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Nov. 28, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
51:44
Episode 740 Scott Adams: Loserthink Opinions in the News, War With Cartels, Thankfulness
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Hey everybody!
Happy Thanksgiving if you happen to be an American, and if you don't happen to be an American, happy Thanksgiving anyway, because it turns out you can be thankful no matter where you live.
Doesn't matter, today's the day.
But, while we're thinking about all the things we're thankful for...
One of them is that you get coffee with Scott Adams even on holidays.
Think about it. No commercial breaks.
Free. Holidays.
Every single day. Coffee.
Really, what's better?
Nothing. Nothing.
And all you need to participate, I think some of you know, but if you're new here, these are your instructions to participate in the simultaneous sip.
Oh, it's good. It's good.
If you haven't tried it yet, you're in for a surprise.
And all you need is a cupper, mugger, glasses, snifter, stein, chalice, tanker, thermos, flash, canteen, grail, goblet, vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, the simultaneous sip.
Go! I am so thankful for coffee and for all of you.
You know, I say that quite sincerely.
I am very, very thankful for all of you because I enjoy spending my mornings with you.
Probably more than you enjoy being spent with.
So, there's that.
Let's talk about some fun things in the news, hey?
How about that?
So apparently there was a lockdown at the White House because of an unidentified blob that was flying toward it.
That's right. There was an unidentified blob in the air that was picked up on radar...
And they were like, we don't know what this is, but we better shut down the White House.
Now they think it was birds.
So it might have been a flock of birds flying in a tight formation.
But, what do you think they thought it was?
They probably thought it was a drone attack with lots of drones.
Probably. Because, sooner or later, There's going to be a drone attack in this country that will not be that different from the multiple drone attack on the Ramco oil refinery in Saudi Arabia.
There will be lots of small, simultaneous drones attacking targets.
Now, I don't know if it will be the White House or something else, but how in the world would you stop a whole bunch of drones coming from different directions?
What kind of defense Even electronic defense couldn't get them all, could it?
Maybe it could. Well, let's hope it could.
So, as you know, President Trump is working on designating the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
Now, I'm told that that mostly means...
Messing with the banking and finance.
So that we could now, once that designation is in place, assuming it does get finalized, once that designation is in place, the United States can go after banks and anybody who deals with the cartels.
Now, people who are smarter than I am have said, if you start a war with the cartels, they're going to fight back, and they're going to fight back in this country.
Will they? I don't know.
It's really hard to imagine that we know what cartel people are thinking.
One thing I don't understand about the cartels Would it ever be possible to do a peace deal with the cartels?
Could you negotiate peace in which we don't kill them and they stop sending drugs?
Now, your first impression might be, well, even if they stopped, somebody else would do it.
That's probably true.
But suppose we made a peace deal in which the cartels agreed not to send any more drugs.
We agreed not to kill them all, because we can.
And then we paid the cartels to stop anybody else from sending drugs.
Could you bribe the cartels?
Just to work for us. Because they already got guns and they know where everything is, they know what everybody's doing, and they control territory.
Could we just say, look, we'll give you two choices.
You can keep all the money that you've made already.
You can keep all that money, and you can work for us.
We'll even pay you every year to make sure that immigration and drugs coming across the border are lessened.
Would that work? Now, anybody who says...
You could never deal with the cartels.
Well, you're probably right. Probably.
I'm just asking the question.
I don't think anybody's ever tried.
Now, one of the things I also wonder about is if you're the head of the cartel, you're wonderfully rich and you never have to work again.
But they keep working.
What's up with that? What is it that causes the heads of the cartel, who have already made their billion dollars or whatever, But the more that they continue to work, the more likely they'll be killed or jailed.
What makes them keep working?
I kind of wonder about that.
I mean, that's an honest question. Why don't they say, I got my billion, I'm going to go retire?
Well, probably because if they retire, they think they won't have the power to protect themselves or somebody else will take over and then kill them and take their money.
It must be some kind of fear.
But is there any way to fix that?
Could we say to the heads of the cartel, if you retire, we'll make sure you're protected somehow?
I don't know. I'm just saying that dealing with it in the way we've always dealt with it hasn't worked.
Same with North Korea.
The way we dealt with North Korea in the past hasn't worked.
Could we actually negotiate with the heads of the cartel?
Well, your first impression might be no, you don't negotiate with people that bad.
But it might work.
So these are just questions.
I just don't know what the options are with the cartels.
But I would say this.
It does seem to me that if there were war with the cartels, that they would fight back and that they would fight back in this country.
And you'd probably see stuff start exploding in this country and mass killings and stuff for them trying to get us to back off.
So if we anticipate that's going to happen, what would you do in that case?
I think the only thing you would do is you would wait for it to happen once, because you probably have to have it happen once.
Something blows up in this country, and then we unleash the dogs of war.
I think, based on what's happened so far, it's all been happening in Mexico, except for the drug deaths in this country, I think if they ever...
Let's say the cartels responded and they blew up something in the United States.
I think the only course of action would be full out 100% war to eradicate every last one of them.
You know, ISIS style?
I don't imagine that we would just do tit for tat.
Do you? Because it wouldn't be a good strategy.
Anything short of complete eradication Would be a waste of time, because there would still be enough people to poke us and sell drugs.
But I also wonder if one way to take them down isn't to just legalize drugs.
Do you know, does anybody know, why the administration doesn't at least have that conversation?
You know, I hate it when people use that word, you know, we have to have a national conversation, because it doesn't mean anything.
But, has the Trump administration ever said even yes or no, just a yes or no, to the question of legalizing the harder drugs?
Right? Shouldn't we get a yes or no?
Has anybody ever said, Trump administration, would you consider this?
Would you even consider it?
Research it? Do a small trial, if that makes sense?
Would you ever consider it?
Has anybody even asked that question?
Why isn't that the most obvious question to answer?
All right. So, I think the press has let us down.
But not at least making that a topic.
Why are we talking about maybe militarily attacking cartels in Mexico?
We're actually talking about that.
It's in the news. But we're not talking about, we're not even talking about the only thing that anybody thinks could work.
Think about that.
As far as I know, there's exactly one proposal that has ever been floated.
The smart people think could and probably would work.
And we don't even talk about it at the government level.
It's just not even talked about.
What's up with that?
Right? What's up with the fact that there's only one known solution, smart people back it, and we don't even put it on the table?
Seriously, what's wrong?
Why? Why is that happening?
So, it could be that maybe it's not such a great idea, but I'd certainly like to see the counterpoint to it.
Could be that if you try it locally, you'll find out, so maybe try it locally.
See what happens. Trying it locally wouldn't do anything to stop the cartels, because it would be too small.
But we could find out what it does to the users.
We could find out what's the impact in, say, one city.
Of just legalizing all the drugs and putting more emphasis, taking the money from criminal prosecution, moving into treatment, making sure that the drugs are clean and not the kind that they don't know what they're getting so they die of overdose.
Just try it. Now let me tell you this.
Let me put it as clearly as I possibly can.
You've often seen me say It bugs me when my critics come in and say, you just agree with the president and whatever the president does.
You just agree because you're just an apologist.
Well, here's a perfect example.
Can we say that the Trump administration is doing even the minimum right job, just the minimum, Good job on drugs if they're not actively at least looking at a trial, just a trial, someplace small, could be a city, to legalize everything.
If you're not even testing that, or if you're not even at least floating the idea of testing that, could it be said that you're doing your job?
Could it be said? Could you honestly say, let's say, if you're the boss of the president and you're giving him his annual performance review, you say, well, President Trump, it's time for your annual performance review.
We've got this massive drug overdose problem, crime coming across the border, etc., Have you done the first minimum smallest thing that we know we should do, which is a small trial somewhere in the United States where we can find out if legalization makes things better or worse?
Because you can always reverse it.
If it's just one city, try it for a year or two, see what happens, reverse it if it didn't work out.
If you're not proposing that, forget about even whether it's going to work.
It's the obvious thing to try.
It's the most obvious thing.
It's completely practical, because you could easily get some local city or county to say yes to it.
If you're not proposing that, are you doing the minimum it would require for we, the public, the people who elect these people, to say, yes, you're addressing the problem?
I say no.
I say no and unambiguously no.
No completely. No, with no caveats.
The Trump administration is not doing the minimum, the minimum that you would need to do to be seen as even taking it seriously.
Not even the minimum.
Now, if you hear someday that the federal government said, yeah, we would back that if there's some state that wants to try it.
It has to be small, it has to be limited, but we would back it as a test.
If you hear that, Then you've heard your government do the best it could do on this.
Alright? But don't kid yourself.
The Trump administration is in complete failure mode on this topic.
Complete failure mode.
Now, do I like the fact that we're pushing China to crack down on fentanyl?
Yes. Do I like the fact that the cartels might be designated terrorist organizations?
Yes. Do I like the fact that we're tightening border security in part because it would reduce the amount of drugs coming in?
Yes! I love all of that.
Do all of those put together Just all of it together, does it reach the minimum to say that the government is competent?
No, it doesn't.
Because all of those put together aren't going to change the amount of fentanyl we have.
It's not going to make any difference.
I absolutely think we should push the countries that are pushing the drugs on us.
They should be punished.
The people involved should be killed.
They should all be killed.
So maximum punishment to any country that's involved in any way to sending us stuff.
But let's not kid ourselves.
It's not going to change the supply.
As people tell me almost every day, Scott, Scott, Scott, don't you know?
It's not going to change the supply.
Somebody will just make you somewhere else.
Don't, don't, don't, don't. Didn't you know that?
Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. To which I say, yes, idiot.
I did know that.
I am aware that you could put enough fentanyl in this pen to kill an entire state.
I do know that.
I do know that other people will make it.
If you killed every supplier today, if you murdered every person who's involved in the fentanyl business, it would take one week for it to regrow, because it's profitable.
If you don't take the profit motive out of it, you're not trying.
Let's be honest.
If you're not trying to take the profit motive out of it, you're not trying.
You've not reached the minimum to say that you're even doing anything useful.
But I do like pressing the other countries.
All right, let's talk about something else.
I guess the IG report is going to come out and we're going to find out if the Trump campaign was spied on or not spied on.
By our own justice people and the FBI. Now, on Fox News, they're priming you against the priming.
So there's priming and then there's anti-priming going on.
Everybody's like setting the table, getting ready for this IG report.
So what the smart people are saying we're going to expect to see...
Is that Carter Page was a target.
In other words, he was spied on.
And here's the fun part.
Do you remember in the very beginning of the Russia collusion hoax, there were reports that Carter Page might have had some connection with Russia.
What did all the pro-Trump people say?
When it came out that Carter Page may have had some conversations with Russia.
Do you remember what everybody said?
They said, Carter Page, he's not really part of the campaign.
He's just some insignificant advisor who went to a meeting.
Doesn't matter if Carter Page talked to Putin.
He's just some insignificant outsider, wannabe, who almost kind of, sort of thinks he's connected with the campaign, but the president never heard of him.
Well, now there's some expectation that it will be confirmed that not only was there spying on Carter Page, but we also know from the Mueller report that there was nothing there.
Carter Page was totally cleared.
So now that Carter Page is totally cleared, and it looks like the report will say that there was spying on him, what do the pro-Trump people say now?
Carter Page, he was totally part of the campaign.
Oh yeah! Carter Page?
Campaign? Carter Page?
He was right there.
So, how often do I tell you that the facts don't matter?
They do matter to the outcomes, of course.
But they don't matter to our decision-making.
You just saw that the facts actually reversed.
Yeah, and it didn't change anything except people just quickly just reversed their opinion.
More persuasion talk, please.
Well, that's what this is. This is persuasion talk.
So you're seeing the pro-Trumpers trying to set the table because the other side is setting the table.
It's sort of anti-table setting.
So I think the New York Times is already leaking that, and others may be leaking, that the campaign was not spied on, and that's going to be the result.
So they're trying to frame it as the campaign was not spied on.
So once you hear the details, you'll already have that in your mind.
And then when they fit the details in, you'll say, oh, okay, that fits what they said not spied on because Carter Page was just sort of an outsider.
He wasn't really part of the campaign.
From a mile away, you'll see the pro-Trumper saying, no, no, no, Carter Page.
The only reason you spied on him was his connection to the campaign.
That's spying on the campaign.
So, facts won't matter.
We'll just line up with whichever side we agreed with.
For the record, I would call that spying on the campaign.
Could we...
What do you think?
Do you agree that if the FBI, Department of Justice, whoever, if they spied on Carter Page, would it be fair to say that they spied on the Trump campaign?
I say yes.
I say yes.
Okay, I hear some of you having some garbled audio, probably because it's so damn popular here.
But we'll just carry on as if not.
So, here's the most provocative thing I'm going to say today.
I'd like to give you one Thanksgiving provocative thought that will get me kicked off of social media forever.
So since I might get kicked off of social media forever in the next 10 minutes, I would like to remind you that my book, LoserThink, is an excellent gift.
What the hell is a gift?
Gift. It's a gift.
It's a gift item.
Which you could give to people who are not even necessarily losers, but rather perhaps they do not have effective debating and thinking techniques.
If you want to cause some trouble at the holidays at your family, just give somebody in the family one of these and then sort of leave it on the table in the main room in your house where everybody's milling around, all your family is, because it's the sort of book people are going to pick up.
They can say, LoserThink, what's that about?
And they're going to come to a page and they can say, oh, what about this one thing?
They'll call out some little item that's called out.
And then the next thing you know, the knives will come out and you'll be fighting with your relatives.
But you'll be winning because you already read LoserThink.
Anyway, it's a great gift item.
I hope you support this Periscope by buying it.
All right, here's the part where I get kicked off of social media forever.
If I never see you again, it's been a pleasure.
So, there's an...
I don't know if you know Charlemagne the God.
So, he's a...
What would you call him?
Activist, maybe? African-American...
Activist slash radio host.
I don't know his full resume.
He's very well known, considered an intellectual, one of the, I would say, leadership type figures in the African American community.
As is Charlamagne Tha God, Tha spelled T-H-A. And apparently he's been saying that even though President Trump is making black Americans richer, They're making more money.
So he acknowledges that African Americans are doing better financially under Trump.
And he says that you should not vote for him anyway, even though you're doing better, because yet you should look at his civil rights record.
You should look at his civil rights record, talking about the president.
Shalameen the God is the worst...
Leader maybe you've ever seen.
So he's a DJ, people are saying in the comments.
I said radio host, DJ, kind of the same.
Charlemagne God's advice that you should discount the fact that you're making more money and you're doing better in your life, but you should look at the president's civil rights record.
Here's what's wrong with that.
Shalem, the god, is asking people who look to him for, I would say, wisdom, because he is, I would call him a thought leader.
He's often very much praised by people for being a smart, informed, capable, useful, good leader.
So I hear, mostly I hear only good things about Charlemagne the God.
So let me get that context in there.
Highly, I would say he's sincere.
And I would say that he's thoughtful and trying to help.
Thoughtful, sincere, smart, trying to help.
Alright, so I'm going to start with a compliment.
To say that, generally speaking, very capable, talented, successful person, and trying to help.
This didn't help.
Let me tell you why.
If you look at somebody's civil rights record, you are looking at the past.
If you ignore that you're making more money today, and your life is better today, and instead you say, I'm going to ignore what's good and happening today, and I'm going to focus on something that doesn't exist anymore.
Do you know what doesn't exist?
The past.
The past doesn't exist.
So, Charlemagne the God has asked you to focus on the past, which doesn't exist, and make your decision based on that, and ignore the present, Which does exist and is going well.
Now, of course, the point of looking at a civil rights record is to assume that if things have happened in the past that you didn't like, that might tell you that more of that will happen in the future.
So as an indicator of what might happen in the future, I would say that's on the table, so let's talk about that.
Is the president's record on civil rights Good or bad in terms of the African-American community?
Well, first of all, I'm only going to talk about his record as president.
Does it matter what he is alleged to do or did 20 years ago or anything else?
Well, it might matter to how you feel, but it doesn't matter to your life.
Because your life is influenced by what he's doing today, what he's done as president so far.
So let's look at what the president has done so far as president that you could call his civil rights record.
He's worked on the First Step Act and hugely popular with the African American community.
He has put emphasis on the historically black colleges.
I believe he's looking to help fully fund them.
I don't know the details, but he's getting a lot of praise for that.
And of course the unemployment rate and wages and everything are looking good for African Americans.
So that so far is all good, right?
But the president is highly criticized for his actions on immigration.
His immigration, his so-called ban on some of the countries who are mostly Muslim countries, looked racist to some people.
His emphasis on border security with Mexico looks to some people like being racist, because the people on the other side of the border are mostly brown.
But here's the thing. That was all to the benefit of African-Americans.
Explicitly, directly, and unambiguously for the benefit of African-Americans.
Who exactly is competing for all these jobs that the immigrants are taking?
Well, everybody.
I mean, it's spread around.
But the African-American community probably hit a little bit harder.
And the president is absolutely discriminating against other countries.
He's totally discriminating against other countries for the benefit of Americans.
And he calls it out directly, for the benefit of the African American community.
So, if you wanted to get President Trump, or even your government, let's say you wanted to get your government to do more stuff that's good, Oh, and also the president is against the Green New Deal, which would ruin the economy and affect African Americans more than other people.
Rich people are just going to pay a little extra taxes and they're fine.
Poor people have to live with an economy that would be crashing during the transition into this Green New Deal stuff.
So if you look at the president's actions on civil rights, there are 100% of them since taking office.
The only time that matters.
100% of them have been pro-African-American.
Compare that to Obama.
Compare it to anything.
Compare it to anybody. Is it worse than every other president we've had?
I'd say you'd have to go back to Lyndon Johnson and stuff that happened in the middle of the civil rights era.
You'd have to go pretty far back to find somebody who was a better president for African Americans in terms of actual results.
So, Charlemagne the God, I think you are guilty of.
Loser think. And while I hear really good things about you in general, and I'm sure they're true, I think it is terribly off.
It's a departure from logic to look at the past which doesn't exist and ignore the present that does.
If you want good things to happen, you should encourage the good things.
Imagine this. If the African-American community decided in any significant part, you know, you can't get anybody to, you can never get everybody to agree on anything, but if you get a significant part of the African-American community to say, hey, President Trump, you've done a good job so far, but there are a few other things we'd like done, and you could get even more support.
Here are some specific things we'd like.
Can you help us with these?
What would President Trump do as a response to, hey, I think you're moving in the right direction.
Can you move even a little bit more?
We've got a few more things to do.
How would President Trump respond to that?
Positively, I would think.
Can you imagine anything that President Trump would like more?
Think about it. If you think about all the things that President Trump would like to accomplish, you know, he'd like peace and good trade deals and he'd like North Korea to denuclearize and peace in the Middle East.
There's a lot of stuff he wants, right?
But put in that list, being the best president for the African American community.
How much... Would President Trump like to leave office as the best president for African Americans?
How much would he like that?
I can't read his mind, but I would imagine anyone in his situation would say that would be like the best thing you can even imagine.
Because it would take away all the bad stuff, right?
It would, with one set of actions, it would just erase anything that anybody said negative about him up to this point.
So, I would give the following advice in contrast to Charlemagne the God's advice, that you should look at the President's civil rights record and vote against him.
What I'd say is that success is the best strategy.
And I had a little pause after that, because I like that to sink in.
Every community needs a strategy.
You need a strategy.
Every individual needs a strategy.
In other words, what are you doing every day to make things better?
What's your system? What is your system For improving your life and the life of anybody in your group, whatever your group is.
What's your system? Here's the system I recommend.
Success. Because the more successful black people are, the less will be discrimination.
The less will be racism.
But wouldn't you like to be in a world...
Where a black person walks in for a job interview and you say to yourself, whoa, that's a member of a group who are extra successful.
They're trying extra hard.
It's a group that's really hitting the books.
They're staying out of jail.
They're doing all the right things.
Now, of course, you know, nothing happens overnight.
But if you're trying to get rid of racism, try success.
There's nothing that convinces like success.
You can't beat that.
So the focus should be on individual success because that will fix kind of everything, if you get that right.
Would you have individual success if you voted against the guy who's giving you individual success, financial success in this case, in favor of feeling bad about something that bothered you historically that doesn't exist anymore?
I get...
You know, I get the wanting to fight right and wrong.
I get that you want to go directly at problems, etc.
But it's not a good strategy.
Somebody said in the comments, Scott said whitey.
By the way, that article that I talked about with the...
I wish I... I'm forgetting his name, but the writer for The Root.
I'm still going to...
I'm still solidly on the side that says his writing is excellent.
I guess Buttigieg called him because the writer for The Root wrote a scathing article about Buttigieg.
And Buttigieg actually called him.
Heriot, yes, that's his name.
His last name is Heriot.
And they had a conversation.
Now, I don't think it changed either of their minds, but How much do you like Buttigieg for calling him?
I like it.
Don't you like the fact that Buttigieg just picked up the phone and called him and said, let's talk.
That was a pretty strong move.
That was a baller move, I gotta say.
Buttigieg does a lot right.
You know, we're watching all these Democrats self-immolate.
One after another, they're doing things that you don't even have to be an expert.
You could just be a person watching television, and you're watching one of the Democratic candidates, and you say to yourself, okay, that just cost you the election.
Oh, no, I wouldn't have said that, Beto.
No, $52 trillion, a little bit expensive, Elizabeth Warren.
So you don't have to be an expert to see each of these candidates just totally destroying themselves.
And then you watch Buttigieg.
And this is sort of the dog that doesn't bark.
Look for his errors.
And it's hard to find any.
He's running a very smart campaign.
He's found the reasonable center.
He's biding his time.
He's waiting. He's not buying into the drama so much.
Yeah, he's playing it really smart.
You cannot underestimate the power of just raw intelligence.
And I think with Buttigieg, you're seeing the benefit of raw intelligence.
He's just smarter than other people.
No doubt about it.
Now, I do worry that he's experienced enough.
That would be a real thing to worry about.
I do love the fact that he lives an authentic life.
And that is really powerful.
The fact that he's not only openly gay, which doesn't even sound Does that even sound right anymore, to say somebody's openly gay?
That feels like a throwback, doesn't it?
It feels like that's not even a sentence that somebody should say in 2019.
Because if you're gay in 2019, and you're not...
I don't even like to say out of the closet.
These just sound like such old terms.
If you're not authentic, well, I think you're just hurting yourself.
Because it's just easier, smarter, better.
Just be who you are, and the world is ready.
The world is finally ready for that stuff.
So, Buttigieg lives an authentic life.
Here's my husband.
Here's his website.
He's part of the campaign.
I don't know. I just kind of love the fact that he's not compromising even in the slightest.
Because somebody else might not like it.
No compromise. I like it.
Somebody say, gay is not a badge of honor.
I'm not saying it is. I'm saying authenticity can be appealing.
You don't disagree with that, do you?
Do you disagree that authenticity can be appealing?
I don't think so. People like that.
Even if they don't like what you're doing, they kind of like that you're honest about it.
Somebody said he's a disastrous mayor.
Well... If you had read my book, Loser Think, perhaps you would not say Buttigieg was a disastrous mayor.
Here's what you can say.
What you can say is that during his reign as mayor, things didn't go well compared to how you wish they had gone.
You could say that. Here's what you don't know.
There was no other mayor doing the same job at the same time.
With whom you could compare, to whom you could compare Buttigieg.
How do you know he did a bad job if he's not compared to anything?
There's no comparison.
Because there was nobody doing the same job at the same time with the same variables, but making different decisions, so he had something to compare.
Nor is that possible, because there was only one job of mayor.
If you believe you're positive he did a bad job as mayor, You are involved in loser think.
Even if you're right.
You could be right, but you don't have any way of knowing it.
Because there's nothing he did there that was being done by somebody else in a different way at the same time with the same variables.
No comparison. Now, I'm not saying he did a good job.
I'm just saying that you can't tell.
And there's no way you'll ever be able to tell.
It is completely and permanently outside our ability to judge.
Somebody say, you can say the same for Trump.
That is correct. And I do.
I say the same for Trump, that there was nobody else doing the job at the same time.
So you can't tell. You can imagine, but you can't tell for sure.
All right. So Charlemagne the God.
Let's focus on success and everything else will work out.
Let's talk about Thanksgiving.
Somebody says, how can you criticize anyone ever with that reasoning?
Well, you can't do it rationally.
You can't.
You can't look at specific things which we know to be wrong.
So if there's somebody who, let's say, shoplifts from a store, you don't have to say to yourself, well, if there had been somebody else in your situation, would they have shoplifted from the store?
No. I mean, you can judge shoplifting to be bad.
You can judge breaking the law as bad.
So there are lots of things that are just objectively bad.
But none of that is on the table with Buttigieg and his mayor job.
Nobody says he broke the law.
Nobody says he murdered anybody.
So you can't tell. Now, in the context of a job, let's say you're the boss.
And you're trying to judge people.
You kind of have to judge them even though maybe it's irrational.
Because when people feel that they're being measured and judged, they will work more diligently.
So if your goal is to make people work more diligently, it doesn't exactly matter that you can judge them accurately.
It just matters that you're watching and that you're judging.
Doing it well is actually less important.
It'd be great if you could.
But it's important to watch them.
It's not important to be exactly right about all their performance.
Somebody says, Scott thinks blacks who work for Papa John should excuse his racism because he pays them.
Did I say that?
Did you hear me say that?
I don't know the Papa John situation, but I would say this.
If it bothers you to work there and you can get as good a job somewhere else, go ahead and leave.
That would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
You can vote with your feet, but let's say you're a vice president at Papa John's and you're black.
I don't know if there's anybody in senior management who's diverse at all.
I don't know. But imagine there is.
That person, should they quit?
Well, again, it depends if they can get a better job and it bothers them.
If it doesn't bother them and they can't easily or reliably get a better job, go for success.
Success pays for a lot of stuff.
Success buys you more than stuff.
It buys you respect.
You become someone who is a source of inspiration.
You become a mentor.
Success is the strategy.
All right. Somebody's saying that Greta Thunberg, we should say, okay, Doomer, instead of Boomer.
Okay, Doomer. That's kind of clever.
Is hating pineapple on pizza racist?
Yes, but just a little bit.
I said, Newsom is doing a terrible job.
Yes. So, again, there are some things which you can see that are just objective.
You know, if somebody got elected and just didn't come to work, you wouldn't have to wonder if they're doing a good job.
If you don't come to work...
Okay. If you start a war that didn't need to be started, okay, you're not doing a good job.
But for most of the basic stuff, you can't tell.
Now, in the case of Newsom, if you can't keep the lights on, I'm sorry, if you can't keep the lights on and you don't really have a plan to fix it, And you got rid of nuclear, when nuclear, according to every scientist who knows anything, is the best thing to do.
And you want to give free healthcare and open the border.
Those things, you can say, are bad.
But, I mean, Newsom has crossed over into a category that is unambiguous, I would say.
Now, of course, bias always creeps in here, so one never knows.
But I've got to tell you, I don't have any special bias against Republicans or Democrats.
I don't identify with either group.
I think they both have their pluses and minuses.
So I don't dislike Gavin Newsom or judge him by his party affiliation.
But I do judge him by the fact that I can't keep my lights on and that my taxes are the highest.
So yeah, I'm judging.
So there's that.
All right. I'm just looking at your comments here.
I feel like I was too much of a downer for Thanksgiving.
Let's talk something positive.
What do you predict for China's T-grades?
I don't know what that means.
Political party.
Yes, we are judging Newsom.
Yeah, I think you could judge Newsom.
The golden age, yes.
I think I might have a guest on next week to talk about one of the big predictions for the golden age.
So I'll tell you more about that as we go forward.
Trade. My prediction on trade is that we will not have a trade agreement with China.
Not now and not in the foreseeable future.
Because I don't think there's any room for a deal with China.
They just don't seem like a credible partner.
Somebody says, your logic on Newsom versus Buttigieg really doesn't wash.
Sorry. Well, let me defend it a little bit stronger.
If Buttigieg couldn't keep the lights on, I would say the same thing about him.
But if your problem is, I don't know, your unemployment is this, or your crime is that, you know, your rates of something are different, that's where you can't tell.
If Newsom's only problem was that, let's say, unemployment went up or maybe our taxes were a little high, in those cases I'd say, you know, I can't really tell.
I don't know what the other governor would have done.
But if Buttigieg couldn't keep the lights on and he'd gotten rid of the only reliable source of electricity, you know, nuclear power, well, then I'm going to judge him.
But there's no evidence that...
Somebody's asking about the Kurds.
Is it surprising to you that we're not hearing about a lot of Kurd massacres?
Maybe it's happening and we're not hearing about it.
But didn't you think that by now we would be hearing about all kinds of Kurd massacres?
It looks like things might be working out.
And wouldn't that be a surprise to everybody except President Trump?
Doesn't it seem to you that Trump continuously does the thing that other people say you shouldn't do?
He's fairly consistent about that.
Somebody asked about my new show with Christina.
We finally, finally, I think, figured out all the technical problems.
I finally got the sound and the video and the lighting to be right.
We did a test run But when we played it back, we didn't like the lighting.
So we want to make sure that we've got a little higher quality production values.
But we're ready to go. I think that sometime between now and New Year's, you will see our first production.
Did you see in Hong Kong they were waving American flags and celebrating Thanksgiving?
So the Hong Kongers are trying to bring the United States into the fight, if you will.
The United States, didn't we just pass some legislation that condemned China for their Hong Kong stuff?
I don't think China likes that.
Somebody says, talk about the visuals.
You mean of the show I'm going to do with Christina?
Well, I will tell you that we're thinking that the first content might be her interviewing me about my book.
Because I think she would do the funniest interview because she wouldn't ask the same questions that other people ask.
So yeah, the idea is that if we produce higher quality content, better production values, we're testing to see if YouTube demonetizes that.
Because they may be demonetizing some of the smaller political-leaning content, both left and right, by the way, just because it's not CNN or it's not some other voice.
Can we submit questions about the book?
Oh, that would be a good idea. I'm working also on a better call-in mechanism so I can have somebody calling in during the podcast.
Will you use your studio for coffee with Scott?
Probably not. I'll probably still do coffee with Scott Adams right from here.
I'll be honest, I'm not interested in your girlfriend, but I would watch her interview you.
Well, you know, the beauty of doing something with Christine is that she would bring in some viewers, I would bring in different viewers, and it would all be fun.
Any advice on how to move out of a bad career?
Yes, build your talent stack.
Read my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything.
And still win big.
And that will give you a path out.
And Tulsi's campaign has never gotten back to me, so that's not scheduled.
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