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Aug. 24, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:01:45

Episode 639 Scott Adams: China, Kanye, Outrage Theatre, Zombies, Goofy Warren, Google vs PragerU

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	Go! Well, so let's start with the funniest tweet of yesterday, I think. This is President Trump.
	Now, this is after the stock market had plunged, presumably on news of the Chinese situation.
	And President Trump tweets, the Dow is down 573 points, perhaps on the news that Representative Seth Moulton, whoever that may be...
	Let me see if I can read the whole thing without laughing.
	It's funny because he said it.
	It's not just funny because it's a funny tweet.
	It's funny that he said it at all.
	Just the fact that he said it is what makes it funny.
	All right, let me try it again.
	This is from Trump.
	His tweet. The Dow is down 573 points, perhaps on the news that Representative Seth Moulton, whoever that may be, has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race.
	I didn't even know there was somebody named Seth Moulton in the presidential race.
	Did you? Yeah.
	Yeah. See, the funny thing is, the whole world is melting down over this China stuff.
	And, you know, you've heard the saying, there's nothing to fear but fear itself.
	Well, who said that?
	Who said there's nothing to fear but fear itself?
	Well, first of all, it's not true.
	It's a ridiculous thing, because there are things to fear.
	But when it comes to the economy, the economy is entirely a, at least at this point in history, the economy is a psychology engine.
	We're now disconnected.
	The economy is disconnected from assets.
	And what I mean is, we don't have a shortage of anything.
	Really. I mean, we have things that have to be moved around, things that cost more than they should, etc.
	But we don't really have a shortage of anything, speaking in the big picture.
	So our economy depends entirely upon people expecting things to happen, hoping things will happen, optimism, trust.
	It's entirely a psychological engine, which requires assets, but the asset part is taken care of.
	So if we didn't have assets, that would be the biggest problem.
	Hey, we have a shortage of something.
	But once you have all your stuff, it's entirely a psychological engine.
	And the president understands that in a way that most people either forget or they lose sight of.
	But he has this laser focus on what an economy is.
	Which by far is one of his strongest qualities.
	And it's also an invisible quality because if you don't study economics, if you're not kind of keyed into what an economy actually is, meaning a psychology machine, you would see the things that he does as counterproductive.
	You'd say, ah, that doesn't make sense.
	Seems counterproductive.
	But look what he did.
	He took this big scary thing The Dow dropping 573 points.
	And, of course, most of us know that it's on China fears, you know, the dust up with China.
	But he just totally makes a joke out of it.
	And he's the President of the United States.
	So what does that do to you psychologically?
	Well, psychologically, what it does to you is it says, you started out saying, uh-oh, I think it's the end of the world.
	This China thing will lead to nuclear war and depressions and all that.
	And then the president follows it up with a joke.
	And you say, oh, well, if he's not taking it that seriously, maybe I shouldn't.
	Now, he's obviously taking seriously the pressure he's putting on China.
	That's completely serious.
	But in terms of how that might affect the overall economy, he's joking about it.
	And so if he's joking about it, you say to yourself, okay, maybe I'm overthinking this.
	Maybe the China thing is something we're all going to work out, which we will.
	So, here's the most interesting thing.
	There are two really big stories about the 2020 election that I don't know will be covered by the rest of the news industry as important.
	But I think they're the two most important things.
	Now, of course, things are changing all the time, so something that's not important could be important tomorrow.
	But at the moment, most important things are...
	And I'll bet you haven't heard anybody say this.
	President Trump just created a common enemy.
	What do the citizens of this country, and I guess every country, but what do the citizens of the United States like better than just about anything in the world?
	When I say like, I'm meaning that In, you know, sort of a non-literal sense.
	We are drawn to, we find ourselves irresistibly compelled by, we are organized by, we are led by, we are motivated by our enemies, our problems.
	Our problems are our motivating factor.
	And because we did not have a common problem, We had a divided country.
	So the natural result of solving all of your big problems in a country, and that's very close to what the president did.
	Now, you could argue that, you know, climate change is a big problem.
	But in terms of today, you know, what's happening today, 2019, 2020, most of our big problems are Kind of were under control.
	Nothing was hurtling out of control.
	And so the United States had this weird situation in which things were going so well externally for the United States that we started tearing ourselves up internally.
	Why? Because there's nothing we like more than an enemy.
	And so when we didn't have a big external enemy, and let's face it, Russia never rose to the level of feeling like an enemy.
	We had lots of complaints with Putin and the election and Ukraine and stuff like that.
	But did China ever feel like I don't know, a big old enemy?
	You know, I get all the things I did.
	I'm not minimizing it.
	But if you put it all together, I just don't know how big of a deal it was, at least to our psychology.
	It felt more like an internal political football than it did some external threat.
	But now, President Trump...
	I don't think he's changing reality in order to do what he's doing and say what he's saying.
	It does seem that China is an external threat, at least economically.
	And the president is now organizing our thoughts around this external threat.
	Now, this is probably one of the most productive external threats you could ever have, because it's unlikely to become military, because neither China nor the USA, under any condition, would ever want to fire at each other.
	I feel confident in saying there's almost nothing you could imagine that would make China pull the trigger or the United States pull the trigger.
	It just... It's so unlikely, because we don't want it in a way that nobody's ever not wanted anything before.
	It's like the most not wanted thing of all time is war with China, and I'm sure they would say the same.
	But, economically, the President's doing a pretty good job of painting them as a villain.
	And if that villain starts depressing our economy, as you're seeing little ripples in the stock market that don't mean too much actually, he may actually be able to...
	Consolidate support around an external threat, and people might start seeing the internal threat, you know, the other.
	Hey, you Democrat.
	Hey, you Republican. Let's get together and fight it out with our proxies.
	So you might see some...
	Some psychological effect of the president consolidating support around reorienting our economy, because that's what it will take.
	It would be a pretty big reorientation of the US economy to divest ourselves even slowly from China.
	Now, I've suggested that stuff should come to this hemisphere, whether it's in the United States or helping us indirectly by being in Central America.
	But that is a good national challenge to be free of China's influence.
	It's pretty good. So yesterday, I haven't checked this morning, yesterday the stock market was down less than 3%.
	Let's see what it looks like this morning.
	It looks like Apple's taking another...
	Oh, I'm sorry, it didn't change.
	It's Saturday. So we're down 2-3% for most companies for the week, and now we've got a few days to think about it, so we don't know what it's going to open up.
	Now, one of the questions...
	Now, of course, you all caught the news that Trump came out strongly against China.
	He ordered, ordered is the keyword here, U.S. industries to come back home to move their production here.
	Now, order is sort of an ambiguous word in this context.
	Brett Hume asked on Twitter, what authority would the president have to order such a thing?
	Can the president order companies to close up shop in China and move out of there?
	So it's a good question.
	My answer to it, I gave what I call the practical answer, not the lawyer answer.
	My answer is, yes, because of fentanyl.
	Fentanyl is an attack on the homeland, and China is doing it apparently intentionally because they have the ability to stop it.
	They've had a year to do it.
	They've done nothing. So, as Commander-in-Chief, Can President Trump make a unilateral decision and just say, as Commander-in-Chief, China is sending fentanyl in.
	We're going to stop their packages and we're going to move our companies out of there because that country is essentially attacking us militarily in the WMD way because the fentanyl is killing tens of thousands of people a year.
	The President said 100,000.
	It's a big number, whatever it is.
	So, I say that whether or not the president, technically, in a lawyer way, has the power to order what he did in terms of countries leaving China, or companies leaving China, I'm not sure I care.
	Because here's the thing, when it comes to the job of commander-in-chief, The Constitution was written and all of history supports that the reason that the Commander-in-Chief is given some unusual powers is because you don't want to mess around when it comes to war.
	When it comes to war, you don't want to run a war by committee.
	You need to put somebody in place that you trust to take care of business.
	You trust them to tell you what they're doing.
	To give you plenty of warning, lots of transparency, which the President is providing.
	He's given China plenty of time to respond in a more civilized way.
	It just hasn't happened. And now he's taken action.
	Now, what if the president is overreaching?
	Well, I suppose Congress and the Supreme Court and the country could get together and say, hey, Mr.
	President, whoever the president is, in any case, you've gone too far, pull it back a little bit.
	Because remember, there are no bombs being dropped.
	Everything that's happening can be pulled back without too much problem.
	Should the country, should the Congress, should the Supreme Court, or some combination of them, decide that the President must pull back.
	But, when it comes to the initial decision, it's a military decision, in my opinion.
	So this is just Scott giving you his opinion.
	That as a citizen of this country...
	I want my Commander-in-Chief to have wide, immediate, single power when it comes to war and defense of the country in general, whether it's a declared war or an undeclared war or a terrorist act.
	Now, for me, that would be enough, because the fentanyl situation makes this a military situation, meaning a defense situation.
	President has broad powers.
	I don't really care if he has exactly the authority to order an American company to leave China.
	I don't really care if that's quite exactly legal.
	I'm okay with having the president have that kind of power in this kind of situation as long as we're all watching.
	There's nothing hidden.
	We see it. We have institutions that can step in.
	If we think it's going in the wrong direction, I'm okay with that.
	Now, in addition to that, apparently there's something called the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
	And the president tweeted, for all the fake news reporters that don't have a clue as to what the law is relative to presidential powers, China, etc., Try looking at the emergency economic powers of 1977.
	Case closed, says the president in a tweet.
	Now, I'm no lawyer, so I have no idea.
	And I'm sure if I looked at it, I would still have no idea.
	Because, you know, you have to be a lawyer to really understand the whole context of these things.
	But apparently there's a claim that we have some act in place that would allow the president to do this.
	So that would be a little extra argument.
	But again, don't care.
	You know, whether or not this Economic Powers Act of 1977 exactly covers this situation, I would say I don't care.
	And I would say a lot of citizens don't care.
	And if they do, maybe they should rethink it.
	Because you do want your commander-in-chief to have wide powers as long as he shows you his work and as long as you still have power to implement the rest of the government to pull it back if there's a public agreement that we should.
	In this case, I say the president should act.
	And if we don't like it, well, we can wrestle with it.
	But I'm okay with the president acting first and see what that gets us.
	I'm trying to figure out what the president's critics will say when even Bernie Sanders agrees that China needs a lot of pushback.
	So President Trump is not that far away from Bernie Sanders on this.
	So what do you do if you're a Democrat?
	You have to criticize the president.
	It is probably the biggest thing in the world that's happening right now, China and the United States economic, let's say, war, using that word loosely.
	And here's a criticism I saw on Twitter of President Trump in a situation where the United States normally would all pull together for this external enemy.
	They're criticizing him for where Trump neckties were manufactured, which was China.
	That's it. The president's, the worst criticism I'm seeing is that Trump neckties were, I don't know if they still are, manufactured in China.
	That's it? That's all you've got is the necktie thing?
	This is the biggest issue in the world, and you're talking about neckties.
	That's it. So that shows you that Trump has an issue that's a pretty strong one going into 2020.
	It's legitimate, too.
	I would say that the president's increased pressure on China is entirely warranted by the situation.
	Now, it has a political ramification, which, coincidentally, could be good for the president.
	Or it could be bad, depending on how things go.
	But it looks like it's both political and necessary.
	Here's what I would tell you about this.
	If you're trying to figure out how much risk is it economically, how much economic risk is there for the president going after China as hard as he is?
	And, you know, the half-pinion people, the people who are literally half-wits, if you're a half-wit, You'll look at half of a situation, either only the costs or only the benefits.
	And a lot of halfwits are looking at the president's actions and saying, hey, there's some bad economic things happening because you're pressing on China.
	Well, that's half the story.
	The other half that the halfwits just don't talk about, they don't even have an opinion.
	They don't say good or bad on the other half, which is if you don't push against your economic competitor, you end up just transferring all of your money to them, because that's what they will demand.
	And if they're demanding that you transfer all of your money and your intellectual property to them, you know, indirectly they're demanding that by the nature of the relationship, what's your alternative?
	Just give them everything they want?
	At least say that.
	If you're a halfwit and the only thing you can see is that the president's actions are having a depressing effect on the stock market at the moment, you know, short term, if that's all you can talk about and you can't even say a sentence, a reference, you can't even wave your hand at the fact that the alternative to this is worse...
	You're half-wit. You've mastered half of a conversation.
	Alright, so here's what I would say to look at.
	Look at employment and wages.
	So wage growth and employment levels are all you need to look at.
	I'm going to give you a degree in economics in 30 seconds.
	This is 80% of everything you need to know about macroeconomics.
	In 30 seconds, it would be the equivalent of a degree in economics.
	Here it is. Employment and wage growth will tell you everything else.
	That's it. That's your degree in economics.
	If you're just following those two things, employment levels and wage growth, and they're both doing well, Everything else is going to work.
	Well, short of some external, you know, shock like a war or, you know, something like that.
	Asteroid. But short of that, If you've got super strong employment levels and you've got wage growth, we have both of those things.
	I saw Ivanka did a tweet, I think yesterday, saying that the women in the United States, their employment levels are just amazing, apparently.
	So women are just killing it in 2019.
	Just killing it. You know, even better than men in terms of employment growth.
	So as long as those things are looking good, The President's in a pretty solid situation.
	Now, I'd like to introduce, again, a new segment that I'll be doing on these Periscopes.
	I call it Outrage Theatre.
	Outrage Theatre is where people pick things in the news and pretend to be outraged on behalf of other people.
	Now, in reality, I've never met anybody who was actually outraged at anything.
	Not really. In person, I've certainly met a lot of people in person who will say, oh, I wish the president had said that, or this thing was a bad way to word it, or this situation is impractical, and maybe they get a little...
	They get a little bit, let's say, emotive when they say it.
	But I've never really heard anybody who's outraged at anything.
	Yeah, you could be outraged at fentanyl deaths, but you're not outraged at anybody in this country over it.
	So I'll pick one piece of outrage theater, which somebody in the news is actually engaging in.
	And I will reproduce it for this periscope.
	Today, it's economist Olmsby, is that his name?
	Who is talking about the president asking whether Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, was a bigger enemy to the country than China.
	To which the Democrats say, He's attacking the head of the Federal Reserve.
	He's calling him the enemy of the people.
	So I will be mocking one character from Outrage Theater.
	Each of my periscopes.
	So there's one of the other, the second biggest story of the year.
	The first story is that the president has created a common enemy for the country in the form of China.
	That's a big, big deal for 2020.
	The second thing that we don't know where it's going to end up yet, but Apparently PragerU, you know PragerU, they make videos, I think they're all conservative-leaning, and they have a very big footprint on YouTube.
	Or they would, except that YouTube is suppressing their videos.
	Very much like, I imagine, my videos, the ones you're seeing, which get uploaded to YouTube and then demonetized instantly.
	That's right. My content is demonetized automatically.
	Nobody even looks at it.
	It's automatically demonetized, regardless of content.
	Now, some version of this is happening to PragerU, and they're taking it to court.
	So apparently this Tuesday, they'll be going to the Ninth Circuit Court.
	In their lawsuit against Google and YouTube for restricting over 200 PragerU videos.
	And they tweeted this morning that the mainstream media continues to ignore this historic case.
	That's true, isn't it?
	I didn't even know this was going on, did you?
	And what could be more historic Than a case against Google and YouTube for controlling the election.
	That's a really big case.
	Can you imagine if PragerU wins this?
	Now, I don't know what their odds are.
	Again, I'm not a lawyer.
	I can't put the odds on this.
	But what if they win?
	Because they might, right?
	They might. So if PragerU wins this, would it force Google and YouTube to open their books?
	Or even if it goes to some kind of a trial?
	Is there some part in this process where PragerU can say, hey Google, let's see your algorithm.
	Because that'll tell us if you've done something intentionally.
	They would suppress our videos.
	I don't know how Google and YouTube could have a defense in court without opening up...
	Yeah, the discovery process should give them access, PragerU, should give them some kind of a look.
	I don't know how you'd manage that, given that there's a privacy issue that's legitimate.
	I don't know how you manage that.
	But somebody's going to look at their algorithm.
	And then what? Because what happens if Google doesn't show them the honest algorithm?
	What are the odds?
	Let me ask you this. If there were a high-level court case and Google were required to tell the truth completely, you know, all the records, all the algorithm, all the emails relative to it, what if that happens?
	Would they tell the truth?
	I'm going to make a prediction.
	They would not.
	I believe that if Google slash YouTube gets cornered in a court case, that they will lie to the court.
	That's a prediction. So, write this down.
	That if Google goes to court for PragerU and is required to disclose their records and their algorithms, that they will actually lie to the court.
	Because I'm not sure the court would know the difference, first of all.
	I don't know if they'd be able to find the error.
	But I'm going to...
	Here's the basis of my prediction.
	I believe that YouTube would have to lie because the consequence of getting caught would be too big.
	And I think that they will be caught lying...
	Because the lie is too big.
	There'll be too many people who know about the lie.
	So there might not be people in Google who are willing to be the kind of whistleblower who says, yeah, I was in the room where I watched Bob change the algorithm so PragerU couldn't show up.
	Probably we're not going to get that kind of a whistleblower.
	But suppose there's somebody at Google who's totally in favor of Google, They're not in favor of conservatives whatsoever.
	They're watching the case, and they notice that their own company, Google, just lied to the court.
	Hypothetically. I'm not saying that Google has done that.
	I'm saying I predict that they will do it.
	I think it would be tough to be an employee of Google, be aware of Google lying to the court, and just sit there on it.
	I got a feeling that that's the sort of news that would bubble up.
	So here's my prediction.
	If PragerU forces Google to open their algorithm, Google will conceal the truth.
	They will lie.
	They will omit.
	And they will get caught.
	That's my prediction.
	Okay? I don't know how long it will take.
	It might be after 2020.
	Let's talk about goofy Elizabeth Ward.
	You've seen the videos of her dancing in a kind of awkward, goofy way.
	And a lot of pro-Trump people are using that video as evidence that she's goofy and she won't get elected and blah, blah, blah.
	And I gotta tell you, I'm just not seeing what you're seeing.
	You know, I get that she's an awkward dancer.
	But do you think that's going to matter?
	Because what I see is energy.
	And I see somebody getting out of her comfort zone.
	I see her...
	This is the other thing.
	I was complimenting Elizabeth Warren on Twitter yesterday.
	She's really fit.
	That video of her running turned into a meme and it was funny and stuff.
	But she's whatever her age is.
	How old is she? And she ran across the field like it was nothing.
	And when you see her on stage, it looks like she, I don't know if she lost weight or she's got a fitness thing going on, but she looks like she's really in good shape.
	And I gotta say, politics aside, I always like to call out somebody who's got the fitness thing handled, because that's, it's a big deal, you know?
	And it's certainly part of her ability to be president is her physical fitness.
	And she did it well. Joe Biden, same thing.
	Joe Biden's in great shape, physically.
	You know, mentally is another question.
	But I like to call that out as a positive thing.
	But here's my question to you.
	Do you think that women think Elizabeth Warren looks as goofy as men do?
	I think some of the men who are mocking her might have male goggles on, sort of saying, well, I wouldn't do that.
	If I did that, that would look weird.
	But have you ever been in an automobile with females and somebody turned on the music?
	What happens if you're in a car with any kind of adult woman and a good song comes on that she really likes?
	She gets as goofy as Elizabeth Warren.
	And doesn't bother you too much, right?
	There's something about getting goofy to music that is just so American.
	I don't know. If you're looking for that to be her problem, you're going to have to look a little deeper because that's not going to turn away any votes.
	But it might make people watch her.
	It might say she's got energy.
	It might make people say, hey, that's exactly what I do in the car when I'm listening to music.
	It's what I do in the shower.
	I don't think that's going to cost her a bit.
	Likewise, I believe that the Pocahontas thing is exhausted.
	Meaning that if the only criticism that Trump can come up with about Warren is that the Pocahontas thing, I'm sorry it's too old.
	It just aged out.
	We just got too used to it and it didn't make any difference to anything.
	She's still, in my view, at the moment, she would be the favorite to get the nomination.
	And all this Pocahontas stuff has been following her the whole time.
	It made no difference. No difference.
	And I think this is a case where, at least for the Democrats...
	She acknowledged that she thought she was Native American.
	She acknowledged that it was a mistake.
	Now, the Republicans want to push further and say, but you haven't apologized specifically for preventing someone else from, I don't know, getting an opportunity because your fake Native American credentials took somebody's opportunity.
	But she can't go back in time.
	She can't go back in time.
	She's apologized to the Native Americans.
	She's, you know, she did a DNA test.
	I would say she's completely, you know, removed that mole.
	So Trump's going to need a much bigger, better attack than Pocahontas.
	That's fun and only barely fun.
	I'm not even sure that's fun anymore.
	Like, just the fun got drained out of that by overuse.
	All right. So here's the issue.
	Elizabeth Warren doesn't have a major flaw.
	Now, you could say her policies are a flaw, but I'm not sure anybody cares about policies.
	Almost nobody cares about policies, it seems.
	So I suppose there'll be conversations about her socialist policies and the budget and all that, but she doesn't have a major flaw.
	You know, Biden has his mental situation.
	Bernie is also old, and he's Bernie.
	He probably has a cap on what his support will ever be.
	But if Warren decides to pivot toward the middle, somebody says you're propping her up.
	It is not my job to tear her down.
	If you're here for a purely partisan opinion, I'm not really interested.
	All right. I'd rather say here are good points, here are bad points.
	And if you prefer to be a halfwit looking at only the bad points of people, I'm sure there's a periscope for you.
	But this wouldn't be it.
	So let's admit that she's got some strong game.
	And I'll also say about Warren that, you know, a year ago, When I was looking at her campaign game, her public speaking game, her just public persona game, I said, no, she doesn't have it.
	She didn't seem to have the, let's say, the charisma and the public projection that I thought I had the gravitas to be president.
	But now she does.
	So, here's the bad news for those of you who don't like Elizabeth Warren.
	She's a learning machine.
	And maybe you didn't see that coming.
	But she's learning.
	Do you know who isn't learning?
	Kamala Harris.
	Yeah. Kamala Harris was my pick a year ago to be the strongest candidate.
	But it depended on Kamala Harris improving her game.
	She never did.
	Her game never got good.
	Elizabeth Warren, similarly, I thought, weak in terms of just being presidential.
	But in a year, Elizabeth Warren improved her game.
	Harris did not.
	I don't know if anybody else that we're watching has done the same thing.
	Somebody says...
	So, you have to be careful of people who are learners, because the learners sneak up on you.
	Because you say, ah, that one's no good, and then they learn to be good.
	And then you say, whoops, didn't see that coming.
	So, if there's anything you can say about Warren that I think we would all agree on, is she's smart.
	She's smart. She's a learner.
	You can see a whole...
	You see her entire history is learning.
	Don't count her out, because she can't learn.
	Now, I think her weakness might be that she's going to be too lawyerly, too academic, too wonkish, too boring.
	But she might learn how to get her way out of that, too.
	So remember, her biggest weakness is that she's boring and wonkish and librarian-like.
	And that won't look so strong next to Trump.
	But don't expect she can't fix that.
	So be careful.
	Let's talk about the zombie apocalypse.
	I say this only a little bit tongue-in-cheek.
	But if you look at the drug problem plus the mental health problem, which are largely overlapping quite a bit, both the drug problem and the mental health problem have created a zombie class.
	We call it homeless.
	Because they happen to not be living indoors in many cases.
	But it's not really a homeless problem.
	As Dr. Drew has taught us, it's mostly a drug and mental health problem.
	There are insufficient resources to treat people or they don't want to be treated.
	And so they prefer to be outdoors.
	So you could have all the housing in the world and it wouldn't make much difference Because these are people who don't want to be in homes, they want to take drugs.
	Or they don't know how to handle themselves even if they had a home.
	They have mental problems.
	So there are more and more people, and I think that the percentage of the total public that will be in this category is likely to grow.
	Because as civilization gets more stressful, And more complicated, fewer and fewer people will be able to cope with just normal life.
	Fewer and fewer people will be able to, I don't know, program a computer, have a job, compete with robots, compete with immigrants.
	So we should have a growing and rapidly growing zombie class, which would be mental illness plus drugs.
	Now, and plus, you know, we've got a rat problem, etc.
	Now, on top of this, I saw that Kanye West built some massive dome huts on some property he owns in California as an attempt to try to design and build, as sort of a prototype, low-income homes for the homeless.
	Now, here's the problem.
	Apparently, they do not meet California building standards, or they haven't been checked out and permitted.
	So they haven't been permitted, and if they don't get permitted, he has to tear them down, because that's the law.
	If you build something without a permit, and you can't get a permit after the fact, you have to tear it down.
	Now, what are the chances that these experimental dome structures meet all of the California building standards?
	Well, maybe because he had professionals build it and they would be aware of all those standards.
	So maybe they just built it in.
	It's possible. I don't know.
	Probably not, though. Probably not.
	What are the odds that these particular homes are the solution?
	Low. All right?
	The odds of anything being a solution for a big problem are low.
	It wouldn't matter what it is.
	It doesn't matter that it's Kanye.
	It doesn't matter that the houses are well built or not well built.
	Just in general, The odds of anything making a big difference are kind of low, right?
	But here's the thing.
	Kanye, again, being a genius among humans, every time Kanye does something, I look at it and I say, you know, even if that doesn't work, it's smarter than what the other people did.
	And here's why.
	Kanye is working a system, right?
	He doesn't have a goal.
	He's got a system.
	And you can see the system.
	He built a prototype.
	Boom. Kanye built prototypes.
	Kanye has a system.
	Do you think that Kanye believes that the first thing he builds is going to be it?
	That's going to be the end of the thing and then he's all done and he solved homelessness?
	I'll bet not. I haven't talked to him about it.
	But I'll bet... That Kanye thinks in terms of a system.
	The system in this case is rich guy, has some land, tries a prototype, looks at them, sees how they work, sees what happens with the permitting system.
	Maybe if it gets permitted, he can put some people in there, see what they like, see what they don't like, build a second set.
	All right? If you see Kanye...
	Learn something from the first set of homes and then say, all right, good, we learned something.
	That's exactly what we hope to get into this.
	Now we're going to build a second set.
	Then you've got somebody who's the most important person in the country in terms of a solution.
	Very important. I'm assuming that that's what Kanye has in mind, is to try things until he gets something that works.
	Because I imagine that's what he did with his clothing line.
	Do you imagine that when Kanye was designing his sneakers or any of his clothing line that he made one design on a napkin and walked out of the room?
	I doubt it. I doubt it.
	He probably had a system. Probably had a system of bringing people in, you know, focus groups.
	He probably, you know, iterated lots of different designs, I imagine.
	So it looks like he's taking the same systems thinking game into this homeless arena.
	Now, as I said, I don't know that the problem with at least the homelessness in L.A. and Portland, etc., I don't know that that homelessness really requires a home.
	But what we do know is that there are plenty of people who are on the edge who don't have mental illness and don't have a drug problem who can't afford a home.
	And so he's certainly filling in a, you know, he's going after a very, very, very important area, even if it doesn't solve the homeless problem in L.A., for example.
	So, three cheers for Kanye.
	Whether his domed huts get ripped down by the mean old California government or not, He built something.
	Kanye built something.
	He did something.
	What did you do? Right?
	What did you do today?
	How did you help the homeless today?
	Probably nothing. Yesterday I was talking to Bill Pulte, a gentleman that had just met Bill, who is an expert on low-income housing and government programs that actually support low-income building, which I didn't even know existed.
	So we're watching now Bill Pulte, partly through his Blight Authority stuff and partly through his efforts as Internet philanthropy in general, has now created energy.
	Remember, I always talk about energy being more important than the details.
	So Bill Pulte has now created all this energy that is drawing resources to him.
	Sort of the flame strategy where the moths are attracted to the flame.
	So now Bill Pulte, because of all the energy he's created around this, has attracted an expert who has exactly...
	The kind of expertise that you would need if you want to do something with some blighted land that's been cleared.
	Now, will that turn into anything?
	Well, who knows. I'm just telling you that the general idea of creating energy around something that needs some energy is a really good system.
	And that's what Pulte is doing.
	All right. I guess Joe Biden had his daily gaffe was that he posed the hypothetical question during the speech.
	What if Obama had been assassinated?
	And everybody just said, Biden, maybe you should speak less.
	Are you seeing anybody on the Democrat side who really is excited about Biden?
	All the reporting says that nobody is excited about him.
	And that they're just waiting for something to happen.
	Now the other interesting story is that apparently Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been treated successfully for her third cancer.
	Details don't matter so much.
	She's 86. So she's wobbly but apparently out of immediate danger.
	Now how effective is she at 86?
	Like, really?
	You know, I get that the Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment, but don't you think we should have, don't you think we should also have an age limit?
	I get lifetime appointment, but I feel as though there still needs to be a maximum age, maybe 80.
	Can I just toss that out?
	I don't know what it would take.
	Is that a constitutional change?
	But maybe 80 is old enough, right?
	Now, I realize that their clerks do a lot of work, and it's not like the 80-year-old is pounding out a lot of work.
	But... I don't know.
	86 doesn't feel like a functioning Supreme Court justice to me.
	And I wouldn't care if she were conservative or liberal.
	I'm just saying that 86 is too old.
	I'm sorry. And there's something very sad going on, which is, imagine the pressure that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is on to not retire.
	Now, I don't know what's in her head.
	It could be that Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn't want to retire for her own reasons.
	She may say, no, I plan to die in this job, and I'm doing good things for the world, etc.
	But it feels to me like maybe she might be influenced by other people to try to stay in there until Trump is out of office.
	So if she stays in there another six years, she'll be 92%, Do you want a 92-year-old, let's say Trump gets re-elected, do you want a 92-year-old on the Supreme Court?
	Man, I don't.
	Not even a little bit.
	So, I feel sorry for Ruth Bader Ginsburg because I think she's, you know, she should be concentrating on her Family and herself and her health and, you know, just sort of enjoying her final years.
	I just don't think it's fair to torture her this way.
	It's just a lot of responsibility to put on somebody who's been a good public servant all her life.
	You know, I have the same problem with Biden.
	At some point...
	Younger people have a responsibility to act kindly to people who've reached a certain age.
	And I think that applies to Biden and Ginsburg.
	All right. That's what I got to say about all this stuff.
	I don't have much else to say.
	Oh, I saw something really interesting.
	Here's like a bonus topic.
	This is an update to something I hark back to now and then.
	Back in the early 90s or mid 90s I guess, probably closer to the mid or late 90s I guess, I wrote a book called The Dilbert Future and I made a prediction.
	And the prediction got me in so much trouble.
	It was the first time I had the anger of the mob against me.
	There were articles written calling me a moron for years.
	Just years of being just shat upon for this prediction.
	And the prediction was that the theory of evolution would be rethought in scientific terms in my lifetime.
	That we would have a different opinion of evolution sometime before I died.
	Now, of course, all the people who were afraid that you don't want people to think it's a religious explanation and that God did it.
	So all the scientific people who were guarding against the barbarians at the gate threw me under the bus with the creationists.
	I'm not even a believer, much less a creationist.
	You'd have to at least be a believer before you could also be a creationist, but I'm not either of those things.
	But articles were written all over the place about how I'm a secret creationist and intelligent design believer, and none of that's true.
	So that was my first massive experience with fake news in which an entirely fake persona of me was created and then criticized by a lot of different people.
	A lot of people. It was a big, big deal for years in my life.
	And now there are, I'm counting at least three different theories that challenge evolution as we know it.
	One of them, of course, is simulation theory.
	So if we're a software simulation created by just another civilization of intelligent beings, well, that doesn't look like evolution, but it doesn't answer the question, how did the original beings get created?
	But it pushes back our story from us being things which evolved into software that got created.
	So that's one theory.
	Now, I'm not saying that's true, It's a trillion to one likely, but I'm not saying it's true.
	Here's another one.
	So Eric Weinstein was talking about this yesterday on Twitter.
	So there's, you don't need to know the details, but there's somebody who's a genuine genius.
	A math kind of person who looked at evolution and said, the statistics don't work, the math doesn't work, there's no way that random activity could have gotten you what you got.
	Now you're saying to yourself, okay, that sounds like the same story that the intelligent design people have been saying forever, but apparently he's adding something to it that smart people recognize as being at least worth a listen.
	Now he's not...
	A religious guy.
	So he's not saying you should discount evolution because it was probably God or intelligent science.
	He's not saying anything like that.
	He's just looking at the math.
	He's saying, I'm sorry, I'm sort of a math expert.
	I'm looking at the math.
	I'm looking at the statistics.
	There's no explanation for how this could have happened.
	The details you don't need to know.
	So someone as smart as Eric Weinstein, of course.
	Looked at that argument and said, I'm, you know, paraphrasing Eric's opinion, so I might get it a little bit wrong, but essentially he said, it's worth a look.
	So that's another theory that's out there that people are looking at and saying, maybe.
	Maybe evolution wasn't exactly what we thought it was.
	But then I heard a new one today, or yesterday, that I'd never heard.
	And it's hilariously simple as an alternative to evolution.
	And by the way, as far as I know, the next thing I'm going to say has been totally debunked, but I haven't read it.
	So I'm just going to throw it out there for fun, all right?
	Just for fun. I'm not saying this is true or credible.
	There's a biologist, I'm not sure who it was, who said that part of the explanation, and maybe all of it, for evolution might be hybrids, meaning instead of a horse evolving over millions of years to be a dog or whatever,
	I don't think that's real, but instead of one species just evolving over millions of years into another species, This one scientific person says, you know, what about hybrids?
	Now, a hybrid would be, for example, a horse and a mule mating and creating a donkey.
	Now, a donkey is neither a horse nor a mule.
	But the problem is that the donkey can't reproduce.
	So that's what a hybrid is.
	So if the new thing can't reproduce, well...
	Somebody said that explains Swalwell.
	Okay, that was a pretty funny comment.
	Oh, that's funny.
	So anyway, this idea that the hybrids...
	So this scientific-minded person was saying that we are wrong.
	The hybrids can't reproduce.
	So one of the most basic things you thought about hybrids is, well, if the horse and the mule have a baby and it's a donkey, the donkey can't mate with another donkey and create another donkey.
	So that's the end of the line. So that can't be an explanation for anything.
	But it turns out that most hybrids can reproduce.
	Did you know that? I didn't know that.
	It's the first time I've ever heard it.
	So most hybrids, not donkeys, apparently donkeys can never reproduce.
	But other animals and creatures mating across species apparently can produce a hybrid between the two of them that can actually reproduce.
	Mate with other hybrids or other things, I suppose.
	So the idea is that natural selection, per se, was not the only or not the main driver of evolution, but rather it was different species having babies that could then also reproduce.
	It's kind of the shortcut to a new species.
	Right? So...
	Do donkey I love that question.
	So donkeys are infertile, but somebody says, but do donkeys still try?
	I mean, does the donkey get a go at it?
	Can somebody let the poor donkey at least give it a whirl?
	It seems cruel to the donkey that you don't let it at least try.
	Hey, you know, your odds are not very good, but give it a try.
	Yeah, somebody's talking about the liger, the tiger and the lion combination.
	So, I can't assign any level of credibility to the idea that hybrids have anything to do with evolution.
	I simply note That in the years since I said that actual scientists would start questioning and overturn our understanding of evolution, that first of all, there was one major change to evolution already.
	You may not be aware of it.
	But originally, the evolution experts said that there was some long, slow, gradual change of species.
	Except when we look at the fossil records, that doesn't seem to be exactly the case.
	It seems that there were periods where there was a whole bunch of evolution, and then periods where things kind of acted slowly, at least within species.
	So if you look at one line of evolution, you see it was like slow, slow, slow, slow, and then something changed a lot, and then slow again, and then that was not explained.
	I think it was Stephen Jay Gould.
	I believe, if I have that right.
	Scientists, very respected, who came up with the punctuated equilibrium idea.
	The idea that there were periods in time that a lot of evolution happened.
	So it was never a long, slow, gradual thing.
	It was long and slow lots of times, but then there would be these short periods where lots of evolution happened.
	And that was a complete change.
	To the evolution that I learned when I was a kid, because I thought it was gradual.
	But apparently there was something happening that sped things up, and I'm not sure we know exactly why.
	We also used to think in the survival of the fittest, That the most fit species were the ones that survived and it evolved.
	But that's been thrown out the door as well.
	Now, I don't know if...
	I'm not sure if Darwin actually used survival of the fittest.
	I think that might have been added after the fact.
	But... To the degree that we learned that in school when I was a kid, well, it was debunked.
	It's not survival of the fittest.
	Do you know what it was?
	So the current view of evolution is it's survival of the things that survived, for whatever reason.
	So lots of times there's survival just because by luck you're on an island and you don't have any predators.
	So you weren't the fittest on the island, you were just the only one on the island.
	So fitness, you could actually be totally unfit for the island, but there's nobody there to eat you, and you've got enough food, and so you're fit enough.
	So it went from survival of the fittest to, well, some things survive, for a variety of reasons, which is very different from how I learned it.
	So, I'm going to say that my prediction from the 90s, the most dangerous thing I ever did for my career...
	Starting to look a little better.
	That's all I'm saying. All right.
	According to the New York Times, evolution was built on U.S. slavery.
	You know, that's... I know you're joking when you say that because the New York Times has this framework, which I call Hoax 5, where everything is being thrown into the racism narrative.
	But I believe that views on, you know, who is superior and all that actually did have an impact on at least slavery in terms of the rationalization of it.
	All right. See James Tours Origins Lections.
	Well, if they're intelligent design, I'm not sure I want to see those, but...
	Epstein was into genetic manipulation.
	Was he? Ann Coulter wrote the same thing.
	What did she write? Was she writing about evolution?

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