Episode 79 - North Korea and Unusually Delicious Coffee
Date: 2018-06-15 | Duration: 28:51
Topics
Pence’s NK gigantic persuasion mistake Kim’s denuke desire, just him or entire world? Is SK President Moon the smartest guy in the game? Did Trump corrupt his supporters, or just his critics? Kids in the past were like printing money Kids today are an enormous economic burden
Transcript
[0:07] Bum bum bum bum bum. Have your unusually delicious beverage handy because this is the time that all sexy smart people know to have their beverage, because it’s time for Coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip. Here it comes. Oh, that’s good stuff.
So let’s talk about North Korea. You all are up on the story. President Trump said he was going to walk away from the summit because Pence was—well, let me back up a little bit. I’ve been saying that Mike Pence is one of our better vice presidents, and the reasoning is he just didn’t break anything. He’s really good in public.
[1:09] He’s professional. He’s just a very smooth politician in a good way. So I’ve been saying, “Yeah, he’s just like a perfect vice president. He’s boring, but he doesn’t break anything.” And that’s really all you ask for. Then he went on television and, talking about North Korea at a very delicate time, made a reference to Libya, which sounds like regime change. Ouch. As mistakes go, that’s sort of a 10 and a 10. So I’m gonna call it like it is: gigantic persuasion mistake. It’s like as big as you can get, short of actually starting a war. That’s right up there. So yeah, they said Libya if they don’t behave.
[2:10] So here’s the problem. We’re trying to put in the heads of North Korea, and in particular Kim, the idea that we can guarantee their safety, that we’re credible people. We want them to think about their awesome future in which they don’t get destroyed in war and have a good economy and stuff. And just even bringing up the Libya thing in any context whatsoever is bad, bad persuasion. Now, you can make the same point in a better way. The point is: if we don’t find peace, things could turn bad. Fire and fury; our nuclear weapons are more powerful than yours. That’s what the President says. Trump says stuff like, “We’re more ready than we’ve ever been for military action.” These are just objective statements of truth. Totally good persuasion over here.
[3:13] Destruction by our gigantic army—we certainly don’t want that over here. Peace, prosperity, North Korea is doing great. Perfect persuasion. You notice also that the President is weirdly just about the only person on the planet Earth who is not North Korean who has not insulted Kim Jong-un in the last 30 days. President Trump, the most famous insulter of all times, who all of his critics say, “No, he’s impulsive, he’s impulsive, he’s impulsive. He doesn’t even do any thinking. He just sees people and then insults start skewing out.” It’s like there’s no brain there, just, “Do I see a person? Oh, there’s a person. You’re fat. You’re ugly and stupid.”
[4:13] “You’re fat. You’re ugly and stupid.” That’s President Trump right there. Good imitation, I think. But what we observe is that when insulting somebody is useful, such as running for office—Low Energy Jeb: useful. Crooked Hillary: useful. Little Rocket Man: useful back then. What is useful for the past 30 days? What’s useful is that you treat Kim Jong-un with respect while he’s doing things that could work in everybody’s favor. You might not like it; you might still have your private thoughts about Kim Jong-un, but this isn’t really the time for insults. And I think that Pence’s reference to Libya, even though it’s not a personal insult, is really close to one.
[5:16] It’s disrespectful in a way that’s essentially an insult. The President doesn’t make that mistake. How is it that the President has gone so long without insulting Kim Jong-un? I don’t understand that. It’s breaking all my ideas about the world because he insults everybody, but at the very time that you should not insult anybody, he’s the only person who seems smart enough not to do that. It’s luck. It’s probably luck. Yes, John Bolton made the same Libya mistake. The slight difference—and it’s not a big one—is that Bolton did it earlier. That makes a little difference. But also, Bolton has always been the bad cop. So it was a mistake when Bolton did it, but a slightly lesser mistake than when Pence did it.
[6:18] Because of timing and who Pence is. Pence should be more aligned with Trump, who is trying to be good cop in this. So I think Pence dropped the ball on this. But in the end, it didn’t make any difference because, as we learn what was really happening behind the scenes, North Korea wasn’t cooperating. They weren’t showing up for meetings to plan the summit. They hadn’t really offered anything, or at least enough. So it was just a good time for a walkaway. That gave us an excuse to just do a little milder reboot. It looks like the reboot may have been good because North Korea, as of today, started communicating more, and President Trump responded positively.
[7:19] Do you know why President Trump responded positively to North Korea’s positive communication to them in the last day? I don’t know why. There’s luck again. I don’t know why. Why does this keep happening? So let me give you my theory of how we got to this point, because you may be wondering: why is it that North Korea keeps saying, “Oh yeah, denuclearization, no problem,” and then when it comes down to it, we can’t get them to actually agree to denuclearization, even though they keep saying it? I think it’s this: I think it might be, as weird as it sounds, a version of Yanni and Laurel. I think this is what happened—just speculation. I believe that every time that Kim Jong-un talks about denuclearization, he either…
[8:19] …says directly, or he means this in context: “Yes, I would like to be part of all countries denuclearizing.” But then he says, “I’d like to denuclearize,” and then President Moon of South Korea says he wants to denuclearize, and I think he’s serious. He actually wants to. So he takes that to the Americans. “He told me he wants to denuclearize, and I believe he meant it.” And then we checked with him, “Hey, what’s up with this? Do you want to denuclearize?” And then Kim says, “I very much want to denuclearize. I’m totally committed to denuclearizing with the rest of the world.” That’s exactly like not denuclearizing because the rest of the world isn’t going to get rid of their nukes.
[9:19] It seems to me that either President Moon and the United States simply heard him differently than what he is clearly saying. Whenever you see his full comments, Kim’s full comments in context, there’s always that little clause about, “Yeah, denuclearizing the rest of the world. I’m all in.” That’s not really what we had in mind. I think people are just hearing it that way. But I also would think there’s a possibility that President Moon of South Korea knew that we weren’t talking about the same thing and got both sides a little bit pregnant. He told Kim, “Yeah, the Americans seem to like your offer. Let’s talk.” That’s not what happened because we didn’t like his real offer. We like the offer we thought we heard or wanted to hear: that he might denuclearize on his own.
[10:20] And then I think both sides simply heard the version they wanted to hear. Moon may have known that they weren’t talking the same language, but here’s my charitable opinion of President Moon: he might be the smartest player in the game, pretending to be not the smartest player in the game. Kind of a Kaiser Söze situation, if you know that reference. Because if what he did was take this little bit of bad communication and the Yanni and Laurel and said, “Yeah, you guys are practically on the same page. Let’s talk.” Getting us to the point of talking is a huge freaking deal.
[11:23] If it turns out the President Moon was saying, “President Trump deserves that Nobel Peace Prize if this works out. Let’s all get together. Let’s talk. Yeah, it’s really President Trump; he’s doing everything here. But I’m glad we got to this point where we’re practically on the same page. Let’s get in the same meeting.” If he did that and he knew that we were not on the same page, but he knew that talking gets you to the next stage where you might get on the same page—at least talking is a step ahead—if he did that and he knew what he was doing: smartest guy in the game. Maybe smartest guy in the game and Nobel Prize-worthy. I don’t know if he shares it or not, but you got to say that if that’s the way he played it, pretty darn smart.
[12:23] Notice that Kim Jong-un did not quite offer what we need him to offer but also saw it as an excuse to start talking. So we may be pretending we’re hearing him differently just to get in the room, just to get the ball rolling, just to get the communication going. So I think there’s a lot of pretending that we shouldn’t assume is what the players are actually thinking. Now, in terms of China’s involvement in all this: we know that China called Kim Jong-un in to talk to him, and then it seems like things went from progress to less progress. People assume that something happened in that conversation. And what did happen? I think maybe all that happened—just speculation—is that China was flexing its muscle. It felt sort of sidelined in the conversations and just wanted to make…
[13:25] …sure that nobody missed the fact that China is the biggest player in that part of the world. So I think China just needed to do a little body check before North Korea and Trump and South Korea went off and made a deal without their involvement. I believe that was just to make sure they’re part of the deal. It might not be on anything consequential, but we’ll find out. So that’s where I’m at on that. Now, there’s an interesting thing happening as we watch President Trump restrain his insults about North Korea correctly. One of the biggest complaints about Trump is that he would influence people with his coarse language and his mannerisms, that he would influence citizens to…
[14:26] …become worse. They would just start acting like him, and they would start insulting and being bad people. I thought to myself, “There’s something wrong with that analysis,” because in my world, people are kind of turds to begin with. It seems to me that there’s nothing that President Trump did that turned good people into bad people. But if you look at his critics and the critics of his supporters, they’re horrible. They’re terrible. I’m dealing with them online and even in person. But are we to believe the President turned all of his critics into horrible people, or did they start that way? I don’t know.
[15:26] Now, I thought the worry was from his critics that President Trump would turn his supporters into bad people. I don’t know that they’ve changed. I haven’t noticed anything different. Some are bad, some are not. Some are turds, some are not. But every time I see his critics acting exactly like him, I say to myself, “I don’t think you know how to criticize.” Here’s how not to criticize: “That orange cheeto—he should stop insulting people.” That’s not the way you do it. If you want to criticize somebody for insulting, you say, “I believe we should be nicer to people.” It wasn’t hard. Here’s how to do it wrong: “Orange Hitler, stupid idiot who makes impulsive decisions will ruin the world. He should stop being unkind to people.”
[16:29] It’s weird. So there was an article I tweeted around about how apparently America and a lot of other countries are having fewer children. This is a problem because we’re not replacing our population, and if immigration is down, we’ve got a problem. People are saying, “What is the reason that the birthrate is down in the United States?” And I’m thinking to myself, “What is the reason that the birthrate is down in the United States?” How many freaking reasons do you want?
[17:29] There’s a whole bunch of reasons that people will offer, and I see them going by already: soy and pollutants and lower testosterone. There are a whole bunch of reasons that just sound like people want to have less sex, but that’s not really the reason that the birthrate is down. Mostly the birthrate is people planning to have children. So even if you’re eating soy and your testosterone’s down, all those things, you’re still going to have children. People are not infertile. I think that might be some part of the problem—that there’s lower fertility—but probably not the big part. Here’s the big part: a hundred years ago, having a child was an economic asset. You were creating these little slaves who would work on your farm and then take care of you. Every child was like printing money. It didn’t cost much for them to live with you; they just added to your workforce.
[18:33] Fast-forward to today: a child is an enormous economic burden. That’s the opposite of what it used to be. And that burden is bigger. Instead of working for you and making your life easier, kids are kind of in charge these days. So the parents are working for the child. If you say to me, “Scott, if you have a child with somebody, that child will be like your little free slave who will do work for you, take care of you when you’re old, will respect you,” and here’s the best part: if they don’t respect you, you could beat them. I’m not recommending that. I’m telling you what people would say in the old days, 100 years ago. “Yeah, if they don’t respect you, you just beat them until they do.” It’s sort of easy. Problem solved. I’m not recommending that. I’m not saying we should go back to that. Let’s be clear about context. I’m just saying that’s what it was. So if you were a parent a hundred years ago, having a kid…
[19:35] …was a pretty good deal. Good economics. They’ll respect you or you’ll punish them until they do. You didn’t have to pay much for them. You didn’t have to buy them a smartphone. They didn’t walk past you with earphones on. They didn’t mock you to your face. They didn’t tell you that you have to give them things and drive them places. They didn’t live in your house after they were old. Having kids used to be a pretty darn good deal; that’s why people did it. Today, it’s kind of a terrible deal. If you ask people who’ve had kids, they’ll say, “Yeah, you should have kids too. It’s great. It’s a lot of work and frustration, but it makes my life so much more fulfilled.” And then check back in a month and there’s a 50% chance they’re divorced and their entire life is ruined because they’re not married, but they have kids and they have an ex-wife.
[20:41] So getting married today, when divorce is easy and kids are nightmares of just a lot of work, still people will say, “Yeah, I’m glad I had them because of how it makes me feel.” And people who have had kids that are not turds—they do love their kids, and the kids respect them—yeah, that happens. But having kids who are in charge of parents, and cost a lot of money, and suck up all their free time and all their happiness while we’re working too hard and coming home exhausted—it’s just not a good deal like it used to be. But please have children, because we need them. In the Dilbert comic, I had a punchline not too long ago in which somebody said they love their kids, but they don’t like them.
[21:41] I hear that all the time. I’m not going to name names, but I know quite a few parents who would say, “I totally love my kids, but I don’t like them. I don’t like them even a little bit. I don’t even like to be in the same room with them.” I’m not saying that about mine, I’m saying you all know people like that. I’m not sure that we ever heard that 100 years ago. And then there’s always the people—the most annoying people in the world—are the ones who tell me that “good parenting” fixes all the stuff I’m talking about. You people bother me more than just about anything in the world bothers me because that’s confirmation bias. There are people who have children who are just naturally well-behaved. They have ambition, they’re respectful, and there’s not much you could do that would change them either way. Other people have…
[22:43] …children who are—let’s call them normal—who see that they have all the power. People who have power are corrupted, and children have power. Have you tried to take a kid’s cellphone away from them? Try to take a 13-year-old’s cellphone away. You can do it, and you know what? You’ll hate every minute of it, because you can’t call your kid on a cellphone. You can’t text them. So we don’t even have punishments that aren’t just punishments to yourself. Parents can’t—you can’t physically do anything to the kid without a pretty big risk, and you can’t punish them enough in a way that doesn’t punish you more. There’s just nothing you can do. I know somebody who was grounded for a year, was actually locked in a room without a phone for a year because every…
[23:44] …time they let her out, she did things that her parents were not happy with. So they said, “Well, I’m going to apply some good parenting. We will lock her in a room until she behaves.” She never behaved in the way they wanted her to. They locked her in a room for a year. That’s real. An actual year. They checked with her once in a while, but she was basically unwilling to be managed, and that’s not unusual. It’s not unusual. Somebody says, “Make it two years,” and I think she aged out of it is the problem. My nephew ran away when his mom took his cellphone. That’s sort of what happens. I’m going to be back on at 9:30 my time, which is 12:30 Eastern Time. I’m going to be back on, if all goes well, I’ll be talking with…
[24:47] …Hawk Newsome about institutional racism. We’ll talk about some of the things that are in the headlines, and I’ll be using the WhenHub Interface app to connect with him. If you don’t already have it, this is my startup’s app. It’s called Interface by WhenHub. It’s available for free anywhere that you get apps. It’ll be 12:30 Eastern Time approximately, assuming everything goes well, and I’ll look at your questions, but mostly I have some questions of my own. Now, I will be calling Hawk. He will be listed as an expert, and he will set a price, so I’ll actually be paying for his expertise. That’s what the app is for. It’s anybody who has expertise—they could just set their own price. I told him to set his price at…
[25:48] …100 an hour. I think his market price should be around 500 an hour. I don’t think that’s out of the realm at all. It’s called Interface by WhenHub. Here’s the thing: if you were doing prison reform, you’re doing urban renewal, you just want to make sure you’ve got all the perspectives. What is cheaper: to fly across the world and have a meeting with somebody who could talk to…
[26:48] …you, or to just pick up the Interface app and talk to somebody for $100 an hour? You might talk for 15 minutes, get everything you need: 25 bucks. Do I get a cut? No. We, the creators of the app, have not designed it so that we get anything for these transactions. The only way I would get money directly on the app is if I sign up as an expert and somebody pays me. The way we make money is that the tokens within the app—the way you pay each other—they don’t have real value as far as cash value until a lot of people are using the app. So if only a few people use the app, people are paying each other with our internal WhenHub tokens and they can’t cash them in because it hasn’t taken off enough. As it takes off, then we…
[27:51] …can get listed on a crypto exchange. We’ve already put in our applications for that. Whenever the crypto exchange says, “Oh yeah, we want to list you because you’re a serious ICO or you’ve got an app that’s working and it’s got traction,” they want to put the real ones on the exchange. Once we’re on an exchange, then you can turn our tokens into other crypto and then cash as you like. Somebody says, “Am I done writing books?” I don’t know. I always think I’m done until I write the next one. So I’m updating Win Bigly right now for the paperback version. Just updating it. I’m going to sign off now, and I will talk to all of you at 12:30 Eastern Time, 9:30 Pacific. Bye for now.