Episode 337 Scott Adams: Mika’s Apology, China, Google, and my Plan for Border Funding

Date: 2018-12-14 | Duration: 41:20

Topics

Mika apologizes to the gay community, but not Mike Pompeo I accept apologies, even if they might not be sincere President Trump’s China policies are brilliant so far What world leader is doing better than President Trump? Nancy Pelosi says building a wall is immoral Weak negotiation strategy Google fixed their search results, bogus photos gone Google image search still shows the photos President Trump’s support for LGBTQ 1st President to come into office supporting them Wall funding solution…a panel of engineers (Whiteboard) Engineers don’t lie for a living like politicians Engineers won’t build a wall where it doesn’t make sense

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:09]

oh Joanne is not the first one in for the first time ever must be sick Joanne what's wrong with you but in the meantime hello Marcus and Les and Stefan and greenskin and Donna and Tyler it's good to see all of
of you we got a lot to talk about today a lot to talk about it's an interesting day so yes there will be a white board talk in which in a moment when we get enough people I will give you my plan for Border funding that everybody will agree with meaning Pelosi and Trump you think I can't do it well you're wrong uh solution is at hand and you're going to hear about it in a few minutes but first let's talk about some of the minor news number one MAA Bensi has apologized for her insensitive comment uh about Mike Pompeo being a

[1:12]

comment uh about Mike Pompeo being a butt boy that term quite properly being considered a an insulting derogatory term for uh gay activities and Mika has apologized to the LGBT community but not to Mike Pompeo to which people say hey she didn't apologize to Mike Pompeo and I say that's not who she owed an apology to because apologizing among um you know highlevel political people that's not really a thing because their job is to criticize each other the fact that she used an anti-gay slur means that she owes an apology to the gay community which she gave she didn't really owe an apology to a high level politician for disagreeing with his performance or his skill or his character or anything else that's just business as usual so they can insult each other all they want that's sort of

[2:13]

each other all they want that's sort of what we elected them to do to fight hard against the other side but throwing the the gay community under the bus just for a cheap political comment was over the line and so I initiated what I call the 48 hour rule 48 hour rule says that if within 48 Hours you realize you did something wrong or you need to clarify and you do within 48 hours that your apology and or clarification should be accepted now here's the important part of the rule you don't have to believe they're sincere because you can't read minds the best we can do is ask for people to act in a way that's compatible with society and the greater good and issuing an apology even if in your secret darkest brain maybe you don't mean it should be 100% acceptable let's judge people by

[3:14]

100% acceptable let's judge people by what they do not by what we imagine they are thinking now a number of you push back on me today because I tweeted that I accepted Mika's apology now I think you know that that Meek and I would not agree on a lot of things related to politics that's not the issue some people are saying that it's a one-sided thing this 48h hour rule and if we allow the let's say the anti-trump side of the world if we allow them to get off with an apology but they don't allow the other team to get off with an apology it's a one-sided thing you're basically putting down your weapons and surrendering to which I say you're really looking at it wrong mutually assured destruction is what you do when you don't have any o other

[4:15]

other options and certainly going hard at the other side would only make them go hard at you so it's just mutually assure destruction and that's what you want to avoid but here's the way to look at accepting an apology when you accept an apology or don't that is not a statement about the person apologizing that is you deciding who you are so all of you get to decide who you are you can decide that you're the person who's never going to accept an apology but then that's who you are if that's okay with you I wouldn't stop you uh you it's not my business you get to pick who you are it is an ineffective strategy in the long run I choose I choose to decide who I am as a

[5:17]

choose I choose to decide who I am as a person who will accept apologies even if I suspect maybe it's not sincere I'm not going to make that a factor I'm going to look at what they do and if they do thing that I hope they do I want to apply to them the same standard I would like applied to me if I screw up I want somebody to say well he clarified I'm okay with it if I screw up I want people to say okay he he messed up but he apologized that's who I want to be you could be anybody you want nobody hasn't nobody's going to put pressure on you either way but but someday when I screw up and you know that's going to happen and I apologize CU I would if it was a genuine you know mistake I want to have the moral authority of saying

[6:18]

authority of saying that uh you should be at least as good as I have been for the past 5 years or whatever it is by then and say I accept apologies I would hope you would rise to my
my level and so in the short run if you accept apologies from the left but they do not accept apologies from the right you lose if you think you're on the that team and your team is getting fired and losing their jobs and that's bad in the short run in the long run it's the only thing that will save the world because in our hyperconnected social media world we're all kind of insulting people all the time and we don't always mean it we we have so much contact and we say so many things that the natural character of communication is insulting people even if he didn't mean it and lots of times you did so if we don't have some kind of a social

[7:21]

we don't have some kind of a social rule to handle this without letting it go off the rails we're really in trouble in the long run and and so I um I'm trying to suggest that the 48h hour rule for an apology or a correction is super helpful for the future of the world super helpful I won't ask all of you to participate you only need enough people to participate until it becomes part of the Consciousness all right once it becomes part of the Consciousness that it's a thing there is such a thing as the 48 hour Rule and we do observe that people are saying okay even if I may not believe you you have done the right thing I don't care what you think you've done the right thing with the apology boom all right um China's economy apparently is sucking air there's new reports that

[8:23]

sucking air there's new reports that they growth is stunted and that they've even pulled back on the whole uh China 20 whatever 50 or what whatever date they pulled about them dominating everything so it looks like China is definitely getting the worst end of the trade deal and it looks like they're getting flexible 2025 is it um and it's starting to look like President Trump's approach to
to China is historically brilliant meaning it might be the the way it's going it's too early to too early to you know say how it will end but if it goes the way it's going president Trump will have taken his place as one of the most effective uh and important presidents of

[9:24]

effective uh and important presidents of all time and we're we're right almost there we're almost at the point point where if he got if he were removed for office tomorrow he would still be the most consequential president and I will I will even go this far once president Trump is no longer president whatever day that is even the other side will adopt his best practices not not necessarily the insult part but the day that he leaves office even Democrats will adopt his practices and what I mean is tough on trade negotiations for example tough on the border for example now let let us do a little tour around the world and see which leaders are doing a better job than president Trump um all right so we'll we'll just do a little tour around the world and see who's doing better is President

[10:26]

see who's doing better is President Putin doing a better job as a leader than than president Trump well Putin is uh his economy doesn't look so hot and his reputation doesn't look so hot so I would say president Trump is doing a better job than Putin I think that's objectively true how about China China's economy is going down the US economy just hit its best uh employment rate in 49 years now the stock market is down but that's uh I would argue that the reason the stock market is down is because the economy is so strong now if you don't understand that statement you need to learn a little bit more about economics right the reason that the stock market is down is because the FED sensing that the economy was too hot too strong they put the brakes on and the and the stock

[11:27]

the brakes on and the and the stock market is just reacting or some would say overreacting to what the FED has done the only bad news in the United States for the economy keep this in mind the only bad news for the economy in the United States is the stock market and the only reason it's low is because our economy is too hot too good it was intentionally slowed down China is not intentionally slowing down their economy president Trump did that for them so I would say that President Trump is certainly presiding over the best economy now what about uh let's take North and South Korea well interestingly that's probably a
a [Laughter] tie I would say weirdly enough that the government of North Korea and the government of South Korea are probably operating at the very highest level

[12:27]

operating at the very highest level right now because they're accomplishing something that most people thought just was impossible even a year ago and you know they're they're taking down borders they're building rail Railways they've got commissioners of unification so I would say if you're comparing president Trump's performance as a leader to North and South Korea they're all doing pretty well so I would put them sort of in the top tier at the moment as weird as that sounds what about Venezuela okay Venezuela's a Baska case what about any country in South America or Central America are is there any leaders there who are doing better than president Trump maybe I don't know of any how about Europe how about great Brit does Great Britain look like they have their together right now not to me no they do not look like they've got it together Great Britain's suffering what about France France literally just had

[13:28]

about France France literally just had riot in because they weren't enough like President Trump right yeah there there's no way if you were to compare macron to Trump it's no contest Trump is clearly the stronger leader and who made the right choices in this case uh compared chudo he's getting slapped around a little bit I think the president of the United States is clearly a higher rated leader than him at the moment so if you were to look at president Trump Trump's um performance by itself you have the luxury of saying well if some other imaginary president was here could do even better but we don't have that comparison there is no other imaginary president but if you compare the president oh Poland somebody said Poland is doing well I don't I think that's true I don't know enough about Poland but Poland doing okay I believe I I need some factchecking on that so I would say that

[14:31]

factchecking on that so I would say that U president Trump if you compare him to the major other leaders is looking not only good but preent and super effective take the Middle East um well I would say yeah in the Middle East uh Israel is looking strong some some of the countries in the Middle East are doing fine actually leadership wise but I would say the president is still top of the the pack of that group all right enough on that there I tweeted around an article in which Nancy Ploy was saying something that sounded like the opposite of what she's been saying lately sounded like um she seems to be all over the map on this but seemed to say that investigating the president or talking endlessly about you know the legal stuff she was downplaying that and saying that maybe we should you know get off of that topic and get on to the work of the the people

[15:31]

and get on to the work of the the people now who knows if that will change tomorrow or whatever but um it's certainly an indication that the Democrats or at least the the uh Democrats were somewhere in the middle think that it makes sense to get stuff done they like to get some stuff done instead of just fighting and I think that's smart now let me tell you a bad negotiating technique that Nancy Pelosi used uh not recently she said that building a wall was immoral but here's the thing in the past she has supported building some wall and funding it was it immoral before the trouble with saying something is immoral is it's hard to change your mind after you've said that if you say something is uneconomical and then somebody comes up with a way to make it economical you can say oh okay we found a way to do it or we have to do it anyway whatever but if you say something

[16:32]

anyway whatever but if you say something is immoral and you make that your principal stand during a negotiation you've given away your ability to compromise it's actually a really bad strategy so I don't know how she recovers from that but I've got an idea for solving the border wall funding I'll get to that in a minute um you some of you are following my uh complaints about Google Google if you did a search on my name Scott Adams you would find the a whole bunch of images uh not a bunch but in the top in the top six images you would see photoshopped pictures of me um photoshopped into a Nazi uniform and they were the first thing that would come up on the homage you know if you Googled my name well uh that's been fixed that has been fixed since I complained

[17:32]

that has been fixed since I complained about it yesterday I don't know exactly what happened or who did what but the homage no longer shows those uniforms but if you click on images they're still in the top 10 now it could be because so many people were clicking on it yesterday because I I made a stink about it yesterday it could be that just the traffic I that I drove to it is causing those images to come up higher so I'm going to wait I'm going to wait a week remember I said yesterday I was going to wait see what happens because there was no chance the Google wouldn't hear about it you know I have enough of a footprint and it's a big enough issue it's you know it's ties with in with the headlines Etc so there was no question that um there was no question that something would be done if they found out about it and wanted to do something about it and it looks like maybe they did so I'm going to I'm going to hold off on on that because there was an

[18:34]

off on on that because there was an adjustment I don't know who did it or why or what's behind it but it did
right uh so that's a wait and see I have a correction within 48 Hours of my own mistake I tweeted yesterday that President Trump was the most Pro lgbtq president ever and a lot of people got on me for that and I said well give me give me an example and they mentioned um some transgender examples about the military what was the other example something about the military but basically protections and I thought to myself good point I I accept that fact fact check uh and and I have to admit that when I write lgbtq I sometimes forget what the T

[19:36]

lgbtq I sometimes forget what the T stands for that's the transgender part so if you were to look at only transgender you you could make a case well a strong case that Obama was stronger and that President Trump is less supportive of that Community now not without reasons because if you're talking about the military and I'm not up on the full military thinking about what their reasoning is about transgender but the military is the one place in society that we allow and even encourage discrimination everywhere else in society you want to get rid of discrimination wherever you can but in the military the since you know Readiness and defense are more important than some niceties the military takes uh tradeoffs that you would not see in the rest of society so the military is making a discrimination decision it

[20:37]

making a discrimination decision it seems about transgender and it must I don't know the details but it must have something to do with expense or Readiness maybe there's some ongoing treatments that you need something like that uh I don't know exactly the reasoning but keep in mind that the military would discriminate against me if I tried to join the military they would say you're too old but everywhere else in society age discrimination would be a thing right but not in the military if I had you know one leg or I were blind or I were deaf I couldn't get in the military and um I want to want to avoid I want to avoid the problem of acting like transgender is a military problem I'm sorry is a medical problem so I don't want to say it's a problem I think that would be bad form so uh I don't want to equate transgender with you know being blind or missing an eye or

[21:37]

being blind or missing an eye or something but in terms of medical costs they both have a medical cost element to it um but I'm not I'm not putting a judgment on it um I think transgender is a real thing that uh that people have to deal with in their life so I'm very I guess I'm very empathetic to people who are transgender great empathy uh but the military does get to discriminate for practical reasons if their practical reasons are not good ones uh they need to change them if their practical reasons do test out in terms of Common Sense and expense then unfortunately they get to continue to discriminate so it's a special case but I will say that the president Trump is the most Pro uh l LG president he's he's the most Pro gay and lesbian president I think that is

[22:38]

lesbian president I think that is objectively true because he's the first one who came into office you know okay with uh gay marriage I don't think that's happened before um but the the the tea part of lgbtq um I would say Obama was more Pro but you have to weigh in you know what are the what what is the reasoning behind it and some of it is just practical it's not it's not intended to be
be discriminatory um which doesn't help you a bit if you happen to be transgender all right um I would like to recommend that if youve not already got your Dilbert calendars and Dilbert books if you have not bought your copy of wind bigley hurry up it's Christmas time uh um and how about I make a deal I'll make a deal with you I'm going to describe on my whiteboard how to solve wall funding I propose that this idea is so

[23:41]

funding I propose that this idea is so solid that the government will adopt it that's how strong it is that once you see it you're going to say oh that's obvious now and the wall funding will be done if I accomplish this how many of you will agree to buy a dillberg calendar or book or wind biggly can I make a deal if if I can solve wall funding in the next 5 minutes I'm totally serious I'm totally serious that the idea I'm going to show you will solve wall funding absolutely it it's over as soon as I show you this all right many of you are saying yes and therefore I will go to the board here's our situation when it comes to wall funding you've got the the Democrats and the GOP and they have essentially the same opinion with a little bit of difference the same opinion is that both of them want strong border security why

[24:41]

of them want strong border security why do we know that they say that they say it all the time give me some strong border security what do they also say some of it needs to be wall and some of it needs to be other do you know what that is this is two groups that are in complete agreement they're in complete agreement does Nancy Peli know exactly where to engineer walls and exactly where it would be better to have offense or electronic means no Nancy py is not an engineer she doesn't claim to be an engineer does Donald Trump who does know a lot about construction know a lot about where to build a wall versus where to use electronic means no he does not claim that expertise who knows where to put theall wall and where to put something else Engineers Engineers the solution is these two have to stop arguing about how much is wall and how much is not because they both

[25:43]

and how much is not because they both agreed some needs to be wall where do you put the wall you put the wall where a wall is the most useful way to get the job done where do you not put the wall you not put the wall that's not a sentence but you don't put the wall when where it doesn't make sense in those places you put other is it 75% wall and 25% not or the reverse is it 25% wall and 75% notot do you know who doesn't know the answer to that question Nancy py president Trump they're not Engineers do you know what makes Engineers different from politicians all right probably a lot of of you are Engineers or you know Engineers what is the main thing that makes an engineer different from a
politician facts I would say it more starkly

[26:43]

facts I would say it more starkly Engineers do not lie for a living in fact if you're an engineer and you lie for a living I hope you get fired pretty quickly because you're a bad engineer Engineers are not going to build the RO wrong wall for political reasons that would be very unusual especially if it's a panel you know if you had one engineer maybe you get the wrong one right but if you have a panel of Engineers and you say look here's $5 billion figure out where the wall will be and where it isn't and get going do whatever makes sense come up with a plan and we won't be the engineers cuz I'm not an engineer and I'm not an engineer bam
bam this is what will happen might happen right away it might happen later but there isn't any chance this won't happen this will happen because these two are basically an

[27:44]

because these two are basically an agreement but they can't get past the political problem of looking like somebody won and somebody lost so the solution is some solution in which both can claim complete Victory does this allow them to both uh for both of them to claim total Victory yes it does because do you think president Trump ever wanted to build wall where it was not economical to do so no he never wanted that he wanted plenty of wall that's my own words and the engineers I'm sure would see that he got it suppose the engineers said look we've we've looked at all the options and we have an even better option than a wall and they were credible and they went to the president and said we looked at you allall we looked at these other means electronic and otherwise and the other means are more economical and

[28:44]

other means are more economical and maybe get the job done better what do you say Mr President do you think the president is going to say no I still want a wall even though a panel of Engineers has shown shown me how a wall is the least effective solution for maybe parts of it there is no way that President Trump experienced in construction is going to disagree with the engineers all bet in the history of President Trump's construction business he's never sat with a panel of Engineers who were engineering a building and they said hey if you don't put this column here your building will fall down do you think there's ever a time when President Trump said yeah I hear what you Engineers are saying but put the you know don't put a column there anyway and then the building fell down that happen zero times if you work in construction you listen to the engineers period period there's there's no exception to that you know nobody's going to take that

[29:44]

know nobody's going to take that liability nobody thinks they know more than the engineers if they're not Engineers Nancy Pelosi same story so if they agree to kick it up to a panel of Engineers you should probably try to get some some you know liberals and some conservatives on the panel but I don't even know if that makes a difference because Engineers are not going to engineer a bad solution they're not going to engineer feelings into their design and if they did it would be obvious so they'd have to go back to the drawing board this gives both sides a way to say we got what we want Dem say we don't want more wall than makes sense Bingo Engineers give it to him President says I want all the wall I can get but no more than is Right Bingo Engineers give it to him both parties claim total success get their wall Take 5 billion probably makes sense doesn't have to be exactly that number but that probably is the right amount now now that you've heard

[30:46]

now now that you've heard it can you imagine that it will go can you imagine it will go any other direction now that you've seen this solution do you think it could go any other
say um yeah it's impossible to see this going any other way isn't it and and the weird thing about this is that the parties were already in agreement on the substantive part of it that we need a bunch of money that it should be accommod ation of wall and other things and that the people who are talking about it are not the ones who know what percentage should be wall Pelosi and Trump and Schumer are actually in complete agreement and I would think they are also in complete agreement that they are

[31:47]

also in complete agreement that they are not engineers and should not M be making the exact decision of what's a wall and what's a fence and what's a electronic you know kind of technique
um somebody says I see Dems just digging in all right imagine imagine if you will imagine if you will the president Trump or somebody prominent suggests this plan let's kick it up to the engineers and stop being politicians being Engineers the first person who says that has taken The High Ground all right that's The High Ground I you know I talk about this in Wind bigley whoever takes The High Ground ends the conversation because once you have The High Ground people go oh crap that's The High Ground imagine if you will it doesn't matter who says it first Pelosi or Trump or somebody on their teams whoever says this first has ended the conversation cuz for to disagree with

[32:51]

cuz for to disagree with this is just stupid does anybody would anybody push back on that to disagree with this path feels to everyone who looks at it as stupid now until you've heard this path until it's been described you're you know you're all forgiven for not thinking of it and in fact frankly I didn't think about it until yesterday it took me until yesterday to even think of this and when once you see it now that you've seen it isn't it obvious to you that it's the only way it can go it's the only solution and it's also guaranteed it just took somebody to think of it or to say it and now and now it's impossible that it will go any other direction so it might take a while you know it may may it might be other words it might be maybe not a panel of Engineers but it's going to look something like this all right you know

[33:52]

something like this all right you know one of the one of the things that Americans can agree on there's so much we disagree on right that you know we Americans just love to disagree I I don't know if we're the most disagreeable Nation on Earth if we are I'm proud of it because I think it would be part of the strength but we love to disagree about stuff and there are only a few things that we can completely agree on if you think about it the United States doesn't even agree on let's say respecting the flag you know you think that would be just is basic but you can even get disagreement on that but I'm going to say something that nobody disagrees with are you ready here's the one thing every American agrees with American Engineers are
awesome that's it it's like the one thing everybody in the whole freaking country agrees with American Engineers

[34:55]

country agrees with American Engineers are awesome so let's get some Engineers on the job let's let's get the politicians out of the job of
um uh what's the plan well I just described the
plan yes we got this see the engineers are already on the job they created the Google algorithm they also fixed the Google algorithm um
um apparently so I would say that in the next week you're going to see this idea Bubble Up um this is another good example actually this would be a perfect test case if you ever wanted to be a test case for this concept this would be it so I've said before

[35:58]

so I've said before that the the government of the United States has morphed from a republic to Something in which social media is really in charge because the politicians can't really go against social media it would be too expensive so if social media forms an opinion that's pretty um you know weighted in One Direction the politicians are going to eventually go that way as well and social media is influenced by usually good viral ideas so if this idea has Merit it will grow because the this you know this Launchpad of this Periscope is big enough that it always gets to the right people right so I can guarantee that there are enough people watching this Periscope who just heard this idea and just said holy crap that actually totally solves it and they will either tweet it or mention it or you know

[36:58]

tweet it or mention it or you know retweet it or whatever so if it's a good idea it will grow and if it grows enough it will be impossible for the government to ignore
it um
um and and and so this will be a test because I think you've never seen a more unambiguously better idea that so obviously the solution to this situation if this one doesn't Bubble Up nothing will so this is a perfect test case Engineers have The Knack that's a good call back not everybody knows what that refers to um and it's scalable that is correct is something you could start a small and you could see how it goes as you go so you could build a little bit of fence a little bit of wall a little bit of electronic uh whatever I'm not sure what the electronic fence maybe that would be

[37:59]

the electronic fence maybe that would be the way to talk about it um and you can see which ones work better and then as you continue building you take what you learn from the first Parts you put in and you say ah it looks like the the wall didn't work but the electronic fence did we'll do more of
that um depends on what goal you give the engineers the engineers should only ever be given an objective keep people out at this price keep people out keep people out of the country at a reasonable price all right uh what if the engineers are bleeding heart globalists well I think you would have to ask them before you put them on the panel is it your objective to build a border security or not you know I the the thing with Engineers is they're not good liars and

[39:00]

Engineers is they're not good liars and if you have a panel of Engineers and you get a couple people in there that are Bad actors the other Engineers will will identify them pretty
quickly um what about tunnels well that's what Engineers have to figure out they have to figure out what to do about the tunnels you know one of my ideas was we should uh here's another idea that's not as good as this one so apparently the coyotes charge $5,000 per family or something like that to take people across the border what if we charged a th000 what if we undercut the cartel price and if somebody came here with $1,000 they could have you know they could have spent $5,000 with the coyotes but if they come here with $5,000 maybe we put them on a fast track and give them a job if they pay us $5,000 that would have gone to the coyotes the beauty is that it would starve the cartels uh and it would it would get

[40:03]

cartels uh and it would it would get people into a legal process until and not an illegal process and they would effectively be buying their way to um you know some better process now the better process could simply be they don't get citizenship but they get to work maybe they don't have all the benefits of a citizen but you would essentially be using capitalism to to undercut the cartels and make their business uneconomical while using that $1,000 to pay for the
wall you're welcome yeah and the people who pay us to come in would simply be first in line for the jobs that the illegals would have gotten so the people who pay $5,000 to a coyote first of all they've overpaid because it's $5,000 instead of 1,000 and secondly they're still illegal when they reach the country country but the people who PID the United States $11,000 they don't pay the cartels and

[41:03]

$11,000 they don't pay the cartels and they get into a legal process where they're a legal temporary worker they get their money they earn it back Etc something like that all right that's all I got for now I'm going to go do something else and I will talk to you all later