Episode 2045 Scott Adams: Silicon Valley Bank Prediction, Trump Dominance, & Race Relations Reframed

Do, do, do. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to not only the highlight of civilization, but today a turning point in civilization. Toward the end. I'm going to do a little presentation which reframes our conversation about race to a high ground that is so obvious you're going to wonder why nobody did this before. You will actually be wowed. And I'm not kidding, if you wait for the end and I'll actually clip this off and make it a separate clip at some point. But if you wait for the end, I will blow your mind and it will make a difference and it will help you stay tuned for that. But we'll do the regular news first, but before that, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank of chalices. Dine. A canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens. Now go. Ah, well, if you didn't know it, this is the last day that Dilbert will be available to the public. Now, the comic continues, so there'll be no break in the production of the comic, but it will transform as of tomorrow, Monday into Dilbert reborn. Spicier version. Now, I'm not going to go crazy, right? It's, it's not going to be X rated Dilber or anything like that, but I won't have any constraints and already I'm loving writing without constraints. It's going to be fun. So if you want to see all the things that I wanted to do in newspapers, not be, not just because they're provocative, but because it's the stuff we're talking about. It's real stuff in the real world. I can finally talk about real stuff in the real world at work for the first time. I'm not going to be a dick about it. I'm just going to be able to talk about it. And I got more free speech than anybody. Anyway, you would need a subscription to see that stuff. And lots, lots more on the Locals platform. Scottadams.locals.com if you're interested in that. Did anybody watch Bill Maher on Friday talking about Trump's political skills? I thought I was dreaming. Oh my God. Trump, Bill Maher. And I want to, I want to characterize his opinion as carefully as possible. He is not a Trump supporter. Just, just to be clear, you know, he did not suddenly become a Trump supporter, but his understanding of Trump's voters and how they see him is now right on point. He described it in words that were unusual to hear coming out of anybody's mouth, that he completely understood what the middle America was feeling and how he's offering a solution to be their warrior, and they get it. Now listen to this reframe that Bill Maher did. That ended the. The presidential hopes of Ron DeSantis. That happened. Bill Maher reframed Desantis out of the race. You want to hear it? Okay. It's so good. I'm going to make you wait for it, because it is the end of Desantis. I don't think he can win after this. Bill Maher says after looking at a poll, there was overwhelming support for Trump in some poll he was looking at, and he said, here's the reframe. Nobody wants the tribute band. It's over. If you have a choice of the real band or the tribute band. DeSantis is the version of Trump without the edge. You know, he's the safe Trump. If you're thinking of him as a safe version of Trump, you're thinking, that makes sense. I like a lot of the Trump stuff, but he does cause some trouble. Yeah, he causes some trouble. So if I could get all the good stuff without the bad stuff, and. Whoa, wow. I just realized that Desantis is exactly that. He's all of the good stuff, and he really is. He is all the good stuff, but without all the baggage. Yeah, yeah, I could go for that. And then the moment you hear he's the tribute band, it's over. That's as good as low energy. Jeb, I can confidently predict that Desantis will not be your next president. You can't hear that. You just can't hear that and not be changed by it. It's an instant refrain. It's one of the best I've ever seen. And that came from Bill Maher. So I think Bill Maher just got Trump elected. Like, actually literally now. He was a little bit surprised. It sounded that Trump's ratings were so high. Why do you think Trump's rating is so high at the moment? Can you think of anything that would be happening in the news that would make Trump look better and better every day? Yeah, he's been completely cleared of the January 6th stuff. He's completely exonerated. It was the one thing that even I was unwilling to support him for, not because of what he did, but because everybody thought he did it, which just made him sort of toxic. Right. But now the January 6th thing has. So now, of course, the left will believe whatever they're told. But the base just listened to Tucker Carlson, just watched the new video and said, oh, no. Oh no, you're not doing that to us again. You are not going to create another fake narrative now that we've seen the video in which we do the thing that it was violent because some people were violent. I get it. And too many. Too many people. But if you're not talking about what percentage. If you're not talking about the percentage, you're not talking about anything, right? Yeah. Was it 1% were violent. Why can't we say that? Why can't we say, you know, 1% were violent. The rest were there for largely a different reason, to protest. And then we saw that. I'm looking at the NPCs going nuts now. The, the NPCs have been activated. So you get the stuff like, wrong, Scott, just wrong. All right? T. Justice can only say the things that the 4chan people put in his head. Poor guy. I feel sorry for you, T. Justice, but you're going to disappear. You're gone. All right? Now, relative to this story, did you hear that writer Naomi Wolf wrote what she calls a full throated apology to conservatives. She actually said, I am totally sorry. I mean, when you talk about a full throated apology, you don't get one this good, right? If you want to know what a real apology looks like, read Naomi Wolf's I tweeted it. You can find it in my, my Twitter feed. That's what a full throated apology looks like. A complete explanation of what she got wrong. A complete, unambiguous apology with details. Damn. Damn. That's how to be a citizen. That's how to be a citizen. I've told you before that I don't judge people by mistakes. Right? I don't. I mean, I try not to. I mean, it's, it's hard, but that's my philosophy. Don't judge people by mistakes. And the reason is that you'd hate everybody, including yourself. Give yourself a break, you know, at least give yourself a break, you know, don't judge yourself by your mistake either. Judge yourself by what you do about it. What do you do about it? Once you've, once, you know, you did it, what'd you do about it? So, Naomi Wolf, no matter what else you want to disagree with or other opinions, blah, blah, I don't know. I don't know if I agree or disagree, but on this point, a plus, that's good. Citizenship, Right. Say what you did wrong, put it out there, move on with our respect. And what she said was that she fell for a whole bunch of hoaxes and she listed them and it was the damnedest thing. Let's see, what did she list? She believed Russia collusion for a while, found out that was fake. She believed that Hunter's laptop was Russia disinformation, found out that was untrue. She believed the Steele dossier, now she knows that was fake. And she believed the J6 insurrection narrative, that Trump instigated it. And now she said after seeing the video, yep, Trump did not instigate that, that that was a fake narrative. And, and here, here's the first thing I thought. Has anybody showed her the hoax list, the one I create that shows, I don't know, 21 hoaxes that, that Democrats have played on the public? 21 of them. She found one, two, three, four. She found four of them. Wait till she finds out there are over 20 of them. And people say, I'm under counting because they count some things that I don't count. Now the reason I limit mine to 21 is that it's 21 things that are unambiguous. Like there's no doubt that that was a lie perpetrated on the public. But there are others that are probably lies, but I don't know for sure, so I don't include them. But it's nothing but hoaxes. The news is nothing but hoaxes. When it comes to the political stuff, the other stuff is probably reasonably accurate. You know, if there's an earthquake, they probably get the right country and the right severity right, eventually. But when it's political, it's just, just crazy town all the way. So here's the context. Even Naomi Wolf is saying, wait a minute, this whole Trump era appears to be nothing but hoaxes. To take a man out who was very popular with his base was representing their press preferences quite well, in my opinion. You know, you don't have to agree with them, but I think Trump was accurately representing the, the will of the people he voted for him. And, and Bill Maher is saying in a full throated way that Trump is a political genius. I think what he said was that Trump is, I forget which word he used, like very good or excellent or great at politics. And he doesn't say, you know, he's unusually weaselly. You have to hear the language. The language is what really, really got my attention. Because you know how people talk about Trump. Usually it goes like this. Well, we all know Trump is a piece of racist trash. But he did this one thing slightly good, and I guess I have to mention it. But remember, mostly we hate him and he's trash, Right? That's the normal way a Trump anti Trumper would talk. But watching Bill Maher talk about him with nothing but compliments, and the compliment was middle America wants a set of things and he's the only one who's strong enough and clear enough to actually offer them a solution and then explain it in a way that people are convinced. And it appeared to me that he has developed a genuine respect. I mean, I'm reading minds, so be careful, you know, if I do that. So, because I'm reading myself into the story here, this is not his opinion, but what it looks like is that he's developed a genuine respect for Trump's skills and a genuine respect for the fact that those skills are directed in a productive way toward a big part of the country that wants to see its, its priorities taken care of. So that is amazing. That's amazing because it reminded me when, when I was on Bill Maher's show, the one time I was, it was when Trump was running the first time. And if you remember, I was sort of the poor man's Ann Coulter, you know, remember, Ann Coulter, I think, was one of the first to say it publicly that Trump would win. But I went on there and said why he would win. I gave a reason. I said, he has this set of persuasive skills that are unparalleled. And do you remember? Well, they didn't laugh when I said it, they laughed when Ann Coulter said it. But I was giving actual reasons. I think when she said it, it sounded unmoored for many reasons. She wasn't unmoored for reasons, but she didn't give her reason right away. So that made that look a little like out of, out of the box. But when I did it, I gave my reasons. I said, he has the following techniques. They match the best practices of persuasion. And he's going to surprise everybody because if you bring that tool, if you bring that toolbox to the, to the project, you can do more than the people with fewer tools. It was just that simple. He just has more tools. And I, I remember Bill Maher just sort of looking at me. If you remember that, I don't remember if he had a counter or an agreement. I feel like it just, he just absorbed it and then we moved on. Five or six years later, the stuff coming out of Bill Maher's mouth is what came out of my mouth when I talked to him, that it's skill. It's skill. But on top of that, he's also given him the respect that. That he does, in fact, represent a substantial part of the country and a substantial part of the country that doesn't seem to be as batshit crazy as some other part of the country, you know, with the wokeness that he's not terribly on board with. So I feel like Trump is very close to completely redeemed, because you look at the Ukraine war and people. Right. Whether you love or hate Trump, people say he didn't get us into a war. That's just a fact that you can't deny the fact he was the least warlike president. No, but nobody can deny that fact. That's just in evidence. So if you look at the backdrop, we've got this war. That's our big problem, that people don't trust the Democrats, but they probably would have trusted Trump a little bit more based on his track record. Right. You don't have to guess anymore what Trump would do in international relations. He does the same thing every time. He uses the full weight and force of the United States to negotiate effectively. That's what he does. No matter what else you don't like about him, he does do that, which is pretty important. You also look at energy. Is there anybody who thinks that Trump's energy policy was wrong, given that he was smart enough to connect energy to homeland defense? He did it. When he talked about Europe, he said, energy is your safety, basically. And now you're giving away your safety with his pipeline to Russia. Totally right about that. So the biggest issues we have are economics. People like Republicans better. Right. The war. Trump looks good in that. And then all of Trump's scandals, at least the biggest one that you remember, January 6th was fake. And now we have even Naomi Wolf noticing. Wait a minute. This can't be a coincidence that there are so many times that they tried to take Trump out with a fake story. So as of today, Trump's odds of winning the presidency are really high. They're really high. They're not 100%, but it's the highest it's been, in my opinion. Today, Trump has the highest chance of winning the next election. Now, I wasn't saying that a week ago. I was not saying that a week ago, but I think he just took the statistical lead. Might be a 60, 40 situation, you know, 60% chance he wins the whole thing, but I wouldn't have said 60% even a few weeks ago. All right. There is a thing called body doubling. I think Fortune had an article about it. Have you heard of this where. It's where somebody will just be doing work, just their own work at their computer. And they have an app, a few apps, I guess, or you could just use TikTok if you're just broadcasting. And all they do is sit there and work. And other people also work while they have that on. So you have a co worker. Does that sound crazy? Does that sound crazy to you to have a. Like a virtual. And you don't talk to them, there's no interaction. They just sit there and you know they're there, they're working, you're working. All right. Well, it turns out that this is like a godsend for anybody with ADHD because apparently they've all discovered, all meaning anybody with adhd, that they can concentrate better if there are other people modeling the same behavior. And I don't know if it's the modeling that does it, but if somebody else is working, then they can concentrate. If nobody's around working, then it's just a free for all in their minds and their mind is all over. But as long as there's somebody else doing what they want to do, they can kind of mirror them and then they can control. Now, have I told you that I can't do any work in the afternoon unless I'm at Starbucks or there's somebody there in my house? Have I told you that I actually can't do any work after maybe 10am unless there's somebody around or watching? And it's the reason I've live streamed some of my writing sessions for the comic. I could sit there all day and just be distracted in the afternoon. But as soon as I turn on the live stream and I start talking to the audience, I do this with the locals people and I'll do a writing session where they learn. They learn writing technique and how to write jokes. And what I'm getting out of it is the feedback in the company and it makes a week worth of joke writing pleasure. Like that's not an exaggeration. You would expect an exaggeration in this situation. Not an exaggeration. It actually transforms an unpleasant work of just blank page. What am I going to put? What am I going to put there? And it turns it into fun. Like I can't wait to do it again. And that's the difference. So I believe that I must have ADHD or at least some cousin to it that activates. By the time I've had a few cups of coffee by the afternoon, I can't sit still and listen to anything in the morning. I have great focus. So right now, from like 4am to 8am, I can focus on anything between 4 and 8am after that, my mind is just splayed all over the place. It's hard to sit down and write. So I'm going to try this. I'm going to find one of these apps and just get a remote stranger. And they may be. They may be surprised who their working partner is. I'm not sure if anybody asks or if you just show up and say, hey, let's get to work, but I think I'll be doing this. It's called body doubling, and if you have adhd, totally recommend it. I've heard good things. Let's talk about Silicon Valley bank before I change the world with my whiteboard presentation, which you definitely don't want to miss. So here's the background, if you don't know. There's a 19th biggest bank in the country, Silicon Valley bank, has been taken over by regulators. And the question is, will depositors get all their money back? Because it's only guaranteed up to 250,000 per person. Per account or per person? No. Per account? Yeah, depending on the type of account. So the question is, we know. It looks like, we know the investors will get wiped out, but. But will the depositors get all their money back? Because a lot of the startups had tons of money in there, they would lose all of it. And there's a big disagreement. You got your Matt Gaetz type, and I think Alex Berenson weighed in to say, no, let those people take their loss, including the depositors, who had nothing to do with anything. They were totally innocent, let them take their loss, free market, why should we bail them out, etc. And then you have other people, such as David Sacks, who, if you're not following you, should. He tends to be the adult in the room. He's not political as much as he is. Let me explain what works and what doesn't work. He's one of those. He's basically an Internet dad of the highest level, Right? If you want the dad advice, meaning forget the politics, what is smart, what makes sense, follow David Sacks. He was one of the PayPal original guys, friends with Musk and Peter Thiel and all those guys. So any one of them, if they talk, you should listen. Right? It's not an accident that they were all successful more than once. So here's my take on it. Should we save the depositors or should we let it, let it go? Because free markets, blah, blah, blah. The first thing I would like to recommend is because it's social media, can we all agree that some of us will say it's about saving the depositors and others will argue it has nothing to do with the depositors. We're trying to fix the entire system so that the contagion of this one doesn't take out any other banks. And then if we could, let's pretend it's the same conversation, okay? Because you want to be as stupid as you possibly could when the fate of the entire world is involved. If the whole world is at stake, you want to be the stupidest fucking idiot you can be. So I recommend that we act as though the people talking about the depositors are in the same conversation with the people who are talking about the integrity of the entire banking system. And let's make sure we confuse those like it's the same thing. So that way when I say, hey, this might be a good way to protect the entire economy and the banking system and you could say some dumb fucking thing like about whether the depositors should be made whole because that's not the same conversation. But because it's social media, let's fucking pretend it's all the same, okay? And let the whole country burn because we can't even get out of that little mental trap. That's what's going to happen. We're not going to have. We're not even going to be able to talk about it. We're going to pretend it's the same conversation. It's not. It's not. It really isn't. If you can't separate those two, you don't belong in the conversation. And yes, I did swear because I want to make an emphasis. That's the only time to swear. Swearing because you're just talking bad idea. Swearing because the entire world is at stake. Yeah, yeah. For that I'm going to get your attention. Here's my take. The government has the ability to protect the system. Meaning that the government can say, whoa, don't worry, whatever we need to say is protected is protected, even if it's different than what we said before. Would you agree that the government has the power to do that? So therefore they do have the power to protect the banking system and they apparently have the will. And then here's the good news. Here's the good news. When something like this happens, the smart people push the stupid people out of the way. Now there'll still be plenty of stupid People on social media confusing the depositor question with the banking integrity question, you can't stop that. But in the real world where people make real decisions and they're really influential, the smart people, I guarantee it, are elbowing the dumb people out of the way. All right, you had your chance. We're now done with the dumb people. Let the smart people play. And watching this, you can almost watch it on social media. Start to bubble up like the smart people who don't talk too much, they just started talking more. Have you noticed? So basically everybody, everybody, everybody who's looking at this situation knows that the stupid people have to get out of the way. Am I right? Is there anybody who disagrees with that statement? Everybody sees that on this situation. It's just too important. The stupid people got to take a pass. Stupid people back up. The smart people are coming online just as they should. The system is, is entering a self correcting mode. There's almost no chance it's going to fall apart. So there is no chance that the whole banking system is going to fall apart because the government can protect it. The smart people are elbowing the dumb people out of the way for this. They will take over, they will have their way and they will decide to protect the banking system. That's what's going to happen. So I'm not giving you any financial advice. What you do with your money, what you need to do to be safe, do what you need to do. But the smart people will take care of it. I'm pretty sure we'll be okay. Now, there could be some disruption, some people might lose money. But the larger banking system I believe, will be protected because we have the ability to protect it. And now the smart people are going to make it happen. All right. Speaking of smart people, Mark Cuban has weighed in and he said this. You might recognize this thought. A couple of Silicon valley thoughts. Number one, 250,000 is too low. That's the amount they guarantee. It's insane that a small company with say 2.5 million in payables and payroll at the end of the month should be, quote, prudent and split their cash across 10 banks in case of a run. The fees in admin would be crazy, but would be great for the banks. Does that sound like exactly what I said? Right. There's an unfairness about the system that just screams once you need to implement the system. The fact that you could just inconvenience yourself this way by opening 10 accounts when you only need one, the fact that that works just tells you the system needs to be least reconsidered during an emergency. It should at least be reconsidered during something this big. So I completely agree with Mark Cuban that the insanity of that argues against keeping it intact when the whole system is at stake. You don't want to. You don't want to keep your insane things. You want to get rid of the insane stuff. All right, so there you go. I think we'll be fine, but not until the smart people have taken control. And it looks like that's happening this weekend. There's a good chance that another bank will buy it, but apparently there's some timing issues about how long it would take to get out improved and whether it would cause too much concentration in the banking industry. Can you believe that? Can you believe that one of the things people care about is that the 19th biggest bank might be bought with another one and that the two of them would be bigger? That feels absolutely ridiculous. Doesn't feels ridiculous. It's like not understanding the cost benefit situation at all. All right, and the good news, There's a new superconducting material that has been discovered. Of course, it's made of rare earth materials. Because once you get excited about anything, anything in technology goes like this, oh, this new thing's been invented, it's going to change everything. And what do you need to make it? Well, you need some rare earth materials. Would there be any trouble getting enough rare earth materials for this new and innovative? I don't know, rare earth materials, how hard could it be? Yeah, rare earth materials might be kind of a problem, but what they found is a new superconducting material that works at higher temperatures and at pressures that are low enough that it's actually useful. We've had superconducting materials for a long time, but yet to have them super frozen and high pressure and you can't really do anything with that. But this one will work at higher temperatures that are practical and at pressure that's practical. And so they're thinking that they could make everything from better fusion containment, whatever you call it, let's just call it fusion reaction containment, because I don't know what I'm talking about, but that sounded close. So it might make fusion much more practical. And it looks like fusion was going to be practical anyway. So this could be another big leap in that field that looks like it's going in the right direction. But also it could be used for creating power networks that don't have loss. Right now we lose a ton of energy just sending it across Lines, because you lose a lot as it goes across the line. But the superconductive stuff would lose nothing. So I could send some energy from here to the other side of the planet, and if it was all super good enough path, it would be the same on the other end, which is amazing. Now, I don't see that you could build an energy network very quickly. It seems like that's beyond possible. So that's not the big thing, but maybe something like fusion, you can get there faster, because in that case, building a one off makes sense. And they could build hovering trains and medical devices and all kinds of stuff. So we'll see if anything comes to that. We'll see. Did you see Fauci lying to Jim Acosta? I'm going to say he's lying. I don't know. I don't know that he's lying, but I've never seen anybody who had a worse lie face. You know what I mean? Like, you just look at his face, you could turn off the sound and you'd say, well, based on his face, he's lying. I mean, just look at his face. That's the biggest liar face in the world. I was thinking if I could do an impression. I don't know if I can. Should I try a Fauci lie face impression? All right, I'll do my best. I'll do Jim Acosta. Dr. Fauci, what about that lab leak? Well, Jim, that. People don't understand that. One of the possibilities, by the way, I'm not making this up. I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not making this up. Yeah, one of the possibilities is that somebody who worked at the lab was out in the field looking for viruses, you know, mucking around with the bats and the Bengalans and stuff, and that they got an infection while they were out in nature, and then they took that infection, took the infection, and then. And then they brought that back into the lab where they work, and then it got into the lab, and then it got out of the lab. And so really, one of the ways that nobody talks about is that you could have a lab leak, but really it came from nature, went into the lab, leaked back into nature, and. And that's how it could have happened. And people don't talk about that possibility. Is anybody buying this? And then he mentioned the other possibility, which was nobody, nobody, all the experts, nobody thinks it's weaponized. I mean, nobody thinks that. So. But it could have been gain of function. It could have been gain of function, but it could have Been the natural way. You know, not manipulating a gene, but rather a natural, you know, evolution within the lab. And in which case that wouldn't even be manipulation. But let's say it got out of the lab that way. That would be, again, nature. I mean, that would just be nature. Even though we forced it to happen by mating these two things in lab, but still it was natural. We didn't manipulate anything. And that scene, my Dr. Fauci, I assume he was lying about all of it or covering his butt. It didn't look good. All right, I have a question for you that I have not seen discussed. If we think that Covid can give you a stroke, and we think that vaccinations could give you a stroke, if we think that the lockdown made you fat and that could give you a stroke, if you think that the pandemic made you tense and tension can give you a stroke. Have we left one out? Apparently, everything can cause a stroke. That's not too surprising. Basically, anything that puts stress on your system. Well, have you heard of the Huberman breathing technique where you do two inhales and followed by an exhale? When Dr. Huberman explains why it works because it immediately calms you down. He says that the magic to it is that it alters the CO2 to oxygen levels, so it gives you sort of an optimal level. So if you do the two inhales and one exhale, you end up for a little while with sort of the perfect mix of CO2 and oxygen, right? Now, if it's true, and by the way, it would actually lower your blood pressure. It's actually such a good technique that if you did it a lot, your blood pressure would go down. Sounds good. Now, if it's true that breathing properly makes you healthier or at least reduces your anxiety and tension, which should make you healthier, would it not be true that if you had the wrong mix of CO2 and oxygen, that it would be the opposite of the optimal mix, which makes you healthier? So could it be that breathing normal is okay? Doing Huberman breathing is extra healthy, but wearing a mask for long periods of time for two years could get you a suboptimal mix, which could cause, in the long run, strokes and cardiac problems? Now, I don't know that that's true, but I also don't know why it wouldn't be true. Why wouldn't it be true? It's almost like, how could it not be true? Now, the counter argument to that is that it hasn't been detected. The counter argument's pretty good, which is nobody's noticed or studied it. So there's no evidence for what I'm saying. I'm just saying if it makes you healthier to have the right mix of CO2, what does it do to have the wrong mix? And they have studied that. If you wear a mask, you do have a higher level of CO2 and substantial. But the argument is it doesn't hurt you. And some amount of variance in CO2 definitely wouldn't hurt you. I just don't know if the masks put it over some level. If you could do that little breathing technique and just that little technique of two inhales and exhale, if that puts you in the right frame for CO2, it wouldn't take much to knock you out of that frame. So this makes sense to me. USA Today was super racist. Today. They printed, they were talking about the best and worst places to live. And they said that Maine has the lowest violent crime rate. That's good. Maine has the lowest violent crime rate. Right below that. They. They said to us, however, something bad going on in Maine. I'm sorry, two bad things. So the first bad thing. No, that's a good thing. The good thing is that they have low crime rates. But the bad thing is that they have the worst diversity in the whole country. They've got 94.4% white residents, but then, coincidentally, also the lowest violent crime rate. Now, when you put those things, two things together, and then the next thing they talked about was Baltimore with the worst crime rate. Now, that's pretty racist, isn't it? It's pretty racist because they're saying lowest crime rate, and then right, like right below it, and it's all white people. Now, when I talk about the difference between Baltimore and some other place that has less crime, I say it's systemic racism. You've heard me say it, right? How many times have you heard me say the difference in poverty level is systemic racism? I say it so much, it's like a mantra. So just I want you to hold this in your mind that when I talk about Baltimore, I say the cause is systemic racism. When USA Today talked about it, they just gave you the. The data, let you draw your own conclusions. Maine has by far the most white people and the lowest crime. Kind of suspiciously like they're suggesting they're related, aren't they? But I don't say that. I say it's systemic racism. Now, the USA Today canceled me. They canceled Dilbert because I say it's systemic racism. But maybe they should Add a little context. I think they should add a little context to that. It looks a little bit racist in my mind. But here's an interesting thing. Bruce Temkin, I guess he's part of the temkin group. In 2016, they did a consumer benchmark study to see who's happiest. And they divided by age and ethnicity and gender and stuff. Here's what they found. The happiest females are over 75. Does that make sense to you, that the happiest women are the women over 75? And I think that the reason might be that they no longer have to worry about man, woman stuff. Like all that stuff sort of out the door at that point. It's probably a lot of pressure off. While men are happier between 65 to 74. And I gotta tell you, so that's my age range. If you had told me at age 30 that at age 66, I would be happier, I never would have believed that. But I'm unambiguously happier. Like it's actually true. Like it's so counterintuitive. You would think, oh, I'd like, you know, my young health and my young options and stuff like that. I don't miss any of that. Like, I really like my current life. And apparently that's a common thing for men and women over 75, is that when you think they would be the least happy, they're the most happy. So if you're worried about your older years, that's one. One less thing to worry about. If you're like everybody else, you might be happier. But some other interesting things. The least happy are 18 to 24 year olds. No surprise, followed closely by 45 to 54 year olds. And between the ages of 18 and 44, males are happier than females. So young adults, Males are happier, but females are happier older. Interesting. So men are happier younger. Women are happier older. But as education increases, so does your happiness. So the more educated you are, the more happy you are. Here's an interesting one. Ethnicity. It says there's little variation in happiness across ethnic groups. Caucasians are the happiest at 73%, but only three points above African Americans. Only three points. So three points on a survey like this would be pretty close to the margin of error. Probably above it, but pretty close. And then income makes a difference too, obviously. So the things that make a difference are education, age and income. And ethnicity doesn't make that much difference. That's interesting. Given the difference in economic opportunity, that feels like it should be a bigger difference. But since Money didn't make that much difference. There was about the same amount of happiness. Here's a question for you. What is equity? What's the purpose of life? Like, why are we here? I would say to pursue happiness. Pursue happiness. So if you and I are equally happy, do we have equity? It's our primary purpose of life, is to pursue happiness. If you're happy, I'm happy. We've achieved equity. If you say, oh, but you also. Also must have the same amount of money, then I would say, well, what? That's not the goal. Where in the Constitution does it say we have the right to money? I mean, it doesn't take away our right. But the Constitution literally says, you know, the right to pursue happiness. Like it's written right in the front of the Constitution. That's the goal. Happiness, Right. If I can make you happy, I'll try to do it. If you can make me happy, please do right. So take my situation. My income went down around 80% by being canceled. And I got happier. I got happier. I'm actually, creatively, I feel better than I felt in decades because I can create the way I want. All these options have opened up. I don't have this thing hanging over me. I feel great, which is hard to explain because I don't think anybody believes it, but I do. Money and happiness are pretty unmoored as long as you have some minimum. Happiness is very similar across ethnicities. We already have equity. We have equity in the thing that matters, happiness. But keep this in mind that if black Americans had better education relative to other groups, their happiness would go up and would probably exceed, you know, exceed Caucasian happiness, according to this. And if their incomes went up, they might be a little happier, too. I would, you know, a little bit, but, you know, they are still disconnected. So I'm about to give you a. Oh, and also, the other thing that creates happiness is being married. Being married, right. So if there's a difference between ethnicities and marriage rates, that would also go directly to happiness. But where are we looking instead? We're not looking at happiness, are we? The main objective of life, we're looking at some kind of equity and all the other stuff. I would like to give you a reframe, and I'm going to signal where this is beginning. So I'm going to do this in a way that makes it obvious. I'm going to create a clip of it afterwards. So I'm going to give you a reframe that I believe changes everything, and it will answer everything about race. And how we're dealing with it in the United States. So this is a micro lesson on race and how to reframe it, to fix everything for everybody. And it goes like this. If you were to have a conversation about race, it would include, but not be limited to stuff like grievances for past discrimination. You talk about critical race theory. You talk about one group compared to another group. You look for racists because you want to spot the racist to know how to deal with that. You'd be looking at systemic racism and you'd be looking at maybe reparations. Now, this is not a complete list of all the things you'd be talking about, but it's sort of a representative list. If you're in the race conversation, it'd be this stuff. Now, I spend most of my time, and a lot of people don't know this, a lot of people don't know this, but I spent. For the past 10 years, I've been more noted for my work in personal success. The book behind me had failed. Almost everything was the entry to that domain for me. And that became, in my opinion, it's the most influential book on personal success. Other books on personal success refer to it. It's the most common way that people will give advice is directly out of things that I came up with in that book. Talking about talent stacks, systems over goals, passion is, you know, BS, etc. But if I'm talking about personal success, I will be talking about keeping positive attitude, having the right mindset. I'll be talking about gratitude as a. As a superpower for success. I talk about the individual and how to network and have lots of contacts. I talk about keeping your optimism up because that really helps for success. And I would talk about reciprocity as an operating system. You do things for people, they'll do things for you. Maybe not directly, but eventually. Now, you might have already noticed something about these two lists that they're in conflict. For example, if you're looking at the grievances of the past, either with CRT or just generally, you're saying that there's discrimination and you've got to focus on the grievance part of it. That is the opposite of what somebody would do for success. If you're focused on personal success, you'd want to have a gratitude frame. But how can you have gratitude about slavery if you're a black American? How could you ever think, oh, that slavery worked out well? Of course not. Nobody could have that mindset. I'm not suggesting you should have that mindset I'm saying that this is in direct conflict with the basic tools of success. But it goes deeper. Talking about a group doesn't help you at all. But talking about you as an individual and what you should do would help you a lot. Spotting racists is good to do. You want to be able to spot the racists and deal with them. But far more important to success would be open yourself to everybody. Have the most contacts you can have. Don't worry so much about what their personal thoughts are. Just make sure that everybody has a good opinion of you because you've connected with them, you've done the right things, you've established your value. Networking. Big, big factor for success. Optimism. Almost everybody will tell you if they work in the field of personal success. You, your mindset again, your happiness, your gratitude, your optimism, your own mindset. Things. If you get these things right, you will be very successful. And then the biggest one is reciprocity. It's the opposite of reparations. Reparations are, you did something bad for me. I've got a grievance I would like you to make good on that. Reciprocity says, I'm going to do something for you that you didn't ask for, and I'm going to do something for you that you didn't ask for. And you. And you just keep doing it. Eventually, somebody in that group is going to come back to you and say, all right, here's something you didn't ask for, but this could help you out. Let me give you a specific example of this. I have been refusing interviews on the question of my little drama that many of you know about. I didn't want to do an interview with anybody who is too friendly to my side or my point of view. So I've been turning down everybody who asked, and there was a lot of them until I got a request from Larry Elder. Now, Larry Elder, I imagine because he's on the conservative side, that he would say, all right, what you're saying is important. Let's talk about it. Maybe it was taken out of context. Now, I know he will say something like that because he wrote an article that got a lot of play in which he seemed to have a full understanding of my situation that was good for me. I mean, in other words, if you understood the situation, you would describe it in a way that doesn't make me look bad. So he wrote an article that was his actual opinion, I'm sure, and it was a positive for me. When Larry Elder asked me if I wanted to be on his podcast. What did I say? I said some version of damn it, Larry Elder, you magnificent bastard. You got me. I can't say no to that, because I operate on a Reciprocity operating system. Larry Elder also operates on a Reciprocity operating system. Why did he write a good article about me? Well, partly because he believed it. I'm sure it's exactly what he thinks, but. But he might also remember that I endorsed him for governor when he ran in the recall election against Newsom. So I did something for him that he didn't ask for when I got in trouble. Not a surprise. He's not the only person who emerged to do something for me just because sometime in the past I'd done something for them. The Reciprocity Operating System magic. It's what gets Larry Elder successful. In part. I'm sure that Larry, I'll bet you if you asked Larry Elder, just use him as an example. If you said, do you believe that this has helped you, the tools for success that I just described, what do you think he'd say? He would say, yes. And I'm not reading his mind, because everybody who has his kind of success, which is quite notable, uses the same tools. And everybody who is not happy and not doing well are focusing on the past, focusing on grievances, focusing on what somebody else owes them, and focusing on how the system is going to prevent them from succeeding because it's all stacked against them. And so I propose to you that we reframe the issue so that we never forget the things in the race filter. That has to be part of history. We have to make sure that none of that is left out. Every bit of that needs to be taught. We need to understand that. I like my Black History Month. I like including history, you know, plain and raw. But I like teaching black Americans and white Americans and every other kind of Americans that if they want to succeed, it's not about their obstacles, it's about their tools for success. If we can. If we can get people to understand that the. It's the people who make money selling the. The race filter. That's why it's on your head all the time. The reason we're all thinking about it all the time and it permeates everything we do, is because it's monetized. There are people who make a lot of money just selling this version of reality. They're not selling you personal success, nor do they say they are. That's not even something that they're pretending they're selling to you. Right? So just Know what you're buying? If you're paying for this, you're going to get something that's a complete obstacle to personal success. If black Americans spent a generation working on personal success using the tools of that, they still have a lot of obstacles, right? Systemic racism is real, but they would slice through it like butter. And let me tell you, as someone who has hired people, a number of people, you know, in my life, if somebody comes in to talk to me and they exhibit an understanding of anything on the personal. The personal success list, they're hired. I don't even care about qualifications at that point. If you're. If your mindset is on the success tools, you're going to do fine. That's an employee I want. If you walk in and I get a sniff, even a sniff, that your mindset is on the race filter and you're ignoring this personal success filter. I'm sorry, you are definitely not hired. Because if somebody comes in with the mindset that every expert, not just me, this is my personal opinion. Every expert would agree with the following statement. People who focus on personal success tools do well. People who focus on grievances do less well. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the great reframe, the most useful thing anybody's done this year. If you're wondering why I was so provocative to get your attention, it's because of this. It's because we're doing everything wrong and it's making me crazy. So now that I have your attention, if you could just take it away from my personality for a moment and just spend a little time thinking about what do you want to teach your kids? Do you want to teach them how to succeed the way it works for everybody? Or do you want to teach them that they should focus on their grievances and have much less chance of success? And that is your micro lesson on reframing race. So you can see I cut it off there because we're going to. I'm going to clip this and make it available. This is called. Let me tell you a little bit about the technique. So this is a reframe, but it also uses. I suppose I should have included this, but I'll include it for you. I've told you this before. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is to say, oh, there's a cause of my problem, so when I go to fix it, I better work on the cause. So systemic racism caused by white people and discrimination cause a problem for current black Americans. So let's focus on this cause. Let's. Let's fix this white person problem here. But that is counterproductive if you have a better solution. So stop looking at the cause as the only place you can find a solution. Instead, look for any solution, just any solution. And one solution is to make your personal skills so good that nobody can deny you. You just have to be the kind of person people want to work with, marry, date, and hire. Right? So separate the solution from the problem, and everything is solved. Now, in my opinion, this is the most, the most useful thing anybody's ever said about race in America. And you're not going to talk me out of that. It's the most useful, useful thing anybody's ever said about race in America. Let's see what happens. YouTube, I'm going to say goodbye to you, talk to the locals people a little bit more, and I'll see you tomorrow.