Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 476: Be Thankful

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Episode 476: Be Thankful · Words & Numbers

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Coming up next on Words and Numbers, Border Patrol.
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Delayed data. Weeds.
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Giving and things we're thankful that we don't have.
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All this and more coming up on words and numbers, the Civil
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original production. Check us out at civil.com.
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That's C ivl.com. Hi, I'm James.
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And I'm Anthony and. This is words and numbers.
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Aunt, what's new and exciting in your Thanksgiving world Today is
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Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving.
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Thank you, James, Same to you. And having said happy
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Thanksgiving, I'm not going to have to be a downer and say what
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the problem that we're currently facing is residual leftover from
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the shutdown. Of course, we shut down the
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government and all kinds of things that many of us would
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think the government shouldn't be doing in the 1st place get
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shut down. But then there are other things
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that the government actually does pretty well that got shut
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down, in this case collecting economic data.
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And what's happened is there are a couple of news releases came
1:04
out from the Fed recently or from Bureau of Labor Statistics.
1:08
One was that the next jobs report they release is going to
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be for September, which means that it's pretty much useless to
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us. September's is long.
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I mean the date is always delayed about a month, but that
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was going to be so delayed that nobody cares what it says.
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This other thing is much more concerning and that is Bureau of
1:31
Labor Statistics is canceling the October release of the
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consumer price index. This is this is this is the data
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that the Fed uses in deciding what it's going to do, right.
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So I mean, if you imagine, yeah, I mean imagine just a mass
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lower. Rates.
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What the hell? We don't have to care about
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facts, just lower the rates. Yeah, therein lies the problem.
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You imagine that you're driving a car at night, the Fed is the
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driver, and all of a sudden the BLS is turned off your
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headlights, right? And it gets worse because how
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could it get worse? You're in a situation right now
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where the economy is is giving signals simultaneously of
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inflation running a bit hot and unemployment running a bit high.
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So it becomes very important what the Fed is going to do
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next. So go back to that image of your
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driving and the BLS shuts off the headlights and combine that
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with the fact that you just entered a mountain pass where
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the road is going like this, right?
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That's the the problem the Fed faces over the next couple of
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months. Yeah, if only there could have
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been two guys who predicted that exactly this would happen when
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the Trump administration took all kinds of issue with the
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Bureau of Labor Statistics and a jobs report that got revised
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downward. Yeah, remember, remember when
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that happened? And they will move the head of
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BLS and replace that person with a new, better version who would
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have better numbers for all of us.
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Which means they're going to cook the books.
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Turns out they're not going to cook the books.
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You just won't be any books. Right, there'll just be no
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books. No books because I mean, look,
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if they're not reporting the jobs numbers, they're not
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reporting the CPI ever or on time or whatever, it's because
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they know that Donald Trump will react exactly the same way he
3:38
did last time. Yeah, I don't, I don't think, I
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mean, that might be the case. I don't think that's what's
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going on. I think it's simply a matter
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that this stuff requires A tremendous amount of work by
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analysts on the back end collecting the data and
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organizing it and all of that. And when the government shut
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down, all those people were sent home for 45 days.
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The data just was never collected.
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There's nothing to report. I'll I'll cheerfully say that I
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hope you're right, because my conclusion is infinitely worse
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than yours. Yeah, yeah.
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I, I don't, Yeah, I, I think it's simply that now, you know,
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we'll, we'll see what happens if the numbers come out, when they
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finally do come out and they're extreme one way or the other.
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My, my guess is if they, if they come out finally and are extreme
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saying that, you know, either there's been much more
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unemployment than we expected or there's much more inflation than
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we expected. I imagine the president will
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then turn around and say, well, you can't trust those numbers
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because of the shutdown. They're largely estimated and
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you can ignore them. Yeah, you can only ignore
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reality for so long. So right.
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Exactly. Yeah.
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We'll see. We go from what I think is bad
4:58
to what I think is much, much worse.
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I want to talk about the Border Patrol.
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We don't really talk about them very much.
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And we really should, because as it turns out, what is it, 100
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miles from the border in any direction?
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The Border Patrol. It might even be more than that.
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It it works. Out that 100 miles.
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It works out that a majority of the American people technically
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don't have the constitutional rights they think they have
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where they happen to because the Borders patrol.
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Can fill in the detail. Well, the Border Patrol, you
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have different rights at the border, right?
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If they extend the border 100 miles, now you have different
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rights in 100 miles. So if you live in Boston or New
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York or any place on the coast, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
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yeah, Tough on you. Yeah.
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But yeah, I, I recall when, when this this came out when I was
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still in Pittsburgh, and I recall looking at the map in
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Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's in Inland City,
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right? And yet it fell within a couple
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miles of this this Border Patrol 100 mile barrier.
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Well, I'm going to get to something that's that's so much
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worse than that. I mean, look, I live 90 miles
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from the Mexican border. We see Border Patrol all the
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time. I'm near the border.
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We interact with them. And I will say that I, I don't
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find them terribly unreasonable. They're, they're just, most of
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these guys just doing a job. They're doing it well, they're
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doing it professionally. And believe it or not, here in
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Tucson, AZ, or well, they're in Nogales, AZ, across the street
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from Nogales, Mexico. The vast majority of border
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agents that I've come in contact with are Mexican.
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They're Mexican American, which makes perfect sense, right?
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You want somebody who can speak a language of the neighboring
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country, right? Who understands the customs,
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right? The same way that I would expect
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up on the Canadian border near Quebec.
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Those border agents should probably have a working
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knowledge of French and you know it.
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It all just kind of works. But here's the headline that
7:15
caught my attention. Border Patrol is monitoring US
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drivers and detaining those with quote, suspicious travel
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patterns. What does that mean?
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Suspicious travel pattern. It means, oh, here we go, Here
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we go, because let me read you a paragraph in the interior of the
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article they're working with. What Ant?
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A predictive intelligence program?
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Sounds a little like pre crime doesn't it?
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Right. So anyway, so if you behave in a
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way the computer doesn't predict you should behave, you get
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pulled over. Allow me to read The predictive
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intelligence program has resulted in people being
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stopped, searched and in some cases, arrested.
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A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate
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information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious
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based on where they came from, where they were going and which
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route they took. Federal agents, in turn, may
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then flag local law enforcement. Wow.
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Now, this is the natural outgrowth of a fundamental
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tension that we have in the law. On the one hand, we say what you
8:28
do in public is public. And it's because of that
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sentiment, for example, that we could, that we are able to
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legally record police officers as they do whatever they do,
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right? No matter where you are in the
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United States, no matter what a police officer tells you, you
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have every right to record him as you interact with him or as
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he does his job away from you. You might not have the ability
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to walk right up and do it 3 feet away.
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You may have to keep a distance, but that's in public.
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You can record him. And this has changed police
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behavior towards individuals for the better.
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No question about it. On the other hand, providing
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tension, we have the guarantee of freedom from unreasonable
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search and seizure. Well, is this an unreasonable
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search? They're monitoring my license
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plate in ways that I can barely comprehend.
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It's in public, yes, but I feel like I'm.
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Being searched? Well, yeah, what bothers me
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more, it's not that you feel that you're being searched, is
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that you could actually be searched if you behave in a way
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but their computer says you shouldn't be.
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But but I'm taking a a a a a meta step here and I'm saying
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everybody's already being searched.
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I see. OK, OK.
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Right. And, and OK, maybe it's
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monitored, monitored, but in this case, being monitored I
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think is the same as being searched.
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It's not my physical being that's being searched, but my
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activities are. Now the FBI would tell you that
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they can follow you around in public all they want.
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They'd probably be right about it.
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But there's, there's a real tension here.
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And I think most Americans, if they knew that their travel,
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and, and we're talking about everybody's travel here, if
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their travel, their personal travel in their actual car was
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being monitored by the US Border Patrol, they would have a
10:35
problem with it. I don't know.
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I don't. Think they, I don't think they
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would have a problem with it. I'm just judging for my own
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reaction. I just take it for granted that
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given the various traffic cams that are around and the even the
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police driving around with and they've got recording devices
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that pretty much if anybody wanted to know where I am at any
10:55
given point, they could figure it out.
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It's just the world we live in. There, there's a lot more to the
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world we live in. Turns out the CIA can take
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control of your car. Did you know that?
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Yeah, I wouldn't. It doesn't surprise me.
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Yeah, why would they want to do that?
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Who knows why would they want? That ability, I'm, I'm just
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wondering out loud here, but it probably could be so people
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could drive off bridges and the whatnot.
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Here's here's the piece that bothers me that you haven't
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mentioned yet. If, if it's now the case that
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Border Patrol operating within 100 miles of any border, which
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covers something like 90% of Americans in their homes.
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If Border Patrol can use this predictive algorithm and the
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algorithm flags you and says, for whatever reason, you're
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behaving in ways the algorithm didn't anticipate.
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Therefore we can pull you over. We can search your car.
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Now enter civil asset forfeiture laws.
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If they find something in your car, let's say it's perfectly
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legal cash or you like watches, you got a bunch of expensive
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watches in your back seat. They can, without any evidence,
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conclude these must be due to illegal activities and therefore
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we confiscate them. They now belong to us.
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And for those for people who are unaware of civil asset
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forfeiture, you can take the police to court here, but the
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but there's a presumption of guilt that is you, you don't.
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The police do not have to prove that you obtained the watches or
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the cache or whatever through illegal means.
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You have to prove that you didn't.
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Good luck. Proven a negative.
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Good luck yo. Yo.
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13:41
Anyway, that's enough of that. It's Thanksgiving, we shouldn't
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be all pissy about everything happy.
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I got I thought that was the main episode I forgot.
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No, no. And and and that brings us to
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the foolishness of the week, which is thank.
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Oh, we haven't even got the foolishness yet, OK.
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No, but it's going to be a short one.
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But I want you to be aware of the foolishness when you gather
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with your children, however many of the 300 children you have
14:08
show up to your house for the big holiday.
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A headline from, of all places, at the Wall Street Journal.
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This year's Thanksgiving. Surprise, half of the guests are
14:18
stoned there. There's apparently a tradition
14:25
among younger people to go for a walk, to walk the dog, to pick
14:33
up more ice, to do anything, to get out of the house at some
14:37
point right around meal time, and they come back happy and
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agreeable. Is this a defensive measure?
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I think you could perceive it as such or just a, you know how the
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kids like to say vibes, right? It's good vibes.
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I think there's a million different reasons for it.
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But I'm, I'm going to have my eye on my children on
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Thanksgiving. If anybody goes outside and you
15:08
know, look what, let's be honest, you can get gummies and
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take them any place you want at this point and just look like
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you're eating a candy. So who the hell knows?
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But apparently lots of people like to get stoned with their
15:21
families not exactly knowing on the happiest day of the American
15:26
year. And I aunt, I love Thanksgiving.
15:30
It's my favorite holiday, always has been.
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It's a holiday with no expectation.
15:38
You're not disappointed by the Thanksgiving Day gifts that you
15:41
get because you don't get any. You what do you get?
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You get a great meal, and I mean great.
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I love everything about Thanksgiving dinner.
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And then you get to watch football and hang out with your
15:53
family. It's just a red letter day all
15:56
the way around. And we often talk about those
16:00
things that we're thankful for on Thanksgiving episodes, but I
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thought it might be fun to be talking instead about the things
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we're thankful we don't have. And right, there's actually a
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pretty significant list. And you and I have not discussed
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this prior to. And I think we should just take
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turns. But let's admit to each other
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when something comes up on each of our lists independently of
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one another. Yeah, sure.
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So go ahead. What?
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What are you thankful we don't have?
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I'm thankful we do not have AVAT in Europe.
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I was. Going to put that on my list.
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It didn't. Many, many countries have this
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value added tax and people complain in this in this country
16:50
or, or foreigners who come here, they say, well the price tag
16:53
says a buck and I get up to the register and I have to pay a
16:56
buck 6 or whatever it is. And I've heard people say, well
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we should just include the tax in the price like they do with
17:03
BAT to which I say absolutely not, absolutely not break that
17:08
tax out. It is very clear to everybody
17:11
how much you paid for the good and how much you paid for the
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tax. When you do it like they do it
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in Europe you can easily get as many countries do UK, Germany,
17:20
France, Italy, Spain. Value added tax above 20% and
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the people don't get as mad because they don't know how much
17:30
of what they're paying is the tax.
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It's baked right into the price and.
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Yeah. As a consumer, it's easier.
17:39
You walk into the store, it says 3 lbs.
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I have 3 lbs. OK, let's do this.
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But as taxpayer, I want the extra step the same way that I
17:51
want the tariff charge to be noted.
17:54
Right. Or the same way.
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And we we would have a very different government today had
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we done this, had we instead of having our tax income taxes
18:04
withheld from our paychecks, if we had to write a check to the
18:07
IRS, life was very, very different.
18:11
December 31st 3/4 of Americans would be criminals every single
18:15
year because they wouldn't have near enough to pay their tax
18:18
bill. Not near enough.
18:20
That's interesting. I I I almost put it on my list
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but I realized my list was too long.
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I'm very grateful not to have any number of things, so I'm
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going to start with one that's going to piss people off.
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I'm glad and, and the way I'm going to phrase it, no
18:38
reasonable person should be pissed off.
18:40
Nonetheless, I'm glad we don't have, and I'm going to have a a
18:44
relatively long list here. I see if you can figure out the
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uniting factor of this big long list of things.
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Smallpox, polio, chickenpox, measles, rubella, German
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measles, diphtheria, mumps, hepatitis AB and pertussis,
19:01
which is whooping cough. Yeah, those were aunt.
19:05
Those were just off the top of my head.
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That's the list it took me one minute to put together.
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I'm really, really grateful we don't have those anymore.
19:20
And I wonder why we don't have those anymore.
19:24
It's just like they just all disappeared for some reason.
19:27
Yep, Yep, they did well for the reason is vaccines.
19:31
Oh come on, that can't be right. I heard.
19:33
I heard it was breast milk and sunlight and stuff like this.
19:37
Well, the the numbers match very closely the advent of vaccines
19:43
and and match exactly what experiments in the lab predict.
19:48
So yeah, it's vaccines. Yeah, I think, I think you're
19:50
probably right back to you. Oh, you don't want to dwell on
19:54
that for a bit. I think.
19:56
I I don't think people, well, yeah, I want.
19:59
To let me say that, let me say this, of all the things human
20:03
beings have done on their own behalf, I think vaccines top two
20:09
or three may be the top. Yeah.
20:11
And you know, people are going to say, well, you know, vaccines
20:14
can cause whatever they cause autism or this or that.
20:18
And I'm. I don't know enough.
20:20
I don't know enough to say one way or the other.
20:22
And even if they did, even if they did, you've got to weigh
20:27
that against the alternative. And people don't appreciate the
20:30
alternative because we've had vaccines for over half a century
20:35
prior to dying dead children that in massive numbers people
20:39
are dying or confined to iron lungs for the rest of their
20:42
lives or whatever it is. Ridiculous.
20:46
Absolutely sight of that. Yep, that's right.
20:51
I've got a whole list here as well, so I've got to pick one.
20:55
Prohibition on peaceful St. demonstration.
20:59
I'm very happy that we do not prohibit peaceful protest.
21:05
But we can't. And we don't.
21:06
And I and I say that as a person who has never participated in a
21:10
peaceful protest. But the mere fact that I know
21:14
that I could if I wanted to without recrimination makes me
21:18
more secure in my person and property.
21:22
Yeah, we, we have them here in Tucson on almost a daily basis.
21:28
People at A at a certain street corner there too.
21:32
They, they tend to wander around with their big giant signs about
21:35
this stupid thing or that stupid thing.
21:38
And I'm paying no attention to them.
21:39
But they seem perfectly happy to be doing it, have had it, it.
21:44
It is your right to free speech and your right to peaceful
21:47
assembly. 2 Two things guaranteed in the 1st Amendment.
21:50
And I'm glad that we don't routinely violate those rights.
21:55
We do violate them sometimes, but more often than not, you're,
22:00
you're right on the money. I'm thankful, believe it or not,
22:03
Aunt, for that we don't have laws perpetuating the inequality
22:08
of women. Oh, that's interesting because
22:12
that's going to tie in with my next one.
22:14
Well, let me. Read.
22:16
Let me read for to you from actress Meryl Streep, who you
22:23
know, we typically we have a certain amount of disdain for
22:28
actors who decide to go public with their political nonsense.
22:33
But look, Meryl Streep, for whatever the reason, is involved
22:36
with the United Nations on a relatively high level.
22:39
And she's actually doing some work here.
22:41
So I'm, I'm willing to cut her some slack and, and she said
22:45
this and I, I would like all Americans to think about this
22:51
because it's really telling. She's talking about Afghanistan
22:56
today in Kabul. A female cat has more freedom
22:59
than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front
23:02
stoop and feel the sun on her face.
23:05
She may chase a squirrel in the park.
23:08
A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today
23:12
because the public parks have been closed to women and girls
23:15
by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a
23:19
girl may not in public. This is extraordinary.
23:23
This is a suppression of the natural law.
23:26
So says Meryl Streep. I couldn't agree more.
23:30
Couldn't agree more. And when I I walk out my door
23:35
and I see that and, and here's the thing, right?
23:38
I have daughters, I have wife. You think I want what's worst
23:42
for them? That's crazy when I see that
23:45
they have opportunities that men have and they get to choose
23:49
whatever they want. Things are working as they
23:53
should. Let me follow up on that.
23:56
I'm thankful that we do not have a ban on private firearm
24:01
ownership. You're just working your way
24:03
through. The states Bill of Rights aren't
24:05
you right? And, and this ties in with with
24:10
your last point. And I've, I have made, I've done
24:16
a ton of research into societies that had that ban gun ownership
24:22
and those that don't. And we can make all the
24:24
arguments about people lives who are saved and all of that and,
24:28
and all that stuff is true. However, there's one argument in
24:32
favor of private firearm ownership that you made years
24:37
ago to me that really hit me viscerally, and that argument
24:43
is. That.
24:46
Allowing people to own guns allows women to exercise the
24:51
same level of force if necessary, as a man.
24:55
And you said it in the opposite you said take an armed woman and
25:00
an armed £350 man and she can defend herself.
25:06
Maybe. Whether successful or not, the
25:08
fact is things are pretty even there.
25:11
But take away their guns and she loses to the £350 man every
25:15
single. Time.
25:16
Every single time. And, and look, are there women
25:20
who can defend themselves against men?
25:22
Yes, there are. But the vast majority of women
25:25
can defend themselves against, cannot defend themselves against
25:30
the vast majority of men. It's a matter of size and
25:33
strength and nothing else. It's just natural differences in
25:39
Physiology. But a firearm is is a fantastic
25:43
equalizer. It makes the the weak woman the
25:47
equal of the strong man. It makes the old man the equal
25:52
of the young man, no matter how you want to cut it.
25:56
It makes people equal functionally.
26:01
It makes it so certain people don't have to fear other people
26:07
all the time and lifting that fear, that's a beautiful thing.
26:13
We should talk about it more. And you really should have said
26:16
you've said I'm going to repeat it because I experienced it
26:19
myself. I went to, I've only been to a
26:22
couple of gun shows, but the first one ever went to.
26:25
I went with you. Yeah.
26:26
And together it is. I have.
26:29
It is the one place in the world I have ever been that I felt
26:33
safest. Yeah, I was surrounded by what
26:36
must have been 500 people, every single one of them armed.
26:40
And I felt safest because I knew if at any point somebody pulled
26:46
out a a gun and started causing a problem or even just started
26:49
causing a problem, everybody's armed.
26:52
They're going to put an end to it right there.
26:54
Now you can say, you would say, well, wouldn't it be just as
26:58
well if you disarmed everybody? Well, no, because the guy, the
27:03
guy who's going to do harm, is going to be the one that's
27:05
armed. Nobody else will be.
27:07
Regardless of the rules, I always tell people that the
27:10
politest place in the world is the gun range.
27:15
Oh my God, it is. Yeah, everybody is Sir or ma'am.
27:19
Everybody is pleasant. Doors get held open, people say
27:24
thank you and you're welcome. It is the most polite place I
27:28
have ever been, and that's true of every gun range I've ever
27:33
been to. James and I are delighted to be
27:35
working with Civil. For years we have been pushing
27:37
people to think about how we can make the world a better place.
27:41
Civil's mission of upgrading society fits exactly with what
27:45
we have been talking about for years.
27:46
Civil helps us by allowing us to do what we do best, which is
27:50
researching topics that are important and communicating
27:54
these to our listeners in ways we hope they find enjoyable.
27:57
To see Civil's extensive list of content, including our podcast
28:01
Words and Numbers and our new lecture series, Words and
28:04
Numbers Live, visit civil.com. That's civl.com.
28:10
I am. Really thankful, both
28:13
personally. Well, I should take the word
28:16
both out. I am really thankful personally,
28:20
professionally and generally that we don't have any more laws
28:27
against homeschooling, right? It was phenomenally difficult to
28:31
homeschool Once Upon a time. And what when I say Once Upon a
28:35
time, I mean like around the year 2000, right?
28:40
25 years ago. This, this isn't the deep dark
28:43
past. This is the very recent past.
28:46
And a group of parents across the country here and there
28:51
really, really spent a lot of effort, a lot of their time
28:56
fighting legal battles, expensive protracted legal
29:00
battles that the rest of us who are involved either in
29:05
homeschooling, as I was, and I think as you were at some point
29:09
with your kids and as we both were as professors dealing with
29:14
the product of homeschool. I, I want to say thank you to
29:18
those first people who did all that work at such tremendous
29:23
personal expense. And I just want to give you an
29:26
idea of what, what it was like when my first daughter was right
29:32
at school age, right. So the year she would have had
29:35
to by law be enrolled in school. We lived in the People's
29:39
Republic of New York. And at the time, I, I was a
29:46
professor, the wife, I think had she had one master's degree at
29:53
the time, she's gone on to another with a PhD on the way.
29:57
So it's not like we're uneducated people.
30:00
But we were disallowed by law from educating our own children
30:05
in our own home because, get this, we didn't have
30:11
credentials. Yeah, right.
30:15
We needed the. Credentials that that produce so
30:18
many well educated students in this country.
30:20
We we would have needed education degrees.
30:25
The education degree is one of the silliest degrees I've ever
30:28
seen in my life. Yeah.
30:29
It's just silly. It does not produce good
30:32
teachers. It doesn't mean that there
30:34
aren't good teachers. It means that they were not
30:36
produced by the education degree.
30:38
What do you want? You want, you want content
30:41
experts, people. I want people with degrees in
30:45
math teaching math. I don't care if you have an Ed
30:48
degree in which you learned how to make a bulletin board about
30:50
math. That's asinine.
30:53
And in New York, we weren't allowed by law and we decided we
30:56
were going to do it anyway because my ass, I'm letting my
31:00
little girl go into to that school.
31:03
And at the very last moment, I got hired for a job in Western
31:08
Pennsylvania where I would later go on to meet you and all kinds
31:12
of wonderful things would happen.
31:14
And the state of Pennsylvania, not only did they not care if I
31:18
homeschooled, they wanted to help.
31:22
They made it really easy. But in New York, we, when we
31:25
decided to do it anyway, that my wife looked at me and she said,
31:28
well, what do I do when somebody shows up?
31:30
And I said, just tell them I made you do it.
31:34
What else could I possibly say? Right?
31:37
But we can't both go to jail over this.
31:41
But it meant enough that I was willing to have one of us go to
31:45
jail over it. And then you get to Pennsylvania
31:48
and the doors just opened and states fell one after the next
31:53
after that. And I, I think they've all
31:56
mostly fallen at this point. And that's for the best.
31:59
I'm really glad that homeschooling is a thing.
32:03
I think it's done poorly on occasion.
32:05
I think it's done very, very well as a rule.
32:09
How do I know this? I see the product of it.
32:11
Or I saw the product of it in college classrooms.
32:14
Yeah, I could tell you I could. I was home schooled within 5
32:17
seconds of my showing up for the very first class.
32:21
Why same here because. Chances are those kids showed up
32:25
at my office before that class to introduce themselves, right?
32:29
They didn't. If they didn't, they were
32:31
sitting in the front. Row when?
32:33
When I got there, had a notebook open, a pen in their hand in a
32:36
book next to the notebook. They were easy to find.
32:40
Yep. I'm thankful that we do not have
32:45
or no longer have criminal penalties for unpaid bank debts.
32:50
We did Once Upon a time. And there are some countries
32:52
that still have this. If you went into debt, you
32:56
couldn't pay it off. I mean, now what do you do?
32:58
You declare bankruptcy and there's a whole thing.
33:01
No, then you went to jail. Think about it.
33:04
It makes no sense whatsoever. How how does that help you to to
33:09
repay your debts, right? Not only that, Ant.
33:12
No, not only that. It makes.
33:14
You more expensive. Literally for everybody, right?
33:17
Right, So we develop bankruptcy law and now there's a procedure
33:23
that that you go through and it's had a number of good
33:26
effects. One of them is, you know, you
33:28
don't, you're not throwing poor people in the in the clink for
33:32
being poor, but also it encourages entrepreneurship
33:35
because you're much more likely, look, nobody wants to go through
33:39
bankruptcy, but you're much more likely to take on the risk of
33:42
being an entrepreneur If you know the worst that's going to
33:46
happen to you, not to say it's good, but the worst is going to
33:48
happened to you is you're going to have to declare bankruptcy.
33:51
If the worst that could happen to you is you get thrown in jail
33:53
and you can't feed your kids and forget being an entrepreneur.
33:57
And I raised this issue, yes, because I'm thankful for it.
34:00
But I will also want to point out a parallel that as
34:05
enlightened as we are and we can see, of course, it makes sense.
34:08
You don't throw people in jail for bankruptcy, yet we throw
34:14
them in jail for drugs. And I would argue many of the
34:18
arguments that I just made about why it's stupid to put people in
34:22
jail for bankruptcy also apply to throwing people in jail for
34:26
drugs. Now, dealing is, is one thing.
34:28
We'll take that off the table for a moment.
34:30
But if you're, if you're doing drugs to the point that you're
34:34
now you're dependent upon them or you're, you're not
34:36
functional, this is a this is a medical problem.
34:39
It's a psychological problem. Throwing you in jail doesn't
34:43
address the problem any more than throwing the bankrupt
34:45
person into jail addresses his problem.
34:48
I I think throwing drug users in jail is actually even worse than
34:55
debtors, because with debtors you can identify a victim.
34:59
Right. Yes, yeah.
35:01
Right. And they're with the with the
35:03
drug user. There are no victims apart from
35:06
the user himself. And you know, if, if you're not,
35:10
if you're not causing harm to others, what you do should be of
35:15
no concern to the rest of us. But I, I, I just want to mention
35:19
here, and you might not know this, most people don't and
35:22
would have no reason to, but you can find the argument that you
35:27
just made in favor of bankruptcy in Plato's dialogues.
35:32
Really. Yep.
35:35
So all the way back in ancient Athens, everybody understood
35:39
that bankruptcy was probably the smart way to go here.
35:43
And I find that endlessly fascinating because we forgot.
35:48
And then we, they're literally right, debtors prisons, right?
35:51
And these were not. These were hard, hard places.
35:56
Let's do one more. And I had the first, you take
35:58
the last. Well, now I got to choose
36:01
between 2:00, so I'm going to do 2 because I know that my last
36:07
one will be one that you're going to have more to say about
36:09
than me. I am endlessly glad that we do
36:14
not have hostile international neighbors there.
36:18
Is. There, there is no enemy at
36:22
either of our international borders.
36:26
You can, I'm, I'm leaving the Alaska, Russia thing out of
36:29
this, right. The functional borders that we
36:32
have the, the Canadian border and the Mexican border are
36:36
peaceful borders with allies. Regardless of how it gets spun
36:41
by politicians. The Mexican people are our
36:45
friends. The Canadian people are our
36:47
friends. And I am very grateful for both
36:50
of them. I think they add a lot to our
36:52
country. They don't take anything away
36:55
from our country and we're never at war with them, right?
37:01
The Mexican, the Mexican war, a long time ago now, large,
37:05
largely forgotten, I would say entirely forgotten, but nothing
37:10
is ever entirely forgotten. So there you go.
37:13
And the last thing, Aunt and, and this may ruffle some
37:16
feathers because it's not absolute, but I'm really, really
37:21
grateful that we don't have poverty.
37:24
Yeah, and we really don't. We don't have poverty anything
37:28
like, not even close to what poverty was up until about a
37:33
century ago. In this country, yeah, right.
37:38
And you can go to many other countries and get a full view of
37:44
poverty right now. And it's terrible.
37:49
Now. We still have poverty here.
37:53
There are still people living on the streets.
37:55
But when you dig into that, you find that there's a a pretty
38:01
sizable set of those people who live that way by choice.
38:05
There's a very big set of those people who are very obviously
38:09
mentally ill. We have mental illness problem.
38:15
We have an integration problem. People don't want to be in
38:18
society. And then there's a very small
38:21
number of people who, through bad fortune, just ended up
38:26
losing everything and found themselves out of doors.
38:30
That is nowhere near even close to a majority of the people that
38:37
we call homeless, who are the poorest of the poor.
38:41
We have working poor, but most of them have air conditioning
38:45
and microwaves and flat screen TV's and cell phones.
38:48
We've done away with poverty for the most part, as it was once
38:52
understood. And I'm endlessly thankful that
38:58
people born now grow up in a world like that.
39:02
It's a better world. And you and I say that often and
39:06
that it's a better world and we say it every year.
39:10
I can't remember ever not saying it because it's always better.
39:15
And if you're going to sit back and be contemplative on
39:20
Thanksgiving, that's probably the thing to contemplate, that
39:25
life just gets better every year, and if you're lucky enough
39:29
to still be here next year, it'll probably be better.
39:35
And you know, when, when life is that good, you should probably
39:39
be just be a little nicer to each other.
39:42
That's part of being thankful too.
39:44
So I guess get high, have a nice meal, watch some football and be
39:52
nice to each other. That that's the take away I have
39:54
from today. Happy Thanksgiving.
39:57
You can. You can substitute Star Trek for
39:59
football and that'll be OK. My God, you're an ass.
40:03
My God, my happy Thanksgiving aunt.
40:09
Happy Thanksgiving, James. At Words and Numbers we spend a
40:12
lot of time talking about what's going on in the economy and the
40:15
government, but fundamentally all of this boils down to one
40:18
thing. The greatest threat facing
40:20
modern society is a lack of respect, that people who
40:23
disagree somehow find it difficult, if not impossible, to
40:27
discuss their differences in a civil manner.
40:30
We at Sybil are interested in upgrading civilization by
40:34
encouraging people to engage with new ideas and ultimately
40:38
engage civilly with each other. If you share this idea, please
40:42
join us by subscribing at civil.com.
40:45
That's civl.com.