Episode 2146 Scott Adams： Hunter's Plea Deal, Missing Sub, CIS Insult, Economic Data Faked？ More
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
145.51393
Summary
Elon Musk thinks the economic data is fake, and we should all be on the lookout for evidence of a government conspiracy to make us think that the economy is not as good as we think it is. Plus, the dopamine hit of the day: The simultaneous sip.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization, the best
00:00:12.740
I don't think there's a better thing you could possibly be doing today.
00:00:17.760
But if you'd like to take it up to even a higher level, I know it's hard to imagine.
00:00:21.880
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind, except
00:00:31.320
So join me now for the dopamine hitter of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
00:00:37.060
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
00:00:50.420
Well, do you remember, have I said this directly or have I not?
00:01:01.900
Have I ever told you that there's something wrong with the economic reporting, that what
00:01:07.980
we observe doesn't seem to match what the economic reporting is saying?
00:01:12.160
And the pundits, what they predict doesn't seem to be happening.
00:01:15.280
There's some kind of weird disconnect between the reported numbers and some kind of reality.
00:01:21.960
Well, it turns out that I'm not the only one who thinks that.
00:01:26.420
So Elon Musk was agreeing with a tweet by Dr. Benjamin Braddock, who said on Twitter,
00:01:33.720
the gap between economic stats and the actual economy is wild.
00:01:37.640
I'm now fully convinced that the jobs numbers, GDP calculations, all of it, it's all completely
00:01:46.540
Now, that's a pretty big claim, that America's economic data is all faked.
00:01:52.540
Because we say that about China and Russia, right?
00:01:55.520
Don't we always say that about China and Russia?
00:02:16.020
Do you remember me saying I didn't understand why inflation was going down?
00:02:37.360
Now, unlike most of you, I don't have much of a problem with it.
00:02:47.380
But if there's one thing you're going to fake that I don't mind a little bit of faking, a
00:02:52.900
little bit, you could go too far, is, you know, as I often tell you, the economy is a psychology
00:03:00.620
People will invest because they think the economy is doing well.
00:03:04.020
Well, if they think it's not, they won't invest.
00:03:07.480
And if they stop investing, everything falls apart.
00:03:10.600
So should your government lie to you a little bit?
00:03:17.680
Should your government lie to you a little bit to tell you that things are going well?
00:03:22.400
Because that will actually make things go well.
00:03:25.060
If they told you the truth, maybe you wouldn't invest and then things wouldn't go well.
00:03:31.700
This one, if you're trying to sort out the moral, ethical dimension of this, not so obvious.
00:03:39.320
If you tell the truth, maybe a million people starve to death.
00:03:46.260
So if I told you that if the government told you the truth, let's say hypothetically, if
00:03:51.960
the government told us the truth, and it caused a million people to die, starving to death,
00:03:58.180
would you be in favor of the truth in that case?
00:04:01.320
Would you be in favor of the truth if you're pretty sure a million people would die because
00:04:13.620
LOL might be the only appropriate answer to that question.
00:04:17.500
So do you think that morality is objective or subjective?
00:04:26.380
This is sort of a clean case where I think good people could be on either side.
00:04:32.420
I think you could be a perfectly good citizen and patriot and be on either side of that.
00:04:41.840
Well, it's certainly a possibility that our economic need is faked.
00:04:45.660
This, again, is one of the big national benefits of having Elon Musk in the conversation.
00:04:54.360
Because he has an unusual weight, because he's Elon Musk, he owns Twitter.
00:05:01.640
But he also says things that other people don't say.
00:05:04.980
That's like his biggest thing, is he'll go into a topic that nobody important is really
00:05:10.260
putting any weight on, and he'll just put like a whole bunch of weight on it.
00:05:13.560
And usually there are things that you need to put weight on.
00:05:23.580
But I love the fact that he highlights issues that people weren't paying attention to.
00:05:33.840
Speaking of that, Elon Musk has now announced on Twitter that repeated targeted harassment
00:05:42.760
against any account will cause a harassing account to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.
00:05:48.280
Now, that part's not surprising, or even new, that if you're harassing people on Twitter,
00:05:54.140
But then he goes on, because the topic he was responding to had this topic.
00:06:00.320
The words cis or cisgender are considered slurs on this platform.
00:06:10.960
So it was in reply to a comment where somebody said that he was being attacked by the trans
00:06:17.860
community, and they were calling him CIS, cis, and cisgender.
00:06:24.420
And I guess there's an insult where you can call somebody a cissy, C-I-S-S-Y.
00:06:31.800
But apparently these are being used as insults for heterosexual people.
00:06:40.340
So now there's an insult for heterosexual people.
00:06:43.440
Now, apparently the medical community uses these terms, a doctor on Twitter says, that
00:06:50.520
these are actually medically approved terms, cis and cisgender, which I believe, probably
00:06:56.060
the updated literature has to have all these different divisions.
00:07:01.860
And so I was challenged on, can they be insults if they're just medically ordinary words?
00:07:11.260
The fact that they're accurate doesn't make them less insulting.
00:07:16.260
The N-word, I'm not even going to finish the sentence.
00:07:21.980
But there are a lot of insulting things that are not saying something that's a lie.
00:07:26.280
It's just using a word you don't like to refer to something we would all agree with, which
00:07:30.860
is, oh, this person's black, this person's white, this person's straight, this person's
00:07:43.000
Now, let me ask, I want to ask you this question, because I want to see if I'm the only one.
00:07:47.200
How long did you go seeing cis all over the place in social media, CIS, without finding
00:07:57.180
How long did you go seeing it commonly used and having no idea what it meant?
00:08:05.440
I think I went two years without knowing what that meant.
00:08:09.940
I knew it would be a 10-second Google thing, right?
00:08:20.220
And somehow I just couldn't make myself do it, because I knew that the people who were
00:08:28.020
I mean, I didn't even know what it referred to, but I knew why.
00:08:31.220
I knew it was some woke bullshit, and I just thought, well, I'm going to ignore this woke
00:08:42.000
So, I would agree with the ban on that, using it as a slur.
00:08:47.780
Speaking of bans, Texas is banning live sex shows for minors, because you had to pass a
00:08:59.700
Texas needs a law to stop doing sex shows to minors.
00:09:13.020
Now, obviously, this story turns completely on how you define a sex show, but what it's
00:09:19.460
talking about, of course, is the, you know, the trans entertainment that has a sexual undertone
00:09:31.160
So, but I think it's just hilarious that you have to pass a law to do this.
00:09:45.160
It was like, it was like, as a society, we couldn't figure out how to not give live sex
00:10:01.580
I just think it's hilarious that society is so lame, you've got to pass a law to stop
00:10:10.020
But, you know, I'm sure that the trans community would argue that they're not sex shows.
00:10:21.840
So I've been seeing that articles about cities dying because the remote workers are not coming
00:10:29.540
Does that feel like, I want to just test this on you.
00:10:33.520
First of all, how many of you are remote workers?
00:10:44.440
I just want to see if we've got a bunch here because I'm going to ask you remote workers
00:10:53.240
The reason given for big buildings and cities going bankrupt is that there's not enough
00:11:11.200
The commute is unpleasant and you, you know, you can do stuff at home.
00:11:17.320
For those of you who are doing remote work, are any of you influenced by crime?
00:11:23.400
Is crime any part of your decision for remote work?
00:11:36.000
We're seeing some yeses, but maybe mostly no's, which I would expect.
00:11:44.760
I doubt it's the biggest variable for anybody, but I just wonder if it's in there.
00:11:49.340
So, in my opinion, cities are dead, but not because of remote work.
00:11:57.280
Because I think you could probably find a way to, you know, find some of the use for the
00:12:02.580
real estate or turn them into residential or something.
00:12:05.660
But you can't do anything if the cities are dangerous.
00:12:10.460
If people simply don't want to be in the city, it doesn't matter what you do with your building.
00:12:14.020
So, and since I don't see any hope that there doesn't seem to be any movement toward fixing
00:12:22.840
the cities, I think you should just get away from any density.
00:12:31.520
You know, I, uh, I don't know if anybody's, uh, ever done any research on this or if I'm
00:12:44.560
But it seems to me that the, you know, the, the crime and the bad stuff happens when you
00:12:52.940
Because you just don't see the same crime when people are spread out.
00:12:58.420
So, you know, I wonder how much of that is, is the issue.
00:13:05.600
Um, President Trump had a, uh, let's say, uh, an awkward exchange with Brett Baier, uh, in
00:13:17.820
which Trump had said he'd like to see a death penalty for drug dealers.
00:13:25.000
Then Brett Baier pointed out that, uh, that would require executing, uh, Alice Johnson,
00:13:31.020
the woman that Trump famously got out of prison, you know, early, uh, because she had a low
00:13:43.080
And, uh, and Baier said, but she'd be killed under your plan.
00:13:50.960
Uh, and then Baier said, as a drug dealer, Baier replied.
00:13:55.520
And then Trump said, no, no, no, uh, oh, under that, uh, it would depend on the severity.
00:14:02.160
Now, this is being, uh, it's being reported as an embarrassment for Trump.
00:14:14.540
He just said, if they're big drug dealers, kill them.
00:14:18.020
If they're small drug dealers, probably the Alice Jones types, that doesn't apply.
00:14:25.000
Now, you might, you might think that nobody should be executed.
00:14:32.740
I would actually do summary executions of the big fentanyl dealers.
00:14:37.080
I think they should be killed at the border at the time that the discovery is made.
00:14:42.060
Like, if you, if somebody's driving across the border and the panels of their cars are filled with fentanyl,
00:14:49.440
you should be able to put a bullet in their head right by the side of the road.
00:15:11.440
Now, I'm not talking about executing somebody you think might have done something.
00:15:15.220
I'm talking about somebody who's driving across the border and the panels are full of fentanyl.
00:15:19.980
You should drag them into the bushes and put a bullet in their head.
00:15:24.020
Or do it in front of other people so that it may, you know, make it a public execution.
00:15:30.900
I saw that the, uh, I saw a story that, uh, was it the Taliban did their second public execution since they took over.
00:15:41.100
And I thought to myself, oh my God, this is going to be so barbaric.
00:15:45.440
And I thought, I have to read about this just to find out what terrible world we live in.
00:15:52.460
So I thought, I usually don't like to look at, you know, the details of horrible stories.
00:15:57.080
But I thought this one, I don't know, I'm going to look at the details.
00:16:00.100
And here's the detail of the horrible story of the Taliban doing a public execution.
00:16:13.020
Secondly, uh, it was done to somebody who was convicted of killing five people.
00:16:23.740
And then the execution was performed by one of the, the, uh, the children of one of the deceased.
00:16:30.900
So the child of one of the deceased got to put this guy on his knees and put a bullet through his head.
00:16:39.420
And I said to myself, that is so, that is so, all right, I'm going to give you a pass on that one, Taliban.
00:16:57.940
Honestly, if somebody wiped out my family, I would like that option.
00:17:03.520
I mean, I may, I might say no, but would I like that option if somebody had actually been convicted in court of law, there's no doubt about who did it, and they killed your family?
00:17:14.980
I would like the option of personally putting the bullet in their head.
00:17:27.240
So that, that story had like a little twist to it that I wasn't expecting.
00:17:31.120
I wasn't expecting to go full pro-Taliban today.
00:17:34.860
But we'll just, you know, limit it to that one area.
00:17:46.720
The courts have ruled that Joe Biden can't be a giant racist.
00:17:54.920
Because the, the, there was a proposed motion from the government just to be a huge racist.
00:18:04.080
And then the federal judge said, you can't be a huge racist.
00:18:11.700
The Biden administration wanted to do something hugely racist that nobody would, nobody would disagree, by the way.
00:18:18.860
There's nobody who would look at it and say it wasn't racist.
00:18:21.360
Because they literally had developed a department to prevent white people from getting stuff.
00:18:28.180
It was called the Minority Business Development Agency.
00:18:31.440
And it was going to be a new federal agency dedicated to helping only certain groups.
00:18:36.820
Meaning not white people and white males in particular.
00:18:41.120
So he actually, he actually tried to develop a department within the government for the purpose of discriminating against one specific group.
00:18:54.700
Now, it seems like a small story that, you know, the court ruled on something, blah, blah, blah, because they always rule on something.
00:19:03.600
But it was only the court that allowed, that stopped the Biden administration from racial discrimination without any, I mean, just right in your face.
00:19:20.380
Yeah, if you're white, you can't have this stuff.
00:19:26.460
It's like amazing that that was ever a question.
00:19:33.880
So China's mad because Biden in a fundraiser referred to President Xi as a dictator.
00:19:45.220
He's literally, isn't he like a president for life or something?
00:19:57.260
And then Biden is claiming that President Xi did not know that they'd sent a spy balloon over America.
00:20:02.780
How in the world, how in the world would Biden know what President Xi knows?
00:20:13.520
That's the most ridiculous thing to say in public.
00:20:16.300
You can't possibly know what he knows using your mind-reading technology.
00:20:24.660
Of course, we have to talk about Hunter's plea deal.
00:20:27.140
Well, let's see how much of this is totally surprising and unpredictable.
00:20:33.400
So he does this plea deal that would keep him out of jail by pleading to lesser charges, etc.
00:20:41.480
And what did the people on the left say about the deal?
00:20:46.100
Do you think that the news on the left said it's not necessarily a sweetheart deal?
00:21:01.380
The people on the left thought that was reasonable.
00:21:04.000
Now, let's see if you can get the next one right.
00:21:06.720
Did the people who are politically right, did they say it was a sweetheart deal?
00:21:20.900
Well, and do you think that anybody tried to turn it racial?
00:21:37.900
So not only can this story be used to promote whatever favorite thing you want to promote,
00:21:55.460
I think I'd like to talk about the unfair Department of Justice.
00:22:05.680
So it's the story that's sort of like the Rorschach story.
00:22:11.900
The Hunter Biden story has no meaning to any of us.
00:22:15.460
I mean, certainly, if he really took $5 million bribes, that's a different thing, but that's not confirmed yet.
00:22:22.960
So, but his small little crimes that had no victims have no importance to us, no importance whatsoever.
00:22:32.560
But they become vehicles to carry your own little political message.
00:22:38.500
Now, I've told you before that the stories about public figures, they're never true.
00:22:46.740
Do you think that you know enough about that Hunter story?
00:22:50.420
Do you think you know enough about the Hunter story?
00:22:55.980
You don't know if the plea deal included not being charged for the bribery stuff.
00:23:06.320
What if the plea deal said we also won't look into any other crimes?
00:23:15.160
Now, if you don't know that, do you know anything about this story?
00:23:19.340
Do you feel that you can have an opinion on that without knowing if this covered all future crimes or was limited to these ones that have been in the news?
00:23:30.460
I would say there are probably at least five critical facts about this story that you'll never know that are deeply important to understanding what happened.
00:23:53.140
It's probably about personalities and who did what and who's related to whom and who bribed whom and who wants a job.
00:24:01.960
You have no idea what happened in this story, except the very narrow legal charges part.
00:24:11.580
But in terms of what Hunter actually did, probably we don't know.
00:24:22.220
But given that Hunter could have been pardoned by his father, what difference does it make?
00:24:27.940
I mean, Hunter could have just been pardoned for the federal charges.
00:24:34.780
Do you think there was any chance whatsoever that Father Biden would not have pardoned Hunter?
00:24:45.260
There was no chance whatsoever it wouldn't have happened.
00:24:47.960
Is there any father who wouldn't pardon their son for a victimless crime?
00:24:56.320
But, yeah, so Hunter never had any risk of going to jail as long as Dad was in charge.
00:25:05.700
Now, let me throw speculation into the mix that I have not seen anybody do yet.
00:25:19.700
Well, Biden was only running for re-election to stay in an office long enough to pardon Hunter.
00:25:27.200
Now, though, Hunter, maybe, if Hunter is actually free of all the charges, and that would include the dad,
00:25:35.680
so Joe Biden would have to feel he's also free of all charges, that might be the key for him to drop out of the election.
00:25:44.360
My speculation is the only reason Joe Biden was running was to protect his family.
00:25:56.160
That for Joe, it was just protecting his family.
00:26:01.880
I don't know that they're out of the woods, because they still have the bribery allegations from Ukraine.
00:26:07.500
But if that got handled by this, that's a really big if, I think he's going to drop out.
00:26:17.780
Now, he'll probably make an excuse like, you know, health.
00:26:25.920
I think that's the reason that Biden needs to stay in office.
00:26:32.620
So Newsom could also be part of the larger plot to not primary Biden, but to just be the one waiting when the, you know, when the convention happens.
00:26:45.720
I could easily see that the convention is what installs Newsom.
00:27:05.620
Because probably you only need a few weeks to do the paperwork, and you could do it any time before the election.
00:27:21.640
Dana Perino said that getting Hunter's problems out of the way might be the beginning of the Biden campaign.
00:27:28.380
Well, it is if Biden is still in trouble with other legal risks.
00:27:35.000
So he's going to definitely stay in office long enough to pardon himself.
00:27:42.940
Are you aware that there's a thing called the Marco Polo Report?
00:27:48.080
But it documents, mostly from the laptop, I think, 459 crimes committed by the Biden family and their business associates.
00:28:02.420
The people were saying that this is a racial Hunter's sweetheart deal, some say.
00:28:10.420
So I heard, I went to CNN to get the other side of this, because, you know, everybody in the right is just saying, sweet heart deal, but who knows?
00:28:31.300
And I have to say that he's, I find him unusually objective for CNN.
00:28:41.400
So I was really interested in what he had to say, because if he said, this looks like a sweetheart deal, I would have believed him, because I would be going against, you know, the narrative there.
00:28:51.020
So, but his explanation was that it's very rare to have this kind of, you know, gun crime, and I guess it was lying on an application.
00:29:03.740
But the people who have been convicted usually had something else going on.
00:29:08.380
For example, other people who were convicted for this same kind of gun crime might have already been felons.
00:29:14.940
So if you're a felon trying to get a gun, or if you got a gun and committed a crime, well, those are much higher levels of offense than just lying on some paperwork.
00:29:36.300
Because of his other sweetheart deals, the only reason he's not a felon is because he hasn't been charged.
00:29:44.940
So there's some poor black rapper in jail, Kodak Black, I think is his name.
00:29:51.320
And I don't know, so he got convicted on a gun charge, got three years.
00:30:00.800
But part of the reason that Biden, Hunter Biden, is not being treated more harshly, is that he wasn't already a felon.
00:30:10.380
But the only reason he's not already a felon is because he's probably been treated, you know, differently.
00:30:23.440
You know, so we've got the case of Wesley Snipes going to jail for not paying his taxes, but Hunter did not.
00:30:31.440
We've got Kodak Black going to jail for some gun charge, and Hunter did not.
00:30:38.420
However, I would caution you that those cases are probably not the same, and that there probably is a matter of degree, and it probably matters.
00:30:53.880
But I do think this is more of a class and power situation than a racial thing.
00:31:00.400
I say it's class and power, and not even Democrat thing, really.
00:31:06.660
I think anybody with enough power would get the same treatment.
00:31:13.120
You know, Republican, white, black, just the same power.
00:31:24.960
So we actually have a situation where Trump might go to jail for not promptly sorting through his boxes.
00:31:33.440
And Hunter Biden may be part of a criminal syndicate that did 459 crimes, maybe, allegedly, and no problem.
00:31:53.400
The sweetheart treatment of Hunter Biden guarantees that Trump will not go to jail.
00:32:02.660
The sweetheart deal for Hunter Biden guarantees that Trump won't go to jail, because the right would flip out.
00:32:15.780
Putting Trump in jail just, you know, on its own would be too far.
00:32:20.520
But if it's done in the context of Hunter getting a sweetheart deal and Trump not, that's not going to fly.
00:32:29.260
This country doesn't go on business as usual if you put Trump in jail.
00:32:37.580
If you put Trump in jail, the wheels are coming off.
00:32:41.240
I don't know what happens, but the wheels are off.
00:32:44.880
So don't fucking say you didn't see it coming, right?
00:32:49.140
If there's somebody trying to jail him for this bullshit.
00:32:53.340
And again, I'm not saying that he didn't break any laws or rules or anything like that.
00:33:01.020
Now, if it turns out we found out something new about his documents, that there were battle plans and he sold them to Iran or some crazy thing, then, of course, I'll change my mind.
00:33:19.080
So if you go to jail for that, the wheels are coming off.
00:33:32.780
You all know the submarine with the tourists who were going to go look at the Titanic and now the sub is missing.
00:33:39.040
I think it's still missing unless they found it in the last 10 minutes.
00:33:43.800
I was having trouble talking about this story, and so I was going to ignore it.
00:33:47.980
And the trouble is that I have too much of a tendency to make jokes about stuff.
00:33:56.440
And these are people who might actually still be alive, might be in the worst possible situation you could possibly be in, or might actually be, you know, may have already passed.
00:34:08.400
And just because there's a billionaire on there and there's a funny story about the diversity hires and stuff, it's hard for me to talk about this one because it's just too sad.
00:34:28.760
Like, I can't, I can't ignore the fact that there's a funny part of this, but I don't feel comfortable making those jokes, at least in public, privately, maybe.
00:34:42.180
But publicly, I don't know, it just feels a little, a little extra for me.
00:34:47.320
But I will tell you what people are talking about.
00:34:49.320
They're talking about how, and this is unfortunate, the CEO of this venture, who owns and operates the submarine,
00:34:58.760
had said on video, and of course it's going around today, that he was very proud of the fact that they weren't going to hire a bunch of 50-year-old old white guys with experience
00:35:08.600
because they weren't really inspirational to people watching.
00:35:12.540
So he wanted to give some young people who didn't have qualifications and then train them to be the operators.
00:35:19.540
And specifically, they would be operating a little game controller, like a little Logitech game controller.
00:35:25.780
Exactly, actually, literally the same ones they would use for a video game.
00:35:30.860
And I saw a critic talking about that and saying, seriously?
00:35:41.680
Do they lose the sub if the game controller battery goes out?
00:35:45.740
Like, who would use a wireless controller for something as critical as a submarine?
00:35:50.780
Now, I don't even know if that's true, but I did see pictures of them using something that looks like a game controller,
00:35:59.540
Now, there is no indication whatsoever that these young people who are hired with less experience
00:36:07.280
had anything to do with anything that went wrong.
00:36:14.140
If you don't know what went wrong, it's kind of a stretch to say it's the diversity hires.
00:36:22.760
It's more like you just wanted some young people because he was an old, horny guy.
00:36:32.420
Maybe it was just a guy who thought his company would be more fun if it wasn't filled with people like him.
00:36:37.240
He was like, I think I'd like to run my company in a way that I have some bullshit excuse to hire 25-year-old women.
00:36:47.600
Facebook is launching a competitor to Twitter called, allegedly will be called Threads.
00:36:55.660
And at first I thought to myself, well, that's not going to be competitive with Twitter.
00:37:00.620
Because the whole thing with Twitter is that, you know, it's had a bunch of upstarts trying to compete for, what is there, Parler and Gitter and Truth, and I think there were some more.
00:37:13.660
And none of them worked because the problem is that Twitter is just too much of a network effect.
00:37:21.900
If all of your friends and enemies are on Twitter, you gab, it's hard to leave Twitter.
00:37:27.900
You might also use the other ones for something, but it's just hard to leave Twitter.
00:37:34.240
However, Facebook has a plan that's made me immediately go, oh, they might actually pull this off.
00:37:46.260
You can move your entire Instagram followers over to the new platform with a click.
00:37:50.860
So you could come onto the platform with 4 million followers.
00:37:56.560
If that's what you had on Instagram, you just bring it over.
00:38:00.160
Now, if the top influencers come over with their 4 million followers, that's a pretty good service right under the chute.
00:38:09.120
But the question I ask is, how many Facebook products are you going to use?
00:38:14.140
Are you going to use the Facebook and the Instagram and the Threads?
00:38:17.340
Now, of course, Elon Musk points out that that would be a disservice to free speech
00:38:23.720
if you let Zuckerberg have too much control of too much social media.
00:38:28.880
It would be a tragedy for Twitter to be destroyed by Facebook
00:38:33.460
because then Zuckerberg owns the world because he would own all communication at that point.
00:38:38.300
All the useful communication, which is social media.
00:38:50.580
My gut feeling is I have, personally, zero interest in that platform before it is even launched.
00:39:03.480
Is there anybody here who says, ooh, you know, that's kind of interesting.
00:39:20.980
So here's the main thing that you need to know about predicting products.
00:39:27.820
You can usually predict products based on how people feel.
00:39:33.340
I've got an amp that I bought for my electric guitar.
00:39:42.160
One of them does a really good job and makes a good sound.
00:39:45.920
But it looks like something your grandma built.
00:39:49.660
It's like your grandmother designed it or something.
00:39:54.480
And the other one is this little sleek design that actually excites me physically every time I see it.
00:40:08.600
It is just a little, you know, rectangular box with knobs on it and stuff.
00:40:13.320
But whoever designed this little rectangular box with the knobs did something that I keep looking at to try to understand.
00:40:21.780
It almost gives me goosebumps when I look at it.
00:40:25.840
It's design that's, you know, achieved an artistic level because you can feel the design.
00:40:35.660
I was looking at a new Porsche the other day go by me on the road.
00:40:45.120
And I thought to myself, why is that Porsche, that shape, immediately exciting?
00:40:53.160
Now, some of you maybe have different response.
00:40:56.800
But I can't look at a Porsche without, I feel it.
00:41:08.980
So Ford has a new version of the old vehicle that was the Bronco.
00:41:16.680
Boy, I was thinking of buying some Ford stock today because I just keep seeing Broncos all over the fucking place.
00:41:24.580
And when I see one, every time, I have a feeling when it's driving by me, when I see the front.
00:41:40.400
So if you go with what your gut feels when you're exposed to a new product, that's usually a pretty good indicator.
00:41:50.960
Because the first day that the Bronco was advertised, I actually tweeted that it was exciting.
00:42:07.580
However, what I hear about Facebook is going to launch something called Threads that will allow short messages.
00:42:29.200
But like I say, the fact that they can move, you know, 4 million users over, or whatever, from Instagram is pretty impressive.
00:42:49.200
Because I wouldn't want Facebook to put Twitter out of business.
00:43:40.720
I don't think we're used to a country like China.
00:43:47.360
Because if you're American, you've grown up in a war, a warrior culture.
00:44:01.860
We find reasons to leave our borders and kill people.
00:44:04.940
We just can't stop leaving our borders to kill people.
00:44:08.600
Like, that's, unfortunately, that's who America is.
00:44:19.760
Now, China is super tough and, of course, looking out for their own good.
00:44:25.200
And, you know, we talk about the total war concept, that they're trying to hurt their adversaries in any way they can, etc.
00:44:32.960
But you don't see China starting physical wars.
00:44:41.700
And the reason, do you know why China doesn't start physical wars?
00:44:56.980
Because they're a nation run by people who have good judgment.
00:45:05.460
It's a nation run by people with good judgment.
00:45:10.120
They have pretty good judgments, you know, for what they're trying to do for their own good, etc.
00:45:20.780
The, you know, the communist upper level people.
00:45:24.160
They tend to be trained engineers, you know, STEM-type people.
00:45:31.660
The other thing that, one of the reasons I think that Chairman Xi and China, they're all mad that Biden called them a dictator,
00:45:40.440
is that I would also call them a dictatorship, but they're a modified dictatorship.
00:45:46.860
And what I mean is, I believe that the ruling, you know, the ruling party could remove Xi if they wanted to.
00:46:07.520
So at the moment, they probably all get, you know, tremendous benefits from supporting him.
00:46:12.900
So they probably get lots of financial and, you know, reputational benefits.
00:46:19.540
But if he decided to start a war, I think that would go away right away.
00:46:26.760
And I think that the Chinese ruling party, being reasonable engineering-type people, would say,
00:46:32.480
okay, explain how that's ever going to work out well.
00:46:46.680
Give me an example where it's ever fucking worked.
00:46:50.460
So that's, I think that's the kind of attitude you'd get in on China.
00:46:54.280
Is if you can't tell me one case that this ever, ever worked, don't do it.
00:46:59.700
But in the United States, we don't even look at it that way.
00:47:05.360
We just think we can win every war and, oh, our military is awesome and we better stop that.
00:47:10.880
We better fight them there before they get over here and their dominoes are going to fall.
00:47:15.720
We've always got some fucking reason that we have to go kill people in other countries.
00:47:27.340
So I do think that China would move on Taiwan if they felt they could do it without starting a larger war.
00:47:38.100
And I think that ultimately, I hate to say it in public, but nobody listens to me anyway, so it's okay.
00:47:48.200
If the alternative was war, I think we'd let it go.
00:47:52.060
Now, of course, you know, if I were a larger platform, you know, if I were ABC News or CNN, I wouldn't say that.
00:48:00.900
Like, I wouldn't say that out loud on a larger platform.
00:48:04.000
But, you know, among my limited audience here, I think we're talking among friends.
00:48:11.920
Now, I don't, I mean, it would be a gigantic fight within the United States because lots of people would, you know, really disagree with that.
00:48:29.000
But if it came to a war, do you know what we'd do?
00:48:36.020
In order for us to stand down, we'd probably have to say, look, you're going to have to transfer a bunch of this technology to us.
00:48:42.840
You know, let Taiwan build some facilities here in addition to the ones they have so we don't run out of chips that maybe we won't start a war and you can have Taiwan.
00:48:54.900
You know, I think if it actually came to serious war, we would just negotiate it away, unfortunately.
00:49:02.740
Very bad for Taiwan, but it's also China's problem.
00:49:10.260
And I have to admit, I don't hate the fact, well, let me say it a different way.
00:49:17.480
China is smart to be pressuring the United States and Cuba.
00:49:25.500
So China is creating something to trade for Taiwan.
00:49:29.540
So they're trying to build, you know, trading bases and listening bases in Cuba.
00:49:34.540
And I think that's all just to fuck with us over Taiwan.
00:49:37.700
I don't know that they really need those listening stations, do they?
00:49:40.980
I mean, they could put it, they could just put a ship 12 miles off the coast and probably get everything they want.
00:49:46.540
I don't think they need the Cuban missile, you know, listening stations necessarily.
00:49:53.360
So it feels to me like China is doing a, you know, every button you can push to increase the odds that they will someday control Taiwan short of war.
00:50:07.860
And I don't think there's anything that can be gained in the United States by having a war if we can get chips.
00:50:12.460
So basically China is going to, all they have to do is figure out a way for the U.S. and other, you know, say European countries not to be denied chips.
00:50:29.420
I think the Chinese investments in Africa are going to turn out not to be the best idea.
00:50:33.880
You know, I've read some articles that that money seems to be wasted, you know, because they're not getting enough back.
00:50:42.680
They have access to natural resources, which is good, but beyond that, it's probably not a benefit.
00:50:56.300
Yes, so yeah, the Taiwan Semiconductor is building a facility in Arizona.
00:51:00.660
But I think in terms of capacity, there would be, we'd have to build a lot more facilities.
00:51:09.120
We, yeah, I'm seeing the suggestion here that we should already be duplicating every chip plant that's in Taiwan.
00:51:17.760
Not as easy as it looks, because I'm not sure we have the expertise in this country.
00:51:22.260
You'd have to have the Taiwanese come over and show us how to do it, I think, which is sad.
00:51:31.300
I mean, if they're willing to do it, we should absolutely do it.
00:51:36.140
Yeah, I think it's already happening, but I don't know if it's happening at a scale yet.
00:51:57.580
Would you agree with the statement that the so-called internet dads, their power is rising?
00:52:11.660
You know, specifically, I'm looking at the Bill Ackman, David Sachs, Elon Musk, the Mike Sertoviches, sometimes me.
00:52:28.180
I mean, they're mostly, people are identifying with the right, but I don't think that's exactly what's going on.
00:53:08.640
Because my entire business model, if you can call it that, depends on credibility.
00:53:14.940
So if I get one wrong, that's bad for me, bad for you, bad for everybody.
00:53:19.640
So I'm certainly not trying to get anything wrong.
00:53:22.140
I'm certainly not trying to lie to you, because I don't have a reason to.
00:53:26.080
And that would be the same with, you know, the rest of the internet dads.
00:53:29.500
They're basically the people who don't have a reason to lie to you.
00:53:37.140
Social media is full of liars and trolls and bad characters.
00:53:41.440
So if you can't depend on the news, because they're incentivized to lie.
00:53:45.720
You can't believe in government, because they're incentivized to lie for their team.
00:53:50.780
But the only people who are not incentivized to lie, and also are paying attention to things,
00:53:57.500
It's the only group that's both independent and paying attention,
00:54:00.780
and cares that your kids do well, actually care about your kids.
00:54:05.760
I got some pushback from somebody about my toughness over fentanyl and wanting the death penalty on that.
00:54:17.580
And somebody on Twitter said that my opinion is distorted because I lost my stepson to fentanyl.
00:54:27.860
So therefore, I could kind of be discounted because I'm just dealing with my own tragedy.
00:54:33.220
To which I responded, I'm trying to save your kid.
00:55:01.220
I'm not working through my trauma trying to save your son.
00:55:07.860
Oh, actually, I guess I am working through my trauma in a sense.
00:55:10.700
That if I could save your son, that would have great meaning to me.
00:55:15.040
And it would give some meaning to, you know, my stepson's life.
00:55:21.940
It just makes me want to work harder to save your son or your daughter.
00:55:56.020
I mean, I just want to see bodies in the street at this point.
00:55:59.560
I honestly just want to see the Border Patrol just put bullets in the head
00:56:03.180
of anybody who has a bag of fentanyl coming across the border.
00:56:21.940
Do you wish I'd used high-density instead of cities?
00:56:43.560
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all for today.