Episode 1689 Scott Adams: How Trump Would Solve the Ukraine Situation, A Talent Stack Lesson
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
64% say Biden policies increased inflation
GOP ticket: Trump with VP DeSantis?
Talent Stack example
Biden's dirty oil preference
Changing the Frame technique
Ending the Ukraine War
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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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Go! Well, I'll tell you, my system for checking the sound without the trolls interfering is working perfectly.
And I know Paul always says, don't thank me.
It hurts the flow.
But thank you, Paul, because you fixed my flow.
Here's a story.
Rasmussen had a poll, and they said that asked people if Biden's policies increased inflation.
And 64% of respondents, likely voters they are, said yes, that Biden's policies increased inflation.
Can you guess what percentage of the public answered that Biden's policies did not increase inflation?
Can you...
Wow, you are good guessers!
Almost every person got this one right.
And whoever guessed 24%, let me call you...
Hold on for a second. So I have to call out Shadu for guessing 24%.
Now, you knew that the answer was 25%, but you were smart enough to know I was probably rounding.
And if you got it right, it would look impressive.
Because it was a pretty clever guess.
But if you got it wrong, everybody would forget immediately.
So in terms of how to play this in the comment game, your comment game is very strong, Shadu.
The answer is, unfortunately, exactly 25%.
But the 24% guess was an excellent strategy.
Good game theory there.
And 87% of people said inflation, in the Rasmussen poll, said inflation will be important in congressional elections.
Do you know what it means when 87% say inflation will be important and also that Biden has increased inflation?
If you put those together, what does it mean?
What will it mean?
Somebody says the red wave.
Republicans will sweep into office.
Except... Except...
There's one other phenomenon which will fight against that.
It goes like this.
People like their own representatives.
People like their incumbents.
So I think, as usual, all the incumbents will get re-elected.
So it has more to do with how many vacant seats there are.
My understanding is there will be far more vacant Democrat seats.
Is that still the case?
The prediction is still for far more vacant Democrat seats, right?
I think that was the latest I read, but that could change at any time.
Now, the other factor...
The other factor is, shit happens.
If there's one thing that you can guarantee, is that between now and the midterm elections, there'll be some shit.
And, you know, it could be anything from a recording of Biden saying he likes to grab women by the who knows what.
It could be something in Ukraine.
It could be anything.
I mean, there's so many things that could happen between now and Election Day that I feel as if making a congressional prediction is just kind of dicey.
But I'm going to do it anyway.
So in this case, I agree with the majority.
So I agree with the pundits that I think the Republicans will take control of both houses, and I believe in 2024 they'll take control of the presidency.
Most likely. I would say I'm a little more confident of the congressional part just because it's closer.
And I'm less confident of the presidency part because Trump is such a wild card.
You throw Trump into any situation, you're like, I don't know.
Anything could happen.
But if he ends up being the candidate, if he wins in the primaries, then I would say...
Because it's Trump, the other side could unleash any kind of attack, and it might work.
So, for example, the Russia collusion thing kind of almost worked, right?
The Hunter's laptop story, the press made that go away just at the right time.
So we do know that the press can create a narrative...
That the public will believe.
So it wouldn't even matter if Trump did something ultra-provocative.
I mean, everything he does.
But if he did something a little extra-extra-provocative, if that's even possible, he doesn't even need to do that.
Because the press will concoct something, a narrative, that will fit the Democrat plan, and the public will believe it.
So it's pretty hard to predict how much narrative they could create about what between now and 2024.
Somebody's saying Trump as president with DeSantis as vice president.
Oh, God, that would be a package, wouldn't it?
You know, I had never considered that as a realistic possibility until literally just this moment.
All right, let's think that through.
Have you heard anybody speculate about that package?
I think I haven't really considered it because I see both of them as the presidential candidate, which is kind of ideal.
What's the one thing you're worried about with Trump?
His age, right?
So, where Biden tried to solve his age problem with Kamala Harris, that was literally the worst decision anybody ever made.
Maybe it helped him get elected, I don't know.
Maybe she checked enough boxes that the demographics of it worked out.
But you really don't look at Biden and say to yourself, ooh, we're in good shape if the number one has to check out early.
But imagine Trump...
Imagine Trump saying something that only Trump could say.
I'm in perfect shape at the moment, but I totally understand that at a certain age, you want a backup plan.
I'm going to give you the best backup plan anybody ever gave anybody.
And he could actually make that sell.
Because DeSantis would be the best backup plan, because he also might be the best president.
Honestly, we don't know.
I mean, nobody's smart enough to know that another run of Trump would necessarily be better or worse than a first run of DeSantis.
There's no way to know that.
But Trump could definitely sell that the number two position is so solid that you don't have to worry about it.
Now, if Trump even wanted to go further...
I don't know that this would be compatible with his personality, but it would be a great strategy.
He could say, for example, I'll tell you what.
I'll guarantee that I'll have a public cognitive test.
In other words, it'll be made public after the fact.
Once every six months.
Or once a year. Or on request by the White House physician.
Let's say on request.
Maybe that's smarter. As long as people trust the White House physician.
Or how about this?
How about he hires a Democrat as the White House physician?
Why not? Right?
Why not? Just imagine it.
I mean, we'll just work through it. This doesn't seem likely to me, so I'm not going to predict it or anything like that.
But just imagine it.
Imagine Trump saying, here's my proposition.
DeSantis says my number two.
White House physician, I'm going to pick a Democrat.
And the Democrat can test me any time they want because I acknowledge that at a certain age, this is just a good system.
So what Trump could sell is a better system.
It wouldn't even be personal.
So he doesn't even have to make it about himself.
He could say, you know, wouldn't you be happier if this system were in place right now?
Wouldn't you like Biden to have a Republican doctor who is doing a cognitive test whenever that Republican doctor deems it necessary and then makes it public?
And if it's a negative result, there might be some double testing requirement.
But if the tests hold up, then the vice president is somewhat automatically assumed to step up.
Why not? Again, everything has to be a personality fit.
And I'm not sure that that would fit Trump's personality, because I don't think he'd like to even suggest any weakness in his future.
So I don't know that that would even be the best strategy.
But it's a strategy.
And it would be very disarming, wouldn't it?
Because after people went through the Biden experience, even the Democrats are saying, I'm a little worried that age is having an impact.
Am I right? I think that most, not most, but let's say Democrats who are paying attention are at least concerned about their own candidate's age.
It would be really clever for Trump to just suggest a system that I think could be an enduring system over a certain age, make sure that the White House doctor is the other party.
Yeah. Null Hypothesis asks, can you talk to Greg Goffeld about sending me a signed photo of himself?
Greg? We've got a request here from Null Hypothesis, who gives me no contact information whatsoever.
But I know, Greg, you're good at guessing.
So he does have an address, and he does have a real name.
We don't know what it is, But I think it's reasonable for you to take a shot at it.
So, you know, pick an address, pick a name.
You might get lucky. There's a new technology I saw in a Mashable tweet in which you get a little earbud that's a near-instant universal translator.
What? Now, of course, this sort of thing has been worked on for a long time.
But apparently the...
Yeah, like a babble fish.
But apparently the claimed technology, so I'll just say claimed, is that it can translate 40 different languages with a half-second delay.
Do you believe that? Do you think the technology is there yet?
40 different languages with a whole bunch of different accents within each, and a half-second delay so that you could have a real-time conversation with somebody in a language that you don't speak.
I feel like it's inevitable it will exist...
Yeah, it's inevitable it will exist.
I don't know if we're there yet.
I mean, there might be a little hyperbole here.
I don't know. And rooms are noisy, and you've got lots of ambient noise problems, etc.
But we're getting there.
Speaking of that, here's a little lesson for success.
This will be the fastest little lesson for success.
It's an example of a talent stack.
It's the simplest example I could think of, and I'm going to give you the example to show how two talents, which are fairly approachable, you know, talents that an ordinary person can learn, when you add it to another talent, if you pick the right two talents, they make you unique, and that makes your market value higher, and then you can get jobs.
And there's a job that I wasn't terribly aware of until recently, A medical translator.
So somebody who's sort of on call for a hospital, let's say, or a doctor, to come in on contract, the insurance probably pays for it, and to be the translator in the room as, let's say, somebody who only speaks Spanish or only speaks Chinese is getting service.
Now, I guess...
I haven't looked into it.
Maybe one of you can tell me right now while we're on.
Somebody will know the answer to this.
A translator in that medical context...
Or a sign language, somebody says.
Yeah. A translator in that context probably gets paid pretty well, don't they?
Wouldn't you say? They probably get paid pretty well.
So wouldn't you...
Imagine combining the following skills...
Let's say you already learned Spanish on top of your normal language, English, or vice versa, so you can be a translator.
But on top of that, you've also made a study of the medical words most commonly used wherever you're going to be translating, so that you can translate obscure medical terms, because even a regular translator couldn't do that, because they have never heard those terms.
Then let's say you combine that with the sign language.
So you can work with the deaf as well.
How hard would it be to learn...
Let's say you'd already learned Spanish a little bit.
If you already had Spanish and English, how hard would it be to add medical terminology and sign language?
Imagine going in for the job as a medical translator and you bring that package.
It's pretty... Yeah, I mean, it might take you a few years to get up to speed.
Now, this assumes that you're already pretty good at Spanish and English.
But anyway, the only reason I mention this is not to suggest that any of you enter this field.
It's sort of a really clean example of how to make an exceptional life and of ordinary talents.
You just have to pick the ordinaries that work together well to make you unique.
Everybody get that? If you want to explain to someone else how to succeed, and you want to give them the most base case, simple thing, use that example.
Because the hardest part about explaining a talent stack is that when you talk about it generically, people can't quite connect to it.
But that example is so clean, if you remember it, it'll really help you explain it to other people.
So then you can become the people who make other people successful.
How many of you have made other people successful by telling them something you learned from me?
Has that happened?
I'm actually curious about that.
So I'm just looking at the comments.
A lot of people are saying yes.
A lot of people are saying yes.
Holy shit. So apparently this content travels.
That's good news.
I didn't know that, actually.
You know, I never really thought of it that much.
But it seems that people can explain the content, some aspects of the content, well enough that it travels.
I'll be damned. I teach systems over goals all the time.
Wow. How weird is it That it seems highly likely at this point that the thing I'll be remembered for is not Dilbert.
Do you know how weird that is?
That if you fast forward to, I don't know, 20 years from now, whatever, some people will still remember Dilbert, but I'll be far more famous for the talent stack stuff and the systems over goals.
Not even close.
Because the systems over goals and the talent stack stuff are like civilization transformable concepts.
I mean, they always existed, but just articulating them allows people to pick them up better.
So, I mean, it's the articulating that I did, I guess.
Wow. It's kind of blowing me away, looking at the comments.
Now, on YouTube, you can't see the subscribers over at Locals, but I'm seeing just a continuous stream of people who have taught other people those concepts with success, meaning that the other people actually visibly succeeded.
Wow. All right, um...
Have I told you before how life suspiciously mirrors movies?
And I'm not sure if it's because we think in movie terms, so we just apply that filter to things, or if there's something fundamental, such as we're living in a simulation in which our plots are being given to us and then somebody's observing how we operate.
And... It just seems to me that the simulation, if we live in a simulation, is about a month away from presenting the following storyline.
Now, I'm not going to predict this.
I'm just saying that if we live in a simulated reality that mirrors what movies do, we're about 30 days away from the following thing happening.
Which is learning that the pandemic started in a Ukrainian laboratory funded by Hunter Biden, and the formula for the antidote is in one of his many still-lost laptops.
You can almost see the movie forming in your head, can't you?
And the search is...
And there's going to be a key part of the movie where 007 or somebody has called in, and it's explained to him, all right, You know, this happened.
Hunter Biden was funding these labs.
By the way, if you're joining late, none of this is real.
I'm just talking about a fictional plot.
Hunter Biden funded these Ukrainian bio labs.
And then at some point another character will say, all right, and the antidote is on that lost laptop?
And the person explaining it will say, laptops.
And then 007 will say, all right, two laptops.
Do we know where both of the laptops might be?
And then the boss says, not two.
He had a real problem losing laptops.
We believe there are seven.
And then the whole plot is to try to find all seven of the missing laptops.
Sort of like Thanos' three rings or gemstones or whatever it was.
And they'd have to figure out Hunter Biden's depraved activities and go to all the worst places in the world to retrieve the laptops.
LAUGHTER So they'd have to be going into the darkest brothels in the most dangerous parts of the world.
Are you telling me this wouldn't be a great frickin' movie?
Imagine you learning about what Hunter did, but only by going into the places where his laptops can be found.
So you have to enter each of these environments to find out how wild it was.
And Hunter Biden's never there.
So the movie never shows him.
It just shows the aftermath or the trouble he caused or the village he burned down or something.
Yeah, it's a little like the Hangover movie, right?
All good movies borrow from other movies.
Well, the pandemic's no laughing matter except when it is.
So had you been curious about whether it was true or not that four Russian generals had been...
Four, right?
Russian generals had been killed by the Ukrainians, which would be like a surprisingly large number.
Well, General Petraeus thinks it's true.
You know, he thinks that at least three of them are solidly confirmed.
And here's how he explained it, if you didn't see this on CNN. By the way, CNN's doing a real good job, you know, since I criticize them often.
I'll give them credit where credit is due.
And I think they're doing a real good job at having generals on explaining what's happening there.
Standing next to the map and pointing to stuff, it's actually really good.
I'm kind of impressed.
And Petraeus, especially, is doing a good job.
And so he says, here's what's going on.
That these long convoys, their command and control breaks down because the Ukrainians can jam or turn off all their communications.
So it turns out the Ukrainians are dominating the electronic warfare, right?
Didn't see that coming, did you?
I did. I mean, indirectly I did.
Because my prediction was that Russia would not have an easy time because the Ukrainians would have access to basically the best NATO or American technology.
So somehow, they're jamming enough...
Part of it is that Russians don't have good...
And they're stealing cell phones from the locals just to communicate with back home and with their own units, I guess, which again makes them targets.
So I guess at some point, because the Russians don't have good, they also don't have initiative, that when the convoy stops, The problem of whatever stopped it doesn't get fixed until the general who's somewhere back in the convoy goes up to the front to figure out what's the trouble and make some decisions.
And he can't do it by phone because they've cut off his communications.
So the general personally has to move from wherever is a more protected position to the front of the convoy.
And do you know what's waiting for them at the front of the convoy?
Sniper. So all they have to do is stop the convoy and turn off communications.
So if you stop the convoy and turn off communications within the convoy itself...
The general is going to have to reveal himself because they don't have good lower management within the ranks.
If they had good lower management, you'd have some officers up front making local decisions and solving the problems, much in the way maybe the general would have.
But they won't move without the general in the Russian army, according to Petraeus.
Is that true? I don't know.
Seems like he'd know. I mean, it seems like he'd know.
But I don't trust anything these days.
And do you believe that the Ukrainians have these talented snipers?
Maybe. I mean, I suppose they've been training for a long time.
So I can't confirm anything that Petraeus says about anything, but it would be interesting to know that that was a strategy.
And it further suggests that the Ukrainians are just operating on a higher strategic level.
Does that seem to be consistently true?
There are anti-sniper snipers.
Somebody says not correct, but I don't know what they're talking about.
Yeah, it's hard to get a lot of trained snipers, isn't it?
I didn't know you could create too many snipers.
But then again, how many do you need?
Right? Right? If you had six good snipers, you'd probably get four generals by now if that technique I described actually produces results.
You'd think the generals would learn to wear the outfit of a private when they're visiting the front of the lines.
Do you think the generals actually dress as a general when they get out of their truck?
I'll bet they do.
Unless there's some kind of facial recognition thing going on.
Apparently Clearview is operating over there, at least for the Ukrainian side.
By the way, that's an interesting story I haven't seen anywhere.
Clearview, the controversial facial recognition company, is apparently going big, or at least...
They're participating in some substantial way in Ukraine.
And I think it's because the Ukrainians are going to need to have facial recognition to figure out who's Russian, who's Ukrainian at some point.
So, you know, wars change things, and war may have made a big difference to their business model.
All right. I saw a Jack Posobiec tweet about a poll of Canadians...
And I talked to vaccinated and unvaccinated people and asked them a question that had nothing to do with either of those things.
It had to do with Russian sanctions.
And they were trying to find out if vaccinated people had a different opinion about Russia and sanctions than unvaccinated.
Now, I don't know why, but the conclusion is that the people who are unvaccinated...
Don't want to go hard on Russia or probably just don't even want to be involved in any way, including sanctions.
Whereas the people who are vaccinated are strong on Russian sanctions.
They really want those Russian sanctions, economic sanctions.
Now, do you think this correlation is real, first of all, Because the correlation was super strong.
I don't have the exact numbers, but it was really strong.
It was like 80 to 20.
I mean, a real big difference.
So there are two ways to, at least two ways, to interpret it.
I don't know which one's true.
So one way would be that the people who don't want vaccinations don't trust the government to do anything.
So it wouldn't matter what two topics you were talking about.
You'd say, would you like the government to...
No. No.
Stop. I do not want the government to do anything.
I don't want the government to force me to get a vaccination.
I don't trust the government when they say they're safe.
I don't want the government to attack another country because I don't think that they'll do a good job of that and there's probably no reason whatsoever.
I don't want them to sanction Russia because I don't want them to do anything.
Everything they do is wrong.
Just stop doing everything.
So, is that an irrational world view?
It's not my worldview, so I don't share that worldview, but I definitely respect it.
Do you have opinions like that where clearly you disagree with somebody's opinion on any topic, but when you hear that other opinion you say, you know, that's not my opinion, but I definitely respect it.
There must be a lot of people who are in favor of abortion, But when they hear the other topic, you know, the other side about, you know, sanctity of life and stuff, don't you think there are a lot of people who say, you know, personally, I might be in favor of abortion, but I've got to admit, I do respect the other opinion.
It's unusual, isn't it?
Usually we don't respect either the people who have the opinion or the opinion itself.
But there are a few cases where you can respect the other opinion.
And this is one of them.
The people who say, just don't give the government any power, they'll just abuse it and do everything wrong, they're at least partly right.
At the very least...
They're very right-ish.
They're more right than wrong.
It's just, are there exceptions that are worth looking into?
And I say yes. But as a worldview, as a starting point, if your starting point is don't give them any power, but somebody can make a convincing enough argument, let's say national defense, in which you should anyway, then that's kind of a healthy situation.
You want people who are totally resistant to the government getting any power.
They are very productive citizens.
Let me put it this way.
Would you want to live in a world in which at least 20% of the public wasn't automatically opposed to the government getting any power whatsoever?
I kind of like living in that world.
I don't want to use the word heroes, Too cavalierly.
But the people who say the government is bad all the time and you've got to watch every single thing they do, don't trust anything, don't give them a dime, don't let them make any decisions, those people are very, very productive citizens.
Sorry, Josh, too many fairies.
So, anyway, it's the same thing I say about the conservative worldview in general.
Somebody asked me about it recently.
Because I prefer spending time with people who have a certain worldview, weirdly even when I disagree with it sometimes.
Weirdly, right?
So, you know, most of you know that on social stuff, I'm way left to Bernie.
But if you ask me, do you all have a good worldview that works, that creates good children and makes society work?
Of course you do.
You've got a great thing going.
If I could do it, I would be religious.
Because I observe it's a really good system.
I just, for whatever reason, my brain isn't wired to be a believer.
But if it were, I think I'd be happier.
Because the people who are wired that way seem to be plenty happy.
I mean, relative to other people.
I think the science says it, and I think observation bears that as well.
So, what did that have to do with Biden and Venezuela?
Well, nothing. But is it weird to you that the Biden administration is looking to buy oil from Venezuela, who is, as you know, not exactly the most trustworthy country and not exactly our ally?
And worse yet, if you didn't know this, Venezuelan crude oil is, do you say heavy or dirty?
What's the right word? But it's worse for the environment than is most other oil that we're using.
It's heavy. So somebody's saying heavy is the right word.
High in sulfur, I'm being told.
So the point is that Biden could allow or at least encourage more domestic oil production, and we would create fairly, let's say, more benign, nothing's benign, let's say, safer.
We would produce safer energy than Venezuela, and we would make the money, and then we'd have this robust industry.
But rather than making the United States more wealthy and the environment safer, two things that the president has vowed to do, he's decided to make Venezuela richer and to make the environment worse.
And none of those things are an interpretation.
Am I right? I mean, I give opinions here, but that's not an opinion.
He's literally saying, my dollars will go to Venezuela instead of the United States.
And he's literally choosing the most polluting option when there's a perfect substitute available.
Now, to be fair, to be fair, lots of times people like me ignore that time has any element or variable in this.
So let me not do that.
It could be...
That if we're talking about the next, you know, 60 days, that we've got to do some kind of out-of-the-box things just to keep the lights on.
And it may be that if we're talking about 60 days, we just need to get any oil we can, anywhere we can.
But if you're talking about what's it look like in a year, then you think that domestic production would be the obvious way to go.
But here's the political calculation, I think.
Momentum matters.
So if Biden is trying to go green in the long run, any reversal in that is going to be harder again to reverse the reversal.
So he might say it's easier to turn off Venezuela than it is to turn off American oil production again.
You know, he already got enough trouble for doing it once.
He doesn't want to ramp it up to have to ramp it down again when things return to normal.
So it could be that the Venezuela option makes sense for the short term, and it's easier to just turn it off because you don't care.
So it might not be crazy, but I haven't heard the argument.
So here's the thing.
If you haven't heard the argument for it, you must assume the worst.
Can I establish the standard for politics?
It's the standard for which I thought Obama should have been impeached.
I'll take you back many years to Obama administration.
He got into office by saying he was open-minded about weed, and he wasn't going to go after weed stuff.
But as president, he reversed it and started to go hard after dispensaries in California.
That were legal in California, but not under federal law.
So he did exactly the opposite of what he said he would do without explaining it.
It's the without explaining it part that I say should have been impeachable.
I mean, I don't know if that's technically impeachable.
But in terms of what is the right thing to do, if you change your policy, or even if you create a new policy, and you refuse to explain why, you should be fired.
If you do something I don't like and it doesn't turn out well, well, I might not think you deserve to get fired.
Because I do understand that all of our leaders, Trump included, they're all going to make mistakes.
That's just sort of baked in.
You're not going to look at the one mistake unless it's so egregious.
But typically you have to look at the whole package because they make some mistakes and they do some good stuff.
If you don't look at it all, you're just being ridiculous.
So, the fact that Biden has not explained to us why he would...
pursue the Venezuelan oil is a real problem.
But it might be that the policy itself actually makes sense.
And I don't think it's too strong a standard to say that if your administration won't give you their argument, they should be fired.
Does anybody disagree with that?
If you had an employee who wouldn't tell you why he was doing stuff...
You'd fire their ass right away.
It wouldn't matter if they did a good job, right?
You'd just say, okay, that doesn't work.
Chain of command. Boom.
Yeah. So...
So everybody's waiting for some kind of breakthrough in the Ukraine situation to get a peace deal.
And I think the peace deal is rather easy.
Rather easy. Here's all you'd have to do.
And by the way, if you didn't know this, if you want major breakthroughs in international thorny situations, you should talk to cartoonists who do live streams.
Because, man, do we have a good track record of fixing international events.
But here's what I... It looks like an easy situation, so let me just explain the situation, and then you can see why it's so easy.
So the only thing we need to end the war in Ukraine...
This is the only thing you need.
Just keep it simple. You don't need all the details.
This is all it would take to end the war in Ukraine.
All you need is some kind of totally unenforceable peace deal between the two least trustworthy entities on the planet, both of whom apparently believe they're winning, and for whom losing means death.
So, how hard could it be under that situation for the parties involved to come up with a deal?
Well, it might be hard.
But I'm going to explain to you how Trump might make it work.
Or at least would make a better attempt at it.
Nobody knows what would work.
And it goes like this. And this will be my new segment called WWTD. What would Trump do?
What would Trump do? Well, the first thing Trump would have done is he would be unpredictable.
Am I right? And I am seeing smart pundits say that when Biden said, we're definitely not going to put any troops against Russia, that Russia knew exactly what the worst-case scenario was, and it wasn't bad enough to stop them from invading.
So it was basically permission.
Now, number one, would Trump have been predictable and said, under no situation will we act militarily?
Don't know, but we do know that his signature persuasion, which he said out loud and often, was to be unpredictable.
So it seems unlikely that he would go against his primary method, which he bragged about all the time.
So I think, first of all, he would be unpredictable.
That would be good. But the other thing that would be Trumpian is a carrot-and-stick approach.
And I'll give you an example and then we'll generalize it to Ukraine.
I told you about a co-worker I used to work with who would not only yell at people if they didn't help her, so if she needed help from somebody else in the company and they were not as responsive as she wanted, she would go right to their boss and just trash them like crazy.
I mean, really, really trash them.
And she would do it instantly the minute you didn't give her what she wanted.
And everybody knew that.
So she had a mutually assured destruction thing that was really powerful.
But that was only half of the technique.
And this is what Trump gets right.
The other half of the technique was if you gave her what she wanted, she would go to your boss and say you need a promotion and a raise.
Reliably. She would go to your boss and say, man, working with this person has been such a joy.
Do you understand what a good employee you have?
I mean, you should really retain this person.
I'd hate for this person to leave.
You really ought to think about a promotion.
Now, that kind of stuff really does have an effect on a boss, does it not?
Because she was very convincing and credible in her own right because she was very effective.
So here's the technique.
It's not good enough to threaten.
You have to paint a picture of what the worst case is versus the alternative and make sure that people know that it could be very bad, but here's the Trumpian part.
It doesn't have to just go back to normal.
It's not a question between being normal and being really bad.
It's a choice of being really bad or why not really good?
What would stop you from getting everything you want?
A Trumpian offer would look like North Korea.
Hey, not only do we have no reason to be enemies, but let me show you a little slideshow about how we can invest in North Korea and how we could be, in the future, economically bound to each other and mutually beneficial.
He actually did that.
Now, what does that do to your brain If you're Kim Jong Un, it broke the frame.
So that's the technique, breaking the frame.
If somebody's locked in a frame of, you're my enemy, you really can't get out of that.
I mean, you can't solve it within the frame, because you can't make a deal with an enemy.
So he changed the frame to, enemy?
Hell, I'll invest in you.
Nobody invested in their enemy.
So the fact that he had put some work into looking at what an investment would look like, and he was somebody you knew could do business with anybody.
I mean, that's one of Trump's advantages, right?
He can do business with anybody.
Saudi Arabia? Yeah.
Khashoggi? Yeah.
We'll let that slide.
So he was credible.
I mean, even before Saudi Arabia.
He was credible as a business person who could make a deal, basically.
So, let's take that back to the Ukraine situation.
So far what Putin has been offered, see if I'm wrong, so far what Putin has been offered is humiliating defeat or conquering a country and having so much trouble holding it and being sanctioned forever.
I mean, basically, two bad choices.
And we're wanting him to do something that we want him to do by giving him two bad choices.
How does that work?
How does that work?
Here's what a Trumpian...
And again, I'm not going to say Trump would do this.
I just use him as a handy reference point, right?
A reference point of somebody who would make a creative negotiating deal.
The first thing Trump would do is shake the box...
Just change some variables somehow.
Somehow. I mean, the Ukrainians changed the variable by holding on as long as they did.
But one of the things you could do is put more things into the offer.
So right now we're saying, you know, Ukraine, Russia, sanctions.
That's sort of the whole package.
There are probably some positive things you could put in there.
You could probably paint a picture of an upside.
Imagine you said...
Let's just take this as an example.
And I'm not saying this would work.
We're just talking through the concept here.
Suppose, as the pundits are saying, that one of the things Russia wants is this land bridge so that Russia itself is connected all the way to the Black Sea.
And you can see why they would want that.
Now, how much does anybody else care, any other country...
If Russia has a good economic path to the Black Sea, is that really something we care about?
Or shouldn't everybody have a good transportation system?
Why are we afraid of their transportation system?
I feel like that's a little unconfident on our parts.
Now, I get that if they're an evil empire, you don't want their economy to get bigger.
But if you wanted a negotiating point that understands everybody's going to have to give up something, here's what a deal would look like.
Okay, Russia, tell us what your economic interests are.
And that's the deal we'll make.
Tell us what your economic interests are.
Period. And that's the deal we'll make.
Now, you also, in return for this stuff, you're probably going to have to figure out how to protect Ukraine Without putting military in there.
That's probably going to have to be part of the deal.
So, how hard would it be for us to promise that Ukraine will be a so-called neutral country and not a NATO country?
I think we could promise that.
You know why? Because we could always change our mind.
Right? Why would we hold back on a promise when we would get something for it that would be enormous And we wouldn't give up anything, because we could just change our mind in the future, if the situation changed.
So I think that the NATO part is the most solvable part.
You just say you'll do it, and if events change and you need to change your mind and you need to make them NATO, then you do it.
But I like this concept of creating neutral countries.
Because the whole idea of an industrialized military power invading a neighbor, that really has to stop with this.
That really, this needs to be the last one of those, which is kind of why I think Ukraine is doing the world a big favor.
By making it so impractical to attack your neighbor with tanks, I think they may stop future wars, assuming they prevail.
So, I would love to see the United States, first of all, produce two GDP predictions.
One, if Putin stays in power, which presumes sanctions stay in, and one, if he doesn't.
And so we should be able to show to the Russian people two graphs.
Putin in power, you all make money.
Putin... I'm sorry.
Putin in power, you lose money.
Putin's out of power, you're up 8% or whatever it is.
And I think that there should be a sweetener to the offer.
So it'd be something like, all right, we'll make a serious effort to make Ukraine neutral, whatever that means.
But there's probably a way to protect them in a neutral context.
But what happens if Russia says, yeah, we'll keep our hands off them, and then they start doing their bribery and cyber attacks and all their underhanded stuff?
Well, then you say, okay, if you do that stuff, then the NATO question's back on the table.
So you just say to Russia, absolutely, we will totally promise that Ukraine will never go into NATO, as long as they're not actively under attack.
And that includes cyber.
Right? Now, I don't think there's anything that would stop Russia from cyberattacks.
But you can at least tell them that that gives you a trigger to change your mind about NATO. So you always have the out.
Because they're always going to be cyberattacking you.
Or you can always say they were.
You have the easiest out of that promise anybody ever had.
And then I think you should promise them a land bridge, but not necessarily through annexation.
If you're willing to make Ukraine neutral, why do you need to own the land bridge?
Right? Neutrality, by definition, means the Russians can drive there with just show their passport and say, hey, I'm taking this truck across the land bridge to the Black Sea.
Right? So it seems to me that neutrality, if somebody could define one that could work, is something you could work with.
But I think you want to promise the upside, too.
So they might need the land bridge.
They might need the demilitarization.
They definitely need Putin to look like he won.
Now, here's the thing.
What time is it, by the way? Okay.
I don't know if the United States wants any scenario that allows Putin to stay in power.
What do you think? Because it's not like we know who would replace him.
It seems pretty iffy.
I think we would rather contain him than replace him.
Is that right? What do you think?
I mean, we don't have an explicit stated policy about that because we wouldn't say that out loud.
What do you say? Do you say contain him or replace him?
What is the U.S. secret goal?
Not what they can say in public.
Contain, replace...
Okay, we're all over the board here.
All right, your opinions are all over the board.
Meaning, I don't know. I'm not even sure what the American plan is.
But I'm not so sure we're not better off trying to squash him.
By the way, all the people who say that economic sanctions don't work, here is my argument to you.
Everything doesn't work until it does.
Human flight in an airplane didn't work until it did.
Fusion has never worked.
But it looks like it might.
So there are lots of things that never worked until they did.
And it's because the technology, usually, changes to the point where the impossible becomes possible.
Electric cars, flying cars, that's all going to be possible.
You just have to wait until it's ready.
And my contribution to this is that we've never been so economically connected, and we've never had so much ability to communicate because of the Internet.
So at this point, we may have reached a point where, for the first time, economic sanctions could be a kill shot in a way that they never could have been before.
It might be in the future, but we're not there yet.
So this is an interesting test, because if this takes Putin out, it would be the first time an economic sanctions took out a leader.
Am I right? Hey, are there any historians here who can answer that question?
Has any leader been taken out through economic sanctions alone?
Meaning that their own people took them out because they couldn't stand it.
South Africa?
Would you say South Africa is an example?
But that took 20 years, right?
Or 30? I don't know my South African history.
Yeah, I guess South Africa would be a case.
The czars of Russia, somebody says.
I don't know. I guess I don't know enough about my history.
But it would be an interesting turning point in civilization if economic sanctions took him out.
Now, here's the other possibility.
The other possibility is that China and Russia and Saudi Arabia get together and they start trading in the yuan instead of the dollar.
And then suddenly there's like two separate...
You know, economic systems, the dollar-based one and the yuan-based one.
And here's what I say.
Isn't that going to happen anyway?
It kind of has to happen, doesn't it?
Because China's just going to be too big for anybody to say no to their currency.
Let me ask this question.
Isn't the only thing that makes currency valuable is if there's somebody who will take it?
Am I right? There's nothing else.
The one thing that makes any currency or any crypto valuable is that you have some assurance that somebody will take it.
Now, doesn't the size of China itself guarantee that there's always a market for the yuan, or doesn't it work that way?
You could have a degree in economics and still be totally lost if you're a little bit outside your channel.
It seems to me that there's no way to avoid at least a second currency, the yuan.
So I don't know if it makes any difference, because it was going to happen anyway.
Maybe it speeds it up.
Or maybe just every currency will be transferable.
I don't exactly understand.
Do you? Why is it that you have to buy oil in dollars?
Is there any reason for that?
Is it because we assume it's not going to fluctuate as much?
Is that the only reason?
Because I think that alone could be solved.
If fluctuation is the only problem, it seems like you could solve it just contractually.
Yeah, we're the most stable economy, so you just assume that the dollar will stay valuable and have a market forever.
I don't know. That seems pretty solvable.
I think China looks pretty...
China's going to be around, right?
Saudi Arabia's going to be around for a while.
All right. What do you think about running out of food because of the Ukrainian wheat situation?
Well, I tweeted an article By Aaron Smith.
He had a blog there. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and he was looking at the wheat situation in Ukraine and Russia.
And his take, bottom line, is that even if we lose a ton of wheat, well, more than a ton, obviously, but a, let's see, a lot of wheat, if we lose a lot of wheat, His argument, and he goes through the numbers to make his case, is that it wouldn't be that big a deal.
Do you believe that?
And his argument, basically, is that we've had droughts that have had this much impact in the past.
So basically, if you're having a 10% hit on wheat, that's not that different than Than hits we've had in the past for various natural reasons.
So, I mean, imagine if we had droughts at the same time as the Ukraine thing.
It would be twice as bad, of course.
But, yeah, it looks like the price of wheat will go up.
But there also will be substitutes.
And I ask you this.
Do we even need wheat?
Is wheat even...
Like, I'm not even sure people need any of it, do they?
I wonder if one of the changes will be that we'll come up with a substitute that's just better.
I mean, a lot of us, we can't live without bread.
I know what you mean. Like, just the pleasure of eating bread is kind of awesome.
But... Yeah, I mean, rice is the obvious replacement.
Quinoa... I mean, quinoa is even more obvious.
Now, nothing's going to happen.
There's nothing you can do in America that would be fast enough to make a difference.
So, apparently, the idea of, you know, quickly growing more wheat in America, so we'll have some next year, that doesn't really hold up.
It's not really practical in sort of a one-year period.
Chickpeas. I don't know.
Everything that I see has a potential upside.
I guess I'm feeling optimistic.
But I think you could argue that wheat is one of the biggest health problems in the world.
Alright, am I going to get demonetized for saying that?
Let me soften that so I don't get demonetized.
Is the world healthier or less healthy without wheat?
Now, it might be that the problem is that that's all the low-income poor people can afford, so you just have to have it.
Maybe. But it seems to me that aren't we better off without wheat?
I don't know. Are we?
I do eat big bagels, you're right.
But at least I have some egg in them.
What bullshit is this, somebody says.
All right. Well, that's happening.
I saw a picture of Trump that was on Twitter, and I had to ask if it was a fake picture, because he looked 50 years old.
Now, the things that look obviously to have changed are it looks like he's lost weight, but his face, instead of being wrinkly, It actually looks younger.
So I'm going to say he may have lost weight, but he may have done a little bit of work on his face, probably not surgery, but I think that, yeah, not Botox, but I think, can't you put in fillers and stuff?
Maybe fillers?
I don't know all the technology, but I doubt it was a facelift.
I feel like we would have known that.
He couldn't hide that, could he?
Anyway, it looks like he even changed his haircut a little bit, so it looks a little bit more like other people's haircuts.
So, yeah, the lighting was good.
I don't know, maybe photoshopped a little bit.
But I'd heard from people who have talked to him recently that he looks great.
Has anybody had the same experience?
Does anybody know anybody who has seen him recently and said he looks great?
Besides losing weight.
Yeah. Maybe less stress, yeah.
Less stress. It could be a laser treatment.
It doesn't have to be fillers. Yeah, it could be that.
But he also might be aging backwards.
We cannot eliminate that possibility.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I believe I've delivered the best entertainment that you didn't pay for, although some of you did.
And I'm pretty sure we've solved almost all of the problems.
If there's anything I missed, let me know.
I'm going to be working on a micro-lesson on how to deliver a compliment without sounding creepy.
So only the subscribers on Locals will see that.
Along with the 200 plus other micro-lessons that will change your life.
By the way, if you learn to give a sincere compliment that doesn't sound weird, it's a really powerful power.
It's a powerful power.
That's the best kind of power to have.
The powerful kind. Are you still working on my book?
Yes, I am. So, mostly I'm at the phase of compiling what each of the chapters will be.
And then, mostly over the summer, I'm going to be pounding out the chapters, I think.
That's right, the micro-lessons are worth the cost alone.
Effective way to fix social anxieties.
The Dale Carnegie course.
Yeah, Dale Carnegie teaches you how to talk to strangers.
Now, you have to get the right course.
They have a number of courses, so you'd have to ask which one it is.
They changed the titles. But, oh, somebody says Toastmasters, too, yeah.
So basically, the way you can fix social anxiety is by training.
So it turns out it's a learnable skill, far more learnable than a lot of things.
There are lots of things that you can't really change about yourself.
But your skill at dealing with complete strangers and talking to them and stuff like that, that is completely skill-based.
