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Feb. 10, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
01:03:36
Episode 410 Scott Adams: Green New Deal (GND), Universal Basic Income (UBI), Trump Tweets
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody!
Come on in here. Happy Sunday!
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
I'm Scott Adams, your host.
Why does Scott Adams talk about Scott Adams in the third person?
How annoying that is, when Scott Adams does that.
Well, as most of you know, I do it because it makes it hard to look away.
So all the people who send me messages and say, why do you talk about yourself in the third person?
It's so weird and creepy.
To which I say, this is why.
Because you can't look away.
It's a mistake that holds your attention.
Alright, we're going to talk about a few things today.
We're going to talk about the unwillingness to work.
You know what that's all about.
I'll get to that in a minute. But first I want to read President Trump's great tweet.
So he's talking about the so-called Green New Deal that the Democrats have put out.
And 15 hours ago, he tweeted this from the President of the United States.
Here it is. I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal.
What? It would be great for the so-called carbon footprint to permanently eliminate all planes, cars, cows, oil, gas, and the military, even if no other country would do the same.
Brilliant! Now of course he's being sarcastic, and he's framing this in a way that I haven't seen framed before.
So this is a terrific reframe of the idea.
Because if you hear their idea in isolation, hey, we want to save the planet and be good to people, it doesn't sound nearly as impractical.
But the moment you say, You realize that if we do this and other countries don't do this, they will have a military and we won't.
They will have a big economy and we won't.
The moment you put it in terms of international competition, the whole thing is ridiculous.
Now that's the most defensible argument against the Green New Deal.
We don't live in isolation.
The things we do are influenced by what that will do to the rest of the world and what the rest of the world will do to us if we do that thing.
So I haven't heard anybody else put it in this frame which is it's not practical because the rest of the world isn't going to do it and it would put us at a disadvantage to other countries.
That's a pretty good argument and a good reframe.
Now the most fun thing about About this whole situation with the Green New Deal, is if you're following this, there are two movies about one element of the Green New Deal.
And let me take you to the two movies, and then I'll pick a winner.
Which movie is closer to true?
Alright, so you've got two movies.
In one of these movies, there was a phrase, unwilling to work, Which appeared on AOC's website as part of the frequently asked questions answers.
Sort of a cheat sheet to give you a summary of what's in this Green New Deal.
Now the Green New Deal is a separate document From the cheat sheet.
So we're talking about two separate documents, right?
One was on AOC's website, and it was sort of a summary.
And then there's the larger document, which is the proposal itself.
Turns out they're different.
In one important way, this phrase, unwilling to work in the context of universal basic income.
So one of the things that the AOC website said for a while, until they took it down, we'll get to that.
So temporarily, AOC's website had a summary in which it said part of the proposal, and it turns out the proposal doesn't have this in it, but it said so initially, That they were proposing a universal basic income, in other words, writing a check from the government to a citizen who was either unable to work or, and here's the fun part, unwilling to work.
And when there was a big reaction to that, as you might imagine, they took it down.
Now there are two versions of reality here, and we're trying to sort out which is the real one, and I'll help you do that in a minute.
One version of reality, I'll call it movie one, says that the Green New Deal did mean to include a universal income for people unwilling to work.
In other words, somebody just had to say, I'm unwilling to work.
And the government would start writing them checks.
Outrageous, right? Crazy stuff.
And when they put this, and when people saw this, that it was really part of their thinking, even though it wasn't in the final document, people flipped out and said, my God, you're thinking this crazy idea.
And as soon as you got caught, you deleted it because of the reaction.
It's only the reaction.
You got too embarrassed when people saw it, so you took it down.
And then here's the fun part.
You try to gaslight the public.
Gaslighting means that you tell them something that is obviously true is false until you make them think they're crazy.
So the gaslighting in this movie is that the people who were behind the Green New Deal Say, no, no, that's not part of the Green New Deal.
Nope. That's not there, even though it clearly was in the document and that has been well established.
Alright, so in this movie, a crazy idea was floated.
When the public saw it, they got such a bad reaction to it, they just said, no, nope, it never happened.
Never happened. No such thing as unwilling to work in the Green New Deal.
Nope. Did not happen.
Alright. Is that likely compared to the other movie?
Now here's the movie as described by AOC's Chief of Staff.
His version goes like this.
That the FAQ, the part that was wrong, there were many versions of it, there were many drafts of the Green New Deal, and in one of the drafts, at least one draft, At least one author, we don't know how many other people, but at least one person thought that this phrase, unwilling to work, should be in the draft.
But other people did not, and it was not part of the final Green New Deal.
But by accident, by accident, the wrong copy got on the website, and people didn't notice it until the critics noticed it, and then they said, whoops, That was an error.
That was never meant to be on the website, and indeed it's not in the final document, so you can see that for sure we didn't mean it.
And in this version, they told the truth.
Hey, we made a mistake.
Which of these two versions is the most likely?
Now, I'll tell you the worst opinion.
No, let me not offend you right away.
Let me go after this a little bit softer.
It'll go down better. One of the ways that you can determine truth from fake news is the level of ridiculousness of one movie versus the other.
If you've got two versions of events that both describe what you saw and they both fit the facts as you've observed, One of them is insane, and the other one is perfectly ordinary.
Which one would you choose as being the likely explanation for the facts?
One is extraordinary, and one is just totally normal.
Well, if you pick the totally normal one, you're going to be right about 95% of the time.
Maybe not every time, because every now and then something extraordinary does happen.
But if you're looking for extraordinary everywhere, you're going to be wrong about 95% of the time.
Let me tell you how this movie...
I know you don't want to hear this.
Here's the part you don't like.
But it's also the reason you watch these periscopes.
Movie 2 is by far the most likely description of events.
And let me give a little background on it so you know why.
How common is it For people to have multiple drafts, and then when the final one is ready, people don't re-read the entire draft again, and you end up with a wrong draft.
How normal is it for people to not realize there's something in a draft that they didn't notice?
Because they don't re-read the entire draft every time.
Totally normal. If you've ever worked in a big corporate environment, in fact my own job, I'm always doing drafts and looking at versions of things, completely normal that they would accidentally put a draft up there and say, whoops, that had something in it that we didn't really mean to be there.
So this is far more normal than the version that they intended to put it out there and then lied about it.
Gaslighting is something that the president is accused of all the time.
In my entire life, I've never seen a real situation of gaslighting.
I've never seen it.
I've seen people accuse people of gaslighting all the time.
In the past year or so, it happens all the time.
So, gaslighting is the most extraordinary situation, and unless you absolutely are positive that's what's going on, Don't ever think that that's the likely explanation.
So as soon as you hear, I'm sure that this was gaslighting, 95% chance you're wrong, and I don't even care what the situation is.
You could take the same analysis to any situation.
Somebody says, oh, that was just an ordinary accident, and somebody else says, it's gaslighting.
The ordinary accident is almost always going to be the real explanation.
People don't gaslight.
It's just not a thing. It's something you imagine is a thing, because people are wrong about things, people do lie about things, and it looks like gaslighting.
Probably never has happened in your lifetime.
You've probably never, literally never seen it.
I've never seen it, for example.
You probably all saw, or many of you saw, a Tucker Carlson interview in which Tucker said to a Media Matters person who was defending the Green New Deal, said, you know, let's talk about this unwilling to work thing.
And what did the Media Matters say?
He said, that's not in there.
And Tucker was confused.
He's like, that's definitely in there.
I'm reading it. It's right on AOC's website.
It says it in direct words.
And then the Media Matters guy goes, no, that's not in there.
It's not in the Green New Deal.
Turns out, the Media Matters guy was accurate.
The actual document, the Green New Deal, the one he's read, it's not in there.
So he wasn't gaslighting.
He was actually telling you the truth.
It's not in there and has never been in there.
It was on AOC's website temporarily, which they called a mistake, and then they took down.
So what you thought was gaslighting was somebody actually just telling you the truth.
It's not in the Green New Deal.
Now, he probably didn't know that there was a bad version on the website when he was talking about it, and thus the confusion.
There were multiple documents.
Now, how crazy is this idea to give somebody a universal basic income for somebody who is unwilling to work?
I'm going to get you a little bit more...
Some of you are going to be a little angrier when I'm done with this.
Universal Basic Income, in other words, writing a check from the government to a citizen for being unwilling to work is not nearly as crazy as you think on first look.
And that's probably why they took it out.
My best guess, and now I'm going into speculation.
So I want to make a clear distinction between what is my opinion versus more of a speculative thing.
Probably, there is a smart argument for paying people who are unwilling to work.
Let me give you a flavor of what it might look like.
And probably, people realize that when you take it out of context of its better argument, and you can't really have context in a summary, that's what the FAQ was.
It was just a quick bullet point summary of the plan.
In the bullet point summary, you can't really defend and explain paying people who are unwilling to work.
It's too hard of a concept.
It's a hard sale. So even if there was a good intellectual argument for that, they would have been wise to have considered it and then taken it out.
Because it was unsellable.
But let me suggest to you this.
Imagine in the not too far future, might be five years, might be ten years, when the robots are doing a lot of the work.
And let's say you've got a situation that for every ten people who could work, there are only seven decent jobs.
And the other jobs They're barely worth doing, because by the time you paid for your childcare, let's say, and your commute, it just wouldn't be worth the job.
So, for every ten people, there are only seven jobs that are worth doing.
Who do you want doing the seven jobs?
Do you want the 7 jobs to be done by people who want those jobs because the people working are going to have more resources, more pay, a happier life than the people who are just getting a universal basic income?
Don't you want the 7 out of 10 who want to work to be doing the work?
Why would you ever want someone who is unwilling to work to have one of those few jobs?
They're not going to do much of a job and they're not going to be happy about it.
So if they're not happy they have the job, and you're not happy they have a job, why do they have a job?
The first thing you have to understand is that it's tough to sort out somebody who can't work from someone who is unwilling.
In a practical sense, anybody who is unwilling will simply claim they're incapable.
They'll say, I've got a mental problem.
They'll say, I've got anxiety.
They're going to say a lot of things.
And so, in a practical sense, you almost can't sort out Who is unable to work from someone who claims they're unable to work.
Those would be the unwilling.
Now what about the people who could work but the only jobs available are such a long commute and would require so much childcare expense that it's not worth working if the alternative is to get this universal basic income.
So we might be very close to a time when universal basic income is a thing because the robots are doing all the low-level jobs and there just aren't enough good jobs.
So somebody has to be the unworking group and we're not going to let them starve, probably, just because there aren't enough jobs.
So the socialist version is that rather than forcing people to work, You just go with the situation which is there aren't enough jobs and I'd rather have people willing to work and willing to make more money by working than getting universal basic income.
So that's one vision of it.
And by the way, I'm not saying you should buy this.
I'm not talking you into it.
I'm just saying that when you first see the idea of paying people who are unwilling to work, it sounds frickin' crazy, doesn't it?
It goes against everything you know about capitalism, it goes against everything you know about incentives, but I almost can guarantee you that there's an intellectual argument for a world that's starting to enter the robot age where very smart capitalists have said to themselves,
we should at least test this idea of universal basic income, and the reality is we're not going to be able to sort out the difference between people who are unwilling to work And the people who just say they're unwilling...
We can't sort out who's incapable from who's unwilling, because part of your health is your mental health.
And anybody can claim, I'm just not mentally able, or I just can't do these jobs.
So you might as well just say, alright, doesn't matter if you're unable or unwilling, if you would rather have a very low level of life, That's an option.
But anybody who wants to work can have a much better life.
That's the payoff for working.
So, you are certainly welcome to say I'm still not sold on that idea.
The only thing I'm trying to sell you on is that there's probably a larger intellectual economic argument that's not crazy.
That's the only point I'm trying to make.
There probably is a larger context and argument that's not crazy.
It might be wrong. You might not agree with it.
You know, reasonable people might disagree.
But I guarantee you, there's a larger argument that's not so crazy.
But it would have been crazy to include it in the draft as a bullet point, or even really in the final plan, because it's such a lightning rod.
It's too easy to argue against it, because we're all primed for incentives and capitalism and all that stuff.
So, to me, the most likely explanation of what happened is that there was at least one person, and as far as we know, it would only take one person, To insert that into a draft because people had talked about it and they thought it was maybe a good idea to start floating out there, getting us ready for a world where this is going to happen.
So universal basic income is almost certainly going to happen.
I would say that we're almost guaranteed that in my lifetime somebody's going to be getting a universal basic income in the world of robots.
You need the robots to get there probably.
And that one person had an intellectual argument, thought it was time to introduce it, but it wasn't the right time.
And so the larger group said, let's take that out.
That's too hard to defend.
So the most likely explanation is movie two.
Doesn't mean it's true, but by far it's the more likely explanation is that they did consider unwilling to work, They did have an argument.
It was too complicated, too controversial, impossible to persuade.
And so it left the early drafts and was just taken out.
But somebody didn't notice.
And because there were lots of drafts floating around, it got on the website.
When they noticed it, they took it off.
And they just said, okay, we made a mistake.
That was dumb. We took it off.
They admitted a mistake.
If you see somebody admit an ordinary mistake and it explains the entire situation, go with the ordinary thinking most of the time.
All right.
So, UBI will almost certainly cause the productive people to be less productive.
Maybe. So here's the thing.
The universal basic income is designed to give you a minimum survivable life.
How many people would accept a minimum survivable life?
Probably a lot.
But I always use this example.
Does it matter?
Let me put this in context.
It seems to me that all of the important things that happen in society that move things forward come from a very small group of people.
There's a small group of entrepreneurs, risk-takers, geniuses who do all the cool stuff.
I would say the top 2% of the performers have this hugely larger impact on the world than all the 98% below in terms of big change.
How important are the, let's say, lowest 20% of performers to the overall success of the world?
Compare the top 2% Who are really moving and shaking and inventing, to the bottom 20% who you kind of wish they wouldn't even show up for work.
Have you ever worked in an office where you looked around and you said to yourself, you know, if the worst 20% of my coworkers would call in sick every day, we'd really get something done.
So when you're saying to yourself, oh no, I can't live in a world Where, let's say, the bottom 10% or 20% of people unwilling to work just get a check.
The alternative is they probably work for your company and slow you down.
They're not the ones who are making the world move forward.
So you're probably not going to be as damaged by it as you think, so long as there was still plenty of incentive to work.
The only people who are not going to work are the people who weren't going to add much to the world anyway.
So you're not going to lose that much.
Isn't that what welfare is?
There are some minor differences, but I can't get into that.
Just drug the people who want to be drugged.
Well, that's gonna happen anyway, right?
I raised my family.
I won't pay for anyone unwilling to work.
I'm not saying it will ever be popular.
Yeah.
All right, so...
UBI will make everybody poorer.
Well, let me ask you this.
Don't we have lots of people who are receiving services for nothing right now?
We have an entire elderly class who are receiving more money than they put in with Social Security.
Now, would you end that?
Would you end Social Security because so many old people are taking out of it more than they put in?
They're effectively getting paid by you for not working.
So, there's a lot of stuff you get used to.
And you'll probably get used to UBI, even though it sounds like a terrible idea from today's perspective.
Not original. It's called communism.
It's pretty far from communism.
In fact, the people who have talked about universal basic income include some of the biggest capitalists in the world.
You may know that Sam Altman, who's a billionaire CEO of Y Combinator, was recently testing the idea.
You know, literally one of the biggest capitalists in the world He was testing universal basic income with his own money.
He was seeing what would happen if I just pay some people and don't ask them anything in return.
Now, I think it didn't work.
I don't remember how that turned out, but I'm not sure that that was a successful experiment, except in the sense that we learned something.
Alright, it seems to me that we've gone far too far without the simultaneous SIP. I know you're ready.
Grab your mug, grab your glass, your cup, your thermos, your stein, your chalice.
Fill it with your favorite liquid and join me for this simultaneous sip.
Ah. Alright.
Somebody says, I'm one willing to pay.
Everybody who says they're unwilling to pay for other people who are unwilling to work...
You're forgetting that you're already doing it.
And you wake up and it doesn't bother you during the day and you go to sleep and you don't even notice.
The elderly are not expected to work, willing or unwilling.
Well, why not? What makes the elderly...
Why do they get a pass?
Why do the elderly get supported by the young?
There's no reason for that.
We just got used to it.
What if the robots don't want to work?
Eric Weinstein, too.
What about Eric? Has he talked about universal basic income?
It's already a failed model.
You know, here's the problem with failed models.
And every time I hear somebody say this, I have the same reaction.
How many times have you heard somebody say, we've already tried that and it didn't work?
It's one of the most common things you hear, right?
We've already tried this, whatever it is, any plan.
We've already tried it and it didn't work.
Well, you know what also didn't work until it did?
The airplane. You can just go down the list of every major invention.
Everything that eventually worked didn't work first.
So not working is the starting point for things that work.
So if you look at something and you note that it never worked in the past, that doesn't really tell you it won't work in the future.
That is not predictive.
Because we tweak things until they do work in the future.
That's what we're good at. Humans are good at adjusting.
The only thing we can say for sure is that the exact way it was tried in the exact situation of the past didn't work.
That's all you can say. You can't say that, well, if I tweak this, or, well, the situation has changed.
We have robots now, but we didn't have robots before.
So it's always dangerous to say, well, it didn't work before, so I guess it'll never work in the future.
Everything that didn't work in the future doesn't tell you whether it won't work.
I'm sorry. I botched that sentence, but you know where it was going.
UBI has never been implemented anywhere.
LOL. Well, LOL person.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
You mock me.
UBI has been tried.
I'm gonna have to get the DALE. Hold on.
This requires a Dale.
I'll be right back.
There are some things that just require the Dale response. .
Don't you know UBI's been tried before, Scott?
LOL! LOL! You poor stupid bastard!
You don't know that it can't possibly work!
It can't possibly work because it's never worked in the past!
Are you talking about the past where robots were doing a lot of our work?
Is that the past you're talking about?
You remember back in the past when we had robots that would do all of our manufacturing and building our houses?
That past? Is that the one you're talking about?
Because the fact that something didn't work before robots doesn't tell you a lot about what the world looks like after robots.
And that's just one example.
So I'm not saying robots are the only factor here, But the general point is, it is very informative that it has been tried in a number of ways and didn't work.
So I'm not saying that's not important, because I'm sure we learned a lot from that.
Finland is an example, yeah.
So Finland tried it and it didn't seem to be a successful thing.
I think some other individuals have tried it and it didn't work.
That does not tell you that it will never work.
It certainly gives you reason for pause.
It gives you reason for pause and good reason.
So if you're saying...
Let me make a more general point.
If you're saying to me, Scott, based on the times it's been tried before and based on what we know about human nature, I would say the odds of universal basic income ever working in a widespread way are low.
The odds are low that we could ever figure out a way to make that work.
I would say to you, well, thank you, reasonable person.
I appreciate your reasonable, well-balanced approach in which you talk about the odds of something working based on our experience.
I would call that a good opinion.
Even if it's wrong, it's a well-expressed opinion.
Here's a bad opinion.
It hasn't worked the other ways we've tried it, and therefore there's a 100% chance, laughably, laughably a 100% chance, that it could never work under any scenario and under any tweaking and under any future condition.
That's not a sensible argument.
It's only sensible that, based on what we've seen, the odds don't look that good.
And I would agree with you on that.
But never say never, is what I'm saying.
Alright. Banning airplanes.
Let's talk about that, banning airplanes.
Now, as I've said before, I don't know that anything on that Green New Deal is practical.
It could be that there's just not a single practical part of that.
But they're all directionally interesting.
Meaning that if I had an option of a fast train to go across the country versus an airplane, I might pick the train.
Because probably you could get a much better accommodation on a train.
It's probably just a better, safer situation.
So if there were any way to economically build a series of low-cost train transportation to crisscross the country, I would love to look at the economics of that.
Because the airline industry is a mess.
Have you flown recently?
Flying is a nightmare.
It's 2019 and flying is no better, it's actually worse than it was 30 years ago.
I think flying is probably the only technology that's gotten worse for 30 years straight.
So I think airplanes need a little competition.
So that would be fine for me.
All right. Yeah, somebody's saying the dumbest people are the ones who say it won't work, so don't try it.
That is correct.
The smart people say, let's test it.
And when the test doesn't work, the smart people say, let's see if we can tweak it and try it again.
So if you're not approaching it that way, you're not part of the productive conversation.
All right. Universal basic income with open borders is a death spiral.
Correct. That's correct.
If you don't have border security, you can't give away your money.
I think that's a safe thing to say.
We've seen now that there's no indication that the Congress is going to come up with a plan for the border.
That is compatible with what the border experts recommend.
Think about it.
The plan that comes out of Congress will not be compatible with what the only people who know what's happening, the experts, say should be done.
What should we do with that?
You know, one of the reasons to declare an emergency is if there's an emergency.
The other reason to declare an emergency, in my opinion, is if there's something the experts want and it's well expressed and we understand what they're talking about and we can afford it, and the Congress won't do it for political reasons.
If you have a Congress that won't act for naked political reasons, Despite the public and the experts essentially agreeing on what a good solution looks like, and I think the public would start to back the experts if we can see specifically their plan.
I think in that condition, in that situation, which is our current situation, the president can just say, look, the system doesn't work right now.
There's a security issue.
I'm the commander-in-chief.
It's my job to plug our security holes.
And the Congress is not a functional body because they've become too political on this issue.
Now, he could also take some...
I think the president could legitimately take some responsibility for Congress being locked up.
Because he's made it such a brand and he's made it so politicized, the border, that it makes it easier for the other side to just want to thwart him for political reasons.
So he's got some responsibility, but he's also not Congress.
Congress doesn't get a pass to not do their job for the people just because they don't like the president.
That's not a reason. We don't accept that as a reason.
So I think the president can just say Congress is not functioning on this question and it's a security question.
So I'm going to act in a way that's compatible with the experts.
If the president declares an emergency, And acts exactly in accordance with what the security experts want, and it's well within the budget, $5.7 billion is well within our total budget, I think he's completely safe.
I think Congress just will prove that they can't function.
So he doesn't have to say I disagree with Congress or I agree with Congress.
He doesn't have to say anything like that.
He just have to say they don't function if they're ignoring the experts right in front of the public.
The public is watching this and right in front of us the Congress apparently is going to ignore the experts.
Think about that. They're going to ignore the experts right in front of us.
You know, their bosses.
Imagine that. Imagine if you went to your boss and your boss said, well, I'd like you to do this because the experts agree.
And you look at your boss and you look at the experts and you go, no, no, I'm not going to do that.
Well, the boss fires you, right?
So it might be time for the president to fire Congress on just this one question.
Now, let me give you a bigger picture.
Once again, I go onto CNN.com, and it's not anti-Trump.
And there seems to be something that's changed.
I don't know exactly what.
It could be because the Democrats are having so many issues.
It could be because, oh, you know what?
I do have a theory.
So we went from a situation in which all the CNN coverage was anti-Trump.
To a situation where they're talking about the Green New Deal and about the new candidates and more of a positive spin on things which are not Trump, but it's more of a positivity about the Green New Deal and the new candidates and the excitement there.
Maybe the thing that's changed is that when you don't have a Green New Deal to talk about, You don't have anything positive to talk about.
So CNN talked about what's left, which is anti-Trump.
So I think you don't need to be as anti-Trump if you have something positive to talk about from the other side.
So it looks like the coverage has, just because they have this option now, there's something positive to talk about.
I think they'll talk about the candidates and about the Green New Deal a lot, and that will be good for the president because if you run down the list of things people were afraid of from the president, he's going to be insane.
Well, we've had two years of nothing that looks crazy.
Where's the insanity going to kick in if that's the problem?
Why is everything running so well?
Why are we doing well with North Korea and Syria?
Why are we doing well on everything?
The economy, the prison reform.
It's hard to square that with he's crazy and incompetent.
Then there's the he's going to be a crazy dictator.
He's going to act like a dictator.
But we're watching right in front of us that he respects the Supreme Court decisions.
He respects the rule of law.
He's working with the Congress because he doesn't have a friendly Congress now.
So every bit of information Refutes the dictator scenario.
So now the crazy, crazy unstable guy thing is sort of no longer believable because we've got a couple years of him in office and no crazy stuff is happening.
At least not in any real sense except for tweets and stuff.
Then there's the...
Now he's also told apparently 80,000 lies So the president has told 8,000 lies, according to the fact-checkers.
But after two years, can you point to something where that mattered?
In other words, can you say, aha, now Great Britain will no longer work with us?
No. No.
Or, aha, we can't get a deal done with China.
No. We don't have a deal, but it doesn't seem to be anything about the president.
There's nothing about the president's promises during campaigns or whatever that is affecting China's negotiation.
You can't really find any way that his departing from the fact-checkers, talking about the president, you can't really find an example where something was damaged by that.
Your so-called common sense tells you There should be.
There should be some damage, but there's not.
Now, that's what I predicted from the start.
If you've been following my coverage of this president, I predicted from the start that his departing from the fact-checking was hyperbole, it was directionally okay, and that it wouldn't make any difference in the real world, because people put it in context.
That's the president. That's what he does.
And then there was a problem that he would destroy the economy.
That doesn't seem to be a problem.
There was a problem that he would start trade wars that would destroy the world.
But what do you hear mostly about China trade talks now?
Do you remember when the China trade talks first started, the way the coverage was?
People would say, my God, trade wars are stupid.
Trade wars will destroy the economy, right?
That was the main thing you heard.
Trade war is always stupid.
Nobody wins a trade war.
If you're starting a trade war, you're doing everything wrong.
It's going to be terrible.
The economy is going to go to the toilet, right?
That was nonstop.
What do we talk about now when we talk about China and trade?
Every time we hear that, what is the thing that comes up right at the top of the list?
Their theft of intellectual property.
So we started with trade deals are always bad, and therefore Trump is being dumb for getting into one.
And it has transformed as we have become educated.
So what Trump has done, whether or not he intended to do this explicitly, it's what happened.
He has educated us from thinking that this was a trade deal, which it was in part, to something bigger, which is you had a country that was just absolutely abusing us by stealing our intellectual property and had no intention of stopping.
Apparently the reason we can't reach a deal with China is because they're only willing to consider deals in which they can easily continue to cheat.
And I was listening to the coverage of it yesterday, and now the coverage accepts that as a fact.
So we've taken it from trade deals are bad, trade deals are bad, you're stupid to get into one, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That argument has gone down a little bit to, well, yeah, you should negotiate a trade deal, to this intellectual property theft absolutely cannot be accepted.
And we'll even take a beating on trade, meaning that the trade war will continue and we'll take the pain from that because this other issue of the intellectual property theft is so big That, you know, you concentrate on that.
So even the most down-to-earth, you know, just normal criticisms of this president, like, hey, you're starting a trade war, that's no good.
The world has become educated to the point where they're kind of agreeing with Trump.
I would say at this point, both sides Agree with the main premise that you can't allow China to steal our intellectual property, and if we don't nail that down with this overall trade agreement, it's a mistake.
So I think China is now, or I think that Yeah.
I think that between the fentanyl issue from China, somebody's prompting me here in the comments, between the fentanyl issue, which we see as huge, and the intellectual property, people get that Trump needed to get tough with China and that he's doing it exactly the right way, which is treating China with great respect.
He always treats them with great respect, and their leader, President Xi, he treats him with great respect.
At the same time, he's saying as clearly as possible, this stuff isn't going to go on anymore.
We're done with this stuff.
Sorry, technical difficulty.
So there's not much left to talk about.
Oh, and then the other thing is the Russia collusion thing is starting to look ridiculous, and especially now that the president is pulling out of whatever nuclear or missile deals we've got with Russia.
So now there are so many ways that the president has acted against Russia, and we've gone so long without Mueller coming up with anything, We've kind of, the Russia collusion thing, even the people who believed in it are starting to not believe it.
So, what about the Roger Stone raid?
That's old news. What about inquirer information on Trump that could surface?
Yeah, that falls into the category of anything could happen.
But I can't imagine much that could happen about Trump's personal life that would make any difference.
If there were some new revelation about Trump did this or that in his personal life, I don't know anybody cares.
Yes, Yes, so now I see people putting their hope in these various Democrat presidential harassments as the president calls it.
I do like the president's framing of what the Congress is planning to do with all their investigations.
I do like that he's calling it presidential harassment, because that's a pretty good description.
I think that works pretty well.
How about the great job Melania is doing?
You know, every now and then I remind myself that Melania is kind of great.
The fact that you don't hear so much about her I don't know, maybe that works in her favor, because she's not trying to be a superstar, she's just trying to do her level best for the country, and I would say she's doing a great job.
She probably has more...
I don't know, is it just me?
Or is the fact that Melania puts up with her husband, the fact that she's stuck with him and puts up with him, Kind of makes me like her a lot more.
There's something about that situation that makes me respect her a lot, I guess.
Because it's not like she didn't know what she was getting into.
She's just making the best of a good situation and doing it with grace, I think.
What about Meghan McCain?
I don't really care about that story.
Alright, just looking at your comments.
What are my thoughts on Beto tomorrow night rally for presidential bid?
Somebody says, Christina puts up with me.
Good point. Just one of the reasons she's awesome.
Well, Beto is good at getting attention, but I don't see him as Being a likely candidate for the Dems because he's white and he's male and that's no longer their brand.
So I just can't get interested about Biden.
I can't get interested with Beto.
I can't get interested about Bernie because I just don't think there's any chance that those folks will be the candidate.
Did I see the Nadler stuff with the AG? Yeah.
You know, I only watched some of the clips with Whitaker, acting Attorney General Whitaker and Nadler, and I didn't think that Whitaker did as good a job as he could have done there.
I don't know that anything was hurt by it, but I feel like he could have You could have done a better job.
I don't know specifically why.
Scott, if you had to vote for a Democrat, who would you vote for and why?
Wow, I love that question.
That is a great question.
Alright, so the question is, if I had to vote for a Democrat, who would I vote for and why?
Of the people running, Wow, that's a really good question.
There's nobody in the field that's running that jumps out.
But I'll take the spirit of the question, which is I have to pick somebody.
So if I had to pick a Democrat, gosh.
I don't know. I would eliminate anybody who's over 70.
So I would eliminate Biden and I would eliminate Bernie just for age.
And by the way, I've said the same thing about Trump and Clinton when they were running, that I thought both of them were too old.
Now, I am happy with the job that Trump is doing, but I think just as a general rule, we shouldn't have presidents over the age of 70.
So probably...
I don't know.
I hate to say it, but...
I don't know why I hate to say it.
Yeah, maybe somebody like Tulsi Gabbard or Kamala Harris.
I think they're probably the strongest candidates.
So I was watching the Elizabeth Warren apology tour, and oh my God!
Were you cringing as much as I was watching Elizabeth Warren Crawl and beg for the approval of the Native Americans.
It was hard to watch because she kept repeating like a robot that she understands that tribal membership does not come from just wanting to be in the tribe and having some DNA. So we get that.
You don't need to repeat it over and over again like you're so weak and sorry.
So I'd say Elizabeth Warren has no realistic chance, in part because she seems weak and apologetic over something silly, you know?
I mean, I would have more respect for Elizabeth Warren if she went directly at it and said, oh my god, I thought I was American Indian, and I thought I qualified for some benefits.
Turns out I didn't.
So I think she should have just gone right at it and said, you know, I really got some benefits from that perhaps, can't tell, but it was bad of me.
But that, you know, I didn't do it out of...
I mean, I think she could make a stronger case that she didn't do it out of some sense of cheating, that she did it because she believed she was Native American.
And the reason I would believe that is because I believed I was Native American until last year when I had my DNA test.
My family also told me that I was Native American with great detail.
I knew the name of the relative.
I knew what tribe she was allegedly with.
Turns out none of it was true.
but I'm not embarrassed by it.
Is the golden age equal to the green new deal?
No, not exactly.
The Golden Age is, you could think it overlaps in the sense that I think we're reaching a point where we could maybe cure cancer and change the environment if we want.
The poll asked your ethnic and race affiliation, not tribal membership.
Somebody says they have reservations about Warren.
Careful about your jokes.
You don't want to be like Rob Lowe who had to remove his tweet because he joked that Warren would be the first commander in chief with emphasis on the chief part.
And then he took it down because people said, how insensitive of you.
Klobuchar, don't know Klobuchar too much.
FBI now has your DNA, they do.
My DNA is now in the system, so I can't murder anybody.
Oh, somebody says, I love the fact you're avoiding talking about Julian Castro.
I'm not avoiding talking about him.
He doesn't rise to my level of caring.
I don't think he has a chance of being the nominee.
But he'd be the funniest nominee just because he has an identical twin.
And having a president of the United States with an identical twin would be so much fun.
I mean, that alone would be worth it.
So, humor is now gone because of liberals, somebody says.
Humor has certainly changed.
Will psychedelics become legal?
Yes. Psychedelics will become legal.
If you ask me when, that's harder.
But I would say that the science and the way we think, the zeitgeist and everything else is moving in that direction.
Psychedelics are insanely valuable for a lot of people.
They're just illegal.
So if we could fix the illegal part, you'd have a much better world.
Let me put it this way.
If I'm 90 years old and I'm not on drugs, I'm probably not having a good day.
If I'm 90 years old and I'm microdosing on LSD, I'm really gonna like my old age.
And I'm not joking about that even a little bit.
If I live to 90 and I can microdose on LSD, I'm gonna microdose on LSD. And I'm gonna have the greatest old age of anybody.
I just won't drive.
And I shouldn't be driving at that age anyway.
How did you like the split screen?
Will you do it again? So there's this weird situation with the split screen.
So Periscope has a split screen option.
And believe it or not, I can't find out the answer to this question.
The most basic question.
When I do the split screen, Can you, as the audience, see both of us at the same time on the screen?
The most basic question, right?
It's a split-screen technology.
I've tried it and I don't know the answer to whether or not you could see two people on the screen.
And the reason I don't know is because I've had credible reports of both.
In other words, I had a report from somebody I personally know who said they watched the test and that there were two people on the screen.
Somebody I personally know who told me immediately after, oh yeah, there were two people on the screen, I could see them both.
At the same time, lots of credible people said that never happened.
I don't know what to do with that.
People said, no, I was there.
There was not two screens.
You could hear one.
And you can see you, but you can only hear the other one.
And then someone else said you get an option of choosing, if you're an invited guest, you get the option of just being audio or being video and audio.
And if you select a video, then you'll be seen on the screen.
Now, I think that's the case, but I'm also hearing from people who are very well informed that Periscope doesn't actually have that option.
So I've been told two worlds that are completely opposites, and I don't know the answer.
But I will tell you that I have two periscopes that I'm going to use the split screen however it works.
We'll figure it out as we go.
On Monday, I'm going to split-screen with Bill Pulte, and I'm going to give you some updates on the Blight Authority, some really interesting stuff, and I'll show you some ideas for what to do with the blight-cleared land.
So Bill Pulte will join me on Monday.
That's tomorrow. And then on Tuesday, I'm going to split-screen with Naval Ravikant.
We've done Periscope before.
Where he was with me in the same room and now we're going to try it this way.
So don't miss those.
So you'll have two good examples of the split screen Monday and then again on Tuesday.
It was their profile pictures.
Oh! So now I'm getting a third version of reality.
So someone else is saying in the comments that you can see a picture of the other person on the screen, but it's not live, it's a screenshot or just their profile picture.
So one of those three things will happen tomorrow.
You'll either only hear the audio, you'll see a full motion video with me on the other side, or you'll see Or you'll see a still picture and me on the other side.
So it's one of those things. How about a split screen with you?
Yes, I probably will set up another device so I can see what it looks like from the user's perspective.
Yes, I probably will do that.
So somebody's saying, yes, it's their avatar.
That would actually explain, ah, so it's the profile picture.
No, now some people are saying that it showed on the upper left.
That's not a split screen.
A split screen with just an icon would not be a split screen.
Alright, so anyway, we don't know the answer, but we'll find out tomorrow, and that's enough for now, and I'll talk to you later.
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