(((My Fellow Americans))) #102: Deirdre McClosky

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i’ll be buried in my grave before i become a slave yes that is [Music] but it seems like since that day yeah we have solely changed [Music] before i become that is [Music] but it seems like since that day we have sorely changed [Music] from oh myrtle beach south carolina you’re watching my fellow americans with your host spike collins yes it’s me thank you oh of people clapping welcome to my fellow americans i am literally spike cohen thank you for joining us this wednesday evening i’m so happy to be back uh i’m actually additionally happy because thanks to this being a holiday weekend coming up i actually am not going anywhere this weekend for the first time since like february so i’m pretty excited about that i’m excited to stay home over the weekend like a normal human being so you can join me on that i’ll probably get stir crazy and end up live streaming 15 times so you’ll get to enjoy that this is a muddy waters media production check us out everywhere on all social media 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it’s not expensive and uh you can definitely try it it people ask me does it taste good it tastes like a coffee alternative i don’t think coffee tastes good either but i like this stuff and it has just enough caffeine to get me this wired but no more wired than i currently am so that tells you something it’s just enough to be able to run a pithy libertarian podcast in the evening so waters go today com slash mud and get your mud water uh and of course oh jack casey jack casey has these two books and he desperately asks us to make fun of them every time that we promote it so here i am again doing that uh this first book the royal green is of course about a ring that is i’m not sure what it’s doing there his second book silver throne uh is about a apparently a butterfly with a knife that has a snake wrapped around it which is appropriate for the kind of things that this man would write uh and his third book crowned by gold is coming out this summer uh if you buy enough of them he will rename it to literally whatever you want it to so you can be a part of crowdsourcing what this book is called by spending money by going to theroyalgreen.com and of course chris reynolds personal injury attorney chris reynolds attorney of law if you find yourself personally injured in the state of florida i have some great news for you i know someone that you can contact who will help you sue and maybe get money i don’t know i don’t know how much money you’re going to get but if you go to chrisreynoldslaw.com you can get possibly money i cannot legally guarantee that and i certainly wouldn’t because i know risk avoidance i’m certainly not going to tell you that but chris could certainly possibly tell you how much he can get you if you go to chrisreynoldslaw.com uh he can help you sue people in florida but don’t like come to him with like a legitimate reason don’t go and you know because someone yelled at you or something like have a legitimate reason for suing someone um i’d like to uh the intro and outro music to this and every episode of my fellow americans comes from the amazing joe davey that’s j-o-d-a-v-i check him out on facebook on soundcloud uh go to his band camp go to joedavimusic.bandcamp.com and you can buy his entire discography it costs like 25 some of the best music you’ll ever hear uh and and so thank you so much to joe davey i would like to thank someone for the water i’m drinking on this episode but we still don’t have any water in this house and i’m not gonna thank the myrtle beach municipal water system for tap water because they pay charge too much and it’s not very good and i’m not 100 sure that it’s safe to drink so instead i’m just not going to drink anything on this episode so that’s what that is maybe tomorrow i’ll remember to go to the store and get some water shout out to tamara on turks’s mom as always folks i have a fantastic guest tonight uh she is the professor emerita a distinguished professor emerita which means that uh she’s retired uh for those who don’t know what that meant uh of economics and of history uh she’s also the professor emeritus of english and communications adjunct in classics and philosophy at the university of illinois at chicago uh she has written 24 books 24 not one not even 23 24 books and some 400 academic and i don’t know if i’ve written 400 tweets yet 400 academic and popular articles on everything from economic history rhetoric philosophy statistical theory economic theory feminism queer studies liberalism ethics and law this woman is i already this woman is way smarter and more learned than me i’m already somewhat intimidated but we’re gonna have a fantastic conversation about supply chains and i can’t wait to get started ladies and gentlemen my fellow americans please welcome to the show professor deirdre mccloskey hi how are you dear i’m here in in i’m here in chicago where i live and and it’s not widely known you you can see behind me that’s the grand canyon of the colorado and it’s not widely known that there’s a branch of that in chicago there’s a branch of the grand canyon in chicago yep as you can easily see behind me yes no it’s beautiful and you have an amazing view of it the professor of merida that must pay very well for you to have canyon property in chicago like that yeah with that and a dollar you can buy a cup of coffee well folks uh be sure to comment with your thoughts and questions and deirdre and i will tell you if you are right or wrong now deirdre before we get started i just want to ask you i mean you clearly are an expert in many different things uh whenever i have someone on for the first time i always ask them what is it that got you into this i mean obviously it’s not your line of work anymore you have have done like me and moved on into retirement so we’re now both professional retirement advocates uh but you know when you were doing this what was it that got you uh into this these different fields of study what what led you to want to become a professor you know i i was when i went to college a long time ago i was going to be a major in history you know but i found that if you if you majored in history you had to read an awful lot and that that really didn’t that interfered with my social life and at the time i was uh i was a socialist as lots of people are when they’re when they’re teenagers and i thought well well what other major would be good right and economics sounded exactly right because i could help the poor by by bossing them around and uh and and it it it it and it didn’t involve a lot of reading of long tedious books so now instead i write them so i was going to say when you said man i i hate reading it really gets in the way of my social life and i thought well writing clearly doesn’t clearly you’re able to attend parties while pending your next novel that’s right well i i it and then i i as i got older and and and matured and in uh intellectual life i i realized that economics by itself is not enough that as it’s been well said that somebody who’s only an economist won’t be a very good economist because an economist after all an academic economist is kind of a social philosopher or at least ought to be right so like it’s like what what my heroine met mae west said i was snow white but i drifted now is there a specific i mean you are in uh the you or you were teaching in the uh into uh in the university of illinois in chicago are you a proponent of the chicago school of economics or of another one or yeah you sure i was i was for um i i my first job was 12 years at the university of chicago as a professor there and i was tenured there um and that that was in the in the glory days from 1968 to 80 i was there and that goddess it was a a wonderful place to be a young economist because extremely creative and milton friedman was a colleague and it was altogether thrilling um and then i spent 19 years at the at the university of iowa go hawks and then my last 15 years of teaching at the university of illinois at chicago but as i went through that i kept getting so to speak broader and broader and having more interest so as you mentioned i was also a professor of english and you know okay it turns out that to understand the economy to really understand it you’ve got to understand novels you’ve got to understand philosophy you have to understand people and since i’ve always been an academic and haven’t ever had a real job the only way i could find out about people was to read and read uh books about them right i like this what you’ve said so far i was a socialist as most kids are and then or you are want to do when you’re a kid i was actually a neocon when i was a kid i was that was that kid um but uh and then i i was an academic which means i didn’t have a real job so this is i think going to be a really good uh interview so i want to ask you so the reason i have you on uh besides the fact that you’re a lovely dear woman uh is that uh we i want to talk with you about supply chains um and for those i guess let’s let’s start with the most basic things many people have heard the term supply chain can you give us a kind of brief definition of for those for the uninitiated what is a supply chain and what does it do how does it function well you know it’s it’s not it’s not actually a term in economics it’s a term in in in the world of commerce and and manufacturing and so forth and it’s the rather obvious idea that in order to make an automobile you got to have some steel and you got to have some i don’t know some plastic and some wires and some computers and those go into making the automobile so what a supply chain is is a way of talking about the recipe for making an automobile or making a pencil or making me making a making a restaurant meal or anything and certainly it kind of looks back um behind the uh the automobile that comes out of the factory and says okay now what does this need and then what does what does the steel maker need so it it it’s it’s it’s a mistake actually in economic analysis because the one recipe which is what you can find out about if you ask the person making the automobile or the or the meal well what she bought to make these things she can give an answer and there it is and then you’ve got that that that that recipe is not the only way to do that product you see what i mean so there the the the main or a main theme in economics is that there are substitutes for everything there’s more than one way to skin a cat it’s the property and so it’s not you hear a lot about supply chains and people talk very wisely and think oh boy i understand the economy but they don’t really understand it unless they understand that there are many many different ways of making the same product right well and in fact that’s even in implicated in how we talk about it right so we talk about the supply chain as though it is this that’s very good metal thing that is involved when in fact it’s actually a supply uh environment that’s being created and that’s very good that i’m gonna i’m gonna i’m gonna i’m gonna steal that expression from you yeah the this chain idea acts as though it’s rigid coefficients which is how we express it mathematically and it’s just that’s all there is you can only do it one way you got to make make it this one way and as you say it’s more an environment or a market or a field of cooperation or a social web and if you if you understand the economy that second wave the field of cooperation then you you’re you’re free from from the this idea of a rigid uh formula now here’s a here’s an amazing application of this okay during the second world war both britain and the united states and for that matter germany when it had an air force engaged in strategic bombing as they said to themselves there’s a supply chain of say tanks going from germany to the uh the eastern front or the western front and if we drop bombs on the on on the railway junctions that’ll stop them right and this idea of strategic bombing famously didn’t work very well in fact after the war there was a strategic bombing survey by a bunch of economists and they said well was this this bombing campaign in which we killed actually hundreds of thousands of civilians right maybe more um it was this a smart thing to do and the economists looking at the facts looking at the data found that the germans uh substituted famously the the the the soviet union moved much of its war production east of the urals away from where the german bombers could get to it so this is not just some academic idea because then they tried strategic bombing in vietnam and it didn’t work there either right right right so it’s really crucial to know that it’s a social mechanism it’s not a chain well it is it is supply meeting demand so if the demand is still there the supply is going to find a way around to meet it and if you can look at it as a social phenomena rather than this rigid thing that’s exactly right the the it’s it’s the it’s the search mechanism that both consumers and producers are doing all the time i mean anyone who’s actually been in the business world which by the way as i mentioned doesn’t include me knows that there’s this constant um uh edgy searching of course we’re all consumers and and i like to shop and the shopping is an inventive activity it’s you’re you’re you’re deciding what inputs you need for your household i just bought for example one of those kind of stick vacuum cleaners that have become so popular yeah you know instead of the big one then they have batteries and so on instead of a cord i just bought one you know so i’m i’m making i’m i’m substituting away from a carpet sweeper which is an old-fashioned technology as i have and i’m moving to this newer way of doing it i’m substituting and so consumers are producers are so the whole idea of a chain a rigid way of doing things is against um well it’s against common sense and and correct economics is common sense well and i mean even speaking to like the calculate the economic calculation problem that uh ludwig von mises posited that you know the reason that a cashless society or a society that doesn’t have some kind of price inputs can’t work uh is because there’s no way to determine what the value is for any specific thing which means you can’t do anything because you need that to supply every single aspect of any single thing that’s being done whether it’s a bridge or a road or a building or a sandwich for that matter and and that that you’re you’re you’re you’re also cool correct there um that idea of the rigid coefficients was believed by economists they were mainly english in the early 19th century and was adopted by karl marx and engels and has become kind of doctrine on the left in economics so marxist economists keep trying to force the economy into this fixed as big we call it fixed coefficient way of looking at the world this supply chain way of looking at the world and um it’s a you know i have lots of marxist economist friends and i i keep arguing with some deers you should abandon this idea structure is not what determines the economy because the structure is chosen it’s humans dancing around you can think of the the economy as a big dance floor which people are dancing and changing partners and so on and it’s a as uh hayek said it’s a spontaneous order and it’s not this lockstep thing that you can easily drop bombs on to stop it see if you have a mechanical view of the economy like the supply chain ideas then you throw a wrench into the machine and you stop it right so you can you can do successful strategic bombing or or indeed an early example of this was the uh the blockade of napoleon by by the by the english navy in the napoleonic war which again was a way to try to stop his economy by well in this case uh having ships attack it and you know there there were uh substitutes well and and you know taken to its logical conclusion of course uh and and we’re largely just agreeing with each other here so i do want to get into the into the uh um the subject of how this works in specific applications if you go to the logical conclusion of this if supply and the chain or the the mechanism by which it’s fed is this fixed rigid thing then that means the economy would be the same now that it was ever and that there wouldn’t be well innovations there simply couldn’t be in even innovations because supply always the way that things are supplied never changes it’s it yes that this way of looking at the world the non-substitute really non-economic way of looking at the world is ill-adapted to thinking about uh progress and uh since the main thing that’s happened in the last couple of centuries in the world’s economy is a really is as the english say gob smacking progress your ancestors and mine were unspeakably poor um and and now here we are on the internet and yeah you know buying stick vacuum cleaners with batteries and so on we’re we’re so um advanced and that indeed is a um is a matter of the dance um a matter of as we say in austrian economics human action which is a i’m a i’m a i i i i i’m a christian i’m an episcopalian and i think of it in terms of free will um i just [Music] wrote a paper saying it’s which is it title is approximately free will goes with free markets and that’ll that’ll drive the theologians who are mostly social it’s crazy well you know you can apply it it’s the invisible hand of the free market and if there’s it is an ideological way to talk about it it’s it’s i think we ought to stop talking about the invisible hand because it irritates people without informing them right it sounds like magic yeah and in fact adam smith only used it twice in his being the only to the only two books he wrote by the way i’ve written all these books i’d i’d certainly trade them for the two that he wrote but but um in fact in the two play in the in one in the wealth of nations and in the theory of moral sentiments he only uses this image once for each book and they’re not used in the same way so it’s it’s not because it it makes people think that we free market types are kind of spiritualists and yeah we believe that it just happens and god makes it happen and so no no no no it’s it’s it’s a spontaneous order the way language is a spontaneous order or music you know would you like central planning of rock music no i don’t think anyone would and the the development of rock music is a spontaneous order yeah i i it’s i was just talking about this with someone um they were uh they were talking about how in a debate uh they were asked about health care and they started talking about the invisible hand of the market and everyone got very upset and i said well here’s why they got upset they don’t know what you’re talking about it sounds like you’re saying we’re gonna take your healthcare and replace it with magic and and you know there’s no explanation if you don’t yeah that’s right that’s right what that means and you’re getting nowhere and you can spend that time in far better pursuit so uh speaking of healthcare let’s talk about an example of where the supply chain or supply phenomena whatever you want to call it uh works in uh vaccines uh we have seen uh in the last year uh a year ago just over a year ago we were told about a virus that none of us had ever heard about it was a novel virus and within a matter of weeks there were uh vaccines that were undergoing trials uh which were very effective especially considering many of them were the first attempt at a vaccine for it by these companies tell us how this supply chain works into for example the creation and distribution of vaccines well you know you you have to be methodical in in thinking up a vaccine and what what was astonishing about this is that the day after or the week after within very short order of of these companies getting or or academic institutions getting the the gene map from the chinese of the virus they had vaccines now as you said they had to you know they’re being regulated by governments right and so they were not free to just start producing the stuff and in fact that would be kind of dangerous to just kind of randomly start making them right but i i don’t think it’s the the government that should be doing the certification but in any case this is amazing how fast we’ve gotten this um uh you know we’ve been looking for a uh a a vaccine for aids for 30 or 40 years without success um and and and polio i remember the days of polio when i was a kid you know every summer there’d be this terrible polio epidemic and it took a long time they started trying to get a vaccine for polio in the 1930s and it took forever okay but what’s unfortunate then is this rigid supply chain way of thinking says well okay now the government will take over the distribution and of course we need so much to go to michigan so much to go to virginia and so much to you know california and this goes to chicago and this goes to memphis and that’s not how to do it what we should have done and actually it’s starting to happen is handed it over to [Music] to to the drugstores or for that matter even earlier in the in the supply shall we call it the supply process allow the drug companies to sell it to anyone they want in that case you know we wouldn’t be allocating these vaccines by this kind of crazy process i got my first shot again i’ve had to in indiana because i was down in bloomington and indiana helping my sister take care of my mom who was dying she actually died about three months ago but i was down there and i got my first shot then then i come back to chicago where i live after mom died and here i am and i think well i’d better get the second one i couldn’t get it in chicago i had to the plan was finally i had to go back to indiana to get the shot now this is crazy this is this is local this is not how to if if we allocated um bread this way or i don’t know anything else you want to name we would be very hungry but uh so but but by now i must say they they it’s it’s they have uh uh enough of these shots that this impulse to control and centrally plan is fading and i actually got my second shot at walgreens here in chicago well that’s good and you know some of this is because thankfully it appears as though anyway you have to get the the two shots and you shouldn’t need them moving on but if this were something you needed regular boosters they’d have to come up with a way that you know up to 320 some odd million americans 330 million americans would be able to get this every year every few months but this this is not really a big problem um in the sense that if you if you leave it to the market of course that irritates our our socialist friends but if you say if you lead it to if you leave it to ordinary um [Music] business ordinary suppliers like the drugstores it wouldn’t be that much of a problem to get 330 million people vaccinated three three four times a year if you needed to turns out actually that i saw something in the paper this morning that they think actually that these vaccines are going to last for some years which would be great because after all with the flu every year we have to do a new vaccine right um so but but you know the way to do it is the way we do it with the flu let the private companies do it for a price and it’s not as if this the this uh covet 19 or the flu are orphan drugs that is a problem and i’m concerned about it it’s not that it’s a really small disease um that only has a couple hundred people who have it and so it’s not profitable for the companies to do it this is not the case for coveter for flu uh it’s very it can be very profitable to just sell stuff right exactly yeah i i get a monthly i have ms and so i got a monthly infusion um and it’s not cheap thankfully i have insurance um but it’s also something that i think maybe a couple hundred thousand people are taking on a monthly basis as opposed to this is something that would be hundreds of million so there’s no reason that they couldn’t on an economy of scale make money and still provide it affordably to people that need it and insurance companies would cover it uh there would be municipal health systems that would cover it there would be private charities that would cover it and by adding that price signal and being able to supply it where it’s most needed then you would be able to you’d be able to provide it a lot more easily yeah and and in fact it’s in in the matter of of covid if you’re worried about the poor and i am i i told you i’m a christian um then you you give the poor people um uh vouchers and you and you make people like me pay more that’s fine with me i’d be willing to pay a couple hundred dollars easily well actually more to if i had to but you you wouldn’t have to if you if you evoke you call out these um uh these um motivations of self-interest right right so let me ask you something how is the infusion working oh it works great i’ve been stable ever since i’ve been on it i went from having a relapse every month to month and a half which is a very very aggressive case of ms to uh i haven’t had a relapse since i’ve been on it uh in uh summer of 2017 i’ve been stable that is terrific well great and a perf thank you and a perfect example of what we’re talking about innovations and supply and and meeting demand there was a demand on the market for effective treatments for ms it used to be when you were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis they would tell you about the types of things that can happen to you if you have ms and when those things would happen they would line you up with occupational therapists and people to fit you for a wheelchair or canes or whatever and and all these different things and they basically manage your decline as you decline your mms and hopefully your ms wasn’t very aggressive and if you’re someone like me where your ms was very aggressive that decline was going to be sharp and pretty extreme now yeah we’ve now gone to the point uh because of the the demand and the price uh inputs and price incentives that were there that there are now treatments that yes they were very expensive but they’re much less expensive to insurance companies and patients than managing someone’s decline and having to get wheelchair accessible vans and having to fit your home for disability not to mention the loss of income and all these other things as a result of that go ahead yeah well it’s the same thing with aids the aids uh cocktail yeah you know it’s it’s really important to hitch the interests of the companies now look on the other hand i think it’s a terrible scandal that that people in the united states are not allowed to buy drugs anywhere else essentially and that’s just loony um if if you’re in a debate about health care with a person on the left i i suggest that you bring up that case because it’s so simple you say well there is one market solution we could have and it would be allow people to buy drugs in canada or mexico or france wherever they want and your friend on the left will have a hard time arguing against that you can’t say all those unreliable canadians are going to poison us well come on stop it especially when some of those drugs especially when some of those drugs are made over there and then shipped over here exactly so you’re literally just paying for the the the patent protections here exactly it’s it’s shocking how much cheaper drugs are in canada and still more in india where a lot of them are made yeah let’s let’s talk about india because that’s actually a big uh factor in this in this some of the debates that are going on with vaccines um can you talk to us about why uh india is so pivotal when it comes to supply for uh vaccines and and what’s happening there well i i’m not an expert on india although i love india i’m i’m a cricket fan which is you know kind of crazy but i i love english cricket and so do the indians so indian and pakistani cab drivers in chicago i always get into a conversation with them about about korean cricket i think it’s probably that india is good in educating engineers and other highly skilled people on a kind of mass scale and these people don’t have fancy jobs so they go work in these drug companies i guess that would be just that’d be my first uh first hypothesis the danger of course in in allowing um the indian uh uh covet to just go crazy is that if we allow it in brazil in the united states and india to go crazy it mutates it has more and more of a chance to me mutate yeah yeah and so one of the things that and this is something shared by both economic nationalists and this sort of new brand of of woke fairness advocates uh yes the idea that you know government should be stepping in and deciding where things are made who gets what and yeah basically ignoring the existence of supply and demand needs and the market in general well well my my look in the last three centuries intellectuals in europe have had three really big political ideas the first one was was liberalism the the uh adam smith called it the obvious and simple system of natural liberty and that was new because in agricultural societies such as we had hierarchy was the rule of the day right and you know you were born to be a you were born as a milkmaid you stayed as a milkmaid the the next one these smart people thought up was nationalism in the early 19th century especially and in the middle of the 19th century socialism so those are the three liberalism nationalism and socialism and i’m fond of saying if you like nationalism say in in making stuff and you like socialism have washington in charge of making the stuff maybe you’ll like national socialism it works very well it’s a great track record with national socialism oh yeah it was a wonderful system and it was so peaceful yes that was that was the hallmark of national socialism it’s just how darn peaceful it was that’s my favorite part let’s talk about so the people that are are advocating for example there have been some articles and some advocacy that’s happened where people are calling for the united states to supply the world with vaccines to provide vaccines and of course their arguments are in some ways understandable as you said the longer this virus is out and spreading around it can mutate and reach become something possibly worse or more or something that is not yeah yeah but but it it it it doesn’t have to be the government it doesn’t right i mean look the these vaccines are not all that hard to make fortunately yeah um they’re they aren’t they aren’t intrinsically very expensive and so if you just allow the the drug companies to make them wherever they make them india or uh france or in germany or the united states wherever they make them and just sell them on a on a profit-making basis they’ll supply the world rather easily and what’s remarkable about this thank god this situation we have is that new vaccines keep coming out i mean i’ve been very impressed by this i don’t know how many there are now but six or seven or eight right different vaccines at various stages of trials and of course the the food and drug administration slowed down the the spread of the vaccines in a sinful way but still they’re getting through this so i think you could you could again depend on the market to do this now look if there’s a big pile however bad the idea was that the government owns yeah then i i you know i don’t want to throw it away and you might as well hand it over to the indians that’s okay with me i don’t mind it too much because look our our friends on the left are always talking about externalities right and imperfections in the market they just love to talk about them and there there aren’t very many that are really significant but one that is is a plague now this one is not the black death which killed a third of the population of europe and it’s not not even the 1918 flu which was worse than what we have so there i i my my my my other libertarian friends a lot of them say look we’ve grossly overdone our panic about this thing but still um there’s a case for coercion to make every child be vaccinated for measles for example right right i mean i don’t have too much of a problem with that um uh your liberty goes as far as my notes you aren’t at being a free person doesn’t mean you’re free to punch me in the nose right of course nor is being a free person give you a right to blow covert 19 up my nose right so there’s a case there as my friends um uh my other friends my my libertarian friends say it it has been overblown but still well yeah absolutely and i i think then in those types of situations where there’s a gray area because it’s like well you know to what extent should my actions be limited to potentially protect you now if it’s the common cold obviously no if it is uh yeah if it’s if it’s you know the black death then yes we’ve got a case here you know we need to have conversations about depending on the the the virulence and the the seriousness of the illness itself to what extent is just ex you know existence is that infringing upon potentially someone else’s life for safety see what we do is the flu we do not compel people to uh have flu shots right now old people like me have a very strong incentive to get a flu shot which by the way compared with these uh uh coven 19 vaccines it it varies of course from year to year they’re not very effective they only protect you about 50 of the time right whereas these darn things are up over 90. um but okay um and you can you you can rely on a certain amount of self-protection in fact i think that as a result of this craziness we’ve had since uh last year we’re gonna get like the east asians are about masks and i think that you’re gonna find that a lot of old people especially are gonna wear masks in the in in the winter when they’re in a crowded situation and you understand that that’s that that this this coerced mask wearing which bothers some of my friends um has prank has almost eliminated influenza in the year before last you know 30 or 40 000 people mainly old people died of influenza every year right this year it was something like i don’t know i can’t remember the figure but 2 000 compared with 30 or 40 and that’s because people were wearing masks and washing their hands and so forth so some of that i think will become a habit which will not be a bad thing we’re you know we’re we’re we’re protecting ourselves and then inadvertently we’re also protecting other people yeah i think and and this is what i’ve said from the beginning i think that people need to be able to judge their relative risk and uh and make and and and their perception and be able to make choices accordingly i think that that’s a good thing to do i agree but it sort of depends on the virulence of the spillover as you say in the case of the black death i’m willing to let the state do a lot of coercion yeah no if something well here’s what i say if something is like the black it’s killing you know it has a 30 fatality rate i don’t think the state’s gonna have to step in i think the vast majority of people are gonna be like i’m not going outside until this is taken care i’m of outside in a bio suit i think even in that situation well that’s right and if you probably wouldn’t even have to do anything yeah and if someone tries to come into their house they’ll they’ll beat him with sticks yeah that’s what i mean yeah i think no i think there would be a lot of mob justice like hey that guy’s not wearing a bio suit and just beat him down because you know he’s gonna kill us all so no i i think that people are able to the vast majority of people are able to competently judge risks far better than a potentially planned organization and the proof of that is in the early days of this virus where the cdc was not allowing testing for covet which allowed it to spread out of control and then you had state health officials who were ordering putting covet patients in nursing homes and mental health facilities where the people are the most likely to contract it and die from it so clearly that’s a great idea yeah fantastic in fact in all these these these rich countries like uh britain and the united states and so forth a very high percentage of the deaths have been in uh care homes as they call them in britain yep yep because it was really smart to put the patients there even though even though the people that ran the facility together you know and and the people running these facilities are saying we don’t have the protocols in place to protect our residents my mom the one i’ve just done you only have one mom so yes she was 98 so she’s quite old and she was in an old age home um and she was you know for 98 she was not in terribly bad shape but my but as soon as this got bad when was it in march my suit my my my my my s my esther and i took her out of that and brought her to my sister’s house in bloomington indiana and then about two weeks afterwards they locked down those places yeah yep that was smart that was smart you saw that one we we got her out just in time and then we had a very nice oh almost to almost a full year where my sister and i were taking care of my mom and it was in some ways in some ways in some ways a lovely year because you know i got closer to her and as she declined we were helping her well that’s really good i mean especially if you consider what would have happened if you hadn’t been able to spend that time with her i mean that that would have been yeah you know it’s an increasing problem of course that life expectancies have gotten very high which is a great thing i mean at i i’m 78 so i’m very much in favor of long life expectancies but um uh it it uh it does create this um this problem of care for old people yeah and i must say as a as a new uh women new [Music] a woman the burden of care falls disproportionately on women yeah it is definitely a problem to deal with it’s better than the alternative of just people being dead throwing them out on the street yeah yeah throwing them out on the street exactly um well this was i mean this was a really fantastic and eye-opening discussion about the supply chain or as we’re going to call it the supply uh dance i like that better actually supply dance we’re gonna we’re gonna coin that term dance is a very nice nice metaphor uh yates the great irish poet ends one poem with uh oh body swayed to music a brightening glance how can you know the dancer from the dance it’s a beautiful line and the beauty of calling it a dance is we might get more people on the left to support it because it sounds like a fun it’s a dance it’s not a change that’s nice the communists want to break the chains right like they know that’s right you know but if it’s a dance well that’s fun everyone loves dancing so yeah this was a great discussion the these socialists want to stop the dance stop the music exactly exactly exactly so this is usually when i get a have a chance give my my guest a chance to have the last word tell us how they can uh you know stay in touch with uh all the stuff you’re doing you’re retired so are you writing new books like what are you doing now what oh like matt i’ve written that since i retired of five years ago or now at six i’ve written about i don’t know about eight new books and so the best way to get get in touch with me is my website deirdre it’s my name deirdre mccluskey you have to spell my weird first name irish spelling correctly think of the word weird and spell it that way d-e-i-r-d-r-e deirdre deirdre mccluskey dot org and there i am actually if if you just um go on the internet you’ll find me fairly fast okay well well thank you so much for for joining us so deirdre mccloskey.org i just put that in the uh in the show notes so everyone that’s watching can see that uh deirdreski.org and to read all of your books that are coming up uh deirdre thank you so much no don’t read don’t don’t read the books buy the books buy the books and then read them i don’t care if you read them buy them buy the books reading is optional i mean listen how how how much better can you show people how smart you are than having 24 books behind you you didn’t have to read them they’re just there and people go what are these books oh these books are about economics and and uh and feminism and history and literature they’re great books they’re by deirdre mccoskey and people go oh great well what’s your favorite part oh what my favorite part is just how brilliantly they were written no one’s gonna question it either so so go buy the books buy all 24 of them deirdre mccloskey.org deirdre thank you so much for coming on you were a fantastic guest okay dear i’ve enjoyed it thank you so much just stick around because i’m going to talk with you during the outro uh thank you so much for uh joining us for this episode of my fellow americans this is usually where i tell you to come visit me this coming weekend wherever i’m gonna be but i’m gonna be at home don’t don’t come visit me at home i’m staying home i’m on vacation but are you traveling alone here every weekend i’m in a different place every weekend they have why is that there are you are you speaking at different places or what i’m i’m speaking at uh conventions i’m speaking at uh uh last weekend i did uh the libertarian party of colorado’s convention uh i visited a homeless camp with a non-profit that’s helping the homeless out in denver weekend before i was in fresno california they keep me busy for someone who’s retired i sure do a heck of a lot uh three to five days a week so but this weekend no this weekend’s memorial day weekend no one wanted to do okay anyway so everyone uh uh do that but tomorrow uh thursday at 8 p.m uh come right back here for the writer’s block uh where matt wright is interviewing i don’t know who but tune in and you can see and then come right back here for tuesday night uh for the muddy waters of freedom where matt right and i parse through the week’s events like the the sweet little uh i don’t know children that we are and then come right back here next wednesday same spike place same spike time for another fantastic episode of my fellow americans folks thanks so much for tuning in i’m spike cohen and you are the power god bless guys [Music] [Music] [Applause] you can’t make a change [Music] it might fit we might just unite them come together become hybrid at the least slightly like-minded indeed the life i’ve lived brings light to kindness all you need is a sign put a cease to the crimes but at ease of the minds like mine sometimes darkness is all i find you know what they say about an hour for a night in a time when the blood is the blood who am i to deny would cry when a loved one dies i recognize that body outside with the holes in the body that was alive i’m in [Music] tell me what [Music] hey [Music] we will make [Music] [Music] you