Episode 1046 Scott Adams: #BLM, Strategy, HCQ, Kamala, Fixing Schools and More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
eBikes and a national bike path
HCQ helps, say 3 new studies
Darrin Bell on single parent black families
Whiteboard1: Teacher Unions, Mayoral Corruption
Children NEED to be brainwashed
A mantra for mothers: Education is the key
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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.
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And I will be ready to present to you Coffee with Scott Adams and the thoughts of the day, the news, and the beginning of the best day you've had since yesterday.
Yeah, today's going to be a It's going to be a doozy.
It really is. And before we get started, you know what you need.
You need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
What the hell? Just imagine this is my coffee and that I didn't forget my coffee cup downstairs.
You're going to have to use your imagination, okay?
But it's the dopamine hit of the day.
It's the best part of the day.
It's a simultaneous hip.
Works with any beverage. It happens now.
Go! That might be the first time I've forgotten to have my coffee cup with me.
Well, that's just because there's so many things happening.
How many of you had elk as the statue that would be destroyed next in the statue Deadpool?
Did anybody guess elk?
Because somebody said a statue of an elk on fire.
It was obviously a white supremacist elk, so in a way it had it coming.
As things continue into more and more ridiculous territory, I think we can see that maybe things were not what you thought they were, if you know what I mean.
Alright, I've decided that if you were to write the summary of the year 2020, you could do it with one sentence.
Here it goes. The one sentence that summarizes 2020.
We measured everything the wrong way.
Is it my imagination, or are something like 90% of the problems we've had in 2020 All around the same problem that we don't know how to compare things, we don't know how to measure things, we don't have the right data, we don't know how to study things.
It feels like a lot of this is self-imposed, meaning that a lot of the things that are making us unhappy are just because we don't know how to do math and compare things and measure things.
So look for that. One of my favorite things to do is watch CNN for what I call contempt face.
Now, those of you listening will miss the magic of this next segment, but if you notice there's a face they make on CNN that you don't see on Fox News, let me do an impression of somebody on Fox News Both opinion and news people reading the news.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Here's the news. Alright, did you see that?
Nothing weird going on with my face.
Now watch every CNN host or opinion person talking about President Trump with contempt face.
And it goes like this. And really, it doesn't even matter the topic.
So I'll make up a topic. Let's say President Trump...
That racism is bad.
Right? You figure, well, most people are going to agree with that, even CNN. But no.
They can turn anything into a negative with contempt face.
Watch me do it now.
And the president, he is claiming that...
That racism is bad.
Clearly, he doesn't mean it.
And you see what I mean?
Contempt face.
Now, you can turn no story at all into a CNN feature just with contempt face.
You just have to add the contemptible face like, oh, I'm so confused and I hate it and What's going on here?
Is he from another world?
I just don't know.
I can't even form a sentence.
My contempt face has taken over my brain.
Well, enough on that.
People have questioned me lately because I've said two things that sound contradictory.
And they do sound contradictory.
So I'm going to clarify.
I've said that in the corporate setting, the strategies are bullshit.
And they are. In the corporate world, the person at the meeting who says, what's our strategy?
Is usually just the dumbest person in the meeting.
And companies have largely given up on the whole strategy thing because there's just a lot of things you need to do right.
That's it. Is it a strategy for Amazon to be in the package shipping business, or I mean, delivering products?
Well, it turns out that just describing what you do doesn't really turn it into a strategy.
Nor does it account, if you have a strategy in the corporate world, nor does it account for changes and opportunity.
So your strategy might be, we're going to make the highest quality product.
And that's your strategy.
How long does that last?
It lasts until somebody else makes a better, high-quality product, and you can't compete.
Then what do you do?
You say, well, what do we have going for us?
Oh, well, we can make a cheap product, and we can make a lot of them.
So people will change their strategy in the corporate world to whatever is the best opportunity at the time.
So strategy doesn't make as much sense.
But in your personal life, That's where strategy matters.
The things that you specifically are doing, you can have a strategy.
So a strategy would be, for example, go to college.
A strategy would be stay in jail.
A strategy would be be nice to people and hope that they return the favor.
A strategy might be to have systems instead of goals.
A strategy might be to build your talent stack.
A strategy might be contacting people to network on a regular basis.
So in your personal life, Whether you call it a strategy or a system or whatever word you want, it's really good to have.
In the corporate world, it just devolves into jargon and it changes on a whim.
But will it ever be a bad idea to improve your talent stack?
No. It'll never be a bad idea.
Will it ever be a bad idea to increase your network?
Nope. No.
There's nothing that could happen that would make that a bad idea.
But in the business world, there's so much happening That can change what your priorities are, that a strategy just makes less sense.
And in a practical sense, if you put five people in a room, they won't agree what the strategy is anyway.
So, in the corporate world, they can't agree what the strategy is.
But if it's you personally, you just pick one and go.
Nobody's going to argue with you about your strategy.
So it turns out that Joe Biden is getting a very wide lead with the people over 65.
I was looking at some anecdotal stuff.
It's hard to tell anything from anecdotal, but they seem to blame the president for the coronavirus.
I saw CNN interview one elderly gentleman.
A retired banker who said the only good thing Trump's done for the economy is juice the stock market, and even that's low now.
And I thought to myself, I don't think he's looked at the stock market lately because it's looking kind of strong at the moment.
So, old people do not make decisions based on data.
And nobody else does either.
But the old people might be a little extra not connected, depending on how old they are.
So here's the thing that is not factored into any of the polls at the moment.
The only thing that moves old people is fear.
If they're not afraid, then they get to make their decisions based on their complete lack of information.
Which is normal. If they're afraid, then they will do whatever they can to limit their fear.
Now the thing that senior citizens are most afraid of is losing what they have.
They're a little less concerned with getting new stuff, at least the ones who vote, than they are about losing what they have.
So that's the fear that senior citizens have, which is, I can't go back to work.
Whatever I have is going to have to be good enough.
I can't give any of that away.
So you can scare senior citizens into thinking they will lose their stuff.
What would it take to scare senior citizens back to Trump?
Just lots of information about the protesters.
Just lots of information about what the left actually looks like and what they want to do.
It's plenty scary.
You don't have to add anything.
So we'll see. We'll see if that happens.
So remember I made a suggestion that for the sports that don't have live audience, and we'll see a bunch of them while there's a coronavirus, I said they should have some kind of technology where people could hear the people watching at home cheering.
It turns out that exists.
It turns out that there's an app, or I think it's a website app basically, called Hero.live.
And Hero is spelled the way you hear.
H-E-A-R, with an O on the end, dot live.
Apparently they're already doing business for ESPN and something else.
So is there any reason that the NBA, for example, Couldn't just say, hey, everybody watching this game, if you use this app, you could all be sort of talking to each other by your phone.
So you would hear the cheering, but it would come out of your phone or your mobile device, not out of your television.
But it would be in real time, because you would be connected to the people who are watching the same event at the same time.
So that exists.
It's called hearo.live.
H-E-A-R-O. And I know that because the company contacted me to tell me.
I don't have any connection to them.
Alright. Here's my suggestion for improving the economy and making us robot-proof.
Are you ready? It goes like this.
Here's something you don't know, so I'll give you some information and then complete this story.
Many of you know I bought an electronic bike, meaning it has a battery in it, and it assists your pedaling.
So you still have to pedal.
You can't drive it without pedaling.
But the bike just makes you feel like you have a superpower.
Now, when I try to explain to people what that feels like, because the way things feel really determine how things go, right?
It's not our common sense.
It's not our data. It's the way things feel.
And I got to tell you, the way an e-bike feels compared to a regular bike Is day and night.
You can't even compare them.
The feeling of being on a regular bicycle.
Hold that in your mind. Almost all of you have been on a regular bicycle.
It's pretty good, isn't it?
Don't you kind of like riding a bike?
I mean, if there are no hills, and it's just a nice day, and you're on a bike, it's a really good feeling.
Now, I'm going to give you an analogy to make you understand how much better it feels to be on an e-bike.
Because if you don't get how much better it feels, the rest of the idea will not hold together.
So I've got to transmit to you the feeling.
It goes like this.
Imagine if everything in the world was exactly the way it is.
The only change is that you personally have an 80% reduction in gravity.
Just you. Everything else in the world is the same gravity, but for magic reasons, you personally don't have the same amount of gravity.
So you can jump 20 feet in the air, and when you come down, you don't even get hurt because you only weighed 20% as much as you would have, and your muscles are all the same, so it's easy.
Now imagine a world in which you can run around and interact with the world.
Everybody else is on regular gravity, but you're at 20% gravity.
You can jump from things.
You could jump up on a ledge.
If you saw something way above you, you could just jump up like a cat jumps up on a counter.
You could run with 20-foot leaps.
Imagine what that would feel like.
If you didn't have gravity just on you in a world where everybody else has gravity, it would feel amazing.
That's what an e-bike feels like.
I've never had a physical activity this addicting.
The feeling you have of being Extra strong on your bicycle because the battery is sort of just helping you out there.
That feeling is really addictive.
And it doesn't feel like a regular bike with a little extra.
It's a whole new experience.
So just in the same way that, you know, if you're, let's say you're a distance runner and you really like it and it feels good and you get the, you get all that.
And then I told you you could run 50% faster tomorrow.
It would be really a kick, wouldn't it?
Imagine just being able to run 50% faster.
So that's what an e-bike feels like.
You can't compare it and it's really addicting.
Now, here's the idea.
The cost of e-bikes will continue to plunge because the big cost is in the battery and the battery costs are dropping fast.
Actually, I don't even know if the big cost is the battery, but the cost will drop as the popularity increases.
If you try to buy an e-bike, It's already hard to find.
Most bike shops have them, but most of them are sold out.
I told some of you this story about when I test drove it at the bike place.
The guy said, just take it out in the parking lot.
It was a really big parking lot.
Just drive around and see what you think.
I got an e-bike and I took it 50 feet.
And then I turned around and drove back 50 feet.
I just sort of drove to the end straight ahead, drove back, and he said, what do you think?
And I said to him, the bicycle salesman, has anybody ever ridden an e-bike and then not bought it?
And he laughed.
He said, there's something called the e-bike smile, that after somebody does a test run, they come back and they can't get the smile off their face.
Because they're experiencing almost a drug rush.
It's so cool. And they said, yeah, they basically, if you can afford it, and you do a test ride, You leave with the bike.
That's it. He said, basically, you just leave with the bike.
I left with the bike.
50 feet sold me on that frickin' thing.
So, here's the thing.
Still way too expensive for normal use, but prices will come down fast.
Here's what we should do. We should build a national bike path that gets to all the good stuff in America.
Now, of course, seasons matter, so you couldn't use it all year everywhere.
But imagine, if you will, a major effort to build really good bike paths that are a combination of, there might be, you need a bridge, a tunnel, you need to connect some things.
There are already a lot of bike paths, but you want to get them off the road.
Because the road's just a terrible place for a bike.
It's just no fun. So even as good as the bike is, if I'm in heavy traffic, even in a bike lane, it's not much fun.
You need sort of your own bike situation.
Now, why is this such a good idea?
Because it's the type of job that you can learn to do, which is building a bike path and all the things associated with that.
That you would suck up a lot of labor.
It would be universal because there's no place you wouldn't want to do it.
The government could say, yeah, we'll pay for it.
We'll train you, get people working.
And then here's the killer part.
How are you going to build a country that's safe from the age of robots when everybody loses their jobs?
And the answer is, I think we have to become a tourist destination country, the best one.
The United States, with a bike path across the entire country, would first of all make it possible for anybody to have a vacation.
Because you could just get on your bike, say alright, or rent a bike.
It would probably be as much rental as it would ownership.
So you could just rent a bike, going 100 miles on an e-bike.
It's actually trivial.
You can go 100 miles on an e-bike and you just enjoy the ride.
You wouldn't even necessarily be tired at the other end, depending on the hills.
You do have to pedal a little bit on the hills, but it's easy.
So, these are the types of jobs that if you built a network of bike paths, you would need lots of support all along the network.
You would need lots of bike repair places.
Kind of a job that people can get into young.
You would need lots of food and water and other resources for bikes all the way.
And you would build basically a destination that anybody from another country could come over to any part of the country and then use their e-bikes to get to a huge circle of places without transportation problems.
Hey, people say it's a good idea.
That's the first time I've seen so many people like my wild ideas.
Alright, enough on that.
So think about that for a little bit.
So here's a little update for you.
I've told you sometimes I plan things years in advance.
So sometimes I'll set up a situation that can't pay off for five or ten years.
Very typical in my life, I've done that.
And one of the times I did that was with this book.
Which many of you know, had failed almost everything and still went big.
When I wrote this book, which was full of useful framing, shall we say, about how to have systems and set of goals and how to stack your talents and basically how to organize your life, a life strategy, if you will. A whole bunch of things that if you said, all right, I'll take these parts and build myself a system, that you would come out ahead.
And the thing that I planned in advance on this one is that there would be something like a five-year lag between the time that the first people read it, because usually a lot of people read it when it's new, but not a lot of people read a book after it's been out for a while.
So you get most of your readers up front.
And I knew that when people read this, that I would get not a number one bestseller because I'm a cartoonist giving people a book that's outside my realm.
And generally that's a hard sell.
And so when I wrote this, I said to myself, all right, it's 2013 when this is going to come out.
And somewhere around five to seven years from now, I mean, I didn't know the exact time, the people who read the book first And then employ the suggestions are going to start coming forward.
In other words, people are going to say, I use this book and look what happened to my life.
I got this promotion.
I lost 80 pounds.
I did this. And now all those things are coming through.
So I just got, this is a little inside baseball kind of a talk.
If you're an author, you usually get paid upfront for a book.
It's called the advance. And then let's say they give you a dollar per book or whatever you've agreed in your deal for each book that's sold.
You don't get any more money than that initial check unless you sell so many books at a dollar a book, just for my math example, that all of that would have added up to the first amount you got.
Once you've earned that by selling a lot of books, then you can get additional checks.
I'm a notable enough author, I'll use that word, that I always get an advance.
Now not every author is going to get an advance.
Sometimes they'll get a little one that's just a token.
If you're a brand new author, don't expect a big advance.
But if you're well known, and you've published a lot of books that did well, you get an advance.
What is unusual, in my case, is to sell more books than the advance covered.
And I just got a big old royalty check for this thing.
2013, and it just blew through its advance.
It actually doesn't stop selling because the people who read it early are now reporting in and recommending it.
And almost every day you see somebody in my feed recommending it with a story of how it helped them.
So, if you haven't read this, and I'll say this again, you know, every author writes a book because they want you to buy it, and it's part of their job, so they would like to get money, right?
So, you know, we're all adults, right?
Authors write books to make money?
We know that, right? We don't have to argue about that.
But I don't do things for one reason anymore.
You know, my life is now rich enough in, let's say, all the ways, Then I just don't do things for one reason.
So I wrote this to really...
I meant it for my stepson, honestly, who tragically died of an overdose before he finished it.
He had started the book, actually, but he hadn't finished it.
And it was really for people who just didn't have a, let's say, a father figure or role model...
They just didn't have anything in their life that would tell them how to organize a successful life strategically.
So I thought, well, this will be like a virtual dad.
Or it could be a virtual mom to make it less sexist.
Somebody who just gives somebody that guidance that is not common sense.
So I hate advertising stuff.
It's just the creepiest thing.
But if I didn't know that this changes lives, I wouldn't do it.
I mean, it really changed his lives, and far more than really even I hoped it would.
So that's the good news.
So here's something interesting.
I think there are three different studies that came out yesterday and today, or the last few days.
I think there are three different ones showing hydroxychloroquine works.
Have you seen them? Yeah, somebody's mentioning Atomic Habits.
There are a lot of books that have explicitly mentioned my book that went on to become huge bestsellers.
So you'll see a lot of people who, and they say that, they say, you know, I got some portion of my book or my ideas from specifically this book.
So it's actually influenced a lot of bestsellers since then.
So hydroxychloroquine, it turns out it works.
Now, I'm still waiting for more evidence, but when the people, when it was tested in a rigorous, the first rigorous study, it showed it worked like pretty well.
Now, this was tested of people who were already in the hospital.
My smartest thinker, I guess, who I always ask for advice on this said, yeah, it looks like a good study, but the way they did it, there's a methodology imperfection.
that you have to take seriously.
So I will still say, even though there are three studies that seem to show hydroxychloroquine clearly makes a difference in a good way, without actually killing people, I will still say we're not quite there.
Not quite there.
If I had to put the odds on it now, I would raise it quite a bit.
I'd say at this point it looks like 75% chance it's a positive thing.
Maybe not a game changer, but probably a 75% chance it's more good than bad.
So that's my current update.
So how good was the president's day yesterday?
Studies were coming out saying hydroxychloroquine works.
The news was reporting that he's pro-mask now, so that solved one problem.
And the economy was screaming again.
The economy, again, beat expectations.
All right, let's review which pundits and experts were right and who was wrong.
If you took my advice, let's say if the country had taken my advice, we would have closed the travel from China one week sooner than it happened.
So I was maybe one of the first few people in public who said, close travel.
If you'd listened to me, you would have known that masks were, of course, obviously effective and that the government was, of course, obviously lying to you about that from day one.
I said that really loudly from the beginning.
So you would have been wearing your masks sooner.
I said early on that we don't know if hydroxychloroquine works and we can't trust those studies, but the risk-reward is probably good.
Meaning that given the low downside and the anecdotal but unproven potential upside, it just made sense to be using it.
Now, that is proven correct.
I see somebody in the comments saying masks are not very effective.
That question is settled.
So if everyone now and then, somebody will send me something saying, oh, there's some dispute about Whether masks work?
I don't entertain that anymore.
I do not entertain even the argument that masks don't work.
It's overwhelmingly obvious, and you wouldn't even need data.
The data supports it, but it's just overwhelmingly obvious, I'm gonna say.
All right. So, and I will add one other thing on there.
Who told you that the recovery would be surprisingly good?
Surprisingly good.
Me and President Trump, right?
Now, both of us loudly and often said...
You're going to be surprised how quickly the economy comes back.
And I gave my reasons, which was that nothing was broken, and people were already trained, so it would just be a little easier to ramp up than it would be if you had massive destruction of some kind.
So sure enough, my estimate of how the economy would come back would exceed expectations of the experts, and it has.
And I said that a lot of times.
I said it would blow past what the consensus assumption would be.
And we're there. Other news from another area.
Iran had a mysterious explosion, it's called, a mysterious explosion at one of the key buildings at a nuclear site in Iran where I guess they make advanced centrifuges.
This would not be the first time that an Iranian centrifuge facility had a, quote, mysterious problem.
You remember the other one, which was, there was a famous cyber attack that Made their machines go crazy and ruin all their centrifuges.
Well, this time, just something exploded.
Now, what's one of the things that people warned the United States about when the coronavirus hit?
Here's what we were warned.
Hey, watch out, United States.
Given that you're all distracted by this coronavirus stuff, United States, It could be that other countries will start to get adventurous because they think your attention is turned somewhere else.
Totally a risk.
We should take that seriously.
But there's a flip side to the risk, isn't there?
The flip side is that we can take risks internationally that we maybe couldn't have taken before because they're also distracted.
So I'm not going to say that the United States was behind the mysterious explosion.
I'm not going to say that Israel was behind it.
I mean, you can make your own assumptions on that.
But here's what I will say to add to the story.
If it was either the United States or Israel, the timing was kind of perfect.
The timing was perfect because everyone's distracted by coronavirus.
So in order for Iran to get any kind of a win out of having their facility attacked, they would either have to mount a counterattack, which looks impossible at this point, or they would have to get public opinion on their side, and nobody freaking cares.
We just don't care about Iran at the moment.
I mean, the world just sort of doesn't care.
We just have other things to worry about.
So if you look at the situation Iran is in, their budget is completely blown up.
I think their taxable income, the income they get by taxes, It's just a fraction of what they're spending now.
So they're on a fast track to complete destruction.
So they've got runaway inflation, their government budget is toast, their oil revenue is nothing, the sanctions are cutting off their other ways to make money, and they've got a big coronavirus problem.
And they're still trying to keep their proxies alive and, you know, whatever they're trying to do in Syria is probably not working out.
It's getting expensive. So, Iran is really on the ropes right now.
And if Israel or the U.S. are getting adventurous in terms of trying to push them over the edge, it is the perfect time.
It's the perfect time to do it.
I've often said that the Most important things a government does are the things you never find out about.
So, you know, it could be that we're deeply involved in whatever this mysterious stuff is going on, but you're never going to know.
Or maybe years from now you'll know.
Here's an interesting factoid that will blow your mind.
Are you ready? One of the reasons that you listen to this periscope, the regulars anyway, is Is that you like to hear something that you hadn't heard before, or have something framed away that just makes you go, what?
And it's especially delicious if it's something that you are positive is true.
You've always been positive it's true, and then you find out it isn't.
It's kind of fun, isn't it?
Admit it, it's kind of fun to find out that something you thought was true your whole life just isn't true.
All right, I got one for you.
Now, you'll have to fact-check me on this, but I'm going to give you a claim that sounded plausible to me, but I'd like you to check it out for me, okay?
So here's the claim that I believe every conservative believes about what needs to be fixed in the black community to get us as close to racial parity as possible.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Conservatives overwhelmingly believe That the family unit staying together, in other words, not being divorced, and having two parents to raise a kid, especially fathers, right, especially fathers, that that's critical, and that there's a gigantic difference in the black community with 70%, I think it's 70% of black babies are born to a single parent.
Now that's why you know, right?
You're conservative, you believe that The black babies in 2020, 70% of them are being born to a single parent, and you believe that the key to success for any baby, like really, really the most important thing, is to have a solid family unit that can kind of guide your upbringing, right?
Those are the things you believe are true.
Here's a little factoid from Darren Bell, who is a African-American cartoonist who I've known of and I've known his work for years.
But he got involved in one of the Twitter threads and he dropped this little red pill on me.
So I'm going to drop the red pill on you that Darren Bell dropped on me.
But you have to fact check this, okay?
And it goes like this.
It is true that 70% of black babies in 2020 We'll be born to single parents.
But remember what I told you at the very beginning of this podcast?
When I said that the biggest problem of 2020 is that we're measuring the wrong things?
Apparently, a huge percentage of that is 70% who are single.
are just living together like they're married.
And the father is completely involved.
And that if you were actually to look at father involvement in a two-parent situation, it's pretty close.
It's pretty close.
So your most major assumption That these fatherless black kids are disadvantaged by the fatherlessness, according to Darren Bell, and this is what you need to check, it's just not true.
They're technically not married, but they operate as a married unit, and so the father is completely involved.
And in fact, if you dig down to feeding and bathing the child, the black fathers, married or not, Are, in some of those categories, actually more involved on average than white fathers.
Now look at the comments.
Watch the comments go by.
Don't think so.
Nope, they don't.
Somebody's having cognitive dissonance.
Somebody is excited by it.
Having a guy in the house doesn't equate to a father.
Remember, the second part of the survey, and Darren Bell sent the information so I could look at it myself, the second part went down to the details.
Do they feed and bathe the kid?
Do they watch the kid? And the answer is yes.
So whether that's a father-father or the new boyfriend, statistically, that kid's still getting a father.
Now, check that for me.
Look how many of you are having real trouble with that.
Yeah, a lot of you are not liking this at all.
Because it just blew up your most basic assumption.
Now, is it true?
I would like you to check that.
Because if it turns out that Darren Bell is the one that's wrong, well, let's find that out.
So let's put a tack in that.
By tomorrow, somebody will have tweeted at me or told me the truth.
Yeah, I'm watching the comments.
Complete disbelief.
Hard to believe.
Somebody says it does pass the sniff test, but you're not sold.
And you're seeing a few people saying, Oh, shoot.
Could we be that wrong?
And the answer is, you could be.
You could be that wrong.
Now... Before I talk about some potentially helpful things for the black community, I would like to update you on my free speech exercise.
So as you know, I've been seeing how close I can get to the line of cancellation, not just for fun, but to see if I can get to a point of useful, productive communication on a really sensitive topic, race in America, In order to be useful, I told you in advance, I'm going to have to walk right up to the line of cancellation, because if I don't get right up to the line, I'm not going to be able to be honest.
And if I can't be honest, well, I'm no use at all.
Ignore my... That's my dog who's sleep barking, if you hear that in the background.
When she sleeps, she runs and barks in her sleep.
Anyway, so as part of my experiment to expand my free speech so that I can get to the point of being actually useful, I tweeted this.
And by the way, I don't think I could have tweeted this one month ago.
But today, no blowback.
So far. Could come later.
So this is a tweet that had no blowback.
If you can imagine this, this is from me this morning.
I said Black Lives Matter is a violent, racist organization that includes lots of people with good intentions who don't fully understand what they're signing on to support.
Now, don't you think I would have got canceled for that about a month ago?
But today I can say it.
It's partly because the conversation is getting richer.
It's partly because people are a little bit more desperate for something that sounds like it's useful.
You know, something that's true.
And let me say this as clearly as possible.
And if there are any African-American people watching this, there always are.
It turns out I've got a fast-growing part of my audience is African-American men and women.
More men than women, because I get more men on here than women.
But it's a fast-growing portion of what they're watching.
And here's why.
The next thing I'm going to say, I think, is why that is.
It's just my hypothesis.
I can't prove this.
I think the reason I'm getting a fast-growing increase in black audience for what I do is that I'm not going to be condescending.
I'm not going to treat you like you can't handle the truth.
Right? I mean, who doesn't appreciate that?
And black people say this directly all the time.
You hear this all the time. I'd rather you just told me the truth.
Don't pretend you're blowing smoke on my ass and then go be a racist privately.
Just frickin' tell me the truth.
Because I can deal with the truth.
I just can't deal with this BS stuff.
I don't know what to do with that.
Perfectly reasonable. So here's some truth.
Black people...
I'm sorry. Here's some truth.
White people almost routinely lie to black people because they feel they have to.
White people almost universally lie to black people about race because they feel they have to.
So if you would like to have an actual conversation about race, you're going to have to get to the point where you can convince some white people to stop lying to you.
Because if you can't get them to stop lying to you intentionally, How the hell are you going to make any difference in anything?
So while I believe that Black Lives Matter is more of a political, violent, racist organization, that doesn't change the fact that there are lots of things that need to be fixed, whether you're black or anybody else.
And here's my current thinking on this.
We're going to the whiteboard.
How would you know that, he says.
No, I'm speculating.
So I tell you when I think I know something, and I tell you when I'm speculating.
So that was speculation, which you're free to disagree with and or fact check.
All right, here's how I see the world.
So the Democrats support teachers' unions.
Teachers' unions are the reason that you don't have school choice.
That's the reason you have bad teachers.
Teachers' unions are the entire problem.
Because if you've got a bad school, you've got a bad life.
Where are the bad teachers?
They're in the inner cities, disproportionately teaching black students.
So basically the teachers' unions are the source of most racism.
Right? Institutional racism is primarily, you know, the thing that I would agree that black people say There's definitely a ripple all the way from slavery.
There's definitely something about the system that tries to maintain itself, which makes it harder for people to have the mobility that they need.
There was way more mobility, I think, when I was a kid.
When I was young, there was way more mobility for everybody.
So I think there's much to be said about systemic racism.
Everybody's got their own definition of it.
But this is a good example in my opinion.
This would be systemic racism with the primary system, the teachers' unions.
And you can't fix that as long as Democrats have control because the teachers' unions favor the Democrats.
Therefore, the Democrats give the teachers' unions what they want.
The Republicans would like to break this model by saying, how about instead of a bad school, how about you have a choice?
Add a little competition in there.
Maybe some charter schools, if you can get them, but at least competition.
So that's the Republican way to fix it.
Now, which of those two groups, Democrats or Republicans, are trying to fix systemic racism in the place that it matters the most?
In other words, if you get this right, and by the way, The black Americans watching this, jump in and agree with this.
If you get a solid education in, let's say, a useful thing, you still have racism to deal with, but you're going to slice right through it.
It doesn't make it go away.
But you can make it less important, and everybody's got their thing, right?
I'm short, I'm old, you know, you're ugly, you've got a weight problem, whatever it is.
Everybody's got something.
But if you've got a strong training and background and education, you can probably slice through your problem too.
Just different problems.
Alright, then there's the cities, because it's hard to fix anything, including the schools, if you're living in a place that's so depressed economically.
And of course, the mayors tend to be democratic in the big urban areas, and nothing can get fixed in an urban area if there's money involved, because the people who want to sell their services to the city can just bribe people easily.
Now, this has nothing to do with race.
There's no race in this conversation.
As long as you have this model for cities, where the people running the city can take bribes by big contractors, etc., to do things, how can anything ever get fixed?
There's no system here that can fix that.
The system as it exists is, one, super racist, Two, unfixable.
It's completely unfixable.
Because you're going to be living in the middle of just garbage if you don't have any way for the mayor to do a real job when they're being bribed to do whatever the contractors want.
The only way I could think of to fix the problem of cities being poorly managed is by what I've called government in a box.
Now, I think somebody needs to create the government-in-a-box option so that voters can at least have an option.
Imagine if you would.
I don't know. Now, in California, you can put anything on a ballot called a proposition if you get enough signatures.
I don't know how widespread that is, so somebody fact-check me on this.
But suppose that you had an urban area that was just a mess.
Let's take Baltimore. So Baltimore is just a mess, right?
And the governance is probably part of the problem, historically.
Suppose somebody started a petition and said, look, if we get enough signatures here and enough votes, we will replace the mayor and the administration for, let's say, one year Could be three years, whatever it is, but limited time with this government in a box,
which might be, who knows, maybe it's people from Switzerland who just want to come in and they don't care about your country, they're just trying to do their job, so they get recommended to be government in a box in another city.
So they want to do a good job just because it's a business, right?
A government doesn't need to do a good job if it can also get elected.
If your mayor knows he or she is going to get re-elected, They don't really have to do a good job.
But if you had a government in a box, which was a private company, let's say consultants, who would come in for a year or three, just straighten things out, get things on the right track, and then at the end of that you say, all right, it's time for these guys to move on, fix another city.
But until that exists, until you have a government in the box option, until somebody offers it, You're just stuck with the old system, which is racist in a systemic way.
Now, let me offer you my most provocative thought for ending racism.
Now, would it end racism?
It would come close. So let's say ending racism is too big because we're, you know, humans are just, we're unfixable when it comes to recognizing patterns.
Especially fake patterns.
So you can't get rid of people's bias, but you can certainly find systems that overcome them so well that they don't matter as much.
Alright, here's the most provocative thing I will ever say.
You ready? And I can only say this because those of you who have followed my lessons on persuasion and you know that facts don't matter, etc.
You have to brainwash children.
Children need to be brainwashed.
They need it. Because if you don't brainwash them, somebody else will.
Either television will, or their friends will, or they'll just work it out on their own, which is the worst case.
If you don't brainwash kids, and I'm using that term very thoughtfully, children are not influenced, they're brainwashed.
And you gotta do it right or you don't get a good kid, right?
So how could black America brainwash its own kids easily, easily, and fix an entire generation the moment they're born?
So here's an idea that won't fix people who have already been born and have already reached a certain age.
I'm talking about something that would stop it cold From this point on, so that the next baby born would be born into a better world.
And here it goes. You convince?
Somehow, because this would require persuasion as well.
So the black community would have to embrace this wildly for it to work.
You embrace this.
The education is the key to success.
Now education including any kind of profession.
So I'm talking about a skill stack.
I'm talking about the kinds of things you would learn in this book, etc.
And so this is all education, but I'll say a practical education.
So imagine, if you will, the black America says, hey, let's end racism.
And everybody will say, that's not possible, that's too hard.
Oh yeah? Watch this.
Watch this. We're going to get every mother.
You don't even need the fathers for this.
And I'll tell you why you don't need the fathers in a minute.
But you don't need the fathers to be part of this.
Just the moms. Keep it simple.
The fathers can help, but they're not required.
And the mother, from the first time the baby can hear, says, you're going to college.
Or, education is the thing.
Education is the thing.
Education is the thing.
And you just brainwash those kids into thinking, education is the thing.
Now, I've gone further and said, you can make a checklist and say, if you check any of these boxes, you're not going to succeed.
One of them, did you have trouble with the law?
Did you get involved with drugs or a gang?
So it's sort of an easy checklist.
And you just give that checklist to every new mom in an urban area.
And again, this works for everybody.
The fact that I'm talking about the black experience doesn't mean it's limited.
This would work for everybody.
And you just say, here's the checklist, kid.
Oh, you're only two years old.
You don't quite understand this.
Well, look how important it is.
I know you don't understand it.
Then you're three years old, still don't understand it, but you realize there's a checklist.
These are the things you need to do.
Stay off drugs. Education is the key.
Then the kid's about five.
At around five, They don't understand how the world works, but the brainwashing becomes permanent.
Education is your way to success.
Education is your way to success.
Education. And again, practical education.
I'm not talking about an English degree.
I mean, it could be mechanics or programming or any practical thing.
And What would happen 18 years from then?
Or let's say 21 years from then.
21 years from then, let's say that every black mother just started drilling that into their kids.
Doesn't mean they'll do it, but they're drilling it in.
And you start developing a generation, which 21 years from now, you're an employer.
Wait for this, here's the good part.
It's 21 years in the future, and you're an employer.
A black applicant comes in, fresh out of college.
What do you say to yourself?
Because you're a racist.
Because everybody's biased, right?
It's just now something you can turn off.
So what do you say to yourself 21 years after that all started, hypothetically?
You say to yourself, oh good, I got a super baby.
I got a super baby.
You're hired.
Because all you want to hear, if you're an employer, is that you've got a kid who came up through a system from the moment they were born, educate, educate, educate, educate, educate, educate, it's your way out.
You tell me that kid doesn't get the job?
No, that kid gets the job.
And what happens when that kid, well educated, does well?
Well, people start noticing it.
You could, in one generation, Turn racism upside down.
And you can say to yourself, black kid comes in for an interview, he's 21, and from the moment he was born, he was drilled with education.
White kid comes in, looks like sort of a similar background, but you don't know what kind of programming that kid had.
I don't know. I think you take the one that got brainwashed the most productive way.
Education. Now why do I mention this?
Because this is what my mother did to me.
My mother was not educated, nor was my father.
Both my mother and my father had to repeat a grade in school.
Neither my mother because she had some family problems.
My father because he just had a low IQ. So he just failed a grade in the way that people do.
So neither my parents had any college.
But from the moment I could understand language, my mother said to me, you're going to college.
It's the key to your success.
You can do anything you want.
You're going to college.
It's the key to your success.
You're going to college.
Now, she didn't have any money and didn't even know anybody had been to college.
But that simple little mantra, if I could call it that, programmed me.
It programmed me.
There was not one moment of my life That I didn't think I was going to college and we couldn't even afford it.
We couldn't even come close to affording it, especially with three kids.
We figured it out.
I got some scholarships and my brother and sister went to less expensive colleges, etc.
We figured it out.
But we never doubted that that was the path.
Now, that's my suggestion.
It's something that 100% of people could do.
There's no mother who couldn't program their kid.
You just have to say it over and over and over again.
That's all it is. Kids can be programmed just by repetition.
Consistency and repetition.
That's all it is.
In one generation, you could turn a black applicant into a super baby.
In other words, the employer says, yeah, I want somebody who came up with that kind of programming.
All right. That probably was just about all I wanted to...
Oh yeah, there's another interesting thing.
Elon Musk is having an online debate with some other smart people and experts.
And Elon is pointing out that the coronavirus test kits can be as inaccurate as 50% false positive.
It could be as high as 50% false positive.
And he's saying that's the reason The number of infections seems to be going up.
It's a combination of more testing, plus the fact that the testing is so inaccurate, plus the fact, as other people piled in and said, that the hospitals are now open for other business.
Now, I have a surgery scheduled, minor surgery scheduled, and I can tell you for sure The process is I have to get a coronavirus test and then I have to self-quarantine for two weeks before I go in for my surgery.
Now, this is elective. But suppose you just went in and you didn't have a surgery plan, you just went in to the emergency room.
Well, the first thing they do is they test you for coronavirus.
So if there are simply more people going to the hospital for unrelated reasons, you're going to pick up a lot more coronavirus because some of them will have it.
So Elon is arguing the point.
Now I'm not sure that I agree with Elon's point because these are complicated situations and there's probably a lot of stuff I don't know, but it would explain The unexplained.
The most unexplained thing in this phenomenon, correct me if I'm wrong, the most unexplained thing is why infections are going up while death rates are going down.
I know what you're going to say.
It's the time lag.
But I don't think the time lag is going to change it.
That's my prediction.
There might be some change, but it's not going to change the major trend.
The major trend is that infections are going up and deaths are going down.
I think that's going to continue.
And I don't know how you would explain that other than you're detecting more cases that are the mild kind.
I mean, that would be part of the explanation.
The other part could be they're doing better with meds.
They're doing better with ventilators.
You know, they're just getting smarter in general.
It's possible. All right.
That is what I wanted to cover today.
So I believe, let's see, what have we fixed today?
We fixed the long-term economy to make us protected against robots by building a national network of bicycle paths and turning us into a bicycle tourist destination with mostly e-bikes in the future.
We've fixed racism.
I told you a mantra.
Three words. No, how many words?
Education is the key.
Education is the key.
All right, four words, five words, whatever you want.
But something like that, a little mantra for mothers, would transform children.
Now, you still have to keep them out of jail and all that, so that's...
That's another problem. And of course, if you voted Republicans in, you could get maybe some school choice, and that would fix your school situation.
Yeah, I think we fixed just about everything today.
Is there anything I haven't fixed yet?
I don't think so.
I fixed your personal lives, so you all have better lives because of this.
Yeah, I think almost everything is fixed.
Do we have any other problems you'd like me to get to?
Alright, well, let's end on that, because I think that's the good news.
