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Episode 450: Not Intelligent · Words & Numbers

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Today on Words and Numbers, Adults ordering from the kids
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menu. Normalizing political
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discussion. 1st Amendment and related issues.
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And the government purchases 10% of Intel.
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All this and more on words and numbers.
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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers.
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Words and Numbers is a civil original podcast.
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Find out more at civil.com. That's civl.com, Aunt, what's
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new and exciting in your world this week?
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We got a e-mail from listener Michael Jensen, who asks what's
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your practical advice for making a difference in society?
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Though I enjoy your podcast, I often find myself feeling
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despondent and powerless afterwards.
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I like your recent So what segment.
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So do we, but sometimes your advice seems too out of reach to
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be practical to an everyday citizen.
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All right, I think I think there's a good approach here and
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I I call it normalizing political discussion in and this
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is maybe not what people are are looking for because they I mean,
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when people ask me, all right, So what do we do about this?
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I get the sense that that they're asking for like, you
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know, unicorns of here's a magic wand and we can make the problem
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go on a magic. Bullet.
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Yeah, and you know those things don't exist.
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Now. There are from time to time,
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there are relatively simple solutions, but that's not
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something. Yeah, well, yeah, that's not
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something an individual can can do anything about.
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But nonetheless, that's right. I'm, I'm going to argue here
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that what we need to do is normalize political discussion.
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We've gotten to the point that we just don't.
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We can't talk about things political either.
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Either you're talking to people who agree with you 100%, which
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case there's no point in the discussion, or you're talking to
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people who disagree with you to some extent, and that ends up
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pretty badly depending on every other.
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Almost every time I spent a lot of time thinking about this
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question, because really what's happened is most of our
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interpersonal communications are are now happening in an
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impersonal way. Right.
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Right. So we're, we're online a lot and
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online our little universes are actually echo chambers.
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You've you end up the algorithms spit out people that are more or
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less slightly different versions of you.
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Right. Yes.
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And, and you end up only hearing things that you pretty much
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agree with until they spit out your antithesis, at which point
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you say this person is so crazy because look at all these other
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people who all are sensible. And then there's this one
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lunatic and they tear into these people like a monkey on a
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cupcake and, and nothing good ever comes of it.
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It's because we're in echo chambers and we we live.
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I wrote a pretty good article about this a long time ago,
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claiming that we live now in a boutique culture, right?
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That we create our own little boutique cultures and we don't
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interact with each other nearly enough.
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And then when you're confronted with somebody who doesn't agree
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with you at all, you don't know what to do with them.
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Right, Yes, yeah, you don't know how to handle it.
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And I, I think part of part of the I agree with everything you
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said. I think in addition to that,
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part of the problem is we tend to focus our attention so much
3:42
on what we want to say that we don't listen to what the other
3:46
person is saying. And so, so often we end up
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talking past each other because nobody's listening, just
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everybody's talking. So let me, let me throw out an
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example here. Suppose let's let's take a
3:58
concrete case of a discussion on minimum wage and somebody's
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arguing for you to you that there should be a minimum wage.
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Now the knee jerk reaction is to say no, there shouldn't maybe
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even to become indignant and to say, well, it's my money.
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I if I'm the employer, I have the right to contract with
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whoever I I have the right to contract with.
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Let me suggest an alternate approach to these things that
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that employs the listening and that is first hear what the
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person is actually saying, not what you imagined that the
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person is saying. And it helps to ask for
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clarification. So, you know, you might ask and,
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and don't ask it in an accusatory sense, but in, in
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actual, you're seeking information.
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You know, this minimum wage that you're discussing, should it
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apply to everybody? Should there be any exceptions?
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What about the mentally ill, this sort of thing?
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Once you're clear that you understand what the person's
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saying, I suggest taking the person down a path and do it
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gently of consequences and don't do it as we so often do as a
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statement of well, if you have a minimum wage, the following
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things will happen. Ask instead, OK, what about this
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you your minimum wage as you imagine it gets gets instituted.
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What happens, for example, with children of affluent households
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who currently, I mean, they're an affluent household, they
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don't need to work, they've got plenty of money, but you push
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the minimum wage up high enough, that becomes interesting for
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them. And so now they look to move
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into the job market. What sorts of effects do you see
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this having? Again, not accusatory of it's
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going to have the following effects, but ask the person walk
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the person through and I think you achieve by doing that a
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couple things. One, you may actually encounter
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something you have overlooked that's valuable. 2, the you you
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engender goodwill. The person is not going to feel
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necessarily that you're attacking, but that you're
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actually looking for information.
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And three, the person, if there are there are errors in his
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thinking, the person's more likely to find them on his own
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if you walk down this path than if you tried and beat him over
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the head with it. So that's my for what it's
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worth, Michael, that's my advice on how to normalize political
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discussion. Yeah, I've, I've seen Anthony,
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God help us all, argue and, and I use the word argue the way it
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should be used, argue with lunatics over all kinds of
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things. And he is remarkably patient.
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Follow me on Twitter for counter examples.
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And let's move on. Unless Michael Jensen is the
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Michael Jensen I once worked with in the great state of Utah.
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And if so, nice to hear from you.
6:56
And if not, there are two. Michael Jensen's probably
6:59
listening to this right now. Get words and numbers on
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civil.com and on Civil's TV and mobile apps.
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Regular episodes are free. Sign up for an annual membership
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to support our show and for access to member exclusive
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content. I want to talk about something a
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little weirder, but maybe related in some obscure way.
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Nearly 50% of Americans aunt when they go out to eat are now
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ordering from the children's menu, 50%.
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Are they looking for lesser portions or lesser prices?
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But apparently both apparently both the the move in restaurants
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to serve tremendous portions has made Americans fatter than they
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need to be. So and and anybody who's going
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to another country in order to meal out knows that the portion
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sizes elsewhere are considerably smaller than they are here.
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But it's it's also a monetary thing when people go out.
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It's expensive. And I, I remember aunt, when my
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three children were small and we wanted to go out, Man, I, I
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couldn't afford. It.
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Yeah, yeah. There, there was no way.
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And you had six kids, for the love of God, that's not
8:16
happening. And the only the only option we
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had was going out for pizza, which one relatively inexpensive
8:23
thing could feed all of us, right?
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So I'm sensitive to both sides of this, this argument.
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I'm just interested to see where it ends up.
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Is it going to have a ripple effect?
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Will restaurants realize that they're A serving too much and B
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charging too much? Or will we just continue down
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this path, which actually answers the question that people
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are having. Can I afford to go out?
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Do I want to eat that much? Well, yes.
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And and I don't have to. That's interesting.
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Anyway, that of course brings us to the foolishness of the week
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and and we're we're going to have to retire Donald Trump
9:02
pretty soon. It's just not fair.
9:05
He's the gift, keeps on giving. There's.
9:08
Never any competition. And it's so bad this this time
9:13
that he's done two things that qualify as the foolishness of
9:17
the week. But we start with him
9:20
threatening to revoke the licenses of ABC and NBC, the
9:24
networks, because because fake news.
9:29
Well, he's going to be. Oh, OK, so we've got two issues
9:32
here. 1 is the revoking. Of the license we got, we got
9:34
the. Rationale.
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We got more than two issues here, trust me when I tell you.
9:40
Yeah, dude, I'm not. I mean, we want a president
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deciding what's fake. 1st And you know, somebody in Donald
9:47
Trump's orbit should tell him the FCC doesn't license
9:51
networks. Sorry.
9:52
Does it not? No, no.
9:54
It license channels broadcasting?
9:56
Yes. Yes, it licenses individual
9:58
channels. So all the channels under the
10:02
network banner are licensed, but the the network isn't.
10:07
Yeah. So you're claiming you're going
10:08
to revoke NB CS license, but it doesn't have one?
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Right, right. And more than that, it's not,
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it's not just the, it's not the channel in the modern sense,
10:16
right. It's the old style.
10:17
Because there was the old style when the went over the radio
10:21
waves, there was only a limited bandwidth.
10:24
Different, different rules apply to cable, but let's just leave
10:27
that off to the side for for the purposes of what we've got on on
10:30
our plate. Is anybody thinking of the 1st
10:33
Amendment here? Well.
10:35
We'll get. There.
10:36
But let's let's keep with the technicalities for a minute.
10:39
The president doesn't have this authority.
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He can't just wave a magic wand and de license a single
10:47
television channel that happens through the FCC and the FCCI
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believe is a Board of Governors of five and the they're all
10:56
nominated by the president and but it's under the control of
10:58
Congress. I see FCC is a congressional.
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There's another level of nonsense that can't happen.
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Now we can talk about the First Amendment because the president
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has nothing to say about the news on any channel or how that
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Channel decides to present the news right now.
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Some channels do it much better than others.
11:23
We often talk about newspapers and websites.
11:26
We tend not to talk about TV that much because it's such a
11:29
wasteland. But these channels are allowed
11:32
to do whatever they want, and under the 1st Amendment, they're
11:37
utterly protected in. And I think that's wise.
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I'm not a fan of fake news. I mean, trust me, as an
11:42
economist, I hear all sorts of fake news all the time.
11:45
But the antidote to fake news is more news.
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It's not less news. Less news is going to is just
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going to empower the people to disseminate fake news.
11:55
And this is really horrifying because really what's happening
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is the president doesn't like being criticized, and he's going
12:03
to silence the critics, but he doesn't have that right, not in
12:07
a constitutional Republic. We have the right to criticize
12:11
him any damn way we feel like it whenever we want.
12:15
And he's just got to live with that.
12:18
It's the downside of achieving the highest office in the land.
12:23
Do you think now? Do you think this is one of
12:25
these things that he does from time to time of throwing out
12:28
something that he really doesn't intend to do anything with, just
12:32
to attract people's attention? He's extorted a fair amount of
12:37
money from CBS already. They paid him I think $15
12:40
million. It was just to get him to go
12:43
away. Over the editing of Kamala
12:47
Harris's 60 Minutes interview, he claimed that they added.
12:50
Private citizen. No, he, he, it was working as,
12:53
as president, it was after the fact and he, he got them to
12:56
donate money to his special thing, whatever.
13:00
And it was a lot of money to get him to just shut up and go away.
13:03
And he's going to try, he's going to try to continue doing
13:06
that. But he won the election.
13:09
What does he? Care.
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Well, CBS disgraced him somehow. By.
13:14
Making Kamala Harris look better by editing.
13:18
Yeah. I mean, it's it's like this.
13:20
It's, it's, it's crazy, but it, it's not the craziest attack on
13:26
the 1st Amendment that we've seen in the last couple of days.
13:30
You're going to talk about flag burning?
13:32
I thought you would. Yeah, I will too.
13:35
I, yeah, I, I, I saw this actually, I, I saw it a couple
13:39
days ago and dismissed. I thought there's no way this is
13:42
correct. And then I saw it again that
13:45
he's, he's looking to, to how should I?
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I don't even know what the right words are.
13:51
I was going to say make prison flag burning illegal, but he
13:54
can't do that. Only Congress can do that, none
13:57
the less. No, Congress can't do.
14:00
Congress can't do that. Oh, because it's
14:02
unconstitutional, right? Yeah.
14:04
But yeah, let let me just. Kind of lay out the reality that
14:08
we deal with here. In 1989, there's a Supreme
14:11
Court, the Supreme Court case called Texas versus Johnson.
14:16
And in a five to four decision, the Supreme Court rightly held
14:20
that flag burning is political expression and covered by the
14:24
1st Amendment. Congress seizing an opportunity,
14:29
decided, oh, now we can get in on this.
14:32
And instead of trying to legislate flag burning, they
14:36
tried to legislate flag desecration.
14:39
So the Supreme Court ruled in 1989.
14:42
Congress comes back in 1990 with this nonsense.
14:46
And the Supreme Court, in a case that nobody ever talks about,
14:49
United States versus Eichmann in 1990, said no, you can't do that
14:55
either. So.
14:58
We don't have one case, we have two.
15:00
Let let me say something here that's going to hopefully throw
15:06
the listeners off. I am 100% against desecrating
15:13
the flag. Absolutely, positively, hands
15:16
down, 100% against desecrating the flag.
15:19
And I am 100% against laws that make it illegal to desecrate the
15:25
flag. Why?
15:27
Because in my mind, what the flag stands for, the United
15:32
States, our Constitution, our way of life, it is a far greater
15:38
desecration of that symbol to quash the free speech that the
15:43
desecration represents than it is to desecrate the object.
15:47
You have just laid out the Supreme Court's argument in
15:49
Texas V Johnson. It's exactly what they came up
15:54
with, right? Stripped of all the legal
15:56
niceties. And, and I I would say the same
15:59
thing. Let me say it completely
16:02
differently. I don't want to listen to people
16:06
spouting off Marxist drivel. I don't want to hear it.
16:09
There's no way in hell I would outlaw it.
16:11
You can't. It's protected.
16:14
If it's a bad idea, we won't listen.
16:17
It's a bad idea and we've never listened.
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Yeah. There you go.
16:22
I so we've got Donald Trump essentially having a, a A2 front
16:28
war against the 1st Amendment. Shame on him and shame on
16:31
everybody who helps him. I want to pick on something else
16:34
about this flag discretion business.
16:35
If I read it correctly, he's signing some executive order
16:40
that makes it a felony with one year prison prison.
16:43
One year, one year in prison. You know, you know how many
16:46
people are going to spend a year.
16:47
Only Congress has an authority. Zero people will spend 0 days in
16:52
prison over this. Tell me this.
16:53
I mean, the man is not stupid, right?
16:55
I mean, it's, I think it's too easy to just write it off as as
16:58
being stupid. Is it possible that he's just
17:02
pushing as hard as he can to see what gives?
17:05
I think so. I think that's his game.
17:08
I think he does it on every front.
17:10
He's trying to amass more power, and you amass more power by
17:14
convincing the people that you need it, and you convince people
17:17
that you need it by doing things, by appealing to their
17:21
prejudices. And he's a master at that.
17:24
He's not stupid. But this is the foolishness of
17:28
the week, without question. Words and Numbers is part of the
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18:43
Anyway, what could also have been the foolishness of the week
18:48
is the United States government taking a 10% interest in Intel,
18:52
the chip company. What with that?
18:55
What in God's green earth is going?
18:57
On I don't know anything about the legalities as to whether
19:01
this is legal for the federal government to purchase stock in
19:05
a company. Well, but let me let me throw
19:07
something onto the fire to maybe get to the heart of that
19:11
question. What about Fannie Mae and
19:14
Freddie Mac? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a
19:18
little bit different. Firstly, they were they're
19:20
government sponsored entities. So think of it as a corporation
19:26
that the federal government created and they loan money for
19:33
people who are looking to buy houses, which there's lots of
19:37
pieces there that seem to me to be very different than the
19:40
government going out and purchasing a shares in a private
19:44
company. Well, no.
19:45
Intel's a public company. Yeah, I meant private in the
19:48
sense of non governmental. Private ownership I see, but
19:52
can't I buy shares in Fannie and Freddie?
19:55
You can, yeah, but. So there there is a there is a
19:59
rough analog. Here.
20:00
Well, yeah, except that that the causality goes the other
20:02
direction. It's not that Fannie and Freddie
20:05
existed in the government bought ownership.
20:08
The government, actually. Created.
20:09
Fannie and Freddie. I I get it, but but there's a
20:12
rough analog, right? We we could.
20:14
The government can, in fact, own shares in publicly traded
20:17
companies. Yeah, own shares is one thing.
20:20
Purchase them is something else. I, I don't think these shares
20:24
were purchased at. I think they were kind of
20:27
extorted. Well, OK, whatever the
20:30
motivation was behind it it. Was I don't think the government
20:34
paid anything for the shares. You know what, I'm looking at my
20:37
notes here. I've got the various details,
20:41
but not that I just. I I would bet most of the items
20:48
in this room, and this is my favorite room and all my
20:50
favorite items that the government got these shares at
20:54
no cost. I don't know that Intel Intel
20:57
may run afoul of its fiduciary responsibility to the existing
21:02
stockholders. Or, or it could say by giving
21:07
the government these shares, we are going to get these
21:09
government grants and we'll all be richer.
21:11
Possibly, yeah. Here, look, here's here's my
21:15
problem. My problem is actually further
21:18
downstream than just the government purchasing shares in
21:21
Intel. At a very, in a very broad
21:23
sense, this smacks of socialism. You know, people say, well, the
21:28
US isn't a socialist system or whatever, and it's not a
21:31
socialist system. In fact, many of the countries
21:34
we point to and say their socialist systems aren't
21:36
socialist systems. What makes you a socialist
21:39
system is that the government owns the means of production,
21:42
and that's. That's exactly right.
21:43
That's. That's what's going on here,
21:44
right? So that that's my at a, at a
21:46
high level, that's my first problem.
21:49
At a practical level, this opens a door we absolutely do not want
21:53
to open. What happens when some years
21:56
down the road, it becomes common for the government to acquire
22:01
shares in various companies, and when it does so, the stock
22:06
prices of those companies will rise?
22:08
In fact, I have One of my notes here is that when this deal was
22:12
announced, Intel's stock price jumped 5%.
22:16
Well, of course it did, because now what are the odds that Intel
22:21
is going to fail? Right.
22:23
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
22:26
No matter what it does, right Right.
22:29
And if I own a company, I might want a sovereign nation to take
22:35
10% ownership. And I looked it up.
22:38
I was wrong. The government paid 8.9 billion
22:41
for the shares. Let me let me read to you the
22:44
exact piece that applies here. the US government paid for a
22:49
stake in Intel shares with an $8.9 billion investment of
22:53
common stock funded by previously awarded but unspent
22:59
grants from the CHIPS and Science Act and Secure Enclave
23:03
program. And for grants already given,
23:06
the federal government took a 10% interest in the company.
23:09
Yeah, Ouch. So my question is a downstream
23:13
question too. If this is perfectly acceptable,
23:17
why not a 10% stake in the S&P 5?
23:20
100 more broadly, right? Yes.
23:22
And then notice what happens. You've got the government
23:25
putting its finger on the scale. Yes.
23:29
And so how, how do I make an informed investment decision
23:34
when I look at stock prices, because the stock prices now are
23:37
all polluted by the government having done and the possibility
23:41
of a doing again in the future in intervening.
23:44
Because and, and people lose sight of of this economic fact
23:48
quite quickly. A stock price is simply
23:50
information. It's it's information about
23:55
everybody's opinion about everything that a company is
23:59
doing. That's what a stock price is.
24:02
Well, a good counterexample to this is, you know, people
24:06
understand that prices of things in hospitals, the aspirin, the
24:11
bedpan, whatever it is, they're, they're, they're meaningless.
24:15
And they're meaningless in large part because of this phenomenon
24:19
that governments, regulators, insurers have gotten in there
24:22
and now the price no longer reflects the reality of the
24:25
thing. It's just some arbitrary number
24:28
in a book somewhere. We don't want that to happen
24:30
with stocks. When I'm in a hospital and I
24:33
have been and they say do you want an aspirin?
24:36
I say no. Right, that's $40 that's.
24:39
Going to be another $40 on my bill and they're going to come
24:41
back in in 4 hours with another aspirin, right, right.
24:46
Yeah. And a couple of things come
24:50
directly into my mind when I start thinking about this.
24:54
First, I would be very worried if I were a shareholder or an
25:01
employee of another chip company.
25:05
Right. AMD, for example, a competitor.
25:08
Example I would also be reticent to start a new chip company.
25:12
And let me hit, let me hit that first one first.
25:16
Think about the incentives for AMD, Intel's competitor up until
25:21
this point. The way that AMD and Intel have
25:25
competed is to bring better chips to the market at lower
25:29
prices to attract. The and they've done a pretty
25:31
good job of it. They have.
25:33
It's been. Pretty well.
25:34
Focused on what a consumers want.
25:36
What are consumers willing to pay?
25:39
I guarantee you what What is the CEO of AMD doing tonight?
25:43
He's thinking about how he can attract not consumers but
25:48
politicians because the government has opened his
25:51
wallet. Because if, if this is the game
25:54
we're going to play, then you can bet that people will play it
25:59
right? And, and the second thing, so
26:00
that was my first knee jerk response, my second knee jerk
26:04
responses. Now I don't want to buy a
26:06
computer with Intel chips. Now, how interesting.
26:09
So let me go back to Michael Jensen's original question.
26:12
What can we do? I'm going to jump ahead with the
26:15
So what segment. I'll give you an introduction
26:20
here. One thing to do is stop buying
26:24
things with Intel chips. Send a very clear signal to
26:28
Intel that we, the consumers, do not approve of this.
26:31
Well, I, you know, I don't know if it's going to work or not.
26:34
I'm just loathe to support this sort of thing and, and look,
26:38
every now and then a company does something that's that's
26:42
just so ridiculous that I don't want to buy their products
26:45
anymore. Right, right.
26:47
And, and it takes quite a bit, right?
26:49
Because when Ben and Jerry's was run by Ben and Jerry, two
26:53
complete and total commies, they made the best ice cream I ever
26:57
ate. And I bought it every time.
26:59
And if they wanted to take my money and use it for their
27:02
ridiculous causes that I disagreed with most of the time,
27:05
some I didn't, most I did. Well, go ahead.
27:08
I gave it to you. But the, you know, there are
27:10
other companies that I don't want to hear it.
27:13
And Union Carbide pissed me off pretty hard once Nestle got
27:17
under my skin a bit, right one in the past.
27:21
And I, I just don't want to buy their products, period.
27:24
And that that sentiment lasts. It's hard to get past that
27:30
sentiment. Right.
27:31
When? When Pepsi disallowed, I forget
27:36
where it was, it was a small island nation, maybe the
27:38
Philippines. They had a contest where you you
27:41
got a number under your bottle cap and if it.
27:45
Was the Philippines, Yeah. The winning number, if you got
27:47
the winning number, you got like $50,000 and it there was a
27:51
glitch and almost everybody in the entire country got the
27:55
number and they didn't pay. And I'll tell you, if I were a a
27:59
Pepsi drinker, I would have stopped 'cause that that's
28:02
that's. Bullshit.
28:03
And I don't I don't want to let Intel off the hook here.
28:07
Intel's got no business doing this.
28:09
However, in Intel's defense, the greater evil is the government.
28:15
Because if Intel did do the moral thing and say we want
28:20
don't want have anything to do with this.
28:22
If you want to give us grants to do research, fine.
28:25
If you want to loan US money that we pay back that we can
28:28
invest in research, maybe. But but to take ownership in the
28:32
company, if Intel were to say no, we disagree with this, the
28:36
problem doesn't go away. It's still there.
28:39
The problem is the government is sticking its nose into
28:43
corporations. It's doing this.
28:44
If you don't stop it at the politician level, the thing's
28:47
not going to end. And it's not going to end.
28:50
I can guarantee you it's not going to end because that first
28:54
step, that's the hard one and it seemed to go through without a
29:00
whole lot of fuss. Let me tell you, I have a
29:03
suspicion as to why. Now, One of the articles I was
29:07
reading said that this is a first step to establishing a
29:11
national wealth Sovereign Fund, which I'd not heard the term
29:16
before, but my quick Googling indicated that a national wealth
29:20
sovereign fund is pretty much just that.
29:22
It's the government having savings that is invested in
29:27
companies, bonds, this sort of thing.
29:29
Now it raises the question, why would the US, why would the US
29:33
government be looking to set up a national wealth sovereign
29:37
fund? One possibility is it this is a
29:42
precursor to some sort of privatization of Social
29:46
Security. Yeah, maybe.
29:49
We've we have. My initial my my initial
29:52
question is a very different one.
29:54
Why on earth are you doing this if we have so much money?
29:58
Why aren't you? Accumulating debt, right?
30:01
Yes. We, we're not, it's not that
30:03
we're not paying it. We're accumulating more, right?
30:07
We're we're not at some baseline where we're not adding to it.
30:11
It gets worse literally every day.
30:13
Except for June, as we pointed out.
30:17
Except for June, where it gets a little bit better.
30:18
That gets a lot worse in July. On the head of a pin, the angels
30:23
danced. But then in July, we were back
30:26
in business. Why on earth are we doing this
30:30
if we if we are simultaneously running up the debt?
30:35
That makes no sense whatsoever. And maybe the rejoinders, well,
30:40
we pay 4% on the debt, but we can make 8% on the investments.
30:44
And if we do it long enough, over time we could use the
30:47
growth in the investments to pay off the debt.
30:49
Now that first part might be correct, but it will never be
30:54
used to pay off the debt. Yeah, there's the.
30:56
Problem. There's the politicians.
30:58
Yeah, yeah. Now let me go back to the to the
31:01
Social Security thing for a moment.
31:03
Because you and I have argued in in the past and continue to
31:06
argue that the solution to the Social Security insolvency
31:11
problem is to let taxpayers who are paying into Social Security
31:16
have that money go into the stock market instead of into
31:20
Treasuries where it earns a paltry of three or 4%.
31:24
Now, there's a big difference between the taxpayer directing
31:30
the Social Security taxes to the stock market and the government
31:36
taking the pile of Social Security revenues investing in
31:39
the stock market. And the difference is the answer
31:42
to the question, who controls what it's invested in?
31:47
If I, the taxpayer, get to control that my tax, my Social
31:52
Security tax money goes into this, that the other stock, or
31:56
if you don't trust me as an average taxpayer to do that,
32:00
allow me give me a choice of of, of investment funds, maybe the
32:04
S&P 500 index, whatever it is. But I control where this thing
32:09
is going. If you let politicians control
32:12
it, then all of a sudden the incentive to behind the choices
32:17
being made are no longer get me the best return.
32:20
It's now get me the most votes, get me the most power.
32:25
And that's a recipe for abysmal returns.
32:28
Help me enrich my friends in the business world who will then
32:31
enrich me after I leave office. And, and in the end, you know
32:35
the word that you didn't use that I was waiting for was
32:38
consequences. If individuals direct their own
32:44
fund, retirement fund, and they make bad choices, they
32:48
individually suffer the consequences.
32:51
When the government makes bad choices, those consequences are
32:55
spread over every last one of us.
32:57
Right, we live with them. So if I'm going to live with the
32:59
consequences anyway, let me have the choice.
33:03
Yeah, no, it's this could be a disaster in the making.
33:09
If it's not a disaster in the making, it's still a terrible
33:13
idea and a God awful precedent. It is terrible.
33:17
And let let me go back to that unfortunately antiquated
33:22
document, the Constitution. The federal government is
33:25
allowed to do the things listed in the Constitution, and
33:29
purchasing stock in a private sector company is not one of the
33:35
items. Having read the Constitution, I
33:38
can I can verify what you've just said, and I would like to
33:43
subscribe to your newsletter, which brings us, unfortunately,
33:49
while you go ahead and tell us what you would.
33:51
Like I, I have one more thing and that is we've, we have a
33:56
history, a long history in this country of drawing a bright line
34:01
between church and state. And we all know from as
34:05
children, we, we know the mantra of separation of church and
34:08
state. I claim that there's another
34:11
separation that we don't pay nearly enough attention to and
34:15
we should hold as sacrosanct, and that is the separation of
34:19
the economy and the state. The government has no business
34:23
touching anything in the economy.
34:25
And before our well educated listeners start sending hate
34:29
mail, the separation of church and state does not exist as such
34:33
in the Constitution. It is a constitutional tradition
34:37
emanating from the two religious clauses in the 1st Amendment.
34:41
So keep it to yourselves. This of course brings us Aunt to
34:46
So what? This is a tough one.
34:49
This is a tough one, right? It was.
34:52
It was all fun and games, telling Michael Jensen to be
34:54
nice and have decent conversations with people he
34:57
disagrees with, but the government has just stuck its
35:00
big fat thumb into the economy in a way that it really hasn't
35:03
before. I don't I I don't have a good So
35:06
what I have I have the one answer that you've already
35:10
thrown out that I think people are going to find unappealing.
35:13
And that is you get, you catch a company doing this, you stop
35:17
buying their products and that sounds.
35:19
There's that it. Sounds trite, but I tell you,
35:22
companies really care. It's not trite.
35:26
It's not trite by a long shot, and the other thing you can do
35:31
is be obnoxious about it. You got a Twitter account?
35:35
Go nuts. Right, right.
35:37
Sure, right. People, people in government,
35:41
they, they may not pay attention to your individual tweets or
35:45
whatever we call tweets now, but they pay attention to
35:47
aggregations of these things. And when they see that public
35:53
sentiment is clearly on the other side of an issue, they
35:57
they change course. Yeah.
35:59
And James, I think you're on to something even better because
36:02
look at all of the many examples we have of people who've been
36:06
wronged by a company, they're ripped off or whatever it is.
36:09
And what do we do now? We go to Twitter, we go to
36:12
Facebook, we post something. And that's how what happens is
36:15
immediately the company that was ignoring you up to that point
36:19
now is falling all over itself trying to make things right.
36:22
So do that. It's the only it's the only way
36:25
I've ever gotten customer service.
36:26
From American Airlines, right? Exactly.
36:29
Take to Twitter, take to Facebook and call out Intel for
36:32
this nonsense. Maybe next week we can talk
36:35
about your beloved Southwest, who just changed a policy on big
36:40
giant fat people. Now they're making them buy two
36:43
seats. I saw that, yeah.
36:46
I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.
36:49
Having had to move from seats because, and look, I am, I am
36:54
not a small man I'm not. I weigh 210 lbs.
36:57
I I fill exactly an airline seat and I got to my seat once and
37:02
the guy in the middle seat of all places was easily £450 and
37:09
he took up half my seat but I didn't have have to give.
37:13
How did you do what? Sorry, I don't know.
37:15
I, I paid for, for this vertical space right here.
37:19
So I would like to maybe talk about that in the in the future
37:22
because being that big is choice of sorts.
37:27
Not always, but sometimes. Almost always.
37:31
Almost always certain. Not always, you're right, but
37:34
almost. Words and Numbers is a Civil
37:37
original podcast. We work with Civil to advance
37:41
their mission of upgrading civilization by exploring ideas
37:45
that promote civic equality and cooperation.
37:49
We believe the most pressing issues humans face, war,
37:52
poverty, debt, tribalism, arise from coercive institutions that
37:57
bring out the worst in us. We at Civil look to voluntary
38:02
solutions to these and other problems.
38:05
We invite you to explore Civil's new platform at civil.com.
38:10
That's civl.com. Anyway, that that's the end of
38:20
our official episode today and aunt, I don't know if you were
38:24
in on this Twitter thread, but somebody asked me if you enjoyed
38:29
smoking cigars with me. Are you going to tell the story?
38:34
Yes I am, yes I absolutely am, because there are some people
38:38
out there who have not heard this.
38:41
One day Ant Ant. First, Ant does not enjoy
38:45
tobacco in any of its forms, which I don't know, makes him
38:49
kind of a girly man in my opinion, but my opinion doesn't
38:52
mean much here I guess. Anyway, he doesn't enjoy tobacco
38:58
products but he was watching the TV show the BBC version of
39:02
Sherlock, which I thought was a great show too.
39:05
I really enjoyed it and and one of the things that Sherlock
39:09
Holmes does to think better is he gets some nicotine into his
39:14
system and Ant thought perhaps I could be a little smarter if I
39:20
had some nicotine in my system and.
39:22
Well, let me back up. I, I, I didn't just say that I
39:25
questioned you about it and you assured me that yes, nicotine,
39:29
you know, increases the whatever it is, the brain and blood flow
39:33
to the. Brain.
39:35
Oh God, it's like a miracle drug, right?
39:37
And aunt and I were on this very long, I think 6 hour car ride
39:41
from one place to another. And I had quit smoking
39:44
cigarettes, but I was still sucking on nicotine lozenges.
39:51
I like Downing them, oh man. Aunt I used to sleep with two in
39:56
my mouth right this I was addicted to nicotine something
40:00
awful. You'll all be happy to know that
40:02
addiction is now broken. But I gave the aunt one nicotine
40:05
tablet so we could find out if he could maybe be smarter,
40:10
which, you know, that would be better for all of us.
40:13
Let's just be honest. And and he started saying things
40:17
like. Jeez James, I don't feel so
40:20
good. And then he started turning
40:22
green and then he looked at me. We're we're about an hour away
40:26
from where we lived at the time and we're just about to stop at
40:30
this world class BBQ place to get some food.
40:34
And aunt said I don't think I can eat any food.
40:37
And I'm like you son of a bitch, I want BBQ.
40:40
And. And then he looked at me and he
40:42
and he pulled the car over and he said I can't do this anymore.
40:46
He spat out the nicotine tablet and he got into the passenger
40:51
seat and twitched for the next hour as they drove him to his
40:54
house, whereupon he went inside. Keep in mind I haven't been
41:01
dropped off at my house. I'm in aunt's.
41:03
Car and he can't. Even drive me home we lived 8
41:07
miles apart and I dropped him off and he just kind of wandered
41:11
in leaving me to carry his suitcase and fell down on his
41:15
bed where he remained for 25 hours.
41:17
My. Son had to drive you home as I
41:19
recall. That's right Aunt, I want you to
41:22
tell the people if I have lied or exaggerated any of the claims
41:28
I have made here today. It was way worse than what you
41:31
have described. Tell us.
41:35
Tell us how much worse it was, aunt.
41:38
I I've had several bouts of kidney stones, which anyone
41:43
who's had kidney stones knows how hellaciously painful they
41:47
are. I'd go through one of those a
41:49
week if the if it was a choice between that and having another
41:53
nicotine tablet. That thing I wanted to die.
41:56
I couldn't die, James. I was so sad.
41:59
And I was eating into the house. What you don't know you were in
42:02
the car when we got to my house. I walk into the house and I'm
42:05
doubled over. My son is sitting there on the
42:08
couch. I can't even stand up straight.
42:09
I just kind of waddle by him and say James car drive and we went
42:15
upstairs and just fell over on the bed.
42:17
And you're correct. I just, I was there for 25
42:20
hours. I was literally eating 30 or 40
42:23
of those a day. Woof.
42:27
And by the way, to go back to the original point, if it had
42:30
any efficacious effect on my thinking, I have no idea what
42:34
that was like other than I I came to the crystal clear
42:37
conclusion I should never do that again.
42:40
Yeah, Aunt walked into the house crouched over like a fentanyl
42:43
addict. So unfortunately Aunt will
42:47
never, I think, have a cigar with me.
42:51
But so it goes. I did want to mention to the
42:54
people who are listening who are maybe new to to us and who have
42:57
stayed through this long story, that in the words and numbers
43:02
backstage Facebook group, which you can all join.
43:06
I do occasionally cigars with James where I just go outside,
43:09
smoke a couple of cigars and hang out online.
43:12
And I think I'm going to do it this week.
43:14
If if not, it's about every other week or so.
43:17
So come on over, join us, have a cigar with me.
43:20
And you don't really have to have a cigar.
43:22
You can just. Say thank God.
43:23
See you next time, man. See you next time, James.
43:26
Oh, wait. And you know what?
43:28
Be nice to each other, catch you later.