Robert Tracinski - Ask Me Anything - July 2022

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Uh, well, it is seven, so we can go ahead and get started. Uh, thanks everyone for joining us today. I'm Scott Schiff hosting the Atlas society, senior fellow Rob zysk doing and ask me anything. We've got lots of quest channels, but we wanna encourage legends. So as Rob is answering these, if you want to join us, just raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage. Uh, Rob, thanks for being here. Um, you know, I, I, I'm not even gonna get into the Mises caucus stuff. Uh, I, I follow your writing, but I, I do have to at least ask you a little bit about the piece you wrote in discourse magazine about Elon Musk. Speaker 1 00:00:45 Oh yeah. Okay. Speaker 0 00:00:48 You seem to have a mixed view of him and you know, we're looking for heroes these days. Speaker 1 00:00:54 Well, yeah, I know we're looking for heroes, but you know, we're also frequently disappointed, especially when it comes to people who get involved in politics, um, you know, trust no one. So yeah, my view of beyond Musk is I I've always regarded him as this frustratingly curiously mixed person. Now, part of this, I think I've said this before. Part of this comes from my background that for a while I was writing a, a, a editing, a publication that was focused on emerging technology and, you know, what's new, what's happening? What about exploring Mars? What about electric cars? What about this? What about that? And of course, Elon Musk figured, uh, figured very, uh, prominently there and, you know, he would get up every morning and make a pronouncement. And I had to decide, is this pronouncement, you know, bold and visionary, or is it complete fly flam? Speaker 1 00:01:42 And it was always kind of a toss up. Um, some of the stuff was bold and visionary and some of it was complete fly flam and he didn't always know ahead of time, which was which so, uh, I've always found him to be sort of a, a, an annoyingly, uh, uh, mixed character. So I, I did a, wrote an article in discourse where I basically said he's an iron ran hero as rewritten by Tom Wolf. Now, for those who I assume, iron Rand dis to this audience, but for those who aren't, who don't remember Tom Wolf, he was the journalist and novel turned novelist, uh, late twenties century journalist turned novelist, and he had this emphasis on these sort of flamboyant characters who were over the top and who were often obsessed with attention and with, um, status and with, with, with having everybody pay attention to them. Speaker 1 00:02:34 And that's kind of how I feel about Elon Musk, that he is a guy who has some really big legitimate accomplishments. I mean, SpaceX is amazing. I have a graphic, I, I think it's linked to in that piece that, um, uh, I, I, I I've the, you could, you could click on it there, but there's a graph somebody put together of basically the cost of putting a, a kilogram of payload into space into, into earth orbit over time. And you see it go dramatically down in the last 10, 15 years. And it's mostly because of SpaceX. That's doing that. So some huge legitimate accomplishments at the same time, he's got some stuff that's complete film flap. I think most of his neural stuff where he is gonna put implants in your brain that is highly dubious, and it's unlikely to really Toce any results. A lot of his solar stuff didn't really, hasn't really produced results. Speaker 1 00:03:27 Like the solar roof tiles have, have kind of, they were announced with great fanfare. They probably disappeared for like a half dozen reasons I could give you. Um, and Tesla itself is like, well, it's an electric car, but it's a lot of people are produced electric cars and it's kind of expensive. I actually did a calculation once that if you, if you bought like a, a ni a really nice, uh, no like a BMW luxury car and paid for all the gasoline for the life of the car, you would still not pay as much as you pay for a Tesla. So, you know, it's kind of a iffy proposition as far as I'm concerned, how much that makes sense. So again, he's, he's sort of has that characteristic of an iron Rand hero of the bold visionary who goes out and boldly defies expectations to create new things. And sometimes that's, that's totally legitimate. And sometimes it's kind of a, it's kind of a triumph of PR over reality. So that's why I find him a very frustrating character. That's why I said iron right hero by way of Tom Wolf. Speaker 0 00:04:30 I, I think the thing that triggered me was, uh, carnival Barker. And, um, I think, you know, because in some ways, Edison and Tesla, from what I understand, they were kind of that way in promoting electricity as a new thing. Speaker 1 00:04:44 Well, well, I used carnival Barker to refer to Tom Wolfe and I, I explain, I, I link to a, a, um, an article I wrote to when, when Tom Wolf died, I did little sort of a, you know, retrospective on him. And I use, I called him America's carnival Barker. And I said, well, it's not entirely in a bad way. It was, you know, he's a colorful guide. He, he's a, uh, an entertaining guide to a colorful spectacle. Right. And that's a good thing in a way, but it also has, again, it has that mixed character, that it's a bad thing because sometimes he's also, overhyping something Speaker 0 00:05:17 That's fair. Um, well, um, we wanna encourage people to share the room as well as raise your hand if you want to get in on the questions. Uh, we also have a ton of questions. I won't spend the whole time on my questions. Um, <laugh>, uh, Sonya, um, Speaker 1 00:05:34 Oh, and I should also let you know, I should let you know, Scott that I just finished today drafting an, a draft of an article on the lessons of the debacle in Sri Lanka. So that might be, if anybody's interested in that, bring that up all Speaker 0 00:05:47 Fresh in my life. You know what, then I'll go ahead and switch, uh, because there are questions about that. It says, uh, one is, uh, foolish politicians, uh, socialist politicians destroyed Sri Lanka. The current situation is so dangerous. How can Sri Lanka achieve economic wellbeing and, and avoid bankruptcy? Speaker 1 00:06:07 Uh, well, I don't, I mean, that's, that's the whole question. I'm not sure they are going to, they are bankruptcy essentially. They're not going to avoid bankruptcy. They're there. Uh, now here's the thing about that though. So somebody said, socialist politicians, well, it's more environmentalist, but here's the thing about the article that is I went in looking into this. Here's what I found on the one hand. Yes, this is absolutely a story of environmentalist utopia, gook, right? So they pursued this idea of we're going to stop. We're gonna actually, it actually banned by like executive decree. They banned the importation of fertilizers of, of synthetic fertilizers, uh, manmade, artificial fertilizers, and, um, and pesticides and things like that. And they basically did this immediate crash course, forced national experiment in organic farming. And of course it ended up being a total disaster and, and yields collapsed, uh, agriculture yields collapsed, and it's still economy. Speaker 1 00:07:05 That's, that's highly dependent an agriculture, especially after, you know, the C um, uh, the COVID, uh, pandemic, uh, led to a collapse in tourism. They got about five or 6 billion between five and $6 billion a year from tourism that collapsed to about a billion dollars a year. So they suddenly lost 5 billion a year, especially 5 billion a year in foreign exchange, you know, in foreign currency that was coming into the economy that they were using to buy things that they needed to import. And so, uh, on a top of that, that then said, oh, but now we're gonna take our other major part of our economy. The agricultural economy T is especially important as an export business. Uh, you know, if you've ever had Sallan T sale's original name for Sri is the, the British colonial name for Sri Lanka. So, uh, they, they collapsed their tea production. Speaker 1 00:07:57 They collapsed their economic, their, their rice production, et cetera. And they ended up having this just economic disaster and making a, a bad situation from COVID 19, making it even worse, even worse. Uh, by the way, I, I was recently on vacation in Europe. And so I had this experience where, uh, I, I was talking to one of the tour guys and he says, well, we'll know, it's okay when the Japanese come back. So apparently the Japanese are the most cautious travelers. They're the last ones to stay away if there's a pandemic or anything like that. So it says when we note, when the Japanese come back, we'll know, we're all, we're totally out of this. Apparently it hasn't, it hasn't happened yet. So, you know, Sri Lanka had this, you know, the, in addition to COVID 19, they had this agricultural disaster totally collapsed. The country's economy inflation out of control, uh, people, I mean, people literally starving, uh, it it's a disaster. Speaker 1 00:08:50 And so they overthrew their president. Now, here's the thing, though, in looking at this, the other part of this that is a cautionary tale is it's not just about environmentalism because this, uh, ban on pest on, on, um, fertilizers was imposed by executive decree by a strong man ruler. And in fact, he's, um, RA RA, uh, Raja Paska is the name of the, of the family. So he used go to something rather, uh, Raja Paska. It was the president ma HIDA Raja Paska. His brother was the previous president, and it was, um, I'm sorry, basil Raja Paska, his, another brother of his, who was considered to be the actual power behind the throne who was responsible for all these, you know, really terrible economic policies. So it turns out what you actually had also as part of this story is it's a cautionary tale about authoritarianism and strong man rule that you had this one single family. Speaker 1 00:09:53 It is a prominent family in Sri Lanka. They've been involved in the government since, you know, literally since the British, uh, were, were, were in charge of, of Sri Lanka. So they've, they've got a long history there, a very prominent family, but basically they, you, they stuck the filled the government full of his brothers and cousins and various family members, and tried to turn it into this like personal fiefdom of this one prominent family. And it was a nationalist and a religious nationalist, uh, D uh, uh, sort of authoritarian system that they were working on creating. They had a 20th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution that they passed a few years back a couple years ago that basically gave extra power to the executive, gave them the ability to appoint people without the advice and consent of the legislature. You know, they had a system similar to the British or American system before that, where if the president wanted to appoint somebody to a cabinet position or a prominent government position, he had to go get the approval of the legislature. Speaker 1 00:10:55 Well, they got rid of that, and basically it meant, so he could appoint all of his family members to every, every prominent key position. Um, so it's also, I, as I see it, it's also a cautionary tale about authoritarian strong man rule, and especially the appeal of, uh, religious traditionalism and, uh, of, and authoritarianism and excuse me, nationalism. So it's sort of like, it's, it's a, a lot of the people on the right here in America are sort of grabbing on this. This is a cautionary tale about the policies to the left, and that's absolutely true. I would also say it's a cautionary tale about religious nationalism and this sort of strong man politics that is, has, uh, certain currencies today on the right. Speaker 0 00:11:39 Interesting, uh, Lawrence, thank you for joining us. Do you have a question for Rob? I don't know if you're able to UN, uh, he's leaving and coming back. See if you can unmute now. Can you hear me? Yes. Speaker 2 00:11:58 Okay, perfect. So Rob, uh, along same, uh, RI Lanka, what are your thoughts on the situation with the farmers in the Netherlands and sort of in multiple places happening in Europe now? Speaker 1 00:12:13 Yeah, I haven't been following, so I I'm, I'm still sort of getting on top of everything after being gone for a while. I haven't followed what's going on in the Netherlands very closely, but I gather it's a similar thing though. Not anywhere near as extreme. Um, partly cuz you know, it's the Netherlands, they're not, they're not at extreme people and also cuz they don't have an authoritarian. Uh, I mean, so in, in, in S Lanka because you have this sort of quasi authoritarian system, you have like basically one, one guy, one of the Raja, Paska brothers, PXA brothers in, uh, uh, just gave a executive decre, Bann all fertilizers and basically reverse the green revolution and totally altered the entire economy of the country overnight with no warning. You can't quite do that in the Netherlands. It's a, you know, it's a freer society. It is a more, there's more procedure and process. Speaker 1 00:13:01 So it's not gonna be as extremely case, but it was again a case where there were various environmental restrictions being opposed on farmers and they're rebelling against it. It's something that happens, um, quite frequently in Europe. It's, it's one of the basic problems they have there in that they have these, you know, this consensus in Europe, uh, for this, uh, very highly regulated, um, uh, a very strong government with lots of, uh, centralized regulation. But at the same time you have the consequences of all those regulations and you still have sort of ordinary people, uh, you know, blue collared workers and far, and especially the farmers who are left to bear the brunt of that. And because they have these highly cent, they tend to have these highly centralized sort of technocratic systems of France. I know that's the case, that's I, I'm assuming that's the case to some extent in the Netherlands where there's not a lot of populist, they they're kind of insulated from populist sentiment to a certain extent. Speaker 1 00:13:59 So they tend to have this thing where they, they don't have the correcting mechanisms when they go too far and do something that really impacts farmers. Um, they don't really notice it until the farmers go up and, you know, start like baking barricades and burning tires in the middle of the street. I'm not sure if there were burning tires in the Netherlands, but it was something similar to that. I know they used to the French liked to burn tires. Uh, they, you know, to tractor tires out there and set fire to them and barricade the streets. So they tend to have these occasional sort of rebellions against this overweening, uh, uh, regulatory state that often has negative impacts on, uh, on, on the ordinary person and especially on farmers. I mean, farmers are always extremely vulnerable to this sort of thing because you know, they're operating off on a very, very tight margins and very dependent on the weather. And, uh, there's not a lot of big safety net for our farmers. So they, they often experience this sort of thing first before anybody else. Um, but it comes from the fact that you have these highly productive, highly advanced societies that want to embrace policies that are, you know, inimical to being a highly advanced, highly productive, wealthy society. So they're always going to be experiencing this conflict, uh, in Europe. Speaker 0 00:15:17 Great. Thank you for that. Uh, Mr. Rembrandt, welcome Speaker 1 00:15:24 Mr. REM. Speaker 4 00:15:26 Yes, I'm here. Uh, yeah, so I have a question. Um, I promise I won't get too long winded cause I I've done that before and Jennifer was like, okay, okay. Okay. You know, and I appreciate that, but uh, I'll ask my question. And my question is, um, I've been doing a lot of research into the study of the mind of socialism and one particular thing that I'll ask you a question on is, uh, particularly when it comes to Todd Ross, who's a cognitive psychologist who's who studied tribalism. Uh, one of the things he, he, um, studied is that people feel negative emotion when you tell them that they're having, uh, answers or ideas that are not divulge to the group that they identify with. So, uh, according to you or, or your opinion, um, do you believe that socialism is a very much ideological base belief rather than people actually believing that, uh, in the framework that, you know, uh, denigrating to the type of philosophies they have are beneficial or actually work or, or scientifically beneficial rather than just an ideological premise? Speaker 1 00:16:51 Yeah. Okay. That's an interesting question. Uh, it hap so happens by, by cause I was, I was just recently starting to reread, um, the road surf, my Friedrich kayak, and I'm reading the introduction and he talks about how this is the introduction he wrote about 10 years after it came out and talking about its reception and talking about how, you know, he actually meant it when he wrote in the intro, he dedicated the book to, he said the book is dedicated to social of all parties. He says. And I really meant that. I think that these people were sincerely wanted what was best. They just had a wrong idea about, about, um, uh, about how to achieve that, about what the best way was to go about it. And they, they hadn't thought through some of the consequences of pursuing socialist policies. And I think to some extent early on in the history of socialism, that's true that people come in because they, they, they are convinced philosophically in the virtue of the system, there they chicken in by sort of sophistical arguments in favor of socialism. Speaker 1 00:17:54 And they actually think, yes, this is totally going to work. And then there's a period, inevitably, there's a period of disillusionment. And oftentimes, you know, many, many of the great many, many people who turn to the right and become opponents of socialism are people who are once, you know, idealistically committed to socialism. They really thought it was gonna work. And then they observe the results and then they turn against it. Um, that, you know, that really happens. That's a real, you know, that I don't wanna denigrate that. That's a real thing by the way. Can you guys hear me cuz I just gotta warning about my connection. Yeah, no you sound alright. Okay. You sound good. I went talking for like, I went talking for like 10 minutes on one of these things once and realized that nobody was, nobody could hear from you. <laugh> um, so I, when, when it down, I like to check. Speaker 1 00:18:37 All right. So there are definitely people who are philosophically convinced to this, um, or at least who are philosophically and naive enough to be taken in by bogus arguments. Right. You know, they, they're not thinking they're not challenging the arguments too clearly. They, you know, it sound all sounds nice and vague in theory, especially when they're young and they don't, you know, when you're young, you often don't have a lot of experience in the world. Don't have a lot of knowledge. You, you don't have the wherewithal to think this through and realize, uh, what's wrong with it. But I think the persistence of socialism has to do with that effective tribalism that it becomes a tribal identity. And I would say though, it's not primarily socialism as a tribal identity that does it. I think it, you know, that's a big impact and you have, you can it's we can see that I think much more visibly these days, because of course you can go online to Twitter and you can watch people building and enforcing and expressing these tribal identities that we are the good people, because we believe in socialism where we believe in big government or we believe in, you know, environmentalism or whatever. Speaker 1 00:19:43 We're the good guys. We're the good people because of that. And all the people who screw with they're bad evil people, and you can see people reinforcing those assumptions in their minds constantly, you know, oftentimes frantically on Twitter and that's the tribalism at, um, isn't at work. Um, but I would also say that it's not primarily that sense of identity is not primarily about socialism. I think it's primarily about altruism. The big appeal of socialism to people is not that they are become personally deeply committed to very obstru ideas about economics. The appeal of it is it tells you that we could design a society around altruism. We could design a society around each according disability, you know, for each according disability to each, according to his needs, we could have design a society in which self-interest does not exist. It's been legislated has been programmed out of existence. Speaker 1 00:20:39 Nobody acts on self-interest or profit anymore. Everybody acts on altruism and wouldn't society be beautiful. So it really comes to the fact that people are raised with a commitment. And this is people from all backgrounds, not just people who are, you know, whose parents are on the left. People are raised with a commitment to altruism as a moral ideal. The idea that sacrificing yourself for others, uh, renouncing self interest self-interest is the root of all evil that's drummed into them. And this true, whether you're a Christian or a socialist or even, or a conservative or whatever, else's drummed into people. And because of that basic commitment and that sort of defines, I mean the, the greatest trick that ever occurred is altruism became basically synonymous with morality, right? It should be altruistic is to be good, is to be moral. And you know, this was never true in the whole history of philosophy. Speaker 1 00:21:29 There were all sorts of different philosophies that embraced self-interest to some extent, altruism is the idea that self-interest, as such as evil was a very late invention in the history of philosophy. It really comes, you know, it comes, I think I argue out of con and then reaches its explicit statement in the ni early 19th century and August comp, this guy who coined the term altruism, but this idea of a philosophy of total self abnegation of total renunciation of the self is actually sort of the minority viewer. At least not by, by no means the, um, the dominant view in, in philosophy up until the 19th century. And then by the end of the 19th century, as it comes to America, as it gets widely accepted, it basically becomes synonymous in most people's minds with morality itself, to be a good person, you must be an altruist to be a bad person, is defined by selfishness by self-interest. Speaker 1 00:22:23 And that becomes so deeply ingrained that it goes, it cuts across all ideological and religious viewpoints. It, it is so widespread and that's what people can't bring themselves to challenge. And I think that's the reason why, uh, socialism has its appeal is it tells people, look, this thing you've been taught, we can, that, that self-interest is the ultimate evil self-sacrifice work, you know, sacrificing yourself working only for the good of others is the I moral ideal. We can make that work. We have a whole system we can implement. That's going to implement that as this whole social system, everything will work that way and to be a good person, therefore you must adopt this system. You must champion and, and, and, and advocate this system. And I think that's the fundamental reason why people, um, so dogmatically committed to socialism and can't bring themselves to challenge it. Speaker 0 00:23:18 Good. Yeah. And I, I think part of it is they're telling people that those who own property and want property, are the ones stopping this Nirvana from happening. Speaker 1 00:23:27 Um, well, you know, the foot, no, but the funny thing about, uh, socialism, especially American socialism is everybody, you know, if you were most places, if you've, I think most people have been to college have had some experience of the trust fund socialist, right? The kid who has more money than you, and is way more committed to socialism the kid. Who's a property owner essentially probably inherit, you know, uh, uh, I mean, I, I knew guys who, who like had, uh, rental properties, they inherited from their parent that were given by their parents. I mean, like, you know, they were, they were capitalists, they were property owners, they were capitalist running dogs, and it's almost like to compensate for that. They had to become even more fanatical in their op in their advocacy of socialism. So, um, that's the thing about it because they're so committed to this altruist thing. It doesn't really matter what your own status is in the economy, whether you're a proletarian or a capitalist, or whether you're Protter or bridge, that doesn't matter. You have to be a socialist because it reflects your commitment to this Altru. Speaker 0 00:24:35 Thanks for joining us. Are you able to unmute, if not, you may need to quickly leave and come back. Speaker 5 00:24:50 I am sorry. It's a wave for my device and I can hear you on the other side of the room. Thank you Speaker 1 00:24:54 Very much. Speaker 5 00:24:55 Thanks. So, so sorry for the drama. Uh, <laugh> so great room, uh, really interesting conversation. Um, such a great distinction that you just made about, you know, the altruistic value that people associate with the, you know, the attainment of an outcome that used to be not really in question, whether you were left or right. You know, it used to be, uh, a achieving progress in a conservative way is what a conservative would be. And we've, you know, evolved our societies from the point of villages onto what we have now with some balance of those points of view. And now they are weaponized obviously to state the obvious. Um, and I guess the question that I am looking at, I mean, today, the UN secretary general stated that, uh, humanity is on a SU suicide course where half the world is already in major threat, half the world right now, Speaker 1 00:25:55 For what economist Speaker 5 00:25:56 As an, just so me finish to the question, if it's okay to, you know, set up for you to address if that's true. Um, and I would agree not everybody agrees, right. But if it's true and potentially as an engineering project, maybe human infrastructure, right by 2050, it's also predicted we might have a billion refugees. So let's, let's be clear that's people without a Homer, a passport in most cases floating around the earth. So my question to you as an economist is what do we do about that? That's not gonna happen at a government. We could agree. It's not gonna get its act together in time for that. So my question is really, are we just gonna sit and let it happen? Or does, does, does economics begin to figure out how to survive? That's question. Speaker 1 00:26:44 All right. So first of all, uh, are you asking me as an economist? Cause I'm not an economist. Oh, I were a guy with, Speaker 5 00:26:50 So we're having an economics and, and justice and thought process conversation. Speaker 1 00:26:56 And the second thing is it was all unclear to me. What is the particular world ending crisis that we're talking about at this particular point? Speaker 0 00:27:05 Gotta be the climate. Speaker 5 00:27:06 Yeah. We're living in an existential crisis right now. We're already living in climate change already right now, as a, as an entire planet. Some of us aren't feeling it yet. Some of us are, Speaker 1 00:27:18 And, uh, that's a, that's a highly debatable assumption actually, because, um, and in fact, if you look at the data, see, I've looked at the, I've looked at this. So, um, if you look at the data we are below the low end of all, predictions of global warming catastrophe, and we're actually poor or less within the range of natural variation that has always occurred. Now, there are some places where variations are occurring in localized ways. So for example, in California, it's very dry recently. Now I looked into this a while back and I found out this like, oh, it's droughts. It's because of climate change. Well, if you look at it and they've done projections and measurements of looking at, you know, what do we think was the amount of water available in California over the last couple cent, the last thousand years essentially. And what they found is that actually the early 20th century was an unusually wet period for California, unusually high rainfall. And they're basically just gone back to the norm of being a dry desert, you know, Semia, desert reach, practically desert region. And the problem of course is then 50 million people moved in and tried to live there in the meantime. And you know, that's why they have shortages of water. So it's not some unprecedented thing that's happened with the climate. Speaker 5 00:28:35 And just so to save time then just to save time. So you and I are not on the same page that there's actually a crisis at all. Speaker 1 00:28:41 Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Speaker 5 00:28:43 Yeah. Let's and let's start with what, let's start with what we might agree on. Um, have you had occasion to just so I know if you and I have it as common reference to see the IPCC report on climate change at all, have you Speaker 1 00:28:57 I've perused the results of several of'em? The whole reports are Speaker 5 00:29:00 A thousand, but I was just speaking specifically about this particular one. The, Speaker 0 00:29:04 I saw the, uh, IPCC climate gate report, where they talked about going after scientist, question Speaker 1 00:29:12 Narrative, Scott, Scott. Let's not, let's not go onto that. We will talk about Speaker 5 00:29:15 That. I'm just talking about the documentation as to whether it's in common. It's obviously not from what it sounds like. That's okay. I'm going look at, I'm gonna look at it this way as an entrepreneur, because I'm not a socialist, right. Um, I think that there's a human infrastructure project. That's not being paid for that. There's a great private opportunity. Whether you agree on how severe or not severe at all, or what the causes are. I think we wasted 35 years talking about who caused climate change. It's never ever been a question about what are we gonna do about it because I definitely don't think governments are gonna do anything about it. Um, and what the I P C report says. So if you think they're overestimating, let's put this in context. Their statement is that by 2050, a billion people will be homeless. And without a passport, they have many thousands of scientists across seven disciplines and reporting from all parts of the globe before they come to that conclusion. Speaker 5 00:30:11 But whatever, whether you wanna dismiss it or not, let's say that they're wrong by 90%. Let's say it's only a hundred million people. Well, a hundred million people is a hundred times the Syrian crisis and look what that, to destabilize the world. So to think that you don't have an opportunity to create a lifestyle for those people, maybe 3d print, something that lives on water that can create its own food. You don't have to look at everything from a crisis standpoint. You can also look at a place we can agree on. Let's make some money from it. Let's make some capital for it. Let's actually generate capital Speaker 1 00:30:45 For it. If, if you wanna generate, if you wanna make money on it, go ahead, risk your own capital on it. I would not risk my capital on it, cuz I think those projections are so inherently uncertain. And by the way you say thousands of scientists, well, thousands of scientists did not produce that conclusion about refugees. That's based on a couple rejections from a couple of people, a lot of the scientist. Now I just happened to, Speaker 5 00:31:08 I would. How would you know that if you hadn't read it with all respect, I'd agree with you. If you'd Speaker 1 00:31:11 Read it. No, no that I know how I know how the IP C CCC high PCC system works. There are thousands of scientists who are cited. Most of them are cited for their work on one particular little, little area. Now the other little dirty little secret of the IPCC process is that what most people see is the policymaker summary, which is usually written by people who are in the political end of the process and not by scientists. And it generally tends to over exaggerate what's in, what's in the actual content of the report and make it sound more dire because it's supposed to be the thing that motivates politicians to act Speaker 5 00:31:48 People. Speaker 1 00:31:49 The report, the body of the report itself is more, is more Speaker 5 00:31:52 Cautious, right? So if other people read the same data, they would've a different conclusion. And the political bent by the summarizers basically are preventing people from seeing what's really there. Is that correct? Speaker 1 00:32:01 Well, I'm not saying no, I, in this case, it wouldn't be preventing people from seeing what's really there because it's a projection, right? There's nothing that's really, there. It's a bunch of people trying to project what the consequences might be of some future development. If it happens mm-hmm <affirmative>, which is so inherently uncertain. I think that I don't, I, especially on something like refugees, even Speaker 5 00:32:21 Don't even, even when I would apply like 90% moderation to their published statistic and say it's only a hundred million people, do you understand like how destabilizing to the world that is, but turns out to Speaker 1 00:32:34 Actually, okay, so here here's the other thing that why don't we have a hundred people, a hundred million people de now there's, there's certainly no shortage of chaos in the world right now. We do have a lot of refugees in the world and what we do, uh, I think we should, what we should do in response to, if there are millions of refugees, I think we should find a way to take those people in. Now, usually in this case, they're from wars and, and various wars and chaos of that, Billy Speaker 5 00:32:59 To build them real estate. And lots of other people like me are willing to do it too, without having to, you know, sort Speaker 1 00:33:05 Of wait for, well, we have no hold on. What we have is insane immigration laws that prevent us from taking any of those people in and, you know, giving them a new life as productive members of, of our society. Let him think that's C new countries, let him finish. So this idea that, oh, we're gonna build habitats for them on the water. It's extremely complicated solution where there's a very easy solution, which is let them settle in Turkey or, you know, that's, what's, you know, a whole bunch of people from Syria has settled in Turkey or let them settle in, let you know, let, um, uh, bring in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war in Ukraine, let them come to Chicago. That's what they used to do. <laugh>, you know, the Ukrainians came to New York and Chicago. Um, so we're trying part of, I think this, I think is there's a tendency to find these extremely complicated solutions when there are very easy ones. Speaker 1 00:33:57 But then again, I say, I also say projections of, I I've lived long enough to know projections of what's going to happen in 2050 are universally almost worthless. That's my prior coming into this. And it's based on long years of experience of seeing, oh, so here's a great example of that. I just saw Jim UCAS who has a newsletter, uh, that I read, uh, talked about. There's a, the, if you remember what the club of Rome was, these were the guys who wrote back in 1972, they wrote this very influential book called the limits to growth, warning that in, you know, by the end of the century, we're gonna run out of this and we're gonna run out of that. And we're gonna have all these shortages. People will be serving. The entire economy will be collapsing, cause we're gonna run out of oil and all these other national resources. Speaker 1 00:34:43 Well, apparently a bunch of these people have put out a book 50 years later, a bunch of people have not. I'm sure, I'm sure, not all the same people, but people following in that tradition put it out of their book. 50 years later, claiming there were never really wrong about anything, but of course they were all completely wrong about everything. You know, that, that the resource shortages that they claimed that they were projecting 50 years ago, none of that ever actually happened none of that materialize. So one of the things I wanna warn you to is, is the world is full of predictions of stuff that's gonna happen 30 years from now and my bias against all those predictions, no matter how many people you have sign onto it is that most of 'em are gonna be completely wrong because that's the track record of all such predictions. Speaker 1 00:35:28 The future is very hard to predict and especially predictions of doom saying, catastrophe have a real tendency to go wrong. So another thing I've been doing recently is I just caught up on, on the, uh, the new star Trek series, strange new world. Uh, and anyone wants to ask me about that. I got many things to say about it. Um, I'll, I'll, I'll restrain myself at the moment, but one of the things that always amuses me about the star Trek universe is their, their history of the past, their history of here's, what happened to America and to, and to the earth, you know, in, in previous centuries, it always has to keep getting updated because we were all supposed to be like engulfed in eugenic war and nuclear war and catastrophe and global collapse. That was all supposed to happen like sometime 20 years ago in, in, in the original timeline of the star Trek series. Speaker 1 00:36:17 Now, as star Trek has a reputation for being this optimistic view of the future, but it was always an extremely pessimistic view of the immediate future that the late 20th century was gonna be collapsed on warfare and destruction. And they're still doing that except they've updated it too well. It happens in the, the early to mid, um, uh, 21st century. So basically that happens five years from now, essentially. Uh, and that's that they're doing in the news series. Well, the apocalypse is gonna happen, but it's gonna happen sometime in the 2020s or, or the 2030s. And so that's what I wanna point out that the proj project projections of pessimism and collapse and destruction from the left and the right have an extremely long history track record of being wrong. And part of it is humans. Part of it is that that people exaggerate certain threats because those threats fit with their priors, they fit with their ideological assumptions. Speaker 1 00:37:13 So if your assumption is anti industrial, if you think industrial evolution was a bad idea, that capitalism a bad is a bad idea, you have this great incentive to say, well, therefore capitalism is, is actually destroying the world. It's gonna lead to a, a billion refugees and temperatures are gonna go outta control, et cetera. And you know, if you're, um, and if you're on the right, you're gonna say, oh, Wil is destroying the world and it's going to, we're causing the collapse of the west and you're going to exaggerate that threat as well. So people partisans who have a, a ax to grind have a strong incentive to exaggerate threats and, and over hype them. And then the second thing is they also have an incentive to ignore various things that we will do to mitigate the effects of those threats. Now, one of the things with regards to global warming is if we don't do anything about global warming and we probably won't, and we don't do the things they're asking us to, first of all, I don't, I, I don't think it's at all certain global warming's gonna happen further. Speaker 1 00:38:14 Warming's gonna happen if that, that if that is the case, but if we don't do anything, one of the things that we know will happen is the economy will keep growing for another 30 years. More people will be raised up out of extreme poverty. They'll have far more resources, uh, at their disposal to use, to deal with whatever consequences come. So I actually think these dire projections of all these refugees we're gonna have, are not taking into account that, you know, barring political interference, like the kinds we saw talked about S Sri Lanka, barring, you know, politically caused disasters like that. You're going to have a whole bunch of people who are way better, off way wealthier, way more technologically advanced than they are today or than they ever have been in a whole human history. And so I think you're actually gonna be way more capable of dealing with any disruptions from the weather, any problems, any climate, any problems that the climate may or may not produce. So I would actually predict your goodness, see far fewer refugees, uh, if we have continued economic growth and we don't shut down the entire economy to deal with what I think is a dubious threat. Speaker 0 00:39:23 Good. Thank you. That Rob, we wanna get Clark in here, Clark. Thanks for joining us. Clark, are you able to UN oh, good. Speaker 1 00:39:34 By the way, I'm not stand. You want any of that, but, uh, uh, we could maybe circle back later if there's, if we have time. Speaker 6 00:39:41 Yes. Uh, Rob, thanks so much for your great, great presentation as usual, but I would like to ask you what I ask all the, uh, Atlas society scholars, uh, if we do have a big recession, uh, maybe even depression size recession within the next year or so. Uh, and you know, this is, we've had it really good. We've been in the boom obviously of the country, the us, uh, we've had all this easy money, uh, you know, in memory for at least the last decade and, and people are angry as hell at each other. Well, what happens, uh, Rob, when suddenly we have to, you know, they take the punch bowl, the proverbial punch bowl is taken away and, and things get really bad. Uh, what is your take on that? Uh, politically, economically, culturally, socially. Speaker 1 00:40:34 Oh, we've been through it before. Uh, we had a, you might have recall we had a little bit of a financial crisis in 2009, uh, in 2008, 2009. Um, and, uh, and I, I felt that more acutely cuz my wife's an architect. So the collapse of the, uh, of, of new housing construction, uh, <laugh> had an impact here. Um, the, uh, so we've, we've been through that before. We've we've, we've had it every session in two in around 2001. Uh, we had, I mean the war on terror, we had new architect. I mean that had a big impact. Uh, and if you remember the Enron thing, we, you know, we have these occasional recessions every 10 years or so. Um, and I, I think we're gonna make it through, I don't, I, again, I, I think that 90% of 99% of cataclysmic scenarios do not come to pass and it's really easy to over hype them because you wanna think, oh, you know, the current people in charge, whether it's Joe Biden or whatever, they're so bad, this is definitely gonna lead to this massive depression. Speaker 1 00:41:35 Well, probably not. Um, I actually see signs of inflation, uh, peeking out. I think we're going to, uh, you know what we're gonna probably, you know, if you ask me to project and of course, you know, like I, part of my theme here is predictions are hard, especially about the future, right? So, um, I'm not going to say, oh, I absolutely knew what's gonna happen. But you know, based on past experience, more than likely the result is things will get a little bad and then we'll muddle through and we'll have a period of really sucky, low growth. And, uh, then we'll come back to sort of slightly higher growth, not too great. Maybe we'll have a little boom, uh, for a couple of years, if we get another Ronald Reagan <laugh>, although I don't see any Ronalds Reagan waiting in the wings to help us out here. Speaker 1 00:42:19 Um, you know, the, the, the biggest economic growth I had in my lifetime was for a couple of years in the early eighties, uh, we had like, you know, five to 7% growth, uh, continuously for a whole period there as a, as the dividend of Reaganomics, uh, uh, uh, if we get another Reagan, we'll have that. I doubt we're gonna get another Reagan. I think we're gonna muddle through with this sort of Clinton, Bush, you know, Obama kind of economy we've had for the last 30 years. Um, I, you know, I think if you have a major economic catastrophe, yes, there could be greater upheaval. Um, I think that a lot, but I, what I see is a lot of people basically trying to create the upheaval as if we had AISM right now, trying to create it before we have the cataclysm in anticipation, because there's some aspect of the existing system they don't like, and they'd like there to be a revolution, right? Speaker 1 00:43:12 So you, I hear a lot of sort of Trump type people, you know, sort of waiting for an economic collapse because then maybe we could have that, that, that, that American civil war that they want, where we finally have it out with the woke people and we all shoot each other. That there's a, there's a certain faction on the right, that sort of fantasize is about that. And I'm sure there are people on the left. I know there are people on the left who are also wishing maybe you'll have the final collapse that will show that capitals doesn't work. And then we can herd everybody into the socialist utopia. They've always been wanting that to happen. There's always been a faction out there wanting and waiting and expecting that to happen. And it just keeps not happening. So, you know, I think what we have to do is we're gonna have to muddle, we're gonna go through this long period of muddling through in which we are going to have to do instead of having some cataclysm solve the problem or produce the result for us, we're gonna have to actually think about, okay, what kind of society we want to live in? Speaker 1 00:44:07 What principles do we wanna be based on. We're gonna have to think through those basic issues and actually make a choice about how we're going to solve those problems and not have the solution foisted upon us by some outside crisis. Speaker 6 00:44:21 I hope you're right. Speaker 0 00:44:24 Good stuff. You, uh, probably don't want the question about whether Bitcoin's going back to 50,000, then Speaker 1 00:44:31 <laugh>, what is Bitcoin right now? I don't really know what it's right Speaker 0 00:44:34 Now. It's, uh, it went down to like 18,000. Now it's back up to 23. Speaker 1 00:44:39 I have no idea what Bitcoin's going to be worth, cuz I have no idea why it's worth anything at all. So that's my on Speaker 0 00:44:45 <laugh> all right, exactly. I'll mark that as answered, Alan. Thank you for joining us. Speaker 7 00:44:52 Yeah, thanks God. Um, yeah, I had a question, but before I ask it, I just wanna say if the apocalypse is not coming, I find that kind of disheartening because I figure the sooner we get to that dystopian future, the sooner Zein Cochran will invent warp drive <laugh> and we can usher in the age of star Trek, but that's Speaker 1 00:45:15 Just awesome. Awesome, awesome response. I like that. Speaker 7 00:45:17 Yeah. That's just me. But Speaker 1 00:45:19 See my take on it though, is if we don't have the apocalypse, then we have no excuse not to get warp drive earlier. Speaker 7 00:45:25 That's that's true. That's true. Speaker 1 00:45:28 If Zeph Cochran could do it while the whole world was collapsing and in civil war, why can't we do it now in peace time without, you know, with, with the, with, with all the advantages we have. So that's my, that's my rant. Speaker 7 00:45:40 Well, that's that we could get into a whole philosophical discussion about <laugh> human nature, but let's not do that. Um, but related to human nature, I think it was you switching to education. I think it was you who said once a while back that there were a group of African American parents who moved to an affluent area and they, when they did, they expected their kids, uh, grades to go up. And when they didn't, a bunch of people studied it and trying to find the reason. And the reason turned out was that they, that in those affluent areas, parents were more involved in their children's education. Yes. And that's why, and I'm you didn't, you didn't give a link or a reference to that. Yeah. And I was wondering if you had that because, Speaker 1 00:46:41 Oh God. It's yeah, I can't get it now. It's in the New York times, it was a New York times article from 10 years ago, I'm thinking, oh Speaker 7 00:46:48 Geez. Speaker 1 00:46:49 I, I, Speaker 7 00:46:50 Yeah, I had looked, I looked for it and I couldn't find it. So if you happen to run across it, that's my only question. Please send me the link. Speaker 1 00:47:00 Okay. <laugh> send me your email. You can find me, or, you know, on Twitter or wherever, uh, on Twitter or go to my website, you can probably find a contact thing, send me your email. It's you. Back's very likely that I linked to that article somewhere in my newsletter at one point. And that might be an easier way to find it than just sort of searching it random in the, uh, New York archive. Speaker 7 00:47:22 Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because I mean, <laugh>, um, I can just say, uh, that as a quick side story, my, my son was the third grade spelling beat champion. Yes. I'm bragging. And that has as much to do with the FA that maybe he might have been smart, but also that from kindergarten on, I used to make him write out each word he got, you know, they'd get 20 words a week. Yeah. Write it out and say it as he was writing it. Um, and that, uh, I attribute it to that more than anything else. So, uh, that's my parentalultimate story. Speaker 1 00:48:06 Well, and that's, that's the thing I like to tell people is that people get despondent about the state of education. And I, I like to tell them that, yes, you should be very concerned about what kind of kid, what kind of schools your kids are in. And I, you know, I, I cannot properly afford to send my kids to a private school. I do it anyway because, uh, I like the, the schools I'm saying to them are way better than sending the public school. But in addition to that, though, the biggest impact you you have on your kids is what kind of home environment they have and what kind of life they have with you. And, you know, hate to say it. But, uh, in, in Montessori school, they have this phrase modeling good behavior, you know, that the kids learn by watching you and you model certain behaviors. And they tend to view that as normal and as something's be emulated and imitated. And so the environment you raise them in, it has a huge impact. And that's kind of a positive, optimistic thing is that no matter what the state of the culture is, your kids are likely to actually end up in pretty good shape. So long as, as, as you are in good shape, you know? And, and so, as long as you're providing a good environment for them in a good example, it, it gives them a huge advantage. Speaker 7 00:49:14 Yeah, I agree. So thanks. Speaker 1 00:49:16 And, and that's also, by the way, the place you should look to for that is, uh, it's a point made repeatedly by Charles Murray who talks about how, um, you have this sort of the woke establishment. It consists of educated, upper middle class people who live a certain lifestyle. That is a very traditional lifestyle. They tend to get married and stay married. They tend to not have, they tend to get educated first and then have children. They tend to, you know, work hard and regard work is important. They tend to engage in all these things that are, you know, like high bound, conservative life advice, right? Uh, they tend to live according to that creed while considering it to be absolutely bla to say that those are good things to do that you should know that you should, that you should say married, that you should wait to have kids that, you know, single motherhood is not ideal. Speaker 1 00:50:07 All these things are bla to actually say, so they live on one code, but then they don't allow anybody to advocate that as an ideal. And he talks about how, you know, what this produces. This is disconnect where, uh, people who tend to be poorer and less well off are, uh, tend not to have, you know, so people who are the educated, upper middle class tend to have, and to spread to their kids a set of values that they won't advocate for anybody else. And they will actually attack you for advocating it for anybody else. And so they sort of perpetuate their own privilege through their own kids while denying it to people who are less well off. So that's a, uh, a point that, uh, um, Charles Murray has made that I think is a, is a worthwhile one. Speaker 8 00:50:54 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 0 00:50:57 Yeah. I actually saw on social media one time they said being too involved in your kids' education is a manifestation of privilege. Speaker 1 00:51:05 Oh, there was an Australian, uh, Australian ABC report, but it's Australian broadcasting company of some Australian philosopher saying that reading to your kids is a perpetuation of, of, of, uh, of privilege <laugh>. And so it's like, well, too bad, cuz I'm yeah. I'm skiing to give my kids as much privilege. I, I possibly give them. Uh, and I I'm very well aware that I have been the recipient of that kind of quote privilege for, you know, from the previous generations that came before me that my, you know, my people came from much poor, less educated backgrounds and they worked like hell to, to make sure that I had these advantages. I'm gonna give even more advantages to my kids. That's how the system's supposed to work. You <laugh>. Speaker 0 00:51:49 Yeah. It's just privilege to them means something akin to original JP. Thanks for joining us. Speaker 9 00:51:57 Thank you, Scott. Hi, Rob. I would like to ask you something personally, um, sure. Are you wary of the state right now? Is it out of control already? Has it failed us or has it benefited us in the current nation state form? Are we ripe for something new? And Speaker 1 00:52:21 What do you mean by something new, other than the nation state? What's your alternative to the nation state? We all government or no government. Which direction are you going? Speaker 9 00:52:32 I'm in Arctic government. Yeah. I'm an Arctic government for security. And Speaker 1 00:52:37 Uh, what are you talking about? And anarchic government Speaker 9 00:52:40 Minar. So minimal Speaker 1 00:52:41 Monarchic monarchic okay. Yeah. Oh yeah. So small government is what you're saying. Menarchy yeah, yeah. Um, well, I, I think the state always fails us. I mean, that's one of the great lessons of history, right? The state is always out of control or on the verge of being out of control and it is always failing us. Uh, now it doesn't mean that, like I said, I try to argue against the apocalypse every time people, people bring it up because we actually have been in much worse conditions, uh, and, or, or other people have been in much worse conditions that we are in right now. So I would, but I would say is that the normal condition is that always everywhere. In some respect, the state is failing us because that's, you know, controlling the world through the use of force is always going to be a losing proposition. Speaker 1 00:53:31 And even when you're trying to do it in the, in even menarchy even like, you know, the, even a government that's doing only the things that's supposed to be doing, like the police courts in the military, the police are gonna still gonna screw up. The military is still, yeah. Every I know has been in the military has always said, you know, there's a reason they say, you know, snafu situation normal, all messed up, right. For sure this, this is the normal, even the military, you know, the legitimate functions of go basic legitimate functions of government. Those are always screwed up too, because these are inherently difficult things to do. And they're inherently prone to abuse of power or corruption or inefficiency or incompetence, et cetera. Right? So the state is always failing us. The state is always in danger of getting out of control. It's a matter of relative, uh, um, uh, uh, relative judgment that sometimes the state's doing a better job than others. Speaker 1 00:54:23 Sometimes the state is less dangerous or, or more so state's more dangerous. Sometimes it's less dangerous. So it, you always have to put it on a sliding scale. Now, are people ready for something different? No, they're not ready for something different. They, they very much want to muddle through with what we have or with something that is five minutes, either direction of what we have by five minutes. I mean, you know, this, this is a saying that I have that there's a tendency. People have to, when things go wrong to wanna say, oh, well that went badly. Let's go back to the way things were five minutes before it all fell apart. Right. Because it was all doing fine then. And they don't realize that. Well, the reason it all fell apart was something went wrong much earlier and we have to reform now. They, they wanna go back to the last, very last moment before everything blew up. Speaker 1 00:55:09 Right. <laugh> so that's the general tendency people have. And I see that a lot that, you know, right now there's a lot of people on the left, for example, who are like, oh, this, you know, there's some people on the left that sort of the Stephen Pinker types, the Jonathan Rouch and, and, uh, maybe Andrew Sullivan who are like, oh, this political correctness that's gotten outta control. You're right. That, that the, the woke set is trying to silence us. We should go back to that ideal of, of, of, of free speech and tolerance and open-mindedness and pluralism. The 1990s, I was like, I'm I was around in the 1990s. It wasn't that this great ideal. It was a way better environment for people like Stephen Pinker and Jonathan Roche and Andrew Sullivan, because they were smacked D in the middle of the range of viewpoints that was widely tolerated. Speaker 1 00:55:56 Whereas people like me were not okay. So like I said, everybody has this idea. We're gonna go back to the last moment in which things seem comfortable and, and, and be working well for me. So, no, I don't think people are right for something new. I think they're going to have to be very ideally now, you know, in the worst case scenario, well, the worst case scenario is we have a huge crisis and the most likely response, huge crisis is we, we respond to it by making things worse and they go into a different, worse crisis that, so I think like Weimar Germany, right? They, they have hyper inflation and you have economic collapse and social upheaval. Everybody says, well, to deal with that, we should go, we should go elect, you know, the Nazis <laugh>. And so you end up thinking you have a terrible problem and your responses to make things worse, the best thing, you know, the second best, the second, the second least worst response is we have a giant crisis and people say, let's go the other direction. Let's go back towards free, uh, free society and smaller government that I consider less likely than the other, the best case scenario is, like I said, we muddle through and eventually by arguing and convincing and by people seeing the results of some good, you know, some good policies being adopted and achieving good results, we slowly managed to turn the ship around and move it back towards a less intrusive government. Speaker 0 00:57:18 It's Speaker 1 00:57:18 Just, but people at a really that's gonna take Speaker 11 00:57:21 Time ago. It is going to take a long, long, long time. Right. Speaker 1 00:57:25 Right. And, and the thing is that if it gets slightly better in my lifetime, I'm happy. <laugh>, that's basic. I, I I've, I've adjusted my expectations. Speaker 0 00:57:33 <laugh> very nice. Well, uh, that's probably a good note to end it. It was a good session. I, I like the way you, uh, held me back from the guy with, uh, different views. So, um, lots of good stuff at the Atlas society this week, tomorrow at 5:00 PM. Uh, Jennifer Grossman, our CEO will be interviewing, um, actor, director, Robert Anthony Peters on across all channels, zoom, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Um, and then, uh, Friday back here on clubhouse professor, Jason Hill will be doing part two of allegory propaganda. And didacticism in the novels of iron Rand. That's at 5:30 PM Eastern. Uh, the first part was very thought provoking. Um, in the, uh, meantime, I wanna thank everyone that, uh, submitted questions and everyone who joined us live on stage. And, uh, you know, if, uh, I'll just throw in my geeky star Trek, uh, reference that, uh, you know, who knew that, uh, Joan Collins could have helped Hitler when world war Speaker 1 00:58:43 II's. Speaker 0 00:58:46 Well, thanks everyone for joining us. And, uh, we hope to see you again next week. Speaker 1 00:58:51 Thanks everyone. Speaker 0 00:58:52 Take care.