Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 06, 2022


Episode 1674 Scott Adams: Apologists, Propaganda and Putin. Your Best Bet Is To Hate Everyone


Episode Stats

Length

37 minutes

Words per Minute

129.10107

Word Count

4,882

Sentence Count

329

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

18


Summary

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about the 5 languages of love, and how to deal with the fact that you don't know any of the news you're talking about. Also, I try to figure out why there's no audio on the Locals only platform.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best place in the solar system, possibly beyond.
00:00:08.640 No, I take that back, probably beyond as well.
00:00:12.800 And despite the fact that the news is largely a big black box that we can't see into,
00:00:20.600 we're going to talk about it just like it was real news.
00:00:23.440 We're going to pretend that our subjective impressions of reality are something like reality itself.
00:00:30.660 Then we're going to talk about it, but first we're going to drink a liquid before that.
00:00:35.620 Yeah, if you could describe a really good time, what would it sound like?
00:00:41.420 It would sound like this.
00:00:43.260 I think I'll drink a liquid, and then I'll talk about things that probably aren't real at all,
00:00:50.100 but I'll pretend they are, and then we'll argue about it with our lack of understanding.
00:00:57.440 But before that, let's do the simultaneous sip.
00:00:59.680 And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:01:06.260 Fill it with your favorite liquid.
00:01:09.600 I like coffee.
00:01:11.380 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine here of the day,
00:01:14.940 a thing that makes everything better.
00:01:16.400 It's called the simultaneous sip.
00:01:20.100 And it goes like this.
00:01:26.340 Were you ready?
00:01:27.360 Did I catch you off guard?
00:01:29.520 I hope you were ready.
00:01:30.700 I mean, goodness.
00:01:33.180 If there's anything at all that you should have been ready for, it's that.
00:01:38.740 Well, for those people who are subscribers to the locals, my locals community only,
00:01:48.320 there's a new micro lesson I put up there, a little three-minute lesson debunking the five languages of love.
00:01:56.360 Have you ever heard of the concept of the five languages of love?
00:01:59.240 The Gary Chapman book?
00:02:05.940 Let's just say there's never been a better scam.
00:02:08.840 And I'm not talking about Gary Chapman.
00:02:12.320 I'm talking about people who use the five languages of love.
00:02:15.260 So anyway, that's only for the subscribers of locals.
00:02:20.400 I have a question for you based on something I saw on Twitter just before I got on here.
00:02:28.760 I saw somebody on Twitter.
00:02:32.500 Really?
00:02:33.020 Did I suddenly get a problem with my audio?
00:02:38.080 No audio on locals.
00:02:50.080 Let me debunk this for a moment.
00:02:54.200 That can only be because this bumped into this, which bumped into that, which then bumped into something else.
00:03:02.900 Totally fixed.
00:03:04.320 All right.
00:03:06.220 All good.
00:03:08.080 So I saw on Twitter, somebody asked, well, somebody was pointing out that they were talking to a high-level executive at some big company that was unnamed.
00:03:19.940 And the executive of the big company that was unnamed was unaware of almost any of the stories that we talk about.
00:03:28.680 You know, I mean, obviously, everybody knows there's a Ukraine-Russia thing.
00:03:33.020 But beyond that, most of the things that we talk about, never heard of them.
00:03:39.440 And I'm not talking about didn't have an informed opinion.
00:03:42.780 I'm talking about didn't even know it was a thing.
00:03:46.680 Never heard of them at all.
00:03:47.780 Well, now, so there's no sound on the locals' platform.
00:03:57.540 Why would that be?
00:04:00.680 Oh, let's try this.
00:04:08.280 I'm going to try to restart it.
00:04:14.900 And please bear with me.
00:04:18.740 Technical difficulties.
00:04:19.880 Technical difficulties.
00:04:21.060 So have you ever noticed that if you don't get enough sleep, your technology doesn't work as well?
00:04:28.680 Have you ever noticed that?
00:04:29.480 YouTube is frozen, too?
00:04:37.660 Really?
00:04:42.240 That's weird.
00:04:45.520 Is there anything happening over here?
00:04:47.320 YouTube is good?
00:04:52.300 Let me just fire this back up.
00:04:55.720 Good morning.
00:04:57.060 Oh, God damn it.
00:04:59.480 How is everybody?
00:05:01.900 Okay, I love these dog pictures.
00:05:03.520 As usual.
00:05:05.000 Keep them coming.
00:05:06.280 So, this is a local...
00:05:09.540 How did the United States create a letter?
00:05:12.480 Oh, just stop it, stop it.
00:05:19.000 All right, sorry about this.
00:05:22.040 But we will be back in a moment.
00:05:25.920 Or not, I guess.
00:05:28.080 Maybe not.
00:05:29.480 I just love debunking things in real time.
00:05:36.660 Debunking and debugging.
00:05:40.860 This isn't going to work at all, is it?
00:05:42.580 All right, I've got a feeling that this is going to be one of those days.
00:05:58.160 So, let's take it from here.
00:05:59.680 I think everything's up at this point.
00:06:01.520 So, here's a question.
00:06:05.680 How many of you have friends who don't know what any of the news is, except for the biggest part of the news?
00:06:13.160 How many of you have actually know, like, you talk to your friends and you want to talk about the things you were talking about on Twitter, and they don't know any of the topics?
00:06:29.340 That's been my experience.
00:06:34.140 My experience is that as soon as I'm not talking to a digital medium, I don't know anybody who even knows about any of the topics I talk about.
00:06:48.500 Well, I can't even think of anybody off the top of my head.
00:06:53.400 Well, actually, I guess anybody I know who's watching my live stream would know about these topics.
00:06:58.520 But, for the most part, people don't really have any idea what's going on in the news.
00:07:05.160 So, here's a question for you, especially if you're not following the news.
00:07:09.500 Is the war that's happening now with Russia and Ukraine, what is the best way to frame it, if you're going to describe it to somebody?
00:07:19.100 And one way to look at it is it's turned into a supply line war, wouldn't you say?
00:07:25.540 It turned into a pure logistics war, because right now it looks like the Ukrainians are trying to starve the Russians and deprive them of food and gas, which is pretty good.
00:07:41.180 But they're laying siege to the siegers.
00:07:44.900 Has that ever happened before?
00:07:46.520 Can you think of a time in which the entity that was, you know, the army that was laying siege to a city, somebody says yes many times?
00:07:59.720 Well, I mean, that would be the most obvious strategy.
00:08:03.680 But generally, if somebody is surrounded, wouldn't they need help from some other?
00:08:09.200 The siege of Syria.
00:08:10.260 There's always somebody on these live streams who knows anything.
00:08:14.620 The siege of Syracuse and the Peloponnesian War.
00:08:18.440 And I'm thinking, somebody actually knew that.
00:08:21.820 Stalingrad.
00:08:22.820 Oh, Stalingrad.
00:08:23.880 Is that a good example?
00:08:26.700 The last 20 years in the Middle East.
00:08:29.380 Okay.
00:08:30.040 Well, like I was saying, it's definitely the most common strategy in the world.
00:08:34.380 But if you had to bet on it just on that, let's say I said to you that the entire war would be decided by who does the better job of cutting off the supplies from the other.
00:08:48.020 Who wins?
00:08:50.060 What would you say?
00:08:52.220 Now, that's not the only variable by far.
00:08:54.980 But suppose it was.
00:08:56.600 If the only thing you were looking at is who could cut off the supplies better from the other side, who would win?
00:09:01.580 I'm saying your answers are Russia, Russia.
00:09:08.900 So you think Russia would win because they would be able to resupply better?
00:09:15.560 I don't know.
00:09:17.820 I'm not so sure.
00:09:19.760 I guess if Russia does get control of the sky, then it's over, isn't it?
00:09:23.980 But I think so far the Ukrainians have been pretty successful at cutting down the supply lines, or so it sounds.
00:09:34.640 Actually, let me correct that.
00:09:37.700 Can we agree that 100% of the stuff that comes out of that war area that's pro-Ukraine and how plucky and accomplished they are?
00:09:49.140 You can't trust any of it, right?
00:09:51.480 You all know that, right?
00:09:52.460 So even when I find myself repeating something like it's common knowledge,
00:09:58.900 because it feels like common knowledge that the column of trucks is bogged down for some reason.
00:10:07.600 But is it?
00:10:09.080 I don't know.
00:10:10.520 Maybe it's not bogged down at all.
00:10:13.160 Maybe it's just right where it wants to be, exactly on plan for whatever it was going to do.
00:10:20.580 Who knows?
00:10:21.100 So just assume you don't know anything about what's going on there.
00:10:25.020 But the other ways to look at this is a puppet war.
00:10:27.500 Putin wants to put in a Putin puppet, and the U.S. wants a West-oriented puppet, a NATO puppet.
00:10:41.740 So this is really like a puppet fight, isn't it?
00:10:44.640 And it's a puppet fight, which is ridiculous.
00:10:49.180 It's a puppet fight where zillions of non-puppets get killed.
00:10:55.840 What do you guess is going to be the ultimate death toll out of this thing?
00:11:00.460 Do you think a million people are going to die when this is done?
00:11:02.960 I'm going to put a death toll estimate on this.
00:11:16.560 So this would be, I'm going to say all deaths, civilian and military on both sides.
00:11:22.080 Yeah, I don't think it'll be a million.
00:11:28.040 It'll be difficult to count.
00:11:30.740 So here's the, the wild card is the starvation, isn't it?
00:11:35.080 And the, you know, prevent, the medical deaths that would have been preventable, that sort of thing.
00:11:39.980 The freezing, if anybody freezes.
00:11:42.300 I'm going to say, I'm looking at your numbers to bias me.
00:11:50.780 Yeah, the people saying 50 to 100,000, that feels about right.
00:11:57.260 Right as in wrong, but, you know, close to the number.
00:12:02.820 Now, I've told you before that if you work in a numbers kind of job,
00:12:07.220 you end up having this weird ability to estimate things that you shouldn't have any ability to estimate
00:12:12.840 because you don't even have any assumptions or raw data to base your estimates on.
00:12:18.080 And somehow, if you work around numbers long enough,
00:12:22.440 you just get sort of a sense for how things are going to work out.
00:12:25.940 And it's sort of a weird thing.
00:12:27.400 It's not some magic power I have.
00:12:30.240 I think it would be true of just people who do predicting and estimating and numbers for a living.
00:12:35.660 And I'm going to say that the people saying 50 to 100,
00:12:41.420 I think that's going to be the right range, which is pretty awful.
00:12:48.080 Now, you know, compare that to other tragedies.
00:12:54.780 And, I mean, it's a big one.
00:12:57.360 And the bigger tragedy, of course, will be that the lives of all those people who are displaced are ruined.
00:13:02.420 The economic damage, the, you know, the second and third order damage from the sanctions on Russia,
00:13:09.440 whatever the hell Russia does about that.
00:13:12.160 So, that's all looking pretty bad.
00:13:15.720 One way to look at this is that the whole problem here is NATO provocation.
00:13:21.160 So, that's one way you could frame it.
00:13:22.560 It was NATO was being too aggressive about what countries it, you know, it associated with close to Russia.
00:13:31.120 And that looked like anybody could have known that that was going to cause a problem.
00:13:36.460 So, that's one way to look at it.
00:13:38.840 Another way is that, and we see smart people saying this,
00:13:44.020 that basically Putin is just a conquest puppy and he's just got to conquer stuff.
00:13:48.940 And he might be looking at Germany, as in actually, literally, thinking about how he could take over Germany.
00:13:58.680 Now, I don't believe that.
00:14:00.760 So, this would not be my interpretation.
00:14:04.300 But look at the difference about, you know, how people are looking at the cause of it and what the hell is going on.
00:14:10.800 It's a puppet war.
00:14:11.940 It's NATO provocation.
00:14:13.160 It's Putin provocation.
00:14:16.120 Can it just be all of those things?
00:14:18.940 It's all of those things, right?
00:14:23.080 So, anyway, Visa and MasterCard and somebody else has suspended operations Russia.
00:14:30.360 And so, you might ask yourself, how can the Russian economy survive?
00:14:35.200 Well, apparently, people are rapidly signing up for a Chinese version of Visa and MasterCard.
00:14:41.940 And what would happen to Russia in terms of their national security if all of their credit card purchases ran through China?
00:14:56.740 Could China gather all of the personal spending habits of all the Russians because they would have all the Russian, you know, financial data coming through all the transactions?
00:15:10.140 Could they use that data and feed it into their AI to have a crushing advantage over Russia that they have no, there's nothing they can do about it?
00:15:20.700 Because the information will just be China's.
00:15:23.000 It will run through Chinese servers.
00:15:24.900 So, if you think to yourself, man, Putin sure is clever.
00:15:31.500 He found a way to get out of these sanctions.
00:15:34.460 Look what he found.
00:15:35.640 Look at what his only option is.
00:15:38.120 His only option is to get in bed with China.
00:15:40.880 Now, if you are going to predict this forward, which is really the best way to predict,
00:15:46.620 because the people who predict the past, far less challenging.
00:15:51.440 So, let's predict the future this time, you know, to really raise the bar on the difficulty level.
00:16:00.220 I would say the most likely outcome is that Putin does horrible damage to Ukraine, but essentially controls it.
00:16:08.700 There's a long, long resistance that bleeds him, but he stays in power because he can.
00:16:15.640 And that eventually, 10 to 20 years, maybe sooner, I'll say average, 10 years maybe,
00:16:27.660 Putin will think, man, was that a mistake to give so much power to China?
00:16:33.000 Because China will use its power, won't it?
00:16:35.560 There's nothing that will stop China from taking advantage of any advantage they get over Russia or anybody else, as far as I know.
00:16:42.740 So, I'll bet there will be a pendulum swing where Putin, if he's still there in 10 years,
00:16:51.600 he's going to be looking at, how the heck can I get away from China's grasp and be more friends with the West?
00:17:01.740 That's my prediction, if he lasts.
00:17:04.200 The other possibility is somebody takes Putin out.
00:17:06.160 But I always think that's a, that just feels like wishing, doesn't it?
00:17:15.260 Doesn't that just feel like, you know, just wishing?
00:17:18.440 I don't think Putin's going to be taken out.
00:17:20.920 Do you?
00:17:23.540 I don't think so.
00:17:24.700 I mean, that seems like the least likely possibility.
00:17:26.920 But it also looks like what the U.S. is playing to.
00:17:30.960 It looks like the United States is playing a decapitation game with almost no chance of succeeding.
00:17:40.820 It's like our strategy is designed to force the Russian public to change their own government.
00:17:46.340 I don't think there's much chance of that happening, is there?
00:17:51.900 You know, are we not pursuing a strategy that has almost, I don't know, 5% chance of working, something like that, at best?
00:17:59.580 Now, maybe our government, I'd like to think it's true, knows more than we do about what they can and cannot do.
00:18:10.000 But from my vantage point, it doesn't look like we have a strategy that has any rational narrative to it.
00:18:18.900 Am I right?
00:18:20.220 Could anybody describe a connection between what we're doing, you know, we, the West, and NATO, and the United States?
00:18:28.820 Can anybody describe how what we're doing leads to a better outcome?
00:18:35.040 Like, just tell the story of, okay, well, we're doing this, and then because we're doing this, this will happen.
00:18:43.140 Can anybody even tell that story?
00:18:46.860 I don't know.
00:18:49.460 I couldn't.
00:18:51.060 So here's the big question.
00:18:53.040 Why are we not talking more about the potential grain shortage?
00:18:56.600 Isn't Ukraine the breadbasket, and is it an inconvenience, or is it mass starvation, if the war causes people not to have access to the Ukrainian grain?
00:19:13.620 And here's the other thing I ask.
00:19:19.500 Could one of the unintended consequences of the war be a mass shortage of bread, the type that makes Americans fat,
00:19:31.020 and cause actually a reduction in obesity, work with me here, a reduction in obesity such that we save more lives from, you know, natural heart attacks and shit than die in the war?
00:19:47.960 I know, I know, it's a rage, it's a rage.
00:19:56.840 But what would happen if, like, Americans just stopped eating bread for a year because it was hard to get?
00:20:04.420 We wouldn't starve, right?
00:20:06.680 In America, we wouldn't starve.
00:20:08.260 We would just not have sandwiches.
00:20:10.260 We'd just eat other things.
00:20:11.740 You know, bread wouldn't be that big a deal.
00:20:14.940 If you go to a restaurant, you know, a lot of people don't eat the bread anyway.
00:20:21.780 So, I don't know, we could probably cut our bread supply in half and just get healthier.
00:20:30.080 I don't think we would get hungrier.
00:20:31.760 I think we'd get healthier.
00:20:32.680 In fact, bread makes you hungry.
00:20:35.860 So that's my theory, bread makes you hungry.
00:20:38.480 Well, Trump was Trump.
00:20:46.880 Oh, wait, before that, one more point.
00:20:50.500 Here are some other unintended consequences that's going to come out of all this Ukraine stuff.
00:20:56.380 I think the U.S. is eventually going to be energy independent.
00:21:02.520 It might require the next president to do that.
00:21:05.380 But I think we will be forever energy independent in a few years, getting back to where we were.
00:21:13.300 So I think this probably causes a permanent rethink in our whole energy situation, which would be good for us.
00:21:20.320 The other thing is that, you know, issues with the pandemic and China and such.
00:21:25.640 I feel like the future of manufacturing looks like this.
00:21:31.480 That somebody like me, or just a person, could create a manufacturing site in their garage.
00:21:41.040 And all they would need would be 3D printers for various materials.
00:21:45.300 And that if somebody wanted to buy a certain item, let's say furniture, let's say furniture, they would, instead of shipping it, you'd have it built, you know, within a few blocks of the customer.
00:22:00.840 Somebody would actually just build the chair in their own garage.
00:22:05.300 And all they would do is, they would bid, they would bid on the order.
00:22:12.340 If they get the low bid, the CAD cam plans are downloaded into their printers.
00:22:19.700 And it could be, it doesn't have to be printers.
00:22:21.680 They could have wood, and they just put it into a cutting machine.
00:22:25.640 And the cutting could be also, you know, designated by the CAD.
00:22:30.300 So there could be some human intervention, but basically just to move materials onto cutting surfaces.
00:22:36.740 So you can get a point where you could order a couch, and the guy three doors down actually makes it.
00:22:45.500 Just because he was the low bidder who was also in your zip code.
00:22:50.220 Now, such a dreamer.
00:22:52.920 Well, more generally, let me say this.
00:22:54.660 So I'm trying to paint a picture of how different it could be.
00:22:58.300 Not specifically that different.
00:23:00.620 But here's the picture.
00:23:02.740 When we bring manufacturing back from China, we should be looking to leapfrog the old way of doing things.
00:23:11.440 The old way of doing things being more manual.
00:23:14.080 So we should be able to bring manufacturing back at the same time our technology allows us to do it completely differently.
00:23:21.120 So you'd want to solve your shipping costs by finding ways to distribute the orders electronically and use local materials to build it so all the shipping costs go away.
00:23:34.460 You want to be able to use robots and you want to be able to use 3D printing and all that stuff.
00:23:47.280 And, you know, automatic cutting of all materials, those sort of things.
00:23:50.840 So I think that's where it's going to go.
00:23:54.240 And the interesting thing is that you always give the advantage to the person who is leapfrogging the last technology.
00:24:01.900 And the last technology was still sort of robots slash people working one place and shipping it to a foreign country.
00:24:09.780 Which is, we've got to be able to do better than that.
00:24:13.400 All right, well, Trump is making news, of course.
00:24:16.700 He was talking to donors and reportedly said, and I say reportedly because, who knows, maybe he didn't say this.
00:24:24.080 But reportedly he said, that we, he mused, they say, that we should take our F-22 planes,
00:24:32.660 quote, put the Chinese flag on them and bomb the shit out of Russia, quote, and then we say China did it and we didn't do, we didn't do it and China did it.
00:24:43.420 And then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.
00:24:47.420 And, of course, social media and the news treated that like it was a serious comment.
00:24:54.220 Now, I hate to be the Trump-splainer all the time.
00:24:57.660 You know, it's like, it's like it's an exhausting job.
00:25:03.100 But let me tell you how to, how to interpret this in Trump talk.
00:25:09.480 We should be more clever.
00:25:12.720 That's it.
00:25:14.640 That's it.
00:25:15.880 We should be more clever, which I totally agree with.
00:25:20.040 Now, his example is just, you know, funny, hyperbole, and nobody should take that as serious.
00:25:25.400 But you get the idea that we should be more clever.
00:25:30.660 Now, I think that's all he's saying, but he's saying it in a funny way.
00:25:34.760 All right, so then that becomes big news.
00:25:37.040 But, of course, it looks like the Democrat strategy, if you look across, you know, the various Democrat-heavy media,
00:25:46.060 doesn't it look like the strategy is going to be to take the heat off of Biden and demonize Republicans
00:25:55.020 by making everything about Trump and making him the apologist.
00:26:01.140 So it looks like the play is to take out Tucker Carlson and Trump at the same time with the same topic.
00:26:08.380 Tell me I'm wrong.
00:26:13.840 I'm not.
00:26:15.920 It's very clear that the Democrat play, via the media, is to paint Trump as an apologist and Tucker as an apologist,
00:26:26.140 because Tucker is the, you know, the strongest voice that people trust on the right at the point.
00:26:31.980 You know, I'm not saying they should or shouldn't.
00:26:33.540 I'm just saying it's true.
00:26:34.540 And Trump, of course, whether he runs or he doesn't, he can be used to demonize the entire Republican Party.
00:26:46.680 So, since Russia is always automatically connected to Trump every time it comes up, this is sort of a perfect play.
00:26:55.660 And you can see, you know, Margaret Sullivan writing for The Washington Post.
00:27:00.440 The title of her thing is that how Putin's full-scale information war got a key assist from Donald Trump,
00:27:10.740 Tucker Carlson, and other right-wing, others in right-wing media.
00:27:15.280 So here's a very, you know, direct statement of what is probably going to be the Democrat strategy.
00:27:22.220 And she ends her piece by saying, calling, I think, Trump an apologist.
00:27:27.900 Now, apologist is your key word for propaganda.
00:27:33.820 I've taught you that, right?
00:27:35.500 As soon as you see apologist, you're like, oh, no.
00:27:40.200 Anybody who disagrees with you, you can paint them as an apologist.
00:27:45.640 You can just take any topic in the news, you know, what's your opinion,
00:27:50.240 and then figure out what's the opinion of the people who disagree with you,
00:27:53.240 and then figure out who they're talking about, because there's usually a person involved,
00:27:57.520 and then you call them an apologist, or an apologist for, you know, genocide,
00:28:02.760 or an apologist for something bad happening.
00:28:04.760 So as soon as you see apologist, that is not factual reporting, that is propaganda.
00:28:12.240 And then apparently Pence used the word apologist, and this could be,
00:28:19.720 I don't know if it's coincidence or who started saying it first,
00:28:23.300 but you're going to see this apologist thing everywhere.
00:28:26.040 And because Pence said it as well, that really makes the message stick.
00:28:29.060 So he thought, no, he wasn't calling, he didn't directly say that Trump or anybody was an apologist,
00:28:36.520 but he said, there's no room in this party, talk about Republicans,
00:28:40.320 there's no room in this party for apologists for Putin.
00:28:43.920 There is only room for champions of freedom, which is, of course, a big old nothing statement.
00:28:51.700 Pence could say nothing better than anybody.
00:28:53.800 I was always impressed at how well he could say nothing,
00:28:58.800 because he doesn't leave you anything to really grab onto.
00:29:04.180 He's pretty slippery.
00:29:08.560 In a skillful way, he is.
00:29:12.020 So, that's going on.
00:29:18.220 So, what do you think is going to happen
00:29:20.420 with the war?
00:29:24.320 How many would take my prediction at this point?
00:29:28.880 So, just give me your yeses, nos.
00:29:30.980 The question is,
00:29:32.840 will Russia get control of essentially all of Ukraine?
00:29:36.760 Yes or no?
00:29:38.160 Will Russia get Ukraine?
00:29:40.680 In the end here.
00:29:42.760 Seeing almost all yeses,
00:29:44.980 but a few nos.
00:29:46.260 A few nos.
00:29:47.780 Now, I don't know what a no really means,
00:29:49.960 because in this case,
00:29:51.220 it might mean,
00:29:52.560 you know,
00:29:52.860 if the resistance stays active,
00:29:55.040 and ten years later,
00:29:58.040 there's another puppet government that's pro-West.
00:30:01.080 I don't know.
00:30:01.620 Does that mean that Putin never got control?
00:30:04.980 So, there might be some gray area here.
00:30:07.480 So, I can see why you'd say no,
00:30:09.000 even if it looks like a yes.
00:30:11.740 All right.
00:30:12.140 So, if you think that'll happen,
00:30:14.180 number two,
00:30:16.040 will the economy of Russia
00:30:18.060 be degraded in a way
00:30:21.400 that makes a war like this
00:30:23.660 forever impractical?
00:30:27.980 So, here's the question.
00:30:31.160 I see lots of no's,
00:30:33.700 but also some yeses.
00:30:37.060 So, what do you think, YouTube?
00:30:38.200 Do you think...
00:30:40.200 I think we're very mixed on this.
00:30:43.080 Very mixed.
00:30:43.720 So, the hardest thing to predict
00:30:45.380 is how Putin will do with the sanctions,
00:30:50.260 or really how long they'll last
00:30:51.600 and how deep they'll go.
00:30:54.740 And if you think that China
00:30:56.920 is going to be the savior,
00:30:59.580 you know,
00:31:00.180 there's still another plague here,
00:31:02.360 which is that companies in China
00:31:04.460 that help Russia
00:31:07.120 could be also subject to sanctions.
00:31:09.880 So, not China itself.
00:31:11.900 But, correct me if I'm wrong,
00:31:13.380 couldn't we easily apply the sanctions
00:31:15.360 to a Chinese bank
00:31:18.400 that helps,
00:31:20.000 or the Chinese credit card?
00:31:22.440 And then, wouldn't it take that
00:31:24.220 out of international use?
00:31:26.560 Couldn't we, for example,
00:31:28.380 take the Chinese credit card company
00:31:31.180 that's going to save Russia
00:31:32.560 and take that
00:31:33.540 out of the international network?
00:31:35.960 So, it couldn't use regular banks.
00:31:38.920 And then, the next part is,
00:31:41.420 are we giving Russia and China
00:31:43.880 everything they want?
00:31:45.720 Which is, they'll band together,
00:31:47.960 they'll make some kind of a currency
00:31:49.800 that competes with the dollar,
00:31:51.500 and then we're really screwed.
00:31:52.960 Because our only real power
00:31:54.380 is the dollar.
00:31:56.960 Yeah, that's pretty risky, isn't it?
00:31:59.260 But I always wonder
00:32:02.800 if the country
00:32:04.020 with the biggest military
00:32:05.320 can ever have a weak dollar
00:32:08.120 or a weak currency.
00:32:11.440 And then you throw in crypto
00:32:12.920 in there,
00:32:13.780 and that's a lot of uncertainty.
00:32:17.380 All right.
00:32:18.280 I'm going to make my prediction.
00:32:20.280 My prediction is
00:32:24.340 that Russia will suffer
00:32:29.680 financially to such a degree
00:32:32.380 that it will really be a deterrent
00:32:37.200 to anybody thinking
00:32:38.500 they want to do something
00:32:39.560 like this again.
00:32:41.820 Even though there's nothing
00:32:43.400 like this.
00:32:45.440 Now, what I mean like this,
00:32:47.000 I mean two modern countries
00:32:50.500 fighting with modern equipment
00:32:52.460 in a border skirmish.
00:32:54.940 So, I don't know how many things
00:32:56.700 will be like that.
00:32:58.580 But I think that the damage to Russia,
00:33:02.540 because I think Putin will hold on,
00:33:04.800 which means that the sanctions
00:33:05.900 will continue.
00:33:07.780 And I think that in...
00:33:12.440 But I'm going to give you
00:33:13.620 a twist on this.
00:33:14.420 I think over, let's say,
00:33:17.180 I think over the next 10 years,
00:33:19.920 it's going to look like
00:33:20.820 a huge mistake for Russia.
00:33:23.300 But now, watch me
00:33:24.360 turn it around.
00:33:27.280 If Putin can hold out
00:33:28.660 for 10 years,
00:33:31.500 and then let's say
00:33:32.740 he just dies of natural causes.
00:33:35.800 If Russia then gets off of sanctions
00:33:38.420 because Putin's gone,
00:33:40.680 which is possible,
00:33:41.520 and then they start
00:33:43.580 recovering their economy,
00:33:45.720 in 20 years,
00:33:48.200 they're going to be
00:33:49.280 remembering it as
00:33:50.800 Putin expanded Russia
00:33:52.660 at a cost,
00:33:54.320 but they became
00:33:55.120 a much greater country
00:33:56.360 because, you know,
00:33:57.240 the combined assets
00:33:58.160 were amazing.
00:33:59.720 And so I think
00:34:01.020 in 10 years,
00:34:01.800 it's going to look like
00:34:02.460 a disaster for Putin,
00:34:03.820 and he might die
00:34:04.820 looking like a disaster.
00:34:07.400 But in the 20-year span,
00:34:11.660 I think Russia's going to look like
00:34:13.120 they're glad they did it.
00:34:16.700 What do you think?
00:34:19.960 The risk to the dollar system
00:34:21.560 is significant?
00:34:22.640 I don't know.
00:34:24.980 So, you know,
00:34:26.140 as I say way too often,
00:34:27.680 I have a degree in economics
00:34:29.120 and NBA.
00:34:31.740 But I couldn't tell you
00:34:34.080 if we're teetering
00:34:35.960 on the edge
00:34:36.740 of financial Armageddon
00:34:39.360 or not.
00:34:40.720 Because I think
00:34:41.600 a lot of smart people
00:34:42.440 would have said
00:34:43.000 we long past the point
00:34:45.180 where our debt alone
00:34:46.880 should have destroyed us.
00:34:49.700 I don't think anybody
00:34:50.820 saw that it was possible
00:34:52.100 we could have this much debt
00:34:54.120 and the stock market,
00:34:55.920 at least until this war happened,
00:34:57.500 and the stock market
00:34:58.560 was going up,
00:34:59.540 and employment
00:35:00.160 was looking good.
00:35:02.660 So, I mean,
00:35:03.980 there's something
00:35:05.280 about the economy
00:35:06.220 that is so fundamentally
00:35:07.780 mysterious,
00:35:10.560 even to people
00:35:11.280 who understand
00:35:12.060 things about the economy,
00:35:15.120 that I don't know
00:35:17.420 what's going on.
00:35:18.700 I really don't know
00:35:19.820 if anybody does.
00:35:20.540 All right.
00:35:31.360 So,
00:35:32.060 that is all I have
00:35:33.760 because there's not
00:35:34.660 much going on.
00:35:38.020 At least,
00:35:42.880 not in the world.
00:35:44.180 I don't know about
00:35:44.720 your personal lives.
00:35:46.160 Let me ask that.
00:35:47.620 How are your
00:35:48.220 personal lives?
00:35:50.240 Did the pandemic
00:35:51.000 tell me better or worse?
00:35:53.080 Did the pandemic
00:35:53.760 make your personal life
00:35:55.640 better or worse?
00:35:59.600 A lot of people
00:36:00.420 are saying better.
00:36:02.380 But,
00:36:02.980 it looks,
00:36:03.840 a lot of worse is.
00:36:05.860 Better or worse?
00:36:09.500 Way worse.
00:36:10.640 Worse,
00:36:10.980 worse,
00:36:11.200 worse.
00:36:11.580 Same,
00:36:11.920 worse.
00:36:12.480 Yeah.
00:36:13.840 Gosh.
00:36:16.200 Oh,
00:36:16.740 my goodness.
00:36:19.300 Wow.
00:36:25.500 Worse.
00:36:26.420 Ouch.
00:36:28.960 Oh,
00:36:29.600 wow.
00:36:36.240 Yeah,
00:36:36.880 I would say
00:36:37.620 one of my trolls
00:36:43.560 is funny.
00:36:44.000 Okay.
00:36:44.060 yeah,
00:36:48.680 I would say
00:36:51.180 it wasn't my
00:36:53.680 favorite pandemic.
00:36:56.440 All right,
00:36:57.800 Chechen,
00:36:59.400 that's a troll
00:37:00.260 named Chechen
00:37:01.020 something.
00:37:01.800 We're going to
00:37:02.180 remove you.
00:37:04.380 You are gone.
00:37:06.760 All right,
00:37:07.260 that's all I've got
00:37:08.160 for now.
00:37:09.080 Let's hope that
00:37:09.880 the news is better
00:37:10.900 and more interesting
00:37:11.800 tomorrow,
00:37:12.320 especially better.
00:37:14.480 And I'll talk to you,
00:37:16.120 YouTube,
00:37:17.440 tomorrow.
00:37:21.360 What is up with this?
00:37:26.360 Okay.
00:37:27.600 Okay.
00:37:27.680 What is up with this?
00:37:46.640 Okay.
00:37:46.980 What is up with this?