Sept. 4, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
28:19
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| You know I had my DNA checked and it turns out they can actually tell by my DNA that I don't have any, that I'm unlikely to have good musical appreciation. | |
| I'm a bit tone deaf. | |
| Yes, yes, I'm late. | |
| Sorry, I was up late figuring out my taxes. | |
| Why am I doing taxes in September? | |
| I'm really, really slow. | |
| True story. Now, we've got a few interesting... | |
| Oh, yes, it's time for the simultaneous sip. | |
| I'm all off my game today. | |
| Are you ready? Simultaneous sip. | |
| Somebody says I should just take a knee. | |
| I'll just take a knee. | |
| Alright, so speaking of taking a knee, by now you all know that Nike has chosen Colin Kaepernick to be part of its new campaign. | |
| And people are up in arms, I say. | |
| People who are not Kaepernick fans. | |
| Now, I'm trying to figure out If that was a good business decision. | |
| And it's a tricky one. | |
| Because their brand is about being young and bold and rebellious. | |
| And in a lot of ways he does fit the brand. | |
| It's just this very specific rebellious thing that he's caught up in. | |
| The kneeling stuff. | |
| Has been interpreted by his haters as being anti-flag, anti-America. | |
| In a way it is, of course, even though he's talking about police brutality, alleged police brutality. | |
| And if I had to net this out, it feels like they're gonna lose more than they're gaining. | |
| Somebody says the stock is dropping. | |
| I'm not sure you can really judge by that because people are trading based on guessing at this point. | |
| But if I had to guess, I feel like conservatives have two characteristics that make this a dangerous situation. | |
| One is that I don't know that conservatives are big on trendy brands. | |
| So I don't think conservatives would stick with Nike just because, ah, Nike's my brand. | |
| So they're probably easy to dislodge. | |
| Now, I have a closet full of Nike shirts because I like their shirts. | |
| It has nothing to do with Nike. | |
| Just when I'm in the store and I'm looking at shirts, I tend to like the ones I make. | |
| Now, I'm sure there are lots of people in my category, but it has nothing to do with Nike, so if I were really mad at them, it wouldn't be the biggest problem in the world to avoid their products, except I'm not sure I could avoid all of them, because they've got some good stuff. | |
| If they didn't make good products, it'd be harder. | |
| Anyway, so here's my net guess. | |
| I think conservatives have long memories and not as much fashion attachment. | |
| Not as much attachment to the brand. | |
| So if I had to guess, I'd say this is going to be bad for Nike. | |
| But I'm wondering if we can get to the point where we'll be able to tell your political preferences by your footwear. | |
| You know, it's bad enough that if somebody wears a red MAGA hat, they're going to get beat up. | |
| But are we going to get to the point where if you're wearing Adidas, somebody's going to look over and say, Adidas. | |
| Conservative. Trump supporter. | |
| Kill. Probably take a while to get there. | |
| Anyway, so that's my prediction. | |
| My prediction is that it will be bad for Nike. | |
| But part of me, part of me doesn't hate The attention they're getting. | |
| Part of me doesn't hate that the Kaepernick does fit their brand. | |
| So it's a pretty brave choice that I don't think is going to work out. | |
| But I don't hate them for making the choice. | |
| What's the next thing I want to talk about? | |
| Trouble brewing in Syria again. | |
| Surprise, surprise. And it looks like the setup is here for another false flag chemical attack. | |
| There's some province of Ibil or something in which there's some rebels existing. | |
| The Syrian government wants them out. | |
| Russia apparently is going to help them. | |
| And they're surrounded. | |
| And I don't know what the U.S.'s connection is to these rebels. | |
| But the U.S. President and Pompeo have both warned by tweet that, hey Russia and Syria, you said you wouldn't touch these guys, leave them alone. | |
| But it seems that since those tweets, Russia has already started bombing. | |
| Now part of the worry is that if the fighting gets to a stalemate, which is likely, that Syria will stage a chemical attack. | |
| But whether they stage a chemical attack or not, there's one thing that we can be sure of. | |
| There will be reports of chemical attacks. | |
| So, who knows if there will be a chemical attack, but we all know there's going to be a report of a chemical attack, that's for sure. | |
| And why wouldn't there be? | |
| You know, the rebels aren't idiots. | |
| They're going to take some pictures of some people gasping for air, and they're going to say, it's hard for you to get over here to check on us medically, but just look at all these people on the ground gasping for air. | |
| Syria has used chemical weapons against us. | |
| Come over here and save us. | |
| Now, I don't mean to make fun of that, because if I were them, Well, I would certainly do that. | |
| If you were in the rebel situation and you were literally going to get wiped out and bombed into nothing, unless you pulled a rabbit out of your hat, you'd be looking in that hat for some rabbits. | |
| So the odds of either a real chemical attack, which is probably at least 50%, right? | |
| I don't know how to put odds on it, but it seems like the odds of an actual real attack are pretty darn good. | |
| Pretty darn good. | |
| And the reason that chemical attacks happen is that they work really well. | |
| If you're trying to clear a city, almost nothing works as well, especially if you want to keep the buildings around. | |
| So there's a big chemical attack coming. | |
| And we know it's coming. | |
| And it's a weird thing. | |
| And when I say we know it's coming, either the real one or the faked one, but we're going to have to deal with it. | |
| So let's see how that all shakes out. | |
| Now, in many of these stories, we don't really know enough about the situation. | |
| There's probably all kinds of intrigue and backstabbing and Double dealing and special interests and multi-country shenanigans that make us not really know what's the deal over there. | |
| Somebody says, rebels are ISIS. Maybe, but why would we be protecting ISIS? So there's stuff we don't know going on there. | |
| Alright, at the same time, over in Afghanistan... | |
| And there's talk about maybe the U.S. will talk with ISIS, and it looks like there's some willingness on both sides to do that. | |
| And I thought, well, here once again, that's a pretty practical approach. | |
| Just as we've talked to Kim Jong-un and Putin, it probably just always does help to be able to talk to these people. | |
| So, I think it might help a little bit that we can at least have a conversation with the Taliban. | |
| Because the Taliban are not the ones who want to make international problems. | |
| They're the ones who want to run their own country, albeit in a horrible way. | |
| But it's not always our problem. | |
| Yeah, if you had to pick the Taliban or ISIS, you would pick the Taliban. | |
| Yeah. Alright, so then you also saw the tweet from the President mocking Jeff Sessions. | |
| Apparently the Department of Justice is going to bring charges against two Republicans who were early Trump supporters. | |
| And conveniently, that will happen close to the midterms. | |
| Or did happen already. | |
| But anyway, it's before the midterms. | |
| And the President was mocking him for making it so hard To, you know, leaving so little time to put another Republican in a safe Republican spot. | |
| And, you know, of course the President is predictably being mocked for interfering with the process and obstructing justice and everything by his tweet. | |
| But is it obstructing justice to say in public what everybody else is saying in public? | |
| You know, is it really obstructing justice when instead of firing people you say in public exactly what other people are saying in public and it's no surprise and it's just transparent? | |
| Would it make any difference if he said it in public or he just felt it in private? | |
| I don't know. How much difference does it really make? | |
| It's provocative. I'm not sure it was a good idea. | |
| So I can't defend it as being clever politically. | |
| But he's certainly building a case, the president is, for getting rid of Jeff Sessions for bad judgment or whatever. | |
| So it looks like it's just part of building his case for getting rid of Jeff Sessions. | |
| Now, some other people are saying it wasn't a good idea. | |
| I think this falls into the category of things that are not a good idea, but won't hurt him as much as you think. | |
| It will get people jabbering again, blah blah blah, but it's just not that important. | |
| It's the president talking and not acting, and he can talk all he wants. | |
| He still has freedom of speech. | |
| He might be the last one. | |
| He might be the only one who still has freedom of speech in a weird way because he's not being shadow banned. | |
| So, yeah, let's agree it wasn't a good idea, but I don't agree that it will hurt him. | |
| It would just be his same old critics saying his same old stuff, speculating that he was problematic and that speculating it broke the law, speculating that he was being sort of a dictator and he's moving us in that direction. | |
| It's all the same stuff they always say, but I don't think it's going to make any difference. | |
| Some people say he is being shadow banned. | |
| Maybe. Could be. | |
| Could be. Is Trump just distracting the media? | |
| I don't know what he would be distracting him from with the Jeff Sessions stuff, but he's clearly building a case. | |
| against Sessions. | |
| Or he's trying to force, you know, the ideal would be to force Sessions to resign, right? | |
| So it might be just part of that. | |
| He might just be forcing Sessions to resign, at which point people are going to say, hey, you can't fire Jeff Sessions. | |
| And then people will say, fire him? | |
| He resigned. And then people will say, but you forced him to resign. | |
| And then people will say, It's not illegal to have an opinion. | |
| It's not illegal to tweet. | |
| If the fact that Jeff Sessions didn't like it and then he quit, well, that's because he knew the actual accurate opinion of the president and the population of the country and the world also knew the accurate opinion of the president. | |
| How mad can you get? | |
| Too basic of an analysis. | |
| I'm not trying to touch every element of the analysis. | |
| We're just talking about firing Jeff Sessions here. | |
| If you can get Sessions to resign by embarrassing him enough, it's a better situation than firing him. | |
| Because he can always say, well, if somebody quit because they knew my opinion, well, why wouldn't my employees know my opinion? | |
| And why can't the people who hired me, the public, that's who hired the president, why can't they know my opinion? | |
| So it would be a good place to be if you really want to get rid of Jeff Sessions, if that's the president's opinion. | |
| The ultimate way to do it would be to force him to quit, just by embarrassing him out the door. | |
| It wouldn't be pretty, and it wouldn't stop people from squawking, But it would get him where he wants to go, the ugly way. | |
| And maybe that's the plan. | |
| Who knows? Somebody says that Sessions have no honor. | |
| His boss is insulting him. | |
| Well, my guess is that Sessions doesn't want to stay at this point. | |
| If you're Jeff Sessions, it probably only matters if you have another job opportunity. | |
| Because you do have to worry about working. | |
| So it might be that he just needs another, you know, he just needs the job. | |
| So that it could come down to that. | |
| Don't leave the grand jury out of your analysis. | |
| Well, I think everybody knows that the president has other interests. | |
| Legally, and that he'd like Jeff Sessions to squash them. | |
| I think everybody understands that part. | |
| Do you think the deep state has dirt on Sessions? | |
| I don't see any evidence of that. | |
| I was thinking the other day about the idea that Putin has dirt on Trump. | |
| So we've been told that as if it's a simple statement that either Putin does or does not have dirt on Trump, and that if he does, that gives him leverage over Trump. | |
| So that's the framework we've been handed. | |
| But I have to wonder, what is it like when you blackmail somebody who has nuclear weapons and a CIA... And a long history of getting revenge against people who deserve it. | |
| If you're Putin, let's say you are Putin, and let's say you do have something against the president, and it might not even be a real thing, because, well, here's the second part. | |
| Let me ask you the question, does Putin have blackmail material about Trump? | |
| Let me give you the definitive answer to that, with no doubt whatsoever. | |
| Yes, or he can invent it, and the public will treat it the same. | |
| Do you get why that's important? | |
| The answer is that Putin either does have dirt, or it doesn't really matter if he has it, he can make it up. | |
| We already know that the public will believe it. | |
| All he has to do is say, You know that one time when somebody from the Trump administration was talking to one of my oligarchs? | |
| Yeah, they really did collude that time. | |
| My oligarch told me he was working for me. | |
| Total collusion there. | |
| So, it doesn't matter that Putin has blackmail material because he can make it up and it will be just as compelling. | |
| So for all practical purposes, he does. | |
| He has something as good as blackmail material, or he has blackmail material. | |
| Now, if this were not President Trump, and it was another leader, would it be different? | |
| You don't think Putin has blackmail material on Obama? | |
| And if he doesn't, you don't think he can make some up? | |
| Of course he could. | |
| So where I'm going is, I'm not sure that this whole blackmail, compromat thing, compromat idea is exactly what we think it is when you're talking about two leaders of major countries. | |
| Let's just game this out. | |
| Let's say that Putin decided to release this compromising information. | |
| It's the end of Putin. | |
| That's pretty much guaranteed, isn't it? | |
| Because you know the United States has all kinds of plans for screwing Putin to the wall, should we need to. | |
| In other words, Putin has mutually assured destruction if he were to release either real or unreal Yeah, allegations of shenanigans. | |
| So if Putin has something on the president, or he decided to make up something and act as if it were true, in both cases he would be initiating mutually assured destruction. | |
| Not of Russia, because I don't think we would go to war with the nation of Russia, but we'd take Putin out. | |
| Don't you think? Let me ask you that question. | |
| Do you think there's any chance if Putin took the president out, or even if we were pretty sure that Putin was behind whatever compromise or information? | |
| We'd probably know. | |
| I would think that Putin's biggest problem is that something comes out, either an allegation or something true, and it looks like Putin might have been behind it. | |
| Putin's biggest risk to Putin is that somebody else leaks something or makes an allegation about the president. | |
| And it gets blamed on Putin. | |
| That's a problem. | |
| Because I'm pretty sure we haven't gone after Putin under this administration. | |
| We haven't gone after him personally. | |
| But we could! | |
| And if Russia intentionally took out our president, through some blackmail-y type of thing intentionally I think we'd have to take out Putin. | |
| We'd do it probably in covert ways, but we'd have to take him out. | |
| That's my opinion. So just as a citizen, I'm not talking about as a politician, not as an intelligence officer. | |
| I think we would have to respond in whatever the maximum mutually assured destruction is. | |
| But don't you think Putin knows that? | |
| Don't you think Putin knows that's the end of Putin? | |
| So my point is that if you're wondering if Russia has some kind of compromising thing on Trump, it probably matters a whole lot less than you think. | |
| Because if he did, he sure as hell wouldn't want to release it. | |
| And if he didn't, and he did want to release it, he could make something up and it would be just as compelling as if it were real. | |
| We should put Putin out regardless. | |
| He's a world menace, somebody says. | |
| I'm a little bit undecided on Putin, I have to say. | |
| Because the world-menacing things he does seem to be pretty central to Russian interests. | |
| In other words, the things he does seem to be very directly related to immediate needs of Russia. | |
| You know, making sure that they have access to warm water ports. | |
| In the case of... | |
| Taking over some of their neighbors. | |
| They're Russian-speaking, and it's very popular in his country. | |
| Yeah, the Ukrainian stuff is where it gets dicey. | |
| But they are not indications that he would want to take over Norway. | |
| You know? Adams is compromised by Russia, somebody says in all caps. | |
| Uh-huh. So I was reading up the other day, and I was reading up the other day on what's the difference between socialism, Marxism, communism, social, democratic socialist, and all of those things. | |
| And, man, it's confusing. | |
| I guess it just depends who owns the means of production, or at least that's part of it. | |
| And I was wondering if we're all going to be socialists eventually because of robots. | |
| Here's a little futurism for you. | |
| I think we'll all be socialists eventually because of robots. | |
| But robots have to get to the following point. | |
| Robots have to get to the point that robots can make other robots. | |
| So as soon as robots can build more robots, and no humans need to be involved, and they can do the entire supply chain, the robots can mine the ore and turn it into the materials, and so all the materials arrive and the robots turn it into robots and they program themselves. | |
| Because once the robots can do everything for us, then labor won't really be a thing. | |
| So there won't be this difference between capitalists and laborers. | |
| There will just be capitalists who, if they were to use their robots just for their own needs and didn't use any employees, the poor people would all starve to death. | |
| So we'll never get to a point where the capitalists are the only ones that own robots. | |
| Because then there would just be too many regular people without money and without food and they would just kill the few people who owned the robots. | |
| Far more likely we'll realize that everybody can have everything if we just build enough robots. | |
| So the rich people are going to say, well, how about I'll just let my robots loose and they'll just build more robots for anybody who needs them. | |
| And then you just call a robot like you call Uber. | |
| You know, you'd be like, I need a sandwich. | |
| And some robot shows up with a sandwich. | |
| So we might get to the point where there is no labor and there is no capitalist because it's just robots who are not owned by anybody. | |
| Who owns a robot if it's made by another robot? | |
| Well, under our current system, it's whoever owns the original robot I think, would own the second robot. | |
| Wait, is that even true? | |
| I suppose it depends where the parts came from. | |
| It gets complicated, right? | |
| So I think robots, once robots can make other robots, we will rapidly reach a point where people don't own robots. | |
| The robots are an independent entity. | |
| We'll still probably need programmers to put some control on them. | |
| But I think socialism is guaranteed because of technology. | |
| Alright. What was my other topic? | |
| That was it. I didn't talk about Kavanaugh because it's too early and it's too boring. | |
| Kavanaugh... I don't know. | |
| The left needs to make a lot of noise about it. | |
| The right needs to try to get them through. | |
| It's a weird national news story because it's so uninteresting. | |
| Scott, you're destroying your analysis credibility. | |
| On which point? Probably all of them. | |
| By the way, when those who say I'm destroying my analysis credibility, you should remember that People have been saying this about me since I started talking in public. | |
| So it's the most common complaint is that this time, this time I got it all wrong. | |
| You've jumped the shark this time. | |
| You've gone too far this time. | |
| I liked all those other things you said, but now you've gone too far. | |
| You obviously haven't watched the hearing yet. | |
| Now, I know that there's a big protest and they had to shut it down, etc. | |
| And I'll watch a little of it today. | |
| But there's something about the story innately where you know exactly what's going to happen. | |
| You know what kind of questions they're going to ask. | |
| You know what the news coverage will be. | |
| It feels predictable in some way that isn't fun to me. | |
| Oh, was it the socialism part that somebody said was going too far? | |
| Well, Well, we'll see. Alright, I think that's all I have. | |
| And I'm going to go do some work. |
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