Megan McArdle on the Grenfell Tower Fire | Chapo Trap House | Episode 118

[@MrMollusk7]

7:28 Every single "debate" on public TV should be interrupted by Matt.

[@jean-lucm9115]

Ĺlki

[@discountchocolate4577]

No idea how that man endured SNL every weekend throughout the Trump years.

[@danielwhitt9150]

Cushbomb yelling "shutup SHUTUP SHUTUP" is one of the greatest things I have experienced in this travesty called the internet.

[@allypoum]

I hope Matt never loses his righteous ranty rage it sustains me.

[@KilgoreTroutAsf]

Love your user picture. Any relation?

[@allypoum]

Kilgore Trout not quite sure what you’re asking bud - I like the POUM flag because they were Marxists who fought fascists shoulder-to-shoulder with their anarchist comrades which chimes with my politics. Also there are family connections w/ the POUM thru an uncle who sent men to fight with them.

[@KilgoreTroutAsf]

@@allypoum I see, your uncle was an international brigadist. I am both Catalan and anarchist, so the POUM acronym means a lot to the anti-Stalinist left here.

[@allypoum]

@@KilgoreTroutAsf My uncle was a union representative - a shop steward - and a member of the Independent Labour Party in '36 and he worked in the Glasgow shipyards (Astilleros). The ILP was a sister organisation of the POUM and my uncle George organised men to go to Spain. He couldn't go himself because of childhood polio. I lived in Spain for ten years during the 80s & early 90s - mainly in Madrid - and was involved alongside many anarchists in many occupations and 'manis' etc. Viva la revolucion compadre!

[@KilgoreTroutAsf]

@@allypoum Viva la revolución! Visca la revolució!

[@vaiyt]

Think of all the dead people who are no longer homeless thanks to unsafe housing!

[@elaikehler6030]

had to come here after the Matt news…get better soon you big beautiful bastard

[@markf5220]

What happened to Matt? :^(

[@insertnamehere8715]

The funniest thing to me is that she used the phrase 'hanging them in effigy'. Desperate to get away from saying 'burning' at all costs.

[@Tom-kg8vu]

13:37 ☹️ get well soon Matt

[@cya5983]

Seems to be doing better, and goddamn not the 1337 😭

[@Rocketboy1313]

"Consider the speed at which you drove to work--" "SHUT UP!"

[@IElrekkaI]

shortly after this matt got the cops called on him because people in the apartments nextdoor thought his screaming was him doing domestic abuse lmfao

[@IElrekkaI]

17:20

[@udonge1043]

oh my fucking god. the absolute legend. i want matt to scream at me until im a cowering sobbing mess.

[@dandogzbutt1518]

*neighbors. Says so in the description. That’d be ever more hilarious if it was the cops tho

[@rickymoen9482]

*7:20

[@randommodnar7141]

It mustve sounded like they were living next to son of Sam 2 or something

[@soconfused8031]

Matt's screams have resurrected Lenin from the dead, now he walks the Earth once more, hunting Megan McArdle to her grave.

[@glitchedoom]

"Must. Crush. Capitalism!"

[@zjc92]

This is the angriest I have ever heard Matt and that's a true accomplishment

[@SweatyHatMan]

7:37 "Stround" When Matt gets so mad he makes up a word

[@hunterwheeler8257]

Lol he's saying "drown" but the beginning was washed over by angry hissing

[@artstsym]

My favorite McArdle piece was the Onion point-counterpoint "No Blood For Oil! vs Exactly How Much Oil Are We Talking About?"

[@jenniferbrewer5370]

English translation, Megan McArdle is GLAD those poor people died so horribly.

[@Sorenzo]

The common conservative tactic in economics is always to sneak in false assumptions into these arguments. The fact is, landlords neglect to install or maintain sprinklers not because they're too expensive, but because there's too little return on the investment. People expect the building to be safe, but they simply don't notice when it is not. In other words, they are largely paying rent AS IF the building had sprinklers, anyway. The clasic conservative tactic here is the insertion of a premise that's contradicted by the facts: Sprinklers are prohibitively expensive. This is similar to when they argue medicine prices should be high so drug companies can do R&D, but it's a doccumented fact that drug companies aren't spending surplus profits on R&D. It is also similar to the argument against the minimum wage, which posits that workers are paid proportionately to their productivity, so there's no way they could possibly get higher wages. The through-line in these conservative arguments is that they're dishonestly asserting "facts" that they've invented for the purposes of making the Invisible Hand theory work, which is essentially "begging the question" - smuggling your conclusion into your premises. You could also just say that they're repeatedly and consistently lying about how economics work. They know full well that these inane thought experiments aren't just relying on false assumptions that are contradicted by the real world; They know WHY this is - they know that capitalists abuse power relations and information assymmetries to screw us all over. And they support this.

[@PartTimeBox]

Very well said.

[@TheJonnyEnglish]

Thank god for Chapo for letting me know these psychopaths exist.

[@biglacheese7449]

Holy shit I completely forgot: “I’m a safety jihadist, Allahu OSHA”

[@jonathannathan1754]

Made funnier because it just means “God is OSHA”

[@astrovaan]

7:15 is what you're looking for

[@danielwhitt9150]

There ARE still good people out there!

[@chuck1prillaman]

I would never advocate violence against any particularly loathsome columnist, but....

[@QuietWookie]

how dare you shush megan like that??

[@jj_abrams_aint_up_my_butt_yet]

Bandit no!!!!

[@asare240]

I wouldn't be upset if someone tossed a brick through her window...

[@psycher7]

I was just thinking about how her whole speculation game could turn on her. "How many people will die (somehow) if we require sprinkler systems?" I don't know, Megan, how many people would LIVE if we started guillotining libertarians before they can enact their sociopathic ideas?

[@Micho55]

allegedly in a game parody social experiment

[@guri__mann]

Matt bringing the extreme Philip Seymour Hoffman in Punch Drunk Love energy.

[@TSmith-yy3cc]

"This is a Talking Heads song". Underrated.

[@Kamboshin]

Ah yes, that one time Matt Christman almost got a heart attack from pure anger

[@whensomethingcriesagain]

Her line of logic sounds like a conservative version of The Rattling Bog. "So the man died in a car crash, a rare crash, a rattlin' crash. He died in a crash, 'cause he lived far from work, 'cause the rent prices rose, 'cause the buildings must have sprinklers!"

[@tewodrosii2875]

...is that the Ironside from Civ 5?

[@whensomethingcriesagain]

@@tewodrosii2875 Yes, yes it is

[@theoleadfoot2864]

Way down in the valley o

[@elizabethbennet4791]

7:30 Megan McGirdle "drowns you in banality AAAAGGGHHHHHH I CAN'T TAKE THIS!" As usual, you guys are pitch perfect and spot on

[@travisbounds4746]

Matt hasn't had the big mad since he found zen. I miss our big angry king. i have faith when the issue and time is right, that repressed anger and rage will resurface.

[@Dawnrunner42]

I do miss his righteous fury, it snapped me out of that tepid milquetoast liberal mindset and I will be forever grateful for that.

[@Resevil]

A man can only take so much. I’m happy he’s found something closer to peace. We have these old clips to enjoy.

[@jeanlucdiscard]

The thing is, who is deciding to make this trade off by not having working sprinklers? Not the people who would ultimately be effected if there was a fire. Tenants don't get to decide or have any influence on that decision. Landlords have complete control and additional profit was a higher priority for them that any a basic safety feature of most high rise buildings. And the whole, "well it might not have been installed in time for the fire," is the weak ass argument. Fuck, why bother enacting any change then?

[@whensomethingcriesagain]

It's even worse than that! This is public housing! They COULD AND SHOULD have installed fire protection, but May's housing department refused to because it would've cost 5000 pounds more!

[@eminatorstudios]

@@whensomethingcriesagain fun addition one year later: grenfell tower was built below budget, the cladding being part of the savings. So even if they didn't have the proper cladding the funds for sprinklers would've still been available. It's just a story about neoliberalisms disregard for human lives in the wake of profit to be made and/or money to be saved at someone else's expense

[@cliveramsbotty6077]

@@eminatorstudios where did you get that from

[@0ptimuscrime]

The cladding was made from polyurethane foam. Yeah, no shit it went up in flames.

[@cliveramsbotty6077]

no it was polyethylene ACM

[@allypoum]

Always a better class of comments on Chapo comment threads lol.

[@GREGORYABUTLER]

Allahu OSHA!

[@aaronhamric7679]

InshaOSHA

[@muhilan8540]

Uhhhhhh it would actually be OSHA Akbar

[@lucasmurphy740]

I love how she uses cars speed as an example like speed limits don't already exist.

[@GREGORYABUTLER]

To translate for Americans, "social housing" a/k/a "council estates" is what British people call public housing projects

[@skabossJ]

Gregory Butler We got it from context.

[@tewodrosii2875]

Shows like chewing gum make me look at them like "oh, so this is just like the places where I buy good weed from here in the states! Ah!"

[@jeanlucdiscard]

I love how she fails to recognize the irony of her own arguments, which can easily be used to critique capitalism. So adding sprinklers is a terrible idea, as it will increase rent prices and therefore contribute to further homelessness and lack of affordable housing. Therefore, only the rich and affluent have the right to not be burned alive in their own home. That's what we want, a system where essential safety standards (fucking sprinklers in a high-rise shouldn't be a luxury) is afforded only to the rich? That's a world you want to live in? The level of delusion and cognitive dissonance it takes to sustain such an ideology reminds me of a scene in the show Chernobyl, where KGB Chairman Charkov rationalizes the surveillance state by claiming that it provides a "circle of accountability." She would make for an EXCELLENT Soviet apparatchik.

[@discountchocolate4577]

McArdle's argument only goes one way if you attribute greater weight to the utility of the property owners than to that of the renters who happen to live in it. Implicit in McArdle's argument - also an underlying justification for the entire neoliberal worldview - is a perverse lopsided utilitarianism in which rich people are Utility Monsters (because they have more income to lose) and that that's not somehow a problem. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster

[@Hamun002]

5:46 So we gunna get the guillotines out or nah?

[@RoyalFusilier]

I prefer reform or electoral revolution to an actual one, but I have literally /never/ been closer to seeing the appeal than this column. Imagine being the kind of human being who sees at least (that you know of) thirty people burn to death, and the take is "but the COST of safety measures..."

[@newsourcetechno5777]

This is a certified hood classic

[@olliegray7068]

I love McArdle's "there are ways to limit the spread of fire, such as sprinkler systems". That's some real "damn I need to hit the minimum word count" style.

[@jonathannathan1754]

I need a ten-hour loop of just SHUT UP through OH MY GOD

[@Micho55]

Matt while disposing of a human body: So there's this book from 1998 called...

[@noahmansland3301]

i regularly come back here, just for the shut up

[@saintbeau2779]

her whole point is "but what if you die?"

[@vantahawk2834]

This isAMAZIN! How can a so-called journalist engage in this degree of rationalisation?! XD

[@antediluvianatheist5262]

Money.

[@alistairpage-mcgill2723]

Never heard of this Meghan McArdle until today but wow she sounds awful, like an American Katie Hopkins. How does anyone write these things without feeling a deep sense of shame and self-disgust as a human being?

[@fuuuursure]

Megan in particular is an Ayn Rand fan, so, that should be explanation enough.

[@semiclassical7620]

“How do sleep at night?” “On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful Ayn Rand books.”

[@ross4]

I think we have to agree this was the most evil reading series they've ever done.

[@QuietWookie]

This is a classic!

[@SockPuppet80]

Got me to read Voltaire's Bastards. Well, half of it. All right, the first 50-60 pages.

[@mura9881]

SockPuppet80 how is that book? I’m thinking about picking it up.

[@SockPuppet80]

​@@mura9881 It's pretty fucking great, actually, though denser than I would have liked. (I got the 2013 reissue in which the print was infuriatingly tiny.) I just wish it was written later, because it so perfectly describes the tech guru bullshit that we're being force-fed today, the whole "app for that" mentality. And I wish I had the time/the endurance to finish the damn thing. (In truth, I'm about 2/3 through.)

[@mephybooks7309]

2:10 says it all

[@BrillTech]

The "sprinklers will put more people in to cars and kill them" line of thought is stupid, and you should laugh, but you also need to point out the fact that even if it's a little more expensive for the landlords... DEAD PEOPLE DON'T PAY RENT. It's better for businesses to eat the cost of a sprinkler system, than say, have no apartments to rent any more and dead tenants.

[@deeznoots6241]

BrillTech hell literally just slightly better fridge fire safety regulations or different cladding would have made the fire non-lethal. The fire was entirely the result of years of failing to improve fire safety regulations

[@tewodrosii2875]

The world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second half.

[@GREGORYABUTLER]

Also, every multiple dwelling should be required by code to have sprinkler systems, and should be banned from using flammable cladding

[@jeanlucdiscard]

@ 7:46 What an excellent argument. BuT iNsTaLlInG sPWiNkRuRs Is HaRdZ. LeT'S nOt Do. TaKe ToO wOnG.

[@deeznoots6241]

Sub Stantial has she considered whether its economically worthwhile for her father to take up land in the form of a grave? Surely that land could be better utilised for agriculture, its already very well fertilised

[@joshuafane7324]

I think this is the episode that made me a Patreon subscriber

[@residentgrey]

"Safety jihadist" ...bless you. ROFLMAO!!!!

[@BinaBecker]

This is why I call her Megan McAddled.

[@amhuir9648]

I'm so glad that I've decided to finally listen in onto this podcast channel. Gives a real refreshing outlook on highly covered/political events such as this one (Grenfell Tower fire), the media circus which follows in suit and the reactionary manner that people interpret it as by whitewashing movements through Western exceptionalism.

[@charlesfosterkane]

I'm gonna say it: I miss McArdle readings

[@rexstout8177]

Matt❤️

[@spicoli306]

17:24

[@0ptimuscrime]

Expired fire extinguishers are haram

[@chumbucket6989]

I’m so relieved to know others see through Malcolm gladwells constant bullshit

[@Officefan2]

Anybody else check what Megan wrote in September after finding out Matt had a stroke?

[@wyattthewallaby7018]

I gotta ask, what’d she write?

[@cameronvanberkum7353]

12:54 "this..is a fucking talking heads song"

[@0ptimuscrime]

Dril should write another gospel for the bibble

[@Cruizinelli12]

How the hell did Megan ever get a job in journalism to begin with? Her writing is so tacky and juvenile. I don’t blame Matt for losing it.

[@nospam3327]

I'm afraid this might be missed: in measuring the value of human life, think about Megan McArdle's salary, "That's a good unit [of measurement]." 17:32

[@MxArgent]

Classics of Pod

[@williamwardell8731]

Dr Riviera can you explain your decision to use inflammable material in the construction of this unit? *tugs collar

[@Gunman610]

7:50 I think her argument, which makes me want to punch kittens, is that reform is unfair to the people who couldn't avail themselves of that reform. It's kind of like how we should have student loan forgiveness because it's unfair to people who'd already paid off their student loans, or how road repair is unfair to people who've already paid thousands getting their cars fixed. Some of you might say, "That's a pretty stupid argument."

[@discountchocolate4577]

Unfortunately, policymakers and bureaucrats are the most likely people to _use_ that argument.

[@nathanswann1198]

Love ya matt! It's OK man.

[@MJFAN666]

Did that lady just say abortion is the real eugenics?

[@williamwardell8731]

Leading light of right-utilitarianism

[@dariendude17]

11:45 ALLAH HU-OSHA!!

[@harryedwards851]

300,000 homeless in the uk

[@williamwardell8731]

Shapiro is a good example of a redheaded step-xerox of Voltaire. Insert some statistics deemed factual into your just so narrative for status quo hierarchies.

[@arubinojr5670]

You hate to get sdrowned in chapsolute banality.

[@madeconomist458]

The $5k for non-flammable cladding doesn't really tell us much. Sure, if we had installed the safer cladding on Grenfell tower then we could have saved up to 72 lives, but "find out which apartments will burn down and install cladding on them" isn't a policy that any society can adopt. The choice facing society is "do we install non-flammable cladding on all our apartment complexes?" and that really does require something like actual accounting of the costs and figuring out the expected lives saved.

[@DennisA1213]

This is why safety costs are computed per life saved. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life It's not possible to predict exactly which buildings may catch fire without fire-fighting mediations, but it is possible to calculate the decrease in fire incidence if these technologies are implemented and the number of lives saved (reduction in mortality)

[@justpettet3506]

the facetime or phone call or telegraph this guy is talking from ruins it. isn't five people enough or however many you always have live?

[@justpettet3506]

he keeps interrupting and being obnoxious not only because of his personality but also the miscommunication you are practicing

[@kyleleehufnagel]

“Man, they surely haven’t fixed the skype audio on this incredibly popular podcast since two years ago. I better chime in.”

[@893loses]

no not really

[@allypoum]

No it doesn't.

[@allypoum]

@@dimmerster97 they must make exceptions for bot accounts.

[@baggerjanus]

Shrill yelling dude is pretty annoying.

[@manysnakes]

post hog

[@baggerjanus]

@@manysnakes I don't get it

[@nessagascoigne386]

SHUT UP SHUT UP

[@efermi2118]

@@baggerjanus chud

[@solargh]

Megan?