Episode 1796 Scott Adams: What To Do With All Of The Dangerous Teens
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
5 Slow moving current disasters
Only 15% of spouses catch COVID?
Positive indicators recession may have peaked
Tucker's take on weird shooter guys
Young males, on drugs with no criminal record yet
The risk takers who migrate to America
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Good morning everybody and welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams and it's going to be a barn burner today.
So, protect your barn.
If you don't have a barn, you probably won't even notice the difference.
It will be the highlight of civilization no matter what.
And would you like to take it up an even higher level?
Yes, you would. And don't worry that some of my sentences leave out key words.
When I realize I've left down a word in my sentence, I just keep going.
Hope you don't notice. Yes, we're going to talk about Tucker Carlson.
But first, all we need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chelsea, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind, filling with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine of the day.
It's the thing that makes everything feel better.
It's called the Simultaneous Step.
Go! Ha!
Just in. The European Parliament backs listing nuclear energy as green.
Booyay! Well, the winning just keeps on coming.
It's one win after another.
I feel like some good stuff's about to happen.
I do. And today I'm going to make you feel good...
About the good stuff that's going to happen.
And it all revolves around a little thing I like to call the Adam's Law of slow-moving disasters.
Because, as you know, we're in the middle of five...
I don't know, I'd have to count them up.
Are we in the middle of five slow-moving disasters at the same time?
We are, aren't we? You know, the pandemic was a fast disaster.
That really caught us off guard.
But the slow ones...
So we've got the economy, maybe recession, maybe inflation.
We've got a supply chain problem.
Is it going to be nuclear war?
I don't know. We've got a lot of problems, but we'll get through them.
All right. Here is the biggest non-surprise in the world.
Why is it... That medical science always follows the direction of greatest profitability for people who work in the medical sciences community.
Is that a coincidence?
That no matter when they do a study, the result will always be that somebody gets to make more money, if it's true.
Here's one. Apparently, the more you get COVID, the worse your permanent problems are.
So the so-called long COVID. So if you get this Omicron once, some number of people get long-term, long COVID problems.
But if the same person gets COVID twice, apparently, statistically, they're more likely to have long-term problems.
And if they get it three times, Even more than twice.
So, since you've got the two levels that you can measure, it seems kind of convincing, right?
At each new infection, your long-term problems increase, and that's what the study says.
So, does that show you that the more you get Omicron, the more problems you have?
Is that what they proved? If you hear that, that's the result.
Is that what they proved? Well, here's the question.
Why is it that something like, and maybe this number has changed, 15% of spouses gave it to their spouse?
Like 1-5?
Now, it might be 25%, but it's the same point.
How do you not give Omicron to your spouse?
I mean, really, if you're most infectious before you know you have symptoms...
Doesn't every spouse get it?
I mean, who spends so much time away from their spouse that they can't give them COVID? I mean, does anybody...
It's hard to imagine.
I would think that every household, everybody would get it.
But it didn't happen.
It didn't even come close to that.
So there's some gigantic variable about the pandemic and about COVID that we still don't understand, right?
And the one we don't understand is bigger than all the ones we do.
Right? The things we understand about COVID, if you put them all together, everything we understand, is still smaller than the thing we don't understand, which is, why doesn't the spouse get it?
That's the biggest question.
We don't have a fucking clue.
Here's my guess.
So this is my non-medical, non-scientist, non-reliable guess.
So I wouldn't put too much...
Into this. It's less than a hypothesis, but it goes like this.
And of course, it springs from the worst possible place, my personal anecdotal experience.
So let me make a global scientific proclamation that affects all of you, all seven billion of you, based on my one experience.
It goes like this. I got COVID. The one time I was completely aware that my immunity was very low.
In other words, it was a period where I was traveling, I went to Hawaii, and I was really sleepless because the time changed and stuff.
And I was completely aware that my ability to fight off anything was real down.
Now wouldn't that explain everything?
Wouldn't it? Everything that's still a mystery Would be explained by just that one fact, that you can't get it unless your immune system's been whacked.
Right? Because that would explain how one spouse could get it, because they had a bad week, lost some sleep, whatever, stress, and the other one didn't.
Now, some of you are saying vitamin D, and there's definitely a correlation, but not the correlation that you think.
There are two correlations.
One is that people who are naturally unhealthy also have low vitamin D. So if you find that only the people with low vitamin D get it, you might not be finding out something about vitamin D. You have to be careful about that one.
You might be finding out that vitamin D is just a signal for somebody who, in general, has a low immunity.
So I feel like low immunity on any given day is what gives you COVID. I don't know.
That's just based on one anecdotal experience and then generalizing it to the world.
The only reason I would hang anything on that is that it answers all the questions.
Everything that's still a mystery would be answered by that one thing.
If your immunity is good, you just don't get it.
That's it. There may be lots of other reasons for that, but just a guess.
I also will take you back to why is it that every study is good for somebody's income, but not yours?
Suppose it's true that every time you get a Omicron infection, it makes your long-term prognosis worse.
Who would make money from that, huh?
Could it be whoever's coming up with the next vaccination for this next Omicron strain?
Yes. There is an entity that will make billions of dollars if this is true.
Because if it's not true, people are going to treat it like the common cold and they're not going to get vaccinated.
But if it's true that you're going to deal with a lot more than a few days of isolation and some aches and pains, then you'd better get that vaccination, huh?
So, big coincidence.
There was a major study that somehow was compatible and agreed with the entities that would make the most money if it were true.
Huh. Now, it doesn't mean it's not true.
It just means you can't trust it whatsoever.
It doesn't mean it's not true.
It means it's not credible.
Anytime something coincidentally lines up with exactly where you would have guessed before they did the study, huh, I wonder where this will end up, this study.
Well, who would make the most money under what situation?
Well, the most money would be made by the pharmaceutical companies if it turns out that the more you get Omicron, the worse off you are, given that we know they can come up with some kind of bullshit vaccine for it.
So, there you go.
You could have predicted the end of that study without any scientific background whatsoever.
Because just follow the money.
It just keeps working. I'll challenge you.
Find me a place that didn't work recently.
Give me an obvious case, something we've all heard of, some headline situation, in which knowing who made money didn't work and didn't explain the situation.
You can't find it.
Sometimes it's coincidence, maybe, but it's a pretty big one.
It's a pretty big one. Well, there's news that Joe Rogan said that he doesn't want to interview Trump because he doesn't want to help him get elected.
He says directly he's not a Trump supporter and don't want to help him by having him on the show, basically.
Now, how important is that?
How important is it if Joe Rogan does not want Trump to run for president?
Now, he did indicate that if it came down to Trump versus Biden, that Biden is basically brain-dead, and then it gets complicated.
But if I interpret Rogan correctly, he doesn't want Trump to even be in the race.
But if he were in the race, well, then the decision gets complicated.
So he didn't really tell you what he would do if he were in the race.
How much difference do you think it makes that Joe Rogan is not supporting Trump?
In the comments, you tell me.
You know, we've made a big deal that Joe Rogan is sort of a kingmaker, you know, he can make or break stories.
A lot of you say none.
But some say a little.
Some say a lot.
He supported Bernie last time.
So actually, most people are thinking none.
Interesting. So have we decided that Joe Rogan is like the master of media, which he sort of is at this point, but yet he's not a kingmaker?
Are you telling me that Joe Rogan has all this influence, like the biggest podcast, everybody talks about him, and all we care about is what did his guest or what did he say about a topic?
And yet all of that, all that attention we give him and you tell him it would make no difference to the election?
It's a bold, that's sort of a bold opinion.
You might be right, by the way.
I'm not going to disagree with you.
You might be right. You might be right.
All right, let me throw in a little more.
Let's say... That Mike Cernovich also is anti-Trump.
Now, so far, that seems to be his position.
I hate to characterize anybody who's that smart, because you always get it wrong.
You know, there's always a nuance you might miss.
But my understanding is that Mike Cernovich would not be supporting Trump.
Now, again, I don't know what that means if Trump gets the nomination.
I'm not sure what that does to anybody's opinion.
Might change it. I don't know.
Do you think that Cernovich's opinion would change an election?
Suppose you added Cernovich and Rogan together.
Do you think that the two of them would be persuasive enough to keep Trump out of the election?
Almost all say no.
Almost all say no.
All right, I'm going to add a third persuader.
Do you have a suggestion?
Who would be the third person to add to this?
If those two together don't make a difference, all right, well, throw me in the mix.
It is my opinion that Trump should not run for re-election.
That's my opinion. Have I ever said that directly?
Give me a fact check.
Have I ever said that directly?
That's my opinion.
Trump should not run.
Okay, I guess I have. Now, my opinion is really based on age and based on...
We don't need a repeat of the trouble that we got last time.
And the fact that there's an alternative.
If you could not get Trump-like effectiveness in any other way, then I'd say, well, darn it, you have to consider it.
Well, you can, right?
The Republicans now have formed a, let's say, a character, if you will, that is so influenced by Trump, it's sort of Trump's party at this point.
DeSantis would always be looked at as a, let's say, a Trump-influenced person.
I mean, they might say worse than that, but he's at least Trump-influenced.
You know, he learned what works and what doesn't from watching Trump, and he did it well.
So I would say the age alone, I'm going to be consistent.
I said that the last election, I said neither of them should be running.
Does anybody remember me saying that?
Because of age. It has nothing to do with policies or even competency.
It has nothing to do with the competency when they're running.
The problem is what happens if they get in office and things go downhill quickly.
That's your risk. So I never support a president that age, period.
So I'm going to be consistent.
I'm never going to support a candidate that age.
But if that's all you have, like everybody else, I'm going to have to pick the lesser evil, so I might be in that situation too.
So in my opinion, Trump has this gigantic, gigantic market opportunity to become the king of political commentary.
I mean, he could just walk right into it.
And he would be the biggest in the business on day one, I think, because he would be the best, honestly.
It's not just because he's Trump.
He could do it better than anybody can do it.
So that has to be considered.
Because I think he would be attracted to things...
There would be high attention, high profitability, could maybe rehabilitate some of his brand for his business, etc.
It's the biggest opportunity I've ever seen anybody ever have, really.
It'd be hard to think of anybody in the world who has a bigger chance for something that's just perfectly in their strike zone, and all they have to do is say yes, basically.
So I think he could have even more power as a political opinion maker than he even would as president.
Because as president, all day long, all he has to do is fight off attacks and fake news.
But if he's the one making the news, he gets to be king.
So if I were Trump, I would take the promotion.
But he hates to lose, so maybe just winning again is all that matters.
Could be. You know, it's the be careful what you wish for situation with Trump.
When you say to yourself, I want somebody who's a fighter and never gives up, and then you got one, well, what are you going to do about it?
You got what you asked for.
If you get somebody who's a fighter and never gives up, and you're still bitching because he's complaining about the 2020 election, what the hell did you think you were electing?
Who did you think you were voting for?
Did you think you were voting for the give up guy?
He doesn't give up.
That's like the most important thing you have to know.
If you don't understand that one thing, he's not going to stop.
He's not going to stop.
Then you don't know who you voted for.
All right. Want some good news?
CNN had a long story about how close we are to recession, etc.
But toward the end, in a very helpful way, they compiled a number of things that are trending right.
Now, I'm not sure if you knew this, because good news doesn't break through, but I'm going to give you some economic good news that falls perfectly within the category of the Adam's Law of slow-moving disasters.
And the rule is that if a disaster is obvious and everybody sees it coming, it's like, oh my God, everybody can see this coming, like a recession, that humans are really, really good at adjusting.
But they just need time. So time is the only variable.
It doesn't matter how big the problem is.
If you give us enough time, we adjust.
That's who we are. So my prediction is, every time you see one of these, all you have to do is look at the time.
Say, okay, we have a year?
Yeah, we can do a lot of stuff in a year.
Pandemic, we didn't have a year.
Just bam, it was there, and what the hell are you going to do?
So that's the bad one.
The good ones, everybody sees coming.
Like the year 2000 bug.
We saw it coming for a few years.
It looked dangerous, and we took care of it.
That's the way it goes with humans.
All right, so here's more of that.
So this is just a bunch of things that are going in the right direction.
The inflation rate implied by TIPS, it's a type of treasury security thing, basically an investment vehicle, issued by the U.S. government over the next five years has fallen from 3.1% to 2.6% in the last month.
Down from a peak of 3.7.
Now, that's an implied inflation rate.
So, in other words, investors are buying this type of security, type of investment, but in order for them to be smartly buying it, in other words, the professionals who know the most about this sort of thing, will tell you that if they're buying this investment at this rate, it means that there's an implied decrease in inflation coming.
That's big. That's a pretty big change, because look at this.
It went from 3.1% to 2.6.
Now remember, you should look at the percentage change of 3.1 to 2.6, which is a pretty big percentage.
You know, it's tiny in the absolute, but only percentage matters for this conversation, right?
So that's a big drop in implied inflation.
So this is indicating that inflation may have peaked.
What would be the biggest problem with inflation?
What would be the story that would say, oh, we're dead, versus the story that says, oh, it looks like we're okay.
All that matters is it peaks.
That's it. There's one thing you need to know.
Did we reach the top?
Or is it still going up?
If it's still going up, you might be fucked.
If it peaked, and this is a pretty strong indicator, it's not confirming, but it's a strong indicator it peaked.
We may have actually gotten top of it.
Now, it still takes a lot of work to ride that inflation wave until you get it down to the beach level.
But we'll talk about the other stuff, okay?
There's new supply chain data from the New York Fed indicates that supply bottlenecks are easing.
Supply bottlenecks, according to one important indicator.
Again, it's just one indicator.
The supply chain problems are easing.
Now, this is exactly what the Adams Law of Slow-Miving Disasters would predict.
It would predict that there would be a lot of adjusting.
And that that adjusting would cause short-term inflation.
Here's what I mean. I'd like to buy some stuff to build something, so I want some raw materials.
But the raw materials I can't get because there's a supply chain problem.
So what's the first thing I do?
The first thing I do is I look for more expensive alternatives because it's my only choice.
So inflation goes up because my demand for those alternatives drives other people looking for the same alternatives.
So the price of the alternatives goes up in the short run because it's your only choice.
And then the quality of the product might go down a little because you don't like that substitute.
But in the long run, you didn't run out of stuff because you adjusted to other materials.
Your price went up but only in the short run because in the long run, other producers will say, wow, look at how much they're selling that stuff for.
So we'll make some too.
So the free market, if you see that inflation has peaked, it should be about the same time That your supply chain problems are easing.
You get that they're related, right?
The supply chain is causing prices to go up because people are all searching for the same alternatives.
But if you've seen that inflation has already peaked, it might be telling you, and this is compatible, that the supply chain problem may have peaked.
Those two things you would expect to peak around the same time, within the same year or so, right?
Now, somebody says supply is also reduced.
So far, that hasn't really happened.
That's been the surprise. The consumer has been strong all the way through and is expected to stay strong, which is sort of unusual.
You know, normally you expect the problem is there's not enough demand, but apparently there's plenty of demand, which is weird.
So there's plenty of demand, and as soon as the supply can fit it, then the prices should start going down, right?
Here's some more good news.
U.S. inflation expectations, as per the St.
Louis Federal Reserve, have dropped to their lowest levels in the early year.
So this is expectations.
So expectations do drive the reality, right?
Because people will raise their own prices if they think, well, this is just the way it's going to be.
I guess I've got to do what everybody else is doing.
But they won't necessarily raise their prices if they think that in a few months everything's going to come back down to where it was.
Because then they don't want to have to go through the raise the price, lower the price sort of thing.
So what people expect about inflation probably does matter, and that's looking good.
All right, here's another one. In June, the University of Michigan survey of consumer long-term inflation expectations fell from 3.3 to 3.1.
Not a big percentage or absolute number, but it could indicate it peaked.
The thing you care about, it's not going up.
Listening to Scott talk about economics is painful.
That's how economics is.
Is there a fun way to talk about it?
And oil prices are down since June 8th, 10%.
But again, that's not a big drop, but it might be a peak.
So some of our most important indicators about supply and about inflation look like the miracle of the free markets have done exactly what they were supposed to do.
In fact, that inflation should be signaling to you that people are adjusting the supply chain.
It's not the only thing in the inflation number, of course.
But you're actually seeing good news being sold as bad news.
If people can charge more and give you an alternative, then you're not in that much trouble.
But if you couldn't get an alternative at any price, you're in a lot of trouble.
So apparently we were in less trouble than we thought because people were more clever about alternatives.
Well, Tucker Carlson's making news, talking about that weirdo shooter guy.
I think I'll just call him the weirdo shooter guy.
I don't want to use his name.
In highlands, don't want to give him too much attention.
All right. But Tucker's take on this is that they're angry, that there are young men who are angry, and this is Tucker's take, all right?
So I'm not giving you my opinion.
It's just notable because Tucker is saying it.
And when I get to the end of what Tucker is saying here, you might stand up and applaud Tucker Carlson even if you hate him.
That's a strong claim.
I would say even if you're a Democrat, when I tell you what Tucker Carlson said last night, you might stand up from your actual chair and applaud him for being a patriot.
Big claim, because people don't like Tucker if they're on the right.
That's my claim, that even the Democrat will stand up and applaud him when I tell you what he said.
All right, so he starts out with some stuff that maybe you wouldn't agree with.
We're going to build into the part you do agree with.
And he says, talking about the young man, he says, and of course they're angry.
They know that their lives will not be better than their parents.
They'll be worse. That's all but guaranteed.
They know that. They're not that stupid.
And yet the authorities in their lives, mostly women, here's where Tucker gets provocative, he says, and yet the authorities in their lives, mostly women, Never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege.
You're male. You're privileged.
He says, imagine that.
Try to imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that.
So a lot of young men in America are going nuts.
Are you surprised? And then he went out to list several mass shooters who had been prescribed antidepressants.
Alright, so his first point is that there's something about the, let's say, female control of society.
This would be his take, not mine.
Something about the female control of society, which is telling these young men that not only are their lives absolutely shit, but they should have some of that removed.
Whatever's left should be removed because of their privilege.
Yeah, your life is absolutely garbage, but it's still a little too good.
You're a little too privileged.
Imagine what that does to your brain.
It is a good point.
I don't know that that has anything to do with a shooting.
Do you? So I think connecting his observation that women are having...
You know, extra control in society lately, and that men are feeling a certain way.
That's probably true-ish for some number of people.
But I don't know that it really explains why they become shooters.
But let me extend that thought a little bit with my own thought.
Is it part of the general degrading of the value of men?
Is it part of the general degrading of the value of men?
And are we just seeing a natural outcome of men being called worthless?
Do you know one reason that men are worth less in 2022 than maybe in prior times?
Give me a reason that men, young men in particular, do have less value than at any time in human civilization.
Any time in human civilization, not because of low T, not because of sex, not because of vibrators.
Good guess, though. Yeah, somebody got it right.
There's no wars. We're not sending young men to die.
Unfortunately, war siphons off our most dangerous people into a different activity, and we don't notice it.
I wonder how much of that is going on.
If you were somebody who thought to yourself, you know...
I actually don't mind shooting people, and even if I got shot, I really wouldn't mind that much.
What do you do in a normal time?
Wouldn't you join the military, or maybe you'd get drafted and you'd be in the military?
But I feel like the most violent-thinking young men would have joined the military in a prior time, and you wouldn't notice that they were violent, because that's their job.
And if they got killed, it'd just be a statistic.
But if you take a world where nothing can be siphoned off, none of that energy can be siphoned off, I've got a feeling that you're asking for it.
Now, what happens when the quality of women goes way down?
So you're a man, and you basically live to mate because you're designed that way, even if you're not thinking that way.
You're designed to look for a mate, and it's just your evolutionary drive.
But what if the quality or the availability of women where you live goes to the point where you don't even want them, and they definitely don't want you?
Now, when I say the quality of women went down, I'm not going to direct that just to women.
I think the quality of people in America went way down.
And there is a growing feeling that people who were not born in this country, but came here after they'd been raised a little bit in some other country, are just better people.
Has anybody had that conversation?
Have you ever sat around and said, you know, when I think about the people who suck versus the people who are kind of awesome in my life, it's hard for me to not notice that there's a correlation.
Where I live, there are just tons of people who were born in another country and then their adulthood is here.
And those people tend to be universally kind of awesome.
People born in other countries.
And there's something about the warmth I don't know what it is.
Something about the warmth of the way they deal with people, especially the way they deal with male-female situations, it does seem different.
And I've heard lots of people lately stating an absolute preference for people who are not raised in American culture.
Has anybody else heard that?
Yeah. It is something that's being talked about now, that American culture is ruining not just women, absolutely not just women, it's ruining everybody.
So, Tucker said that.
But that's not the part you're going to applaud him for.
In fact, you might not even like that.
The part you're going to applaud him for is that he went after The news business being supported by pharmaceutical companies.
Now, he alleges that we should be worried...
No, he doesn't allege it.
He tells us directly that we should be concerned about the number of...
Is it SSRIs?
No, SSRIs.
What is it, the antidepressants?
So apparently the antidepressant, SSRIs, the antidepressant prescriptions are up 3,000% at the same time that this violence is up.
So do you think it's a coincidence that That drug prescriptions and violence are both going up.
Now the suggestion would be that maybe the drug companies might have something to do with the increase in violence.
I would argue that that is not clear from the data.
Rather, there are two possibilities that the data suggests.
One is that people are being driven crazy by something else.
And so more of them need drugs, but it's not the drugs that are making them crazy or violent.
It's just there's more craziness, and this is really all we have to deal with it, is drugs.
So, I'm not sure I buy the...
I don't buy the correlation as being causation, but it could be.
It could be. Now, here's the part where you need to stand up and applaud Tucker Carlson.
He went directly at the networks for using pharmaceutical companies as their main backers for commercials.
Now, am I wrong that Fox News also has lots of pharmaceutical advertisements?
Am I imagining that?
Now, I don't think that Tucker Carlson's show necessarily does.
Because I feel like I always see MyPillow and Patriot This.
You see all the weird commercials that don't run anywhere else on Fox News.
But I believe that all the networks are running pharmaceutical commercials.
Did the biggest name in news opinion just go on the news and tell you that the whole system is broken because his own business is funded by the pharmaceutical industries?
He just did that.
Tucker Carlson just went on the air and said his own industry is completely non-credible and the most important problems.
His own industry. And really, he didn't name Fox News, but did he need to?
Because the indication is that if you take advertisements from pharmaceutical companies, you're not reporting the truth.
That was the implication.
That if you take money from that source, you literally are going to lie about the news.
And somebody who knows way more about the news than you do, who knows more about how the news works?
Tucker Carlson or you?
Tucker Carlson knows more about that.
Say what you will about him.
He's an expert on the news business, right?
You're not. I'm close.
I mean, I know more than most of you about the news business, but I don't know what he knows.
Whatever the hell Tucker Carlson knows is a lot more than you know.
And if he's sounding the alarm, and he's basically telling you the news is fake because it's altered by the advertising, I think you've got to stand up and give that a hand.
No matter what you think of Tucker Carlson's other opinions.
And by the way, I don't agree with his other opinions in a number of places.
So I'm not going to tell you I'm going to agree with this or give him a standing ovation because Tucker is awesome.
He is probably the most gifted person doing his job at the moment.
I don't think anybody's doing what he does better than he does it.
But this is a service to the country.
Let me ask you this. Follow the money.
Tucker Carlson just spoke out against pharmaceutical companies that fund his industry.
Was he following the money?
Do you think that was a clever play to somehow make more money because it'll become more popular because he said something you like?
I don't think this is good for him.
I do not believe that there's any way Tucker Carlson could be anything but hurt By talking out against advertisements from pharmaceutical companies.
It seems to me that you just watched a rare example of somebody who didn't follow the money.
And I'm trying to think of a second reason that he would do that.
Besides, he actually wanted to make something better.
Can you? Give me a second hypothesis for why he did that.
Credibility, somebody says.
Credibility. That's always an important variable.
I'll give you that one. Job property at CNN? No.
Altruism? Kill the competition?
No, because Fox News, I'm pretty sure, takes pharmaceutical advertisements.
Plans to run for president?
No. I don't see any indication of that.
Here's my hypothesis.
We're not mind readers, right?
We're not mind readers. But when you see somebody conspicuously ignore following the money, he's actually running away from the money.
Now, he can afford it, we assume, like he's not going to be poor.
But people don't do that, no matter how much money they have.
They don't run away from money.
And he just, I think he's just doing it.
Jumping off a sinking ship.
No, Fox is killing it.
Fox is doing great. Scott is talking like a Canadian.
So I'm going to give Tucker a standing ovation for this one thing.
Just calling out the corrupt situation there.
Standing ovation. Tucker Carlson for calling out the pharmaceutical companies.
Thank you. And by the way, this is actually standing out of respect.
That's not even just showboating.
That's actual respect.
Because if other people in this country could have the balls to do what he just did, well, maybe we'd be in better shape.
Wouldn't you love to see somebody on CNN just say, you know...
Like, we've been saying X and Y, but I've just got to tell you the truth.
And just, like, come out with the truth.
Like this. The world would be a better place.
All right. I'm going to take a radical turn.
I think I've made you all feel positive now.
Don't you all feel positive?
All right. I'm going to tell you the biggest problem, one of the biggest problems that we have, For young people in America, social problems.
And the shooting is a perfect example of the dangerous young men.
Now, they're also dangerous young women, but we're going to concentrate on men just for statistical reasons.
There are two problems that are kind of conflated.
One is the fentanyl drug addiction problem, and the other is the school shootings.
Here's what they have in common.
They're both cases where you can know there's trouble in advance and there's nothing you can do about it.
So you can find that this, let's say, a teen is saying that they're going to do something dangerous.
You send the police, they take away the guns, he gets the new ones.
There's nothing you can do about it.
The Highland situation is really, really good evidence That we don't have any systems in place that could deal with that specific kind of situation.
A dangerous young male who hasn't yet broken a law.
That's the important part.
A dangerous young male who's clearly dangerous but has not yet broken a law.
There's nothing you can do. Now here's another one.
Suppose your teen, and I'm going to say male between 14 and 19, just so you can have a visual of this.
Male between 14 and 19, and they get on drugs.
What do you do? What do you do?
You've got a teenager on drugs.
What do you do? Which program do you access?
Which government program?
Somebody says rehab. So you've got your rehabs, right?
Does rehab work?
Sometimes. Hardly ever.
Hardly ever. Does it work for a teenager?
Let me give you...
My impression of my conversation with my stepson before he went into rehab several times.
So we tried to rehab several times.
Here's how the conversation would go.
Alright, you know that you can never do another drug of any kind again, right?
Because you are literally an addict.
And you know, rule number one, there's no such thing as a little bit of drugs for an addict.
You know, you know you have to be completely clean of all drugs, I'd say to him.
And he'd say, yes, I do know that.
I completely understand that.
And that's why when I'm out of rehab, all I'm going to do is maybe a few beers, a little bit of pot.
That's all I'm going to do. I'd say, I feel like you didn't hear a word I just said.
Really, really zero is the only thing that works.
One percent is a complete failure.
Your life is over. You're dead.
Have one beer, you're probably fucking dead.
You get that, right? And he'd say, I totally get that.
I totally get it. I'm an addict.
I can't stay away from drugs.
So I'm just going to have a beer or two with my friends.
And I'd be like, I don't know what's happening.
I don't even understand what's happening here.
And he would look at me and just say, no, there is no way in the world after rehab I will not do more drugs than alcohol.
And I would say, why am I spending money on this?
And he would say, I can't imagine a life where I could enjoy my social life without drugs and alcohol.
I don't have any way to even imagine it.
And he said, there isn't any way I'm even going to try it.
Couldn't possibly work.
And so, sure enough, he got out of rehab, went immediately back to using, and now he's dead.
And so, I get a lot of helpful advice from other adults.
And the helpful advice I'll get is all the things I could have done differently.
But let me tell you, there's nothing you can do.
There's nothing you can do.
Somebody says, apply that to yourself, Scott.
No, I'm not an addict.
So you can't make a comparison between somebody who doesn't have an addictive personality and someone who does.
Right? So I tend to be addicted to doing live streams and exercises and stuff like that.
So I just did a long Twitter thread in which I tried to give people some tough reality, which is that these people cannot be addressed with any program or any technique.
There's no tough love.
There's no rehab, there's no program, there's no therapist, there's no law, there's no court system.
A lot of people will tell me, Scott, why don't you just have the people who come in, they'll kidnap your teen at night, you know, with your permission, and they'll take them to their secret facility and make them ride horses and act like cowboys for a year, and then when they come back, they'll be all fixed.
Have you all heard about that?
That program where you hire somebody to come in and basically kidnap your kid, take them sometimes to another state, like to some rural place, and they'll make them do outdoorsy things until they're right.
All right, let me tell you what you need to know about that program.
Here's the most important thing you need to know about that program.
And by the way, I'm going to swear.
So there's some cursing coming.
Because it's the only way I can answer this question.
So that program where they capture your teen and take them to some place where they can fix them for their drug problems, it doesn't fucking exist.
It doesn't fucking exist.
I don't know if it's ever existed.
But in California, there is no such thing.
It's completely illegal.
If it existed, it would have to be shut down tomorrow.
All of your helpful fucking suggestions about Scott, why don't you just give him a little tough love, have him taken to that special place.
That's like when your dog fucking dies and you say he went to the farm.
It doesn't exist.
There's no farm where your old dog goes to live forever.
Your dog is fucking dead.
And there's nothing you can do when your kid is on drugs.
There's no program.
There's no therapist. There's no rehab.
There's no government program.
There's nothing to protect you in your own fucking home.
That kid is a danger to the parents.
Like a real danger.
They can't do anything. They can't even kick the kid out of the house.
Do you know why? It's illegal.
It's a minor. You can't even kick your own kid out of the house.
There's nothing you can do.
It's like somebody saying, well, here's this murderous rapist, and the law says they have to live in your house.
What? Yeah, yeah, it's just the law.
The law says so. The law says you have to live with a murderous rapist.
So, yeah. So deal with it.
Now, if your kid, they're not murderous rapists.
They might be murderous. But if you put a 14-year-old male addict in your household, it's ripping the house apart.
Guaranteed. Your family is ripped apart.
And there isn't a fucking thing you can do about it.
I've looked everywhere.
I have resources.
I'm smart. My ex was very smart, very capable, very capable, looked everywhere, did everything, tried everything.
There's nothing to help.
And you're going to say, well, maybe that's about your son or your stepson.
No. No.
It's everybody in this situation has the same conversation.
All the parents who are having this are having the same conversation.
There's no help.
None. Nothing.
Nothing you could do. And if you don't get that, you don't understand anything about the situation.
There is nothing.
Nothing. There's nothing that might help.
Nothing that could help.
There's nothing to even fucking try.
There's nothing to even try.
Yeah, this isn't the feel-good part.
I'll tell you what I would do.
And this is kind of tough.
I think the people who can't be fixed have to be separated from society, but not in jail necessarily, because they haven't necessarily done a crime yet.
Well, one that they've been caught for.
So I think that we need to find some camping ground somewhere and just say, look, you don't have to get off drugs, but you can't live with other people.
You don't have to get off drugs, but you can't be around other people, except other people like you.
So we're going to put you in this place where we can make sure no drugs get in, but it's not jail.
There's some kind of a life.
You might be living in a tent, but a nice one.
You're not suffering. And just make them live in the forest with other people who can't live in society.
They have to be separated from the rest of us.
They have to be separated physically from the rest of us.
And I don't think there's another way to go.
If you do, I'd sure like to hear it.
But I think they have to be separated.
And as soon as you saw this kid doing this violent stuff, I think you've just got to put him with the other people and say, all right, this is your new life.
Unfortunately, there should be some way to recover and get out of there.
All right, here's my tip for the day that will save some lives.
I like doing this if you have enough viewers.
If you have enough viewers, these little tips will be meaningless to most of you, but I could actually probably save a life right now.
So I'm going to do it. So I'm going to give you a tip that might save a life.
Here it comes. Did you know?
You probably knew that fentanyl is the most dangerous of the drugs.
But did you know that the fentanyl could be inside heroin, cocaine, molly, meth, and counterfeit pills like OxyContin, Adderall, and Xanax?
Basically, if it's a powder or a pill, and it's 2022, it probably has fentanyl in it.
And you don't know how much.
Now, that knowledge might keep one of you alive.
Because one of you probably has somebody in your life who's taken some pills and doesn't know that it's just Russian roulette.
You don't know which one has fentanyl in it or too much in it.
So just knowing that it's in all the drugs, if it's a powder or a pill, it's probably fentanyl.
Probably fentanyl. Just know that.
That simple knowledge might help somebody stay alive.
That is my positive, upbeat thought.
And I'll give you one other thought that is upbeat on the economy.
What is Warren Buffett's primary investment advice?
Warren Buffet has lots of advice, but there's one piece of investment advice that sits above everything else.
No, it's not hold. It's not buy and hold.
You'd think so, but it's not buy and hold.
He does talk about diversification, yes.
But there's one thing he said, buy railroads, that's funny, because it's true.
Natural monopoly is okay.
So he has lots of investment rules, but there's one that sits above all of them.
And it goes like this.
Don't bet against the American economy.
That's the number one rule.
And he hasn't been wrong yet.
From the time that Warren Buffett was born to today, his advice never been against the American economy.
If you had simply done that and nothing else, you would have been rich too.
It's the best advice anybody ever gave.
And the reason that you don't bet against the American economy is because we have a degree of freedom and flexibility that just apparently doesn't exist anywhere else.
Now, we do have our own problems.
We're getting a little ossified and too many rules and regulations, and we're so inside each other's pants that we can't get anything done lately.
But we're still America.
We're still America.
You can throw a lot of problems on top of us.
And I'm sorry if people from other countries are watching this, of course.
This sounds a little too, I don't know, jingoistic or whatever word you want to put on it.
But betting against America has just been a losing proposition forever.
And I also think that it will be a losing proposition for a long time.
It's not because of our system.
It's because there's something about Americans, and it's also something about the immigrant community who comes here, is that they're risk-takers and they're problem-solvers.
Am I right? We have the biggest collection, I would say the best, the best collection of problem-solvers.
Because there's an entry test to get into the United States.
Did you know there's an entry exam?
Everybody who gets to the United States, almost everybody who gets here from another country, they had to pass a test.
The test was, can you go into a situation where you don't know what it looks like and make it work?
Can you leave your bad situation, take a huge risk to come to another country, maybe not even knowing the language?
Can you come to this country not knowing the language, having nothing except the address of a relative you can stay with for a while?
That's all you have. You'll trade everything for that.
We have a country built by those people, right?
And we keep renewing it with more of those people.
And we keep looking at the wrong variable.
The variable we, you know, because we're all trained to look at race.
So you've got all the, you know, the racists who are looking at immigration and saying, wait, you know, white people built all this cool stuff, but then you're letting all these brown people in the country to replace us, say, the right-wing racist types, and that's going to go bad.
But here's the counter to that.
What do all of the immigrants have in common all the way back to the colonies?
They were all the risk-takers.
They were all the ones who were confident enough in their own abilities that they could jump into a really murky situation and they thought they could make it work.
And then they did.
We have accidentally attracted all the people who can pass that test.
And we've left behind all the people who couldn't pass that test.
The people who said, well, maybe I'll just do tomorrow what I did today.
Right? The people who stayed, that's who's running those other countries.
The people who had all of the qualities it takes to pack up your shit and move to the other side of the country, the other side of the world, when you don't even know the language and you've got like two cents in your pocket.
Do you want to get in a war with people who are comprised of those people?
Good luck. If you're going to get in any kind of a competition, and the only thing you know is that there's one country where they all passed that same test.
They had to do something super ballsy that was hard, and they all made it work.
And you're going to fight against a country that's the people who are left behind, who didn't have that quality.
Who's going to win? The colonists, right?
Because they've got balls, men and women, we'll make this non-sexual.
They've got balls that are bigger than the other countries.
Just by luck, because our system sort of accidentally created this test...
Alright, so that's the good news.
There is something special about the American character, and we always overlook it.
Because we're all hung up on race, and we're hung up on economics, and we're looking at crime.
Those are all important. They're all variables, right?
It's all in the mix. But the one thing we ignore is the important part.
There's something special about somebody who would take on that kind of risk and then make it work.
That is special.
And that is what makes up the American DNA, is people who will do what Tucker Carlson just did.
Tucker Carlson is descended from people who have this characteristic.
You just watched him piss in the face of his employer and the entire system.
Right? Now, I also have an impulse toward trouble and risk-taking that I deal with all the time because I just like to get in trouble.
I like to take risks.
Not physical risks.
I'm not so much about extreme sports.
That doesn't make sense to me.
But I do think that taking a risk to get something done, I can't stop doing it.
So if I could take a risk that would maybe be bad for me but somehow it would work out for you, You, the public.
I'm at that point in my life where I think I'd do it, and that would seem like a reasonable trade-off for me.
And we've got a country like that.
We've got a country that has that in their DNA. All the other stuff, not so important.
Not so important. All the other stuff, you could add it all together, and it would be smaller than the fact that we attract a certain kind of person from every country, every culture, Every gender that you like.
We attract the best ones.
Let me give you another example.
Well, can I do this one?
Yeah, all right.
I haven't thought about this, but I'm going to just throw it out there.
So in the United States, we probably have one of the most progressive views toward the LGBTQ community.
Is that fair to say? It would be among the top countries in terms of acceptance at this point.
Would that be fair? Now, think about how much talent that unlocks.
Think about it. That the LGBT community in the United States can just go do whatever their calling is.
They can be at the top of tech.
They can be at the top of government at this point.
And how much talent did that unlock?
That's the American thing.
That's the thing we do.
We find this talent and we go, you know, why don't we unlock this?
Boom. There it is.
So I think we're really good at unlocking talent and attracting it.
So that's our lasting advantage and it's why the Adams Law of slow-moving disasters continues to prove out.
We're really good at solving problems, and it's not an accident.
We collected the people who are good at solving problems in one place and said, we're going to give you freedom now.
How does that not work?
Put all the people who are good at solving problems in one place and say, you have your freedom now.
That works pretty much every time.
All right. Am I talking you into the golden age?
Yes, I am. Do you know how the golden age happens?
You first imagine it.
Here's a little tip for you.
I guess it's a persuasion tip, but it's also like a super important life tip.
It sounds really simple, but when you see how it affects everything, here's the tip.
People only do what they can imagine.
That's it. Now that doesn't seem like much, does it?
But if you unpack that, and I know people hate that term, it's like a corporate buzzword, let's unpack that.
But it works in this case. Unpack it works when there's like a small thought, but really if you start looking at it, it really affects everything.
So that's what I'm talking about.
You won't do what you can imagine.
Do you know how that's important? Okay, right now I have a number of, as always, I have choices in my life, right?
We all do, at any point.
When I imagine the choices, I imagine the outcomes.
I have some choices that I can imagine the outcome with such specificity, it's almost like it's a movie or a picture I can just look at.
There are other outcomes that seem more conceptual.
Like, I can't picture them, for whatever reason.
The ones I can't picture, they're definitely not going to happen.
Now, that's based on a lifetime of experience.
The stuff I can imagine the clearest seems to happen.
So the first thing is, it's a way to predict what you're going to do.
Sometimes you say to yourself, I don't know what I'm going to choose.
Yes, you do. You do know which one you're going to choose.
You just haven't admitted it yet.
Here's how you know. It's the one you can imagine.
The one you can imagine the most clearly is the one you're going to pick.
So when you say to yourself, I haven't decided yet...
That's not true. You almost always have decided.
And the way you know how you've already decided is it's the one you can imagine the most clearly.
Now, you might want to overrule that.
Like, once you know that that's the rule, you might say, ooh, that has some downsides, so I don't want to do that.
Maybe. But just be aware of it, that the thing you can imagine is what happens.
Now, in the terms of influence, if you want to persuade somebody...
You must first get them to imagine it.
You want them to visualize it, see the characters, have names and dates involved.
You know, really, really imagine the details.
And if you do that, then people can move in that direction.
But people will not move in the direction of things they can't imagine.
I see what you're saying, but it's just sort of a concept.
I don't even know what to do about that.
It's just a concept. So, the indication before was that somebody asked me, am I trying to create a golden age by persuasion?
And the answer is yes.
Yes. And the way I'm doing that is by describing what it would look like.
So the more detail I put on it, the more detail will be in your mind, if you're listening.
And as it starts to come together, the first time you heard it, it's a concept, the golden age.
Okay, sounds good, but what's that mean?
And then I start putting some meat on it.
And then you start imagining it.
You start imagining, let's say, a place that people who have addiction go to.
Or you imagine a time when we're all 3D printing and we don't need manufacturing from China.
You can actually visually imagine 3D printers making stuff on demand, and you can imagine ships coming from China and not coming anymore.
It's physical.
So whenever you can make somebody imagine something specific, the odds of them moving toward it are much greater.
And it's so obvious that this connection exists between imagination and then actual future actions that it makes me wonder if it's the user interface for the simulation.
In other words, maybe you are literally unable to imagine things that are not going to happen.
You can't imagine things that are not going to happen.
Maybe. Wild Bill says, is this guy on drugs?
No, you should see me on drugs.
If you really want some fun.
You should see me when I'm on drugs.
This is without drugs. Imagine that.
All right, well, never bet against the American economy.
That's my final happy thought for you.
And... Successfully persuaded him to imagine going to high school.
Your son isn't going to high school?
That's interesting. A micro lesson on betting?
Yeah, don't do it.
You're better when not on drugs?
So somebody said that I'm better on my live stream when I'm not on drugs.
How many of you would agree with that?
Marijuana is the only drug that I would do.
There's a little disagreement there.
All right, so here's the question.
How would you know? How would you know if I were on drugs or not?
Because there was one time I told you, but I'd also taken the wrong drug.
So I'd accidentally taken indica.
Had I not taken accidentally the wrong drug, do you think you could tell?
Slurred speech, yeah, on the wrong drug.
You speak faster when not on drugs.
Depends on the drug. Yeah, I don't think you would know if it was sativa.
Well, let me ask you this. What percentage...
I'll ask the YouTube people, because I think the locals people know the answer to this.
What percentage of all my live streams...
This is a question for the YouTube viewers.
What percentage of all my live streams do you think I did while under the influence of sativa, marijuana?
What percentage do you think in, say, the last three months?
I'm not going to read the percentages over at locals, because you know too much.
Alright, so on YouTube I'm seeing 75, 25, 10, 26.
See how your numbers are all over the place?
The fact that your numbers are all over the place somewhat suggests that you can't tell the difference.
Now, it could be that some of you can, but I wouldn't know which ones are actually right and which ones are lucky.
You imagine that Uncle Scott cares about you.
Well, I do. I do.
That is literally true.
I do care about you. One million percent.
That is the correct answer. Yeah, I'm a slow speaker generally.
That's why you should always listen to this at 1.75 speed.
All right, well, I don't know what the real answer is myself.
Probably 50%. I think the real answer is probably half, something like that, in the last three months.
But I guarantee that the days that people said, wow, that show was good.
So I get feedback after the show, typically.
And people will either contact me and say, oh, that was really good or not.
And there's no difference in the feedback, no matter what situation I'm in.
No difference. The first time I learned that was when I was trying to decide what comics to submit to become a cartoonist.
And so this was 1988.
I put together 50 sample what became the Dilbert comic and I was going to send them off to the cartoon syndicates to see if they would give me a contract to be a cartoonist.
And I would have my friends over and I'd take these 50 comics I'd made and I'd say, can you help me weed out the good ones from the bad ones?
And then I'll just send in the good ones.
So I had all my friends come in individually so they couldn't be influenced by each other.
And they would sort them into the good or the bad pile.
And what I noticed was there was no correlation.
No correlation at all.
Not even a little bit. There was nobody who thought my best...
There was no comic that everybody thought was a good one.
Some people love this one, some people love that one.
It was completely random.
No correlation whatsoever.
So you know what I did? I sent all 50.
Because I didn't know which side the editor would be on.
Would the editor be on one of the ones who said they love these or hate them?
So I just sent all 50 and got a contract to become a syndicated cartoonist.
You should be aware that people are really, really, really bad at perception.
The editor was impressed by productivity.
I think so. I think so.
Yeah, that was my instinct.
My instinct was that proving you could do a lot of it would be as important as proving you could do some good work.
Because there are cartoonists, I'm not going to name names, But within the cartooning industry, all the cartoonists know who I'm talking about.
There's a specific cartoonist, probably one of the best you've ever seen.
I'm not going to be specific, but let's say definitely one of the top 10 or 15 of all time.
And that cartoonist is really good, but really has trouble meeting deadlines.
And it's just a constant struggle for the publishers and the syndicate.
So yeah, it does matter. It really does matter.
So quality is great, but you've got to be able to produce quantity as well.
I'm only going to tell you what name it isn't, because I don't want you to have that impression.
Stefan Postis is the most productive cartoonist since me.
He does more side jobs.
He's got an entire line of children's books that's a huge success on top of a comic strip that's a huge success.
He's working on a movie.
He does speaking gigs.
He's got all kinds of stuff going on.
All right. No more guessing.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a conclusion of the best thing that's ever happened in the history of civilization.
