Episode 244 Scott Adams: Kavanaugh, Taxes, Chinese Fentanyl, the Anti-Male Party
Date: 2018-10-03 | Duration: 53:18
Topics
Chinese Fentanyl, what’re America’s options? NYT article: Trump’s parents legally reduced their tax burden! Helped his Dad cheat on his taxes…at the age of two? Shocking news stories, that aren’t Lying in the business world is required for the success of capitalism Can you meet my deadline? Total cost of proposed project? Your product versus the quality of the competitor’s product Political lies versus business lies Democrats evil but extremely clever “recusal play” against Kavanaugh The women-centric political party versus the party of protectors and prosperity
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## Transcript
## [Introduction and the Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=6s)
Pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom. Oh, come on in here! It turns out there's a lot to talk about today. You're in time for the simultaneous sip. It hasn't been a good week, but maybe things will get better. If you have your mug, your glass, your vessel, your chalice—fill it with your favorite beverage. You've got time. Come on over here and join me for the simultaneous sip. It happens now.
## [The Chinese Fentanyl Crisis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=68s)
Let's talk about Chinese fentanyl. As you know, my stepson died from what we presume to be a fentanyl overdose. It seems that a lot, or even most, fentanyl comes from China, from Chinese pharmaceutical labs which apparently the government has investigated and knows who those labs were.
Now the problem is, you say to yourself, "Wait a minute, if we know who the fentanyl labs are and they're sending all these drugs from China..." When I talk about China, I'm just going to call them "Fentanyl China." Fentanyl China’s primary effect in the United States is killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. When law enforcement finds these labs, they close them down in China, but at least one person on Twitter says the problem is that the Chinese government will seize the equipment and then sell it to another lab, and then the other lab opens up and starts selling fentanyl. I don't know if that's a universal problem or something that happened a few times, but I’d suggested online that the owners of the labs be the first thing that comes up in a Google search on fentanyl.
If you do a search on China fentanyl, you should see the names of the fentanyl lab CEOs and the owners. I would like to see them publicly shamed for being the mass murderers that they are. Now, if that doesn't work—if we can't get Google to include that at the top of the rankings, and I imagine that would be a problem since they do what China tells them to do—here's another suggestion. If it's true that we can determine that Chinese companies are sending X amount of fentanyl, and that fentanyl has a street value of hundreds of millions of dollars, and if we can determine the percentage of people being killed in America by Fentanyl China, then I would say we should include that in our tariffs.
Perhaps if China causes us $700 billion worth of drug problems, we should just add that to their tariffs once a year. We'll take an inventory of those things which we have investigated and found to be Chinese fentanyl. If they send us a billion dollars of fentanyl, we add a billion dollars to their bill. We don't even need to show them the evidence; just add it to the tariff. If we determined that 20,000 or 30,000 Americans in a year were killed by Chinese fentanyl, let's put a value on a human life. Let's say each human was worth $100 million. Multiply $100 million times 20,000. It's a pretty big number. Then just add it to their bill.
We should at least raise this possibility in the negotiations. We should say, "If you can't stop the fentanyl, we'll just bill you for it, and we'll also try to kill those owners of those labs." Now, it might be that we don't need to kill any lab owners in China—I'm talking about extra-legal, hunt-them-down, give them a shot of their own fentanyl sort of situation—but we might not have to do that because it could be that the Chinese government closes down the lab and even executes the owners as soon as we tell them about them. It might be that the Chinese government doesn't want these labs any more than we do; it’s just a whack-a-mole situation. But I think we should see the faces of the owners, and we should try to kill them if the Chinese government isn't. We should definitely do it on their soil.
You say to yourself, "My God, you can't disrespect the sovereignty of China and kill Chinese citizens on Chinese soil." To which I say: China is killing 20,000 or 30,000 people a year with their fentanyl. Can we kill a few lab owners on their soil? Yes, we can. And if somebody says, "Hey, there are a lot of suspicious deaths of these lab owners," it seems like they're all dying of fentanyl overdoses. Because if you can catch one of these lab owners, well, we'll kill them with fentanyl. Just give them a couple of shots of fentanyl and walk away. That should do it.
## [The NYT Trump Tax Story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=435s)
That’s enough fun on fentanyl. Let's talk about the headlines. There's a big New York Times story—a whole bunch of pages, 15,000 words—in which they have dug through ancient Trump tax returns. They have determined—and I know this is going to be hard to believe—that the Trump business, going back to Fred Trump, the father, the Trump Organization, has aggressively tried to reduce their tax burden.
It's true. I knew this day was coming when the anti-Trumpers would finally find something so terrible that they could take down the President. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Trump Organization has tried aggressive tactics to reduce their tax burden. Now you might say to yourself, "Wait a minute, isn't that 100% of every company that can afford an accountant?" And I say, yes, it is. But their names are not Trump.
Were all of the things that they did legal by today's standards? Here's the first problem: Are we judging what happened decades ago by the standards of today? I hope not, but there might be things that you couldn't do today that were more standard practice back then. The second thing I wonder is—here's some tax advice I once heard: A friend of mine once had an ambiguous situation. There were two ways to calculate his taxes, and under the rules of the IRS, it seemed as if both of them were accurate. One calculation cost him a lot more money than the other. He asked his expert friend which way he should use, and the expert said, "Use the one where you pay the least taxes." That's it. You don't need to decide which of those ambiguous rules is the slightly better one; you just have to have a reason.
Is it possible that if the IRS had dug into some of these tax avoidance techniques that the Trump family used, they would have said, "Yeah, this is technically true but not what we had in mind"? Probably. That's the most common situation in the world. Every time there's a tax change, all the big corporations think, "Wait a minute, if I open a company in Ireland and a funneled it through there, and if I put my headquarters in Estonia and I've got a couple of shell companies, I can move that money." That's just normal business.
What happens when the IRS determines that you have abused the rules and stretched them beyond what they were intended to be? They pay a fine or they just have to do it the other way. It's not jail time. If someone did something that's at least supportable by a real-live accountant who's willing to sign it and put their reputation as a tax preparer on it, probably a big accounting company, they’ll sign it because it has a good argument.
In the opinion of the New York Times reporters and some experts, looking back at those decades-old mechanisms, they say that's sketchy. But that's a normal situation. A big company is going to do gray area stuff. If the IRS doesn't actually ask for the details, they don't really look at it. An IRS audit typically is not an audit on everything you've done; they tend to focus on something specific.
I don't think the tax story is going to change minds. For the people who voted for Trump—raise your hands, because I can see all of you—how many of you already knew that the Trump Organization did everything it could to avoid taxes? All of it went through professional accountants. There are professional accountants who don't work for the Trump Organization who looked at all this and said, "This one's a little bit of a gray area, but yeah, this is legal according to the technical rule." It was already baked in. Everything you hear now will not threaten the President legally because he wasn't the one who even knew the details. Literally, he didn't know the details when he was two years old and Fred Trump was funneling him money. The way the New York Times writes it is that Donald Trump was helping his father cheat on taxes when he was two.
There's a big "tell" in the New York Times story that made me laugh out loud. The story says that they went through 100,000 documents. Can you imagine that? What's left out of that story? They went through 100,000 documents and found stuff about those taxes. How many of the 100,000 documents made any difference? Were there two pages? Is it possible that maybe two pages had something on them that was of any importance? I'll tell you why they told us they went through 100,000 documents: because it's a really big number. If you say you went through 100,000 documents, it sounds like your proof is really good. That's not reporting; that's manipulation of the reader.
## [The Utility of Lying in Capitalism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=1053s)
Let's go to another topic. Here’s some "shocking" news: it's being reported that the President may have been behind the payments to Stormy Daniels. What are the chances we didn't know that? We didn't know that the President might have talked to Michael Cohen and had something to do with the payments to Stormy Daniels? You think the President may have shaded the truth when asked in public about an affair with a porn star that is alleged to have happened while his wife was pregnant? We didn't see that coming.
It gets to the larger question of lying. We're talking about Kavanaugh, and the implication is that if he lied on anything during his testimonies, it makes him untrustworthy for the Supreme Court. But imagine if they asked, "Mr. Kavanaugh, did your family ever own a pet?"
"Yes, we had a dog named Fluffy."
"Is Fluffy still with us?"
"No, Fluffy is not with us anymore."
"Did Fluffy die or did you tell your children that something else happened?"
Kavanaugh would be like, "Yeah, he didn't exactly die. Fluffy went to a farm where he's very happy, running around with other dogs forever."
Everybody lies to their kids about their dog dying. At what level do you say that the lie is trivial? If the man is asked in front of the world and his family and his children, "Did you drink too much?" what do we expect him to say? I want him to minimize that because it didn't really matter. A little bit of lying? I'm okay with that. If Kavanaugh, or the next judge the Democrats put up, lies about stuff that isn't terribly important because it might have been embarrassing, I’m okay with that. I will not feel bad when a Supreme Court judge is ruling on some important thing just because they lied about their dog or how many beers they had.
Think about where Trump came from. He came from the business world. In the business world, do people lie? If you have any experience in the business world, and I do, you will know that without lying, capitalism wouldn't even work. The entire capitalist system really depends on lying. It comes in many forms: "Yes, we can totally meet your deadline," when you know you can't. Once they get a little bit "pregnant" with the project, you'll be able to make some excuses and you still get the deal. Lying about deadlines is almost universal.
How about lying about your total cost? Do you tell them what it is likely to cost for the upgrades unless they ask? Do you really disclose all the costs, or are you lying to get the job? What about marketing? Have you ever seen an advertisement that said, "Frankly, our competitor makes a lower-cost product that's better, and you should buy that, but we have one that's almost as good"? That would be honest, but that’s not how the capitalist world works. Lying is a central ingredient that greases the capitalist engine. If there were not enough lying, there would be less buying.
Trump brings this capitalist business ethic into government, which is that you are allowed to lie about anything. You can say the competition is doing terrible things; you can say yours will cost less. If you didn't do those things, it would be hard to persuade people. I've said in the past that the President is almost always "directionally accurate." Even if he's not technically accurate, he's moving our minds in the right direction. If he says this economy is the best it’s ever been, and fact-checkers say it was better one year under Obama, technically that’s a lie. But I score it like capitalism: it's an exaggeration of your success and a minimization of your competitors.
He brought the capitalism ethic into government—100% exaggeration, hyperbole, and outright lies to drive the engine. But instead of the profit motive, he has the "Make America Great Again" motive. As long as the things Trump says are inspiring people to invest, or inspiring ISIS to quit because they believe he was going to crush them, that’s not a bad lie. That’s a capitalism kind of lie. It moves the bar toward making America safer and greater.
## [Laurence Tribe's "Recusal Play" Against Kavanaugh](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=1732s)
Let's change the subject here. I'm going to give some credit to the Democrats for strategy. Alan Dershowitz pointed out on Twitter that Laurence Tribe, a prominent lawyer and anti-Trumper, wrote an article describing a strategy for blocking Kavanaugh that was pure evil—and at the same time, pretty darn clever.
The idea is that if organizations such as the ACLU announce their opposition to Kavanaugh, they are the type of entity that ends up at the Supreme Court a lot. If the ACLU has come out strongly against Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh would have to recuse himself from that case because he had been an enemy, or they had been an enemy to his nomination. Tribe's idea was that if enough entities oppose him publicly, he would have to recuse himself from so many decisions that he would be a "wounded" jurist. There would be no point in putting him on the court because he’ll only be a part-time justice. That is pure evil, but it might work.
## [Democratic Fight vs. Strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=1855s)
One thing you can't say about the Democrats anymore is that they're afraid to fight. This Kavanaugh thing is changing my mind about that. There’s a lot of fight. The whole Russian collusion thing is a lot of fight. You have to give them an A-plus for effort. They have some fight in them, but they don't have good strategies.
They've taken the fight to a situation in which the President has two ways to win and no way to lose. If Trump gets Kavanaugh in, even wounded, it's unambiguously a giant win. But if Kavanaugh doesn't get in—if he is thwarted by this level of machination—Republicans will go nuts. It's going to be a "Red Wave" like you've never seen in your life.
If Kavanaugh is thwarted by this kind of claim, it would look like a system change in the United States. It would feel like rewriting the Constitution. The Senate would no longer be in "advise and consent"; they would just be in some weird team-fight where they just make stuff up. Republicans like the system. If they see a result they don't like but the system was followed, they'll accept it. If Republicans see a result they don't want because somebody "broke" the system—meaning someone abandoned the standard of innocent until proven guilty or corroboration—that is very motivating. Trump wins with the Red Wave, and Trump wins if he gets Kavanaugh. Democrats: tons of fight, terrible strategy.
## [The Anti-Male Party and the Politics of Protection](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=2416s)
I've talked before about how the Democrats have become a woman-centric party. They've largely thrown everyone else under the bus except women. I'm not saying that's good or bad; it might be a healthy thing that there's a major political party concentrated on the preferences of women.
I describe Republicans as being about protection. Republicans are strong on anti-crime, law enforcement, and defense. This protection applies to both men and women. Republicans are strong on immigration. The President talks about the risk of rape—does he exaggerate? Of course, he exaggerates everything. But he talks about the protection of men and women.
In this world, men are seen as protectors. Generally speaking, for a woman to be victimized, she usually needs to be in the company of one man. If there's more than one man in the room, she's safer because the other men act as protection against the one man who is problematic. Trump said at a rally that it’s starting to get dangerous for your sons and your husbands because they might be the recipient of uncorroborated accusations. The media acted like he wasn't allowed to say that men matter. It's fair to say "Black Lives Matter," but it seemed to be unfair to say that men and boys matter. He wasn't saying they matter more; he was just saying they matter too.
It feels like the frame that's evolving is that the Democratic Party is not just pro-woman; they're also anti-male. The Democrats are unambiguously anti-male and don't even try to hide it anymore. This President is willing to call BS on it. The Democrat brand has turned from pro-woman to anti-male, whereas the Republican brand is "Protection and Prosperity."
It seems to me that when "Black Lives Matter" became a popular slogan, a lot of people tried to respond by saying "All Lives Matter." That was a trap, because if you say "All Lives Matter," you're seen as refuting the point that black lives matter, so therefore you're a racist. It was a genius slogan. But an unintended consequence of the societal acceptance of calling out one group and saying "this group matters" made it safe for Trump to say "Men matter." I'm not sure he could have said that before Black Lives Matter.
## [Interface by WhenHub App Upgrade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNDdEzpAo4I&t=2969s)
Anyway, my startup, the Interface app by WhenHub—we have a new version. If you don't have the new version, let me show you. It's a big upgrade. The app allows you to either be an expert or find an expert. If you want to be an expert, you just say, "I'll take credit cards" or "I'll take crypto." You set your price and put in your keywords. It takes about 60 seconds. You can be an expert in gardening, technology, anything.
If you want to find an expert, you just put in the search term. I’ll look for a "French tutor." Look, there's one online right now for $40 per hour. If you have a kid who needs tutoring and you’re making dinner, just call this up, put the phone on the table, and your kid is getting French tutoring. Imagine this for every kind of skill.
One of the things we're fixing in the upgrade is the notification system. If you couldn't find someone, you can now set it to give you a notification when that expert is back online. If you would like to talk to me right after this is over, I'm going to go online as an expert on the Interface app. You can find me by name, or by "cartooning" or "persuasion."
I'm going to accept "WHEN Tokens," which you get for free just for signing up. It wouldn't even cost you anything to call me. I'm going to set my hourly rate at $100, so you get paid $25 if you want to talk to me for 15 minutes. I’m online now. I’m going to hang up from this Periscope, and if anybody wants to call me and try out Interface by WhenHub, you can do that right now. It’s in the app stores as a free download. We’ll see who calls first. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.