 All right, let's let's see we've got a bunch of super chat questions, but I want to cover the second topic first Let me just see if there's anything relevant Okay Let us let's do America 2.0. All right Okay so What happens after this crisis is over is the question What does America look like? once coronavirus is gone and to put this in context We've had two dramatic events over the last 20 years They can give us a hint with regard to What the world looks like post dramatic event and the two dramatic events. I'm thinking of a 9-11 in 2001 and The 2008 financial crisis Two dramatic events that arguably changed America changed our laws changed our behavior Changed our attitudes changed our perspective And in both cases we are still living their outcome. We're still living the consequences and Arguably in both cases We misidentified the problem Misdiagnosed the issue came to the wrong conclusions Changed our behavior in wrong Destructive ways that have changed America. I think generally for the worst And the question is will the same thing happen To us as a consequence of the coronavirus and the lockdown and and this is this is motivated by you know a Question I got from David Strasburg and he he sent a list of questions and I'm gonna go through those questions But first I want to remind you of kind of what happened post 9-11 and what happened post 2008 to give you a sense of how this works So obviously post 9-11 we made Islamic Well, we didn't make a song we made terrorism The biggest threat to American security there is at the expense of really all other threats and one could argue that To some extent our Lack of preparedness For a pandemic it's partially caused by the fact that our font policy is single-mindedly focused on terrorism on Islamic terrorism now it's a little scary Because you know imagine if the terrorists that you biological weapons we are Pathetically ill-equipped and unready to deal with it as this corona virus has illustrated, right? So let's hope they don't learn the lesson or let's hope We can we learn how to deal with it in the future, but 9-11 we miss identified the problem the problem was terrorism We refuse to name the enemy Islamic totalitarianism We launched into meaningless wars where thousands of American young men died and Well over trillion dollars or maybe much more than a trillion dollars were completely and utterly squandered We for a while squash the terrorism against us, but then destroy the terrorists or their infrastructure and There was a long period of time where the terrorism struck a little bit in the United States, but a lot in Europe That too seems to have been squashed by the way as I predicted I said over and over again that the problem of terrorism in Europe is The existence and the thriving of ISIS and the one you once you got rid of ISIS the terrorism would go away and everybody I remember all the people on the chat and all the people in in Facebook saying oh, what are you talking about? You know the problem is the Muslims in Europe and the Muslims in Europe will always commit terrorism ISIS has nothing to do with it You can't defeat The Muslims Europe by defeating ISIS, but we have right by defeating ISIS You've you know nobody as I said at the time nobody actually wants to die and commit a suicide bombing a suicide mission on behalf of a losing ideology and If you show them it's a losing ideology terrorism plummets and it has But I don't expect anybody to pat me on the back and say you're on You were right again. We were all wrong Particularly not the people at the time who claimed to be wrong, but they were wrong. I was right again 911 also bought with this not only no not only the The wrong wars The misidentification of the problem the misidentification of the enemy But it's all brought us as a consequence of all that a massive surveillance state. It brought us the NSA it brought us Everything the Snowden revealed and nothing has changed. It's then it brought a secret courts to America secret FBI warrants Secret listening in and collecting data and and you know specific data mass data all kinds of data That the NSA and other intelligence Elements are getting against us and we all Don't care it also bought us the TSA Think about I mean those of you vaguely remember think about Pre and post 9-11 what it was like going to the airport You remember going to the gate with your guests. You remember meeting people at the gate. I Mean the post pre post 9-11 security the pre post 9-11 TSA it brought us a massive government bureaucracy That is dedicated to harassing us at the airport in the name of security and safety and Nobody remembers what it was like before and nobody seems to care anymore about TSA TSA is like a metaphysical reality It's unchallenged nobody cares Nobody cares one Iota about them You remember George Bush created the largest restructuring of government and the growth of the law, you know the homeland security Which is responsible for a million things? massive government bureaucracy Nobody cares post 9-11 we started spending money like there was no tomorrow Nobody cared nobody cares today So 9-11 government grew government power over our lives through surveillance grew government power over our lives through our behavior airports grew and the government engaged in You know in what turned out to be mass sacrifice of American troops for nothing in its wars over overseas and The problem of terrorism by the way. It's not gone away. It's just an all there will be the right time when it comes back Post so that's post 9-11 America changed Americans before 9-11 would have tolerated a TSA like this. There was some consciousness about government spending there was some Care about how American troops were used There was suddenly a concern about spying All of that is gone and the government can basically almost do it at once in those arenas after 2008 Again, we misdiagnosed the problem the problem was to was banks to little regulation too little controls and the solution was massive additional regulation Dodd-Frank Massive growth in government stimulus packages and and massive increase in government spending again. Nobody cared and a Basic fundamental shift in Americans thinking about capitalism before 2008 Generally capitalism was viewed as a positive and socialism was ridiculed 2008 The popularity of socialism and basically the death in the American minds of capitalism the last remnant of Some kind of support for capitalism was the tea party movement, but it was mainly old people. It was mainly It didn't last and it didn't have cultural resonance What had cultural resonance is the anti-capitalist movement both on the left and on the right that I have documented in the show over and over again both bony sanders and Donald Trump and the national conservatism and all the variety of national conservatism that exists out there that basically rejects the idea of capitalism so 2008 really destroyed the concept of capitalism and free markets and and cemented The idea that government must have a dramatic significant substantial role in our economic lives so both crises did This they grew the role of government significantly and they eroded our commitment to freedom to individualism to capitalism To the American way of life. I mean, I don't know anything good That came out of 9-11. I mean other than the recognition that Islam and particularly Islamic totalitarianism was a threat in some parts of the culture I don't know anything good that came out of 9-11 and I know nothing good that came out of 2008 Even though 2008 was caused by government regulation caused by too big of a government caused by a federal reserve that didn't stick That story has no resonance with the American people So in both cases It was both cases The crisis led to bigger government and less freedom now. I Think unfortunately that is going to be the case for coronavirus. I Saw an article. I think this is unpolitical where they interviewed 20 cultural figures About what they thought the outcome. Well, how will the world change? post-coronavirus and you know, some of it was pretty innocuous that they mentioned Different examples of ludicrous like, you know, we'll we'll be less polarized I mean, there's a sense in which we might be but I don't think that's what he meant But I think some of it was quite perceptive and scary So one said Post-coronavirus we will be less individualistic To quote the coronavirus pandemic marks the end of our romance with market society and hyperindividualism We could turn towards authoritarianism The person said who's this is Eric Kleinberg some Professor of sociology at NYU But he says we're now seeing the market-based models for social organization fail catastrophically Self-seeking behavior makes this crisis so much more dangerous than it needed to be We will reorient our politics and make substantial new investments in public goods for health especially and for public services, so I Think he's absolutely right for the wrong reasons. He views this as a positive. I viewed as a negative But yes, I think one of the consequences of this is a rejection for the rejection of markets for the rejection of individualism a greater reliance on government a greater demand for government to take over healthcare and for greater public services and a recognition Coming out of the stimulus plan and the lockdowns that Our economy cannot function without a government writing two trillion dollar checks That the only way to survive the lockdown, which of course was necessary They will claim Was for the government to step in and write those checks in an illusory capitalist economy if you'd had lockdowns Who is gonna write the checks who is gonna pay these people they're all gonna stop that's gonna be the story So we need government In emergencies and by the way, they will tell us and and some of the people mentioned this or some of these others commentaries There are other crises that we need a government now That it's just as bad as Coronavirus we will be told for example The obvious one is climate change climate change cannot be sold by markets cannot be sold by individuals Cannot be solved. It might it can only be solved by the state and Climate change has the potential to kill many more people. We will be told Then coronavirus and therefore the state must intervene and if it has to shut down whole industries Well, so what we already shut down whole industries. We'll just write big fat stimulus checks and That'll solve the problem or for example There is another crisis that makes coronavirus much worse And indeed not just coronavirus but actually makes Climate change much worse or the response to climate change much worse. It creates all of our problems Much worse and that's inequality And there is indeed no way to deal with inequality unless the government takes it on and deals with it So we need the government to intervene in markets and If necessary to write trillion dollar checks So that we can deal with this Crisis of inequality. Why won't this paste? There we go. All right. I don't know what happened And you can imagine on and on and on the left will come up with every crisis possible on the right will do the same Crisis of the family crisis of abortion crisis of this crisis of that Uniform to most of these people is the belief That we need much more government intervention in health care So you get demands they expect to see public demands for much more involvement in government in health care in Universal health care in single-payer or as one Steph Stirling of the Roosevelt Institute that tells you everything you need to know about this guy Suggests what we really need is to nationalize our pharmaceutical industry because the fact is our pharmaceutical industry Cannot has does not have the incentives to make a virus Vaccine So we need government to make the vaccine and by the way, that's true of many diseases So we need government to take over the pharmaceutical company or to create its own pharmaceutical company to compete with the pharmaceutical companies so you could see government involvement heavily involved in Pharmaceutical development by the way, how is that going in Europe or in other? I don't know if any of the countries tried it and there's a reason they haven't tried it even the so-called socialist countries haven't tried it basically almost all of the people on this Argued the just like they don't say this, but I will say just like every other crisis The winner in this crisis is big government Give them big government will come out of this victorious and ever bigger They saved us Because they quarantined us because they locked us down Rights you care about rights, but we violated your rights and we saved you. We saved your life. Who cares about rights? Society is better off because government acted in a decisive assertive way So we will venerate government even more look wow they did it And whether you want to venerate Trump or you want to venerate Como or Newsom in California? It doesn't matter the principle is going to be we Wow government acted and I think the death rate from this virus is going to be lower Than the hundred thousand dollars that the government is under thousand people that the government is saying now So they'll claim a success because they got in a number significantly lower and we will say wow We survived it and of course the stimulus package is going to Reduce the pain. It's gonna prevent a great depression It will cause us to stagnate for decades, but that's unseen We don't have a parallel universe where we acted differently so that'll be taken as just the status quo We already had that after 2008. It was just the death of growth You know we'd reached our growth capacity the economy couldn't grow more than it grew under Obama and under Trump We had economists writing old books big books arguing That growth was dead We'd reached our max What we'll see is that people didn't stop in the street What we'll see is that fewer businesses failed What we'll see is airlines getting a bailout and they'll be up in the sky again and what will internalize this? Yeah, government can save us government can manage the economy Government can protect us from disaster government spending stimulates We don't have an Alternative universe where this didn't happen We don't have an alternative universe with a government where the US economy grows at 4% instead of zero And to see the differences in quality and standard of living that that results in so I see nothing positive nothing positive coming out of this politically economically Maybe the only positive will be that the scientists are taking a little bit more seriously the national security priority shift and now they shift towards Planning for future pandemics, but that can also lead to a lot of negatives for example We can increase surveillance just like we did after 9-eleven We can have Biotrackers implanted under our skin to determine when we have a fever when we've been exposed to a virus All kinds of things The technology allows governments to do today to violate a privacy we can be Harass much more about the countries we visit the places we go to the people we interact with all In the name of protecting us from the next pandemic so having pandemics taken more seriously Can be can never really have negative implications if we're not careful and we're not we're showing No sign of actually being careful so Again I really see no positives Another negative if we do take the pandemic seriously and we have more pandemic planning Will we then start restricting trade in significant ways what we then believe that we have to build some kind of arsenal of protective gear some kind of supply chain that's all internal to the United States and eliminate global supply chains and eliminate Ability Ability to trade globally all in the name now of national security And you could imagine that a president like trump certainly Would jump on that Okay, my computer's behaving weird All right, we'll manage so I worry that the more we take corona Or pandemic future pandemics more seriously the more we restrict freedom in the present What we need today what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason By the intellect not by feelings wishes wins or mystic revelations Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's Out of the stare cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world To the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads Using the super chat and I noticed yesterday when I appealed For support for the show many of you step forward and actually Supported the show for the first time. 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