EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,062 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Congressman, how are you,…
- JRJoe Rogan
Congressman, how are you, sir?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Hey, I'm doing well, Joe. Good to see you again.
- JRJoe Rogan
You look official.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Even virtually.
- JRJoe Rogan
Bro, you look very official. You have an American flag in the background. You got books. Have you read those books? Be honest with me.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. That's a good question.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDan Crenshaw
Um, some of them. I mean, this one's, like, a congressional cookbook. Like, I'm not gonna read that.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDan Crenshaw
So, obviously. Uh, some of these I have, or at least I dabble in books. Like, I'll- I'll- I'll look over a book mostly. I've definitely read my book. That one's up there. I've read that way too many times. I hate reading it now.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's the one that's out right now.
- DCDan Crenshaw
And I wrote it.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the one that's out right now that-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. Yeah. That come- that comes out... Yeah. That comes out, uh... I don't know when we're posting this, but Tuesday, April 7th.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's tomorrow.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, yeah. That's exactly when this will come out.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, perfect. Fortitude. We need that right now.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. And, um, we do. We do. Now the rest of this, I just kind of set up for this, uh... I found that weird-ass painting right there at some, like, flea market in San Diego back when I was stationed there. It's like a- it's like a sh- it's a bunch of ships. The cans and stuff going on.
- JRJoe Rogan
It looks like a horrible idea for a tattoo. You know, sometimes people have those really bad old ship tattoos.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, I- I... Yeah. I feel like there's worse tattoos you could get.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah. I've got them. Is there, uh... (laughs)
- DCDan Crenshaw
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
What about the typewriter? Do you use the typewriter? Is that legit?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Oh. That- no. That- that is a legit typewriter. That was my granddad's old typewriter.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- DCDan Crenshaw
So, I- I saved that. Um, they- they kept it in pretty good shape. I didn't really have to do much restoring, but you can still buy the ink for that, actually. We would, uh... We used to have it set up in the house, so when guests came over, they could, like, type-write a message. And so it's- it's like a guest log. It's kind of a cool-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh. That is cool.
- DCDan Crenshaw
... little thing. Yeah.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Well, they accomplished what…
- DCDan Crenshaw
that y- that, that you, that you have to use as much emotion as possible and as, and express your anger in, in the most exceptional of ways. Otherwise, it's, it's not worth listening to. But we haven't stopped as a culture, and we have to stop rewarding it. That's what I talk about. We have to stop rewarding that kind of behavior so that it actually ceases to control us that way.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they accomplished what they wanted to do. We're talking about them right now. Although you didn't give up their name, good for you.
- DCDan Crenshaw
No. I didn't.
- JRJoe Rogan
But you, but you, you talked about them and that's what they wanted. Th- I mean, there's so many groups out there that are d- I mean, I don't even know if they have an end game. The, the end game seems to be just get attention.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you know, and shine the light on these atrocities or whatever the, whatever they feel like is an atrocity.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Right. It, it is attention. It, it happens on both sides. I, I'm pretty careful in my book to actually, uh, criticize both sides on this one because at least I do see it in con- in the conservative circles. It's, it's different. The, the, the kind of outrage culture that happens in conservatism is, is certainly different and less widespread than, than happens on the left. Um, it, it is more about attention-seeking. And, and I always tell people that. If you're gonna, i- if your main goal is getting more followers and more clicks, then, you know, you, you have to reevaluate what your priorities are. And, and I worry about the activist community as well, um, which is... A- activists sometimes don't want to win. They don't actually want to win the argument, and that should concern us. Because at, at least politically speaking, my goal is to win the argument, and to win the argument I have to actually persuade people. And like that, that should be the goal. We, the, the, those lengthier conversations, a- again, it's, it's why these kind of podcasts are so, uh, prevalent. It's why I do my own podcast 'cause I wanted to dive deep into some of these issues, um, on a substantive level.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I do appreciate your reasonable and balanced perspective 'cause you are one of the rare guys that's on the right that does criticize the right, uh, and do, and you do it fairly and objectively, which I think is very important in this day and age. You know, I, I'm on the left but I find myself more and more getting confused like a man without a country, or a man with, you know, w- without a side rather, without a team. There's, there's so many people on the left now that wanna silence people. Freedom of speech was always a, a, a core tenet of what this country is based on, the ability to express yourself. But there's so many people that want people deplatformed for having views that they disagree with or ideas that they disagree with, and y- this is an enormous problem obviously in social media.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Well, t- uh, to bring it back to coronavirus, there, there was, there was certain messages that were being taken down by Twitter if, if they were... And I, and I, and I think these, the kind, type of messages or articles that were being promoted along the lines of, "Hey, there's, there's too much economic cost, we need to, we need to reopen the economy and get people back to work," if it was things like that, Twitter was taking them down. I don't know if they're still doing that but I, but I heard reports of it. And, and on, on a broader scale, yeah, the, the attack against freedom of speech is, is by far one of the most concerning, um, elements, that, that concerns I think classical liberals and, uh, if that's how you would describe yourself, I don't know. (laughs) To, to all of us in the political world, Joe Rogan's political leanings are like the great mystery. And frankly, we kind of like it that way. It makes you ... It, it, it keeps you out of the fray. (laughs) In a, in a way.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's more of a mystery now because I said that I wouldn't vote for Biden. That, that I said I would vote for Trump over Biden. All these people went crazy.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah, everybody (laughs) went crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
But let me, let me be clear. You know what? I'd also vote for Whoopi Goldberg over Joe Biden. I'd, I'd vote for Mike Tyson over Joe Biden. I just don't think it's a good idea to take someone who's struggling with dementia and put him in one of the most stressful positions the world has ever known. That's what I'm saying. I mean, it's, it's not an endorsement of Trump, but it is, it is me saying, you shouldn't have a man who's clearly, clearly in the throes of dementia. I mean, there's... I'm not a doctor, but when you can't form sentences in public and you forget what you're talking about and you, you, you wander off into these conversations. If you're not smoking pot, you're, you're not high, if you're not on pills, like what's going on? Well, there's cognitive decline. He's a, an older man that has mental issues. And, you know, not to be cruel to him, he, he's, he's suffering medically. This is, this is the real issue. And the Democrats want to sweep that under the rug. And Trump is already chewing him apart. He's already dismissing him. I mean, there is a recent thing that Kyle Kulinski posted, a video on his Twitter, talking about this is what happens when you don't discuss the elephant in the room.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's Trump saying, he used to do it doing a press conference and they asked him a question about something that Biden wrote, he goes, "Biden didn't write that." He's like, he's... That's a Democratic operative. He didn't read it. He, he probably doesn't even know what's going on right now. And he's gonna, he's gonna continue to do that, and it's, it's such a vulnerable point.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I don't know why the Democrats thought it would be a good idea to take someone who's clearly got a problem. This is... I mean, I don't want to be mean to the guy, but we've all seen it. That's not normal. It's not normal to forget, like when he's talking about the Creator and he literally loses what he's saying. He's like, "The thing..."
- DCDan Crenshaw
Misquoted the Declaration of Independence twice now.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes! I mean, that's just-
- DCDan Crenshaw
It's a very simple document. (laughs) I don't understand. It's frustrating.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a bunch of those things, like when he was talking about the cure and losing what he's saying, that you have to take care of the cure. And he, he's, he's struggling. The guy's struggling. He's tired. This is an extremely stressful process to run for president. And the idea that he's going to be able to get through this and be okay on the other side to run the country for four, potentially eight years is crazy.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. And on a more, from a policy perspective, if we're looking at the coronavirus in particular and the handling of it, you know, this is obviously the subject of hot debate. You know, there's, there's plenty of bad faith journalists out there who, who continue, and, and politicians, including Pelosi, who continue to repeat that Trump has the deaths of thousands on his hands. Um, I, I think that's a horrible, horrible overstatement, I mean, to say the least. It's just fundamentally not true. But we need to remember Joe Biden just recently acknowledged that he now agrees with Trump's decision to close down travel from China in January. And I go through a long... I recorded a podcast. Um, I almost have as many subscribers as you do now, I'm sure. (laughs) No, I don't. Uh, where I go through a timeline of what actually happened, right? Like, let's, let's actually look into this debate in an objective way of who knew what and when. Because you can criticize people for sure, because hindsight is 20/20. But it's important to put yourself in the moment and what we all knew at certain times when certain decisions were made. And I, and I have to point out that back when we did this travel restriction from China in late January, at that same time, the World Health Organization was saying that, was repeating Chinese claims in mid-January that this virus couldn't even be transmitted in human to human contact. You know? And Trump was ripped apart for that. Biden ripped him apart for that. Biden continued to rip him apart for that up until a couple of weeks ago. So like, you know, these decisions saved countless lives. And, and it's pretty obvious that Biden... I mean, he said it, so of course it's obvious, that he would have made a different decision. And we would be in a much different place right now. To, to put aside all of the issues that you pointed out, those are, those are certainly issues and I don't, I don't need to repeat them, I don't need to go into it. But it's, um, it's obvious.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I feel like we do need to repeat them. It is obvious, but that's crazy that this is the guy that's running for president. You know, and then when people got upset at saying that, you know, me saying that I would vote, I'd probably vote for Trump before I'd vote for Biden. I'm literally saying I'd vote for anybody that can talk. I mean, anyone who's not in, in severe cognitive decline. I mean, pick a person. Shit, I'd vote for Hillary before I'd vote for him. Literally. I mean, I just, I just think the poor guy shouldn't be in the position he's in. I don't understand why they're doing that. I mean, anyone else could have been... Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg. Pick a person. They all would have been a better choice. I mean, this is crazy. And I don't know what their strategy is. I don't know why they decided to do this. It makes no sense to me. It's very, very confusing.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah, well, there was, there was a, there was a couple of days where it all happened, where behind the scenes, all of these different candidates basically, basically said, "Okay, we're all going to quit," because we, they're so afraid of Bernie winning. They don't think Bernie can win the Democratic nominee, or win the general election. Um, I tend to agree with that and I'm, I'm very much against Bernie winning the general election. But that's not the point. The point is, is that the DNC didn't want that. Um, they... And, and they made moves to make that happen. And uh, the Democratic Party as a whole is trying to find out who they are. You know, I look back in time and the Democrat Party to me seems more like a labor party.And that changed over time into a highly progressive activist party, where th- the labor side of that is, is really just an afterthought. Um, and in- in- in- in a, it has really become this sort of, well, a democratic socialist party, um, with more and more- Very recently. Um, because I, I wouldn't even describe President Obama as ... I mean, he definitely, he definitely p- paved the way for it. He's definitely way more progressive than Clinton, but it, it appears to me that it happened very recently. I'm never furious to how this happened. I, I think, I think the kind of language that is often used by, by a lot of well-meaning Democrats over time in th- in this sort of Labor Party era, let- let's call it the Bill Clinton era and before that, um, the language they used was still rather re- radical and, and revolutionary and kind of, you know, coming up from the, the children of the '60s and that, and that kind of revolutionary feel. Um, th- this, this idea that a progressive utopia can solve more and more of your problems, uh, if you just expand government control, that we put enough experts at the top, we can figure all this out and we can make your problems go away. I think for a long time though, they had the Republican Party to always just be against that and, and say, "Hold on. Wait a second. There's, there's, there's other consequences to doing that." And it was almost like there was this sort of, um, this sort of unspoken balance. Th- the thing ... And, and I'm not even sure that they believed it themselves, but over time, their young people did believe it. And so now you have AOC, who I think truly believes these things, who truly believes in the virtues of socialism. I think Bernie f- believes in the virtues of socialism. Um, I think he's dead wrong on this, but, but he believes it. And I think a new generation belie- a new generation of progressives h- are true believers in a way that I'm not so sure they were before. And they're much louder because of their platforms on social media, and they're able to change the direction of their party in a, in a much more powerful way than I think they, they had been able to in the past. And, and we see that in Congress, um, to an extraordinary degree, where, where somebody like me now views Pelosi as sort of in the middle between moderates and extremists. Uh, and, and, you know, 10 years ago, we would have, we would have described Nancy Pelosi as an extremist. But now I view her as sort of center left, and the extremists are even to her left, and she's deeply afraid of those, those ... That, that, that progressive squad because of their power on social media and media in general. Um, so it's- Do you think- ... it's an interesting battle. D- do you think that the shift is because it seems like nothing works perfectly, and this hasn't really been tried or implemented on a large scale in the United States, democratic socialism? They don't think of it as socialism, the way D- Bernie describes it. When you talk to him in person, it sounds very reasonable. He s- it sounds like he's looking out for the rights of the workers and he ... The way he described y- uh, finding this money, just taking a small tax on speculation, uh, b- gambles that Wall Street does. Do you think it's because nothing has worked ideally and that this hasn't been tried before, so they look at this as this could be the solution that solves all this for us and sort of, uh, balances out the economic playing field? Yeah. Well, I mean, I would, I would, of course ... If he was making that argument and he does, I, I would simply say, "Of course it's been tried before." That's the same kind of rhetoric that was used to, to move into the socialist policies of the 20th century, uh, where tens of millions of people died. And I would also, I would also put it into th- this other way of thinking about it. Yeah. Y- you can, you can put forward these, these seemingly innocuous ideas. "Okay. We're gonna, we're gonna tax a little bit here." And on that specific policy, by the way, that, that's not what people think it is. You, you tax a little bit there, um, that has wide-ranging effects on every single transaction that you would make in the stock market. I, I think this is the Warren ... And, and I think Bernie Sanders has the same, um, policy that you're describing, but I remember l- I remember analyzing Elizabeth Warren's policy, which is, again, the same. It would have drastic effects on everybody's 401Ks, on pensions, and these are working class people that own these things. This isn't just the wealthy that they, that they describe it as. So on, on, on one hand, there's always a lot more ... There's a lot more layers to the policy that they put out than they're, than they're really letting on. And there's a lot more second, third order consequences than they're letting on. On the other hand, as far as it not being tried, um, what they're describing is a, is a fast path to the, the nationalization of production, owning the means of production, um, setting price controls. And they talk about setting price controls, okay? Setting, setting wages is price controls. Uh, setting prices w- is price controls. I mean, w- we passed a bill out of the House, HR3, which they claim lowers people's drugs pri- drug prices and, and these evil Republicans like us, we're all against it because, you know, because we just don't want people to have low drug prices. Of course, that's not true. The reality is, is that when you analyze what it means to implement price controls, you lose supply. Th- that's just Economics 101. That, that has to be true. It always is true. Th- that's why people starved in Maoist China and the Soviet Union, because they put price controls on food, um, and they did production quotas, and they believed, they truly believed that the government could figure out how much to produce and what price to sell it at, and that they would be a perfect utopia after that. Well, of course it
- 30:00 – 45:00
Can I pause you…
- DCDan Crenshaw
doesn't work, even for simple as simp- something as simple as farming and, and food production. It doesn't work at all. Um, people starved as a result. And so it's even more unlikely that it would work for more complicated parts of the economy, uh, like wages and drug prices, because the reality is, and the Congressional Budget Office confirmed this, many other studies confirmed this, we would have up to 30 less new drugs over the next couple decades if you implement that kind of legislation. And so they forget to tell you that you're actually making a choice between these price controls and actually having the cure in the first place. And what I tell people is, like, uh-It, the affordability is definitely important and we should continue to tackle that problem, and, and there are ways to do that. But the thing has to exist before you can afford it. It has to actually exist. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I pause you for a second there?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How, how do you implement that without making, uh, putting a cap on the amount that a pr- a drug can cost? I mean, how do you make it more affordable?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, so like we'll, we'll ... There's other bills that we're in favor of that do that. So one way is, is improve the way that generic drugs get to market. So ju- just like any innovation, there's a patent on it. Okay? But once that patent ends, what happens is some pharmaceutical companies do take advantage of the system and c- may- maybe they continue to put out different drugs that are slightly different than the last one. It extends their, their, um, their patent. Or they'll actually pay off generic, um, manufacturers to not produce it. So there's a lot of these little loopholes that we can actually tackle surgically to make sure that doesn't happen. We also have to remember th- that a lot of these stories are, are anecdotal. They, they, they, they are, they're about a few different drugs. And instead of, instead of wide price controls on everything that a pharmaceutical company actually creates, we should be looking at some of these life-saving drugs that we want people to have, but we also wanna, don't want to destroy the foundation of innovation and research and development that it took to make that drug in the first place. And so how do we do that? Well, I mean, there's ways. There's, there's ways to reinsure it, um, at a certain cap so w- when, when insurance companies don't want to pay the exorbitant amounts that it would cost, you know, there's, there's other options for reinsurance. Um, but it's, it's ... Y- y- you have to tackle it one at a time. Um, there's, there's more complicated ways to do it with the way that pharmacy companies do rebates with, um, the insurance companies. Uh, that gets into a really complicated discussion. But there's ways to do that for, for instance, for insulin. That was a Republican bill that we tried to pass in ENC that got shot down. But it would've, it would've driven down prices for something like insulin. Uh, because-
- JRJoe Rogan
Was there anything else attached to that? I mean, why did it get shot down?
- DCDan Crenshaw
No. That was, that, that was just an amendment. Because people don't understand it. Listen, I, I, I think, I think Democrats, they, they love the idea of these very simple fixes. We want things to be cheaper, so they will just be cheaper by law. We want people to make more money, so we will just make the minimum wage $15. We'll just make it that way and everything will be fine. There'll be no consequences to that. No second and third order effects. But there are second and third order effects. And when we ignore those second and third order effects, we ignore them at our peril. And in the case of the $15 minimum wage, well, you can't ignore the fact that companies are just gonna hire less people. You know, their, their, their budget doesn't change just because you change the minimum wage. With respect to drug innovation, they're just, they just won't invest in something ... And it takes billions and billions of dollars to invest in these drugs, uh, for, for, for the massive amounts of cost that it takes to, um, to do the clinical trials that take years. Um, that I, I can't remember the average on top of my head, but it's enormous and an enormous amount of time. And so you're not gonna get somebody to take that risk if there's not any payoff at the end. And, uh, and, and I think that's, that's what we forget, and we have to balance that, uh, quite a bit. I would also remind everybody of this with respect to the drug price, um, discussion. That bill, that H.R.3 bill, it won't become law because the Senate won't take it up and the President won't sign it. But if it did, it wouldn't hurt big pharma. I think Democrats would like to believe that it would hurt big pharmaceutical companies. It wouldn't. It would put all of the smaller startup, um, biotech companies totally out of business because they're the ones who actually, they start that innovation just, just, just like happens in Silicon Valley. These startups start it, and then they get bought out by the bigger companies. That's sort of how the system works, and it's, it's a very dynamic system. It's, it's, it's why we are the, by far, the number one innovator in the world. No other country innovates like we do. They don't do the research like we do. If we implemented the price controls that are inherent in Medicare for All or H.R.3, there wouldn't be anybody else in the world doing what we do. Um, I can, I can relate that back to the coronavirus discussion too on ... Because there's the, there's like a, there's a big discussion about, you know, should we have Medicare for All. Doesn't coronavirus, uh, prove that everybody should have, uh, free healthcare? And again, what I, what I have to remind everybody is, is that if we had Medicare for All, what we're basically talking about are price controls, because Medicare already pays below average payment for, for anything, or for whatever service, or for, for whatever doctor visit. It's about 60%, 70% on the dollar. What does that mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
And what is ... Can, can I stop you right there?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Medicare's a- av- available for who right now? What, what is the-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Uh, seniors.
- JRJoe Rogan
But what-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Medicare is for ... is a senior program.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, so what it, what age is it? Does it kick in? Is it 65?
- DCDan Crenshaw
I believe so. Um, yeah, I don't wanna confuse you with Social Security. Um, I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
So the idea is that for older folks, we should, uh, give them healthcare and make sure that their basic needs are covered in terms of sickness, illness, injury, and such?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the, the entire, you know ... And we, we could argue that we could, we could even debate the merits of, of Medicare on its face, um, but the entire-
- JRJoe Rogan
But Medicare for All would be available for everybody?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, if Medicare for w- for all was available for everybody, what you're saying is it would essentially ... You, you would fix prices on, on everything in terms of medical treatments, and, and that would be-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... a problem because of what?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Well, so okay, so o- once you fi- once you fix prices ... Um, well, imagine this. Im- imagine if, if, if the government said that your podcast could, could only take $100 per ad, and that was just the price fix from now on, what incentive would you have to really expand your audience? What expensive, what incentive would you have to keep going or expand the business? You wouldn't be able to.It's similar under any industry. You know, once you, once you fix that price, um, you're going to reduce the supply that goes into it. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I stop you on that analogy?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Here's the problem with that. The difference is if ... There would, there would have to be a reason why they would say that I could only get $100 per ad. The reason why you would say that s- things shouldn't cost too much for someone who's injured or sick, is 'cause we wanna take care of each other as a community. And the idea is that-
- DCDan Crenshaw
It is.
- JRJoe Rogan
... healthcare should be something ... Look, we, we provide so many services to people that we, we, y- we are united, right? We're u- the United States of America. We're supposed to be a gigantic community, and one of the, the great things that we could do for each other is to make sure that if someone's sick or injured and something's wrong, that we can take care of that. We would like everybody to do their share, and we would like everybody to chip in so that this is possible. But there's a big difference between that and fixing the price on an ad.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, no, but not ... Economically, there's no difference. Morally, there is. And, and I agree with you morally. We do have the, we have the same goal of getting everybody adequate care.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. But I think that's-
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
I see what you're…
- DCDan Crenshaw
again, you could add 100,000 people more to your city and the fire department would have marginally more, more work to do. You know, compared to like an, uh, a doctor, for instance. Does, does that make sense? Like, you just, it doesn't ... I think on a, on, um ... If you're, if we're trying to compare them in that sense, that, that non-rival attribute, um, matter, matters quite a bit. If I'm describing that correctly.
- JRJoe Rogan
I see what you're ... So what you're saying is because competition is necessary with medical innovation and also, like, doctors profit off of being exceptional, so you, you ... They have incentive-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to be ex- exceptional.
- DCDan Crenshaw
No, no, what I'm saying is if, if you have, if you have 10 doctors that's, that are serving a community, um, every time that doctor is serving somebody, it means somebody else can't see them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, isn't that just a-
- DCDan Crenshaw
So that's that.
- JRJoe Rogan
... signal that we need more doctors and more hospitals?
- DCDan Crenshaw
It is.
- JRJoe Rogan
That they're understaffed.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. Uh, it, it would be, yes. But I'm saying that's how it's different from a fire department, which is sort of lying in wait for a fire to occur, um, if there-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, if there was more fires.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah, but, which is unlikely most of the time. And I, I'm just ... I'm, I'm trying, I'm trying to distinguish why those, why those aren't very comparable things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Like why one is more of a, a public service that, that we see to work, while, while the other wouldn't necessarily be. And for ... And, and, and you kind of just said it yourself, it would be a signal for there to be more doctors. Um, which is why the free market, um, price, price points are so important, because the only way to signal that is to actually, um, uh, uh, that demand raises prices. When the government tries to do that ... Now there's this theory as a socialist that, that they would say, "The government can just figure that out." Um, I, I would say that they've tried that in the past. It never works. It never, it just, it never ever works. The government can't possibly be so omniscient as to know every single price signal and, and anticipate every single piece of demand and production that is therefore required. And so, you know, it's not just healthcare that this is a problem, it's, it's every aspect of society.
- JRJoe Rogan
So if I can go back to what you were saying earlier, you ... So what you're essentially saying about socialism, that socialism looks at this problem and says, "Hey, let's make the d- the government take care of everything. Let's take money from the wealthy people and pour it into the government. And that the government will then have resources to take care of these issues." And you, you're just looking at the first step of the problem. You're not looking at the secondary or tertiary, uh, uh, uh, in- instances-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or things that are gonna go sideways once you do implement that first step. Is that what you're saying?
- DCDan Crenshaw
That's 100% what I'm saying. Uh, uh, I would, I would add that soc- socialism leaves out some very important things, like, like human nature, uh, for instance. And, and this, th- this notion that we need incentives. Um, socialism doesn't believe in incentives, doesn't believe that we need incentive to do things. There's, there's, there's, there's this utopian belief among s- the most, the hardcore socialists that, that humans will act in this, in this kind of philanthropic manner no matter what. Like, we're going to do the most amount of work even if that reward is, is overwhelmingly taken away from us and redistributed. But of course that's not how it would actually function in reality.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I agree.
- DCDan Crenshaw
You would start to ... You would, you would ... It just wouldn't, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DCDan Crenshaw
And so you're ... And now maybe for a few people, a few altruistic people would be the ones, you know, doing all the work while everybody else is like pretending to work, which is what happened in the Soviet Union. You pretend to pay us, we'll pre- we'll pretend to work. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Like that, that was the saying from the Soviet Union. That's ... I, I think we intuitively understand that, and, and, and when that hap- ... And, and again, the same thing with Medicare for all. If, if you're ... If you have price controls, your incentives change.And, and if we're, if we're not really serious about understanding that aspect of, of these, of these policies, then, uh, we're, we're, we're not thinking through them correctly. And I, and I understand a lot of Democrats would say, "Well, it's Medicare for all. It's not socialism." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it, but it has very socialistic tendencies and it has these qualities that I've described of, of not taking into account the second, third order effects, of removing human incentive, of, of, of, of forcing somebody's services and because you're calling it a right, which means that you now have a right to somebody else's services." Like, these are, these are things that have been proven not to work, and, and I, and I think we, and I think we have to understand that as, as we try to move towards the mutual goal of getting everybody access to healthcare. On, on the healthcare-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it doesn't work with everything.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it do- doesn't that work with the fire department? Isn't the fire department in a lot of ways a socialist institution?
- DCDan Crenshaw
No. No. Again, I, I still say, it, it is not, because it is not under any obligation to serve everybody, um, that, that demands its service, right? It's there for specific emergency service as a, as a public good. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
But it's there for fire. If there's a fire, they, they come in and help you.
- 1:00:00 – 1:12:55
But- but can I…
- DCDan Crenshaw
doesn't seem to like them. But I also don't want the government doing it. I don't wanna be in a case like in Great Britain where- where the government will say, "You know what? Your granddad's not on the ventilator anymore. We're done with that." Or, "Your baby can't get that care." I mean, we've all seen these stories. And we don't have that issue in America. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
But- but can I pause you? Don't we have a problem-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... with insurance companies not want to pay for certain things?
- DCDan Crenshaw
They- they might, but they still, but the care still happens. Um, the hospital has to eat that care a lot, and there's- there's different funding mechanisms that reimburse them. You know, we- we have a really, I mean, I'm not defending our healthcare system. I want to be clear about that. It's definitely not perfect. It's a huge patchwork. But no, that doesn't, that- that- that, not the way it happens over there. Because over there, like in Great Britain, if you actually nationalize the healthcare system the way they do, it's, when they say you're not gonna be on the ventilator anymore, there's no choice. Like, that's, that- that is, that is the decision. And then that's what they have to deal with. And so-... it, it is different.
- JRJoe Rogan
But don't they have some private healthcare over there as well?
- DCDan Crenshaw
I think they might have elements of it, and same with Canada, but, but, but not for basic care. Like so you can, you- for, for other kinds of healthcare that aren't necessarily-
- JRJoe Rogan
Surgeries?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah, like elective stuff. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Orthopedic surgeries?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah. And I, I, I'd have to really get some details for you on what each country does, but it's, it's, it's limited. They limit what they can actually do.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't wanna get bogged down too much in socialism, but one, one of the things that you said, you said socialism has been implemented before. But it, it's never really been implemented here, right?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Thank God.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But this is, but this is what I was saying-
- DCDan Crenshaw
(laughs) .
- JRJoe Rogan
... before that I think that when people look at it as an attractive notion, one of the things that attracts them to it is that w- our system doesn't work that great, and that maybe this would be a system that does serve people. And like there, there's a bunch of buzzwords that people use, you know, uh, wealth disparity, economically disadvantaged, you know, the working class, all these different-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... this is, these are words that they use that this is maybe w- maybe socialism would benefit those people and there's more of them than there are of the elite. And d- what do you say to that?
- DCDan Crenshaw
Um, I would say that there has been times in this country where we had astronomical tax rates, um, and, uh, higher government control on some things, and we ended up with skyrocketing inflation and, uh, downward growth. So I'm talking about the '70s. And the- when, when Reagan came to power, we reversed a lot of that, and we've been in a pretty good, good trend ever since. I, I, I, I know that what, I know what people are saying, and you repeated it, which is our system doesn't work. Well, I, I wanna, I actually wanna push back against the premise that our system doesn't work. The, the evidence for that is, is not great. I mean, I, I think there's a lot more evidence to suggest that we live in the best time in modern hist- in history, in modern times. It, it, it's, it's hard, it's hard to argue otherwise.
- JRJoe Rogan
I would agree.
- DCDan Crenshaw
There are certain, there's, I mean, there's certain problems that people point to, especially millennials, my people my age. Housing is, is more expensive. Um, our, our purchasing power isn't as good with, say, things like housing and healthcare. This is- these are true statements. Also depends on where you live. The, the problem, Joe, is people are identifying issues, they're not putting them into context and perspective. But even if they're right about the issues, like, "Hey, our purchasing power is lower with respect to housing and, and healthcare," two very important things, people are misunderstanding why that is. People forgot to ask the question, "Why is it? Why is it that I can't afford this?" People are instead jumping to a solution that is frankly very shallow and simple, which is make housing cheaper, make healthcare cheaper. How? Write a law, say it's cheaper. Well, no, that's not how it works. We can't just do that. We have to first ask the question, like, "Why did this happen?" So in California, let's talk about housing for a second. Cal- California and Texas don't have the same problems, and housing in Texas is much easier to come by than it is in California. Why is that? Well, as it turns out, we don't have zoning here in Houston. You can build where you wanna build. It's a much easier... I talked to developers who, who develop here and develop sometimes in California. It's like four times more expensive to develop because of all the regulations in California, which means the housing itself is gonna be more expensive. So what is it? Government, too much government control, frankly. Um, in San Francisco, you can't build anything else. They don't allow building high rises full of apartment buildings, so it's no surprise that supply is too constricted and prices have to go up for the lan- for the intense amount of demand that's out there. We don't have those same problems in Texas. Okay, so again, it's like, why is this happening? Same with healthcare. Healthcare is not a free market, hasn't been, um, in basically forever, and prices have gone up as a result. Now, healthcare is a lot more complicated than housing, and we, we've spent a lot of time talking about it already. But we really have to ask ourselves why something is, is so expensive, what we're getting from that, and, and then, and then we intelligently look at what are the solutions to, to solve it.
- JRJoe Rogan
California's a mess in a lot of ways. There's, uh, a lot of problems.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But do you really feel like the, the reason why San Francisco's housing, I mean, it's gone up radically with the tech boom.
- DCDan Crenshaw
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, I think a lot of it is supply and demand. A lot of it is just-
- DCDan Crenshaw
Yeah, that's what I mean.
- JRJoe Rogan
... has people, but it's also people that just have ridiculous amounts of money. And so-
Episode duration: 2:23:26
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