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April 30, 2021 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:10:08
Episode 1361 Scott Adams: Socialism on Trial, Trickle Down Economics, Alternate Headlines, and Monsters Under the Bed

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Human motivation versus equitable outcome Alternate headlines using same facts Disturbing FBI raid on Rudy Giuliani Joe Rogan on vaccinations for healthy 21 year olds India's terrifying COVID death rate Matt Gaetz update ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Go! Stop it, Daniel.
Stop it. Troublemaker.
All right. Let's talk about all the news.
Most of it is fake.
Who would have known I could make an entire job out of just pointing out how fake the news is every single day?
Wouldn't you think that there would be days at a time when I would try to talk about fake news and I would look at the news and I'd be like, darn, there's no fake news today to talk about.
But no, we never have to worry about that.
We never have to worry about that.
There's always fake news.
Here's at the top of the list.
Did you hear the poll that found that 85% of the viewers of Biden's joint session address liked it?
85% liked his address.
Wow! That's pretty high, isn't it?
Totally real news there, isn't it?
Well, of course, they only polled, not only, but almost overwhelmingly, they polled Democrats who wanted to watch a Biden speech.
What type of result do you get if you do a poll of mostly Democrats who liked Biden enough to watch his speech?
I feel like 85% is just about what you'd expect out of that number.
So it meant absolutely nothing, because they just polled the people who said exactly what you'd think they would say.
Rasmussen has some poll results, just came out, that by more than a 3 to 1 margin, voters say capitalism is better than socialism.
I have questions.
Wait a minute. Are you telling me that in the year 2021, in the United States, it's only 3 to 1?
Don't you feel like that should have been a little higher?
As in 20 to 1 or 100 to 1?
Are there really that many people who said, huh, capitalism versus socialism.
Capitalism versus socialism.
Yeah, socialism. But apparently, yes.
How can you explain this?
Well, I have a potential explanation.
It goes like this. There's nobody in the world who has the same definition of what socialism means.
People just have different definitions.
If people use the same definition, I feel like you'd have a lot more agreement.
But as long as people think socialism is everything from lots of it to a little bit of it, then people just answer whatever political direction they think their answer ought to be.
But if you ask me, is socialism better than capitalism, I would say, I don't know what you're talking about.
Because they're always paired.
Is there any place in the world, any country, in which there is capitalism, but there's not also socialism?
I can't think of one.
Maybe I can. Saudi Arabia?
Maybe? Because I'm trying to think of a situation where they don't have taxes.
Because if you pay taxes, you're a socialist country.
Right? Right? Is anybody going to disagree with this statement, that if you have a capitalist system, but you also pay taxes, that functionally you're a socialist country?
Yeah, it's just a definition.
We don't like to think of it that way, but it's sort of a definition.
You take taxes from some people, you use it for the betterment of the whole.
Socialism. How about public school?
Socialism. Roads.
Pretty much everything.
Now somebody's saying, that's dumb.
So you're going to see what I call the word thinkers pouring in.
Once you see this distinction in the way that people think, you can't unsee it.
So I'm going to ruin your brains here for a minute.
There is a big hunk of the public who believes that words...
And the definition of words are a complete replacement for logic and reason and facts.
Now that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
And you think to yourself, there's nobody like that.
Everybody knows the difference between a logical argument...
And something where you're just arguing about what a word means.
There's nobody who can't tell the difference.
Yeah, there is. Watch the comments.
You're going to see all the people get really mad when I say, well, for all practical purposes, paying taxes is socialism.
And those people are, no, no, the word, the word hurts me.
Oh, I'm out.
I'm out. I'll never listen to you again.
Because you used a word in a way that I didn't like.
So the word thinkers usually are the first ones to bail out of any conversation that looks at cost-benefit or nuance or anything else.
Word thinkers, first out.
But I would say that everything from Social Security, even though we pay into it, blah, blah, blah, we don't pay enough to cover it, We have socialism all over the place in our system.
Here's a better way to ask the question.
You ready for this?
Here's your payoff. By the way, if the Rasmussen folks are listening, I don't know if there's a way to make a polling question out of this, but I'd love to see it.
Instead of saying, what's the better system, socialism or capitalism, and then you just get into word thinking and what words mean, Instead, ask this, which gets away from the whole what words mean problem, all right?
Here would be my poll question to the public.
What is a better system?
One that focuses on human motivation or one that focuses on equitable outcomes?
That's the question.
Because, you know, the socialism just means too many things to too many different people.
But if you said, what's a better system?
One that focuses on human motivation or one that tries to focus on an equitable outcome?
How do you think people would answer that?
Well, I asked that question in my highly unscientific Twitter poll.
As you might imagine, 98% of the people said you want a system that focuses on human motivation.
Let me go further.
Name a system that doesn't take into account human motivation and still works.
I don't think you can.
I mean, it would be fun to see if somebody could.
There must be, you know, maybe there's some special case or something.
But I don't think there's any history, any situation, any example in which somebody designed a system that works against human motivation and it worked out fine.
I can't think of one.
So, that's the way I'd ask the question.
Now, let's say you were a capitalist or a republican.
Let's say you're a conservative and you wanted to warn people away from the risks of socialism.
How would you do that?
Would you go on social media and say, socialism is bad?
Useless. Because the person you talk to doesn't even know what you're talking about.
So when you say, socialism is bad, the other person hears, what's wrong with public education?
You're not even on the same conversation.
So social media is useless for changing anybody's mind about socialism.
You'll just be caught up in the definition of things.
So how would you do it?
Let's say you wanted to be a high-level persuader.
And you wanted to persuade people, but you know you can't do it directly.
You can't just argue with them.
They'll never change their mind.
Nothing you say in public is going to make any difference, right?
So what do you do? Here's what I would do.
If I were trying to be the master manipulator here, I would create a one-minute video about socialism...
And focus on just that human motivation element.
And say, whenever you create a system where the human motivation is right, you get good results.
But put it in a little one-minute package that can educate people really quickly.
So it'd have to be interesting, visual, probably have to have good production values, maybe something funny, but not necessarily.
Something that everybody could get just the one-minute description Of what the problem is.
Now, let me show you how bad this is.
I'm seeing in the comments somebody saying, we'll just show them Venezuela.
Done. Right?
Worst persuasion ever.
Try it on me. Try it on me.
See if you can convince me.
I mean, I'm already a capitalist.
But let's see if you can convince me with that argument.
Scott, we don't want to become like Venezuela.
To which I say, the problem with Venezuela was how they picked their politicians, meaning that they had a dictator.
The problem with Venezuela was a dictator, and then everything else you say about Venezuela is just yak, yak, yak, because you're done.
Venezuela had a dictator.
Everything that comes after that, you don't even need to debate it.
You're kind of done.
Dictator equals bad shit.
So anybody who says, we don't want to become like Venezuela, you should be talking about how we pick our leaders.
We're not going to slide into their economic policies, you know, like nationalizing companies and stuff.
I don't see that coming.
So that's a terrible argument because Venezuela is too different on the political element to compare them in any way on an economic argument.
It's just apples and oranges.
They voted for their dictator, somebody says.
Sure they did. Allegedly.
Maybe they did. It doesn't matter how they got there.
They got there.
So, yeah, one minute video showing that there's no such thing as a system that can survive without human motivation calculated in.
That would be one thing. All right.
CNN, I think it was CNN, in an opinion piece yesterday, maybe, talked about how Joe Biden was different than Trump in terms of the lying and fact-checking.
Now, apparently even the left, CNN specifically, is in fact calling out Biden for a number of things he says which are not accurate.
So I'll give him that, right?
It would have been sort of hard for them to just never fact check Biden.
I don't think they could have gotten away with just not fact checking him.
And indeed they found a bunch of things he said that were not correct.
Now, Given that the reason he ran for office, one of the biggest ones, was that Donald Trump was a big old liar, it's kind of weird that he's also getting fact-checked and lots of stuff he says is not true.
But as CNN points out, he does seem to have one pattern which they would consider an improvement over Trump, which is that when he gets fact-checked, He typically backs off the fact, which would have been a lie, not a fact. Now, would you say that's true?
First of all, have you observed that?
Have you observed that he's made claims that didn't pass the fact-checking, but then fairly quickly, maybe not the same day or something, but fairly quickly modified off that claim?
And I'm looking at your comments to see if you've noticed this.
I would say I have...
Well, only by reading the reporting.
I haven't noticed it directly, but I've noticed that the reporting seems to say it.
I've seen it in a few different places.
All right, most of you are saying, no, no, no, hell no.
Hell no, no, no, no.
All right, let me ask you this.
When was the last time Biden used the fine people hoax?
Because remember, he used it every single time he talked.
In the campaign. Every time.
How many times has he used it lately?
None. All right?
Can you think of a time that he used the Find People hoax lately?
It went from his main theme to doesn't exist anymore.
Do you know why?
Well, it got fact-checked.
Yeah, it got fact-checked.
Now, not by CNN, because they can't fact-check it because they're part of the lie.
But it got fact-checked by enough places that it must have been embarrassing after some point.
What about the Trump said, drink bleach?
You don't see Biden saying that.
He may have said it at some point.
But I don't think he says it anymore.
So, there might actually be something to this.
I hear what you're saying, that you don't believe he's backing off his lies.
But keep an eye on it.
Just clear your history, Cash, and just say, all right, starting now, let's see if he does back off anything that gets fact-checked.
We'll see. But I think we did some good work making him back off of the fine people hoax and the bleach hoax.
And when I say we, I mean literally, we.
You know, people who followed me and amplified, etc.
All right. CBS News.
Reports about a new paper by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Lindbergh of King's College, London.
And they said the following. They examined 18 developed countries from Australia to the United States.
They looked at a 50-year period from 1965 to 2015.
And they were trying to figure out if tax cuts were good or bad.
Did you come out ahead because you cut taxes, especially on the rich?
And they looked at the Reagan tax cuts, etc., and the other countries as well.
And here's what they found.
They found that the per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and those that didn't.
So what do you make of that?
This says that the GDP was no better...
Whether you cut taxes on the rich or not.
And also, unemployment was no better.
So here's how this was reported.
If it's no advantage to cut taxes on the rich, then maybe you shouldn't do it.
Because you didn't get any GDP benefit, and you got no...
I'm sorry. Opposite.
I'm speaking upside down right now.
So the study would suggest, and I'll use the word suggest, that cutting taxes on the rich does nothing good because it doesn't help your GDP, doesn't help employment.
Is there something wrong with this?
Do you see it?
Do you see something wrong with this?
Here's another way to say the same thing, and I'm not going to change any facts.
I'll just use the facts as they report them.
There's no reason to take money from the rich because it doesn't help anybody.
Right? According to their study, if you take money from the rich in terms of cutting their taxes, or I'm sorry, increasing their taxes, if you increase the taxes on the rich, the rich will have less money, but the GDP will not be improved, nor will employment. I believe that their study It shows the opposite of what they wanted to show.
That there was no benefit of taking money from people who had earned it.
Legally, under the rules of capitalism, for whatever reason, some people get lucky, some people inherit, but it showed there was no benefit for taking their money.
And in a free country, allegedly, why are you taking money from the rich if it doesn't make any difference?
Now it does, I would say that this does, if the data is accurate, you always wonder about that.
But if the analysis is good and the data is accurate, it does argue against, it argues against trickle-down economics working.
Meaning it doesn't say that the GDP went up if you cut your taxes.
But it did let people keep more of the money they earned and didn't make any difference.
That's better. It's better to let people keep their money.
Now, let's see.
And it says the incomes of the rich grew much faster where the rates were lower.
So the rich got richer. But here's the other thing that this analysis I'm pretty sure left out.
Which is the differences in tax shelters and write-offs and all that.
When taxes were highest in the United States, were rich people paying the most?
Or were they using the most tax shelters and really not paying much at all?
I don't know if you could look at tax rates and say you've got some kind of apples to apples.
Because if the tax rates are this, But all the rules of how you hide stuff and avoid taxes are completely different from one to the other.
That's an apple and an orange.
You can't compare them. So I don't think there's anything useful in this economic analysis, except that it didn't find any big difference when you steal the money from the people who earned it.
So why do it?
The other thing I think I worry about is that cause and effect might be backwards.
Because when are the situations in which you can raise taxes on the rich?
When is the time you can raise taxes on anyone?
When the economy is good, right?
So is it the tax change that causes the economy?
Or is it that the economy is good and this is a good time to pay down some debt?
So you raise some taxes.
Hey, economy is looking good.
Sort of the Bill Clinton situation.
Clinton could raise taxes.
Because the economy was good.
The economy caused the tax change.
It wasn't the tax change that caused the economy.
So I don't think this economic analysis has any value whatsoever.
Just none. But it's in the news.
People are going to make all kinds of assumptions about it.
Let's do some alternate headlines.
I'll tell you how the news was reported.
and then I'll tell you another way you could have reported the news with the same facts.
So I won't be adding or subtracting facts.
I'll just be describing it differently, and you're the judge if the original headline or my headline is more accurate.
All right, here's something from The Hollywood Reporter This is in a tweet, but the tweet described the situation this way.
It said, Purported former participants on the show, this is Jeopardy!
is the show, wrote an open letter on Medium accusing the game show's producers of failing to catch what they allege is a white power hand gesture.
Now, I'm not going to do an impression of it.
Because then somebody takes a screenshot, blah, blah.
But, suffice to say, that his thumb and forefinger were together, and his three remaining fingers on one hand were exposed.
So that's what he was doing.
So he was definitely making an intentional gesture.
So nobody is questioning that.
It's just, what was the gesture?
His claim, because he was horrified...
So the person who made the claim...
No, he wasn't making the OK sign.
That's the automatic thing you think.
But he wasn't doing it because you didn't see the O. So normally the O part...
See, I'm not going to do it with my hand.
Let's use these scissors.
Let's say this part of the scissor...
Was where your thumb and your index finger would cause a little O, like the OK. That wasn't there, because his hand was like this.
So the audience, and who he was presenting it to, couldn't see the OK part of the OK. All you could see is that three of his fingers were below it.
Now he says it was the third time he won, And each of the other times he won, he did a gesture.
He did a one, a gesture for one when he won once, a gesture for two when he won the second time, and a gesture for three when he won the third time.
But wait a minute, why did he have to do it that way?
How do people typically say three like that?
This is the way you say three, but he didn't do that.
So why did he do that weird other thing where these two fingers are together but the other three are giving the number?
Have you ever seen that before?
In baseball.
In baseball they do that.
So if you're a baseball catcher and you're indicating a call to the pitcher, you do that signal.
It's one of the ways you indicate three, but baseball players tend to do it.
Now, that doesn't mean that's why he did it.
I have no idea what's in his mind.
But as far as I know, there's nothing on social media, nothing his friends are saying, nothing he said, that would even come close to making him a white supremacist, which is the accusation.
Nothing in his background, any suggestion that there's anything like that.
So pretty unlikely it was true.
So that's the headline, that all these people are accusing him of making an alleged white power hand gesture.
Let's see the alternate summary.
Could have been the same tweet.
In other words, it could have been the same facts.
Here's how I would have written it.
Man holds up three fingers to indicate three victories in a row.
Mass hysteria ensues.
Is that an inaccurate statement of what happened?
He held up three fingers and people lost their shit.
That's a fair statement.
Based on what we can observe, right?
There's no indication he has any connection with any racist anything.
So the only thing we know is he held up three fingers, and there was a bunch of mass hysteria that happened.
How is that not accurate?
Same story. All right, here's another one.
You remember the NXIVM so-called cult that wasn't really a cult, but people are calling it that.
The New York Times once wrote this headline.
And, you know, so this is a while ago, but the headline was, Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded.
So you know the story that there was some small group of people who got a brand, you know, a little brand, that had the leader's name, initials, you know, sort of embedded in it, etc. So that was the story.
Now, is this accurate?
No. Inside a secretive group where women are branded.
Well, I would say that's an accurate statement.
It was a semi-secretive group.
That's true.
And that women were branded.
But don't you assume they were branded outside their willingness to do it?
Doesn't it sound like they were victims?
That's what it sounds like, right?
Here's another alternate headline.
And I believe this is all true.
So it's just another way to look at it.
It's all true. So first of all, these brands have a name.
I don't know if you've heard it, but it's called scarification.
Have you heard of it? So giving yourself a little brand or scars with a cauterizing pen.
So there's actually tools to do this.
It's a thing. So it's a growing trend where you'll get like a little bit of scar instead of a tattoo, right?
Now, how many of you knew that?
How many of you were aware that this thing called scarification already existed?
It's a growing trend with professionals who use professional equipment.
Now, did you know that prior to this so-called branding that the people who participated, did you know that they called in an expert on scarification to learn how to do it safely?
And voluntarily. Did you know that?
Did you know that they got expert advice so it'd be safe and that nobody did it unless they wanted to?
Did you know that the...
So here's the alternate headline.
Is scarification the new tattoo?
We report on a group of friends who are part of this growing trend.
That could have been the headline.
Right? Is scarification the new tattoo?
Because that puts it in context, that it's a thing.
Most of the public doesn't know it's a thing.
So if you just heard somebody got branded, and you didn't know that there's a name for it, it's a safe, growing in popularity thing, then you would think of it differently.
And it was a group of friends who decided among themselves...
To put these brands on each other.
Now, have you also heard that it was a sex cult for Keith Ranieri?
You heard it was a sex cult, right?
Did you know that the people having sex with him were already having sex with him before any of this happened?
And that the people who were already having sex with him, who all knew about each other, it was completely open, do you know that they were the core of the people who recruited the other people, but there was never any requirement of any kind of sex or anything?
That was never even part of it.
So when it's reported...
It's that this, you know, they'll call it a cult, and they'll say that a bunch of women in the cult were having sex with the leader.
Is that true? Yes.
It's also true that they were having sex with him voluntarily before any of the group was even formed, and that they were part of forming the group.
So, now, of course, I'm also dealing with information that, you know, comes from the group.
I wasn't there.
So you have to factor in, you know, whether there's any context, I don't know.
But look at the way this stuff gets reported.
When you see that the headlines are so disconnected from anything that actually happened.
And by the way, just because I know this will get taken out of context, I'm not defending anything that anybody did.
I don't know what Keith Ranieri did or did not do with anybody or whether he did or did not break any laws.
I do know that everything about the prosecution was sketchy.
I do know that.
There's a lot of sketchiness about how he got prosecuted.
But that's independent of whether he broke any laws.
I wouldn't know. So I have no personal knowledge of any of that.
So I don't defend anything I don't know it about.
By the way, the Dilbert NFT... The bidding is up to $12,600 with one day left.
I imagine most of the bidding will be the last day because there's not much reason to do it before the last day.
So this is the day.
This is the last day.
So if anybody was thinking of that...
And by the way, I don't know why anybody buys collectible anything, but if you wanted this one, it's available.
The disturbing story about Rudy Giuliani being raided at his...
New York apartment, I guess, by federal agents who had a warrant for all of his electronic devices.
They were trying to figure out, apparently, if he had some kind of foreign agent, unregistered help he was giving to Ukraine to lobby the United States on their behalf.
But apparently, at least Giuliani says he's never done anything like that.
And he had also offered all of this stuff without being asked for it.
Everything that they took, he had already offered to give them.
Now, that's his version, so I don't know if that really means everything.
But the weird part of the story is, I heard this on Tucker Carlson's show, is that Rudy Giuliani says he tried to give them Hunter Biden's hard drives because that was covered in the warrant.
The warrant said, get all of his electronic devices.
Some of his electronic devices had Hunter Biden's information on it.
And he was trying to give it to them.
Please, take this.
Your warrant says it's for you.
Here. And they wouldn't take it.
What's that tell you? What's that tell you?
Well, it tells you that there must have been some kind of agenda.
Now, everything about this is disturbing.
But keep in mind, we also don't know exactly what their motivation was, the federal, the people who served the warrant.
And it's not their job to tell us because it's a legal action.
They shouldn't be telling the public everything that they're doing.
But we can't really trust them anymore if we ever could.
So I don't think we're in that world where our intelligence agencies can do stuff like this without a real good explanation to the public.
So let me speak to our You know, law enforcement people in the Department of Justice, you have seriously degraded your credibility with this.
I mean, a lot.
You know, everybody has their line.
You know, maybe it was the Roger Stone raid was where it crossed the line for you.
They said, okay, I'm out.
That's way too much showmanship for whatever they were trying to accomplish.
Um... But until we hear more about this Rudy Giuliani case, maybe there's something we don't know.
I'm going to say that this has really taken the Department of Justice's credibility down a whole other level to me.
But we'll see. Maybe there's something else we learned about that.
So this next story tells you a lot.
You heard the Joe Rogan story, and he had said that if a 21-year-old healthy The person asked him, should I take the vaccination?
That he would say, maybe not.
Now, how did that get reported by the illegitimate media?
That immediately got reported as that he's some kind of anti-vax person.
Not even close to true.
He plans to get the vaccination, or already has.
He's happy his parents got it.
He has no objection to it.
He does, however...
Have a cost-benefit opinion about whether an individual would be better off in a special case.
Special case is you're healthy and you're 21.
Now, the experts weigh in and say, you anti-vaxxer, the reason that the 21-year-old should get vaccinated is that that's the group of people who are spreading it.
So it's not about the 21-year-old's own health, it's about the spread.
To which I say, that wasn't the question.
The question was whether the 21-year-old should get a vaccination.
The question wasn't whether the 21-year-old should do a solid thing for the rest of the public.
And of course, Joe Rogan clarified that.
But in my opinion, that clarification was unnecessary, because that's what I heard the first time.
The first time I heard it, I did not hear him say that he was saying that the 21-year-old should or should not protect other people.
As he said, that's a separate question.
It's a separate question.
The question is, is the 21-year-old making the right cost-benefit analysis for their own situation?
And I did not see the experts push back on that, except that there were some long-haul problems But how many of the long-haul problems happen to 21-year-olds?
I don't know.
Do you? Have you seen any statistics that told you that a healthy, fit 21-year-old would also have lingering long-haul problems that some of the older people are getting?
Again, I think Joe Rogan made a perfectly reasonable statement That captured all of the nuance.
It captured all of the nuance.
He understood that there's a spread question from the people who don't get vaccinated, but that wasn't the question.
He was talking about this one person's cost-benefit analysis.
So the fake news is trying desperately to turn this into a story, but the real story should be Joe Rogan agrees completely with experts.
On the scientific part, there's no difference between what he's saying in a cost-benefit way and what all the experts are saying.
There's no difference. But they try to make it into one by acting as though he's talking about something that he isn't, which is blocking the spread to other people, which is an important question.
It just wasn't what he was talking about.
Are you as...
Weirded out as I am by Biden saying, let's get out of Afghanistan, and suddenly everybody's cool with that?
Does that bother you?
Because it's bothering me.
Because I'm pretty sure if Trump had said, as he did, let's get out of Afghanistan, it looked like the world was going to end and all bad things were happening.
And then Biden says it.
I feel like people just said, all right, okay.
Yeah, now that you mention it, there's no reason to be there.
Now, of course, the reason would be, you know, we're seeing stories in the news that al-Qaeda is already, you know, going to take over Afghanistan, and the Taliban is going to let them, and whatever.
Who do you think is planting those stories?
Do you think reporters are saying to themselves, hey, I've got an idea for a story.
I'll go research what's going to happen after we pull out.
Maybe. Maybe. But that's not exactly how the world works.
It is slightly more likely that whoever is planting these stories about Al-Qaeda taking over Afghanistan is somebody roughly associated with the military-industrial complex.
Probably. Or somebody who has an interest in staying there or furthering warfare.
But Biden gets a pass.
He just says we're getting out because there's no reason to be there and there's no metric we can measure to even know if anything's working.
We don't have anything to measure over there to say it was good or bad, better or worse.
Apparently it's hard to tell.
So if you can't measure your progress, get the hell out.
Here's a good general statement of truth.
It's like a management...
I guess it's just a given.
Anybody who studies management, if you can't measure that the things you're doing are affecting the things you want to change, if you don't have any measurement, get the hell out of there.
You don't want to be anywhere where you can't measure That you did something that makes a difference.
If your actions appear random, get out.
You don't need to be there.
You only want to be where you know your actions have some kind of a likely predictable outcome.
And there's nothing like that in Afghanistan.
There's just no way to predict that anything we do makes any difference in the long run.
So get out. And I think in a way that that's what Biden...
You know, I'm paraphrasing, but I think he's basically saying that.
That we can't see any reason, so get the hell out of there.
I'll give Biden credit for that.
And, of course, Trump as well.
He started that. So Trump more than Biden, I think, in this case.
All right. I owe you this private information.
One of the... Pitfalls of being a public person, such as myself, is that every now and then there's a private thing that happens in your life that Any reason to appeal to the greater good requires me to tell you this, which is I am going to get vaccinated Monday.
So I have decided.
Finally, I can get it close enough that I don't have to wait five hours.
So only recently it became available somewhat easily.
So I'm going to get vaccinated on Monday, and I owe you my reasons.
Because it's a topic we talk about all the time, right?
I'm watching the comments.
You haven't heard my reasons yet, have you?
Don't you think you should hear my reasons before you have such strong opinions?
How do you know you disagree with me until you've heard why?
I'm watching all the people.
Am I scared? All right, let me give you my reasons.
It goes like this. Number one...
I'm in a category with some comorbidities, right?
So I've got a little high blood pressure, and it's under control, but a little bit high.
And I've got asthma, which I've had for many years.
So in my case, I've got a little extra risk.
Number two, at this point, it's obvious the vaccinations work.
There's nobody who disagrees with that, right?
I don't think there's any question at this point.
No reasonable person could say that they don't decrease the number of deaths.
Are you right? Does anybody disagree with that so far?
That the vaccinations do at least what they said they would do, decrease the number of deaths.
Okay, so that's the first thing.
Now, I didn't know that for sure two months ago.
Two months ago, if you said, are you sure these vaccinations even work?
I would have said, well, I'd like to wait a little bit longer just to be sure.
Now, we're not talking about the risks yet.
So far, we're only talking about whether they help against the coronavirus.
I think at this point, it's unambiguously true.
There's no expert anywhere in the world who says they don't work, as far as I know.
Next, let's talk about my personal risk versus social risk.
All right? If I were looking out only for my personal risk, maybe I'd make a different decision.
I don't know. But I don't like the long-haul risks.
And most people just ignore that when they talk about the risk of dying from COVID. I'm not as worried about dying because the risks are so small.
I'm definitely worried about a long-haul problem.
And I think I'm in the age group where that's worth worrying about.
I wouldn't worry about it at 21, but I do worry about it at this age.
So I've got a little bit of personal risk here of the COVID that's bigger than most people.
And I judge without having perfect information, because we're all making decisions with imperfect information, right?
There's a little bit of guessing going on.
My feeling, and that's about as far as I can go with it, is my hunch, my feeling, my common sense, if any of those are real things, is that my risk would be similar and maybe a little bit better, you know, lower risk if I get the shot.
Now, I'm unlikely to get blood clots because I'm male, so there's that.
But then the second part is the social part.
As a patriot, as a member of the American family, a member of the world, let's say, as a citizen of the world, I'm sort of in that category where if I get sick with COVID, there's a little more chance I'm going to give it to somebody.
Because if you're older, you might get a worse case.
If you get a worst case, you're more of a spreader.
Maybe you don't know it. So, as a patriotic...
I'm not going to say duty.
I'll say a patriotic preference.
As well as for the world, which is not patriotism per se.
I think that there are people who are in the category where they should take a risk for the other people.
And I'm in that group.
Meaning, I've had a good run.
I've had a good run.
If I die, it's going to happen sometime.
If it happens now, I've had a good run.
Honestly, I really think that.
And everything I do now is just bonus.
If I get another good year out of my life, hey, that's great.
So if I were just doing it for myself, I probably would, because I think I think I have a little bit better risk-reward getting the shot than not.
And for the benefit of the public, there's no doubt that people like me, especially public figures, so if a public figure gets the shot and I'm in the older person category, it probably reduces the risk for the rest of the public, is good for the economy.
Somebody says, aren't you a recluse?
Well, I'm largely a recluse, but other people are not.
Meaning that people come in and out of my environment, even if I'm relatively a recluse.
Take a selfie and post it.
I don't think I'll be doing that.
Yeah, and there's the other thing.
If you would like to put your money where your mouth is, for those of you who think I'm taking on the risk of death, I guess everything's a risk of death.
Probably I have higher risk of...
Here's a good question for you.
Let me see if...
Let me see if you can calculate these risks without knowing the data.
Do you think my risks of dying are greater from the vaccination or from the drive to the vaccination site?
Which is the higher risk of dying?
This is a legitimate question.
No hyperbole.
I actually don't know.
I feel as if, and I don't know if it could be calculated exactly, I feel as if the drive to the vaccination is more dangerous than the vaccination.
That's the point we're at, right?
And I think maybe you could calculate that if you said, let's say my vaccination is five miles away.
You can figure out your risk of dying per mile.
You can compare that to the risk of dying per millions of vaccinations.
Somebody should actually do that.
By the way, that's actually a really good calculation.
If you want to convince people to get a vaccination, do that calculation.
Do the calculation.
I want to know the actual risk of driving five miles compared to the risk of somebody my age and demographic of getting the shot.
Now, of course, if you're saying you can't really know, I get that.
But it feels like it's similar.
It feels like it's in the same neighborhood.
All right. The other reasons I'm doing it is that we're seeing a number of businesses are going to require it.
Here's my prediction.
If we look at what the experts are saying, they're saying that even vaccinated people need to wear masks, and it looks like that would be the case through maybe the end of the year.
If you're only listening to the experts, it would feel like that, right?
That even when we're fully vaccinated or as close as we can get, you're still going to have to wear a mask all year?
Here's my prediction.
No way. There's just no way.
The public...
We'll take some pushing.
You can push the public quite a bit, but you've got to have a reason.
As soon as the reason goes away, the public is going to turn on you like a motherfucker.
And we're getting closer and closer to that point, aren't we?
Like, you're hearing plenty of people complaining and saying, why do I have to wear a mask if I got the vaccination?
But wait till 80% of the country is vaccinated and has to keep wearing a mask.
Once you get about 80% vaccinated, good luck, good luck telling the 80% they got to wear a mask.
I don't think it's going to work.
If you tell me I have to wear a mask during a scary pandemic where there's nothing else I can do about it, Yeah, I'll wear a mask, even if I'm not positive it works, even if I'm not sure the cost-benefit's worth it.
I'm going to take that guidance if smart, well-meaning people tell me to do it.
I'll take that. But you get me vaccinated, and you tell me that my risks are nil, my risk of spreading it are nil, and I still got to wear a mask.
I don't think that's going to fly.
So whatever you think about the official people telling you you're going to need a mask until the end of the year, I don't see it.
I think it's somewhere around mid-summer.
By mid-summer, my guess, the mask thing is just going to have to go away.
Imagine, if you will, two restaurants.
One is right next to the other.
One says, if you're vaccinated, come on in.
No masks. The other one is being a little cautious, and they say, well, the experts still say masks are good, so maybe you should do it.
Which one do you go to? It's just going to be easy.
So I wouldn't worry about masks in the long run.
So I don't know what the hell is happening in India.
There's certainly something we don't exactly understand, but we have terrifying numbers that up to 30,000 people per day...
Could be the death rate pretty soon, based on what they believe is the infection rate.
30,000 per day!
So, if you're saying to yourself, gosh, I'm glad we helped out India a little bit, that's not enough.
That's not enough.
If you want India, you being the United States, let's say, if the United States wants India to be its ally for the next hundred years...
We need to step up to this.
Because allies don't let allies lose 30,000 people a day, if there's anything you can do about it.
Now, who knows what you can do about it?
Who knows how much we would be taking from Americans if we were to help them more?
But I've got to say that 30,000 people dying in India, you pretty much have to treat that like it's happening in your backyard.
If they're an ally, right?
And even if they're not, right?
A human, just being human means you should care about it.
But when you're talking about your most important strategic ally vis-a-vis, you know, China, your most important ally for the next hundred years, we should just drop everything, not do anything that would hurt our domestic effort, but man, we should do everything we can to help on this.
For our strategic benefit.
And for humanity, really.
Here's a Matt Gaetz update.
It's a good thing we have Matt Gaetz, because otherwise there wouldn't be any good news.
Like, interesting news, not good news.
So here's the latest on that.
So apparently the fellow Greenberg, who was part of this story, and was pals with Matt Gaetz, So there's a story that there's some documents that have come up in which Greenberg had been talking about some things and mentioned that there was a 17-year-old girl, according to Greenberg. So we only have one person saying it.
We still don't know that there's a real girl, or she would be a woman by now.
So we don't know that there's a real person, but we know one person's talked about this real person, if it's real.
And said that Greenberg had just learned that she was not really 19, had been lying about her age, and she was 17.
Now here's the question. We now have a document that looks reasonably credible that would say with certainty that Matt Gaetz did not know if it happened.
He denies that anything like this happened.
But if it happened, the Greenberg documents would indicate that he didn't know That Greenberg's the one who told them, and he was horrified.
Now, does that make it not illegal?
If it happened, which Matt Gaetz says unquestionably did not.
So keep in mind, the person who knows for sure says it didn't happen.
In any form.
Not just that he didn't know, that it just didn't happen.
So keep that in mind, because we just assume guilt when we hear stories like this.
But if we know he didn't know, how illegal would it be?
So we'll talk about the exchange of money part separately.
But just the underage part.
How illegal is it if you didn't know?
Does anybody know?
How many of you know the answer to that?
How illegal is it if you didn't know?
And the person who is involved lied to you.
Somebody says, is it still technically illegal?
Is it? Well, the answer is, it depends.
Let's say, for example, the woman, and this will be a hypothetical.
This has nothing to do with Matt Gaetz.
This will be a hypothetical example.
In a hypothetical example, let's say the underage 17-year-old had a fake ID. If you saw a fake ID, but you're not some expert on ID, and it looked real to you, You would be in the clear.
Did you know that? Did you know that if you had really strong evidence that she was of legal age, such as a fake ID, that looked real to you, you'd be in the clear?
Now, I just read that this morning on some legal website, so if I'm wrong about that, I'll expect the real lawyers to weigh in and get me.
Now, if you're saying that's not true, here's what might be the difference.
If the female in question is under 14, there's no defense.
All right, let me say that again.
If the female is actually under 14, there's no defense.
No defense. There's nothing you can say.
You can't say you didn't know.
Because if you're with somebody who's even anywhere in the neighborhood of under 14, you've got some explaining to do, right?
That you didn't know. So I think we all agree that there has to be some age below which you just can't use any I didn't know defense, right?
Even if sometimes somebody goes to jail for that.
You just sort of have to have a standard for that.
But at 17, simply being deceived is actually a complete legal defense.
It may be a difference by state.
It might be a state difference, but I think probably it'd be similar.
So, what would happen if what we find out...
Is that the Greenberg document documents quite clearly, if there is actually this person even exists, that Gates didn't know.
So I would say, is that the same as looking at an ID? I don't know.
If you date somebody, do you ask to look at their ID? I don't know.
Did they go to, let's say, did they go to a restaurant and order drinks?
And again, none of this is an evidence.
We have no reason to believe any of this happened.
But just hypothetically, suppose Matt Gaetz had gone on a date and the woman had bought a drink, took out a fake ID, the server looked at it and said, all right, and served them.
Would he be in the clear if he observed...
A waiter looking at a fake ID and saying, yeah, you're 21.
I don't know, that would be sketchy because I think she claimed she was 19, so she still couldn't drink.
So I guess that example wouldn't work in this case.
But this gets a little less clear than you think.
Now what about the question of exchange of money?
So apparently there is acknowledgement by all parties.
That money has been exchanged.
But was it money for sex?
And where do you draw the line when it's money for sex?
Let me give you an example.
Let's say a billionaire who has never had sex with you invites you to take a private jet to France on a date.
And then you have sex.
Did the billionaire pay for sex?
Because he just provided you a value of, let's say, $50,000.
Because the jet plus the high-end accommodations, whatever.
Pretty expensive. Would you say that's a case of buying sex?
Well, if you live in the real world, you probably do.
Legally, no. Legally, no agreement of money for sex happened.
Alright, let me give you another one.
Suppose there's a millionaire who buys some diamond jewelry for a woman he's never been intimate with, and then soon after that, they have some sex.
There's no discussion of money for sex or diamonds for sex, but they've never had sex.
He gives her a real expensive gift, and then some sex happens soon after.
Did he pay for sex?
Yes. In the real world, absolutely.
It was part of his package.
It wasn't the only thing.
I mean, presumably he was not disgusting, but it's part of the package.
So, it's really, the problem here is that beyond a certain level of income, men are always paying for sex.
They just don't talk about it that way.
So let me say this again so you don't miss this point.
Above a certain income, all men are paying for sex all the time.
No exceptions. Because, unless they don't know who you are, And a rare case where somebody just didn't know you had money or something.
If they know you have money, that's part of the decision.
I've never met a woman who was unaffected by what a man did for a living.
I've never seen that.
Even if they say, I don't care about money, they certainly care about what he does for a living and whether that whole package is attractive or not.
So, I'm not casting aspersions on the men or the women or anybody in my examples.
These are all just free people making free decisions.
Money is always part of big decisions.
So I feel as though the dividing line should be this.
Let me just put this out here for discussion.
Suppose we found out that the girls that this Greenberg and Matt Gaetz We're involved with.
Suppose we found out that none of them were prostitutes.
Because there's no information that says they are, right?
So far I'm aware of no reporting that says that they were working in that capacity.
Do you think that you could convict somebody for paying for sex if the person who accepted the money for hotels and tuition or whatever things were going on If they accepted these gifts, but they did not work as a prostitute in any other form that you can identify, is that paying for sex?
Because it's really murky, isn't it?
Who knows? I would say that if money is involved and it's a rich person, you're always paying for sex, and there's no way to avoid it.
It's just you don't always talk about it that way.
New York Times has a story about this Arizona audit, and I just love the fake news way they talk about it.
Here's an actual quote from a story in the New York Times.
It's almost unbelievable that this is even written down.
It says, quote, almost half a year after the election Donald Trump lost, the audit that Arizona Republicans promised has become a partisan snipe hunt.
What? Do you know what a snipe hunt is?
How many of you know what that is?
First of all, I'll tell you while I wait for your comments.
A snipe is a bird that doesn't exist.
And a snipe hunt is a reference to a famous historical prank.
In which you get somebody who's new or young or dumb, and you convince them that there's this thing called a snipe, a certain kind of bird, and that you're going to go hunting for them, and then hilarity ensues, right?
So you try to get people to go hunting the snipe that doesn't exist.
So the New York Times refers to the audit as Republicans on a partisan snipe hunt.
How do they know how the audit ended?
Because that's not part of the reporting.
Now, if the reporting came at the end of the audit, and the whole audit had found nothing improper, then calling it a snipe hunt after the audit, when you didn't find anything, perfectly appropriate.
Perfectly appropriate. A good analogy, actually.
Somebody looking for something that they believe exists but is just imaginary.
That's a snipe hunt. But if you say it before the audit has any results, that's not news.
That's just propaganda.
How in the world do they know it's a snipe hunt?
They don't know how it ended.
Now, they also make reference, and this is the other part of the fake news, they say the other audits, they have nothing to do with this one, Other audits showed nothing.
Well, those were different audits.
They were limited in scope.
They weren't really anything like this one.
But the New York Times would like you to believe that because completely different situations had an outcome that we know, that this completely other different situation is now predictable.
And it, too, will be a snipe hunt.
Nothing like that is in evidence.
Now, it might be true that it's a snipe hunt when we're done.
What would be your bets?
Let me test your predictive abilities.
All right, in the comments, I want you to commit after the Arizona audit, and we assume that whatever they find would have to be verified by somebody else because nobody trusts the auditors, but whatever they find is something they could just show you and then other people could look at it and say it's either true or not.
But do you think the Arizona audit will find enough impropriety to reverse any outcome?
Or at least the outcome of the state.
How many of you think the audit will reverse the outcome?
In the comments, I'll just read them.
Find nothing, yes, no, absolutely not.
Some but not enough, yes, no, yes, don't know, 60% chance.
Well, the smartest person here gives percentages.
By the way, if you said yes or no, you're not as smart as the person who said 60%.
And I don't know if 60% is a good estimate, but if you fell into the binary, It's a yes or a no.
You should have gone with the statistics.
All right, but in terms of prediction, it does have to be yes or no.
So I'm looking at your predictions, and they're actually kind of mixed.
Kind of mixed. Yeah, and now I'm seeing people saying slightly more than half percent chance that it's wrong.
You know, I'll tell you what.
If I had to bet...
I don't know. This one's a tough one.
Statistically speaking, this is something Matt Brainerd said.
Based on everything we know about other elections, based on everything we know about mail-in votes, so based on all of that, if you just looked at the sheer number of votes in the millions, and you said to yourself,
if this many millions of votes had happened just like they always happen, If it was similar to the past, you would have more than 12,000 votes that are, you know, sketchy, and that would be enough to change the election.
Because the election was, you know, kind of close.
So, is Matt Brainerd right that you wouldn't have to know much about anything to know that if there are this many votes, there are always, always, it has nothing to do with Arizona, has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans, It has only to do with a type of system that has a certain kind of frailty to it, which is it's imperfect.
The size of the votes guarantees that enough of them will be wrong, that it could change the outcome.
But it could be wrong in the other direction.
We could end up, at the end of the audit, one of the two possibilities is that Biden won by more votes than we thought.
There's nothing that would make that impossible.
So just because there's close to 100% chance that there are enough sketchy votes to change the election, that doesn't mean that they're all in the same direction.
It does mean that there might be problems.
So I'm going to take your 60% estimate.
Based on the Matt Brainerd estimate that there are so many votes, you will have a question about whether the election was affected.
I'm going to say I'm going to go with the 65%.
I'd say there's a 65% chance that it doesn't matter if it's Arizona or anyplace else, there'll be at least enough sketchy votes that there'll be an issue, at least a question about the results.
So that's my final answer.
65% chance that we will have some question about the accuracy of the outcome when we're done.
So that is what is exciting today.
Now here's a question for you.
Will I be demonetized for what I just said?
What do you think? Now, it would be grounds for demonetization if I were to say that I believe the election is fraudulent.
But I didn't say that, right?
Everybody's clear. I am not alleging fraud in the election.
I made a statement about accuracy of elections in general.
And a statement about how large the number of votes is.
That's all I've done. That's all I've done.
So I don't think anybody has much pushback on those two things.
So I'm hoping I can stay on YouTube for saying that.
Somebody says that I insinuated fraud to Did you hear me insinuate fraud?
In this broadcast?
Because I feel like maybe that was in your head.
I definitely insinuated inaccuracy.
Right? You heard me insinuate that anything large of this nature will have a certain percentage of inaccuracy.
That's all. That's the whole story.
Inaccuracy doesn't mean fraud, and it doesn't even mean it changes the election.
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