March 20, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
23:32
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| Hey everybody. | |
| How are you? | |
| It's time for a bonus edition of Coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| Without the coffee, because it's not coffee time, it's bedtime. | |
| And why you need to drift off to sleep is a little bit more of me. | |
| Apparently, I mean, sounds silly, but here you are. | |
| Here we are. And I just wanted to remind you that the finest minds in the universe are working on solving your coronavirus problem. | |
| And I think we've turned the corner. | |
| Not in terms of people who get it or people who sadly pass. | |
| There's going to be a little more of that. | |
| But here's my prediction. | |
| When we get on the other end of this, we are going to be amazed at how well we did. | |
| The things that people are going to learn, and they're going to learn them pretty quickly, is that saying something should have been done differently in the fog of war, I'm not sure it's a thing. | |
| What does matter is whether you quickly correct. | |
| And we've seen our government and our citizens try, try, try, and quickly correct. | |
| And the corrections have been stunning, I think. | |
| The first tries, the first attitude, the first guess, the first hunch, the first instinct, it's sort of luck, sort of guessing. | |
| You know, in any situation somebody's, you always have a variety of opinions, somebody's going to be right. | |
| Because you have a variety. | |
| If you have people that say yes and people that say no, well, it's going to go one way or the other. | |
| So I think we should be generous with how things start, but probably in the end we're going to be very proud about how things end. | |
| And And by the way, I hope that you enjoy the fact that I didn't do my second afternoon periscope to conflict with Tucker. | |
| I think Tucker has gone from talk show host, or whatever he calls himself, to national treasure. | |
| And he's one of the most productive... | |
| People in the business, not just productive in terms of producing content, he does a lot of that too, but productive in terms of his content makes a difference in a way that it seems like other hosts, you know, wish they could be doing. | |
| So he's quite impactful and has been quite a, I think, quite a patriot, if I may say, with this coronavirus coverage, etc. | |
| Somebody says, is my brother Mike here? | |
| Mike, are you here? | |
| Your brother's looking for you. | |
| Well, LA is locked down. | |
| Yes. How many of you, I almost hate to ask this, but how many of you are enjoying the lockdown? | |
| Be honest. | |
| Because it's a weird kind of emergency, you know. | |
| Nobody enjoyed... | |
| World War II, probably everybody was affected in such a bad way that nobody ever had a good day for a long time. | |
| But the weird thing about this is being forced to stay home and work less and eat the food that you hoarded, it's not the worst thing in the world. | |
| I actually thought it would be a lot worse than it is. | |
| But largely because I decided that part of my objective for the lockdown is that I would work on my fitness. | |
| And that's been really, really, really good. | |
| I feel healthier than I think I've felt in, I don't know, years. | |
| And it's because I've made my fitness my job. | |
| You know, it's one thing to say, well, you know, I got my priorities and I'm going to try to Working a little, you know, eating right and exercising and stuff. | |
| That's most people's normal attitude. | |
| But as soon as this coronavirus looked like the real thing, I said to myself, well, I'm not going to go easy. | |
| If the coronavirus is coming for me, I'm not going to make it easy. | |
| You know, I'm going to be so... | |
| Immunity hardened by my own actions. | |
| First of all, I'm going to feel a sense of doing something. | |
| We humans need to do something. | |
| If you're in a bad situation, the best thing you can do is find something that's productive that you can do. | |
| It's the doing that makes you feel better. | |
| Somebody says, I miss the stores and restaurants and bars. | |
| You know, there's never been anything quite like what we're experiencing. | |
| Just nothing like it. | |
| Certainly, if you live through 9-11, you know, you saw the country, you know, come together as one. | |
| But the weird part about that is that by the time we came together, the damage was done. | |
| You know, there was still a A war that we can debate forever. | |
| Two wars that we can debate forever. | |
| But it wasn't quite this. | |
| We've never seen the problem coming toward us from, you know, well now it's a close quarters fight at this point. | |
| But we've never all focused on solving this problem, the entire world, simultaneously once. | |
| And no matter how many times I say that, I feel like I need to keep pointing that out because this is one of the most remarkable experiences in humanity. | |
| I mean, there's a non-zero chance that on the other end of this, we can turn the next pandemic into two weeks of home vacation. | |
| Because think about how much we're learning from this pandemic. | |
| I mean, really think about it. | |
| All the things we've learned, Because a lot of these meds have such high chances of working that even if one of the ones that they're talking about isn't the one, you've still got several of them that look pretty promising and several vaccinations and we've got detection kits. | |
| A year from now, our ability to To instantly ramp up ventilators and detection kits and set up roadblocks and shut down the public and say, whoop, two-week vacation, everybody. | |
| Send out some checks. | |
| We're going to have a little framework built after this so that the next pandemic, and apparently the experts say you're always going to get one, the next one could turn out to be a lot closer to the common cold. | |
| If we're as smart as we can be about detecting and nipping it in the bud. | |
| So that's good news. | |
| I'll tell you one thing that I'm feeling at this point. | |
| In the optimistic case, our government and our public can keep our small businesses hanging on. | |
| It's really a case of hanging on because I'm pretty committed and I'm sure there are other people who didn't lose their income during this time. | |
| There are a number of people who won't lose their income. | |
| For them, they have a lot of pent-up spending. | |
| Not just because they want to get back in there, but because they'll actually literally have more money. | |
| One of the weird things about this is that I'm not spending as much money as I would. | |
| I think most people, that would be the same. | |
| So a lot of people are going to have a little extra cash, and there will be a call, probably from the government, probably from President Trump, probably from friends and neighbors, to hit the local stores hard. | |
| So whenever we get the green light, consumers are going to come back with both kindness and gratitude in a big way. | |
| Because remember, the small businesses didn't ask to close. | |
| They're willing to do it for the good of the Republican because it's required. | |
| But I think the people who did well, in other words, the people who didn't lose their income in this and actually maybe save some money, I think they're going to come back hard just the moment it's safe. | |
| And maybe it's not as simple as that. | |
| Maybe phase one will be the small businesses can open, but they've got to stagger customers and seat people 10 feet apart and stuff. | |
| So there might be some other phase. | |
| But there's a whole lot of spending coming your way in small businesses. | |
| I'm just going to be peppering my little town with as much business as I can. | |
| And I think most people will do the same. | |
| Now, here's a... | |
| Thought experiment. I understand it's actually complicated for the government to give people money, right? | |
| It's sort of complicated because I guess there are lots of agencies involved and, you know, there's a big machinery of government and everything. | |
| And so since we're in an emergency, I thought, well, how could you shortcut that? | |
| What would be one way you could shortcut figuring out who to pay and how to pay and all that? | |
| Well, it seems like one way would be just to give everybody money. | |
| Now, you say to yourself, well, Scott, that's not going to work because you'd be giving rich people money and driving up the debt and they don't need it. | |
| Why don't you be a little smarter and figure out who deserves it and who doesn't deserve it? | |
| But here's the thought experiment part of it. | |
| In normal times, in a non-emergency time, you would expect a lot of bad behavior. | |
| So if somebody who didn't need the money And knew they didn't need the money. | |
| Got a check for $1,000. | |
| Would they keep it? Well, in normal times, they'd say, hey, I paid a lot of taxes. | |
| I'm just going to keep it. Yay, I got $1,000. | |
| But suppose the government says, we don't have time to mess around. | |
| Everybody's going to get a check for $1,000. | |
| This is just a thought experiment. | |
| Nothing like this is going to happen, and I'm not really suggesting it. | |
| But it's a thought experiment to help you feel the situation. | |
| To read the room, if you will. | |
| How many rich people would keep the money? | |
| In normal times, probably quite a few. | |
| They'd say, hey, I paid my taxes. | |
| I'll take you $1,000. Thank you very much. | |
| But suppose the government said, we don't have time to sort this out. | |
| If you get a check and you don't need it, here's where to give it back. | |
| Here's where to give it to some agency or deposit it somewhere or send it somewhere. | |
| How many rich people would automatically, without blinking, and even people not rich, and even people who are not even doing that well, just say, you know, somebody else needs my $1,000. | |
| I didn't earn it. | |
| I'd rather get this small business going, so I'll go give this to my local restaurant or something. | |
| How many people just wouldn't keep it? | |
| I don't know. It's an open question. | |
| Because whatever is happening now, In the world, and certainly you can feel it. | |
| There's just something in the air that's connecting us all in a way that's never happened. | |
| I think it would be like a 98% automatic compliance. | |
| People would just look at themselves and say, I don't know, I think somebody needs it more than I do. | |
| Boom. I think. | |
| It's just a guess. | |
| I don't think, you know, you can't really take a chance on that working, so maybe you couldn't. | |
| Cernovich says if you're doing well, pay it back or pay it forward or something of that nature. | |
| Yeah. How many of you know somebody or know somebody who knows somebody who actually has the coronavirus? | |
| Because let me warn you about what's coming in case you're not ready for this. | |
| So aside from the obvious fact that there will be more infections, the next few weeks are going to get ugly. | |
| There's just no way around it. | |
| But then, maybe in two weeks or so, you're going to see some fairly dramatic flattening of the curve, and then we'll be on top of it and wrestle it to ground, I think. | |
| It may take a while, but I think two weeks is sort of what you should look at for a guarantee that it's getting worse. | |
| But after that, I think there's reason to believe we might be able to Be on top of it. | |
| That's just my personal opinion. | |
| Nobody official has said anything nearly that optimistic. | |
| Now, let me suggest this. | |
| If you could imagine two hypothetical people who were trying to predict how things would go from the very beginning, and one of them was an optimist about human ability, and one was a pessimist who just said, ah, this virus is going to get us all Which one of them would have been more right? | |
| Now, the pessimists would have been more right that it caught us off guard and, oh man, it's bad. | |
| I won't say alarmists because they'd be right. | |
| You're not an alarmist if you're right. | |
| So the people who had a dark opinion of what was coming turned out to be dead right. | |
| From the point that humanity organized, and it happened very quickly, the smartest people are the ones who predict that we beat the expectations. | |
| Because any sense, you know, your common sense of how long things take is completely influenced by the normal world. | |
| And we're not in it anymore. | |
| We're just not in a world of friction. | |
| We're not in a world where if you say, I need this to battle the coronavirus, Whoever you're talking to says no. | |
| In the real world, you usually get no. | |
| If you're trying to sell, you get more no's than yes's. | |
| We went from a world of mostly no To almost overnight, a world of mostly yes, and how can I help? | |
| And now that I've helped, can I help you more? | |
| And is there anything else I can do? | |
| Can I volunteer? Can I put some muscle into this? | |
| Can I put some money into it? You've never seen anything like this. | |
| It's remarkable. I'd love to believe that some of this is permanent. | |
| Maybe some. Maybe a little bit. | |
| Maybe the memory of it, or at least for a generation. | |
| It could shape us. And... | |
| So I'm looking into the comments here. | |
| So here's what I wanted to warn you about. | |
| You can get a little sense of it in the comments. | |
| You know the Kevin Bacon game where everybody is six degrees of separation from everybody else? | |
| Well, the Kevin Bacon effect is going to start hitting you hard. | |
| So, already I can tell you in my life, I know somebody who knows somebody who got it, and I know somebody who got it, probably got it. | |
| So, already the Kevin Bacon effect has hit me, once directly and once a couple of levels removed, but too close to home. | |
| You're all going to be Kevin Bacon to death. | |
| But keep in mind that this is a mathematical sort of illusion. | |
| The whole reason the Kevin Bacon game is so fascinating is that your common sense doesn't tell you that you could be just a few jumps away from so many famous people, etc. | |
| And that illusion is going to be smacking us around for a couple weeks because you're going to hear about people all the time. | |
| That you have one or two or three jumps away from, and it's going to start scaring you because that feels close. | |
| But just keep in mind, it's real easy to be a few levels away from somebody. | |
| So it's sort of an objects in the mirror appear closer than they are in a situation. | |
| So this is my warning. | |
| It will feel a lot worse than it is for the next couple of weeks, but it will also be worse than it is. | |
| So it's going to be worse in terms of the number of people who have a problem with the virus, but it's also going to look worse than that. | |
| So just adjust it in your mind to how much it actually is versus how much it feels like it because you've heard of six Kevin Bacon people you know that got it this week. | |
| So that's just something that's coming. | |
| What are your thoughts on the Trump UBI? You know, I haven't looked at the details. | |
| I'll look at them in the morning before I periscope. | |
| But my understanding is he's getting praise from, it's almost impossible even, like, barely comes out of my mouth, but Ilhan Omar, I think, didn't Presley praise him too for leadership? | |
| And I think that has a whole lot to do with the fact that I think he went big, right? | |
| So here's something, you know, I don't want to be too political, but I think it's always good if you can learn something, right? | |
| So with the learning in mind, let me talk about some things. | |
| Normally, I just want to put the politics aside, but if you can learn something, that's worth it. | |
| I don't think you could lose your re-election by going too hard At everything on the coronavirus. | |
| So if the best, you know, kindest, most empathetic and smart people said, I think we should give each person X amount, the smartest thing for the president to do, given, remember, nobody knows the right amount. | |
| There's nobody smart enough who knows that it's 1,000 or 2,000 or 1,500. | |
| Nobody knows the right amount. | |
| So there's a lot of judgment and guessing in that. | |
| So within that... | |
| I'm going to have to go in a moment. | |
| So within that judgment... | |
| God damn it, I forgot what I was going to say. | |
| Oh, I was going to say that... | |
| You don't really know if your president's doing a great job or not, but here's some things that you can count on. | |
| If the president exceeds what even the good people imagined was the right amount, and I think that would have been a smart thing to do, since nobody knows the right amount, once the people on the left have said, darn it, we've got to get $1,000 into everybody's hands, I don't know if this is what happened, I'll check on this tomorrow, but if the President said $1,000, try $3,000. | |
| I have no idea if those numbers are in close. | |
| But the point is, if the President went bigger than even the Democrats were asking, that was exactly the right play. | |
| Right? Because nobody knows where to go. | |
| Nobody knows the right amount. | |
| But if you go smaller, everybody's going to blame you. | |
| If you go bigger, what's the worst that could happen? | |
| If it doesn't work, he's going to say, well, I still went bigger than everybody said, so it still looks like the smart move, even if it doesn't work. | |
| And if he went small and it doesn't work, well, then you really look like you did everything wrong. | |
| So the president has one smart play, which just has the advantage of also being... | |
| Within the zone of what we imagine would be good for the country, which is just go big, just go hard at everything, drop every regulation you can. | |
| He's a maniac on dropping regulations. | |
| That's working well. | |
| Removing friction, I think he's adopted the right, you know, the war general tone of this. | |
| I think his optimism about how quickly we'd get back is going to be closer than anybody else's guess. | |
| Are you ready for that? | |
| Are you ready for, you know, I don't want to be over-optimistic and get people's hopes up, but I feel like the person who is the most optimistic is also going to be the most right, given what we've just learned in the last 48 hours about the depths of human, or the heights, I guess, of human ingenuity. | |
| What you have seen in the last just 48 hours is absolutely astounding in terms of what we learned, what we figured out, what we tried, what we know, what we can do, what we can build. | |
| And now it's a contest between the manufacturing might of the world and a virus who's duplicating itself virally. | |
| Who do you bet on? | |
| I wouldn't bet against people. | |
| We're pretty good at this. | |
| All right. | |
| Turns out I didn't take any calls, and I'm going to have to go in a moment, but I'll let you know. | |
| What about the stock market? | |
| Okay. | |
| So I don't make stock or financial advice except diversification, but I'll make this comment. | |
| What kind of investments are people likely to make once they feel they can put money back into the market? | |
| What kind of investments? | |
| Will they do risky investments? | |
| Well, some people will because they're risky. | |
| But what do you think will be the bias or the trend? | |
| My guess is that the trend will be towards safety. | |
| And at least within safety within the stocks world, which means diversification, which means funds, like a Fortune 500 fund. | |
| So my prediction, and this is not advice, this is just a prediction of what other people are going to do, right? | |
| My prediction is that the funds will do great. | |
| Gotta go. My DoorDash is here. | |
| Helping the local community. |
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