Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1471 Scott Adams： I Tell You Why Biden and Trump Both Got it Right About Afghanistan and More Fun

00:00:00.720 Hey everybody, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the best part of the day.

00:00:06.800 Again, again, for four years running.

00:00:10.700 And if you'd like to take it up a level, I know you do.

00:00:14.100 All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or a chalice, a tie in the canteen,

00:00:17.160 a jug of glass, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:00:19.860 I like coffee.

00:00:21.960 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day,

00:00:27.480 the thing that makes everything better except leaving Afghanistan. 0.99

00:00:31.880 It's called the simultaneous sip.

00:00:33.560 It happens now.

00:00:38.800 Oh, that was good.

00:00:41.240 That was well planned, just like Afghanistan. 0.99

00:00:46.280 Well, let's see what we've got going on in the news here.

00:00:49.900 Lots of interesting stuff.

00:00:51.460 Ah, interesting, interesting stuff that I sent to myself so it would be right here on my phone.

00:01:00.180 With my email that's totally working.

00:01:03.380 What the f is going on?

00:01:07.020 Hold on a second.

00:01:09.560 Why in hell did Gmail stop working at the beginning of my...

00:01:15.040 All right, there it is.

00:01:16.060 I really sent it.

00:01:17.000 So I really sent...

00:01:19.240 Ah, there it is.

00:01:19.940 It just appeared.

00:01:21.240 Takes a long time to email yourself sometimes.

00:01:24.900 Story number one.

00:01:26.900 Mask resistance.

00:01:29.580 It's coming.

00:01:31.180 Mask resistance.

00:01:35.700 And it's starting in San Diego County School District.

00:01:39.660 So there's one private school network and one county school district, a district.

00:01:47.800 It's not just a school.

00:01:48.780 It's a whole district, that are making masks optional despite the government's requirements.

00:01:55.160 That's right.

00:01:56.120 And so I ask you this.

00:01:59.000 What will be the penalty for the school district and the private school who made masks optional?

00:02:07.060 Will they be executed?

00:02:10.240 Will they be rounded up and taken to jail?

00:02:14.200 Nope.

00:02:15.920 There's no penalty.

00:02:18.560 Can I tell you something that you didn't realize?

00:02:22.340 It's not up to the government if you wear masks.

00:02:26.640 It's not up to the government.

00:02:28.820 It's up to you.

00:02:30.580 The government doesn't have any control of you.

00:02:32.640 They can't make you wear a mask.

00:02:34.700 They can't.

00:02:35.280 Now, it is true that if only a few people resist, it's not going to make much difference.

00:02:42.400 But take a look at the San Diego County School District.

00:02:45.560 Do you think the police are going to come in and round people up?

00:02:49.580 Nope.

00:02:50.660 I don't think so.

00:02:52.320 How many more school districts would it take before they all just say, uh, there's no penalty?

00:02:59.220 Because guess what?

00:03:01.100 There's no penalty.

00:03:02.740 There couldn't be.

00:03:03.460 Now, you could imagine they might try to make your life hard, you know, at least hassle you a little bit, if it's just one or two of you.

00:03:12.360 But if an entire school district decides, eh, masks are optional, what the hell are you going to do?

00:03:19.080 So stop thinking that the government is making you wear masks.

00:03:23.040 That's not happening.

00:03:24.620 You're wearing masks voluntarily.

00:03:27.740 Just own it.

00:03:29.360 You're doing it voluntarily.

00:03:31.200 You could easily not wear a mask. 0.98

00:03:32.780 Well, you'd be paying the ass if you were the only one, because people would hassle you. 0.78

00:03:37.340 But no, it's, it's a, the public is volunteering for this. 0.98

00:03:40.820 That's what's happening.

00:03:42.180 If you think the government is making you wear a mask, how?

00:03:46.740 What, do they have a gun pointed at you?

00:03:49.000 Is there some law I don't know about where I'll go to jail if I wear a mask?

00:03:52.200 The government isn't making you do anything.

00:03:56.620 All right.

00:04:00.120 I've always believed that in terms of vaccinations and passports and stuff, it's not going to be the government that makes you do it.

00:04:07.360 It'll be some combination of economics, insurance, which is also economics, and brand, brand protection.

00:04:18.240 So companies will want to protect their brand.

00:04:20.160 So here's the perfect example.

00:04:24.580 Apparently the Las Vegas Raiders are going to require fans to provide proof of vaccination, to go to home games.

00:04:33.580 The Las Vegas Raiders.

00:04:36.240 Let me take those two things individually.

00:04:39.020 Las Vegas, where everything's legal and free and the government doesn't bother you.

00:04:45.800 Las Vegas is going to make you, I mean something in Las Vegas.

00:04:49.540 It's going to make you wear a mask, get vaccinated.

00:04:53.680 Secondly, the Raiders?

00:04:56.180 The Raiders?

00:04:57.540 Are you kidding me?

00:04:58.620 Their entire brand is about being, you know, pirates and rebels and, you know, take your risks and all that stuff.

00:05:05.320 And they're going to make you get a vaccination, too.

00:05:09.640 So it seemed inevitable that the economics and the insurance of it and the brand and management would require companies to be the enforcers.

00:05:19.020 So you don't really need the government to tell you to do anything.

00:05:21.920 These are private companies making private, well, they're public companies in some cases, but making decisions about what's good for the brand.

00:05:31.300 Is that a problem?

00:05:33.660 You like capitalism, right?

00:05:36.100 Big government's bad.

00:05:38.260 Capitalism is good.

00:05:40.260 So capitalism is going to drive the passports, I think, as far as they go.

00:05:46.060 I don't know how far they'll go.

00:05:47.040 So Chris Cuomo, with impeccable timing, and I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, managed to make his first public statement about the resignation of his brother, Governor Cuomo, and he waited until the biggest news day of the year.

00:06:04.440 Well, I suppose January 6th was the biggest news day.

00:06:09.100 But the biggest news day of the summer, wouldn't you say?

00:06:12.480 The Afghan withdrawal.

00:06:14.320 It's very visual.

00:06:15.300 It's horrible.

00:06:16.040 We all want to talk about it.

00:06:17.480 So he picked just the best time to do it.

00:06:20.580 Really, he nailed that.

00:06:22.660 Now, it could be it was just the end of his vacation anyway.

00:06:26.200 So it might have been just accidental.

00:06:28.520 But, man, talk about a lucky accident for him.

00:06:31.800 Took him right off the headlines.

00:06:32.920 Well, here's a question I saw from Raul Davis asked this, CEO branding expert.

00:06:43.400 And I'll reword it so it's not his exact words.

00:06:46.460 But here's the thing.

00:06:48.240 We know that there was.

00:06:49.840 Don't we know this?

00:06:50.820 Because it was in the news.

00:06:52.840 And if it's in the news, it's true.

00:06:55.700 We all agree with that, right?

00:06:58.020 That if it's in the news, it's true.

00:07:01.480 Right.

00:07:01.760 Yeah, I think we do.

00:07:02.920 So the news told us that on January 6th, there was this insurrection, violent insurrection

00:07:08.000 in the Capitol, and that many people have been rounded up as being party to that insurrection.

00:07:15.140 But here's the troubling part.

00:07:18.780 Biden's Department of Justice is refusing to charge anybody with insurrection.

00:07:24.340 They're only charging them with, like, smaller stuff, like obstructing a public meeting or, you know, interfering with the government, something like that.

00:07:32.000 So why isn't the Department of Justice going hard at these insurrectionists?

00:07:37.080 Why is nobody being charged with insurrectionists?

00:07:39.080 Why is nobody being charged with insurrection?

00:07:40.840 As Raul Davis points out, shouldn't we be investigating the Department of Justice?

00:07:50.100 Because the Department of Justice is apparently refusing to do the obvious thing that you should do, which is press charges against insurrectionists.

00:08:00.520 I can't think of anything worse than an insurrection.

00:08:04.220 So let's put some pressure on the Department of Justice to do their job.

00:08:10.860 Do their job.

00:08:11.940 Let's see some charges for all this insurrection.

00:08:16.520 Wait, wait, what?

00:08:19.340 What?

00:08:20.060 Are you telling me that no Justice Department anywhere has found any evidence of an insurrection sufficient to charge somebody with?

00:08:30.220 What?

00:08:31.220 What?

00:08:31.980 How could that be with all the video and all the witnesses and all the insurrection?

00:08:39.580 What?

00:08:40.900 What?

00:08:41.420 What?

00:08:41.700 What?

00:08:42.260 What?

00:08:42.740 What?

00:08:45.620 So there's that.

00:08:49.320 Here's a good question.

00:08:52.980 Why did we lose in Afghanistan?

00:08:56.160 What the hell happened there?

00:08:59.000 Now, one theory, and I don't know how much weight to put on this, so I'll just put this out there and let you wrestle with it a little bit.

00:09:09.580 Reportedly, the U.S. did not want to destroy the poppy fields, where all the opiates came from, because for rural Afghanistan, that's the only way they made money.

00:09:21.680 So if you mowed down the poppy fields, then a whole bunch of people would starve to death, I guess.

00:09:27.460 So then we couldn't do that.

00:09:28.640 But wasn't it those same poppy fields that funded the Taliban?

00:09:35.420 Or who else funded them?

00:09:37.320 Was there somebody else?

00:09:38.460 Was it some other country funding the Taliban?

00:09:41.720 Because at the very least, they were well-funded, weren't they?

00:09:46.000 Because they had money and resources to take over a country in a week.

00:09:50.500 That's pretty well-funded.

00:09:51.880 Somebody says the CIA funded the Taliban.

00:09:55.840 I don't think so.

00:09:58.060 At least not recently.

00:10:00.860 So the question is this.

00:10:03.380 What should we have done?

00:10:05.240 Should we have just mowed those poppy fields, because they couldn't have been that hard to find.

00:10:10.060 Mowed them with fire, of course.

00:10:11.940 And just taking care of the resulting economic displacement?

00:10:19.580 Because you could probably still feed the people somehow, and, I don't know, convert them to some other kind of agriculture, maybe, in the long run.

00:10:26.420 But apparently nothing works in Afghanistan.

00:10:28.900 You can't convert any industries.

00:10:30.700 You can't create any industries.

00:10:32.640 You can't get the government to do anything.

00:10:34.400 You can't get the army to work.

00:10:36.140 There's something going on over there that makes everything not work.

00:10:39.080 But I think the opiate field part of that might be a big portion of it.

00:10:48.600 Biden, according to Rasmussen polls, Biden reached a record low approval, 45%.

00:10:53.680 No surprise.

00:10:56.940 Have I told you that visual persuasion and scary stuff is really effective?

00:11:04.220 It's like the most effective persuasion?

00:11:05.860 I'm sure that this poll was taken before the images of the Afghans trying to flee their country and falling from the airplane as it took off.

00:11:16.440 This low approval rating was probably before that.

00:11:19.860 I'm guessing, because of the timing.

00:11:22.820 What's it going to be after?

00:11:24.580 I don't think it'll be 45%, but maybe.

00:11:27.520 Who knows?

00:11:28.040 Apparently there are 30,000 Afghans that we want to relocate.

00:11:33.740 That must be interpreters and helpers and the families.

00:11:37.980 That's a lot of people.

00:11:39.720 30,000 people.

00:11:41.720 But if you're worried about 30,000 refugees coming in, these are probably the ones you want. 1.00

00:11:48.740 Now, economically, who knows how much they can support themselves when they get here, but they would be 30,000 people who were working with us and on our side, and sort of, you know, they're leading our direction to begin with.

00:12:04.280 So if we could help these people, I think they would be loyal Americans.

00:12:08.320 I think that they would be, I would be proud to have them in this country if they fought with us in Afghanistan.

00:12:18.560 And sure, you know, there might be some trouble, might be expensive, but I would be proud to have them.

00:12:26.600 Apparently the Taliban is offering a general amnesty for government workers so they can go back to work without risk of being killed.

00:12:34.100 Would you trust the Taliban?

00:12:36.440 If the Taliban said, I've got a deal with you, we've got a deal, we won't brutally murder you, just go back to work and we'll pretend you never were on the other side. 0.92

00:12:49.720 Is that going to work?

00:12:51.900 Maybe.

00:12:53.420 It might.

00:12:54.100 I have to think that one of the strongest things the Taliban had going for them is their unprecedented level of brutality.

00:13:03.400 Would you agree?

00:13:04.000 An unprecedented level of brutality?

00:13:07.820 I feel like that's, I feel like that's why they conquered the country in a week.

00:13:13.960 Because I think the Afghan government and the Afghan army said, you know, we might be able to beat them in a fight. 0.86

00:13:20.820 We might. 0.95

00:13:22.460 But if we lose, they're going to slay our family and torture us and execute us. 0.74

00:13:27.760 So losing was a really, you know, bad deal versus just saying, we give up, let's run away.

00:13:36.600 So I have a feeling that the brutality of the Taliban is what won them the war. 0.97

00:13:42.280 I feel like their reputation won them the war.

00:13:45.180 Does anybody feel the same?

00:13:46.940 I mean, they obviously had to move resources into the places they took over.

00:13:51.080 But I feel like nobody fought because they didn't want to take a chance of losing.

00:13:56.200 You know, you could take a chance of losing against some enemies and still figure, well, we'll do a peace deal.

00:14:02.040 We'll get on with our business.

00:14:03.800 Well, I don't know if that works with the Taliban.

00:14:05.600 All right, here's the provocative part.

00:14:10.360 I'm going to support Biden totally in his withdrawal, including the way he did it.

00:14:17.480 All right.

00:14:18.200 I'm also going to support Trump for getting the process moving.

00:14:23.360 So in my opinion, both Biden and Trump were right, 100%.

00:14:28.660 Now, here's the part you're going to say, Scott, Scott, Scott, it's not about that.

00:14:33.020 It's about the incompetence of leaving.

00:14:37.000 And here's where I'm going to surprise you.

00:14:39.340 I don't think there was any.

00:14:41.880 Now, there could be, because there's more that we don't know than we do know, right?

00:14:46.800 But I'm going to tell you that it's not evident.

00:14:50.120 There could have been massive incompetence, certainly.

00:14:53.040 I mean, I wouldn't rule that out.

00:14:54.600 But I didn't see it.

00:14:56.780 And here's what I mean.

00:14:57.540 What would happen, no matter who is the president, when, no matter who is the president, as soon as we said we're leaving, what's going to happen?

00:15:08.420 The Afghan government's going to start packing its bags.

00:15:12.100 The entire, the only way you could leave that country peacefully and in some orderly way is if the Afghan government was willing to fight and then actually fought. 0.96

00:15:23.560 And that was never the case.

00:15:26.440 It wasn't the case under Trump.

00:15:28.340 It wasn't the case under Biden.

00:15:30.140 It wouldn't be the case under the next president.

00:15:32.860 There would be no willingness to fight by the Afghan people. 0.98

00:15:36.740 And without that, there was also no way to get out without it being messy.

00:15:42.140 Here's an assumption I'm going to make.

00:15:43.760 You can check this assumption.

00:15:44.800 That the American withdrawal required, to some degree, that the country wasn't falling apart at the same time.

00:15:55.340 In other words, you couldn't have all of your defense and structure falling apart while you're trying to get all your assets out.

00:16:03.160 That would be the most dangerous thing.

00:16:05.100 You wanted it to stay coherent enough that you could get your important American assets out and then let it fall apart.

00:16:13.080 And that's what happened.

00:16:15.460 We got our stuff out, apparently without even telling people at Bagram Air Force Base they were even leaving.

00:16:21.840 They didn't even give them a warning.

00:16:23.500 They were just gone.

00:16:25.500 Right?

00:16:26.660 If you think that was a mistake, I would challenge your assumption.

00:16:31.520 It could have been.

00:16:32.620 So let me say as clearly as I can, you could be right.

00:16:36.120 Because I'll bet every one of you is thinking that the pullout was pure, naked incompetence.

00:16:40.760 And when I look at General Milley, I think, well, that makes sense. 0.89

00:16:45.300 Because he does look incompetent.

00:16:47.340 I'm sorry.

00:16:48.540 He must have competence to become a general, I think.

00:16:52.200 You'd have to be competent.

00:16:53.980 But he doesn't look it. 0.97

00:16:55.500 I mean, he looks like he's incompetent. 0.64

00:16:57.440 He acts like it when he talks in public.

00:16:59.040 So it wouldn't be hard to believe that we just effed up the whole thing.

00:17:03.880 But I think we would have anyway.

00:17:06.260 I think you could have changed out all the people and gotten the same result.

00:17:11.000 Because the moment you say you're leaving, the whole country falls apart, the Afghan government leaves.

00:17:16.020 It's going to get wet.

00:17:18.000 It's going to get wet.

00:17:19.520 So if you say that you know that Biden did this worse than somebody else, forget you're forgetting your lessons from COVID.

00:17:30.180 What did we learn from COVID?

00:17:31.700 The thing we learned from COVID is the only way you know anything is you'd have to do a randomized controlled trial, right?

00:17:40.760 And we could argue about meta, metadata and meta studies.

00:17:45.400 But for my analogy, the reason you can't always tell if a drug worked is you didn't do a controlled study.

00:17:52.760 So there's nothing to compare it to.

00:17:54.680 You know it did well or it didn't do well.

00:17:56.420 You just don't know what the alternative would have been.

00:17:58.220 Likewise, all we know is what happened in Afghanistan.

00:18:03.000 We don't know what Trump would have done.

00:18:05.060 We don't know what a President Hillary Clinton would have done. 1.00

00:18:08.920 We don't know what anybody else would have done.

00:18:11.180 If you are certain that the result we got was worse than if we had done something differently, there's no support for that.

00:18:22.260 You have an opinion with absolutely no support.

00:18:25.240 Now, later, later, I'm saying, come on, man.

00:18:29.980 Now, later, we might find out that you're totally right.

00:18:33.640 We could, right?

00:18:35.200 So hear me clearly.

00:18:36.760 You could be totally right and I could be totally wrong.

00:18:41.140 But here's my only point.

00:18:43.220 I'm making my opinion based on observation.

00:18:45.840 You're making your opinion based on speculation.

00:18:50.800 And it's baseless.

00:18:52.220 It is baseless speculation that it would have gone better if we'd done something different.

00:18:57.220 I don't think there was a right way out.

00:18:59.600 I think we only had two bad ways out.

00:19:02.800 Bad slow and bad fast.

00:19:05.320 And we took bad fast.

00:19:06.860 Was that a mistake?

00:19:08.760 No, it wasn't.

00:19:10.200 If you have a choice of bad slow or bad fast, and they're both just terrible, do a bad fast.

00:19:19.200 Get it over with.

00:19:21.200 Whoever was president was going to be president when somebody fell off a plane, right?

00:19:26.080 Now I'm using that as, you know, a representative of something bad was going to happen.

00:19:31.560 But somebody was going to fall off a plane and it was going to be on film. 0.96

00:19:35.600 The Taliban was going to brutally kill people. 0.70

00:19:39.700 That stuff was all going to happen.

00:19:41.780 So the part that is the key part that separates your opinion from mine is your assumption about what the Afghan government would have done.

00:19:52.520 All right?

00:19:52.720 So this is a key point.

00:19:54.100 The only difference in our opinions, I think, is your assumption of what the Afghan government would have done

00:20:01.200 if we'd done a more planned, phased withdrawal.

00:20:06.320 I say they would have folded in every case.

00:20:09.180 In every case, the Afghan government would be packing their bags because they were pretty dead. 0.91

00:20:14.200 And they knew it.

00:20:15.900 So while it is a completely reasonable assumption, completely reasonable that I'm wrong,

00:20:24.240 is everybody hearing that?

00:20:27.320 I want you to hear it clearly, that tomorrow we might find out some information of a specific thing we did wrong,

00:20:33.320 that would completely change my opinion.

00:20:36.020 I'm just saying that as of today, your opinion has no support.

00:20:41.600 Could be right.

00:20:42.880 You might be right.

00:20:44.120 Evidence might prove you right.

00:20:45.680 I wouldn't be surprised at all.

00:20:46.840 But as long as the Afghan government was going to evaporate as soon as we started leaving,

00:20:53.780 you didn't really have an option to do it right.

00:20:56.340 You only had an option to do it fast.

00:20:59.300 That's what they did.

00:21:00.200 Now, I have to think that the people over there had a little bit of capability,

00:21:06.100 meaning that I'm seeing lots of people saying, you are wrong.

00:21:10.360 Everybody who's saying you're wrong, I hear you.

00:21:13.120 I hear you, and I even think you might be right.

00:21:17.040 I'm just saying that you don't have evidence for your opinion.

00:21:20.120 That's all.

00:21:22.820 David Sachs did a tweet today on this point.

00:21:26.220 Now, if you don't know David Sachs, a very successful investor,

00:21:29.760 one of the smartest guys around about everything,

00:21:33.400 and he said this in a tweet,

00:21:36.240 the correct order of operations would be this.

00:21:38.360 Number one, shred sensitive documents.

00:21:41.160 Sounds good.

00:21:41.700 Number two, evacuate civilians and allies.

00:21:44.980 Sounds perfectly reasonable.

00:21:46.860 Number three, pull out the military, 0.95

00:21:48.600 and then number four, announce the end of fighting.

00:21:51.780 Now, that would be a good business order of things, right?

00:21:59.640 As Jan says, there you go.

00:22:01.440 That's the way to do it.

00:22:03.200 This wouldn't work.

00:22:05.400 Have any of you ever worked in any kind of a large organization?

00:22:09.060 There's no way this would work.

00:22:10.540 Here's what would go wrong.

00:22:12.580 Step one, shred sensitive documents.

00:22:15.640 At this point, some of the Afghans find out you're ready to leave. 0.99

00:22:21.940 Everything falls apart.

00:22:23.900 You can't get to step two, evacuate civilians and allies, 0.99

00:22:28.000 because the entire structure of the country would have dissolved

00:22:31.000 before you got there.

00:22:32.580 There wouldn't be transportation.

00:22:34.280 There wouldn't be government entities.

00:22:36.300 It would just be chaos.

00:22:38.220 So could you get your military out easily if the civilian support structure was disappearing at the same time?

00:22:47.700 Well, not easily and not safely.

00:22:50.980 So it looks like we've made a decision to protect our military at the expense of some of the civilians.

00:22:58.680 And unfortunately, that's what we pay our military to do, right?

00:23:03.140 To protect us, but not necessarily other countries.

00:23:07.460 It's not really their job.

00:23:08.700 So I don't think that would work.

00:23:14.220 What is, let me put it down to the individual person.

00:23:17.920 Let's say you're an Afghan citizen and you've been working with the American presence.

00:23:22.700 So you worked with the Americans and you know you're pretty much in tough shape if the Taliban take over

00:23:29.300 and you didn't get out.

00:23:33.640 Boy, people are mad today.

00:23:36.600 People are mad. 1.00

00:23:38.340 You old fool. 1.00

00:23:39.980 You old fool. 1.00

00:23:43.100 The people who are disagreeing have a much different impression of the competence of human beings 1.00

00:23:48.760 and the competence of the Afghan government that I do.

00:23:53.240 Probably you could boil it down to one difference in assumption.

00:23:57.520 The people who think that Biden got it wrong believe the Afghan government was capable of competence.

00:24:04.760 Am I right?

00:24:06.160 Because if the Afghan government had been competent, we could have worked with them and done more phased withdrawal, 0.99

00:24:14.260 put them in charge, have them cover our backs while we leave.

00:24:17.820 Thanks a lot for helping us up to this point.

00:24:19.720 But the Afghan government had no competence.

00:24:24.300 None.

00:24:25.860 So, you know, that's our difference of agreement.

00:24:30.360 So remember, if you're disagreeing with me, you're hanging your assumption on the Afghan government's competence.

00:24:37.340 That's what you base your opinion on.

00:24:38.980 And I base it on them being incompetent to the extreme.

00:24:42.540 That's the difference.

00:24:44.160 All right.

00:24:47.220 And, like I say, I could be wrong.

00:24:50.260 All right.

00:24:50.640 But if you think that what our problem was in Afghanistan is a lack of leadership, including the way we left,

00:25:00.200 you've got a much higher opinion of everything in Afghanistan than I do.

00:25:04.420 I don't feel like leadership was even a variable.

00:25:09.020 Remember I told you when the pandemic started, one of my best predictions, I think.

00:25:16.420 I told you that leadership wouldn't matter.

00:25:19.980 And everybody was sure it did.

00:25:22.720 Everybody. 0.99

00:25:23.200 I don't think a single fucking person agreed with me when I said that. 0.99

00:25:27.640 I said leadership wouldn't matter. 0.99

00:25:29.440 You wouldn't see it in the statistics.

00:25:31.860 Guess what?

00:25:33.300 It's not in the statistics.

00:25:35.440 You can't find it.

00:25:38.500 We still don't know why some countries do better than others.

00:25:42.100 We really don't.

00:25:44.040 So leadership is always the thing we look to as the magic bullet that made everything different.

00:25:49.300 We look to it in Afghanistan and say, you know, if we'd had better leadership.

00:25:54.220 And we look at the pandemic.

00:25:56.440 We say, you know, if the United States had better leadership.

00:26:00.400 Nope.

00:26:01.440 Nope.

00:26:02.220 There's no evidence that leadership made any difference in either of these cases.

00:26:07.220 My long goal of being a musical power and a lyricist is now accomplished.

00:26:15.760 Thanks to Akira the Don, who takes podcasts such as mine, and I think Jordan Peterson and

00:26:23.660 some other folks, and takes out samples, part of what we say in our podcast, and puts it

00:26:29.860 to really interesting music.

00:26:31.980 And if you think that that doesn't work, you're wrong.

00:26:35.900 It works in the same way that Beatles music worked.

00:26:40.360 Now, if you study the Beatles, you know that part of their magic was that their songs were

00:26:44.860 nonsense, they didn't make any sense.

00:26:47.340 The lyrics, you know, the story of the song was nothing.

00:26:50.640 It was just pieces that they had that they put together.

00:26:53.160 It sounded good.

00:26:54.620 And once you free yourself from the thought that your song has to make sense, which is

00:26:59.840 what the Beatles did, and Akira the Don has sort of in the same way made the same kind

00:27:08.720 of artistic choice.

00:27:09.700 It's different in this case, because he's intentionally putting things together that

00:27:13.440 you wouldn't normally put together.

00:27:14.800 But that's what the Beatles did.

00:27:16.500 They would take things that shouldn't be together, but they sound good.

00:27:20.860 So they just put them together.

00:27:22.560 And people would think, hey, you can't put together a lyric from this idea with a lyric

00:27:28.620 from this idea, and then suddenly you're an orchestra, and now you're just drums and guitar.

00:27:34.220 You can't do that.

00:27:35.180 But then they did, and it worked great.

00:27:38.320 So Akira the Don did the same thing in a different way.

00:27:42.100 You just put together these podcast lyrics, if you can call it that, and put it to a really

00:27:47.720 interesting beat and music.

00:27:50.660 It's called Meaning Wave.

00:27:52.880 So if you're looking for it, search for Meaning Wave, one word, Meaning Wave.

00:27:59.260 And the album's coming out on September 10th, and the first single's coming out this week,

00:28:06.240 which has got my voice on it.

00:28:09.960 George Soros tweeted.

00:28:12.400 Have you ever heard of George Soros?

00:28:14.820 Anybody?

00:28:15.620 Anybody?

00:28:17.640 George Soros tweeted, I consider President Xi the most dangerous enemy of open societies in

00:28:25.020 the world.

00:28:25.460 Well, now we've got a fight on our hands.

00:28:30.420 If you believe that George Soros was actively destroying the United States, with his many

00:28:36.120 donations to groups that you don't like, what's he going to do to China?

00:28:44.040 George Soros just said China's his biggest enemy.

00:28:50.920 So, I don't know.

00:28:52.720 I think this is interesting to watch.

00:28:54.220 If you think George Soros was so powerful that he was a threat to the United States, would

00:29:00.840 he be a threat to China?

00:29:03.120 And what would he do?

00:29:04.260 Does he have any in there?

00:29:05.460 Maybe they don't have enough freedom that he can take advantage of, but do you think that

00:29:09.660 would stop him?

00:29:11.020 I don't know that that would stop him.

00:29:12.480 I think you'd just find a different way in.

00:29:15.100 So, George Soros, enemy of my enemy, let's talk.

00:29:21.660 Because, as much as you don't like George Soros, and okay, you have your reasons, I don't like

00:29:31.520 China even more. 0.89

00:29:33.240 So, George, if you're listening, if I can give you a boost there on taking care of China,

00:29:40.160 China, let's talk.

00:29:42.540 Enemy of my enemy.

00:29:44.980 So, user, Twitter user Anomaly, you all know him, probably.

00:29:49.280 Makes a lot of noise on politics.

00:29:51.260 He is still taunting me on Twitter to debate him or to make a better argument for all the

00:29:59.900 times we disagree, except it's the weirdest situation.

00:30:04.460 I don't know that we disagree on anything.

00:30:07.900 He's imagining we disagree on stuff that we don't disagree on, and he's taunting me in

00:30:12.940 public to debate him on the things that we agree on.

00:30:16.700 And I don't know how you debate agreement.

00:30:19.600 And watching other people pour in and come up with imaginary things that we disagree with,

00:30:27.480 oh, well, he says this, and you say that.

00:30:30.420 And I say, no, I don't.

00:30:32.420 I say the opposite of that.

00:30:34.440 So, there's this weird, gigantic, imaginary fight going on between the imaginary me and

00:30:42.000 somebody I've never met, Anomaly, and other people are getting in.

00:30:46.760 It's like, it's become a spectator sport.

00:30:49.700 It's imaginary, and it has spectators.

00:30:54.640 I'm not making that up.

00:30:56.860 I'm in an imaginary battle over imaginary topics, and there are spectators.

00:31:03.900 There are spectators.

00:31:05.840 What's happening?

00:31:08.840 What the hell is happening?

00:31:11.600 Spectators to an imaginary fight.

00:31:14.440 All right.

00:31:14.700 So, these are just some of the things that are happening today.

00:31:21.060 And as long as the Afghan thing's going crazy, I don't think anybody has any other news to 1.00

00:31:31.680 talk about.

00:31:33.020 All right.

00:31:34.940 Scott is scared to debate.

00:31:37.420 Let me ask you this.

00:31:38.400 Can you even imagine a debate with me and Anomaly, if you know him from Twitter?

00:31:45.220 Some of you do.

00:31:51.960 Somebody says, prediction.

00:31:53.460 Millie becomes the fall guy and is fired. 0.97

00:31:57.140 Oh, that's not a bad prediction.

00:31:58.760 I'm not going to go with you on that prediction, because I don't know that he did it wrong.

00:32:03.980 I really don't.

00:32:04.960 So, at this point, I don't know if he can defend himself, because everybody's going to

00:32:11.120 believe he did it wrong, but the evidence isn't there.

00:32:14.380 We have an evidence of the outcome.

00:32:16.340 We don't have an evidence of the process, and we don't have anything to compare it to.

00:32:20.880 So, judging things based on outcomes is not rational.

00:32:25.000 You would need to know a lot more about the mechanics of it to know if the outcome is

00:32:31.000 really telling you something.

00:32:36.660 Scott, debate's too much with the block button.

00:32:40.560 Well, blocking is part of the show.

00:32:43.260 You know that, right?

00:32:48.360 I don't have a cracked iPhone screen.

00:32:50.700 I have a cracked phone protector.

00:32:53.400 Somebody's blaming me for having a cracked iPhone screen.

00:32:57.320 Incorrect.

00:32:59.040 Incorrect.

00:33:00.420 Let me put it this way.

00:33:02.960 If everything I know about you, I can find out from how long it takes you to put your

00:33:09.440 protector on your phone.

00:33:13.060 Here's what I do.

00:33:14.000 I will not hold my phone in my hand except to put the case on it and the protector when

00:33:23.540 I first buy a new one.

00:33:24.920 I won't even walk around with it in my hand.

00:33:27.920 I will lay it carefully on a surface, often handing it to the person who sold me the phone

00:33:32.740 and saying, would you mind putting that phone in that case?

00:33:35.800 And while you're at it, would you slap that protector on it?

00:33:38.920 Now, if you heard that's the way I handled my new phone, would you offer me a job?

00:33:45.900 Let's say I came in and asked for a job and that's all you knew about me, is how I handled

00:33:49.800 my phone.

00:33:51.600 I would hire me.

00:33:52.920 I would hire me in a heartbeat.

00:33:54.200 Now, compare that to the person who I shall not name, who has a cracked real screen and

00:34:01.860 did not put a screen protector on it.

00:34:05.340 Would you hire somebody who had a $1,000 instrument that they didn't put a screen protector on?

00:34:13.260 I wouldn't.

00:34:14.760 I would not hire somebody who didn't put a screen protector on their phone.

00:34:18.300 Period.

00:34:19.400 Period.

00:34:20.060 I don't even need to look at your resume.

00:34:22.140 You're from Harvard?

00:34:22.880 That's great.

00:34:24.660 You didn't put a screen protector on your phone as soon as you got it?

00:34:29.220 Nope.

00:34:30.260 You can't work for me.

00:34:32.420 You can't work for me.

00:34:34.360 That is, that's the bottom line.

00:34:36.900 And you know what?

00:34:37.980 If you're not the person who paid for the phone and you didn't put the screen protector

00:34:42.720 on, you really don't get the job.

00:34:45.480 I will make an exception.

00:34:47.740 I do have a friend who is rich.

00:34:50.360 And he loves the way the iPhone looks with no protector.

00:34:55.820 And he loves the way, I think he likes it without the screen protector or the case.

00:35:00.780 Now, he's rich.

00:35:02.880 He pays for it himself.

00:35:04.640 If he drops the phone, he buys another one.

00:35:07.140 He doesn't bitch to anybody. 0.97

00:35:08.520 It's his own phone. 0.97

00:35:09.280 I'd give him a job.

00:35:11.160 I'd give him a job in a heartbeat.

00:35:13.800 But if his children don't put a protector on it, well, I'm not going to hire them.

00:35:21.560 Because they're not paying for the phone.

00:35:23.780 If somebody's paying for it, okay, do whatever you want.

00:35:26.900 It's your money. 0.98

00:35:27.380 But if you're too dumb to put a protector on it when someone else is paying for your phone, that's not good thinking. 0.99

00:35:38.300 And you can't have a job with me. 0.99

00:35:41.640 But he's modeling that behavior to them.

00:35:43.960 Yes, but they know who pays for it. 0.99

00:35:45.600 Somebody said there's a rumor.

00:35:53.140 I don't believe this, but it's a fun one.

00:35:55.080 A rumor that Steve Jobs would drive around Palo Alto without license plates because he only leased his cars for six months at a time.

00:36:02.040 Okay, I don't believe anything about that story.

00:36:04.400 But it's funny to imagine Steve Jobs being pulled over.

00:36:08.680 You know, you're the cop.

00:36:09.780 You pull over Steve Jobs and you say, can I have your license?

00:36:13.080 And, oh, wait, you're Steve Jobs.

00:36:14.480 I guess I don't need identification.

00:36:18.460 You don't have a license plate.

00:36:20.960 Yeah, I know.

00:36:23.620 Whatever.

00:36:25.480 I don't even know if anybody would care.

00:36:27.940 I think if you met Steve Jobs in person sort of accidentally because you pulled him over at a traffic stop,

00:36:33.600 you would be so pulled into his reality distortion field.

00:36:38.660 I don't even know if you'd give him a ticket.

00:36:40.140 He might have done it just for fun to see if he could talk his way out of every ticket, because I'll bet he could.

00:36:47.520 I'll bet Jobs could talk himself out of any ticket.

00:36:53.820 Oh, thank you.

00:36:54.940 Somebody said they thought this show was good.

00:36:57.900 I don't know if it was, but thank you.

00:37:00.660 He could beat everything except cancer.

00:37:02.280 Rapid, rapid home tests.

00:37:10.740 Yes.

00:37:12.660 I saw a link on some rapid tests, but the question is always availability.

00:37:18.700 I know some exist.

00:37:21.880 It's always good when Scott isn't talking.

00:37:23.360 Well, I did talk about masks, but I talked about mask resistance.

00:37:25.940 So that made you happy.

00:37:30.320 Oh, your business partner just got tests from Amazon.

00:37:33.300 So does Amazon have rapid tests?

00:37:34.980 Is that what you're telling me?

00:37:36.440 Because that would be a big deal.

00:37:38.400 So New Zealand just shut down the whole country because they had one positive case.

00:37:42.960 That just happened.

00:37:48.300 Yeah, so do you think New Zealand's handling it right?

00:37:50.920 Shut down the whole country in one case?

00:37:52.540 How do they keep the rest of the cases from coming in?

00:37:56.740 I don't know what their vaccination situation is, but I've got a feeling that the COVID is all over the place there.

00:38:02.220 Maybe they just don't know it.

00:38:04.280 All right.

00:38:05.200 I am going to go do something else, and I will talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - August 17, 2021

Episode 1471 Scott Adams： I Tell You Why Biden and Trump Both Got it Right About Afghanistan and More Fun

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