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Sept. 1, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
48:37
Episode 648 Scott Adams: Gun Crimes, #FentanylChina
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hey everybody come on in here What fun!
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So the president tweeted, and I'm paraphrasing, to Iran after their missile launch failed and their rocket blew up on the launch pad.
The president tweeted that the United States had nothing to do with it, and he hopes they figure out what went wrong.
Now, I have to admit, even I am not sure what's going on with that, except that I like it.
The U.S. had nothing to do with it, and hope you figure it out.
Now, I'll tell you what that leaves as a possibility, that Israel had something to do with it.
But I thought it was interesting that the President said out loud that we had nothing to do with it.
Because I thought to myself, wouldn't it be better if they thought maybe we did?
Or at least if they, you know, at least they thought it was a possibility.
Wouldn't that be better for us?
But I suspect that they still have to look because they don't believe him.
So even though he says the United States had nothing to do with it, they're not going to believe it.
So they're still going to look for any sign that we did.
So here's what this felt like, and I may be over-interpreting this.
Do you remember the big breakthrough with Kim Jong-un was when the president went funny?
So when he tweeted at him purely joking insults.
And that got Kim Jong-un to kind of deal with the president on a human level.
Where they joked at each other, they insulted each other, and they said, all right, you crazy guy, you big old orange crazy guy, let's just get together.
And it looks like the president's trying to play that same play.
I can't imagine it working in Iran, because it's a different personality, but he's basically tweeted something playful.
You know, in a sense.
I mean, it's provocative and it's challenging, but when he says the U.S. had nothing to do with it, we hope you figure it out.
Of course you're going to read that and say, he's kind of just joking and jabbing them at the same time.
It looks a lot like when he was calling Kim Jong-un Little Rocket Man.
It feels like he's trying to humanize Something that is otherwise, you know, statecraft and political and all those things that have not produced anything like a solution.
So yeah, it's a little mocking.
It's a little sarcastic, perhaps.
And you know, if it had been anybody but Iran, it probably would have gotten more of a response in kind.
So if he can get a Rand to match him, so he's, you know, he's putting something out there and essentially seeing if they'll match it.
And what they would match is his tone.
And his tone is sort of, you know, that it's a game and we're playing long and this is not the end of the world and, you know, let's put it in perspective sort of thing.
Might be useful. We'll see.
It's worth putting it out there just to find out what happens.
Do you remember how much trouble...
Well, let's see.
How many...
What would be the best word?
Not trouble. I guess it was trouble.
How much trouble the president caused when early in his administration he said...
Or was it before he got elected?
That he said he wanted to put a ban on Muslim immigration...
But there's a second part of that.
A ban on Muslim immigration.
What he meant was from certain countries.
That came out later. But maybe he didn't mean that.
Maybe he just meant we're going to put a ban on Muslim immigration.
Until... And it was the second part that was the important part.
Until we figure out what's going on here.
And everybody said, racist, racist, because they always leave the second part out until we figure out what's going on.
And I remember thinking to myself...
You know, there's one situation where bigotry is allowed, if not encouraged, and that's in the military.
So in our regular, let's say, society and business life and personal lives, we try to drive out all forms of bigotry.
And we pretty much all agree, you know, 95% of the public would agree.
That getting rid of bigotry in every business, social, everyday experience, school, you name it.
You want to get rid of all that bigotry.
But there's an exception.
The military.
The military is specifically allowed to discriminate like crazy.
If it makes sense.
Now, they still have to support it.
For example, women typically cannot lift as much as men, and there may be some other physical differences.
So the military discriminates against women.
The military discriminates against short men.
The military discriminates against men and women, I assume, who have physical disabilities.
Because it could have some impact on safety.
So we see that the military is a discrimination machine, and it's the one place where we say, oh, all right, you know, if they need to discriminate because it gives them some statistical advantage, that's the one place we'll let it happen.
Now, of course, historically, there was also discrimination against African Americans in the military, but that did not prove out to be useful.
In other words, it was discrimination that didn't have the benefit of science behind it.
It wasn't supportable, and so it went away.
But my main point is, if the military can support the reason for their bigotry, Meaning that there's some actual safety, you know, risk management thing involved, they can get away with it.
It's one place that you can discriminate.
And so when the president said, we're going to ban immigration from Muslim countries until we figure out what's going on, I saw that as a military homeland decision, which was bigotry.
But it was the kind that, as long as the second part was acknowledged, until you figure out what's going on, I thought that was fair, because we don't know what's going on.
And wait until you see where I'm taking this, by the way.
Withhold your judgment until you see where this is heading, all right?
And then when the administration and the public weighed in, they said, no, no, no, you can't ban an entire culture, even if you think you don't know what's going on.
And when the government dug into it and the public weighed in, and the pundits weighed in, the decision ended up, let's put some restrictions on countries that can't properly vet their citizens.
Some of them would be Muslim countries, some would not be.
North Korea, for example.
So it ended up morphing into something that was a little bit easier to swallow because those countries that had good records were still allowed in.
Now here's where I'm taking this.
We had yet another mass shooting yesterday.
And of course, there are lots of conversations about changing the laws.
And let me toss out a possibility.
Are you ready for this?
I guess I felt like in trouble today.
Some days you wake up and you say, I think I'm going to cause some trouble.
So here's me causing some trouble.
Maybe we're at the point where we should consider banning gun sales to white men under the age of 50 Until we figure out what's going on.
Let that sink in for a little bit.
If you were ever in favor of the Muslim country ban, because we didn't quite know what was going on and we couldn't vet, you know, we didn't know how to protect against that risk, and we thought, well, temporarily, temporarily, let's use bigotry.
That's what we did. The country collectively used bigotry.
Said, alright, if you're from this area, you're from a Muslim country, we'll ban you.
Until we figured it out.
And it looks like we did figure it out.
We figured out that if we could check their records, we could still be safe enough.
So here we have the situation where, for whatever reason, youngish white men keep getting high-powered rifles and killing a lot of people.
And so, I'm just going to put it out there.
What would happen if we just said, you can't buy a gun if you're a white male under 50?
Until we figure out what's going on.
Right? Now, I wouldn't want that to be a permanent situation, would you?
Of course not. Of course not.
You wouldn't want that to be permanent.
But you certainly want to figure out what's going on.
And so now I know that nobody would ever take that example seriously.
But I can tell you that as a white male, I probably would have been willing to live with it until we figured out what's going on.
Maybe not live with it for more than a year, but I wouldn't mind trying it out.
Now, here's another suggestion.
By the way, if you're new to this Periscope, you should know, context-wise, that I like to throw out bad ideas Because sometimes they spur your thinking to think of something related that's a good idea.
So I'm going to give you some more bad ideas, just like that last one.
You don't need to tell me it's a bad idea.
That's obvious to me.
It's bad in the sense that you could never give society to agree to it.
But here are some other bad ideas.
Suppose you pass a law that says you can buy a gun under the following conditions.
You ready? So here's a proposed gun control law.
You can buy a gun if you are a current owner of a gun.
So in other words, if you already own a gun, a legal firearm, you have the right to buy another one.
So if you already own one, you can get another one.
Now we might put some limit on, I don't know, is there any limit on the number of guns you can have?
I don't think so, because there are collectors who buy quite a few guns.
But let's say if you already own a gun, you can buy another one.
Because whatever danger you were going to cause, well, you already had a tool for it.
So it's probably not the new gun that makes that much difference.
Here's another one. You can buy a gun if you're not a current owner of a gun.
You can also buy a gun if you've been a member of the NRA for three years.
I pick three as sort of a generic number.
If you've been paying dues to the NRA... And I have never owned a gun, legally.
At the end of the three years, you can apply for a gun.
You still have to pass the background checks and stuff.
But three years of being an NRA paid person means you will at least have been exposed to best practices.
It means that you were thinking about it three years before you got the gun, which should reduce the number of people who are having a mental breakdown and this month they got crazy and this month they decided to buy a gun and this month they decided to go kill people.
If you decided three years ago That probably tells you that it has more to do with a long-term desire to own the firearm.
Here's another one. If you're a member or ex-member of law enforcement or the military, you can buy a gun.
So, again, if you're just joining, I'm throwing out bad ideas for how you could tweak gun control.
I'm not claiming any of these are good ideas.
I'm throwing out ideas. They might suggest something that is a better idea.
So, I would say that if you're law enforcement or military, you've earned the right to own a gun.
I mean, everybody has the right because of the Second Amendment.
But it would probably be a safer situation.
They probably could get a gun.
So just consider that one.
How about this? Women can buy guns.
Just always. If you're a woman, the rules don't apply.
If you're a female and you're over 18, you can buy a gun.
How about that? And it would only apply to men, the restrictions.
How about this?
Some occupations can buy a gun.
Let's say you're a security guard or some kind of job that requires it, you can buy a gun.
How about if you're male and over 50, you can buy a gun?
Now, maybe it's not 50, maybe it's 40, whatever.
But suppose that if you're male and you're over 50, you can buy a gun.
If you're under 50, the other restrictions come into play.
Or how about this? You can buy a gun if someone vouches for you who's in one of these other categories.
So if you're a man under 50, you can't buy a gun unless you get the agreement or signature from somebody in law enforcement, somebody ex-military, a woman, or somebody over 50.
Again, these are not good ideas.
I'm just throwing out different ideas, things you haven't heard before.
So anyway, those are some ideas I thought I'd throw out.
But the only thing I want to introduce...
Is the idea that when it comes to death and security, bigotry is allowed.
That it's allowed. In this particular case, what I'm suggesting is bigotry against people who look like me.
Right? I'm literally suggesting that we look at young white men and say, Maybe they should be carved out as a special category.
Maybe we should do something about it.
All right, here's a challenge to you, Second Amendment proponents, of which I am one.
So I'm pro-gun, by the way, in case that gets lost in this.
I'm 100% pro-Second Amendment and gun, but I'm also pro-do-what-makes-sense, etc.
So if you're pro-gun, here's what I think is a requirement for you.
You have to ask yourself, how many American deaths are you willing to put up with for that right?
If you can't answer that question, then I would suggest that you don't have an opinion.
You don't have an opinion. Because you've got to be able to say, I like the Second Amendment and I like this set of laws or no set of laws, whatever it is.
If you're willing to say that's what you like, you can't stop the conversation there.
That's not a full opinion.
The full opinion is, I like all these rights and what I'm willing to give up is that X number of people will be slaughtered by guns Per year in order for me to have this right.
If you can't say that in direct language, you don't have an argument.
So it's not that you're right or you're wrong.
It's that you're only pretending to be part of the conversation and you're not.
You're not saying anything.
So let me go first.
I'm in favor of the Second Amendment.
I could accept up to 20,000 guns per year.
Name one person who's ever said that before.
Name one person.
Years and years of gun conversations.
Name one person who ever gave you a full opinion until I just did.
It's the first one. You've never seen an opinion on guns until I just gave you one.
That's it. Now, how many people actually die from guns per year?
It's about twice that, right?
So that's my line in the sand.
I'm pro-gun, up to...
About 20,000 accidental or murder deaths per year.
That right is worth that much to me.
Now, of course, it's easy to say if you're not the one getting shot and you're not the one whose family is dying.
I acknowledge that.
And I'm sure I would change my opinion the very moment somebody close to me got shot.
So would you. We understand that.
But I gave you the first full opinion you've ever heard on guns.
I want the Second Amendment, and I'm willing to put up with 20,000 gun deaths a year, about half of where we are now.
In other words, I'm willing to try some stuff to see if we can get that down.
And if trying some of that stuff put a little restriction on guns, I'd be willing to try it.
Now, I might want to try it for a while, and if it doesn't work, stop trying it.
But we should certainly be experimenting our way toward getting to another level.
Now, how much did that mess with your minds?
Because every one of you on here has a real opinion on gun deaths.
Let's see you do yours.
I gave you a number.
20,000 gun deaths a year.
That's my price. For the Second Amendment.
That's what I'm willing to pay.
Of course, it's easy for me, right?
Because I'm not the one dying.
You know, I'm trading off 20,000 lives of mostly strangers for me to have the right to own a gun.
That's my price.
If you can't say your actual opinion out loud, shut up.
Actually, that's my new rule.
If you put out an opinion on gun ownership, And you're not willing to say what your price is, how many people dead per year, I don't want to hear it.
You don't have actually anything like an opinion.
All you have is blather, blather, blather one gun.
So that's my challenge to you.
So there was a straight pride parade.
Milo Yiannopoulos, I guess, was the head of ceremonies or whatever.
Parade master, maybe.
And, of course, the whole thing was just sort of a walking troll, right?
I don't know that straight people need any parades.
So I'm not sure exactly what the objectives of the organizers were, except to have some fun, get some attention.
Maybe they had a point to make.
I don't know what it was. But here's my point about this.
So, however long ago it was that there was the first Black Pride event, or when Black Pride was being used as a phrase, probably made sense, because there was a time in our history that maybe, you know, maybe, let's see, acknowledging pride in who you are could have been an important step To getting society to the next place.
Likewise, when the gay pride parade became a thing, probably very useful.
Probably useful for the LGBTQ community to say, hey, we're fine.
It's society that needs to change.
We have pride in who we are.
How about you, society changing, instead of us?
That was probably important.
But I feel as though...
Society has evolved and improved to the point where pride feels like a wrong word, doesn't it?
Why would you take pride in something you had nothing to do with?
How much of your good work was involved in you being born the way you are?
How much work did I do before I was born to arrange my DNA so that I could be the person that I was born as?
None. Why should I take pride?
Why do you take pride in someone else's work?
I never understood that.
I put no effort into who I am in terms of my genetic makeup.
I didn't put any work into that.
Even my parents barely did any work.
I'm sure they enjoyed it when they made me.
But the point is...
Pride is just the wrong word.
I feel like we should understand the world free of pride.
Because what is the fundamental thing that makes white supremacy ridiculous?
The thing that makes white supremacy ridiculous is that people who are the white supremacists, if they exist, by the way, again, I've never met one.
I do not know even one person who would identify as a white supremacist.
Even if they didn't use the words, I've never met anybody who would make an argument of white supremacy.
I've never met that person.
Ever! And you know I would have, right?
I mean, I hang around with a lot of Republicans, etc.
I've just never met even one person who privately would have those opinions.
But let's say they exist. It doesn't make any sense to have pride in other people's accomplishments, because the whole point of the white supremacists is, you know, yay, white people invented a bunch of stuff, but not you.
Not you. You didn't invent anything.
People who share your pigmentation invented things, and you're taking credit for that?
Are you taking pride in what other people did?
How the hell does that work?
How about working on yourself?
Period. Don't take pride in what strangers did, for God's sakes.
That's the dumbest thing in the world.
Anyway, enough on that.
I'm just saying that we should probably acknowledge that we would be in a better place if we didn't try to take pride in things that we had nothing to do with.
Certainly, you should not feel guilty or bad for who you are, but you also had nothing to do with that.
It's not your fault, and it's also not something to be proud of.
It just is. You just happen to be whatever you are.
I just happen to be whatever I am.
Can't we be good with that?
I mean, I can give full respect to anybody, you know, as long as they're playing within the rules of society.
That should be enough.
Respect should be the thing, not pride.
All right. Alexander was tweeting yesterday that there are 340,000 Chinese students in the US. Did you know that?
340,000 active Chinese citizens who are students in the United States.
Now that's probably a good thing because it transports our culture and our capitalist beliefs and stuff.
Probably translates that over to China and maybe in the long run they have some value in keeping us from war and such.
But I put out the following suggestion, which again might be a bad idea, but one I hadn't heard before.
Why don't we ship home one Chinese student For every fentanyl overdose death.
Now, some of you say, wait, wait, you can't do that because then there would be no Chinese students left and we would lose the benefit of, you know, the cross-cultural exposure.
And I wouldn't want to lose that.
But here's the thing.
After we had shipped home the 50,000th 50,000th Chinese student, which would be 50,000 out of 340,000, after we'd shipped home 50,000 of them, how much fentanyl do you think they would ship us after that?
Well, the people who have the money and the connections to get to school in the United States, I have to think are the people who have a little more influence in China than the average person.
I have to think it's money people who can afford to send somebody over here.
My guess is that after we sent home 50,000 students, they would say, maybe we shouldn't send so much fentanyl to the United States.
And don't believe anything you hear about China's working on reducing the fentanyl.
They're not. They know the name of the person who's doing it.
There's one person who's in charge of the whole deal.
Apparently he's like the main fentanyl guy.
They know his name.
They know where he lives.
He's still alive.
As long as he's alive, they're not doing anything.
So anything else you hear...
It's nothing. It's just garbage.
Congressman Max Rose out of New York is sponsoring some legislation to put sanctions on Chinese pharmaceutical companies because of fentanyl.
I back that.
So if you want to follow somebody on...
Twitter, who's actually doing something useful, look for Max Rose.
I don't have his Twitter name, but he'll pop right up if you search Max Rose.
So he's my new favorite politician.
I'm hearing a lot of people say that it's irrelevant if we go after China because somebody else will make the fentanyl if they stop doing it.
And that it's really the responsibility of the person taking it.
And that we should just focus on personal responsibility.
The people saying that don't know anything about addiction.
They don't know anything about free will.
They don't know anything about how people work.
If you believe, and they don't know how to solve problems, if you believe that it's personal responsibility, end of story.
If you want to take fentanyl and die, go ahead and do it.
Then you don't understand how the brain works.
You don't understand how addiction works.
You don't understand how much of the world works.
But the most important thing, Is that you don't understand the solutions and causes don't have to be connected.
For example, there's a burglary and crime problem in this country, meaning that there are such things as people who rob your house.
Now, how do you deal with that?
Because the responsibility for the decision to rob your house is the robber.
Shouldn't they take personal responsibility and not rob your house?
Well, yes, they should.
Will they? No, they won't.
So does it help to know whose fault it is?
Not at all. It doesn't help you at all to know that the fault is the criminals, because they're not going to fix it.
Likewise, the addicts are going to have a tough time fixing it themselves.
So when you're worried about being robbed, you lock your door.
So you do something even though the personal responsibility is with the robber, but they're not going to change.
So you have to do what you can do.
Likewise, you need to push on the dealers and try to shut them down and try to execute them as the opportunities arise.
Because It might not change the situation, but it will certainly change how the situation is viewed.
It will certainly change how we think about it.
If you see bodies dropping of the dealers, you're going to think of fentanyl differently.
It will inform you, for example, just the higher visibility will tell people that the real fentanyl problem is not people deciding to take fentanyl.
A lot of it is people who think they're taking some other drug like Xanax, but it's actually a pill that's been pressed by a dealer, and it's got fentanyl in there and none of the active ingredients in Xanax.
That's how people are getting killed.
So you have to go after the pill pressers and execute them.
All right. So I'm seeing discussions in the news about, you know, Joe Biden's forgetfulness and ignoring of the facts and making up stories and stuff.
And then people, of course, are comparing that to President Trump getting his facts wrong and failing the fact-checking 11,000 times.
And they're saying, hey, is there something wrong with President Trump because of his age?
To which I say, I don't know that he's doing any more of it than he was doing before.
In other words, I don't know that President Trump is departing from the facts in a bigger way than he ever has before.
I don't know. Maybe.
We should keep an eye on it.
But they're all at that age.
Biden, Bernie, less so Warren, but Trump.
Well, I think we have to look at that.
I feel like that's a fair thing to look at.
And I want to suggest this idea.
If you're running for president and you're over a certain age, let's say the age is 70.
I'll just pick that as a random age.
If you're over the age of 70 and you're running for president, here's what I'd like to see.
I'd like you to tell me the three family members that you trust To validate that you still have your faculties.
So in other words, if you're running for president and you're over 70, I want you to name three people that the press have access to who are also close to you on a regular basis.
So if you're President Trump, you might say, okay, here's the thing.
Talk to Ivanka, talk to Jared, talk to Don Jr., whatever.
So whoever his three people are.
Could be family members.
And have the press have access to them so that they can ask, all right?
You're watching them. Do you think there's anything we need to worry about?
But also, those three should have direct access to the physician of the candidate so that they can give their personal opinion to the physician without it being public.
So I would like to see...
Now, you're saying to yourself, oh, yeah, but they're family members.
They're not going to say anything.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe they wouldn't say anything.
They might not say anything publicly.
But I'll bet you a family member would say something to the doctor.
Because if a family member sees the President of the United States doing things that see men of character, I think a family member is going to say, okay, I love my father.
But, you know, the country's at risk.
And I think you could count on family members to, of course, be biased in favor of their loved one, but they're the only ones who might know.
They might be the only ones who really are close enough to know.
So I feel like we need some kind of a system in which there's a known set of people watching the candidate over the age of 70, And that they can be queried on a regular basis and say, alright, have you seen anything?
Is there anything different? I don't know if that would help, but I'd like to throw out that as an idea.
Maybe somebody has a better idea.
So what I... I just wanted to say this about Biden.
Why is it that the Democrats have one primary complaint about Trump?
There's one thing that they say, well, it's not a primary complaint, but it's the one that's true.
The one complaint that they have about Trump that even his supporters would say, well, okay, that's true, is that he departs from the facts.
In other words, even if you're a Trump supporter, certainly you've noticed the 11,000 departures from the fact-checking.
Now you might say to yourself, okay, at least 2,000 of those are fake news, and he really did not depart in a real way from the facts.
That's probably true. So probably 2,000 of the 11,000 are not real, because that's the world we live in.
But that would still leave you 9,000 facts.
That he departed from.
Now, most of that's hyperbole and exaggeration and typical politicking.
But what's interesting is, if that was the biggest problem, and it's the one you hear the most, people say, he's a liar, he lies, President Trump can't stop lying.
If that was your biggest complaint, why the hell would you run Joe Biden against that?
You can't think of anybody who would be a worse matchup, can you?
Biden is literally famous for that flaw.
He's actually famous for just making stuff up.
Why would you run the one person who doesn't have an advantage in the category that's the one you care about the most?
It's exactly the wrong person.
Precisely the wrong person.
If you took 7 billion people on the planet Earth and said to yourself, who would be the worst person To run against Trump if what you care about are the lies.
Who's the worst?
It would be Joe Biden.
You can't think of anybody who is more famous for lying.
So, I think you have to ask yourself, who's making the decisions over there?
I doubt there's anybody on the Democrat side who actually wants him to get the nomination.
Including maybe people on his team.
I have this feeling, and again, I have no facts to back this up, so this is just speculation.
My speculation is that even the people who work for Biden on the campaign at this point are hoping he doesn't get the nomination.
I feel like that's the case.
That there's probably nobody even close to him who wants him to get it at this point.
All right. Yeah, Obama's not even coming out for him.
Biden is there to provide cover for worse candidates?
Somebody's saying. I don't know.
I don't know.
You know, the interesting thing about a second term of Trump is that when Trump was originally running for president, we had We had worries of things he might do.
And the entire attack against President Trump, or candidate Trump, the entire attack fell in the category of things we worry that he would do.
Well, we worry he will round people up and put them in concentration camps.
We worry that he will deport 14 million people.
We worry that he'll do this or that, start a nuclear war.
But now, by the time the election rolls around, we will have had four years of really getting to know what he is likely to do and not likely to do.
And it doesn't look anything like what people expected.
Now, they're going to twist it and say, oh, but we knew he would create these concentration camps, and sure enough, he's putting children in cages, just like we told you would happen.
Really? It's the same cages Obama was using.
Literally, Obama built them.
I'm not sure that matters.
People will still use it if they can.
So the slaughter meter is at 100% right now.
So there's nobody in the race who could beat Trump.
And I don't even know at this point if anybody on the Democrat side thinks they can win, which is interesting because the polls show so clearly that everybody could beat them.
But does anybody believe those polls?
Do you believe those polls?
Yeah, so I think the first election, 2016, was about what people imagined Trump would do.
The re-election campaign is going to be based on what they imagined he did.
Think about that.
The first election was people imagining what he would do if he got elected.
And now we have four years of hoaxes, and so the re-election campaign is already focusing on the things that people imagined he did that he didn't do, like the fine people hoax.
Right? They're putting children in cages, you know, they imagine that there was some option to that, or they imagine that Obama didn't do it.
It's an entire imaginary scenario of, well, we imagined he said this, and we imagined he called people shitholes, even though it didn't happen.
We imagined that he said this that didn't happen.
so it's an entire imagination based campaign.
Um, isn't that always the case for every reelection campaign ever?
You know, it's a fair question, but I don't know if we've had this much imagination about what actually happened.
I think we've had more difference of agreement.
You know, the more common re-election is, you know, you change the tax rate and look what happened.
That's not imagination.
Or you attack this country and look how it turned out.
That's not really imagination. But this election is almost entirely imagination-based.
Oh, let me tell you about something that is kind of exciting in terms of understanding the future.
I ran into a startup, they've been around for a few years, called Teachable.
So you can find them at teachable, just like it sounds.
And they allow people to use their tools to create a class.
So I'm usually on one topic.
So one topic class, you can put it on their website and you can set your own price and then people buy it and download it online.
Now what's interesting about them is that they're already making tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
So it's a serious company with serious revenue.
They've been at it several years.
And the quality of the courses is really high.
Because, for an obvious reason, they just announced that one of their creators, in other words, one person, or it might have been a team, created one class content that made $550,000 in one day.
Let that sink in.
There was one creator who made one class, I don't even know what the topic was, doesn't matter, made one topic class, They made over half a million dollars in one day.
One day. Now, When you hear that, how many people heard that and said to themselves, uh, I think maybe I'll try making a class.
But it's not easy.
You know, it's not like you can just say, uh, I think I'll put a PowerPoint together.
Because they've raised the bar about what would look like a proper class.
Partly because you use their tools, so it sort of guarantees you have a good format and stuff.
But once you reach a point where you can make that much money by selling content online, what is the big change?
The big change is who it attracts.
Because Hollywood is going to start noticing.
If I said to you, hey, guys, I'm going to start an online school and you can add content to it, you'd say, hey, that's great.
I could make maybe a few thousand dollars.
And I would attract people like you and people like me who could put together a little class with a PowerPoint thing, and we'd try to sell it for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars.
But that wouldn't be a change the world kind of a situation.
But suddenly you hear that one creator made half a million dollars in one day.
Now, I'm sure that that creator put a lot of work, probably a lot of money, into creating that class content.
It probably was quite impressive.
I don't think it's PowerPoint exactly, but it's some kind of presentation format.
And suddenly, don't you think people in Hollywood just said, uh, what?
Are you telling me that I could pull together a team, get a content person, a presenter, somebody to do the graphics, and we'll really just kill this thing?
We'll figure out what's the most valuable class that people would buy, and we'll make some content, and we'll make a half a million dollars in a day.
Because that's what's going to happen.
You're right on the cusp of the big teams, the corporate entities saying, uh-oh, this is where the money is.
I'm going to stop making movies.
I'm going to start making class content.
And the next thing you need, which I think will come naturally, is accreditation.
I believe that you'll see something like Teachable or some other company in that business who eventually puts together enough classes that they can create a college major.
The first major I'd like to see is something I would call life strategy.
I've said this before, but it's worth reiterating.
I would like to see the federal government create a set of requirements for types of classes That you could take online and you would learn life strategies.
Now, life strategies would be everything from you'd learn about persuasion, public speaking, how to be a good communicator, how to write well.
Maybe you'd learn Spanish if you live in California.
So maybe you'd learn how to program a website, etc.
So I'm talking about skills that you can really use in the workplace, but that they affect your life as well.
So if somebody went to, got a major in life strategies, they would be fairly qualified for a lot of different jobs that they would have to be trained for specifically.
But that's the current situation.
So I would like to see the federal government accredit a series of classes that they call a life major or life strategies major and make that a thing so that you could go to college for a few hundred dollars by just downloading content.
That's going to happen. It's going to happen.
So look for that. All right.
That's about all I got. It's a Sunday.
It's a holiday. And you want to go do other things.
I know you do. So let's go do other things.
Somebody says, why does the government need to be involved?
That's a fair question.
So I don't know enough about this topic, but who is it who does accreditation for colleges?
So the problem is you need some entity that everybody trusts, at least trusts enough, you know, nobody trusts the government entirely, but trusts enough to say that if the government says anybody who takes this set of courses gets a BA in life strategy.
That would probably be enough that corporations would say, all right, well, you've got a BA in life strategy.
The federal government said that's the thing.
And I'm looking at the courses, and hell yes, I would like to hire somebody who would study this set of courses, because they're going to be pretty powerful.
So, all right, we'll get rid of this, Joel.
Goodbye, Joel. Somebody says, I don't think accrediting organizations are a government strategy.
You might be right. But whoever does the accreditation, if they don't want to do it, the federal government could.
There's nothing stopping them from doing it.
They could certainly do it if they wanted to.
And indeed, if the government doesn't want to do it, I would do it.
So if somebody wanted to create an online set of courses that they wanted to call Life Strategy, I would be willing to endorse it if it were a bag of classes I thought were good.
Yeah, Warren Buffet could endorse a set of classes.
Bill Gates could endorse a set of classes.
Elon Musk. Wouldn't you take...
If Elon Musk said, I would hire somebody who took this set of courses, wouldn't you take that seriously?
Now, of course, in the technical world, he needs people who are engineers and have technical courses, but even Tesla must be hiring a lot of people for non-technical jobs.
If Elon Musk said, anybody who takes this set of courses, we will take seriously at Tesla, that would mean a lot.
That would mean a lot.
All right. That's all I got for now.
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