Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1314 Scott Adams： Biden to Raise Taxes to Pay for the Destruction of America, Science Versus Guessing, China is Doomed, More

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody. Come on in. Yeah, yeah, you made it. Good for you. So far your day is

00:00:09.680 going great. But I got news for you. It's going to get better. Yeah, because you made

00:00:16.060 it to Coffee with Scott Adams. A lot of people didn't make it. There are people who are working

00:00:21.260 instead of watching this. Do you feel sorry for them? Well, you should. Because the people

00:00:27.580 here are going to have a great time. And all they need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a

00:00:31.040 tank or a chalice, a stein, a canteen, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind, and fill it

00:00:34.420 with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure

00:00:39.040 of the dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous

00:00:42.920 sip. And it happens all over the world. At the same time, it doesn't matter your time

00:00:48.140 zone. Really amazing how that works. And it's happening right now. Go.

00:00:57.580 Now my day can start perfectly. Deep breath. Exhale. All right. You ready for some fun?

00:01:12.520 Well, I did a comic in February, I think it was, that was based on a real-life suggestion.

00:01:20.300 And the suggestion was that Zoom calls should have closing credits. And the reason that somebody

00:01:27.220 suggested they should have closing credits is so you know when they're done. Because

00:01:32.000 people don't know how to end a Zoom call. It's like, well, okay. So there's no polite

00:01:39.220 way to do it. So somebody said, why don't you just run the closing credits? And everybody

00:01:44.160 will just say, oh, I guess it's over. Well, it turns out somebody actually added closing

00:01:49.220 credits. So that's a real thing now. I mean, it's still just a joke thing. But sure enough,

00:01:55.700 there's a video of somebody who added funny closing credits to a Zoom call. So that's

00:02:00.220 art imitating life, and then life imitating art, and then I'll make a comic about it again,

00:02:07.300 and then art will imitate life again.

00:02:09.000 So here's a little coincidence for you. Economists at Goldman Sachs, they have multiple Sachs.

00:02:20.260 I said Goldman Sachs, but that would just be one Sach. But there are multiple Sachs over

00:02:25.420 there. At Goldman Sachs, they raised their GDP growth expectations for the U.S. economy to

00:02:31.180 8% for 2021. Now, if you don't follow economics, that's a shockingly big number. That's such

00:02:42.860 a big number that I'm not sure I believe it. I think it's, you know, other economists are

00:02:49.800 down like, you know, under 5%. So to think that we would have an 8% GDP when, you know,

00:02:56.960 two or three is pretty good. Three is pretty good. Coming off the pandemic, though, you've got a

00:03:03.620 little bit more of a natural bump. So here's the first part of the news. Goldman Sachs is saying

00:03:12.700 that the economy is going to be great under Biden. Okay? So that's the first unrelated fact. It's just

00:03:21.620 floating out there. It's not connected to any other news. Okay? It's just by itself, just floating.

00:03:30.460 Now, unrelated to this in every way, completely separate from this story,

00:03:36.560 we hear leaks today that Biden is planning to raise taxes quite a bit. But that's a separate story,

00:03:45.340 floating all by itself, not connected in any way, to this coincidentally timed story from Goldman

00:03:56.120 Sachs, who some people might say is in the Democrats' pocket or vice versa. And so if you were a

00:04:06.960 skeptical kind of a person, and you were looking at the media, would you say to yourself,

00:04:12.060 huh, that's a pretty big coincidence that this highly respected firm, Goldman Sachs, multiple

00:04:20.200 Sachs, would be giving cover for the Biden tax increase? What are the odds that those two things

00:04:29.880 happened at the same time by accident? Do you think that happened by accident?

00:04:34.080 Because if you say to somebody like me, and I'm actually a good example for this, if you're a poor

00:04:44.140 person, and your government says we're going to raise taxes on rich people, what do you say? Oh, good.

00:04:52.260 Raise taxes on the rich people. Maybe there'll be more money for me from that. If you're a rich person,

00:04:57.960 what do you say to the prospect of higher taxes? Well, here it gets tricky. It depends. It depends.

00:05:07.660 Because if you're the kind of rich person who has enormous wealth already, and the economy is better

00:05:15.340 than usual, that enormous pile will grow in value faster than maybe anything that would happen with

00:05:22.180 your annual income. So if you have a giant amount of wealth compared to how much you make every year,

00:05:28.480 and they raise the taxes on that smaller part, the part you make every year, but let's say the

00:05:32.840 bigger part can just grow with the economy, you still come out ahead. But if you're the kind of rich

00:05:39.260 person who hasn't accumulated much wealth, but your annual income is really high at the moment,

00:05:45.720 but let's say you're young, you haven't accumulated that much yet, well then you're just never going to

00:05:50.100 accumulate as much. Because they'll get it as soon as it's made. So there are two kinds of rich people.

00:05:56.720 One kind of rich person is better off. If you have both higher taxes, so long as this Goldman Sachs

00:06:04.060 kind of optimistic look at the economy is anywhere near good, then the rich people actually do the best

00:06:12.180 in any kind of a good economy, so they could pay a little more taxes and wouldn't know the difference.

00:06:16.460 But the other kind of rich person who is mostly income is not going to like it. Not going to like

00:06:25.600 it. All right. You knew this was going to happen. There's a Pennsylvania woman who created a deep

00:06:33.980 fake video to embarrass the rivals of her daughter's cheerleading team. And I guess the deep fakes of the

00:06:42.300 teenage cheerleader girls were showing them in embarrassing situations. I think there was some

00:06:51.260 nudity or drugs or something like that. But somebody actually created a real deep fake

00:06:56.820 to basically perpetuate a crime of sorts. I don't know if it's technically illegal, but there you go.

00:07:07.380 There's the first one. Now, of course, the people who do this first are going to get caught

00:07:12.060 because the deep fakes are not that good. And the people in them are going to say,

00:07:16.520 ah, that wasn't me. So it's not exactly a perfect crime, but you can see where this is all heading

00:07:22.080 pretty quickly. Here's another story that makes me miss, let's say, the energy and the

00:07:30.280 entertainment of President Trump. You've heard everything that can be said about Meghan Markle

00:07:38.140 and Harry, right? Is there anything else anybody could say that would feel fresh or new or interesting

00:07:48.900 at this point? Right? Because everything's just been said. What else is there to say?

00:07:54.200 And then we hear that President Trump had weighed in on this question privately. I guess this is being

00:08:01.680 reported by Jason Miller or somebody who said that he talked to him. And this is what Miller says the

00:08:08.400 president said about Meghan Markle. And I'm going to quote it. She's no good. I said it and now everybody

00:08:18.460 is seeing it. Now, just think of this first three words. She's no good. As soon as I read that, I just

00:08:29.760 laughed. Because you don't realize how, I don't even know the right word for it, you don't realize how

00:08:39.060 crisp Trump's communication is until he's gone for a while and then you see it again. And then you're not

00:08:46.620 used to it after a while and you go, oh, that's the thing he does. I don't know why, but if you sat down

00:08:55.520 and thought for a year about what would be three words to say about Meghan Markle, that would sort of

00:09:03.800 sum it up and be quotable and would stick in your head and would make you laugh after everybody said

00:09:10.840 so much already. And then you just, you picture Trump saying it, right? Because when it's a Trump

00:09:16.600 quote, you see the picture of him and you just see him saying, she's no good. And you say to

00:09:22.400 yourself, I think we're done here. What else is there to say? She's no good. Now, I'm not saying I

00:09:31.420 agree with that statement. I'm just saying that the president's communication style really is

00:09:37.500 inimitable. Like, I don't know why he can find just the right words that just does something to

00:09:45.060 your brain. I don't know how he does it exactly, but it's consistent. So in California here, some

00:09:52.120 children, at least in my area, are going back to school in the hybrid learning environment.

00:09:58.160 You know what that is, right? So I guess here they have a choice. If they want, they can just stay home

00:10:03.860 and continue learning from Zoom as they have. Or they can go two days a week, I guess locally,

00:10:10.780 and do, you know, severe social distancing. Few kids showing up in the classroom with their own

00:10:18.180 little stations and distance and masks all day long and stuff. What do you think the local kids say

00:10:26.400 about that? What do you think is the opinion of the local kids now that the school has opened up at

00:10:31.840 least a little bit? Screw that. Now, I can't say that I've done a poll, but I have overheard,

00:10:42.080 I've overheard a variety of kids talking about it. And they're saying, we might as well just Zoom until

00:10:50.900 the end of the year, because we're not going to be able to see our friends. You know, you're going to

00:10:54.920 be six feet away from them. You have to wear a mask all day. And it's duplicative of what you're

00:11:00.900 doing on the computer. And so the kids just said, uh, thank you, but no thanks. It's just not even

00:11:10.060 worth it. And when you hear that they have to wear a mask all day and can't even get within six feet

00:11:15.940 of their friends, it doesn't look worth it to me. It doesn't look worth it to me at all.

00:11:22.080 So we need to get to the next level.

00:11:28.080 China is experiencing or did experience this gigantic sandstorm in Beijing. Did you see the

00:11:34.900 pictures of that? Did you know that Beijing has gigantic annual sandstorms? How many people knew

00:11:42.580 that was even a thing? So apparently between deforestation and their proximity to the Gobi

00:11:48.040 desert, when the conditions get just right, this enormous storm of sand piles up. Now, do you know

00:11:58.820 what the normal pollution level is in Beijing? Okay, the normal pollution level is unhealthy.

00:12:06.200 So they added on top of the normal pollution, a sandstorm. And between the two of them,

00:12:13.740 basically it was an unlivable city for a while. I mean, people did, but it was essentially unlivable.

00:12:22.980 Now, when people talk about China is going to eat our lunch and their, you know, their economy is

00:12:28.880 zooming and they're going to take over the world and all that stuff, it does seem inevitable just because

00:12:34.200 of the population. And they're doing, they're moving in that direction. So if you were to just

00:12:39.080 straight line, okay, if everything just keeps going the way it's been going, China dominates the world

00:12:44.860 eventually. And I would just add this, straight line projections, projections, they never work,

00:12:54.740 ever. In fact, the only thing you can be sure won't happen in the future is whatever the trend is

00:13:01.480 today. If you just straight line any trend and you take it long enough, you know, the short run trends

00:13:07.800 will continue. But if you take it long enough, they never do. It's just, it's almost impossible.

00:13:16.300 So we don't know what will happen, but I remember, I'm old enough to remember when we thought the same

00:13:21.860 thing about Japan. So when I was younger, you youngsters won't be aware of this, but everybody who's in my

00:13:29.920 age group will now be nodding their heads at home and saying, oh yeah, we thought Japan was going to

00:13:36.600 run the world because their manufacturing was so dominant for a while that it just looked like they

00:13:43.080 would suck up all the business from the United States and it was just going to be, the future was going

00:13:48.040 to be Japan. Well, what happened? It turns out that Japan's system couldn't grow. So they had a little bit

00:13:56.700 too much, maybe social or cultural friction. I'm no expert, but maybe some of it might have been

00:14:05.060 cultural. Some of it might have been the way their systems and their banking and everything is set up,

00:14:10.440 that there's just a little bit too much bloat, maybe a little corruption. I don't know exactly

00:14:15.300 what's going on over there, but it didn't straight line. They sort of hit a wall and then, you know,

00:14:21.180 things were sort of stagnant for years. China has this gigantic demographic problem, but on top of

00:14:28.420 it, the only way they can survive is by destroying their own environment. So if they want energy,

00:14:35.620 they have to put in coal plants, right? If they want to build as many homes as they need, they might

00:14:42.580 need to cut down their trees. So there's a whole bunch of ways in which China is essentially destroying

00:14:49.780 itself to grow. And the Chinese system doesn't strike me as flexible. They do have some advantages

00:14:58.320 because it's a dictatorship. So if the whole country needs to do something like clamp down on the

00:15:03.840 coronavirus, they have some advantages there. But they don't really have flexibility within the system.

00:15:09.640 They have flexibility at the top, you know, so that the bosses can make you do anything they want.

00:15:14.320 But they don't have flexibility within the entrepreneurial system, right, is what I'm

00:15:19.500 imagining is the problem. And I compare that to the general statement that's always been true,

00:15:29.580 that every empire fails, right? Through history, we don't have any example of an empire that lasted

00:15:38.260 forever, right? The Roman Empire was great for a long time, but there it goes, you know, the

00:15:45.400 Genghis Khan and the Moguls, Mongols, you know, they took over, I don't know, a quarter of the earth or

00:15:55.560 whatever it was, but then they disappeared. So every time there's some major power, Great Britain,

00:16:01.260 for example, you know, colonizing all over the world, but then every year since then sort of

00:16:06.640 shrinking in territory at least. So the thinking is that the United States can't possibly dominate

00:16:13.520 forever, because nothing ever does. Every system, every system collapses under its own weight. It's

00:16:21.000 just the way everything works. But I would like to add one bit of optimism. I believe, and I don't know

00:16:29.460 that this is confirmed, but I believe that the geniuses who built our system, you know, capitalism

00:16:37.600 plus the Constitution, etc., I feel like they built a self-renewing system, meaning that what our system

00:16:47.720 is today won't be exactly what it looks like or how it operates tomorrow, because it can self-correct.

00:16:54.140 And there's just a whole bunch of self-correcting stuff in our system that doesn't seem to be the case

00:17:02.620 everywhere else. And so I would put this optimistic thought out there, which is the United States might be

00:17:13.080 the first system that could last forever. And the way it would do it is that it's never the same system.

00:17:21.100 In other words, it's evolving with events. So as long as the system is evolving with events,

00:17:29.020 I think it can renew itself, it can cannibalize itself, you know, it can basically just reinvent

00:17:35.720 itself as it goes. Whereas I don't know if the Chinese system can do that. It might be a little bit

00:17:41.780 too much ossification there. So I think that the United States, because of our system, maybe even a little

00:17:48.480 bit because of the culture, I'm not sure. But does have some kind of enduring advantage. We'll see

00:17:53.860 if that is enough, because China has some big advantages too. So Tom Cotton continues to be one

00:18:04.500 of the only interesting people saying things in the news. And, you know, we're talking about immigration

00:18:10.680 being whether it's a tremendous challenge, or it's a crisis. Now, of course, the Republicans want the

00:18:18.260 Democrats to use that word, use the word, say crisis, say crisis, damn it, don't keep saying

00:18:24.600 it's a challenge, it's a crisis. So then once it's a crisis, you know, they can make more political

00:18:30.440 hay about it. So Tom Cotton notes this, he says, and now the Biden administration is sending FEMA to

00:18:37.660 the border. They are, by their own declaration, admitting it's a disaster. That's what it is when

00:18:44.340 you deploy FEMA, a disaster. And I thought, how come he's the first person to point this out? It's

00:18:53.200 like one of those things where you hear it and you say, oh, yeah, that should be the end of the

00:18:58.480 conversation. Once you've deployed FEMA, you can't argue it's not a disaster, right? Because FEMA is

00:19:07.420 literally the group you send to fix a disaster. That's what they are. It's pretty hard to argue

00:19:16.000 you're sending FEMA at the same time you're saying it's not a disaster. So of course, this is word

00:19:21.340 thinking, because what you call it doesn't change its, you know, change its nature. It's a bad situation,

00:19:27.180 no matter what you call it. But I thought that was an interesting observation.

00:19:33.160 There's an article in the New York Times, Alan Feuer, F-E-U-E-R. How would you pronounce F-E-U-E-R?

00:19:45.000 Feuer? Feuer? Maybe? Okay, we'll go with that. He's asking and trying to answer the question

00:19:52.860 of why the Proud Boys, despite their long history of promoting and committing violence,

00:19:59.200 according to Alan, how were they able to skirt law enforcement scrutiny prior to the storming of

00:20:07.780 the Capitol? So what is it about the Proud Boys that law enforcement would be completely aware of

00:20:14.580 them, right? They're not hiding. So law enforcement knows who they are. They know their whole deal.

00:20:19.840 But yet they were not really leaned on before the storming of the Capitol. I guess they were

00:20:27.920 visited. So law enforcement did visit some of the leaders and talk to them. But there wasn't any

00:20:34.160 strong enforcement or suppression or anything like that. And the question is asked, why did they get a

00:20:40.160 pass? Why is it that the Proud Boys were given sort of a, you know, a pat on the back and, you know,

00:20:48.480 okay, you know, go ahead? And here's my answer to that. The Proud Boys don't have a larger ambition.

00:20:58.480 The Proud Boys sort of like their club and they like being in it. They like drinking. That's actually

00:21:06.340 literally a big part of their philosophy is they like to get together and drink. And they like

00:21:11.340 provoking fights so that they could have fights. And they don't, they try not to start them in the

00:21:19.720 sense of punching first. But they like being in the situation where maybe they could get somebody to

00:21:25.360 take a punch at them first. And then they can finish it. And I think to myself, there's nothing about

00:21:33.020 that, that looks like a coup attempt. There's nothing about it that looks like a national

00:21:40.580 movement. You know, they don't seem to be organizing to change the world. They don't seem to be trying

00:21:47.340 to elect officials. They're not donating money to a candidate. It just seems like a, a, a club of

00:21:57.520 knuckleheads. And I say that lovingly, you know, a bunch of knuckleheads who like using their knuckles,

00:22:04.480 right? They like punching stuff. They like drinking. And they have something like a philosophy. So in my

00:22:11.860 view, law enforcement not coming down hard on them is because it's not, it's not Antifa. Antifa actually

00:22:22.120 wants to destroy the country. That's different, you know? Um, so you could, uh, this will sound

00:22:30.960 like a defense of the proud boys. And then somebody's going to say, why are you a proud boy

00:22:35.080 apologist? I'm not an apologist for anything, right? You can say that things have good parts and bad

00:22:41.180 parts, and that's just talking about it. That's not being an apologist. Almost everything has some good

00:22:48.160 parts and some bad parts. So if you can be an adult, we can talk about that. All right. So I don't see

00:22:56.640 the proud boys as any kind of a existential threat to the country. Not the way Antifa would be, or even

00:23:05.000 neo-Nazis, I suppose. So the Vatican, uh, causing trouble, uh, by being completely consistent to

00:23:16.320 everything they've said before. So I don't know why it's news, but it is. Uh, so the Vatican

00:23:22.840 decreed Monday that the Catholic church cannot bless same-sex unions since God, quote, cannot bless

00:23:32.140 sin. What? Let's go on. The Vatican's orthodoxy office, the congregation for blah, blah, blah. Um,

00:23:43.040 they said that they were asked about whether they can bless gay unions. Now they do, they do go on

00:23:48.960 and say that they want full respect of everything for, uh, the LGBTQ population. So they're saying,

00:23:57.300 no, no, no, we're not saying anything bad about, uh, gay people. They're saying, we're only talking

00:24:02.800 about the institution of marriage. And they go on, um, let's see. And they said they distinguish

00:24:10.720 between the church's welcoming and blessing of gay people, which it upheld, but not their unions,

00:24:16.880 since, since any such sacramental recognition could be confused with marriage. So I guess they're

00:24:23.640 opposed to, you know, any kind of a union that could be somewhat similar to marriage. And it says,

00:24:32.840 the Vatican holds that gay people must be treated with dignity and respect.

00:24:36.280 respect. And then they, and then they go ahead and don't treat them with dignity and respect.

00:24:42.620 But I guess, I suppose that's subjective. Uh, but they say that gay sex is, and here's the,

00:24:48.660 the money quote here, intrinsically disordered, intrinsically disordered. How long did they have

00:24:57.480 to think before they came up with those two words? That gay sex is intrinsically disordered.

00:25:04.000 Like you'd have to work pretty hard for that, wouldn't you? To come up with those two words

00:25:08.940 that nobody, uh, maybe nobody's ever used before about this topic. Um, and it says Catholic teaching

00:25:17.000 holds that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman. It's part of God's plan as an intended

00:25:22.480 for, here's, here's the important part, is intended for the sake of creating new life.

00:25:28.600 Oh, interesting. So if you take their, uh, argument, uh, I'll do a better job than they do of their own

00:25:40.440 argument. Okay. So here's how the Catholic church could have done maybe a better job on this. So I'm

00:25:47.880 not going to be backing their opinion. I'm just going to say they could have, they could have made a better

00:25:52.420 argument. It would have gone like this, that, uh, that God is all about creation and God is apparently

00:26:02.880 concerned or loves people and wants them to reproduce. And so God is more about blessing.

00:26:09.960 Again, this is not me saying this. I'm just making an argument that would be a better argument.

00:26:13.820 Um, so God would be, um, so God would be sort of more pro anything that was conforming to the mating

00:26:20.660 process. And, uh, he would maybe think it's a sin to do something that works against, uh, let's say

00:26:30.220 the procreation and the, um, the growth of humanity. So for example, God would be against murder

00:26:37.900 because murder reduces the number of people who he loves, but God would be in favor of reproduction

00:26:46.140 because reproduction keeps more people. Now I'd never heard this philosophy before where the,

00:26:53.900 the God view was being married philosophically to the mating instinct. Had you ever heard that before?

00:27:00.960 And yeah, I'm seeing somebody in the comments saying that, you know, life is sacred being part of the,

00:27:05.700 the Catholic, uh, the Catholic, uh, belief system. So, so yeah, the, the life is sacred. Um, it's about

00:27:13.160 mating. It's about reproduction. It's about, you know, the biology of the species. So here's, here's the

00:27:19.440 part that, uh, I'd never heard before. I'd never heard anybody marry the philosophy of Catholicism

00:27:27.420 with the biology of the mating process. Is that common? Have you heard that framing before?

00:27:35.700 Because I thought it was actually a productive framing, except the, yeah, abortion being another

00:27:42.660 example. Yeah. So the, the Catholic church would be in favor of everything that promotes

00:27:47.560 making more people and keeping more people alive.

00:27:53.060 And so far, it sounds pretty good, right? Even, even if you disagree with some of the policies that

00:28:01.020 come out of that, it's hard to argue against the general idea that Catholicism wants to keep

00:28:06.920 everybody alive and have more of us. Like just, that sounds good on the surface. But

00:28:13.080 that, unfortunately, the side effect of that is that it, um, I think unintentionally demonizes

00:28:21.200 gay unions. To which I say, what does the Catholic church think about people who can't have children?

00:28:30.300 Like, you know, physically, biologically, they just can't have children. Are they defective?

00:28:36.600 Are they sinning? Or are they in some condition of, it's not their fault, but are they in some kind of

00:28:43.020 perpetual sin situation because they're outside of the mating process? Through no fault of their own.

00:28:50.760 How about people who have aged out of the mating process? You're a certain age, you can't have

00:28:55.520 children anymore. Well, you're a woman, let's say. If that woman who can't have children, but has never

00:29:01.000 been married, gets married, what does the Catholic church say about that? Because that woman is getting

00:29:07.520 married in an institution which is designed for the reproduction of people, but she would not in any

00:29:14.780 way be part of the reproduction because she's already aged down. Let's say she's 60, not, not 40,

00:29:21.860 just to keep it easy. Right? So how does the Catholic church reconcile that some people can get married

00:29:30.480 and it's just fine, and even though they have nothing to do with reproduction and nothing to do with

00:29:35.180 mating, because they can't. But there's other group of people, according to the Catholic church,

00:29:42.280 they're gay, and they also want to have, you know, something, some kind of marriage situation,

00:29:47.580 which has nothing to do with reproduction, except that they can adopt. Right? So I'm just pushing the

00:29:56.920 question, right? So far, I've not given you an opinion. So if you're looking for my opinion, it's not here

00:30:02.160 yet. Right? So suppose the Catholic church is looking at the following two situations. Number

00:30:09.680 one, a gay couple get married, and now they're in a better, let's just say they're a better situation

00:30:16.400 economically and stability-wise to adopt, or to artificially inseminate and have a child.

00:30:24.100 Now compare the gay couple who can find a way to either support a child who already is here or to

00:30:31.280 create a new one with science. Aren't they part of the mating process? Doesn't that put the gay couple

00:30:37.580 right in the middle of the whole reproduction thing, except they may be taking care of a kid who's

00:30:43.260 already born? That seems very Catholic to me. Compare that, again, to the two 70-year-olds who get

00:30:52.500 married. The Catholic church says, oh, this is fine, but don't plan to adopt because they're 70, and they

00:31:00.020 don't plan to have children because they're 70. Why is that okay? Why is one a sin when the gay couple,

00:31:09.220 hypothetically, is, you know, taking care of children, maybe creating children with a little science

00:31:14.760 involved, and the others are doing nothing for reproduction, but yet the gay people are the ones who are

00:31:21.020 outside of the mating process? It feels there's an inconsistency here. Now, again, I'm not Catholic, so is it

00:31:30.580 up to me what the Catholic dogma is? No, no. So Catholicism shouldn't listen to me. My opinion should have

00:31:39.000 no weight, and I would hope it would have no weight. But I simply point that out. I feel like the Catholic

00:31:45.420 Church needs a little bit more work, needs to do the work, as they like to say. All right, I guess Dr. Fauci

00:31:56.340 is now open to the idea. There's some new studies showing that, at least for schools, maybe three feet

00:32:03.160 of distance is enough. So six feet might be too much, and Fauci says he's open to that, and they're still

00:32:10.520 collecting data. But preliminarily, it looks like the six foot thing is less important, and maybe three

00:32:17.240 feet would be enough, maybe just in schools, don't know yet. But here's my thing. How in the world could

00:32:24.900 three feet be good? If you're just breathing, and I'm just sort of using my non-scientific brain here,

00:32:34.800 doesn't it seem like if you're talking to somebody who's three feet away, can't they actually feel

00:32:41.780 your breath? Like if you're only three feet away, let's see, three feet, three feet like this, if you're this

00:32:49.360 far, you can feel somebody's spittle. Like they could actually, you can feel like the spray hitting you in the

00:32:56.080 face. Whereas six feet away, you can't. And I'm thinking to myself, if the data confirms that three

00:33:04.420 feet is good enough, I've got questions. Because if three feet is good enough, there's something that

00:33:14.060 we've been told that doesn't quite track, if you know what I mean. Right? So I'll tell you, if this three

00:33:22.120 feet holds, I want it to hold, of course, because that would be better than six feet. But if it does

00:33:26.880 hold, and the data supports it, there's something else that we don't understand about how this thing

00:33:33.020 gets spread. All right. I asked on Twitter yesterday, if there were a private company

00:33:38.780 that could offer to deprogram your child from whatever occult programming they're getting in

00:33:46.240 school, would you pay for it if it were reasonably priced? And overwhelmingly, people said yes.

00:33:52.120 Now, of course, that reflects my audience as much as anything. But I feel as if this is like a

00:33:57.780 legitimate market opportunity for somebody to be something like a tutor, but to be a tutor on how to

00:34:05.660 avoid cult wokeness. And I don't think it would take forever. Like I think you could hire that tutor

00:34:14.100 to come in, you know, twice a year, and just give your kids a little tune up. Say, hey, kids,

00:34:20.840 it's just 45 minutes, I'd like you to listen to Mr. Johnson, twice a year, and he's going to just go

00:34:29.200 over what you've been told. And then he's going to give you another view of it. So you can see the

00:34:34.000 filter to look through. And you can tell what's real and what's not. Twice a year, just a little

00:34:39.980 bit of a tune up. Really useful, I think. The other thing I've been promoting forever is teaching

00:34:45.740 strategy to kids. Life strategy. The sort of things you can get from my book, How to Failed

00:34:51.300 Almost Everything and Still Win Big. There are others. But schools don't really teach strategy.

00:34:57.740 Like, you know, should you have a system versus a goal? How to build a skill stack, etc. And I feel

00:35:04.300 like that's a consulting business too. Imagine if you could, again, just twice a year,

00:35:11.060 have a tutor come in, put your kids in front of them. It could be different ages, because it

00:35:16.360 wouldn't matter that much. And just have them teach you, all right, here's the stuff you learn

00:35:20.620 in school. Here's the stuff they don't tell you. But if you use these strategies, you're really going

00:35:26.000 to do well. Priceless. It would be priceless. All right. Have you noticed how often the Democrats

00:35:37.700 get the same thing, I'm going to say wrong, but you might say different, than Republicans?

00:35:46.040 And it's so consistent. And I don't hear people talk about it, even though this would be the way

00:35:51.220 to describe everything that's happening, is that Democrats don't understand or don't appreciate

00:35:57.140 or don't recognize human motivation as being a necessary, maybe the most necessary part of any

00:36:04.780 system. And Republicans consistently get that right. It's the biggest difference. It's like

00:36:12.040 there's a blind spot. Now, the Democrats think the blind spot is that Republicans have no heart

00:36:17.260 or they're racist or something. Whereas the Republicans say, you're ignoring the biggest

00:36:22.900 variable every time. It doesn't even matter what topic you're looking at. Every time you get the same

00:36:28.280 thing wrong, which is human motivation. You act like it doesn't, it's not a thing. Like it doesn't

00:36:34.120 even exist. Let me give you some examples. Immigration. Trump got the human motivation right

00:36:41.840 because he made it difficult and unpleasant to come across the border. And so fewer people did.

00:36:48.940 The Democrats say, hey, we want to be kind. So we're going to let anybody, any kids come in. And of

00:36:54.880 course, the human motivation was too many kids and the system is, looks like it's already broken.

00:37:01.180 It's collapsing. So how about socialism? Socialism is, again, getting the human motivation part wrong

00:37:08.380 because if you let people make more money and be greedy, they will build amazing businesses. And if you

00:37:15.160 give them no reward whatsoever for doing extra hard work, they won't do it. Again, Democrats get that

00:37:23.660 wrong. The teachers' unions. The motivation is for them to protect the union. And that means that the

00:37:33.060 children, who are our most valuable asset, even if you don't love children, economically, they're the

00:37:39.460 most valuable asset for the future, unambiguously. But the Democrats create a situation where there's

00:37:46.960 no competition in schools because of the teachers' unions. So they squash the competition.

00:37:52.480 And as soon as you don't have competition, what is the human motivation of the people working there?

00:37:58.540 To not do a good job because the pay is the same if you do a good job or a bad job. There's no

00:38:04.760 competition, so you're not going to lose out that way. What about the minimum wage? Same thing.

00:38:11.360 The minimum wage, the Republicans say, hold on. If you make this change, you can predict very easily

00:38:18.600 what people will do. Companies will hire fewer people. You know, just the human motivation will

00:38:24.480 work through it and it'll be a problem. Now, I don't agree with the Republican position on this,

00:38:29.500 just to be clear. I'm just describing them. I do think that the country could handle a higher

00:38:35.500 minimum wage if you do it smart and you do it differently in different places, etc. But I think

00:38:42.460 we could probably handle it. Anyway, so in every case, even foreign affairs, you know, even trusting

00:38:52.220 Iran to do the right thing. Okay, Iran will do the right thing. So you will too, right? Again,

00:39:00.240 they get the human motivation wrong because Iran says, you're going to let us do whatever we want

00:39:04.920 and not check. We'll do some bad stuff. I feel as if this label between Republican and Democrat

00:39:14.560 could be scrapped and there are just some people who believe human motivation is real.

00:39:20.700 And that could describe everything. Instead of saying, are you Democrat or are you Republican,

00:39:25.760 just say, hey, do you believe that human motivation should be a big factor when you design a system

00:39:32.160 for society? And if somebody says no, they're a Democrat. I guess Bill Burr was one of the hosts

00:39:44.200 for the Grammys, did part of the presentation, and a bunch of people are complaining. And when I say

00:39:49.940 a bunch of people, I mean artists. Artists are consistently the humorless group. Now, if you hire Bill Burr,

00:40:02.160 to be part of your program, and then Bill Burr mocks something about your program, which I guess

00:40:10.500 he did, because he wasn't turned on by the piano music section, that's sort of on you, right?

00:40:20.640 If you hire Bill Burr and he says something that offends somebody, you can't say you didn't see it

00:40:25.860 coming. Well, I didn't see that coming. By the way, there's nothing funnier than watching people

00:40:33.540 call Bill Burr racist, because he does, everything he does is a little edgy. So it's like right on the

00:40:40.280 edge of being, you know, sexist, but not quite. And he's like right on the edge of you think it's

00:40:46.140 going to be a little racist, but it's not quite, which is where he gets all of his energy by walking

00:40:52.180 right up to the line. But I love this fact about him, which is he's married to a black woman.

00:40:58.520 And so he's got this situation where just, he just silently does his thing. And everybody

00:41:04.300 complains about, you know, hey, are you being a racist? And he just sits there, married to a black

00:41:10.760 woman. And that's it. That's, that's the defense. Now, I don't think he ever has ever said that

00:41:19.760 directly, like, hey, I can't be racist, because I'm married to a black woman, which is not even

00:41:25.000 the thing. Because of course, you could be the biggest racist in the world and be married to a

00:41:29.320 to a black woman, that there's nothing that would stop that. But as an argument, it's like the most

00:41:35.660 elegant argument you could make. Because you don't even have to say anything. Here's my argument.

00:41:41.660 Nothing. How about my counter argument is nothing. I'm not even going to counter argument. I'll just

00:41:49.960 be me. And that's my argument. Have you noticed that all of the stories turn out to be continuation

00:41:58.640 stories? Remember when Trump would create new news? You'd wake up and he's like, oh, what do you do now?

00:42:05.480 It'd be like this whole new story about a new thing. But today, all of the stories are just

00:42:12.280 more. So we have Biden continues not to give press conferences, 54 days. We continue to talk about his

00:42:22.820 declining mental state. There's no news per se, but there is more of it. Immigration is just getting

00:42:33.120 worse. Cuomo gets a new accuser every few days. And more people have been asked about commenting

00:42:41.920 on it. But it's the same story. There's just more of it. How about the vaccination rollout? It's not really

00:42:51.960 new. There's just more of it. How about the comedians say something offensive? Well, is that new? Not really.

00:43:01.160 There's just another one. So the Biden administration has turned into a no news.

00:43:11.160 Isn't that weird? That the idea of news just stopped.

00:43:17.200 Sharon Osbourne got in trouble for, I guess, supporting Piers Morgan and his comments about

00:43:24.920 Meghan Markle. And that turned into, you must be a racist and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:43:29.220 And then she had to, of course, do her statement in which she said, so here's Sharon Osbourne.

00:43:36.900 There are very few things that hurt my heart more than racism. So to feel associated with that spun me

00:43:43.200 fast. I am not perfect. I am still learning like the rest of us and will continue to learn,

00:43:49.380 listen and do better. And I was comparing that to Chris Harrison's public statement of apology.

00:43:56.600 And I thought to myself, I'm going to need to write one of these. Sooner or later, I'm going to be doing

00:44:04.580 one of these public apologies. I don't know for what, but it feels likely, right? Oh, by the way,

00:44:10.440 YouTube just took down two of my videos. They were both from January, but they took them off. And the

00:44:16.540 reason giving is that the videos they say promoted false election claims. Now, if you've been watching

00:44:25.700 me, do you think that I made any false election claims? You've been watching me for a while, right?

00:44:34.800 And you know how carefully I word everything. Do you believe that there were any false claims about the

00:44:42.560 election in those videos? Two of them, and they were taken down. No, they weren't. No. Because I don't make those

00:44:49.140 claims, nor do I think anybody should. Indeed, I could not agree with YouTube anymore. I don't think people

00:45:00.240 should be promoting false claims of elections. And so, I've never done it. You'd agree. You've all watched it.

00:45:08.860 You've never seen me even promote anything that was even sketchy, right? In fact, I do the opposite

00:45:14.300 more than anything. I tell you that the claims are bullshit. Pretty much exclusively, I tell you that

00:45:19.920 the claims don't have substance. I've probably mentioned that the statistics need to be explained,

00:45:27.020 but that there's no direct evidence of fraud. So, and what YouTube said in a statement, oh, let me

00:45:33.660 read it to you. I'll tell you how YouTube described this to me, and I'll tie it back to Sharon

00:45:37.900 Osborne in a moment. So, here's their actual statement. It says, hi, Scott Adams. We want to

00:45:48.200 let you know that our team reviewed your content, and we think it violates our spam deceptive practices

00:45:54.240 and scams policy. We know you may not have realized this was a violation of our policies. Here's the

00:46:01.880 important part. We know you may not have realized it. Now, that's true. And the reason I did not

00:46:08.560 realize it is because it didn't happen. In no reality did this happen, in any reality. Now, do

00:46:15.120 they point to the thing I said so that I could know next time, oh, don't say that, because whatever it

00:46:22.740 was that I said, that's the thing they're keying on, so I'd like to avoid. They don't tell me what it is.

00:46:26.820 It's just somewhere in a video that had lots of different topics. Okay? And they said, we've,

00:46:36.280 it says, so we're not applying a strike to your channel. So, they're not going to put it on my

00:46:43.020 permanent record because they think I might not have realized that I had violated their policy.

00:46:50.380 That seems pretty good, right? If they admit they don't know I did it intentionally, so they're not

00:46:57.060 putting a strike on my record. They're just getting rid of the videos. Does that seem reasonable?

00:47:01.500 Pretty fair, right? If this were the only thing in the world, even I would say, oh, I would disagree

00:47:08.060 with that opinion, but that's reasonable. I'm not getting any kind of a permanent strike. They're just

00:47:12.940 doing a little editing. Eh, no big deal. And they're older videos anyway. But here's the question.

00:47:18.920 If I got these taken down, and even they know I couldn't tell that I had violated the policy,

00:47:26.780 what happens when I do it again? Right? Because now I've been warned. Have I not been warned?

00:47:36.400 This is exactly what this is. It's a warning. And they're saying, we're not going to give you a

00:47:41.460 strike because you probably didn't know you did anything wrong. But what happens the next time?

00:47:46.460 The next time, can they not say, we warned you? I feel like they could. Because they did warn me,

00:47:54.200 but they didn't tell me what it was that I did. So I don't have the option of avoiding it,

00:47:59.600 because I don't know what it was. Now, do you see what's happening? Now, add this to the fact that

00:48:07.740 the algorithm has obviously tightened up on me as well, so that, you know, the monetization and

00:48:13.080 everything from the channel just plunged. So doesn't that look like a setup to you?

00:48:20.820 Like an obvious setup? I feel as if they're pushing me in a situation where I will accidentally

00:48:27.780 cancel myself and I'll never know I did it. I'll just be canceled. And then they'll say,

00:48:33.000 well, this is your third strike. To which I'll say, about what? You didn't even tell me what the

00:48:39.760 other strikes were about. I mean, you gave me a category, but you didn't tell me what I said

00:48:44.960 that violated that category. I have no idea. And honestly, I don't even have a guess.

00:48:51.740 I have no guess why I got censored. Think about that. Think about being censored,

00:48:57.580 and you don't even know why, except for a category. I just don't know what I said about it.

00:49:05.400 Yeah, and they went back two months to find it. What's that tell you?

00:49:10.280 So every time one of my videos goes up, it gets a down vote the moment it comes on,

00:49:16.640 meaning that there are people who spend their full time just trying to demonetize my channel.

00:49:23.280 Now, I don't know that they're anybody except trolls, but there's somebody whose job it is trying to

00:49:30.000 make my voice less. They're spending like time every single day working on decreasing my voice.

00:49:37.580 Think about that. So I would say the odds of me eventually getting canceled from YouTube are 100%

00:49:45.300 unless I stop saying the kinds of stuff I say, which I don't plan to do. So we'll see. If I get

00:49:51.680 canceled, I'll be on the Locals platform, subscription platform, where I am now with

00:49:56.880 the stuff you don't get to see. And by the way, I keep saying I'm going to do a thing on Locals

00:50:02.100 about reframing. It's going to be the best thing I've ever done. And I think that's actually true,

00:50:08.700 because I've just been sort of working on the outline for it. And when I looked at it together,

00:50:14.360 it's really going to be life-changing. Not some, probably a lot of people who watch that content,

00:50:22.200 it's just going to completely change your life. It's actually that powerful.

00:50:27.120 Anyway, back to Sharon Osborne. So she did her little statement of contrition and how she's

00:50:31.720 going to listen and do better. I thought, I better write mine in advance. So I wrote up a little first

00:50:37.060 draft. So I'd like to read to you my statement. I will be reading when I get canceled, because that

00:50:42.860 seems inevitable. I don't know for what. So please help me on the first draft. Okay? So this is when

00:50:50.980 I get caught or canceled for whatever bad thing I'm sure I'll do in the future. I will say the

00:50:57.880 following. It doesn't matter what it is. Here's my statement. I'm a deeply flawed human. Really,

00:51:05.300 just a pile of organic crap that is barely sentient. I must learn to listen and do better.

00:51:12.860 I am committed to doing the hard work of examining all of my flaws as described by my critics. And I

00:51:19.740 will force myself to be unhappy until my brain is free of all bias. And I can clearly see myself

00:51:26.860 as broken and unworthy of life itself. I beg my critics who are already operating at a higher level

00:51:35.140 of moral standards to pity me for my wretchedness and evil and to help me improve by spitting on me

00:51:42.280 in public whenever they see me. I am committed to a path of self-improvement that will, with lots of

00:51:49.100 hard work, make me barely acceptable to proper thinking people. I dedicate my entire life to the

00:51:55.940 mission of pleasing my critics, who are justifiably uncomfortable with my very existence.

00:52:03.280 In summary, I am a shitty person and I will spend my days thinking of nothing else but my unworthiness,

00:52:09.980 which I now understand, extends to the molecular level of my being.

00:52:14.780 Please adjust your opinion of me to be as low as my opinion of myself. I plan to issue public

00:52:21.540 statements of apology for being me until the end of my days, which I think we all agree should come

00:52:28.020 sooner than later. Now, this is just the first draft. I need to tighten it up a little bit.

00:52:35.620 I don't feel that I insulted myself enough. I need to add a little bit more begging.

00:52:43.520 Right? Got to add a little more begging. So, but that's the start. And I would suggest that all of

00:52:49.140 you start working on your statements of contrition and apology because it's coming for you. You don't

00:52:56.860 want to be caught off guard. In fact, when I get cancelled, I think I'll just have this in my back

00:53:03.360 pocket. And I'll be like, uh, Mr. Adams, you've said some terrible things. Uh, do you have any

00:53:13.460 comments? Do I? Yeah. Here I do. Thank God I did all this work and I'm glad. Uh, yeah, I have a

00:53:21.960 statement for that. Uh, statement begins, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, I'm a deeply flawed human and I'll just read

00:53:30.380 my statement. And then people say, whoa, you carry that with you carry with me. Yes. I memorize this

00:53:38.660 every day. I, I read, I chant it. I actually go outside and I chant my apology. That's how serious

00:53:46.540 I am to doing the work. A lot of you, you're not serious about doing the work. I do the work.

00:53:54.560 And that's why I'm a better person than all of you because I hate myself more. Now you understand

00:54:02.380 that, right? I hate myself more than you hate yourself, which makes me a better person.

00:54:11.260 And if you add to that that I'm white and male and of a certain age, that self-hatred is really the

00:54:20.440 key to moral acceptability. So if you can find a way to deeply, deeply despise yourself,

00:54:27.800 um, that will give you some moral clarity. All right. That is my show for today. I think you'll

00:54:37.600 agree. It's the best one ever until tomorrow. And I'm glad you liked that. Some people are laughing.

00:54:47.020 Can I get a copy? So he wants a copy. Yeah, maybe I'll post that. I may post that. All right. That's

00:55:01.280 all for now. And I will talk to you a little bit later. All right, YouTubers. Good first draft.

00:55:10.020 Thank you. I'll keep working on that. And I will see you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 15, 2021

Episode 1314 Scott Adams： Biden to Raise Taxes to Pay for the Destruction of America, Science Versus Guessing, China is Doomed, More

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript