"None of the Above": Facts Don't Care About Bureaucrats' Orders
01:09:00 Share

- Hey, so it looks like we are streaming live. Hello, James. - Hello.

I had a little bit of a connectivity issue here with Zoom just now, which again, every time that I have a little bit of trouble with Zoom right now, I actually have reinterpreted that as a good thing. You know, I think that during this time, Zoom has been such a beautiful asset for all of us to remain connected. I've been using Zoom for a very long time anyway to, you know, broadcast, but it's been just amazing.

phenomenal for people. I can't tell you how many friends have told me that they're keeping in touch, you know, they're doing video chats with their family and staying in touch and in some ways reconnecting with people because of this. Yes, definitely. So it has been a great asset. Of course, you know, Apple's got their FaceTime and everything else, but since I've been on Zoom already doing this,

I have been thrilled with the service and I mean under all of this increased demand they have performed wonderfully. So welcome everybody who's joining in. We've got people coming into the chat. Go ahead and say hi over here on YouTube. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Yes, the title of today's show, Facts Don't Care About Bureaucrats Orders. And I mean in there to also

encompass politicians among the bureaucrats. We're going to talk about some... That's a two-episode title, yeah. Yeah. And of course, it's inspired by Ben Shapiro, who I understand out on Twitter has retweeted my little tweet out there, so there might be some people here for the first time. Welcome, welcome. Yes, definitely inspired by Ben Shapiro and facts don't care about bureaucrats' orders. He has, of

famous, maybe for some people, infamous facts don't care about your feelings. But what we have seen in this scramble to,

you know, sort of remedy or save face with the coronavirus disaster. Are these politicians just issuing orders and wishes left and right? And my main message for today is they can try to order whatever they want, but there are facts of reality in the world that make it such that perhaps the order is not even morally correct enough.

for them to issue. But moreover, even if it were morally correct for them to issue this order, things can't just snap into line to conform to their wishes. There are resources and facts of reality that

are at play here and it can't just happen overnight just because they wish to make it so. The person that I've had in mind the most is New York Governor Cuomo in issuing all of these kind of pie in the sky orders recently, you know, all these politicians, they're up there preening and, you know, as they sort of almost like to

say that they're so important during the mission. They're enjoying every second of this. It's disgusting. It's hard to watch. They're enjoying it. Even as they put on their sorrow for the dead and the suffering and the medical first responders and stuff, they are loving it.

Because, I mean, you can just really tell that they've been itching to take control of the economy in our lives and be able to say they just love an emergency, of course, that they largely created that allows them to come in and take, you know, drastic efforts. Yes. Yeah.

So let's recapitulate a little bit because we've talked about this before, but why we think that our politicians are in part responsible for the virus. Because again, what we know is that this virus originated in one of these open markets in Wuhan, where there are practices in terms of the handling of live animals and products and stuff there that are

are not good and clean and sanitary and therefore resulted in this virus jumping from some animal, maybe a bat people are talking about. There's these great Ozzy Osbourne memes out there about, you know, I used to eat bats and no problem, you know, but no, but you know, so it jumped from- When I was a kid, we could eat bats safely. Did you send me that one? I think

I think you may have sent me. You are sending me the best because it's so nice to be able to laugh during this time. Yes, I think it's really all the more important. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, so it just originated in this market. But how is it that politicians, starting with the communist regime in China...

have created this mess. - I mean, you point out there that there could be some, I mean, purely economic development issues and some cultural issues that underlie this, but it's much, much worse than that. And that's not the real culprit. I mean, with the Ebola crisis, we learned how to contain

a deadly disease where it came from. But the communist Chinese government, the Chinese dictatorship did not send out good information. In fact, they were lying about the information. They knew surely in December at some point that they had person to person transmission as medical people were getting it.

And yet, still, in the middle and the end of January, they were denying any such thing. And the World Health Organization was saying China denies that this is communicable and that there's person-to-person transmission in mid-January.

And they refused to let international health experts in, American doctors, European doctors, go into China to see what was really going on. So this lack of information and the way the Chinese government handled it, of course, made it a world problem, not just a China or East Asia problem. Right.

So that's where it began. Yes, yes. And again, the communist government, as far as I understand, was trying to squelch the

sort of you know i think it was the that there was that one doctor that poor doctor who died oh yeah and he and he was spreading the word about this and they were trying they were trying to shut it down yes i would help you if you're a doctor trying to tell the truth to the world yes yeah no the whistleblower doctor who was trying to say just that

was they were shutting him down and persecuting him rather than uh making him the hero and a spokesman for what the heck is going on so that the world could take appropriate steps at a point when it might have made a bigger difference exactly it's criminal it's really criminal no it is there's blood on their hands you know so yes so so for them obviously and i think

Given that and some of the conduct that we've seen recently where they're grandstanding and maybe potentially even threatening to withhold supplies and supplies that they're sending are substandard and everything else, people might really reconsider their relationship

business relationships and otherwise with the Chinese regime. But aside from that, okay, so think about that. There was a lack of information. There was misinformation coming from China. Nonetheless,

I think we are of the opinion, we agree, right, James, that our government and perhaps other governments around the world have mishandled the situation as well. And what would you put in that category in terms of United States government? It starts with the test, the regulation of testing. And it is purely the government's fault.

on that too. Testing is all the more important at the beginning of an outbreak. The normal protocol, as we've said, for dealing with a disease is to do a lot of testing so you can isolate those who got the disease or are carriers of the disease and those are the people that should be isolated or those they came in contact with. We can trace back the disease once we have that information and rather than shutting down the entire economy and in effect quarantining everybody just in case.

Right. So because we lacked that information early on, the more dramatic steps that we have to take now have seemed more plausible or required only because we didn't have the testing back in February when we should have been doing thousands and thousands of tests like South Korea was. And it was purely the result of government regulations about

testing and the protocols and getting this stuff out there. I mean, many layers. You know, one of the interesting things about this whole thing is that some of the most effective things that the government and Trump have done in response have been deregulation. Yes. Yeah. Getting the government out of the way, practicing medicine across state lines, off-label use of treatment drugs. When you think about

the layers of regulation that would have otherwise just killed tens of thousands of people, it's really frightening. Regulation kills. And really, that's one of the headlines from this. But in the first instance, it was the regulation on testing and that lack of information that is seen to justify these draconian steps that governments are taking.

Yes. So that is inexcusable. And the lifting, any of the lifting on the regulations that should have come a lot sooner at the very least. I hope that again, you know, that this is an enduring message. There's so many messages that we could have learned, for example, from a 9-11 that unfortunately our government has not learned. We really hope that people learn that regulation is not perfect.

promoting human life in any way, shape or form in this country. We should have for drugs, the equivalent of UL, you know, when they talk about an electronic, we don't even look at that stuff that much anymore. But I always remember, you'd have the tags on the electronic UL listed. And

And if it was UL listed that that somehow had a quality assurance attached to it, better housekeeping or something, good housekeeping, good housekeeping seal of approval. Underwriter laboratory. Yeah, underwriter laboratory. One of those wonderful free market services, you know, like the good housekeeping seal of approval. Yes, exactly. Those types of things. Consumer reports, right? Consumer reports, yeah. Yeah.

There was a site that used to be called ePinions, which was reviews of all sorts of products and stuff. And I had actually posted this wonderful review. I was so proud of one of the original iMacs on ePinions and it got a lot of traffic and I loved it. It was called Fashion Function and Fun All in One. It was that original floating screen iMac with the dome thing. And I was so excited about my, it was my first iMac. I was so excited about it.

And put that up there. But ePinions doesn't exist anymore. But that was another one of these private entities giving you reviews of available products. And sometimes reviews from experts, but sometimes just reviews from consumers. Both types of information can be valuable. Consumers can't be trusted.

Consumers can't be trusted making judgments of their own over their own life. They can't be trusted to look these things up or care about their own well-being or safety. No. And so the government takes that out of our hands and forces a one size fits all regulation that more often than not kills and hurts people. Over here in the chat, they are coming up with better solutions.

acronyms for FDA. FDA is not that was it called Federal Drug Administration or whatever? Food and Drug Administration. Okay. Federal. I want to put federal in there as a government. It's government. Government that's here to help as Ronald Reagan said, right? That's the worst. Yeah. Angie's List is another private entity where you can get reviews on services, local services for your house and things like that.

Anyway, federal death agency is what they're calling the FDA. And really, that's what we're seeing here is that the delays often result in death. Well, just to use one example, beta blockers, which are so often so commonly used for people with heart disease, right? They save lives. And in Europe, for years, they were prescribed and saved lives.

untold tens of thousands of lives of middle-aged people with heart conditions, but the FDA still had not approved it for use in the United States. They knew it was safe,

But they just didn't know how effective or what the correct dose was. And so rather than leaving it to doctors to make the decision with their patients on these things, literally tens of thousands of people died who would have otherwise not died. And that's just one example of one drug of how the FDA delayed coming to market and killed people.

One thing I'm remembering now, I have also heard a lot of good things about beta blockers. I don't think I've ever taken one for anything, but I've heard good things about them. But I remember a few weeks ago hearing something about beta blockers and coronavirus not mixing very well. So just...

go, go look. Yeah, no, I just want to throw it out there, but go look, because again, this is weeks ago that I remember hearing this. I don't remember exactly. You'd have to go look and see what the latest and greatest information is. There's so much information coming at us. Well, if you've got a heart, if you've got blood pressure or heart conditions such that your doctor's prescribing beta blockers, you should probably take extra care about not getting this

disease in general. If you can, certainly. But something with the beta blockers themselves, maybe you're right, maybe it's a co-factor, right? There's confounding factor, which is the underlying condition for which you are taking it, right? Federal death agency apparently was credit to someone else, they say in the chat room here. So yeah, so our government has made it worse, right?

And that's all that they've done. And the overwhelmed medical system. For at least two decades, maybe three, we've had a strain in just the number of beds and medical equipment and hospitals. In the recent years, we haven't built the hospitals that people knew that were necessary, nor put the investment into medical resources that people knew needed.

was necessary. And so now we're living in the upshot of it. Frankly, so is much of Europe because they don't have the medical resources they should in order to cope with this kind of a thing. So again, government interference just on that level. I mean, the single biggest crisis that we may be facing, I don't know how big a crisis is going to be, but the single biggest crisis that people are warning about are overwhelmed medical resources, not having the ICU beds, the respirators. Now, mind you, right, so...

If our market for healthcare had been left free, which it hasn't been free for decades, it's been creeping and creeping government interference. The last huge jump is Obamacare. The Trump administration has made no progress towards retreating from Obamacare, notwithstanding all sorts of bluster and promises out there. Maybe there's what he got rid of the

mandate, right? I think he's gotten rid of a couple of mandates here and there. But that really is, I think, like a game of Jenga, right? Where you pull out something and who knows the whole thing's going to end up collapsing. It was precarious at best anyway. But, you know, so we've had this atrophy of capacity and quality.

in our healthcare system because of government involvement, not just for the last while, for decades. Now, if that hadn't taken place, then what might you have seen from a free market in medicine that was informed by, for instance, the SARS experience or other sorts of potential pandemic experiences

They wouldn't have necessarily increased capacity to that required to deal with a pandemic all the time, right? Because that's just going to be unused. It's not profitable for even a free market system. But what a free market system might have in mind is agility, right?

and the ability to ramp up capacity in response to as needed, knowing that there is a potential to make extra money during a period such as this if they can provide the quality services that are needed. If medical equipment providers are themselves better capitalized, right?

Then we just simply have more medical equipment that can be, they can shift resources as needed, of course. But of course, they also will make a decision, as you say, as they go through pandemics, hey, this is not going to be our last pandemic. This is not going to be the last time we're going to have, you know, a swelling need for it. So they'll make a calculation.

as to how much they need in excess capacity. And that's the way that kind of business would have to run, I would imagine. I'm not an expert in health economics, but I would imagine you determine just how much excess capacity you might need given, say, a local disaster, not just a pandemic. Yeah.

Yes, yes. And they could be prepared, for example, not just to make medical equipment, but to make other sorts of rescue equipment or maybe just rebuilding equipment.

supplies and things like that. If there are hurricanes, tornadoes, whatever, you know, just be prepared. But of course, if you have to get every single thing approved by the, you know, Center for Disease Control, the National Institutes for Health. Permission from the unions to work overtime or whatever. The state health authorities. Right.

So, and then of course you have layers and layers of local bureaucracy as well. Right. So, uh, no, that all that slows down any kind of, uh, flexible response, uh, uh,

you know, within the business. Of course, of course. The lingo I think is agility, right? Agility. They're not able to respond quickly to changes in circumstances because of all the atrophy and capacity and capitalization, as you said, because of the continuing government interference in markets in all areas. So there's that issue. So then we get to,

The orders that are coming out now. Right. And I've been harping on Cuomo for a while here because Cuomo just comes up and basically says, OK, I order all the hospitals in New York to increase capacity by 50 percent.

Right? Just orders. It's amazing. That is really out of Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's famous novel. I order you to come up with this idea to make it more efficient. I order you to produce this number of, what? I order you to continue this particular train journey.

Right, right. I'll say no more than that, right? Because that's really the analogy that I've got here. And, you know, you, first of all, some and someone will come back, they're trying to defend these governments that are supposedly trying to respond and be important.

But, you know, they say, oh, well, he's lifting the prior regulations that limited the capacity or, you know, constrain how many hospital beds you can have. And so just by lifting it, therefore, he's going to help make it happen. Think about that just for a second. Yeah. You're telling me that there was a New York regulation that limited the number of hospital beds they could have in New York City? Well.

Well, okay. So think about it, right? In a normal circumstance, you could have, you know, a room, a hospital room shared by however many patients they think that they can fit in there and still be profitable. Right. So that's the sort of thing. He doesn't want hospitals to cut corners in order to make money, blah, blah, blah. So that's why, as I understand it, the rationale behind this. So, um,

But here's the thing, right? Jeez, heaven forbid anyone make any money saving our lives. Right, right. But, you know, it just happens to be the case that with coronavirus...

you need to have a certain distance between hospital beds. That might not be the case if you've got five people with a broken leg or whatever, right? Five people with a broken leg, they could all be in the same room right next to each other. It's not fun. What did I hear today? 44 healthcare workers in Italy have died and thousands have been infected. Wow.

Spain is miserable. New York is now miserable. There is a health care worker, a nurse in New York who has died now. A man in his 40s. This is horrific. And it's because they don't have the protective equipment.

equipment and preventing the spread in hospitals and clinics is really important. And so hospitals are the ones who have the biggest incentive to keep people with infectious disease apart. Right. And so that's the first one, you know, he says, he says increased capacities, ordering an increased capacity as if the resources that they need to do that are just going to

you know, snap into shape. And God said, let there be light. And Governor Cuomo said, let there be this much hospital bed. Right, right. And, you know, and to go back to the title, right? The facts don't care about bureaucrats' orders. Right. Cuomo can order whatever he wants.

But the facts of the whole situation, again, the decades-long atrophying of the capacity and quality of the healthcare system make it such that it just can't snap into place. It's crazy that profit is our enemy instead of our friend here.

You see, the free market would say, look, if a million orders for more masks come in, that will signal the mask makers to gear up production. In fact, other people, you know, people who make pillowcases, which is literally true, will then go into the manufacture of masks because that's where the profit is. That's where the customers are. So instead of resenting profit, we should encourage profit and let profit do its natural work.

and increased capacity and production. Yes, yes. And so probably, you know, a hospital would have been designed with this type of flexibility in mind. Maybe they could have, you know, have partitions and things that are easily movable. But

Why bother building a hospital that way if the government is telling you that you're not ever going to be able to use that increased capacity? And so they're not ready to do this. But then second, even if all of the materials and the ability was there and they could snap into place, which they can't, again, because of government.

The other thing that Cuomo cannot affect with his order is that it's a safe practice to do in this particular circumstance, you know, so again, right now, even if the most, you know, profit greedy practices.

hospital out there would not, if they have any sort of long-term perspective on the health of their employees and their reputation and everything else, they are not going to cram people together if they can avoid it because of the nature of this particular virus. You've got to be at least six feet apart. Right. But I'll ask the rhetorical question. What would be in the abstract, what do you think would be the safer hospital bed? One that was

put there and added by order of the government or one that was the result of increased need and profit on the part of the hospital. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And then that goes into another order, least implicit order in the discussion. I think there was an order involved in it as well. Cuomo was out on one of the talk shows.

And he says, you know, that all of the manufacturers, they need to increase the production of this PPE equipment to protect all of our healthcare workers, the masks and the gowns and everything that protects them from the virus. And he says, it's easy to do.

It's easy to manufacture those things. It's not very complicated. That reminds me of Bloomberg saying, well, look, anyone can be a farmer and just put the seed in the ground and up goes the... And look, anyone can build hospitals, Amy, don't you know? Anyone can go into the medical equipment business. Anyone can make safe masks and sterile gloves. Don't you know? Of course. Of course. The arrogance.

the sheer arrogance that that implies is stunning. Absolutely. Yes. And so my answer to him is, okay, well, if it's so easy, why don't you do it? Cuomo, you go out and start manufacturing this stuff. Right. Right. Right. Right. See if he can run a business. And of course, you know, as if the raw materials are going to make themselves available like that, as if suddenly you're not going to have a reduction of your workforce because they themselves are sick. Right.

with this right you know all of the various challenges it's like no it's it's just easy to do now well he's the hero he's done the important thing he's issued the order the hero's actually out there making it delivering it making it available making sure they're safe those aren't the heroes he's the hero because after all he ordered it and he will make sure it gets there

He really wants it. He really wants it. He wants it. He wants it. Why? His desire, his intention, his good heart is really the important thing here. Right, right. And, you know, as if, and again, you go back to Shapiro's original, which I think is largely inspired by

a Rand approach, you know, an Ayn Rand approach to looking at the world, right? Facts don't care about your feelings. He could want that to snap into line. He can give orders based on his desire, but that is not going to make the whole world snap into place according to his desires and make it happen. And, you know, if you go back to really the basic philosophical premise that makes this the case,

that everybody has to bump up against. And I think in some ways, Ben Shapiro doesn't bump up against it enough. I'll give a little, just a dig at him. There's so much I like about Shapiro, but I also have had, you know, a little bit of a discussion where I outline the differences. We're just trying to help. Yeah. You know, facts don't care about your feelings. In other words,

the facts of existence, existence itself is primary. Right. It's what I call the primacy of existence. Yeah. The facts are facts of reality, regardless of whatever is in here. A virus, a speck of dust is an absolute. And, you know, Leonard has, Leonard Peacock has this great way of looking at it from the time that we're

babies or toddlers and we realize that covering our eyes doesn't make the world go away right that's the moment when we really realize that i love that anecdote and and the world the world for the toddler is the vegetable on his plate that he doesn't want to eat the brussels sprout on the plate that mom wants me to eat if i close my eyes maybe it'll go it'll go away

You got to feed it to the dog under the table, then it'll go away. No, but that's it. Existence has primacy over consciousness. It's up to our mind to conform to the facts of reality, not the other way around. But you know, it's astonishing, even though we learn it as a toddler, as a baby, how many adults in effect do the same eye covering and think that it'll... Well, and again, I mean, it is breathtaking in the worst way.

how much politicians are doing it right now. So I want to go through some more examples and you can see I'm just having them mostly off the top of my head because they're just so glaring. So with Cuomo, the other thing he pronounces out there as if he's the hero because he wants it to happen, right? Is the plasma therapy.

The plasma therapy, if you've heard about it, James, as I understand it, is that you can have someone who has recovered from coronavirus and therefore has the antibodies in his or her plasma. That person donates plasma and that that can be used to treat, as I understand it, what I heard was that two other people could be saved.

If you apply this plasma therapy. So Cuomo the other day, and again, you know, it's, I think every day he's having a press conference, just like Trump is, you know, they're just all, and they get up there and they're smarmy and whatever. But, you know, one of these press conferences, he announces that in New York state, we're going to do plasma therapy. And then I did see a release from Mount Sinai, which is in New York.

saying that we are, you know, commencing the plasma therapy.

And so I read the article for that one and it says that, you know, one of the things that's required, of course, and if you just think logically, of course it's required. You need to identify the potential donors of the plasma, which means you have to have enough people who are, you know, fully recovered, fully recovered, but wrong enough to, right. Yeah. And so you have to have tested a whole bunch of people.

hopefully who've had mild cases because donating plasma is not a trivial thing. Right, right, right. Have you ever donated plasma? No, I really can't, but I know people who have and it is because of family things they needed to do that. Sure. And you're right, it is not a trivial thing.

It takes a few hours or something. You sit there and they take out your blood and they remove the plasma and they put your blood back in or something. And I've never done it. I've donated blood a ton of times. I've, you know, one of those O positive people and they would always bug you and I would go back and actually in college, they, and I, I worked in college at UCLA for the student association. I worked at the coffee shop and all this stuff.

and they would actually give you four hours worth of pay if you donated blood on campus. And so I would do it every so often. And I was on crew and I was buff and strong and big, you know, 140 pounds of solid mass. And so, yeah, I could spare it, right? But yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, I did that a lot of times. And they would sometimes talk to you about, would you be interested in plasma? And I never took that jump.

Right now, I would definitely consider it if I could do it safely. Especially if I knew that I'd already had or been exposed to the virus. Yeah, yeah. But we haven't tested broadly enough in the United States, whereas people are bragging, you know, we've now tested more than South Korea and Italy have. If you actually look at the numbers, New York Times had a very helpful chart this morning. They say, whereas an absolute number of tests, yes.

We have tested more. Per capita, we are still way below everybody else, right? Brie over here is saying, it's gross. Your blood circulates through the machine for an hour. Well, yeah, so it's got challenges, right? But if you have...

You know, somebody who's very experienced at administering this plasma donation procedure, and I could be assured that it's safe and that it's safe for me personally. Again, I'm still recovering from my own stuff and a bit underweight and blah, blah, blah. But I would do it if I knew I had these antibodies and I could save two people, and this is a horrible thing, right? So, you know, we would do it, but...

The mere fact that Cuomo says in the state of New York, we're doing it. And Mount Sinai says, yeah, we're starting it next week. Doesn't make those people materialize. And there was a key passage that when I put this article from Sinai out on social media that I quoted, you know, here's the key. The key is they have to identify the people who donate. They have to identify them and they have to have those people willing to donate. Certainly they're not going to conscript people.

against their will to be hooked up to these machines. You know, Amy, every day that passes, I'm not sure. My faith in these things gets shattered. So maybe they will put a gun to our head and take our blood from us. I'm not sure. Why not? If they can make a sacrifice in any number of other ways, why not?

Okay. Well, and suppose they do that, right? You'd say, okay, well, they can get what they can get the plasma they need because they can order people that is not going to make it right. And that's another component of this all right. You know, again, I said it briefly at the beginning, but I'm going to hammer it again here. You know, it's one thing they put these orders out there in the world. And I'm, you know, with each one, I'm focusing on why it's impractical.

Oh no, it would be a perfect symbol of the evil of socialism, of the government pointing guns to people's heads to force a blood extraction from them. Isn't that the perfect concrete for socialism? Yeah, yeah. So they can order all they want, but it's not going to make it right. They can express wishes all they want. They can express intentions all they want, but it's not going to make sense.

the practical snap into place and it's certainly not going to make the moral snap into place. And so when you talk, we'll go hand in hand as they always do, as they always do, as they always do.

So, that's Cuomo. I think I'm done with Cuomo. Have you heard more Cuomo that is just nonsense and pie in the sky? Well, I mean, his whole attitude when he came out of the chute, you know, there's a military thing, let's basically call martial law, let's have the government, the federal government even take over and why we're not getting, you know, military troops here in the streets of New York. Whoa, whoa. You know, you could tell these politicians, like I say, are just salivating at this, which

which is kind of disgusting in itself. I mean, and you know, look, they just passed the house just passed the Senate bill. It's what $2 trillion plus another 4 trillion in loans. And now as I understand, did the house pass it now they had to the house has now passed it just passed it. Trump was Trump was having a temper tantrum or something about the fact that they were delaying the passage. And actually, I think the delay was a little bit useful. How am

much of a delay is required if all you say is we want the vote to actually be recorded? It seems like it should not take that much longer to have a vote in which the members of Congress votes are actually recorded so that we know who voted for what. Right. Yeah. In fact, we would kind of want it. But they said that this was their excuse. They said that having the yeas and nays all recorded because of the new social distancing rules on Capitol Hill would have taken hours and hours, whereas a vote

So we can be here on Zoom right now, but they can't record votes. Well, exactly. No, and the procedure may only take, you know, 20 minutes normally if everyone can be on the floor. But if they had to do, you know, bring people in, you know, bit by bit, group by group in small groups, it would have taken, they say, four to six hours to do this vote. And so, you know,

Lord knows we can't be inconvenienced like that to make sure that everyone's name is accountable. Yeah. Accountability. Yeah. Because avoid that in order to get it right there, we can do a voice vote by acclamation. You know, the A's are bigger than the names and no one asks for, you know, the, I'm sorry, Congress creatures, you are going to be accountable for this regardless. And, and so, you know, let's, let's talk about this package, this stimulus package. Yeah.

He's going to sign it, no doubt. He's been upset that they didn't quickly enough. He's going to sign it. It's here. We're all going to get money. That's going to make everything awesome, right? Oh, boy. $1,200 for individuals and up to $3,000 for families is so much per kid. And

massively increased unemployment benefits. In some places, the unemployment, I don't know if it'll have a big impact like Senator Graham said, but in some places, the unemployment will exceed, your unemployment would exceed what you would get by staying on the job, which sets a sort of perverse incentive structure. $350 billion to bail out just small businesses affected by this. In addition to all the medical equipment and stuff for the first responders.

- Yes. - Two trillion dollars. - So between that and then Trump ordering in effect, right? He bully pulpits the fed all the time, getting the fed to lower the rates, interest rates to near zero. Those two things, those are government orders in effect here that suddenly money is gonna be created out of nowhere.

And, you know, let's talk about that. Of course, we could do it better if we had a Keith Weiner here, right? Well, exactly. But I mean, we, you know, we presciently had Keith Weiner on a little while ago. Yes. Because the truth is we were already, you know, a kind of DEFCON 5 with Fed policy.

in the economy. They can boast all day like, well, Fed still has all these arrows in its quiver and we've gone to near zero interest rates. I mean, they are at the, and they're still pumping new liquidity and they're still getting money so that the Fed can leverage it so that they can get these huge loans and not only get loans that need to be repaid back, but some of the equity in the companies

Lord knows how many companies Uncle Sam is going to have a percentage stake in when this is all over. So it's a terrifying bill, really. It's comprehensive and it's socialism. So what

One thing is them doing this. And again, they're expressing their wish that everyone's just going to be happy and continue to spend and prop up whatever bubble there is in our Dow industrial and just the S&P and everything in general, NASDAQ, all the markets, they're going to have a pretty number for Trump to brag about there. That is not going to make this practical in terms of

Somehow actually obscuring the damage that the coronavirus is doing to people and the economy, right? But like great Henry Hazlitt, economics in one lesson, there is no way that when you look at this as the economy as a whole, that this can do any good, right?

No amount of money that the government takes from one guy to, you know, from another guy spends on. No, it can't. There's no net increase because there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't make that, you know, something from nothing. So the idea that you're shifting the only justification that there could possibly be is that this is where the resources are needed now. We need to shift them there. It's not like this can help the economy. It can only hurt the economy in the long run.

Yeah. I mean, if there's going to be a shifting of resources, we want it led by a free market at the very least. We all know from the broken window fallacy that if there is, for instance, growth in a particular sector of the economy, it's not as if suddenly there's been this new growth in GDP and everything else. There is a tremendous loss in life and wealth

That is going to be exacted by this coronavirus again, because of the bad circumstances in the market in Wuhan, the bad conduct of the various governments dropping the ball and not protecting us. And you can't avoid that by, you know, having a whole bunch of fancy accounting going around and sending everybody a check and saying here, feel good, keep spending, pretend it's all okay.

No, it'll only cost the economy. You'll only have less, fewer resources at the end of the day. Did you hear, Amy, that Mr. Navarro has said that the Trump administration is not even considering lifting any of the tariffs on imported goods? So that if we need an imported good, well, sorry, we're going to have to pay the higher price or have the inferior. Well, here's the thing, OK?

I think tariffs is a horrible way to handle trade. You know, I agree with your on Brooke on all this stuff and he's talked about different things. You're either going to trade with a company, a company, a country, you're going to trade with a country, in which case just set the tariffs at zero because then you're going to get the benefits of the bargain way more all economic theory has has shown this.

Otherwise, if there is a security risk posed by a country, then you just embargo the hell out of it. You do not trade. Comprehensive trade issue. You don't do it by tariff. That's insane. No. And if the concern is like with China, they always say, well, what about the intellectual property theft? This is to make up for that. It's like, first of all,

these tariffs are being taken and they're put into some slush fund that goes who knows where. But Trump loves to brag about all the money coming in, where the hell it's going to redistribute to the people who are going to vote for him in November. I don't even want to get started on that. So that's garbage. It's not like, you know, they take the tariffs and then they reimburse the people whose IP has been stolen. Right. Right. Of course. Right.

Very few of these deals that they're making involve actual solving of the problem. So what do you do if there's IP theft? You embargo on those goods. You do not allow those damn things into the country. So you punish the people who engage in IP theft. Okay, fine. But

Today, this is the thing. I mean, again, I don't approve of this instrument of tariffs to deal. But when it comes to lifting any sort of restriction on China, I'm not in favor right now. Well, China. Yeah, China may be different. And we may not want to buy the crap that China is selling because apparently some anything if you can avoid it anyway. But if but consider what you say about tariffs in general.

All tariffs, any tariffs, tariffs that are still there, even with the North American agreement on Canada and Mexico. Tariffs that are still there as we're working things out with Japan. Tariffs that are still there as we're working things out with Europe. So what you're saying by saying we don't lift for this crisis, we don't lift the tariff is that we'd rather to create a domestic supply chain in that item. We'd rather it be less available and more expensive now in this crisis.

So that's exactly so totally they're making the decision. I would rather hurt more now so that we create a domestic supply chain.

Yeah. And again, are they actually creating a domestic supply? I mean, you know, the way, the proper moral way to create a domestic supply chain is for either us to develop a comparative advantage in efficiency and producing whatever it is.

It can only be a less efficient supply chain. Exactly. If the government is making it. If we don't have the comparative advantage, for example, there's a lot of goods made in China that they seem to have been been able to make cheaper and more plentifully up to now. And maybe it's still the case, but

For other reasons, many of us would choose maybe not to buy them right now because we are not such fans of the Chinese regime. And as you point out, China may be a little different than other places. But if, for example, we're getting our...

antibiotics from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, that doesn't bother me. It really doesn't. It would only bother me. I want the best product at the cheapest price. I really don't want just to create a supply chain in America because it's something the government regards as essential. But if it comes to say, depending on an essential like antibiotics from China, now I have a different opinion because China is a

Specific case. Yeah. And there are stories going around about China basically sending worthless test kits and other things to other countries and pretending to be great benefactors and using this for tremendous political gain around the world and saying, oh, we don't have any new cases. And I'm just I'm so sick of them.

Yeah, don't don't trust them at all. So yeah, there should there should be a lot of repeals of these controls during this period and we're not seeing it. And what we're seeing instead is, again, this pie in the sky wishing will make it so sort of economic policy that this stimulus package is full of I don't even want to talk about the pork issue.

That must be in there. Oh yeah. In order to get it passed. You know, instead of. Politicians, politicians, those are you guys. I mean, nobody watches this thing probably. Right. But you guys, if you guys like, and you share the show here on YouTube, maybe a politician will be watching this. Any of you politician, any of you politician personally who held this up because you wanted to get your little bit of pork added into it and make it even bigger and more disgusting and revulsifying. Um,

Shame on you. Go look at yourself in the mirror, politicians. Yeah, we need to have more money for the National Institute for the Humanities or the arts programs. We need to have more diversity regulation. Environmental rules. We need to do all of this junk that they wanted to, which really shows the bad faith

all along, right? And instead of the message that's just the screaming message that drowns out everything else is shared sacrifice and boy, aren't we glad we have a paternalistic government that can do all this rather than the message that the only effective things the government is doing right now is deregulating and getting out of the way because they were the problem in the first place. Yes, yes.

I mean, and I think we've talked about this before. I know I've harped on it, but what is the ideal thing that our government should be doing in this situation right now? Like if you could take over Trump's body today and give the speech for him, it would be something like, Mayor Culpa, we really messed this up. And I realize we messed this up because of all the things that you and I've talked about in this show. So he takes responsibility for that. And then he says...

We are going to get out of the way to the extent that we are going to remain involved to try to clean up the mess. It's going to be minimal. It's going to have an exit strategy.

all the stuff that we've talked about. And, you know, when I looked at Amesh Adalja's post again on his Tracking Zebra website this morning, and, you know, he's right there. He said, you know, to the extent there's going to be any sort of enforced anything, lockdowns and other stuff from government, it needs to be strictly limited. And again, you know,

exit strategy, exit strategy, and being clear in communicating with the American people. Don't give these wishing-will-make-it-so sorts of orders. If a neighborhood needs to be quarantined because there's a real crisis, that's one thing. But to have these blanket, no options, no alternatives, point of the gun, applies to everybody orders, just strikes me as insane. I think this could be solved in terms of

Letting people go on with their lives in a reasonable way for the most part, with some exceptions of certain pockets, etc. Within a matter of weeks, if the government got out of the way and just let people do their thing. So for example, in Orange County, they.

There is a doctor who actually imported a bunch of tests, I believe, from South Korea. And these are the ideal, you know, at least or at least one major piece of the puzzle of the testing problem, which is a pinprick, a stick test.

for antibodies antibodies so we know if you've been exposed and it could be read in 10 minutes oh see now this is the solution we've been waiting for gosh you know we get some good numbers we'd be able to get some people back to work because they'd be yes identify plasma donors maybe plasma donors but if we know that you've had it and are okay now you can go back to work yes yes so

So, I mean, I think anybody who takes that test, if they tested positive with the antibodies, you would probably want to stay home for a couple of weeks or, you know, stay away from anybody you cared about and you didn't want to infect for a couple of weeks. Um,

Just to make sure that you've been through the whole period and the sickness and I think it's hard to tell. I'll go even further than that. I'm no libertarian or anarchist in this sense. If you know you've got it, and you're in a dangerous phase, stay the F home, and the government should be able to find you because you're endangering other people's lives. Yeah.

I mean, you're endangering my mother's life. Yes. So I understand that completely. I'm no anarchist. Yes, yes. So, you know, but it is a huge piece of the puzzle to get that bit of information. You could combine it with the swab test, which again, if we had more materials in the swabs and everything else, that would be more plentiful.

But, you know, kudos to people like this who take the initiative to import. He's been importing thousands of tests. I think this doctor said that he plans to donate tens of thousands of these tests to Orange County in order to be able to test postal workers and frontline health care providers. What a hero he is. Yes. So.

So this is the sort of thing that could happen if government did this properly, which again consists of them owning up to the responsibility, including, including if Trump was really smart and wanted to earn my respect, he'd get up there and talk about the fact that I acknowledge.

that there has been a decades long atrophy of our healthcare system in both capacity and quality because of government intervention that he sees the error of his ways that he's not going to continue to pretend to repeal Obamacare but still cover pre-existing conditions and all

the garbage that they use to cover for socialized medicine which is what it is you know if the government were to acknowledge its own role in this in a straightforward way i would be a lot more understanding of this is a one-time crisis we created the problem and this is our system stay home for a right exactly but whatever whatever steps they would take even spending money that they're

probably going to steal from us anyway. I would feel a lot better about if the government said, hey, we screwed up. This is a one-time deal because we were the ones who did it. And here's how we're going to fix it going forward with an exact plan. But instead, we don't have that. And we instead, we have government doubling down. So we saw on Monday this week, the FDA, again, people are talking, shut down the FDA. It's more dangerous than the virus, says Stephanie.

FDA, Monday was shutting down the offering of at-home testing kits. Now the at-home testing kits were not the pinprick, you know, I'm waiting for us to be able to do that at home. I think we could, you know, you could talk about, for instance, the type of test they were offering was the swab thing. You got to stick it in the right place in your throat or in the right place, way up your nose where it's going to be horribly uncomfortable. And you're probably not going to stick it in far enough because you're doing it right.

you know, dubious, right? But still let a free market offer.

offer that the pinprick test would be remember there's we can all stick our finger exactly in a drop of blood right we can do it and you know depending on the test we're by allowing the test to be out there we're not saying how we're going to treat the test results do we in other words if you know if those home tests that had the swab up the nose that they thought was difficult you know okay those are dubious results we can't trust positives or negatives uh but

So positives you could, but not negatives. Yeah. Yeah. So does it control the way the government counts or treats those results? No, it just allows people to have an initial screening so that maybe they go and get more testing or something. It's insane. It's absolutely insane to me that the test isn't available. Yeah.

Yes. By what logic? Well, and allowing for the proliferation of tests, you're going to naturally have better and worse tests. And again, let's let the market decide that. Let's let consumer reviews and experience. There's going to be an error rate when the nurse takes the test too. Yeah.

Oh, sure. I mean, you know, there are a lot of people. So for example, one thing that the NYU School of Medicine itself did that I, you know, kudos to them, they allowed their medical students to graduate three months early to get into the front lines of that battle there. Yeah.

So kudos to the school, but kudos even more to all of you guys who weren't planning on getting out there, but who are going and working on the front lines. We need more interns and we need a new batch of people to help treating physicians. I mean, you know, again, I was reading about that and it's tragic what they're already dealing with in New York City and they haven't even hit the peak yet if you look at statistics. So it is tough stuff. So yeah, so congratulations.

Trump is not doing that at all. And moreover, this morning, what I saw in the headline at New York Times is that he's engaging in the sort of wishful thinking, ordering of people that Cuomo is doing. They're just kind of like try to outdo each other. And of course, he's got a bigger platform, Trump, as much as Cuomo likes to think he's got a huge platform because of it's New York. Trump's got a bigger platform. And what is he doing? Ordering

General Motors to open a factory it had closed in order to make ventilators as if he's invoked his emergency defense powers so I think that's the sort of thing that our economic dictator can do because I think that's the sort of thing that Congress has given the president the power to do when he declares this sort of emergency but but meanwhile right you've got a Dyson

Right. I saw. Did you see the Dyson article? I did. They've got ventilators ready to go. Right. Exactly. Easy to make ventilators from Mr. Dyson. Why not throw some resources at Dyson instead of ordering General Motors? Because what? Dyson's not an American company. It's British or something. Right. Right. So how dare you let the Brits actually solve something when Dyson is a brilliant company? Right. Right.

Right. Well, and that's the thing. You'd go with the guy who's got the idea, right? Commandeering, you know, a plant in Detroit to make whatever you want to make. That's the thing that's going to take the time. Well, and what quality of ventilator is going to come out of a General Motors that doesn't necessarily, because I would say Dyson is a little bit more,

related in terms of the type of product that it makes and easily able to retool to make something like a ventilator. That's why they can easily, agilely jump over to the making of ventilators. Yeah.

I mean, let the people who are most equipped step up. My Dyson vacuum cleaner actually is more connected to a respirator than... Good point. Exactly. No, exactly. And so they're ready to do this. They're doing it. And yet Trump is going to order General Motors to do it. And again, the message is he

He can wish and want and stomp his feet and have temper tantrums on camera or do whatever he wants, but it's not going to make all the resources step into line. It's not going to make General Motors able to jump into the market to make money.

ventilators in an efficient way at all. And again, to hit this point home, it is not going to make it moral. It's not going to make forcing people to do your bidding moral. It is not moral to force people to do your bidding. Can't make theft and slavery into something good. No, no. And I think I agree with you, Jim, that the

you know, the meme that would just be very powerful in illustrating what government intervention in this whole crisis is, you know, really

Malignant government intervention would be if they actually did order people to donate plasma. That's just gross. Right, right. But isn't it, I don't see the conceptual difference really, you know, because if they can make a sacrifice share. There's something about bodily integrity where you think there's a real line. I think there might be an emotional, I think there might be an emotional thing, but

When they, not to go way off topic, but there are many examples of this. When they have rules against assisted suicide, when they have laws against abortion, when they have, it's really not too far, big a step actually, is it? And when they, as we say, they're regulating medicine. What is that but an invasion of our bodily integrity? Exactly. Okay. So we have had many,

Many, many examples. I was actually a little concerned that I would run out of examples of politicians, bureaucrats giving orders and making this point again that the facts of reality can't just snap into line to conform to the politicians' whims and wishes expressed as orders out there. No matter how strongly they order it, no matter what the penalty, no matter what the temper tantrums on camera are that they have,

you are not going to make all of these healthcare providers and manufacturers and all the people who potentially could donate plasma and stuff. It's not going to suddenly snap into place and do your bidding. And then again, moreover, you can't make it moral or proper by doing that. We've seen much less than what is properly required from our politicians. Put your guns away and I'll be first in line.

Yeah. Put your, well do the mea culpa. Yeah. Right. And show me by a definite plan.

how you're going to put your guns away. Right. And then we will all willingly help out in the effort because we will be so excited to see that our politicians for once have learned this lesson that wishing, wishing doesn't make us interested. It's in my interest. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And, and, you know, that's the thing. And go, go to Amish's website. It's called tracking zebra. And he has a plan forward and he talks about the fact, which is something I've been arguing that,

It is within our interest right now for a limited period of time to do some quarantining, either targeted if you got the information or just blanket if for some reason you don't right now have the information. But we need to get that information as soon as possible so that people can go on with their lives because, you know, doing this indefinitely is harmful, perhaps, as people have been arguing, more harmful than the virus itself.

So I'm going to make a little plug if you don't mind at the end here, if that's okay with you. And it's right along the theme of facts don't care about bureaucrats orders about the primacy of existence. One thing I've been inspired to do during this period to make it more productive and enjoyable for me personally is to finally engage in a project that I had been putting feelers out about for quite a long time and I've had various challenges that have kept me from doing it and say okay now's the time.

And it is that I am offering an introductory logic course. And it's relevant because the whole idea of introductory logic, it's going to be just a 10 week long standard undergraduate introductory logic course. The reason it's so relevant is, again, we're seeing this politicians put it out there, the primacy of logic.

You know that they if they wish something, it's going to make it snap into reality in the world if they order something, therefore it's going to happen and it's all going to be okay. Just everybody has to think it's going to be okay and it will, you know, this is a

you know, tremendous default on the part of our leadership. We are supposed to be the country of reason, a creature of the enlightenment of freedom and free minds in our country. And this whole wishing will make it so attitude that we're seeing in response to this crisis is exactly the opposite of what we need to be the country based on reason, individualism, and freedom.

So that's kind of- - Let me echo the importance of that. There's no topic more important than logic. And it's not just when we're in a crisis, but a crisis really brings out the fallacious thinking. I have a degree in philosophy from NYU. I've studied logic extensively and still, if I could right now, I would be taking your logic course. So I- - Well, we might arrange a little deal, you know?

behind the scenes. I just want to encourage everyone who can to listen. I will give you the offer you can't refuse. Now, I had a webinar that it was a webinar, just an intro webinar that I had yesterday for people. And I offered people who had either registered or attended the webinar that they could get a discount. So I'm giving a 10% discount to those people. And those of you who actually register for the webinar and who weren't able to attend live, you're going to be getting a recording of that and plus my pitch.

But anybody else who wants to join the class, get a load of my pricing structure, James, okay? Because my pricing structure creates a big incentive. People who become supporters or who are already supporters of me, either through my blog via PayPal or by Patreon or Subscribestar, any of those people who are at the $5 a month level are going to get a 50% discount on the course. Yeah.

Now, I want to do that for two reasons. A, I just would like to have as many people join me and have fun with this as possible. But the other thing, of course, is that I want to encourage people who have been thinking about becoming a supporter to go ahead and make the leap and do it. The 50% that you're going to save is going to be much more than the $5 that you're going to do to make that initial thing. And of course, you don't have to commit to be a supporter forever, but I am hoping that once you get there, you're going to stay on and there's going to be other perks.

Something that I am now doing also that I have been toying with is creating a space that doesn't depend on either Facebook or Google, both of whom are big privacy invaders. We know, you know, we kind of balance the value of Facebook and Google with the invasion of privacy, our privacy. Every day. Yeah. Yeah. So I have discovered a way that I can connect everybody together.

so that we can all communicate in a classroom type setting that is private, that doesn't depend on either Facebook or Google, that you can actually have an app on your phone and we can all stay in touch through the 10 weeks of this class. So I'm looking forward to demonstrating that as well. I think, and what I might use that little network that I'll create is, you know, for more things in the future. So this is a time of experiment and kind of

you know, taking a leap and trying something new for me and everybody who decides that they want to join me in it. I want to reward them as well. So I'll be sending the information out. But if you go to my blog at don'tletitgo.com, you'll already find information there. But I'll keep sending out more pitches and stuff. The class will start on Tuesday,

And I'm going to have it the same time slot as this show. I think that's really going to work out the best in terms of my personal schedule. That is 2 p.m. Eastern Time and that is 11 a.m. Pacific Time out here on the left coast, as we call it. So that's what I'm doing. It's going to be a 10-week intro logic course. Textbook is optional because I want you guys to be able to save money if you need to.

And I have a textbook myself. I pulled out, I got myself through Amazon. Amazon, by the way, kudos to Zoom, kudos to Amazon, kudos to Facebook and everybody's keeping us connected, by the way. But this, look at this beast of a book. Yeah, this is the 15th edition of the Kopi Cohen logic book. I know Ruby, an old, old edition of Ruby had been recommended by Leonard Picoff, but that's not very accessible to people. You can get this, you can even get an electronic edition of this book.

book as well. But it's, as I said, optional, people don't have to do it. I'm enjoying it. And it's going to be fun to dig into that. I think, you know, I talked in the webinar about examples of discussions that have been taking place in social media during this timeframe, that also inspired this people committing various logical fallacies. And

So there's, you know, our government and bureaucrats who think that wishing will make it so that is very fundamental error that you nip in the bud at the very beginning of a logic course. And then there are other sorts of errors of thinking and arguing, arguing that we'll discuss in the course as well. So that's my plug. Watch more at this space for that. And people, the other thing I'll ask you is if you are getting value from our shows here,

please like, please subscribe over at YouTube and please share. And James, your special perk invitation about the course is going to follow very soon. So with that, I'm going to say goodbye for now. I'm excited. You know, I'm actually feeling pretty decent today. I still have all of my, you know, I'm fighting with the digestive stuff here and there. And I was a little, I've had a bit of headache here and there and stuff, but right now my voice isn't feeling too bad. I'm,

Oh, hope, hope, right guys? You look good. Well, thank you. Oh yeah. This, by the way, Hey, this is a Rob Wolf's healthy rebellion. And I have gotten tremendous value from joining that up. I will put out there. I've got a little ambassador.

badge thing that if you guys join because of me, I think I get some kind of perk or maybe I just get a pat on the back. I can't remember what I get, but I would recommend definitely join that if you are into the whole paleo keto health promoting sort of thing. There's a lot of good material and discussion. And of course he's going above and beyond in giving you information about COVID. He goes out and reads all the papers that are released and

tries to dissect a lot of it, what sort of, you know, supplements you should take versus not to boost your immune system, those sorts of pieces that are very valuable. So yeah, healthy rebellion, awesome stuff. Anything you want to plug? I've been plugging away here.

I've been doing so many podcasts about Christianity stuff. So if anyone's interested, you know, check, check the, we'll try to keep the website updated, but check us out. And the website again is tell them www.creatingchrist.com. Creatingchrist.com. And I'm at don'tletitgo.com. And we say good afternoon to you guys. And I hope you guys are staying safe for me. This is the way I put it in terms of,

kind of preparing myself, just even making myself just healthier in general through this crisis. Meet, meditation, sleep, and sunshine. That's good. Meet, meditation, sleep, and sunshine. Try to get all those things. Sex and exercise too. Well, sex as exercise. Okay. Bad boy.

You're such a bad influence, Chase. Okay, we got to go. We got to go now. Take care, everybody.