Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 462: Rolling with Life’s Punches

Transcript

Episode 462: Rolling with Life’s Punches · Words & Numbers

0:00
Today on words and numbers. Alzheimer's Research.
0:02
Responses to our Social Security episode.
0:05
Only fans, but but not how you think.
0:07
And how life can turn on a dime. All this and more today on Words
0:10
and Numbers, which is a Civil original production.
0:13
Check us out at civil.com. That's civl.com.
0:18
Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony.
0:19
And this is words and numbers. Ant, what's new and exciting in
0:27
your world this week? Our episode on Social Security
0:30
generated a lot of comments. Most of them were were not even
0:33
hostile. Yeah.
0:35
You know, I, I get the sense that we've reached the point
0:40
that I don't want to say everybody, but most Americans
0:44
kind of understand that this is a problem that we're going to
0:46
have to deal with. So I, I think for the first
0:50
time, you can actually start to talk about like if we did in the
0:53
episode, winding it down without people losing their minds.
0:57
But nonetheless, listener Eric Gartner writes and says the sad
1:02
reality is that if many people aren't enrolled in a force
1:07
savings plan, they won't save much of anything.
1:10
And then we're right back to having destitute elderly people
1:14
Politically, such a condition will rapidly lead to Social
1:18
Security 2 being enacted. And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm kind
1:27
of stuck in the middle here with Eric's comment because on the
1:30
one hand, I think practically speaking, he's absolutely right.
1:35
On the other hand, at some point we've got to say, OK, we take
1:41
freedom seriously, and freedom includes the fact that people
1:47
have to be free to make bad choices.
1:50
And so, you know, if people you, you're not enrolled in a forced
1:54
savings plan, your savings is up to you.
1:57
Yeah, there's going to be some problem.
2:00
And I would think the problem lasts a maximum of one
2:04
generation. I don't mean 20 years, but one
2:07
set of of people who don't save and then people learn.
2:10
Yeah, that, that's how we got into the the mess in part the
2:14
first time around, right. I, I think in order for our plan
2:20
actually to work, we might have to see a mandatory savings
2:25
account of some kind, right? That that this percentage of
2:29
your salary must go to a retirement account.
2:33
Now you're free to manage it. You're free to choose someone
2:36
else to manage it. But this percentage has to go to
2:41
a savings account of some kind. Yeah, but see, I I think that
2:43
second part doesn't gain us anything because the very same
2:47
people who don't, who wouldn't know enough to know that they
2:52
need to save, also won't know enough to know what to save
2:56
with. Well, it could be.
2:59
It could be very similar to, you know, any 4O1K offering where in
3:05
your HR meeting they hand you the packet and you pick, oh,
3:10
this category or this one or this one or that one.
3:13
And it, it could be as simple as starting everybody off in a
3:18
pretty aggressive fund as they age, moving them ever more to
3:22
ever more secure investments. I mean, there's a number of ways
3:26
you could do this, but I have grave reservations about saying
3:30
here, keep all your money and please invest it so you have
3:36
retirement. I mean, look, it's the same
3:39
thing every every year round about April I come up with the
3:43
bright idea that what we really need to do is do away with
3:46
withholding and have everybody write a check to the government
3:50
round about Christmas time. Right.
3:53
Which would alter things considerably.
3:56
Why? Because no one would have the
3:58
money. Right.
4:00
Yes. And, and we all know that,
4:03
right, People will not plan ahead for an annual tax bill
4:08
that they have to pay all at once.
4:09
Well, if they won't plan ahead for that, they will not plan
4:12
ahead for their retirement either.
4:14
Yeah, it I, I'm with you 100%, except that it's a self
4:19
fulfilling prophecy that we help them because they wouldn't do it
4:25
on their own, but they end up not doing it their own because
4:27
we're helping them. I mean, think about it another
4:29
way. We don't have to force people to
4:31
put money aside to pay their grocery bill, right?
4:34
Because, well, we know. We understand how that works.
4:37
Because you have to eat. But but Aunt we, we don't force
4:40
people to put aside money for their children's college tuition
4:43
either. And that's what led to the
4:45
student loan crisis, right? Because nobody had the money.
4:50
The thing got so expensive that nobody could afford it.
4:54
And as we're having this conversation, I'm reminded of a
4:58
story someone told me once who knew first hand people who had
5:05
lived under communist rule prior to the decline of the
5:09
dissolution of the Soviet Union. And, and the story was the
5:15
relatives from the West would go and visit once they could, and
5:20
people there would complain about this and that quality of
5:23
life and so forth. And, and their follow up
5:26
statement was the government needs to do something.
5:30
And the relatives from the West said, well, why don't you get up
5:33
and do it yourself? And they kind of looked
5:37
strangely like they had no idea what that meant.
5:41
And I think it's the same kind of thing that in this case, they
5:44
lived under, under a system in which the government told them
5:47
what to do for enough generations that they lost the
5:52
ability generationally to do for themselves.
5:55
Yeah, look, and it's not a permanent loss.
5:57
All you need is one generation of letting them make mistakes
6:00
and they'll. Figure it out.
6:02
I'm not willing to watch a generation starve.
6:05
Yeah, what's the solution though?
6:07
Oh, I, I don't know. And, and all I'm going to say
6:11
here is that I, my orientation on this and everything is toward
6:17
more freedom, not less. And yet I'm, I'm making a case
6:22
against you that we have to be a little less free than your ideal
6:27
world would warrant. And, and I, I do so because I
6:31
know human nature and I know the problems that human nature will
6:35
introduce. The, the people who are going to
6:37
be angriest with me about this are exactly the people who would
6:41
have taken care of themselves anyway, right?
6:45
And the people who wouldn't take care of themselves anyway aren't
6:50
going to be listening because they don't, they don't concern
6:53
themselves with these sorts of things.
6:56
And I think, you know, we've got a problem in the middle of this
6:59
somewhere. We're going to need some kind of
7:02
formal answer. I think it needs to be a market
7:05
based answer. It needs to be rooted in
7:08
freedom, generally speaking, but it's going to have to mandate
7:12
participation. Yeah, it may maybe, maybe James,
7:18
the answer is something along the lines of the government
7:23
says, OK, you, you must put aside X percent of your paycheck
7:28
and it must go into AS and P500 fund whatever it is.
7:33
And that's the way it's going to be until you become educated
7:37
enough in whatever way that might be.
7:39
You pass an exam indicating that you understand how all of this
7:44
works, and then we'll let you make the decisions for yourself,
7:47
the same way that we would require you show proficiency
7:51
with driving a car before we let you on the road.
7:54
Yeah, I, I don't think I want to get into a regime of examination
7:58
on the part of the federal government, but I could see just
8:04
saying, look, this is how it goes until you're 40 or
8:09
whatever. I mean, given our plan, I think
8:13
it would work, right? You could say, look, you will do
8:15
this until your 40th birthday. And then, hey, man, we trust you
8:20
to do what's right, what's in your best interest.
8:23
And even even if you fail, there's nothing we can do about
8:27
it anyway. So go nuts.
8:30
We can insure you from yourself only so long.
8:34
I'd be comfortable enough with that, and I'd also be
8:36
comfortable enough with something like the Social
8:39
Security cap that we now have. If if you make more than X
8:44
dollars a year, don't worry about it.
8:47
Now that's interesting. That's interesting you say that
8:49
because we have an analogous rule in place now for private
8:55
equity. If you want to invest in a
8:58
company that is not traded on Wall Street, and of course if
9:03
it's not traded on Wall Street, there's all kinds of checks and
9:05
information that aren't generally available to you.
9:09
If you want to do that, you have to demonstrate that you have a
9:12
net worth above a certain amount and then the SEC will allow you
9:16
to trade. If not that you then you can't,
9:18
the same kind of thing you're describing.
9:20
But in both of these instances, whether it's it's your plan or
9:23
it's education or what have you, we're both.
9:25
We're both attacking the same thing, which is weaning people
9:31
off of the government. So long as the government
9:33
remains in place, people don't have an incentive to figure this
9:37
out for themselves. And then you need the government
9:38
in place. I think that's right.
9:41
I think that's absolutely right. And the maybe what I'm
9:45
suggesting would become an intermediate step right on the
9:49
way to just washing all the rules right off the books.
9:53
Yeah, right. Right.
9:54
And I don't know if we could ever get there, but I know we
9:58
couldn't start there and. Well, you know, interesting you
10:03
say an intermediate step toward washing the rules off the books
10:07
because last I saw, and this was just a couple of weeks ago,
10:11
President Trump was suggesting exactly that for those private
10:14
equity rules, opening up the private equity market to
10:18
anybody. I'm fine with that.
10:19
Police yourselves, figure it out.
10:21
Yeah, anyway. Well, I, I, I want to underline
10:25
because they're there, there are people I know and I would
10:29
include myself amongst them from time to time who are going to
10:33
listen to this and say, but people need protection.
10:37
And I say in response, either we're free people or we aren't
10:41
free people. And if we're free people, we've
10:44
got to be left alone to make our decisions and to live with the
10:48
consequences thereof. Yeah.
10:50
And I would say there are some consequences that are so
10:53
horrific that freedom necessarily gets curtailed and
10:58
we always end up at the same example.
11:00
So I'll cut all the intermediate steps and just go right to it.
11:03
You're free to drink all you want.
11:04
You're not free to drive once you've you've had the alcohol
11:08
right. And our friend, well, you don't
11:11
know who this is, but a former NFL quarterback, Mark Sanchez is
11:14
finding out all about what happens when you get too drunk
11:18
and, and start milling about in public, right?
11:22
He's got in a fight with a guy, stabbed a guy, and now he's
11:26
going to prison and good, good, right?
11:30
But, but we never told him he didn't have the right to drink.
11:34
There were just other things, right.
11:36
And, and you know how Domino's fall sometime and, and I'm not
11:40
willing to roll the dice on something as big as nationwide
11:45
retirement because there's going to be a lot of people who will
11:49
have nothing. And you know, they're going to,
11:51
they're going to starve and they're not going to have a
11:52
place to live and it's going to put strain on their children if
11:56
they happen to have any, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
12:00
Get words and numbers on civil.com and on Civil's TV and
12:04
mobile apps. Regular episodes are free.
12:07
Sign up for an annual membership to support our show and for
12:10
access to member exclusive content.
12:13
I've got something that's kind of uplifting and I think we all
12:17
know at this point that for whatever else it is, Alzheimer's
12:23
disease is a build up of plaque in the human brain and, and
12:28
nobody quite knows what to do with that.
12:30
And I, I say this as an incredibly interested observer
12:36
because listen to this. My mother died of with
12:40
Alzheimer's. Every one of her four siblings
12:45
had it or has it. Her mother had it, her mother's
12:52
sister had it, and all of her cousins have it.
12:57
Wow. Guess what's going to happen to
12:59
me? Yeah.
13:01
Well, I mean, look, we all know, but it might not because some
13:05
researchers from Spain and China have developed nanoparticles
13:13
that break the blood brain barrier, go into the brain and
13:18
pull the plaque out. How about that?
13:20
Are these are these nano machines?
13:25
They just call them nanoparticles in the, in, in
13:29
the, the bits I've read about this.
13:31
So I, I don't think that they, they have to be turned on.
13:34
I think they just have to be injected into the bloodstream.
13:37
And for some reason they break the blood brain barrier, which
13:40
is very difficult, hardly ever happens.
13:43
But where does the plaque come from, right?
13:46
Probably a break in the blood brain barrier and and they just
13:50
haul it away like little tiny garbage trucks.
13:53
And this is. This is apparently working.
13:56
Huh. Alzheimer's human trials.
14:01
I, I believe they're in them right now and if, if this works,
14:06
Oh no, it's brains of mice right now.
14:09
So next, next would be human trials.
14:12
We may be looking at a cure for Alzheimer's 'cause I bet you
14:14
anything that one gets fast tracked probably before I get it
14:21
would be my guess if this is efficacious as they like to say.
14:27
But this brings us Ant to the foolishness of the weak.
14:31
And I want to talk about one of my favorite things.
14:36
And you could talk about one of your favorite things and we'll
14:38
still kind of be talking about the same thing for a change.
14:42
I want to talk about only fans. Do you?
14:45
Do you know what only fans is Aunt?
14:47
Yes, I do. How?
14:49
How long have you had an account?
14:55
I neither have. I'm on neither end of that
14:58
transaction. Well, we all know you're not on
15:02
one end of that transaction. Good Lord man, who would pay for
15:08
that? Although I have toyed with the
15:10
idea of opening an an Only fans account for myself and just
15:15
putting cameras all over my house so people can hear me
15:17
ranting about things throughout the day.
15:22
No sexual content whatsoever, just just me offering my
15:26
unvarnished opinions. Watch me stub my toe, it would
15:30
be hilarious, right? This is what reality TV should
15:33
be. But.
15:33
I bet you people would actually pay for that.
15:36
I I'm thinking they might. So if you're out there and you
15:39
would pay me $5 a month to watch me moan about things, you get,
15:43
you get in touch. Anyway, the issue that comes up
15:47
here, Aunt, is you know how when you're you're on only fence and
15:51
you want to talk to the woman who you're watching and you're
15:55
typing it your keyboard? Do you do that?
15:57
Do you interact? I told you I have no experience
16:00
with this. How?
16:02
I know you're trying to goad me here.
16:04
I am. I'm I'm asking you how long it's
16:06
been since you've beaten. Your wife, which is.
16:10
OK, fine. We'll play by your rules.
16:12
When gentlemen go on only fans and they see a a young lady that
16:18
they, they take a fancy to, they like to type messages back and
16:23
forth to to to the woman. But it turns out only fans has a
16:27
feature that a woman can opt into and pay for that will have
16:32
other human beings doing the responding.
16:36
It's kind of like the principle behind, you know, the that that
16:40
phone bank in India, you got she's to get tech support.
16:45
She's got a production crew behind her.
16:47
That's right. That's exactly right.
16:49
And and they tap and a couple of gentlemen who were patrons of
16:53
Only Fans, unlike you found out about this and became very upset
16:58
when they filed a class action lawsuit against only fans
17:03
because they thought they were talking to the people they were
17:07
talking to, not somebody in the Philippines type in a way or or
17:12
that woman's friend in the other room or whoever ends up doing
17:15
it. So they actually got an ongoing
17:17
case, a class action lawsuit. But here's the good part.
17:22
We haven't gotten to the good part yet that that makes it the
17:25
foolishness of the week. Their lawyers decided that what
17:30
they needed to do was was, you know, file all the papers and
17:35
they used AI to construct. Their pleadings, I don't even
17:41
know the punch line yet. I know it's good to be.
17:43
Good. The punch line is right there in
17:45
front of you in a case about paying for something that you
17:50
thought you were getting from a a professional.
17:53
I see. See the the professional lawyers
17:57
are doing the exact same thing, and it turns out their their
18:02
their filings with the court were loaded with AI
18:05
hallucinations. They were absolute garbage.
18:08
And here you go. Nobody in this entire story is
18:14
doing their job. That's it.
18:17
Oh my God. All right, so I have all kinds
18:20
of questions, but I guess I'll focus on the lawyers.
18:23
How could they not know this? I mean, this has been a thing
18:26
for maybe a year in the news of lawyers doing this, having AI,
18:32
right, and then getting slapped. They blamed it on a a junior
18:38
lawyer at the firm who'd been there for 10 years.
18:42
So she it's not she just fell off the the lawyer turnip truck.
18:47
But she had a challenging personal problem, apparently LED
18:52
her to cut every corner on the job, which to me sounds like,
18:56
you know, somebody's feeding a load of BS into the into the
18:59
system. I just don't know who, nor do I
19:02
really care. I just think it's hilarious that
19:05
a bunch of adult performers are hiring people to be them and
19:10
then the lawyers who sue them because they're not being them
19:13
are using something that is not a lawyer to do it.
19:17
And I honestly hope that everybody loses.
19:25
Oh my God, that's great. Yeah, every now and then you
19:28
come across a a real winner, but that's not what we're here to
19:33
talk about today. Oh, now he looks at me.
19:37
This was your episode. You're supposed to say
19:40
something. I just said a bunch of James.
19:43
James. And I are talking James and I
19:44
are talking the other day about this recording and he says, oh,
19:49
I've got this great idea. And he starts yo, as in his
19:52
James way saying things and I'm typing down notes here.
19:57
And anyway, it sounded interesting to me.
20:01
And we get together on this call that we are now on and James
20:06
says, what are we talking about with his James blank stare.
20:09
And I said, James, you gave us the topic.
20:12
Oh, I don't remember. Fine, I started reading the
20:15
notes, he still didn't remember and now it comes time to do the
20:19
episode. He looks at me and says OK.
20:22
Maybe the Alzheimer's has kicked in, Maybe.
20:26
And maybe you should be a little more respectful of the mentally.
20:31
Disabled. What we want to talk about is
20:35
is. I guess it would fall under the
20:38
the heading of the strange turns that life takes.
20:43
Look it, it occurred to us, right, that aunt, you're a,
20:46
you're an economist and you spent decades teaching at
20:51
colleges. And I'm a political scientist
20:53
and I spent decades teaching at colleges.
20:55
And neither one of us does that. Anymore.
20:57
No, we don't. And you know when.
21:02
Well, because of reasons, right? There are always reasons, but
21:06
Aunt used to say this thing and I always really made a note of
21:10
it when you said it. And I think it might be the
21:12
smartest thing you ever said. Not like that's a big category,
21:16
but. It might be the.
21:18
Smartest thing you ever said. And it was when we would visit
21:21
high schools and you would say to the students, look, they
21:24
would always ask, well, how am I supposed to make a living, blah,
21:26
blah, blah. And aunt would always say the
21:29
same thing. He would say, look, the thing
21:31
that you're going to do for the majority of your life hasn't
21:35
been invented yet. And I thought, you know, that's
21:38
right. That's absolutely right.
21:42
And if you really think about it and I, you know, I speak to the
21:45
adults in the room right now. If you really think about it,
21:48
did life go the way you planned? Fewer than 5% will have their
21:53
hands up right now because life never goes as planned.
21:57
And I think the the noted sage and philosopher Mike Tyson had
22:02
the best of this when he said everybody's got a plan until
22:06
they get punched in the mouth. And life has this nasty habit of
22:10
punching your right in the mouth and, and you've got to change
22:14
your plans on the fly and hope to God you've got the skills to
22:19
back it up. So in terms in terms of high
22:22
school kids, we used to tell them get the best education you
22:26
can get, get a broad education, learn about technology to the
22:30
extent that you can, have a decent understanding of
22:33
mathematics because that's the way the world is trending right
22:36
now. Or we would tell them, get into
22:39
the trades because people have been going to college for so
22:41
long, there are fewer people than necessary working as
22:46
electricians and plumbers. But that's only the first bit of
22:50
advice We can't give you anymore, because life will
22:54
inform you as you go. Yeah.
22:56
And I, I think there are a couple things here.
22:58
One is 1 is of course the thing everybody says of, you know, get
23:02
skills and a broad education so you can respond to things that
23:06
come along. But I think it's, it's equally
23:08
important, maybe even in some cases more important that you
23:12
develop a sense of, of resilience and openness to
23:17
change. You know, so often I have seen,
23:22
I've seen highly talented, skilled people who when some,
23:27
something adverse comes along, they don't have the resilience
23:31
to deal with it. And so they fall apart when when
23:36
actually this thing that looks like adversity that comes along
23:39
actually presents some interesting opportunities if
23:42
they would grab hold of it and move forward.
23:45
And I, I think the thing that's lacking to the extent that
23:49
something is lacking, and I think this is more of the case
23:53
with each passing year, right? I think people have become
23:58
noticeably less resilient overtime and to the point now
24:02
where people crumble if you use the wrong word near them, right?
24:09
This is just ridiculous if you think about it, using the wrong
24:12
word, put, please put on your big boy pants and cut it out
24:16
right. But the the thing that that is
24:19
missing is courage. People, you need to have, I
24:25
mean, look back to Aristotle, courage is understood as a
24:28
virtue and you must have it in order to live well.
24:36
Now can you live without it? Of course you can.
24:38
I know many, many people who live without an iota of courage.
24:44
Do some of them live well? Yes, they do.
24:47
Do they miss really big opportunities?
24:50
Absolutely they do, because sometimes taking advantage of an
24:55
opportunity means that you have to go so far outside of your
25:00
comfort zone. I mean, so far that there's, you
25:05
can't even see the shore from where you're, you're swimming,
25:08
right? And, and you know, look, I, I
25:11
have a couple of examples in my own life, right?
25:14
I, I took a job in Iraq. Why?
25:17
Because it was offered. I met a guy and he said, do you
25:22
want this job? And I'm thinking, hell yes, I
25:25
do. And when I told people, they all
25:28
thought I was crazy. Yeah, yeah, it was one of us.
25:33
It was the single best decision I ever made.
25:36
Not, not, you know, in the, in the professional realm because
25:39
it qualified me to do almost anything when I got back home.
25:43
Yeah. And that's the kind of foresight
25:46
you have to have. And then a few months ago, as
25:50
you know, but our listeners probably don't, I was asked to
25:54
write the libretto for an opera. I've never written a libretto
25:58
for an opera before. I don't.
26:01
I've only seen two or three operas to begin with, let alone
26:05
sitting down to write 1. My initial knee jerk reaction?
26:09
Hell yes I will. And then I did.
26:13
It's done. And it's going to be performed
26:14
in New York City next year. And what door will that open?
26:18
I don't know, but it's going to open something.
26:22
Right I'm. I'm sure you have very similar
26:25
stories. Yeah.
26:27
And the, the key here is I could share a couple as well, but the
26:31
key here is you, you know, you'll identify one of these
26:36
opportunities that comes along like this because it will be so
26:40
far out your wheelhouse that your knee jerk reaction is why
26:44
would I do that? And the, and the fact is you,
26:47
you gain all kinds of skills and experience and, and, and outlook
26:53
that you wouldn't have gained otherwise and that helps you
26:55
later on. Yeah, when I told people about
26:58
the Iraq job, I I quickly realized I might as well have
27:02
just told them I'm going to play professional soccer in Ecuador.
27:06
Right. Right.
27:07
There's no way for anybody to wrap their head around it.
27:10
To me, it was a natural choice. I I saw no option but to take
27:16
it. It'd be crazy not to take it
27:19
right. I was in a distinct minority and
27:22
and yeah, I remember even you asked me if I had my head
27:25
screwed on right. Right, Yeah, yeah, I had a
27:29
similar thing. It was I was part way through on
27:35
the tenure track and doing quite well that I was going to end up
27:38
getting tenure. And a friend of mine came along,
27:41
this was in the.com era and said, do you want to leave
27:44
academia and start a start up with me?
27:48
And it was exactly that. It was the kind of thing that
27:52
any reasonable person should have said no, right?
27:56
I had a wife, I had young kids, mortgage and all of this and a
28:01
safe job. Saying yes to him was the best
28:05
thing that ever happened. And it's not because it's not
28:09
the best thing because, you know, I went into the.com era
28:12
and became richer. All of that.
28:14
No, the company ended up folding like 18 months later, right?
28:20
And I had to go back to academia.
28:22
But I came back with with a skill set that I would not have
28:25
had otherwise with experience. And not just experience, but
28:28
also this, an internal sense of I did that.
28:35
It was scary. It turned out all right.
28:38
And so I'm more apt to do it again the next time an
28:41
opportunity arises. Yeah, that's right.
28:44
And, and most things, when viewed from enough distance, do
28:48
work out. All right.
28:51
It, it, it may not in the immediate short term, but if you
28:54
just take a step or two back and look at the entirety of your
28:58
life, you'll see it, it'll it'll make a fair amount of sense,
29:03
Right. And that's a little strange,
29:05
because life is a series of random events, and yet the
29:10
patterns emerge over time. Yeah.
29:12
And I think it's. And and things build right.
29:15
You build from one point to the next, even if you're not
29:19
perceiving it. Yeah.
29:21
And I think there's a there's a middle ground there because I'll
29:24
I'll get people, I'll hear people say, well, I got where I
29:28
got because of my hard work. And I'm thinking, OK, maybe was
29:32
your hard work, but there was also likely a lot of luck.
29:35
A. Lot of luck.
29:37
And then, and then I hear other people say, well, he only got
29:40
where he got because of luck. And I'm thinking, no, that's not
29:43
the case because but there, when luck hands you something, you've
29:46
got to have the sense to pick it up and do something with it.
29:50
I mean, I, I'm going to dip into the vernacular of of your people
29:54
here. When we look at hyper successful
29:57
people, there's a survivorship bias, right?
30:01
We only, we only see the ones for whom the hard work paid off
30:07
for every one of them. We don't know how many people
30:09
worked exactly as hard and didn't get anywhere.
30:13
Now, they might have had bad ideas, they might have had bad
30:16
luck. It could be a number of things.
30:19
But survivorship bias plays here.
30:22
And this is where it becomes so important that you're operating
30:26
in a free society, because that's freer the society is
30:30
politically and economically. The freer it is, the more able
30:34
you're going to be to take advantage of opportunities when
30:37
they come along and to recover when they blow up in your face.
30:40
When when they and they will right, you will make big
30:44
decisions. You will swing for the fences
30:46
and the ball won't get out of the infield right.
30:49
This is going to happen, and the harder you swing, the more
30:52
likely it is that that will happen over and over again.
30:56
But you keep yourself in the game long enough to continue a
31:00
sports metaphor that you don't understand at all.
31:02
And sooner or later you're going to drill one, right?
31:05
And and you only need to succeed once, right?
31:10
You can fail and fail and fail and fail.
31:13
But if you succeed one time, that's good enough and you can
31:18
ride that the rest of your life, right?
31:20
So it's, it's interesting now because we're, we're at a time
31:25
where things do seem to be changing.
31:27
And I, I want to tell people that that's literally always
31:31
true. Any point in history that you
31:33
can point to people sat around and worried about how things
31:37
were changing. But for, you know, we could go
31:40
back thousands of years if you want.
31:42
We can go back three generations if you want.
31:45
There's been a certain what what we would call folk wisdom that
31:50
emerges from human life and human interaction, right?
31:54
We learn collectively what works and what doesn't.
31:58
So in the easiest terms, we all learn what berries never to eat,
32:04
right? Because some guy ate those
32:06
berries once and then died, and then some other guy ate them and
32:10
he died too. So we see a pattern developing.
32:14
Let's maybe not eat the berries, OK?
32:17
That's folk wisdom, right? We didn't get out the
32:19
microscopes to figure that out. And folk wisdom plays in much
32:23
bigger ways. For years, folk wisdom was you
32:26
graduate high school, you get a good job, you get married right
32:30
away, you have some kids, and then you coast until retirement,
32:34
right? Well, then it became graduate
32:37
high school, go to college, get an even better job, wait a
32:40
while, figure out who you might want to marry, then maybe have
32:44
some kids later. And what was the difference?
32:47
Well, the environment these people lived in, when you didn't
32:50
need to breed workers for your farm, you didn't need to breed
32:55
at all. And if that's the case, you
32:58
safely put it off for a while. And, shock of shocks, people
33:02
have children later now than they did 100 years ago.
33:05
Yeah, and and you start to see that changing the changing
33:11
environment in the need for the folk wisdom to change in a
33:14
couple places right now. One work, one work, I'd say
33:19
halfway through the change. And that's our attitudes towards
33:22
student loans and College in general.
33:25
You know, it was always, when I was a kid, it was always, well,
33:27
they didn't ask are you going to college?
33:29
They said, where are you going to college?
33:30
Because that was the key to success.
33:33
Everybody knew it. That's what you did.
33:36
Now we've rethought that and we're finding it's not
33:39
necessarily the key to success. In fact, in a lot of times it
33:42
just leaves you with an albatross around your neck.
33:45
If if you take out $150,000 worth of loans and you major in
33:50
medieval lesbian poetry, chances are you're not going to get a
33:55
job good enough to pay back those $150,000 in loans plus
33:59
interest. People seem not to realize that
34:02
those loans accrue interest. They think, they literally think
34:06
I'm going to borrow 150,000, I'm going to pay back 150,000.
34:10
That you know that's not how this works.
34:13
You know, I had a conversation with somebody about that this
34:16
person had had posted and said, look, I took out, I forget what
34:21
the number was $100,000 in student loans and and I've been
34:26
making all my payments on time and somehow my loan is now
34:30
$150,000. And I came back to the person, I
34:33
said, this is not possible what you're describing here.
34:37
And so we delve into it and the person says, well, maybe I
34:39
didn't make all of them on time, but I made most of my time.
34:43
And then versus, Oh yeah. Still not possible.
34:46
And and then Joe Biden said that I didn't have to during Kovid.
34:50
That was it, yeah. And the person said, Oh yeah.
34:51
And then of course, there's covad years when I didn't have
34:54
to make the payment and I said, but it was accruing interest
34:57
during that time. Tick, tick, tick.
35:00
Yeah, but so, so that's one thing.
35:02
The other thing that's that's, that's coming about right now is
35:06
this the folk wisdom about the key.
35:09
The other key to success is owning your own home.
35:12
And I think people are starting to realize or hopefully they'll
35:15
begin to realize it's not necessarily the key to success.
35:18
In fact, as as we become much more mobile, because we're
35:22
richer and because we're more educated, it's actually a
35:25
problem owning a house. It's more costly to do so if
35:29
you're not going to stay in it for 15 years straight.
35:32
If you're going to be moving around rent, that's the better
35:35
thing. It's more than that too, and
35:38
people don't realize the amount of money that goes into
35:41
maintaining a house. Yeah.
35:44
It's it's a lot, right? I mean the first year I moved
35:50
into to this one I had to replace not one but two HVAC
35:55
units. You know.
35:57
For at a cost of $34,000. Yeah, and you haven't even hit
36:02
the property tax yet or the insurance?
36:04
No, I, I barely moved in when when these things happened.
36:08
And you know, when you buy a house, you typically spend most
36:12
of the money you have to, to do that.
36:15
I, I didn't have $34,000 just laying around.
36:18
I had to go get other jobs to pay that off.
36:21
And then, you know, the HOA, which you know, I've spoken of
36:25
with great love, trust and admiration in the past, decided
36:29
that I needed to paint my house. And that's another 10 grand
36:33
right there, $10,000 to paint a house.
36:36
And then I had to replace all of the, the, the sconces on the
36:42
lighting outside. I have 29 of them.
36:46
They each cost $150.00. Yeah, right.
36:51
And it, it just bang. And we're not even getting to
36:54
the plumbing problems, the electrical problems, things that
36:58
just happened as you own a house who doesn't have to pay for all
37:01
that? Well, renters, they do and they
37:04
don't right there. It's wrapped up in the rent so
37:07
they don't get blindsided by anything.
37:10
Do they pay more to rent than I pay to quote UN quote own?
37:16
Yeah, actually, they would. It would cost you more to rent
37:18
this house than to buy it. Well, because hang on.
37:22
Because I no this house specifically, right Apple to
37:26
Apple comparison. If I'm going to rent this place
37:29
out, it's going to be for more than my mortgage.
37:33
I'm going to collect more than I pay in.
37:37
But there's still there's still something else that renters tend
37:39
to overlook. And this is particularly
37:42
important if you're going to be moving every couple of years.
37:46
And that is the closing costs on a house for astronomically.
37:52
Yeah. And if you're if you're not
37:53
going to stay in that house for probably five years or more.
37:58
Yeah, it's about 6 years, even if.
37:59
You sell it for the same amount, you're not going to recoup those
38:02
those closing costs and it's a. Lot, it's actually a lot.
38:07
So the thing in our society that gives you the opportunity to do
38:11
better over time by moving from here to there.
38:15
And I've, I've moved probably more than a dozen times to take
38:18
advantage of opportunities that that also mitigates against home
38:24
ownership. If you're going so and, and the
38:27
younger you are, the truer this is, right?
38:29
The older you are, the more likely you are to stay in place
38:33
after a while. But you know, you got to keep
38:37
these things in mind. And just because everybody has
38:42
always said, for as long as you can remember that success means
38:46
owning your own home, that it might not be true.
38:48
And this goes back to this idea of folk wisdom, which which is a
38:53
wonderful thing because I mean, what it is, is a way to distill
38:58
and communicate very quickly and cleanly things that people have
39:03
learned perhaps over a long period of time or great expense.
39:07
And so it comes down in the form of some rule of do this or don't
39:10
do that, right? And society is, as you've said
39:15
many times, an emergent phenomenon.
39:17
It changes as as our knowledge changes, as our circumstances
39:21
changes, as the people themselves change.
39:24
And because it's an emergent phenomenon, over time, some of
39:28
this folk wisdom is going to remain as as important and and
39:32
correct, and some of it is going to become overcome by events.
39:38
I'll give you, I'll give you a quick example, right.
39:40
Everybody told me when I was a boy, oh, you, you need to be a
39:44
doctor when you grow up. And I'd say, why this?
39:48
Well, you're really smart and that's a great you'll make a lot
39:51
of money, you'll be rich and everybody will respect you about
39:56
that. Doctors are not rich anymore,
40:01
and very few people actually respect them in this day and age
40:05
until they absolutely need one. But you know, look, that was
40:08
great advice in 1974. Not great advice after the
40:14
Affordable Care Act. Right.
40:16
Yeah, yeah. Words and Numbers is part of the
40:19
Civil Network. Civil is a streaming platform
40:23
dedicated to upgrading civilization by exploring better
40:27
ways for people to organize, innovate and thrive.
40:31
At Civil, we believe that societies flourish when their
40:34
members honor the civic equality of all people and engage with
40:39
one another through cooperation. Civil seeks great minds from
40:42
around the world world to share bold ideas for fostering
40:45
healthy, dynamic societies. By creating space for honest
40:49
disagreement among people who share a commitment to building a
40:52
better future, Civil offers a refreshing alternative to
40:56
divisive punditry and insular echo chambers.
41:00
Words and Numbers is freely available, but those who
41:03
subscribe to Civil will access exclusive content, including
41:07
regular live streams and conversations with remarkable
41:10
people who are working to build a better society.
41:13
For more information and to subscribe, visit civil.com.
41:17
That's civl.com. Use the code words and numbers.
41:22
That's one word for 50% off an annual subscription.
41:26
Think about the body of, we'll call it roughly speaking, folk
41:30
wisdom, rules and advice that are passed down.
41:33
And some of it is going to become outdated and need to be
41:36
replaced. Some of it isn't.
41:38
Needs to be respected. How do you know which is which?
41:43
And herein lies an important linkage that unfortunately I
41:47
think we're losing. And that's the the linkage
41:50
between what I'll broadly called the Conservatives and the
41:54
Liberals, because those two groups of people approach that
41:58
question very differently and importantly different ways.
42:04
Yeah, which one do you want to cover?
42:06
I'll take. I'll take whichever one you
42:07
don't want. I'll talk about the Liberals.
42:09
The Liberals want change. They want to make life better.
42:14
So they look at things that are going on, how we do voting, how
42:17
we do immigration, how we do taxes, how we care for the poor,
42:21
and they're constantly saying we should do this differently.
42:25
They're looking to do it better. I'm not advocating their plans
42:28
because in a lot of cases I think the things that modern day
42:32
liberals want with respect to those topics is going to lead us
42:37
to worse outcomes. However, that's not true for
42:41
everything they stand for. No, and we should all want to,
42:45
to do better. We should all want better things
42:47
for the future, right? That's a rational thing to want.
42:51
And conservatives want that too. Literally every human wants
42:55
that. I mean, and, and think about it,
42:57
if you really believe the rhetoric that the two sides used
43:01
against each other, I mean, you'd walk away thinking that
43:04
there's no such thing as a conservative who wants children
43:06
to be well educated. But you couldn't be further from
43:11
the truth. That's crazy.
43:13
Of course, there's no such thing as a liberal who believes in
43:15
self-defense. That's right.
43:18
Almost all of them do. Literally almost all.
43:23
So the conservatives. And yeah, I'm dispositionally
43:26
conservative. We said this before, it doesn't
43:30
exactly translate to politics, but it it does kind of
43:34
conservatives first inclination is to not make things worse.
43:39
Yes, and notice the tension. The liberal, I want to change
43:42
things to make it better. The conservative I don't want to
43:45
change things because they might become worse.
43:47
And I think both of them are are well within the realm of
43:50
reasonable. Yes, they're both reasonable
43:54
positions, and I actually hold both of those positions about
43:58
many, many things simultaneously.
44:01
There is tension in my head about many things.
44:04
And that's the key, because if you only hold one of those
44:07
positions, you're either going to destroy things you shouldn't
44:10
be destroying on the liberal side, or you're going to
44:12
preserve things that you need to get rid of on the conservative
44:15
side. That's probably right, Probably
44:19
right. And, and, you know, of course
44:22
there are hardcore people who are only going to hear the words
44:25
liberal and conservative and their arms are going to go
44:27
straight up. They're not going to hear what
44:29
we actually just said. I am both of those things.
44:33
I know that you are both of those things.
44:35
Yeah. And, and what we decide to do
44:38
and what we advise the greater world to do when we have
44:43
opinions generally is born of that friction.
44:47
It's a productive friction. You should embrace it.
44:51
Now, that doesn't offer an answer about how best to live
44:57
right? It just tells you the forces
44:59
that are in play. And earlier, Aunt, you said that
45:04
there there's folk wisdom that has lasted.
45:08
There's folk wisdom that probably needs to go.
45:11
There's folk wisdom that is dropped by the wayside, but
45:16
there is one bit of folk wisdom that offers us exactly what we
45:21
need as a guiding principle, and it's it's what we call the
45:24
Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have
45:27
them do to you, and you could frame that religiously if you
45:31
must. You can frame it in a secular
45:34
way if you prefer, but that statement is enough to build an
45:40
entire moral universe around. It is.
45:44
And think about this for a moment.
45:46
You know, you can call it respect for human dignity if you
45:50
want to go that route, or you can go the route of the founders
45:53
and call it equality in in the political quality.
45:56
Yeah. And it's it's, it's literally
45:58
all of that all of the time. I want to go back to your
46:03
statement that we are, you and I are each both of those things,
46:07
the conservative and the liberal together and, and having and I
46:12
want to be careful that people don't hear that.
46:15
Oh, well, we're centrists. That's not the case.
46:18
I would not at all if I had to. If I had to pick one, I would.
46:21
I would say I'm much more in the conservative camp.
46:24
Oh, I'm I'm a radical. But but here's why.
46:28
Here's why. Again, the conservatives
46:31
attitude is let's preserve things because we don't want to
46:34
make them worse. The liberals attitude is let's
46:36
change things for the better. And there's some truth on both
46:39
sides. But what I point to is the
46:42
society that we particularly live in, for all of its warts
46:46
and has many warts, it has been a successful society, largely
46:51
speaking. They have progressed perhaps at
46:55
different rates, but as a body over the centuries, we have
46:58
progressed. And, and that tells me if it's,
47:01
if indeed it's a society that is generally speaking, working well
47:05
and advancing, it tells me that we have a, we have a greater
47:10
need to preserve things than we do to overthrow them because.
47:14
Largely, things are working. The philosophers would call what
47:18
we have, and indeed what many countries right now have, as a
47:22
nearly just society. Is it perfectly just?
47:26
No. No human society ever has been
47:29
or ever will be. There will always be flaws, but
47:33
it's nearly just right. You've got a pretty good shot at
47:38
living a life relatively free of, of massive injustice here.
47:45
And, and that's just going to have to be good enough.
47:48
And, and look, if you think, and, and we've, we've said this
47:51
on recent episodes, right? If you think, as some young
47:54
people have told me, that the United States is the most unjust
47:57
country in the world, all you need is a passport, you need to
48:02
go to some other places, you will come back disabused of that
48:06
notion in a more profound way than I can even explain to you.
48:11
Because if I had to leave the country, anywhere I would pick
48:16
would be less wonderful than it is here.
48:20
Not to say that there wouldn't be perfectly wonderful places to
48:23
go. There would be, But they would
48:25
be less wonderful than what we've got here across a number
48:29
of of metrics. So, yeah, and and I think this.
48:33
Is just, look, I just need to say that I'm, I'm a political
48:37
radical right because what do I want?
48:40
I want wholesale change all the way back to the founding
48:44
principles as understood at the time, right?
48:48
I want them, I want them to apply universally.
48:51
I don't want to exclude anyone, but I don't want this massive
48:55
government that we have. I want a small government that
48:59
spends roughly 3 to 4% of GDP on federal government things, which
49:04
is what we had until about 1910. So now we have, what, 30 some
49:10
percent? Yeah, pushing 40.
49:13
So it's literally 10 times as big as it should be, in my
49:17
estimation. That makes me a political
49:19
radical right. I want this crazy thing, just
49:23
like the Founders were political radicals, but I have the the
49:27
same liberal conservative tension within that context,
49:32
right within those confines. You can't get away from it.
49:36
Every single aspect of modern life really requires you to
49:40
think through a number of compelling options.
49:43
Well, which one are you going to choose?
49:45
Should things change or should they stay the same?
49:48
That's the first philosophical question to ask about anything.
49:52
And where's the way the university correct answer?
49:56
No, no there isn't. In the way you iterate to better
49:59
answers is you sit down with people who you disagree with.
50:04
If you're a conservative, sit down with liberals.
50:06
If you're a liberal, sit down with conservatives and have
50:08
honest, respectful, civil discussion.
50:12
And you'll figure these things out because each of you, each of
50:16
those groups is right about a lot of things and wrong about a
50:20
lot of things, and they don't know what they're wrong about.
50:23
I always was happiest as a professor when my students would
50:27
say, oh, man, I never thought about it like that, right?
50:32
As if a light bulb went off and they realized that an entire
50:35
half of the American population wasn't evil at all.
50:38
They just had a differing opinion, right?
50:40
And. Or even better still, from time
50:43
to time, when a student would say something in a lecture I'd
50:46
given 100 times and I had never thought about that thing that
50:50
the students had all and it overthrows what I was thinking,
50:54
but at the same time expands my my thought.
50:57
I'm now better than I was before.
50:59
Yep, that's right. And, and it, it was asymmetric,
51:03
right? I was able to have a massive
51:06
influence on young people, but they were only able to have a
51:09
small influence on me, right, they bring up.
51:13
Its points, Yeah. Well, it's a law of diminishing
51:14
returns, right? Yeah, that, that's right.
51:16
There's, you know, I, there's, it's not like I hadn't thought
51:20
these things through, but every now and then somebody would say,
51:22
what about X? And I'd say, Oh yeah, what about
51:24
X? And, and I didn't say, well, I
51:27
guess I'm a communist now, right?
51:30
I, I thought, OK, this this requires an alteration of
51:34
something that I thought was correct.
51:35
That is clearly not so you know those were good days too.
51:41
Because I like learning things. I'm I'm happy enough to be wrong
51:46
if I get to learn something in in the process.
51:50
Yeah. And let let me say, let me say
51:51
it a little bit differently. Yeah.
51:54
I mean, I agree with you. It's about learning things, but
51:56
it's also it's about wanting wanting to be right more than
52:03
you want to win. If I'm wrong about something, I
52:06
want to know it. I now, of course, it's painful
52:08
to realize I know it, but but I really want to.
52:11
I want to get rid of that so that I am.
52:13
Right. And, and I think that's the
52:15
message to kind of end on today, right?
52:17
Because the world is a better place when more people want to
52:22
learn more things and when it's more important to them that they
52:28
get things correctly rather than they own the libs or some such
52:34
idiocy. I don't want to own anybody.
52:37
I just want to talk about it, figure out what's best and move
52:40
on. And I don't think that's a
52:42
particularly weird thing to want.
52:45
So, you know, stop falling for all the anger and, and we'll
52:50
talk about the anger factories in maybe the next episode.
52:55
If if memory serves, that's up on the up on the horizon for us.
53:00
But you know, for now, let's just end this and and be happy a
53:04
little bit. And if you're if you're a
53:07
conservative, go find a liberal and shake their hands and thank
53:11
them for challenging you. And if you're friends, go find
53:15
their conservative and hug him and thank him.
53:19
You have to hold on tight because he's going to try and
53:21
get away. Conservatives are kind of
53:23
prickly that way. I don't know if most of them
53:25
want to be hugged. I know I sure don't.
53:28
But you know, at the end of the day, we always say the same
53:32
exact thing. Be nice to each other.
53:37
It's not that hard. You can do it.
53:39
And today maybe you saw why we think it's so damn important And
53:44
and it really is. So be a little kinder than you
53:48
think people deserve, and you'd be amazed at the good that comes
53:52
from that. Catch you next time, Aunt.
53:55
See you next time, James. Words and Numbers is a Civil
53:57
original podcast. We work with Civil to advance
54:00
their mission of upgrading civilization by exploring ideas
54:04
that promote civic equality and cooperation.
54:07
We believe the most pressing issues humans face, war,
54:11
poverty, debt, tribalism, arise from coercive institutions that
54:16
bring out the worst in us. We at Civil look to voluntary
54:19
solutions to these and other problems.
54:22
We invite you to explore Civil's new platform at civil.com.
54:26
That's civl.com.