Dec. 7, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
25:58
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Joanne always here first Quiet Lion, coming in second. | |
| Hey everybody, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| This is the travel version. | |
| Oh, somebody got engaged last night. | |
| Congratulations, Cameron. | |
| Bruce? Bruce? A lot of people named Bruce on here today. | |
| Well, it's time to raise your glass, your cup, your mug, your chalice, your stein. | |
| Fill it with your favorite liquid before you lift it. | |
| I like coffee. | |
| Join me for the simultaneous sip. | |
| So I'm seeing that Burma is in the house, and Myanmar, Manila. | |
| Man, everybody's here. So, the news is kind of boring, but busy. | |
| Have you noticed that? Yeah, this is a terrible camera angle, but... | |
| How about that? | |
| Is that any better? Slightly improved. | |
| So, it's too early to have an opinion on any of these staff changes. | |
| We're talking about Kelly might leave and Nick Ayers might come in and we've got a new UN representative and maybe a new Attorney General. | |
| And it's all great fodder for the news, because you can chat about that stuff all day long, but I'm sure all these people are qualified, and probably it's going to be a lot of chatter without a lot of substance. | |
| I tweeted this morning that a top guy from... | |
| British Intel recently said in an interview that Facebook is essentially dangerous because of its influence. | |
| And this is like one of the top Intel guys from Great Britain saying that Facebook is a threat to democracy and should be regulated like a utility. | |
| That's a pretty big statement. | |
| Think about the enormity of that. | |
| Now, I've argued that social media has already replaced democracy. | |
| It's sort of a form of democracy, but a dirty form. | |
| And that Facebook and social media in general are a part of that. | |
| And the way that model looks is that our government who we elect really doesn't have the option of doing something that social media doesn't approve of. | |
| Wouldn't you agree? Now in the short run you can have ideas that social media doesn't like, but in the long run you're really going to either lose your next election or you're going to have to conform one way or another. | |
| So social media largely determines how the government is going to go because they can't get on the wrong side of social media. | |
| And the big tech companies are the biggest determinants of what social media thinks and says and does, because they can control which messages have the most to play. | |
| So their algorithms are essentially I would say have already replaced what you thought was the Republic or what you thought was a democratic process. | |
| So we're way past the point where you have to ask yourself, hey, can social media distort democracy? | |
| We're way past that. | |
| It's already happened. | |
| The Republic has already been replaced with a new system. | |
| Now, you can like that new system or you can not like it, But I don't think you can legitimately argue that the old system still exists. | |
| I think that's a settled deal there. | |
| So it seems to me that the odds of Facebook someday being regulated... | |
| Are pretty high. And I think specifically that the form of the regulation will be some independent body, maybe some kind of judges that have technical backgrounds. | |
| They can look at the algorithm and say, the only thing we're going to look at is any change to the algorithm. | |
| And then the judges will say, okay, this change is not in the best interest of the country because it's introducing some bias. | |
| So I think something like that's guaranteed eventually. | |
| Now what's interesting is that because the social media companies control how we think, they could also control the public to be against any kind of public regulation of their entities. | |
| So that will be... Oh, Kelly just quit, somebody said. | |
| I don't know if that's true, but the reports were that that was imminent. | |
| Somebody is saying they're going to depose Zuckerberg soon at Facebook. | |
| I think that's a strong possibility. | |
| I think Zuckerberg might not last too much longer in his job. | |
| And a lot of that will have to do with the public's distrust of Facebook's intentions and actions. | |
| One of the things that Zuckerberg has working against him is that he's not a sympathetic character. | |
| Meaning that his public persona, let's say his charisma, if you will, doesn't come across as somebody who's on your side. | |
| He comes across as a little bit robotic, and I think that's just scary to people. | |
| I've told you before that the definition of charisma is power plus empathy. | |
| So if you don't have empathy, but you have power, you look like a monster. | |
| I know, it's somebody with a lot of power who doesn't care about me. | |
| That's the scariest thing. | |
| But if you have lots of power and you care about people, then they say, that's great. | |
| I've got this powerful person on my side. | |
| I love this person. So Facebook is this big powerful entity whose public face is probably the least empathetic persona we've seen in the modern age. | |
| It's very hard to watch Zuckerberg in action and feel, he feels my heart. | |
| He's really connected to my emotional reality. | |
| You don't really feel that from Zuckerberg. | |
| Now, by the way, I'm not a Zuckerberg basher because clearly he's a genius. | |
| Clearly, I think people have said he's one of the top CEOs maybe of all time. | |
| So in terms of capability, strategy, intelligence, motivating his staff and all those things, He's probably one of the best we've ever seen. | |
| So you can't take that away from him. | |
| But in this very specific situation where he's become so successful that Facebook has so much power, you have to make sure that the face of that power is compatible with the business model. | |
| And the business model is that they need people to like them. | |
| And the way he comes across is not as likable as it could be. | |
| So I think for that reason alone, probably there will be a change. | |
| Somebody said the uncanny valley. | |
| I was going to say that but it seemed too cruel. | |
| I was thinking it. | |
| I was thinking exactly that and I was thinking it for like actual analytical objective reasons. | |
| I was thinking it but it just sounds so cruel to actually apply it. | |
| Have you noticed that China apparently did not have a big pushback to the CFO of Huawei, I think it's pronounced, getting picked up in Canada and will be turned over to the United States for some kind of crime? | |
| And again, I don't understand how the United States can have criminal jurisdiction over a Chinese citizen who did things in China. | |
| I just don't know how that all works, so I'm a little confused about how we have any authority there, but let's say we do. | |
| Did you notice that China did not push back hard on that? | |
| They asked for her to be released, but they did not say they were going to derail the trade deals. | |
| And that's what I was predicting. | |
| Yeah, I was saying that these stakes are too high. | |
| And even though this person who was picked up is the daughter of the founder of this major company, This company is being blamed of such terrible things. | |
| I think they're being blamed of theft of intellectual property as well as essentially being a spy organization for the Chinese government. | |
| So that if you put their equipment in your country, you've installed spy equipment from China. | |
| I don't know how true that is, but that's what the belief is out there. | |
| So my prediction was that China could not tolerate having that being a bigger story than it already is. | |
| So if they were to reverse the trade deal and say, ah, we're walking away from trade, that would be a gigantic worldwide story. | |
| And the last thing they want is for us to talk more about this Chinese company that's apparently a bad actor. | |
| So, I think the Trump administration played this perfectly, meaning that they had a free punch, because given the sensitivity of the trade negotiations, China really can't die on that hill. | |
| They're not going to put all their eggs in the, hey, you grabbed our CFO basket, because that means talking more about that company and the bad things that they've done that no American is going to be happy with. | |
| So it just works against them to push on that. | |
| The Dow is going down. | |
| Yeah, so I had said, apparently incorrectly, not too long ago, that December is the worst month for stocks. | |
| And so somebody doubted me on that and then sent me a chart that showed that the last quarter was actually pretty bad, but it's not the month of December specifically. | |
| So the last quarter of the year, traditionally, and somebody needs to fact check me on this, please, because I'm not entirely confident on this, but the one chart I saw seemed to indicate that historically the fourth quarter was low. | |
| Now, the thing you've got to look at In deciding whether to be panicked or not about the stock market is that it seems to be reacting largely to just headline news. | |
| And the headline news is, wait for it, always exaggerated. | |
| So remember, the business model of the news industry is that if they can scare you, that's better. | |
| They make more money if they can scare you. | |
| So all of the press you're seeing about the risks, the financial risks, etc., are filtered through hyperbole. | |
| They're filtered through fear because that's the message that makes people the most money. | |
| So when you're watching the stock market drop based on the headlines, a lot of people who are, let's say, more balanced in the way they're looking at this are probably thinking it's a buying opportunity. | |
| Now, that's not financial advice. | |
| Don't take any financial advice from me. | |
| But it's a statement of fact that some people are going to say, eh, we'll definitely get a deal with China because we have to. | |
| The reason we will get a deal with China is that we have to. | |
| We have to. They have to. | |
| We have to. We have to. | |
| It might take a while, but it has to happen. | |
| So those people who are willing to wait it out are going to... | |
| Yeah, so the people willing to wait it out are probably going to be rewarded. | |
| But that's not financial advice. | |
| Bitcoin is at its lowest right now. | |
| Well, I hope you appreciate what I've done for Bitcoin. | |
| I don't know if you know, but when Bitcoin kept zooming and zooming, I said, darn it, people are getting rich while adding nothing to the economy. | |
| And they're getting super rich while adding literally nothing to the economy. | |
| So I said, as a public service, I'm going to stop this. | |
| So I bought some Bitcoin. | |
| Actually, I bought a fund that holds Bitcoin. | |
| And I said to myself, this will stop it. | |
| Bam. And that was the end of Bitcoin. | |
| Now, if there's anything else you'd like me to stop by investing in it, just let me know. | |
| I'm sure I can kill it like I killed Bitcoin. | |
| And by the way, I'm not even joking a little bit about why I bought it. | |
| I literally bought it because if it kept going up, well, I'd have some. | |
| But the odds of me not crashing that market were low. | |
| All right. Can I stop climate change? | |
| I probably already have. Who makes opioids? | |
| China. | |
| Was that a trick question? | |
| Alright, so I've got a question for you. | |
| In my new book I'm working on, I'm writing on the idea that war might be obsolete. | |
| So that's my prediction. | |
| War is obsolete. | |
| And here's my argument. So war between nuclear powers has been obsolete for some time because of mutually assured destruction. | |
| If a nuclear power attacked another nuclear power, there's a good odds that nobody wins. | |
| So war usually happens when at least one warring party thinks they have a good chance of winning. | |
| And so for nuclear powers, they know that there's no such thing as winning in that environment, so we haven't seen any of those wars. | |
| Now the smaller wars, let's say Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, where you have big powers conquering small powers, that's not a nuclear risk because only one side has nuclear weapons and they're not going to use them in a non-nuclear war. | |
| But because it's so easy to get really good weapons to guerrilla resistance, I think the days of economically holding a conquered country are over. | |
| Meaning that if the United States conquered any smaller country, Those citizens would have access to really good explosives, really good drones, really good weapons, so that holding that country would never be economical. | |
| It would always cost more to occupy a country than you could gain by having it. | |
| Now, that wasn't always the case. | |
| Wars throughout history often had an economic incentive. | |
| Even as recently as World War II, Even Hitler had a reasonable belief, as crazy and evil as he was, he had a reasonable, rational reason to think that he could conquer neighboring countries and economically, and here's the key, economically hold them. | |
| Because the resistance in those countries was likely to have just rifles. | |
| And over time, you could probably pacify that kind of a country. | |
| But today, they're going to have all kinds of weapons. | |
| So I think it's not economical. | |
| Secondly, because the economy is so interconnected, If a big country conquers a small country and it's an unpopular conquest, the big country is going to suffer economically because the rest of the world is going to say, hey, stop doing that. | |
| We're going to put some economic sanctions on you. | |
| So you see that happening with Russia and its aggression against the Ukraine. | |
| You see that happening against Saudi Arabia and Iran, economic pressure because of their proxy wars in Yemen and, of course, Iran because of their proxy wars all over the place. | |
| So the economic reason for war is now gone. | |
| Think about it. I'm pretty sure that's a defensible statement, that the economic incentive for war is completely gone now. | |
| Because no conquering country, even if they win the war, can do it economically. | |
| And if they can't do it economically, it just doesn't work. | |
| Tell Putin. So I think that all that's left is what I'll call the specialty wars. | |
| Meaning that there's a special situation. | |
| And a special situation might be, for example, a Russian country conquering a neighboring Russian-speaking country that maybe used to be part of their country and maybe the local population is actually friendly toward the conquering country. | |
| So if you've got specialty situations, Crimea for example, you'll still see that. | |
| So I don't think that'll change. | |
| But I think you're going to need the conquering country to be at least neutral or positive about the conquest. | |
| I think they're going to have to sort of be positive about it. | |
| And speaking the same language will help as well. | |
| So that's my thesis. | |
| My thesis is that because it's no longer economically feasible to conquer a neighboring country, no matter who you are, except for those specialty cases, that you just won't see it. | |
| And I would argue that President Trump is a big part of that new psychology because you see him putting economic pressure on North Korea successfully. | |
| North Korea has responded in a rational way to the fact that they could never have, never, never, ever have a functioning economy. | |
| And that's the sort of pressure that Trump is putting on Iran. | |
| Iran, with its current stance on things, can never have a functioning economy. | |
| Ever! It's just not an option. | |
| Because of the interconnectivity of the world and the fact that economic war is so effective. | |
| Likewise, you see Russia getting economically slapped around because of its recent provocations. | |
| So that's my optimistic feeling about the future, is that it's no longer economical to conquer and hold a country except for special cases. | |
| And in the special cases, it's not even going to be clear. | |
| Maybe they shouldn't have been conquered or didn't want to be conquered. | |
| And that's what makes it a special case. | |
| Tell Russia. | |
| So Russia is actually what I would call the edge case. | |
| You can look at Russia and you can see the limits of what I'm talking about. | |
| So Russia taking over Crimea is a perfect example of the special case. | |
| But if they try to extend that to a full conquest of Ukraine, And correct me if I'm wrong, but if, let's say, theoretically, Russia just militarily or in other ways conquered Ukraine, just completely conquered it, would Russia have a better or worse economic situation after that? | |
| I think worse, and I think clearly worse, because the international community would get pretty tough about it. | |
| Estonia is a good example. | |
| So Estonia, I think, is safe because if Russia moved against them, there would be no way to justify that. | |
| And so I think the international community would just shut down Russia as a trading partner with the world. | |
| I think their pipelines would be replaced with other sources. | |
| So... Anyway, so that's why I'm saying that war, I think, will decline. | |
| How would you like to see... | |
| I don't have any thoughts on the candidates for AGE or anything else right now because I just don't know those characters. | |
| Let me give you... | |
| So that's my view. | |
| Can you tell where I am? | |
| I'm in Deer Valley, Utah. | |
| So, I'm in Utah, Deer Valley. | |
| So, one of the things they don't tell you when you travel to a place like this, I got here and I learned that there's something called altitude sickness. | |
| Did you even know that was a thing? | |
| Somehow I got to my current age without knowing there was such a thing as altitude sickness. | |
| We're above 8,000 feet, mostly. | |
| When you get above 8,000 feet, it's harder to breathe until you get used to it. | |
| And you actually get flu-like symptoms. | |
| And I got up here and I thought I was dying or something because I had all these generic flu-like symptoms and I couldn't breathe and I was headachy and all that stuff. | |
| So I didn't know that there's a place you can go on vacation and that you can be sick simply by being there. | |
| Yeah. I mean, that doesn't seem fair. | |
| It seems like you should have to get a bug or, you know, some specific illness. | |
| But if you visit a nice town, and this is really a beautiful place, if you just go to a nice place, it shouldn't make you sick just because you're there. | |
| You'll feel great when you get back. | |
| Maybe so. So I'm feeling better today. | |
| But, yeah, trying to stay hydrated, as someone said. | |
| You can die. | |
| It felt like it yesterday. | |
| Yes, I'm sucking through the water like crazy, but it's not enough. | |
| All right. Work on your breath work. | |
| Yeah, I've been trying to breathe deeply. | |
| Okay, is there anything else that's happening besides the staffing changes? | |
| Because I don't think those are interesting. |
Export Selection