Episode 1328 Scott Adams: The Argument For and Against Vaccine Passports, The Everstuck Ship, And Trump Fun Too
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Does Missoula Montana exist?
Prank goes over NYT Mike Baker's head
25% people polled...are idiots
Support for voter ID
Why I identify as Black
Vaccine passports
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The best place to be at the best time in the entire world.
Yeah, a lot of people think there are better places to be.
Not really. This is the best place to be and every one of you know it because you're here.
You could be anywhere.
Well, you could be watching anything.
But no, you're here because you know that you can have the best time of your entire day.
And all you need is a cup or a mug, a glass tank or gel, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better except, apparently, that big ship that's stuck in the Suez Canal.
But let's see if we can get that out.
Yeah. Yeah. I think the simultaneous ship has the power to dislodge shipping vessels from canals.
Go! I feel it wiggling right now.
Yep. Whoa, whoa, hold on.
I feel it coming loose.
It's coming loose.
Well, let's talk about all the stories.
Yes, let's talk about that big old ship...
So the name of the ship, humorously, is the Evergreen.
Isn't that kind of perfect?
Because the story became an evergreen.
An evergreen is like it never goes away.
Every day you wake up and there's still a ship stuck in the Suez Canal and you're not going to be able to wipe your ass if it stays there much longer.
So this morning the news was that at least one part of it got free.
And everybody's thinking, yay!
If one part of it is free, it's not going to take long to get the other part free, is it?
Except they let the wind blow it back into its stuck position.
And I ask you this.
Is the wind around the Suez Canal sort of a special kind of wind?
Is it the kind of wind that targets specific ships?
Because it seems to me that a Suez Canal that is filled with ships, they probably figured out the whole wind thing by now, right? But yet I'm not hearing that the wind has disrupted shipping all over the world.
Seems to me just this little evergreen ship gets a little extra wind, I feel.
And that's not right.
So, I won't make any other jokes.
I had some good ones, but they're not for the public.
But that ship is not quite out yet.
The wind blew it back into a stuck position.
And I do love the simplicity of the story, as somebody said on Twitter.
All of our other stories are too complicated.
They have lots of variables.
But this one's great.
You can sum it up easily.
Ship. Stuck.
Needed unstuck.
That's it. Alright, Trump made news again.
A couple ways. He attended...
I guess he crashed a wedding at Mar-a-Lago...
And there's a video of him sort of talking about himself and talking about the government.
And it wasn't until the very end that he says something to the bride and groom.
You could tell he got a big applause.
It was a friendly Trump crowd, as you might imagine.
They had a wedding at Mar-a-Lago.
They were probably pro-Trump.
But the way it's being portrayed out of context is that he was rude and boorish and Crashed a wedding and talked about himself and forgot about the bride and groom and then left.
Nothing like that happened.
Exactly the opposite.
He showed up at a wedding, thrilled the wedding people.
They had the wedding of all time, the most memorable wedding you could possibly have, because Trump showed up and gave a speech, unexpectedly.
So the bride and groom probably had the best story ever.
Yeah, exactly.
It got Rupard. So that story got totally Rupard.
If you cut off the last part, it looks like he never even addressed the bride and groom.
All right, Trump is also saying he's going to visit the border.
This is why he was the fun president.
Visiting the border is just the best thing you could possibly do when the sitting president is not visiting the border during a crisis.
So if the ex-president visits the border before the sitting president, it sort of makes the sitting president look not so strong on that issue, if you know what I mean.
So that's a good play by Trump.
Persuasion-wise, good play.
So the George Floyd trial is starting today, I guess.
And have you noticed how one story ends and then there's always another one that just backfills it perfectly?
Why isn't there ever a day, I guess there were a few without Trump in the winter, in which it seemed like there wasn't much news.
But it's kind of weird how the news always has a big story in the pipeline.
The timing of it is a little suspicious.
You know, sometimes they're two at a time, but they really make sure that pipeline is filled.
Which sort of suggests to me that if we had a time when there wasn't much happening...
That the news would make something out of nothing.
Huh. They wouldn't do that, would they?
Make something out of nothing just to make news?
Maybe they would. And how would we know?
How would we know if there was a real issue and we were just reading the news and seeing a real issue, or the news business had created an issue that otherwise you wouldn't have even cared about, or known about, or had any impact?
You know, whatever.
So you start to see the pattern, that the news is pretty much artificial, at least in terms of how you feel about it.
So the things you feel about the strongest aren't necessarily the important things that are happening.
So the news no longer reports what's important, per se.
They report what's going to get the best audience.
Well, there's a publication called Real Clear Investigations.
They're reporting about this little county in Montana, Missoula.
Only 120,000 people in the whole area.
And they did a full audit of the mail-in ballots.
Now, apparently other audits have been sample audits.
I wasn't aware of that. So when larger places are audited, they can't count them all because there would be too many.
So they pick a sample and just count those.
Now, I have questions.
Did you know that, first of all, that the other mail-in ballot audits were samples and not actually just counting all the ballots?
I didn't know that, so that's interesting.
But here's my second question.
What do we know about how they picked the sample?
Who exactly gave them the sample?
Did the auditors go into a big room full of ballots and say, all right, we're just going to randomly...
And how would you do it?
How would you randomly select balance?
Because even if you went and said, oh, I'll just randomly pick them out of this pile and this pile, probably it wouldn't be random, would it?
Because that's not even close to random, right?
I mean, mathematically, statistically, even if you weren't trying to take them from the same place, you couldn't guarantee it was random.
It wouldn't be possible.
So, I ask you this question.
Were the people who audited the ballots the same ones who decided which ones to audit?
In other words, did they do the randomness?
Or, I'm just going to put that out there, because I don't know the answer, and let me tell you that no court has found any widespread fraud.
No court...
As a ruling of any widespread fraud in the election, right?
It's a big lie.
It's a big lie. I'm saying that so I can stay on social media.
Now, on with the story.
So the question is, do the people who have done sample representative audits of big places, was the sample given to them by the same people who organized the election?
Or did they somehow get to pick it, and if they picked it, how in the world did they know it was representative?
And do you want a representative sample?
Because I don't think you want a representative sample, do you?
Don't you want, don't you assume that if there's a problem, it's probably not going to be evenly spread?
So wouldn't a representative sample of ballots eliminate the possibility of finding fraud?
Because you could find some, but you'd say, ah, it's hardly anything.
This one sample that we got from this one town, yeah, it had a problem, but it's just one.
But it's also the only one you checked in that town, because it was a representative sample.
So, if you do a representative sample, doesn't that guarantee, or almost guarantee, just math-wise and statistically, that you wouldn't find any fraud?
Am I wrong about that?
It sort of calls into question whether any audits have been done at all in any way that would matter.
So I'll just put it as a question.
It's not an accusation, because that would get me kicked off of social media.
So I have no reason to believe that any audits were insufficient.
I simply have a gap in my understanding of how they could possibly pick some representative sample that actually meant something.
But anyway, back to this little Missoula place.
So they did an audit in which, because it was a smaller place, and there were volunteers, and they got approval to do it, they could look at every single one.
So I believe this might be the only place that every ballot was checked.
Maybe. Fact check me on that.
And here's what they found.
There were enough irregularities that could have changed the election.
Like, easily. There were so many in a place where elections were often close that it was way beyond the point.
Let me see. I'm seeing some answers about the samples.
Okay, I don't see an answer I want to read.
But some people are addressing the sample size question.
So again, I put that out there as a question, not an accusation.
I don't know how it could be representative, but maybe it is.
So what they found is that out of 72,000 mail-in votes, 4,600 of them were without envelopes.
6.3% of all votes, of the mail-in votes, not of all votes, but 6% of the mail-in votes didn't have envelopes.
Which means that legally they should not have been counted.
But they were. And what's more, according to, this is from the article, according to auditors, county employees claim that during the post-election audit, some of the envelopes may have been double-counted.
So, might even be a higher number of missing envelopes, but they don't know that for sure.
And... And apparently there were some postmark issues as well.
So fact check me on this, will you?
Just fact check me. Number one, is the story even true?
Right? Like, I don't trust anything.
Like, maybe this story didn't even happen.
Maybe there's no place called Missoula.
Right? I mean, anything's possible in 2021.
So first of all, is the story even true?
I don't know. I don't know.
I don't even know how to know. But if it were true, is it the only place they've ever checked?
And it's also completely problematic.
I hate using that word.
I'm going to erase that word and back up like I never used it before.
The only place you checked there was a problem?
Is that true?
So there is a Missoula in Montana, at least that's...
Well, that part I was pretty confident about.
But was there really an election?
Somebody says, yeah, you know, I gotta say, I gotta say, this certainly raises some questions.
But, like I said, the courts have shown no proof of widespread fraud.
Jack Posobiec had a great prank tweet this morning.
And here's the setup.
As you know, there are a bunch of Antifa people who are counter-protesting some, I guess, some Republican types, some conservative types who are protesting something.
Anyway, so the Antifa people were throwing rocks through the cars of anything that had a flag on it, or the trucks usually.
And so there was some of that kind of violence and destruction.
And Jack tweeted, tongue-in-cheek, armed Antifa insurrectionists attempted to overthrow the Oregon State Capitol today.
Now, of course, that's a joke on the Capitol riots, where anything that looks like a protest could be construed by the fake media as an insurrection.
Mike Baker, correspondent to the New York Times, not understanding that this was a joke, tweets about it.
The tweet below is getting a lot of traction, but isn't even close to being true.
Yeah, which is often the case with jokes.
They're not that close to being true.
The crowd of anti-fascist activists gathering in front of the Capitol to protest.
A planned right-wing event.
There was no attempted overthrow.
Yes. Yes. There was no attempted overthrow.
Good to know. So we have that clarification of a prank.
Breaking news. I don't know if you knew this, but 25% of people polled on any topic are idiots.
Have you ever noticed that?
It doesn't matter what the question is, if it's on politics anyway.
Any question on politics, 25% of the country is going to be on the dumb side.
It doesn't even matter what the question is.
And I wonder, is it the same people every time?
Or is it just always a coincidence that about 25% of the people will disagree on things no matter what they are?
Or is it always the same 25% who just don't understand anything?
Makes you wonder.
I imagine it's different people, but it's a funny question.
So here's, in case in point, Rasmussen is reporting about the support for voter ID laws.
So apparently back in 2018, so not that long ago, the support for voter ID laws among white people was 67 to 74%.
Among blacks, it was 55 to 69.
And other non-whites...
Oh, that's interesting.
It's much higher, 76 to 82.
And so among all voters, the range was 67 to 75.
But the current average is 75.
So in other words, the support for voter ID laws has climbed substantially.
A lot more people are in favor of it.
But I go back to my question.
25% of the country is not in favor of knowing who voted.
What's wrong with them?
What's wrong with them?
So I see somebody saying that Scott believes polls again.
Well, I'm reading the Rasmussen polls.
The Rasmussen polls, at least on the presidential stuff that I follow, I don't know about anything else, but on the presidential stuff, they've been one of the closest pollsters consistently.
So following a pollster that is consistently one of the best is not exactly being too stupid.
Following the polls that come out prior to an election, which you know are fake polls, would be sort of dumb.
So you can't say polls are polls.
Some of them are just obviously fake all the time.
Now, as I've been telling you lately, I've decided to self-identify as black.
And I decided I haven't explained that well enough, because some people still think it's a joke, but it's not.
Number one, I agree literally, no joke, being completely serious, I agree with the concept that people can self-identify.
Let me give you an example. Let's say somebody is technically bisexual, at least in their own mind, they would consider themselves bisexual.
But let's say they just have more of an affinity for the gay lifestyle, spend more time there, have more gay friends than straight friends, and just decide to identify as gay.
But maybe technically, in their mind, they know that they could go the other way if they wanted to.
So should they be allowed to identify as gay when sort of technically maybe they're not so much completely gay as bi, but they have an affinity for that lifestyle?
I say yes.
I say yes.
Because they would certainly be treated as gay.
They would be living the life, you know, etc.
So I say yes. Likewise, as you know, I've been pro-transgender everything.
And should those folks be allowed to live the life and identify with the group that they want because of an affinity for it?
Technically, if you looked at their DNA, right?
You'd say, well, technically, this isn't the group that we would have put you in.
But if you have an affinity for that group, it's where you feel you live and belong and how you're going to be treated in life...
I'm okay with that. I feel that's a reasonable thing.
And so, based on that same standard, which I've accepted as reasonable, and likewise, I accept that if somebody is, say, 25% genetically black, that if they identify as just black, we accept that, right? Because same reason.
Their lifestyle, their Their interests, the way they're treated might be more in one group.
So yeah, identify that way, even if technically somebody else might argue you shouldn't be.
So here's why I've decided to self-identify as black.
Number one, I like to be on a winning team.
I like to be on the winning team.
Who's winning? Well, I would say black Americans are starting to finally, like really getting a little bit of purchase, right?
Finally, after hundreds of years, it does look like The black situation is doing pretty well, largely because of activism, whereas the white situation is sort of decreasing.
Wouldn't you say? Now, I'm not putting a value judgment on that.
I'm just saying if you observe it, it looks like that.
So I like being on the winning team.
Number two, I'm told by science that all of us have African roots.
Now, if it's truly we all have African roots, if you looked at the full arc of human evolution, most of the time I've been African.
In other words, my family ancestry probably spent more time African than they did in Europe.
So, I say genetically I've got an argument there.
I've also lost two careers for my race.
I've told you that too many times.
I lost my banking career because I was white.
And I was told that directly, by the way.
I'm not reading between the lines.
Boss told me that. I lost my telecom career because I was white.
Again, my boss told me directly, you're white, we can't promote you.
And I would say that my current career as a cartoonist and now public commentator, I probably lost, I'd say, a third to a half of my potential income to race.
Because if I talk about Trump in any positive way, that made me look like a white supremacist, people don't buy my books, etc.
So I've lost two careers completely because of my race, and my current one is probably down by a third or so because of my race.
Now you tell me, who do I have more affinity with?
People who are discriminated against for race, Or people who are not.
I have way more affinity with people who have been discriminated against for race.
And by the way, that's not a joke.
That's literally true.
I do have more affinity for anybody discriminated against by race.
That's how it works. If something happens to you that happened to somebody else, you have some appreciation for it.
That's how it works.
And then...
And I've also done more work to benefit the black community than any other.
So I would say that's my affinity group.
And that's what I choose.
All right. Here's a little issue that I saw in a cartoon, but it's actually a pretty good point.
We're making a big deal, and should, about Asian American violence, because we don't want any of that.
We don't want any of that bias and discrimination in our country.
So we started out with Black Lives Matter.
My group.
But now we're sort of talking about Asian Americans being discriminated, and we're very close, very close, to saying Asian American lives matter.
We're going to get to the point where they all matter except for these white supremacist lives.
So it'll be interesting to see how the Asian American thing Has an influence on the Black Lives Matter thing, or if they just always live separately.
But it seems like one would influence the other.
I told you that the news is all artificial, and what you consider the biggest story is often completely irrelevant, and what you consider no story at all is often the biggest thing happening.
Here's a good example.
I would argue that the biggest thing that's going to come out of the coronavirus thing is the death of public schools.
Because the teachers' unions have overreached, right?
The teachers' unions have overreached.
And if you're not following, let's see, you should be following Corey DeAngelis on Twitter because he's sort of the only one who seems to be consistently reporting all the changes that are happening.
But today we're hearing that West Virginia Governor Jim Justice just signed this year's most expansive bill to fund students instead of systems.
Now that's happening all over the place.
A bunch of different states, especially where they have Republican control, are deciding that the funding will follow the student so the student can go to whatever school they want, private or public, and it won't just go to the school instead.
I think the teachers unions have destroyed public education as a monopoly.
It looks like they overreached and destroyed it.
Now, as you know, the teachers unions are the biggest source of systemic racism.
And I don't think enough of my people are talking about this.
But it's the biggest source, and it might be on the way to self-solving.
In other words, the pandemic may have solved the biggest form of systemic racism in the country.
I don't think there's a bigger story than that.
I propose to you that this is the biggest story in the country.
And it's basically one guy who's tweeting about it.
It's the biggest story.
Like, this is the one that moves the planet.
This one moves civilization.
The entire future of the United States compared to, let's say, our competition with China is really, really dependent on this.
Biggest story in the country.
Completely ignored. You won't find it on any website.
You'd have to follow somebody on Twitter to even know it's happening.
Also from Rasmussen, 76% of folks say that gun ownership is a constitutional right.
76% say gun ownership is a constitutional right.
That makes about 25%, 24%, 25%.
Idiots, right? Because you could argue that something shouldn't be in the Constitution, but it's hard to argue it's not there.
It's another one of those examples where 25%, you can always count on them, to be wrong on everything.
All right, here's my new section, which will cause you all to get worked up.
Are you ready? Are you ready for some fightin'?
Ready for some intellectual fightin'?
Come on, here it comes. Here it comes.
Here's the red meat.
Coming out. Alright, I call this section, Am I Wrong or Are You Frightened?
Am I Wrong or Are You Frightened?
And here's the concept behind it.
An ordinary intelligent person will make ordinary, intelligent, and reasonable decisions when their emotions are not involved.
If you take that same reasonable person who's got perfectly average abilities and common sense and reasoning, and you put that person in a stressful, scary situation, how good is their reasoning now?
Not good, right?
So your ability to reason...
It gets switched off as your emotions go higher.
As you get angrier, as you get more frightened, as you're worried, as you're more anxious, your sense of reason just switches off.
Does anybody doubt that?
We all agree with that, right?
So if you have a situation, let's say hypothetically, there was a situation where there was somebody you knew who had a really good track record of being reasonable and often right, A very reasonable person.
And then you're comparing that to that reasonable person to another one who's just as reasonable.
Two very reasonable people.
They're often right, see things clearly.
Now, we're going to make one tweak.
They're both reasonable.
They're both usually right.
But one of them is now really scared.
One's really frightened.
Now, they start to disagree on the topic.
One is not frightened.
And is reasonable most of the time.
One is pretty scared.
And they have different opinions now.
Who's right? Which one of them is more likely to have the right opinion?
Because remember, same intelligence, same information.
But one of them is scared.
And one of them isn't. Yeah, the calm person.
Statistically, you should expect that the calm person has the advantage.
Now let's talk about vaccine passports.
I'm not afraid of vaccine passports.
Now you might argue that I should be, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
But as a statement of fact, I'm not even a little bit concerned about them.
But the people who disagree with my opinion, which I'll state in a minute, those people are really, really concerned.
Like they're really scared.
Now, A lot of people are saying the following comment.
Scott, I like your opinions in general, but wow, you're all over the place on these vaccine passports because you think maybe it should be a good idea.
And you're way off on this one.
You've got a lot of stuff right, but you're way off on this vaccine passport thing.
So I ask you this.
Step back for a moment.
I have no fear of it whatsoever, which doesn't mean I'm right, right?
That doesn't mean I'm right.
I'm just saying I have no fear, and you've watched me for however long you've watched me, and you thought that I was reasonable until now.
But here's an object where you have a topic where you have a lot of fear, and now where our opinions are different.
What do you think's going on?
What do you think is going on here?
Is the problem that you're afraid and it's affecting your judgment, or is this one of those times when Different from my pattern, I'm just way off.
I'm way off in a bad opinion.
Which of those is more likely?
All right, I'm going to read some of the comments to my tweet this morning, and I'm going to tell you what I think of their reasoning, okay?
So here are the people who are disagreeing with me.
So I've said that vaccine passports will be fine.
Now, it doesn't mean it'll make anything better.
I'm just not afraid of them.
And here's my argument.
We already have driver's licenses, right?
Putting your name into a database and giving you a driver's license, did that ruin your life somehow, or did it just make it safer to drive?
It didn't really hurt much.
If you get a mortgage, you have to show your taxes.
Was that a slippery slope to losing your health care information?
No. No. No.
And how about your healthcare information?
Has anybody gotten access to that?
We have laws that keep your healthcare stuff private.
Has anybody gotten access to most of it?
We're talking about just the vaccination part.
But has anybody gotten access to the whole database yet?
Not yet. Not yet.
I mean, I suppose it's a risk, but not yet.
So we live in a world in which the government has often put these restrictions on us to put us in a database and know something about us.
Now, the big argument that I've heard from, I guess this is from Naomi Wolf.
So she's quite famous for being a skeptic on some of the coronavirus stuff.
And the first thing I would say is beware of skeptics.
Skeptics are, you know, valuable.
Gotta have them. I am one.
But there's a skeptic trap.
And you should be aware of it.
The skeptic trap goes like this.
Once you become the skeptic, it's hard not to be the skeptic.
And you're going to want to have at least a win.
In your skeptical thing.
So there's a bias that would affect the Ivor Cummins of the world, a skeptic.
Alex Berenson, skeptic about some aspects of the coronavirus in both cases.
And Dr.
Naomi Wolf, also a skeptic.
Now here's my problem with skeptics.
Once you're known as the famous skeptic, and you're getting a lot of attention and reward for being that famous skeptic, you kind of need to be right.
Meaning that even if you're wrong, you need to be right.
Whereas somebody who hasn't committed that forcefully to the position, and I would argue that I haven't.
I've been all over the place on different coronavirus stuff.
So I don't feel like I would be labeled as a skeptic or labeled as a believer.
I'm somewhere in the middle.
So I would argue that if you're somewhere in the middle, you're less likely to be influenced by the bias of needing to be right about something big.
But if you're out there all the time being the skeptic, you kind of have that really big bias.
And just be aware of that.
Now, does that mean that any of them are wrong?
No. No.
I'm not telling you that any of them are wrong on anything.
I'm not sure I would know.
But... Just have that little bit of knowledge in the back of your head that once you're the skeptic person, you've got a little extra bias there.
All right, so just be careful about that.
And I'm sure that that same concept would apply to me whenever I've committed to a position, so be aware of it.
Here are some comments about people who are against the vaccine passport.
I won't read their names.
I'll just talk about the comment itself.
All right. It's discrimination against the free will of the people who do not want to get vaccinated.
Is that true? Would it be discriminating against...
We'll say the freedom, I think, is the point.
The freedom of the people who do not want to get vaccinated.
That's true. It definitely discriminates against their freedom.
But isn't that true of a driver's license?
Isn't that true of getting a loan?
People who don't have tax returns, can't go on.
Is it true of travel?
You can't travel anywhere unless you have a passport.
So this is a true statement.
It discriminates against your freedom.
But that's not a reason.
Because we do it all the time.
The society, all of civilization, the entire civilization is built on restricting your freedom.
That's what it is.
You don't build a civilization to give people freedom.
All of civilization is a restriction of freedom.
But it's designed to be a wise restriction.
It restricts the things that you'd want to restrict.
This is just another one of them.
So I don't think it is reasonable to disagree with it in concept as a reduction of freedom.
Because all of civilization is a reduction of freedom.
You can't drive your car on the sidewalk.
They built a road to restrict where you drive the car.
It's all restrictions.
All right, let's do some more reasons.
The U.S. government couldn't execute this in a way that...
So there's a practical element to it.
So somebody says it might be impractical.
That's a good point. If your argument is that we can't get it up in time, somebody else argued that a lot of people got vaccinated without showing ID. So what do those people do?
If you got vaccinated, but you didn't show ID at the time, but your name is still in the system, right?
If you got vaccinated or not.
So there might be some practical limitations to it, which are perfectly, that would be a good skeptical comment.
If you just can't do it, that's a reason not to do it.
It just can't be done. So if it's not accurate, then yeah, of course it's a problem.
But I don't know that for sure, and the argument about it is usually not on the practical level.
Here are some more arguments. Once the system and the precedent exists, factions within the government can take them and bend them in their own purposes.
Ah, now we're getting to the real good stuff.
So the problem is that once you have a platform, and this is Dr.
Naomi Wolf's argument, that once you have a platform...
Where there's something about you, in this case the vaccination or not, is in the database, and that's going to restrict you from, let's say, businesses or travel or government things.
Once you have that system, they can add anything to that system, can't they?
They can add anything to that.
Next thing you know, maybe the next thing they add to it, you don't like so much, even if you think the vaccination thing is a good idea.
Slippery slope, isn't it?
Do you know what else is a slippery slope?
Computers. If we allow ourselves to have computers, somebody's going to put some information in those databases.
We're not going to like it.
Or how about driver's licenses?
There's a database of your driver's license that has your weight, your address, your height, your eye color, your hair color, I think.
Couldn't they use, and then it's also used to restrict what you can and cannot do.
So if you don't have ID of some sort, you can't fly, you can't do a lot of stuff.
So couldn't they take the driver's license platform, because it's just a database, and add stuff to it?
See where I'm going?
I don't think we should have driver's licenses, because that database could be expanded into a social credit system.
Couldn't it? Do you know what else could be expanded into a social credit system?
Any database.
It's just a database.
Yes, you can put bad things in the database.
You could put good things in the database.
But you don't get rid of databases because somebody could misuse it.
So could somebody misuse this system?
Yes. They could misuse every system.
That's not a reason not to do it.
You have to weigh the, you know, the risk against the benefits, right?
So here's my best argument of why I'm not worried.
Number one, it might be impractical.
Like, once they roll it out, the odds of it working, I don't know.
It might be impractical. So it might never even be a problem.
Number two... I believe that transparency and market competition is all you need to make sure that it doesn't go too far.
Now, everything goes too far before it gets pulled back, right?
So things do go too far and then get pulled back.
So we might find that this will go too far and get pulled back.
But as long as...
Let's work it through.
Let's say the government says you can't travel unless you have a vaccination.
Same as now. I traveled recently and I couldn't do it without getting a test that goes in the database that the airline can see that says I got a negative COVID test.
What's the difference between that, the current situation, that I'm in a database saying I got a COVID test, or one that says I got a vaccination?
It's the same damn test.
I mean, it's the same process, right?
Once you're in the system, So were people complaining that the airlines required you to get a test?
Because once you have that platform that allows the airlines to know if you got a test, they could add things to the platform.
So when you're talking about the vaccination platform, you already have one.
The platform already was built.
It was for the tests, whether you got tested or not.
So I don't think the flight thing...
Is anything. Because it's just the current situation that seems to be no big deal.
What about individual businesses?
Let's say you need a vaccination to go to a basketball game where the seats are filled.
Let's say that's the case.
And let's say that the public says, hey, I'm going to boycott your basketball game because of this rule.
If enough people boycott it, what's going to happen?
Well, they either won't have the game or they'll change the rule or some time will pass and we don't need the vaccinations, right?
So the public response and market competition is going to kind of take care of this, I think, as long as you've got to have lots of visibility.
The problem, I think, would be a lack of visibility.
Now... In America, do you think that we could take this to the next level of social...
What is it that China has?
The social credit system?
Where you have to do a whole bunch of things right or else you get in their database as a bad person?
We're not too far from that now, are we?
We have a social credit database.
Did you know that? Did you know you're already in a social credit database in the United States?
Well, one of them is your credit score.
Literally your credit score, right?
That is a social credit.
How trustworthy are you?
Do you pay back your debts?
We have that. It already exists.
That's just one form of it.
We also have this thing called the internet, which you've probably heard of.
You can go on the internet, on social media, and you can find out...
Quite a bit about people.
And you could find out how good or bad they are fairly reliably by looking at their social media background.
So I would argue that the wokeism is a social credit system.
I don't even know if it would be worse if we turned it into a database.
Now, I'm not in favor of that, turning it into a database.
But the current system is pretty damn bad.
The wokeness stuff is pretty, pretty bad.
I would say we do have a social credit system.
So you're worried about the thing that's already here.
I suppose it could get worse, but it's here.
You already have it.
All right, so let me read a couple more reasons here.
Just to show you the types of objections.
All right. I want to see some good comments here.
It's from David Reboy.
So here's somebody I know to be a higher level thinker and commentator on Twitter.
So this would be a better quality of objection.
It says, my objection isn't even really related to the vaccine.
The passport infrastructure will encourage private companies of every kind to engage in an emerging social credit system.
Now, Again, that could be...
I suppose you could see it going that way, but what would be the next thing that got added?
What exactly would be the next thing in the progression?
Somebody says, poison is bad for your health.
Thank you. Somebody is saying, I'm framing travel by international standards, not domestic.
That's right. But the point stays the same.
Because international travel is a big enough thing that that's a fair example.
How long is immunity?
Yeah, somebody's asking a good question.
How long does immunity last?
So if you got vaccinated, does that really mean anything?
I suppose there'd be a date on there.
So... Here's what I feel like.
A lot of people are saying that this feels like a slippery slope and it reminds you of Nazi Germany.
Every time you see yourself saying, wait a minute, that reminds me of Nazi Germany, there should be a flag that goes off in your head.
Wait a minute, why am I always reminded of Nazi Germany every time there's a political conversation?
It's because it's the weird extreme that's in all of our minds.
It's not because everything is like that.
So just being reminded of something else is not a reason.
If you are reminded of Nazi Germany, you are probably looking at this with fright, as opposed to reason.
Now, let me say as carefully as I can, you could all be right, and I could be wrong.
Nothing rules that out, right?
So if you're hearing me say, I'm right, right, right, and you're all wrong, you shouldn't be hearing that.
What I'm saying is, I'm not seeing any reason to be afraid, because it looks like normal business to me.
It just doesn't seem that extreme.
As long as you have market competition, as long as you have visibility, as long as the public can get its way.
And it can, if it pushes hard enough.
I'm not especially afraid of it.
So, yes, I wouldn't worry about Nuremberg and Nazis and Hitler.
Every time you look around a corner, Hitler is not under the bed.
Hitler is not under the bed.
Do you remember when the coronavirus was first hitting and a lot of people thought that it would be the end of our supply chains and civilization would crumble?
And I was telling you, no, no, no, don't be operating on fear.
Logically, we will adjust and we'll figure out how to get you food.
And then we did just that.
We figured out how to adjust.
We took the risks we needed to take.
We got everybody fed for the most part.
So just keep in mind that when you've been the most frightened is when you've made the worst decisions.
So if there's somebody that you think has been right before and they're not frightened by the current topic, maybe you should give them a little bit more credibility than you should even give yourself if you're operating from fear.
Doesn't mean you're wrong, by the way.
Fear is a good thing. But just play the statistics.
Alright. The ex-CDC chief says he does think that the COVID-19 came, or the coronavirus, came from some lab.
Now, his argument, I hadn't heard before, and it goes like this, that it's actually hard to get an animal virus to be compatible with a human.
And even if it gets to a human, it tends not to be very viral because it's not a very effective virus.
But I guess the way that you can make an animal virus really, really bad for humans is to expose it to human cells in a lab, and you get the virus basically trained, or to evolve, if you will, or to mutate, I guess, until it is really, really bad for humans.
And the speculation here, and I think you'd have to call it sort of educated statistical reasoning, is that it's unlikely that this thing could have as quickly become so viral, unless there was some, you know, weaponization happened.
Now, the weaponization doesn't mean that they intended anything to get out, so that's a separate question.
But the statistics of it, according to Dr.
Redfield, ex-CDC head, is that it's unlikely that in the timeframes we're talking about, a natural thing could have become this viral.
It would have had to be stepped up, they say, and added a little bit of zing in a human way.
But I would add to that, that doesn't make it impossible.
It just makes it unlikely.
So just know that we live in a world where unlikely things do happen fairly regularly, more than you'd expect.
But that's a good argument.
I'm going to say that's a solid argument.
I love this story about Ted Cruz going to visit the Biden cages and all the kids that are in there.
And there's the video of the The worker who's trying to stop him from filming.
I think that's sort of a Rupar video.
And here's why.
What you're watching is, you know, I think Ted Cruz is probably using his phone camera.
He's talking to somebody who's trying to stand in front of him and stop him from filming the people who are in the cages.
Or the boxes, the Biden boxes.
And the part that's left out is the reason that she's trying to stop it.
And I feel like there should have been two reasons.
One of the reasons I believe is valid, which is there's a privacy reason.
And I believe that if you're just filming people and you can see their faces in a world of facial recognition, that does sort of put those people in a...
Let's say a more vulnerable spot if their faces get into a database because somebody took a picture of it.
So I'm going to say that that part was actually reasonably responsible.
But then the other part is, are they just trying to stop embarrassment?
And that's not valid.
Because we do get to see this, right?
We should be able to see this.
We can't fix it unless the public gets excited about it.
So, A-plus to Senator Cruz for excellent theatrics and politics as well.
I think that was exactly the right thing to do, what he did, bring a bunch of senators in, elbow your way in there, don't take no for an answer, don't let anybody stop you if you have a moral authority to do what you're doing, and he did.
He had moral authority, which is greater than their authority, and he took it.
He basically just expressed moral authority and got away with it.
Very good. Very, very good work, I would say.
And good for the country. We wanted to see that.
Alright, that is pretty much what I wanted to talk about.
Somebody says the faces are blurred before broadcast.
Yeah, if you're being responsible, and the pictures that I did see, they were blurred.
But what the worker could not know is whether Ted Cruz would do that.
And that's fair. Now, if it had been, let's say, a professional news crew, you might have had a little more certainty that they would agree to and actually blur out the faces.
But was Ted Cruz going to go through all the editing of blurring out dozens of faces?
Probably not. Probably not.
Somebody says, do illegals get a right to privacy?
Here I would question the use of the word right.
And my answer is probably not.
I mean, I assume that if you're not a legal citizen, you don't have all the same protections.
Maybe you do. Actually, maybe you do.
I guess I'm not enough of a lawyer to know the answer to that.
Maybe you do. But I don't think it's the right question.
The reason that privacy is even an expectation...
It's because all of us think it's something that people should have.
Like, regardless of what the law is, we all kind of think people should get some privacy.
So I don't think that whatever the law is or the Constitution should be the guiding principle in this case.
Because there's a moral law on top of that that's just bigger.
That's just bigger.
Um... It's...
Once they're on U.S. soil, then they do, somebody says.
We should all have privacy and also vaccine passports.
Okay. Well, the thing with privacy, and the thing with all of my arguments, is that if you ever see any of them as absolutes, the problem's on your end.
Because I don't present anything as an absolute.
Privacy is good. But also restricting what people can do so that you can have a functioning civilization is also good.
They can both be good, right?
You could have times when you're trading one for the other.
There's nothing wrong with that. Somebody says moral laws have no place outside of religion.
Well, moral laws don't.
Maybe. But acting in a moral way, you could take away the word law if you like, but acting in a moral way is just something we should expect of each other.
It doesn't have to be on the books.
Privacy is a form of public restriction.
That's correct. Good point.
That's right. If you have privacy, you're restricting me from that information.
Now, I'm not saying that's wrong.
I'm just saying that there is no such thing as just freedom.
To have a civilization, it's all about restriction.
That's what makes it a civilization, is restriction.
Mind your own business, somebody says.
That's a perfectly reasonable statement.
So if somebody says, you know, our philosophy or our point of view should be everybody just mind your own business.
If you could be consistent on that, you'd have something.
The trouble is, it's not one of those things you can be consistent on.
Because we really can't mind our own business and live in the same physical place.
You could try, but it couldn't possibly work.
Oh, so there's a great fake news story about, I guess, a couple of rappers or hip-hoppers or whatever is the best word, musical acts, are creating a Satan-based sneaker with a drop of human blood in each sneaker, to which somebody on Twitter asked, do you really think there's a drop of human blood in each of those sneakers?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's one of the best marketing schemes you'll ever see, because we're all talking about it.
But I don't think there's a drop of blood in every sneaker.
I mean, anything's possible.
But I'm just going to say, I don't really think there's a drop of blood in those sneakers.
Yeah, weirdos.
All right. I don't know how many of those satanic sneakers are going to sell, but...
They certainly did a good job in letting us know they're out there.
All right, I'm just looking at some of your comments.
All right, that's all I got for now.
Today I'm going to start recording the audiobook, which is actually a re-recording, because another artist did the original.
So this will be the first time I'll be recording my own book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
It'll take months before you can actually buy it.
But next three days, I'm going to be leaving here and recording all day in the studio.
And I hope that you like the audiobook when it's done.
