Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 466: Elephants and Christmas Trees

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Episode 466: Elephants and Christmas Trees · Words & Numbers

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This week on words and numbers. A cure for.
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Blindness, taxing the rich, your mom and listener questions.
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All that and more coming up on Words and Numbers, a civil
0:09
original production. Check this out at civil.com.
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That's civl.com. Hi, I'm James.
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And I'm Anthony and. This is words and numbers, so
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let's do it exciting in your world this weekend.
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One of our listeners sent us a an article that I'm looking here
0:30
to see who this is and I didn't write it down, so I apologize
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whoever you were. But this is an article on taxing
0:39
the rich appeared in The Hill, the Washington publication
0:43
recently headline. Most Americans say taxing the
0:46
rich is the best way to reduce federal debt.
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That's a Gallup poll. Well, can I?
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Can I weigh in on this real quick?
0:54
Please do. That sounds great.
0:56
Just don't tax. Me.
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Oh, there's all kinds of problems here.
1:00
One, we should have to find the rich.
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Of course. But if we're going to figure out
1:07
who to tax, I'm going to find a group that is not me.
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Right. Yes.
1:13
And if that happens to be the rich, whatever the hell that is,
1:17
fine by me as long as I'm not in the group.
1:20
Go tax those people. Well, according to this, I'm
1:23
looking at the Gallup poll. Before the latest government
1:27
shutdown, almost half of US adults said Congress should
1:31
reduce the deficit. Now this is interesting because
1:34
the Gallup poll says deficit. The headline said debt reduce
1:38
the deficit either mostly 27 percent or only 22% by cutting
1:44
spending, whereas 17% favored relying mostly or only on tax
1:51
increases. Another 20 percent, 27%, said
1:55
they would prefer an equal mix of spending cuts and tax hikes.
2:00
And whenever this sort of thing comes up, people talk, they
2:04
start off with the tax cuts and you very quickly come to the
2:09
conclusion that there there just simply isn't enough to cut to
2:13
close, forget about the debt, to close the deficit.
2:16
And I can give you some some perspective here.
2:19
You you mean spending cuts? Spending cuts, Yeah, spending
2:23
cuts this year, this fiscal year, the tax revenues the
2:30
government brings in are not enough to fund the mandatory
2:35
spending. So in other words, you'd have to
2:40
cut everything the government does except for Medicare,
2:43
Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt, and you
2:47
still wouldn't have closed the deficit.
2:49
So very quickly, people who start off with well, the the way
2:52
to fix this problem is to cut spending.
2:55
They quickly find out that that's just not going to work.
2:58
So the next step is, well, you can't cut spending, let's raise
3:02
taxes. And you get the reaction you
3:05
had, which is absolutely, let's raise taxes, all the other guy.
3:10
Anybody but me is fine. They look at the rich and I ran
3:14
these numbers just a couple of days ago, so I wanted to update.
3:17
I update every few years the my analysis of the Congressional
3:22
Budget Office numbers showing who's paying how much tax.
3:27
And the fun thing about this is that when you look at the
3:31
Congressional Budget numbers, they will include how much you
3:35
pay in tax, all federal taxes. So income taxes, estate taxes,
3:38
capital gains taxes, payroll taxes, everything, all federal
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taxes. They'll look at how much you pay
3:43
in taxes. They will also go a step
3:45
further, which a lot of people won't do and they'll account for
3:49
tax credits. So places in which the tax code
3:54
actually gives you money back that you never paid in in the
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1st place. And then CBO will go the next
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step, which almost nobody does, which is to look at transfers.
4:04
So money the federal government just hands out to people,
4:07
usually in the form of things like income assistance and if
4:12
you're. Or or or a COVID check.
4:16
COVID checks for. Example.
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Yeah, which everybody loved. Yeah, Oh, yeah.
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We loved it until the inflation came along in 2022, but that's
4:25
another episode. But if you put all of that
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together, ask yourself how much people paid in taxes?
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How much did they get back in tax credits?
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How much did they receive in transfers?
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And when all the dust settles, ask the question, how much did
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they actually pay? Right.
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So things like deductions and exemptions and write offs are
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not part of this. We've all that's done.
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What did they actually pay? And the numbers here, James, are
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astounding, and they become more astounding every year.
4:56
Well, and I remember, I remember when we wrote about this a bunch
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of years ago, it 60% of the American population were net
5:06
takers from the government. Yes, yes.
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So the numbers, the latest numbers are the bottom, bottom
5:13
20% of households by income are taxed at an effective rate of
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-115%, negative 115%. So they end up more than more
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than twice as better off as they were prior to the whole tax and
5:31
transfer thing. When you're done.
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Yeah, I don't begrudge any of that.
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This is part of what we do to help the poor.
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Fine. But let's let's admit what's
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going on here, that they've got an effective negative tax rate
5:44
of 115%. The next 20% up that quintile of
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households are, and I should have written it down, I believe
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it's -10% roughly. And then you get to the middle
5:56
class, their effective tax rate is 0.
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And to to all of you who are in the middle class saying that's
6:03
not right, I pay taxes. Yes, you do pay taxes and then
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you receive tax credits and some of you receive transfers and
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when we do the math, the average of you is paying 0.
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Federal How do I get? How do I get?
6:19
More tax credits and transfers, that's the question that we got
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to get into here. Oh, that boat sailed for you.
6:25
You need more kids. Oh, right, those little tax
6:30
deductions that I got every single.
6:32
Year, that's right. Yeah.
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And I could tell you having kids, I felt you know every one
6:39
of them as they reached age 18. Boy age 18 was tough.
6:42
I remember my my middle child was born on December 21st.
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I referred to as daddy's little tax deduction but also Ant
6:52
interest on your mortgage deductible.
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But that this isn't exactly me getting money in my pocket.
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This is me paying less than by way of tax.
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Right. How?
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How did the middle class get transfers?
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Social Security counts as part of this.
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There's also depending on where you are in in the middle class.
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The middle 20% is a wide range. Depending on where you are in
7:16
there and how many people in your household, you may actually
7:19
be qualified for some income assistance.
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Wow, middle class. Well, yeah, with lots of
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footnotes, but. Yes, lots of footnotes.
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Yeah, I, I get it. So we're probably still at
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around 60% who are net takers. Yeah, you're around 60% who are
7:37
receiving more from the federal government.
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They're paying in. And then you get to the top 1%.
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And that's the reason I bring that up is because that's what
7:44
people point to when they say, well, let's raise the taxes on
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the rich. The top 1% are paying an
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effective rate of 30%. Yeah.
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And and this. Is way more than everybody else.
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Way more than everybody else is. This is where we have to be very
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careful because of all of those groups, it's the top 1% that
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have the most mobility, the most ability to hire the lawyers and
8:10
accountants and get around these things.
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So my point here is you want to raise taxes, There's not much
8:16
more you can squeeze out of the top 1%.
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However, think about the middle class.
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Now we don't make as much as the top 1%, but we way outnumber
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them and we're currently being taxed at a net.
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Of 0 that's right look if if you're looking to solve a
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nationwide financial problem, the only place you can look is
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the middle class. Nothing else makes any sense and
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and once you sit down and just look at the numbers, it's it's
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not advanced math, it's basic math it's like third grade math.
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You can look at it and say, well, there is no more to take
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from A. Now we have to move down to B,
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right? And B is the middle class.
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And sorry, sorry to people who. Are listening to this and
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saying, well, what about those corporations?
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We should tax them. And let me remind you that
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corporations don't pay taxes. They collect taxes.
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And those taxes are ultimately paid either by the corporation's
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investors who actually are going to include a lot of Americans.
9:27
Anyone who has stock in a four O 1K or an IRA, it's going to be
9:32
paid by the corporation's customers in the form of higher
9:35
prices. That's going to be paid by the
9:37
corporation's employees in the form of reduced wages.
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The corporation simply collects the tax.
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It's the people who pay it. In an honest system, we would
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have a corporate tax rate of 0%. Yeah, yeah.
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And we would just pay everything on the income side.
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And this is the thing that. Because that makes it
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transparent. And it makes me so mad about
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corporate taxes. The They're the perfect vehicle
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for politicians to raise taxes on the people without appearing
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to raise taxes on the people. In fact, the people cheer and
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say, yeah, put it to the corporation.
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That's right. Not realizing that they, the
10:14
voters themselves, are the ones who are going to end up paying.
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It's it's literally the same thing as the tariffs, yes.
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Right, right. You, you will.
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Pay it in the end, because that's how this works, right?
10:28
You raise taxes, people pay those taxes.
10:31
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Subscribe to Civil for $5 a month or $50.00 for an annual
11:22
subscription. I've come to the conclusion, you
11:25
know, is someone who listens to this and says, OK, well, Davies
11:28
is saying there's we can't cut spending.
11:31
There's not enough spending to cut to make a difference and we
11:33
can't raise taxes because really that's going to be raising on
11:36
ultimately the middle class. What do you do?
11:40
I've come to the conclusion that something you and I wrote about
11:43
years ago is we wrote about it as a possible solution.
11:48
I've come to the conclusion that is the only solution.
11:51
And that is you've got to freeze the government.
11:54
You can't cut the spending, you can't raise the taxes.
11:57
So you're free. You hold the government in
11:59
stasis, no cost increases. Whatever the government spent
12:03
this year, that's as much as it can spend next year and the year
12:06
after that and the year after that.
12:08
And you hold it there for about 10 years.
12:11
And in doing so, the economy catches up.
12:14
And when the economy catches up, as it catches up, it starts
12:17
generating more and more tax revenue.
12:19
And about 5 to 10 years down the road, you'll have your first
12:23
balanced budget. Imagine that.
12:26
It's never going to happen, but imagine that.
12:28
And I'm sorry, but that's a weird thing.
12:29
It's never going to happen, and yet that's the only solution
12:32
that's. Right.
12:33
But it's never never going to happen.
12:34
So I want to get us to something that's actually a lot more
12:37
hopeful. 5 people. In England, Who?
12:43
Have a disease called dry age-related macular
12:48
degeneration. AMD who are who are blinded by
12:53
it have received an implant directly onto their eyeballs of
12:59
a microchip and they can see again.
13:03
Yeah, yeah. This form of blindness has been
13:06
cured. That's remarkable.
13:09
Yeah, with a. How about that?
13:11
That is so cool. How about that?
13:13
We actually have, finally. Gotten to the level.
13:16
Of the bionic eye. Mm.
13:17
Hmm, right. And and how soon now before they
13:21
fine tune those microchips to get us all better vision?
13:25
Right. Can I see like Ted Williams?
13:28
Ted Williams had 2040 vision or or?
13:34
Yeah, his vision was twice as good as everybody else's.
13:37
I can never remember which of the good.
13:39
Numbers comes first. Can I get that 'cause I can
13:44
barely read a book now without, well, I can't read a book now
13:49
without eye, without eyeglasses? Oh, you get infrared or the
13:53
night vision? Oh man, I'd love night vision.
13:55
That'd be really cool. And how soon before this becomes
14:01
ubiquitous? I I I understand it's only for
14:05
one thing, one disease, but 250 people in the UK have that
14:10
disease and 5 million people worldwide have that disease.
14:14
This is a big deal that those people, 5 million people, do not
14:20
have to go blind now. Right.
14:23
Well, how about that? That's just fantastic.
14:27
This is why I so often like talking about medical and
14:31
scientific news instead of political things, because there
14:36
are these wonders that come up and and hey, you know, all those
14:40
people say, what did I never cure anything up yours?
14:43
Look what they just did. People are trying to cure things
14:47
everyday. I know people with this and, and
14:51
the interesting thing is there are, there are drugs that will
14:55
hold it at Bay, won't cure it, but it'll hold it at Bay.
14:59
But with the way technology is going, that's all you have to
15:02
do, hold it at Bay because 10 years from now they'll be some
15:06
new wonderful thing that does like they're describing.
15:10
That you'll be able to afford. Right.
15:12
Yes, Yeah, right. Right.
15:13
It's it's not only that it's going to be out there.
15:17
You'll be able to have it. Yep.
15:20
Right. And ain't that something.
15:21
And. And from the incredible to the
15:25
ridiculous, it's time for the foolishness of the weekend.
15:29
I've already given you a hint. Deep.
15:31
Do you have any idea who the big winner is this week?
15:33
No, because you mentioned it so long ago I can't remember what
15:37
it was. Yeah.
15:38
You're an old man. You can't.
15:39
You can't remember. Anything.
15:40
No, it's not that old. I have to.
15:41
I should tell. We should tell our listeners
15:43
that we're recording this on the day that a third of the Internet
15:46
went down. Yeah.
15:48
So we spent we spent an hour and a half trying to record, trying
15:53
and failing to record an episode.
15:55
And moved. Over to various platforms before
15:57
we finally got this going. So no, I have no idea what you
16:00
were talking about. We, we've been at this for some
16:03
hours today to to give give you nice people the entertainment
16:07
that we can give you, which probably isn't nearly as good as
16:10
many of your other options. But hey, man, here we are
16:12
together. The the foolishness of the week.
16:15
And I think this is a first goes to Carolyn Levitt, the press
16:19
secretary for Donald Trump, who when asked why, who decided that
16:24
a meeting was going to be held in Hungary, got irked by the
16:30
question who who was sent via text, by the way.
16:34
And she responded. Your mom.
16:38
I'm sorry, it's just so ridiculous.
16:41
Our government has become. Secretary, our government.
16:44
Has become so classless that your mother jokes are part of
16:48
the public process now. And, and I can tell you that I
16:52
remember a day, and you do too, when if a press secretary had
16:56
said that he would have been fired immediately.
16:58
Oh yeah, yeah. Immediately, no questions asked,
17:04
whoever was man, woman or child, but out of that office before,
17:10
before ass hit chair. And this time we all just kind
17:15
of guffaw and move on like it, like it's no big deal.
17:19
And this is, you know, one could argue with Trump's policies.
17:26
I don't even think you need to go there.
17:28
The thing that I think he has done to damage the presidency
17:32
more than anything else is to make it banal.
17:37
He's just, he's, he's brought a level of, of what's the right
17:41
word? Crassness.
17:44
Crassness. It's unbecoming of it's
17:49
unbecoming of people in a regular day-to-day business, let
17:53
alone the president of the United States.
17:55
So. The leader of the free world.
17:58
Yeah. Well, here we are.
18:02
Everybody's crass all the time now.
18:04
Somebody told me recently I didn't see it if indeed it's
18:08
true, but somebody told me that he created an AI video of him in
18:16
a plane flying over the No Kings protesters dropping poop on
18:21
them. Poo.
18:22
Yes, that's right, Poo. The president and the United
18:26
States make that video. I'm.
18:28
I'm pretty sure he didn't make the video.
18:30
I don't think he's got the wherewithal to do it.
18:32
But he told somebody to make it for him, and that person did
18:35
that, and then he took it and he released it.
18:38
Yeah. Tell me, Can you imagine Ronald
18:41
Reagan doing such a thing? Oh my God.
18:43
How about Jimmy Carter? Let's go both.
18:45
Let's do a both sides example. You think either of those guys
18:50
would have done this? How about George W Bush or
18:53
Barack Obama, You know, No, no, no.
18:56
And, and Trump does it, and the masses applaud.
19:01
His followers think it's the greatest thing ever because he's
19:04
exactly as crass as they are. What comes next?
19:09
I don't know, President, how do you restore, or does he even try
19:13
to restore dignity to the office?
19:15
I, I don't, I don't know. And, and more to that point, and
19:19
I don't know what's going to come tomorrow, let alone in five
19:23
years, because we seem to reach a new depth pretty often.
19:28
And you're just standard human decency is out the window
19:32
because this gives tremendous license to people to behave
19:35
badly and they take it. But it's only the foolishness of
19:41
the week. It's not the end of the world.
19:43
We're now supposed to talk about the episode.
19:46
Your mother, your other? I don't know.
19:49
That doesn't. That just doesn't sound right.
19:52
I wanted to try it and see if it was offensive.
19:55
It kind of is, but it isn't really.
19:57
I I don't know. I want to hit on some listener
20:01
e-mail, Jessica Sims Bowen wrote us following our episode on
20:07
Social Security. And Jessica, we've known Jessica
20:11
for for a number of years. She's a teacher and she's
20:14
talking about teachers here, she says.
20:15
Municipal workers, including teachers.
20:17
She and I went to a Red Sox game together.
20:19
Can you imagine that? Oh, did you really?
20:22
Fenway Park. It was one of the all time great
20:24
days. Huh.
20:26
She says municipal workers and including teachers who are on
20:29
state, I'll say pseudo Social Security systems that is there
20:35
there are instances in which people are exempt from Social
20:39
Security, but you've got to be on a roughly equivalent system.
20:44
Typically these are at the state level.
20:46
We talked about Kentucky teachers who have their own in
20:49
state system that is like Social Security, but it's run by
20:53
Kentucky. Jessica says municipal workers,
20:57
including teachers who are on these systems face problems if
21:01
they change careers or move out of state, which had never
21:04
occurred to me till she said this.
21:06
Their money doesn't follow them. How about, she says, if I wanted
21:10
to switch to a private sector job, I can't roll my teacher
21:14
pension payments into a private fund or even into Social
21:19
Security itself. It's just lost.
21:21
And remember, there's this rule with Social Security that you're
21:26
not eligible for benefits unless you've paid in for, is it 10-10
21:31
years? They measure in quarters, maybe
21:34
it's 40 quarters or something, but you have to have paid in for
21:37
a number of years before you become eligible.
21:39
So imagine that you're a teacher on one of these state-run
21:43
systems and you're, let's say five years from retirement.
21:47
You're stuck. You can't leave and move on to a
21:50
job that's in the Social Security system because not only
21:54
will you be giving up the retirement from the state
21:57
system, but you'll never become eligible for Social Security
22:01
because you won't have enough of a job history.
22:03
Yeah, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
22:05
Yeah, that's, that's astounding. I had not considered that in in
22:09
a way, I guess it's if you want to say beneficial, it's
22:13
beneficial for the state governments in that they have a
22:17
a pool of essentially captive workers.
22:21
The workers can't. Yeah, yeah.
22:23
You hate to look at things like that, though, right now that
22:25
that's really awful. And look, anytime you devise a
22:29
large system or a bunch of large systems, certain human beings
22:34
are always going to fall through the cracks.
22:36
That's just simply going to happen.
22:38
You can't be specific enough in the rules to cover everybody
22:42
exactly the way you want. And how do you know this is
22:45
going to happen? Every time Congress gets a a
22:48
crazy idea and says, yes, we will do this, it then next
22:52
creates a massive bureaucracy to make it so.
22:56
And if you've been to the Department of Motor Vehicles in
22:58
your home state, you know what a massive bureaucracy looks like
23:01
at the end of the of the chain, because that's what you're
23:05
dealing with. You're dealing with a
23:06
bureaucracy, yeah, and there are rules.
23:09
And if you show up with every document you need, you can
23:12
proceed to rule #2 if not, you have to go home and get the
23:14
documents you need. And on and on and on.
23:17
The madding thing about the bureaus, I shouldn't say
23:20
Madding. The dangerous thing about that
23:23
bureaucracy that you describe is that it creates its own
23:28
constituency. That is, the people who work in
23:31
the bureaucracy now have an incentive for the bureaucracy to
23:34
continue. And hope and to grow.
23:36
Band and to grow. Now, if that bureaucracy is, for
23:42
example, serving the poor, all of a sudden you've set up a
23:46
system in which the people who work there have an economic
23:51
interest in poverty remaining a problem because if it's ever
23:55
solved, the bureaucracy is now out of out of work.
23:59
That's right. This is the March of Dimes
24:01
problem, right? Against muscular dystrophy.
24:05
And people used to leave a dime in this placard that was kept
24:09
near every cash register in every store, and the hope was
24:13
that by these little tiny donations of $0.10, enough money
24:17
would be raised. It was muscular dystrophy,
24:20
wasn't it? I believe that March of Dimes,
24:22
yeah. Muscular dystrophy, yeah.
24:24
And and then they achieved their goal.
24:28
What do you do now? Well, nothing.
24:32
Apparently Mothers against Drunk Driving had a completely
24:35
different answer. They they lobbied hard for years
24:39
to get the the blood alcohol rate to a uniform point O 8%
24:44
nationwide and that and they said once that happened, they
24:49
drunk driving fatalities would decrease.
24:52
They actually pulled it off. It was a long shot, but they
24:56
pulled it off and lo and behold, traffic fatalities due to drunk
25:01
driving went down. How about that?
25:04
But Mothers Against Drunk Driving didn't disband having
25:09
achieved their goal, they just picked newer, new goals.
25:12
Right. Now it's got to be a lower
25:15
percentage. Now we got to go after pot
25:17
smokers and things like this, right?
25:19
There's always some other group to go get when your job is on
25:23
the line. So 2 bureaucrats, right?
25:26
Their jobs are on the line. If they succeed and there's no
25:29
more of whatever X is, then they're off to go home without a
25:33
job. Yeah.
25:35
And there, there are two things to say here. 1 is that, look,
25:38
you know, here's this organization and it was
25:40
successful in achieving this thing and it's built, it's got
25:44
the infrastructure there. What other good things can we
25:47
do? And that's, granted, I'll give
25:50
all of that. But then there's also this other
25:52
thing that is also true, which is the people involved have a
25:56
direct economic incentive to find something, find anything,
26:00
even if it's not necessarily a good thing.
26:03
I mean, we prefer to be a good thing, but.
26:05
Or they're immediately, or a real thing.
26:09
Or it doesn't even have to be a real thing.
26:11
Well, an example is a lot of, I won't say all, but a lot of the
26:16
racial quote, UN quote problems that that you hear about at
26:21
their root aren't necessarily always racial problems so much
26:25
as something that has been fomented by people who have an
26:29
economic incentive for racial problems to persist.
26:33
That's right. It's the civil rights industry,
26:36
not the civil rights movement, right?
26:39
We we have race hustlers all over the place whose only goal
26:43
is to foment difficulty between people because when there is
26:49
that difficulty, they can capitalize on it.
26:52
And you can tell them over time, if nothing else, because they'll
26:56
be the the people who are front and center in the cameras when
27:02
someone has has raised an accusation that something bad
27:06
has happened to me and so forth. But when?
27:09
Not always. But when it does happen that the
27:12
accusation is proved false, so the person recants that person
27:16
who was in front of the cameras? Nowhere.
27:17
To be never to be found, never to be found again.
27:20
And, and you know, I'll go maybe even a step further or half a
27:24
step further. But when the shakedown happens,
27:29
right when, when a corporation is found guilty of being
27:33
insufficiently sympathetic to whatever 'cause we're looking at
27:38
and somebody says, therefore you must fund the following
27:41
initiatives, right? That, that, that person right
27:45
there, there's your problem. I This is nearly 100% true.
27:52
You know, as you're talking about this, it's reminding me of
27:54
when I was a kid. There's the big thing that I
27:59
remember was all of the species that were going extinct.
28:03
And then the the. Nonprofits that we're working to
28:06
get species on get the Endangered Species Act passed
28:09
and then getting species put on the endangered species list and
28:12
all that stuff. And in all kinds of of, of push
28:17
toward that. And it became very hard to get
28:20
the species off the list subsequently because again,
28:24
there's an incentive to keep as many on there as you can because
28:26
you stay in business. Right.
28:28
And and what's the best way to keep a species alive?
28:31
Serve it for dinner. It is.
28:33
Yeah, it isn't. People don't want to hear that.
28:36
But there's no there is no shortage of cows, right?
28:41
Cows don't become endangered because it's in everybody's
28:44
interest to take care of the cows.
28:47
So if you wanted to save the spotted owl, you should have got
28:51
it on the drive through menu at McDonald's.
28:54
Spotted owl everywhere. James and I are delighted to be
28:58
working with Civil. For years we have been pushing
29:01
people to think about how we can make the world a better place.
29:05
Civil's mission of upgrading society fits exactly with what
29:08
James and I have been talking about for years.
29:11
Civil helps us by allowing us to do what we do best, which is
29:15
researching topics that are important and communicating
29:18
these to our listeners in a way that we hope they find
29:22
enjoyable. To see Civil's extensive list of
29:24
content, including our podcast Words Numbers and our new
29:28
lecture series, Words and Numbers Live, visit civil.com.
29:32
That's civl.com. There are all these resources
29:36
out there, you know, some of the mineral resources, some of them
29:39
animals, some of the air, what have you, All these things out
29:42
there that humans use. Humans have an incentive to use
29:47
the resources. It doesn't matter whether, you
29:51
know, you outlaw the use of the thing or you put it on the
29:54
endangered species. We still have an incentive to
29:56
use it. Now you're trying to balance the
29:58
incentive with, you know, punishment on the other end, but
30:02
you haven't. What you have not done is to
30:05
give the human an incentive to husband the resource.
30:09
Yep, carrots, not sticks. Yeah, what does give the human
30:13
the incentive to husband the resource is if he can make a
30:16
profit at it. Yep, and.
30:19
A beautiful example our friend Howie Beacher writes about in
30:22
his book Free Our Markets, which I highly recommend.
30:26
I do too. Looks, he looks at Zimbabwe and
30:30
Zaire in Africa. And this was back at the, I want
30:33
to say 80s to 90s, but it's like a 2030 year period.
30:37
And he's looking at these two countries specifically because
30:40
at the same time, one of them outlawed the trade in ivory and
30:45
the other one didn't. And of course, the the problem
30:48
at the time was poachers were, were killing the elephants and
30:51
cutting off their tusks and all this thing.
30:53
And, and if you move forward 20 years and look at these two
30:58
countries, you would think the knee jerk is, well, the country
31:01
that outlawed the trade in ivory, they protected their
31:04
elephant population. So they got more elephants.
31:07
And the other one that didn't, well, then, you know, people
31:09
just killed off the elephants that don't have any elephants.
31:12
It was actually the reverse, that the elephant population in
31:16
the country that outlawed the trade in ivory, their elephant
31:20
population is decimated. The other one, the country that
31:23
said, yeah, it's fine, go ahead and trade in ivory, their
31:25
elephant population flourished. Why?
31:28
Because in both countries, people had an incentive to
31:32
harvest the elephants, but only in one did they have an
31:35
incentive to husband them, to grow them, to raise them, to
31:39
protect them. It it's interesting when you
31:41
think it through, right? It it doesn't quite sound right,
31:45
but the minute you hear the explanation it makes perfect
31:48
sense. Yeah, well, I, I used to tell my
31:50
students every year about the Christmas tree.
31:53
I said, look, what do we do in 150,000,200 million households
31:57
in the US? And every year, Christmas time,
32:00
each one goes out and cuts down a tree and we put in the living
32:02
room, we sing gleeful songs to it, and then two weeks later we
32:06
throw it in the garbage. And that's a seems to be a
32:10
recipe for massive deforestation.
32:12
And yet there's no shores of Christmas trees.
32:14
Why? Because everybody wants to do
32:16
that. So if I've got 5 acres of land,
32:18
you can bet I'm going to go plant Christmas trees.
32:23
I'll come down no plant more the next year.
32:26
And I live in the desert and I know where to go buy a Christmas
32:30
tree in December. They sell them even here, right
32:34
where no Christmas trees can possibly grow.
32:37
And there's never a shortage for exactly the reason you say,
32:43
because it's in somebody's interest after cutting one down
32:46
to plant five more. Yes, right, right.
32:50
It's always that second step. Poachers don't have a second
32:54
step. Entrepreneurs have a second
32:56
step. And that's an interesting thing
32:59
going back to this story of of Zaire in Zimbabwe in and I
33:03
forget which countries which, but in the country that outlawed
33:07
the trade in ivory, what would happen?
33:09
Just, you know, of course, the things outlawed, but there are
33:12
people still trying to get the ivory.
33:14
The poachers will come in the dead of night.
33:16
They kill the elephant chainsaw, cut off its tusks and get out of
33:20
there, leaving, you know the 98% of the animal there to rot in
33:27
the other country that allowed it.
33:29
What did they do? They didn't just, you know, the
33:32
village would own a bunch of elephants and you keep them.
33:36
However one manages to keep elephants and they would not
33:40
just not kill them, but specifically kill the older
33:44
males that you know they're no longer, they're not going to
33:47
breed or what have you. And not just kill them, but to
33:50
sell safari rights. So rich Westerners, for $50,000,
33:55
you come in, you can kill an elephant with the elephant gun.
33:58
Not any elephant, the one they specifically say, right.
34:01
So we got your $50,000. What are we going to do with
34:03
$50,000? We invested in raising the
34:05
elephants, making sure they're healthy and well fed.
34:08
Oh, and the elephant that was killed, OK, fine.
34:10
Did the guy who killed it, he can take the tusks, that kind of
34:13
a thing. But the meat will harvest that
34:16
and we'll sell it. We'll feed people.
34:18
And all of a sudden you can see the resources being well used
34:22
versus the other country where it's just hack off what you want
34:24
and get out of there. Get get out there.
34:27
An entrepreneur always has more to do with the materials in
34:31
front of him. Yeah.
34:33
Right. You're never in and out quickly.
34:35
You're in and you do the first thing, then you do the second
34:39
thing, then you do the third thing until you've exploited all
34:42
the resources you can possibly exploit.
34:45
Then you move on to your next thing.
34:47
Yeah, Why? Because you're earning a profit
34:49
doing this. The profit incentive causes you
34:52
to husband the resource. And notice I used the word
34:55
exploit in a positive. Way right, right.
34:58
This is. Not a negative, right?
35:01
We all exploit resources every day in our own lives, and I wish
35:05
I could exploit more. Well, I had another listener
35:09
question news from our friend Chris Wilcox, but you stole it
35:12
from me and used it in the previous episode, so I have
35:15
nothing else. Tough on Chris Wilcox, I guess,
35:18
right? Chris is a good friend and I'm
35:22
happy to to say his name repeatedly here on on the show.
35:27
I don't know. Is there anything else to talk
35:29
about this week? We're talking about bombing or
35:34
infiltrating or attacking Venezuela.
35:38
That's good fun. Something happened that bothers
35:42
me that I had mentioned earlier that 1/3 of the Internet went
35:47
down today from from the little bit that I read, of course, it's
35:52
preliminary stuff. It was a data center here in
35:57
Northern Virginia that some DNS setting got screwed up on it,
36:01
what have you. Yeah, but.
36:04
Something very simple. But so many of the things that I
36:09
had to do today got waylaid because of that.
36:14
And what went through my mind is what happens when we have
36:18
something at the level of COVID. And I don't mean like a
36:23
communicable disease, but I mean what happens when something
36:26
happens to the Internet that has that magnitude of impact, you
36:31
know? It it's interesting yet because
36:34
people talk all the time, there's, there's always a lot of
36:37
tough talk and nonsense about how when society collapses, I'm
36:43
ready, right? You've met these people.
36:46
You most certainly are not. Nobody's ready for that.
36:49
Nobody's ready for that. If you think you want that,
36:53
you're an idiot. Nobody should want that.
36:56
That's crazy talk. And we would get just a little
36:59
tiny glimpse of it. Imagine if the Internet
37:03
disappeared for a week. For a week, yeah.
37:06
Yeah, the whole thing gone down for a week.
37:10
People would be utterly lost. And then they would be literally
37:14
lost too, right? Because they wouldn't be able to
37:15
get directions anywhere. They wouldn't.
37:17
And nobody knows how to use a map anymore.
37:19
And nobody remembers where anybody lives.
37:21
And they. Wouldn't go anywhere because
37:23
they couldn't read their calendar.
37:25
That's yeah, that's right. Imagine.
37:27
And they couldn't contact. This is the interesting thing.
37:29
Even if if the Internet went down but phone but the phone
37:32
service was still up, they would be able to contact people
37:36
because nobody knows people's phone numbers.
37:39
Yeah, I don't. I could only contact the few
37:41
people who are already on my list.
37:44
No. I mean, look, I talk.
37:46
I talk to you almost daily and have done so for the past 20
37:49
years. I have no idea what your phone
37:51
number is. Nor nor I yours.
37:54
Not a single clue. I barely hear what my own is.
37:58
Yeah, I have to think about it from time to time, but I mean,
38:02
imagine how life would grind to a halt if the Internet something
38:06
that we all just, I mean, you and I are old enough to remember
38:11
when there wasn't one, right? Right there, there, the pre
38:14
Internet days, I think. Is it fair to say that most
38:18
people alive in the United States now don't remember that?
38:22
That's probably fair. Yeah, we're.
38:24
Probably, if not there, we're at a tipping point right about now
38:29
and I, I people would not know how to live without this
38:33
resource. And it's absolutely a resource.
38:37
You think about not just living, but businesses couldn't conduct
38:40
business. Nothing's on paper anymore.
38:44
That's, I mean, how do you, how do you pay the person at
38:46
McDonald's for the burger? How do you pay your mortgage?
38:50
Yeah, but then again, how does the mortgage company know you
38:53
didn't pay your mortgage? Yeah, there's that too.
38:56
Right. Maybe everybody wins, right?
38:58
Except the mortgage company. But the thing that scared scared
39:01
me particularly about this is it was, if the article is to be
39:06
believed, it was one data center here and one thing that was done
39:12
wrong. Yeah.
39:14
And it really underlined how fragile the Internet is
39:17
ultimately. Yeah, it's, it's an ecosystem
39:20
that hasn't built up resilience. And you know, I, I see.
39:25
Survivalists. Building Faraday cages so they
39:28
can have their devices after the crash and but why would you need
39:32
them? There will be nothing to use
39:33
them with there. Will be nothing to connect to,
39:36
right? But this is just a disaster that
39:39
we're we're looking at here. And you know, it made our day
39:43
today very difficult. It, it, it ruined a number of
39:47
things throughout the course of my day.
39:49
And I lived well over 2000 miles away from that.
39:53
And nonetheless, here here I am, irked still about all the grief
39:58
and aggravation I had all day long.
40:01
And it was only 6 hours. Right.
40:05
Right, that six hours is the blink of an eye.
40:07
Imagine a week and and then come back and and tell me that you're
40:12
ready for anything that might hit because wherever you live,
40:17
there's only a three day supply of food there.
40:19
Because there's always only a three day supply of food
40:23
anywhere. Well, good luck to you.
40:27
If everything went down for a week and you had food for three
40:30
days, you're going to be living in a riot before long because
40:35
the mob will figure out who planned ahead.
40:38
Mobs figure that out a lot. And there's an interesting
40:41
bifurcation there. The problem large.
40:44
Having lived in an urban and A and a rural setting, I could
40:49
tell you the problem is not going to be in rural America.
40:51
No problem is going to be in urban America.
40:54
That's right, you don't go out hunting in the middle of the
40:56
city. Well, forget about hunting.
40:58
I mean, people in rural America tend to stock up naturally on
41:02
stuff because that's that's what you do.
41:04
You know, the season for beans comes along.
41:06
You can a bunch of beans. Yep, that's right.
41:10
So one little 6 hour glimpse into how irritating life can
41:14
get. I, I, I would prefer if we
41:17
didn't have any more of this for a very long time.
41:20
Yeah, that would be good. This was really irksome, but
41:23
apparently it's over. We got through this recording.
41:26
Everything's fine. And I'm I'm going to go have
41:29
dinner because I'm getting a little, a little little a little
41:31
cranky. So Ant until, until we meet
41:36
again in in these shallow waters, be nice to each other.
41:42
I I know it's hard. It's hard for me right now too.
41:46
The, the, the anger with the hunger comes hard in me, as you
41:50
might well imagine. And I, I want some fried
41:53
chicken. So I'm going to go eat some
41:54
fried chicken and then we'll be nice to people.
41:57
Catch you next time, man, next time.
41:59
At Words and Numbers we spend a lot of time talking about what's
42:02
going on in the economy and the government, but fundamentally,
42:06
all of this boils down to one thing.
42:08
The greatest threat facing modern society is a lack of
42:12
respect. The people who disagree somehow
42:15
find it difficult, if not impossible, to discuss their
42:18
differences in a civil manner with Civil, are interested in
42:22
upgrading civilization by encouraging people to engage
42:25
with new ideas, and ultimately engage civilly with each other.
42:29
If you share this idea, please join us by subscribing at
42:32
civil.com. That's civl.com.