Episode 1025 Scott Adams: Why the Protests are a Huge Success, How to Solve Racism
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
"White privilege" is a highly offensive phrase
Some things President Trump could say or try
Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell's economy comments
What are the political leanings of Derek Chauvin?
Whiteboard1: Some Good News
Whiteboard2: Solutions
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody, come on in Have you been feeling a little bit tense lately?
Are you feeling that your world is spitting apart?
Well, boy, did you come to the right place at the right time.
Because I'm going to tell you how everything is way better than you think it is.
Way, way better.
I'm going to tell you how everything is going to work out fine.
Because it will. And I'm going to tell you how the country is going to come out stronger fairly quickly.
But first, we've got to get ready.
Gotta get ready for all of this.
And one way to do it is with a simultaneous sip.
Yes. And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, 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, from the pandemic to the economy to racism, you name it.
It's getting better as we sip.
Simultaneous sip coming at you now.
Go. Yes, yes.
So, let's start out with a few little items here.
So on Twitter, I was just teasing this Periscope.
And if you wondered why I say, you know where to find me, instead of providing a link, does anybody know why I do that?
So on Twitter, when I tell people that I'm going to be on Periscope, I don't tell them where to find me.
I just say, you know where to find me.
And if you look at the comments, people are saying, where do I find you?
Where do I find you? Now, this, of course, is a persuasion slash marketing technique because I'm trying to make people think that there's some exclusivity about it.
And there is. There is.
It's real. Because if you don't know where to find me, you can't find me.
So it's not that hard.
All they'd have to do is Google it or ask somebody on Twitter.
But I like making it a little bit hard.
So I intentionally don't tell people how to find me.
I make them work at it a little bit.
Now if you can make somebody work at it a little bit, and then they find you, the odds of feeling like they want to continue watching you are much higher.
So that's a little marketing trick for you.
Now that wouldn't work if you weren't already...
Popular in some way.
So you don't want to make it hard to find you if you're not desirable to find, right?
So you have to have something about you that makes people curious, and then in some cases you could use that trick of acting like you're a little bit hard to find.
I would like to continue pointing out, for anybody who hasn't heard it yet, that the phrase white privilege is, in my opinion, an insult to white people and should be banned.
So that's my version of the N-word.
While I am completely on board with not using offensive terms that any group finds offensive and they let you know, hey, don't use that term, totally on board with that.
A hundred percent, by the way.
There's no joke. If somebody is offended by a certain phrase or words, why in the world would I want to use them?
How would that help me?
There's nothing in it for me to insult people for no reason.
And I would like to request the same respect.
So in my opinion, the phrase white privilege...
It implies that somebody who succeeds and they're white maybe didn't deserve it, which is just offensive.
So I can't make anybody say anything.
Of course, you have freedom of speech, so you can do anything you want.
But in terms of information, I think it'd be helpful for people to know that when I hear the term white privilege, and I would imagine this is common, but you can speak for yourselves, I don't speak for anybody else, that white privilege is an offensive term.
It's just completely offensive.
Now, that's not to say there isn't something to it.
Things can be true and offensive at the same time.
Would you agree? Would you agree that we're not talking whether it's true?
Because things can be true and offensive.
There's no conflict there.
All right. There are five days left in my one-week challenge for somebody to explain to me in a coherent way what systemic racism is with a current example.
So it's the example part that's the fun part.
I've had, as we went through this yesterday, people will give you analogies, they'll give you historical examples that don't apply, like redlining, things that are currently illegal.
They'll tell you that there are statistical differences, let's say, in education and incarceration.
And those things are all true, but they don't seem to get towards systemic, as I understand the word.
So we're still waiting for that.
At the end of the week, well, here's what we've learned already.
So I cannot yet conclude that it doesn't exist, that there's no such thing as systemic racism.
In fact, I would assume, just based on living, I would assume that there are examples of it.
And that those examples are perfectly clear.
And when presented to me, even I would say, being skeptical as I am, that even I would say, oh yeah, that's a pretty good example.
I'm with you. I see that.
But I'm not getting it, weirdly enough.
I expect it, because there's still five days left, so I would expect this would not be hard.
But here's what we know for sure.
So it is way too soon to say anything like...
That systemic racism doesn't exist, so I'm not making that claim.
Way too early to say that, because there's five days left of the test.
What we can say with complete certainty, though, is that people don't agree what it is, and there's no common definition.
Would you say that? Would you say that we can say with some certainty that the idea of systemic racism Separate from the question of whether it exists at all But we can conclude that people don't agree what it is.
If you ask for examples, it'll be all over the board.
Most of them will not be something that somebody else would say, well, that's not so systemic.
That's just an example of somebody being a racist.
And we all know that exists.
There's no debate on whether or not racism exists.
So we're still waiting on that.
So we'll see how that goes.
Have you seen the, there's a new viral video going around about coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine and vitamin C and ventilators, and there's, many of you have seen it by now.
And it features an interview with one, at least the part that I saw, was one very charismatic nurse.
I think she's a nurse, based on the context.
Now, I say charismatic because that's a big part of what makes this video so viral.
The person who's doing the talking and being interviewed, the person we assume is a nurse, she's not wearing nurse clothes.
Oh yeah, but I think there was a follow-up that confirmed she's a nurse.
Anyway, she's saying, among other things, her claim is that ventilator misuse is killing people.
We're primed to think that's true.
She says hydroxychloroquine, I think with zinc, basically works every time, meaning that in her experience, every person who's gotten it has lived.
That doesn't mean it's true, right?
So it's very important.
It doesn't mean it's true. But there is a video of one nurse saying that she's seen lots and lots of people come through because she works in that area with the coronavirus and we don't know which hospital but according to her the hydroxychloroquine works basically every time in the narrow sense of keeping you from dying.
That is not a clinical study.
Here's what I would say about that.
I don't find it credible.
And I think that you could easily be fooled because the nurse in the video who's being interviewed is insanely charismatic.
As in, you wonder why she's not working in the movie business.
So there's something a little too perfect about her in this context.
She's just a little bit too good on camera.
So that part...
It makes me think that maybe it's getting more attention than it would just for the details.
But secondly, I just don't see the statistical scientific weight behind it.
It's purely anecdotal, and it feels like it agrees too much with what a lot of people would want to hear.
So here's my bottom line to this.
I'm not going to say that any of it is wrong.
Because I don't know. It could be that everything she says is completely accurate.
And actually she comes off as being honest, which is different from being right.
So my reading of her as a human being is that she's sincere.
And my reading of her as a human is that she's telling the truth as she understands it.
So I think she's credible in that sense.
But she's also not telling you scientific studies.
It's anecdotal.
So I would just put this filter on it and say, I just don't trust any of the scientific conclusions, especially when she talked about vitamin C. That just felt like Maybe she had gone a little bit further than her anecdotal experience would take her.
So just be careful of that one.
It's interesting and I would recommend it.
I recommend you watch it if you see it, but just have a little skepticism on that.
I've been asked, what would Trump do or should he do in this current situation?
If you were the president, what would you do, given all the protests and the temperature of the country, etc., how would you handle it?
Would you do a big speech on bringing the world together?
I think most people, if they think the president should do anything, they think he should do some kind of big unifying speech.
Here's my opinion of that.
It'll only make things worse.
Now, should the president make a unifying speech?
Kind of has to, right?
It's the job of the president.
You sort of have to do that.
If you don't even try, you're not going to look like much of a president.
So I think the president has to make...
More than one, probably.
And I think there's a plan for one come out.
Some kind of a unifying speech.
But I don't think there's any chance that won't make things worse.
Do you? There's nothing the president can say that won't just give his critics new ammunition.
Because CNN doesn't need much.
What was the one they were doing today?
Oh, yeah. So here's something the president said recently that CNN found a criticism with.
So the president said this, quote, We have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear.
So far, so good, right?
What could you complain about that?
Work together, confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear.
Good so far. But we'll make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling the tens of millions of decent Americans as racists or bigots, Trump said.
So CNN pulls that out and criticizes him for saying that we should not be bigots and prejudice.
That's what he said.
Don't be a bigot in any way.
Don't be a bigot against black people.
Don't be a bigot against Republicans.
Just don't be a bigot. And CNN calls that out as a gigantic criticism of how bad he is for not wording it right.
Did he not word this right?
No, he did. He worded it perfectly.
Because he included everyone.
He said, no bigotry, no prejudice.
We should work together to get rid of it.
And by the way, we should get rid of all of it.
Not just most of it.
Let's get rid of all of it, including bigotry against Republicans, basically.
So is there any chance that if the President did a perfect speech, that it would be regarded as a perfect speech?
No. No!
Even this week, I think three or four times, CNN has repeated the fine people hoax of Charlottesville, as if the president praised neo-Nazis, which didn't happen.
The opposite happened. He condemned them.
So if you think that saying the right things can help, you haven't been paying attention.
Saying the right things won't help at all.
It will make things worse.
No, he has to do it anyway.
Because, you know, you basically have two bad choices.
Say nothing, that's really bad.
Say something, still bad.
But not as bad as saying nothing.
So, those are the choices that the smart people are giving the president.
Two ways to lose.
I don't think he likes that. So, instead of two ways to lose, how about something else?
How about, instead of two ways to lose, We give him a more productive path.
And let me suggest this.
Suppose the president came out and, you know, he has to say all the right things about coming together.
That won't work, but he has to say them.
But then suppose he emphasized coming together on data.
Ah, interesting, huh?
Has anybody done that before?
Has any leader said, look, we can't do a thing until we agree on the data.
So let's agree on the data.
Let's put a whole bunch of work into gathering as much data as we can about institutional systemic racism, regular racism, cops mistreating anybody, every cop incident, let's get the ethnicity, let's get the city, let's study this thing up.
And here's why that's important.
I think if we agreed on the data, the problem would go away.
Now, not right away, but at least if you had the same data, everybody would be on the same page.
The problem is, most of the problems in life, almost all of our political problems, they're all because the data is bad.
And when I say the data is bad, I mean...
When I say the data...
I'm going to make a note. Somebody said something here I want to go back to.
The data is bad for climate science.
The data is bad for the economy.
The data is bad for racism.
The data is bad for who the police are stopping and killing.
Basically, every big issue, the data is bad, right?
Can you think of anything that Republicans and Democrats disagree on In which we also agree on the data.
I don't know, there might be one.
Maybe abortion.
Because I think in abortion we agree on the data, but then people disagree on whether it's a good idea or not.
But I would say in general, if you look at the things that are most in the headlines recently, it's because we can't agree on the data.
So could the president make any headway by saying, look, let's just start where the Let's start where we all agree.
Is there anybody out there who doesn't think we need to better understand the data when it comes to racism?
Raise your hand if you don't want better data.
Nobody raises their hand.
So you find at least this tiny little thing that you all agree on.
We need better data.
And we should put it all in one place so everybody can look at it and we'll be on the same page.
So that's one thing the president could do that I don't think would get pushback.
Study it and make sure that there's some real effort and muscle and money behind really understanding it in all of its complexity.
Here's another thing the president could do.
He could say, as I've been saying, racism is a problem.
We should do everything we can do to reduce it.
You have to say that. Everybody agrees with that.
You have to also be realistic.
We're a certain type of people.
We have pattern recognition brains.
You're never really going to get rid of it.
So you should, in addition to trying to stamp it down or tamp it down to the smallest thing it can be, it's never going to be zero.
But you want to get it small.
That's good. But in addition, there's an entirely neglected area, which is learning how to deal with it.
Ideally, you'd want to have none.
But you can't get there.
I mean, realistically, you can't really get there.
Not all the way to no racism.
We're humans. Just not going to happen.
But you can develop strategies that make it so irrelevant that you barely notice.
One of the strategies, for example, is just having a better idea that, let's say, if you're a young black person, to know that corporate America wants to hire you.
Strategically, if you developed a skill stack that aimed toward a corporate job, your odds of success are basically 100%.
So would you still have racism?
Probably. In your daily life?
Probably. But would it stop your career?
Nope. Your career would do great.
Racism isn't going to stop your career if you have the right strategy, if you have a talent stack that That works.
So the president could tell people to work on strategy, and there's a lot that could be done there.
He could also emphasize something I'm going to be talking about in a minute, A-B testing.
In other words, the president doesn't have to say, this is a good idea and this is a bad idea.
The president can say, we've got a big country, let's test some stuff.
Let's just see what works.
Who would be opposed to testing some things small?
Just try a town with no police.
Just try it.
See what happens. Try police plus some other change.
Try mostly police, but you've also funded some other things.
Just try some stuff.
Who's against that? Alright.
Oh, if all goes well, I'll be on Tucker Carlson tonight.
So if you want to see more of me, I guess there's a big move to cancel Tucker for all the usual reasons that the left hates anybody.
And I guess they're getting some success in getting some of his advertisers to pull back.
So far, Fox News is backing him, as far as I know.
Now, Going on Tucker's show at the moment, when he's the focus of the entire country's, at least the left, not the entire country, but the left's entire focus of cancellation is Tucker.
To go on his show, simply being on his show would be supportive, of course.
To go on his show, at the very moment the white-hot fire of cancellation is on him, Is, of course, career suicide on my part, which is what makes it attractive to me.
I don't know what's wrong with me.
I swear to God, I don't know what's wrong with me.
But sometimes you need a little danger in your life just to feel alive.
Do you ever have that feeling?
It's like you really can't go through life with no danger.
But everybody has their own preferred kind of danger.
I'm not a big fan of You know, extreme sports and physical danger, because if you get that wrong, you're in big trouble.
But I kind of like social danger.
Not every kind and not all the time.
But now and then there are things that are just so tantalizing.
And the thought of that I would increase my chance of being canceled just by going on Tucker's show, That sealed it for me that I was going to go.
Because I'm turning down most things this summer.
Most invitations to go on shows and do interviews, I'm going to start turning down just because I have other things to do.
But as soon as I realized that Tucker is the focus of all this cancellation energy, I thought to myself, you know, I'd like to be right in the middle of that.
What is wrong with me?
There's something wrong with me because I want to be in the middle of that because I want to feel that fire focused on me for a little while.
Just to feel something.
It's a weird thing about humans that we need to quit.
The first time I ever heard this was my philosophy instructor in college.
And he talked about how if you have a loose tooth, you know, when you're a kid, you're going to lose a tooth.
If you wiggle it around, it hurts.
But what do you do all day long if you have a loose tooth?
You wiggle it around, and it hurts.
And then you keep wiggling it around, and it hurts, and nothing good comes from it.
But it's one of those things that sometimes you just can't help yourself.
You go toward pain.
I don't know what this is about people.
Anyway, so I'll be on that.
I don't know the exact time, and it could change.
Those of you who've been watching me for a while, you know when I go on book tours, I get booked on things, and I don't like to tell you too far in advance because those things get changed half the time.
They get changed so often that you can never guarantee them.
All right. Here's some other things that the enemy of the people is telling you.
I guess the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, his remarks made the market go down yesterday.
And by the way, you should always expect there's going to be a 5% pullback.
Anytime the market goes up as much as it has, there's pretty much a guarantee that there'll be like a 5% pullback at least once, probably more than once.
Today, some of the pullback was halved, but you should expect more of that.
That's just normal stuff. I wouldn't worry about it at all.
So they're reporting that the Federal Reserve Chairman said That what everyone already knew.
So according to CNN, this is what everyone already knew.
So ask yourself if this is what you already knew.
That the global economy is in a bad place and there won't be a quick rebound.
Now, what did I tell you about the psychology of economics?
Now, it is true that the world economy took a big hit.
So yes, we do all know that.
But when you're the head of the Federal Reserve and you tell people that there won't be a quick rebound, what does quick mean and why do you know that?
You don't really know that.
What would be more helpful is to be what Trump is, which is a cheerleader.
Because nobody knows if it's going to be good or bad or how quickly it'll rebound.
Nobody knows. So if you don't know, the only smart and responsible thing to say is, it could be quicker than you think.
It could be great.
Because it's that optimism that actually fuels it.
It's what makes it actually capable of working.
So I would say that the Federal Reserve Chair, I would call that an error.
Because given that he can't predict, he shouldn't.
And he can't predict how quickly the rebound will happen.
He can't. Nobody can.
It's just unpredictable. So to make a prediction about something that's unpredictable, and it's a prediction that hurts the outcome, well, that's just a mistake.
Now, Trump also can't predict, because nobody can.
Nobody knows where things are going with the economy.
It's just true all the time with everybody.
But Trump plays it smart.
If you don't know where the economy is going, and you're a leader, head of the National Reserve, you know, or the Fed, I mean, of course, is a leader of sorts, you should talk in optimistic terms, even if you're not sure, because that's what leadership is.
This is just a mistake, in my opinion.
And I think if Trump were to call out Powell on that, I would agree.
That's just an error.
That's just not doing a good job.
He should be more optimistic.
Here's something that I wish I'd thought of myself.
You know the cop, what's his name, Chavain or whatever, the cop who killed George Floyd, as was pointed out by Kevin Erbanowitz on Twitter, and he said this.
He called him Murder Cop, which I think is funny that the cop has his own tag now.
Did Murder Cop have a social media history or voting record?
I feel like if he was a big Trump or MAGA guy, CNN would have told us.
Feels like a dog not barking.
So from Sherlock Holmes, the dog that doesn't bark also tells you something, because it means there was nobody in that area, otherwise the dog would have barked.
So the dog that's not barking is, that's a little suspicious, isn't it?
That we haven't heard anything about the politics of this police officer who's accused.
When was the last time somebody was accused of murdering a black man and we didn't immediately find out his political leanings?
I'm watching the comments.
It's blowing your mind, isn't it?
People are going, oh my god, that's such a good point.
Yeah, it's missing. It's very missing because we don't know the politics of the cop.
Do you assume that he's a Trump supporter?
Because you probably did, didn't you?
If you're a racist, you probably did.
But I didn't assume it one way or another.
I don't think I even thought of it, weirdly enough.
Surprisingly, I don't think it ever came across my skeptical part of my brain.
But it's a really good question.
Wouldn't you like to know his political leanings just a little bit?
I think you would.
Now, I'd love to know...
I mean, wouldn't you love to hear that, let's say it turns out he is a Trump supporter, how happy would you be if it had not leaked?
Because that's how the system is supposed to work, right?
If it turns out he's a Trump supporter, and I'm guessing he's not, but if it turned out that way, wouldn't you be impressed if that didn't leak all the way through the trial?
I'd be really impressed, because I don't think there's a chance that's going to happen.
But that's the way it's supposed to work.
So maybe, maybe we're seeing something really good happening here, which is a system working the way it's supposed to work without leaks.
But I doubt it.
But I doubt it. I'm wondering if the job of ambassador to the autonomous zone in Seattle has been taking?
Because I think I would be an excellent ambassador.
So I'd like to put my hat in the ring there.
I hear the Autonomous Zone is being described as more like a block party atmosphere by the governor.
And of course, others, including CNN, are calling it a terrorist atmosphere with a warlord.
The warlord, of course, that's probably an overstatement of his actual roles.
But the funniest thing about the Autonomous Zone It immediately needed an armed police force.
Or if you don't think that they agree that they need an armed security force, this rapper named Raz, even if you think they don't agree they need it, they do agree that the guy with the guns is the security force.
So I think they just learned that if you have an area that doesn't have guns, it only takes one guy with a gun to take over the area.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the people with guns are kind of running the autonomous zone.
Because if the people who don't have the guns get into, let's say, a major disagreement with the people who have the guns, which way do you think it's going to go?
Who's going to win? The guns or the no guns?
So I think there's a lesson being learned there.
Alright, let me tell you why I think everything Let me tell you why I think the protests have been successful and things are better than you think.
Alright. Number one, I give the government's handling of the protests an A+. That's not what you think, is it?
Don't you think that every part of the government messed up?
You think the mayors blew it?
You think the president should have been more involved?
What's up with those governors?
Right? Because we're fed a non-stop diet of our politicians messed up.
And you're always watching your favorite news source, and each news source is picking on different politicians.
But the theme overall is all the politicians are doing everything wrong all the time, basically.
That was the coverage. Let me tell you the opposite view and why I would give all of the politicians, from mayor all the way through, A+. Now I'm only talking about how they handled the looting and the protests.
I'm not talking about other policies.
So this is not an A-plus for all their performance.
It's not an A-plus for all the things they've said or anything like that.
Just the outcome. What would have been the best outcome from all of these protesters and looters?
Well, the best outcome is that the police did not kill anybody else who didn't deserve it.
It wasn't part of something that's legitimate.
So here are the things that I think you should look for, again, the dog not barking.
The entire protests, in my opinion, were a giant provocation for the police.
In other words, the police, the National Guard, the President, All the politicians were being pushed to overreact.
Would you agree that a major risk slash even goal of some percentage of the protesters, not all of them, clearly, but some percentage of the protesters wanted a provocation and they wanted an overreaction?
Would you say that that's true? Did any of the governments give them an overreaction?
No. They really didn't.
A whole bunch, I guess, scores of police and Secret Service at the White House were injured.
And some of them badly injured.
Terrible injuries.
We're talking about head injuries.
Lots of them. And with all of that, no overreaction anywhere.
No overreaction anywhere.
Not in a city.
Well, mostly it was in the cities, but not anywhere.
A+. We're not done yet, right?
There could still be some bad stuff happening.
But we've gotten pretty far into this.
We're a lot closer to the end of at least the street protest part of it than we are at the beginning.
And I don't think we messed up at all.
This is one of the greatest success stories ever.
I've ever seen. I mean, I am so impressed by the restraint of everyone.
Everyone. Not only did the armed Americans in this country not take out their weapons.
Oh, they bought weapons.
They cleaned weapons.
They loaded weapons.
They made sure they knew where their weapons were.
But they didn't use them.
Didn't use them.
You didn't see anybody shooting a protester.
And here's the weird part.
You didn't see even the protesters arm themselves and use the guns.
You see people doing lots of things for the cameras.
People had guns, hold guns.
But for the most part, we're the most armed country in the world, and we chose not to use them.
It's remarkable on a level that I don't think will ever be fully appreciated.
One of the most remarkable human accomplishments is that we just went through the last couple of weeks.
Not done yet, but it's looking good.
I think we did something close to impossible, really.
So, A+. Because I think there was a strategy to it, and I think the strategy was perfect.
And the strategy was to listen...
I think that happened. I think the entire country listened.
No question about it.
And drained the energy out of it slowly.
Because I think there was an understanding that there was an energy problem, just too much pent-up energy, years of grievances that are real.
And I don't want to make the mistake of giving somebody the chance to misinterpret this.
The protest didn't happen because it was warm.
It didn't happen because of the coronavirus.
It didn't happen because of the lockdown.
It didn't happen just because of a video.
It needed all of those things, including the history and the grievances that have built up.
All of it had to happen the way it did.
But once it happened, by far the best strategy was to just hold, hold, hold, hold Hold, hold, hold, hold.
There's no second part of the strategy.
It's just a hold strategy.
And just drain the energy out of it while respecting it.
Respecting it's pretty important.
Because I think the entire country respects at least the point.
The entire country is at least on the page that...
We all saw the video of George Floyd being killed.
I think every person of every type...
It had a horrified reaction.
In a weird way, it brought the country together, at least on that limited question of whether that was out of bounds.
And so A+. Every governor, every mayor, and the president of the United States, good job.
Now, was it perfect?
No. No, nothing's perfect.
But man, really good.
All right. I think that we've reached a deeper understanding.
We're not there yet.
A lot of work to be done.
As I said, understanding what this systemic racism thing is in a way that white people can know what the hell you're even talking about would be a big step.
We're not there, but it looks like there is real interest in getting there.
I have real interest in getting there, by the way.
I don't do this for jokes.
I do it because I have a real interest.
I would like to understand You know, the black experience better.
I would like them to understand my experience better.
That's all good. So I would say that the amount of focus that was put on the question of racism, A+. If I'm going to grade the protesters for getting attention, A+. You can't take that away from them, right? But how about getting something done that's practical?
I and many other people have noted accurately that there's no unified set of requests.
And I've said that it would be a mistake to try to offer things because then you're negotiating with yourself.
That's a term of art for negotiating and it's considered a mistake.
It's a negotiating mistake to say, alright, alright, you're not asking for anything particular, but what if I gave you a million dollars?
And then there's no response.
Here's the mistake.
Okay, okay, you didn't respond to my million dollars, and you're not asking for any particular amount.
How about two million?
That's the mistake. You never negotiate with yourself.
If you don't get a counteroffer, you stop.
You walk away. Because that's not a negotiation.
So since the protest was sort of a semi-spontaneous, semi-organized, at least in small cells, I guess you could call them, you know, groups, let's say, It doesn't have a unified leadership, and so it didn't have the capability of saying, okay, here's our 10 stuff, 10 things.
But even though I criticize that as not good negotiating, look what's happening.
If I'm being honest, it's working.
Because you see new legislation being proposed, quite seriously.
Rand Paul just came out on Twitter.
I think he's actually sponsoring some or co-sponsoring some legislation.
I don't know exactly his involvement, but he's supporting it for getting rid of no-knock warrants.
Now, I didn't even know about no-knock warrants.
I didn't even know that was a thing, right?
Did you know that no-knock warrants were a thing?
Well, if you were following a specific case of racial injustice, as many people believe it to be, you knew about it in that one case.
But I think most of us are getting this new understanding about, what's this?
What's that? What's a no-knock warrant?
Because you and I have never experienced a no-knock warrant, but apparently it could be deadly if you're black, more so than other groups, or so that is the concern.
Again, if we had better data, we would know what is true and what isn't, but that's the concern.
And that's just Rand Paul.
He's more associated with the right, of course.
But on the left, they also have a number of legislative things going through the system.
So I forget everything that's on Kamala Harris's list, but they all look pretty good to me.
I'm no expert, and I can't tell you exactly what you do and do not need in this realm.
But I looked at her list of stuff, and it was things like You know, training or national standards for cops.
And there were things like, you know, build a better database for police incidents.
And I looked at the list and I said, reasonable.
You know, I would want to hear the experts weigh in on those things because I'm not.
But as a citizen, I look at the list and I think, Reasonable.
Quite reasonable. Now, the whole defund the police, I don't think you can take that too seriously, really.
Unless you hear Biden and say, I'm going to defund the police, I wouldn't take it too seriously.
I think defund the police is turning into Trump's plan of funding the police fully, But also there might be some other things that are worth funding.
Because when the protesters say defund the police, it's not so much that they need them to be defunded.
It's just a conceptual thing to say that that money could be maybe more productive in these other areas of social concern.
If it turns out that what happens is the police are mostly funded, except in some places where they're experimenting, that's not bad.
If it turns out that some things that should have been funded got funded, we'll see.
Could be good too.
I'm actually completely in favor of the autonomous zone.
I know I make fun of it because it's just such a perfect fodder for humor.
I mean, for God's sakes, it's got a charismatic rapper who has become a warlord and And of course, when we say warlord, that's a little bit for humorous purposes.
He does have guns, and he does seem to be handling security.
Warlord is just a funny term for it.
But even though it's hilarious and funny and it can't last forever because they don't have a structure to support them, I would say that we're going to learn something from this.
I think that the end product of this is we're going to learn something.
And when I say we, I don't mean you.
And I don't mean me.
I mean the protesters.
I mean the protesters are going to learn something from it, don't you think?
They're going to have some fun, because right now it's just sort of fun.
But they do have to worry about security.
They have started infighting because they don't have a common enemy anymore.
The common enemy was the police.
So remember, the governments did this brilliant thing.
And I would say that even the Seattle governor is playing this brilliantly.
You don't think so, do you?
Because I'll bet every one of you disagrees with that statement.
The governor from Washington...
She's playing it brilliantly.
She's described it as closer to a block party than terrorism.
I think she's three-quarters right.
She's more right than wrong, I would say, based on the pictures I've seen.
She's more right than wrong.
But whether or not it's fully a block party or there's something to worry about also, I think the way she is trying to frame it is perfection.
She's framing it as peaceful, which helps you treat it that way, which will let the energy just dissipate on its own.
Going in there hard with any kind of force?
Huge mistake.
Huge mistake.
Now eventually they might need to send in some kind of uniformed force to mop up.
But I don't think the protests can last that long, meaning they need food, they're not going to want to stay there, they want to go home to, you know, they're going to have to go home to see their pets and stuff.
You just let the energy die out and see what you learn.
And I think people will learn that running their own autonomous zones is not so easy.
It might be useful. I would say that the protests led to reopening the country faster.
Most of you would agree, right?
Because it sort of made a joke of the thought that we shouldn't leave the house.
The protesters just made a mockery of the whole coronavirus medical recommendation.
Now part of it was luck because the virus was starting to wind down and we were getting smarter about how to treat it and ventilators and all that stuff.
So some of it was luck, but I think you would agree.
That the protests hasten the economic reopening in a way that's irreversible.
We're not going to go back to lock-up.
We're just not. So, I mean, that was an unintended consequence.
And I think that the country will be stronger once we've gotten through all of this.
That has less to do with the protests and more to do with just good news, because we shook the box on basically everything.
And that kind of energy and disruption In a country full of entrepreneurs should unleash just amazing amounts of progress.
Now, let me tell you how we can solve all this racism problem if we wanted to solve problems.
But we don't.
You know we don't.
When I say we, I mean not everyone.
You might want to solve a problem.
I might want to solve a problem.
But the leadership of groups That are, let's say, active.
They don't necessarily want to solve a problem.
Because in politics, if you solve the problem, you have to find another job.
Right? So politicians don't always want to solve problems.
Sometimes it benefits them to keep that problem running a little bit.
Likewise, the leaders of any kind of provocative groups.
So the leadership may be out of sync With the people they're leading, who might want solutions, leadership, it's a little less certain.
But imagine, if you will, there were no leadership, and all you wanted to do was solve problems.
What would that look like?
Given that people have very different views of the world, how could you solve it?
Here's my take on it.
I would say that if you looked at the political left and the political right, that they focus in different places.
This part I've told you before, which is the left seems to focus on the end state.
They'd like equal justice and equal pay and no bigotry and free healthcare and free college.
Now they also believe that there are systems that need to be in place to get there.
But they focus on the end state.
So the emphasis is on getting to this more equal, more moral place.
I would say the political right also likes all this stuff, but doesn't know how to get it.
Instead, they say, you know, we don't know how to get all that stuff.
You could talk about it all day long, but nobody knows how to get there in the way that the math works and the country would accept.
So instead, the best we can do is have these systems that are equal for everybody, as best we can do it.
So you have to tweak these things to make sure they're equal over time.
But the constitutional laws and educational system, the family process, and even mentoring.
I'm throwing that in there because that's important.
So let's say these are systems.
But again, both the left and the right, they both have goals.
And they both think that you need a system to get there.
It's just a difference in emphasis.
There's more emphasis on goals on this side and more emphasis on process and systems with less emphasis on the outcomes because who can guarantee you an outcome?
Nobody can guarantee you an outcome, but we can work really hard to make sure that everybody's got the same rules and the same game.
So given this situation, how would you solve it?
Well, if there were no politics and there were no leaders, it's kind of easy.
This would be really easy to solve if there were no political leaders.
I mean, really easy, because there's no problem here in the first place.
Here's why. The solution is really easy.
Number one, you agree on the aspirations.
Let's call them goals. Is there anybody on the right Who, if it were free, would not want everybody to have health care.
If it's free. Like it's not free.
But imagine if there were magic.
Let's say magic exists.
Hey, magic exists.
And you go to a Republican.
Hey, we just discovered that magic exists.
And we can give everybody health care for free.
Are you in? Is there any Republican who would say, no.
Now, even though it's magic and it's not going to cost me anything, it's not going to cost anybody anything, and there's no downside, I don't want other people to have health care.
Said nobody. Said nobody.
Right? If it were free, yeah, everybody would be on the same page.
So, given that you've got these two points of view, I think we could agree on the aspirations.
There's no Republican who would not agree if we had a way to get there.
We don't, but if we had a way to get there, I'd like all of this stuff.
So you could agree on the aspirations.
No problem. I think you could get there.
You could also agree on the metrics.
In other words, what are you measuring to know if you've got a problem, and what are you measuring to know if what you're doing is working?
Well, that would be easy.
Do you think anybody would disagree on the concept of Of coming together over what you're measuring to know if it works.
I think you could get together on that.
That's not a problem. Then here's the part that's the heart of it.
Making A-B testing more common.
Now A-B testing is literally just testing something small and see if it works.
And if it works, you do more of that.
And if it doesn't work, you try something else and then you just keep testing.
But it's a continuous testing situation.
Why do I like the Autonomous Zone in Seattle?
Because it's a test.
It's a test. We're going to learn something about the AutoZone.
We don't know what, but we're definitely going to learn something.
Now, it's not the kind of A to B testing I'm talking about, because if you do it right, you plan it so it could be more lasting, and you do your best job of planning it.
The Seattle Autonomous Zone was not planned, and therefore it doesn't have any structure to support it, so we kind of know where it's going to end up.
In the long run, it's going to be dismantled.
But we're going to learn a lot, and I think that genuinely it's going to be useful.
And then once you've learned something for your testing, you revise your systems.
So, suppose we get an idea from this autonomous zone and somebody says, you know, the biggest problem is you didn't plan it.
And also that it belonged to somebody else.
That's a pretty big problem.
That zone that they've occupied, that belongs to other people.
So that's a problem.
But suppose somebody said, hey, Maybe we just need two systems within one country.
Would it be a problem for you You personally, would you have a problem if somebody said, hey, we found some private funding and we found some land for sale.
We'd like to build a little experiment here in the middle of Idaho or doesn't matter where.
Just find some friendly place.
Say, we're going to build this thing.
We're going to try an experiment for a few years with private money.
And we're going to try no cops.
So that's part of the experiment.
No police. We're going to try to build a place that's really inexpensive, so you don't have to be a millionaire, and we'll make sure everybody's trained and educated, we'll have some kind of health care.
So in other words, we'll just test something, see if it works.
Whatever we learn from that will become the next test, or maybe legislation.
So, if you had no politicians, it would be easy to merge these, because they are two halves of Of the whole.
Having goals without good systems is useless because you can't get to your goal.
Having systems with no aspirations or no end state that you're trying to get to borders on immoral.
That's not the intention.
I mean, there's nobody on the right who's trying to do anything immoral.
Nobody thinks of it that way.
But if you have processes that don't have a A pretty distinct end-stated mind that's better for everybody.
If you're not heading towards something good, what are you doing?
You have to add these together to have anything.
So if we didn't have leaders, we would just add those things together.
We would agree that we don't know as much as we think we know about anything.
So we would just test them.
Somebody says, next time communism will work, I tell you.
It hasn't ever been tried.
So everybody who takes a good idea and then exaggerates it into a stupid one to make a point is really just surrendering.
So whoever said that, you just surrendered your point.
Because if you have to take a good suggestion and turn it into something stupid just to criticize it, Then you've accepted that there wasn't enough to criticize of the idea itself.
So I don't believe anybody has suggested communism.
I haven't heard that suggestion.
I've heard socialism.
If you think they're the same, again, same problem.
You've surrendered.
If you're going to call communism and socialism the same thing, well, you've surrendered.
Because if you can't criticize socialism on its own without turning it into some other thing called communism so you can criticize it, well, you've surrendered.
You've said there's nothing to criticize with socialism.
Otherwise, you would just criticize it.
You wouldn't have to turn it into something else.
All right. People are giving me examples of other countries that have already tried things.
Again... Let me say this as clearly as possible.
If somebody wanted to try something in just a small community and it wasn't your money, why would you object?
I know you say you don't think the experiment would work if, let's say, it's too heavily socialist.
I hear you. But you also hear that other people think it might, right?
So all that I need to convince you is that people have different opinions.
That's all. If people have different opinions, and it can be tested, and it doesn't cost you anything, you personally, no risk.
Why not?
Why not?
All right.
The U.S. has never had socialism before.
The US is a socialist country.
We have lots of socialism.
We just do it in a specific way.
Are you talking about Chaz with Well, I don't know yet.
So the way the process usually works is so people who go on TV a lot, such as myself, know this process.
So sometime today, a producer for Tucker's show will probably contact me and say, the topics we want to talk about are, you know, maybe three questions.
Now, even if we talk about that topic, the host will usually change the questions.
So even if I know the questions in advance, it's pretty rare to be asked exactly that question.
Usually, you know, the more talented hosts are going to put their own spin on the question, which is fine.
So you can never be completely prepared Because you don't know what the host is going to improvise.
Also, that list of, let's say, three things that you might talk about on the show gets revised every hour until the show, typically, because they're always looking at the hottest news and say, okay, okay, we're going to drop this third one because something just happened.
We'll throw that on top, but the other two are still there.
And then by the time you get to the show, who knows?
You know, there's so much happened in one day that you don't know.
All right. Let me just make sure I hit all my points.
Oh, Microsoft just announced it will not sell facial recognition technology to the police.
I don't know how they're going to get away with that.
How in the world do you get away with just denying selling something to the police if it's a tool?
And what exactly does facial recognition do that is so evil?
We're going to be talking a lot more about that and I'll tell you why.
So I'll have an announcement in that zone that I'll be talking to you about later.
So wait for that.
All right. I think I hit all my...
Oh, let's talk about the statues.
I'm completely in favor of getting rid of all the racist statues.
I've told you that before. I'd get rid of Columbus.
I'd get rid of all the slave owners.
I'd get rid of all the Confederate generals.
Now, I know you disagree, and I respect that.
So I want you to know that if you would like to keep all those statues, and the reason that you'd like to keep them is that you understand that they offend some people, but you think they have historical value and that that context can be maintained, that's a very respectable opinion.
But it is nonetheless a fact that something like half of the country is offended by them.
And for me, they're just declarations.
And if your declarations are offending a quarter of your guests or half of your guests, you don't need a better reason.
I'm not going to reason through the logic of it and the Constitution and my rights and the laws.
I'm not going to talk about the details of it.
If half the country is offended by it, and it's basically a decoration, because the history is in the history books.
I don't know anybody who learned history from a statue.
In my whole life, I've never heard anybody say, well, I didn't go to school, but...
I did a tour of statues, so I got the same education.
I wouldn't worry about losing history because you lost a decoration.
It doesn't work that way. Yeah, Columbus was a huge racist.
He was one of the biggest ones.
And if you don't know that, just Google it.
Maybe a lot of people don't understand that basically Columbus was basically Hitler.
You know, he wasn't far off from Hitler.
Literally. You know, if you Google it, you'll find out yourself.
So, I think that I think it's healthy for a country to reboot and refresh.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at our historical founders in their full context.
And if we don't want to promote people who were half-awesome and Half horrible.
We don't have to.
Why bother? So I say, you know, if somebody wants to protect the statues and handle them differently, I completely respect that.
I just think...
This isn't even a policy decision.
Let me put it in personal terms.
As a policy decision, I don't know.
I'm not really that interested.
As a personal decision of a citizen who lives in the country, I personally choose not to offend other citizens of my country, deeply offend them, over something that's not important to me.
So that's like a personal decision.
In terms of policy, well, that gets into free speech and bigger things, and frankly, I'm not that interested.
But if you want to know what I think about it personally, I wouldn't offend anybody for no reason.
