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Aug. 20, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
57:52
Episode 634 Scott Adams: #AntiRa, Biden Family Gaffing, Polls, Google Manipulation, The Squad
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
As luck would have it, I'm Scott Adams.
And you've probably got a cup or a mug or something.
We'll get into that in a moment.
Let me turn off my coffee warmer here.
And if you'd like to join in on the Simultaneous Sip, you don't need much.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tank or a thermos, a flask, a cantina, a vessel of any kind, chalet with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the part that makes everything better, the Simultaneous Sip.
Go! Don't leave out the expression at the end.
If you try to have your sip and enjoy it while holding in the pleasure that you get, it's like trying to stifle a sneeze.
Have you ever done that? You go, and it just hurts.
Sometimes when you have the simultaneous sip, you have to just let it out.
It'll feel much better.
It'll feel like sneezing in a forest.
Have you ever sneezed in a forest?
And you don't have to cover your hands or you don't have to cover your mouth.
I mean, normally when you're sneezing, you're like...
You're covering it with your arm or something.
But you're in the forest and you're all alone and there's nobody in the forest with you and you've got like a good triple sneeze coming up.
And you feel it, and like the sun's on you, and the wind is just right, and you feel the leaves rustling through the forest, and you just think, oh, this is going to be good.
And you just sneeze into the wonder of nature.
And that's just the first one.
And then you've got another one. The last one, you just let it vibrate your whole body.
That's how you sneeze.
That's how you do it.
Alright, we've got stuff to talk about.
Yesterday I founded a new organization that you can join.
It's called Anti-Ra.
Now, Anti-Ra obviously means anti-racist.
Which I am. I disavow all forms of racism.
And so I thought, well, why not form a group?
Because it turns out that Antifa is a leaderless group.
There's no central organization.
And I thought to myself, what could be better Then join a group with no central organization.
They're not going to tax me.
They're not going to raise my dues.
I'm not going to get mailers.
I don't have to talk to other people about the organization if I don't want to.
I don't have to go to meetings.
I don't have to create a folder on my computer or in my desk to hold any materials.
What you need is a leaderless organization.
And so I founded it yesterday.
It's called Anti-Ra. And I would encourage all of you to join.
What does it take to join?
You just have to say you're in it.
That's it. You just have to want to.
And you just say, huh, I guess I'm in it now.
I'm anti-Ra. And it would be helpful if you are actually anti-racist.
I think that would be, you know, the main requirement.
But we're a leaderless organization, so we're not policing it.
But really, that's the main thing.
You want to be anti-racist.
Now, the beauty of this, if you haven't already figured it out, is that if anybody criticizes you once you're a member of anti-RA, what does that make them?
What are your critics when they're criticizing you?
I think, you know, racists.
Because if you're an anti-racist, As I am.
And somebody criticizes you, well, what are they?
They must be racist.
It's spelled anti-RA. So the first two letters of racist and anti.
So anti-RA. Now you might say to yourself, wait a minute, that's not anti-RA. That should be anti-RA. Right?
But that's not how it works.
Because anti-FA... It should be anti-Fa.
It's fascist.
But it's not. It's anti-Fa.
So we could be anti-Ra.
Why not? So join anti-Ra with me.
I would like you to join with me.
Well, when I say I'd like you to join with me, I've lost the entire spirit of the organization there for a moment.
So let me correct that.
Since we're a leaderless organization, do whatever you want.
That's how it works.
You don't have to do what I ask you to do.
Do whatever you want. We're truly leaderless.
You just have to be against racists.
But I'll tell you which racist I'm against.
So I think it was last night, Chris Cuomo had a raging racist on his show.
And I think probably the biggest racist I've ever seen on the show, somebody named Angela Rye.
And she said...
White men, she was talking to one of the other guests, and she said, white men who think like you are the greatest terrorists read in this country.
That's like the most racist thing I've ever heard on CNN. Have you ever heard anything that racist?
I mean, actually, literally, there's no joke here.
Is that the most racist thing you've ever seen on CNN? They've had a lot of guests.
I have to think that some of them are good, some of them are bad.
But I've never seen anybody say a direct racist statement, like right there, and then not be corrected.
And in fact, I think Chris Cuomo amplified the comment.
And I'm thinking, well, okay.
It's a good thing I joined the anti-racist organization so I can criticize this properly.
Now, the other thing that Angela Rye tried to pull On the other guest who was on the panel at the same time, the other guest said that the squad, you know who the squad is, or at least a few members of the squad, Tlaib, I think, in particular, and Omar, that they were, quote, hijacking some process.
So the racist that they added to the show, Angela Rye, she said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hijack?
You wouldn't use the word hijack unless you were talking about these people, right?
So you must be using a loaded racist term, hijack.
And I thought to myself, damn it, get out my notebook.
Add another entry to the common words that can't be used.
Let's see. Can't use articulate.
Can't use any reference to primates that are not human.
Hijack. Cannot use that common word.
So the list of common words that you can't use is growing, according to this racist Angela Rye.
Anyway, so racist Chris Cuomo and racist Angela Rye had this conversation with this poor guy who was the recipient of all their hate.
That's just my opinion.
I'm anti-racist, and so I disavowed them all.
CNN also has an article on...
Do you remember the research?
There was this researcher named Epstein who concluded that Google's bias could have moved anything from a few million votes to, I don't know, 10 million-something votes.
And there was an upper level that maybe this next time it could be up to 15 million votes, and the president tweeted something along those lines.
So CNN debunked it.
So they wrote an article, Debunking, Epstein's claim that Google had intentionally biased, or at least the president's claim that seemed to suggest that Google had intentionally biased and that it would move a lot of votes.
Now, here are the things that I think CNN got right, as far as I can tell.
One is simply clarifying what Epstein said versus what people are interpreting he said.
So that's fair. Just a clarification.
So one of the clarifications...
Is that Epstein did not study the United States to get those numbers, specifically.
He studied what happened in some other countries in other situations and then said, okay, if that was true in other countries, given the situation in the United States, it would probably be true if we were similar to those other countries in the important ways That we would get this kind of an impact from the Google bias.
So other critics said, yeah, I see what you did, but you can't really know that that works.
You can know what he did, and he shows his work.
He's not hiding anything.
But you can't really know that that's a cause and effect.
You can't really know that if something happened in another country, you've got the same variables lining up here.
That's fair. The other thing was that Epstein does not claim, because he doesn't have evidence of this, that wasn't what he was looking for, he doesn't have any evidence, nor does he make a claim that Google is intentionally biasing.
His claim is that it is biased.
Compared to Bing and Yahoo, I think, two other search engines.
So what he did was he tested searches using different search engines and found that Google was consistently biased in effect, not necessarily by intention.
Meaning that he didn't even look for intention.
That wasn't what he was looking for.
He just was looking for the effect.
So I think those are fair.
Those seem like fair criticisms, meaning that he has not demonstrated a cause and effect, and he has not demonstrated that there's intention.
But now that he has demonstrated that there is bias, which is the part they didn't question, so the part I didn't see any criticism on is on the effect of it, that there is, in fact, bias.
Now, did Google, look at this result and say, oh, wow, we didn't know we had that bias.
We certainly weren't doing that intentionally.
Let us go correct that.
Nope. Now, I don't know that they didn't correct it, and I don't know what they said behind closed doors, but what I do know is they did not say publicly, oh yeah, that's a good point.
Let's see that study.
Maybe we should fix things to get rid of this accidental bias.
I didn't see him do that!
Which seems like exactly what you would do if somebody who was a famous researcher talked to Congress, which he did, the researcher, and told Congress that your search engines are biased and then showed his work.
If you were Google and you wanted to get rid of that bias, which you claim is not intentional, and nobody has shown evidence, at least Epstein has not shown any evidence, he's not making the claim that it's intentional.
But once he's shown that according to his study it exists, at the very least you would want to try to reproduce the study.
Right? At the very least.
Because the claim is so big.
The claim is that it can move the election.
Even if you don't believe that's true.
Even if you don't think search results move elections.
And by the way, that was another...
Criticism is that search engines are a very small part of how anybody learns about who to vote for.
So even if the search engines were biased, other researchers say, what if it is biased?
Everything you're looking at is biased.
All the news sources are biased.
Everything is biased. Could you really say...
How much extra influence, you know, just searches had compared to the news and social media and every other kind of biases out there?
Not really. Probably, it's hard to tease that out.
So those are all good comments.
Anyway, the point is, I don't think there's any doubt that there's something going on that is creating at least an unconscious bias or What would you call it if your algorithm had an unintentional bias toward Clinton, let's say, or toward whoever runs against Trump next time?
What would you do if you knew you had an unintentional bias?
Would you fix it?
Well, maybe you'd say, we didn't do that intentionally.
It's the same algorithm we use for everything else.
We took the same algorithm we'd use for searching for the best toothpaste, we applied it to politics, and maybe the outcome looks biased if you were to compare it to other things, but there's no intention.
We're using the same algorithm for toothpaste as we're using for Joe Biden.
It's not our fault that you get more of one kind of thing, we're just treating everything the same.
Maybe. Maybe that's exactly what's going on.
But would they have a responsibility to say toothpaste and politics are not the same?
And that if there's a bias in the political in the way that the algorithm handles politics, do they have a responsibility to fix it if it's just the same algorithm that works on every other search?
I don't know. I actually don't know.
I'm not sure I have an opinion on that.
If it really is the same algorithm and there's no difference, maybe that's just how things shake out.
I don't know if that's something you should fix.
But if they know there's an imbalance and they know it could change the whole future of civilization, well, maybe they want to look into that a little bit.
All right, so I would leave you here.
I would say that Epstein's study raises questions which should be further researched, meaning that apparently he's a respected researcher, so even the people who are criticizing him say, okay, we usually agree with this guy.
So nobody is saying he's a nut.
That's important, because when you see a claim this big, don't you wonder if he's a nut?
But apparently not. So it's worthy of research, but I think it is short of being proven all the way from there is bias all the way to a changed votes.
That chain of cause and effect, I would say, is not fully demonstrated, but we should be worried.
It's certainly enough to worry.
Now, I would be equally worried or more worried about, let's say, Google YouTube results.
How, what kind of, you know, and what kind of photos come up when you do an image search?
You know what happens when you do an image search of me, don't you?
Let me find out. I'm going to do an image search of me, and you know what I'm looking for, and you don't need to, please don't search this, because you know what will happen if you do.
So let's do this image search of me on Google.
See what comes up. Yeah, Mitch.
Because some of you know that I've had a little issue with this.
All right. Let's see how far down I have to go before I see something really bad about me.
Oh, looks like it might be adjusted now.
All right. So I'm going down quite a few pages, and I've seen nothing but lovely pictures of me.
And here's one of me with the president.
Here's my book.
Here's pictures of me doing interviews, Dilbert, Dilbert.
Looks good now.
But you do know that there was an extended period where searching for me brought a very bad picture up.
Very bad.
A photoshopped picture.
That seems to be fixed. So those types of things seem more problematic.
And by the way, let me say completely that YouTube has completely taken the legs out of my YouTube channel.
So my thought was that coming into the 2020 election, I was going to use more YouTube, bigger audience, you know, I could reach more people.
I thought, oh, YouTube would be a good way to expand my influence, so to speak.
And YouTube has just decided that my channel won't be seen.
So they demonetize it, and they take it off of the suggested videos most of the time.
Sometimes there's a little bit of action from suggested videos, but it's unusual.
So, use Fox Channel.
Well, Fox Channel has got a paywall, so that's kind of different.
There's something else going on there.
So what do you make of the fact that Well, let me put it this way.
I estimate that I moved 100,000 votes in 2016.
Now, I can't prove that.
I base that on the following thing.
I did a Twitter poll, and of course Twitter polls have no scientific or statistical significance, but I asked this question.
Did I change your vote in 2016?
Did I cause you to vote for Trump by explaining his talent stack, essentially?
And I think 1,500 people said yes.
Now, that was just on a Twitter poll.
How many people answer polls in general?
Not many. Not many people answer polls.
So having 1,500 people immediately, meaning over 24 hours, I think, say, yes, you changed my vote, suggests that there's a multiplier there of people who also had their vote changed, but they didn't see the poll.
Probably somewhere in the 100,000 range, I would think.
Because remember, my effect was twofold.
There were the people who watched me directly, But then there are the other pundits in the world who took my framing and then extended it.
And the framing was that Trump was a salesperson and an influencer and that he was persuasive and that he was using hyperbole and that the fact-checking stuff was not so important as long as he was sort of directionally correct.
I'm going to get rid of that crack.
Now, so I got rid of somebody who was questioning my ego for this conversation.
If you can't hang with a conversation that is factual, because you're worried about how it makes me look, you're not really qualified to watch this Periscope.
Because on this Periscope, I'm going to make myself look like a douchebag, a jerk, I'm going to look out like an egomaniac, a narcissist.
I'm going to run the whole range because I don't care what you think.
But I don't have to see your comments.
Part of my value is that I will embarrass myself in front of you, and I will be flawed and full of errors right in front of you.
If something I say is useful to be said, but in so saying, it looks like I'm patting myself on the back, I'm going to pat myself on the back right in front of you.
I'm not going to be ashamed of that.
If I do something well, I'm going to tell you I do it well.
If I do something poorly, I'm going to tell you I do it poorly.
If that's too much for you, you should bail out.
This isn't your periscope.
All right. So, sorry that triggered me a little bit.
Here's the thing. I think why it bothers me is not even about me.
It's not even just about distracting from this.
It's such a loser way to think.
My book, Loser Think, is coming out on November 5th.
And so this is very much on my mind.
There are certain types of thinking...
That are so unproductive, they just flip me out when I hear them.
Because I know it's somebody who's going through life unproductively and probably making other people less productive.
Because if you're telling people to stop saying good things about themselves...
You're not on a good path.
You should always pat yourself on the back for things you do well.
And if you're just talking, and just talking to make your point requires you to say that you're good at something, you should say it.
You should not go all Californian.
I think I've said this story before, but I'll digress for a moment.
When I came to California from upstate New York, where I grew up, but I moved as an adult right after college, I noticed that the culture was totally different.
In upstate New York, if you were good at something, you could say so.
You could say, I'm good at baseball.
I'm terrible at basketball, but I'm very good at baseball.
And you could say that and your friends would go, oh, okay, well, you know, I'm good at swimming and, you know, not so good at riding bikes.
And you could have an honest conversation about what you were good at and what you were bad at.
And then I moved to California.
And you can't do that.
In California, here's how you say you're good at something.
Wow, Scott, you seem pretty good at playing soccer.
Here's how you answer in California.
No. No. No, I'm terrible at soccer.
I'm trying.
I'm a beginner. That's how you have to say you're good at soccer in California.
You have to say you're bad at it.
Because if you don't, somebody like the guy I blocked is going to say, Oh, you've got such an ego.
I can't hang around with you with your big ego.
Who thinks he's so good at playing soccer?
If you're good at something, You can tell me.
If there's nobody else in the world that you can tell you're good at something, you can tell me.
I love to hear it.
I love it when people say they're good at something.
I mean, if they believe it, if it's real.
In fact, why don't you do that right now?
Why don't you tell me one skill you're good at in the comments right now?
Brag. You have complete permission because of the setup.
Nobody's going to call you an egomaniac.
Put in the comments something you know you're good at.
Somebody says, I'm a great writer.
I'll read some of them. Somebody says, I'm good at watching this Periscope.
Somebody says he's a fat guy, but he doesn't sweat much.
Okay? Somebody's good at straight talk, honest communications.
Somebody's super good at the drums.
Damn you, Jordy.
I wish I were good at the drums.
Somebody's good at writing, good at Excel.
Somebody's a good sleeper, a good singer.
I won't read that one.
Somebody's a good software engineer, good at trolling, good at logic.
Somebody's good at reading people.
Somebody's good at puns, computers, line dancing, auto mechanics, sarcasm, leadership, music.
Somebody's smart. Somebody's analytical.
Somebody's great at parallel parking.
Good for you. That's a good skill.
Somebody's a great listener, a good nurse, good at dancing, de-essing, baking.
We've got a blacksmith.
Well, I don't know about that one. Somebody's great at cobalt, carpentry, visual artist.
Somebody here can roll a perfect joint.
You have my respect. Microsoft Excel, reading inner thoughts.
Well, I don't know. Another great writer, great at making money, figuring things out, boating, racing, making money, procrastinating.
See? Doesn't that feel good?
Doesn't this little bit of honesty feel good?
How many places can he go and just brag?
Right? Name what other place you can go where you can just unashamedly brag and everybody's like, hey, that's great.
That's probably it.
All right. You can keep complimenting yourself for the benefit of other people reading it, but I'm going to move on to another topic.
Did you see the quote from Joe Biden's spouse, Dr.
Jill? Dr.
Jill Biden, who has an interesting personality.
So I like her. She's pretty likable.
But it's clear that maybe her comments were not vetted by the campaign.
So here's what she actually said when talking about who you should vote for.
So Joe Biden's wife says, quote, your candidate might, your candidate, meaning somebody other than Joe Biden, your candidate might be better on, I don't know, health care than Joe is, but you've got to look at who's going to win this election, she said.
And maybe you have to swallow a bit and say, okay, I personally like so-and-so better, but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.
Now... If she were a paid consultant, she'd be very fired right now.
Because here's something you don't want to say about the candidate you're supporting.
Well, you know, your other candidate might be better on health care.
Health care, like the most important, literally the most important issue for the Democrats.
You know, you might prefer somebody who's actually better at the thing you care about the most.
But don't you want to win instead?
Seriously? Don't you want to win instead of getting somebody who's good at the most important priority?
And that's who's out there selling you?
Wow. And maybe you have to swallow a little bit, she says.
So, this is what you call reverse persuasion.
I've taught you that if...
You're going to persuade somebody positively towards something you want to persuade them to.
It's good to make it visual because the visual sense is important.
But if you can make it tactile and even throw in a smell or a sound, if you can get somebody's, let's say, five senses memory activated, then you can attach your thought to the physical memory stuff and make it more powerful.
That's why...
Speaking about something in a visual way, even if you don't have a picture, just speaking of it in a visual way activates the part of people's mind that is likely to attach to the idea and make it more sticky.
So, Dr.
Jill Biden uses this technique, but uses it in the opposite way that you would want to.
She says, about voting for Joe Biden, she says, maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, okay, I personally like somebody else better, but blah, blah.
Swallow. As soon as you read that sentence, didn't you almost have to swallow?
Didn't you go...
You could almost hear it and feel it.
I'm going to vote for Joe Biden.
So because she said it in such a powerful, persuasive way by adding the swallow, which makes you feel it and remember it and think it and even attach it to the thought, it's which makes you feel it and remember it and think it and even attach it to the thought, Yeah.
Because you don't want to vote for somebody that requires you to go when you push the lever.
That's exactly what you don't want.
If there's one thing you don't want when you vote for somebody is to have reservations.
Nobody wants that.
So this was a thorough failure to support the candidate.
Now, does it matter? No, it doesn't matter at all.
Won't have any effect on the election whatsoever, because, you know, statements by candidates' spouses are interesting news, but they don't move the needle too much.
All right. Here's another interesting thing.
So, we've been watching that the Democrats have been giving a lot of attention, and let's say the left-leaning press has been giving a lot of attention to the Squad.
Now you know who's in the squad.
I don't have to name them. Except for, who's the fourth member of the squad that we always forget?
Presley? So the squad is four people, but really, there are three of them that we remember.
Omar Tlaib and AOC. There's the fourth one that sort of they throw in there just to make it a Fantastic Four kind of situation, but she doesn't seem to get many headlines unless she's with the other three, so sort of the squad is really three people.
But is the squad really three people?
Or is a squad really just AOC and people who were smart enough to associate with her?
Because it seems to me that as soon as AOC is taken out of the story, the others are treated differently by the press.
So AOC is not really part of the story about Omar and Tlaib wanting to visit Israel.
The story is really focused on Omar and Tlaib.
So how does the press that is friendly to the Democrats How do they handle the squad when it's just the two of them, Tlaib and Omar, who are part of the story?
Here's their headline.
Lawmakers slammed Trump and Netanyahu at an emotional news conference following scrapped Israel trip.
Does that seem like a change in tone?
Because the headlines are...
I think the headlines are more often written by an editor than by the writer themselves.
At least that's my experience.
When I submit articles to major publications, I usually have a title.
But commonly, the editor tweaks the title, so it's really the editor's title for your article.
That's probably what's happening here, too.
So the writer wrote an article, but the title is probably the editorial decision of CNN. Probably.
Don't know this for sure. 80% probable.
And let me read it again.
So this is about Omar and Tlaib.
Lawmakers slammed Trump and Netanyahu at an emotional news conference following a scrapped Israel trip.
Lawmakers. They don't even say their names.
Now, if that were AOC, don't you think AOC would be in the title?
So it seems to me that there's sort of a maybe, you know, I'm reading too many tea leaves here, so I'm in speculative territory here.
But speculatively, it seems that CNN is underplaying these two members of the squad.
And I don't think that they would be underplaying it if it were AOC. So I predicted before that AOC is going to have to make a break with the rest of the squad for her own political purposes.
Because AOC can cross and the other two can't.
If you're AOC, you do have a chance to broaden your support.
If you're AOC, you know, you don't want to hear this, you could probably pick up a Republican or two.
The other two can't.
The other two are not gonna get any Republicans, ever.
There's nothing they can do that will ever change that.
But AOC... You can imagine her moving to the center and actually making an impact.
Maybe not right away, but you can see her doing it over time.
So I think AOC strategically is going to need to put some distance between herself and the squad because they bring her some attention of the kind that's hard to get away from.
It's hard to deal with.
The whole anti-Semite attack on Omar and Tlaib, AOC has an option to put some distance.
Even if she thinks it's an unfair attack, she doesn't want to be part of it.
Nobody would want to be part of it.
All right, so I would look for this.
Look for CNN and other press that's friendly to the Democrats.
To sort of underplay Tlaib and Omar compared to what you think the attention should be.
But if AOC was there, it would be a lot more.
That's what I think. I love the...
There's a reporting that Obama said to Biden, you don't have to run.
Which, of course, everybody's interpreting and over-interpreting.
And who knows if he actually said that?
who knows what the actual context of the comment was.
But the way it sounds, out of context, it's very out of context, but the way it sounds is Obama wasn't too crazy about Biden running.
And then on top of that, he has not endorsed Biden, which could be explained two ways.
One, it means he's not so sold on Biden.
That's possible. But the other is just as possible, which is he's an ex-president.
He wants his party to win.
There are 20-some people running.
And he would like to be able to completely and cleanly endorse whoever comes out of the process.
Now, both of those explanations are 100%, you know, explain the situation.
One, he doesn't like Joe, so he's holding off.
Two, it wouldn't matter who was running, he would hold off until there's a nominee, which would be the smart, wise, prudent, Obama-like thing to do.
So I don't think you can necessarily jump to he doesn't want Biden there.
But there are now questions about whether Obama thinks that Biden will destroy whatever's left of Obama's legacy.
And I was kind of thinking of it in those terms.
It's like Biden is the mop-up crew.
It seems that Trump has essentially dismantled much of Obama's legacy, but there's still some cleanup.
And so I have this mental image Of Trump taking sort of a big broomstick and, you know, shoving it up Biden's backside and then using Biden as sort of a mop to sort of mop up whatever debris is left from Obama's legacy because there's not much left, right? It just seems like Biden is the mop and Trump is going to use him to take care of whatever's left.
That's just sort of the image that jumped in my mind.
I was looking at the new polling.
I forget which polling entity did this, but it was reported on CNN. So here's the standing of the front runners on the Democrats.
Biden solid at 29%.
So, Biden's lead is holding, 29%.
Sanders at 15, and apparently Sanders has been right at that 14, 15, and he's not going up and he's not going down.
But probably that tells you there's a cap on Bernie's support.
I believe if Elizabeth Warren's support could go to Bernie, maybe it already would have.
I've got a feeling that anybody who's going for Warren instead of Bernie is because they think he's too old.
That's my guess. So I'll say that again.
People who prefer Warren over Bernie, given that they both have, you know, super progressive, similar views...
Probably because they think Bernie's too old.
Now, there's also the woman vote, and I guess Warren gets a lot of the women vote, college-educated women.
So there's that, too.
But then you've got Warren, almost tied with Sanders in second place.
She's got 14, so statistically, basically, she's tied for second.
And then Harris took a big plunge.
Harris just didn't perform and fell off the map.
Now, I will remind you of my hits and my misses.
Now, I predicted over a year ago that Kamala Harris would be the most dangerous opponent.
But it appears that Democrats do not love her, and they have other choices.
So, because there are so many choices, it sort of spreads people's preferences around.
I think if Harris were running head-to-head against any one of these people, she'd look pretty strong.
But she's, you know, her impact is sort of distributed.
Because part of the power of Harris is that she's a woman.
And she's a person of color.
But she's in a pack of people who have a very strong woman at the top, Warren, other strong women in the group, whose names I can't remember right now, Tulsi Gabbard and...
Klobuchar. Am I missing any?
Did I miss a woman? But anyway, so she's running in a group that dilutes her power.
So she's got, you know, Cory Booker.
So she's got a person of color there.
She's got other women.
So being a woman and a person of color should be a double benefit.
But because she's running in a large group, that all gets distributed.
You know, some of that love gets distributed to other people.
And then you've got Buttigieg.
Who's tied with Harris now at 5%.
Buttigieg also picks up...
Oh, and Jill Brand also. Buttigieg picks up the...
Let's say the...
What do you call it?
Maybe I'd have to invent a name for this.
But the people who are super progressive...
And some of them would just like to see a gay president.
I would also love to see a gay president.
That doesn't mean I'm supporting Buttigieg in particular, but in general.
The same when Obama was running for the first time.
I and many other people said, you know, all things being equal, I think this country would really do well To have a black president, you know, assuming that he's qualified and, you know, he's got all the right requirements and everything.
But all things being equal, it's time.
You know, it's like a healing thing.
It's an important thing.
And I have no regrets for having those thoughts because I think we do come out ahead.
And I think that the national wound from everything from slavery...
It's affected by stuff like that.
Now, for the same reason, I think it would be great to have a woman president eventually.
We don't have to rush.
And I thought Hillary got more votes than the person she ran against, more popular votes.
So that certainly, you know, I've said that broke the glass ceiling, even though she didn't win.
It showed that a woman can get enough votes to be president.
So the president is...
The country has... Has gone beyond the question of can a woman win?
And have you noticed that's not even part of the conversation?
That nobody says that, oh, we better not nominate a woman because a woman can't get elected.
Nobody says that. So Hillary Clinton broke the glass ceiling and it remains broken because we don't even have that conversation.
If we talk about running a woman for president, it's only talked about in the positive, right?
There's nobody on either side who says that's a negative.
But both sides would say, yeah, that could get you some votes.
It's only talked about in the positive.
But we don't have, at least we're not aware of any gay presidents.
My guess is we've had gay presidents.
But, you know, it might have been Lincoln, for example.
There's some indication he might have been gay.
But we need one who's, you know, a public gay figure eventually.
And again, I wouldn't put somebody in because they're gay.
Like, it's not some kind of an asset.
But for the benefit of the country.
Just to get past it.
Just once. You know, you don't need to.
There's no quota.
But wouldn't it be nice to have a gay president?
And I like the fact That Buttigieg is doing in a smaller way what Hillary did even in losing, which is, like I said, Hillary broke the glass ceiling because it stopped the conversation about whether a woman could get enough votes to be president.
Of course. Buttigieg is doing the same thing.
He's not proving he can get enough votes to be president, but how many people said he can't be president because he's gay?
Have you heard anybody say that?
No. Nobody cares.
I haven't heard one person say that that would be a factor in any way.
Now, privately, of course, there are people who have their own feelings about everything.
So privately, people are going to have their concerns.
But publicly? Think about the fact that on social media, where people will say anything on social media, social media is completely unfiltered in terms of this kind of awfulness.
If there were anybody out there, let's say on the conservative side, who wanted to say bad stuff about Buttigieg because he's gay, I've seen none of it.
I haven't even seen I don't believe I've seen one, even one, negative thing about it.
Have you? Now I've seen, you know, people make jokes, but the jokes don't seem mean-spirited.
Even the jokes don't seem mean.
So it feels like the country is getting over, you know, whatever history there is there.
And Buttigieg, I give him a lot of credit, because in losing, He still is sort of, I don't know if he's going to break the glass ceiling to have a gay president, but I think he's taking it off the table in terms of a conversation.
Do you think, let's say the next cycle there's somebody who's a stronger candidate.
Everything's the same. He's a gay guy running for president, but he's just a stronger candidate.
Could he win? I think so.
I think so. And I think Buttigieg sort of, you know, he loosened the seal.
He didn't break the glass ceiling, but, you know, when you tried to open a jar, like, you know, he's the one who banged it on the counter until it was loosened.
So I give him a lot of credit for that.
All right. Let's see what else we got going here.
Would you like me to solve the education problem and the student debt problem?
I would like to solve that for you now.
Would you like the solution?
Here it comes. Here's a Republican solution for college debt.
Now, this won't help you immediately with existing debt.
So existing debt, maybe that's a bigger problem.
But in terms of future debt, future students who have to take out big loans, etc., I'm going to tell you how to fix that.
Now, there are two kinds of college educations, roughly speaking.
One kind is the immediately employable kind of things.
Let's say you're trying to be a doctor.
Or some kind of technology worker, let's say a STEM, STEM type person, engineer, etc.
Those kind of jobs, well, you can kind of pay for your loan.
Because those are such good jobs that you can take out a little bit of a debt, you'll probably get a good job, you can handle it.
But what about all the people who are taking on gigantic debt For generic degrees.
Now, generic meaning, let's say, you've got a BA in English history or something like that.
It's not directly applicable to a high-paying job.
It just makes you generally better qualified for lots of different things.
You don't know exactly where your career is going to go.
That's a lot of people. Here's what we need.
We need one college course that I'll call a...
I'm going to give it a name just for conversation.
Let's call it a life strategy degree.
That's a working title, not a good title.
A life strategy degree.
And let's say that the government, the federal government, blesses it as being an accredited college degree.
And then the components of this are just all of the things that would be useful for a really powerful talent stack.
So a talent stack is when you intelligently layer useful talents together so that you have a powerful person.
Let me give you some examples. So the degree course Would not look like anything you see now.
Normally when you have a major, you've got some generic classes you need to take, and then there are specific things like how to be an economist or history.
So it's not like that.
Instead, it's everything that works together to make you powerful and effective as an adult working person, and even as a parent and everything else.
So, for example, you would have as a requirement how to learn how to speak.
How to be a public speaker.
Because it's applicable to just all kinds of stuff.
You would learn how to write like a business person writes, not the way you write a novel.
If you want to learn to write a novel, this is not the degree you need.
But to learn how to write short, clear, crisp sentences, very powerful.
So you add that to ability to speak.
If you just had those two classes, you'd be ahead of most people by the time you were done.
And then you can imagine the things that you would add to that.
For example, I would have a class on persuasion.
And that would cover everything from marketing to sales to one-on-one conversations.
So persuasion, because it fits with every job.
You might have classes on literally social interactions.
How to meet somebody.
How to network. How to be a friend.
How to be a friend.
We should have a class on that because these are learned skills.
You can learn how to make friends, how to keep friends.
You can learn how to be a better parent.
You can learn fitness.
You can learn the basics of staying healthy and eating right because all of those things make you a better employee.
They make you more employable.
I would include financial literacy.
Thank you. Somebody is suggesting.
That was on my list. So financial literacy, basic economics, plus the basics of how to get a mortgage, how to balance your checkbook, how to make sure you budgeted correctly, etc.
On top of that, maybe a little bit about how to start a business.
Now, you don't need a four-year degree on how to start a business.
I could probably take you through the basics in one semester.
And after one semester, you would see at least all the parts, and then you could look into them as you needed.
So, for example, if I were teaching you how to start a business, and I said, the first thing you need to do is get a lawyer, and a lawyer will help you decide if you're an LLC, or a S corporation, or a corporation, or a Schedule C type of business.
Now you say to yourself, I don't know what any of that means.
But you know what to do.
Go get a lawyer, and the lawyer tells you which of those you're going to be.
So you don't need to tell people the details of how to start a business.
You tell them where to start.
Get a lawyer, ask them which one of these entities you want to be, and then the lawyer sets it up for you.
Or you could say, you know, how do you find employees?
So you teach them how to find employees.
Or, you know, how do you estimate whether your business will be good?
So you teach them the basics. They can work out the rest.
I would teach them at least one language, but it would have to be a useful language.
A useful language.
How many people do you know who are taking something like Russian or German, but don't have any intention of being international translators.
Those are useless languages.
Now I'm exaggerating.
Some people do need to learn those languages because they might be dealing with markets there, etc.
But for most people, if you're in the United States, learn Spanish.
I'm going to say something that you're going to hate.
If you've got a kid in the United States Who's taking a language in school and they didn't take Spanish.
They took another language.
They took French.
You have failed your child.
If you let your kid take a French class when they could be taking Spanish in the United States, You've failed as a parent.
You have wasted their time, and you've taken the time that they can learn something that would be a valuable life skill, completely affect your employability, your social structure, everything.
Yeah, and learning Latin might be the least useful of all.
So, you can imagine now that this class of life strategy I'm describing would have some design elements.
You'd learn how to make a PowerPoint, how to design something for marketing purposes.
When you're done with this life strategy course, how employable would you be?
Because if you want to hire somebody, and if you told me that somebody had completed the course with the classes that I'm describing, if you told me that I could hire somebody with that bag of skills, unless I needed somebody who had something very specific, such as a specific technical skill, I would love to hire that employee.
Because that's somebody who has a talent stack that's the best stack of skills anybody's ever seen.
And it would allow them to go different ways.
Now, how does this solve student debt?
Because once the government has said, this bag of classes constitutes a degree, and we, the federal government, will validate that that's a powerful and useful degree, You can put that all online.
Because once you've limited the number of classes that matter to, let's say, maybe there are 30, 30 classes that are really the powerful ones to have a successful life.
If you get down to about 30, then you can also start making them online.
Now, they already exist online, but the online learning world is sort of fragmented, etc.
But if the government said, here's the deal, these 30 topics are, these are it.
These are the 30 topics everybody needs to have.
Then suddenly there would be all kinds of people entering those fields to create great topics.
Now, somebody still has to pay for it, but if it's online content, What does it cost to go to college when you're only taking it online?
Well, you can reach lots of people.
And so maybe you can take an entire class for $10?
An entire semester of, let's say, how to be whatever, writing or whatever.
$10? Maybe?
So that's how you get to free college.
You could make people who are far more capable humans and far more complete and far more capable with the most powerful power stacks you've ever seen in your life for way less cost.
And if the government says this is valuable, then employers will too.
So, that's the way I'd go.
That would be a Republican response to say, look, we didn't ask you to take on a loan last time.
Now, let's tie this back to student debt in the past.
Suppose it costs you, let's say the market rate is $10 for a class.
I don't know what it really would be, but it's going to be low.
Let's say it's $10. Let's say that the government says on top of the $10, which covers all the profit for everybody involved, On top of that, we're going to add another $10.
So it's going to be $20 per class.
Still so affordable that everybody can do it.
It's just $20 a semester for a class.
The extra 10 could go to paying down student debt that has gone before.
So you might actually create a new system that's so cheap, you could double the cost and use the extra profit to pay down past student debts in some way that seems equitable for everybody.
I don't know what that would look like.
Anyway, that's a capitalist, conservative, low-cost path toward Free college that would make more sense.
And the best thing that this does is it cuts through the total BS, which is the college experience today.
The current college experience is about networking.
It's about putting a certification on you that, oh, well, you got into this college.
You must be at least this smart.
And then a lot of classes that don't have much use in your life.
So if you had an actual college course that was only useful stuff all the time, I think eventually the market would recognize that as something better than some generic degree at some private college.
Now, could you network as well?
I think you could. Because if enough people were taking this life strategy college, some of them would be local.
And if you lived in a city, probably a lot of them would be local.
And a lot of them would be taking the same classes at the same time as you, so you could get together.
So there might be, as part of the process, networking and socializing online and then in person if you want, with other people on the same path.
And I think... That would give you everything you want.
That's all I have to do today.
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