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June 8, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
53:52
Episode 1021 Scott Adams: Lying Statistics, Trump Poll Numbers Plummet, Democrat Strategy Debacle, Harris Versus Warren, BLM

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: The look on Alisyn Camerota's face Foot washing protesters and reciprocity Leonydus Johnson's thought provoking tweet Van Jones, best choice for police reform leadership? Democrat Mayor riot failures, election consequences? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Time Text
Hey everybody, it's time!
Dr. Funk Juice, good to see you.
Always a pleasure.
Well everybody, what a great day today is.
What a great day.
63 years ago today, I came out of my mother's body.
So today's my birthday.
Yay! Shall we celebrate with a simultaneous sip?
I think that would be in order.
And all you need to do to participate Find yourself a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a sty, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the pandemic, including racism.
It'll even make your birthday better.
But it's my birthday, not yours, so it might not help you at all.
To the simultaneous sip.
Go. Happy birthday also to Kanye West and to JFK, people who shared my birthday.
All right, but enough about me.
Let's talk about the world.
Is the world still there?
All right, here are some things for you to think about.
90% of the people who are killed by police are men.
Is that proof of sexism?
Go. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Now, I just put that out there to cause trouble.
Why is it only men who are getting killed by police?
It's proof of sexism, isn't it?
Now, when you say, uh, Scott, um, no, because the men are committing the crimes, I say to you, how sexist of you to say that.
I just put that out there to cause trouble.
Here's some more trouble causing statistics.
Have you noticed that we humans can't calculate anything correctly?
We can't calculate anything correctly.
We don't know how many people are going to die from the virus.
We don't know how many people died from the regular flu.
We don't know what the unemployment rate really is, because even that got revised.
So that got revised up from what we thought was great, great news to just pretty good news.
The unemployment got corrected up to 16.3%.
Black unemployment is the highest in more than 10 years, according to Kamala Harris.
And Latino unemployment is 17.6%.
Yikes! So as Kamala Harris is saying, that's nothing to celebrate about.
But of course, nobody is celebrating the absolute number.
Do you think anybody was celebrating the absolute number?
No, I think they were celebrating the change.
I think there was celebration for the direction, celebration for the hoped-for future.
But it's one more example of how we humans, we should just give up on numbers.
We should just give up on trying to calculate anything, because we always do it wrong, or if we do it right, the other side doesn't believe it.
It just doesn't make any difference if you've got good numbers or bad.
Here are some more numbers.
So according to Rasmussen, and I believe that's coming out any moment now, Back in 2016, this was the opinion, alright?
So in 2016, 38% of voters thought most black Americans were treated unfairly by the police.
So it was 38% in 2016.
Today it's 51%.
It went from 38% thought black Americans were treated unfairly by the police to 51% during Trump's administration.
What changed? What changed?
Was it the data?
Did the data change?
No, I'll bet not.
I mean, not in three years, right?
I don't think the data changed.
I think what changed was the persuasion.
What you saw on television, who was the president, you know, how many stories were run of a certain type, what did social media do?
So without the data changing at all, I mean, I haven't even looked at the data, but I don't think it got worse between 2016 and 2019, did it?
Or 2020? It didn't get worse.
I mean, if it did, it's like some small amount, but basically it's the same, but our opinion of it completely changed.
So do you think opinions change because of data?
No. No, the data stayed the same and the opinions wildly changed because of persuasion.
So if you don't see that the data didn't make any difference and the persuasion made all the difference, you're watching the wrong world.
So let's talk about some more fun stuff.
So I've told you before that...
Fear is the primary persuasive force.
There is nothing more persuasive, period, than fear.
Because fear is the top of your concern stack.
If you're literally afraid at the moment, you're going to take care of that first.
You won't even eat first if you're afraid.
First you take care of afraid, go hide, protect yourself, do what you need to do, and then you eat.
So there's nothing that competes even close to fear as a primary persuasive variable.
And here's what the Democrats are doing for their campaign strategy.
They're calling for defunding the police at exactly the same time Other Democrats, and I say that more jokingly because I'm just, you know, I'm doing that thing that all pundits do.
I act like the 1% of the bad characters represent the whole.
Obviously, the looters do not represent Democrats.
Can we agree? Looters are not representative of Democrats.
Even if you think that's true for fun.
It's not true mathematically.
But it is nonetheless true that in a political season, if the Democrats are producing two things simultaneously, it's not a good look.
One of the things they're producing is a very powerful and maybe successful call to defund the police.
So that's one thing they're doing.
But other people who will be associated with the Democrats, because they lean in that direction even if they're not registered Democrats, even if they're not voting, is the people doing the violence on videos.
So we have all this video of what happens when the police are not there, which is, if I can be blunt, white people being killed by black people.
I'm not saying that that describes the world.
I'm saying it describes these selective little videos that are running nonstop because those are the anecdotes we're getting.
So if you're doing two things simultaneously, the Democrats, saying let's defund the police, well, all of the visual persuasion, what do I tell you about visual persuasion?
It overwhelms other kinds of persuasions that evolve your senses.
It's not as strong as fear, but the visual can be part of the fear persuasion too, of course.
But the fact that it's visual, it's on video, and it's horrible, and you're seeing people just being killed by rioters and looters breaking store windows, you couldn't have a weaker strategy going into the election.
In fact, If you were to sit down and try to design on paper the worst campaign strategy, it would be defund the police while simultaneously showing non-stop images of what happens when the police are not standing right there.
I don't know that that could be worse from their side.
Am I wrong? Highest form of persuasion And they're creating a situation to scare you to death.
Now, if you haven't seen this clip, I just tweeted it, you have to watch it just for the reaction.
It's a CNN clip in which Alison Camerato is interviewing somebody named Bender, who is in favor of defunding the police.
And Alison Camerato asked this question, which I think is on all of your minds.
And here's the question.
What if in the middle of the night, my home is broken into?
Who do I call?
Now, here's what you need to watch in that question.
Alison Camerato is a CNN, what's the right word?
Of course, host, whatever is the right word for that.
Host, I think. And The way she words the question is personal.
That's important.
Because you're trying to understand what she's thinking as well as what she's saying.
We can't read minds, but how we receive the communication makes you think that they're thinking a certain way, even if you're wrong.
So she puts it in a personal form of a question.
What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into?
This is very important.
She's putting herself in the movie.
She's not saying, what if something happens to somebody and somebody needs to do something?
No. Alison Camerato said, what if my home is broken into?
She put herself in the movie.
Now watch the response.
Bender said, yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors.
And I know, and myself too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.
So that was the moment that Democrats lost CNN.
They lost CNN.
Because you could watch, you had to see the look on Camerado's face, Now again, you can't really tell what people are thinking By a look on their face.
But I'll tell you the impression I got.
Because remember, when I talk about persuasion, it's not about what's right, it's what impression did you get.
And the impression I got was Alison Camerado saying, thinking, that doesn't work for me.
That doesn't work for me.
That's what I saw in her face.
Again, I warn you, you can't read other people's minds.
She may have had a completely different thought.
But that's how I received it.
It looked like CNN was lost on that day.
Because seriously, what CNN host with a good income is going to say, yeah, that's a good idea if somebody is trying to break in my front door that there's nobody to call.
There's nobody on CNN. Not even Don Lemon is going to get behind that.
If you've lost Don Lemon, well, you've lost the election.
Now, of course, Don Lemon is not going to side with having more police, but I don't think even he could say directly and on camera, you know, this would be a better world if somebody's breaking into my house and I don't have anybody to call.
That would be an upgrade.
I don't think he's going to say that.
So I don't know how they can recover from that.
But despite all that, it turns out that the latest poll numbers on Trump versus Biden is that Biden is just blowing them away.
So the difference between Biden and Trump and the national polls just widened.
It widened.
Trump just had the best week of his life and the polls widened.
Now when I say it's the best week of his life, I don't mean that people realize that.
I'm just saying I realize it.
Because he did get us through the pandemic.
And I think he called the timing about right.
Pushing for the opening looks like exactly the right thing.
He was criticized for it.
Being tough on China looks smarter every day.
The economy will probably pick up, and Trump is very directly involved in at least the psychology of that.
I don't think Trump's ever had a better week, but I also don't think it registered that way to everybody.
I'm not sure that intellectually people realize what a good week this was.
Now, when I say a good week, that includes the looting.
Because although the President did not do something directly to stop the looting, think about the fact that he brought in the National Guard and it kind of stopped at the same time.
Am I wrong that the looting kind of went from a lot to not too much immediately upon the National Guard showing up?
I think that's true. I mean, it feels true, even if it's not.
And if we're talking about persuasion, what feels true is right.
So I think the president actually had one of the highest, almost borders-ungifted, honestly, performances, with the exception Just so you know that I'm not just praising Trump for everything.
I think they completely blew the messaging on a lot of this stuff.
Everything from the pandemic messaging to the protester, the George Floyd stuff.
I don't think the messaging was good.
So I'm not just complimenting everything he does just mindlessly.
I'm telling you that if you're watching looting on television, And your choices are the pro-law-and-order guy or the who knows what guy.
The pro-law-and-order guy is just going to get a bump from watching crime on TV. That has nothing to do with his performance.
He's just had to exist and be that guy, and it's going to help him.
Likewise, the economy going up will help Trump.
Likewise, the coronavirus just getting in our rearview mirror at least a little bit will help him.
So I think he had his strongest week, but his poll numbers are the weakest.
And I have speculated that this is the biggest practical joke in the history of politics, that Republicans are literally lying to pollsters in massive numbers.
I feel that's true.
I can't prove it.
It's just an instinct.
But I feel it's true.
I also feel like it's a long time until Election Day, and I don't know that polls are telling us as much today as they should, because they're pretty frothy at this point.
All right. So let's talk about those protesters Washing the feet of Black Lives Matter leaders, and I guess police were washing the feet of black religious leaders as well.
Not all the police, not all the protesters, obviously.
But here was my take on that.
It's pretty good persuasion, because you can't look away, it gets your attention, and it shakes the box.
Like, everything that you think about people and power and racism and who thinks what and does what, We're good to go.
You can get them to do harm to themselves.
Just anything. If you have enough people.
So when you're watching some small number of people do something that you wouldn't do, it doesn't mean anything.
It just means that you're seeing a small number of people do something you wouldn't do.
That's it. So it doesn't have any meaning beyond the fact that it really shakes up your head.
So persuasion-wise, I give it an A+. Because the madder or the more upset you are about it, the better it works.
That is its power.
Its power is that it upsets you.
So, if I'm just looking at it from a persuasion as a technique, A+. Yeah, if it disgusted you, if it angered you, if you couldn't turn away, that's what makes it work.
So, I wouldn't worry about it becoming a trend.
You don't have to worry about it being a trend.
It's never going to be guaranteed.
It'll never be required.
It'll always be optional.
So this is the power that the media has.
They can take something that's unusual and give it a lot of attention until you think it's some kind of a normal thing or it's the beginning of a trend or it's happening everywhere.
It's the smallest little thing that some very unique people could do but you couldn't do.
Nobody's going to ask you to do it.
It just doesn't matter. But persuasion-wise, it was strong.
I swear to God, almost all of our problems in society are because we can't calculate percentages, right?
Am I wrong about that?
If we could calculate percentages, meaning that we knew the right numerator and the right denominator...
If we could always get that right and then calculate it right and know which one is the one that matters, I don't think we'd have nearly as many problems in the world.
It's like we can't calculate anything right.
I'll give you some specifics on that.
For example, A guy who follows me on Twitter, which is no way to describe a person, because that's the least important part of his personality, is following me on Twitter.
But I don't know anything else about him.
So, other than his name is Leonidas Johnson.
He may or may not be watching this Periscope.
And he's African American, which you need to know for the purpose of the story.
And he tweeted this.
And I presume he leans conservative.
He says, For every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crimes, three are killed.
For every 10,000 white people arrested for violent crime, four are killed.
And then Leonidas goes on.
He says, I'm going to keep tweeting this until someone can explain to me how this is possible if there is truly pervasive racial bias in policing.
So he's a black man, so he can tweet this.
Do you know what I can't do?
Tweet that.
I can't tweet that.
I don't have freedom of speech in a practical sense.
I have freedom of speech in a legal sense.
I can say anything I want.
But in a practical sense, my life would just be worse if I had been the one who tweeted this.
But because Leonidas is black, he can tweet it, and then I can retweet it, and I'm okay.
So I did that. But I certainly don't have freedom of speech the way black people do.
Let me just say that directly.
I have less freedom of speech than black people.
Would you agree? Is that even controversial?
Because it's true that black people can say more things in public with less repercussions than I can.
It's not even close, really.
And now, regardless of whether I'm right or wrong, which is a separate question, there are just whole classes of things, including data.
I wouldn't even be able to talk about data in public.
Think about that.
That I can't talk about data in Now, I've told you before that one of my advantages is that I have, I wasn't going to swear today, so I'll give you the PG version, that I have F.U. money, meaning that the worst thing that could happen to me is I retire and live on the money I already made.
Because I'm still in the workforce and I would still like to have an actual job, I like to be productive, I like to create things that people want and pay for, and I would like to be paid for those things because it just works better that way.
So I'm finding that I'm becoming increasingly uncancellable.
If you have FU money, you're uncancellable.
But if you also care about your ongoing career, you're not completely uncancellable.
Because I'd still like to be a cartoonist.
I'd still like to be able to come on video and talk to you.
I'd still like people to buy my books.
So I'm not completely uncancellable.
But I'm getting closer.
Because I always talk to you about Locals, the new platform which I've joined.
Now Locals is a subscription platform.
And it's growing, so it's becoming a larger percentage of my overall income.
At the moment, it's still the minority part of my overall income, but it's growing pretty quickly.
When it reaches a point where it's competitive with my income in general, meaning that even if I lost everything else, I would still have a real job.
It would just be limited to locals, which would be fine if that was a big enough community.
I'm becoming increasingly uncancellable.
And I don't know what that does.
Because I haven't been there before.
I've never been in a place where I not only have FU money, but I have an FU job.
I've never had that before.
I've only had the money, not a job that was invulnerable.
And I'm getting close to that.
I'm getting closer and closer to being actually invulnerable.
And I'm wondering if at some point I would have freedom of speech.
I'm getting close.
And it's kind of exciting.
Because I would like to be able to have freedom of speech the way black Americans do.
The way women do.
Women less than black Americans.
But someday, God willing, I will have freedom of speech.
I don't know if that will make me speak any differently.
I actually don't. But it's kind of exciting.
I got real excited the other day when I thought, hey, are you kidding me?
I could actually tweet some data that was actually just useful and true.
I could just tweet true data and I don't have to lose my career.
Could be good. Could be good.
Anyway, in response to Leonidas Tweet, there was, of course, lots of interaction on it.
And he went into some detail in the thread, which I would recommend to you.
And so look for it in my Twitter thread.
I just tweeted it this morning.
So, all right, so starting with the claim that for every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crimes, now this is the key phrase here, violent crimes, three are killed.
For every 10,000 white people arrested for, again, violent crimes, four are killed.
Now, of course, the big question mark is, well, what about nonviolent crimes?
What about all the people getting hassled and, you know, I don't know, abused, beat up, humiliated, all those other bad things for nonviolent crimes?
What about all that? I mean, that's got to be part of the equation, doesn't it?
And so I don't know the answer to that.
But I tweeted back that which group gets stopped and hassled the most by police?
Because let's say these statistics are true, and let's take out the violent crime.
Let's say that it was true that statistically slightly more white people are killed, not even slightly, but more white people are killed by police than black people.
But what if black people encounter the police ten times more?
What if there's just more police presence in black communities because they tend, at least in the urban areas, they're going to be lower income.
More crime comes with lower income, so there's going to be more police.
So how do you factor that in?
So is it the whole story that it's the percentage of people arrested for violent crimes?
It's not really the whole story because you have to look at who's getting stopped and why.
Is there a racial component to that?
And most Americans apparently think there is a racial component to that.
And it would be hard to debate.
I mean, it's hard to argue that there's...
Who could really argue that?
I would think that race has a big impact on who gets stopped.
Now, which doesn't mean that the people doing the stopping are racist.
Because apparently there's not much difference between how black police officers and white police officers treat anybody.
If black and white police officers are basically the same in how they treat people, it's kind of hard to find the racial component when you take that into consideration.
But what Leonidas argued in response to other people questioning the totality of the stuff is that Leonidas makes a really good rational point, and it goes like this.
That people being stopped for violent crimes is not the whole story.
So he'd be in complete agreement that he's taking a slice of the whole story.
But he says quite reasonably that if the racial bias was what people say it is, this is exactly where it would show up the strongest.
I don't know that that's true.
I also don't know that statistics are accurate.
Because where do statistics come from?
The police, right? So is it possible that the police aren't good at accurately documenting who got killed for what?
Maybe. I mean, that wouldn't be surprising.
But it's an interesting point.
Leonidas says that it would show up there, and it doesn't.
Is that persuasive to you?
I wouldn't say it's completely persuasive, but I would say it's exactly the right question.
Isn't it? It's exactly the right question, because we should understand that, no matter what the answer is, even if the answer is the data was bad.
I'd like to understand that for sure.
All right.
Van Jones tweeted today that women leaders globally kicked hashtag coronavirus in the ass.
Male leaders across the board blew it.
Hashtag facts, hashtag pandemic, etc.
And then he linked to the story on that.
Now, was that helpful?
To say that women leaders did a good job and male leaders did not?
Because I don't feel like what we needed was more sexism.
Because I'm pretty sure that you can't document that their gender is what made them more successful.
One of the successful female leaders was New Zealand.
I don't want to be unkind to New Zealand, and I don't want to be unkind to the leader, who's a woman, who apparently is leading a country that claims to have actually eliminated coronavirus.
That's pretty good. But it needs to be said, It's an island.
It's an island.
And it could be that, once again, humans are bad at calculating percentages.
And do you think it's fair or accurate or helpful to say that women beat the coronavirus but male leaders blew it?
To me, that feels like just sexism.
Because I don't think you can make that claim based on the data.
Now, here's what's ironic about this.
Literally the day before, I was thinking to myself, who's the only person who would have enough credibility to fix the To do something constructive about the protests and race relations in this country and maybe come up with something practical that we could work on.
Come up with some specific proposals we could toss around and see what we can do.
And I thought, well, Van Jones.
Van Jones is probably one of the few people in the world who can...
Well, he's bilingual, meaning that he can talk to black people, he can talk to white people, and he knows what they mean.
I don't know how many people there are in the whole world who have credibility, ability to communicate, have the interest, have the aptitude, the history of success, especially with prison reform.
I mean, really, come up with one other person on the planet Who would be more perfect for being in the middle of this and getting it fixed?
Now, in the comments, somebody's saying Kanye.
Kanye is a force of nature and one of the most productive ones you'll ever see in lots of ways, socially as well as economically productive.
But I don't know that Kanye is the right one to dig in and get into some details about how to fix policing.
I see Kanye as more of a Almost a spiritual kind of a leader, not a nuts and bolts, here's my policy kind of a leader.
And if you want to get down into some real practical stuff, I'm thinking Van Jones.
I'm thinking Van Jones would be the best choice I can think of.
Can you think of a better one?
I'm looking at your comments to see if anybody suggests anybody.
Larry Elder would be too associated with the right.
You really need somebody who is more associated with the left, but knows how to work with the right.
And it really just sort of comes down to Van Jones.
So I hope he gets in the game.
But my friendly advice with affection to Van Jones, because I think he's one of the most productive people in the country right now.
I don't think the sexism helps us.
We probably didn't need that.
Alright, here's my favorite story that didn't get many retweets.
Now the fact that this didn't get many retweets compared to everything else I tweeted today tells me that the message is not getting through or it's getting through and it's being rejected.
Now I'm going to tell you something that will be one of the most important things you'll ever hear.
Indeed, it's so important It could end racism.
I'll just let that hang in the air for a moment.
I'm going to give you a suggestion, a persuasion suggestion, that's so powerful, it could completely end racism.
It's a pretty big claim, isn't it?
Let me tell you the story.
Buffalo teenager, 18 years old, who is African American, which is important to the story.
After Buffalo was hit by the looting, I guess there was glass all over the streets.
And this 18-year-old gentleman decides to just on his own go out with a broom and start sweeping the streets.
And he spent 10 hours cleaning the street by himself.
Just one guy by himself and a broom cleaning the street.
What do you think happened?
Have you ever heard of the power of reciprocity?
I talk about this, right?
And it's documented, right?
It's in the book Influenced by Cialdini.
So it's been studied. This is not some new-agey kind of let's-all-get-along kind of thing.
It's been studied, and it's scientifically true, that if you just give somebody something and ask nothing in return, The odds of them being flexible with you in the future and wanting to work with you and do good things for you that you didn't ask for goes through the roof.
Now, I don't know that reciprocity works everywhere all the same.
There could be a cultural element to it.
But I can tell you, as your representative white person, that, and again, I assume it works with everybody, but I can only speak to the group that I have the most information about.
Among white people, reciprocity is like a frickin' nuclear weapon.
We can't ignore it.
We can't. If you do something good for me, I just gotta return the favor.
I got to. And if I can't find a way to do it right away, it will bother me for years.
Years. Literally, it'll bother me for years if I can't pay back a kindness.
So what happened to the 18-year-old African-American guy who just saw a glass in the streets and said, you know, it'd be a better world if I just swept up this glass.
Spent 10 hours doing...
If you've ever swept for 10 hours, because I have, not 10 hours, but I've swept for hours, and it's hard after the first few hours.
Here's what happened.
One gentleman gave him a car.
I think a Mustang.
It was a classic one.
It was a few years old because he checked his social media, the person who gave him the car, and found that he said he was saving up to get a car.
So somebody just gave him a Mustang.
Now here's the fun part of the story.
His late mother had that same car.
And so it wasn't just a car.
It was like really a meaningful who's programming the simulation kind of a car.
Of all the cars in the world, he was given as a gift the car that had the most meaning to it.
That was a coincidence.
He gets a car and then somebody hears that story.
And they say, what good is a car without car insurance?
So somebody bought him insurance.
So he made a brand new, not a brand new, it was a used, but it was a classic Mustang.
Maybe better than a new car, depending on what kind of cars you like.
And then, somebody paid for his college education.
They gave him a car, car insurance, and they paid for college.
Because he spent 10 hours sweeping the streets And asking for nothing.
My cat is visiting.
If you see a tail go by, he asked for nothing.
And he got a car, car insurance, and a free education.
Now, how often does this work?
Well, it doesn't work like that too often.
Like you're not going to get a car and a college education just for helping people out.
But the concept of reciprocity will work every time.
What are white people doing to try to make the world better?
Are you watching the protests?
The white people are washing the feet of Black Lives Matter people and the leaders of black churches.
Why are they doing that?
Well, who knows?
You can't really see in their minds, but it is a reciprocity play.
Because if you're watching that and you're black, let's say you're a black leader, and some white people said, can we wash your feet on camera, and you said yes, and it happened, how do you feel?
Do you say, ah, suckers, you suckers, ha ha ha, that changed nothing?
You might try to feel that way.
You might try to feel like these stupid white people, they don't know that this doesn't work, but sure, I'll humiliate them.
I'll let them wash my feet.
I don't know what you're thinking intellectually, but I gotta tell you, it probably worked.
Because reciprocity doesn't ever not work.
It works every time.
So, if the Black Lives Matter people wanted equality, there is a four-lane highway with no traffic to get there.
It's called reciprocity.
But could you use a reciprocity strategy if you were, let's say, still suffering, in your opinion, From the effects of slavery.
If you still felt oppressed today and you felt it was the legacy of slavery and all the bad Jim Crow laws and everything in the history, if that's what's on your mind and that's sort of defining your worldview, how in the world Could you ever use reciprocity as a tool?
It just doesn't feel like giving something is the right solution when the problem is people took too much.
Right? Slavery is somebody taking too much from you.
Your very liberty, your life, your safety, everything.
Slavery is taking everything from you.
So how do you get from that mindset something that's still rippling through history?
How do you get from that mindset To the most productive and reliable persuasion technique in the world, reciprocity.
Well, I would look at an 18-year-old buffalo teen who did that.
He actually did that.
He was born into the same world you were born into.
Slavery is still a historical fact in his world, right?
This 18-year-old was not born into a world where slavery never happened.
Nope. He was not born into a world where black people are treated exactly the same as white people.
Nope. He wasn't born into that world.
Wasn't born into a world where everything is fair.
Nope. Nope.
Wasn't born into a world where racism doesn't exist.
Nope. Nope.
He had every obstacle in the world against him.
Every obstacle in the world against him.
And he fixed it with a broom.
A broom. He changed his life with a broom in 10 hours.
And if you had asked me ahead of time, Scott, do you think this is a good idea?
Will this work? I would have said, not only will it work, it could change your life.
Might even change the world.
I doubt it.
I just don't think it's realistic to find too many people that have as much on the ball as this 18-year-old has.
This 18-year-old is just operating at a different level.
If this guy doesn't run for office someday, it would be a crime.
Because this is the guy you need to be in charge.
I would vote for this guy.
He's 18 years old, and he already has my vote for president, frankly.
All right. So let's see what else is coming down the road.
Let's talk about Biden and his vice presidential pick.
Some smart people are saying it's narrowed down to Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris.
So I did a little Twitter poll to find out how you thought about it.
And Kamala Harris was the winner of the unscientific Twitter poll with almost 70% of the vote.
So sort of a 2 to 1, let's say.
So 2 to 1 of probably mostly pro-Trump people who voted in my unscientific Twitter poll, 2 to 1 thought Kamala Harris was the stronger candidate.
Stronger meaning the one that would help Biden the most.
And I agree with that completely.
Some people complained and said, no, no way, because Kamala Harris was a prosecutor, and she's more associated with putting black people in jail than she is associated with defunding the police, which is the popular thing for Democrats.
But I would argue this.
That if you're Democrats and you're worried about scaring Republicans with too much of the defund the police stuff, and I think Biden's not going to go fully...
He might flirt with defunding the police, but he's not going to be and eliminate the police guy, I don't think.
I think Harris is actually perfect for that because she straddles both worlds like nobody else you can think of.
You want somebody who's got one foot...
In the world of the police, let's say, law enforcement world.
And she does. But you also want the other foot to be with the protesters, with Black Lives Matter, clearly progressive.
Somebody who can see both sides.
How many people have that?
She actually is exactly the right person.
She's not even approximately the right person.
She's exactly the right person.
Because you want somebody who can see both sides.
You're not going to get to the end without a few leaders who can do that.
Now, I don't think she's necessarily the unifying leader that we need, but she has what you need for vice president.
I think it's a slam dunk. All right, so we could be surprised by some candidate we didn't know of who just was even more perfect.
But at this point, I'd say at least a 50% chance it's Kamala Harris.
But I would say there's a 100% chance it's not Elizabeth Warren.
So there could be some surprises.
I checked my predicted bets, so where I go to the betting market and actually bet on stuff.
Now, all of my bets are many months old, so there's nothing that I bet recently.
Everything is 2019, maybe early 2020.
I don't remember some of them. So there's nothing new, and I've got six bets.
All six of them are right, except that only four of them, I think, will pay.
Here's why I say they're all correct bets, but only three or four of them are going to pay.
One of my bets was that Kamala Harris would get the top ticket nomination.
That will not happen, because Biden already got it.
But we also agree that if she's the vice presidential pick, it will be like she's the presidential candidate.
So I'm going to lose my bet on Predict It, because they're going to be technical about that.
They tell you in advance what the standard is, and it wouldn't meet that standard.
So I'm going to lose the bet at the same time that I won the bet.
So I think it was either 6 out of 6.
It might have been 5 out of 6.
So one of the bets I won is that the nominee would be over 70.
So that's Biden.
One of the ones I won is that I lost the bet that the Democrats would nominate a woman.
But again, if Kamala Harris is vice president and people see her as the top of the ticket, I kind of won the bet, even though I'll have to pay on the bet and lose it.
So anyway, I think Harris is going to get it.
That's about all I've got for now.
Just checking to make sure.
So here's something I tweeted yesterday.
I had this pinned for a while, and even Ann Coulter liked it.
So I got over 11,000 retweets.
Now, given the size of my Twitter following, a really good viral tweet for me would be about 1,500 retweets.
All right, so this is approximately It's approaching 10 times, it probably will get to, 10 times more than a good normal viral tweet.
So that means that this is hitting a chord with people way, way beyond normal tweets.
And here's what it is.
Most of you saw it. I said, I can't respect the protest.
I always respect the people, of course, but you can disrespect activities.
I can't respect a protest that has these qualities.
Number one, no specific suggestions on what to change.
Defunding the police isn't too specific.
Data is not allowed into the debate, because it's not.
You're not really allowed to look at the data.
Dissenting opinions, no matter how respectful and well-meaning, are not allowed.
That's true. You could not have a dissenting opinion.
Even if you're respectful, and even if the data was on your side, and even if you're well-meaning, not allowed.
And number four, the protest has a low regard for public safety, and I think that's true.
So, I don't know.
I don't know how to participate in a debate in which you can't talk about the data, you can't have a different opinion, There's no real suggestions and they're not even concerned with public well-being.
Like, I don't know.
What's that? Part of the reason that I think the protests are so big and that, again, nobody seems to want to say this out loud, but I will, it's because the weather is good and there are no alternatives for something to do.
Imagine if this were just a regular summer and people had their summer vacations planned and Kids were going to camps, and you're just busy, busy, running around, and you could go to clubs and bars, you could go out to restaurants, you're at the beach, and you've got all these other things you can do.
How big would the protests be?
Now, you'd like to believe they'd be the same size, right?
Because what's more important, going to the beach or protesting to try to improve life and reduce racism?
So your logical mind says, well, they'd be the same size because it's so important compared to going to the beach.
Have you met people?
If you've got that many human beings, there are a lot of those people who would have gone to the beach.
They would have gone to the beach.
It doesn't mean that the issue is any less.
I'm certainly not saying that.
I'm just saying if you're looking at the size of the crowd, it's completely misleading.
Because they just didn't have anything else to do that was outdoors, that you could leave the house.
So I think we're being fooled not only by selective images on our TV, we're being fooled because we ignore the alternatives.
The alternative was to do something else and it didn't exist.
Alright. It's the perfect time for a protest.
Weather's good and there's nothing else to do.
I don't even think the protests would be this big if they were in August, because it would be too hot.
That alone would be a factor.
You just described Florida.
Do you think it'll matter that people are saying that Democratic mayors all failed?
Do you think that that's going to matter to anything?
I have a feeling it won't.
I really do. I'd love to see some kind of a city, let's say, consultants like Bain Consultants or people like that.
I'd love to see them put together a city rescue service.
So it would be a contracted service, and you would say to some big consulting company, McKenzie, just, you know, somebody who's got a lot of smart people.
And you'd say, we're going to have an election in our city, and if we choose this by referendum, then you're going to come in for two years, and at two years, you're out of here, but two years, We'll bring in professional consultants who have a package of, you know, they figured out how to do things, what works and what doesn't.
And they'll come in and they'll just implement these changes.
We'll run it for two years, and then the consultants will have to leave no matter how well they do.
They don't live here. They're not elected.
They've got to leave after two years.
And then we'll try to fill positions with regular elected people to keep the momentum going.
Do you think anybody would use that?
Would anybody use a city rescue service?
It would be like a government in a box.
A canned government that just comes in for two years and then they have to leave.
No two ways about it.
I wouldn't worry about consultants taking over a city and staying.
I don't feel like that's a big risk.
I feel like they'd want to make their money and move to another city.
Yeah, and maybe you appoint a city manager to implement things, but that manager would be more of an implementer.
Anyway, pork is a problem.
That is correct.
And I think that the professional consultants would be less susceptible to the pork because they would be highly paid on day one.
They wouldn't have to take bribes because they have good jobs.
All right. That's all for now, and I will talk to you.
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