Real Coffee with Scott Adams - June 08, 2022


Episode 1768 Scott Adams: The Slippery Slope Met The Brick Wall Last Night. Let's Sip And Discuss


Episode Stats


Length

50 minutes

Words per minute

134.9305

Word count

6,766

Sentence count

518

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

It's my birthday, and I want to know what you'd like for your birthday drink on my birthday. What would you like to see happen if you were having a bad day, and the only thing that could make it better than a nice day was if you could be mad about something as simple as accidentally using the F word in a text message?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization, if not the highlight
00:00:13.200 of your entire day. And that's what matters most. Because, you know, for most of civilization,
00:00:21.280 I hate to break it to you, you weren't even here. You were a little bit irrelevant to
00:00:27.120 most of civilization. But now that you're here, wouldn't it be great to take it up a notch,
00:00:33.820 to go to the height, the height of happiness on my birthday? Today's my birthday. Happy
00:00:43.620 birthday to me. And if you'd like to celebrate my birthday with me, turn 65 today, all you
00:00:54.020 need is a special birthday cup or mug or a glass or tag or jealous or sign a canteen jug or
00:00:59.360 flask or vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me
00:01:08.780 now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything
00:01:14.640 better. The special birthday sip happens now. Go. Now, in the comments, someone nicely said,
00:01:28.220 I deserve a nice day. Well, that's not true at all. I don't deserve anything. Nobody deserves
00:01:37.900 anything. We kind of get what we get. But how would you like me to give you an idea that
00:01:45.280 would make all of us, 80% of us, much happier? It goes like this. And it's all I want for my
00:01:54.660 birthday. Have you ever tried to send a text message and you're kind of worked up, you're
00:02:04.800 angry about something? And you're going to use that F word. And you've got your text message
00:02:09.980 and your body is shaking and your thumbs are quivering. And you're like, that effing thing.
00:02:16.700 And you get to the end of your sentence and you get ready to send and spell correct has
00:02:21.300 changed it to ducking. D-U-C-K. Now, I don't know about you, but on a statistical basis, the 0.90
00:02:31.580 number of times I've wanted to type ducking, but, you know, didn't. Very small. Very small
00:02:41.960 times I've ever wanted to use, such as I was ducking the debris. I mean, it doesn't really
00:02:50.000 come up that often. And I can see why the impulse for the spell correctors would be to give us
00:02:55.920 the clean word just in case. But I would like to suggest the following. Number one, they
00:03:05.120 have picked the very worst time, the worst time to duck with me. Because when I'm already
00:03:13.000 mad and I'm sending a text message with that F word in it, do you know what is the only thing 0.78
00:03:18.380 that could make me more angry at that moment? It's having to pause and scroll back. Scroll. Scroll.
00:03:29.180 Scroll. Scroll. Not D. Not D. Delete. F. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, I mean it. Now, compare that.
00:03:43.020 Compare that to the alternative. Here, I was already mad and it made me more angry. And
00:03:51.240 I still sent the bad word. Did they gain anything at all? No. No goodwill. Nothing was helped.
00:03:59.340 But imagine if they went the other way. Flip it around. 180. Suppose if every time you tried
00:04:06.660 to write ducking, as in you were ducking the pitch or ducking the golf ball, what if it autocorrected
00:04:16.360 to effing? Am I right? Because then when you got one of those messages that somebody accidentally
00:04:23.880 sent, it would be hilarious. It would say, when the gunfire rang out, I hope you were fucking.
00:04:34.320 And you would read that message and you'd say, what? Why would you? Well, it's a nice thought.
00:04:41.980 But, oh, oh, it got autocorrected. It got autocorrected. It should have been ducking. And then what
00:04:50.800 would you do? You'd laugh. You'd laugh. You'd laugh and you'd laugh. Could you ever have a better
00:04:58.400 day than that? No. That would be a total gift. So let me summarize. Current method takes an angry
00:05:09.220 person, makes them angrier. Makes you hate their product. Bad. And you still send the bad word
00:05:20.360 anyway. My way, everybody gets a good laugh. Oops. Oops. I meant you should have been ducking.
00:05:30.180 Sorry, Mom. Come on. You tell me that wouldn't be funnier? There are very few situations where it's
00:05:37.360 all upside and no downside. I think this is one of them. And that's all I want for my birthday.
00:05:43.560 By the way, it's Johnny Depp's birthday tomorrow. I don't know why that's important. I believe
00:05:50.500 Kanye, who I call Ye, has his birthday today too. All of that means absolutely nothing because
00:05:59.760 Michael Schellenberger did not succeed into getting into the final two in the governor's race in
00:06:06.980 California. But I got to say, I'm really proud of the campaign he ran. And I feel as if something
00:06:16.940 good should come out of this. Meaning that at least people saw what it looks like to run a rational
00:06:24.260 campaign in which you're focusing on, you know, proven solutions. You're not trying to be political.
00:06:30.920 Now, why did it not work? Almost certainly because he wasn't part of the established, you know, Democrat
00:06:39.060 machine. So there was no amount of good ideas, no amount of effort, no amount of qualifications
00:06:47.420 that really could make a difference in our state. We're just so constipated with Democrat politics.
00:06:54.040 But I would argue that Andrew Yang did not have as practical solutions as Michael Schellenberger
00:07:03.700 promotes. Yang had ideas that were a little bit more futuristic, so they might work. And
00:07:11.400 I definitely think a lot of his ideas were worth testing. But that was a more speculative kind
00:07:18.260 of futuristic. Whereas I think Schellenberger really says far more practically, we already
00:07:25.420 know what works. We don't really need to experiment. The experiment's done. Just implement. So the
00:07:32.800 most rational message anybody ever brought to the electorate, and the electorate largely, I
00:07:37.680 think, maybe we're not aware of him because it's just so hard to break through. So I think
00:07:44.060 that probably is the whole story there. Let's talk about the slippery slope. You know, one
00:07:53.960 of the things I've always disliked about that slippery slope theme, which I've grudgingly
00:07:58.560 decided, you know, does exist. There is a slippery slope. I have said in the past that it's just
00:08:06.600 bad thinking. But I'm coming around that there are some situations in which the best way to
00:08:12.020 describe them is a slippery slope. However, I insist, I insist on adding this visual update to the
00:08:21.600 slippery slope. Here's what I'd like to add. At the bottom of every slippery slope, there's a brick
00:08:30.880 wall. If you give me that, we're on the same page. I'll give you the slippery part. But I've always
00:08:39.660 said, yes, you don't have to worry about it. Because at the end of the slip ring, there's
00:08:45.160 always a brick wall. Now, you might say to yourself, that's not true. Here are all these
00:08:50.400 examples where it just keeps going. To which I say, it just hasn't hit the wall yet. Right?
00:08:57.080 That in retrospect, you'll look back and a lot of people will say that was progress.
00:09:01.080 You hit the wall when everybody agrees you've gone too far. And that happened in San Francisco
00:09:08.580 last night, where the San Francisco DA, who was the super progressive one who basically thought
00:09:18.060 criminals should be set free, was recalled. So even liberal San Francisco said, you know,
00:09:25.860 I feel like we're done with this. I think we would like law and order in San Francisco.
00:09:33.100 So did the lawlessness and the Democrat, you know, craziness, was it a slippery slope? Yes.
00:09:43.520 Yes, it was. I mean, we slippery sloped all the way to destroying San Francisco. If that's not a
00:09:50.520 slippery slope, what is. But it turns out there might be a brick wall at the bottom of the slippery
00:09:56.800 slope. And I think the voters, depending on how you want to use this imagery, hit the wall last
00:10:06.220 night. And they just said, up, up, up, this is too far. Now, you don't want to say there's a trend
00:10:16.820 building on, you know, one day of voting or anything like that. But there did seem to be some
00:10:21.880 trends that maybe are surfacing, maybe. One would be the school choice people had a good night,
00:10:30.940 I guess, in Iowa. There was a lot of, you know, victory for the school choice people.
00:10:37.180 That feels like a wall, doesn't it? It feels like the, you know, the schools were a slippery slope
00:10:43.260 open to horribleness. And they were certainly in horribleness. And maybe, maybe school choice is
00:10:51.380 the brick wall. It's like, okay, okay, that's far enough. So it's always hard to know when you're
00:11:00.560 sliding like crazy and when you're actually, you know, one second away from hitting a brick wall.
00:11:07.480 But it's useful to know that usually a brick wall comes up. Not every time.
00:11:18.380 Here's a sort of a messaging persuasion thing I've been noodling with. What would happen if
00:11:24.380 Republicans started using their own solutions but using the Democrats' arguments? And I think
00:11:34.460 you'll see there are a few examples of this. And I can't tell if there's a way to do this more
00:11:39.180 generally or just a few interesting examples. Let me give you this one example. So I tweeted
00:11:45.360 today, if you lived in a country bristling with white supremacists, what kind of tool or device
00:11:52.040 would help you protect your family? And the choices were a stick, a gun, or the third choice was,
00:11:59.120 I don't like my family. And of course, the message here in the humorous form is that if you actually
00:12:07.820 believed that white supremacists were a rising force, I feel as if you'd want to have some guns if you
00:12:15.900 were a person of color. And so what would happen, and I'm just sort of noodling through it. I'm not
00:12:23.400 saying this is a good idea. I'm just sort of like noodling. What would happen if the Republicans
00:12:31.500 just started embracing the Democrats' most crazy statements and acted as though they believed them?
00:12:41.380 It could make things worse. Let me give you the most extreme example. Suppose Republicans did a
00:12:47.220 pro-gun ad in which they used the Charlottesville fine people hoax, but they treated it like it
00:12:55.140 really happened. The really happened part is not that there were neo-Nazis. That did happen,
00:13:01.360 obviously. But the part of the hoax is that Trump praised the neo-Nazis. What if they just,
00:13:09.440 they didn't have to say anything about Trump, so they wouldn't have to lie. They could just show
00:13:13.720 the imagery of Charlottesville and say, you know, maybe if you're worried about this,
00:13:21.440 maybe you should own a gun. Second Amendment. Now, is it a terrible idea?
00:13:29.840 So one of the things that was at the San Francisco Chronicle headline, I saw a Joel Pollack tweet on
00:13:37.980 this, that San Francisco is interpreting this recall of their progressive DA. They're looking
00:13:48.460 at that as, oh, it has nothing to do with what the right wing wants. It's just people want a city
00:13:54.520 that works. And I thought to myself, a city that works? You mean do all the things that the Republicans
00:14:03.100 say you should do? That's how you get it to work. Literally being, you know, more aggressive about
00:14:11.360 crime or, you know, punishing crime. So I just wonder how many of these arguments could be
00:14:19.860 turned around. You know, the one, my favorite one is if you embrace the systemic racism, let's say
00:14:26.820 you're a Republican. You embrace systemic racism as a primary thing, like a primary, like force and
00:14:34.960 a reason that you're, you're running. And then you say, and we have to work at the source, which is the,
00:14:40.360 the teachers unions. So you totally accept their argument, the systemic racism, but you use that
00:14:49.320 argument to dismantle the thing that actually is the biggest problem. Like, would people, would people
00:14:57.640 start to notice that you kept using Democrat arguments, but Republican solutions? Because I think
00:15:05.220 you could do it all day long. I'm not sure. But I feel like a lot of the things you could cast that
00:15:11.360 way, and you would be impossible to ignore. If you ran as a candidate who literally said, I'm going to
00:15:18.880 give you a Democrat view of the world, and then I'm going to show you how to dissolve it with
00:15:24.420 Republican policies. Now, it's not going to work for abortion, right? There are going to be a few
00:15:29.240 things that it just doesn't work for. So how about you say, you know, there's a group that wants to
00:15:38.740 promote more LGBTQ awareness or openness or whatever, however they would say it, in the schools, and a lot of
00:15:47.320 conservatives would say, no, that's too young. You know, we want our kids to do it. So how about instead,
00:15:53.860 you say, we need, we need to, you need to be able to send your kids to a school where they can learn
00:16:01.120 to appreciate all people. That would be the Democrat version. And then say, the solution to that is school
00:16:07.980 choice. So that you Democrats have a choice to send your children to exactly the kind of school you want
00:16:15.100 to send them to. Why should you send your kids to a school which Republicans have designed? Does that
00:16:23.080 make sense to you? No. So you take the Democrats' own argument that you want to, you want to teach
00:16:30.120 your kids to be, you know, educated about openness and the differences among people in a productive way.
00:16:38.220 How about we help you? How about we help you get that choice? And then we get out of your
00:16:44.460 business. And the Republicans would say, there's nothing I want more than to get out of your
00:16:49.700 business. I just would like the same. You know, in return, I would like you to get out of my business.
00:16:58.060 Think, think how often you could, you could use their arguments and then a Republican solution.
00:17:02.400 All right. So maybe the country is closer to sticking together than we think. Over in the United
00:17:14.960 Kingdom, they're going to test the four-day work week pretty seriously. So there are 3,300 workers
00:17:20.960 and 70 businesses across a whole range of industries that are going to participate.
00:17:26.000 And apparently this has been done before. In Iceland, they did a study between 2015 and 2019.
00:17:35.320 And they found that the employees who volunteered, I guess, to work the shorter work weeks had the
00:17:43.120 same productivity. Now, what do you think about that? Do you think, do you think that in general,
00:17:53.920 a four-day work week would work as well as a five-day work week? Because I don't think it's four times
00:18:01.440 10. I think it's still, I think it's 32 hours instead of 40, I believe is the idea.
00:18:12.360 Well, one way to look at it is that you can reduce most business expenses by 25%. It doesn't make a
00:18:19.740 difference. There are a lot of things that you overspend for that if you just stop doing it,
00:18:25.500 you find it didn't work out as poorly as you imagined. So it wouldn't be shocking at all
00:18:31.900 if people could figure out how to do fewer meetings and more work. That wouldn't surprise me.
00:18:38.620 I don't know. I will watch this with interest. But I've got a feeling that there are other
00:18:50.860 reasons that people go to work. And so one of the things they say is that people are more productive
00:18:56.620 if, you know, if you can teach people to stop bothering each other at work and dropping in and
00:19:02.700 having meetings that are too long and stuff like that, you'd be more productive. But I feel as if
00:19:09.100 for everyone who wants someone to stop dropping into their cubicle, there's someone who really needs
00:19:15.500 to do the dropping in. Because the people who are always doing the dropping in are like lonely people
00:19:21.180 who need to talk to somebody because they don't have anybody at home. Yeah, there's a huge social
00:19:27.740 part to work. That if you decrease that, I don't know that people are happier at their house.
00:19:36.300 Wasn't one of the big problems with the pandemic that it caused people to be home more? And people
00:19:41.660 are like, you know, two days at home with my family, that's just about right. Five days at home with my
00:19:50.140 family, that's a lot of family. So I've got a feeling that there's some unintended consequences
00:19:57.260 of the short work weeks. But I am glad that they're testing it. Why? Because we should test
00:20:03.580 everything that can be tested. Just a general statement. If there are people who want to do this,
00:20:10.380 it's funded. We're all curious about the outcomes. It matters. It's important. Yeah, let's test it.
00:20:19.340 So thumbs up to the UK for being leaders and at least testing this stuff.
00:20:28.700 So here's another story that fits into the theme. So George Takai, do you follow him on Twitter?
00:20:36.540 So he played Sulu in the original Star Trek. And he's pretty active in left-leaning politics on Twitter,
00:20:45.900 especially anything with LGBTQ stuff. And so he tweeted this yesterday, I think. He says,
00:20:56.220 crazy thought, but those 20 million AR-15s now in this country could sure arm a lot of Ukrainians.
00:21:06.540 Now, is that not an example of a left-leaning person completely agreeing with Republicans,
00:21:14.620 but they just can't say it out loud? Because here's the other way to say what George Takai just said.
00:21:22.700 The only reason the United States doesn't have to worry about being overthrown is we have 20 million AR-15s. 0.97
00:21:31.180 Now, it's not like I was worried that Canada was going to overrun us anytime soon. But
00:21:37.100 I do feel safer with knowing that my fellow citizens, which always sounds sexist to me,
00:21:46.380 what's the non-sexist way to say my fellow citizens? Is there a non-sexist word for that yet?
00:21:53.500 My they citizens, my they citizens, my comrades. Sounds wrong.
00:22:01.160 Now, that didn't trip off the tongue just right. We citizens. Well, I'm glad we citizens have 20 million AR-15s.
00:22:13.800 Although I admit that whenever there's a mass shooting, I say to myself, what the hell? What the hell?
00:22:21.560 So this feels like another one of those situations where you could agree with George Takai and just sort of like
00:22:31.400 make a commercial end of his opinion and say, and that's why Russia isn't invading America. I mean, that's the ridiculous version.
00:22:40.680 So, Rasmussen, in their polling, reminds us that the top voter concerns in this order, number one, inflation.
00:22:53.720 Number two, election integrity. And number three, violent crime.
00:23:00.840 Do these things seem like the same priorities that you're seeing on television and from your politicians?
00:23:10.680 Have there been a lot of CNN specials about how to improve election integrity?
00:23:19.640 No. There have been lots of specials telling you that the elections were fine.
00:23:26.040 They're just fine. It's the number two issue in America.
00:23:31.540 Think of all the issues we have. We've got some pretty bad stuff floating around, right?
00:23:37.000 And still, number two is election integrity.
00:23:40.080 Because people know, people know intuitively that if you don't have that part right, all of the other stuff doesn't get fixed.
00:23:48.560 And you've taken away your ability to do anything, really.
00:23:52.700 So, I think Rasmussen does a great job, you know, for the country
00:24:00.020 by reminding us that our politicians and our news services are not giving us what we're asking for.
00:24:06.960 What we're really asking for is, can you at least make sure the elections work?
00:24:12.540 Please?
00:24:14.080 Can you please just give us one thing?
00:24:18.740 Just one?
00:24:19.860 Can you just get on the same side that the voting machines should count the actual votes?
00:24:25.480 Can we agree on that?
00:24:28.460 It feels like something we could get to, you know, we could rally around.
00:24:32.360 But not in our divisive country.
00:24:40.020 Here's a reframe that I've been working on.
00:24:45.880 Those of you who know my life story,
00:24:48.980 you might know that I grew up in a small town,
00:24:52.480 Wyndham, New York, in upstate New York.
00:24:55.480 There were, I don't know, 40 people in my graduating class,
00:24:59.640 maybe 2,000 people in the town.
00:25:02.900 And the first thing that I did after I graduated college,
00:25:10.360 and I went to college in a nearby town, Oneonta, New York,
00:25:14.860 the first thing I did was move to San Francisco.
00:25:20.760 Why did I do that?
00:25:22.320 Yeah, it was Hartwick College.
00:25:25.460 I got a degree in economics.
00:25:27.240 Why did I, why was the first thing I did to move to San Francisco?
00:25:34.320 It's because I was chasing luck.
00:25:36.440 Over on YouTube, somebody says, because you're gay?
00:25:46.560 No, follow along.
00:25:49.180 Try to get back on track here.
00:25:53.980 It was funny, though.
00:25:55.080 No, I went to San Francisco, because it's where the energy was, right?
00:26:01.740 It's where the energy was.
00:26:03.480 And I wanted to go somewhere where there were more opportunities,
00:26:06.080 more chances to get lucky, and just more stuff happening.
00:26:09.960 And I thought to myself, okay, I was lucky that I could do that.
00:26:14.580 Like, it was physically possible for me to do that.
00:26:19.100 Now, imagine you're looking at any impoverished inner city area.
00:26:24.520 Let's take Chicago.
00:26:26.820 You've got high crime, and, you know, economics are terrible in certain parts of the city.
00:26:31.960 How would you fix it?
00:26:35.460 Well, I'll tell you the worst way to fix it.
00:26:38.260 Keep everybody where they are, and try to make it better there.
00:26:43.620 That might be the worst way to do it.
00:26:46.880 Because the concentration of troublemaking people is probably too high.
00:26:53.720 And so that nothing you do there is going to make a difference.
00:26:56.100 It's like donating food to countries where they have warlords.
00:27:03.180 You can give them all the food you want,
00:27:04.960 but the warlords are going to steal it all when it hits the ground.
00:27:08.280 It doesn't help.
00:27:09.720 It doesn't help to help, because of the people.
00:27:13.240 There's just too much of a concentration of criminal element or whatever.
00:27:17.640 So, in my opinion, the number one thing that you need to do to help anybody
00:27:22.360 who's in that situation is to move them.
00:27:24.180 And I'm wondering, how much poverty and, I don't know, every problem in the world
00:27:31.460 could you solve if it were real easy for poor people to move?
00:27:38.820 And that is really the hardest thing in the world.
00:27:41.380 It's really pretty hard to just say,
00:27:44.660 okay, I'm going to move to San Francisco just because it's a better place to be.
00:27:49.420 Like, who can really do that?
00:27:50.720 I mean, I was very, very fortunate, and it was a point in time,
00:27:55.620 and let's be honest, I was a white male.
00:27:59.080 Things were easier if you were a white male in those days, right? 0.63
00:28:03.000 So, I had everything going for me, in a sense.
00:28:07.200 But imagine if you could pick out the B students and above in every poor place,
00:28:14.320 and you just say, all right, you've got a B average on your own by sixth grade.
00:28:21.140 I'll just pick a random grade.
00:28:24.180 So, you got all the way to sixth grade, and somehow,
00:28:27.220 somehow you pulled at least Bs.
00:28:30.240 We're going to give you the option to pull your whole family out of there.
00:28:34.160 And some kind of, you know, government greased,
00:28:37.180 you know, you don't want the government to get bigger.
00:28:38.760 But there's probably some way to create even a private app kind of situation
00:28:47.400 where you can get people out and get them to a job.
00:28:51.940 Now, I've talked about this before,
00:28:53.440 but the more apps become ubiquitous, the more practical this is.
00:28:59.640 Imagine if you had an app that was designed to help people escape where they live.
00:29:05.420 Let's say domestically.
00:29:08.380 Eventually, it could include other countries.
00:29:11.300 But just domestically.
00:29:12.880 And let's say you're a single mom,
00:29:16.520 and you know you just can't do enough for your kid.
00:29:20.600 You want to, you just can't do enough.
00:29:22.160 So, you go on the app, and you say, like, I need to escape.
00:29:25.500 I need to get out of here.
00:29:26.780 And then other people go on the app and say,
00:29:28.740 I'd like to help you escape.
00:29:30.460 Like, I'll be one of the people.
00:29:32.160 I can't afford to do it all myself.
00:29:33.940 But I could give, you know, 20 bucks or whatever to help you escape.
00:29:38.840 But in return, here's the deal.
00:29:41.720 You've got to show us your kid's report card,
00:29:44.720 and it's got to be at least bees for, let's say, you know, one year or something.
00:29:51.640 Whatever it is.
00:29:52.500 So the mother says, all right, I got one thing to do.
00:29:55.540 I'm going to make sure my kid gets bees. 0.99
00:29:57.620 Like, it might be a Herculean task.
00:30:01.000 You might have to, like, lock them in.
00:30:03.800 But maybe for one year you could do it, if you were really incentivized.
00:30:08.600 And then you meet that simple test.
00:30:11.160 Yeah, there would be fraud.
00:30:12.160 There's fraud in everything.
00:30:13.320 You know, you do your best to get past it.
00:30:15.880 But you get to that point, and then you get an option that people put together a moving package.
00:30:22.120 And they say, all right, here are several options.
00:30:24.480 You can move to this town.
00:30:25.840 We'll help you connect with the people who will make that easy and inexpensive to do.
00:30:31.400 And we've even got a job lined up for you that's in your field.
00:30:36.240 And we'll get you trained.
00:30:38.920 I feel as if individuals helping individuals and then following their story would be more entertaining than actual entertainment.
00:30:49.220 Let me say it again.
00:30:50.220 Suppose you could go onto an app and pay $20 to help somebody that somehow has been vetted to be not a fraud, that you're actually just part of their cheering community to help them out.
00:31:04.520 So you get to follow somebody's life.
00:31:06.080 You follow them on social media.
00:31:07.560 And maybe that's a requirement or a suggestion.
00:31:10.880 You say, look, we'd like to be able to follow your life.
00:31:13.940 So post as much as you can on social media, and we'll just follow you.
00:31:19.960 And if you're doing well, we'll give more money.
00:31:22.980 But if it looks like you're in with a bad crowd or something, if there's some way to find out, maybe we won't.
00:31:30.800 But if you do well, we'll back you, and we'll give you advice, right, lots of advice and connections.
00:31:36.940 And we'll help you get a job with somebody we know in that town and stuff like that.
00:31:40.860 But I feel as if all these kids are becoming, they're trying to become social media stars when they really just need to be good people.
00:31:52.240 Imagine, if you will, that a kid said, hey, I could use social media and TikTok to help my future life.
00:32:00.780 And all I have to do is offer myself up and say, hey, I need help.
00:32:07.160 I'm in a bad situation.
00:32:09.440 I live in a tough town.
00:32:11.260 I'd like to get out.
00:32:13.780 Can you be my virtual mentors?
00:32:17.700 And in return, I will keep you informed of my life so you can see that whatever you do is helping me or not.
00:32:23.980 And I'll give you some transparency about how I'm doing.
00:32:27.720 And you could just sponsor me.
00:32:31.020 And then the people sponsoring could argue among themselves whether they're doing a good job.
00:32:37.180 So the sponsors would police each other.
00:32:40.160 It'd all be transparent.
00:32:42.240 In every case, the parent would have to have access to everything, right?
00:32:47.400 The parent has to see all of it and approve it, right?
00:32:51.140 That's just got to, that has to be.
00:32:53.060 You want to turn people into social workers? 0.99
00:32:59.480 No.
00:33:01.560 So if somebody says you want to turn people into social workers, as soon as you added a worker, you lost the idea entirely.
00:33:11.140 There's nothing about this that's work.
00:33:15.040 That's the idea.
00:33:16.000 See, the greatest untapped resource in the world is people's natural generosity.
00:33:33.320 And the reason that it's not activated is that we don't trust the people asking for it, right?
00:33:40.380 You just don't trust that if you use your generosity, it's necessarily going to be turned into something positive.
00:33:48.800 I think I've done this before on the live stream, but let me do it again.
00:33:53.620 Do you know how many times I've tried to help somebody who had, you know, a financial situation or some kind of a big problem?
00:34:01.140 A lot, because for three decades I've been in a situation where I had more than I needed.
00:34:10.060 So lots of times I've tried to help somebody who was in a bad situation.
00:34:14.720 Now let me ask you this.
00:34:16.360 How many times did it work?
00:34:19.400 As in, once you solve this temporary problem, somebody went on to a good, successful life.
00:34:28.600 Okay, here's the answer.
00:34:31.140 It's not zero.
00:34:33.300 It's not zero.
00:34:35.260 It might be 10%.
00:34:36.600 It might be 10%.
00:34:38.820 And probably 20%, you know, really did make a big difference.
00:34:43.420 80% is just people revert to whoever they were.
00:34:47.580 So the person who got into trouble is the person who's going to get into trouble again.
00:34:52.520 Unfortunately.
00:34:53.000 You know, helping people temporarily doesn't really, by definition, doesn't have a permanent effect.
00:35:01.620 But it's totally worth doing for the 10%. 1.00
00:35:07.300 If I look at the people who, you know, for whom I have made an actual difference, it really did make a difference.
00:35:18.040 And so, you know, I'll be able to enjoy my senior years knowing that at least 10% of the people I tried to help genuinely got helped.
00:35:29.400 Like really, really made a difference.
00:35:31.020 And that is very, very rewarding.
00:35:34.440 Now, how entertaining is it to know that you help somebody?
00:35:41.380 It's one of the greatest pleasures you can receive.
00:35:44.120 So my generosity is automatically rewarded when it works.
00:35:50.260 The problem is that generosity doesn't work.
00:35:54.720 We live in a world in which we're not tribal.
00:35:58.900 So I could send my generosity out into the world and it just gets absorbed and taken for granted, right?
00:36:06.020 It doesn't come back.
00:36:07.600 Anyway.
00:36:07.820 So right now, if we had an app that simply captured generosity and made sure that it wasn't, at least,
00:36:19.540 maybe the trick is to, you have to diversify your generosity so that you can see the 10% that worked.
00:36:25.940 So maybe you're always investing in more than one person, perhaps.
00:36:30.880 A fund of people.
00:36:32.260 You can even have somebody who organizes a fund to see who's worthy to get, you know, to be part of the app.
00:36:41.260 So anyway, you can imagine a situation in which you could untap generosity.
00:36:47.320 People would get something immediately in return for their generosity.
00:36:51.260 And you would create a virtuous cycle.
00:36:58.400 All right?
00:36:59.400 Well, that's the best idea you've heard all day.
00:37:02.260 But if I were a Republican, the way I would put it is, we're going to help Democrats move out of Democrat cities.
00:37:10.240 See?
00:37:11.180 See how many things you can take as a Democrat argument with a Republican solution.
00:37:17.960 Democrat cities have too many guns.
00:37:21.100 Too much gun violence.
00:37:23.540 We Republicans will help you move out of those places and live where there are just as many guns, but no gun violence.
00:37:32.260 It's called Wyoming.
00:37:35.180 Or something.
00:37:37.640 Now, have you seen all the advertisements for ADUs?
00:37:42.340 The, what's it called?
00:37:45.240 You can put an extra little house on your property.
00:37:50.940 ADU, what's that stand for?
00:37:53.080 Something unit, dwelling unit.
00:37:56.180 Affordable dwelling unit, ADU.
00:37:58.180 So, that industry has recently exploded.
00:38:01.740 And there are a whole bunch of companies that make, basically, a house in a box.
00:38:07.280 And one of them, I think, is called Boxable.
00:38:10.060 And I think Elon Musk actually has an investment in it.
00:38:13.020 And it comes in a truck and it unfolds into a proper little house.
00:38:16.400 That's got, you know, bathroom and bedroom and, you know, tiny kitchen kind of situation.
00:38:24.760 So, here's what I think is going to be the big thing.
00:38:30.460 Somebody's going to develop some land in a remote place that has good weather and lots of water.
00:38:36.820 And Wi-Fi.
00:38:40.460 And they're going to say, you can put any kind of ADU here and live there.
00:38:45.560 The ADU would just be where you live.
00:38:48.620 And you could have more than one.
00:38:52.460 So, you might have a family that needs, you know, two of them.
00:38:55.460 And you just stick them together.
00:38:57.200 And people like me could invest in them.
00:39:03.780 So, you'd say, Scott, you can invest in this little, you know, square piece of land in Wyoming.
00:39:09.780 And we'll tell you how to invest in any one of these ADUs.
00:39:13.760 And we'll put it there.
00:39:14.780 You don't have to do any work.
00:39:16.480 You just have to put the money in.
00:39:18.260 You'll own the land.
00:39:19.280 You'll own the ADU.
00:39:20.400 And we'll rent it for you.
00:39:22.260 The rent will be low.
00:39:25.000 That's the whole idea.
00:39:25.980 But, since it costs so little for you to invest in that little piece of dirt, in that little ADU, you'll get your money back.
00:39:35.740 So, you might want to invest in several of them.
00:39:38.200 And I say, oh, actually I do.
00:39:40.940 I wouldn't mind owning several ADUs, like little mini investments.
00:39:45.760 And then you say to the people who are maybe living there, you know, if you will manage the one next door,
00:39:55.980 I'll give you a break in rent.
00:39:59.840 And then suddenly they've got work.
00:40:02.300 They've got a place to go.
00:40:03.660 They can, you know, work remotely.
00:40:06.100 Anyway, I think we need a place to take people who have promise and some drive,
00:40:11.780 pull them out of their situation, put them in a good situation,
00:40:14.880 stop talking about the guns that are in the bad situation,
00:40:17.600 and start talking about pulling the people out and getting them into a place where they can be educated and safe.
00:40:27.280 Most investors are not generous.
00:40:29.600 Well, that's true.
00:40:30.860 That's true.
00:40:31.700 If your mode is investor, you're not generous.
00:40:35.280 Right.
00:40:35.820 Because those are different.
00:40:36.720 You know, being an investor is being selfish.
00:40:41.060 That's what it's supposed to be.
00:40:42.500 It won't work if you don't try to be selfish.
00:40:48.080 So the Steve Bannon situation got interesting.
00:40:52.340 I guess there were 12 jurors wanting to convict Steve Bannon,
00:40:57.020 associate Timothy Shea,
00:41:00.860 and there was one holdout.
00:41:03.820 So there was one Trump-supporting holdout
00:41:06.260 who just hung the jury.
00:41:09.980 And it just turned completely political.
00:41:12.500 But, of course, this is in the backdrop of the larger story,
00:41:16.940 which is it does appear that conservatives are being treated differently by the government than the left.
00:41:25.240 Does that feel true?
00:41:28.400 I don't know if it's true.
00:41:30.860 I'm not totally sold that the prominent anecdotes we've seen really show us a trend.
00:41:38.900 But it sure looks like it, doesn't it?
00:41:42.340 Like, the anecdotal stuff is very persuasive.
00:41:48.900 I just don't know that we aren't being fooled by anecdotes.
00:41:54.140 Does anybody have that suspicion?
00:41:56.560 Because if you ask me if it's persuasive, totally.
00:42:02.040 But if you ask me if it's really true, I don't know.
00:42:06.600 How would I know?
00:42:08.080 How would you know?
00:42:09.540 I wouldn't know.
00:42:10.840 Has anybody done some kind of rigorous study that would, you know,
00:42:16.540 that would tell us whether this is really happening?
00:42:18.820 Now, the prominent cases, it just looks that way, but I don't know.
00:42:24.660 Yeah, I know the anecdotes.
00:42:26.240 I know the Peter Navarro.
00:42:27.500 I know the Stone.
00:42:29.740 It does look as though they are being mistreated.
00:42:33.300 In every way, it has that look.
00:42:36.940 But just because they're being mistreated,
00:42:40.080 I don't know if that's part of a bigger thing.
00:42:45.200 But it could be.
00:42:46.540 It could be.
00:42:47.580 I'm definitely worried about it.
00:42:57.860 All right.
00:43:01.500 Yeah, if you compare Peter Navarro's situation
00:43:04.120 to the way Hillary was treated, et cetera. 1.00
00:43:09.740 You know, this January 6th stuff,
00:43:13.240 is this going to backfire on the Democrats?
00:43:17.400 Did you see the David Axelrod tweet in which he was...
00:43:22.460 I felt he was warning his own team.
00:43:25.700 Because the New York Times treated the January 6th hearings
00:43:29.600 as a political strategy by the left.
00:43:35.480 And David Axelrod was saying,
00:43:37.040 I don't think you want to be happy if you're a Democrat
00:43:41.260 and you see the press say it's a political thing.
00:43:46.640 Because the New York Times basically treated it
00:43:48.900 like it was just a political act.
00:43:51.880 And Axelrod is saying,
00:43:53.480 I think you need to let the evidence go where the evidence goes.
00:43:57.440 Now, which is the correct thing to say in public, of course.
00:44:04.900 And I've got a feeling that this is going to backfire gigantically.
00:44:10.280 Because at some point,
00:44:13.520 the Republicans get to talk, right?
00:44:16.460 Now, I'm not talking about during the hearings themselves.
00:44:19.280 But a lot of Republicans are going to talk about it.
00:44:23.360 You know, are you telling me that the mainstream media
00:44:26.100 isn't going to have any Republicans on?
00:44:28.860 Don't they have to?
00:44:30.800 I mean, how often does CNN and MSNBC
00:44:33.500 have a prominent Republican on to interview?
00:44:38.520 Actually, I don't know the answer to the question.
00:44:40.260 Does that happen often?
00:44:41.920 Never?
00:44:45.320 Because there's not as much cross-pollination
00:44:47.960 as there should be.
00:44:49.460 But I do think Republicans are going to have to get a...
00:44:53.720 You know, there's going to have to be some kind of response.
00:44:56.240 And it's going to be newsworthy.
00:44:58.860 But I think that if the Republicans simply use it
00:45:02.080 as a place to grandstand
00:45:03.960 and call out the left for exactly what's happening here,
00:45:10.480 it could really, really work for the Republicans in a big way.
00:45:14.760 So Axelrod is completely right.
00:45:16.360 The fact that the left is not trying to hide the fact
00:45:20.640 that it's purely political,
00:45:22.920 that has to have some blowback, doesn't it?
00:45:28.740 If you're not even pretending,
00:45:31.100 it's anything but political.
00:45:32.980 It also makes all of the other cases,
00:45:35.280 you know, like the Peter Navarro,
00:45:36.960 and it makes all the other cases
00:45:39.340 look like they were political, too.
00:45:41.620 Because they largely are.
00:45:44.740 Yeah, they produced a Good Morning America producer
00:45:50.640 to do that.
00:45:57.300 Yeah, it's the House, not the Senate.
00:45:59.460 Right.
00:46:00.640 But still, I think the Senate's going to be
00:46:02.440 pretty vocal about what's going on.
00:46:04.580 So there are no Republican members
00:46:11.260 of the January 6th committee, you're saying?
00:46:14.640 But there will still be lots of Republican voices.
00:46:18.180 Won't there?
00:46:20.020 Won't Republicans be interviewed
00:46:22.420 by the January 6th people on TV?
00:46:26.200 Well, let me ask you this.
00:46:27.860 Who exactly is going to be talking?
00:46:29.680 Because it doesn't matter
00:46:32.420 who's asking the questions,
00:46:33.760 it also matters who's answering them.
00:46:37.260 Who will be the prominent people
00:46:39.420 interviewed during the hearings?
00:46:46.040 Actually, I have no idea.
00:46:48.380 Who exactly, are they just going to be
00:46:50.240 showing video and evidence?
00:46:51.600 Or are they going to be interviewing people?
00:46:54.660 What exactly is happening on Thursday?
00:46:57.120 Can somebody tell me?
00:47:01.340 Two rhinos on it?
00:47:02.600 Yeah, okay.
00:47:06.260 Okay, well, I guess I don't know.
00:47:10.520 I guess I don't know what we'll see.
00:47:12.860 But I'll probably watch it.
00:47:14.720 Who's going to be watching it?
00:47:21.420 They can get away with it.
00:47:22.820 That is why they're doing it.
00:47:23.840 You know, I think the fact
00:47:25.860 that there are no real Republicans
00:47:30.540 on that committee,
00:47:32.920 that should tell the Democrats something.
00:47:37.560 Schiff is leading the show?
00:47:39.320 You're not serious, are you?
00:47:41.060 Is Adam Schiff in charge of that?
00:47:44.780 Seriously?
00:47:45.300 Now, how is it that Adam Schiff
00:47:52.600 is not hated by his own team?
00:47:55.600 Is it only because I don't like what he says
00:47:58.740 that makes me think he's the worst figurehead
00:48:04.620 for your cause?
00:48:06.580 I mean, he's like the Jeffrey Dahmer of politicians.
00:48:09.760 Like, I look at him,
00:48:12.380 and I have just such a visceral reaction.
00:48:15.000 And I can't tell if that's just because
00:48:18.440 I don't like what he says.
00:48:21.520 If I liked what he said,
00:48:23.720 would he come across to me
00:48:25.460 as like a reasonable patriot or something?
00:48:29.680 I don't know.
00:48:30.580 He's just got the look of something's wrong.
00:48:33.340 He and Swalwell have that same thing.
00:48:38.020 There's something about their look
00:48:40.240 that I can't get past.
00:48:45.820 Yeah.
00:48:47.100 Crazy eyes, maybe.
00:48:50.420 Reptilian.
00:48:57.640 All right.
00:48:59.840 So, have I hit all the big points for today?
00:49:03.340 Yes, I have.
00:49:07.300 And,
00:49:08.240 can we agree
00:49:10.760 that this is the best birthday livestream
00:49:14.540 of all time?
00:49:17.100 Yeah, I think so.
00:49:18.500 And would you join me
00:49:19.560 in a special birthday closing sip?
00:49:25.440 Some of you would.
00:49:26.940 Yes.
00:49:29.160 And here we go.
00:49:30.240 This one's to all of you,
00:49:35.000 my beloved audience.
00:49:38.040 Thank you for showing up every day.
00:49:41.260 I'm sure sometimes you have other things to do.
00:49:43.940 And thank you for supporting me
00:49:46.120 and all of your good wishes.
00:49:48.360 And I've got to say that
00:49:49.400 the response is the reason I do it.
00:49:54.180 I mean, I could be doing a lot of different things.
00:49:56.220 So, I appreciate you very much.
00:49:59.080 Cheers.
00:50:06.680 YouTube,
00:50:07.740 have a great day.