Episode 1683 Scott Adams: Putin's Health, The Next Governor of California, Lots More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
President Zelenskyy's persuasion
Elon's offer to fight Putin for Ukraine
Does President Putin have medical issues?
Why are oil prices down?
The Jake Sullivan factor
Michael Shellenberger for Governor of CA
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to you.
Pretty, pretty sure.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and aren't you lucky to be here?
You are. You're lucky, you're sexy, you're smart, and damn it, you know it and you should.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid.
Oh yeah, we're going to Salisbury Hill.
And join me now for the unparalleled...
Pleasure. It's the dopamine the other day.
And it's the thing that will make everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Coursing through every corpuscle in my body.
Powering up. All right, full power now.
You don't know what you're going to get now.
Well, let's see what's going on in the world.
China's pretty much screwed.
They're shutting down things because of COVID. They've shut down life in Shenzhen and Shanghai, and the Foxconn company that makes iPhones is having to move their business to other locations, and...
Well, it's looking kind of ugly.
And here's my question.
Number one, do you remember I've been warning you that China's pandemic is ahead of them?
I did that, right? Can somebody confirm that I've been telling you that China's pandemic is ahead of them, not behind them?
Yeah, okay. I'm seeing in the comments you remember I said that.
Now, I don't remember anybody else saying that in public.
Do you? Do you remember?
Do you remember anybody else saying, uh, I think China's problem is ahead of them?
Certainly when Omicron came.
Because the idea was that the virus was going to be around forever...
And the vaccinations don't stop it, and the Chinese vaccinations especially don't stop it.
So, well, it looks like Sweden's pandemic is behind them, yeah.
I think the West has largely conquered this thing.
I hope so. But why is it that every single thing that happens in the news has a supply chain impact?
This can't be a coincidence, is it?
Just everything has a supply chain impact.
Whereas two years ago, nothing did.
Am I right? It just went from everything affects it to everything affects it.
There's something going on that doesn't look completely organic to me.
I don't know what it is. It could be that we're in a simulation and we're testing supply chains.
It could be a weird coincidence, I guess.
Zelensky... Has picked up on my persuasion.
Not specifically my persuasion, but let me explain.
So Zelensky is now trying to talk directly to the Russian conscripts that are in the Russian invading army.
Now, I don't imagine his message can reach them too easily.
Seems like they would be protected from any outside messages, but...
He said, if you surrender to our forces...
So he's actually talking about the Russian military being defeated militarily and surrendering.
And what he says is, if you surrender to our forces, that your people will be treated the way they're supposed to be treated, as people, decently, in a way you were not treated in your army.
Literally, Zelensky is telling the Russian army people that they would be treated better as prisoners of Ukraine than as military members of their army.
And you know what?
He might be right.
Doesn't that ring true?
Because I think the Russian transcripts are really being treated as cannon fodder.
They're being treated as cannon fodder for no gain to them or their country, really.
No gain. The Russian army wants to kill these guys or put them in harm's way.
They'll be damaged for life even if they survive.
You know, there'll be PTSD and everything else.
So the Russian army is absolutely abusing their own conscripts.
And I do think that the Ukrainians might treat them better as prisoners of war.
That's actually literally true.
That's the damnedest thing, isn't it?
Has anybody ever told an invading army, we'll treat you better as prisoners than you're being treated by your overlords right now?
And actually could sell that.
You could sell it because it's true.
I think. I think it's actually true.
Well, here's the part I wanted to point out.
We've all been impressed at how persuasive Zelensky has been.
But then I look for a specific technique.
If you see technique, then you say to yourself, where did he learn that?
Who taught him that?
And if he's just sort of randomly persuasive, then you think, oh, maybe he's just some kind of a natural or has something to do with the situation he's in.
It just is automatic. But here's the technique.
This is what I've been waiting for.
Have you ever heard of a thing called making you think past the sale?
I talk about it all the time.
It was Trump's main trick.
He would make you think about how things would be after you'd made the decision, as if the decision is already made.
And when he talks to the Russian conscripts, to the extent that he can actually get his message to them, he talks about how they'll be treated after they surrender.
Do you see it? Do you see the technique?
Here's how you'll be treated after you surrender.
That's exactly the right way to say it.
Rather than saying, you know, you're in trouble, your masters are cheating you poorly, he talks about what will happen after they've surrendered.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a tell for professional advice.
He is being advised by somebody who knows what the hell they're doing.
I don't know that he knows this stuff by himself.
You know, there's no information we have that he had some kind of training in persuasion or something.
Maybe he did. You know, we know he's a good actor.
We know that he presents well.
But that's a very small part of persuasion, just presenting well and speaking well.
You have to know the technique.
This latest thing he's doing, which does two things.
Well, actually, it makes you think past two separate sales.
Two completely different sales.
One sale is imagining that you've surrendered.
And the other sale is that Zelensky is predicting victory, direct military victory over Russian troops.
Not survival.
Not survival.
Not a deal. Victory.
Do you think he can sell that story?
Do you think there's anybody who will believe the story...
That Ukraine is actually winning or could win?
And the answer is yes.
In my opinion, half of Putin's army might...
I'll put a might in there because we don't know what's happening for sure.
I think half of Putin's army is trapped.
And I think that between NATO communication, coordination, and satellite spotting, and weaponry, and even training, the Ukraine's special forces are really, really trained.
I'm being asked if I'm high.
Amazingly, no.
By the way, I won't ever lie to you about that.
If I tell you I'm not high, I'm not high.
I don't really have any reason to tell you I'm not.
If I tell you I am, I certainly would tell you what I'm not.
But I'm not. In case you wondered.
Somebody says, good time for China to invade Russia.
I don't think so. Well, I'm going to say that Zelensky's got some persuasion help, probably from somebody in a foreign intelligence agency, maybe one of ours, for example.
And let me ask you this.
Who did you hear talking about Ukraine winning militarily besides me?
Anybody? Who was the first person you heard say, you know, I think Ukraine might actually win militarily?
Or at least give them such a black nose that they have to leave.
Somebody says you did.
Somebody says none really.
Somebody says the entire MSN. That's not true.
The mainstream media thinks that Ukraine should have been swallowed in two days.
All right. Yeah.
Now here's what I wonder.
I think I've told you that on some topics I might be persuading and not just predicting.
I think the CIA has picked up on...
I'm not saying that they're copying me.
That would be a claim with no evidence whatsoever.
But people who know how to persuade know how to persuade.
If I were Zelensky, I would be talking about an outright victory over Russian troops, even if I didn't necessarily believe it was going to happen.
I'd still be talking about it.
Because you want to put that in their heads, right?
You want the people who are giving you weapons and support to believe they could actually win.
Otherwise, why would they give you weapons if you're just going to lose anyway?
So, if I had Ben Zelensky, I would be handling this part of it exactly this way.
Like, exactly. And it's the...
I guess it's the precision of this persuasion that makes it look professional, right?
There's a certain precision of the perfectness of his message right now that just doesn't look organic.
I mean, it looks like smart people who know how to do this are telling him what to do, and he's good enough to be able to do it.
Yeah, ask if anything about Zelensky is true.
The only thing I'm sure is true is that he's persuasive.
I'm sure that's true.
Everything else about Ukraine, I don't believe.
I don't believe anything else I'm hearing about Ukraine.
We'll talk about some of those. Well, here's a good example.
The news was saying today that more than 140,000 Ukrainians, mostly men, have returned from Europe to fight for Ukraine.
Do you believe that number?
Do you believe that 140,000 people and people are being turned away?
Apparently they're being turned away because there's, quote, no room.
Like, Ukraine is all filled up with people.
There's no room left for more foreign fighters to come in.
Apparently, the news says there are 20,000 appeals from foreigners who are ready to come.
So people who are not even Ukrainian by any ethnic connection, people with no ethnic connection to Ukraine, 20,000 of them have already signed up to come fight because they want to fight against the Russian Nazis on the Ukrainian side.
I don't believe any of that.
Do you? Do you, really?
Right, no. Somebody says yes.
But on locals, it's all no's.
So the part I don't believe is 140,000.
If you told me that 10,000 came, I'd say, that could be.
If you'd heard the number was 10,000, would you believe it?
I think I'd believe 10,000.
I mean, even that sounds high.
But I'd lean toward believing it.
At 140,000?
No way. No way.
The entire Russian army is 150,000 people.
Am I right? I mean, the entire invading army, not the entire Russian army, but the entire invading Russian army is 150,000 people.
And you think that 140,000 foreign-living Ukrainian-associated people signed up and actually came to Ukraine to fight?
No. What's not correct?
There are 44 million in the country, so somebody says they can believe it.
No, I don't believe it. Not going to buy it.
All right, Elon Musk tweeted an offer to fight Putin one-on-one with the winner getting Ukraine.
Perfectly normal day.
Let's see what's happening in the news.
Let's see, richest man in the world.
Oh, okay. He's offering to be the champion fighter for the Ukrainian people, and he wants to actually have a physical fight with Putin, and then they'll decide...
Who wins.
What is Musk up to?
Why do you do this?
This is real, by the way.
In case you thought I made this up, he literally did this, Musk did, literally offered to fight Putin one-on-one as a champion.
The winner gets Ukraine.
He really said it.
And then when somebody asked him if he was serious, he said yes.
Why did he do it? Why'd he do it?
Tell me why. You say publicity's done?
Everything that Elon does probably has more than one benefit or purpose.
So publicity's part of it.
But publicity's not what I'm looking for.
He's always looking for publicity.
That's just a given. Because he doesn't have a marketing department at Tesla.
Somebody says high ground maneuver.
Close. Close.
Close. Here's what I think it is.
Number one, Elon Musk is not like us.
Will you accept the first premise?
Elon Musk is not like us.
I don't know what he's like, but he's not like us.
He's better than us.
I hate to say it, but he's better than us.
I mean, it's not an accident that he's the richest man in the world.
He's smarter.
One of the parts of his talent stack...
Which he never gets credit for, because he's so engineering-centric that you think of him that way.
But he's one of the best persuaders of all time.
Of all time.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe the best. I mean, it's hard to measure that kind of thing exactly.
But you could make an argument he's the best there's ever been.
Because his companies didn't become great companies because he's a great engineer.
I heard somebody say that.
Somebody said that you should think of Elon as a great engineer, and that would explain why his companies are succeeding.
Nope. Nope.
I think he might be a great engineer, but that would just be part of his talent stack.
He's not an engineer, for one thing.
He's a physicist.
I think he picked up engineering as like a side job or something, just something he figured out on his own.
Here's what I know that maybe you're not aware of.
The people who came from the PayPal mafia, the so-called PayPal mafia, it was the folks who were part of that first PayPal startup.
Elon Musk was one of them.
Peter Thiel was one of them.
Hoffman was part of them.
So they formed LinkedIn and everything Peter Thiel did, Facebook, Pantera, and now Elon Musk.
They all came from that same little startup.
Is that a coincidence? What do you think?
Is it a coincidence that three people from that same startup all went and did, like, amazing things?
Do you know what all of those amazing things had in common?
Persuasion. Persuasion. Everything they did that worked, you look at it and you say, you know, I get how they could do the engineering, but how did they get somebody to buy into it?
Let me ask you this.
How in the world did a startup get banks to agree with them being like a little electronic bank when PayPal was brand new?
Before PayPal, people were not sending money back and forth digitally to each other.
Somehow, PayPal convinced people to do something completely outside of their trained nature, to trust an app with their money.
That's really hard.
How'd they do it?
And then how did somebody build LinkedIn?
LinkedIn was basically just a resume online with some social aspects and stuff.
I don't think LinkedIn was ever the greatest idea, or even an innovative idea.
But somehow everybody wanted to do it, and it became huge.
So if you look at the persuasion element of PayPal, LinkedIn, Facebook...
And everything else that these people do, from electric cars.
Do you know how much persuasion it takes to sell an electric car?
Or to build a rocket company to go to Mars?
I mean, you're talking about unusual levels of persuasion to get any of that to work.
Forget about the engineering, which is super impressive.
How about Uber? Uber didn't work because guys were really good at making apps, although the app is really good.
Uber works because somebody was persuasive as hell.
And figured out how to get past all these local ordinances.
Oh, my God. A lot of persuasion.
So the thing that people miss is the persuasive power of successful people.
They didn't get there just by being good engineers.
Ever. It's always persuasion, too.
And that's what I see when I see Elon Musk offering to fight Putin one-on-one.
Here's my interpretation.
Now, of course, I cannot read Elon Musk's mind.
If I could, I'd be building myself some unicorn startups, too, because I guess I'd know how to do it if I could read his mind.
But here's what I think.
When Elon Musk, richest guy in the world, knows he's going to get lots of attention when he says something like this, challenges Putin to a one-on-one fight, your brain says two things.
Number one, number one, that is absurd.
Am I right? That's the first thing you think.
Okay, that's absurd.
What's the second thing you do?
You compare it to what we're doing already.
And then what? It's not so absurd anymore, is it?
If you could literally fucking choose, you don't have that choice, but if you could...
To have Ukraine fight it out the way they're fighting it out, men, women, children being slaughtered and dismembered every day.
Or you could settle the whole thing with Elon Musk having a personal fight with Putin.
Actually, I don't know who would win.
I think Elon's got size and youth, but Putin has Putin.
I'll tell you who I wouldn't want to ever get in a fight with.
Putin. All right, Putin's basically around my age and about my size.
I feel like I could handle myself around people my size in general, especially my age.
Like, if I ever got in a fight with another 65-year-old guy who was about my age or about my size, I feel like I could take him.
But I don't feel like I could take Putin.
I think Putin would dismantle me.
I'm pretty sure. Putin is 5'7", somebody says, yeah.
He would go MacGyver on you?
All right, so here's what I think is Elon's play.
I think that he is making a ridiculous and absurd offer, but doing it seriously so that your brain will compare it to what's actually happening, which is even more fucking absurd than what he's offering.
He's basically juxtaposed an unambiguously absurd thing With the actual news and made you look at the absurd thing in the news and say, you know, the absurd thing doesn't look so stupid anymore.
Because compared to what we're doing, it actually, literally, no joke, would be better for everybody.
Maybe even Putin. I don't know.
I mean, he might even come out ahead.
Might not be so good for Elon.
Elon might get killed.
But making us think about how ridiculous the war is, how absurd it is, I feel like that's productive.
Because it's easier to stop doing something that you know is absurd and everybody else knows it's absurd.
And that's what he did.
He just introduced into the thinking that war is not just a bad idea.
It can never be a good idea.
It's just absurd. And...
I see somebody in the comments saying he's trivializing it.
No, I don't think so.
I think he's trivializing it as persuasion successfully.
It's a weird little move because it's a chess move that's not a checkmate.
Do you see what I'm saying?
He's just taking the board and he's just shaking it a little bit.
Not a lot. He just took the chess board and he's like, just a little shake.
And a couple of the pieces just moved into another square, but you don't see it yet.
He's basically softening up the room so that if decisions need to be made that would normally not be made, maybe they can be now, because a couple of the pieces got moved.
It's a very small change to how we think about it, but it's real.
It's real. It does make you give a little more absurdity to the current situation, and I'm not sure that we had enough absurdity in our opinion of it.
I feel like we thought the war was sort of, we don't like it, but that it made sense.
Am I right? No matter what you thought of the war, who's wrong or who's right, on some level, it sort of seemed logical to you.
Like, you don't like how we got here, but there's a logic to it.
You know, we poked the bear, the bear poked back, they've got strategic, you know, historical reasons.
You can kind of make it all make sense in your head, can't you?
You can talk yourself into that we got here logically.
What Elon has done is just ripped that all out and just said, maybe not.
Maybe we did not get here logically at all.
Maybe we just got here.
Maybe we're in an absurd situation and the only way out is to recognize it.
The only way out is to recognize it.
The only way out is to recognize it.
Because the only way out is to recognize it.
And Elon just did that for you.
Now, I don't know how much thinking he put into it.
It may not be even close to what I'm saying.
Maybe it was just a joke. Who knows?
But... Ronnie says, Scott hasn't taken his hand off his lap since he started talking about Elon.
I'm not going to hide the fact...
That I think he's one of our greatest American patriots.
Born in another country, but in a way that makes him a perfect American.
Yeah, I have complete respect for Elon Musk, so I'm not going to hide that.
Yeah, he's ridiculing a ridiculous war.
I think Elon's frame that is ridiculous is productive.
We'll see. You all saw the story about the Russian on-air...
News personality who ran out with a protest sign against the war.
You know, don't believe everything you say about the war or everything you hear.
And I guess you disappeared.
So, is that the first time that Russian viewers would know that there's something wrong?
If you were watching at home, or even if you heard about it, and you saw somebody run on TV and basically risked their life, Because anybody who saw it knows that that person risked their life, or at least their freedom.
Somebody risked their life to give you this message, would it wake you up?
Or would you say, oh, that's weird, crazy person.
I wonder if this matters.
Don't you? It might matter.
It could be that we'll look back on this one brave woman who literally risked her life, To try to right a wrong.
And, boy, I have a lot of respect for her.
Although I wouldn't have done it.
I don't think I would have done it.
Yeah, it's almost out of a Hollywood movie.
All right. There's another story that, you know, When I see a story that so perfectly fits what people on social media were imagining, I get real suspicious.
So I'm going to tell you this story, and I want you to say, does this look familiar?
Meaning that does the story seem to match exactly what I had said on Twitter?
Now, I'm not going to tell you that I'm the only person who said this.
Sometimes I tell you that because I think it's useful to track who predicts things correctly first.
So I know it's annoying when I say, did I predict that?
Do you remember? But I think it's useful.
Because you should have the same idea of how accurate I am in order to enjoy this live stream.
So... Here's a story from the New York Post.
And it says that citing sources close to the Kremlin, senior figures in the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance comprising...
Oh, well, look at this.
Using the word comprising correctly in a sentence.
I'm always impressed. Comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom and the United States believe there is a physiological explanation for the Russian president's globally reviled decision to invade Ukraine.
So, of course, a lot of people haven't been talking about it, but now we're seeing a story that the intelligence people believe that there's evidence that the sources, the unnamed sources, highly, highly dependable unnamed sources, speculated that Putin, who's 69, could have dementia, Parkinson's disease, or, quote, roid rage.
Roid rage. From potential cancer treatments that involve heavy steroid use.
Do you know what? I swear to God, yesterday, I was taking a walk and I was thinking to myself, huh, I wonder if there are any cancer treatments that would give you, like, anger issues.
It turns out there are.
Apparently, steroids are indicated for some kinds of cancer treatments, and...
That could give you roid rage and actually explain his entire behavior.
It would also explain his puffy face.
His puffy face and his change in decision-making.
It's all looking a lot like a chemical change in his personality.
Because the people who know him say he's changed.
Yeah, didn't I say that on day one?
Steroids. Give me a fact, Jack.
I don't think I was the first, but I think I was among the first to say, that looks like roids.
That looks like steroids. Day one, right?
Yeah. Oh, I did ask about it?
Oh, okay. Oh, good.
Now, I'm not going to claim that I had the first in the world to say that, but I was there early.
I think that's worth it.
Now, here's my fake news analysis of this.
I thought it was true until I saw it in the news.
You know what I mean? I thought I was pretty confident in my opinion that there's something chemically different about him.
But as soon as I saw it in the news, and the news looks exactly like my tweets, I stopped believing it.
Now that's a hell of a thing.
That I believed my own opinion until I saw it being confirmed in the news.
As soon as I saw it confirmed in the news, I'm like, oh shit, I'm wrong.
They confirmed it.
I must be wrong. Because here's my problem.
It looks exactly like what an intelligence agency would want you to think.
Like a U.S. intelligence agency.
Like a Ukrainian intelligence agency.
It looks a little like...
Our intelligence agencies and other countries may have said, look, they're going to believe this anyway because people are chatting about it in social media, so let's just put it out there like it's probably true because they're already primed to believe it.
They didn't have to wonder if we would believe it because it had already been tested.
See what I'm saying? It had already been tested.
They knew people would believe it because we already believed it without any evidence whatsoever.
So they just gave us some fake evidence of, you know, people who are sources say they think.
And then it goes through the media and then you think there's really a source.
And then... So here's the thing.
Could I have caused this?
I'm not saying I did.
But I worry about it.
Is it possible I caused this?
Let me tell you what I know.
I do know that intelligence agencies watch me.
Do you accept that?
Now, I'm not going to tell you how I know, but I know, because I've been approached by people, etc.
So I know that there are at least...
I know of at least three intelligence agencies who do have their eyes on me.
Four. I know four.
Four. If four intelligence agencies are watching me, and I've sort of tested in advance the idea that Putin looks like he's drugged, do you think that they could have gotten the idea to just amplify it?
I'm not saying that this happened.
I just worry about it.
I worry that I'm giving people ideas without knowing it.
I have no reason to think I did this.
I'm not making that claim.
But I worry about it.
All right. CNN has a story.
Oh, let's talk more about Putin.
So apparently Putin is a known hypochondriac.
Do you believe that? Putin is a known hypochondriac?
And they think that's why he's so afraid of COVID, but somebody else said, and I had never said this out loud, but I believed it for a while, that the reason he's so afraid of COVID... Is that he has comorbidities.
I think he's got comorbidities, which would suggest cancer or something bad, which would suggest the steroid thing is correct.
Because if you're the head of a country and you've got some kind of medical problem that's going to slow you down, They might pump you full of meth and steroids to keep you going because you can't take a day off if you're Putin, right?
Putin can't take a day off.
I don't think Putin takes sick days.
Am I right? I don't think he can take a sick day because weakness...
It would be a big risk for him politically.
So I've got a feeling that he's pumped up with whatever it takes to make him look like he's still functional while he's rapidly declining in some kind of health-related problem.
So that's my current analysis.
So I'm going to say comorbidity is why he's afraid of COVID. Comorbidities.
There's a new threat in the United States, according to CNN. They've got a story.
It's men who are involuntarily celibate.
Wait a minute. Are incels involuntarily celibate?
I thought people volunteered.
Don't they sort of volunteer because they just gave up on it?
You know, I think it's a...
Sort of a grey area, whether they volunteered or they didn't have any choice.
But apparently now the government is worried that these celibate men, who in many cases have bad feelings about women, will become mass murderers of women because they are misogynists.
And, well, yeah, I get it.
I get it that incel means involuntary celibate.
But what I've seen in actual popular use...
It always seemed like people were voluntarily labeling themselves involuntarily celibate.
Does that make sense? I mean, it looked like there was some free will involved, however you want to define that.
Anyway, do you think that's a big problem for the future?
Involuntarily celibate men?
I think it is.
It sounds ridiculous, right?
It sounds a little absurd on the surface, but...
I feel like it is. And I've often speculated, much to my destruction, that a big problem in the Middle East is too many men and not enough women.
Because if the high-end, rich men in Middle Eastern society have several wives, necessarily there won't be enough left over for the men, the lower-ranked men.
So in theory, there should be all these extra men who have nothing to do but kill and be killed.
Because we turn into killers when we're not domesticated, basically.
Ethan, why do you need to say that?
Ethan has decided to inform me that my wife divorced me.
Ethan, you're probably aware that I know about this, right?
I'm kind of up to date.
Ethan? And Ethan, I wonder, when you wake up in the morning...
And you start your day.
Do other people say, I'm sure glad Ethan is awake.
Because there's a guy who brings light and sunshine into our lives.
Ethan is a person who is always looking on the bright side.
Ethan. Some people would say Ethan is a worthless piece of shit.
A dingleberry on the ass of life.
Some would say that. Because his contribution to our conversation...
Was so mind-bogglingly useless and negative that one wonders if Ethan will make it through life, or is Ethan an incel who will soon be killing a room full of women?
I don't know. I don't know, Ethan.
But it's one of those things.
All right. What else is going on?
Lots of things. Lots of things are going on.
Oil went down 30% because oil prices are not real.
Oil is the only thing that doesn't depend on supply and demand.
Am I right? Maybe there's something else.
But I've been watching oil prices forever, and one thing that is a guarantee is that supply and demand doesn't make any difference.
Talking about supply and demand makes a difference.
Talking about it. But the actual supply doesn't seem to make any difference.
It's just the worrying about it that changes it.
So every time somebody worries about it, somebody else raises the price.
If I write a story and say, I think X will happen so oil prices will go up...
What happens to the price of oil prices?
Or what oil price goes up, right?
If people are talking about it going up, it goes up.
If people are talking about it going down, it goes down.
It's not even related to the supply.
Now, of course I'm exaggerating.
Because, of course, in the long run, the supply is all the matters.
But that's never what we see.
We see all these short-term, enormous swings And all of it's just psychology-based.
So, yeah, oil can go up 30%, it can go down 30% with no change in demand and no change in supply.
So remember, all of this is bullshit.
All of the oil changes are just psychology about what we expect, and nobody can predict the future.
So there's more uncertainty, which raises the price.
So uncertainty does always increase risk, which increases price.
But I don't see any reason that it can't plunge just as fast as it went up.
How fast does it take people to open up production facilities that used to be not profitable but because the prices are so high they are?
It doesn't take that long to reopen a well, does it?
Somebody says years. It takes years to reopen a well that's been capped.
I would think a month, without knowing anything about anything.
I would think a month.
If oil were $1,000 a barrel, you don't think you could drill me a fucking well in a month?
Really? That's where this comes in.
Really? Let's say oil is a million dollars a barrel.
You don't think you could drill me some new wells in a month?
Yeah, you could. Yeah, you could.
Somebody says three months.
I'll take three months. But it seems to me we must already be massively starting to ramp up production everywhere in the world, I would think.
So I don't think oil prices could stay high.
What do you think about the news that China is helping Russia or might help them militarily?
Joel Pollack tweeted.
He said, in my opinion...
The China Helping Russia story is largely a fake news narrative cooked up by anonymous source Jake Sullivan, who also briefed the media in 2016 about Russia collusion.
He has a demonstrated history of lying to the media to the detriment of national security.
Um... That's how I see it.
Now, I don't know anything about Jake Sullivan being involved.
That's a different question. Certainly, there's reason to suspect that this fits his wheelhouse.
I agree with Joel on that.
But I don't think I believe that China is helping Russia's story exactly.
It makes sense that Russia is talking to China, and it makes sense that because they have this unlimited partnership, that China might step up with a little extra trade or something like that.
But framing it as China helping Russia militarily, it's a bit of a stretch, and it has a persuasion direction.
Feel to it as opposed to a news feel to it, wouldn't you say?
Does it feel like news?
Or does it feel like redefining news to make it into something new?
Feels like reframing the news.
Feels like persuasion.
Feels like bullshit. But could be wrong.
We'll wait and see. I saw some people following me today on Twitter.
You know, Twitter tells you who followed you recently.
And I believe that at least two of the three had followed me forever, and they had to re-follow me today.
And somebody else had said the same thing.
And this had gone away for months and months.
For a long time, I had not had this issue of people being automatically unfollowed from me.
Has anybody been unfollowed from me automatically?
I'm just watching the comments.
I guess the no's don't tell me anything, because most people would be a no.
Somebody said, yes, I have.
Last year, yes.
Had to refollow when you got a new computer.
That's weird. So people say yes.
Somebody was two years ago.
Yes. Now...
There are enough yeses going by that do those look like people are just mistaken?
Because I watched my Twitter account reach a certain level and then just plateaued.
It looks like it's throttled.
It certainly looks like it.
I can't guarantee it, but it looks, for all appearances, it looks that way.
Twice. So somebody had to resubscribe to me twice.
Yeah, the names that I saw resubscribing to me are ones that I've known and communicated with for years on Twitter.
And they had to re-sign up today?
Because the thing that...
If it had been random names that I was not familiar with, I would have thought, oh, they got mad at me someday and blocked me or something, and then they changed their mind.
But these are people I've had no bad interaction with that I'm pretty sure had just always followed me and had to re-follow.
Here's the most interesting thing that's happening, in my opinion.
Did you ever wonder what would happen if a lifelong Democrat ever figured out how to design systems that took into account human motivation, economics, and science?
What would happen? Well, the Democrats have a lot of supporters, so just being a Democrat should help you get elected.
Like, half of the time you would win just by being the Democrat.
But what if you had a Democrat who is not just going to win because there are a lot of Democrats?
What if the Democrat found a way to design systems and solutions that are compatible with all Republican thought?
Well, that person exists and is running for governor of California, Michael Schellenberger.
So Michael Schellenberger was a lifelong Democrat who has turned independent, and there are actually more people registered independent in California than either Democrat or Republican.
If you could actually treat the independents as a party and get them to maybe see themselves as a team, They would win every election in California.
It's the biggest group.
Now, I don't think that there are real independents.
I think people are really Republican but don't want to say so, that sort of thing.
But there's certainly a lane.
You know, if you think it's impossible, you're way wrong.
It's very possible he could win.
Very possible. Because here's what he's got going for him.
He was a lifelong Democrat, and as far as I can tell, his...
Let's say his emotional empathy are still exactly in that world of trying to make sure everybody has a good chance and a good life.
But on top of that, he's the only person I've ever seen who put tremendous years of effort into figuring out what works.
You know, he's written books on these topics.
So he knows what works with homeless and with drug addiction because he looked at all the things that people have tried.
And he knows that what California is doing is on the category of things which have been tried and fail.
So he wants to try things that are in the category of things that have been tried and were greatly successful.
How crazy is that?
So... This is really interesting.
What happens if somebody has the total skill stack from communication, writing, political knowledge?
He's an expert on now addiction, an expert on homelessness, by virtue of having studied it for writing books.
An expert on energy, of nuclear power, climate change, and even forest management.
So there's not a single topic that matters in California that Michael Schellenberger doesn't know twice as much as the current governor.
Think about that. And this is a demonstrated fact.
I'm not just saying, oh, he's smart.
I think he's just smart.
It's not that. I'm saying you could just look at the documented life of both people...
And you can see that Schellenberger's done deep dives and super productive activist stuff, like talk to Congress a number of times, talk to other governments.
I mean, he's persuading governments at the highest level about things that are deeply important to the world.
So he's got his priorities right.
He's got the skill set that I've never seen, honestly.
Let me say this. I've never seen anybody enter politics...
With as good a skill set as he's bringing.
Like the right set of talents that all stack just right.
You take anybody.
You take Trump.
I was obviously pro-Trump.
But even Trump doesn't have expertise in all these categories.
Imagine if he did.
Imagine Trump with his other skills...
But also having all the deep-dive analytical ability of a Schellenberger.
I mean, that's an endless possibility.
But you don't have to imagine that.
Because you can just look at Schellenberger.
Because he actually has those skills.
He has everything from the persuasion to the communication to insanely high energy.
I don't know how he gets so much done.
You need somebody with high energy in politics.
And he's got good hair.
I always make fun of that.
You can't really get elected unless you have good hair.
He has great hair.
Let's not underestimate the hair.
So there you go. Keep an eye on California.
We might be going from a bad situation to a good situation.
And at least we have a good choice, which I don't think we've ever had before.
And you should follow Michael Schellenberger if you want to know any solutions for anything from drug addiction to homeless to nuclear energy to crime.
Basically all of it.
He's done pretty much a deep dive on everything that matters in California.
So, what do you think?
Does he have a chance? He is going to have some powerful people behind him.
I'm 100% behind him.
Anybody who thinks he doesn't have a chance, I think you're coming from the political parties have all the power perspective.
You probably didn't think...
That's interesting.
You probably didn't think that he could move the dial on nuclear power, did you?
Did you think anybody could do that?
Did you think anybody could enter the conversation and just move the dial on nuclear power?
He did. He did that.
I mean, you watched it in real time.
I did the play-by-play for years, watching him do his work, and he did it.
Musk should endorse Schellenberger.
Oh, there's an idea.
Yeah, imagine if Elon Musk backed Michael Schellenberger and did it publicly.
Wow. Because I don't think there would be even one speck of difference between Musk's opinion on political stuff and Schellenberger's.
I'll bet they don't have one difference of opinion.
Because at a certain level of awareness, everybody has the same opinion.
I hate to tell you, but at a certain level of understanding of how the world works, all the opinions are the same.
Trust me. They're all the same at a certain point.
Could Tesla come back to California?
Now, that's a big ask. And I think taxes will be the big problem there.
All right. I am going to go do something else.
And I think you'd agree this is the best livestream of all time.
Of all time. And it's just getting better.
This is the only livestream in which we intentionally try to change the world and succeed.
Okay, maybe others do that too.
But I don't know about them, and that's the same thing.
