Episode 537 Scott Adams - Iran, Socialism, Bad Candidates, North Korea, Viewer Questions
North Korea calls Joe Biden a “fool of low IQ” Israel is naming things after our American President ALL countries have an interest in our elections and the outcomes Chinese Ambassador, trying to explain away Huawei issues Chinese “job training centers” OR concentration camps OR fake news Iran sanctions have been increased to penalize countries aiding them Unprecedented clarity, determination from President Trump Border situation deteriorating…and almost no news reports on it? Is that because it’s now agreed by both sides…it’s a crisis? Beto pushing hard for impeachment Kamala as a candidate…where is her appeal? Awkward appearances, boring, nothing interesting to say Joe Biden is an early beta version…of President Trump Take away all of President Trump’s strengths…Joe Biden Where’s media attention for leading Democrat candidate? Gorsuch and Kavanaugh…NOT ruling politically as feared “40% of Americans favor socialism”…is phony It’s a dispute over the definition of words, nothing more Venezuela’s issues, root cause of their problems Socialism did NOT destroy Venezuela A dictator and massive corruption destroyed Venezuela Questions from the viewers Healthcare costs Rural area issues and possible solutions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please donate to support my YouTube channel: https://interface.my/ScottAdamsSays I also fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that. See all of my Periscope videos here… https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL Find my WhenHub Interface app here… https://interface.whenhub.com
Oh hey everybody. Hey, Jimmy Pants Five, come on in here. Super Comic-Con, Drew Sides, Dam X Lied, Chris Whittle. It's good to see all of you. And I know why you're here. Probably for the coffee, possibly with a
View segment →simultaneous sip. Let's get right to it. Let's grab your coffee mug, your glass, your stein, your tankard, your chalice, your thermos, your flask. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip. It's good sipping. So I'm g
View segment →oing to take some calls at the end of some comments here. So if you have some questions, you might want to be thinking about them. I'll take questions on anything today. Yeah, anything at all. So let's talk about what's new. So it turns out that North Korea is trying to interfere with American elec…
View segment →a. You know if you just start with Trump and one by one you pick off all of the qualities that are good about him and just remove them from Trump, what's left is Biden. Biden is like the frame that you build the Trump on. Biden is the boring, you know, the boring nothing. They could not be a worse m…
View segment →ch time we come up with a new way to keep people healthy we always would choose a little extra expense to keep these extra people alive or healthy. Especially since these extra people could be us. But well you know I would kind of respond with this. It seems to me that well for example I think nine…
View segment →e covered so that doesn't work for all the obvious reasons. There's probably something where the, I'm just going to get rid of all the people who say that mic doesn't work. There's probably something that makes the government just the biggest customer and there's still plenty of competition. So I th…
View segment →Oh hey everybody. Hey, Jimmy Pants Five, come on in here. Super Comic-Con, Drew Sides, Dam X Lied, Chris Whittle. It's good to see all of you. And I know why you're here. Probably for the coffee, possibly with a simultaneous sip.
Let's get right to it. Let's grab your coffee mug, your glass, your stein, your tankard, your chalice, your thermos, your flask. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip. It's good sipping.
So I'm going to take some calls at the end of some comments here. So if you have some questions, you might want to be thinking about them. I'll take questions on anything today. Yeah, anything at all.
So let's talk about what's new. So it turns out that North Korea is trying to interfere with American elections. Here's my question to you. What country is not interfering with American elections? Quick, name a country that's not interfering with American elections.
I mean, North Korea clearly has. They just made some comments about Joe Biden. Israel obviously has. They're naming stuff after Trump. I mean, when Israel starts naming things in Israel after your president, they kind of want that guy to get reelected. Or that woman, depending on the time.
So Venezuela is affecting U.S. elections probably more than any other country, and they're not even trying. Simply by being Venezuela. Venezuela just sits there being Venezuela. That's probably going to have more impact on it than Facebook, just by this example.
What about China? China's definitely interfering with our election. They might not be trying to do it, but everything about how they act is having an effect on our elections. So I'm starting to think maybe we should just get rid of this fiction about other countries interfering with your elections and just embrace the fact that all of our elections are international affairs now.
I'm not completely serious, but the point is you can't really turn off the impact from other countries. Yes, maybe not in Slovenia, as somebody's saying in here, but the big countries.
Let's talk about another big country. Iran. Oh, let's talk about China first. So I was watching the, I think he was the Chinese ambassador, being interviewed on I forget which network. And the Chinese ambassador was answering questions about potential bad actions by China. And I've never seen a worse ambassador. How in the world does that guy keep his job? He was just the worst.
If you ever get a chance to see the Chinese ambassador to the United States on TV, you have to watch it just to watch how bad he is. Now, a question I have is whether all I'm saying is some kind of a social cultural difference. Because the way he answers questions looks exactly like he's lying.
And by the way, somebody's saying I should do it closer. So specifically he was asked about Huawei, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, the Chinese telecom company that the U.S. is saying if you install their equipment they'll spy on all your traffic. And listening to the Chinese ambassador try to explain that away, it really looked like he was confirming everything about them. Because his denial was so transparently wrong for Western ears that I wondered what I was even listening to.
And so here's my question. Was it a cultural difference? Because if you ask somebody from the United States, "Hey, is your company putting spy equipment in all of your telecommunications?" If you ask somebody from America, they will say no, that's not happening. That's a ridiculous rumor. Here's probably why it got started. But no, there's no proof to that. No, there's no evidence of that. And by the way, you know why? We invite the inspectors to come in and look at our chips and you could just tell.
So the American wouldn't answer it that way. They would go right to the facts. The Chinese ambassador simply sort of changed the subject. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, do you even know what country you're in? If you're in the United States and somebody says, "Did you murder that person?" And you say, "Well, we could talk about murder, but maybe we should talk about the weather. Why is nobody talking about the weather? Why does everybody have to talk about the murder? Why don't we talk about the weather?" If you say that in America, a hundred percent of Americans say, "Oh, okay, you're guilty. Obviously you're guilty. You didn't even answer the question. You just changed the subject."
And here's this Chinese ambassador who apparently knows nothing about America. How the hell did he get his job? I'm serious. You're probably the least qualified looking person I've ever seen in such a high profile job. He acted like he didn't know how Americans work. He answers the question in a way so damning and so confirming of Huawei's inappropriateness in our networks that I thought, how does he even stay alive? I mean, it seems like he'd be sent to one of those concentration camps.
And then he was asked about the Uighur concentration camps, at least they're being called that. And he actually with a straight face looked at the interviewer and said, no, those are just job education places. Everybody, they can come and go. Doors are open. We don't even have a lock on the gate. You could just walk in there, get some training. And of course we want them to be trained so they can be productive citizens. Why wouldn't we want them trained? Why wouldn't they want to be treated?
Now I'm paraphrasing. He didn't say it that way, but it was one of those jaw-dropping things where I said to myself, and I'm going to be fair here, Western media is so unreliable that it is possible, I'm not ruling it out, it's possible that they're actually just job training centers. Now I don't think that's true. It seems to me we probably have a pretty good idea what's going on over there. And it seems to me that they're probably just as bad as it sounds. There probably are concentration camps. I'd imagine that's true because we've seen interviews with family members of lost family members and obviously they can't go visit them. So it seems to me like the most obvious lie I've ever seen.
And so this guy goes on American TV. Again, does he even know what country he's in? Does the ambassador to the United States from China know what country he's in? Because he looks at it and goes, no, those are just job training places. And I'm thinking, I think I'm looking at Hitler. So this Chinese ambassador made me think, instead of thinking, you know, I thought he would have answered the question about the Uighur concentration camps. I thought he was going to come up with something better. You know, at least a lie that sounds like there's some gray area.
Like maybe he should have said, oh yes, they are detained there, but they've all committed some kind of a crime. We're trying to rehabilitate them. Then I was going to say that's evil enough. You know, I wasn't going to think that that was good, but still it's a concentration camp. But I thought they would at least put some kind of spin on it to make some kind of attempt to make it sound like there was some reason why maybe the coverage of it was not quite accurate. It didn't really. It was a good idea. I thought they would at least take a run at it.
And he looks right at the interviewer and says there's just job training places. You know, of course it's all voluntary. And I just thought that guy needs to be, I don't know, executed. Why? Because what he was talking about was a concentration camp and he just lied to the world about its existence. Now I suppose that's part of his job, but really China, you couldn't come up with a better cover story than that? That was pretty pathetic.
All right, enough about that. I'm just quite seriously, I don't know how he keeps his job. He could not have been worse as a spokesperson for China. What I do appreciate is that he's so bad at it that he doesn't leave any question about the facts. He confirmed every bad thing about China without trying. I thought it was the worst.
Anyway, I read about, so as you all know, President Trump has increased the sanctions on Iran. I did not realize how effectively he had increased the sanctions on Iran. Listen to this. I just found this out today. So this month the administration tightened up the sanctions so that even if you were a country we like and you were dealing with Iran, you would get sanctioned too, I guess. So we were trying to stop anybody buying Iranian oil.
Now when you hear that you say to yourself, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have a bunch of sanctions but then everybody finds a way to work around them. So if you're like me, when you heard we were putting more sanctions on Iranian oil sales, didn't you say to yourselves, yeah, that'll hurt them ten percent? Didn't you think it was something like that? Yeah, that'll squeeze them a little bit, maybe twenty percent.
Turns out since the sanctions got tightened, zero ships have been leaving Iran's oil terminals for foreign ports. Zero. We actually closed down their tankers that were selling oil to other countries to zero. Pattern or that'll last, but it certainly tells you that Iran needs to do something and do something quickly because the government is falling apart.
Now I love it. And again, I'm going to say historians will look back at this administration as the model for how to do things, even though in our current moment anything President Trump does gets tons of criticism because that's the world we live in. But historians will not have to deal with the politics of the time. They'll be able to look at it in the rearview mirror and just say whether something was good or bad, if it worked or if it didn't. And I think Trump's policy on Iran is going to be one of those lasting good examples.
Now of course we don't know how it all turns out, but the way he's setting it up is the cleanest thing I've seen so far. Here's what used to be the way we used to treat Iran. If you do things we don't like, which we know you're doing and you're always doing and you keep doing, we're going to do things that you don't like. So that was the old proposition. If you do things we don't like in a variety of different ways, we will do things you don't like in a variety of ways. And what did that get us? Iran did a variety of things we don't like and then we would do a variety of things they don't like and nothing really changed.
Trump has clarified this situation. As I understand it, the proposition is your economy will be completely obliterated. Because that's what it means when zero tankers leave your ports. If you can't get a single oil tanker out of your port, you're looking at the end of your economy. The alternative is you saw Iran try to game the system a little bit. Maybe put some missiles on ships, put a little military risk into the equation, muddy it up a little bit.
What was Trump's response to Iran muddying up this very clean situation? The clean situation was do what we want or we will completely annihilate your economy. We won't damage it. We won't take it down ten percent. We won't impede it. We will eliminate it. We will eliminate your economy. That's the Trump proposition.
So they try to add some variables with the military stuff to disturb. Do you bring the whole frickin' armada? I mean not an entire armada, but he brings enough firepower to turn the entire nation of Iran into a burning super cinder because they loaded some missiles on ships apparently. And then he's going further and he says that any actions against our interests, and I'm not sure if that applies to, say, Israel's or not. Probably that would be not what's on the table. But the president said very clearly that any military action against our assets would be the complete elimination of Iran. Iran would cease to exist as a country.
Do you think he means it? I do. I think he actually completely means that. I mean when he says obliteration of Iran, we're not talking about the people or the physical country but rather the leadership, I'm pretty sure. The military that's close to the regime would be completely eliminated. And I'm pretty sure that the regime itself would be completely eliminated.
So think of the clarity of the current situation. The clarity of the situation is that the Iranian people have now three options. Number one is to go along with whatever peace plan gets revealed. I think in June they're going to unveil the administration's peace plan. So option one is to go along with some kind of a peace plan, which is the last thing they want to do because I'm sure that involves not funding their proxies and really not doing any of the things they're doing. Probably means some retreating from territory. It's probably a lot of stuff they don't want to do.
Option two, have their economy completely destroyed. Completely destroyed.
Option three, have their country, in terms of the ruling class of the country, completely destroyed.
Three options: complete destruction of your leadership as in dead, complete destruction of your economy as in we're not just taking it down ten percent, you just won't have money, the economy will just be gone. Or three, play along with some kind of a peace deal that probably would be good for everybody.
Now if you, the only way you could ever imagine that Iran would agree to anything would be with this level of clarity. Anything short of the level of clarity I just described, and I think is being just as clear to the Iranians, I think that that's our best possible situation.
Now I see somebody saying you are not being realistic. I'm not telling you that the peace plan is going to succeed. That would be kind of unrealistic. I am telling you that the clarity of the way in which we're dealing with Iran is unprecedented. We've never had this kind of clarity. And clarity goes a long way for this stuff. The best thing you can do is find some clarity. And Trump has definitely got it.
So this is why I think that Trump will be seen as the model for how to do this stuff in the future because of the clarity of it. Completely black and white.
All right, I've got something else. Why is it that we're not seeing as many images from the border? Have you noticed that we keep hearing about the immigration problem getting worse and worse and worse and worse, but you don't see that many pictures anymore? It seems as though the news, and maybe both sides of news, are downplaying the border stuff. Why is it?
Now it could be because it became bipartisan. It's a weird way. The border problem started as, you know, the Democrats said well it's not that much of a problem, it's not that much of a problem, so let it go the way it is. And then the Republicans say it's a big problem. But now it's obvious that it's a big problem to everybody. And so under those conditions it feels like maybe the news doesn't need to cover it so much because we all know what to do except we need to do something better. And so that's our situation.
So I think it's just less in the news because the Democrats don't have anything to complain about and the Trump administration's all right.
I'm just looking at all your comments about my microphone. Let me tell you that I'm not going to change it so it is what it is. If it doesn't work it doesn't work so you don't need to tell me.
I saw that, you know, Beto is going hard for impeachment. He's going hard for impeachment. And I was watching him and I thought he doesn't even seem close to being a viable candidate. Doesn't even seem close.
And I'm also going to officially revise my prediction. Are you ready? So I had a prediction months ago, about maybe six months ago, that Kamala Harris was the strongest candidate for the Dems and that she was the most likely to be a risk to Trump. I have now watched Kamala Harris in action. I have seen her proposals. I have watched her interact on camera. She is one of just about the worst candidates I've ever seen. How in the world did she even get elected senator? Am I wrong?
She seems awkward. She seems uncomfortable in her own skin. She's got policies that only sound crazy and impractical. And she has added nothing interesting. She's boring and terrible at the same time. And for a long time I thought she was their best hope. And so I'm starting to understand why the Democrats are pushing Biden, who on paper seems like the least likely person who could beat Trump.
This is my opinion, not anybody else's opinion. In my opinion he's a terrible matchup with Trump because if you take Trump, all of his good points, and you remove all the good things from Trump. Oh he's brave, you know he'll do things other people won't do. He's unpredictable. He's interesting. He's funny. He's provocative. He knows how to use social media. You know if you just start with Trump and one by one you pick off all of the qualities that are good about him and just remove them from Trump, what's left is Biden. Biden is like the frame that you build the Trump on. Biden is the boring, you know, the boring nothing. They could not be a worse matchup.
And I'm not, I don't think that I'm exaggerating right now when I tell you that it seems to be some kind of a strategy by the press to give Biden less time to talk on television. Am I wrong? Because it seems to me that Biden would be doing TV interviews just every day. Like every day there'd be a sit-down, a one-on-one, because you could get all kinds of attention doing that. And Biden is in a campaign. Why would he not want more attention? I'll tell you why. I'm pretty sure that the press has figured out that the more we hear from Biden the less we like him. The more he talks the worse he is.
So I don't think the president has anything that looks like a threat out of the entire field unless there's somebody who emerges who has not yet emerged. So I would say I would rule out, with a judge ruling, rule out Harris. Biden might get the nomination because somebody's got to get the nomination but he's certainly not competitive with Trump unless something really big changes between now and then.
So who's left? I've already sort of run through names of people who are serious looking at least and I don't think so. I don't know. We may see somebody who's lower in the pack and lower than two percent of approval who might rise but the sarcasm meter is at 114 percent.
All right, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. There's a story on Fox News about how their votes have been more independent than people thought. So here's a little surprise for you. It turns out that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, both who we assumed would be very, very conservative judges who would side with the conservatives, apparently haven't. At least on small stuff. When I say small stuff I mean the Supreme Court is continually dealing with issues that you and I never hear about. You know stuff about Indian or Native American tribes and stuff like that. But apparently Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have voted on different sides on several issues. So they are less predictable than we imagined.
Yeah I see Tulsi Gabbard and Yang. Amy Klobuchar. Klobuchar just doesn't have the personality. Yang is interesting but he's a bit of a technician. In other words he's got tons of policies and almost all of them sound interesting. If you were going to have a conversation, you know sit down and have coffee with one of the candidates, yeah it might be the most interesting one. Maybe Buttigieg. Buttigieg would be pretty interesting. But if you had to sit down and actually spend some time, if you had to spend an hour with one of the candidates, would you spend time with, well I could talk all day with Yang. Like I mean I could just talk all day with that guy because he's got all kinds of interesting ideas. They may be good, they may be bad, but that's just like my ideas. He has lots of them.
And Buttigieg would probably be interesting just because he's so smart and it looks like he'd be funny. But I can't imagine spending an hour with Beto. Can you? Could you imagine spending an hour just you at lunch and it's just the one candidate on the other side of the table and you have to spend an hour just making conversation? Could you make an hour of conversation with Beto? That would be painful. But Klobuchar, I don't know if I could spend time with them anyway. They've got a real charisma gap on that side.
All right, four in ten Americans like some form of socialism. Your hair's on fire for an attack. America is like some form of socialism. What does it all mean? What's this all mean? Nothing. Nothing at all.
This whole socialism versus not socialism is the biggest phony. The whole conversation is phony because it's all about definitions of a word. It's not about content. It's about what words mean. So when people say that, so when the poll says that four out of ten Americans like some form of socialism, all they're saying is that they like things the way they are. Because the way things are is we have some form of it. I suppose we've got Social Security, Medicare, stuff like that. So should we be surprised that a system that's working pretty well, four in ten like it? It doesn't mean they think it just means they have a different definition of what the word means than others.
Now when I hear the anti-socialist argue against socialism I always have the same reaction which is I'm sure there's a good argument against socialism. I'm sure that exists because socialism has never worked and capitalism has worked very well. So I'm sure that somebody can come up with a persuasive sounding argument against socialism but I haven't heard it.
And again let me be very clear. I think socialism is a big mistake. Well why can't anybody make a convincing argument against it? What's up with that? Well part of the reason is socialism isn't one thing. It's sort of like finding a cure for cancer. Remember when you were a kid, those of you who are older, you thought well I hope science comes up with a cure for cancer. The reason they can't come up with a cure for cancer is that cancer isn't one thing. It's like hundreds or thousands of things that they just put in this label. So even if you could cure one kind, and we're pretty good at treating specific kinds of cancers now, it doesn't cure cancer because it's just this one little thing.
So socialism is like that. There are all kinds of different ways you can do it. So if you say socialism is good or bad you're not really saying anything. So whoever is arguing socialism is good is saying nothing. Whoever says socialism is bad is saying nothing. It's a conversation between two nothings. That's why neither side is persuasive because it's a nothing arguing against another nothing. If you can't define exactly what socialism is you can't really compare it to anything. It's a nothing compared to another nothing. And yet we get all worked up. Oh this nothing is much better than this other nothing that I haven't defined. It could be anything.
So the best I've heard is when people say hey when you consolidate power, when you consolidate power you get every bad thing that human beings do when they have too much power. This sounds reasonable right? If you consolidate power then whoever's the boss of whatever that power structure is has too much power and then when people have too much power you don't have competition and there's corruption.
But do we see that with Medicare? Do you see a lot of headlines that say Medicare has resulted in, what, are people pretty happy with it? What's the biggest problem with Social Security? Well it's hard to pay for but we seem to have figured it out so far. So where is the Social Security corruption that's destroying the country? If you're going to make your argument against socialism and it's about centralizing power corrupts things you'd better give me some examples of American centralized power that are corrupted. Did Medicare become corrupt? Did Social Security become corrupt? I mean there's a math problem of who pays for it and if you have enough young people to pay for the old people and those are real problems but they have nothing to do with socialism versus capitalism. They are simply sort of functional detail problems.
Somebody's saying the VA. Perfect example. So the Veterans Administration was corrupt because it had sort of a centralized control. How easily it was fixed. It would have to fix but at least they could address the subject. But by giving, apparently veterans now have an option of getting private care if they would have waited too long for the Veterans Administration. So when you see some of the examples of where you can add a little market pressure to the public option that's not exactly socialism as it is the Veterans Administration with socialism. When all the president had to do would say okay you veterans you can also use private stuff and you know so now you've got some competition in a sense. I don't know. Yeah I'm not saying the Veterans Administration is fixed but they at least tried to address some of the problems.
And even if you say that the Veterans Administration is a good example of centralized power going wrong, don't we have lots of examples of decentralized power going wrong? Take for example social media. Social media operates in an almost entirely capitalist structure and it's a big freaking problem. So did capitalism make social media and work really well? Well in a sense it did because the businesses are very robust. They make a lot of money. They employ a lot of people. They develop technology. So in those ways all great. But they also created some real social problems as in nearly eliminating free speech effectively even though free speech is about governments not private companies. The effect of it is pretty darn bad.
So when people argue that capitalism is good and socialism is bad that's really just two nothings being compared because those are such vague concepts. You really need to look at the specific. You need to look at the specific. Likewise if we were looking at healthcare it probably would be a bad idea to have the government making decisions about health care but would it be socialism if the government simply was one of the customers for health care? Because we could have an option where you could have the government health care and the government would be paying that insurance at the same time that people are using the public competitive market and they could be in the market at the same time. Would that be socialism?
So here's my statement. People are trying to win these socialism arguments by first of all saying socialism is you know Stalin or some other example from Venezuela etc.
I don't think you have as well this problem. What socialism? I realize that's an unpopular thing to say here. Let me ask you if you think that's the case. I'm no expert on Venezuela but I'm watching that situation and it doesn't look to me that the problem with socialism, it looked like the problem was the leaders. It looked like you had a dictator problem. Am I wrong about that? Am I wrong that Venezuela's problem was a dictator? Now a dictator chose socialist policies etc. which ruined everything but it wasn't the socialism that ruined it. It was the dictator. The dictator made no, you know nothing would have worked with that dictator.
Somebody says god damn it Scott Venezuela has to be in the state it is because of socialism. Really? Well let me ask you this. Let's say Venezuela had an enlightened leader and that enlightened leader said well we can't go full socialism because it wouldn't work but what we will do is make sure all of you have good health care. Would that be the end of Venezuela? Do you think Venezuela could not have provided health care to its citizens and just kept everything else the same? You know capitalist kind of capitalist businesses. Of course it could.
So when you say to me that socialism ruined Venezuela that is so dishonest. It's either uninformed or dishonest. If I'm being blunt it's dishonest because there's no such thing as socialism. There are lots of different things you can do within socialism. The United States does a number of them and it has not destroyed the United States. Venezuela likewise could have done some socialist things and they would still be a fine vibrant country with a great economy. They did too many of the wrong things and they had a dictator and God knows whatever other problems. But blaming it all on socialism is so simplistic. That's really, that's just a talking point from the news.
So I've said before that the news assigns you to your opinions and that we don't have independent thoughts. Everybody here who reflexively says socialism ruined Venezuela, you have been brainwashed. That's it. There is no logic to that thought and it's a completely baseless irrational statement that socialism ruined Venezuela. And I don't even know much about Venezuela but that much is obvious because socialism hasn't ruined most of the European countries who have a little bit of socialism.
I've seen people say I actually agree with you on this. And you see people are being a little bit hesitant to say that in public because when you hear me explain it are you mad that you've been told this? Socialism destroyed Venezuela. Is anybody actually mad that they've been told that? And it's just so obviously not true because socialism isn't a thing. It's a whole bunch of things. And if they'd done the right things at the right times they'd be fine just like the United States. We did some socialist things and we didn't go too far and we're fine. So don't let yourself be fooled by that. Socialism versus bad socialism. Bad government killed Venezuela. Beginning and end of story. Bad government. Dictator. That's it. Corruption and whatever things that that dictator allowed.
Somebody saying define socialism which is my point exactly. If you can't define it you don't have anything to say about it.
All right I'm going to take some questions. I'm going to open it up here because I promised I would. Let's see who looks interesting. I'm only going to take questions from people who show their face and real name. Okay so let's see what Thomas has to say. Thomas. Thomas can you hear me? Thomas. Thomas. Hello. Do you have a question for us? Oh no it's Steve but uh anyway yeah yeah my question is, well actually I want to throw out a fact first and it's about health care. And in the 60s health care was 5% of the GDP. Today it's 18%. Of course that adjusts for inflation you know in that it's in the GDP. And my question is isn't there enough of an indication that something is seriously wrong with that? Indication that things are seriously right?
The reason, the primary reason it might be that health care is so much higher as a percentage of GDP than it used to be is we can do so many things. So we have drugs we didn't used to have. So in the old days you didn't have to spend money on drugs that didn't exist. We have procedures that you can do, operations that we've never thought of. You know scanning devices that didn't exist. Yeah going from whatever you said 5% of GDP to 18% feels to me exactly what a healthy society should look like. We should be inventing new expensive things that will come down in price over time. But each time we come up with a new way to keep people healthy we always would choose a little extra expense to keep these extra people alive or healthy. Especially since these extra people could be us.
But well you know I would kind of respond with this. It seems to me that well for example I think ninety, you know somewhere I read 97 percent of the top 100 selling drugs don't cure, they only relieve symptoms. Things also that kind of concern me include a little confused about what the FDA requires to approve a drug above the placebo effect which seems to me it could be just a single digit because my readings just says it has to be statistically significant. I'm just wondering if you know I mean I understand your point about technology has improved but during that same period from the 60s to today the healthcare industry also had the huge improvement in computer technology so why do so that's right.
So working against us is a lack of price transparency and I think that the lack of price transparency all and the lack of competitive forces throughout the whole healthcare industry is what the administration is actually working on directly so that that is what they're focusing on. Yeah which I support a hundred percent by the way. I talked to another caller just keep things keep saying it's going. Thanks so much. Let's say let's bring someone else in. Let's go with, no I'm not going with that. Let's go with Jacob. And when Jacob's on here we'll see what Jacob has to say.
Hey Jacob. Jacob are you there? Good how are you? You have a question? He said something kind of poignant. He said where is that for the rural areas of our country? And especially where we live the rural areas are, there's no work, no money and they're just falling into darkness and despair. Along with that comes drugs and crime. And the strange fact is that the majority of the country's, U.S., Canada, are rural. There's only a couple cities right? And all these people just, they're running out of hope. The authority concentrates where there's a very specific problem and this you know it's all a different dynamic once you get out of the city. Oh yes very a lot there you know. I want to try to, your question please do.
Suppose it seems to me that we should be able to develop a kit such that one or two people working together without a lot of tools could build a small single story structure that they could live in. I can't imagine why we can't make you know essentially bricks that just fit together with a plan, have a few different designs and so that you can just very easily run cable, run plumbing and that. And any person could do it just watching a YouTube video for the work that you need to do that day and it says okay take these pipes that are labeled over there and put them together like you see on the video and that's all you're doing today. It seems to me that you could get people to be able to build their own homes.
Now here's the full idea. Let's take the BLM authority but this, there's some version of this that we're working with rural communities. You have all this land that is either free or close to free because it's sort of worthless. Suppose you took these properties, you've put it in government control which is easy to do because again it's free or foreclosed or close to free. And then you say for each person who fits a certain profile, they've got to apply for this, they're going to get a free piece of land to build on. And here's the fun part. They get a second free piece of land next to it to build an income property. In other words they can build a second home. Once they built their own home with their own hands the second one they can rent or sell.
So that everybody who gets two pieces of land next to each other, because again the land is almost free because nobody wanted it, they get one they can build on and one that they can turn into an income property. That would make the cost of their building much lower. It seems to me that you could come up with kits where people could build their own homes with some exceptions such as you might need a backhoe to come in and move some dirt around. So there might be some site prep and sewage and stuff like that that has to be done by you know big companies. But it seems to be that you could put up a wall. You could probably figure out a way to raise a roof with just two people and pulleys and some platforms. Certainly you could figure out plumbing that you don't have to be a trained plumber to do. You could have inspectors who are checking in at each step to make sure they build things right and you know you've done it right.
Yeah so people are telling me those Sears sold these homes before etc. but I'm pretty sure you could build a model where you would take, you basically use the pioneering instinct. You would get people who can build their own homes and then they would have a reason to want that home in good shape because it's next to their income property they can build that next to. Yeah and it's not just a place to live in the rural areas. You're right that there is an economic element absolutely because they just don't have the jobs or the opportunity etcetera. So I like that idea of having one element which is your home to live in, the other which is your income element. Yeah we're doing manicures or hair or something else you know while you're building it maybe use that as your place of business or so.
I think there are models in which people can sort of work their way into better situations but they have not been developed. A lot of people are saying you see Sears trying to get homes which they did. It's been tried in other countries and didn't work. Everything that I've seen was a very bad try. And I always warn people don't compare to the bad try to what a good try could look like right. The airplane didn't work until the airplane worked and everything before the Wright brothers was a disaster. Then it just got better after that. So I would say that the idea of a kit home was poorly done in the past but does not predict what you could do in the future if you had a better block design. I don't think we've designed them right yet.
All right thank you for the question. Take care. We'll move on to one more. Let's do one more question. Spring. Oh really there's not a single woman who wants to answer the question. I was trying to mix it up but I'm going to go with Tom I think. No not Tom. Let's see who we've got here. Tom how are you on the healthcare stuff especially. So I own a small healthcare company myself and we work with almost all entirely private insurers. I also went to business school. I did a double degree thing out of UCLA and the National University of Singapore. I spent a lot of time living overseas. And I would ask if you or maybe some of the other viewers here have a lot of knowledge about Singapore's healthcare system.
Actually Michael Malice talks about this in his new book where it's a very much a public-private partnership. Singapore has aspects that are very socialist in some ways and obviously some ways even totalitarian but it's also hyper capitalist in many ways as well. So I'm kind of curious if you've looked into that or maybe some of the other guests here.
Yeah if what you're saying is some kind of government, probably a government safety net but they make sure there's a lot of competitive elements within the market. That's what you're saying essentially. This is that the big picture. Not only that yes but also prices for procedures and drugs are clearly posted. I've used the healthcare system there as a foreigner as a student where for an emergent, for an urgent situation that I had and what would have cost probably several thousand dollars cost me about 1970 Singapore dollars. So these are minor things and but also for the big ones too. And they've exceptionally low taxes but also the standard of living is very very high and cost of living is very high as well. So that's something to think about but Singapore's it's my second favorite country in the world. I think you guys should take a look at it.
Can we take you off now but thank you for that. I like the idea. And follow me Scott.
Okay so we always talked about the current healthcare system versus a single-payer and it seems to me the obvious, the most obvious productive place to be it would be neither of those places. You wouldn't want a single payer for all the obvious reasons. Our current system is not getting everyone covered so that doesn't work for all the obvious reasons. There's probably something where the, I'm just going to get rid of all the people who say that mic doesn't work. There's probably something that makes the government just the biggest customer and there's still plenty of competition. So I think that's where it's going to end up.
All right that's all for now. I will talk to you later.
oh hey everybody hey Jimmy pants five come on in here super comic-con drew sides Dam X lied Chris Whittle it's good to see all of you and I know why you're here probably for the coffee possibly with a simultaneous simultaneous up let's get right to it let's grab your copier bug your glass your Stein your tankard your chalice your thermos your flask fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the simultaneous scent it's good sipping so I'm gonna take some lips take some calls at the end of some comments here so if you have some questions you might want to be thinking about I'll take questions on anything today yeah anything at all so let's talk about what's new so it turns out that North Korea is trying to interfere with American elections here's my question to you what country is not interfering with American elections quick name a country that's not interfering with American elections I mean North Korea clearly has they just made some comments about Joe Biden Israel obviously has their naming stuff after Trump I mean when Israel starts naming things in Israel after your president they kind of want that guy to get reelected or that that woman depending on the time so Venezuela is affecting US elections probably more than any other country and they're not even trying simply by being Venezuela Venezuela just sits there being Venezuela that's probably gonna have more impact on her than Facebook just by this example what about China China's definitely interfering with our election they might not be trying to do it but everything about how they act is having their elections so I'm starting to think maybe we should just get rid of this fiction without other countries interfering with your elections and just embrace the fact that all of our elections are International Affairs happen now I'm not completely serious but the point is you can't really turn off the impact from other countries yes maybe maybe not in Slovenia as somebody's in here but the big countries let's talk about another big country Iran oh let's talk about China first so I was watching the I think he was the Chinese ambassador being interviewed on I forget which network and the Chinese ambassador was answering questions about you know potential bad actions by China and I've never seen a worse ambassador how in the world does that guy keep his job he was just the worst if you ever get a chance to see the Chinese ambassador to the United States on TV you have to watch it just to watch how bad he is now a question I have is whether all I'm saying is some kind of a social cultural difference because the way he answers questions looks exactly like he's lying and by Mike intentionally away from my face but somebody's saying I should do it closer so and specifically he was of that he was asked about hallway if I'm pronouncing it correctly the Chinese telecom company that the u.s.
is saying if you install their equipment they'll spy on all your traffic and listening to the Chinese ambassador try to try to explain that way it really looked like he was confirming everything that the everything about them because his denial was so transparently wrong for Western ears that I wondered what I was even listening to and so here's my question was it a cultural difference because if you ask a somebody from the United States hey is your company putting spy equipment in all of your telecommunications here if you ask somebody from America they will say no that's not happening that's a ridiculous rumor here's probably why how it got started but no there's no there's no proof to that no there's no evidence of that and by the way you know why we invite the inspectors could come in and look at our chips and you could just tell so the American wouldn't answer it that way they would go they would go write up the facts the Chinese ambassador simply sort of changed the subject and I'm thinking to myself okay do you even know what country you're in if you're in the United States and somebody says did you murder that person and you say when we could talk about murder but maybe we should talk about the weather why is nobody talking about the weather why do so everybody have to talk about the murder where do we talk about the weather if you say that in America a hundred percent of Americans say oh okay you're guilty obviously you're guilty you didn't even answer the question you just changed the subject and here's this Chinese ambassador who apparently knows nothing about America how the hell did he get his job done I'm serious you're probably the least qualified looking person I've ever seen in such a high profile job he acted like he didn't know how Americans work he answers the question in a way so damning and so confirming of how always inappropriateness in our networks that I thought how does he even stay alive I mean it seems like he'd be sent to one of those concentration yes and then and then he was asked about the the weaker concentration camps at least they're being called that and he actually with a straight face look what then you know looked at the interviewer and said no those are just job education places everybody they can come and go doors are open we don't even have a lock on the gate you could just walk in there get some training and of course we want them to be trained so they can be productive citizens why wouldn't we want them trained why wouldn't they want to be treated now I'm paraphrasing he didn't say it that way but it was one of those jaw-dropping things where I said to myself and I'm gonna be Ferrier Western media is so unreliable that it is possible I'm not ruling it out it's possible that they're actually through job training centers now I always think that's true it seems to me we probably have a pretty good idea what's going on over there and it seems it seems to me that they're probably just as bad as it sounds there probably concentration camps I'd imagine that's true because we've seen interviews with a family member of lost family members and obviously they can't go visit them so it seems to me like the most obvious lie I've ever seen and so this guy goes on American TV again does he even know what countries and does the ambassador to the United States from China know what country he's in because he looks at it goes no that's just job training places and I'm thinking I think I'm looking at Hitler so this Chinese ambassador made me think instead of thinking I you know I thought he would have answered the question about the weaker concentration camps I thought he was going to come up with something better you know at least a lie that sounds a like there's some gray area like maybe he better said oh yes it is they are detained there but they've all committed some kind of a crime we're trying to rehabilitate then I was gonna say that's evil enough you know I wasn't gonna think that that was good enough as still as the concentration yep but I thought they put at least some kind of spin on it to make some kind of attempt to make you sound like there was some reason why maybe the coverage of it was not quite accurate it didn't really it was a good idea I thought they would at least take a run at it and he looks right at the interviewer says there's just job training places you know of course it's all voluntary and I just thought that guy needs to be I don't executed what because what he was talking about was a a concentration camp and he just lied to the world about its existence now I suppose that parts of his job but really China you couldn't come up with a better cover story then then then that was pretty pathetic alright enough about that I'm just quite seriously I don't know how he keeps his job he could not have been a worse at spokesperson for China what I do I do appreciate that he's so bad at life that he doesn't leave any question about the facts he confirmed every bad thing about China without trying I thought it was the worst anyway I read about so as you all know President Trump has increased the sanctions on Iran I did not realize how effectively he had increased the sanctions on Iran listen to this I just found out this today that's so so this month the administration tightened up the the the sanctions so that even if you were a country we like and you were dealing with around you would give sanction to I guess so we were trying to stop anybody buying Iranian oil now when you hear that you say to yourself yeah yeah yeah we have a bunch of sanctions but then everybody finds a way to work around them so when if you're like me when you heard we were putting more sanctions on Iranian oil sales didn't you say to yourselves yeah that'll hurt them 10% didn't didn't you think it was something like that yeah that'll squeeze them a little bit maybe 20% turns out this since the sanctions got tightened zero ships have been leaving Iran's oil terminals for foreign ports zero we actually closed down their their tankers that were selling oil to other countries to zero pattern or that'll last but it certainly tells you that the RAM needs to do something and do something quickly because the government is falling apart now I love and again I'm going to say historians will look back at this administration as the model for how to do things even though in our current moment anything President Trump does gets you know tons of criticism because that's the world we live in but historians will not have to deal with that you know the the politics of the time they'll be able to look at it yeah in the rearview mirror and just say whether something was good or bad if it worked or if it didn't and I think Trump's policy on Iran is going to be one of those lasting good examples now of course we don't know how it all turn out but the way he's setting it up is the cleanest thing I've seen so far here's what he used to be the way we used to treat Iran is if you do things we don't like which we know you're doing and you're always doing and you keep doing we're going to do things that you don't like so that that was the old proposition if you do things we don't like in a variety of different ways we will do things you don't like in a variety of ways and what did that get us Iran do a variety of things we don't like and then we would do a variety of things they don't like and nothing really changed trump has clarified this situation as I understand that the proposition is your economy will be completely obliterated because that's what it means when zero tankers leave your ports if you can't give a single oil tanker out of your port you're looking at the end of your economy the alternative is you saw Iran try to gain the system a little bit maybe put some missiles on ships put a little military risk into the equation muddy it up a little bit what was Trump's response to Iran muddying up this very clean situation the clean situation was do what we want or we will completely annihilate your economy we won't we won't damage it we won't take it down 10% we won't impede it we will eliminate it we will eliminate your economy that's the trunk proposition so they try to add some variables with the military stuff for distrub do you brings the whole frickin or Matta I mean not an entire tomada but he brings enough firepower to turn the entire nation of Iran into a burnin super cinder because they loaded some missiles on ships apparently and that he's going further and he says that any actions against our interests and I'm not sure if that applies to say here's the Israel or not probably that would be not what's on the table but president said very clearly that any military action against our assets would be the complete elimination of her and Iran would cease to exist as a country do you think he means it I do I think he actually completely means that I mean in what he says obliteration of Iran we're not talking about the people or the physical country but rather the the leadership I'm pretty sure the the military that's close to the regime would be completely eliminated and I'm pretty sure that the regime itself would be completely eliminated so think of the clarity of the current situation the clarity of the situation is that the Iranian people have now three options number one is to go along with whatever peace plan gets revealed I think in June they're going on unveil the administration's peace plan so option one is to go along with some kind of a peace plan which is the last thing I want to do because I'm sure that involves not funding their proxies and really not doing any of the things they're doing probably means some retreating from territory it's probably a lot of stuff they don't want to do option to have their economy completely destroyed completely destroyed option three have their country in terms of the ruler ruling class of the country completely destroyed three options complete destruction of your of your leadership as in debt complete destruction of your economy as in we're not just taking them 10% you just won't have money the economy will just be gone or three play along with some kind of a peace deal that probably would be good for everybody now if you the only way you could ever imagine that Iran would agree to anything would be with this level of clarity anything short of the level of clarity I just described and I think is being being just as clear to the Iranians I think that that's our best possible situation now I see somebody saying you are not being realistic I'm not telling you that the peace plan is going to succeed that would be kind of unrealistic I am telling you that the clarity of the way in which we're dealing with the rat is unprecedented we've never had this kind of clarity and clarity goes a long way for this stuff the best thing you can do is find some clarity and Trump has definitely kind of it so this is why I think that Trump will be seen as the as the model for how to do this stuff in the future because of the clarity of it completely black and white all right I've got something else why is it that we're not seeing as many images from the border have you noticed that we keep hearing about the immigration problem getting worse and worse worse and worse but I will see that many pictures anymore it seems as though the news and maybe both sides of news are downplaying the border stuff why is it now it could be because it became bipartisan it's a weird way the border problem started as you know the Democrats said well it's not that much of a problem it's not that much of a problem so let it you know just let it go the way it is and then the Republicans say it's a big problem but now it's obvious that it's a big problem to everybody and so under those conditions it feels like maybe the news doesn't need to cover it so much because we don't know what to do except we need to do something better and so that's that's our situation so I think it's just less than news because the Democrats don't have anything to complain about and the Trump administration's the Trump administration is all right I'm just looking at all your comments about my microphone let me tell you that I'm not going to change it so it is what it is if it doesn't work it doesn't work so you don't need to tell me I saw that you know is Beto is going hard for impeachment it's going hard for impeachment and I was watching him and I thought he he doesn't even seem close to being a viable candidate doesn't even seem close and I'm also going to officially revise my prediction are you ready so I had a prediction months ago about maybe six months ago that Harris Campbell Harris was the strongest candidate for the Dems and the she was the most likely to be a risk to trump I have never watched Carla Harris in action I have seen her proposals I have watched her interact on camera she is one of just about the worst candidates I've ever seen how in the world did she even get elected senator am I wrong she seems awkward she seems uncomfortable in her own skin she's got policies that only sound crazy and impractical and she has added nothing interesting she's boring and terrible at the same time and that for a long time I thought she was their best hope and so I'm starting to understand why the Democrats are pushing Biden who on paper seems like the least likely person who could beat Trump this is my opinion not anybody else's opinion in my opinion is a terrible match up with Trump because he's if you take you start with Trump all of his good points and you remove all the good things from Trump oh he's brave you know you'll do things other people won't do he's unpredictable he's you know he's interesting he's funny he's provocative he knows how to use social media you know if you just start with Trump and one by one you pick off all of the qualities that are good about him and just remove them from Trump what's left is binding by those like the frame that you build the Trump on Biden is the the boring you know the boring nothing they could not be a worse match up and I'm not I don't think that I'm exaggerating right now when I tell you that it seems to be some kind of a strategy by the press to give Biden less time to talk on television am I wrong because it seems to me that Biden would be doing TV interviews just every day like every day there'd be a sit-down a one-on-one because you could get all kinds of attention doing that way doing that and Biden is in a campaign why would he not want more attention I'll tell you why I'm pretty sure that the press is figured out that the more we hear from Biden the less we like him the more he talks the worse he is so I don't think the president has anything that looks like a threat out of the entire field unless there's somebody who emerges who has not yet emerged so I would say I would rule out with a judge ruling been a rule out Harris the Biden might get the nomination because somebody's got to get the nomination but he's certainly not competitive with Trump unless something really big changes between now and then so who's left I've already sort of run in names of people who are serious looking at least and I don't think so I don't know we may see somebody who's lower in the pack and lower than 2% of approval who might rise but the slaughter meter is at 114 percent alright Gorsuch and Kavanagh there's a story on the Fox News about how their votes have been more independent than people thought so here's a little surprise for you it turns out that Gorsuch and cabin on both what we assumed would be fair very conservative judges who would side with the Conservatives apparently happened at least on small stop when I say when I say small stuff I mean the Supreme Court is continually dealing with issues that you and I never hear about you know stuff about Indian or Native American tribes and stuff like that but apparently or such and Cavanagh I have putted on different signs on several issues so they are less predictable than that we imagine yeah I see to last about Tulsi Gabbard and and yang Amy Klobuchar Klobuchar just doesn't have the personality yang is interesting but he's a bit of a technician in other words he's got tons of policies and almost all of them sound interesting if you were going to have a conversation you know sit down and have coffee with one of the kid Bates yeah it might be the most interesting one maybe blue to judge Buda Gentry would be pretty interesting but if you had to sit down actually spend some time if you had to spend an hour with one of the candidates would you spend time with well I could talk all day with ya like I mean I could just talk all day with that guy because he's got all kinds of interesting ideas they may be good they may be bad but that's just like my ideas he has lots of them and Budaj edge would probably be interesting just because he's so smart and it looks like you'd be funny but I can't imagine spending an hour with Ben ever can you could you imagine spending an hour just you at lunch and it's just the one candidate on the other side of the table and you have to spend an hour just making conversation could you make an hour of conversation with bet oh that would be painful but Klobuchar I don't know if I could spend time with them anyway they've got a real charisma gap on that son all right at 4 and 10 Americans like some form of socialism uh your hair's on fire for an attack America is like some form of socialism what does it all mean what's this at all mean nothing nothing at all this whole socialism versus ánotá socialism is the biggest phony the the whole conversation is phony because it's all about definitions of a word it's not about it's not about a content it's about what words mean so when people say that so when the poll says that four out of ten Americans like some form of socialism all they're saying is that they like things the way they are because the way things are is we have some formulas other suppose we've got Social Security Medicare stuff like that so should we be surprised that a system that's working pretty well before an attendant like it it doesn't mean they think it just means they have a different definitions of what the word means and others now when I hear the anti-socialist argue against socialism I always I have the same reaction which is I'm sure there's a good argument against socialism I'm sure that exists because socialism has never worked and capitalism has worked very well so I'm sure that somebody can come up with a persuasive sounding argument against socialism but I haven't heard it and again let me be very clear I think socialism is a big mistake well why can't anybody make a convincing argument against it what's up with that well part of the reason is socialism isn't one thing it's sort of like finding a cure for cancer remember when you were a kid those of you were older you thought well I hope science comes up with a cure for cancer the reason this I can't come up with a cure for cancer is it cancer isn't one thing it's like hundreds or thousands of things that they just put in this label so even if you could cure one kind and we're pretty good at treating specific kinds of cancers now it doesn't look you're a cancer because it's just as one little thing so socialism is like that there are all kinds of different ways you can do it so if you say socialism is good or bad you're not really saying anything so whoever is arguing socialism as good as say not whoever says socialism is bad is saying nothing it's a conversation between two nothing's that's why right neither side is persuasive because it's a nothing arguing against of nothing if you can't define exactly what socialism is you can't really compare it to anything it's a nothing prepared to or nothing and yet we get all work nothing but oh this is nothing is much better than this other nothing that I haven't designed didn't could be anything so the best I've heard is when people say hey when you consolidate power when you consolidate power you get every bad thing that human beings do when they had too much power this sounds reasonable right if you consolidate power then whoever's the boss of whatever that power structure is has too much power and then would people have too much power you don't have competition and there's corruption but do we see that with Medicare do you see a lot of headlines that say Medicare as as resulted in what are people pretty happy with it what's the biggest problem with Social Security well it's hard to pay for but we seem to a finger to damned so far so where is the where is the Social Security corruption that's destroying the country if you're gonna make your argument against socialism and it's about centralizing power corrupts things you'd better give me some examples of American centralist Bowery their corrupted did it Medicare become corrupt the Social Security become corrupt I mean there's a math problem of that who pays for it and if you have enough young people to pay from the old people and those are real problems but they have nothing to do with socialism versus capitalism they are simply sort of functional detail problems the somebody's saying the VA perfect example so the Veterans Administration was corrupt because it had sort of a centralized control how easily it was fixed watered office to fix but at least they could address the subject but by giving apparently veterans now have an option of getting private care if they would have waited too long for the Veterans Association administration the Veterans Administration so when you see some of the examples of where you can add a little little market pressure to the public option that's not exactly socialism as it is the Veterans Administration with socialism when all the President had to do would say okay you veterans you can also use private stuff and you know so now you've got some competition in a sense I don't know yeah I'm not saying the Veterans Administration is is fixed but they at least try to address some of the problems and even if you say that the Veterans Administration is a good example of centralized power going wrong don't we have lots of examples of decentralized power going wrong take for example social media social media operates in a almost an entirely capitalist structure and it's a big freakin problem so did capitalism make social media and work really well well in a sense of it because the businesses are very robust they make a lot of money they employ a lot of people they develop technology so in those ways all great but they also created some real social problems as in nearly eliminating free speech effectively even though free speech is about governments not private companies the effect that it is pretty darn bad so when people argue that capitalism is good and socialism is bad that's really just - nothing's being compared because those are such vague concepts you really need to look at this specific you need to look at the specific likewise we were looking at healthcare it probably would be a bad idea to have the government making decisions about health care but would it be socialism if the government simply was one of the customers for health care because we could have an option where you could have the government health care and the government would be paying that insurance at the same time that people are using the public competitive market and they could be in the market at the same time would that be socialism so here's my here's my statement people are trying to win these socialism argument by by first of all saying socialism is you know Stalin or some other example from Venezuela etc.
I don't think you have as well this problem what socialism I realize that's an unpopular thing to say here let me let me ask you if you think that's the case I'm no expert on Venezuela but I'm watching that situation and it doesn't look to me that the problem with socialism it looked like the problem was the leaders it looked like you had a dictator problem am I wrong about that am I am I wrong that Venezuela's problem was a dictator now a dictator chose socialist policies etc which ruined everything but it wasn't the socialism that ruined it it was the dictator the dictator made no you know nothing would have worked with that dictator somebody says god damn it Scott Venezuela has to be in the state it is because of socialism really well let me ask you this let's say Venezuela had an enlightened leader and that enlightened leader said well we can't go full socialism because it wouldn't work but what we will do is make sure all of you have good health care would that be the end of Venezuela do you think Venezuela could not have provided health care to its citizens and just kept everything else the same you know capitalist kind of capitalist businesses that said of course it could so when you say to be that that socialism ruin Venezuela that yes so dishonest it's either uninformed or dishonest if I'm being blunt it's dishonest because there's no such thing as socialism there are lots of different things you can do within socialism the United States does a number on them and it has not destroyed the United States Venezuela likewise could have done some socialist things and they would still be a fine vibrant country with a great economy they did too many of the wrong things and they had a dictator and God knows whatever other problems but blaming it all on socialism is so simplistic that's really that's just a talking point from the news so I've said before that the news assigns you to Europeans and that we don't have independent things everybody here who reflexively says socialism ruined Venezuela you have been brainwashed that's it there is no there is no logic to that thought and is a completely baseless irrational statement that socialism ruined Venezuela and I don't even know much about Venezuela but that much is obvious because socialism hasn't ruined most of the European countries who have a little bit of socialism I've seen people attended at lycée I actually agree with you on this and you see people are being a little bit hesitant to say that in public because when you hear me explain it are you mad that you've been told this socialism destroyed Venezuela is anybody actually mad that they've been told that and it's just so obviously not true because socialism isn't a thing it's a whole bunch of things and if they've done the right things at a few things they'd be fine just like the United States we did some socialist things and not we didn't go too far and we're fine so don't let yourself be fooled by that socialism versus bad socialism bad government killed Venezuela beginning and end of story bad government dictator that's it corruption and whatever things that that dictator allowed somebody saying define socialism which is my point exactly if you can to find it you don't have anything to say about all right I'm gonna take some questions I'm gonna open it up here because I promised I would let's see who looks interesting I'm only going to take questions from people who show their face and real name okay so let's see what Thomas has to say Thomas Thomas can you hear me Thomas Thomas hello do you have a question to us oh no it's Steve but uh anyway yeah yeah my question is well actually I want to throw out a fact first and it's about health care and in the 60s health care was 5% of the GDP today it's 18% of course that adjusts for inflation you know in that it's in the GDP and my question is isn't there number enough an indication that something is seriously wrong with that indication that things are seriously right the reason the primary reason they might be that health care is so much higher as a percentage of GDP than it used to be is we can do so many things so we have drugs we didn't used to have so in the old days you didn't have to spend money on drugs that didn't exist we had procedures that you can do operations that we've never thought of you know skimming devices that didn't exist yeah going from whatever you said 5% of GDP to 18% feels to me exactly what a healthy society should look like we should be inventing new expensive things that will come down in price over time but each time we come up with a new way to keep people healthy we always would choose a little extra expense to keep these extra people alive or or healthy especially since these extra people could be us but well you know I would kind of respond with this it seems to me that well for example I think ninety you know somewhere I read 97 percent of the top 100 selling drugs don't cure they only relieve symptoms things also that kind of concern me include a little confused about what the FDA requires to approve a drug above the placebo effect which seems to me it could be just a single-digit because my readings just says it has to be statistically significant I'm just wondering if you know I mean I understand your point about technology has improved but during that same period from the 60s to today the healthcare industry also had the huge improvement in computer technology so why do so that's right so working against us is a lack of price transparency and I think that the lack of price transparency all and the lack of competitive forces throughout the whole healthcare industry is what the administration is actually working on directly so that that is what they're focusing on yeah which I support a hundred percent by the way I talked to another caller just keep things keep saying it's going thanks so much let's say let's bring someone else in let's go with no I'm not going with that let's go with Jacob and when Jacobs on here we'll see what Jacob has to say hey Jacob Jacob are you there good how are you you have a question he said something kind of poignant he said where is that for the rural areas of our country and especially where we live the rural areas are there's no work no money and they're just falling into darkness and despair along with that comes Drugs and Crime and the strange fact is that the majority of the country's US Canada are rural there's only a couple cities right and all these people just they're running out of hope the authority concentrates where there's a very specific problem and this you know it's all a different dynamic dynamic once you get out of the city oh yes very a lot there you know I want to try to your question please do suppose it seems to me that we should be able to develop a Kint such that one or two people working together without a lot of tools could build a small single a single story structure that they could live in I can't imagine why we can't make you know essentially bricks that just fit together with a plan have a few different designs and so that you can just very easily run cable run plumbing and that and any person could do it just watching a watching youtube video for the work that you need to do that day and it says okay take these pipes that are labeled over there and put them together like you see on the video and that's all you're doing today it seems to me that you could get people to be able to build their own homes now here's here's the full idea let's take the blade authority but this there's some version of this that we're working with rural communities you have all this land that is either free or close to free because it's sort of worthless suppose it took you took these properties you've put it in government control which is easy to do because again it's free or foreclosed or close to free and then you say for each person who fits a certain profile they've got to apply for this they're going to get a free piece of land to build on and here's the fun part they get a second free piece of land next to it to build a income property in other words they can build a second home once they built their own home with their own hands the second one they can rent or sell so that everybody who gets two pieces of land next to each other because again the land is almost free because nobody wanted it they get one they can build on and one that they can turn into an income property that would make the cost of their building much lower supposed to mean that you could come up with kits where people could build their own homes with some exceptions such as you might need a backhoe to come in and move some dirt around so there might be some site prep and sewage and stuff like that that has to be done by you know big companies but it seems to be that you could put up a wall you could probably figure out a way to to raise a roof with just two people and pulleys and some platforms certainly you could figure out plumbing that you don't have to be a trained plumber to do you could have inspectors who are checking in the each step to make sure they build things right and you know you've done it right yeah so people are telling me those Sears sold these homes before et cetera but I'm pretty sure you could build a model where you would take you basically use the pioneering instinct you would get people who can build their own homes and then they would have a reason to want that home in good shape because it's next to their income property they can build that next mm-hmm yeah and it's not just a place to live in the rural areas you're right that there is an economic element absolutely because they just don't have the jobs or the opportunity etcetera so I like that idea of having one element which is your home to live in the other which is your income element yeah we're doing manicures or hair or something else you know while you're building it maybe use that as your place of businesses or so I think there are models in which people can sort of work their way into better situations but they have not been developed a lot of people are saying you see your Sears trying to get homes which they did it's been tried in other countries and didn't work everything that I've seen was a very bad try and I always warn people don't compare to the bad try to what a good try could look like right the the airplane didn't work until the airplane worked and everything before the Wright brothers was it was a disaster yeah then it just got better after that so I would say that the idea of a kit home was poorly done in the past but does not predict what you could do in the future if you had a better better you know block design I don't think we've decided them right yet all right thank you for the question take care you'll move on to one more let's do one more question with spring oh really there's not a single woman who wants to answer the question I was trying to mix it up but I'm gonna go with Tom I think no not Tom let's see who we've got here Tom how are you on the healthcare stuff especially so I own a small healthcare company myself and we work with almost all entirely private insurers I also went to business school I did a double degree thing out of UCLA and the National University of Singapore I spent a lot of time living overseas and I would ask if you or maybe some of the other viewers here have a lot of knowledge about Singapore's healthcare system actually Michael malleus talks about this in his new book where it's a very much a public-private partnership Singapore has aspects that are very socialist in some ways and obviously some ways even totalitarian but it's also hyper capitalist in many ways as well so I'm kind of curious if you've looked into that or maybe some of the other guests here yeah if what you're saying is some kind of government probably a government safety net but they make sure there's a lot of competitive elements within the market that's what you're saying essentially this is that the big picture not only that yes but also prices for procedures and drugs are clearly posted I've used the healthcare system there as a foreigner as a student where for an emergent for an urgent situation that I that I had and what would have cost probably several thousand dollars cost me about 1970 semi Singapore dollars - so these are minor things and but also for the big ones too and they've exceptionally low taxes but also the standard of living is very very high and cost of living is very high as well so that's something to think about but Singapore's it's my second favorite country in the world I think you guys should take a look at it can we take you off now but thank you for that I like the idea and follow me Scott okay so we always talked about the current healthcare system versus a single-payer and it seems to me the obvious the the most obvious productive place to be it would be neither of those place you wouldn't want a single pair for all the obvious reasons our current system is not getting every covered everyone covered so that doesn't work for all the obvious reasons there's probably something where the I'm just gonna get rid of all the people who say that mic doesn't work there's probably there's probably something that makes the government just the biggest customer and there's still plenty of competition so I think that's where it's going to end up all right that's all for now I will talk to you later
oh hey everybody
hey Jimmy pants five come on in here
super comic-con drew sides Dam X lied
Chris Whittle it's good to see all of
you and I know why you're here probably
for the coffee possibly with a
simultaneous simultaneous up let's get
right to it
let's grab your copier bug your glass
your Stein your tankard your chalice
your thermos your flask fill it with
your favorite liquid I like coffee and
join me now for the simultaneous scent
it's good sipping so I'm gonna take some
lips take some calls at the end of some
comments here so if you have some
questions you might want to be thinking
about I'll take questions on anything
today
yeah anything at all so let's talk about
what's new so it turns out that North
Korea is trying to interfere with
American elections here's my question to
you what country is not interfering with
American elections quick name a country
that's not interfering with American
elections I mean North Korea clearly has
they just made some comments about Joe
Biden Israel obviously has their naming
stuff after Trump I mean when Israel
starts naming things in Israel after
your president they kind of want that
guy to get reelected or that that woman
depending on the time so Venezuela is
affecting US elections probably more
than any other country and they're not
even trying simply by being Venezuela
Venezuela just sits there being
Venezuela
that's probably gonna have more impact
on her
than Facebook just by this example what
about China China's definitely
interfering with our election they might
not be trying to do it but everything
about how they act is having their
elections so I'm starting to think maybe
we should just get rid of this fiction
without other countries interfering with
your elections and just embrace the fact
that all of our elections are
International Affairs happen now I'm not
completely serious but the point is you
can't really turn off the impact from
other countries yes maybe maybe not
in Slovenia as somebody's in here but
the big countries let's talk about
another big country Iran oh let's talk
about China first so I was watching the
I think he was the Chinese ambassador
being interviewed on I forget which
network and the Chinese ambassador was
answering questions about you know
potential bad actions by China and I've
never seen a worse ambassador how in the
world does that guy keep his job he was
just the worst if you ever get a chance
to see the Chinese ambassador to the
United States on TV you have to watch it
just to watch how bad he is now a
question I have is whether all I'm
saying is some kind of a social cultural
difference because the way he answers
questions looks exactly like he's lying
and by Mike intentionally away from my
face but somebody's saying I should do
it closer so and specifically he was of
that he was asked about hallway if I'm
pronouncing it correctly the Chinese
telecom company that the u.s. is saying
if you install their equipment they'll
spy on all your traffic and listening to
the Chinese ambassador try to try to
explain
that way it really looked like he was
confirming everything that the
everything about them because his denial
was so transparently wrong for Western
ears that I wondered what I was even
listening to and so here's my question
was it a cultural difference because if
you ask a somebody from the United
States hey is your company putting spy
equipment in all of your
telecommunications here if you ask
somebody from America they will say no
that's not happening
that's a ridiculous rumor here's
probably why how it got started but no
there's no there's no proof to that no
there's no evidence of that and by the
way you know why we invite the
inspectors could come in and look at our
chips and you could just tell so the
American wouldn't answer it that way
they would go they would go write up the
facts the Chinese ambassador simply sort
of changed the subject and I'm thinking
to myself okay do you even know what
country you're in if you're in the
United States and somebody says did you
murder that person and you say when we
could talk about murder but maybe we
should talk about the weather why is
nobody talking about the weather
why do so everybody have to talk about
the murder where do we talk about the
weather if you say that in America a
hundred percent of Americans say oh okay
you're guilty
obviously you're guilty you didn't even
answer the question you just changed the
subject and here's this Chinese
ambassador who apparently knows nothing
about America how the hell did he get
his job done I'm serious you're probably
the least qualified looking person I've
ever seen in such a high profile job he
acted like he didn't know how Americans
work he answers the question in a way so
damning and so confirming of how always
inappropriateness in our networks that I
thought how does he even stay alive I
mean
it seems like he'd be sent to one of
those concentration yes
and then and then he was asked about the
the weaker concentration camps at least
they're being called that
and he actually with a straight face
look what then you know looked at the
interviewer and said no those are just
job education places everybody they can
come and go doors are open we don't even
have a lock on the gate you could just
walk in there get some training and of
course we want them to be trained so
they can be productive citizens why
wouldn't we want them trained why
wouldn't they want to be treated
now I'm paraphrasing he didn't say it
that way but it was one of those
jaw-dropping things where I said to
myself and I'm gonna be Ferrier
Western media is so unreliable that it
is possible I'm not ruling it out it's
possible that they're actually through
job training centers now I always think
that's true it seems to me we probably
have a pretty good idea what's going on
over there and it seems it seems to me
that they're probably just as bad as it
sounds there probably concentration
camps I'd imagine that's true because
we've seen interviews with a family
member of lost family members and
obviously they can't go visit them so it
seems to me like the most obvious lie
I've ever seen and so this guy goes on
American TV again does he even know what
countries and does the ambassador to the
United States from China know what
country he's in because he looks at it
goes no that's just job training places
and I'm thinking I think I'm looking at
Hitler so this Chinese ambassador made
me think instead of thinking I you know
I thought he would have answered the
question about the weaker concentration
camps I thought he was going to come up
with something better you know at least
a lie that sounds a
like there's some gray area like maybe
he better said oh yes it is they are
detained there but they've all committed
some kind of a crime we're trying to
rehabilitate then I was gonna say that's
evil enough you know I wasn't gonna
think that that was good enough as still
as the concentration yep but I thought
they put at least some kind of spin on
it to make some kind of attempt to make
you sound like there was some reason why
maybe the coverage of it was not quite
accurate it didn't really it was a good
idea
I thought they would at least take a run
at it and he looks right at the
interviewer says there's just job
training places you know of course it's
all voluntary and I just thought that
guy needs to be I don't executed what
because what he was talking about was a
a concentration camp and he just lied to
the world about its existence now I
suppose that parts of his job but really
China you couldn't come up with a better
cover story then then then that was
pretty pathetic alright enough about
that I'm just quite seriously I don't
know how he keeps his job he could not
have been a worse at spokesperson for
China what I do I do appreciate that
he's so bad at life that he doesn't
leave any question about the facts he
confirmed every bad thing about China
without trying I thought it was the
worst anyway I read about so as you all
know President Trump has increased the
sanctions on Iran I did not realize how
effectively he had increased the
sanctions on Iran listen to this I just
found out this today that's so so this
month the administration tightened up
the the the sanctions so that even if
you were a country we like and you were
dealing with around you would give
sanction to I guess so we were trying to
stop anybody
buying Iranian oil now when you hear
that you say to yourself yeah yeah yeah
we have a bunch of sanctions but then
everybody finds a way to work around
them so when if you're like me when you
heard we were putting more sanctions on
Iranian oil sales didn't you say to
yourselves yeah that'll hurt them 10%
didn't didn't you think it was something
like that yeah that'll squeeze them a
little bit maybe 20% turns out this
since the sanctions got tightened zero
ships have been leaving Iran's oil
terminals for foreign ports zero we
actually closed down their their tankers
that were selling oil to other countries
to zero pattern or that'll last but it
certainly tells you that the RAM needs
to do something and do something quickly
because the government is falling apart
now I love and again I'm going to say
historians will look back at this
administration as the model for how to
do things even though in our current
moment anything President Trump does
gets you know tons of criticism because
that's the world we live in but
historians will not have to deal with
that you know the the politics of the
time they'll be able to look at it yeah
in the rearview mirror and just say
whether something was good or bad if it
worked or if it didn't and I think
Trump's policy on Iran is going to be
one of those lasting good examples now
of course we don't know how it all turn
out but the way he's setting it up is
the cleanest thing I've seen so far
here's what he used to be the way we
used to treat Iran is if you do things
we don't like which we know you're doing
and you're always doing and you keep
doing we're going to do things that you
don't like so that that was the old
proposition if you do things we don't
like in a variety of different ways we
will do things you don't like in a
variety of ways and what did that get us
Iran do
a variety of things we don't like and
then we would do a variety of things
they don't like and nothing really
changed trump has clarified this
situation as I understand that the
proposition is your economy will be
completely obliterated because that's
what it means when zero tankers leave
your ports if you can't give a single
oil tanker out of your port you're
looking at the end of your economy the
alternative is you saw Iran try to gain
the system a little bit maybe put some
missiles on ships put a little military
risk into the equation muddy it up a
little bit what was Trump's response to
Iran muddying up this very clean
situation the clean situation was do
what we want or we will completely
annihilate your economy we won't we
won't damage it we won't take it down
10%
we won't impede it we will eliminate it
we will eliminate your economy that's
the trunk proposition so they try to add
some variables with the military stuff
for distrub do you brings the whole
frickin or Matta I mean not an entire
tomada but he brings enough firepower to
turn the entire nation of Iran into a
burnin super cinder because they loaded
some missiles on ships apparently and
that he's going further and he says that
any actions against our interests and
I'm not sure if that applies to say
here's the Israel or not probably that
would be not what's on the table but
president said very clearly that any
military action against our assets would
be the complete elimination of her and
Iran would cease to exist as a country
do you think he means it
I do I think he actually completely
means that I mean in what he says
obliteration of Iran we're not
talking about the people or the physical
country but rather the the leadership
I'm pretty sure the the military that's
close to the regime would be completely
eliminated and I'm pretty sure that the
regime itself would be completely
eliminated so think of the clarity of
the current situation the clarity of the
situation is that the Iranian people
have now three options number one is to
go along with whatever peace plan gets
revealed I think in June they're going
on
unveil the administration's peace plan
so option one is to go along with some
kind of a peace plan which is the last
thing I want to do because I'm sure that
involves not funding their proxies and
really not doing any of the things
they're doing probably means some
retreating from territory it's probably
a lot of stuff they don't want to do
option to have their economy completely
destroyed completely destroyed option
three have their country in terms of the
ruler ruling class of the country
completely destroyed three options
complete destruction of your of your
leadership as in debt complete
destruction of your economy as in we're
not just taking them 10% you just won't
have money the economy will just be gone
or three play along with some kind of a
peace deal that probably would be good
for everybody now if you the only way
you could ever imagine that Iran would
agree to anything would be with this
level of clarity anything short of the
level of clarity I just described and I
think is being being just as clear to
the Iranians I think that that's our
best possible situation now I see
somebody saying you are not being
realistic
I'm not telling you that the peace plan
is going to succeed that would be kind
of unrealistic I am telling you that the
clarity of
the way in which we're dealing with the
rat is unprecedented we've never had
this kind of clarity and clarity goes a
long way for this stuff the best thing
you can do is find some clarity and
Trump has definitely kind of it so this
is why I think that Trump will be seen
as the as the model for how to do this
stuff in the future because of the
clarity of it completely black and white
all right I've got something else why is
it that we're not seeing as many images
from the border have you noticed that we
keep hearing about the immigration
problem getting worse and worse worse
and worse but I will see that many
pictures anymore it seems as though the
news and maybe both sides of news are
downplaying the border stuff why is it
now it could be because it became
bipartisan it's a weird way the border
problem started as you know the
Democrats said well it's not that much
of a problem it's not that much of a
problem so let it you know just let it
go the way it is and then the
Republicans say it's a big problem but
now it's obvious that it's a big problem
to everybody and so under those
conditions it feels like maybe the news
doesn't need to cover it so much because
we don't know what to do except we need
to do something better and so that's
that's our situation so I think it's
just less than news because the
Democrats don't have anything to
complain about and the Trump
administration's
the Trump administration is all right
I'm just looking at all your comments
about my microphone let me tell you that
I'm not going to change it so it is what
it is if it doesn't work it doesn't work
so you don't need to tell me I saw that
you know is Beto is going hard for
impeachment
it's going hard for impeachment and I
was watching him and I thought he he
doesn't even seem close to being a
viable candidate doesn't even seem close
and I'm also going to officially revise
my prediction are you ready so I had a
prediction months ago about maybe six
months ago that Harris Campbell Harris
was the strongest candidate for the Dems
and the she was the most likely to be a
risk to trump I have never watched Carla
Harris in action I have seen her
proposals I have watched her interact on
camera she is one of just about the
worst candidates I've ever seen how in
the world did she even get elected
senator
am I wrong she seems awkward she seems
uncomfortable in her own skin
she's got policies that only sound crazy
and impractical and she has added
nothing interesting she's boring and
terrible at the same time and that for a
long time I thought she was their best
hope and so I'm starting to understand
why the Democrats are pushing Biden who
on paper seems like the least likely
person who could beat Trump this is my
opinion not anybody else's opinion in my
opinion is a terrible match up with
Trump because he's if you take you start
with Trump all of his good points and
you remove all the good things from
Trump oh he's brave you know you'll do
things other people won't do he's
unpredictable he's you know he's
interesting he's funny he's provocative
he knows how to use social media you
know if you just start with Trump and
one by one you pick off all of the
qualities that are good about him and
just remove them from Trump what's left
is binding
by those like the frame that you build
the Trump on Biden is the the boring you
know the boring nothing they could not
be a worse match up and I'm not I don't
think that I'm exaggerating right now
when I tell you that it seems to be some
kind of a strategy by the press to give
Biden less time to talk on television am
I wrong
because it seems to me that Biden would
be doing TV interviews just every day
like every day there'd be a sit-down a
one-on-one because you could get all
kinds of attention doing that way doing
that and Biden is in a campaign why
would he not want more attention I'll
tell you why I'm pretty sure that the
press is figured out that the more we
hear from Biden the less we like him the
more he talks the worse he is so I don't
think the president has anything that
looks like a threat out of the entire
field unless there's somebody who
emerges who has not yet emerged so I
would say I would rule out with a judge
ruling been a rule out Harris the Biden
might get the nomination because
somebody's got to get the nomination but
he's certainly not competitive with
Trump unless something really big
changes between now and then so who's
left I've already sort of run in names
of people who are serious looking at
least and I don't think so I don't know
we may see somebody who's lower in the
pack and lower than 2% of approval who
might rise but the slaughter meter is at
114 percent alright Gorsuch and Kavanagh
there's a story on the Fox News about
how their votes have been more
independent than people thought so
here's a little surprise for you
it turns out that Gorsuch and cabin on
both what we assumed would be fair
very conservative judges who would side
with the Conservatives apparently
happened at least on small stop when I
say when I say small stuff I mean the
Supreme Court is continually dealing
with issues that you and I never hear
about you know stuff about Indian or
Native American tribes and stuff like
that but apparently or such and Cavanagh
I have putted on different signs on
several issues so they are less
predictable than that we imagine yeah I
see to last about Tulsi Gabbard and and
yang Amy Klobuchar Klobuchar just
doesn't have the personality yang is
interesting but he's a bit of a
technician in other words he's got tons
of policies and almost all of them sound
interesting if you were going to have a
conversation you know sit down and have
coffee with one of the kid Bates yeah it
might be the most interesting one maybe
blue to judge Buda Gentry would be
pretty interesting but if you had to sit
down actually spend some time if you had
to spend an hour with one of the
candidates would you spend time with
well I could talk all day with ya like I
mean I could just talk all day with that
guy because he's got all kinds of
interesting ideas they may be good they
may be bad but that's just like my ideas
he has lots of them and Budaj edge would
probably be interesting just because
he's so smart and it looks like you'd be
funny but I can't imagine spending an
hour with Ben ever can you could you
imagine spending an hour just you at
lunch and it's just the one candidate on
the other side of the table and you have
to spend an hour just making
conversation could you make an hour of
conversation with bet oh that would be
painful but Klobuchar I don't know if I
could spend time with them anyway
they've got a real charisma gap on that
son all right
at 4 and 10 Americans like some form of
socialism uh your hair's on fire for an
attack America is like some form of
socialism what does it all mean
what's this at all mean nothing nothing
at all this whole socialism versus ánotá
socialism is the biggest phony the the
whole conversation is phony because it's
all about definitions of a word it's not
about it's not about a content it's
about what words mean so when people say
that so when the poll says that four out
of ten Americans like some form of
socialism all they're saying is that
they like things the way they are
because the way things are is we have
some formulas other suppose we've got
Social Security Medicare stuff like that
so should we be surprised that a system
that's working pretty well before an
attendant like it it doesn't mean they
think it just means they have a
different definitions of what the word
means and others now when I hear the
anti-socialist argue against socialism I
always I have the same reaction which is
I'm sure there's a good argument against
socialism I'm sure that exists because
socialism has never worked and
capitalism has worked very well so I'm
sure that somebody can come up with a
persuasive sounding argument against
socialism but I haven't heard it and
again let me be very clear
I think socialism is a big mistake well
why can't anybody make a convincing
argument against it
what's up with that well part of the
reason is socialism isn't one thing it's
sort of like finding a cure for cancer
remember when you were a kid those of
you were older you thought well I hope
science comes up with a cure for cancer
the reason this
I can't come up with a cure for cancer
is it cancer isn't one thing it's like
hundreds or thousands of things that
they just put in this label so even if
you could cure one kind and we're pretty
good at treating specific kinds of
cancers now it doesn't look you're a
cancer because it's just as one little
thing
so socialism is like that there are all
kinds of different ways you can do it so
if you say socialism is good or bad
you're not really saying anything so
whoever is arguing socialism as good as
say not whoever says socialism is bad is
saying nothing it's a conversation
between two nothing's that's why right
neither side is persuasive because it's
a nothing arguing against of nothing if
you can't define exactly what socialism
is you can't really compare it to
anything it's a nothing prepared to or
nothing and yet we get all work nothing
but oh this is nothing is much better
than this other nothing that I haven't
designed didn't could be anything so the
best I've heard is when people say hey
when you consolidate power when you
consolidate power you get every bad
thing that human beings do when they had
too much power this sounds reasonable
right if you consolidate power then
whoever's the boss of whatever that
power structure is has too much power
and then would people have too much
power you don't have competition and
there's corruption but do we see that
with Medicare do you see a lot of
headlines that say Medicare as as
resulted in what are people pretty happy
with it what's the biggest problem with
Social Security well it's hard to pay
for but we seem to a finger to damned so
far so where is the where is the Social
Security corruption that's destroying
the country if you're gonna make your
argument against socialism and it's
about centralizing power corrupts things
you'd better give me some examples of
American
centralist Bowery their corrupted did it
Medicare become corrupt the Social
Security become corrupt I mean there's a
math problem of that who pays for it and
if you have enough young people to pay
from the old people and those are real
problems but they have nothing to do
with socialism versus capitalism they
are simply sort of functional detail
problems the somebody's saying the VA
perfect example so the Veterans
Administration was corrupt because it
had sort of a centralized control how
easily it was fixed watered office to
fix but at least they could address the
subject but by giving apparently
veterans now have an option of getting
private care if they would have waited
too long for the Veterans Association
administration the Veterans
Administration so when you see some of
the examples of where you can add a
little little market pressure to the
public option that's not exactly
socialism as it is the Veterans
Administration with socialism when all
the President had to do would say okay
you veterans you can also use private
stuff and you know so now you've got
some competition in a sense I don't know
yeah I'm not saying the Veterans
Administration is is fixed but they at
least try to address some of the
problems and even if you say that the
Veterans Administration is a good
example of centralized power going wrong
don't we have lots of examples of
decentralized power going wrong take for
example social media social media
operates in a almost an entirely
capitalist structure and it's a big
freakin problem
so did capitalism make social media and
work really well well in a sense of it
because the businesses are very robust
they make a lot of money they employ a
lot of people they develop technology so
in those ways all great
but they also created some real social
problems as in nearly eliminating free
speech effectively even though free
speech is about governments not private
companies the effect that it is pretty
darn bad so when people argue that
capitalism is good and socialism is bad
that's really just - nothing's being
compared because those are such vague
concepts you really need to look at this
specific you need to look at the
specific likewise we were looking at
healthcare it probably would be a bad
idea to have the government making
decisions about health care but would it
be socialism if the government simply
was one of the customers for health care
because we could have an option where
you could have the government health
care and the government would be paying
that insurance at the same time that
people are using the public competitive
market and they could be in the market
at the same time would that be socialism
so here's my here's my statement people
are trying to win these socialism
argument by by first of all saying
socialism is you know Stalin or some
other example from Venezuela etc I don't
think you have as well this problem what
socialism I realize that's an unpopular
thing to say here let me let me ask you
if you think that's the case I'm no
expert on Venezuela but I'm watching
that situation and it doesn't look to me
that the problem with socialism it
looked like the problem was the leaders
it looked like you had a dictator
problem am I wrong about that am I am I
wrong that Venezuela's problem was a
dictator now a dictator chose socialist
policies etc which ruined everything but
it wasn't the socialism that ruined it
it was the dictator the dictator made no
you know nothing would have worked with
that dictator
somebody says god damn it Scott
Venezuela has to be in the state it is
because of socialism really well let me
ask you this let's say Venezuela had an
enlightened leader and that enlightened
leader said well we can't go full
socialism because it wouldn't work but
what we will do is make sure all of you
have good health care would that be the
end of Venezuela do you think Venezuela
could not have provided health care to
its citizens and just kept everything
else the same
you know capitalist kind of capitalist
businesses that said of course it could
so when you say to be that that
socialism ruin Venezuela that yes so
dishonest
it's either uninformed or dishonest if
I'm being blunt it's dishonest because
there's no such thing as socialism there
are lots of different things you can do
within socialism the United States does
a number on them and it has not
destroyed the United States Venezuela
likewise could have done some socialist
things and they would still be a fine
vibrant country with a great economy
they did too many of the wrong things
and they had a dictator and God knows
whatever other problems but blaming it
all on socialism is so simplistic that's
really that's just a talking point from
the news so I've said before that the
news assigns you to Europeans and that
we don't have independent things
everybody here who reflexively says
socialism ruined Venezuela you have been
brainwashed that's it there is no there
is no logic to that thought and is a
completely baseless irrational statement
that socialism ruined Venezuela and I
don't even know much about Venezuela but
that much is obvious because socialism
hasn't ruined most of the European
countries who have a little bit of
socialism I've seen people attended at
lycée I actually agree with you on this
and you see people are being a little
bit hesitant to say that in public
because when you hear me explain it
are you mad that you've been told this
socialism destroyed Venezuela is anybody
actually mad that they've been told that
and it's just so obviously not true
because socialism isn't a thing it's a
whole bunch of things and if they've
done the right things at a few things
they'd be fine just like the United
States we did some socialist things and
not we didn't go too far and we're fine
so don't let yourself be fooled by that
socialism versus bad socialism bad
government killed Venezuela beginning
and end of story
bad government dictator that's it
corruption and whatever things that that
dictator allowed somebody saying define
socialism which is my point exactly if
you can to find it you don't have
anything to say about all right I'm
gonna take some questions I'm gonna open
it up here because I promised I would
let's see who looks interesting I'm only
going to take questions from people who
show their face and real name okay so
let's see what Thomas has to say Thomas
Thomas can you hear me Thomas Thomas
hello do you have a question to us oh no
it's Steve but uh anyway yeah yeah my
question is well actually I want to
throw out a fact first and it's about
health care and in the 60s health care
was 5% of the GDP today it's 18% of
course that adjusts for inflation you
know in that it's in the GDP and my
question is isn't there
number enough an indication that
something is seriously wrong with that
indication that things are seriously
right the reason the primary reason they
might be that health care is so much
higher as a percentage of GDP than it
used to be is we can do so many things
so we have drugs we didn't used to have
so in the old days you didn't have to
spend money on drugs that didn't exist
we had procedures that you can do
operations that we've never thought of
you know skimming devices that didn't
exist yeah going from whatever you said
5% of GDP to 18% feels to me exactly
what a healthy society should look like
we should be inventing new expensive
things that will come down in price over
time but each time we come up with a new
way to keep people healthy we always
would choose a little extra expense to
keep these extra people alive or or
healthy especially since these extra
people could be us but well you know I
would kind of respond with this it seems
to me that well for example I think
ninety you know somewhere I read 97
percent of the top 100 selling drugs
don't cure they only relieve symptoms
things also that kind of concern me
include a little confused about what the
FDA requires to approve a drug above the
placebo effect which seems to me it
could be just a single-digit because my
readings just says it has to be
statistically significant I'm just
wondering if you know I mean I
understand your point about technology
has improved but during that same period
from the 60s to today the healthcare
industry also had the huge improvement
in computer technology so why do so
that's right so working against us is a
lack of price transparency and I think
that the lack of price transparency all
and the lack of competitive forces
throughout the whole healthcare industry
is what the administration is actually
working on directly so that that is what
they're focusing on yeah which I support
a hundred percent by the way I talked to
another caller
just keep things keep saying it's going
thanks so much let's say let's bring
someone else in let's go with no I'm not
going with that let's go with Jacob and
when Jacobs on here we'll see what Jacob
has to say hey Jacob Jacob are you there
good how are you you have a question he
said something kind of poignant he said
where is that for the rural areas of our
country and especially where we live the
rural areas are there's no work no money
and they're just falling into darkness
and despair along with that comes Drugs
and Crime and the strange fact is that
the majority of the country's US Canada
are rural
there's only a couple cities right and
all these people just they're running
out of hope the authority concentrates
where there's a very specific problem
and this you know it's all a different
dynamic dynamic once you get out of the
city oh yes very a lot there you know I
want to try to your question please do
suppose it seems to me that we should be
able to develop a Kint such that one or
two people working together without a
lot of tools could build a small single
a single story structure that they could
live in I can't imagine why we can't
make you know essentially bricks that
just fit
together with a plan have a few
different designs and so that you can
just very easily run cable run plumbing
and that and any person could do it just
watching a watching youtube video for
the work that you need to do that day
and it says okay take these pipes that
are labeled over there and put them
together like you see on the video and
that's all you're doing today it seems
to me that you could get people to be
able to build their own homes now here's
here's the full idea let's take the
blade authority but this there's some
version of this that we're working with
rural communities you have all this land
that is either free or close to free
because it's sort of worthless
suppose it took you took these
properties you've put it in government
control which is easy to do because
again it's free or foreclosed or close
to free and then you say for each person
who fits a certain profile they've got
to apply for this they're going to get a
free piece of land to build on and
here's the fun part they get a second
free piece of land next to it to build a
income property in other words they can
build a second home once they built
their own home with their own hands the
second one they can rent or sell so that
everybody who gets two pieces of land
next to each other because again the
land is almost free because nobody
wanted it they get one they can build on
and one that they can turn into an
income property that would make the cost
of their building much lower supposed to
mean that you could come up with kits
where people could build their own homes
with some exceptions such as you might
need a backhoe to come in and move some
dirt around so there might be some site
prep and sewage and stuff like that that
has to be done by you know big companies
but it seems to be that you could put up
a wall you could probably figure out a
way to to raise a roof with just two
people and pulleys and some platforms
certainly you could figure out plumbing
that you don't have to be a trained
plumber to do you could have inspectors
who are checking in the each step to
make sure they
build things right and you know you've
done it right
yeah so people are telling me those
Sears sold these homes before et cetera
but I'm pretty sure you could build a
model where you would take you basically
use the pioneering instinct you would
get people who can build their own homes
and then they would have a reason to
want that home in good shape because
it's next to their income property they
can build that next mm-hmm
yeah and it's not just a place to live
in the rural areas you're right that
there is an economic element absolutely
because they just don't have the jobs or
the opportunity etcetera so I like that
idea of having one element which is your
home to live in the other which is your
income element yeah we're doing
manicures or hair or something else you
know while you're building it maybe use
that as your place of businesses or so I
think there are models in which people
can sort of work their way into better
situations but they have not been
developed a lot of people are saying you
see your Sears trying to get homes which
they did it's been tried in other
countries and didn't work everything
that I've seen was a very bad try and I
always warn people don't compare to the
bad try to what a good try could look
like right the the airplane didn't work
until the airplane worked and everything
before the Wright brothers was it was a
disaster yeah then it just got better
after that so I would say that the idea
of a kit home was poorly done in the
past but does not predict what you could
do in the future if you had a better
better you know block design I don't
think we've decided them right yet all
right thank you for the question take
care you'll move on to one more let's do
one more question with spring oh really
there's not a single woman who wants to
answer the question I was trying to mix
it up but I'm gonna go with Tom I think
no not Tom let's see who we've got here
Tom how are you
on the healthcare stuff especially so I
own a small healthcare company myself
and we work with almost all entirely
private insurers I also went to business
school I did a double degree thing out
of UCLA and the National University of
Singapore I spent a lot of time living
overseas and I would ask if you or maybe
some of the other viewers here have a
lot of knowledge about Singapore's
healthcare system actually Michael
malleus talks about this in his new book
where it's a very much a public-private
partnership
Singapore has aspects that are very
socialist in some ways and obviously
some ways even totalitarian but it's
also hyper capitalist in many ways as
well so I'm kind of curious if you've
looked into that or maybe some of the
other guests here yeah if what you're
saying is some kind of government
probably a government safety net but
they make sure there's a lot of
competitive elements within the market
that's what you're saying essentially
this is that the big picture not only
that yes but also prices for procedures
and drugs are clearly posted I've used
the healthcare system there as a
foreigner as a student where for an
emergent for an urgent situation that I
that I had and what would have cost
probably several thousand dollars cost
me about 1970 semi Singapore dollars -
so these are minor things and but also
for the big ones too and they've
exceptionally low taxes but also the
standard of living is very very high and
cost of living is very high as well so
that's something to think about but
Singapore's it's my second favorite
country in the world I think you guys
should take a look at it can we take you
off now but thank you for that I like
the idea and follow me Scott okay so we
always talked about the current
healthcare system versus a single-payer
and it seems to me the obvious the the
most obvious productive place to be it
would be neither of those place
you wouldn't want a single pair for all
the obvious reasons our current system
is not getting every covered everyone
covered so that doesn't work for all the
obvious reasons
there's probably something where the I'm
just gonna get rid of all the people who
say that mic doesn't work there's
probably there's probably something that
makes the government just the biggest
customer and there's still plenty of
competition so I think that's where it's
going to end up all right that's all for
now I will talk to you later
