Scott Adams opens a live YouTube episode with greetings, then critiques media framing of a child-death-in-custody story and raises an unverified claim that the U.S. has an agreement with Mexico to return migrants to Mexico while asylum paperwork is processed. He reasons that if Mexico houses and provides services to hundreds of thousands of migrants, Mexico would effectively bear costs that otherwise motivated building a U.S. wall, and even speculates (hypothetically) about paying Mexican cartels to prevent crossings. Adams also proposes rebranding a physical barrier as a "fence-wall," critiques proposed Democratic socialist bills while suggesting individual U.S. states could be allowed to try socialism experimentally, and then signs off.
Chapters
Hey, everybody. Tyler, Morgan, Sharona, good to see you. Jeremy, Mike and Shelton and Sean and Angela. It's about time you got here. I'm glad you were ready. Finger at the ready. Waiting for coffee with Scott Adams. This is the time. This is the lucky time. Wake up, everybody, all you sleepy heads or taking the rest of the week up off, it's time to raise your mug, your stein, your glass, your tankard, your chalice, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me for the simultaneous sip. Ah, so it's not really a very newsy day. All the big newsmakers are taking the day off. CNN is flogging yet another story of an unfortunate incident where a child died in, I guess, in border custody. Again, that story you probably should ignore because the point of such stories is not really to talk about the individual. It's to make you think something big about the policies and the evil of borders and all that. So while it's a tragedy, it should not be informing us on our political opinions. Now, here's an interesting thing that happened, and I'm not sure why I'm not seeing this in the major media, but in a non major media source. And I'd like to see if. Like to see if you could fact check me on this. Is it true that the president has signed some kind of a deal, I guess, with Mexico, in which when we grab people who were trying to cross the border illegally, we used to release them into the United States, but now I think the deal is we're going to release them back into Mexico while they're waiting for their paperwork to be processed. Can somebody confirm that that was real? All right, so some people are saying, yes, let's assume that's real. Now think this through with me. If those people were allowed to stay in the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of them, aren't there? Isn't it a tremendous number of people every year? And if you have a tremendous number of people who are in the country illegally, isn't the whole idea that they cost money, they cost more than they add? That's the argument from the people who would like a wall, right. That the people coming in are subtracting more than they're adding? And now that subtracting has moved from our side of the border to the Mexican side of the border, isn't that really expensive? Because Mexico apparently has agreed to give them some social services. Now, what would that cost? Yeah, so somebody's a little bit ahead of me. It looks like Mexico is paying for the wall. Doesn't it? Because I don't know what that costs to house and give medical care and whatever else they need to give to hundreds of thousands of people that we capture and release back into Mexico. But seems like that's pretty expensive, so maybe they'll indirectly pay for the wall. Here's another thing that I was wondering. So part of the reason with Mexico controlling the border on their side is that Mexico, the government, apparently doesn't really control their border. The cartels do. So there is, for all practical purposes, a big chunk of Mexico is just owned by the cartels, and they're the ones who charge the families $5,000 or whatever it is these days to come across the border. Yes, I think there are several cartels. They each own little parts of the border. But I wonder if we've ever even floated the idea of paying the cartel to guard the border. I'm sure we can't do that for all kinds of ethical reasons. But if we said to the cartel, here's the deal. You're going to start with a billion dollars a year, and then we'll subtract $5,000 for every person who comes across illegally, and then at the end of the year, we'll pay you. I know there are all kinds of problems. There are all kinds of problems with that idea, but the point is, it would actually be cheaper, I think, to pay the cartels to prevent people from coming into the United States. Now, are they trustworthy? Well, we know how many people are coming in, so we could just monitor the number of people come in and say, oh, looks like you didn't. You didn't meet your quota this month. So we pay you nothing. There are a hundred reasons that's a bad idea. You don't have to give them. Give them all to me. Now, the president did tweet, I think it was yesterday, that he would be willing to call it a slat. What did he say? A fence or a wall. I'm looking for that tweet, but I can't find it. So, yeah, let's call it a fence wall or a wall fence. Apparently, my name Wentz, is not catching on with anybody, so it's not as sticky, which is no big surprise, of course. But suppose we call it a fence wall. Fence dash wall. If we call it a fence wall, then everybody gets what they want. Wentz was too complicated for people. But if we call it a fence dash wall, then I think all we need to do is get that funding and go forth, because who is going to turn down a fence. Okay, so I understand that the Democrats are prepping to introduce full socialism, some bills out of the House. Now, there aren't enough people to get any of those laws passed, but it will be interesting. And I ask you again, what would prevent, let's say, one state from being socialist? Suppose we said some people are saying there's a loud mic home and other people are saying there is not. So as long as there are some people who are saying there is not, I'm going to assume that there is not. What would stop, let's say Rhode island or Vermont? If Rhode island or Vermont, If they're not willing to try socialism, why not? Why not let them try socialism for a little while and see how it goes? All right, I'm going to sign off because too many people are having trouble with the sound or they're just pranking me. I can't tell. But in any case, it's no fun because all I'm getting is complaints. So I'm going to sign off and I'll talk to you later.
