Episode 471a Scott Adams: Healthcare, Socialism, Biden, Smollett, Climate Change, Venezuela

Hey, everybody, come on in. Gather around. Grab a chair. We still have a few seats left in the front. Those of you who like to sit up front, make sure that you've filled your coffee mug. Oh, it doesn't have to be a mug. It could be a glass or a Steiner chalice. Could be a thermos or a tankard. But what matters is the simultaneity of it all. So join me, please, for what I call simultaneous sip. Ah. So there's a whole bunch of interesting things happening. Let me jump. Jump right in. There's something. Something going on with Q that I'm hearing about, but I don't know. Don't know exactly. Somehow I'm involved. I don't know exactly what's going on, but there's. There's something. Something happening in the world of Q. And some thought that I might be a target of something, but I'm not too worried about it. It's just out there. Let's talk about Jussie Smollett, because I know you want to talk about that. Now, I tweeted a very. I think I tweeted it. Controversial opinion. I'm going to repeat it. But unlike a lot of things I say, I am not going to try to change your mind. So I'm going to give you an opinion this time free of persuasion. So I'll just take the persuasion off, because when you disagree with me, and I know you will, I'm going to say, that's fine. I think your disagreement is well supported. Okay, so I'm okay with a light penalty for Jussie Smollett. Now I'm going to make the argument for why the light penalty is the right one. And remember, I told you that if your argument is that it should be a harder penalty, I'm not going to disagree with you. I'll just make the case and then you can decide for yourself. So we don't need to disagree on this. You're welcome to your opinion and I will respect it. In this case especially. Here's the first consideration, nobody got hurt. Secondly, now, indirectly, you could say there were cases that didn't get solved, but I'm not sure that you can directly find the problem there. I think it would be true of everybody. Every case that the police works on takes resources away from more important cases. So the fact that the resources were wasted, if you could say that on the smaller case, is not that different than any other low priority case where they use resources. So, yes, there's a problem there. He did use resources, but he's also forfeiting some amount of money that at least would go partially toward that. So I'd say that the resources argument is not the strongest one, but it's real. There were real resources. Now there was a real crime. Right. He. It just happens that Smollett himself might, allegedly, according to the police, is the one who committed the crime. But there was a real crime. So when the police investigate a real crime, are they wasting their time? Because the only way that the police could determine this mullet was the problem and not the accuser, the accused attackers. The only way they could get to the bottom of that is by putting resources toward it and investigating the fake story until they knew the real crime. So I ask you this. Did Chicago police waste their resources? I say it depends how you look at it. Because what did they do? They investigated a real crime, and. And they found the perpetrator. If the police investigate a real crime, in this case, the real crime is Jussie's hoax. They didn't know they were investigating it, but that's how it turned out. So in a way, the investigation was productive because it found an actual crime and it tried to prosecute it. But the judge had a different idea. All right, so the argument about the wasted resources is not as clean as you think it is. You could argue there's some wasted resources, but not so wasted that they wouldn't have otherwise made a difference. And there was a real crime, and they really used those resources against it. The next issue is that Smollett is not like regular people in a number of ways. But the important way that I'm going to talk about is that he's famous. Now, the way most people are talking about that is, wait a minute, he's getting special treatment because he's famous. It appears clear that that's happening. So I'm certainly not going to argue that somebody didn't put their finger on the scale. I'm not going to argue that somebody powerful didn't get to the judge. It seems obvious that. That there's something sketchy going on. Right? So let me completely agree with you that we probably got to this. This verdict in a way that doesn't feel comfortable to any of us watching it. So that part is real. Probably we may never know, but probably there's something there. So I don't want to discount that. But I would say that one difference that he has is that he's a public figure. Now, if somebody who is not famous perpetrated a hoax, and let's say they Got a, they got a light sentence. All right, so let's say nobody got hurt, police wasted a little bit of time, perpetrator pays a fine which at least partially covers the work of the police. And then there's penalty, but it's not very high. But let's say it's an unknown person and let's say the unknown person is completely cleared. The way it looks like Jussie Smollett will be cleared in the sense of technically having a criminal record. What would be the ongoing effect to that unknown non famous person? If that person got the same non penalty as Jussie Smollett, they would have no criminal record. And, and when they went to apply for a job, nobody would ever know what happened. Right? So a non famous person, if that non famous person got the same non prosecution as Smollett, it would just completely wipe their record clean and it would be like it never happened. It wouldn't affect them for the rest of their life. But Smollett is famous. He can have his technical criminal record expunged. And yet every place he goes from now on, they're all going to know his alleged criminal activity. So by virtue of his fame, this non penalty is actually a pretty big fricking penalty. He has a real life penalty outside of the legal penalty, but his real life penalty is going to be pretty big. Now some of you are saying, you know, he'll still get work and he will, he'll still have probably an above average life, but this is going to sort of hang with him forever, all right? It's never going to go away. So here's the point. You can't compare a Smollett to a non famous person because the non famous person would have no lasting problems from this. He does. Now we don't know if those problems will be greater than the benefits he gets from being famous. Who knows. But definitely there's some lasting problems. And then here's. I'm going to make you my most non obvious statement. The United States is definitely, at least in the political realm, we seem to be at each other's, you know, at each other's necks. And you know, the left and the right seem to be hating on each other. People are talking about, you know, violent revolutions. I think there's no chance of that. I wouldn't worry about that at all. But people are talking about it. If you want to bring down the tensions, somebody kind of has to go first. Somebody has to go first. In other words, if everybody just keeps ratcheting up, it's like you did this. I have to do this. I have to match you. It doesn't get better. So maybe this is a case where Trump supporters can say, look, the story itself is all we need. Just knowing that this was a hoax is a big benefit to Trump supporters. You don't really need to put your boot on this one person's neck and just keep it there forever. You don't really need to, because you got everything out of this that you need. So I do not argue that Smollett should get a lesser penalty than other people. I do argue that this particular crime, since there was no violence, and here's the other factor. One of the reasons that you punish people is that you don't want them to repeat the crime. But the weird part about this crime is it's unrepeatable. It's an unrepeatable crime, at least by Smollett. And I don't think anybody could look at this situation and say, well, Smollett really had a good result. So I think I'll do a hoax, too. Nobody can look at that and say it worked. So if you're worrying about discouraging other people from trying a similar hoax, I would say that the Smollett story already does that. It didn't work. He just embarrassed himself, etc. So it probably has the effect of diminishing future crimes. There's no chance in the world this mullet would do this same crime again. And here's the even harder part. Just think about this. I haven't heard anybody say this. If someday in the future a real crime happened to Jussie Smollett, and I hope that doesn't happen, I want to. I want to be very clear. I'm not suggesting it. I'm not trying to incite it. I'm just making a point. Someday Smollett may be in a case where he needs the police to believe him. There might actually be a real crime that he is committed that he is a victim of. I mean, aren't most people the victims of crime eventually? Most of us are victims of one crime or another. I think most of you have had to call the police at one time in your life. Who the hell is going to believe anything that Jussie Smollett tells the police? So the next time he needs the police, that might not go so well for him. I don't know if they're even going to believe it anyway. So that's the argument why I'm personally not bothered by a light sentence. I think it might be better for the country. If we say, look what you did, looks pretty bad to us. Nobody got hurt. You got embarrassed. I hope everybody learned their lesson. Let's, let's not make this worse than it needs to be. Let's, let's be, you know, understanding about whatever it was that caused that is hard to understand. Here's the next, here's my last point. Would Jussie Smollett have done anything, any of the things he did without the influence of the illegitimate media? If somebody is hypnotized or brainwashed into doing the thing they do, does the legal system treat them exactly the same as if they came up with the idea on their own? Look at the Patty Hearst story. Patty Hearst was kidnapped and allegedly brainwashed into becoming a bank robber by the Sabinese Liberation Army. And I believe she got off because the argument was that she had literally been brainwashed. Has Jussie Smollett literally been brainwashed by the media? Undoubtedly, there isn't the slightest case, there's not the slightest chance that he was not literally brainwashed by the media. Now, that's not a full defense, but it should have an impact on how much you penalize somebody. Anyway. Those of you who say, let me be very clear, those of you who say the law is the law and it looks like it wasn't followed in this case, you should have a significant penalty for that. I respect that opinion. So you don't need to argue with me because I'm already saying that is a solid opinion, that he should be punished harder than he was. I'm not going to disagree with you. I'm just going to explain the counter argument, that's all. Do with it while you will. I was quite amused to watch how CNN is dealing with the fact that the Russia collusion thing fell apart. And I've told you before that the way you can tell with the editorial, you know, the high level editorial direction is for CNN is you look at the stories that are on the top left because that those are the important ones. So at the highest level, apparently, I mean, I don't know this for sure, but it's, it seems evident that there's some kind of larger direction because, for example, today I think every story on CNN on the top left is about health care. Let me check and see if that's still the case. All right, so in order, these are the headlines on the top left of cnn. Ending Obamacare would be a headache for Trump. Something about the court and health care. Obamacare. It's the next one. The real reason Trump wants to get rid of Obamacare. Okay? They're all. They're basically all health care now. When was the last time that CNN was so concerned about health care? Now, of course, it's driven by a story that a court has over, apparently says Obamacare is not constitutional or whatever they're saying. I don't care about the details. But the point is Obamacare is under, you know, under risk of disappearing. At the same time, the GOP has just nothing. They have nothing that looks like a plan. So this is one of those be careful what you wish for things, because if Obamacare disappeared tomorrow, Trump could not get elected, reelected. Right? So if Obamacare really just went away and it really just took, you know, however many millions of people off of health care, it wouldn't matter what else went right. It just wouldn't matter what else went right. That would be enough to deny him reelection. So president should be careful what he wishes for. If he doesn't have a replacement, the last thing you want is for the Obamacare to go away right away, because that's a bad look. Let me suggest what a Republican plan for health care should look like in a general sense. I've said before that the best approach against the Democrats, at least the Green New Deal part of the Democratic Party, is the statement that capitalism can deliver what socialism promises. Capitalism can deliver what socialism promises, but it doesn't work the other way around. The second thing that should be said about the Green New Deal and full socialism is that it's risky because we have a system that has problems, but it's working. We have a solid economy. I think there are maybe something like 16% or 18% don't have health care insurance. That's not as big a problem as it's been in the past. It's a big problem and we should solve it. But it's hard to get people to make a big risky change to a system that could doom the planet to annihilation. I mean, if you get capitalism wrong, you could ruin the whole planet. So a big socialist experiment would be by far the riskiest thing that the world has ever experienced. Probably riskier than maybe literally everything. I don't know if anything would be a bigger risk than that. By the way, the bad arguments against socialism go like this. Here are the bad arguments. We don't want to become Venezuela. Well, it's true we don't want to become Venezuela, but I don't think anybody on the left fears that. I think people look at Venezuela and they go, well, that's not Us, you know, whatever happened there, it's unlikely that that exact stuff is going to happen to us. We don't have a dictator, blah, blah. So I don't think it's convincing. It might be true that we could end up like Venezuela. I mean, I'm not sure exactly how that would look, but it's just not persuasive to the other team. The other thing that's not persuasive is that socialism has killed hundreds of million people in the past and led to dictatorships and misery beyond compare. It's true, but it's not persuasive. And the reason is that I've never heard anybody yet make any kind of a connective argument. It's like, okay, well, socialism ruins everything. And I know it's happened in the past, but they're all different cases. Like, explain to me why socialism ruins everything. That's the part nobody really does a good job of explaining. And it goes like. And I'm not even sure I know the argument. So I'll tell you what I think the argument is, and maybe somebody can correct me. And I need correction on this. I think the argument goes like this, that when you centralize control, either of the entire government, or if you start with, let's say, healthcare, and that becomes centralized in the government, that whenever you centralize control, abuse happens because there are too few people in charge of something big. And those few people can become corrupt too easily. Too much power, not enough control. But does that happen every time? And is there some situation that causes that abuse to happen and some situation that causes it not to happen? I don't really know. So the argument is too conceptual. So arguing that socialist policies about. Well, let me say how it sounds to the left when you argue that socialism leads to hundreds of millions of deaths and centralization and abuse of power and all that, that could be completely true. Here's what the left hears. You're telling me that if my health care improves, it's the end of the world. Do you see how stupid the argument from the right looks? Okay, explain to me, genius, how having 16% more health care, you know, that's how many people are uncovered or something like that. It's in that range. Explain to me how that leads to dictatorship, because that just sounds crazy. Now, it might be true, but it's completely unpersuasive. So the argument that is persuasive is that any radical changes to a system that's at least working, even if it has problems, is the riskiest thing you can do. And Nobody likes risk when they don't need it. The only time you should introduce risk is when you're sort of in a bad situation and you don't have much to lose overstating the case. But you know, the more desperate your situation, the more risk you should be willing to take on to fix it. And if things are going well, the less risk you should introduce to the systems. That's, that's the better argument. Everybody understands risk. All right, so what, here's what the Republicans should do. They should package up the things that they're already doing right and the things that they plan to do right. The capitalism can deliver what socialism promises. When you're talking about health care, you could say, all right, capitalism is what got 75% of you health care. So we got that part. Capitalism is what makes sure that even the people who don't have health care insurance still get health care, because they do. They might have to go to an emergency room, it might be a waste of resources, might be the worst way to do it, but they still get health care and capitalism delivered that. Now how do you make it better? A market based Republican approach would first of all look at the regulation cutting and the streamlining of, let's say, competition. And that would include things that they're actually doing, but for reasons that boggle my mind, they don't talk about enough. So the weirdest part about the Republicans and health care is that they're doing actually good stuff. That they put out a press release from whoever puts out those press releases, and then you don't really hear about it. One of those things is pushing to make it easier to fast track generic drugs. Because apparently the rule is that when the third, or is it the second generic hits the market, it's more than one. But I think as soon as you get that second generic or third, that the price of the original drug just plummets. So the faster you can fast track the generics, the lower the prices will be for the public. So the administration has actually made changes to fast track that. That's a really big deal. I don't think they're selling that enough. They've made a number of other changes that involve doing things across state lines, etc. So there are probably a dozen or so rules changes to make things more market based and competitive that could be packaged up. And they say, all right, this is what we've done and this is what we plan to do more of. Here's some more. So we've already done these rules changes to make things more competitive. And now we're going to do these. These extra things also. So that would be one part of the package. But they should all be together and they should be presented as, here's what we've done, here's what we're going to do. The next thing would be to look at states. Apparently some. Some states are looking at their own health care plans. The smartest thing the president could do is to back it, just back it and say, I love the fact that the states are experimenting. Why don't we watch it for a year, see if it works and pick the good parts, if there are any good parts, see what that does. Then the last part would be spurring innovation, the part that the. I think the administration is just missing in action on this, even though they're probably doing it. So I'm going to blame the government for the current administration for not doing enough of something that they might actually be doing. I just don't hear about it. And maybe that's the problem, which is stimulating the new entrepreneurial healthcare businesses, making sure they get funding and attention, making sure the government gives them whatever resources make sense for a government to help out with. So if we could focus on and package up even as a fund, could even be just an investment fund of specifically companies who are in the healthcare space. But here's the key. They're not just a new cool thing. Sa. And see if that makes any difference. No sound. All right, well, I'm going to turn it off and I'll be back. I'll be back. I'll be back. Okay.