Episode 242 Scott Adams: Fentanyl, Flake, Canada and Other Stuff
Date: 2018-10-01 | Duration: 52:38
Topics
Fentanyl, mainly from China, and 49,000 OD deaths last year Public companies in California can no longer have all male boards Rosie O’Donnell accused of anti-gay slur Gillum staffer’s shirt advocating assassination of President Trump President Trump’s Trade deal strategy is working Negotiating hard with your friends…doesn’t break anything Kavanaugh’s “temperament”…is that a sexist accusation? Incentive’s to leave home aren’t as strong as they used to be
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## Transcript
## [Introduction and the Fentanyl Crisis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=17s)
Hello Donna, hello Chris, Tyler, and Fleed. Come on in here. I hope all of you are having a good day. My day is not so good, but I'll tell you about that in a minute.
So let's talk about fentanyl. But before we do, please join me for the simultaneous sip. Grab your cup, your mug, your beverage, bring it to your lips. So, you've heard of fentanyl. It's a painkiller, a very powerful painkiller, but there is a very small margin between killing your pain and killing the person. As a result, fentanyl is the number one drug overdose killer in the United States. I think 72,000 people died of drug overdoses last year in the United States. Fentanyl is the top cause by far. I believe it was the cause of Prince's death; i believe it was the cause of Michael Jackson's death.
The interesting thing is that China is apparently the main source of the illegal flow. Now, that's what the United States says; China says not so much, but you would sort of expect that. The President tweeted back in August that China was the major source of fentanyl and he called on China to do more. Actually, I think he referred to it as almost a form of warfare. If another country was shipping something to us that was killing, let's say, 30,000 people a year, doesn't that look like a war? I believe Vietnam only took 50,000 American lives—many more were injured—but the entire Vietnam War killed 50,000 Americans. Fentanyl from China probably killed five times that many.
## [A Personal Tragedy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=199s)
Yesterday morning, I did my Periscope, and at the end of the Periscope, right after that, I got a text message. The text message said that there was a 9-1-1 call on another line that's on my Verizon. Yesterday I got a call right after the 9-1-1 alert from my ex-wife, who told me that my stepson, the little boy that I raised from the age of two, was dead. He died last night, or maybe early in the morning yesterday; we're not sure. In his bed, from what appears to be a fentanyl overdose.
The coroners found a fentanyl patch on his arm. If you don't know what a fentanyl patch is, I didn't either. It's a little patch about the size of a postage stamp, and it's very popular now among addicts. It's a little patch they put on their shoulder, and it feeds a continuous flow of fentanyl. Now, that may not have been the actual thing that killed him. It could be that he was also trying to get Xanax. We have some information he was trying to score some Xanax. If you don't know this topic, you're lucky, but Xanax is mostly counterfeit. The Xanax that the kids are doing, the addicts are doing, is not really Xanax; it's combinations of other drugs that people are passing off as Xanax, and close to 100% of them are fake. One of the prime ingredients in this fake Xanax is fentanyl. So there's a fairly good likelihood that my stepson Justin, now deceased, probably got two doses of fentanyl yesterday.
Now, we weren't surprised because it had been a long battle with addiction since he was 14. He had a very bad head injury when he was 14 from a bicycle accident. He was wearing a helmet, but it was still a bad accident, and his behavior changed after the accident. He sort of lost his ability to make good decisions. I'm not sure he ever made great decisions, but he lost his impulse control; he lost his fear.
In California, if you reach a certain size physically—if a teenager is a certain size—if you tell them to do something and they don't do it, you have certain recourse. But in California, you don't have much. You can't physically restrain somebody, and you also can't keep them from getting drugs. Somebody would really have to want to get better, and he never wanted to get better. From the time he started doing drugs, he wanted to do more drugs, and that's all he wanted. His quality of life he didn't think was good enough for a variety of reasons that didn't have anything to do with lifestyle. My dead, blue, bloated son taken down on a stretcher. Because of the law in California, there was actually nothing that we could do. Now, in other states, I understand that you can actually commit somebody. You can have them essentially locked up in some kind of a rehab facility, and if they tried to walk out, they just couldn't. But in California, if a kid wants to walk out the door, they just can. And he would, and did.
## [Holding China Responsible](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=511s)
Fentanyl, mostly from China, probably killed my son yesterday. As we're negotiating with China, I hope we can do something about that problem. I understand China is doing a little bit in terms of controlling some of the instrumentation used to make these drugs, etc. But here's my opinion: at this level of problem, if we, the United States, know which Chinese executives are behind this—and I would bet we do by now—we probably know which specific pharmaceutical companies are making the drug because they're made by actual legitimate incorporated type companies in China. But they, of course, know that there's big leakage, and I'm sure that that's good for their profits.
If we know who those Chinese executives are, I would like to call for their execution. In China, if you mess up—if you're a Chinese executive of a company and you, let's say, steal some money or you cross the government in some way—they'll actually just take you out and kill you. I'm not even sure they have due process in the usual way. So, I'd like to offer to China, to President Xi, who I do respect, that we give him the first chance to take care of the problem himself. If you don't, I think we can hold China responsible for perhaps 30,000 deaths per year in this country. So, in a very real way, we are at war with China in an indirect way. Not with the government per se, but I would be in favor of our CIA or our dark intelligence people going after those executives directly, even at the price of substantial international problems.
I'm calling for the death of the executives of those Chinese companies who we believe are not doing enough. Now, I don't have all the details. If it turns out that they are doing enough, our government probably can tell the difference. They can probably tell the difference between trying and not trying. But if they're not trying, I think President Xi should, for the benefit of international relations and for the benefit of being a legitimate international power, start executing people in his own country. If he does, I think that would be a great step. And if he doesn't, I would be in favor of our country directly executing Chinese citizens. Ideally, we don't want to get caught, but I'm pretty sure we know how to kill people without getting caught. Those folks who may be directly or indirectly responsible for the death of my stepson: I'd like to see you die, and I'll see what I can do to make that happen.
## [The Modern World and Addiction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=760s)
Just a little bit more on this, and then we'll talk about some other headlines because life does go on. The other observation is that, and I think Jordan Peterson says this, he talks about the complexity of life and how, as life is getting harder to navigate and more complicated, certain people in the society are being left behind. My stepson was one; he was not well-equipped to deal with the modern world. If you ever saw him with drugs in him, you knew that once he had the drugs in him, the drugs were his personality. He didn't really have an independent personality. Then he took drugs, and the drugs were him. He sort of became the drugs and he would be almost a monster. He was 18.
If you don't have any personal experience with opioid addiction, it doesn't look like anything else you've ever seen. It turns people into walking zombies who quite clearly are not in their own mind and are not in control of their actions. Somebody says it's murder. It's murder to kill Chinese executives of pharmaceutical companies just because they're killing 30,000 people in this country a year? Do I want to kill somebody who might be responsible for 30,000 American deaths a year? Yes, I do. Legally or illegally, I do want them dead. And so I want the government to know: you have my support. If you kill them and you get caught, you have my support—for what that's worth, which isn't much.
## [California’s New Board Diversity Law](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=884s)
California just passed some kind of law that requires that public companies housed in California can no longer have all-male boards. If you're a public company and your headquarters are in California, I had two reactions to that. Reaction number one: it'd be good to have more gender diversity; sounds like a good idea. Reaction number two: California is really the vanguard of the Democrat Party. The Democrats have this branding evolution going on in which they try to be for all people, but the practical reality is that they're very female-focused. The Democratic Party is basically a party of women who also include other people.
When you see a law passed in California that says, yeah, we're going to make sure by law that you diversify your boards by gender—which again, I think gender diversification is a very good thing—my question is this: what do black men think when they hear this? If you're a black male Democrat or a Hispanic male Democrat, what do you think of the fact that the law just required women to be on boards, but not you? There's no requirement for ethnic diversity. Why not? Now, it might be just a practical problem. It could be too hard to do; there are too many ethnicities. Let's start somewhere. Those would all be good reasons, or at least rationalizations, for why the focus is on women.
My larger point is: how can Democrats possibly win another national election when their priorities are so clearly woman-focused and it appears to me to be completely ignoring a huge part of their base, which is black Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc.? I see that as a real problem.
## [Rosie O’Donnell and Gay Slurs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=1069s)
At the same time, Rosie O'Donnell, a prominent Democrat and prominent anti-Trumper, has made some gay slurs about Lindsey Graham. Rosie O'Donnell, I guess in a tweet, said some anti-gay slur. Now, Rosie O'Donnell is a member of the LGBTQ community, so it's not the same if it comes from her. You can't say that if somebody that's in the community makes a slur about somebody in the community, it sounds the same as if somebody outside the community makes it. So I won't make that case.
But it did make me think that I'm having trouble remembering the last time I saw a conservative make an anti-gay slur. Maybe it could be just my filter is off. Doesn't it seem to you that conservatives and Republicans and Trump supporters don't make anti-gay slurs? I don't mean that as an absolute; I'm talking about public discourse. I'm not talking about what anybody says in private; obviously, people are anti-everything in private. It made me think that conservatives don't really give a rat's ass about the entire gender preference thing. I don't think I've ever met a conservative who said anti-gay things in the past three or four years. It feels like as an issue, it just disappeared.
## [Andrew Gillum Staffer Fired](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=1191s)
I understand that Candidate Gillum, who's running for Governor of Florida, had one of his staffers fired for wearing a shirt about the assassination of President Trump. Of course, it makes sense that you're going to fire your staffer for wearing a shirt that advocates assassination of the President. No criticism of Gillum for having a staffer that thinks like a lot of other people, and no criticism that he fired the staffer for going over the line. The part of the story that is just jaw-dropping is that the staffer wore that shirt in the first place. Imagine being so deeply in your bubble that you think you can put a shirt on advocating the assassination of the President of the United States, wear it in public, and people would say, "Yeah, that guy." It tells you how deeply people are diluted on both sides. When you see it like that in such stark relief, it's astonishing.
## [Bannon’s Prediction on Avenatti](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=1312s)
I saw a headline that says that Steve Bannon was speculating about who might run against Trump in 2020. Steve Bannon is predicting that Avenatti might be the one the Democrats run. I found that amusing. I don't think there's the smallest chance that Bannon thinks Avenatti is going to run against Trump. But the fact that Bannon put that out there, he sort of pushed Avenatti forward as the standard-bearer for the Democrats, is kind of hilarious. To the extent that people believed he was serious, it would raise Avenatti's profile. There's nothing that is less likely for the Democrats than to have another white male to be their standard-bearer. There isn't the slightest chance that Avenatti could ever be the candidate for the Democrats. It was just hilarious and smart; that was like one of the most clever moves to put Avenatti out there as the standard-bearer for the other team.
## [The Success of the Trade Deal Strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=1372s)
Let's talk about Canada. You saw the big news: Canada has agreed to a deal. So now we have a deal with Mexico on trade, and we have a deal with Canada on trade. I believe I told you early on that once you've done Mexico and Canada, you have demonstrated it is no longer a one-off. They've also done South Korea. I don't know where Japan is, if that's done or still working, but what I predicted was that Trump would start lining up these deals. He would do the easy ones first. China, of course, is going to be the big one; we would expect that one to be last. But he will continue proving through example that new deals can be made.
The fact that Mexico, Canada, and South Korea have all made deals, and that the United States is characterizing them as better deals than before—and here's the weird part: I believe the other countries are also characterizing them as better deals because they have to. Even if it's not a better deal for Mexico or Canada, what are those governments going to tell their own people? They're going to tell their own people, "I did a good job for you. I made a new deal with the United States and it's better for us," even if it isn't. Every country is going to see that the countries that worked with us are telling the world that working with us is better for them.
Politically, China is in this sort of vice right now. That's how the Trump administration has them in a vice, and the vice is closing. Unless I'm missing something major, I don't see anything that would make it easier for China going forward. I see nothing but more pressure on China until we have a deal. I would say that Trump's strategy, which everybody called crazy, is certainly starting to pan out.
## [Negotiating Hard With Your Friends](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=1806s)
I saw a criticism on Twitter from a random user that said, "Surreal watching Trump cult followers trash Canada while swooning over Trump-Kim love affair." I tweeted back: "Which approach gets you better trade deals and a denuclearized Korean peninsula? Being too nice to Canada and too mean to Kim got us the opposite. Figure out this puzzle and we'll let you in the cult after the hazing, obviously."
Here's the thing that Trump understands that for some reason other people didn't understand. This has to be attributed to the difference between a government mentality and a business mentality. Trump was hired in large part because he would bring a negotiating business person's perspective to the job as opposed to a diplomatic, politically correct perspective. That was his proposition: "I will not be the friendly diplomat you're used to. I'm going to kick some ass and get some deals. But wait, I'm not a bad guy because I'm pursuing a system which is better for everybody."
The system is that we compete as hard as we can in a friendly competition. We say, "Canada, we expect you to negotiate like wounded animals. We expect you to do the hardest negotiating you can and to screw us as hard as you can. And we're going to be doing the same." This system where we both fight as hard as we can gets you to a better place. Capitalism. Compare that to what this tweeter believed: that it was more important to stay friendly with our friends in Canada than it was to have a better trade deal.
What Trump knew is that negotiating hard with your friends doesn't break anything if you're honest and you lay it out and you're above board. What do you do with your enemies, the ones who have a nuke pointed at you? Do you do what diplomats in the past have done? "I dare you to shoot that nuke; we're gonna nuke you too." Trump did a little bit of that to frame things and make sure he had a credible threat, but as soon as the threat was established, he quickly moved to the smarter approach: why the heck would we be enemies with a country that has nuclear weapons? We don't want anything out of North Korea; we just want them to stop aiming their nuclear weapons at us.
Trump made friends of our enemies and he negotiated hard with our friends. That's what a business person does. A diplomat does the opposite. What did the opposite get us? Bad trade deals and nuclear confrontation. President Trump, if he stopped today—let's say he gets another conservative on the court—if he left office today, he probably would be the most important president in the last hundred years, if only because he brought a systems approach and a business perspective to the job. Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.
## [The Nixon Tool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=2112s)
Let me give you an example. Until Nixon went to China, those of you who know your history know that Nixon was the most badass anti-communist president. He was super hard on China. But when he had an opening to visit and maybe get things moving in the right direction, he was the perfect person to do it because he was so anti-China that it was credible when he said, "Hey, something's changed." As soon as Nixon did that, you can't unsee it. Everybody now understands that being the hard-ass before you decide to get friendly is a model that works.
What did Trump do with North Korea? He did the Richard Nixon play. Why did he use the Nixon play? Because he already saw it. Once you see it, it's part of the toolbox. Trump is adding tools to the toolbox the same way Nixon added a tool to the toolbox. Even if Nixon went down in flames in terms of his reputation, that one tool he introduced into the system is permanent, and Trump is doing the same with a set of tools.
## [Jeff Flake and the Kavanaugh Investigation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=2235s)
Let's talk about Jeff Flake. He has the most ironic, perfect name in the simulation. He looked like he was going to vote for Kavanaugh, but at the last minute, he sided with Chris Coons and other Democrats to ask for a one-week investigation. He was asked on *60 Minutes* if he could have done this had he not been retiring, and Flake said no way. He said all the incentives are against it. If you want to keep your job, you actually can't do what you think is right. He said directly and unambiguously: "No, I would not have done this except that I'm leaving the job."
Think about that. The only person who made a difference was the guy who's leaving. In the end, it came down to the one person who was leaving because that person was the only honest broker. He was the only honest player in this whole saga, and he said directly that even he wouldn't have been honest except that he's already quit. He has nothing to lose. The only honest person. What the hell does that tell you about our system?
I am in favor of the one-week delay because I think that it's reasonable. Now, I know a lot of people say it's really just a trick. Yes, it is a trick and it is a delay, but they also painted themselves into a corner by saying that a week is all you need. So the President gave them a week. Now they're saying he's narrowing the investigation. Don't you have to narrow that investigation the day that you say it's only going to take a week? You've narrowed the investigation because everybody knows you can't do anything in a week except talk to the same people you talked to and ask a few extra questions. The Democrats pushed forward this completely ridiculous standard that something could be deeply investigated in a week, and Trump just accepted their standard and said, "All right, I'll take your week." I think the President has a pretty good chance of just getting through the week and getting his nomination done.
## ["Temperament" as a Sexist Accusation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=2545s)
I'm seeing now that the goalposts have moved to the question of whether Kavanaugh lied in his testimony on the little stuff. Lying under oath about things that would simply embarrass other people for no good reason and are not central to the main point of the proceedings doesn't look disqualifying to me. If the parties were reversed and the judge had 35 years of exemplary record, and the only thing you had to say about him is that he lied on some trivial stuff like the meaning of yearbook statements or how much he drank, I'd say it just doesn't matter. Indeed, it's true that if you lie under oath about immaterial parts, you don't really get the same treatment as if you lie about material things.
The word "temperament" is being used a lot. It was used against President Trump, and now it's being used against Kavanaugh because he got pretty worked up during his questioning. Society has largely agreed that the word "hysterical" when applied to any woman is sexist. I would agree with that. It is one of those words that has to do with women, so historically it's an insulting term. But when do we ever see women accused of having a "bad temperament"? It feels like "temperament" is the word that people use against men because you say, "Well, he's got a bad temperament and he's big; he's a male, so he's a little bit dangerous."
I would suggest the same thing about the word "temperament" for men. If you're saying Trump has a bad temperament or Kavanaugh has a bad temperament, do we ever see that applied to a woman? I can't remember any time I've seen that word applied to a woman. Let's have a fair standard about use of words. If some are sexist, maybe others are too.
## [Why Young People Stay at Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyJ_S44aadk&t=2738s)
I tweeted around a little graph that showed that the percentage of young people who are still living at home spiked around 2007-2008. The cause of the initial spike is that the economy imploded, so it was harder to get jobs. But coincidently, 2007 is when the iPhone came out. Even as the economy improved, things were going better, but that doesn't mean the people at the low end are getting jobs that are good enough to move out of mom's house.
Here's my hypothesis. When I moved to California and I had essentially no money, I rented a one-room with no window and a bathroom that I shared with four other people down the hall. That's all I could afford because moving out of the house wasn't optional; I was definitely moving out. I worked very hard because I didn't like being in a windowless room. Part of it is the pain. There's a degree of pain that being poor inflicts on you because you have no source of entertainment and you have no connection. If you don't have money and you also don't have a smartphone, you don't have a social life. It's painful, and you'll work as hard as you can to get out of that situation.
Compare that to a twenty-something who hasn't left the house yet and they've got their smartphone. Their smartphone is importing to them a form of a cyber social life. It's insanely stimulating; it's designed to stimulate the same things as drugs. They're sitting at home; they don't even have to shop; mom is making dinner. They go from their nice room in their house, play with their phone all day, probably use mom or dad's car, you can Uber, you can date on Tinder. Suddenly the motivation for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain changed.
A kid today with a smartphone living at home has a pretty good quality of life. Friction causes people to do less of something. My hypothesis is this: even as the economy improves for the lower end, we will never get back to the level we were because in the age of the smartphone, motivation is just sucked out of the young because they're already getting so much reward without working. The incentive to leave home is far less than it ever was, and it should make a difference.
I believe that's all I want to talk about today. If you didn't see Kanye, now named Yay, the little clip of him talking at the end of *Saturday Night Live*, you should. I have to go now because I'm looking at my incoming messages and I need to make some funeral plans for my stepson. I will talk to you all tomorrow.