Episode 2755 CWSA 02/19/25 — Scott Adams Philosophy

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2755 CWSA 02/19/25

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writing for Quartz says there's a new study on despair and how it affects voter turnout. You'll be very surprised to hear that people who are suicidal and in despair are less likely to vote. Huh. Well, surprising. You know what they could have done to save some time and money? They could have just asked me. Scott, do people who are experiencing despair, are they motivated to do really anything? An…

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because I was very addicted to Diet Coke for decades, it took me a long time to get off it. If you have an addictive substance in a grocery store and you give people free money that they can use in the way they want in the grocery store, they're going to buy the addictive substance. There's no way around that. So if you didn't prevent that from the start, who couldn't see that coming? Like who in the world couldn't?

Now on the other hand, you don't want to be the nanny state and tell people what they can and cannot have. But I would think that the exception would be what they can have with my money. If they're spending their own money, do whatever you want. Get the soda. But if you're spending my money, well maybe I don't want you to have the soda. Maybe I think you should get a potato.

Anyway, so you probably heard that Trump's going to order all the Biden-era U.S. attorneys to be fir

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ed because he says we must clean house immediately. Fox News is reporting. And he says the Justice Department has been weaponized and politicized against him. Given the degree of obvious lawfare that we saw, I'm 100% in favor of this. In a more functional world where you could depend on attorneys to just do the job of attorneys and not be political, I would be totally against it. But the attorneys…

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Wisdom from this episode

"If you have an addictive substance in a grocery store and you give people free money that they can use in the way they want in the grocery store, they're going to buy the addictive substance. There's no way around that."

When you give people unrestricted assistance to buy groceries, they will inevitably purchase addictive products if available—human nature makes this outcome obvious and unavoidable.

"You don't want to be the nanny state and tell people what they can and cannot have. But I would think that the exception would be what they can have with my money. If they're spending their own money, do whatever you want. But if you're spending my money, well maybe I don't want you to have the soda."

Adults should be free to buy whatever they want with their own money, but taxpayers have every right to restrict what can be purchased with government assistance.