Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson Inherited These Bad Ideas. Here's the Science. | DarkHorse 323

0:00 The very large city of Seattle, which has just elected a new mayor,

0:05 who it is not a completely unknown fact

0:10 that she is the daughter of David Sloan Wilson,

0:14 something that I would not have even thought to wonder about,

0:18 but you called my attention to it.

0:20 And so who's an evolutionary biologist?

0:23 He's an evolutionary biologist.

0:24 I will say I know him slightly.

0:26 We have not met in person, but we've had several conversations.

0:30 I actually quite like David Sloan Wilson,

0:32 and I think there's an element of his work that is exceptionally good.

0:37 But he's most famous for his revival of a concept called group selection based

0:43 on the idea that altruism pays in a much

0:48 more general sense than evolutionary biologists typically believe.

0:52 And in that context, it is fascinating that his daughter has become the mayor

0:56 of Seattle and seems to have picked up the same misunderstanding,

1:02 which is now being manifest in policy.

1:07 Now, this may not be fair, but you know how using a bad understanding

1:14 of evolution to justify eugenics became known as scientific racism?

1:19 This is like scientific socialism.

1:22 Yeah, you're right.

1:24 Using a, we think of a stake in understanding of evolution

1:28 and how things work to justify policies that are batshit crazy.

1:35 All right.

1:36 So I'm going to spend three minutes and explain what the connection

1:40 is because people are bound to find this a little mysterious.

1:44 Once upon a time, there was

1:46 an idea in evolutionary biology called group selection,

1:50 most famously associated with a biologist named Wyn Edwards.

1:54 The idea starts out with a correct observation.

1:58 The correct observation is that if you take two groups,

2:01 let's say that they're people,

2:03 you take two groups of people that are similar, but for one characteristic.

2:08 One of the groups is altruistic within the group with the other members,

2:12 and the other group is fractious and fights within the members.

2:17 And you put them in competition.

2:19 The group that is altruistic,

2:20 in which everybody collaborates and doesn't think about their own take,

2:26 that group outcompetes the fractious group every time.

2:29 That much is true.

2:31 But the idea that therefore we should expect to see altruism break out,

2:36 that groups that are being altruistic should be favored everywhere,

2:39 and so it should be a very common observation.

2:44 That was debunked, I hate using that word, but that was debunked by a group

2:50 of very insightful biologists in the mid-20th century,

2:55 mid to late 20th century, including Bill Hamilton,

2:59 Bob Trivers, all the greats participated in this, George Williams.

3:05 And their argument was, yes,

3:06 a group of altruists outcompetes a group of selfish individuals,

3:09 but the problem is the individual within the group

3:14 of altruists who is at greatest advantage is the selfish individual,

3:17 that a cheater who takes advantage of the altruism

3:20 of the other members of his group,

3:22 but does not contribute by being altruistic himself,

3:24 is the most successful within the group of altruists.

3:28 So every group of altruists is torn apart by basically cheaters, right?

3:33 It's a collective action.

3:34 Sounds familiar?

3:34 Yeah, right.

3:36 Sounds like humans.

3:37 Sounds like life on earth.

3:38 It sounds like life on earth,

3:39 and it is exactly the misunderstanding of socialists who

3:44 expect this, we all pull together and come out ahead,

3:49 ideology to work, and it doesn't because in the end,

3:54 the mistake is always the same.

3:56 Socialism and communism punish those who are

4:00 productive and reward those who are lazy, and that is unstable.

4:04 It is exactly this misunderstanding that undergirds socialism and communism.

4:10 And it is interesting to watch the academic

4:13 version of this misunderstanding flow down a lineage,

4:17 ha ha ha, to the now mayor of Seattle,

4:21 who is apparently confused in this very way.

4:24 So here, let's take a look at this brief clip of her recently.

4:28 And I might, oh, before we go to the clip,

4:29 let me just say she is the mayor of Seattle.

4:33 She is not in charge of tax policy in the state.

4:36 She is simply responding to what has been done by other people in her party.

4:41 So we cannot hold her responsible for the bad policy.

4:44 So right, as we've talked about on Dark Horse before,

4:47 the so-called millionaires tax has just been passed

4:50 by the state legislature and signed by Governor Ferguson,

4:53 which is something, 20-something attempt to pass an income tax

4:58 in the state of Washington over and over and over again,

5:01 overturned by the voters.

5:03 This time not overturnable due to more slights

5:06 of hand and ridiculous nefarious behavior by the lawmakers.

5:13 So now, for the first time, Washington state has an income tax.

5:16 Oh, but it only affects people making a million dollars or more.

5:20 Oh, it's not people, it's couples making a million dollars or more.

5:22 Oh, let's immediately consider whether or not

5:24 we should drop that to $125,000 or more.

5:27 And, you know, everyone grants that just because

5:30 this is currently a tax restricted to the wealthy

5:33 does not in any way suggest that it

5:35 will continue to be restricted to the wealthy.

5:37 All right.

5:38 In fact, the game theory is going to require it to be

5:42 extended for reasons that we'll talk about here in a second.

5:46 But let's hear from Katie Wilson.

5:49 I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are

5:52 like super overblown and if you know the ones that leave like I.

5:57 So.

5:59 So first of all, she does the thing

6:06 where it's like the thing you're saying isn't true.

6:08 And also, if it is, it's great.

6:10 Yeah.

6:10 Like she has both of those positions at the same time.

6:13 Also, she doesn't quite do it.

6:15 I thought the first time I heard that that she

6:17 did that crazy millennial vocal fry thing like by.

6:21 Which is very, very aggravating to everyone who doesn't do that.

6:26 And it does seem like she's sort of just appealing to exactly.

6:29 Well, gosh, I can't even think of all

6:32 the people who have pointed out that financially,

6:35 upwardly mobile, highly educated single women,

6:41 childless single women have are looking to the state to take

6:47 care of them absent something else in their life that will.

6:52 And so there's an appeal here to that.

6:55 You know, those who would use vocal fry to affect social change.

6:58 Yes.

7:00 Well, and the audience's reaction there was fascinating to me

7:06 because initially they realized that she said something that isn't good.

7:11 Like she's like, oh, millionaires are leaving by.

7:14 And the audience is like, huh?

7:16 And then they're like, OK, we're going to get on board with this.

7:18 And they start, you know, they slowly arrive at hooting and clapping.

7:23 And, you know, so, OK, on the one hand,

7:27 you think the state should be, you know, taking care of you.

7:31 And the other hand, you're like sneering

7:33 at the so-called millionaires as they walk out the door.

7:38 And that is how the spiral is going to go,

7:41 because you're driving out the people who, you know,

7:46 are taxable, who are who have money to.

7:50 I want to say to offer who have money to steal.

7:54 And and there's not going to, you know,

7:56 you're going to have to start dropping the number,

7:59 the amount of income a person has to make

8:03 before you start taking their money from them.

8:04 Because there is not going to be enough of a tax base.

8:08 You know, go on.

8:09 Right.

8:10 But I mean, that's just it is like the game theory is very clear.

8:14 On the one hand, she says, oh, they're not going to leave.

8:17 Well, they already are leaving.

8:18 There is a freaking glut of houses on the market.

8:21 They're leaving because they can.

8:23 And because you've made it clear that you're going to enter into the spiral.

8:28 So there's actually now a kind of race to get

8:30 out of the state before they start, you know.

8:34 Well, and that's you know,

8:35 we are going to talk more about Washington, including next week.

8:39 But I will say that the objection here is

8:43 not actually to the idea of an income tax.

8:46 Right.

8:47 Let's let's talk about Idaho.

8:49 Idaho has a stable flat income tax.

8:54 If I think it's I may be right.

8:55 It's like five point two or five point three percent at this point.

8:58 It was five point seven or so percent.

9:02 And they realized they had more money than they needed.

9:05 And so they dropped it a little bit because it's not the state's purview

9:08 to take money that they don't need from people who have earned that money.

9:12 And that is you know, that doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

9:16 The fact is, in Washington state,

9:19 the goalposts are moving constantly and they're

9:22 pretending they're not even playing a game.

9:25 You know, new estate tax, new capital gains tax,

9:27 new income tax, changing property taxes that are hard to interpret,

9:32 changing business taxes,

9:34 different kinds of syntaxes like the landscape is impossible to predict.

9:41 You know, they're not on your team, no matter who you are, actually,

9:44 like some people may think that the legislature legislators are on your team,

9:47 but they're clearly not.

9:49 And it's completely impossible to just be like, OK, you know what?

9:52 I live in a place with great services.

9:54 No, I live in a place with some services and I

9:57 know what I'm going to have to pay so I can plan.

9:59 I can try to grow my business.

10:00 I can try to put away a nest egg in order

10:02 to buy a house in order to save a retirement from my college,

10:05 from my kids college.

10:06 You can't in a landscape where clearly the people who are making policy are

10:11 going to just make things up differently every year they come back into session.

10:17 Yeah.

10:17 Well, I mean, it has become an obvious scam.

10:20 The fact is, the incredibly high tax burden and the incredibly

10:25 cruddy services have to be viewed at the same time.

10:28 This is, you know, what you're looking at with politicians who, you know,

10:32 whatever they say, no matter how crazy it is, the farther left it it.

10:37 This is my right, but it's their left, arguably.

10:42 The farther left, the thing that is said that louder, the tears, right?

10:45 Well, OK, now you know in order to fleece you,

10:48 all you have to do is disguise it as a compassionate

10:51 policy and people will feel obligated to cheer for it.

10:55 And this is what you get.

10:56 You get a state that is signing its own death warrant.

10:59 Right.

10:59 It is creating, you know,

11:01 Starbucks is apparently considering a move to Tennessee.

11:05 Starbucks, which is they have opened up offices in Tennessee,

11:10 have hired, I think I heard like two thousand people.

11:14 They still claim they're not leaving Washington,

11:15 but a lot of people don't believe them.

11:18 Yeah, I mean, let's put it this way.

11:20 They're moving some large fraction of their operations

11:22 out of the state of Washington.

11:24 Boeing already did it.

11:26 Amazon already did it.

11:27 We're driving out the major employers with punitive taxation by.

11:32 Yeah, exactly.

11:35 And the point is, what do you think is going to happen next?

11:39 Either the state's going to collapse because it's not going to tax

11:44 the people who remain or it's going to tax the people who who remain.

11:48 Neither of those are any good.

11:49 Both.

11:50 Well, right.

11:51 It'll be both.

11:52 And and the jaw (Music)