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Sept. 3, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
34:48
Episode 650 Scott Adams: China, Hurricanes and More
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Hey everybody!
Hey Jake, come on in here.
Kevin, good to see you.
Donna, grab a seat.
Kevhefi2020, always a pleasure.
Todd, Brian, Duke, Andy, I see you all.
And you know why you're here.
And I know why you're here.
It's because you like the simultaneous sip, and it doesn't take much to do it.
All it takes is a cup or a mug or a glass of stein, a chalice, a tank or a thermos, a flask, a canteen, a vessel.
Run! Run! Grab something.
Put a liquid in it.
I like coffee. And if you're ready, you can join me for the simultaneous sip.
It gets your dopamine going.
It's the part that makes your whole day better.
Everything's better after the simultaneous sip.
Go! Let me say this about the Hurricane Dorian.
If, if I say, if you're a person who is hoping Hurricane Dorian would wipe out Mar-a-Lago because you think it would be awesome, you're a bad person.
That's all. That's all I'm going to say.
If you're disappointed that Mar-a-Lago is not going to get destroyed by Dorian, You're a bad person.
Let me give you an update on fentanyl China.
As you know, China is the number one, by far, number one exporter of fentanyl to this country, generally through Mexico.
Now, we have some competing information on this story.
You will decide what is true and what is not.
So a Border Patrol official testified that the flow of deadly fentanyl from China has dropped precipitously.
That sounds good, right?
So the flow of deadly fentanyl from China has dropped a lot.
Do you believe that?
What does that mean when we just captured enough fentanyl from China in Virginia, I think it was, that would be enough to kill 14 million people?
And what about the, what was it, 25 tons of fentanyl that we just caught off the coast of Mexico?
That was from China.
Are we counting those two gigantic shipments that we caught As part of this precipitous decline in shipments, I have some questions.
I don't believe it.
So here's something else.
So President Xi said that he would do something to stop the fentanyl trade.
He said he would make it illegal, make it a capital offense.
And apparently there's some activity along those lines.
So Lu Yuzhin, a narcotics commissioner, vice commissioner, a narcotics commission's vice commissioner, so this is an official from China, told reporters that in May, China began regulating all fentanyl-related drugs as a class of controlled substances.
So, I don't know if that's enough.
Does it count that they changed the law to take care of all the analogs, the things that are like fentanyl but just slightly different so that before they used to be legal because they were slightly different and now they're illegal.
Is that enough? And Lu, Chinese officials, noted that fentanyl deaths continue to rise despite increasingly strict controls on the Chinese side.
Well, is that true? Are there increasingly strict controls?
And Liu said that no fentanyl smuggling cases have been discovered between the US and China since the new measures were implemented.
What? And as the article notes, this was on CNN, I believe, that, like I said, officials in Virginia just found a whole bunch of it.
That they captured from China.
So it sounds as though China is pretending to do something but not doing something.
They're probably just shipping it through third countries.
So in other words, if they say, oh yeah, the shipments from China to the United States are way down.
They might be.
They might be way down.
But they're way up if you count the stuff they shipped to Mexico that Mexico ships here.
But here's the canary in the coal mine.
You should ignore everything that's said on this topic until this one person, I think his name is Zhang, is dead.
Yeah, Jian Zhang.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right.
Z-H-A-N-G. He's the biggest fentanyl dealer in China.
We know his name.
The United States has named him as the guy.
And as far as I know, he's still alive.
If he's still alive, the biggest fentanyl dealer in China, they're not doing anything.
I want to see a story, a reliable story, that says that that guy, by name, is dead.
He's been executed.
Because if it's true that they've changed the laws to make it a capital offense, And that's not clear.
It's not clear that they've changed it that much.
Then that guy should be dead by now.
China works fast. So I'm on record as saying that we are pushing on China, meaning the United States, the Trump administration, and they should.
They are tying it to trade negotiations, and they should.
China is embarrassed enough that they're doing something about it, or pretending to, and they should, but it's all meaningless.
It's all meaningless until that one guy is dead.
Because until he's dead, it's obvious they're not really doing anything.
It's obvious that it's just more China making promises they're not keeping.
Speaking of promises they're not keeping, let's talk about Hong Kong.
I have two predictions about Hong Kong.
Number one, China can't lose in the long run.
They might have to pull back.
They might pretend they're pulling back.
But remember, it's a long game.
And China has all the power and the influence.
Eventually, they'll do whatever they need to do to get full control of Hong Kong.
I don't think there's any chance that won't happen.
But here's the second part of the prediction.
They're going to be sorry they won.
If China had simply said, OK, Hong Kong, you can do your thing over there.
We'll do our thing as long as it doesn't cause us any trouble.
We're all good. If they had done that, they could probably just keep taking along like they always had and things would be fine.
But once they absorb Hong Kong and the Chinese people see this story and they see what it's done, they will have weaponized however many, what, millions of people against their own country.
So, Hong Kong is going to eat them from the insides.
I think that their system is in a lot of peril now, because once they do get control of Hong Kong, and they will, it might be in a year, it might be in a day, it might be in 25 years.
But they will. Eventually they will.
They just have too much power and influence for that not to happen eventually.
But it's going to take them out.
It's going to change their system.
They're going to choke down Hong Kong and it's going to kill them over time because it's going to change the psychology within the country in a way that you can't put that back in the bottle.
All right. Outrage theater of the day.
You know, I like to show one outrage a day.
Here's the outrage of the day from Eric Swalwell, Representative Swalwell, my representative.
He says in a tweet, If Trump golfing stopped hurricanes and mass shooting, we'd never see you there again.
But we've been wracked by both this weekend.
So put the clubs away and do your damn job.
You can't be golfing during a hurricane.
Don't golf during a hurricane.
You're golfing and there's a hurricane.
I'm outraged. But you're not.
Of course you're not.
Because what does Swalwell think President Trump was supposed to be doing instead of golfing?
Because I'm pretty sure that he told FEMA to do what he's going to do.
I'm pretty sure that the government is all lined up to do whatever it needs to do.
What exactly was the president supposed to be doing on the weekend waiting for the hurricane?
Because I don't think he could have flapped his arms and made it go away.
So this fake outrage that somebody taking the weekend off, no matter how often he does it, I'm pretty sure taking the weekend off is a good thing, not a bad thing.
So, there's that.
There's a report... That is weirdly not on CNN or Fox News, but I saw it in a lesser site.
They said after 18 years of war, the U.S. and the Taliban have agreed on some kind of peace deal where we would remove, I don't know, some percentage of forces there.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that the Taliban and the United States have a peace deal and it might work?
Well, I don't know. I mean, I'd love to think it is going to happen, but until the major sites or new sites are reporting this as a real thing, I don't know.
I'm going to be skeptical on that, but we're moving in the right direction.
There's an interesting thing happening with nuclear power.
California, I just tweeted around an article by Michael Schellenberger, and it talks about how California might have to go Nuclear, or at least keep open some nuclear sites that might have otherwise closed, because otherwise they just can't get to where they need to get.
There's no other way to get there.
Renewables won't do it.
And I was looking at the landscape now, and apparently, according to this article also, a recent Gallup poll shows that support for nuclear energy is inching up.
In other words, nuclear energy, which has always been unpopular, just sort of hit the bottom and it's inching up.
Could it be? Could it be all of the persuasion that's happening on this?
Because there are certainly a lot of people talking about it.
But here's the landscape.
I believe Bernie Sanders says no to nuclear.
I believe he says moratorium, meaning don't build any new ones.
Fact check me on that, but I think Bernie is anti-nuclear power.
Interestingly, though, AOC, the most famous architect of the Green New Deal, is open to it.
She doesn't say yes and she doesn't say no.
And it's yet another example of why she's way smarter than most of her critics believe she is.
She's way smarter than you think she is.
Because nuclear is, scientifically speaking, Kind of the only thing you could do if you're really concerned about climate change.
Now, it's not the only thing you can do, but it's the only thing that's going to be big enough and that's going to be scaled enough to make a difference.
So now you have Yang, who's openly and vocally in favor of nuclear energy.
You've got AOC, who's vocally...
And publicly in favor of at least, you know, having the conversation as she says it.
Now keep in mind, there's no chance that AOC would say she's open to the conversation about nuclear, unless she already liked it, right?
Say you're open to the conversation is pacing her base.
She can't just say, hey, nuclear all the way.
But the fact that she says she's open to it tells me with, I'd say, 95% certainty that she's looked into it and she knows we need it.
So I'm going to say that AOC being on the side of nuclear, even though she says she's only open to the conversation, I believe that's a clear indication that she's leading her followers first by pacing them and saying, "Well, we could have the conversation." There's nothing wrong with talking, is there?
So then people say, well, all right, we'll talk about it.
Maybe there's something new.
And there is something new, which is it used to be a lot more dangerous than it is now.
That's new. So, between Yang and AOC being on that side, and also Biden.
Biden is pro-nuclear.
He's not making the biggest deal in the world about it, but he's publicly and solidly pro-nuclear as part of the solution.
And of course the Trump administration is pro-nuclear and the energy department is doing things to try to stimulate development of new plants.
So here's what I think just happened.
I think public opinion just turned a corner.
Because, you know, it's hard to...
To pick out a turning point when you're in it, usually it's more obvious, you know, if you're looking at the history.
If you look at the far history, you can tell where all the turning points happened because, you know, you can just graph them.
But I think we just reached, and I mean just as in 2019, a turning point.
Where there's something like, well, there's a majority of the Republicans are already pro-nuclear, and the most important voices, or at least the ones considered the youngest scientific rational voices, AOC and Yang, and even Biden, are pro-nuclear.
So I feel as though we've turned a corner.
And that something important is going to happen with nuclear and probably pretty soon.
So, there's that.
Let's talk about gun control.
I've heard it said that The United States is really two countries.
Depending on how you want to slice things, it could be lots of different countries in one.
But in the gun control sense, there are big swaths of the country where they're pro-gun.
There are parts of the country where they're more anti-gun.
And how do you have one set of policies that apply to everybody?
When some are pro and they probably would be better off with guns and some are anti and maybe they'd be worse off with guns.
So what do you do? Here's what I would do.
Here's my proposal for gun regulation.
Are you ready? I think the federal government should draw up a number of proposals that are complete.
So a number of proposals on gun control that are complete proposals that the federal government then does nothing with.
So I'm not asking the federal government to pass any laws.
None. Zero laws.
I'm asking the federal government to create some standardized suggested laws for the states.
And what makes it more powerful is that they would be complete laws.
In other words, smart people would look into it and they'd say, all right, background checks.
What's the smartest thing we can do with background checks?
Maybe it includes doing something with the gun shows and having background checks there.
Apparently, 90% of the country is in favor of that.
But what if there's a state that's not?
What if there's a state that doesn't want to do that?
Why not give them the option?
Why not have the federal government come up with a set of standardized state-friendly regulations that can be approved by any state or not approved by any state?
And then just see how it goes.
Now, I know what you're saying.
The motivated people will drive across the state border to do whatever they're going to do.
Yeah. But I think we would be able to pick up on that over time.
In other words, we could interview criminals and mass killers and say, where'd you get your gun?
We can usually figure it out.
And we would find out if the only thing that happened is that nothing happened.
People just went across the state line and nothing changed.
That might happen.
But generally speaking, whenever you introduce friction, people do change behavior.
So I would expect that anything with friction would change behavior.
So, I would take the federal government out of the business of passing laws because they can't.
Apparently, our federal government is not capable of passing laws about guns because of the politics, the NRA, etc.
But they're certainly capable of putting together a set of standardized suggested policies and Different states would adopt different ones of them and maybe tweak them a little bit, but you'd have a standardized set of smart things to do.
And then you would be using your states as the laboratories of democracy as they were intended.
The states, far more capable of passing laws, would say, all right, we passed this one.
This other state on the other side of the country did not pass it.
Let's see how we do.
Let's see if this new law makes us have fewer problems over the next five years compared to the other states.
Now, if you do this, you have a system which everybody can love.
Yeah, it's a system instead of a goal.
And, of course, there's no end to how much you could keep improving these little suggested changes.
But I think states should get every opportunity to vote on a set of restrictions for themselves.
And other states may say, we don't need it.
Now here's another thing that I was looking at on gun control.
I didn't realize that almost half of See, half of people or half of gun owners?
I'm not sure. But there's a lot of support for a mandatory buyback of all assault weapons.
When I say a lot of support, something like half the country supports that.
Now, that's not nearly enough to make something happen.
And probably the majority of you on this Periscope are saying, good, we don't want it to happen.
We don't want some irrational buyback of AR-15s just because they look scary.
So I get that.
But how about this?
Would you be in favor of, instead of a buyback, just changing the laws about who can own one?
So I made some off the top of my head suggestions the other day.
Suppose you said you can get an AR-15 if you have experience in the military or law enforcement, so you already have some credentials as a person who can handle a gun.
And maybe secondly, if you already have been a gun owner for a while, one more gun probably isn't going to make a difference because you already own a bunch of guns.
So maybe that's an exception.
And maybe over 50.
Yeah, veterans, etc.
Maybe if you're over 50, maybe no restrictions, because people over 50 don't tend to be big criminals.
But, and suppose you're a woman.
If you're a woman who wants to buy a weapon, I would say that should be okay too, because there's no history of women being big shooters.
Somebody says, oh my God, Scott is totally drinking the Kool-Aid.
If you're saying that, you're not understanding what I'm saying.
You should understand me to say that there are a variety of things people have suggested, and there are a variety of states that could test it.
What I'm not suggesting is that everybody have their guns taken away.
I'm very pro-Second Amendment, and I do look at Hong Kong like the rest of you.
The Hong Kong situation just couldn't happen here.
Imagine all those people who are marching in Hong Kong.
Now you move that to the United States.
And it's a life or death question for your republic.
How many of those people would be armed to the teeth?
Quite a few. You would have a lot of weapons come out in this country if the republic were actually at risk.
A lot of weapons would come out, and it would make a difference.
It would absolutely make a difference.
So I'm pro-gun for all the same reasons most of you are, but I don't believe the slippery slope.
I don't believe that we just start going in some direction and we can't change anything.
Almost everything that we do in this country that's dangerous has regulations.
It doesn't kill us.
I put my seatbelt on every day.
It doesn't make me unhappy.
I have safety features in my car.
It doesn't make me unhappy. Children can't buy cigarettes.
That doesn't make me unhappy.
We already have lots of regulations, and they mostly work.
Mostly. So I don't mind them on guns.
If you're an absolutist on guns because of the Constitution...
I would say that's not really a supportable position, to be an absolutist on guns.
It's not supportable either way.
It's not supportable to be absolutely in favor of no restrictions, and it is not supportable to have them all taken away.
All right. So that's where I stand.
I think we should do a better job of slicing and dicing the public.
And let's just be honest.
It's men under the age of 50 who are doing all the gun violence.
So why should they be treated the same as everybody else?
Let's discriminate. Let's discriminate against young men who don't have training, they're not part of the NRA, don't already own guns, haven't been in the military, have not been in law enforcement.
So I would make lots of exceptions.
Lots of exceptions.
But if you're just a loner who wants to buy your first gun and it's an AR-15 and you're not a member of the NRA, you've not been in the military, you've never been in law enforcement, that's not good enough for me.
Now, we already have, what, 10 or 20 million AR-type weapons in the country.
I'm pretty sure we have enough already that if the government wanted to make a play, we could pass them out.
We'd have all the guns we needed.
So I'm not too worried about that.
All right. In fact, if everybody is...
You know, if the women all bought the guns, they wouldn't necessarily have to do the fighting because if we had a revolution in this country, you know, the guys would end up with the guns whether the women were the ones that licensed them in the first place or not.
All right. Somebody made a great suggestion for my interface by WinHub app.
Listen to this suggestion.
So most of you know the app my startup makes lets you contact any kind of expert on any topic whatsoever.
But you have to be an expert and you can set your price for anything you want.
So right now there are...
I'm checking out how many people are hurricane watchers.
So I've got one, two, three, four, five...
So there are five people on the app right now, on the interface by WinHub app, who are in Florida, and you could call them and they could point their camera out the window and they could show you what the weather looks like as the hurricane's approaching.
Probably not too fascinating at the moment because the hurricane's stalled, but it's out there.
But here's a better idea than somebody had.
Somebody suggested, what if you have people just register on the app as either Democrats or Republicans, And they make themselves available to debate.
Just to debate. They're not experts.
They're just a Democrat or they're just a Republican or whatever.
And they just say, available to debate.
They don't even have to put a price on it.
You could do it for free. Say your price is zero.
Because here's what I found out.
There are so many people who want to discuss politics but can't.
Right? How many people do you know who want to discuss politics with somebody who's not a troll on Twitter and you just want to have an honest discussion with somebody who's completely on the other page?
When was the last time you've had that discussion?
I don't even remember.
I can't even remember The last time I had an honest political discussion with somebody who was completely on the other side.
Literally, I can't remember ever.
I mean, I'm sure I've done it, but I don't remember the last time.
And it's because you end up talking to people who agree with you.
Or because things are so polarized, you end up not having the conversation.
So if I happen to find myself alone in a room with somebody who agrees with me, we'll have a conversation about politics, but it's useless because we already agree.
If I'm in a room with somebody who's got an impeach Trump hat on, I'm not even going to start the conversation, right?
Because you don't want an unpleasant situation.
But there are plenty of people in this country who would simply like to have an honest conversation with somebody who's completely on the other side.
Somebody who will actually engage with you and enjoys being there.
And I thought, that's actually a great idea for the app.
So if anybody wants to sign up as an anti-Trumper or a pro-Trumper or a Democrat, a conservative, a liberal, whatever you want to sign up with, just say that you're there to debate.
See if anybody calls you up to debate.
I'd be surprised if people don't use that for that purpose.
Because I often find myself wanting to know What a typical Democrat is thinking because you can't really tell online because everybody lies and trolls and you don't really know what you're getting online.
But if you're actually looking at a person on a video call, how about a little bit of cross-pollinization?
It's scary, somebody says.
There should be a mediator.
No, I don't think so.
Because if somebody lists themselves as available to have the conversation, they're already incentivized to be nice about it.
I mean, I don't think trolls are going to go on there just to be obnoxious.
If you debated them, what can they say except you are a racist?
Well, if they do say that, then you say, and I recommend this in my book, Loser Think, and I say it online a lot, you should say, can you give me your one strongest piece of evidence that the president is a racist?
And before they do, you say, and can we agree?
That if your number one best reason isn't real, that you would rethink the other ones.
Because they might not be real either.
Because usually they'll come up with whatever their top thing is, and it's usually not real.
So I just say, doxing rules...
Somebody's talking about doxing rules, and I don't know what that's about.
Within the app, you don't have to give your identity away or your contact information.
So you can have a conversation on the app.
Well, actually, you should give away your identity, your name, but not your contact information.
You don't need to do that.
We do that behind the scenes.
So we connect you, but you don't know how to connect with each other unless you tell each other.
Can you rate the experts?
Yes, you can. You can rate the experts.
Ted Cruz said he'd be happy to talk with AOC. She said, yeah, we can livestream so people can hear your BS. Did that really happen?
AOC and Ted Cruz talking about actually livestreaming a debate.
I would love to see that!
I would love to see Ted Cruz and AOC have a debate, as long as there was no time limit.
If they could just livestream that thing and just chat it up, oh my god!
In fact, they could do it. Let me make a better idea.
They could pay-per-view that thing for charity.
AOC and Ted Cruz could have a livestream debate in which you have to pay something to watch it.
And donate that to charity, like, let's say, a veterans charity or wherever makes sense.
Or maybe helping. How about donate it to helping the families on the border?
How about that? How about a pay-per-view debate between Ted Cruz and AOC and the proceeds of that go to help families and children at the border who are in a bad situation?
Who could say no to that?
Now here's the reason that I love this idea.
Ted Cruz, whatever you think of him as presidential material, he's one hell of a good debater.
Have you ever seen him doing his congressional stuff where he's interviewing somebody in public?
I think he's one of the top three Republicans who can do that sort of stuff.
He's really good at that.
AOC, also amazing at her public communication skills.
Now, which of them has a better grasp of the facts?
I don't know.
Because I'll bet they both have a pretty good grasp of the facts that are relevant to their side anyway.
So I can't think of something I would rather watch.
You could make it one topic or multiple topics.
I would prefer that they did it with, let's say, pick three topics.
Let's say immigration, gun control, climate change.
I think it's better if you limit it to something so that they don't just talk forever.
AOC would say, no, she's trying to stop a bed for a children's detention center.
Well, whatever it is, I'm sure that they need more money to make people's lives more comfortable at the border.
I'd be in favor of that.
So let's do it.
And by the way, I think Ted Cruz and AOC could be friends.
I think she could actually be friends.
Now, those of you who are anti-AOC, I hear you.
I hear what you're saying.
I'm just saying that you're wrong.
Cruz is a Mensa member?
Is that true? I wouldn't be surprised.
He seems like he's immense of quality.
Joe Rogan as moderator.
here.
Yeah. Could be, but you know what?
I think they wouldn't even need a moderator.
You could do it without a moderator so long as they both agreed to let the other one have some time to talk.
And I don't think they would go into it thinking that they were just going to shout over the other one.
I mean, I imagine that they would both be smart enough to know there's no point in doing it unless you're really going to let the other one talk.
If there's no time limit, you can let the other one talk, make your notes, address all their points when they're done.
I don't know that they need a moderator other than maybe an introduction.
I'd be happy to do it myself.
Although Joe Rogan wouldn't be better.
All right. That's all for now.
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