Episode 1481 Scott Adams： Talking About Disgraced President Biden's Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal and Lots More
Episode Stats
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Summary
Inflation has hit a 30 year high. Why is it happening? And why is it a problem in the long-term? And what can we do to fix it? Today's episode is all about inflation and why it's not a problem.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody. What an amazing day. Yeah, not everything's going right, that's
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for sure. But this moment, this moment right now where we're together, it's almost perfect.
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It's everything you want. Awesome people, all together for a good reason. That's just
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like the meaning of life right there. But there is a way to make it slightly better, and
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all you need is a cup of mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask,
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It's called The Simultaneous Sip and I have us now. Go!
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Ah. Is it just me, or do I look kind of military when I'm wearing this green khaki t-shirt?
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Well, that doesn't matter. Big news today, the second single from Akira the Don's new album
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featuring me. The awesome lyrics of me talking on this podcast, which have been massaged and
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turned into a musical event. Now, if you think that sounds like a bad idea, you haven't heard
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it. Let me just tell you that you ever see a movie where the preview doesn't give you any
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idea what the movie's about? Well, that's this. If I tell you that there's a musical product
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that involves my voice talking on these live streams, you'd probably say to yourself,
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I think I'd like a little less of that. But you have to see the artistry of Akira the Don,
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who took these two concepts, the live stream content and music, and put them together, and
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you'd be amazed how well it works. So take a look at that. The new one is called Low Self-Esteem
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is Like a Virus. Just Google me and Akira the Don, A-K-I-R-A. If you Google Akira, my name
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should all pop up. It's on all platforms. So here's something we all know to be true. Inflation
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is going to be a big problem. Why is... I'm just seeing some cutting comments about me
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there on YouTube. Why is inflation going to be a big problem in the long run? Well, we're
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all good economists. And we know it's because the government has borrowed so much money, which
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essentially creates money in the marketplace, which means that for the same amount of goods
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and services, there's more money chasing it, which drives up prices. And that's inflation.
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Right? Well, apparently not. Apparently not. So I learned something today. I read that inflation
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indicators are way up today as some kind of 30-year record inflation indicator. And here
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are the reasons in this article given for why inflation seems to be up. Number one, supply
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chain disruptions from the pandemic. So you can't get enough stuff. That means there's fewer,
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there's less stuff for the same amount of money. Increased labor costs. Makes sense. And material
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shortages probably also from the pandemic. And that's caused the number of companies to increase
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prices. And therefore, there you go. You got your inflation. Do you know what's missing
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from this? This is what's missing. That we borrowed a lot of money. So the three reasons
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given for why inflation just spiked are temporary. Right? Because supply chain disruptions are based
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on the pandemic. And it's easy to assume that those will take care of themselves.
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Carpe, I think you're right. I think you're right. It is not your imagination.
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So here's my curiosity. All right. I, as I say too often in public, I have a degree in economics,
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which is important to know if you're new to this content. But having a degree of economics doesn't
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help you nearly as much as you think. Because I look at this and say, why is this story about
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inflation going up, not including the one thing we all seem to think we know is the thing that makes
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inflation go up? Instead, it's three somewhat temporary things. Because we'll get our supply
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chain back. Cost of materials will probably go down once the pandemic's over. And the cost of labor
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probably is going to go down too. Because there are a lot of people who are out of the workplace
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because they're getting the free money. What happens when people don't give free money and
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they have to go back to work? Well, then you have more employees competing for jobs. And that should
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lower the, or at least put a lid on increases like that. So weirdly, it looks like inflation is maybe
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not a big problem. Or at least it's not showing itself to be a problem yet. You know, we still assume
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in the long run it will be. One of the things that Kamala Harris brings to the White House,
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and I don't think she gets enough credit for this. There's a lot of, well, you see a lot of
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criticism of the Vice President, Kamala Harris. But I don't think that one of her values is being
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appreciated enough. And that is that as long as Kamala Harris is the Vice President,
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it's nearly impossible to impeach Joe Biden. Because if you impeach Joe Biden, all you got was Kamala
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Harris. And if you're a Republican, do you want more Kamala Harris compared to Joe Biden? And as big
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a disaster as Joe Biden is being, Kamala Harris might be worse. So believe it or not, Kamala Harris's
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greatest contribution, and I have to admit I didn't see this coming, is to be so incompetent and
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terrible as a leader that you'd rather keep a brain-dead pile of organic matter who has just
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fucked up the most important thing we were doing. And you'd still rather keep that guy.
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That's how good the Vice President is by being bad. So if you want to be a good Vice President,
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be a really bad one, because that's what your boss needs, keeps you in office.
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That's one of the mistakes that I think Trump made. He had a capable Vice President. So if you could
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actually talk reasonably about impeaching somebody like Trump, because your backup is a solid,
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solid performer with a solid record, right? He might not like his politics, but he's a totally solid guy.
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Weirdly, I've been probably one of the biggest supporters of Mike Pence, and I'm not even a fan.
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You know, I'm not a fan at all. But you can't deny that, well, you could deny it. We can deny
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everything. But in my opinion, Mike Pence is one of the most underrated Vice Presidents of all time.
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He could have walked into the top job. I think we all agree on that. He could have walked into the
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job easily. And he never caused trouble. I mean, you know, the stuff at the end was an anomaly,
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but I think he was a great Vice President in terms of doing what a Vice President is supposed
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to do. I thought Al Gore was good, too, but don't hate me for that. Here are my two favorite
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political words, disgraced and botched. And we can use them both these days. Because disgraced
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President Biden botched the Afghan withdrawal. Yes. Disgraced and botched. And I'm going to use
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them whenever I refer to Biden from now on. I'm going to refer to him as disgraced President
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Biden who botched the Afghanistan withdrawal. As someone pointed out on Twitter this morning
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when I said that, that we don't use the word disgraced for all politicians. Sometimes if it's
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a Democrat, such as Governor Cuomo, he's not called disgraced, he's called embattled. He's
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embattled. He's not disgraced. He's embattled. And that would be a, you know, CNN, MSNBC kind
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of a framing. I don't know which of those use that word. And how about somebody who's doing a lot
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of crazy, stupid, incompetent things? Sometimes it's just controversial. Yeah. It's not botched.
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It's controversial. So there you go. I'm going to report on this, but I feel like I don't know all
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the details, but Sam Harris seemed to be tweeting that he was eating his own tweet, in other words,
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eating his own words, from January of 20, in which he was expressing some satisfaction that we finally
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had a good president in President Biden. Now, you might know, some of you, that early on in the
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Trump cycle of the presidency, I think he was still running for president. I had an on-air discussion
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slash debate, but more of a discussion, with Sam Harris, in which I was saying that he was maybe
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missing some of the finer benefits of a potential Trump presidency. And he was very anti-Trump, and we
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had a long conversation on that, and, you know, people had strong views about how that went. People who
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liked Sam Harris and disliked Trump thought he made a monkey of me. People who liked me and liked Trump
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thought I made a great presentation to make my point. But today, it appears that Sam Harris is eating his
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own words about Biden, and I would love to know, I don't know if he'll talk about this directly, probably, I
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would love to know if he thinks Trump could have done better. Because he doesn't say that.
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Right? You know, he's showing some remorse about Biden, which is a little different from saying
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that, you know, he wanted Trump to be president. But let me ask you this. Is there anybody in the
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world who doesn't believe Trump would have done the Afghan withdrawal better? Now, of course, he had
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an earlier deadline. He had a May deadline, and Biden got that extended, which was good work.
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I would say that was good work. I think we did need to extend the deadline. And I think probably Trump
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would have done the same. So I'm not sure that that's any point of comparison. But don't you believe
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Trump would have done this better? Even if you thought he was bad in every other way, you know,
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even if you're a Democrat, a big anti-Trumper, don't you believe he would have done this better?
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Because I feel like, I feel like there's no way to know, right? It's pure speculation. But it feels
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like it. I guess we'll never know. So yeah, the press conference in which Biden talked about it was a
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plain embarrassment. Compare this to the types of embarrassment we had when Trump was president and
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did press conferences. Were there any embarrassments when Trump did a press conference? Yes. Yes, there
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were. So this, you know, Biden is not the first president who was embarrassing. Trump was embarrassing.
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But what's the difference? Hmm. What is the difference? Oh, here's the difference. The thing that was
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embarrassing about Trump never happened. It was just reported that it happened. For example, do you remember
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the embarrassing time that President Trump suggested you should maybe drink bleach to cure your
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coronavirus? Very embarrassing. And it also didn't happen. It was fake news. At least 75% of the country
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believes they saw it with their own eyes and heard it with their own ears. And it literally never
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happened. It's a long story about why you believe that. But it didn't happen. Same with the fine people
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hoax. An embarrassing moment for the president, right? President Trump embarrassing the country
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by saying that some of those neo-Nazis were fine people. Except it literally never happened.
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You think you saw it. You think you heard it with your own ears. You even think you went back and
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watched it again. But it didn't happen. It literally didn't happen. It's just a fake edits and stuff make it
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look like it happen. So I would rather be embarrassed by fake news about a president
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than I would rather be embarrassed about the actual freaking thing that happened. That's a pretty big
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difference. So here is my advice for Republicans in this delicate period. Instead of saying things like,
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I don't know who's in charge, I don't know who's in charge, which doesn't really land. You know,
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it's just sort of a talking point. Well, I don't even know who's in charge of the White House,
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blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's change that to demand to know who is making the actual decisions in the
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White House. See the difference? Demand to know who's making the decisions. Because the decision was so
00:14:02.520
bad. You need to know. Right? So instead of asking the question, or instead of just speculating in sort of a
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critical way that, you know, Biden's not in charge, that doesn't really stick, does it? I mean, we all feel
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that. So it's true. Like it has an element of truth to it, or at least it feels true. But it's way stronger if you
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demand information. So instead of just making this general claim and let it lay there doing nothing,
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just demand a full accounting of how the decision was made so you know who's in charge. Because I
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don't think we know who's in charge legitimately. Legitimately, we don't know who's in charge.
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Normally, that would be the sort of thing that I would regard as political talking point. But I feel
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this is a special case. I feel that we actually don't know who's in charge. Am I wrong? Like, I don't
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feel that that is a biased political statement anymore. At one point, at one point, you could have
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reasonably said, although you're just being a team player. You know, Biden's not that bad. You know,
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he's getting by. But I'd like to ask Mark Cuban. So I don't know, Mark, if you ever watched these
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live streams these days. But, you know, early on in the in the campaign, Biden versus Trump,
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Mark Cuban was a solid supporter of Biden and thought that his mental faculties were sufficient
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to the job. And that was actually one of the biggest, the biggest points of support for Biden
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is that, yeah, he looks when he speaks in public, he looks a little, a little uncertain. But privately,
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he's fine. I don't know if he still believes that, or if maybe there was a rapid decline,
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whatever. So I'd love to see Mark Cuban's current updated opinion. And keep in mind,
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I'll say this again, Mark Cuban is one of the people I consider a smart analyst of public events,
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right? So I'd like to see if he's changed his opinion, because that would be meaningful to me,
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because I respect his opinion in general on a lot of stuff. Biden said that he will be hunting down
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the ISIS-K folks who were behind the attack at the Kabul airport, which killed a lot of people,
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including American service people. But when you hear Joe Biden say that he will hunt down ISIS-K,
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do you say to yourself, will you do it as effectively as you did the withdrawal?
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If the context of this is a botched withdrawal, how do you feel about his capability of hunting down
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ISIS-K in a country that we just got beaten by a bunch of goat herders with? Well, you know.
00:17:00.380
Do you believe it? It feels like an empty threat, doesn't it? But here's the other way to take
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this. I'm pretty sure there's a secret agreement going on here somewhere, or more than one. Do you
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have that feeling? Do you feel there's some kind of secret agreement going on? I don't know what it
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is, but I'll speculate. I feel like one of the secret agreements is that we're going to work with the
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Taliban to kill al-Qaeda and ISIS. Or maybe at least ISIS. Maybe not al-Qaeda. You know, it could
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be split difference. But I feel like both. And I feel like what would, who would have a better chance
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of killing ISIS in Afghanistan? Who would have a better chance? Would it be America staying there
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with what assets we would likely put there? Or would it be the Taliban on the ground torturing
00:17:58.480
people to get that information about who is left? I feel like the Taliban could take care of this
00:18:04.580
better than we could. Because they're not going to cut any corners, right? They're going to do
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whatever's the most brutal way to get rid of ISIS. Because ISIS is their enemy as well.
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So is it possible? Now, can somebody do a fact check on me? I need a fact check on this because
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this is an important point and I'm not confident about it. Fact check me, please. True or false,
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the Taliban does not have international ambitions. Meaning the Taliban doesn't want to conquer other
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countries. It just wants to be left alone. Now, it did make a problem protecting al-Qaeda at one point,
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but at the moment, I imagine they would see that as a mistake and one that they would not want to
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reproduce. And so I'm asking this question, have Trump and Biden collectively, because they, you know,
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in a sense it was a joint decision over time, have Trump and Biden both made the right move
00:19:03.740
by putting the Taliban back in charge for American interests? A huge disaster for the Afghan people,
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I think most of us would agree. But, well, or is it? Or is it? If the Taliban can take over so easily,
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doesn't that suggest that they have more support in the public than we think? I don't know. Not sure
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about that. But anyway, we may have reached a situation where America is better off because
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the international terrorists, the al-Qaeda's, may be suppressed by the Taliban better than we could
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have done it. And I'm just putting that out there as a maybe. I'm not saying that's true.
00:19:42.680
But you can't really speculate accurately on how any of this is going to go. It could turn out fine.
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You know, the, of course, the tragedies that are happening right now are major tragedies.
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But in the long run, for American interests, Taliban in charge might be the best possible outcome.
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Because if the Afghan army were in charge, do you think they could take care of ISIS-K?
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Do you think the Afghan army could have taken care of al-Qaeda?
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So the only, the only possible law enforcement we could have over there against these terrorist groups
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Now, I, again, I'm way over my, you know, way over my, let's say, competence level talking about any of this stuff.
00:20:36.100
And one of the things I like to talk about in the news is what it looks like,
00:20:42.240
All right, apparently there are only a thousand or so of these ISIS-K people
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in the whole country, and it's pretty hard to find a thousand people if you're America.
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But I don't know if it's hard to find a thousand people if you're the Taliban,
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a very successful, famous investor in tech stocks and stuff.
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This is one of those things where you see somebody say something, or you hear it,
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okay, that's so obvious, why didn't I think of that?
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Here's the most obvious point that for some reason I didn't think of it until I read it.
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I reject the idea that we had to choose between Bagram and the KIA airport,
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You keep both assets until the withdrawal is over.
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Here we're having this big conversation about whether we should have kept Bagram or Kabul.
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And then David Sachs says, you idiots, you keep both of them until you're done.
00:22:00.820
And apparently the Bagram airport had also a wide perimeter.
00:22:08.160
So we went from the one that's easy to defend and already had facilities for processing people
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to one that's impossible to defend because it's in a city center
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and doesn't have the facilities to process people.
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There's some of these mistakes that I'm allowing.
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We might find out some information later that would make it not look so bad.
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But I don't know what you would find out about this.
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To me, I can't imagine any scenario in which David Sachs is wrong.
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We should have kept both bases until we were done.
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Am I wrong that that seems so completely obvious after the fact?
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We like to think like there are two options for everything
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And it blinds you to the fact that there almost always is other options.
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This is the most obvious thing that I didn't think of maybe in my entire life.
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The country is finally united around our dislike of how Biden has handled this whole situation.
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Do you think there is any argument, any argument at all that could be made
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that would put Biden in a better light given what's happening?
00:24:05.100
When Trump is president, I'm a president supporter.
00:24:08.820
Not just a Trump supporter about some topics, other topics, maybe not so much.
00:24:19.000
You know, once they're in, it's one thing to fight about it before they get in.
00:24:23.880
But once they're in, then I'm just an American, right?
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And I just want them to do a good job and such.
00:24:29.460
So I'm going to do what nobody is doing for our president.
00:24:39.460
And I think that just as an American who respects the office of the presidency,
00:24:46.460
I respect the office of the presidency, I am going to give him the first defense you've
00:24:56.080
And this defense will only make sense to people who have experience in big organizations.
00:25:06.080
If you've ever been in a big organization, and you were the head of the organization,
00:25:09.540
and you ordered something to happen that was unpopular with the people who had to execute
00:25:19.220
Did the people who needed to execute this unpopular order give you all the options accurately?
00:25:26.840
Because the people at the lower levels are going to try to manage the boss.
00:25:35.600
It's where the people at the lower level are so sure that the boss is an idiot, or they
00:25:40.120
need to make a different decision than the boss is telling them, that they will hide
00:25:49.760
They will reduce the options and give you only options that look bad for what you don't
00:25:56.720
Now, before I go on, I want everybody in the comments to look at other people who have
00:26:02.020
experience in big organizations, and watch them confirming that this is a normal phenomenon.
00:26:09.460
It's a normal phenomenon that if people think the boss is making the wrong decision, they
00:26:14.980
will resist in a passive way that you can't quite determine if they're really cooperating,
00:26:23.500
or are they intentionally killing something by doing it poorly?
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Because if you don't have experience in big organizations, you don't necessarily believe
00:26:37.960
What I'm going to add to the conversation is it's common.
00:26:43.120
If you don't get that it's common, everything else I say won't have an impact.
00:26:47.700
I want you to know that it's ordinary that the boss can't get his way or her way.
00:26:55.180
Now, let's put yourself into the Afghan situation.
00:26:58.560
Do you think that the people on the ground, the military, do you think the military wanted
00:27:05.600
to remove everybody from Afghanistan on the timeline that either Trump or Biden wanted?
00:27:14.720
Do you think the generals who are looking for jobs in the manufacturing industry, who
00:27:21.900
makes military stuff after they leave Afghanistan, and they've got other bosses to please, don't
00:27:28.960
They have their current boss, which is the president, but then they also have their five
00:27:33.100
years from now boss, or sooner, that is making weapons, and if you've got a war, you can sell
00:27:40.740
And you can make an argument that it's in the interest of the United States to stay, to
00:27:55.640
Biden, and by the way, you could replace Trump.
00:27:58.820
You could actually replace Biden and Trump, and you get the same outcome.
00:28:07.060
Biden says, we're going to get out of there by this date, and then the generals give him
00:28:14.940
Well, if you do that, this is going to blow up.
00:28:27.940
But, hey, hey, if that's your order, Mr. President, we'll start doing it.
00:28:34.420
If that's what you tell us, we advise against it.
00:28:37.320
But if that's what you're telling us, we'll start doing it.
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That's what people do in a corporation when they don't like what the boss told them to do.
00:28:56.980
Okay, now let's say you're the boss, and you realize that a slow roll is being played on you.
00:29:06.000
In the comments, those with experience, inform the rest of the people what you do.
00:29:11.560
You're the leader, you're the CEO, you're the president, and the people below you won't
00:29:31.560
And it would take a while, and it would be disruptive, and all that stuff.
00:29:45.500
All the generals come in and say, if you do this, everybody's going to die, it'll be the
00:29:50.200
worst thing in the world, and you know your generals are fucking with you.
00:29:58.000
They tell you, the whole world will fall apart if you order us to do this.
00:30:10.280
You tell them to do it anyway by that date, and you tell them that if their head's on the
00:30:23.840
But I'll tell you what I'm not going to do, is I'm not going to let you tell me what's
00:30:30.900
You can tell me you'll do it incompetently, but you're going to fucking do it.
00:30:37.920
And if you can't give me a good way to get out of Afghanistan, if you incompetent motherfuckers
00:30:44.080
who are trying to make this happen, if you won't even give me a good option to get out
00:30:48.920
of Afghanistan, you're going to take the bad fucking option, and you're going to get out
00:30:54.640
Because let me tell you the thing that's not going to change.
00:31:02.180
You can do it right, or you can do it fucking wrong.
00:31:21.280
But if you said to me, what would leadership look like?
00:31:34.840
And we might find out someday that his generals were the problem.
00:31:38.420
And we might find out that he overrode the generals and said, look, this is a leadership
00:31:45.560
Shit ton of people are going to die, no matter what.
00:31:54.360
So the leader says, we're going to take care of the United States, and the shit ton of people
00:31:59.320
Let's take it as a given that every path has a shit ton of people dying.
00:32:06.440
So you might as well do what's good for the United States.
00:32:14.160
If it's the only option you're going to give me, fucking generals, if you generals will
00:32:20.940
only give me bad options, I'm going to take the bad fucking option.
00:32:24.040
But I'll tell you the option I'm not going to take is you're in charge.
00:32:30.900
If the only way I can get out is messy, we're getting out messy.
00:32:40.720
But you can't rule it out based on what we've seen.
00:32:43.360
So the big question I would have is, was the military slow rolling him?
00:32:52.060
If I were an investigative journalist, this is the question I would be digging into.
00:33:02.200
It could be everybody was just doing their job as best they could, and the president botched
00:33:08.180
Because here's the part that doesn't make sense, is why the military wouldn't have stopped
00:33:19.500
If the president says to the generals, hey, generals, I've got an idea.
00:33:24.160
Why don't you send the troops out into certain harm for no particular benefit?
00:33:35.600
The general is going to say, other generals, what are we going to do about this?
00:33:42.720
But here was this situation where it looks so obvious to all of us, keep both of the
00:33:48.340
bases open, or at least Bagram, and get the people out before you do blah, blah.
00:33:53.300
It's so obvious to us, but there were no generals who it was obvious to.
00:33:59.220
It feels like slightly more likely, based on the little bit we can know about the fog of
00:34:05.000
war that was going on, it feels to me a little bit more likely that they were slow rolling
00:34:09.760
him, and he did the only thing a leader can do.
00:34:13.040
You've got two bad choices, and he took the better of the bad choices.
00:34:15.920
Just tell him to do it anyway, and we'll eat the consequences, which are, in fact, tragic.
00:34:24.940
Now, remember, I'm acting as a patriot, all right?
00:34:32.500
This is just pure American patriot giving a legitimate defense to my sitting president,
00:34:43.660
So I think he deserves a defense, and I don't know that he could make that defense himself
00:34:48.520
because he'd be, you know, he'd be calling out his generals, et cetera.
00:34:56.920
I can't assert that it's likely even, but it feels like it.
00:35:02.720
We all know that we should follow the data and follow the science, right?
00:35:07.920
Here are the three worst pieces of advice you'll ever get.
00:35:17.340
Number two, worst piece of advice, be yourself.
00:35:30.840
And you know what's interesting about all three of these?
00:35:33.120
It's the most common advice we give in the world.
00:35:39.560
Do you know, if I were myself, I never would have taken a shower in my life.
00:36:07.700
How about being better than yourself and making that your standard all the time?
00:36:12.380
Like, is there anybody here who got good enough and you're like, well, I've achieved my full standard of life.
00:36:18.360
I guess I can be myself now because I'm as good as you can get.
00:36:29.480
Here's why that's stupid advice, as I've said before.
00:36:35.940
That would be like me telling you, make sure before every decision that you use your psychic powers.
00:36:44.940
Use your psychic powers to see the future before making any decision.
00:37:11.100
You don't agree on ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, masks, lockdowns, vaccinations, or climate change.
00:37:21.500
Following the data, and also believing the experts, got us to a point where we don't agree on anything important.
00:37:32.760
When we can see plainly it doesn't work for any topic.
00:37:35.680
There's not a single frickin' topic in which following the data helps.
00:37:42.920
And once you realize that, well, maybe that's a little freeing.
00:37:50.620
So what would you, uh, well, what would you do about a world in which you can't follow the data?
00:37:56.760
I would suggest that we should have some kind of informal data following experts.
00:38:03.880
People who are not experts in the fields that, you know, these studies are at, but they're experts at looking at data.
00:38:11.160
They could be economists or statisticians or whatever, some scientists.
00:38:15.160
But I would love to see some independent, not fact-checkers, not fact-checkers, because fact-checkers aren't smart enough.
00:38:22.480
They're just journalists, you know, researching stuff.
00:38:28.940
A small group of people, let's say a dozen people, who have the kinds of jobs where you could trust that they know how to look at data, at least.
00:38:37.960
And I want all of them to look at all of our data and say, all right, U12 data specialists.
00:38:45.700
So I'm going to throw Nate Silver in there, uh, just as one example.
00:38:50.420
Now, I know you're going to say, hey, he got something wrong, or you don't like him for one reason or another.
00:38:57.020
You want somebody with that, that kind of background.
00:38:59.520
And I would argue that Nate Silver is pretty objective.
00:39:02.860
You know, as, as objective as people can be these days.
00:39:06.620
So that would be my first, uh, first thing, is that instead of fact-checkers, we need data analysis experts to just tell us if the data is reliable or not.
00:39:18.660
Not a fact-check, just reliable or not reliable.
00:39:23.340
And let me give you an alternative, which I don't understand.
00:39:28.840
So this is one of those weird things that I think is maybe, uh, confirmation bias on my part, possibly.
00:39:35.660
But I'll throw it out here and let you follow it, just for fun.
00:39:39.020
You know, you know that all the smart people always say, follow the money, right?
00:39:43.560
If you're going to predict who murdered somebody, well, find out who had a financial advantage.
00:39:48.520
If you're going to find out who did any bad thing, find out who had a financial advantage, right?
00:39:54.160
So following the money tends to be very predictive.
00:39:57.080
But it's way more predictive than it should be, because it even seems indirectly predictive.
00:40:06.320
If somebody murders somebody to get the insurance, that's a, that's a direct correlation between the money and the action.
00:40:14.160
But there are all these situations where it's a little less direct, and they still predict, which is the fun part.
00:40:21.680
Um, if, if vaccinations, uh, have booster shots, will the pharmaceutical companies that control the data we see about vaccinations, will they make more money or less if booster shots are a good idea?
00:40:39.740
And indeed, it looks like the data is telling us that booster shots are going to really help.
00:40:46.360
So could money have predicted that we would need booster shots and we'll need more than just the next one?
00:40:53.880
Money would predict that, even though, I'll bet if you dug into it, it would be really hard to find anybody who said, yeah, we're going to do this for more money.
00:41:01.820
I think you'd find lots of people making independent decisions that, in their minds, they think actually make sense.
00:41:10.120
But why is it that follow the money is so predictive?
00:41:13.200
If all of those other variables are in there, why is that one variable so darn predictive?
00:41:22.700
Uh, what were, could you have predicted that we would leave so much equipment behind in Afghanistan?
00:41:27.340
Well, the people who are leaving it behind and therefore wasting money are the government.
00:41:33.660
The government doesn't work for money, it just taxes you.
00:41:37.260
So the government doesn't mind too much how much money it spends, you know, relative to you and I spending money.
00:41:43.820
But the people who make this military equipment would really like us to leave it behind,
00:41:53.200
So there would be a gigantic financial advantage for the makers of military equipment if we left it behind.
00:42:00.960
And there wouldn't be anybody who would have a financial disadvantage if we left it behind.
00:42:06.900
So the money predicts that we would have left it behind, even though every bit of your common sense says we wouldn't.
00:42:16.900
All of your common sense says we would not leave all of that behind.
00:42:21.160
But if you followed the money, it suggests we would.
00:42:28.700
Why is it that even when you can't tell what the mechanism is that connects the money to the decision,
00:42:38.720
Could you, uh, could you predict that Black Lives Matter would stop their protests when Biden became leader?
00:42:45.620
Probably, because probably they would stop getting as much funding,
00:42:49.540
because whoever was funding them needed them to do their thing for political reasons.
00:42:54.820
And so were all of the things that Black Lives Matter protested fixed?
00:43:00.580
If you looked at all the reasons that we think Black Lives Matter did what they did,
00:43:08.720
But if you used money to predict, and you said to yourself, wait,
00:43:12.720
they'll get money during the political process, because they're helpful,
00:43:15.940
but after the political process and the election's over, and Biden wins,
00:43:28.420
Um, did you see the OnlyFans, the fan site where you can go on and do little videos
00:43:37.020
Um, they, they started and made their fortune with porn, or adult stuff,
00:43:42.540
and that they said they were going to ban it, and then they reversed their ban,
00:43:47.580
and now they say they're going to do it again, and they're going to let the porn back on there.
00:43:55.240
As soon as they said they weren't going to do it, didn't you and everybody else in the world say,
00:44:02.560
They're getting rid of their primary business model,
00:44:05.780
and they're just going to give it to somebody else?
00:44:09.180
If they stopped doing it, somebody's going to say, well, that's the best part of your business.
00:44:17.340
Now, one of the stories about that is a former ICU nurse who makes $200,000 a month
00:44:29.920
What does it predict if an ICU nurse can make $200,000 a month on OnlyFans?
00:44:36.940
Well, one of the things it predicts is that there will no longer be any hot nurses.
00:44:41.460
There will still be a lot of nurses, but you should expect there will be fewer of them
00:44:49.640
All the hot ones are going to go to OnlyFans and make $200,000 a month.
00:44:56.600
Scott, people are not going to whore themselves out just for money
00:45:02.380
because nurses are people who care about people and they want to help.
00:45:06.580
They're, by nature, they're people who want to help people in need.
00:45:09.140
Well, you just wait a couple of months and see how many hot nurses you see.
00:45:20.140
The officer who shot and killed Ashley Babbitt on the January 6th,
00:45:33.260
Michael Byrd, Lieutenant Michael Byrd, very experienced.
00:45:41.940
One element to this story that's important is he's black.
00:45:45.840
He's a black man who a lot of people think shot a white woman without good cause.
00:45:52.800
I'm not saying that in my opinion, but people think that.
00:46:05.860
and then you just fill in all the rest of the things I was going to say
00:46:08.580
because you're going to hear everybody say that.
00:46:16.720
you should always follow people's predictions and see how well they do
00:46:19.900
so you know if you should follow them in the future.
00:46:25.060
who said I didn't believe he would be charged with a crime.
00:46:32.100
Did any of you hear anybody else say in public,
00:46:37.980
did you hear anybody else say that you didn't think that guy would be charged with a crime
00:46:46.660
Because to me, I didn't see any crime there at all.
00:47:19.240
If you were in the bubble or you were, you know, on a side,
00:47:24.160
you saw that and you just immediately took a side.
00:47:27.940
I try not to be in the bubble as much as possible.
00:47:35.900
I saw somebody who avoided potentially more danger
00:48:20.620
they're using it to damage your social credit score.
00:48:24.420
I feel like more of that's going to come on, right?
00:48:30.940
So, and I wonder if China has a competitive advantage
00:48:37.020
How much of a competitive advantage will that be?
00:48:58.920
and corporations are putting pressure on people, etc.
00:49:12.880
Now, if I were doing a persuasion war against China,
00:49:24.920
and you wanted China to do as poorly as possible,
00:49:52.260
a little bit of the ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine,
00:49:56.200
you know, vaccinations will hurt you kind of stuff?