Episode 1661 Scott Adams: Let's Follow the Bunny and Predict What Happens With Ukraine, & Other Fun
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Content:
Blocking tenure for teaching CRT?
Dump tenure and Teachers Unions
Pretending to be a disadvantaged minority
Ottawa Police closing businesses?
Kamala Harris asked if sanctions will deter Putin
Who benefits from Russia taking Ukraine?
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Good morning, everybody, and congratulations on arriving at the best place in the world at the best time.
Even if you're watching this recorded, it is the best time still.
I don't know how that works, but I didn't take a lot of physics in high school.
However, one thing I do know, and every scientist will agree, The simultaneous sip will make your day better.
And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or Chelsea Stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite beverage.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day.
It's the thing that makes everything better.
Except Ukraine. And it happens now.
Go! I'm seeing a disturbing note on locals.
Has somebody already drank their coffee?
Prematurely? We'll have to talk about that.
Unauthorized sipping. No, actually, you're always authorized to sip without me.
But don't oversip.
If you oversip, there will be nothing in your vessel.
It's a problem. Alright, the most important story of the day.
This comes from the Omicron Olympics.
There was a Finland skier who suffered a frozen penis.
That's right. He was a Finnish skier.
He suffered a frozen penis.
You might say he was finished.
Now, what was not included in the story is what you should do.
If you're the first person to come across someone who has a frozen penis.
So let's say it's up to you to do first aid, and you're the first person on the scene.
Now, you're going to have to find some way to warm the penis of the person who needs the first aid.
Some kind of warm, I don't know, place or cavity...
Some place that you know would be nice and warm.
Now, here's my advice.
If you're the first person on the scene to treat somebody with a frozen penis, you should immediately say, I'll go get help.
That's why you should say, I'll go get help.
Because you don't want to be the first person on the scene when there's only one way to treat it, if you know what I mean.
If you know what I mean. Wink, wink.
Well, I went into my local grocery store yesterday.
Of course, masks in California are now optional for adults in most situations, unless it's a medical or senior care or something.
And I walked right into my grocery store with my maskless face, as I have for weeks, but now it's legal.
Guess how many people in California, northern California, Wore a mask optionally.
How many customers, not talking about the staff, the staff were mostly in masks, but how many do you think wore a mask?
Didn't need to. The answer is 80 to 90%.
It took me a long time to find even one other person without a mask.
Obviously a Republican.
I hate to say that the maskless people were obviously Republican, because, you know, that imagines some stereotype.
But if I may, the maskless people were obviously Republican.
Don't ask me how I know what a Republican looks like.
But you know what a Republican looks like.
You kind of do. You kind of do.
You know you do. And they were the only maskless ones.
Well, Truth Social Platform is getting closer to launching.
I guess the beta is up. This is President Trump's new social media platform.
And I asked myself, well, what could go wrong?
Well, you know, what could go wrong with this?
How could it go wrong?
And then I saw a tweet from Dean Obadiah.
He often appears on CNN, and he's sort of a designated pit bull to go after Republicans and Trump.
And here's what Dean Obadiah says in his tweet.
The FBI needs to thank Trump for helping gather the personal information of white nationalists and other right-wing terrorists with his new social media platform, Truth Social.
Are you going to sign up?
Are you going to sign up?
I think he talked me out of it.
I don't know. This is a pretty good reason not to do it.
Honestly. I mean, I wanted to succeed, and I'm very spring-loaded to sign up.
I already have the app downloaded.
I'm just waiting for it to go live.
I have beta invitations.
I just haven't used any.
Somebody says, don't be afraid.
But let me ask you this.
If you know that Trump supporters are literally being tracked and rounded up, do you want yourself on that list?
It's actually a real question.
I think that this Dean Obadi guy did actually a tremendous job of pissing in the punch bowl.
That's actually...
That is a scary, scary tweet.
Honestly. They have your stuff already?
Yeah, that's probably true. For people like me, yes.
Um... Wow.
So, yeah, that's going to be a big problem.
Now, obviously, other alternative platforms have not been huge successes, or as big as they could have been.
But this might, because I think you can't ignore Trump.
Am I wrong? You could maybe not use an alternative to Twitter or something, but it's hard to ignore Trump if he becomes the main story in the elections.
See, you kind of almost have to have an account.
And so I asked myself, wouldn't the press have to have an account just to track him?
You think so, right?
Like, if you were a member of the press, you'd almost have to join, even if you didn't use it every day just to look at stuff that people talk about.
Yeah. So we'll see how this goes.
Maybe you'll get a little bit of people on the left.
So Texas' Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he's got this idea for blocking tenure in public universities and colleges in an attempt to stop the teaching of critical race theory.
And I asked myself, can you do that with legislation?
Yeah. Can you tell an entity, even if it's a public school, can you tell a public university or college to not have tenure?
I'm seeing people say yes.
I suppose you can make a law about anything as long as the law is constitutional.
But this feels like a weird overreach, doesn't it?
It feels like an overreach coming from the Republicans.
Right? Because I feel like the Republican Party should be more about, you know, leave everybody alone and let them work it out.
But this would be sort of a direct meddling in the way they do business.
I'm not sure how I feel about it.
I get that it might work.
I get that it might work.
But I don't know that this is the way to do it, exactly.
What do you think of it? I don't think we should have tenure.
So, you know, I'm against tenure, but I don't know that the government is the way to do it, to get rid of tenure.
You know, but here's an interesting question, if I do say so myself.
Wouldn't you say that the education of our youth is so connected to homeland security that you can't afford to do it wrong?
Right? Would you all agree with that?
We can't afford to educate our kids wrong, Because it's just the entire security of the country in the future depends on it.
So in that case, could the government say, you know, we have to fix the biggest problem, which is teachers' unions and tenure?
So could the government say, in order to fix education, we're going to get rid of teachers' unions and tenure?
Could they do that? Would that pass all constitutional tests?
No. I don't know.
I don't know if it would.
It feels like it might.
I don't see an obvious problem with it.
But I think that would be the way to go after improving the schools, is to just directly say there are two problems with schools that make them anti-competitive.
It's tenure, and it's the school...
I'm sorry, the teachers' unions.
And so just get rid of them.
There's no reason not to do that, right?
I mean, in terms of constitutionally, you could do it.
Well, I don't know.
If Dan Patrick can actually do this tenure thing in Texas, it does open up a question about using that technique more often.
I just don't know if that's a good idea for Republicans.
Well, we hear a story, I think this was on CNN, a professor of African and Latin American studies...
Who had been a professor at George Washington University for a long time, taking advantage of her background.
She wrote extensively about Africa and Latin America.
And so that was sort of her thing.
She was an expert on that.
And, of course, it probably helped that she was identifying as African and Latin American.
Turns out she was none of those things.
She was just a white woman who had pretended all of her life to be a black and slash Latina.
Now, this is not the first time we've heard this story, is it?
Am I right? We've heard a few stories of white people trying to pass as black.
Why is it that nobody tries to pass as white anymore?
Now, people have said this before, but this story gives me an opportunity to say it again.
There's only one thing you need to know about this fucking country.
That people will pretend to be black for financial advantage.
That's it. If you wanted to unpack everything else you need to know about the United States, you could just tell them that one fact...
And if you uncoiled that, it would tell you everything about the United States.
It's just the one fact.
That pretending to be a disadvantaged racial minority is a huge economic benefit.
I'm not wrong.
Pretending to be the most disadvantaged minority would guaranteed, guaranteed, be a huge economic benefit for you.
If you played it right. Doesn't work the other way, does it?
Are you hearing any stories recently about the black person passing as white to get a job?
That's not happening anywhere.
Not in the United States.
Nobody's pretending to be white to get a job.
That wouldn't work. So it's easy to get lost in the detail.
You know, who's teaching CRT and who's kneeling for the national anthem and what are cops doing to minority people, etc.
And those are all important, you know, interesting questions.
But if you wanted to just summarize the whole thing, if you wanted just one story or one fact that would tell you everything you needed to know about the rest, it's that pretending to be a disadvantaged minority It's the best economic plan you could ever have.
And nobody disagrees with that, which is weird.
You know, if I said that and other people said, Scott, oh, you're crazy.
You're crazy, Scott.
That will never work.
Well, of course it works.
It works really well. It works great.
Everybody who's ever tried it says it works.
There are very few things that work as well as that, actually.
Anyway... Apparently, I saw a tweet by Ian Miles Chung saying that the Ottawa police are going after local businesses that supported the truckers.
There's a coffee shop that served coffee to the truckers, and the officials are closing them down for serving coffee to the truckers.
Now, I'm no military strategist, but let me just put this out there.
If it turns out that Putin invades Ukraine, and if it turns out that the cover or the diversion of that allows President Xi in China to attack Taiwan, I think that would be the time to make a move for the United States to invade Canada and try to free their citizens.
Because... I do see a cry for help, if you know what I mean.
Now, I don't know how much stinger, missile, anti-aircraft, and anti-tank weaponry Canada has.
They probably have a little, but no Second Amendment, right?
So I feel like we could maybe not control the entire of Canada, because most of it is just snow and A moose here and there.
But there's this little corner of Canada where pretty much 90% of all the population lives.
It's sort of the valuable part.
We could just take over that.
Just take over the populated part.
Leave the rest, you know, for the mice, the meese.
What's the plural of moose?
Mises? The meese.
The mooses? Mooses.
I need a fact check on this.
Moose is plural as well as singular?
Well, I'll be damned.
Did you know that? That moose is both singular and plural?
So you could say, look at that moose.
Or you could say, look at all those moose.
Hey, there's moose in the backyard.
Just one? No, hundreds.
Moose. Well, if we didn't have enough reason to attack Canada...
We should at least attack for the benefit of giving them proper plural words.
Because apparently Canada doesn't have a plural for moose, and I think they need one.
So if we could just bring them a plural for moose and freedom, but not coffee, not coffee.
If you bring coffee to anybody in Canada, you could be closed down.
But I think we can invade...
I think we can give them a plural for moose, and I think we could have a beer with them.
And it would probably be the least violent war of all times.
Something tells me the Canadians would just sort of welcome you in.
Like if the American army appeared on the border, the Canadians would be like, hey, come on in, have a beer.
And the Americans would be like, what?
Yeah, come on in, have a beer.
And we'd be like, okay.
And you'd sort of conquer Canada, but nobody would really know what happened.
It would be more like a conceptual thing.
We'd end up partying, because we like Canadians.
So we'd end up partying and drinking beer and complaining about the lack of a plural for moose, and then we'd go home.
But I think we could bring some freedom while we're there.
So just think about it.
60 Minutes had a program about the alleged secret sonic or maybe microwave weapon that has been scrambling the brains of people all over the globe.
And I ask you, why is 60 Minutes doing a story on that now?
Why would 60 Minutes do a story on the secret sonic weapon now?
What would be happening now that would make that a story now?
Because it's a little bit sort of maybe anti-Russian, isn't it?
Is that a coincidence?
Now, I don't know if the story ever tried to pin the blame on anybody, but remember originally...
When we talked about it, the speculation was it was some kind of Russian weapon.
There's no evidence of that whatsoever.
And I think it's a ridiculous hypothesis.
But I wonder, is it a coincidence that this vaguely but not really proven Russian connection to a thing that may not even exist in reality at all, is it a coincidence that it happened right now, just when Russia is poised to attack?
It doesn't feel like it. Does it feel like a coincidence to you?
I mean, it could be. Coincidences do happen, right?
Well, I just put that out there.
But their bottom line was there seemed to be a thousand incidents that had been reported, but they don't have any idea what the cause is, basically.
It's a whole story that says we don't know what the story is.
There's just something or not.
So as Jack Posobiec reports, Kamala Harris is doing a tremendous job starting off in her assignment to be the lead on this Ukraine business.
And if you want to hear some inspiring words, this is what our own Vice President Harris said when she was asked, will sanctions deter Putin?
So Jack Posobiec was tweeting about this.
And Kamala Harris said, and I quote...
And if anybody here needs to be inspired, if you're feeling down a little bit, I want you to listen to the inspirational words of our vice president and watch how this makes you feel.
I think it'll pick you up a little bit.
And so Vice President Harris said when asked, will sanctions deter Putin?
She said, within the context, then, of the fact that that window is still opening, although open, although it is absolutely narrowing, but within the context of a diplomatic path still being open.
I'm sorry, a tear came to my eye.
I've never been so inspired.
It's beautiful. It's beautiful.
Well, so Putin is apparently doing some kind of a reality TV show right now in which his security council is meeting with him to decide the fate of Ukraine, and it's televised.
Now, I haven't seen the feed.
I've only seen the reports of it.
Is anybody watching that? I don't know if it's easy to watch with the translations.
Yeah, I think in real time, Putin is videotaping a live session of his Security Council.
Now, of course, it's all fake, right?
Because everybody knows to say what Putin wants him to say.
But we may be finding out the future of Europe with a reality TV show.
In real life, no exaggeration, it's a reality TV show and it will determine the fate of Europe.
Now, it's not a real reality show because we already know the outcome.
I saw this great article on also CNN by Matthew Schmidt.
As we're trying to figure out what might Putin do and why might he do it, the why is the interesting part.
Because I guess maybe there's so many reasons that why doesn't make sense because it's really a bag of good reasons that are all individually good and collectively even better.
But let's see what we can learn that we didn't already know.
So this is from Matthew Shred.
He says, first of all, there are a lot of Ukrainians living in Russia.
A lot of Ukrainians live in Russia.
People have Ukrainian background, I guess.
How happy would Ukrainians living in Russia be if Russia turns its guns on Ukrainians, their relatives?
It's a civil war among people who know each other.
That feels like the least popular thing anybody could do.
Could you imagine the President of the United States attacking Florida?
Well, everybody has a friend in Florida.
Is there anybody here who doesn't have a friend in Florida?
Or a family member?
In the comments, tell me.
How many of you have at least a friend or a family member in Florida?
Just to pick a random state.
A lot, right?
How many Russians have a friend in Ukraine?
I don't know. I don't know, but it's a lot, right?
I remember when Kim Jong-un was threatening to nuke the United States, and some smart people were saying he won't nuke his friend.
What's his friend? Not Trump.
Basketball player. Who's the basketball player who's friends with...
Rodman, yeah. So somebody said he's not going to nuke his friend, Dennis Rodman.
And you think about that, and that's actually a pretty good reason.
It's actually a pretty good reason.
That, you know, even if Kim Jong-un had some wild, crazy plans, would he nuke his friend?
The guy he invites over all the time?
I don't know! It's actually a perfectly good question.
I don't know that he would.
Would you? Would you nuke your friend?
It's pretty hard to do.
So that's a factor that Putin has some domestic stuff he has to worry about.
The other thing is, as Matthew Schmidt points out, Ukraine might have way more effective weapons than the Russians think.
Who told you that? That's what I've been saying for a number of days.
Now, I don't know that Ukraine has much more effective weapons.
What I know is that nobody knows.
I don't think Putin knows.
For example, Putin wouldn't know how many anti-tank missiles they have, and he wouldn't know how many stingers they have, right?
And he wouldn't know where they are, necessarily.
He might know some of that, but he's not going to know the bigger picture.
So the technology and the training are way different than anything Russia has ever encountered with their modern army.
So Russia has never moved against anybody who had this kind of weaponry.
What's going to happen? When was the last time the Russian army got a serious bloody nose?
Like somebody actually made them retreat?
I don't know, maybe never?
Well, I mean, since World War II or something?
Well, Afghanistan was sort of a low, slow bleed.
I'm talking about an actual army moving in and just getting its ass kicked.
And having to retreat. Like on the battlefield.
Like not even being able to go forward.
That could actually happen.
I think the Ukrainians might have enough weaponry to block an armored movement.
I don't know. We'll see. So Putin has to deal with the fact that there's a huge unknown about the level of resistance.
And here's the big question for me.
Do you think it's profitable?
Do you think that Putin has judged that if things go the way he wants them to go, that Russia will make more money or be worth more?
And here's my question.
If we can come up with an economic forecast for climate change, think about how complicated that is.
Coming up with an economic forecast for climate change.
Now, of course, I always say that that's basically impossible.
Too many variables. Too long a time frame.
But we still do it.
And we do it for persuasion purposes, don't we?
It's not exactly to know what's going to happen.
It's more because it's persuasive to put a price tag on things.
Why is there no price tag on this war?
Not for the United States and not for NATO. Because we sort of have to do what we have to do.
But it's an optional war for Putin, isn't it?
It's an optional war.
So why isn't somebody said, if you do this, you'll lose this amount of money?
Because there'll be sanctions put on, so you can calculate that.
Now, you can't calculate anything accurately, but again, does it matter?
We still do it for climate change.
We do inaccurate predictions for lots of things because it at least tells you what the scary parts look like, potentially.
So wouldn't you like to see our economists say, all right, let's do the pluses and the minuses here.
So Putin's going to spend X amount of money directly on the military.
You could probably estimate that, don't you think?
Because we've got the satellites, so we've got some rough estimate of what wars cost, so I think we could put a number on that.
Then you could say, what will happen with the sanctions?
You could put a number on that.
It might be a range, but it'd still be a number.
What would happen with Russia's future sales of gas, especially?
Well, you could probably put a number on that because of, let's say, fewer pipelines in case they get closed down, etc.
Now, you'd also have to put, I think, a value on Ukraine as an asset.
So it's not just his expenses.
What's it cost to keep the army running?
How much did you lose from your oil sales?
It's not just that. He's also acquiring an asset.
So you'd have to take the entire value of Ukraine...
Right? And add it to Russia.
Now, I don't know, what's the value of the entire GDP of Ukraine?
I don't know. Let's say it's a trillion dollars.
Who knows? Let's say it's a trillion dollars.
He gets a trillion dollars.
Right? If you don't own Ukraine, and then you do, you gained a trillion dollars.
But is it an asset that is cash positive or cash negative?
Right? It's a valuable asset, but does it produce more cash than it uses?
Because it's going to be expensive to hold it.
An occupying army is really expensive.
So, why don't we produce that number?
Because there are two possibilities I can think of that are likely to come out of that.
One possibility is that it's wildly unprofitable.
Wouldn't you like to know that?
And wouldn't you like to remind Putin of that?
And wouldn't you like his oligarchs, who do have some control over things, allegedly?
I don't know exactly how that works.
But you think the oligarchs need to be a little bit happy for Putin to be safe.
Would you buy that? Even though Putin is strongly in control, don't you think he sort of needs to keep the oligarchs on his side so they don't gang up against him?
I think so. So...
Suppose the West came up with an economic projection and said the GDP of Russia will lose X trillions of dollars and you oligarchs are likely to see your fortunes go down by 20%.
Now, some oligarchs will make money, some won't, right?
Because it's never even.
But suppose you said to the oligarchs, well, this looks like a 20% to 50% hit to your assets, right?
And your income. And there's no upside.
Because that might be the case.
Or it could go grossly the other way.
You could do the economic analysis and find out that it's a no-brainer.
That Putin really, really comes out ahead if he gets Ukraine.
In which case, war is guaranteed.
Now, I tweeted yesterday a map, and this is a few years old, but I think it still worked, a map of all the pipelines from Russia that cross through Ukraine.
I kind of had this simple idea in my mind there were one or two pipelines.
It turns out Ukraine is just crisscrossed with pipelines.
Ukraine is practically a pipeline itself.
There's so many Russian pipelines in different cobweb ways through the country to get to different places.
So once you see the map that Russia is completely dependent on Ukraine as its distribution, once you see that map, you know Putin's going to take Ukraine.
Until I saw the map, I actually thought he wouldn't do it.
And then I saw the map, and I was like, oh...
That's way too big of a strategic risk to have your pipelines in other people's country.
There's no way he's going to put up with that.
In the long run, for business purposes, which are also strategic...
Oh, yeah, on locals, somebody's publishing the map right now.
So if you get a chance, Google that.
Once you see the map of the pipelines, you know that Putin's going to take Ukraine.
Because for purely business reasons, you can't have your competitors or enemies control that much of your distribution.
You just can't do that. So I think, from an economic perspective, this is a no-brainer for Putin.
And he could put a trillion dollars into this and come out ahead.
What do you think? If I put a price tag on it of a trillion dollars, do you think he comes out ahead?
Because I think he does.
I think he does. Without running any numbers, I think he would make more than a trillion dollars in the long term.
But he would also protect himself from an extreme downside, which is the pipelines get attacked and destroyed.
Ukraine is also a breadbasket, and that's going to matter as well.
So at this point, if you follow the money, it does seem to me that it's inevitable.
That Russia will have to control Ukraine one way or another, either indirectly or directly.
And then I ask this question.
Which military and or other kinds of businesses would gain if there's an attack?
So if Russia attacks, we expect energy prices to spike.
And although there won't be more energy produced quickly in the short run, All the energy that's there, the companies that produced it, get to charge more for doing the same job.
So they make a windfall profit for anybody who's competing with Russia as an energy source.
What about the companies that make the big tankers that carry the natural gas?
Well, if the pipelines from Russia are at risk, there's going to have to be a lot of shipping in, in the short run, shipping in of gas, Probably American Gas and from other places.
The LPGA, yeah.
And who makes a profit from that?
Are you concerned that there are gigantic energy companies that would make a huge profit if war breaks out?
Because don't those gigantic energy companies have a lot of influence on the government?
Because lobbyists?
It's starting to look...
I'm not going to say this as a fact...
It's looking like we're inviting them in.
And what would it look like if Biden really wanted them to attack?
Suppose he wanted it.
What would that look like?
Well, it would look like this.
The first thing you do is assign Vice President Harris to the job of preventing it.
Am I right? If you're Russia and you see that Harris has been assigned to prevent war, what would you think about the United States' interest in avoiding war?
I'm not joking.
You would think they're not serious about it.
Am I right? Because you could think of a lot of people you could send to do this job that Russia would take seriously.
But this is the only one they would.
So it's almost as if we're signaling to them we want you to invade.
Right? Here's another hint.
Why do we insist on applying the sanctions after invasion when Ukraine itself is saying, could you put those sanctions on now and maybe it will deter them?
And we say, no, no, no, it's after the invasion we'll put them on when it's too late.
Doesn't that sound a lot like maybe we want them to invade?
Because if you have the option of preventing it and you don't do it, While you have the option, that kind of means you want them to invade.
Am I going too far with that?
Here's another one. Don't negotiate with Russia seriously.
When you've heard of the back and forth between Russia and the United States, does it sound like we did that seriously?
Because it doesn't to me.
We should have at least said, you know, your security concerns are valid.
How can we work together so that we're less afraid of you and you're less afraid of us?
But I don't even think the conversation happened.
Now, it could be that there's so much distrust it was a waste of time, maybe.
But if you're putting together the hints, so Harris is in charge of stopping the war, which looks like we're not trying.
We're going to apply the sanctions after invasion, which looks like we're not trying to avoid it.
We're not even negotiating seriously, in my opinion.
I think you'd have to be in the room to know for sure.
But it doesn't look serious.
Like, nobody's even suggested any kind of accommodation for anything.
And then we're actively creating these alternative channels for delivering gas to Europe.
Aren't we? To me, it looks like we want them to invade.
So that we can essentially clamp down on Russia as a provider of energy.
And how much does the United States love Ukraine as an independent country?
I feel like Ukraine is just an expensive pain in the ass.
And would we be worse off if Russia owned the whole thing outright?
I mean, I'm not saying I want that to happen.
But if you're doing the cold calculations of war, you have to ask yourself...
It doesn't make any difference. Now, part of the reason I understand strategically is that Russia doesn't want missiles and missile defense that's right on their doorstep.
But does any of that stuff matter anymore?
Can't Russia destroy us and we can destroy them if we wanted to?
There's nothing anybody can do to stop any of that, is there?
So I'm not even sure that any of that missiles on the doorstep made any difference, really.
You don't want Russia to be desperate.
That's true. All right.
Colonel Jack Jacobs was on a show.
I don't know which new show it was.
But he was saying that suppose you were Russia and you just wanted to make a trillion dollars without working.
How would you do it?
You would buy stock in a bunch of energy companies, just on the stock market, and then you would threaten war with Ukraine.
And then the value of those stock energy companies would go up, and then you sell it.
And then you say, oh, we're pulling back, and then the energy prices go down, but you've already sold, so you buy them again, and then you threaten again, and then the energy prices go up, and you sell it again.
And you could short the Dow...
And go long. Long means buying, and short means you make money if it goes down.
You could actually, if you were Russia, you could actually invest in the stock market and then make it move the way you want by where you put your army.
So Russia could have extracted a trillion dollars out of our system just by threatening.
They may have already paid for the war.
That's right. There's no evidence that they did this, by the way.
But if they did this, if they invested before they moved their military assets, in other words, having insider information, because only they knew what they were going to do, they may have already paid for the war.
They may have made a trillion dollars in stock gains already.
Paid for the war. Possible.
I mean, it's unlikely, but it's weird that it's possible.
All right. And that is what I wanted to say today.
So, given the follow-the-money scenario, and given that we haven't done an economic cost, and by the way, this is more evidence that we want them to attack.
If we didn't want them to attack, don't you think the United States would have created a financial estimate of how expensive it would be?
Because it's obvious, isn't it?
I mean, I don't think we've ever done it for any other war, but as soon as I say it, it's kind of obvious, isn't it?
Am I wrong? Am I wrong that that's just an obvious play?
Just do the math.
Tell Russia how expensive it's going to be.
Now, I'm seeing some people say that the money doesn't matter and that there are other issues.
But I would argue this.
If the other issue is national defense...
The money makes more difference than anything.
Being profitable is definitely the thing that keeps you the safest, just being profitable.
But could there be other things such as national pride or that sort of thing?
Yes, but I'll bet they don't overcome the economic things.
The reason that follow the money is so predictive is because it always works.
If follow the money didn't always work, it wouldn't be the most common thing that people say, right?
Well, I suppose it could be, but it does work.
And I believe that, as I've often said, follow the money works even if the people who are making the decisions aren't thinking that way.
People automatically go where the money goes.
Even if their brain is saying, well, I'm doing this for national pride or some other reason, they still go where the money goes.
And it's not a coincidence.
Money is just too powerful.
It just drags you wherever it is.
Boo the cat. I'm taking her into the vet again.
She's not doing well. So this week I'll take her in again.
Have I noticed tons of ads for green technology?
Not really. But I'll look for it.
Did you see the UN Gulf Stream that arrived in Ottawa and then flew to Washington, D.C.? Well, I don't know what you're implying by that.
I saw a story about that, but I didn't know what the implication was supposed to be.
All right. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I have to say about the news today.
How does the fear frame filter work on Ukraine?
Well, if I were going to try to stop I would be using fear persuasion to scare the Russian soldiers themselves because they don't know what kind of a killing field they're walking into.
So you want to lower the morale of the Russian troops, which you don't imagine would be that high to begin with because they're attacking other Russians, basically.
The Ukraine-Russia thing is such a brother-cousin situation.
How could you have good...
Let me ask you this.
If a civil war broke out in the United States, and again, I'll just pick a state, and, you know, let's say Florida was the breakaway state, how much morale would U.S. troops have to go in and shoot Floridians?
Am I right? Like, you're a soldier in the U.S. Army, and you've been ordered to go shoot citizens in Florida.
Are you going to do it?
Even if they're a breakaway revolutionary state, are you going to do it?
I don't think so. So I think that Putin has a real morale problem, and I think you could make it worse by using fear persuasion to, first of all, tell the Russian soldiers if you can get to him.
And by the way, can you get to him?
Do you suspect that even though Russia controls information aggressively, do you suspect that the average soldier just can't get information from the outside world?
Because maybe they can't.
Maybe they can't. Well, if they can, it seems like we could get to them.
I would imagine there's some way to do it.
They should have images in their heads of just being mowed down when they cross the border.
They should think of it like the Normandy landing.
Like it's just going to be bullets.
The air will be thick with bullets from Ukrainian guns.
And they should think about that long and hard, and they should think that even if they survived, all they got to do was kill their own cousins.
Right? The bad news is you might get killed or disabled for life, but that's if you fail.
If you're successful, you get to kill people you didn't want to kill, who are basically your family members.
I can't imagine that morale would be any lower, but if we could lower it some more, that might be useful.
Yeah, Russian soldiers are not allowed to have smartphones.
I would assume that's the case.
But it doesn't mean they don't know anybody who has one.
There's got to be information coming in from other sources.
Maybe not well enough to change anything.
Wouldn't a Ukraine invasion help China?
Would it? China is very anti-war.
Because it's just never good for business.
I feel as if China would be...
Opposed to that war, although you can imagine it would give them cover for Taiwan, it would keep us busy, you know, keep two armies.
It would make a lot of military poorer, I guess, because they'd spend a lot of money there.
Yeah, I mean...
I feel as though China's policy of non-involvement in this stuff is kind of brilliant.
It's kind of brilliant.
Um... Maybe Putin is really standing up to China.
I don't see that happening. Get off the weed.
Yeah, the Belt and Road.
Right, China needs to be friends with everybody to build out their Belt and Road.
So China's takeover of the world strategy is commerce, to make everybody dependent on them for commerce, which is a good strategy.
