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June 1, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
46:22
Episode 1010 Scott Adams: Tell Me About the Riots in Your Town. Mine is Heating up Now. And More. Relax!
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Time Text
Come on in here.
It's safe. It's safe in here.
Come on. Gather round.
Nobody can catch you when you're in here.
Well, there's craziness breaking down all over the place, but you don't need to worry about it.
I'll tell you why.
Make a note to myself so I don't forget to tell you why.
Oh, people are calling me the bald prophet.
Well, I guess you don't get to make up your own nickname.
I'll take what I can get.
So, Erica, relax.
Calm down. The rest of you, relax.
Here's what you need to know.
I've told you before that it's always helpful to see the world through an energy filter.
In other words, don't look at the details of what people are doing.
Don't look at the fact-checking.
Don't look at the reasons and the logic.
Look at the energy.
Because the energy is very predictive.
When the energy is moving around, that's where the luck goes.
It's where the bad stuff goes.
It's where the good stuff goes.
So follow the energy.
And if you take that theory, then we should see the protesters burning out in a few days.
Meaning that there was all this pent-up energy, just a ton of energy, largely because of the lockdowns, and that energy has to go somewhere.
So all of that energy, it didn't just disappear.
It just was still there and it was kind of pent up and now it's being released.
Now the point of this is if you think this is the beginning of something that's going to build and build and build, I would say you're almost certainly wrong.
If there's one thing I'm willing to bet on, like a lot, that this has a peak and then it peters out.
Now, that would be true of most protests in general, but I think this one is especially easy to predict because of all that pent-up energy.
You're just seeing it come out.
Now, the bad luck of it, and it was the worst luck, George Floyd was killed, and that became the trigger for all of this.
So there probably would have been any trigger that would have done it, but man, that was a powerful trigger.
Now the tragedy, of course, as we're all watching this, is first of all, there's a tragedy for George Floyd, and there's a tragedy for the credibility of the police, because one assumes that most police are perfectly good human beings and doing their job But certainly this group of four police officers did not make them all proud.
So it was a bad day in all those many ways.
But man, did it get worse!
Wow! The one positive that could have come out of the tragic death, if you can even say it that way, is that for a moment the entire country was on the same side.
We all had the same impression of this video.
It's obvious some kind of crime was committed.
We're not lawyers. We don't know which one exactly, but it's obvious that there's something deeply wrong there.
And it could have been this big unifying breakthrough kind of thing.
And then Antifa came along and then the looters.
But whose fault is that?
Whose fault is it that there was Antifa?
And there were looters.
Well, your first impression should be, well, duh, it's Antifa's fault, and it's the looters' fault, and if you want to blame me, go further back, it's the cops' fault.
That's probably your first reactions.
But I would suggest that in the year 2020, when you have an issue that is so unusual and powerful as this one, unusual and everybody agreed, the right way to play this was anything but a street protest.
The right way to play it was anything but protesting in the street.
Because protesting in the street is sort of guaranteed to give you exactly what you're getting, especially with all that...
Pent-up energy and the weather getting warmer and it was just everything that you don't want.
So I got to say that Black Lives Matter, while I believe most of them are well-intentioned, they used a strategy that kind of invited all this.
Now, once you've seen that your strategy doesn't work, what do you do?
Do you say to yourself, gosh, I hope in the next time we do a nighttime protest, I sure hope Antifa doesn't show up.
That's not going to work.
You don't say to yourself, I hope nobody thinks of looting, because that's not going to work either.
So what does Black Lives Matter, what do they do when they know they have a strategy that is guaranteed to make things worse?
What do you do? Well, apparently Black Lives Matter just repeats the same thing That made everything worse.
At this point, I would say originally they're just victims.
Victims of the looters, victims of Antifa, turning what should have been a positive thing into a bad thing.
At this point, their strategy is deeply, deeply flawed.
In fact, they're losing more ground every minute.
Would you not say that your empathy For their cause has dramatically decreased because of the riots.
And the answer is, if you're human, probably so.
Because it's hard to hold too many thoughts in your head without them influencing each other.
And at the moment, our biggest thought is, why are you doing this?
Why are you having even a peaceful protest that you know is guaranteed to destroy businesses?
You know it's going to make you look bad.
You know it's going to make Antifa behave badly.
You know these things.
You don't even have to guess.
You know them. So at this point, my empathy, which started out nailed at a 10, probably for most of you, right?
You watched that video, and your first reaction was that your empathy, if you're normal and you're human and you're a good person at all...
Your empathy just went to a 10 out of 10 and just pinned there.
Boop! Now that was the biggest opening in the world to get something done.
Name one thing that Black Lives Matter has suggested in terms of a policy change.
Go ahead. Name anything that you're aware of that Black Lives Matter has put together as a little suggestion of how things could be better.
Go ahead. Yeah, none.
Not a damn thing.
So not only has Black Lives Matter squandered maybe the best opportunity they'll ever have to make real progress, completely lost now.
You can't get it back.
Not only did they lose that, but they never had any suggestions.
After all this?
After all of this?
Not a suggestion?
Something we could chew on?
Something Congress could vote on, or more likely states could vote on, or municipalities?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Now, if they do have something, then I would say that our news sources are failing us terribly.
Because if Black Lives Matter has anything that looks like some suggestions, why don't we know it?
I don't see it on any news source.
So, what empathy am I supposed to give to Black Lives Matter when I started as a 10 and they're implementing a strategy to lower my empathy for their cause?
And not only are they implementing the strategy, they're putting a lot of effort into it to lower my empathy for their cause.
They couldn't work any harder at lowering my empathy for their cause.
Now, here's the thing that I think they get wrong that would be a good lesson for you because it's something that everybody gets wrong.
It's a really, really common thing to get wrong.
In fact, I would say, when you're talking about communication and persuasion, this might be the most common thing that people get wrong.
And they're so wrong on this.
Just terribly, terribly wrong.
And it goes like this.
Just as I could never...
I don't fully understand what it's like to be a black man in the United States.
Of course I can't. I can listen and I can observe and I can do what I can, but there's nothing you can really do.
To make you really know what it's like to exist as another person.
But the same would be true in reverse.
There's no person who's different from me with a different life who really knows what it's like to be inside my body and my life and my mind and feel the way I feel.
So the first thing you need to know is that nobody really knows what's in other people's heads.
We just sort of sometimes think we do, but we're terrible at it.
And here's the big problem.
People forget that they're persuading the other team.
People forget that their job is to persuade the other team.
And the way you know that they've forgotten that is that they communicate and they persuade in a way that's designed for their own team.
People are just talking to themselves.
It's the opposite of persuasion.
So when you see Black Lives Matter protesting in the street...
Protesting in the street.
Who are they talking to?
Who are they talking to?
Not the people they're trying to persuade.
They're not talking to white America.
Because if they wanted to talk to white America, they would have seen that protesting in the street led to violence and they would have immediately stopped it.
And then white America would say, good move.
I'm glad you clamped down on that.
Let's talk. Do you have any suggestions?
This is the time to talk.
We're open to suggestions.
We'd like to do something.
When have you ever been in a situation where everybody would like to do something?
It's not even that you have to talk anybody into anything.
We'd like to do something.
Seriously, we'd like to do something.
We'd like to help.
Give us any suggestion just to chew on.
We'll debate it. I'll help you.
I'll help you persuade.
If there's some good suggestion.
Let me put a bow on this.
The protesters need to figure out a language that is the language of the people they wish to persuade.
That is primarily white America.
They're speaking a language which is designed to persuade themselves.
It's missing by a mile.
Missing by a mile.
It's not even close. And all they had to do was bank the game that they got by accident, because that video was so compelling that everybody just joined their side.
And then they protested.
Everybody joined their side, and then they protested.
It's like they missed the biggest opening of all time.
To me, that's the biggest tragedy.
The tragedy was far bigger than the death of even one person, no matter how tragic And horrible it was.
The death of one person, of course, was special because death is death.
But what this lost opportunity could have meant for civilization, I mean, it was a really, really big loss for the black community especially, but for really everybody.
But there are some signs of Well, maybe a trend?
Some signs of maybe a shift?
And it comes in the form of multiple anecdotes.
I've been following, if you're not following Ian Miles Chiang, he's got the best feed on all the various videos from the protests.
So I'm looking at one now in which there was obviously some Antifa Protester guy who started to break up with a hammer, tried to break up some concrete curb to make bricks that people could throw at things, you know, to get projectiles.
And the peaceful protesters tackled him and handed him over to the police.
Now, some of the protesters, most of them, I think, the peaceful ones were white, and they tackled what I'm guessing was a white guy.
He had a lot of masks on, but that's my best guess.
And, you know, there was at least one black guy helping to wrestle him down, etc.
So, at least in one place, the peaceful protesters literally took physical action against Antifa.
Physical action. They tackled him.
They tackled him and they dragged him to the police.
But it wasn't just one.
Do you know, if you follow sports, you may know a basketball player named J.R. Smith.
Apparently, he was in L.A., and I think it was a protester of some sort, messed with his vehicle.
Now, if you want to have a bad day, mess with the vehicle of somebody who doesn't look that big until they get out of their vehicle.
So there's a video of J.R. Smith, who, did I mention he plays in the NBA? I don't know his height, but he plays in the NBA. He's a big guy.
And he's just beating the piss out of this guy who's about half his size.
He was not happy about this guy messing with his car.
Now, was the guy he beat up Antifa or Black Lives Matter?
I couldn't see much of him.
He was getting beaten so badly, you couldn't even tell anything about him.
But it's that sort of story where you see, let's say, the peaceful segment of the protesters, the peaceful segment of Black Lives Matter, the peaceful people who are supporting them, are going to turn on Antifa.
I've seen now maybe four or five videos in which the Black Lives Matter people, the peaceful activists, are shouting down the Antifa people who are not black and saying, hey, you're getting us in trouble.
One of them was graffitiing.
So it looked like two young females who may have been Asian, I couldn't tell, it matters to the story, were graffitiing something and writing Black Lives Matter and they weren't even black.
And the black woman who was Presumably with Black Lives Matter, or at least marching with him, is saying, we're going to get blamed for this.
So she's yelling at him, who do you think is going to get blamed for spray painting Black Lives Matter on public property?
It's not going to be Antifa.
Antifa isn't going to get blamed.
So I don't know if these were outside agitators, but was it Susan Rice?
Susan Rice now says that she suspects Russia is behind this.
Russia? Really?
So that's funny.
But I would expect that in the next maybe day or so, and I predicted this yesterday, I said it would take about 48 hours for Black Lives Matter to turn on Antifa.
And let me just put it out there.
If Black Lives Matter wants to turn on Antifa, They're going to have a lot of friends.
Let me tie two conversations together here.
I told you that if you want to communicate and persuade, you have to speak in the language of the people you're trying to persuade.
If you imagine that the people you're trying to persuade are, say, conservatives, because if you could persuade conservatives, Well, you've already got a lot of people on the left, then you'd really have a lot of people.
Then you could get things done.
So if Black Lives Matter wants to persuade conservatives, the best way to do it is to just shut down Antifa.
Because you know you can do it.
You know you can shut down Antifa.
It wouldn't be easy, but you know you can do it.
If you want conservatives to love you, shut down Antifa.
If you want the conservatives to care less and less about you every day, keep protesting in the street while we have video of hardworking business owners, many of the minorities, having their lives destroyed by your careless and ridiculous strategy of protesting in the street.
During the pandemic, which of course invites looters and Antifa.
So it's pretty easy if you want an ally.
The conservatives are anti-Antifa.
So all you have to do is be anti-Antifa and you've got a lot of friends suddenly.
So that's the strategy I would look at.
All right. Let's see what else is going on here in crazy town.
So, it seems to me this week that thanks to Antifa primarily, Democrats have lost every argument they've ever made.
That sounds like a big claim, right?
That because of Antifa this week, Democrats just lost all the arguments they've ever made.
For example, how do you feel about the Second Amendment this week?
Do you think you're going to give up your gun?
You can forget about gun control because the visuals are so pro-gun ownership that you couldn't do anything more powerful for convincing people to buy extra guns.
My guess is that gun sales are through the roof right now.
And if they're not, I don't know why.
So on gun control, they're losing badly because they just made the best commercial you'll ever see For gun ownership.
That's it. How about income inequality?
How's their argument for income inequality?
Do you know how much I care about income inequality when the people who are complaining are burning their own small businesses?
People within their community who do not have a lot of money.
They're small businesses. How much empathy do I have for income inequality When Antifa and Black Lives Matter are actively destroying, at least through their actions anyway, actively destroying business of low-income people?
None. None.
I have no empathy for it because of the way it's being handled.
I have empathy for it if they hadn't done that, but their actions so discredit the entire argument.
How about reparations?
How's that looking? Well, I wouldn't bring up reparations this week.
I don't think that would be a winning argument this week.
I think you can put that one to bed.
How about, let's see, what other arguments have they lost this week?
They haven't lost abortion, because you see that many people running around acting poorly, and you don't think to yourself, we need more people.
You don't think that.
I was just looking.
All right. So that's pretty much...
The entire left has discredited itself to the point where it's ridiculous.
I don't know if it changes anybody's mind.
It doesn't work that way. Did you see the video of the woman who was running away with a cheesecake?
How many of you saw the cheesecake video?
If you haven't seen the cheesecake video, you have to see my Twitter feed.
I think it's several tweets down now, but it happened today.
There's an Antifa-looking person, a woman it looks like, in a raincoat, and she's got a full cheesecake.
The article is a local news story that says that the cheesecake factory was looted, and then there's a woman walking out with just a full cheesecake.
I added my own caption to the video, and I said, quote, all capitalists must die, but if I'm being honest, their cheesecake is exceptional.
Antifa. So that is how ridiculous it is.
Now let me ask you, what is it that Antifa wants?
What does Antifa want?
Don't know, do you?
You don't know. Neither do I. Does Antifa all want the same thing?
I don't think so.
I think they're breaking stuff for fun.
Some of them. I think some of them are in it for the lifestyle.
We know that because people who have been in Antifa have said that directly, that they were in it for sort of the lifestyle and the thrill.
Some of them might think it's going to help in some weird way.
I don't know. But what do they want other than to destroy black lives?
So I think Antifa is working directly to destroy black lives and everybody else's life, it looks like.
They are the common enemy.
If black America wants to team up with white America, we've got a common enemy called Antifa.
Antifa is attacking my town tonight.
I don't know. Did I mention that?
Probably not. My town is under attack tonight.
The local shopping mall It may or may not go up in flames today.
I don't know. But I think when you attack the suburbs, there's a little extra risk.
Now, it could turn out to be a peaceful protest.
Who knows? But I don't think you plan a peaceful protest at the mall.
No. You plan looting at the mall.
So I would expect that in my little East Bay town in Northern California, there will be something like at least attempts at looting.
One of the things that people don't quite appreciate about the suburbs is how heavily armed we are.
I saw one of the organizers saying it would be safe because there are so few MAGA people around here.
Okay. Okay.
Maybe as a percentage there aren't that many.
That's true. But they are really well armed.
Just the MAGA people that I know personally in my town have enough armory to have their own National Guard.
The suburbs are really well armed.
Now, I don't know that it's going to make any difference.
Anybody's going to use it. But if you were going to tell me where is there most likely to be an A lethal event.
I think my town's pretty close to the top of the list because you're not going to get lost in the crowd that easily and the odds of running into somebody armed in my town is pretty good.
The number of people in my town who have a firearm in their car, it's pretty high.
It's pretty high. So I think those who maybe don't own firearms and around the left Probably operate in a world where they don't know anybody who wants a gun.
You know, in the suburbs, they might not even know anybody.
But there's a lot of guns here.
A lot of guns.
So, there's that.
All right, yes.
It looks like Antifa, if I had to guess, I mean, the odds of a mass casualty event are pretty high, but I think most of the people who will be in that event will be Antifa, if you know what I mean.
So I think there will be a mass casualty event, but it won't be Antifa causing it.
I think it will be, you know, if there is one, that will be in the direction of fewer Antifa protesters, if you know what I mean.
I'm not recommending it.
I'm not recommending it.
I hope it doesn't happen. I'm just saying it's about a 50% chance at this point, I'd say.
50%. Somebody says Pleasanton folks have ARs.
You know you're Pleasanton, don't you?
Yeah, Pleasanton is bristling with assault rifles.
It's true. And the people who think that is not, they better keep their protest Kind of peaceful because it's a pretty heavily armed place here.
All right. I'm going to take some calls.
Is there anybody having any protest where they are?
Anybody have any eyewitness accounts?
But you can ask me anything.
I'll just take some callers.
Let's see who's around.
Let's see if Benjamin wants to talk.
Hey, Benjamin. Can you hear me?
When I catch people off guard, they're not ready to talk.
Benjamin? I think he has his mute on.
Let's pick somebody who just signed on because they're almost certainly going to be ready.
Dave? Dave?
Dave, are you there? Good.
Do you have a question for me or do you have a report?
No, I don't have a report, but I do have a question I've been meaning to ask you for quite some time.
Do you think that USA slash Trump should buy Taiwan at, say, 10,000 an acre?
No. Taiwan has the Hong Kong problem, which is that the geography just – it doesn't work.
Taiwan will someday be part of China, I think.
It might be in 100 years.
But I think China just has infinite patience when it comes to that topic, and I just don't know there's any other way it can go.
Now, it might be that in 100 years, China will be a democracy, and then Taiwan says, well, why not?
You could imagine it, but no, I don't see there's any There's no way we could get away with that without causing way more problems than it solves.
It would only be $91 billion, so not much.
Well, it'd be cheap, but not in terms of what it would cost us in the long run.
So anyway, good idea.
I like the out of the box.
I like that out of the box thinking.
All right.
Somebody says, Scott is my Oprah.
That gets you the invite.
Guest, can you hear me?
Hi. Do you have a question or a riot report from your town?
Yeah, so I'm in Salt Lake and we had had a little bit of rioting.
We went on, what is that called, where they shut you down at night?
Curfew. Curfew. They put us on curfew.
I think a car got put on fire And that was it.
Maybe a few windows broken.
We still have protesting, but the news is reporting that rioting has been quelled and the police are doing a fantastic job.
Good. What are the odds that we would come from a COVID lockdown immediately into a riot curfew?
The rioters ruined the only thing that we had going for us, which is, oh, finally we can go outside a little bit.
And then, the next thing you know, bullets and bricks are flying, and mostly bricks.
Alright, thanks for the update. Oh, yeah.
Well, I think the rioters didn't realize that they came from out of state to come to basically Mormon Switzerland.
I mean, we are also ridiculously armed.
Yes, the Mormons are prepared.
I know that about you.
Yes. First up, yes.
They're supposed to fit in and a little bit suspicious of a government, so we're always well armed.
All right. Well, that's where I'm going to go during the end times.
I'm going to go right to your state.
Yeah, you should. All right.
Thanks for the call. Bye.
All right. That seems like a safe place to be.
All right, how about Awadesh?
Watch me mispronounce this name.
Awadesh, are you there?
Was that...
Was that even close to the right pronunciation of your name?
Actually, you did it better than my parents.
I'm the ninth youngest child of my parents, and they ran out of all the names even where I come from.
Even from where I am, it's not a usual name.
I feel like they were sitting around and they were like, all right, oh, I lost the connection, but I have to finish this thought.
I feel like his parents were sitting around, based on his story, and saying, all right, we've got eight kids, we've named them, we're just out of names.
How about... Ooh, have we done blah?
How about I did?
And then they just sort of triangulate on one.
I'm not making fun of your name, just having fun.
Sorry you got disconnected.
Let me see if you got back on.
We'll try you again if you did.
Jump back on. There you go.
We're going to try you again.
Let's try this again.
What was your question and or report?
Yeah, yeah, my report.
You know, I've been locked down in my little apartment in midtown Manhattan here for more than three, four months now.
And I was so excited watching the news that all these things are going on all over American big cities.
And I go for a walk.
I mean, kind of like Hell's Kitchen.
Oh, darn. We lost them again.
All right. Well, Let me take somebody else and let's see if Michael's connection's good.
Oh, maybe not.
Michael doesn't seem to be connecting.
Let's try someone else.
I'm not exactly sure why there are so many that don't work.
Hello, caller.
Can you hear me? I want to tell you I really enjoy you, but I want to, so the governor's daughter in Minnesota and de Blasio's daughter have both been arrested.
What kind of repercussions are going to happen?
Arrested for what? De Blasio's daughter was arrested for, she's out with the protesters.
Yeah, I think all of the protesters will probably get off with just warnings or tickets or whatever it is.
I don't think the society cares too much about punishing some protesters to get a little bit out of hand.
It's more about crowd control, I think, than really punishing them.
So I would guess nothing.
Well, I'm not really asking about the protesters, but the optics of the governor and de Blasio.
Well, actually, the optics are fine because aren't they left-leaning?
And if the protesters were protesting against police brutality and they were with Black Lives Matter, I think it's all good for the left.
I'm not sure that hurts them in one bit.
Okay. All right.
Thank you. All right. Thank you.
All right. Let's see who else we got here.
Let's go to Ale.
Or is it Allie? Hello?
Is it Allie? Allie?
Allie? Allie?
Allie? Allie? Hi Allie, do you have a question or report?
Yeah, so what I would like to address is the fact that President Trump actually designated the Antifa as a terrorist group.
How do we go forward from there?
Well, apparently that doesn't mean anything.
The experts have weighed in and they've said that if you're not a foreign group, it doesn't mean anything to designate you as a terrorist group because there's no formal anything that goes with that.
It's just words.
But if they were foreign, there would be a whole set of things you would do because of it.
But domestically, I don't know that it means anything.
So I guess the president is going to have to figure out what it means.
Yeah, I think the president will have to figure out what it means.
And maybe they need some new legislation or something.
But we could get there. I mean, I think we could make it more of a thing than it is.
So I think it's a good step that he gets the, you know, he's directionally correct on this.
So being directionally correct is the first step.
Maybe we get the details later.
But thanks for bringing that up.
Yeah, we lost that connection.
But let's talk to Ken because he has a nice dog icon.
Ken, are you there?
Ken disappeared.
There's something about talking to me that makes people disconnect.
All right, let's see if Nicole's connection works.
Nicole, can you hear me?
Hi, do you have a question and or Antifa reports?
I have both actually.
All right. So I went to the Boston protests today.
I haven't been there since like the sun's gone down, but it was very well populated when I was there, but didn't seem violent, which is good.
I talked to some of the police on the scene and they weren't pleased to be there, but Oh, we lost the connection.
You know what I think it is?
I think that people who are not on Wi-Fi lose the connection.
So if you're not on Wi-Fi, you should probably not try to join as a guest because I think it's the regular cell connection that's causing everybody to fall apart.
Let's see if Mark's got a Wi-Fi connection here.
Mark, are you there?
Mark is not there.
Alright, what am I, one for three lately?
I can do better than that.
Let's try Joe. Joe, come on.
Let's make this work.
Joe, are you there?
Joe. Joe.
Hello. Oh, this is Jim.
Jim, do you have a question and or anti-fire report?
Yeah, just like Nicole right ahead of me, I too am in Boston.
And over the last hour, it's starting to get a little more.
The last couple of nights been quiet, but it's starting to get a little more out of control now.
The most I've seen is burning a police cruiser, but the crowds are getting pretty heavy right about now.
Yeah, go ahead.
Two quick things.
I got into listening to you over the last two months because I was home due to COVID. So I've become a really big fan.
But do you think it would be good if the president addressed the nation at some point, maybe to help things out?
Well, you know, I've been thinking a lot about that question because I've seen a lot of his supporters almost begging for it late last night.
I'm not sure he needed to do it in the middle of the night last night.
And here's my concern.
He's really bad at this.
It's the one thing that I'm going to say unambiguously, he's bad at this, which is saying just the right words without the illegitimate press finding the one thing they can take out of context and turn it into a racist dog whistle.
So he may have calculated, as his advisors may have as well, that saying anything at all would make it worse.
And he might be right about that, because when he sends a tweet, he can say unambiguously, you know, your, let's say your looting is ruining the memory of George Floyd, and that's nice and clean and easy to understand, and you know what side he's on.
But the moment he starts freestyling, and you know he would freestyle, It opens up that possibility.
He uses the word thug too many times.
He does the, what was the thing that caused offense when the looting starts, the shooting starts, which I doubt he was thinking of in racial terms, but any of these things allow them to find something to grab onto, and it's a week in news.
So I don't know if that's why he's not doing it, because it's still his job, right?
Correct. I would have thought we would have heard something by now.
Right. It's still his job.
And I don't know if it's...
I don't consider it good enough that he's just tweeted and said he'd do a few things.
So I'm with you.
Something needs to be said.
But I guarantee it will make it worse.
It's sort of a bad situation where he has to do it, but it's going to make it worse.
You know it will. The other possibility is there's something else brewing.
Something that's really taking a lot of his time.
And I don't think it's COVID and I don't think it's the riots.
It very well could be there's something international brewing.
That's really, really big.
And he just might be absorbed by that.
But still, I would be with the critics who say, it's still his job.
It doesn't matter what the reasons are.
That's still his job.
So at the moment, he seems to be missing in action.
I would agree with you. All right.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, I've been wondering about that, when the president's going to make some kind of an address, but it's just not what he's optimized for.
He's so good at other things, but it's just not that.
All right, that guess didn't work.
Let's try another one.
Let's try Jedi Mac.
Let's see if Jedi Mac is here.
Hello, Jedi Mac, are you there?
I can. Do you have a question and or Antifa report?
I actually have a question.
I just was wondering if you could speak a little bit about how you think the direction of the economy is heading because I've been seeing a lot of material about hyperinflation in the near future within the next 10 years and I was wondering if it was going to happen even sooner Well,
I've got a degree in economics and an MBA, and I'll tell you everything I know about that question.
Nobody knows the answer to that question.
The people who are predicting anything 10 years from now, you could discount that entirely.
Because nobody can do a 10-year economic prediction, even on one variable, such as inflation.
It just can't be done. Nobody's ever done it.
Nobody ever will do it.
There's just too many complications.
So I would never worry about a 10-year economic prediction.
Too many adjustments and changes will happen before any of that happens.
That said, we printed, digitally anyway, trillions of dollars.
Under normal circumstances, that would immediately cause inflation.
Because people would have more money, but their same amount of goods.
So we would bid the price up and people could raise the prices and they could get it because people had more money.
But in this rare situation where there's no demand because of the COVID situation, you can actually print trillions of dollars and it won't immediately.
Emphasis on immediately.
It won't immediately cause inflation because people can't raise prices.
They're lucky if they get any customers when times are struggling right now.
Nobody knows how long it would take to get demand up to the point where we have too much money for the amount of demand or products, whatever.
It probably won't happen in a few years.
Then, of course, we don't have to print any more money between now and then because we'd have enough money in the system, presumably.
There's at least some possibility that this will all work out.
I'd love to give this example, which is everybody's smart in economics and finance.
Everybody. 100% of experts would have told you that you can't have strong growth and inflation basically disappearing.
Those can't happen at the same time.
And then Trump did it.
He did it. Now, I'm not saying he did it personally, but he was the president when it happened.
And it's not supposed to even be physically, mathematically.
The physics of the economics just don't make any sense.
So with something that basic, I mean, that is incredibly basic.
And the experts said it couldn't be done, and it was.
What about the most basic question of, can we pay back our debt?
Well, nobody knows.
Believe it or not, nobody knows.
We don't know how much we could service.
We don't know how big it could get, and we'd still be fine.
Nobody knows at all.
It's completely unknowable.
So people have opinions, but definitely nobody knows.
So I'm not sure if that gives you any comfort, but what I would say is we probably have lots of flexibility to tweak things and engineer things.
Patch things up as we go.
I think my sources were just saying that we're printing a lot of money now to To help with the unemployment and then when the insurance rates go up, then they'll have to somehow print more money and then that's going to cause the hyperinflation.
So that's just – yeah, that's what I was looking at.
Sorry. Well, as long as the economy is crippled, meaning that demand is low, you can sort of print a lot of money, trillions and trillions.
So we'll see. Nobody knows but it's certainly – so your friends – Point is well in the category of things you should consider, but probably not something you need to worry about right away.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you. Have a good one. All right.
I think I'm going to end at about here.
I think it's a terribly tragic day for the black community in this country, and if they I'll make the offer, and I've been making it for several years actually, the same offer.
If there are any specific changes to laws or policies that they can suggest that would make this situation better, let me help.
I'd be happy to help. Help you persuade.
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