Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 477: Your Future Self Hates You

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Episode 477: Your Future Self Hates You · Words & Numbers

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Next on words and numbers. The right to know.
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Hyping danger. The likely odds of presidential
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candidates. Republican version.
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And what yoga's got to teach. Economists, all this and more
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coming up on words and numbers, a civil original production.
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Check us out at civil.com. That's C ivl.com.
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Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony and.
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This is words and numbers. Ant, what's new and exciting in
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your world this week? I have a survey that came from a
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a place that I rarely mention, but I use them.
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I'd say 15 to 20% of the data that I get comes from these
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people. It's our world and data.
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And I love those guys. Yeah, they've got all kinds of
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interesting things there, but they've done a survey asking.
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It's a comparison. On the one hand, what are the
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things that Americans died of in 20?
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The last year they did was 2023. And they've got them all ranked.
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And there's a whole bunch of these things.
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The ones I'm going to look at are heart disease, cancer,
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suicide, drug overdose, homicide and terrorism.
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So these things and what's the in effect, what's the
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probability of dying from each of these things?
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And then they survey major news outlets and count the number of
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times that these things show U in the news.
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And you know, they show them here side by side.
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And what you can do is I created what I think of as a hype index,
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which is comparing the frequency with which the thing appears in
1:48
the news to the probability of it killing you.
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So a hype index of 1 is The thing is appearing as with the
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same frequency that it is a danger.
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Any hype frequency below 1, the thing isn't getting enough
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press. Anything above 1 is getting too
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much press relative to a danger. I'm just going to say before you
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get started that it's a it's a crime that you did not include
2:16
shark attack. Shark attack is interesting.
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I've said this before on Words and Numbers that the probability
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of you being bitten by a New Yorker is greater than the
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probability of you being bitten by a shark.
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Anybody, anybody who's been to New York knows that to be true.
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Yeah. I've heard it said that it's
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you're more likely to be struck by lightning or even win the
2:39
lottery than you are to be bitten by a shark or what
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killed. There's all.
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There's all kinds of interesting things when it comes to
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statistics like this that reveals how people don't behave
2:50
rationally. I'll give you an example.
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A company I'm aware of has a rule that they're not more than
3:00
one of senior management can travel on a on the same plane.
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That's the idea of being of course, that if it's a bunch of
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them plane goes down, you've lost, you know, some core
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competency. However, they have no such rule
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for them driving together in a car.
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But the probability of them dying in the car accident is way
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higher than the probability of dying in the plane.
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Accident it. It's always funny when we start
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shaking our heads at the same moment, right?
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You, you, you just know that that it's a stupid, stupid thing
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when we both start shaking our heads like this.
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Anyway, sorry to interrupt. Well, our thing but.
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Yeah, along those lines, because I, I really got annoyed at this.
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I, I don't know if I mentioned this to you a few weeks ago, but
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the, the church that I'm a member of here, they decided
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that they wanted to have a active shooter drill to help
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protect people from active shooters.
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And I said, well, hang on a second, you don't have a safe
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driving course to protect people from when they're on the roads.
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And I, I said it as a comparison for them to say, oh, we don't
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have that. So clearly we shouldn't have
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this, the active shooter thing. Their response?
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Both there. They're going to have both now.
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Yeah, now they're doing both. It's astounding.
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Next, next time, aunt, what you need to do is, is say, do we
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have a drill for flood 'cause the church could become flooded
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and we might all drown. Then we have fire drills because
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the church could clearly burn down.
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Many have and and on and on and on until you make it so asinine
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that they just cancel all of them.
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Right. Or, with my luck, they would
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institute. All of them have, but yeah, but
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let. Me go back to this.
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Were it me, I'd be looking for a new church, but I'm just
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throwing that up. Let me go back to this data and
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we'll put the chart. And what you see in this chart
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is all the various things that can kill you.
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The probability of it's not the probability of dying from the
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thing, it's the fraction of Americans who died from the
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thing. So let me start off with heart
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disease. Heart disease is 29%.
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So it's not there's a 29% chance of you dying of heart disease.
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Course that varies for all kinds of things.
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It's 29% of people who died in 2023 died of heart disease.
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Now, if heart disease got press coverage that was proportional
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to the chance of you dying from this thing, then roughly 29% of
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things mentioned in the news would involve heart disease, and
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in fact only 2.5% did. So.
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Heart disease is getting 110th of the coverage that it should
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be getting. Well.
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Cancer is getting 2/10 of the coverage that it should be
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getting. Suicide comes a little bit
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closer. 2.1% of Americans who died in 2023 died of suicide,
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and suicide got 3.7% of coverage in the media.
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So suicide's getting almost twice as much coverage as it
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should given the frequency with which it occurs.
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The list goes on and on. Homicide, which you and I have
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talked about a lot. Americans fixation with
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homicide. Of course, the fixation is
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understandable because what do we do with our spare time?
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We watch movies and television and it's always about homicide,
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right? So we have this this overblown
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view of how how common this is. In the US, 20238 tenths of a
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percent of people who died, died of homicide versus 47% news
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coverage. So homicide is being covered at
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almost 60 times the rate that it should be covered in the media
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60. Times or or it slowed down if
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it's covered 60 times the rate it occurs right when you use the
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word should. There I I bristle.
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Well, OK, so when I say should, what I mean is if if we were to
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give it the same level of coverage that is commensurate
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with its level of threat. But it it's fascinating and it's
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scary. So of course it's going to lead
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the news every time it happens, the same way that a bridge
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collapse is going to lead the news every time it happens.
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And we're never going to cover all the bridges that didn't
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collapse. Right, right.
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But what happens is the thing creates a feedback loop that as
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the media covers it more, people think it's a greater threat.
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And so the media has even greater incentive to cover it
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even more. The big extreme here is
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terrorism. One, one thousandth of 1% of
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Americans who died in 2023 died of terrorism.
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One, one thousandth of 1%. That number is probably inflated
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due to definition. Yes, it's probably inflated
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given how we define it, right, right.
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But none the less, that's the official number, 11 thousandth
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of 1%, fourteen percent coverage.
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So we're covering in the media terrorism 14,000 times the rate
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at which you would expect us to cover it given the actual threat
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level. Yeah, and and you've just
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happened upon another explanation of what we've been
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saying for years. If it bleeds, it leads.
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Yeah, and, and I understand that the what makes me sad is I
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encounter so many people usually when I'm talking about something
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has to do with the economy usually went something like how
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much taxes the rich pay or inequality or poverty or
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whatever it is. And people just blurt out as
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truth, well, the following is the case, and they're completely
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wrong. They're completely wrong in
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large part because of this thing.
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What leads in the news? Billionaires and the poor and
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inequality. And you come away with an
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outsized view of what's actually going on.
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It happens, it's always happened and it always will happen, and
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the best we can do is caution people never to be taken in by
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it. Yeah, just be aware, be aware
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that it's out. There when when you click on the
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news, understand that you're seeing outlying events, you're
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not seeing what daily life looks like anywhere, and you can go to
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other countries and kind of walk around in residential
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neighborhoods. I do this all the time just to
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kind of get a sense of what life is like.
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The smells, the sounds, the regular stuff and regular life
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everywhere is largely the same. And outlying events everywhere
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are largely outlying events. Everybody's terrified of them.
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Nobody should be. It's like the shark attack
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thing. Should you be deeply concerned
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that you're going to be bitten by a shark?
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Well, no, unless you fall off a boat and shark infested waters.
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If you're on the. I remember when Jaws came out.
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Or was it back in 77 I was just a boy and and nobody wanted to
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go to the beach. As if a a great white shark
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might be in the waters off of the New England coast.
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No, no self respecting shark would be found in waters that
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cold. I mean it it, it's ridiculous.
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It was a great movie. It terrified everyone but the
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terror lasted and was real. People didn't go to what didn't
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want to go to the beach for years afterwards.
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I think it got hook until Jaws 3D when they finally made it.
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Not terrifying. We're happy to announce that
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Subscribe to Civil for $5 a month or $50.00 for an annual
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subscription. Anyway, I want to bring us to
11:46
the great state of Ohio, a state that we almost never talk about,
11:51
right? And Ohio's an important state.
11:54
It's it's got a lot of electoral votes.
11:56
It's had many an outsized number of presidents have come from
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Ohio. And the Ohio legislature right
12:03
now is working on a bill, I think they're calling it the
12:08
Right to Know bill, but it the the right to know language comes
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up a lot. And it's a bill designed to
12:18
offer not mandate, but offer a paternity test at the time a
12:23
child is born. How about how about that?
12:27
And I did a little digging and in no state in the United States
12:31
is a paternity test mandated. Now, we could do this quite
12:35
easily. It's it's not like this is a
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difficult thing at this point. This is an easy test.
12:41
It's a cheap test. It's something we could easily
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do and yet we choose not to. And the numbers on paternity are
12:50
all over the place. It seems to be the case that
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when the father the reported father.
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I don't even know what adjective to use.
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Alleged father, alleged father when the father wants a
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paternity test. The numbers seem to indicate
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that anywhere from 10% to 30% of them are not the father in a
13:16
general population and and understand we don't have
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wholesale studies on this, we just had bits and pieces.
13:23
The correct answer seems to be 1 to 2%, so that that is a very
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real #1 to 2%. But that means that one to 2% of
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everybody you know right now thinks his father is somebody
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that who it isn't. What do you think about that?
13:42
Should we have and preface this, Let me preface this by saying we
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do all kinds of tests on babies at the moment of birth.
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They do a heel stick, they take a little bit of blood out, and
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they do a raft of tests on every newborn baby.
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Why not this one? I can see a reason for not doing
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it. Let me be stronger than that.
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I can see a reason for not even offering it, and that is the
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same reason that it is a bit of a stretch.
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But these are these come from the same family of problems.
14:19
How little white lies smooth social relations.
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I could imagine there are instances in which it would just
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be better that the people themselves would say it would be
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better not to know. Well, I'm going to disagree with
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you in the strongest possible terms because I am for this sort
14:43
of thing 100% of the time. As a rule, I I think
14:48
establishing paternity in a day and age where a simple
14:52
allegation of paternity can put you on the hook for 18 years of
14:57
payments. Or on the other hand, on the
15:00
other hand, if you think your children are your own but they
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are not. Oh my.
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If this hang on offered and and let me say I trust my wife
15:13
implicitly. But if this test were offered,
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I'd say Yep, do it. I I think there's a big
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difference between making the test mandatory if either parent
15:25
requests it versus. Doing it as a matter of course
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when no one has requested it. Yeah, I think if you don't do it
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as a matter of course doesn't really work.
15:36
And I wouldn't imagine some shit.
15:38
Look, look, I'm with you on the concept of little white lies,
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right? There's where were you last
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week? Oh, I I went to the bar with
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Anthony. And then there's the baby is
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yours. And the level of lie here is
15:53
radically different. I've heard stories from older
15:59
generations that there were instances in which you just look
16:05
the other way. Those.
16:07
Work out and and you know, the the, the alleged father raises
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the kid as their own and people know, but they don't talk about
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it and you just move on. This law makes that not
16:19
possible. It takes a takes that option off
16:22
the table. I'm not comfortable with that.
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Well, I I don't think it takes the option off the table at all.
16:28
I just think it affords all parties the truth, and the truth
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should always be the most important thing.
16:38
Yeah, I don't think I agree with you.
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Yeah, no, we don't agree on this.
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At all. Let let me let let me just
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clarify the law, the Ohio law does it as a matter of course.
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It's not that it's offering it, it's no it's doing.
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It it's offering. It it's offering.
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OK, I've got no problem with that.
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I have a problem with them doing it like they do all the other
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tests. I think it doesn't go nearly far
17:03
enough, but we'll see what what this leads to.
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Of course Aunt. This brings us to the ever
17:09
popular Foolishness of the Week. And for the foolishness of the
17:13
week, this this time around I'm off to Polymarket, the betting
17:19
website that aggregates bets on various things to provide
17:27
possibilities, probabilities, if you will.
17:31
And who do you think right this second, the most likely
17:36
Republican nominee for president is, according to Polymarket.
17:41
For 2020282028. It's the obvious.
17:48
Answer. Just go ahead and say it.
17:50
Yeah, I I'd say JD Vance. Yeah, it's absolutely JD Vance
17:54
about 55%. So it, it's not even, it's not
17:58
even a question who's at the top of the list, but it's not who's
18:03
at the top of the list that I'm intrigued by.
18:06
It's the, it's the people down the list I'm intrigued by.
18:10
And you can bet either for or against the following at the
18:17
following rates. Marco Rubio is at 8%.
18:21
You can make $0.92 on the dollar if you if you bet on him and he
18:25
is the nominee. We've got a statistical tie for
18:31
third, but it's not really that much of a tie.
18:35
Donald Trump is third at 5%. Oh oh you got to cash out your
18:44
4O1K and put all the money. Put it, put it on that.
18:48
The the problem is, is you got to wait so long for the payout,
18:53
right? And does Polly Market still
18:55
exist in 2028? I don't know.
18:59
But boy, I want to get some cash on that.
19:02
Yeah. Marjorie Taylor Green is 4th,
19:07
which I predicted in an episode not too long ago that upon her
19:13
sudden retirement from politics that she would somehow get the
19:18
old time religion and decide to make a run for the big office.
19:23
And I think she could actually win it, which is kind of
19:27
shocking. Tucker Carlson comes in next at
19:30
3%. So you can make more on Tucker
19:34
Carlson than you can on Donald Trump if you're betting against.
19:39
Right, right. Right, yeah.
19:41
Or is that right? No, I think if I'm understanding
19:45
correctly, I'd I'd be making what, $0.05 for every dollar?
19:50
I bet on Trump. I get better.
19:51
Get Trump. You can.
19:53
You can buy against for $0.95 with Trump.
19:57
You buy against Marjorie Taylor for 95 point 95.3.
20:04
You bet against Tucker with 96.7.
20:08
So Trump is where the easy money's.
20:11
At Paulie, because he's got hell there.
20:15
He's constitutionally disallowed from running.
20:18
Again, what did you call this, Paulie?
20:20
What? It's Polly market.com, so there.
20:24
You I'm I'm amazed that anyone is offering money on Trump.
20:31
You can. You can buy a bet on anything
20:35
you want. You can bet, I know.
20:38
Anything in the? World, that's a guaranteed loss.
20:42
Yes, it is. Or a guaranteed win depending on
20:46
how you look at things. And look, is it worth a 5%
20:51
return if you have to wait until 2028?
20:56
And of course it's not, of course it isn't.
20:58
But if they still. Yeah, I guess that's 5% over.
21:01
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.
21:03
If they still have those odds in 2027, I'm all in.
21:08
Yeah. So I'm keeping a sharp eye on
21:11
Polly Market. Maybe I just turned you into a
21:14
gambler. Oh, wouldn't that be great if I
21:16
found a? Way to get you.
21:17
Gambling. I have tried to get you gambling
21:19
1000 times. We have been in casinos together
21:22
and you just sit there like an oaf behind me watching me play
21:26
cards. I can't.
21:26
I can't even get you to sit down at a $5 blackjack tape.
21:29
Well, this is interesting. It's something I understand.
21:32
All right, well, you get back to us with your advice on these
21:35
things because between my political knowledge and your
21:38
economic knowledge, we might be able to clean house on
21:41
Polymarket. I'm just saying.
21:43
All right, we'll, we'll put a pin in that and get back to it
21:46
at a future date. This week I wanted the title
21:52
that I as I introduced it was What Yoga Can Teach an Economist
21:55
and. I got a couple ideas what yoga
21:58
can teach me. I, I know, I know people who
22:01
were involved in yoga and the spirituality of yoga.
22:05
And I was talking to some people about this and ran across a
22:12
book, The Yamas and Nyamas, if I'm pronouncing that correctly,
22:17
it basically it's foundational principles for living a
22:21
conscious and moral life. And there's all kinds of things
22:23
that yamas are things, principles, things you shouldn't
22:27
do and the Nyamas are things you should do if you want to think
22:31
about that way. And I'm didn't get into all of
22:33
the business, but the one thing that jumped out at me was the
22:40
ethical restraint titled non stealing, which of course, as a
22:45
free market economist, that's an important thing to me.
22:49
Well, you know then. Under the ancient the ancient
22:51
Jews thought so too, right? Thou Shalt Not Steal made the
22:54
top ten list. Right.
22:56
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except for the Jubilee year,
23:00
where you have to forgive debts and all kinds of.
23:02
Weirdness, not stealing that, that's something very different.
23:05
But we're not going to get into that nonsense now.
23:07
And look, every culture in the world has a prohibition against
23:11
stealing. Right.
23:14
And, and I would imagine the prohibitions arose as a social
23:19
construct that, look, society just runs much more smoothly if
23:25
we're not stealing from each other.
23:27
It turns out to that the economy runs way more smoothly if we're
23:31
not stealing from each other. I'm going to go a step a step
23:34
well beyond that and say that property rights are sown into
23:38
the nature of man that we understand intuitively what is
23:44
mine and what is yours. Yeah, it there's some really
23:47
good philosophy there that I don't think people appreciate.
23:53
They, they too often stop at, well, this is mine, I paid for
23:58
it and so I have rights to it. And it all boils.
24:03
It comes down if you follow the causal chain to you owning your
24:07
life and consequently your labor.
24:11
If if my life is mine and my labor's mine only I can sell it
24:18
and I choose to sell it. And this is the moral answer to
24:23
the problem of slavery. Yeah, right.
24:27
So self ownership negates the legitimacy of slavery.
24:31
So if you if you wave your hand at property rights and say,
24:35
well, we should just take from some and give to others by
24:38
force, which is exactly what socialism is, right?
24:43
Communism if you prefer. But they both they're both the
24:46
same animal in the end. You could even add in Western
24:50
democracies, right who tax at a level that's really quite
24:54
confiscatory. If you can do that, then slavery
25:00
is on the table. Yes, Yeah.
25:03
You've undermined the philosophical principle against
25:06
slavery. Yes.
25:07
That that's right. And people, I think, need to
25:09
realize that when they say nonsense like, let's take it
25:13
from the billionaires. Now we we've jumped a few steps,
25:16
but I want to highlight them because I think it's important.
25:21
If I own myself, I own my labor. I can then sell it if I choose.
25:27
I can go work for somebody and I get payment.
25:30
And that payment then is as much mine as my labor is because I
25:36
willingly gave my labor in exchange for the payment.
25:39
And conversely, if I turn around and I use that money to buy
25:42
something, that thing I bought is mine.
25:46
Because you could even, it came from the money that was mine,
25:49
which came from the labor that was mine.
25:51
And you can even turn around and use the money that you made by
25:54
by your labor to employ other people, right?
25:58
Yes. And then the fruits of their
26:01
labor become yours and the money for their labor becomes theirs.
26:07
This is how a market economy works.
26:09
And as a matter of fact, it's how every economy works.
26:13
And you can mess around with those rules when you want
26:17
politically, but it always comes to no good.
26:20
Now someone's going to say, yeah, but what about the guy who
26:23
steals who, you know, takes the labor?
26:27
Yeah, that's, look, that's slavery if you're taking
26:30
somebody's labor. But if you take their stuff,
26:34
that's one step removed because their stuff is an embodiment of
26:38
their labor. Yeah, I don't even think it's a
26:40
step removed. I think it's the same animal.
26:43
Yeah. And and so that brings us to you
26:45
as you point out this thing of, well, we should just take from
26:48
the rich, you've just violated this principle of self
26:51
ownership. You have and, and there's going
26:54
to be in the end of this conversation somewhere a
26:58
contradiction and, and people will already sense it because if
27:03
taxation is theft, as libertarians love to say, then
27:07
taxation is, you ask, well, and, and what it what is?
27:11
What is it really? And the answer is taxation is
27:13
slavery, which is exactly the argument that the American
27:18
founders made when they broke from Great Britain.
27:20
We're being taxed. People taxed without their
27:23
consent are slaves, right? So consent plays in here.
27:30
Yeah, that's interesting. Is taxed.
27:32
Without their consent, yeah. Now, I, I make the argument that
27:36
taxation with representation or consent is no walk in the park
27:41
either, because the American founders broke away from Great
27:44
Britain over a tax regime of about 3%, right.
27:49
And, and we're being taxed right now generally speaking between
27:54
federal, state and local at about 40%.
27:57
So depending on who you are, yeah.
27:59
Yeah, but but consent is a weird thing.
28:01
People misunderstand consent all the time.
28:04
They say I don't consent to this or I don't consent to that.
28:09
That is irrelevant. You consent to the regime
28:14
itself. You consent to being governed.
28:19
You don't get to have consent over every single thing that
28:23
happens after that initial consent.
28:25
And then the problem of consent is the problem of ongoing
28:29
consent because people can agree it it doesn't happen this way.
28:34
And the the great social contract theorists, Locke,
28:38
Hobbs, Rousseau, Rawls, they all say look this never happened and
28:44
couldn't, but if it did, this is what it would look like.
28:48
All right, fair enough. But consent is an issue.
28:53
It's the chief political issue that people.
28:56
So when you say, when you say we consent to the system, what
29:01
we're consenting to is the set of rules from the Constitution
29:05
down that determine how we go about deciding whether we're
29:09
going to tax, what we're going to tax.
29:10
And so long as that's right, when we consent, we consent to
29:14
that system of rules. Therefore, anything that comes
29:17
out of that system of rules we have consented to, whether we
29:20
like it or not. But it binds you.
29:23
It binds you even if you disagree.
29:25
And the more honest social contract theorists will say even
29:29
if you voted no to the social contract, you're still bound by
29:33
it. Yep.
29:35
Right, because the majority voted for it.
29:38
You stayed now you're bound. The problem becomes with ongoing
29:42
consent. And Jefferson knew this
29:44
Jefferson said that we should have a constitutional convention
29:48
every 20 years and 20 years then and now is largely seen as every
29:54
generation, right. You, you can't bind one
29:57
generation from the follow from the previous generation.
30:01
And as a theoretical concern, I would say Jefferson is exactly
30:05
right. But as a practical political
30:08
matter, if you're having a constitutional convention every
30:11
20 years, you're in for a disaster of a time.
30:15
So we're, we're left with this disconnect at the end where
30:20
whereby we can in fact be taxed 40%.
30:23
Everybody thinks that's a terrible idea, and yet there's
30:27
nothing we can do about it. And, and, and This is why in the
30:31
last few episodes, I've been talking more and more, largely
30:34
because I've been thinking more and more about what it means to
30:38
withdraw consent from the from the regime.
30:41
Right. I think that's a fascinating
30:43
question. Do you have to say, stand up and
30:46
say I am no longer an American and I won't participate in any
30:49
of this nonsense? Well, that'll get you thrown in
30:51
jail because the minute you stop following the laws in any way,
30:56
now you've got a real problem. And, and I think the only ways
31:00
that descent on this order can be demonstrated are by massive
31:07
gigantic demonstrations on the one hand, and I mean, massive
31:11
millions of people all the damn time, which very unlikely to
31:15
happen because people have jobs and lives and they're afraid and
31:18
all this sort of thing or not participating in elections.
31:23
And I just love this idea more every time I think about it.
31:27
I think you can withdraw consent by not participating at all in
31:32
elections. And when the number of non
31:34
participants gets ridiculously high, everybody's going to look
31:39
around and say, you know what? We don't have consent anymore.
31:43
And I think you. Offered you offered.
31:46
The none of the above answer and I like that answer but I like
31:50
everybody just not even showing up even more.
31:53
Yeah, this is the third episode that we've bumped on up against
31:57
this topic. I what bothers me about your
32:02
solution of not participating is I'm left saying, OK, there's a
32:08
bunch of people that that have withdrawn their consent, but So
32:10
what? They're not doing Oh, that's
32:12
right, that's right. And, and the unfortunate reality
32:16
of my my way would be that wing nuts are going to win elections
32:21
more and more and more. And we've seen that happen.
32:25
But but that's already happening, so how much worse can
32:28
we get, right? So I say just stay home, right?
32:33
We're not allowed to. Well, I guess we aren't.
32:36
We, I don't know. Let's just leave what we're
32:38
allowed to do off to the side and do what we're going to do
32:40
anyway. So I say go in and write none of
32:43
the above. Yeah, and and I did a little
32:46
digging or or actually our good friend John Dougal from Utah
32:50
wrote to us with 'cause he is very active lifelong in politics
32:56
at a high level in Utah. And he said that the none of the
32:59
above the write in candidates don't get tallied.
33:04
They don't get tallied. At least that's in Utah.
33:08
My guess is if we did that, if if 10s of millions of people did
33:13
it, states are going to sit up and notice as a yes.
33:17
We didn't tally it but good God it got more votes than anybody
33:21
else. It maybe it needs to appear on
33:23
the ballot. Maybe, maybe I I leave it out
33:26
there as a possibility. I I just like the idea of non
33:29
participation. I like the idea of peaceful,
33:33
restrained protest. James and I are delighted to be
33:38
working with Civil. For years we have been pushing
33:40
people to think about how we can make the world a better place.
33:44
Civil's mission of upgrading society fits exactly with what
33:47
James and I have been talking about for years.
33:50
Civil helps us by allowing us to do what we do best, which is
33:54
researching topics that are important and communicating
33:57
these to our listeners in ways that we hope they find
34:01
enjoyable. To see Civil's extensive list of
34:03
content, including our podcast Words and Numbers and our new
34:07
lecture series, Words and Numbers Live, visit civil.com.
34:10
That's civl.com. Let me go back to this principle
34:15
of nonstealing. So we think about stealing from
34:18
others, but it goes on. It says you don't steal from the
34:23
Earth, which I thought was interesting.
34:26
And there's probably an argument one could make it for as an
34:29
economist about externalities here, that look, you know, with
34:34
when you pollute, you're imposing costs on everybody
34:37
else. That smells a lot like stealing
34:42
from the Earth. Yeah, I don't think so.
34:45
Stealing from the Earth seems to me to be an argument against
34:50
exploiting resources. May be to excess, right?
34:55
But but you and I make the argument all the time that
34:57
resources exist to be exploited, and we're all better off when
35:02
people exploit resources, right? But entrepreneurs, that's what
35:06
they do. They look around, they find
35:08
resources, they exploit them, and as a result, we're all
35:12
richer one way or the next. Yeah, and I think the problem
35:15
here is you and I mean something different than the common person
35:19
who uses the word exploit. What we mean is.
35:23
Is to use, utilize, utilize, probably visualize a.
35:27
Better, Yeah, yeah, I've talked about in the past husbanding
35:33
resources that using them but but also promoting their their
35:38
continued existence. I I remember the looks on young
35:43
people's faces whenever you would use that as a verb.
35:46
Husbanding. It it would befuddle them almost
35:51
immediately and and in today's day and age, you'd be referred
35:55
to as a as a terrible sexist. Of course.
35:58
Why not wife Lord? Why not wife thing?
36:02
Yeah, well, people are ridiculous.
36:04
I mean, what can you do? But I, I, I take the larger
36:08
point, right, that these things should be done with care.
36:13
That seems to be the point, right?
36:14
That if you're going to extract things from the Earth, there's a
36:19
right way and a wrong way to do that.
36:22
Yeah, fair enough. But let me let me get to the one
36:26
that really had me thinking and that is under this title of non
36:32
stealing. Don't steal from your future
36:36
self. We do that every day.
36:38
We do that literally every day. Yeah.
36:41
And that that all of a sudden there was an entire cascade of
36:44
logical interesting things. First in the list, is there in
36:51
the sense of of rights in in let's say, in the sense of
36:56
natural rights? Is there a distinction between
37:00
me today and me 10 years from now such that such that we could
37:08
talk about the Ant today violating the natural rights of
37:13
the Ant that's 10 years from now as if I were two people?
37:17
Well, from the view of natural rights, the answer to that
37:20
question is no, that there are people, that they have natural
37:24
rights, and that's the end of that.
37:27
Now, there there's a much more interesting and nuanced way to
37:31
understand what it means to be a person.
37:34
And you can make, I think, a very plausible case that the you
37:38
in 10 years is literally not the you of right now.
37:43
Yes, right. And this is the very reason we
37:47
leave open the possibility that people convicted of terrible
37:51
crimes can be reformed, right? That they can, yes.
37:56
Reformed isn't the right word. Transformed would be the right
38:01
word and it's certainly not the rule, right?
38:04
Most violent criminals, say, don't see the, the light of, of,
38:09
of, of the angels and become different people, but some do.
38:15
And there's a strong argument it's largely based in Eastern
38:18
philosophy. So if you're delving into yoga
38:21
stuff, right, you're going to be in that zip code there.
38:24
There's this idea that, let me explain it by analogy, that you
38:31
are walking through life and you're, you're carrying under
38:35
your arm a batch of reeds. And as you walk, you pick up new
38:41
reeds and stuff it into your batch.
38:43
But as a result, some of the old reeds fall out.
38:47
And this is almost like a ship of Theseus argument, right?
38:50
If you take away every piece of the ship and replace it, is it
38:54
still the ship of Theseus? And that's an interesting
38:57
question, but applied to the human being, it becomes even
39:01
more interesting, right. You've got things coming in and
39:05
people don't like to admit it, but we have things dropping out.
39:09
And as a result, and this is true, the more, the more
39:12
thoughtful you are, the more true this is.
39:16
Over time, you literally become a different person.
39:21
Yes, now there's there's a core of your essence.
39:25
I don't even know what to call it, right?
39:26
We don't really have a good vocabulary for these things.
39:28
But there is a core of your character that never changes.
39:34
And you've heard me say many, many times, usually when we
39:38
criticize somebody for doing the same stupid thing over and over.
39:41
Looking at you, Bernie Sanders. People born round don't die
39:45
square, right? You are what you are.
39:47
And I think for thoughtless people, that is 100% true.
39:52
They do not change over time unless they have catastrophic
39:55
life events that force it on them.
39:57
Thoughtful people, on the other hand, change constantly because
40:02
they're always thinking about everything, and they change
40:05
their minds about things. If you change your mind about
40:08
one thing, all right, that's something.
40:10
But then you realize that one thing causes you to change your
40:13
mind about another thing, and another, and another, and before
40:16
you know it, you're not thinking the way you once did.
40:20
And what what defines you as a person more than your thought?
40:25
You are what you think. This is Aristotle one O 1,
40:28
right? You habituate your, your
40:31
children to certain things, right?
40:33
You teach them what to think about a batch of things.
40:36
And by the time they reach adulthood, they're on autopilot.
40:40
They don't think about those things anymore.
40:43
And people who were, who were raised poorly, you could spot
40:46
them a mile away. They were not habituated towards
40:49
good outcomes. So all of this becomes very
40:53
complicated. But you see, you see this now
40:57
that I've had my eyes open to it, I look back and I see it
41:00
elsewhere. For example, the instances,
41:03
there aren't many of them, but you do hear it from time to time
41:06
of somebody who committed a heinous crime at when he was 17,
41:13
thrown in jail for life. And now he's 85 and you look at
41:18
him and he's it's not the same person.
41:22
And a threat to no one. And that's a threat to no one.
41:25
And that's the argument that everybody makes when they say,
41:27
well, look, let the guy out. You know, he's yes, he was
41:31
supposed to serve life, but he's not the same.
41:33
We've he's literally a different person than the person we locked
41:37
up all those. Years ago.
41:38
And your use of the word literally here is exactly
41:42
correct we don't use the word literally to mean anything we
41:45
want it to mean it means only what it means right.
41:49
This is literally true. He is a different man now than
41:52
he was when he was 17. But look it it you're asking a
41:59
different question. You're and I don't know how
42:02
you're going to get back to it. You're asking if I can steal
42:05
from my future self and I don't even know what the hell that
42:08
means. I'm going to get there in a
42:10
second. I'm going to go to children
42:12
next. And I argue that this, this may
42:18
be the foundation for the the argument as to why it's OK for
42:27
children not to have the full rights that adults do.
42:31
I claim in light of what we've been discussing, that when you
42:36
put restrictions on a child, what you're doing is protecting
42:41
his future self from his current self's decisions.
42:46
Well, and and in this case his future self might be himself in
42:49
3 minutes. Yeah.
42:51
And it yes, it might be. Yes, yes.
42:54
'Cause when I would grab my children when they were walking
42:56
someplace they shouldn't be walking, was I protecting their
43:00
future self while in any rational understanding I was
43:03
protecting them in the here and now.
43:05
But yeah, 3-3 minutes is the future.
43:09
And when I taught my children that you should work hard and be
43:13
honest, that was protecting their future selves.
43:17
Yes. It was habituating them toward a
43:20
certain kind of life. But notice what happens.
43:25
I'm liking this argument that your future self may be a
43:31
separate person, and if so, has property rights just like your
43:38
present self does. And if.
43:41
So live with the consequences of what your present self did.
43:45
But notice it puts in new light, for example, drug laws.
43:50
Now, libertarians are all about, and I understand and have agreed
43:55
with it largely up until about yesterday when I'm thinking
43:59
about this, that look, there's no, there's no we say there's no
44:02
victim here. Maybe there is.
44:06
Maybe the victim is your future self.
44:08
You've just made the case in favor of a massive nanny steak.
44:12
Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm.
44:14
I'm not liking that it makes that argument, but I'd want to
44:17
follow this where it goes. OK, well, that's where it goes.
44:24
Well, does it really? Because while you can make,
44:28
while it makes the argument in favor of laws that protect my
44:33
future self from my current self, that does not imply that
44:39
we should somehow violate my current self's rights in favor
44:46
of my future self. I mean, there's, there's some
44:48
sort of balance here, right? Right now.
44:50
Now we've got rights and conflict.
44:53
Right. Yes, yes, yes.
44:55
And rights in conflict, that's no bargain, right?
44:58
There's, that's a real problem. It doesn't happen often, right?
45:03
And, and hardcore classical liberals will often say it never
45:09
happens. I'm I'm not quite there, but it
45:12
almost never happens, right? It, it's usually property rights
45:16
disputes, not property rights themselves that that come up in,
45:21
in things like this, but in, in this new consideration, if we
45:26
are to consider people to be different human beings, you're
45:31
going to have rights and conflict all over God's green
45:34
earth. And the difficulty is, is that
45:38
you can never draw any law you draw, any line you draw will be
45:42
arbitrary, right? So what?
45:44
What's so magical about 10 years from now?
45:46
Well, nothing. We're going to, we're going to
45:48
talk about arbitrary lines in our next episode, so I don't
45:51
want to get too deep into this matter, but tomorrow is an
45:57
arbitrary line. But you're going to be almost
46:02
the same tomorrow, if not exactly the same tomorrow as you
46:05
are today. Well I I was drawing parallels
46:08
between this and how we deal with children and this is the
46:12
same problem we have with children.
46:13
Where do you draw the line? It's exactly the same argument,
46:17
exactly the same. And anytime you have an age
46:21
based restriction on anything, which is again what we're going
46:25
to talk about next time, you by definition have an arbitrary
46:29
line because we all say 21. What's so magical about the age
46:35
of 21 and absolutely nothing. But you know what?
46:40
It works. We've used it for a while.
46:44
It doesn't seem to have negative effects, right?
46:47
So when we talk about alcohol consumption or or marijuana
46:52
where it's legal, 21, sure, why not?
46:56
Voting 18? What the hell?
46:59
Why is that not 21? Two.
47:02
Then again, there are people who say why isn't it 16?
47:05
And I think the people who say why isn't it 16 are frankly
47:09
idiots who don't hang out with 16 year olds very much.
47:13
But there's not that much of a difference between 16 and 18.
47:17
Well, it so this is interesting because I'm, I'm looking now for
47:22
parallels in distinguishing between the current self and the
47:26
future self. And where do you draw the line?
47:29
Well, yeah, we do this. Let, let, let, let me, let me
47:32
draw. Something we do draw, we do draw
47:35
a line in a couple of places. For example, the the decisions I
47:39
make today with regard to saving will affect my future self going
47:45
out, you know, all the way fifty 60-70 years.
47:50
And we do. Have laws.
47:52
We have Social Security, for example.
47:54
We have decided we're going to we're going to force you to save
47:57
some money. That's correct.
47:58
And I'm going to give you a counterexample because the
48:01
current you, you right now are encouraged to make decisions for
48:07
future you in the form of a living will.
48:12
Yes, yes. If I can't think clearly and the
48:16
following conditions occur, please pull all the plugs out of
48:20
the wall and let me go. Yep, Yep.
48:23
And that that law works on the assumption that you're a
48:28
different person later and that you have every right right now
48:33
to make decisions for future you, even if future you might
48:38
disagree. Yeah, that you know.
48:40
So we've got, we've got. Some things in the.
48:43
Water here, but I boy I don't know.
48:46
Stealing from future you is a very hard argument to make and.
48:52
Yet I the more I think about it, the more I think we end up
48:57
dealing with it without perhaps even being aware we deal with
49:01
it. Let me go to the other extreme.
49:03
Let me let me talk about alcohol for a moment.
49:06
Sure we don't you know, assuming you're over 21, drinking alcohol
49:12
is not illegal. Now you could say well, but
49:15
you're damaging your future self because you know you get drunk
49:18
and all of this, but we understand the put it put aside,
49:23
you know chronic Alcoholics, somebody who's you know has too
49:27
much one night give yourself a couple days and you're over it.
49:33
You'll be fine. I'll.
49:33
Go you, aunt. I'll go you one better.
49:36
Cigarette smoking, right? Cigarette.
49:39
How many times do you have to hear it?
49:40
Cigarette smoking causes cancer. Hang on a minute.
49:46
That's not exactly right. Cigarette smoking can cause
49:51
cancer. There are lifelong smokers who
49:54
never developed lung cancer. As a matter of fact, the
49:57
majority of them don't. They end up having heart
50:01
problems and all kinds of other issues.
50:03
And I'm not making the case in favor of cigarettes by any
50:06
stretch, but they have been demonized well beyond their
50:09
their their their lethality. But what we have, what we just
50:13
identified, are two sets of examples.
50:16
One set the Social Security in which we have decided.
50:20
That the the. Current self must be his rights
50:24
must be infringed in favor of the future self and the other
50:28
drinking, smoking, where we've decided that no, the current
50:32
self's rights take precedence over the future self.
50:37
So we've got a couple of batches of problems, right, where we say
50:41
it's OK to step in and regulate this kind of problem, but this
50:47
other kind of problem, you just should have behaved better.
50:51
Well, why shouldn't old people have behaved better and saved
50:55
money, right. Well, what's, where's the
50:59
fundamental difference between these two sets of problems?
51:03
And and frankly, I don't see it. Yeah, in the same problem, but,
51:07
but in light of this discussion, I'd say the distance between the
51:11
young person and the old person is so large that clearly they're
51:16
they're separate people. And now we're asking this old
51:18
person to live with the consequences of decisions that
51:22
in effect someone else made, like the 85 year old guy in
51:25
jail. Yeah, but look, you've just made
51:28
the argument in favor of outlawing cigarettes and.
51:32
Alcohol. No, no I didn't.
51:35
I'm not making the argument in favor of outlawing them.
51:37
I'm what I'm saying is that it seems as if we our law has
51:42
developed, as if we have this in the back of our minds, that
51:46
sometimes we do think of present future as two people, sometimes
51:49
we don't. We are time bound creatures,
51:53
right? We live in time.
51:55
Each of us has a past, a present, and a future.
51:58
And I'm willing to say, well, your future is going to depend
52:02
largely on your present, however many years you have between 1:00
52:08
and the other. And when you're young, it's a
52:10
lot of years, and when you're middle-aged it's not as many,
52:12
and when you're old, it's not many at all.
52:14
Right, but what I'm what I'm pointing out is it seems to be
52:18
the case that the further into the future your decisions have
52:23
consequences, the more likely we are to treat your future self as
52:29
a separate rights bearing entity than your current self.
52:32
Yeah, but lung cancer develops over decades and we don't, we
52:36
don't care. You're I don't know if I didn't
52:38
get lung cancer from smoking cigarettes right now.
52:42
Sure, and while we have an outlawed it, we have come way
52:46
closer to it than we have with alcohol.
52:49
Stipulated and and I I would say that if we're looking at real
52:53
problems right now, being being gigantically fat is is worse
53:00
than cigarettes. And yet we let people buy all
53:04
the food they want. We know how many calories people
53:07
need to survive. That's just simple math.
53:09
Why not only allow them to buy that many calories at the
53:12
grocery store? Well, let let me throw, I'll
53:16
throw out a thought. Which is it?
53:18
I think this is fascinating and there's, I need to think about
53:21
it way more, but it's possible that there's that there's a
53:25
nuance here that escapes libertarians and it's, it may be
53:30
why people, non libertarians tend to take libertarians
53:35
property rights arguments as naive.
53:38
It. It may be that this topic we're
53:41
discussing brings a an adult flavor or nuance to libertarians
53:46
concepts of property rights. I'd I'd be willing to say that I
53:51
agree that people take property rights arguments.
53:55
There are two groups of people, people who take property rights
53:58
way too far and people who don't think about property rights
54:00
nearly enough. And they're both deeply flawed
54:05
in their thinking. I think property rights need to
54:07
be front and center, but you have to understand that living
54:11
in society means that they, your property rights are going to be
54:15
curtailed this way and that way, and it's just going to happen.
54:19
And you might not like that. I certainly don't when it
54:21
happens. But that, as they say, is the
54:24
cost of doing business. And and if you see it any other
54:28
way, you're defective because that is how it will be seen
54:33
regardless. Now, when you throw the future
54:37
self argument into the mix, I'm right there with you.
54:41
For the most part, Future self is fascinating to me and I, I
54:45
have long believed that we become literally different
54:48
people over time if we're thoughtful.
54:51
So that is actually a goal, isn't it?
54:54
To become a different person over time, a better person for a
54:58
thoughtful person. Thoughtless people.
55:00
None of this applies to thoughtless people, people who
55:03
simply react to life. None of this is relevant to them
55:06
in any way. But to those of us who sit back
55:09
and ponder the nature of our own existence, you're going to come
55:11
up against this sooner or later, one way or another.
55:15
You found it in a yoga book of all places, right?
55:18
But but you're going to hit it because we are time bound
55:21
creatures. Our lives are X years long on
55:25
average about 80 right now, 7877.
55:30
And what you do now has a material impact on your final
55:34
number. Not always, but often.
55:39
I don't know. I think holding people
55:41
accountable for what they do in the here and now probably the
55:45
best way to go about our business.
55:48
I think anything else tends towards totalitarianism, which I
55:52
despise in every flavor it comes in.
55:55
At Words and Numbers, we spend a lot of time talking about what's
55:58
going on in the economy and the government.
56:00
But fundamentally, all of this boils down to one thing.
56:04
The greatest threat facing modern society is a lack of
56:07
civility and respect that people who disagree somehow find it
56:12
difficult, if not impossible, to discuss their differences in a
56:16
civil manner. We at Civil are interested in
56:18
upgrading civilization by encouraging people to engage
56:22
civilly with each other. If you share this idea, please
56:25
join us by subscribing at civil.com.
56:28
That's civl.com. My name is Anthony Davies.
56:33
James Harrigan is my colleague, and he is much smarter than I
56:36
am. In fact, I'm a fucking idiot and
56:38
I was wrong about sports completely.
56:43
Oh, that's great. Not the.
56:46
That is what. Not exactly, not exactly the
56:49
reaction I was hoping for, but there you go.
56:53
This was created and sent in by our good friend Jesse Hans, who
56:59
took it upon himself to generate your voice saying a smart, smart
57:04
thing for a change. So the real question is, do I
57:10
need you at all? Well, you need at least Jesse
57:13
Hans. I guess that's right.
57:16
And we would have to always know what to tell fake Anthony to
57:20
say, right? Which on the one hand is not
57:24
terribly difficult, but on the other hand it's extraordinarily
57:27
difficult. You see the dilemma that I'm on
57:30
the horns of a dilemma as as old people like to say.
57:34
But see, this is we should this, we should do a higher episode of
57:37
you being me and me being you. Oh, that'd be funny.
57:41
This is amusing. Now it's going to become a
57:43
problem when you know, I mean you can already do video when
57:48
you can't tell the difference. I I think it's already kind of a
57:52
problem, right? And is especially for guys like
57:56
us who people can go and sample our voices very easily.
58:01
Oh yeah. Make us say whatever the hell
58:04
they want. I I'm sure I've just given lots
58:06
of people terrible, terrible ideas.
58:09
I I tell you because, yeah, I know there's so much out there.
58:13
It's going to be really easy to do.
58:14
I've already established a security word with my family.
58:19
Yeah, I think that's. Actually, they would have known
58:20
as me, yeah. Yeah, one of the one of the
58:23
scams that's running right now is you get a call from a family
58:28
member from a far off land saying, oh, God, I'm in jail.
58:32
You need to send me $5000 right away so I can get the hell out
58:36
of here. Right.
58:37
And and then grandma goes and and buys a bunch of Apple gift
58:41
cards and sends them off. Yeah, you know, this is going to
58:46
be a problem. But for today, this is just the
58:50
greatest thing ever. Thanks, Jesse.