WEBVTT

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Oh, look at mister Rockefell are
here with his diamond tipped walking stick.

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Not what your country can do for
you, what you can do for your

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count. If you like the plan
you have, you can keep it.

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If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor. To

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read my lips. They want to
replace history with line who like snakes,

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who lay in the grass. They
emerge to cast their sniper bairn. It's

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the Ricohe Podcast with Rom Long.
I'm James Lylynx and Stephen Eward sitting in

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for Peter Robinson. And today we
talked to Mari and to be about superabundance.

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We've got lots to bring you,
so lot sappers. I was a

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podcast Americans a nation that can be
defined in a single word, ours the

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foot of I agree you'll never get
bored with when we never get bored.

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Welcome everybody. It's the Rickoeche Podcast, number six hundred and fifty two.

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I'm James Lynx, Minneapolis. It
is hot. Rob Long is in Gotham,

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which of course steams unendurably in the
summertime. Stephen Hayward sitting in for

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Peter Robinson. And we don't know
if Stephen is calling us from a pub

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in England or somewhere in California,
or wherever his peripatetic journeys may take him.

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Stephen, welcome, Where are you
right now? Not that it matters.

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I'm out here in California, although
to say, I'm very suspicious that

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what's really going on here is that
Peter, the whole reboot process of the

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Peter Robinson AI robot is not going
well, and that this prolonged absence has

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to be No, it's not,
it's not. It's questions are too short,

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frankly, and so it's too efficient. We have to work on those

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also, gentlemen. Of course,
the heat is on everybody's mind, since

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this is we are now told,
I think, the hottest summer in two

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hundred and sixty five thousand years.
They have found, i believe, extremely

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accurate records from Caveman era where they
scrawled down in Celsius interestingly enough, on

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the cave walls. Records from the
Roman civilization indicate that they exceeds the temperature

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in Pompeii at the height of the
rain of pummice and fire. So we're

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in bad shape here. And obviously, as we're told, the Gulf Stream

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is going to do something very bad
in three years, and disaster and dire

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things await us. All. I've
been hearing this for a while now and

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I'm a bit inured to it.
So perhaps we should find something that's even

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more pressing that people will be talking
about in the eons to come, And

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that is the welter of indictments.
I joke. Of course, if you

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go and look at old papers,
they're always full of indictments of this,

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that or together, which I never
thought about it six months or a year

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later. But this one seems to
be important because it does sort of suggest

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with the dismaying feeling that a lot
of us have, that there's something of

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a two tier justice system working now. When we were talking before the show

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about matters etymological and weather and slavery
and all sorts of interesting things that would

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have made for a cracking good podcast, Rob said that there was another indictment

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besides the one that Hunter Biden is
facing that he finds as fascinating, if

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not more so. Yeah, I
mean, I think the Trump A diamonds

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are kind of interesting, don't you
think. Indeed? So go on,

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well, I mean, the you
know, I am not a lawyer.

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I will start by saying I'm not, I did not. I'm not.

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I'll say instead, I have not
passed the bar in the state of New

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York. But you had an old
fashioned at every day exactly. It's an

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old joke. This this Whether it's
fair or not fair, or whether I

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don't whether the this is how they
always get you right. They get you

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on trying to squash evidence. They
get you on you know, when they

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when there's a discovery process or there's
a process and you're racing voice mails or

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text mails, or trying to go
into a security camera and a race the

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tape. This is like, I
mean, if you just took out the

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proper names and you inserted, you
know, Gambino Gambino and Tony two Cheeses

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Luches or something like that, that's
exactly how. This is how it's done.

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This is how it always ends up
being this, whether that's right or

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wrong. I just think it's interesting
that if you'd had to put money down

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on whether you're going to find evidence
that you know, there was a Donald

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Trump as a stage of Bill and
twirling his mustache and saying I'm going to

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take these secret documents and I'm going
to take them down to my laird mar

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Lago and I'm going to keep them
and sell them or whatever. Right,

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the likelihood of finding that it is
probably like two percent. Right likelihood of

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finding a person, any person saying
I'm under investigation. Wait a minute,

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that looks incriminating that piece of evidence, so destroy it. That is like

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ninety nine percent likely. That's how
That's what these things all are. So

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the weird thing to me is that
somebody who's as lawyered up as Trump,

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what he needed was he need a
lawyer who was going to tell him the

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probably and he needed to follow that
advice. So that's that's my quick fast

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take on it, without really coming
down on whether it's fair or not fair,

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or whether it just doesn't seem surprising
that the reason that he's indicted is

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because of trying to destroy evidence.
Well, I think Trump's problem is he

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didn't have Rosemary Wood still around to
do an eighteen minute gas. Yeah,

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but there is something odd about this, which is a week ago we had

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the news came out very dramatically that
Trump had received his target letter from the

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Special Counsel Jack Smith, and there
were some charges talked about connected to January

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sixth, and they looked a bit
strange but unprecedented and so forth. But

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everyone expected that what we were going
to get this week were the indictments for

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his actions around January sixth, and
we didn't get that. Instead, we

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got supplemental charges about the Marlago document
business. I don't know what to make

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of all that, unless they're still
holding that back for a more dramatic moment,

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I don't know. But but that
was kind of the twist of this,

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was that it's not January sixth being
in direct I don't know. That

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seems odd to me. Well to
me, it seems like, I mean,

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the January six stuff, six sixth
stuff is complicated and nuanced. And

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was he really I mean, were
even the Georgia post election stuff? Was

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he threatening the secondary of state of
Georgia? What was he saying really that

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that that those are questions. This
seemed to be like we told you not

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to destroy the thing, and you
destroyed the thing, right Like you told

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your employee to get rid of that
tape. Um that's like I don't know,

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I mean low hanging fruit maybe or
whatever that is. It just seems

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to be like like, yeah,
we only get that no matter what.

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That's just that's just what happens now. Um. The other stuff, unfortunately

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for us. I think the other
stuff is more interesting and probably is more

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meaningful and has more sort of historical
value and more um just more lat I

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mean for me, just just just
more legally consequential. Um. And I

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suspect that, like a lot of
things, we're never going to get there,

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that the people who are after him
just want to get him for something.

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It's al capone time for them.
And Hey, if I can get

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him for you know, trying to
unplug a you know, a camera,

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I'll get him for that. If
I can get him for trying to,

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you know, trying to strong arm
the Secretary of State in Georgia to lie

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about the election results, that seems
a little harder, you know. It's

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like so it's it's it's the essence
of our time. It's the essence of

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our times. Yeah, we'll never
really know, yeh know what I lab

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or from a bat in a cave. You know, we'll never really know,

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Uh didn't do this, did he
not? Yeah, we'll never really

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know. We'll just have sort of
a vague outcome at the end that there's

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an anti climax, and then we
all move along. If I were Trump,

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I would plead guilty immediately. But
with a Hunter Biden cotacil that gave

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me. That gave me blanket immunity
from anything that I should do in the

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future, anything that I might be
prosecuted for in the future, which I

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think is fat I mean, if
you can imagine that Donald Trump, who

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would go in back into the presidency
with in his pocket legal immunity from anything

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that he did. Wow, that
would be a rather untrammeled, zesty set

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of four years. But of course
that's not going to happen. Briefly touching

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then on the Hunter Biden thing,
unless you still want to have something more

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to say about Trump. Um,
what did you make of this picure?

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What did you make of this?
And were we one judge away from from

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Hunter Biden indeed getting you know,
absolute immunity from the future from any of

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the foreign Registered Foreign Agent Registration Act
stuff. Um, if the judge hadn't

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noticed what was in there, we
we might have seen the fellow state and

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and and suffer no kind Well,
of course, what CNN was reporting,

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what everybody else was saying that look, Fox News has mentioned hundred Biden one

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hundred and four times and it's not
even known today, As if who's a

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private citizen, what does this have
to do with? As if this isn't

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really particularly consequential to the issue of
his treatment. And the big guy,

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the big guy, the ten percenter
guy there mean, but that's what bugs

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me about it, right, what
bugs me about it is that this is

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like, again, none of this
is spectacularly unusual and nobody should be shocked

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by this. This is influenced pedaling. It's been illegal. They talked about

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it in the Constitutional Convention. I
mean, the idea that there was going

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to be influenced pedaling was something that
the founders worried about, something that the

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people worry about. It something It
was kind of legal for a while and

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then illegal. Now we are,
I think, you know, since the

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seventies. The influenced pedaling is a
big deal. This is what this is.

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But that's what we would have called
it if we didn't live in this

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bizarre hyper part as an age where
the every every single journalist works for the

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Democratic Party. It's influence. But
the only reason you gives an influenced peddler

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immunity is to get the person he
was selling the influence of or buy or

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however that works. Right, the
only reason you give somebody immunity is because

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you've got a bigger fish. Or
right, that's one. That's one interpretation.

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So who's the bigger fish? Right, there's only one, and he's

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behind the resolute desk. I don't
know if he knows he's behind that desk,

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but he's probably behind that desk right
now. Or you do it so

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that it's all over, so you
plead guilty to some weird thing and then

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it's all over and there's no influence
peddling investigation because there's no influence peddling that

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you can charge as you can bring. Now I am now channeling Andy McCarthy

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with this, but there really only
other two reasons why you give some the

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only two reasons you give somebody immunity, right, is there another one I'm

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missing? Well, I think that
they thought they could sleep one by the

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judge, and it's pretty clear that
that they try to see and what you're

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here, by the way from Democrats
and the media. But I repeat myself

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as well, this is a Trump
appointed district judge. Well, it turns

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out the judge was approved in the
Senate by a voice vote, which meant

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that to get to the arcana of
these things, both Democratic senators and Delaware

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signed off the blue slip process,
as it's called. And I think it's

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possible she might be a Democrat.
That's what my writing partner, John Hinderocker

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thinks. And I'll bet they thought, you know, she's part of the

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Delaware legal community, she's you know, a good old gal, and she'll

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probably sign off on this. And
I think they knew it was risky and

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she decided not to have any part
of it, So good for her.

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No. I think further that what
do you think of your Hillary Clinton?

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Right now? I only got one
hundred thousand dollars from my cattle futures him

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and I could have gotten fifteen million
dollars from Ukraine I adjusted for inflation,

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and of course there's the question of
where the money comes from. You know.

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The interesting thing, of course,
is the Chinese connections and the rest

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of it, because you don't remember
a little while ago we were all concern

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and absolutely panicked about JOHNA taking over
the world and the rest of it.

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And while there's still a threat,
you have to admit that their own Loomi

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demographic problems are something of a difficulty
for them. And speaking of demographics,

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he said grinding the gears to his
segue to a shift, not to amcial

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but to a guest. We would
like to welcome to the podcast Marian Tupi,

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the editor of human Progress dot org, senior fellow of the Center for

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Global Liberty and Prosperity, and the
co author of Superabundance, The Story of

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population growth, innovation, and human
Flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet. Welcome,

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it's a delight to be with you. Well, here's the thing.

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There was a great tweet the other
day where somebody was talking about the various

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paradigms and science fictional literature in the
nineteen fifties, if there was an assumption

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that there would be a nuclear war
and there would be mutants roaming a radioactive

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world. In the sixties, there
was always scary technology was going to do

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it, but we're going to get
out their highline style and we were going

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to call lies. In the seventies, the reigning paradigm and science fiction was

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the collapse in constriction of the human
prospect of famine, of overpopulation, of

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books like Make Room, Make Room, which was soilent, green, and

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the rest of him. They were
facing this world in which people would be

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clawing over each other in a hot, sweaty mass, scrambling for the last

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little bit of resources. Didn't happen. But I grew up in that.

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That was what I was marinated in
because all of these maenthusian ideas were coming

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back to us. Now. Martha's
and the acolytes predicted one of these catastrophes,

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and a lot of them have lived
to see it not happen. Tell

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us about Martha's and Erlik and the
rest of them, and why they didn't

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see what exactly a free, prosperous
future would look like. Well, thanks

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for having me. Martha's, obviously, is an eighteenth century figure. He

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was a English Anglican cleric who became
fascinated with mathematics, and especially two rates

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of growth, one linear right of
growth one two, three, four,

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five, six seven, and the
other exponential growth one two, four,

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sixteen, thirty two, etc.
And he believed that whereas resources only grew

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at a linear rate one two,
three, four five, population would grow

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at an exponential rate, and consequently
the gap between the two rates would result

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in famine. Now, as we
have documented in our book, actually during

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Malthus's own lifetime, whilst the population
of Britain increased by something like fifty percent,

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the press of flower, on which
most people back then depended on their

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sustenance, has fallen by about thirty
six percent. So even whilst Malthus was

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writing, food was already becoming cheaper, even though the population was expanding.

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And there's a very interesting parallel here
with Marx, who dies in eighteen eighty

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three, and of course his theory
predicts the immiseration of the proletariat, and

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in fact, by the time he
dies, it's evident to absolutely anyone that

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the English working class is becoming richer
at any rate. Mothers continued to feature

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in the background for a very long
time, but then in the second half

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of the twentieth century, the population
of the Third World specifically started to expand

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dramatically, and that was partly because
Western medicines and best practices and better agricultural

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techniques started to penetrate the developing countries, and so suddenly you saw these massive

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increases in population of China and India, etc. And that's what Paul Erlick

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enters our picture. He famously in
nineteen sixty eight wrote The Population Bomb,

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in which he predicted hundreds of millions
of people would die that didn't happen.

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He predicted that England wouldn't exist by
the year two thousand, it would be

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swallowed up by waves that didn't happen. And he advocated in favor of the

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government put putting drugs in the water
system in order to make men infertile,

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and things like that, and and
and I think that to our current audience,

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especially to young people, you may
ask, what on earth does it

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have to do with us. Well, Early, who is still alive just

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in ninety was on CBS sixty minutes
in January as an authority on human population

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and consumption. He's still around and
other Malthusian voices famously AOC asking her followers

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is it still okay to her children? Bill Mahra, I'm a huge fan.

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He's very funny and a very smart
guy, but he's a Malthusian.

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He's a hardcore Malthusian. Almost every
show he talks about resources and how we

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are going to run out of water
and golden spoils, and it's all nonsense.

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Well, I first of I should
just say that you and I spoke

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on the phone about a month ago, and you sent me a copy of

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your book, which I read.
And to warn people, it looks like

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a big book. It's like the
size of a brick. But about a

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third of it our tables and graphs, which you can just gleefully ignore just

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to read because I ain't going to
read, but to get to the narrative.

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And the narrative is we're going to
be fine, right, there's a

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high presumption. Well, I think
that rational optimism is justified because people are

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not just consumers. They are also
producers. Where early went wrong and generations

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of scholars liking is that they are
fundamentally most of them are biologists. They

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think of human beings in the way
that they think about rats or rabbits,

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meaning that you have a lot of
a lot of rain, you have a

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lot of grass. Rabbits have a
lot of food, They eat a lot,

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they have sex a lot, they
produce a lot of babies that they

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consume everything, and then there is
a catastrophe. What is the big difference

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between between rabbits and humans? What
is the big difference between biologists and economists?

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Is that we understand that humans are
special. We are special because we

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innovate. Animals don't innovate humans do. When we run against some sort of

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a problem, some sort of scarcity, we immediately search for ways to go

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to get around it, such as
the green revolution in the nineteen seventies,

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or for example, looking for a
vaccine to cove it. You know,

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our ancestress and certainly animals would never
dream of solving a problem. We immediately

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switch into a solution solutionism kind of
mindset, which tells us, let's look

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for a solution to this problem.
And your evidence for this, just to

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be clear to everybody, your evidence
for this is the some total of human

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history from the beginning of time to
today, for human progress and human flourishing

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and human problem solving, and their
evidence the sort of will calm the rational

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pessimists, right, their evidence is
yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's

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all over now, right. Isn't
that essentially what they're saying. They're not

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they're not disputing your view of all
of human history from the beginning of time

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to today. They're just saying,
yeah, but you know, that's it's

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all different now, right. Is
that basically an argument? I think that

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you are into something. I mean, aside from you know, you have

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to ask a question, I mean, how many times do the predictors of

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imminent apocalypse have to be wrong before
you sort of begin to discount their viewpoints.

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But but, but another thing is
that part of chapter one is devoted

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to what we call negativity biases.
This is a very well trodden area in

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in psychology. And one of the
negativity biases that we have is so called

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end of the point sort of end
of history titis. In other words,

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that every generation thinks that they are
somehow special, they are at the turning

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point of history, and that it
is in their time. I mean,

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it's basically part of it is sort
of like narcissism, is that you think

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that you are so special that every
every every problem, every that everything is

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going to get resolved in your own
time. But this is how it happens

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throughout human history. Everybody thinks that
they are standing on the precipice. And

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I jump in on that point,
Rob because I think this is crucial.

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So Mary and Steve Hayward out in
California, a longtime fan, first time

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caller. What they say, Yeah, so you know, people will have

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asked me. So, I've been
part of this game for a long time,

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talking about environmental progress before I went
back into academia to be miserable.

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And people often ask me why are
environmentalists in particular so gloomy? And I

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finally came to the view because it
makes them happy. And what I mean

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by that is experience I've had where
I've presented your data, the data people

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like Hans Rosling or Matt Ridley or
Max Rose or other people you know very

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well, Julian Simon, and I
have this strange experience with students. They're

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either angry that there's good news or
they're depressed. I mean, I've actually

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had students in class hanging. I've
never seen I've never heard information like this

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before. And why are they depressed? Well, because I've just taken away

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their cause. I've just taken away
this redemptive potential of their lives. And

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you mentioned you know, I haven't
had a chance to read the book yet,

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but I follow your site all the
time. I don't I don't know

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how to explain that except from psychology. And once you're into that realm,

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we're out of the realm of rationality. Yeah, So I believe, I

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really believe this, that human beings
are seek some sort of trans transcendence,

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transcendence. Now, you don't have
to be religious to believe in transcendence.

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Religious people obviously have a very very
strong, constable transcend transcendental life after death.

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But even secure people have a sense
of the transcendental. You want to

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have children to pass down your genes. You know, it's not the end

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when you die, your children live
on. Maybe if you don't have children,

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you devote yourself to writing books because
you want something to live after you.

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You know, even us libertarians here
at the Cato Institute, you know,

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we may be individuals, but we
do derive some sort of utility,

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some sort of a psychological satisfaction of
being part of something larger, the cause

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of liberty. Right. So I
think that people in general aim for transcendent

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transcendence um. And this is specifically
important for young people, who, on

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top of that existential angst, also
have a sense of the heroic. In

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other words, that when people are
very young, um, you know,

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in their late teens and twenties,
they develop this sense that they are empowered

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to by by boundless energy and optimism
to transform the world. Into utopia.

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And that's part of the reason why
I think that environmentalism has such a purchase

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on human psyche, but especially amongst
the young. The cosmology of this sort

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of a depression is all encompassing.
There's nothing that really doesn't fit into it

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um and you can I mean,
there's no structure that you can't find blame

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in from corporatism to you know,
the way that the country is situation means

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it's an all inclusive, explanatory mind
view that that has the satisfying aspect of

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misanthropy, which also appeals to the
young. You know, they're simultaneously idealistic

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and simultaneously misanthropy. Well, how
do we get out of this? I

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mean, aside from letting everybody read
your book, telling people, for example,

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that we're not I mean, it
was all assumed when I was growing

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up there we're going to run on
of oil just the well the wells were

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going to be screeching and pumping and
spewing dust within five six years or so.

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And as it turns out now that
wasn't the case, partially due to

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technology and partially I think I'm the
nut case who believes in the biogenic origin

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of oil. But that's another day. They will believe that a finite planet

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simply cannot produce efficient resources to provide
prosperity for everybody else. But they're wrong,

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aren't they right. So, so, theoretically speaking, our planet has

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a finite number of atoms on it
until the time when our knowledge progresses to

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such a level where we are able
to drag atoms from out of space by

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let's say, mining on the Moon
or alternatively capturing comets, or simply draining

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the universe of hydrogen. Whatever we
have on the planet we have. Now

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that being said, we have only
explored a fraction of the planet, and

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we have absolutely no idea what's happening
on the bottom of the oceans. So,

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by the so, we have thousands
of years ahead of us in which

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we can explore our planet get to
resources that we don't know exists. One

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of the reasons why we don't know
about about many elements is because they are

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so cheap that there is no reason
why we should go on exploring them.

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But if something gets very expensive,
then we have an incentive to explore.

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The modern twist on this seems to
be not that we there's not enough stuff

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for us to get, but it
is wrong for us to at it.

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There is violation somehow of the ethos
of the earth of the guia to actually

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that it's exploited, exploitative to go
down there and get it when it's actually

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necessary. But treating the earth as
some sort of uh you know, permanent

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stasis system that cannot be disturbed by
man, that it is unethical to do

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so? Am I right? Sure? No, No, that's absolutely right.

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I mean I wouldn't be the first
to to to draw attention to the

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similarities and parallels between Christianity and Judaism, for example, monotheistic religions overall and

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and and environmentalism. Now, I
don't say there's some as some as a

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as a religion hater or something like
that. I simply point out that environmentalism,

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the structure of environmental movement is very
similar to that of these monotheistic religions.

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You have the God, which is
Gaya. You have Mother Mother Earth,

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you have the the Garden of Eden, which is Earth before industrialization.

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You have your priesthoods, the IPC. You see. You know, if

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you disagree with them, or if
you criticize them, then then then you

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are a heretic. You have your
saints, Greta Thumberg, you even have

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you have your you have your you
have your devils. Now those are obvious

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though. Those are the the CEOs
of fossil fuel companies and fosil fuels and

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whatever. You're probably in there too, by the way, And so it's

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cato. Don't you excuse yourself from
the devil pantheon? I'm sure. And

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and finally, and most most interestingly, we have we have, of course

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indulgencies, just like the Catholic Church
before before Reformation. Um. You can

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be an utter hypocrite. You can
fly around the world on a private jet,

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you can live in one of your
six twelve bedroom houses. Um.

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But so long as you say the
right things, so long as you um

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um, so long as you go
and march with the with the green movement,

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all of these are washed away.
So um. So so there are

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these else. Now finally, to
your point about it's sinful. Yet there

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is a religious aspect to it,
which is sinfulness, a raping of mather

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Gaya. But there is also a
more shall we say, materialistic concern,

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which is what do you do with
the byproduct of human activity? In other

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words, even if you don't believe
that we are going to run out of

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let's say, copper or zinc or
whatever humans consume so much that at some

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point we are going to destroy the
air, we are going to destroy the

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earth, and so on, so
and this is tied to an environmental concept

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of natural think that at some point
you're going to cross a threshold, at

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which point the biological sphere, the
biosphere on which you rely on sustenance,

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is going to collapse. The only
problem is that after forty years of research,

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we have no idea how to measure
these biological sinks and thresholds and what

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it would take in order to overcome
or rather prevent those thresholds from being overcome.

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Perfect example of that would be something
like what happened in Chernobyl. Chernobyl

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is now a refuge for wildlife,
even though it's obviously a place that was

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heavily polluted by the nuclear explosion.
The other the other place to look is

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the Bikini Atoll. The United States
had dropped twenty five nuclear weapons nuclear bombs

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on the beginning atolls in the nineteen
fifties. The marine life has completely recovered,

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and even life on the islands such
as palm crabs seem to be doing

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just fine. Now, this doesn't
mean that we should be going out of

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our way in order to destroy the
earth. I feel I am an environmentally

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conscious person. What I am.
What I am saying is that is that

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it probably takes a lot in order
to destroy and in order to cross these

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thresholds, and we need to and
and there's nothing wrong in rebalancing the debate

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back to anthropocentric kind of approach as
opposed to guia based approach, if I

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can jump in again. Yet,
by the way, Mary and I've looked

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at in detail some of those ecological
footprint models, and as you know,

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they're all heavily dependent on one thing
to get their dire outcome. And that's

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COO too, emissions. Okay,
leave that aside for another day. Rob

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mentioned that the premise of your enterprise
is the story of human creativity, which

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is coevil with civilization itself. Except
I think there's an inflection point. And

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I always like to say that maybe
the two most important charts of all those

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that you produce show, starting around
roughly eighteen hundred, life expectancy starts to

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soar, the number of people living
in dire poverty goes from ninety eight percent

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and starts falling precipitously. A lot
of that's a twentieth century story poverty.

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A lot of that's the last forty
fifty years on a global scale. What

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explains that? What are your theories
for that? I mean, I gather

401
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that there's still debate among economists and
economic historians about what explains economic growth as

402
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a technology? Is it markets as
a rule of law, it's a democracy,

403
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And I mean, I have my
own opinions, but I'd like to

404
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hear yours. So, yes,
you're drawing attention to a fundamental issue here.

405
00:30:07.160 --> 00:30:11.599
Human beings have always innovated, but
innovation was sporadic and it took a

406
00:30:11.680 --> 00:30:15.880
very long time. You know,
the Older one stone age technology appears three

407
00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:22.599
million years ago, but then it
remains unchanged until Assulian stone age emerges one

408
00:30:22.599 --> 00:30:26.680
and a half million years ago.
So people were apparently perfectly willing to use

409
00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:30.559
Older one technology for one half million
years without innovating at all. So people

410
00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:33.960
have always innovated, but slowly and
sporadically. Two hundred years ago begins the

411
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:41.359
age of what economic historians referred to
as the period of sustained innovation. In

412
00:30:41.359 --> 00:30:45.079
other words, that innovation happens every
day, it happens constantly, and in

413
00:30:45.119 --> 00:30:49.319
some ways, certainly the way that
we measure it, innovation is actually accelerating.

414
00:30:49.920 --> 00:30:56.359
So what are the reasons for it? The key reason that I zeroed

415
00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:03.079
in, primarily because almost all economic
historians give it some credibility, is into

416
00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:08.519
jurisdictional competition between European states. What
does that mean. It means that after

417
00:31:08.559 --> 00:31:12.559
the rise of gunpowder, after the
invention of gunpowder and the rise of the

418
00:31:12.599 --> 00:31:18.079
gunpowder empires China, Ottoman Empire,
Russia, etc. There was only one

419
00:31:18.200 --> 00:31:22.720
place in the world where there was
civilization. By that I mean cities and

420
00:31:22.799 --> 00:31:27.680
writing which did not have an imperial
structure, and that was Europe. Yes,

421
00:31:27.759 --> 00:31:33.839
European powers did have external empires,
but in Europe there was no empire.

422
00:31:33.359 --> 00:31:37.440
Europeans where on each other's throats all
the time, and they were threatening

423
00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:42.559
each other's independence all the time.
And so you so in China, in

424
00:31:42.599 --> 00:31:48.559
the imperial China you were China was
so big that you were not really worried

425
00:31:48.599 --> 00:31:52.480
about being swallowed up by your competitors. What you were worried about was being

426
00:31:52.079 --> 00:32:00.200
destroyed from within by new ideas in
Europe, the problem was opposite. You

427
00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:07.680
are constantly worried about somebody swallowing you
up, and so what what is European

428
00:32:07.799 --> 00:32:14.319
lads did? They permitted domestic innovation
and disruptive ideas to emerge in order to

429
00:32:14.359 --> 00:32:20.480
create more wealth and more growth to
protect themselves against being swallowed up by their

430
00:32:20.640 --> 00:32:25.599
geopolitical adversaries. Hey, Marian,
have you have you just described capitalism.

431
00:32:25.640 --> 00:32:35.319
I've described How've described how capitalism can
survive that it needs. It needs countries

432
00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:39.640
continuously innovating and showing to the rest
of the world that things can be done

433
00:32:39.680 --> 00:32:43.799
in a better way. If you
do have a global government, if you

434
00:32:43.880 --> 00:32:46.759
do have one tax tax system for
the entire world, then of course you

435
00:32:46.799 --> 00:32:54.440
will then you could lose that innovative, innovative spurt because because that is for

436
00:32:54.480 --> 00:32:59.200
innovation to happen and for growth to
happen, you have to have different countries

437
00:32:59.240 --> 00:33:05.559
trying different sets of freedoms and responsibilities
to move ahead, just like we have

438
00:33:05.720 --> 00:33:07.680
to some extent in the United States. Part of the reason why I'm so

439
00:33:07.759 --> 00:33:14.519
excited about or why I like the
federal system so much, is because right

440
00:33:14.559 --> 00:33:17.400
now, look at what's happening in
terms of competition when it comes to school

441
00:33:17.480 --> 00:33:22.240
vouchers and education. Look at what's
happening in competition on state taxes. You

442
00:33:22.279 --> 00:33:25.759
know, competition is driving it down. And it's basically in a nutshell what

443
00:33:25.799 --> 00:33:31.079
happened in Europe. Okay, So
I mean people, I guess what I'm

444
00:33:31.119 --> 00:33:35.839
trying to say is whose fault?
You know, there's always that people always

445
00:33:35.839 --> 00:33:39.759
complain about. After the World War
Two, the big American foreign policy questions

446
00:33:39.799 --> 00:33:45.519
who lost China? Right like who
who blew it? Which American policymaker,

447
00:33:45.559 --> 00:33:52.000
which American policy lost China? Who
lost capitalism? Because I think you've just

448
00:33:52.039 --> 00:33:54.400
described capitalism, and I would say, I would make a full throaded argument

449
00:33:54.440 --> 00:33:58.519
that it was capitalism a human that
would led to human flourishing, and human

450
00:33:58.519 --> 00:34:02.000
flourishings would led to it's incredibly golden
age we live in now, and yet

451
00:34:02.279 --> 00:34:06.160
um, everywhere I you know,
if I read the New York Times,

452
00:34:06.200 --> 00:34:09.159
the Interest, there's somebody saying it's
late stage capitalism, the capitalism is there

453
00:34:09.400 --> 00:34:14.559
is there is responsible for more misery
when in fact, you know, a

454
00:34:14.679 --> 00:34:17.000
third year graphs in that book just
show you that no, actually, capitalism

455
00:34:17.039 --> 00:34:22.480
is brought immense, immense good to
the world. By a factor. It

456
00:34:22.519 --> 00:34:28.760
isn't even just you know, some
good some bad, it's almost entirely good

457
00:34:28.760 --> 00:34:34.679
news. Why is that? Is
it just? Do we need another word?

458
00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:38.840
It's just capitalism. It's a bad
word. Now, Yes, capitalism

459
00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:43.639
is a bad word. It was
meant as a pejorative. My colleague Dedra

460
00:34:43.719 --> 00:34:52.960
McCluskey emphasizes emobism. I've heard people
talking about solutionism. Obviously, the mainstream

461
00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:57.480
within our world talks about free markets
rather than capitalism. And why is that

462
00:34:57.519 --> 00:35:01.079
important? It is because capitalism is
not built by accumulating capital. Sorry,

463
00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:07.039
modernity and economic growth was not built
by accumulating capital. If all you needed

464
00:35:07.119 --> 00:35:12.280
was to accumulate capital, then Imperial
Spain would have been the most prosperous country

465
00:35:12.280 --> 00:35:15.800
in the world because they had a
lot of accumulated capital. In fact,

466
00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:21.440
modernity and economic growth and prosperity emerges
in Holland and Britain, which didn't have

467
00:35:21.599 --> 00:35:25.199
that much capital. So capitalism doesn't
matter. The capital matters much less than

468
00:35:25.239 --> 00:35:30.159
innovation, and innovation is dependent on
human freedom. In other words, the

469
00:35:30.760 --> 00:35:36.760
human freedom to be able to apply
disruptive ideas and in order to be able

470
00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:38.360
to benefit from them. Now,
who lost it? And now who lost

471
00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:44.960
it? A good question? I
think that well, First of all,

472
00:35:44.960 --> 00:35:50.079
capitalism never had a wholesale purchase on
the parts of the elites or even common

473
00:35:50.119 --> 00:35:54.840
people. Where has never been a
successful political party which was called a capitalist

474
00:35:55.000 --> 00:36:00.159
party. There were countless socialist parties
and communist parties which but even parts of

475
00:36:00.239 --> 00:36:05.400
government in Western democratic nations, But
there has never been a capitalist country.

476
00:36:05.440 --> 00:36:08.719
We don't even we don't even have
a name for that. I mean,

477
00:36:08.719 --> 00:36:14.760
a democrat, somebody who emphasizes democracy, you know, a socialist, somebody

478
00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:19.239
who advances socialism. But capitalist is
somebody who manipulates capital r then advances the

479
00:36:19.280 --> 00:36:22.119
capitalist ideas. So we didn't even
have a name for it. I can

480
00:36:22.159 --> 00:36:24.800
I offer a possibility for that.
One of the reason why we don't have

481
00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:27.679
a name for it, one of
the reason why we don't do that is

482
00:36:27.679 --> 00:36:31.679
because capitalism is inherently scary, and
that if you're in if you're an elite,

483
00:36:32.599 --> 00:36:37.079
if you're on the top, you
don't really like capitalism so much because

484
00:36:37.079 --> 00:36:39.719
you want to keep things the way
they are in term terms of power,

485
00:36:39.760 --> 00:36:44.760
in terms of wealth, you don't
really want that. Capitalism by definition is

486
00:36:44.840 --> 00:36:47.960
dynamic. Mean you look at the
vast amount of wealth that was created in

487
00:36:47.960 --> 00:36:52.400
the nineteenth century in Britain or in
this country for that matter, and how

488
00:36:52.480 --> 00:36:55.360
quickly, how how many of those
sort of newly minted lords and ladies and

489
00:36:55.440 --> 00:37:02.039
newly minted robber barons and industrialist In
the United States, we're about one generation

490
00:37:02.119 --> 00:37:07.760
or half a generation, or maybe
zero generations from poverty. There is something

491
00:37:07.800 --> 00:37:12.559
about four people getting rich that just
bugs the crap out of rich people.

492
00:37:14.920 --> 00:37:21.360
We have a study out here at
Cato showing that the attrition rate for super

493
00:37:21.400 --> 00:37:25.400
wealthy people in the Forbes four hundred
is three percent per annum. So within

494
00:37:25.440 --> 00:37:30.400
a generation of let's say, thirty
years, you have a brand new group

495
00:37:30.440 --> 00:37:35.440
of people within the Forbes four hundred
because people who are there simply simply the

496
00:37:36.599 --> 00:37:39.000
atrophy and the wealth gets divided or
lost, and so and so forth.

497
00:37:39.199 --> 00:37:43.400
Another great thing about the United States
is that most of the people who are

498
00:37:43.440 --> 00:37:46.639
super wealthy in America today are actually
self made. They are not descendants of

499
00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:51.519
kings and queens and nobility and whatever. In you know, in Europe,

500
00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:57.320
of course, you're right that elites
always have a preference in the status quo,

501
00:37:57.800 --> 00:38:01.760
and it's only when they are fundamental
is threatened that they take their foot

502
00:38:01.760 --> 00:38:09.039
off the neck of the ordinary people. Perfect example of it is what happened,

503
00:38:09.280 --> 00:38:14.719
what's happening in China right now.
You know, she thought that he

504
00:38:14.760 --> 00:38:20.119
was losing control over China, so
he doubled down on communist control of the

505
00:38:20.119 --> 00:38:27.679
country at the cost of massive economic
losses and declining economic growth. And already

506
00:38:27.719 --> 00:38:31.840
there's a lot of talk about him
making a U turn and embracing market again,

507
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:37.159
because the Chinese Communist Party can remain
in charge of the state only as

508
00:38:37.159 --> 00:38:43.440
long as it can say and show
that it produces superior economic results, which

509
00:38:43.519 --> 00:38:46.519
is impossible if you have so much
economics, if you have so much control,

510
00:38:46.719 --> 00:38:50.960
and if you if your interest is
in the status qroke. So,

511
00:38:51.039 --> 00:38:54.199
I mean the current the current environmental
movement. I mean, part of it

512
00:38:54.239 --> 00:39:00.400
we have to say is I will
stipulate is in good faith people who are

513
00:39:00.440 --> 00:39:04.559
in good faith and want to protect
the earth. I understand that. But

514
00:39:04.840 --> 00:39:09.840
there's also this part of it that
just feels like, you know, poor

515
00:39:09.880 --> 00:39:15.800
people should just stay poor, that
like maybe everyone should just stop inventing stuff

516
00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:22.000
and coming up with new stuff.
And I mean you in order to really

517
00:39:22.039 --> 00:39:24.159
be I mean, I want to
talk a little bit about your phrase infinitely

518
00:39:24.199 --> 00:39:30.280
bountiful, which I need, I
wanted. But in order to believe the

519
00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:32.679
sort of the current environmental movement,
you have to believe that it's over.

520
00:39:34.719 --> 00:39:37.239
And I think there are some people
who believe it's over as you describe the

521
00:39:37.239 --> 00:39:39.960
psychology, but I think there's also
a bunch of people who just want it

522
00:39:40.039 --> 00:39:44.920
to be over, because if it's
not over, I means they have stuff

523
00:39:44.960 --> 00:39:46.679
to work? Can I add on
to your question a little bit, Rob?

524
00:39:46.760 --> 00:39:51.719
Sorry? Right, No, Well, Mary, we started with Maltha's

525
00:39:51.800 --> 00:39:53.760
and you know, an awful lot
of environment lost. The smarter ones have

526
00:39:53.880 --> 00:39:57.679
been trying to get away from Althusianism
for a while. That lacks I say,

527
00:39:57.719 --> 00:40:00.639
yeah, Malthus was wrong. But
then they're like I was like to

528
00:40:00.719 --> 00:40:04.239
say, they're like people just out
of a twelve step alcoholics anonymous meeting and

529
00:40:04.280 --> 00:40:06.800
they go buy a well at tavern
and they stumble in and go on a

530
00:40:06.840 --> 00:40:09.960
bender. And now we have,
as you know, a D growth movement.

531
00:40:10.039 --> 00:40:15.039
They openly call themselves a D growth
movement. So they're back to malthes

532
00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:20.000
under a different label. And so
yeah, I mean Rob was asking a

533
00:40:20.119 --> 00:40:22.679
question, Um, what do we
make of how do we how do we

534
00:40:22.760 --> 00:40:27.199
think about these people who are determined
to not be people keep poor? We're

535
00:40:27.239 --> 00:40:30.719
against progress itself. I mean that
was the Uni Bomber's manifesto. Right,

536
00:40:30.760 --> 00:40:34.639
progress itself is bad? What do
we do about that? Well? Look,

537
00:40:34.679 --> 00:40:37.920
in a way, yes, Rob
asked the right question, but I

538
00:40:37.920 --> 00:40:42.559
don't think it's necessary to go into
details trying to figure out their motivations because

539
00:40:42.760 --> 00:40:46.400
their agenda has been clear from uh, their agenda has been clear since Russo.

540
00:40:46.639 --> 00:40:52.320
But Russo is the first, is
the first Enlightenment intellectual who objects to

541
00:40:52.400 --> 00:40:59.360
modernity. He agrees with um,
you know, condo saying others that that

542
00:40:59.559 --> 00:41:04.119
that that modernity, this freedom,
which has led to more economic growth,

543
00:41:04.239 --> 00:41:08.199
has made us richer. But he
thinks that as people become richer, they

544
00:41:08.239 --> 00:41:15.519
become less moral, that they begin
to obsess about material goods, about about

545
00:41:15.679 --> 00:41:22.679
fulfillment of their material needs at the
at the expense of, let's say,

546
00:41:22.519 --> 00:41:29.280
thinking deeply about universal questions, um
and and things like that. So,

547
00:41:29.400 --> 00:41:37.199
Russo is the first one. And
Russo birthed a a bi political movement called

548
00:41:37.360 --> 00:41:42.000
Romanticism. And what is the romantic
objection to capitalism? It's exactly what Russo

549
00:41:42.320 --> 00:41:46.559
said And what Rob just pointed out
is that is that the desires of the

550
00:41:46.599 --> 00:41:52.400
common people, of the ordinary people
are somehow less valuable of what the elites

551
00:41:52.480 --> 00:41:58.320
want. The elites want um,
the elites want, you know, to

552
00:41:59.039 --> 00:42:04.320
spend their time thinking about deep questions. What Hoi poloi wants is a bigger

553
00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:09.239
house with a swimming pool and two
cars in a garage. And that is

554
00:42:09.480 --> 00:42:13.920
and that is that is cross.
It is materialistic. But that's what the

555
00:42:14.000 --> 00:42:17.000
Romantic movement was about, the Romantic
movement. So Russo gives birth to the

556
00:42:17.079 --> 00:42:21.320
Romantic movement, and the Romantic movement
then gives birth to whom, to the

557
00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:25.400
socialists and also to national socialists.
What to national socialists and socialists have in

558
00:42:25.400 --> 00:42:32.920
common is rejection of capitalism and the
expressed desires of the masses. They shouldn't

559
00:42:32.920 --> 00:42:39.400
be in They shouldn't be indulged in
the cross in their crass materialistic obsessions.

560
00:42:39.639 --> 00:42:45.159
Rather, the state and society should
function at the behest of the of the

561
00:42:45.280 --> 00:42:50.719
of the ruling elite. So so
there's nothing new under the sun. It's

562
00:42:50.760 --> 00:42:55.800
just that we have moved on from
a socialist criticism or sorry, romantic criticism

563
00:42:55.840 --> 00:43:01.079
of western of Western world to socialist
to nationals socialists, and to post modernists

564
00:43:01.119 --> 00:43:06.800
and to environmentalist critique of Western life. But ultimately they are all tied together

565
00:43:07.199 --> 00:43:09.840
by what I've just described. When
you mentioned the romanticist I'm thinking that the

566
00:43:09.880 --> 00:43:13.760
people who subscribed to that philosophy in
the day, I always thought that they

567
00:43:13.760 --> 00:43:16.800
would be the Casper David Friederich person
standing at the top of the mountain looking

568
00:43:16.840 --> 00:43:22.880
down at that beautiful thing. But
if the mists in those paintings had lifted

569
00:43:22.920 --> 00:43:25.880
and they'd seen the dark satanic mills, they would have opposed capitalism and progress

570
00:43:25.880 --> 00:43:29.400
and the rest of it simply on
esthetic grounds, which goes back to what

571
00:43:29.440 --> 00:43:32.679
you're saying about the Hoi poloi having
their having their crafts pursuits. Anyway,

572
00:43:32.719 --> 00:43:36.119
that wasn't so much a question.
It's just something that popped into my head

573
00:43:36.119 --> 00:43:37.960
for no particular reason. I give
it to Rob before we leave. Rob.

574
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:42.000
Yeah, so I'm so. I
guess what I'd say is that I'm

575
00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:50.119
just sort of channeling the critics You
talk about the world could be infinitely bountiful,

576
00:43:51.239 --> 00:43:57.880
that we're actually entering a phase of
superabundance. It's incredibly positive this book.

577
00:43:59.199 --> 00:44:00.239
One of the reasons I like it
is because I've an optimist and it

578
00:44:00.280 --> 00:44:02.719
seems to like, you know,
you got a bunch of graphs and charts

579
00:44:02.760 --> 00:44:08.039
that like seem to suggest that my
optimism is is well placed and that essentially

580
00:44:08.119 --> 00:44:16.159
is a full throated endorsement of uh, disruptive, active free market innovation and

581
00:44:16.360 --> 00:44:24.800
progress. Um. So, what
should we be worried about aside from the

582
00:44:24.880 --> 00:44:35.000
grim Greta Thurnbergs and eco warriors?
What what? What? What's gonna stop

583
00:44:35.039 --> 00:44:37.960
this? That will come under the
guise of friend you know what I mean?

584
00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:42.199
Like, like, where where are
we going to make mistakes? Those

585
00:44:42.239 --> 00:44:47.639
of us who are full throated free
marketeers, they're dangerous on the horizon that

586
00:44:47.719 --> 00:44:52.960
have always been dangerous to modernity,
um and to and to economic growth.

587
00:44:53.599 --> 00:44:58.199
One of the dangers moving forward will
be what will happen to the human population.

588
00:44:58.320 --> 00:45:00.239
I very much believe that people should
have as many babies as they want.

589
00:45:00.599 --> 00:45:05.519
But if they are brainwashed into not
having children, and if they are

590
00:45:05.519 --> 00:45:08.440
brainwashed into believing that bringing a child
into the world is an act of selfishness

591
00:45:08.480 --> 00:45:12.559
and that humans are cancer on the
planet, that we could basically see a

592
00:45:12.599 --> 00:45:15.079
population collapse if we do that.
That it's going to have its own negative

593
00:45:15.119 --> 00:45:21.440
consequences, such as potentially much less
economic growth. Because where do new ideas

594
00:45:21.440 --> 00:45:23.559
of sorry, we'll do innovations come
from. They come from ideas which are

595
00:45:23.559 --> 00:45:29.360
produced in the human brain. And
until we get this much promised AI and

596
00:45:29.480 --> 00:45:34.719
supercomputing, we still rely on human
beings to come up with new ideas that

597
00:45:34.719 --> 00:45:37.320
can move humanity forward, such as, for example, how to make fusion

598
00:45:37.360 --> 00:45:44.000
reactors economical so that we can produce
plentiful energy for everyone. The other thing

599
00:45:44.039 --> 00:45:45.559
that worries me is, of course, the values of the Enlightenment, which

600
00:45:45.559 --> 00:45:51.880
seem to be attacked everywhere. It
is incredibly important to understand that modernity,

601
00:45:52.480 --> 00:45:59.480
growth, capitalism can only function within
a within more or less irrational world where

602
00:45:59.480 --> 00:46:02.280
we understand then that math matters,
That math is not racist, but math

603
00:46:02.440 --> 00:46:07.960
is very important, for example figuring
out how a bridge works, or how

604
00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:13.840
airplanes take into the skies and land
safely. Freedom of speech is incredibly important.

605
00:46:13.960 --> 00:46:17.599
If we decide that certain areas of
inquiry shouldn't be shouldn't be spoken about,

606
00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:22.760
or we keep on canceling people with
something important to contribute. Think about

607
00:46:22.760 --> 00:46:25.880
somebody like Jim Watson, the co
discovery of DNA. I mean, imagine

608
00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:31.880
if he was canceled because he's a
deeply, deeply offensive and politically incorrect person

609
00:46:32.079 --> 00:46:37.199
and we never got DNA structure out
of him, humanity would wouldn't be well

610
00:46:37.239 --> 00:46:42.199
served. Also, you cannot think
freely if you cannot if you cannot speak

611
00:46:42.239 --> 00:46:45.559
freely. In other words, my
freedom to think freely very much depends on

612
00:46:45.559 --> 00:46:49.440
my ability to be able to hear
what people have to say, even if

613
00:46:49.440 --> 00:46:53.079
it's offensive or something I disagree with. And of course, any new idea

614
00:46:53.199 --> 00:46:58.599
has to be tested in the marketplace. People have all sorts of ideas.

615
00:46:58.760 --> 00:47:00.719
They have ideas all the time,
but some of them are some of them,

616
00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:05.119
most of them are crappy, some
of them are incredibly dangerous, and

617
00:47:05.119 --> 00:47:07.800
only a small fraction is very good. How do you differentiate between a good

618
00:47:07.880 --> 00:47:13.039
idea and a bad idea? You
have to have a functioning marketplace, which

619
00:47:13.119 --> 00:47:20.039
decides between the betamex and the VHS, which decides between Blockbuster and Netflix,

620
00:47:20.239 --> 00:47:28.000
which decides between green new jobs or
alternatively fracking. Can I underline something very

621
00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:31.519
important you just said, which is
you said enlightenment values or under attack.

622
00:47:31.840 --> 00:47:37.880
I'm an old now old conventional conservative. I never thought that I'd arrive at

623
00:47:37.880 --> 00:47:42.039
a moment where it's conservatives who would
become the principal defenders of light of the

624
00:47:42.119 --> 00:47:45.000
Enlightenment era and its ideas. I'm
stunned at this development, and this covers

625
00:47:45.039 --> 00:47:47.280
a lot of territory, and yet
here we are, thank you, Mary,

626
00:47:47.320 --> 00:47:52.719
and we're saying that the book is
super abundant, the story of population

627
00:47:52.760 --> 00:47:55.760
growth, innovation, and human flourishing
on an infinitely bountiful planet. Get it

628
00:47:55.800 --> 00:47:59.880
now before it sells out. I'm
kidding, it's ever going to sell outs,

629
00:48:00.199 --> 00:48:02.280
be infinitely. It's superabundant. Yeah, it's super aboundant. It'll be

630
00:48:02.280 --> 00:48:06.039
on PDF, and of course that
means that no atoms, not too many

631
00:48:06.039 --> 00:48:07.440
apples. We're used too. And
you don't have to look at the graphs

632
00:48:07.519 --> 00:48:09.679
or the charts. You can just
skip right by them and read the book.

633
00:48:09.880 --> 00:48:15.039
I love graphs and charts, but
that's just all right. There's your

634
00:48:15.039 --> 00:48:16.880
blurb for the next edition, Rob
Long. Skip all the graphs and charts

635
00:48:16.880 --> 00:48:23.480
that were so mistakingly chosen and incented. But anyway, it's been a fascinating

636
00:48:23.480 --> 00:48:27.519
discussion. And the next time you
write something else or just want to come

637
00:48:27.519 --> 00:48:30.320
on the show, give us a
give us a hauler and finally some good

638
00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:34.559
news. Absolutely, so we appreciate
you being on the show today. Thank

639
00:48:34.559 --> 00:48:37.199
you, gentlemen. It's been a
great pleasure all the us. Bye bye.

640
00:48:37.719 --> 00:48:39.000
You find a link to that book
at ricochet dot com. And what

641
00:48:39.159 --> 00:48:42.920
is ricochet dot com? You might
ask, if you have just stumbled on

642
00:48:42.960 --> 00:48:46.639
this podcast somehow by a search engine
optimization, a little tweaked thing we did,

643
00:48:46.880 --> 00:48:51.320
or because you were handed it or
link came your way. What is

644
00:48:51.400 --> 00:48:57.000
Ricochet? It's a fantastic website on
the Internet. Do I have to say

645
00:48:57.039 --> 00:48:59.840
more? The thing is, unlike
all the rest of these sites is that

646
00:49:00.039 --> 00:49:05.119
Ricochet members actually meet in person,
in room where they where they do,

647
00:49:05.159 --> 00:49:12.320
where they intake oxygen, and yeah, they consume, they consume infinitely bountiful

648
00:49:12.360 --> 00:49:15.119
quantities of Sorry, and here's Rob
Long to tell you where you can meet

649
00:49:15.199 --> 00:49:17.840
up with some Ricoche people. You
are absolutely right, James. The summer

650
00:49:19.039 --> 00:49:22.840
meetups are in full swing and there
are two more left. There's one happening

651
00:49:23.039 --> 00:49:29.280
right this minute in Milwaukee. The
German Fest meetup is happening right now this

652
00:49:29.320 --> 00:49:31.079
weekend. So if you're listening to
this today or tomorrow, um, get

653
00:49:31.119 --> 00:49:35.440
on over there. If you're in
the Milwaukee area, and then on Labor

654
00:49:35.480 --> 00:49:37.159
Day weekend there's one in Cookeville,
Tennessee. And that's what we got for

655
00:49:37.199 --> 00:49:42.360
the summer, and there's more coming
after the autumn. If you want to

656
00:49:42.440 --> 00:49:45.159
have an autumn meetup, and the
autom meetups that you see listed are not

657
00:49:45.360 --> 00:49:49.519
you know, convenient or location or
time, the thing you do is you

658
00:49:49.599 --> 00:49:52.679
join Ricochet and you just announce a
meetup of your own. People will show

659
00:49:52.760 --> 00:49:55.280
up. You don't really have any
planning. People just want to show up

660
00:49:55.280 --> 00:50:00.440
and have some drinks and some food
and talk and get an each other.

661
00:50:00.440 --> 00:50:04.920
And um, they're always a good
time. I look forward to them every

662
00:50:04.960 --> 00:50:08.880
year, fantastic. I hate the
fact that you mentioned autumn because that means

663
00:50:08.880 --> 00:50:12.079
that that I suppose is something to
think about. We are here in the

664
00:50:12.119 --> 00:50:16.159
waiting days with the inauguration of August, which we always think is the big

665
00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:22.360
monolithic block of time that somehow stands
between us and and the fall. But

666
00:50:22.480 --> 00:50:27.199
oh, it starts to gallop.
Oh times winged chariot starts to be heard,

667
00:50:27.360 --> 00:50:30.840
and it increasingly speed of the beats
to the wings. But that's a

668
00:50:30.840 --> 00:50:36.599
while away. In the meantime,
it's crazy season right at some point is

669
00:50:36.639 --> 00:50:40.000
like August is the crazy season where
there nothing really happens and so weird story

670
00:50:40.119 --> 00:50:44.679
surface. I think that's I don't
think that's true anymore. I think in

671
00:50:44.679 --> 00:50:46.880
this twenty four seven, three sixty
five Twitter driven news cycle that there's always

672
00:50:46.920 --> 00:50:51.639
something crazy and always something that's that
it's not a news desert at all.

673
00:50:51.800 --> 00:50:58.559
Or maybe we just are so used
to everything being hyped and amplified outside of

674
00:50:58.559 --> 00:51:01.559
its parameters. You would never have
thought, however, many years ago,

675
00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:06.440
that, for example, we would
have a national discussion about the educational curriculum

676
00:51:06.440 --> 00:51:10.000
in another state, do you,
But yet we do, because apparently it

677
00:51:10.079 --> 00:51:16.440
is important to prove that Florida is
an anti intellectual, racist dystopia run over

678
00:51:16.480 --> 00:51:21.599
by a madman, a little Mussolinian
healed boots, that people are fleeing in

679
00:51:21.719 --> 00:51:24.360
terror because they are becoming aware that
should they want to change the gender of

680
00:51:24.400 --> 00:51:28.000
their child, it's going to be
difficult to do so. And what's more,

681
00:51:28.119 --> 00:51:31.599
the textbook are telling everybody that slavery
was zippity Duda song of the South,

682
00:51:32.079 --> 00:51:37.239
wonderful thing that benefited everybody. Even
the Vice President of the United States

683
00:51:37.239 --> 00:51:40.239
went on to castigate the Florida standards, something which produced Charles C. W.

684
00:51:40.440 --> 00:51:50.320
Cook to do the most detailed evisceration
of V. Paris's points one hundred

685
00:51:50.320 --> 00:51:53.039
and ninety one I think points that
there were. Would say, so,

686
00:51:53.280 --> 00:51:57.559
Stephen, we were talking about this
earlier because you said you had a prophetsorial

687
00:51:57.599 --> 00:52:01.119
connection with one of the people involved
in the educational standard today appear that correctly.

688
00:52:01.480 --> 00:52:05.719
Yeah, I mean Bill Allen was
one of my professors in graduate school

689
00:52:05.719 --> 00:52:08.920
thirty five years ago or more.
Was one of African American grew up in

690
00:52:08.960 --> 00:52:13.239
the segregated South. Told me once
that you know, as a kid,

691
00:52:13.320 --> 00:52:15.800
he couldn't go into the public library, but the librarian who bright kid,

692
00:52:15.840 --> 00:52:21.679
obviously the librarian would bring him books
out to read on the steps of the

693
00:52:21.679 --> 00:52:25.320
library, right. And he was
one of the collaborators on the curriculum.

694
00:52:25.320 --> 00:52:29.280
And what they're picking on is one
sentence, it's actually not even part of

695
00:52:29.320 --> 00:52:34.079
it's a little guideline in a footnote
that says, I'm paraphrasing slightly, but

696
00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:38.480
slaves acquired skills that in some instances
enabled them to be more self sufficient once

697
00:52:38.480 --> 00:52:46.000
slavery ended. Now, the actual
APE curriculum that Harris actually recommended that she

698
00:52:46.079 --> 00:52:49.440
used around the rest of the country. Here's their sentence. I'm going to

699
00:52:49.480 --> 00:52:52.599
read it too. It's not very
long. In addition to agricultural work,

700
00:52:52.840 --> 00:52:59.079
enslave people learned specialized trades and worked
as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians,

701
00:52:59.320 --> 00:53:05.639
and healers in the North and South. Once free, African Americans use

702
00:53:05.719 --> 00:53:09.880
these skills to provide for themselves and
others. The point is Harris would have

703
00:53:09.880 --> 00:53:14.239
said exactly the same thing if the
Florida people adopted that same sentence from the

704
00:53:14.239 --> 00:53:19.199
ap curriculum that everyone else uses.
This is just ranked demagoguery. One more

705
00:53:19.239 --> 00:53:22.840
addition to all this, I think
the real reason for the outbursts. It's

706
00:53:22.840 --> 00:53:25.559
cynical and political. Democrats are panicked
they might lose some of the black vote

707
00:53:25.559 --> 00:53:29.639
to Republicans, so you got to
keep racism alive. This has been going

708
00:53:29.719 --> 00:53:32.480
on for a long time. Of
course, on page eight that that sentence

709
00:53:32.519 --> 00:53:36.280
that the objectives on page six of
the Florida curriculum. I bread through the

710
00:53:36.280 --> 00:53:40.960
whole thing. Page eight there's a
line that says we must teach the history

711
00:53:42.039 --> 00:53:47.400
of slavery before sixteen nineteen. Aha. This takes aim and if you read

712
00:53:47.440 --> 00:53:51.039
the whole curriculm. And you can
see it's a much broader and more rich

713
00:53:51.079 --> 00:53:55.440
curriculum that fully explores the violence against
blacks, Jim Crow, segregation, the

714
00:53:55.440 --> 00:53:59.719
brutality of the slave trade, and
so forth. There's no whitewashing of the

715
00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.719
history here, so to speak.
But the point is that this curriculum does

716
00:54:04.960 --> 00:54:08.360
challenge the reigning orthodoxy of the left
that's taken over the New York Times that

717
00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:13.440
America was a slave ocracy and in
their mind still is a slave ocricy.

718
00:54:13.519 --> 00:54:15.920
Right, the world began in sixteen
nineteen, right, and there was nothing

719
00:54:16.000 --> 00:54:21.480
changed between sixteen nineteen and the summer
of twenty twenty, right, right,

720
00:54:21.920 --> 00:54:25.880
right. And and also that it's
a unique institution, although there are things

721
00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:30.360
that are unique about American chattel slavery, but it certainly has its roots in

722
00:54:30.800 --> 00:54:36.000
um, I mean in the birthplace
of civilization, the birthplace of human kind,

723
00:54:37.119 --> 00:54:39.159
where not a slave come from.
It comes from slaw. However,

724
00:54:39.199 --> 00:54:42.320
who are we talking about here,
right, right? Right? It was

725
00:54:42.360 --> 00:54:45.039
not, but it was also it
was. It was not an institution brought

726
00:54:45.119 --> 00:54:47.679
to the continent of Africa. Um. What I loved was that the College

727
00:54:47.679 --> 00:54:52.199
board said yesterday that it totally disagrees. But the people who do the ape

728
00:54:52.239 --> 00:54:57.320
exam it totally disagrees with the idea
that these are the same. They're completely

729
00:54:57.320 --> 00:55:00.880
different, it says, and then
and then then it st saying anything.

730
00:55:00.960 --> 00:55:04.960
Because you read them side by side, you realize that they are, in

731
00:55:05.079 --> 00:55:08.280
fact, ai versions of each other. They are almost identical. Um.

732
00:55:08.639 --> 00:55:13.920
But I guess the way I mean, just to go back into the into

733
00:55:13.920 --> 00:55:16.519
the politics of it for a minute. Um, I mean, I think

734
00:55:16.559 --> 00:55:21.400
that this should have been a great
watershed moment for Rod de Santis, Right,

735
00:55:21.599 --> 00:55:25.599
gotcha, you guys, I gotcha. But instead, since he's mad

736
00:55:25.639 --> 00:55:31.760
about everything, and he's yelling about
everything, and he's setting bonfires on every

737
00:55:31.800 --> 00:55:37.599
major topic in American culture right now, there's no discernment, there's no organization,

738
00:55:37.760 --> 00:55:42.679
there's no coherent message from him except
I'm mad as hell. I'm going

739
00:55:42.679 --> 00:55:46.239
to yell and screen. And that
is not a great way to reach voters.

740
00:55:46.360 --> 00:55:51.880
It's not a great way to tell
them that to to to express your

741
00:55:52.039 --> 00:55:57.079
political personality, which is disciplined.
He's supposed to be. He's the disciplined

742
00:55:57.119 --> 00:56:00.960
one. He's the effective one.
He's the who's not emotional. He's the

743
00:56:01.000 --> 00:56:05.360
one who's like he's he's the buttoned
up one. He's the one who read

744
00:56:05.480 --> 00:56:09.039
all of Jay Badichari's research and then
came up with his own plan for how

745
00:56:09.039 --> 00:56:13.480
to Florida should handle COVID and made
the president of United States and a lot

746
00:56:13.519 --> 00:56:16.519
of other people, like the governor
California, looks foolish. He is both

747
00:56:16.559 --> 00:56:22.079
presidents, by the way, this
is a moment for him and he's fumbling

748
00:56:22.079 --> 00:56:25.039
it, which is so too bad. Yeah, I think I think Rob

749
00:56:25.119 --> 00:56:29.039
that, Yeah, he did fumble. I think he was catted by surprise,

750
00:56:29.280 --> 00:56:32.719
so he was unprepared. And I'll
add that maybe he didn't read the

751
00:56:32.800 --> 00:56:36.360
right history when he was a Yale
student. Robs the poking a little bit.

752
00:56:37.280 --> 00:56:38.119
Look, I mean my last comment
on this, and then I'll shut

753
00:56:38.159 --> 00:56:40.800
up about it because I could have
gone too long. We should not be

754
00:56:40.880 --> 00:56:45.280
I think there's guilt and projection at
work here with the Democrats. We should

755
00:56:45.280 --> 00:56:49.159
not be surprised that the Party of
Calhoun, the party that said slavery was

756
00:56:49.199 --> 00:56:52.719
a positive good in the eighteen fifties, is now trying to project that old

757
00:56:52.840 --> 00:56:57.800
legacy of the Democratic Party onto the
other party as a deflection and as a

758
00:56:57.880 --> 00:57:01.440
cynical political tactic that that's my last
word for today. I think that presumes

759
00:57:01.480 --> 00:57:07.320
more history and savvness that might actually
be there. I think it's built into

760
00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:12.159
them, the young folk that they
are, is that to be on the

761
00:57:12.239 --> 00:57:19.159
right is to necessarily be defending capitalism
and slavery and every other bad thing there

762
00:57:19.159 --> 00:57:22.480
are. Because the right baked into
the idea of less government, less control

763
00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:25.719
over your individual lives. Baked into
that, of course, is racism.

764
00:57:25.960 --> 00:57:30.599
Somehow. It's all intertwined like a
braid that they put together in grade school

765
00:57:30.599 --> 00:57:35.679
camp. And they've never been able
or willing to unknot it. It's frustrating,

766
00:57:35.920 --> 00:57:38.000
as we all know, but there
it is. What you want.

767
00:57:38.039 --> 00:57:42.440
Though, Rob's right is optimism.
I mean, there's a way to fight

768
00:57:42.440 --> 00:57:45.119
back against something like this with a
sense of amusement and an incredulity and laugh

769
00:57:45.159 --> 00:57:47.519
and point and the rest of it
and jeer and make fun and not be

770
00:57:47.559 --> 00:57:51.400
angry about everything, you know.
And that's you know a lot of people

771
00:57:51.400 --> 00:57:52.880
who looked at Tim Scott and thought, well, there's a fellow who projects

772
00:57:52.920 --> 00:57:58.239
a certain amount of cheer. And
Tim Scott has been blasting to Santis for

773
00:57:58.400 --> 00:58:01.639
the Florida Black History Standards as well
so it's that just wonderful period of the

774
00:58:01.679 --> 00:58:08.239
year where everybody's consuming each Otheroever,
reputations are sundered, and Donald Trump rises

775
00:58:08.239 --> 00:58:14.119
above it all, and the nation
looks at the prospect of replaying that Trump

776
00:58:14.239 --> 00:58:17.719
versus Biden with this feeling in their
stomach that if we if four years didn't

777
00:58:17.719 --> 00:58:23.119
give us something else to come up
with, then then the whole notion of

778
00:58:23.159 --> 00:58:29.840
super abundance infinitely bountiful may apply to
resources, but certainly not to our political

779
00:58:29.840 --> 00:58:32.760
class, superannuated as it is.
That also seems like the problem is that

780
00:58:32.800 --> 00:58:37.760
he's a smart guy. And when
you see a smart guy behaving like a

781
00:58:37.760 --> 00:58:42.960
fool, Yeah, we're not getting
basic politics, right, I mean,

782
00:58:43.119 --> 00:58:46.079
the die our Trump voters are not
going to vote for him. That's not

783
00:58:46.119 --> 00:58:49.000
how we should be going after.
He should be going after. The Trump

784
00:58:49.079 --> 00:58:51.400
voters are like, yeah, you
know, he makes me nervous. He's

785
00:58:51.639 --> 00:58:54.679
emotionally mentally unstable. He's only got
one topic. And this other guy here,

786
00:58:54.960 --> 00:59:00.320
the santist is like a contrast.
You don't want to be um,

787
00:59:00.400 --> 00:59:02.400
you don't want to be there.
I'm just as bad and crazy as that

788
00:59:02.440 --> 00:59:07.320
guy. Uh, that's that's not
how you win. You win by drawing

789
00:59:07.840 --> 00:59:12.519
meaningful and useful in an era of
institutional collapse where nobody trust the institutions to

790
00:59:12.519 --> 00:59:14.639
be able to do what they do
because they lied to us and they failed.

791
00:59:14.639 --> 00:59:16.239
On the rest of it, somebody
who projects a certain amount of competence

792
00:59:16.280 --> 00:59:22.599
and and and competence in using the
instruments of government and not being afraid to

793
00:59:22.760 --> 00:59:27.360
use them for reasons that someone they
would strike some as you know, ideological

794
00:59:27.880 --> 00:59:30.159
is kind of what we're looking for, but it has to have a certain

795
00:59:30.239 --> 00:59:32.840
Reganesque character of optimistic and optimism and
humor and the rest of it. And

796
00:59:32.960 --> 00:59:38.480
Santasism has not been projecting that alas
and playing around with you know, footsie

797
00:59:38.519 --> 00:59:43.920
with RFK Junior and the rest I
you both well, we will see.

798
00:59:43.960 --> 00:59:45.679
That's why Ricochet is here where we
can hash all these things out of the

799
00:59:45.679 --> 00:59:51.000
comments and yell but hug at the
end because we're all friends and you should

800
00:59:51.039 --> 00:59:52.719
go there. You should also go
to Apple dot com. That's not what

801
00:59:52.760 --> 00:59:57.239
it's called, no Apple music iTunes, I don't know. It's what I

802
00:59:57.280 --> 01:00:00.880
pay for that gives me all this
and give us five star review. We

803
01:00:00.960 --> 01:00:06.199
really like that, and of course
flatter our patron in our advertisers. With

804
01:00:06.280 --> 01:00:08.960
your patronage, your life will be
better and so ours. And I don't

805
01:00:09.000 --> 01:00:14.400
know what more to say except that
it's been great fun and we're getting out

806
01:00:14.440 --> 01:00:16.159
in an hour. How about that? Yeah, some of the summer hour.

807
01:00:16.239 --> 01:00:19.440
That's what we need. There,
you go, well, see everybody

808
01:00:19.440 --> 01:00:22.480
in the comments in Bricochet four points
soon to be five point zero, Rob

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Steve next week. Next week Fellas
Ricochet joined the conversation