Episode 1120 Scott Adams： Double-Nobel Prize Nominations, Antifa Allied With Shitler, NFL Cancels Itself, Mueller Phone Wipes
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Summary
On this day every four years, we remember the lives lost in the attacks of September 11th, 2001, and the lessons we can learn from that day and the days that come after. Today's episode is about how important it is to remember that we are all on the same page.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, go on in, come on in. There's time. Still time to get a good seat up front
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for a smoky, because it's very smoky here in California, coffee with Scott Adams.
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I'm still alive, because I'm not going outdoors. I don't know how long I could survive outdoors.
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I've decided that California now has three seasons. You got your sunny season, your rainy season,
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and your smoky season. Because this, everything being on fire, seems to be now an annual thing.
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So I think that's the way it's going to go. Anyway, I know what you're here for. You're
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here for the simultaneous sip, and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tankard chalice
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or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask of a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the
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thing that makes everything better eventually. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens
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now. Delightful. So it's September 11th, as you know. And you know how sometimes bad news
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turns into accidental good news? You know, the bad part is still there, but there's something good
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that comes out of it, and vice versa. You know, you never know what kind of unintended consequences
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anything has. As horrible as 9-11 was, you know, we're all on the same page on that. As horrible
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as 9-11 was, think about how important it is today. Like, literally today. Think about what
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the United States is going through as it approaches the election. We are in full-out divisive mode.
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And we're running at 100 miles an hour. Divisive, divisive, divisive. You know, it's like two muscle
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cars doing a drag race. It's like vroom, vroom. And it's just two cars, and they're going 100 miles
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an hour. Bam. It's 9-11. 9-11 hits, and all of your bullshit looks like bullshit. Now, tomorrow,
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we'll go back to fighting. Tomorrow, we'll be divided along racial lines. We'll be divided along economic
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lines. We'll be divided along gender lines, you know, as we like to be. But today? Not today. Nope. Not
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today. So, think about the fact that just by historical coincidence, it didn't have to happen
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this way. That September, September 11th, every four years, will just be that little pause
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that reminds us, oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. We're all on the same side. And you just need to
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remember that every now and then. So, I'm just glad that September 11th happens in September,
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because it's exactly the time that this country will need every four years. You know, obviously,
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we'll be reminded every year. But every fourth year, it takes on a completely different meaning.
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And I've never really felt that until this election, this being so divisive. But let's be
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thankful that September 11th happened in September. It doesn't make any of those lives come back.
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It doesn't make it any less of a tragedy. But if there's one thing that this country does well,
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it's capitalizing on a crisis. We're really good at that. And we can find some value out of charred
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embers. I mean, literally, we can say, oh, here's some charcoal. We'll make a barbecue. And, you know,
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maybe we can maybe we can dig out some value of this, this September 11th, eventually. Now,
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I was wondering what Joe Biden's morning looks like on a day like today. And so I was just trying to
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picture it like the movie in my head of he wakes up. And at some point, probably there's an advisor
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there pretty quickly. I'd imagine he's probably swarmed with advisors. And he probably says some
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version of so what's the news? What's what's happening today? And I'm just imagining his advisor
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saying, well, so today's not ideal, because it's September 11th. So all day today, you can't be a
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dick. You're just you're just gonna have to take a day off from being a dick. And today would be a bad
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day to, let's say, promote your race hoaxes that are the basis of your campaign. Because that's a
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little divisive. And just not today. It's September 11th. So Joe says, all right, all right, well,
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I guess I won't be making news. And he literally said that this morning to the news crew. He said,
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I won't be making news today, because he just wanted to treat things seriously. Because it's
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September 11th. Not a bad approach, you know, good role model kind of a thing. But, you know,
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there might be a few other news things that pop up. And you could see him saying to his advisors,
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all right, so it's September 11th. What else? Anything else happen today? Yeah. Yeah. A couple
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other things happened today. Number one, remember how you thought it was a fluke when you saw that
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first poll that showed that African American support for Trump was at record levels? And you knew that
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couldn't be true, right? And remember how the second time you saw a poll that said the same thing,
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you said to yourself, well, you know, that's just two. That can't really be real, can it? Well,
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Rasmussen will have some numbers coming out today from North Carolina. And you might see,
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you might see that there's an actual trend here. It turns out that this president probably will break a
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record for black support. Did you see that coming? Now, when I say break a record for black support,
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I mean of Republicans, Republican presidents, right? Obviously not for Democrats. But how many of you
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would have predicted, how many of your filters would have predicted in 2015 or 16, that Trump would be
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legendary, like not just do okay, but break records for black support? How many of you had a filter on
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life that predicted that was likely? I did. Because I predicted it directly, publicly, many times. I said,
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this president's going to break records for black support. Here we are. And then Joe Biden says to his
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advisor in the morning, after he gets his coffee, oh, that's not good. It's 9-11, so I can't use my race
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hoaxes today. So I'm kind of unarmed. And now you're telling me that the main reason that I even got
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nominated is because I would have black support. And you're telling me that Trump will have more black
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support than any Republican president, maybe ever? Except, you know, maybe Lincoln or something.
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And then the advisor says, oh, just one more thing. Just one more thing. It's not a big deal.
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But election is coming up, and your competitor, President Trump, he just got nominated for,
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I don't know how to say this, a second Nobel Peace Prize for his Kosovo-Serbia agreement and helping
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that get done. So you're running against a guy who will have the highest African American support of
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any Republican president who just got nominated for two, two Nobel Peace Prizes. Now you say to
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yourself, ah, anybody can get nominated. Being nominated doesn't mean you won. But if you look at the
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details of why he got nominated, they're pretty solid. Nobody made anything up. Nobody's fact-checking
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it. Nobody said, hey, there's no Kosovo-Serbia agreement. Nobody's saying that. Nobody's saying,
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what UAE-Israel deal? That doesn't exist. Even the fake news doesn't say that. Apparently,
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President Trump has earned two Nobel Peace Prize nominations. But I think if you look at the
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details, whether or not he gets the actual prize, he earned the prizes. He earned two Nobel Peace
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Prizes. And Joe Biden has to wake up in the morning and say, well, what am I running against? Oh,
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are you kidding me? So in the history of presidents, nobody has ever run against somebody who had just
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got nominated for, did I mention two Nobel Peace Prizes? Now, what I've been telling you that I think
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the president's going to win in a landslide, but even I didn't think it was going to be this bad.
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So if you take into account that he's starting to, depending on what polls you're looking at,
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he's drawing even or pulling ahead in the battleground states. Biden continues to just decompose. And CNN had
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lots of good things to say about Kamala Harris. Because, you know, Kamala Harris is considered not just the
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vice presidential candidate, but because it's Biden, people think of her as almost a shadow president
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situation. You know, maybe she'll be the real power right away or soon or something. And so you'd expect that the
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people promoting her would have some good things to say about her, about her policies and her accomplishments and
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stuff like that. So let me check the news. Let's see what CNN is saying about Kamala Harris. There's probably lots of
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news about her accomplishments, I'm thinking. If not her accomplishments, then certainly there's going to be lots of
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news about the policies that she promotes. Checking. Oh, here it is. There's a story about Kamala Harris on the front page of
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CNN clicking that. People are talking about her footwear and her skinny jeans. Apparently, there's quite a bit of
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excitement because she wears a particular kind of footwear, sort of a sneakerish situation. But there's probably,
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that's just the lead in. Obviously, there's stuff here about her accomplishments and her
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policies, looking, looking. No, it's still about her footwear.
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Nope, that's all we got. That's all we got. So I don't know if I've mentioned yet, but President
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Trump was nominated for two Nobel Peace Prizes, which he's earned, both of them. But he's got some
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strong competition because on the other side, there's somebody who's wearing sneakers who lots of
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people think is a good fashion statement. So that should be close. I would like to give you my
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impression of every Democrat that I've been debating online. And they seem to be able to win arguments
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by facial expressions and not arguing. And I'd like to give you my impression of Dale
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representing every Democrat that I've debated with this week. And it goes like this. I'll first start in
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my character, played by myself. You know, mathematicians say that two plus two equals four.
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And then Dale, the Democrat, will come in to fact check me. And he'll fact check me this way.
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Oh, why don't they just call you Dilbert's boss?
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Did you see what I did there? Oh, yeah. Show me your sources. What sources? What college did
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you go to? Look at this guy. Two plus two equals four. Idiot. Idiot. Oh, this is why you support
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Trump. You're just thinking two plus two equals four. Oh, idiots. Idiots. I gotta say, I thought
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somebody else was the dumbest person in the world. But now that I see you with your two plus
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two stuff, I'm like, well, now you're the dumbest person in the world, obviously.
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So, yeah, the wide-eyed tell. Did you see the interview with, I guess, one of the major
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advisors for Joe Biden on his campaign, his name is Duck Low, spelled just like a duck,
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D-U-C-K-L-O. That's his last name, Duck Low. So, Joe Biden, who literally was in a basement below
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the ground ducking questions, his main advisor is Duck Low. I think the simulation is talking to us.
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Maybe we can figure out what it means. But the funny part was that, I guess it was Brett Baer
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who asked him directly, did Biden agree with the travel ban from China? And Duck Low, he gets the
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wide-eyed look. Now, if I've taught you nothing, Democrats all lie with a similar liar face. It's
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where their eyes get really big to try to convince you of something that didn't happen. And so, Duck Low
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gets the big eyes, and he says, there is plenty of fact-checking, Brett Baer. I could give it to you.
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I mean, I could send you the fact-checking that said that Joe Biden did not disagree with the travel
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ban. And then Brett Baer says, just clarifying, so you're saying that Joe Biden agreed with the travel
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ban when President Trump suggested it. You're saying he agreed with it. I'm saying I can send
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you all the fact-checking. It's been debunked and debunked and fact-checked. And everybody knows
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that Joe Biden did not disagree with it, Brett Baer says. Okay, but just clarifying, you haven't
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quite answered the question. You've ducked low. Now, Brett Baer didn't say that, but I wish he had
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ducked low. But that's not exactly the answer to the question. So I'll ask again, are you saying
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that Joe Biden agreed with President Trump? Well, he didn't give an answer to that, as you might expect.
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But he did give very big eyes, like that. If you are listening to this on audio only, you're
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missing my tremendous impressions, in which I make big bug eyes, and, well, you're just
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missing the best part. Police departments are trying to dispel the rumors that Antifa is
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starting the wildfires in the West Coast. And I guess they're starting, I guess Antifa
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is very particular, because wildfires don't destroy many black businesses. So I think Antifa
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is more concentrated on burning up black businesses and urban centers. They don't say it that way,
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but that's how it turns out. They burn other businesses, too. Just to be fair, to be fair,
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they do burn other people's businesses. So in that way, you could say they are pursuing
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equality, in a way. We'll talk a little more about Antifa in a moment. So India, this was
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reported on CNN's website, that India may have a lot of problems with their reporting.
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Apparently in India, most people die at home or somewhere that's not a hospital. So India
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has a real trouble counting the number of coronavirus-related deaths, because so many people just die at home
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or not under medical care. But here was an interesting statement. Again, it's important that this was
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on a CNN website. And it says, and I quote, with more tests, authorities are detecting more cases.
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What? What? This is CNN. CNN is stating that in India, if you test more, you'll detect more virus.
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Huh. Because I'm sure that I have been mocked for suggesting that the president may have made sense
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when he said that the more you test, the more virus you will detect, because that's why you test,
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to detect virus. And all the smart people told me that didn't make sense. May I do an impression
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of every smart person who's telling me why it's so dumb to think that if you test more,
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you will detect more. Oh, look at this guy. Oh! Why don't you stay in your lane?
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Pointy here, boss. Much. Oh! So that was the intellectual debate I've been getting on the question of
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does testing find more cases? So did you watch the first NFL game last night? Did anybody watch that?
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If you saw the stands, I don't know what, I don't know what kind of rules they have about
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in person, but the stands were largely empty. There were people there, but there are lots of,
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I don't know if that was just the social distancing rules or just not a people, a lot of people went or
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what, but it wasn't well attended. And yet when, when the players locked arms to support
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their social positions, there was a lot of booing, a lot of booing. For the fact that there weren't
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many people there, it was a lot of booing for not many people in attendance, making me think that
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there were more boos than there were supporters. Now, my take on it is that sports are not terribly
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important just in general. I wouldn't care if all professional sports ended tomorrow. I just wouldn't
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care. I stopped watching professional sports a while ago. But the real question is whether you need to mix
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your social messaging in every product, or can you separate your social messaging from your product?
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If the sports game is the product, does it make sense to always mix those? So without debating whether
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it's good to talk about equality, of course it is. Without debating whether it's good to always
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strive for a more equal society, of course it is. So the message, you know, the idea behind it,
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of course it's fine. Everybody, I think everybody agrees with it in concept. But do you need to put
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it in your sports? Does it have to be everywhere? And I saw the most scathing, if that's the deepest
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cutting criticism of the NFL that I've ever seen. Are you ready for this? I don't believe anybody's
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ever said anything worse about the NFL than what I'm going to, and I didn't write down who said it,
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but it was a Twitter user, and said that, you know, the, why can I never remember all the victims' names?
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I think I'm supposed to remember all the victims. But the gentleman who got shot seven times but
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survived, and he was alleged to have been a sexual assaulter. And somebody on Twitter commented
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that there's a real woman in the United States, a living real woman, not a conceptual woman,
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not in principle somebody might exist that, but an actual woman with a name and a life,
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who someday will turn on TV and see the name of her rapist written on the helmets of the football
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players. Imagine that. Imagine that you are literally a victim of a sex crime, and you have to watch
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the NFL, all these multi-millionaires, write the name of your attacker, allegedly, on their helmet,
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and then play a game in front of the whole country. Think about that. That's actually the most
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cutting criticism I think I've ever heard. Maybe the worst criticism I've ever heard of any
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professional league for doing anything, not even on this topic. You could say any topic.
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Putting that guy's name on their helmets, I would say you'd have to nominate that for one of the
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worst things anybody's ever done. Not just in sports, but if you don't count actual physical
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violence to stuff, that's the worst stuff. But of things that are not physically violent,
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but are, let's say, socially or psychologically devastating, just imagine that you were a victim
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of a crime, and you see the perpetrator's name, according to you, on the helmets of the NFL.
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If you ever watch another NFL game, I don't know why you would, really. I just don't know why you
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would. Because they've completely thrown, you know, women and Me Too under the bus. And I don't think
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they could be further from social justice warriors, which is what they'd like to be. They'd like to be,
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you know, if I could use that term, they'd like to be on the right side of history. They'd like to be
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on the right side of justice. But boy, did they miss it. You know, I think the players' intentions are
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great. I wouldn't, I don't even, you know, I don't fault any of the players for doing what they need
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to do, freedom of speech, blah, blah, blah. But man, did they miss their, they missed the target by a
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mile. There's another story in the news that is so mind-boggling that you can't actually hold it in
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your mind for long. In other words, there's something that if you could accept that it's true,
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and it is true, there's no, there's no argument about whether it's true, if you can accept that
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it's true, you just can't process it in your brain to do something about it. And here's the story,
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that apparently several dozen phones associated with the Mueller investigation were accidentally
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wiped of all their data so that when the, who was it, the department, the inspector general wanted
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to review them, that they were not available. And the excuses they gave were physical damage in a few
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cases, but that they'd forgotten their own passwords, and they tried their password too many times and it
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deleted their phone. Now, have you ever tried entering the wrong password in your phone? It makes
00:26:35.800
you wait to do it again if you do it too many times. You'd have to really work hard to delete your
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data, like it would have to be a project where you'd come back to it every several hours, say, all right,
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put in one more password, time out, I'll come back to this hours later. Now, I don't think there's
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anybody dumb enough to think that these are real accidents and these are obviously excuses. They're
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transparent excuses for people who wiped the data that could have been relevant to the inspector
00:27:08.980
general. Now, that is so mind-bogglingly big that nothing will happen. Do you get that? The idea of it,
00:27:20.860
you almost can't hold it in your brain. Like, I can't conceive that there were dozens, several
00:27:30.080
dozen, several dozen phones, people deleted evidence, and these were people working in a legal field for
00:27:40.280
the United States, and they were looking for crimes of exactly this nature. They were looking for this
00:27:51.700
kind of crime, obstruction of justice. Now, I don't know how you could see it any other way, but destroying
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evidence that they knew could be later discoverable because it might be relevant feels to me exactly like
00:28:07.820
obstruction of justice and not a little bit. I'm talking about coordinated, because obviously there
00:28:14.840
must have been some coordination. I'm talking about massive, obvious, direct. You almost can't hold it in
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your mind. And because, and I mean this literally, that you can't hold it as true because it's just too
00:28:30.060
ridiculous. Too ridiculous. And because your brain can't quite process it, I think they actually will just
00:28:37.280
get away with it. It's kind of a weird situation that is so unusual, you just can't really process it.
00:28:45.440
That's what I think. All right. I drew out a bunch of, a bunch of trolls, as I like to do. They were all
00:28:57.700
confused about what I was saying and what I was doing. But I made a tweet that I said that, you know,
00:29:04.040
Antifa, I'll paraphrase my own tweet, the Antifa would be surprised to learn that the original Antifa
00:29:11.300
fought on the same side with Hitler against the Weimar Republic. And now, I can tell you because
00:29:23.860
you're my insiders. So let me tell you what I was thinking and why I sent that tweet. Number one,
00:29:31.820
do I think it's relevant that a German organization in the 30s had the same name as, you know, at least
00:29:40.840
translated, it's the same name as Antifa in Portland in 2020. Do I think that that matters? No.
00:29:49.580
No. Oh, I don't think that matters. It has nothing to do with anything. I also don't think it matters
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that the KKK used to be, you know, more of a Democrat kind of a thing. Because if it's not
00:30:04.920
relevant to 2020, I don't care. It's just history. It's not history that matters. It's just a fact
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that doesn't matter. You know, because all that matters is today. And so the first tongue-in-cheek
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that people should have known, it should have been a red flag, how serious I was about this.
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The first flag should have been, is he serious that this unrelated group, because there's no
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connection through time, they're unrelated. And I guess it was a Swedish group that was also some
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kind of Antifa that was separate from both Germany, separate from the current one, separate one,
00:30:44.820
separate from the modern version of Antifa in Europe. So I think there are at least four versions
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of Antifa. I guess the US one has some connection to Europe. But no, I was not serious, not even a
00:30:59.960
little bit serious, that it matters what Antifa in Germany in 1930s did. I don't think it matters.
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It's just a different group, different circumstance. But I knew it would bring out the trolls.
00:31:14.560
And here's the next part. Just to be provocative, I said that Antifa in Germany in the 30s was
00:31:22.700
allied with Hitler. Now, is that an overclaim? I gave people the link on Wikipedia. And it will tell
00:31:33.140
you that the German Antifa and Hitler's group fought each other, which is not like allies, right? That
00:31:41.060
would be the opposite, because they were fighting each other. But at the same time, they were both
00:31:46.500
fighting the common government that they both wanted to overthrow. Now, the government was overthrown.
00:31:53.280
Hitler came to power. And one of the first things he did was get rid of Antifa, because they were
00:31:59.720
useful fighting the government. But as soon as Hitler was in power, they were no longer useful. And
00:32:05.400
so he dealt with them harshly. So the historians are coming after me and saying, Scott, Scott, Scott,
00:32:12.200
you idiot, you pointy-haired idiot. Read some history. Where are you making up these stories about
00:32:17.560
Antifa being allied with the Nazis? And then I do this. Are you waiting for the second part?
00:32:25.760
I say, well, I get why you might not like that word allied. But they were fighting on the same side,
00:32:34.680
meaning that they were both opposed to the government. We'd agree on that. Historians will
00:32:40.060
agree on that. We also agree that they fought each other a little bit. Doesn't remove from the fact
00:32:48.120
that they had a common enemy. But here's the thing. It's a lot like 2020 Antifa and Black Lives
00:32:56.340
Matter. Here's why it's similar. Have you seen Antifa and Black Lives Matter get into any scuffles?
00:33:04.560
I think you have. I think you have. Now, they've been minor. And primarily, BLM and Antifa are opposed to
00:33:14.360
the current government, current, you know, systems, I guess. But what would happen if they prevailed?
00:33:24.580
Suppose, suppose Antifa and Black Lives Matter overthrew the government. I don't think it's going
00:33:31.740
to happen. But imagine they did, just like Antifa and Hitler overthrew the German government. What
00:33:38.180
would happen if Black Lives Matter and Antifa somehow came to power? Would they say,
00:33:44.360
I'm glad we're all on the same side? Let's form a government that's part Antifa and part Black
00:33:50.580
Lives Matter? No! Antifa is against governments. No, Antifa are anarchists. They don't want to be
00:33:59.720
part of a government. Black Lives Matter, they're Marxists, etc. But even they like a Bernie Sanders
00:34:08.020
kind of capitalism. But they still want a capitalist system. I think most of them do. You know, maybe
00:34:16.760
some of the leaders are radical. But most of Black Lives Matter, you know, rank-and-file kind
00:34:22.140
of people, they're not looking to get rid of Bernie Sanders socialism. They kind of like it. Antifa?
00:34:30.900
Antifa? They can't live with any kind of capitalism. Even a Bernie Sanders capitalism is way too much.
00:34:39.060
So Black Lives Matter and Antifa are allied only because they have a common enemy. But they are not
00:34:45.980
on the same team. And if they ever came to power, they would have to fight. Who would win? Well, I'd bet on
00:34:54.840
Black Lives Matter, frankly. In part because, do you know who would be on the same side as Black Lives
00:35:00.100
Matter if they ever decided to turn on Antifa? Republicans. Republicans. Black Lives Matter would
00:35:10.180
have plenty of allies because they're the people who want capitalism. Now, of course, all of this is
00:35:16.600
silly and will never happen. But what I wanted to do was to get people to think through the analogy
00:35:22.680
and just make them uncomfortable about the current situation because of how they feel about the
00:35:30.360
other one. Now, here was the other thing that I learned while looking into this. Apparently,
00:35:35.520
Antifa in Germany, the original 1930s version, when they used the word fascist, all it meant was
00:35:43.960
capitalism. That's it. It didn't matter if you had, you know, classic fascist elements.
00:35:52.680
If you were a capitalist, that's just fascist by definition. So when the Antifa people say to me,
00:36:00.140
I have to get my Dale beard again to say this, as they do often,
00:36:04.700
Scott, anti-fascist? It's in the name? How could you be confused? It's in the name. Did I mention
00:36:17.360
it's in the name? Anti means opposed? Are you following me so far? Anti means opposed to? Second
00:36:25.540
word, fascist. Fascist. Opposed to fascist. Therefore, Antifa is opposed to fascist. Scott, do you not
00:36:36.000
understand? Am I talking too fast? Do you not following this yet? To which I say, what did it mean in
00:36:45.920
Germany? Didn't mean that. So it is obvious from the original Antifa that the word fascist sort of
00:36:55.440
means just anybody who's making money, basically, capitalism. If you're making money in any way,
00:37:04.160
you're a fascist. So all I wanted to get out of this was to sort of stir the thinking pot and just
00:37:14.920
make people uncomfortable and maybe they would shift in their opinions over time.
00:37:20.540
So it's just a little context that I thought was fun. I'm being accused of being the dumbest guy
00:37:26.880
in the world. In the world. For that tweet. But people don't realize that it was more mischievous
00:37:35.160
than historical. All right. So Lindsay, Lindsay Graham says there's a big surprise coming in 10 to 12
00:37:48.220
days about the situation with Russia collusion and the investigation about how that went down.
00:37:56.300
So something big coming in 10 to 12 days. Now, I don't know if it'll be 10 to 12 days, but the fact
00:38:02.440
that the Durham investigation looks like it might wrap up before the election, that is an interesting
00:38:11.360
coincidence. In France, the hospitalization rates are up for coronavirus, COVID-19. And I use this as
00:38:23.100
further evidence that leadership is an illusion, or at least leadership as a major variable in how people
00:38:32.220
are doing with coronavirus is probably just an illusion. And the illusion goes like this. If you're
00:38:37.640
Democrats and you're not good at analyzing stuff, President Trump didn't do enough testing.
00:38:45.840
Okay. What was he supposed to test with? Was the president supposed to do lots of testing
00:38:52.440
with the test kits that didn't exist? And that even the people who are responsible for the test kits
00:38:59.020
didn't know they didn't exist because they had test kits. They just didn't know they were defective.
00:39:04.080
So was the president supposed to magically make test kits or magically know they needed to be made
00:39:10.980
when the experts themselves didn't know that? And where were all the test kits from the Obama
00:39:16.820
administration that he could just use? What about all that time he lost in preparation where he could
00:39:22.520
have been getting PPE ready? Wait a minute. Why would Trump have to need time to get a bunch of PPE
00:39:32.360
when Obama had a gigantic storehouse of it just in case? Oh, did I get that wrong? Wait, are you
00:39:41.860
telling me that Obama and Biden, when they were in office, they didn't have a gigantic national supply
00:39:48.480
of PPE? I don't know why they didn't have that since they knew this pandemic was coming and they knew
00:39:54.540
they would need it. Can you explain to me why they were so aware of it coming and yet we did not have
00:40:00.980
warehouses full of PPE to be to be ready? Huh? So it's only people who are and then the third point
00:40:09.620
there is that testing and contact tracing only works if you have a small group of infections and maybe a
00:40:19.660
an island situation or a small country. If you get it early, maybe, maybe you can tamp it down. But if you're
00:40:28.060
the United States and people are driving in and walking in and flying in from every direction and
00:40:34.040
you're one of the main destinations on planet Earth and it's just impossible to stop at all. I mean,
00:40:39.940
even if you stop travel from China, still people walking across the border, still coming in from
00:40:45.420
Canada who came from China. So the United States never really had the option in a realistic way
00:40:52.460
of doing contact tracing and stopping it while it was small. You can fantasize that that was possible
00:41:00.480
but it wasn't. It wasn't. Was it possible in New Zealand? I think so. I think it was. If President
00:41:09.760
Trump had been the leader of New Zealand, could he have done the same thing that the leader of New Zealand
00:41:15.580
did, which seems to be effective? Probably. Do you think the leader of New Zealand just made her own
00:41:22.680
decisions? Or, or, do you think she talked to her experts and the experts said, well, we're a small
00:41:31.360
country, don't have many infections. I think we can test our way through this because we do have enough
00:41:36.720
tests to do that. And then she said, well, I don't have a better idea. Well, I'm not the expert.
00:41:42.540
If that's what you say will work, let's do that. Now replace her with President Trump.
00:41:49.680
Experts come up and they say, we've got enough test kits. We're a small country. We can test.
00:41:54.340
Let's do it. Does President Trump then say, ah, no, I don't think so? No, no. He says the same thing
00:42:04.680
that the leader of New Zealand said. Yeah, let's do that. You're the experts. Let's do that.
00:42:09.940
So if you are unsophisticated and you don't have much experience in life, or you've never read the
00:42:17.720
Dilbert comic strip, you might still be suffering the illusion that leadership is a big variable in
00:42:24.320
how things turn out. It really isn't. Because most of life in big organizations is people at lower
00:42:32.740
levels surfacing their expertise. And then the leader says yes or no. But it's not really the
00:42:38.840
leader deciding. Because it's very rare for the leader to say, well, there's your expert opinion.
00:42:44.060
I'm going to go a different direction. Because if you make a mistake that way, you're done.
00:42:49.420
So as long as everybody's following directions from the experts, and the experts largely were
00:42:55.540
in agreement around the world, it's not like there was one country where all the experts
00:43:00.640
were on a different page. That didn't happen. So we should see that the most predictable thing
00:43:08.980
that you could see is that hypothetically, if you could just switch all the leaders, you
00:43:14.520
know, just snap your fingers, and all the leaders go into different countries. And they're just as
00:43:18.920
smart, just as capable as before. But now, magically, they know the language and the culture and stuff.
00:43:25.800
So you've just replaced the leaders. How do those countries turn out in terms of coronavirus?
00:43:32.820
Exactly the same. Exactly the same. So the big illusion that the fake news and the people who don't
00:43:40.900
have experience in big companies are selling you is that the leadership is the big variable.
00:43:47.480
And then, you know, they all had a menu of tools. So it's how you decided to use those tools,
00:43:54.480
your leadership, that is the big, you know, the differentiator between who gets a good result
00:44:00.220
and who gets a bad result. Nothing like that's happening. That is just an illusion. They were all
00:44:07.120
just following expert advice. Experts largely gave the same advice. Some countries faster,
00:44:13.140
some slower. Some had hydroxychloroquine supplies, some didn't. So some had options that others didn't.
00:44:20.200
But it's not leadership that you're seeing here. That's not the main filter. All right.
00:44:25.300
All right. I'm not in favor of raising taxes, just in general. You know, if there's any way you can not
00:44:35.520
raise taxes, you should do it. But let's say you wanted to mess with Bernie Sanders. And let's say you
00:44:44.820
wanted to, what's the word, where you co-opt or you somehow take somebody else's policy. There's a
00:44:54.520
better word for that. Suppose President Trump, this is not going to happen. This is purely a thought
00:45:00.060
experiment. So don't get hung up on, that'll never happen. Because I'm telling you, this will never
00:45:06.040
happen. But it's a good thought experiment. It goes like this. Tax the monopoly digital companies,
00:45:15.620
you know, your Facebooks, your Googles, you could throw a few more names in there. Amazon, maybe.
00:45:20.720
And you tax them specifically to pay for health care and free college for anybody who doesn't have
00:45:28.700
it yet. So I'm not talking about paying for health care for the whole country. I'm talking about they
00:45:34.200
would cover the gap for those people who can't get health care. They would cover the gap for anybody
00:45:39.300
who wanted to go to college but couldn't afford it, that sort of thing. And here's the beauty of the
00:45:45.120
idea. It would basically be a sin tax. Because social media is sort of like liquor and cigarettes, in the sense
00:45:54.060
that it's not good for you. You know it's not good for you. But it's a free country, so we're not going to get
00:45:59.380
rid of it. And because it's not healthy, in a variety of different ways, it does make sense that you tax the
00:46:06.780
things that are least healthy. And then you use that money, we have a tradition for this, cigarette taxes, for
00:46:12.240
example. Then you use that sin tax money to do something that's very healthy for the public.
00:46:18.200
What would be healthier for the public than getting everybody good health care?
00:46:22.340
Nothing. What would be healthier for the public than making sure they could get good educations?
00:46:29.020
Nothing. I mean, it's probably one of the best things you can do for your health
00:46:33.180
is to have an education and therefore a good chance for a good economic situation.
00:46:39.420
And there's a big difference. The richer you are, the better your health. It's pretty direct.
00:46:45.780
So in a practical sense, nothing like that would happen. But here's the interesting part of the idea.
00:46:55.700
If the big digital companies realized that only they were being taxed for this very special kind of tax
00:47:02.840
for health care and for education, now it doesn't have to be college education, it could also be maybe school
00:47:09.480
choice, etc. What would they do? Well, the first thing they'd do is they'd say, wait a minute, I'm paying a billion
00:47:17.080
dollars a year for these things, or however many billions, but if I can make the cost of providing health care
00:47:24.840
go down, so too would my taxes. If I can make the cost of going to college, just how it's done, the whole process of
00:47:33.040
education, if I could alter that and make it less expensive, I could lower my own taxes. So you would create a
00:47:40.900
situation where the companies most capable of solving health care, most capable of solving education, would have
00:47:49.460
an enormous financial incentive to do it, and suddenly you don't mind so much, those big companies.
00:47:56.940
I think you would agree with the following statement.
00:48:02.760
a big company is super important to the country itself,
00:48:08.620
you're a little bit more forgiving if there are some
00:48:14.740
Just a general statement. As long as you're providing
00:48:17.720
some enormous benefit, you can be a little more forgiving about any
00:48:26.260
So if those big companies, which are suffering quite a
00:48:29.440
reputation hit, if they wanted to fix two of the biggest problems in the country
00:48:34.800
and tie it to their own self-interest, and it is pretty tied to their self-interest,
00:48:41.060
that might be a healthy situation. It might be a situation where the public says,
00:48:45.860
you know, I was mad about Amazon for whatever reason yesterday, but now I see that they're
00:48:53.780
helping give health care to poor people and educating people. I'm like, well,
00:49:02.660
Somebody says private would be better. Well, you know, who knows if the solution would look
00:49:07.400
more private or public to be determined. All right. That's all I got for now. And I will talk to you tomorrow.