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May 6, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
46:29
Episode 958 Scott Adams: Grab Your Beverage and Buckle Up

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: The coronavirus pandemic viewed through a Dilbert filter Victor David Hanson: "credentialed class" keeps getting it wrong My Twitter debate with a doctor, on testing feasibility Models function is to manipulate perception Paying to have airline middle seats empty --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Hey everybody, come on in!
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the most amazing and immense time of the day.
It's such a special time, it should have its own day.
And all you need to enjoy it to its maximum potential is not very much, really.
Doesn't take a lot. All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask or a 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, including the damn pandemic.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go! You can feel those test kits being built even as we sip.
Well, let's talk about all the news.
I'm very amused in a Dilbert-like way.
Have you noticed that this whole coronavirus crisis Can it easily be understood through a Dilbert filter?
You know, the Dilbert filter is basically that everybody involved in any kind of a big organization is lying and incompetent.
It kind of explains everything we've seen, right?
Because all the experts are wrong.
Almost everything's been wrong.
And it's been this gigantic cluster...
That looks more like a Dilbert cartoon than like an existential threat.
I suppose it's both.
But here's the funny part in a Dilbert filter.
So the president apparently was flirting with the idea of disbanding the coronavirus task force.
Now what did all of his critics say about that?
You fool! It's too soon to disband the coronavirus task force.
Now, was he ever going to disband the task force?
Or was it maybe more of a case where those functions would be handled better by the states?
Of course, they would still be on the case.
They would still be the experts.
They still do interviews.
But maybe they don't have to meet together and give a and give some kind of a daily update because we're probably at that stage of the crisis where that's not so important anymore.
We have lots of sources to get the same information And frankly, the task force was giving us bad information half the time anyway.
So, or no information, or they were not really telling us numbers in context.
So, was it a mistake for the president to say, maybe at the end of the day we'll just wind this down?
I don't think so.
It's the most ordinary thing in the world to create something for a specific need.
As you're getting close to the point where maybe some other function is more important, you put those functions into other places, maybe the states.
But he got all this criticism, so what he does, he solves it with a Dilbert solution.
Which is just funny, because it was a Dilbert criticism.
That people would act as though they thought disbanding this group somehow made the, I don't know, the function go away.
Which, of course, I'm sure was never the point of it.
So now Trump had, apparently he announced just moments ago, that he's going to keep the task force indefinitely, except he's going to shift his focus to safely reopening the country.
In other words, he's just putting different words on it, so it's harder to complain about.
Because what exactly does it mean to shift the focus of the task force?
I mean, are Dr.
Birx and Dr. Fauci going to say something about opening the economy?
I mean, what exactly would they do differently under the context of indefinitely keeping the coronavirus task force open Versus just having Dr.
Fauci still working. It looks a lot the same, doesn't it?
Would he not answer a question if the task force had been disbanded?
Was Fauci just going to go home?
Was that ever the plan?
Did somebody think we couldn't ask him questions anymore if the task force got disbanded?
The fact that Trump has found a Dilbert solution, or whoever advised him, a Dilbert solution to a Dilbert problem, which is you just change the name of it.
And the funny thing is, it'll probably work.
That's what's so funny about it.
The complaint in the first place was just people not understanding how organizations work, and it's normal to distribute functions when it's that time.
And instead of giving some kind of rational explanation like I did, well, you know, it's time to move those functions into the places they can be performed best.
Something like that. Which wouldn't work.
Nobody would buy the truth.
It just comes up with basically just refocusing.
I don't know. It's funny to me.
Um... So Victor David Hansen had a great line.
I just like the way he put this.
It's not something you haven't thought of yourself, but I like the way he put it.
He calls the experts the credentialed class.
And I thought, that is a really good way to put it, the credentialed class.
And he says that the credentialed class has been wrong on masks, Antibody testing and, quote, almost everything when it comes down to predicting how the virus would affect the country.
Now, I've been saying things like this, and people are pushing back.
Am I wrong to say that the experts have been more wrong than right?
I mean, they got the broad brush of it right.
There's a virus.
It's novel.
It's dangerous. A lot of people dying.
I mean, they got the big stuff, right?
But almost everything in the detail from masks, from human to human transmission, to what's the R on this?
How fast is it spreading?
Do antibodies work or not?
Do we have enough tests?
Can we get enough tests?
I mean, just right across the board, just wrong on just about everything.
Now, I just had a hilarious private conversation with someone who's, let's say, someone associated more with an anti-Trump side.
And his explanation for, you know, sort of explaining away why the experts were wrong on so many things is that that's how science works.
And that, you know, you're always moving toward the truth.
And I'm thinking, I don't think that's what's happening here.
It's one thing to say science does a lot of testing and they're refining their knowledge over time and you're never quite done moving toward better knowledge.
Okay, everybody gets that.
Everybody gets that.
But that's not what's happening when they told you that it wasn't transmissible from person to person.
That's not what happened when they indicated there was enough testing facilities to test our way out.
There isn't. That's not what happened when they said masks are more bad than good.
None of this has to do with the normal progression of science, you know, testing and learning and correcting itself.
None of that was happening.
This was just gigantic lying and bullshit and incompetence.
That's all it was. It wasn't science, except in a general sense.
I ended up in a...
I think you'll be amused by this.
I don't think it would be a surprise to you to find out that sometimes I can be arrogant or cocky.
I'm not sure there's a difference.
What's the difference between cocky and arrogant?
Are those the same?
I guess cocky would be not so much thinking other people are wrong, but arrogant would be you think you're more right than other people.
So I guess it'd be a little different.
So I prefer to call myself cocky.
You might call it arrogant.
I will not debate the difference because I like to think I have at least enough self-awareness to know how I can be cocky.
But, but, but it's also based on the fact that I've been right.
I'm not cocky without purpose, not without evidence.
For example, I don't believe I can play in the NBA. Right?
Because if I just had some weird belief about my powers, I would have crazy thoughts about what I could do.
Oh yeah, I could play in the NBA. No problem.
But I only make a very limited claim.
Very limited claim.
This is very limited.
That I have a special experience that I didn't put together intentionally.
Just the life path I took gives me special insight and I'm detecting bullshit.
Corporate bullshit especially.
You know, organizational bullshit specifically.
Now, I base this claim on being one of the foremost authors of making fun of bullshit in big corporations.
Maybe the most foremost author who has wrote the most on the topic of bullshit from big organizations.
Who's done more of that than me in the whole world?
Maybe, you know, that doesn't make me an expert, of course.
It just means I've spent the most time in that domain thinking about it, talking about it, hearing about it, etc.
So I'm pretty good at detecting bullshit, and if you add on top of that training and persuasion and just being around and, you know, having a breadth of experience, it's the only thing I claim.
The only thing I claim To be an unnatural ability, meaning something that you can't all do just as well, is detect bullshit.
And you've seen me do it in public over and over again.
President Trump can't possibly win the election.
Bullshit. There's a Cuban embassy problem.
There's a secret sonic weapon.
Bullshit. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Vegas shooting.
Bullshit. Masks don't work.
Bullshit. So, I mean, you've been watching me.
You've watched me call bullshit a thousand times, probably right 900 times.
I'm exaggerating, of course, but it's what I do.
Calling bullshit on stuff.
So, here's the funny story.
Enough of this setup.
As people do, I got myself into a conversation on Twitter with somebody on the topic of the coronavirus.
Unbeknownst to me, and here's the funny part, he's a doctor.
Alright, so here's the setup.
I got myself into a conversation about who knows more about this coronavirus situation with A doctor.
But I didn't know he was a doctor.
I just knew he was a guy on Twitter and I was disagreeing with him.
So how do you think that went?
Well, it turns out that this doctor has two beliefs that I think you should maybe look into.
One of those beliefs is that it's possible that we can test our way out of this.
That we'll just ramp up our testing really quick.
Have enough testing stuff, test, test, test, contact tracing, and once we get that all cranked up, we can go back to work.
Nothing like that's happening.
There is nothing like that even slightly happening in the world.
The number of tests we would need to test ourselves to safety, to really be able to test all the stuff we want to test, we're not even close.
Nor is there any expert who will tell you that we could be close in the coming months.
We're not in the same universe of being able to do that.
Everybody who tells you that that's the strategy, they're lying.
It's bullshit. In all cases where I'm calling bullshit, you just have to show me the other case.
Just show me the evidence for the other side.
I probably would change my mind.
Because wouldn't I love to think that we could test our way out of this?
If there's anything I want to be true, I mean, I really, really want this to be true.
And I also believed it was true.
Only maybe, I don't know, a week ago?
If you had asked me, I would have said, yeah, this is the United States of America.
If anybody knows how to make a test, we can make a lot of them.
We can make them fast.
We're the United States.
And then I learned that there are all kinds of different tests and companies and hundreds of them and nobody's in control.
And if you were to add up the ones that we know can be made, it doesn't come close.
Yes, Bill Gates. He made the same point.
So in order to prove me wrong, to prove that we can ramp up to the number of tests we need, to, let's say, have something done in, say, a month or so, you know, to ramp up during May, let's say, if there's anybody who believes that's a thing, please send me the link.
I'll tweet it out.
If it looks even a little bit credible, I'll take that story forward.
But, good luck with that.
You're not going to find these two numbers that at least are compatible with each other.
Find me the number of tests that need to be made per day in order to be able to test our way out.
What is that number?
Go research that.
Then figure out if you can find, and I don't think you'll be able to find this, the total number of tests of the right kind.
That's the other trick, because there are different tests.
The tests that you have to wait three days for a result, as Bill Gates points out, what the hell good are they?
Because those three days, you've spread it around while you're waiting for the result, etc.
So you have to figure out, it has to be the right kind of test, sort of the five-minute test, to really get any kind of a foothold.
So how many of those five-minute or so, or less, tests are we going to crank up in the month of May?
Go research that. How many would we need?
Let me do this visually for you.
This is my current understanding.
I want you to fix it if I'm wrong.
I want to be wrong.
I mean, I really, really want to be wrong.
So please prove me wrong.
So my understanding is the number of tests we would need per day is this big.
For those of you listening, I'm holding my hands far apart.
My current understanding, I hope it's wrong.
Is that the number we will actually reasonably be able to produce in, say, the next month or two, the period we're talking about, in order to be ready to go back to work in more of a safe way?
If the universe we need is my hands being held far apart, the amount we can make is something like the size of my fist.
Not close.
Not close.
Alright? And if anybody's telling you otherwise, please tell me.
Because I've been waiting for the Crisis Task Force, which is useless, largely, in terms of information, because I don't think they know.
I don't think anybody knows.
Here's what I think. Let me put the Dilber filter on this.
I believe there are 100 or more companies involved in testing and creating tests.
I believe that the government has talked to probably every one of them.
And I think the government has said, can you tell us what you can do?
And maybe the government heard big numbers.
And I don't know if they've summed them all up, but maybe they heard lots of claims.
Do you know what What corporations claim in situations like this where the person they're talking to is going to write you a check if you have any story at all, any story of plausibility, and your customer is going to write you a gigantic frickin' check in an environment in which making money is hard.
But you can get a big frickin' check from the government and all you have to do is lie.
All you have to do is say, Yeah, I think maybe in three weeks we could make a million tests if you would just write us a check.
Now what happens in three weeks?
Do you think that company says, here's your million tests, just like I promised, or do you think this would be more like, I need to curse.
Can I have permission to curse in the morning?
Is that okay? Are your kids still asleep?
Probably kids are sleeping in, right?
I feel like just some situations, they need a little cursing.
Maybe I can hold that back.
I'll try to just curse in the evening.
I think that would be a better idea.
So, the point is that I'm almost certain...
That if it's like every other situation in the corporate world...
Wait, back me up? Oh, I'm getting a lot of approval for cursing.
Alright, let me give it to you with full curse mode on.
Hide the kids! Hide the kids!
You've been warned. It goes like this.
If it's true that the government talked to all these companies that are going to make us all these test kits...
And all the companies said, yeah, we'll get you these million test kits in a few weeks.
We can do this.
Is that possible?
Maybe. Could be.
Or could it be that every one of these companies that the government talked to to get information...
Could it be that they're acting like every other fucking time they talk to anybody in the whole fucking world?
And it goes like this.
Hey vendor, can you get me this in three weeks?
Yes, I can. All you have to do is approve it so that there's no turning back.
You've got to get a little bit pregnant and then I'll definitely get this to you in three weeks.
What? Here's your check.
Alright, we're starting.
We're going to build it. We're going to have this in...
Well, did I say three weeks?
We'll have this in four weeks.
You said three weeks.
Yeah, I know, but we just found out we've got this problem with the factory.
It's not our fault, but, you know, four weeks, tops.
All right, four weeks.
Now, what's the vendor say?
Thank you. I just needed that little flexibility, because in four or five weeks, what...
And you say, four or five weeks?
What the fuck are you talking about?
I just gave you a check for three weeks.
You said you'd give this to me in three weeks.
What's the vendor say?
Yeah, you know, I really meant that.
But I was surprised to find out, after we got your money, that there's this problem.
But we're totally working on it.
Five fucking weeks go by.
What happens? Where's my goddamn fucking product, you goddamn asshole fucking liar?
What does your vendor say to you?
Almost there. Almost there.
All we need is for you to write another check because we're going to need an upgrade that we didn't know we need when we first analyzed this because you didn't quite give us the right data.
So it turns out we'll need an extra server so we can get this to you in five weeks.
Tops. We just need this extra check.
Okay, you motherfucker.
You lied to me.
You lied to me. You fucking lied to me.
But I'm stuck. Now I have to give you that goddamn fucking check.
Because I can't go back and say, let's start over.
I'm five weeks into this motherfucker.
And I can't change it.
And I'm not going to tell my boss that I fucked up.
So you need to fix this.
Yes, yes. Four or five weeks, we're going to have this fixed.
And once we get that check, I think I can get this to you in two months.
Two months? What the fuck are you talking about?
You said three fucking weeks!
Now... Those of you who have worked for a big company, back me up in the comments.
Did I not just describe every fucking experience you've ever had with every fucking vendor for anything that's complicated?
You know, if you're just buying a simple product, sure.
But if you're like doing an installation, you're replacing a whole system, tell me how that goes.
Every fucking time.
That's how it goes.
Not sometimes it works out well.
Every fucking time it goes the way I just described.
Now multiply that by a hundred fucking lying corporations who talk to our dumbass fucking gullible government who for some reason may have believed their bullshit and now they think that we can make test kits like fucking magic because we're going to be shitting them out of our asses in three weeks when nothing like that has ever happened in the fucking history of this country or the civilization in general.
you So if you'd like, you can believe that this is the first time in the history of the world corporations have Have accurately told the buyer what they could deliver before they got their money.
It could be the first time it's ever happened.
In fucking civilization!
Or maybe you put the Dilber filter on this and say, we're not going to test our way out of this.
And the way you know that, the way you know it, Is that the government didn't even have the balls to put together the estimate for us to say, this is how many we need, and we're a little embarrassed that we believe it, but this is how much they say they're going to make.
I don't even know if I want to put that on paper because I don't think it's true.
So if you can't even get to the point where the government will lie to you and say, we asked them, it looks like we've got plenty.
They're going to have this in three weeks.
If they're not even willing to lie to you about it, it's not happening.
Same with the vaccines.
The vaccine story is just complete bullshit.
The other thing that this doctor that I found myself talking to on Twitter, he made the mistake of questioning my credentials.
I And it's always the same problem.
The medical people will question my credentials and then I have to correct them and say, oh, I'm sorry, did it seem as though I was offering a medical opinion?
No, no, I'm no expert on medical stuff.
I'm not going to offer a medical opinion.
But if you want to know what is bullshit, you want to come to me.
I will spot your bullshit faster than just about anybody.
Am I cocky? Yeah.
Yeah, I'm cocky about that.
Because I'm good at it.
I'm not cocky at things I'm bad at.
That would just be crazy. But I'm good at that.
So yeah, come to me when you want to find out what is bullshit.
So the other thing that this doctor believed is that we could eradicate the virus.
What? How could you be paying attention to this whole coronavirus thing and think that we could eradicate it?
Nobody thinks that.
Is there any expert that thinks we could eradicate the virus?
So I'm talking to a guy who thinks I'm stupid because I don't have enough medical information, and he's the smart one, and he thinks we're going to test our way out of it because the corporation said we could.
Okay. And that the virus could be eradicated.
Okay. Says, nobody.
But, and then he pointed out, I have a credential problem.
Oh, what's the world coming to?
All right. Speaking of credentials, I only mention this because of the credentials of the person saying it.
So this is a professor of practice at Harvard, and he teaches economics.
He's a senior fellow.
So, you put all that together, he's a smart guy.
Now, what does he say when he looks at the coronavirus prediction models?
What does someone who's a Harvard Econ professor and a senior fellow, clearly very qualified, and based on his comments you can tell he's deeply qualified, what does he say about the prediction models?
Well, he uses big words, but here's one of the things he says.
He says a lot, but here's one of the things.
He says the cubic fit, which is the method that I guess they're using, is based on an approach to epidemiology that has long been absent from any serious epidemiological discussions.
It made terrible predictions back in March and April.
The functional form was chosen to get the result they wanted.
So there's an expert on models who's telling you exactly what I told you, but smarter, which is that models are sort of about manipulating perception.
You know, they can do a little bit in terms of bounding things, but if they try to use them to convince you there's something specific going to happen, like, we're going to follow this curve...
They're not on such solid scientific ground, says this Harvard expert, and I believe him.
All right. Oh, by the way, by the way, so most of you know I've started moving some content.
I'm not going to be moving these periscopes.
You'll still be able to see these, but in addition, If you wanted to see them on the Locals platform, locals.com, I'm putting some special content on there so that people who subscribe there will get extra stuff.
And just letting you know, if you subscribe there, you can see my micro tutorial on personal finance.
So if you're somebody who doesn't know anything about personal finance, and it's just a few minutes to get you started.
So what I'll be doing is putting lots of little micro lessons, just a few minutes on topics for people who just need to get a Some traction on a topic and then they can, you know, Google it and research it.
But I'll get you going in 10 minutes on a bunch of topics.
So personal finance is the second one.
The one that was already up there is how to write humor.
So those are two. I'm going to try to do one a week.
We'll see how that goes.
So you can see this forming and it's already started.
So here's a tweet that I said.
That's based on the fact that once you realize that the whole testing story is a fraud, that that's never going to get us where we need to be, and that there's no other plan.
There's nothing else in terms of a plan or a technology or a solution or anything that would get us back to work more safely than just sort of going back to work and trying to do it as cautiously as possible.
Given that that's the case, that we don't have an option where people don't die, so the not having an option part is the key here.
So remember, there is no option.
There's nobody smart who can say, oh yeah, why don't we do this?
This doesn't exist.
There's nobody smart offering an option.
If you don't know that, you're missing the most important part of the story.
Because you think they are.
Because you're thinking, yeah, there's an option.
We get better testing.
No, that's not a thing. That's a fraud.
You're not going to get better testing, at least within the next several months.
So I wrote this tweet, which is just a realistic assessment of the fact that we don't have options.
So no options.
Here's what I said. I once demanded people give me their acceptable death count to go back to work.
In order to be deemed credible in the conversation.
That makes sense, right? If people are going to die either way, a serious person is going to say, well, I choose this path because there will be fewer deaths than the other path.
But you have to say they're deaths, otherwise you're not part of the conversation.
And then I updated that and I said, today I see no option but to accept the death toll whatever.
That comes from opening, because it is what it is.
So the death toll is just going to be what it is.
If we had an option to make it something different, then we should talk about that.
But nobody's offered an option.
The only option we've heard about are these fake ones.
Like, let's think, how about if magic happens, and then we all have enough tests.
Hey, that's an idea. Let's use magic.
To make enough tests appear really quickly.
Then we'll test everybody.
And we'll go back to work.
That's way better than your plan, Scott, of just going back to work.
Well, it is better than my plan.
If magic was real.
But it isn't.
So we're not going to use magic.
To create tests that don't exist and can't exist before the economy is destroyed.
So my take on this is that there's some point at which the economy has gone too far, meaning that you can't claw your way back to something good.
That would be catastrophic.
We don't know where that point is.
I suspect that we can go another three weeks in California.
As long as other states that are in better shape or whatever are beginning to open up sooner, I think California could wait.
I don't think it becomes a permanent problem in three weeks, but I wouldn't say that about six weeks, meaning that I don't think anybody's smart enough to know where that crossover point is where you kill more people by killing the economy.
Nobody knows where that is.
But we do know, conceptually, that there's some point where it happens and some point that's just too far.
And I think that you can sort of feel that more than you can analyze it.
And what I feel, and again, since we don't have data to be more important or more reliable than anybody's feeling at this point, is that the risk of taking this too far and having not enough left of the economy to bring it back is so big, that's such a big risk, that you'd be better off going a little bit early.
And we don't have an option.
We have to go back to work.
It's only a question of now or wait a few weeks.
But nothing's really going to change in a few weeks.
If there was something happening that would change our situation in a few weeks, such as having lots more tests, or at least enough, or a vaccine or therapeutics or something, I'd say wait.
If we could, if there was something to wait for, I'd say wait.
Which is also why I say, It was exactly the right decision to close things down for a while.
So if the entire close down had been one month, I would have said unambiguously that was the right decision because we needed to find out what's what.
And one month we can survive.
It doesn't crush the economy.
One month. And I was saying that.
I was like, pfft. One month?
We're going to bounce back from this.
Six weeks? No problem.
We're going to bounce back from six weeks and we'll be back by the end of the year.
And then it turned into, well, it's not six weeks.
It's a lot longer.
Now there's nobody who can tell you what's too long.
But six weeks definitely would have been short enough that we would have bounced back.
I say that with very high confidence.
Three months? I don't know.
I don't know. Maybe.
Maybe not. But I don't have confidence that three months is...
we're still going to get back from that.
So, let's see.
Oh, apparently airlines are looking at options for not occupying the center seating.
So there's, I guess, Frontier Airlines...
He said that you could actually pay extra to keep the seat next to you open.
So if you want to pay extra, there's nobody in the middle seat.
I don't know how that works, because if I pay extra, the person on the other side, the other side of the middle seat, do they get it for free?
I mean, is that fair?
And then apparently other airlines are just, without extra charge, are getting rid of these center seats.
And I guess they're all requiring that you wear masks now.
And I'm thinking to myself, if the only thing that came out of this is that people could pay extra to have a seat with nobody in the middle seat, that would be huge.
Do you know, one of the advantages of being my size physically...
Is that if I'm flying in coach and there's nobody in the seat next to me, it's not a lot different than first class.
Because I'm not so big that the bigger seat makes that much of a difference to me.
I mean, I can fit in a regular seat just fine.
So if you give me the option of flying coach with nobody in the seat next to me and I have to pay 20% extra, there are a lot of situations where I'm going to fly coach Where otherwise I might use my Dilbert money to fly first class.
And, you know, it would be sort of a waste because it might be a two-hour flight or something.
But for a two-hour flight, I'm not going to fly first class even if I can afford it, if I can have nobody in the middle seat.
You know, I'm not so rich that I throw money away for no reason.
I'd like to be that rich, but...
I don't know if I could ever feel that, that I could waste things.
All right. So, that's where we're at.
If you take the fact that people might be willing to pay a little extra for the middle seat to be empty, put on top of that the fact that the fuel cost should be coming down a lot for airlines.
That's going to be one of their biggest costs, if not the biggest.
Is fuel the biggest cost for airlines, or is it Something else.
It's up there. And then I'd add on top of that that probably by year end, the resorts are going to be offering amazing deals because they won't be booked up unless they do.
So I would expect that...
Here's something I totally agree with Trump on.
That 2021...
I think 2021 is going to be off the hook because the people who lost work...
We're the people who were not the big buyers to begin with.
They were the people who didn't have much money.
They were working the kind of job where they would lose it, but they weren't driving consumption because they were the people who didn't have money.
The people who still kept their job, something like 70% of the country, still got their same paycheck.
And probably they're the people who are making more than the people who lost their jobs.
So all those people who are getting extra just spent months indoors not spending much money.
I guarantee you that there are a lot of people very quietly who had a really good few months.
Their personal expenses dropped to practically maybe 30% of what they could have been.
Let's say 60% of what they could have been.
They probably saved money.
They're probably at least half of this country who saved money because they still got paid and they didn't have anything to spend it on.
So what happens to all those people who saved money, the people who have the money, When they're free to go spend it again.
Look at all the cars that they didn't buy, all the trips they didn't take, the clothes they didn't get.
I mean, 2021 is going to be off the hook if we just go back to work.
Nothing special has to happen.
There is so much...
You know, untapped buying potential is going to be crazy.
Now, of course, people's 401ks and their stocks are lower.
But as of today, stocks are having...
Well, it looks like it's mixed. It was better this morning.
A lot of stocks are having a good day.
Bitcoin's up. Bitcoin's having a good time.
But... It seems to me that when we get to the point where the economy is reopening, people see that bulge of consumer demand that's coming.
The stock market and the 401ks are going to be back within, let's say, spinning territory of where they were, and people are going to feel fine.
So, that's the good news.
All right. Somebody's saying that they saved a ton.
Yeah, you know, this coronavirus thing will be a big hit to me because I think that my main source of income will probably shrink, I don't know, 75 to 90 percent this year.
Because I think the small newspapers will just go into business.
But... If my income stayed the same, I would have also spent much less.
I'm not doing anything.
So I would have come out ahead, but I won't be going back to a career that I used to have.
Commercial real estate, yeah.
So somebody's saying commercial real estate might be a fee.
But here's the thing. The people who have...
Commercial real estate probably have long-term, mostly, deals.
So I don't think commercial real estate is going to crash right away.
I think that's got a little bit of padding because people are still going to have to pay the rent, even if a lot more people are staying home for another year or two.
Isn't stock your main source of income?
No. No, it is not, nor is it even close.
Anecdotally, it didn't just hit poor people in my sphere.
No, it did not just hit poor people, but of course they got hit the hardest.
Killed my wife's speaking business, yeah.
Yeah, anything with travel or crowds.
Somebody says, take the speaking engagements.
What speaking engagements?
What speaking engagements?
Do you think that I get speaking engagements now?
Now, I'm too controversial at this point.
So I'm no longer a good speaker for a general, let's say, a corporation event or an industry event, because as soon as they book me, because this has happened, you know, I'm not guessing this has happened, they'll book me, and then they'll tell their members, hey, we got this Dilber guy, and then somebody in the membership will say, ah, you know that he said good things about Trump, right?
And then the organizer says, I didn't know that.
And then they call me and say, you know, we lost our budget.
We can't hire you anymore.
So, I mean, I've been through this.
So, no, I can't do speaking.
That's not on the table. Nor can I make a Dilbert movie.
Same reason. Too much, you know, Hollywood hatred.
So most lines of my normal business have been closed down for me for different reasons.
But I will be fine.
Don't worry about it.
Somebody says you make tons on books.
That's not true, actually.
So the books that I write are actually a trivial part of my income.
I think even the bestsellers, they're actually kind of trivial.
Most people don't realize that.
The books that make money are the ones that are just runaway bestsellers, but they make pretty much all of the money.
Once you get to, well, you were on the bestseller list for a few weeks, but at the bottom, and then it fell off after a few weeks, if you're that kind of author...
That's not a lot of money. And my early Dilbert books were in that other category where it's just crazy money.
But that was like 20 years ago.
The current publishing, even though I write bestsellers, they don't sit at the top of the bestseller list for five years.
Those make money. But maybe 1% or something of books that get published are big money makers.
I'm probably in the top...
5%? I'm just guessing here, just off the top of my head.
I would say that my books sell in the top 5% of books fairly dependably, but that's not a lot of money in terms of the big picture.
Cartoon on TV makes no money, even though it still runs on TV, because Hollywood makes a deal where after a while they keep all the money, so that's where that's at.
Anyway, just in case you were wondering, not that it matters to you, but I do have options, so I'm not complaining.
If any of this sounded like a complaint, let me clarify.
I am in a much better situation than 99% of the world.
I do not lose sight of that.
So I'm not going to bitch about something that happened to me when I'm watching the world meltdown.
Like, that's not where I'm at.
But it is also just true.
That many of us will be affected in our different ways.
It's just a fact. Alright.
What's my big overhead?
Oh, well, that's a longer story.
Living is expensive.
But my property tax is probably more than...
My property tax on my house...
Nah, I'm not going to say this.
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