Episode 2048 Scott Adams - Banks, Cartels, CIA Manipulation, Narrative Poisoning, The Success Reframe
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: ----------- - Banks incentivizing bad behavior - Facebook employees down 25% - US Reaper drones fly over Black Sea? - San Francisco reparations update - RFK Jr. on manipulation of Americans - Things being said about SVB ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to you. I call it the highlight of civilization because it is. It's just better than anything you were doi
View segment →ng anyway. So if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that, I don't know, nobody's ever seen before, well, all you need is a copper mug or a glass or a tall stein, a canteen, your glass, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me n
View segment →ow for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous sip. The thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, but it happens now. Go. Sip it. Sip it. Well, let's talk about all the stories. Would you like to talk about banking? Sorry, I just nodded off there. You know, I was a…
View segment →one place you really want some regulation, in my opinion. Yeah, if you're going to get rid of all regulation and get rid of banking, last you want to keep that one around. Not too much regulation, but you want something. So what would we do? Maybe some kind of a government brake. So the brakes just…
View segment →r. And everything that I care about, my life would be destroyed. I'm gonna do it because the depositors are protected. Maybe that's the actual thinking. I actually saw like an actual adult say that the executives would be disincentivized by what happens with the depositors, as if they would not be…
View segment →nd imagine that those executives would have acted differently if the $250,000 had been a bigger number — come on, that's crazy. Am I wrong? Does anybody disagree? I don't believe there's anybody disagreeing. I don't see any disagreement in the comments that I usually do. Right? That's how poorly man…
View segment →next big thing. So it's a whole bunch of people who are working on stuff that's not the core business because they can make an argument for it and because the budget allowed it. So here's my parallel to that. My first Dilbert experience, kind of when I left the bank and went to the phone company, l…
View segment →anies got dumped during the beginning of the pandemic and I bought in because I thought, oh, this is the best price I'll ever get, turns out Amazon is lower than that. Amazon is lower than before the pandemic at the moment. So that didn't work out. The other one's dead. But the one that I wouldn't e…
View segment →heir territorial zone, but it is a hot war. It's a hot war. If you fly your military assets in and around a hot war, somebody's going to mess with it. So I don't know. I think that's just two countries bumping chests. I didn't see much there for a story. You see, neither side once wants it to escal…
View segment →. Yeah. Once again I'd like to give a public congratulations to Gavin Newsom for one of the best political plays of the year. I've told you before that he, instead of saying no to reparations — well, actually this is more the San Francisco board, but the San Francisco board came up with the recomme…
View segment →t rid of him. And I would say that if you look to the last several years, anybody who was paying attention could see that I could move the dial. How many would agree with that statement that in the realm of politics that I can move the dial? I can actually change people's opinions in a way that's im…
View segment →The newspapers had too much pressure. Newspapers also didn't like me because I criticized the news a lot. And so it was just a news thing. It was just business and there was nothing suspicious here. Very possible. But I can't really conceive of a situation where the CIA wouldn't want to take me out…
View segment →early, but these changes I've made, if you wait five years, well we'll be in good shape then. I've really set this up for the future. No, it's not good now because it's an investment, right? So if Zuckerberg were not the head of his company and he said, all right, Facebook maybe isn't killing it at…
View segment →out. So we don't know. We don't know. All newspapers ended up not being able to run it because my syndication company and then my book publisher canceled me. So that cancels distribution. So they couldn't — newspapers couldn't carry it even if they wanted to. Yeah. So here's this. This is the messa…
View segment →schooling is great only if the parents are well educated. That's probably true although I think that's changing. My understanding is that the homeschool market is now robust enough that you can find videos of good teachers. You know, I think people coordinate to have maybe the smartest parent teach…
View segment →Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to you. I call it the highlight of civilization because it is. It's just better than anything you were doing anyway. So if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that, I don't know, nobody's ever seen before, well, all you need is a copper mug or a glass or a tall stein, a canteen, your glass, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous sip. The thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, but it happens now. Go. Sip it. Sip it.
Well, let's talk about all the stories. Would you like to talk about banking? Sorry, I just nodded off there. You know, I was a banker for a number of years. I started my career as a banker. Thought I'd be a big old banker guy. So I know a little bit about banking. A little bit. So let's talk about Silicon Valley Bank.
Here's something I know that people just figured out. I'm not the one person who knew it. You knew it too. But here it is. When the idea of banks was created and then it evolved into modern banking, it was a good design. And one of the things that was good about it is that even if there was something that looked like a banking weakness, communication among people was so slow that unless you saw a line forming in front of the bank, you couldn't tell there was a bank run. So you wouldn't know to get in on it because you wouldn't even know what was happening. So bank runs were naturally, let's say, prevented just by poor communication.
Suddenly you've got Twitter and the internet. Suddenly not only can you instantly tell people there might be a problem, everybody knows at the same time. That's a big problem. But it's worse. They don't even have to go stand in line. They just pull out their app and say, boop, all my money, move it somewhere else. Boop.
So when you have those two things that went from sort of a little bit difficult to do — find out what's happening with your bank, number one, and two, actually go stand in a long line to get your money out — there was a natural slowdown. So we now have a banking system that was created for slow communication and inefficient withdrawals. And then those two things changed. That's a big problem.
So I would say that social media and banking apps that are just more efficient are actually the risk to the system almost as much as bad decisions and poor risk management. The fact that we have two mismatched systems — our communication system is mismatched with our banking system — that has to get fixed. I don't know exactly what the fix is, but there has to be something that's like, maybe I hate to say government regulation, but banks are heavily regulated for a reason. There's a reason to regulate it, right? That's the one place you really want some regulation, in my opinion. Yeah, if you're going to get rid of all regulation and get rid of banking, last you want to keep that one around. Not too much regulation, but you want something.
So what would we do? Maybe some kind of a government brake. So the brakes just gone. Now, there's an analogy to this whole banking problem that I've been thinking about. Have you ever thought about how unfair it is that if somebody knows to form, let's say, an LLC, limited liability corporation, or a corporation, which takes a lawyer — you have to need a lawyer to do that — if somebody does that little bit of paperwork, they protect themselves individually from all kinds of legal risks and bankruptcy and stuff. But if you don't do that paperwork, you don't have those protections. Does that sound like a good system to you? If you happen to know to do it, you're protected just from some paperwork. And if you didn't know to do it, you wouldn't be protected. That's a terrible system.
Here's a better system. If you're a business, you have all the protections of a corporation. How about that? What's wrong with that? If you're in business, you get all the protections of a corporation. You don't have to do the paperwork. I don't see any problem with that, right?
And how about this for banks? Oh, taking that concept. How about if you're a depositor, the government protects you? How about that? Well, I don't think having limits — I've seen some really bad takes, and it goes like this. If you don't have a $250,000 limit that's really a strict limit and you really stick to it and you never change it, it will incentivize bad behavior.
So let's take this example with Silicon Valley Bank. All right, let's say the Silicon Valley bankers who made the mistakes, let's say that they were aware there was a good chance that even the $250,000 would be guaranteed beyond that if something went wrong. So under those conditions, if those leaders and especially the risk management person said to themselves, well, I thought I was evaluating the risk properly, but you know, all those depositors would be protected, huh? So I guess I don't have that much risk. The only risk would be, let's see, I would lose all of my money. I would lose my reputation forever. It would be dangerous to go outside if I ran into a depositor. And everything that I care about, my life would be destroyed. I'm gonna do it because the depositors are protected.
Maybe that's the actual thinking. I actually saw like an actual adult say that the executives would be disincentivized by what happens with the depositors, as if they would not be disincentivized by losing all of their own money. You don't think that's enough? You don't think that the risk of losing everything — that's what happened to the executives. I mean, they made some money before they lost their jobs, but do you think anybody in the real world who's an executive is thinking to themselves, well, yes, this will definitely destroy my life, but what I really care about is that $250,000 limit and I think the government will protect a little bit more because I did that one time. So I'm going to change everything I'm doing because the depositors — not about my entire life being on the line. It's insane. It's just crazy.
No, no. Changing the amount that's protected for depositors will make no difference to anybody's decision making because they don't give a shit. The whole problem is that the executives didn't care about the depositors. Am I right? The entire problem is that the executives were not working for the benefit of the depositors. They never would. They never will. It's not the real world. People just don't care. They care about their own situation, and that's not going to change.
And to watch actual adults in the real world in 2023 get up there and imagine that those executives would have acted differently if the $250,000 had been a bigger number — come on, that's crazy. Am I wrong? Does anybody disagree? I don't believe there's anybody disagreeing. I don't see any disagreement in the comments that I usually do. Right? That's how poorly managed we are, or that's how capable our leaders are. There were real leaders arguing that point and still are. Still are. That's still a point that's being made by supposedly serious adults. How can they possibly believe that? Crazy.
All right. The other thing we learned about Silicon Valley Bank is that the speed of mass hysterias in general — you know, I'll call it a bank run, a mass hysteria because you're causing the problem by thinking it's a problem. It's a little different than a mass hysteria, but you can see the parallels. So now anything that could have been a mass hysteria before, it becomes one almost instantly because of the speed of communication. So that's a problem, right?
I'm gonna talk about some other perceptual problems, and then it'll be a theme by the time I'm done. So put a pin in that.
Zuckerberg at Facebook, he's cutting 11,000. I guess 11,000 people got cut in November. Another 10,000 being cut. Do you say to yourself, uh oh, how could Facebook possibly continue as a company if they get rid of one out of four employees, which is what it will be when they do this latest round? They will have lost one out of four employees.
Do you know what the experts say? You're not going to notice the difference because the tech companies that were wildly profitable, they end up doing a lot of, let's say, optional stuff. A lot of optional stuff. You know, a lot of people working on the next big thing that doesn't work out, and somebody else is also working on the next big thing. So it's a whole bunch of people who are working on stuff that's not the core business because they can make an argument for it and because the budget allowed it.
So here's my parallel to that. My first Dilbert experience, kind of when I left the bank and went to the phone company, local phone company. It wasn't long after the divestiture from when all the phone companies were owned by AT&T. So once the individual phone companies were created, they got some allocation of capital from what had been the master entity that was very profitable. So it turns out that the company I worked for had big piles of money coming in just because of the divestiture and had nothing to do with their business. There was just vast piles of capital that we had to employ.
How many of the things that we spent that money on were necessary, do you think? Because we realized early on that whatever we established as our budget for the group I was working in, it probably would be sort of the good starting point. So after that capital started trickling out because it wouldn't last forever, we'd have a large budget and then we'd be able to say, hey, we better keep having this large budget. You might have to cut some other things, but look at all these things we're doing. So people were fighting to spend the most budget because that was in their best interest. I'm not making that up. We had conversations about how to overspend and move some expenses into the current year to make sure that our expenses were as high as possible. That was a real thing that happened. Real thing.
Now, do you think that a bank like Silicon Valley Bank, which at one point looked pretty profitable, do you think that all the things they were doing were right on target to their basic? No, they were doing lots of social things and donating money to politics and all that stuff. Facebook, I assume it's the same thing. If you got rid of 25 percent of the workforce, no problem.
How about Twitter? What percentage of Twitter did Elon Musk fire? I don't know the numbers. Like half or something. Does anybody have that percentage? I'm not sure I've seen it exactly. A little technical problem here. Oh no, technical problem on Locals. Looks like Locals is down. I'm gonna reboot Locals, see if that works. Well, we should be one click and back in business. Back in business. Sorry about the technical problem there.
All right, so he says 50 percent. 50 at Twitter. And has anybody noticed that Twitter is worse now? There have been a few technological problems, but I think there always were. Oh, is it 75? Did he get rid of 75 percent? My personal subjective experience is that Twitter is better. I feel it's better. It's got a little more features. I don't know. To me it looks better. And that is not unusual from the Dilbert perspective.
But I think they're hiding the bigger story here. Here's the bigger story on Facebook. Do you know anybody under the age of 18 who uses Facebook? I don't. No, nobody. Now they do use subsets of the corporation. They use Instagram for sure, and they might be using WhatsApp. But actual Facebook, I think the real story here is that Facebook has no potential for the future unless they become an entirely different company, which, to Zuckerberg's credit, is exactly what he's trying to do. He is a good manager, I gotta say. You know, say what you will about him for any political stuff or any other problems you have, but he has proven to be a durable and reliable leader who has a good vision of the future. So I think he can own that. I appreciate him for that. And he stayed out of trouble too. Have you noticed how much trouble Zuckerberg stays out of? He's really, really good at staying out of trouble. You know, you don't notice it because you don't notice the trouble he didn't cause, but he's just really good at not causing any controversies.
However, I think the problem is that if he doesn't make Meta work, Facebook has no future. When all the tech companies got dumped during the beginning of the pandemic and I bought in because I thought, oh, this is the best price I'll ever get, turns out Amazon is lower than that. Amazon is lower than before the pandemic at the moment. So that didn't work out. The other one's dead. But the one that I wouldn't even touch was Facebook. Like I never was even tempted to own Facebook because some of the best advice I got early on was don't get too interested in anything the kids don't want to use because the timer is on. It can't last.
All right. This is just a story about me. This is just about me. So if you'll indulge me, it's sort of a, I don't know, sign of the times sort of thing. But there's some gentleman on Twitter who was really, really mad at me today, but I can't get interested enough to find out why. But he's really, really mad, and he's talking about how people who follow me on Twitter are doing things and that's my fault, I guess. People who follow him on Twitter follow me on Twitter are doing something to him and he doesn't like it. So somehow that's my fault. But I don't even know who he is.
Now, the only thing I know is he may be in the media and may have said something about me, but I wasn't reading any of those stories. Like I don't know what he said. But he reminded me because I said, you know, can you leave me out of this? I don't even know who you are. He was all mad at me for the things I've done to him. I literally didn't even know who he was. That's like a typical day for me.
So I asked him on Twitter, you know, hey, I don't even know what this story is about. Can you leave me out of it? So he tweets that I had once retweeted a deepfake that involved him. And so that was on me because I had retweeted a deepfake that I guess in his mind was not complimentary or something. But when I did, when I retweeted it, I labeled it in the retweet right above it in clear language: there's the AI version. Like I'm calling it out as a deepfake. And he got mad at me for doing that because I guess more people saw it. But I called it out as not real. I mean, I couldn't have been more clear. It was one sentence and it just said that it's the AI version. So I guess I could have been more clear, but he is hella mad.
I just think it's funny that he's so mad at me and I don't even know why. And I'm not incentivized to find out. It just doesn't matter.
All right. There was a Russian jet that messed with one of our Predator — no, what kind of drones? A Reaper drone, I guess. So did you know that the United States was flying Reaper drones over the Black Sea? Well, why were we doing that? Why? I feel like that's direct American involvement in a war zone. I realize I'm supposed to be on the American side here and I am, but why do we do that? And why do we think we can get away with that? Flying American — even though it's a drone, it's unmanned, but it's a major military asset and we're just flying it around Russia's neighborhood. Now, I get that it wasn't in their territorial zone, but it is a hot war. It's a hot war. If you fly your military assets in and around a hot war, somebody's going to mess with it.
So I don't know. I think that's just two countries bumping chests. I didn't see much there for a story. You see, neither side once wants it to escalate, so it won't. You would need at least one side to be willing to escalate, and neither side wants to escalate into some direct confrontation. So I don't even have a problem with Russia knocking that drone down. I guess I had some technique where they tried to fly their jets over it and dump their fuel on it. I'd never heard of that. Is that something they invented on the spot or is that an actual thing, dumping your fuel on the drone? But I guess that didn't work. Then somehow they actually clipped the propeller or something. They clipped something and it went down.
But did they intentionally do it? Do you think they intentionally put their jets so close to it that it clipped it and it hurt the drone more than it hurt the jet? You say yes. I can't imagine being brave enough to knock down a drone with my plane and hope that I would get back okay. And that doesn't sound right to me. It sounds like maybe they were getting close to do something else and maybe hit it accidentally. I don't know. Or maybe the drone closed the gap and it wasn't the jet. It's possible the drone went after the jet, which would be dumb. But maybe they thought, well, let's just bump this jet and see what happens. I don't know. None of it I think will become anything big.
You see the New York Times was talking about how DeSantis is now saying he's not crazy about defending Ukraine and then it's a territorial dispute. Now this would put DeSantis in the same bucket as Trump. Trump was already there being not crazy about this war. And as the New York Times put it, if you put the support of Trump plus DeSantis together, 75 percent of Republicans, at least the leaders of 75 percent of Republicans — given that people like different leaders — out of Ukraine, 75 percent.
But here's what's missing in the conversation. I don't think Trump or DeSantis can describe what it looks like if we leave. And without that, it's not a real opinion. It's just a political opinion. Sounds good, sounds good to the base. But what would it look like? How in the world would you not expect the Ukrainian people to be crushed by Russia? You've got to be able to say that out loud. See, if you can't say that out loud, you don't belong in the conversation.
I like the Willie Brown statement on that. Yeah, if you're not willing to say we should get out of there and I fully understand that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people will be crushed by this and I fully understand that it would look like America is backing away from a fight and I fully understand that it could embolden Russia — but we don't know, we don't know, but it could embolden them — that would be a greater risk. And it might give them a recovery time to get their energy dominance back over Europe because you can imagine the Europeans would start signing deals again. Am I wrong? Yeah, they would just start signing deals again as soon as the war was over.
So we'd have to understand that getting out of Ukraine means giving everything back, crushing Ukraine, having wasted our money, wasted a reputation, wasted all those lives. Now, it still might be the best idea. It sounded like I said to you, so don't do it. I didn't say that because I don't know what the best idea is. But I know that I don't want to follow a leader who can't describe it. Just describe your plan.
Here's my plan. We pull out in six months. Russia will definitely wipe out Ukraine. You know, they'll fight boldly but lose in the long run. Then the Ukrainians will maybe be starved like the Holodomor and certainly the older leaders will be executed that we've had over here. And you know, we're pretty happy with Zelenskyy, but he'd obviously be tortured and executed. And just describe it. Now if you can say that directly to the American people and then say, and we should still do it, we should still do it because the alternative is even worse, that's somebody I would believe. That's somebody I could follow. That would be a real leader. Tell us the truth and I can handle the hard truth. I can handle that. I can't handle half a truth. I can't handle an obvious lie. But if DeSantis or Trump could give us the actual truth — here's what it looks like and it's really, really gonna suck for these people but we need to do it — I'll listen to that. I'm not preconvinced, but I'm going to listen to that.
But I'm not going to listen to, oh, we shouldn't be there. Oh, we shouldn't be there is just that's for public consumption. That has nothing to do with policy. That's just for — do you think that if DeSantis became president tomorrow he could actually pull the trigger and start pulling people out? No, it would take about a minute and a half for the what he called the military-industrial complex to own him. Take about a minute and then he'd be like, oh, well, we definitely want to phase out but not so quickly. You know, we have to do it right. So it might take two years, which coincidentally is exactly the amount of time the war would have taken on its own. So I think it would instantly turn into we got to do what we're already doing because it's too late to turn back. I think that's the truth. I think it's too late to turn back. Might be, but we'll see.
Yeah. Once again I'd like to give a public congratulations to Gavin Newsom for one of the best political plays of the year. I've told you before that he, instead of saying no to reparations — well, actually this is more the San Francisco board, but the San Francisco board came up with the recommendations. So here's what they came up with. Huh. I was going to try to read it without laughing, but I don't know that I could do that.
So the reason it's brilliant is that when you ask the people who were in favor of reparations to come back with a detailed plan, you can know in advance that the detailed plan will just be laughable. Like actually just laughable. And then you don't have to be the person who's against reparations. You're the person who tried to get a committee to come up with a plan. Well, it's not your fault if the committee came up with a laughable plan that nobody would possibly implement. That's not your fault. So Gavin Newsom for the win.
Here's the plan that the committee came up with. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors met Tuesday — this is from Fox News site — in official discussions on the reparations with five million dollar payments on the table for every eligible Black adult in the city. Oh no, I'm not done. I'm not done. The board expressed unanimous support for reparations during the meeting even after Stanford University Hoover Institution calculated that the proposal would cost non-Black families in the city at least $600,000 each.
Members of the San Francisco board also expressed interest in other forms of reparations because that's not enough for the city's roughly 50,000 Black residents, including a guaranteed annual income of $97,000 a year for 250 years. For 250 years. Each person. Well, what is the average lifespan of a Black resident of San Francisco? I know they must — I think they live longer there, probably to a thousand, but anyway. $97,000 for 250 years. And wait, hold on. And a home that they would purchase for one dollar for a family. One dollar.
So they want one dollar home purchases. Now since the person selling the home obviously has to be compensated, you would have to add the roughly, I don't know, what's a home in San Francisco, a million dollars, two million dollars. So you'd have to add a million dollars to each Black family, say. So the $600,000 per non-Black resident that they have to pay, you have to jack that up. In other words, maybe $100,000 to buy all the homes, but also to pay the annual $97,000 for 250 years. Well, probably each non-Black resident, maybe a million dollars. Maybe a million dollars per non-Black resident as their fee to pay for the fact that none of them have anything to do with slavery.
All right. Well, I'd like to double down on something that got me in trouble and say that as I tweeted, I don't want to spend time near any cluster of white people who have been poisoned by wokeness narratives. Is that racist? Is it racist to say I don't want to be near any cluster of white people who have that mindset? Now I don't think I would have been canceled for saying that, would I? No, super racist, super racist. But it does not include conservatives. Like white conservatives, great. And by the way, Black conservatives, love them. You know, I don't even know if I've ever seen a Black conservative who wasn't doing well. Have you? Is it my imagination or is it every time I have any encounter with a Black conservative, younger, older, they seem to have done okay? Like they have jobs and families usually and like all the things you'd imagine signify some kind of personal success.
So I think when I got in trouble, my hyperbole disguised the fact that I was talking about a mindset, not anything genetic. Was there any of you who misunderstood my comments about the context of staying away from — I won't say it again out loud — but people who have a mindset that you're the problem? Why would you want to be around people whose mindset is you're the problem? Did anybody figure out when I said hey, Black Americans are being poisoned largely by white people to believe that white people are the problem, why would you want to be around that? Literally nobody disagreed with the idea. It's just that it's racist.
So I'll say the same thing about white people. White people who are in a Democrat cluster, I'm sure there are some of them that are just great. Even I'm sure there's some progressives who are actually just great people, have a little bit different opinion. I don't mind them, of course. And of course I'd judge everybody individually because you have to. It's the only smart thing to do. Judge people individually. And when I say judge people individually, that's not a race frame. Have I ever explained that? When I say I'm adamant about every individual must be treated as an individual, not a race, not a religion, that's based on math. That's not based on any racial anything. That's a personal success math-based strategy. The more people you have access to, the more successful you will be. It's called networking. Those are the people who offer you jobs. So it's about mindset and it's not about race. It never was about race. It was never about race. But my hyperbole quite intentionally made it look that way.
All right. RFK Jr. was on video recently. I was listening to him and he reminds us that before Obama's presidency, it was illegal for the CIA to manipulate the minds of Americans. They could do it in other countries, but it was illegal for them to try to brainwash Americans. Obama changed that and made it legal again to brainwash Americans.
So do you think that he made it legal just in case anybody ever wanted to? Or do you think that the CIA immediately said, whoa, we better immediately start a department to manage the opinions of Americans? Well, if you've learned nothing from what I've taught you about the Dilbert kind of organizations, the moment it was legal you should assume that somebody at the CIA said, you know what, if you were to give me a promotion and a budget, I could run the department that is in charge of this and we won't go wild. We'll only use it when it's necessary for public safety, for example. Maybe we'll stop a bank run. How about that? Maybe we'll stop a bank run. That would be good. I wouldn't mind that. Would you mind if you found out later that the CIA had somehow managed our minds to stop a bank run? Some say they would mind. I respect that opinion. Yeah, some will say they mind. Others would say, you know what, under that specific situation I'd rather they stepped in. And I think both could be supported. I think smart people could be on both sides of that question.
But does it make you wonder? Now let me ask you this. Do you think the CIA totally said this isn't our thing? Or do you think the CIA said, oh, this is exactly our thing. We got to stop this bank run. And if the CIA wanted to stop a bank run, how would they do it? Well, what would be the tools they would employ? Well, what they would use is people. People who were willing to do what they asked them to do. So they would go to newspapers and they would go to networks and various, but they would also make sure that they got some prominent voices that were persuasive to say what they wanted to say.
Did you see a number of prominent voices that were on the side of controlling the bank run and taking care of it? Well, you did. Now I'm not saying that they were CIA influenced. I'm saying that's how they would do it, which is different from any individual being part of that. So I'm not making an accusation about any individual. I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised. Oh, somebody says me. No, no. Nobody contacted me.
Well, that's a good point. If nobody contacted me. But would people think that I was pro-CIA or a critic of the CIA? How would you interpret my public work as a critic of intelligence agencies? 50 members of whom signed the laptop from hell disinformation. Well, somebody says I'm both and that's fair. Yeah, I'm both because I think we need the CIA, but clearly if you look at the behavior of our intelligence organizations in the last several years, they do seem weaponized against us and they do seem politicized. So I've been saying that for a long time.
All right. So here's my question to you. If the CIA had the legal ability to manage public minds and brainwash people, would they act against their critics? Do you think the CIA would act to minimize their critics? Some say yes, because it's legal. It would be legal to protect their own brand if they could argue that that was good for the country. Oh yeah, we don't want the CIA to be dismantled. That would keep the country in a weak state. So we'll manipulate people into thinking we're awesome. And one of the ways we do that might be to get rid of our critics.
Do you remember when the newspapers canceled me but suspiciously only Democrats seem to be really, really angry? Whereas conservatives, once they heard the context I was talking about, conservatives almost to a person said he shouldn't be canceled for that. Even if they didn't like it, even if they thought I was over the line or too offensive, pretty much conservatives said, you know, still it's not cancelable in their opinions. And pretty much it was just Democrats versus Republicans in the end.
So my first take on this was that it was really political, meaning that the newspapers wanted to get rid of me and anybody who was a Democrat wanted to get rid of him. And I would say that if you look to the last several years, anybody who was paying attention could see that I could move the dial. How many would agree with that statement that in the realm of politics that I can move the dial? I can actually change people's opinions in a way that's important, right? So the Locals people mostly say yes. They're a little bit ahead of the — yeah, you see yeses here.
Now those of you who don't agree, like there's some nos, right? So those of you who say no, the only point I'm going to make is look at all the yeses. So I'm not going to say I am or am not influential. I'm just going to say look at the yeses. If the public thinks I'm influential, do you think the CIA thinks so? Do you think the CIA hasn't noticed me? Do you think the CIA, who is an expert on persuasion, doesn't know exactly what I can do and what I can't do? Of course they do. They know exactly how much influence I have and which direction I'm likely to push it. It is not necessarily in their favor.
And then the newspapers canceled me. How many newspapers did it take to create the run on newspapers? It's like a run on banks. Like if the first few newspapers say we must cancel you — let's say the Washington Post. Washington Post was the second big paper. If the Washington Post cancels me, do you think these smaller papers can keep me in the pages? Nope. It really only took the Washington Post because once they took a stand, the other papers just sort of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the Washington Post is a newsmaker. They decide what is true for the smaller newspapers.
So how much would the CIA have to tweak a knob to get rid of me as a public figure? They needed one editor in one place to write an editorial and say cancel this guy. That's all it would take. One editor in one place. Do you think the newspapers did this on their own because they couldn't? I'm not saying they didn't. It's entirely possible. It's just what you thought. It was public complaint. The newspapers had too much pressure. Newspapers also didn't like me because I criticized the news a lot. And so it was just a news thing. It was just business and there was nothing suspicious here. Very possible.
But I can't really conceive of a situation where the CIA wouldn't want to take me out and they have the ability. It's one phone call. One phone call cancels me worldwide. Now, do you think that I will have as much influence after being canceled? What do you think? Will I have as much influence after being canceled? Well, it would be a good bet that I would go away like Roseanne, right? If you were going to bet, you'd bet, okay, it's going to be a Roseanne situation. You know, he might come back in five years or something, but basically he's off the field for the next election cycle.
Somebody says this is not an issue for the CIA. Let me tell you why it is. The CIA does want to protect its own power and its own mission and I'm a critic. It's pretty straightforward. If people don't try to get rid of their critics when they can, I don't know. I wouldn't understand the CIA if they couldn't act on things that they thought were important. So I'm not going to make a claim that the CIA decided to cancel me. I'm going to make the following claim. It would look just like this. It would look exactly like this. And you wouldn't be able to know.
Now the problem is not me because, you know, I know some people say when I talk about my situation it's whining or complaining. I'm not whining or complaining. I'm just describing. My life is fine. I'm in a good place. I don't have a problem in the world, right? But you should know that you can't tell what stories are real anymore. If the CIA decides that's your narrative, well that's your narrative in the news. Will they only have to get a few news people to say it's true and then it's a big story everybody's talking about? So if you thought it was hard for the CIA or anybody else to change the entire narrative or to take on a person, it's not. It's one phone call. It's just one phone call. That's it. You can change the whole narrative. Which doesn't mean they're doing it. It's just that they could.
All right. Rasmussen did a poll on designating the cartels as terrorist organizations. It turns out 79 percent of likely U.S. voters are in favor of designating the Mexican drug cartels as a serious threat to the United States. Who would disagree with that? I mean, seems obvious, right? See, let me see. We disagree. Okay, well 20 percent strongly disagree with that. 20 percent. But then there's another 10 percent that are not sure. So let's say the 10 percent that are not sure, if they found out a little more they could go either way. Unless it's one sort of a coin flip. So take half of them and add it to the 20. Oh yeah, that would be 25 percent are not in favor of it. Huh. Very surprising. Very surprising. I don't know.
I wonder how many of the people who said they wanted to designate them as a terrorist organization, how many of them know that that guarantees military action? I'm not sure if the people answering the poll knew that they were voting for war. They're voting for a hot war. They sort of favor that. Now I do. I'm in favor of a hot war. A limited one. I mean one that just goes after the bad guys. But I can say that loud.
All right. Here's a shift in the narrative that I'm seeing and you can decide if I have anything to do with this, right? So your assignment will be, as I mentioned a few different related stories, to see if anything that happened to me recently allows people to talk this way in public. In other words, have I had any impact accidentally on broadening the discussion zone? Things you can say out loud.
Here are some things that people are saying out loud, which I'm not agreeing with. This is important. These are not things I agree with. The point is people are saying it out loud. That the problem with Silicon Valley Bank was a diversity hire. Now as people point out, you know, most of the leadership was white men, but the person in charge of risk management may have been a diversity, let's say, influenced hire. Now I'm not going to say that that was why the person got hired. I'm just saying that that's the conversation. And I don't know that we would have had that conversation out loud before. And the out loud part is, okay, we should at least look at whether this was caused by a diversity hire. We should look at it. People are saying that out loud. I don't think you could say that out loud, I don't know, a month ago. It seems like you couldn't say that.
Here's another one. The report is that Southwest Airlines has consciously decided to reduce the risk or reduce the safety to get more diversity in their pilots. That's actually being spoken about out loud and in the news. That your plane might go down because of diversity hiring. Now again, this is not my opinion. My only point is that it's now a conversation. People are actually saying this out loud now.
And then the third one. Joe Rogan, I just saw he was saying on his show that he'd vote for Trump over Biden because Biden's just an empty shell of a human at this point. But he pointed out that the Biden administration couldn't even hire good people because he used Sam Brinton as the, you know, the cross-dressing bag-stealing guy, used him as an example of somebody who clearly in Joe's opinion was a diversity hire and clearly could not have been the best choice. The implication is there was a better choice.
So again, I have no opinion on whether Sam Brinton was brilliant at his job. He could have been. I mean, there's no smoking gun in my opinion that says that any of these people are less qualified. There's no smoking gun. But it is part of the conversation now and it should be because it might have mattered. Like it might be true that Sam Brinton is purely a diversity hire.
Now why do I say that? Let me explain to you everything about every big organization. Here's the thing. In any big organization, whether it's business or government, it is better to appear woke because everyone can observe it right away. You can see it. How many people of color do you have on your board? How many people did you hire? What is your diversity? It's just obvious. But that's more important to look woke because people can see it compared to being competent, which is often invisible.
Do you know what happens if you're good at your job? Nobody notices because there are no problems, right? If the risk manager at Silicon Valley Bank had done everything right, you would never even have known that was a bank. I literally never heard of that bank. I'd never heard of it. The only reason we're even talking about it is that somebody was not competent. But we don't know if that's because of a diversity hire. That would be a leap. That's not an evidence.
But here's what you can know for sure. Managers being managers and leaders being leaders, they will choose to look good compared to performing well. Does anybody disagree with that? If they have to choose. Now the first choice we all say is but Scott, but Scott, you can do both. You can have great diversity hires and you can have great performance. There's no conflict at all. I'm not saying there's a conflict. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the managers don't care if there's a conflict. They're going to manage to what you can see. They're not going to manage to a long-term output that you can't determine if it's because of who they hired or not, right?
The Silicon Valley Bank is a perfect example. There are people saying, oh, this might have been the diversity hire problem. But there will always be people who say reasonably there's no direct link. There's no direct link. It's really about interest rates and the environment and whatever. So managers will always manage to that which can be confirmed by everybody. The things you can see and it will never manage to the things that can't be proven. The things that can't be proven, you can manage those by the way you talk about it.
This is the same reason that a new leader likes to come in and then change all the metrics and the departments because what it does is it erases the past and so you can't be compared to what you've done before. Because once you've reorganized, all the measurements of who's doing what are now obsolete. So you erase the past and then you say the new things we're doing, yeah they're not paying off now. Of course it's early, but these changes I've made, if you wait five years, well we'll be in good shape then. I've really set this up for the future. No, it's not good now because it's an investment, right?
So if Zuckerberg were not the head of his company and he said, all right, Facebook maybe isn't killing it at the moment but look what I'm doing with Meta. Right? Meta is Zuckerberg's way of saying we're doing something good that you can see. Hey, look at this. Pictures of us in Meta. Hey, look at these goggles that you wear. Hey, it's all visual and it diverts you from the fact that their core business doesn't have a future because young people don't use it.
So you see this effect everywhere all the time. It's universal. It's every company, every organization. Managers manage to what can be seen and easily agreed upon by observers, especially their bosses but also the public. So it's not a case — and this is where everybody will go wrong — it's not a case of there are not enough diversity hires. That might also be the case. Might also. And that would be systemic racism, blah blah blah. But if you have a situation where everybody has to have a high number of diversity hires and everybody's scrambling for the same limited pool of people, in theory and in practice you will always get lower performance. Not because the people are bad but because the managers will manage to the look, not the reality.
Does that — am I clear enough about that distinction? There could also be a question that there just aren't enough. You know, the limited pool of who everybody wants to hire because everybody's looking at the same pool of people. It might just be a shortage of people. That would give you a terrible result too. But you don't even need that. Those people could all be better than everybody else and the fact that people are managing to the look still gets you to a bad place every time. So it's a Dilbert problem.
And I would summarize it this way. I'd say that wokeness is a good goal that became a bad system. I would, on top of what I've said already, every good idea gets ruined by exaggerating it to absurdity. Let me give you a concept. Are taxes a good idea? No, some absolutes say no, no taxes. I think taxes are a good idea because it allows you to fund the military. Yeah, fund the military. But are the current level of taxes good? No, it's too much. Everything that's good in small amounts will eventually be ruined by people who have figured out how to make money by taking it too far, right?
When I say that the base idea of woke is a good goal, I got a lot of pushback. But here's what I mean. On day one, on day one it was a good idea. By day three it was already ruined. On day one it looked like, you know, wouldn't it be great if we treated everybody with the same level of respect? And that's what I think wokeness is at its base. To which I say yes. Yes, on board. Everybody should be treated as their own individual and respect them totally unless their individual performance says otherwise. Absolutely.
But as soon as you go from treat everybody with respect and oh, and by the way I'd like to be called by these pronouns, to which I also say okay. You know, don't judge me if I get it wrong, but I like calling people what they like to be called. It's just polite. And next thing you know, white people are hired last. Like we immediately went from treat everybody with respect to everyone except white people. That's where we are now. It's literally just anti-white now.
Does that mean it was always a bad idea? No, no. It's like everything else. Everything starts as a good idea. It just turns to shit when it gets extended by the grifters and the media. Like everybody's got to talk about it. They've got to signal. They've got to be on that team. And actually, you know, Drew Barrymore is underneath in front of a trans activist on her show. That was big news today. And I think that was a trivial, trivial news bit. But yeah, everything goes too far.
So here's what I'm going to do for the world. If you've been watching me for a while, if you've read my past books, you know that I always talk about systems being better than goals and you know that I like to reframe things. So I'm going to show you the first draft of my four-page PowerPoint presentation. The title of it, I think you can see it there. I'll read it. The racism mindset and the success mindset. Choose one.
Now I could just go home after the title page because that's the whole story. They're incompatible. They're incompatible. The racism mindset or the entire topic has lots of good historical things we should all know. So in terms of information it's pretty good. I like the information. But if you make it your focus and you build your systems around looking backwards, you're doing everything that's the opposite of what successful people do. And I'll detail that on this page.
So on one column — I showed you an earlier version of this. I'm just refining it because I think it's important. So on one column you've got the things that racism cares about. Equity. Well, I'll just read it to you. Equity, focusing on the past injustices, systemic racism, reparations, dividing people by race. That's the racism mindset. Does that turn things into oppressor and victim model? Resentment. Resentment of current people for not doing enough as well as old, you know, the long dead. And then the racism mindset is basically could be summarized as I can't because I can't succeed because racism. I can't get this job because racism. So it's a can't because philosophy.
Now the success mindset has a direct or pretty direct — sometimes a little indirect but correlation — where what you would do for success would be instead of focusing on equity you would say how about winning? How about winning? Have you ever heard anybody in the success industry like somebody who really knows about how to do success have you ever said if you work hard you could be average? You know, if you put your muscles into it and your brains and you work hard you could be as good as other people. That's ridiculous. Any success mentor will tell you why aren't you trying to win? If everybody tries to win and we're playing by fair rules and we're not breaking any laws, the whole society is better. Just everybody try to win. That works.
How about focusing on the past versus focusing on the future? If you want to be successful you have to focus on the future. It's not optional. Nobody ever got successful just thinking about the past. Or how about systemic racism? It's a real thing. You can't forget about it. Can't ignore it. But if you have a success mindset you're not thinking about what's stopping you. You're thinking optimistically. Nothing can stop me. Oh, your problem is systemic racism? No problem. That won't stop me. Oh, your problem is that you're short. Let's say you're a man and you're short. No problem. I'll work with that. I'll make that work. Your problem is that you're less healthy or maybe you're disabled. No problem. I'll make that work. Yeah, I can make that work.
So the success mindset is all about the problems won't stop you. The racism mindset is all about the racism did stop you. It did and it's going to keep stopping you. So that's what your brain should focus on.
The cleanest one is reparations. Reparations is you owe me something. Whereas the success mindset is what can you do for other people? And also reciprocity. If you're Jeff Bezos, talk about Amazon, right? What made Amazon work? He says an obsessive focus on the customer. Did that work out for Amazon? Yeah. I use Amazon specifically because I can feel their obsessive focus on the customer. You can feel it. It's like it's like an actual feeling, right? Everything from the one-click shopping to how easy it is to reorder things. It is insanely customer focused. And that's Jeff Bezos. That's all Jeff Bezos. He is forcing them to be customer focused and probably there's a big problem when they're not. My guess is that you probably get fired if you lose that focus for a minute. Now that's a winner's attitude.
But looking at things as reparations, you owe me, is a short-term strategy at best. The racism mindset divides people by race. But if you're in a success mindset you're playing the odds. Why would you limit yourself to part of the public by thinking that some people are against you? Stay away from these people, whatever. Network is you try to meet as many people as you can from wherever might come in handy.
Of course the racism mindset is about resentment. And how does that work if you're trying to find a mentor? Imagine you're a young Black person. You're trying to make it in the world. You're in a big company and you'd like to find a mentor because everybody would like it. It's good to have a mentor. But most of them are white. What do you do if you have resentment toward white people for racism? It's going to be harder to get a mentor because I think that resentment is going to come through pretty quickly. Like people are going to notice. Yeah, you can't really hide it. It would come out in your language and the things you focus on, et cetera.
And then the can't because it turns into the can-do mindset with success. So that's the list. I think you should be at least at the very least you should agree that the lists don't line up. Would you agree? Would you agree that the racism mindset the way it's being used in America is opposite of the success mindset? That's the thing that bugs me the most. And part of what is misunderstood about me is that I'm coming from everything from a success filter, not a race filter. But if you come from that filter it can be really jarring. It can be jarring to somebody who's in the other filter. It's very jarring, as we learned.
But I should also say that you don't want to ignore history. You want to teach the history, of course. But don't focus on it. You should focus on strategies for the future. It's just a focused question. Don't forget that.
And then here's the kill shot. All right, I'll read these but you can see it's just three points. The kill shot is the persuasive dagger that I'm gonna put into some people reading this. Here's the dagger. A child who learns the tools and strategies of success will do better in life than one who is taught to see life as a racist struggle. How does that feel? How does that feel? Yeah, you're killing your kids by teaching them the wrong frame. You're just ruining their lives and you know it. You can't argue with it because nobody's going to argue that ignoring the tools and strategies of success to focus on race struggle is a good strategy. Literally no one would believe that. And yeah, we're doing it. So that's the dagger there.
Here's some explanation. Point two. The media, race grifters, well-meaning teachers — see I'm not insulting teachers but well-meaning teachers — and professional activists are poisoning race relations and destroying the future of Black American kids by teaching them a losing mindset. Do you think the Asian American kids are learning to focus on race or are they learning to focus on building a talent stack which is central to success? Maybe they're focused on staying out of jail and not doing drugs, which are essential to success right now. We got to stop pretending that every culture is being raised with useful mentoring messages. It's just not happening. Some of the cultures are getting useful mentoring success-related messages and the Black culture is being poisoned into thinking there's a reason that's going to hold them back and nothing's going to change it. That's what they're taught.
And I would imagine that the progressive white part of the population is taught the same thing so they would be on board with that. But it doesn't matter as much that progressive whites buy into that frame because it's not them. It's not them. They're probably going about their own lives however they want. But I'm watching something that looks like a Black holocaust. With you know obviously that's hyperbole. I'm looking at something that's a disaster for Black Americans and I don't think they're doing it to themselves. I believe that white America is allowing the situation that is the current situation. To me it looks like the media assigns people's opinions and the media is still controlled by white people. So if we have these opinions it's because somebody told the left and the right what to think largely and then they adopted those opinions. And those opinions are not coming mostly from Black people, right? It wasn't Black people who canceled me. I had zero cancellations from anybody Black. Zero. It was all white people.
So I don't see the blame being squarely on anybody in Black America. I see the teachers unions being evil and they're a mixture of everything. I see white Americans creating the situation that's not good for anybody. And I think the only people who can save themselves are Black Americans because if Black Americans rely on white people to help them with their reparations they're going to get the Gavin Newsom treatment. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we'd love to help you. How about you do a committee and come back with your recommendations on reparations, huh? And then I'm helping. Look at me being supportive. Good, good going there. I'm so supportive. No. Only Black Americans can help Black America.
And if you think that I'm talking about like white tricks for success, no. It's what all Black successful people do. It's what all white successful people do. It's all the same. Look to the future. Be optimistic. Use some gratitude. Have reciprocity. Just basic stuff. Build a talent stack. Stay out of jail. Have systems over goals. There's like 12 things you have to learn. It'll take you 20 minutes to learn all 12 of them, right? It would take you 20 minutes to learn all the techniques of success. 20 minutes and then you're good to go. There will still be lots of racism but you'll cut through it like a hot poker through butter.
And then my final statement here to close down is the reason no one told you this before is because there is a high social penalty for doing so. There's a high social penalty for being honest on this topic. I don't know if you know anybody who had that issue. Now my problem was not the honesty. It was the hyperbole. The honesty part everybody was okay with. But I did cause a little trouble more than I thought by a little extra hyperbole. But I was, as you know, the people who have watched me use this pattern before, they know that I was causing trouble to draw a fire. I didn't think I'd draw that much. It was a calculated risk. I knew there was a risk. So that's why I'm not complaining. The reason I'm not complaining is because I intentionally did something with a high risk that I had in my opinion a potential high reward for the country, not for me. And maybe it didn't work out so far. I'm pretty happy with how things are turning out. So we don't know. We don't know.
All newspapers ended up not being able to run it because my syndication company and then my book publisher canceled me. So that cancels distribution. So they couldn't — newspapers couldn't carry it even if they wanted to. Yeah. So here's this. This is the message that I plan to die on this hill. And I'm going to die on the hill that all the ESG, CRT, DEI are crushing the chances for Black American success. And because they are such an important part of my country, that's bad for me, right? It's bad for me when Black Americans don't do well. That's bad for me. And that's why I've put so much attention in trying to fix that specific situation.
But maybe the CIA took me out for political reasons. Maybe the Democrats took me out for political reasons. The only thing I know is that the conservative part of the country understands this message completely. True or false? Most of you are lean right if you're watching this even though I don't — yeah, every one of you is agreed. Every one of you is agreed. Look at the comments. Absolutely zero pushback. I got canceled for this. This is the way I did it so it's my own damn fault.
But look at the bigger picture. Was canceling me good for Black America? Well let me ask you this question. Was canceling me good or bad for Black America? Because this is what I'm bringing, right? This is what I'm praying. This is my offer. It's free, right? And by the way you don't need to buy it in my books. Like I have a book that I think is good. You can't buy it at the moment because it's canceled. But if you could buy it it would just be one of the things you could do. I'm proposing that the tools of success are so widely available you can just Google it. You could pick up a different book. You could ask somebody who's successful. I don't care where you get it. That's the unimportant part.
So that's why I'm interested in working on homeschooling because I think you could make a difference in the curriculum by just introducing a module about personal success. And a module about personal success if you could do it well I think would guarantee the homeschoolers outperformed everybody else. They probably already do but it would just make it clean.
And I would make a following bet that if you gave me a group of randomized Black Americans or even poor — let's say low income so they're randomized except they're all low income — and you compare that to a randomized group of white kids and you say Scott, you're going to work with the randomized group of Black kids. You're going to teach them the tools of success that work for everybody. And then the white kids will just be the control group. They're just taught at regular education. Come back in 20 years. Who's making more money? I guarantee it's my group. I guarantee it. You should place a very large bet on that. If the group that has the tools of success does well, I would do it.
I could probably make a web series. A web series teaching the rules of success. The trouble is I don't know if people are watching videos that are longer than 30 seconds. So if I did it it would be a series of 30-second reels. It's probably the only way to do it. Yeah, because kids aren't going to read it. You can turn it into a course for a teacher and then the teacher could work with the kids. But for mass communication it's hard to reach kids. You need something really simple. Yeah. I'm trying not to say TikTok because I want TikTok to go away.
Homeschooling is great only if the parents are well educated. That's probably true although I think that's changing. My understanding is that the homeschool market is now robust enough that you can find videos of good teachers. You know, I think people coordinate to have maybe the smartest parent teach a few of them or something. I think they're finding workarounds. But you're true. But it's true if the parents aren't starting with a good basis of knowledge it's going to be harder. Charter schools. Yeah, I'm in favor of all of those alternative schooling things.
All right, that's all I got for you today. Stevie, we'll talk about how the bell curve is for suckers. Actually I'll do it right now. Anytime I have this kind of conversation somebody says bell curve or bell curve and you know what that means. The idea is that the racially let's say provocative members of the white community think that that's the whole explanation.
Here's why I disagree. Most people are average. That's my whole argument. I'm only talking about average people. If it's true that there are more white people who are genius scientists, how does that affect you and me? Suppose it's true. Suppose there's a bunch of freaks who are white that are so smart, you know they're the quantum physicists and stuff. Suppose that's true. What does that have to do with the guy who walks in for the job in your company? Nothing. Nothing. It doesn't tell you anything about an individual. The fact that there might be some freakishly smart people in one group doesn't excuse the average. It isn't there now.
All right. So my point is you're talking about the exceptions now. How about Black America? Do they have an unusual number of people who because of poverty and even low nutritional stuff — is there anything that's skewing that average? Probably, right? But if the average person, you know the people in let's say the 80 percent bulk of both the white and the Black population, if anybody in that middle 80 percent of white or Black comes into your office for an interview and they have roughly similar credentials, you can't tell them apart. You have no idea who's going to be good on the job. Nobody can do that. It's just not a thing, right? There it's because the middle is just the middle. The geniuses that may have been skewing it and the people who don't have any job and never will were skewing it in another group. They're not the people we're talking about, right? They're just not the people.
So when you tried to deal with — if you're using an average to decide how to deal with an individual, that's just nonsense. There may be some use for that information but I think it's overused. So I reject it as useful, right? I'm not rejecting it as I don't know if the science is measuring the right thing or not. I don't know how much IQ is really telling you about success. I mean it's highly correlated but there may be other things that are correlated that are sort of obscuring the real thing going on. So those are all interesting topics. But when you're talking about personal success it's about the person standing in front of you. It's not about anybody's average. It's the person standing in front of you.
All right, that's all for now. YouTube, I'm going to talk to Locals people a little bit more. Best live stream you've seen today. Join me tomorrow.
uh good morning everybody and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to you I call it the highlight of civilization because it is it's just better than anything you were doing anyway so if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that I don't know nobody's ever seen before well all you need is a copper mug or a glass of technical Stein a canteen Jokers Alaska vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to tell you the thing makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip but it happens now go save it save it well let's talk about all the stories would you like to talk about banking sorry I just I nodded off there you know I was a banker for a number of years I started my career as a banker thought I'd be a big old Banker guy so I know a little bit about banking a little bit so let's talk about Silicon Valley Bank so here's something I know that people just figured out I'm not the one person who knew it you knew it too but here it is when the idea of banks you know was created and then it evolved into you know modern banking it was a good design and one of the things that was good about it is that even if there was something that looked like a banking weakness communication among people was so slow that unless you saw a line forming in front of the bank you couldn't tell there was a bank run so you wouldn't know to get into in on it because you wouldn't even know what was happening so Bank runs were naturally let's say prevented just by poor communication suddenly you've got Twitter and the internet suddenly not only can you instantly tell people there might be a problem everybody knows at the same time that's a big problem but it's worse they don't even have to go stand in line they just pull out their app and say Boop all my money move it somewhere else Boop so when you have those two things that went from sort of a little bit difficult to do find out what's happening with your bank number one and two actually go stand in a long line to get your money out there was a natural slowdown so we now have a banking system that was created for slow communication and inefficient withdrawals and then those two things changed that's a big problem so I would say that social media and banking apps that are just more efficient are actually the risk of the system you know almost as much as bad decisions and you know poor risk management the the fact that that we have two mismatched systems our communication system is mismatched with our banking system that has to get fixed I don't know exactly what the fix is but there has to be something that's like maybe I hate to say government regulation but banks are heavily regulated for a reason there's a reason to regulate it right that that's the one place you really want some regulation in my opinion yeah if you're going to have if you're going to get rid of all regulation and get rid of banking last you want to keep that one around not not too much regulation but you want something so what would we do maybe some kind of a government break where the brakes just gone now there's an analogy to this whole banking problem that I've been thinking about have you ever thought about how unfair it is that if somebody knows to form a let's say LLC limited liability Corporation or a corporation which takes a lawyer you have to need a lawyer to do that if somebody does that little bit of paperwork they protect themselves individually from all kinds of legal risks and you know bankruptcy and stuff but if you don't do that paperwork you don't have those protections does that sound like a good system to you if you happen to know to do it you're protected just from some paperwork and if you didn't know to do it you wouldn't be protected that's a terrible system here's a better system if you're a business you have all the protections of a corporation how about that what's wrong with that if you if you're in business you get all the protections of a corporation you don't have to do the paperwork I don't see any problem with that right and how about this for banks oh taking taking that concept How about if you're a depositor the government protects you how about that well I don't I don't think they're having limits is I've seen some really bad takes and it goes like this if you don't have uh if you don't have a 250 000 limit that's really a strict limit and you really stick to it and you never change it it will incentivize bad behavior so let's take this example with Silicon Valley Bank all right let's say the Silicon Valley Bankers who made the mistakes let's say that they were aware there was a good chance that even the 250 would be guaranteed beyond that if something went wrong so under those conditions if those leaders and especially the risk management person so with the risk management person say to myself to themselves well I thought I was evaluating the risk properly but you know all those depositors would be protected huh so I guess I don't have that much risk the only risk would be let's see I would lose all of my money I would lose my reputation forever uh it would be dangerous to go outside if I ran into a depositor and everything that I care about my life would be destroyed I'm gonna do it because the depositors are protected Maybe that's the actual thinking I actually saw like an actual adult say that the executives would be disincentivized um by what happens with the depositors as if they would not be disincentivized by losing all of their own money you don't think that's enough you don't think that the risk of losing everything that's what happened to the executives I mean they made some money before they lost their jobs but do you think anybody in the real world who's an executive is thinking to themselves well yes this will definitely destroy my life but what I really care about is that 250 000 limit and I think the government will protect a little bit more because I did that one time so I'm going to change everything I'm doing because the depositors not about my entire life being on the line it's insane it's just crazy no no changing the amount that's protected for depositors will make no difference to to anybody's decision making because they don't give a the whole problem is that the executives didn't care about the the depositors am I right the entire problem is that the executives were not working for the benefit of the depositors they never would they never will it's not the real world people just don't care they care about their own situation and that's not going to change and and to watch actual adults in the real world in 2023 get up there and imagine that those Executives would have acted differently if the 250 had been a bigger number come on that's crazy am I wrong does anybody disagree I don't believe there's anybody disagreeing I don't see any disagreement in the comments that I usually do right that that's how poorly managed we are or that's how that's how that's how capable our leaders are there were real leaders arguing that point and still are still are that's still being that's still a point that's being made by supposedly serious adults how can he possibly believe that crazy all right um the other thing we learned about Silicon Valley Bank is that the speed of mass hysterias in general you know I'll call it bank run a Mass list area because you're causing the problem by thinking is a problem it's a little different than a mass hysteria but you can see the parallels um so now anything that could have been a mass hysteria before it becomes one almost instantly because of the speed of communication so that's a problem right I'm gonna talk about some other perceptual problems and then it'll be a theme by the time I'm done so put a pin in that um Zuckerberg at Facebook he's cutting uh 11 000 I guess eleven thousand people got caught in November another 10 000 being cut um do you say to yourself uh oh how could Facebook possibly continue as a company if they get rid of one out of four employees which is what it will be when they do this latest round they will lost one out of four employees do you know what the experts say you're not going to notice the difference because the the tech companies that were wildly profitable they end up doing a lot of let's say optional stuff a lot of optional stuff you know a lot of people working on you know the next big thing that doesn't work out and somebody else is also working on the next big thing so it's a whole bunch of people who are working on stuff that's not the core business because they can make an argument for it and because the budget allowed it so here's my parallel to that my first uh Dilbert experience kind of when I when I left the phone company I'm sorry when I left the bank and went to the phone company local phone company it wasn't long after the divestiture from where all the phone companies were owned by ATT so once the individual phone companies were created they got some allocation of capital from what I've been the master entity that was very profitable so it turns out that the company I worked for had big piles of money coming in just because of the divestiture and had nothing to do with their business there was just vast piles of capital that we had to employ how many of the things that we spent that money on were necessary do you think because we realized early on that whatever we established as our budget for the group I was working in it probably would be sort of the good starting point so after that Capital started trickling out because it wouldn't last forever we'd have a large budget and then we'd be able to say hey we better keep having this large budget you might have to cut some other things but look at all these things we're doing so people were fighting to spend the most budget because that was their best interest I'm not making that up we had conversations about how to overspend and like move some expenses into the current year to make sure that our expenses were as high as possible that was a real thing that happened real thing now do you think that a bank like Silicon Valley Bank which at one point looked pretty profitable do you think that all the things they were doing were like right on target to their basic now and they were doing lots of social things and donating money to politics and all that stuff Facebook I assume it's the same thing if you got rid of 25 of the workforce no problem how about Twitter what percentage of Twitter did Elon Musk fire I don't know the numbers like half or something does anybody have that percentage I'm not sure I've seen it exactly a little technical problem here oh no technical problem on locals looks like locals is down I'm gonna reboot locals see if that works well we should should be one click and back in business back in business sorry about the technical problem there all right so he says 50 percent 50 at Twitter and has anybody noticed that Twitter is worse now there have been there have been a few like technological problems but I think there always were oh is it 75 did he get rid of 75 percent my personal subjective experience is that Twitter is better I feel it's better it's got a little more features I don't know to me it looks better um and that is not unusual from the Dilbert perspective but uh I think they're hiding the bigger story here 's the bigger story on Facebook do you know anybody under the age of 18 who uses Facebook I don't no nobody now they do use you know subsets of the corporation they use Instagram for sure and they you know might be using Whatsapp but actual Facebook I I think the real story here is that Facebook has no no potential for the future unless they become an entirely different company which to Zuckerberg Zuckerberg's credit is exactly what he's trying to do he is a good manager I gotta say you know say what you will about him for any political stuff or any other problems you have but he has proven to be a durable and reliable leader who has a good vision of the future so I I think he can own that I appreciate him for that and you stayed out of trouble too have you noticed how much trouble Zuckerberg stays out of he's really really good at staying out of trouble you know you don't notice it because you don't notice the trouble he didn't cause but he's just really good at not causing any controversies yeah however I think the problem is that if he doesn't make Meadow work Facebook has no future when all the tech companies got dumped during the beginning of the pandemic and I bought in because I thought oh this is the best price I'll ever get turns out Amazon is lower than that Amazon is lower than before the pandemic at the moment so that didn't work out the other one's dead but the one that I I wouldn't even touch was Facebook like I never was even tempted to own Facebook because some of the best advice I got early on was don't you know don't get too interested in anything the kids don't want to use because the timer is on it's it can't last all right um this is just a story about me this is just about me so if you'll indulge me it's sort of a I don't know signed other times sort of thing but there's some Gentleman on Twitter who was really really mad at me today but I can't get interested enough to find out why but he's really really mad and he's he's talking about how uh people who follow me on Twitter are doing things and that's my fault I guess people who follow him on Twitter follow me on Twitter are doing something to him and he doesn't like it so somehow that's my fault but I don't even know who he is now the only thing I know is he may be in the media and may have said something about me but I wasn't reading any of those stories like I don't know what he said but he reminded me because I said you know can you leave me out of this I don't even know who you are he was all mad at me for the things I've done to him I literally didn't even know who he was that's like a typical day for me so I asked him on Twitter you know hey you know I don't even know what this story is about can he lead me out of it so he tweets that I had once retweeted a deep fake that involved him and so that was that was on me because I had retweeted a deep fake that I guess in his mind was not complimentary or something but when I did when I retweeted it I labeled it in the retweet right above it in clear language there's the AI version like I'm calling it out as a defect and he got mad at me for doing that because I guess more people saw it but I called it down as not real I mean I couldn't have been more clear it was one census and it just said that it's the AI version so I guess I could have been more clear but he is hella mad I just think it's funny that he's so mad at me and I don't even know why and I'm not and I'm not incentivized to find out it just doesn't matter all right there was a Russian jet that uh messed with one of our Predator no what what kind of drones a Reaper drone I guess so did you know that the United States was flying Reaper Jones over the Black Sea well why were we doing that why I feel like that's direct American involvement in a war zone I realize I'm supposed to be on the American side here and I am but why do we do that and why do we think we can get away with that flying American even even though it's a drone it's unmanned but it's a major it's a major military asset and we're just flying it around Russia's neighborhood now I get that it wasn't in their territorial Zone but it is a hot War it's a hot War if you fly your military Assets in and around a hot War somebody's going to mess with it so I don't know I think that's just two countries bumping chests I didn't see much there for a story you see neither side once wants it to escalate so it won't you would need at least one side to be willing to escalate and neither side wants to escalate and then some direct confrontation so I don't even have a problem with Russia knocking that drone down I guess I had some technique where they tried to fly their Jets over it and dump their fuel on it I'd never heard of that is that something they invented on the spot or is that an actual thing dumping your fuel on the on the Drone but I guess that didn't work then somehow they actually clipped the the propeller or something they clip something and it went down but did they intentionally do you think they intentionally put their Jets so close to it that it clipped it and it hurt the Drone more than it hurt the jet you say yes I can't imagine being brave enough to knock down a drone with my plane and hoped that I would get back okay and that doesn't sound right to me it sounds like maybe they were getting close to do to do something else and maybe hit it accidentally I don't know or maybe the Drone maybe the Drone closed the Gap and it wasn't the jet it's possible the Drone went after the jet which would be dumb but maybe they may have may have thought well let's just bump this chat and see what happens I don't know none of it I think will become anything big um you see the New York Times was talking about how De.
Santis is now uh saying he's not crazy about defending Ukraine and then it's a territorial dispute now this would put De.
Santis in the same uh the same bucket As Trump trump was already there being not crazy about this war and as the New York Times but it would if you put the support of trump plus De.
Santis together 75 percent of Republicans at least the leaders of 75 of Republicans given that you know people like different leaders out of Ukraine 75 but here's what's missing in the conversation I don't think Trump or De.
Santis can describe what it looks like if we leave and without that it's not a real opinion it's just it's just a political opinion sounds good sounds good to the base but what would it look like how in the world would you not expect the Ukrainian people to be crushed by Russia you got to be able to say that out loud see if you can't say that out loud you don't belong in the conversation I like the Willie Brown statement on that yeah if you're not willing to say we should get out of there and I fully understand that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people will be crushed by this and I fully understand that it would look like America is backing away from a fight and I fully understand that it could uh embolden Russia but we don't know we don't know but it could embolden them that would be a greater risk and it might give them a recovery time to get their energy dominance back over Europe because you because you can imagine the Europeans would start signing deals again am I wrong yeah they would just start signing deals again as soon as the war was over so we'd have to understand that getting out of Ukraine means giving everything back crushing Ukraine having wasted our money wasted a reputation wasted all those lives now it still might be the best idea if it sounded like I said to you so don't do it I didn't say that because I don't know what the best ideas but I know that I don't want to follow a leader who can't describe it just describe your plan here's my plan we pull out in six months Russia will definitely wipe out Ukraine you know they'll fight boldly but lose in the long run then the ukrainians will maybe be starved like the Hall of De.
Mar um and certainly the older leaders will be executed that we've we've had over here and you know we're pretty happy with zelinski but you'd obviously be tortured and executed and just describe it now if you can say that directly to the American people and then say and we should still do it we should still do it because the alternative is even worse that's somebody I would believe that's somebody I could follow that would be a real leader tell us the truth and I can handle the hard truth I can handle that I can't I can't handle half a truth I can't handle an obvious lie but if the San Francisco Trump could give us the actual truth here's what it looks like and it's really really gonna suck for these people but we need to do it I'll listen to that I'm not I'm not pre-convinced but I'm going to listen to that but I'm not going to listen to oh we shouldn't be there oh we shouldn't be there is just that's for public consumption that has nothing to do with policy that's just for do you think do you think that if De.
Santis became president tomorrow he could actually pull the trigger and start pulling people out no it would take about a minute and a half for the you know the what he called the military-industrial complex to own him take about a minute and then he'd be like oh well we definitely want to phase out but not so quickly you know we have to do it right so it might take two years which coincidentally is exactly the amount of time the war would have taken on its own so I think it would instantly turn into we got to do what we're already doing because it's too late to turn back I think that's the truth I think it's too late to turn back might be but we'll see yeah uh once again I'd like to give a public congratulations to Gavin Newsom for one of the one of the best political plays of the year I've told you before that he uh instead of saying no to reparations uh well actually this is more the San Francisco board but the San Francisco board came up with the recommendations so here's what they came up with huh I was going to try to read it without laughing but I don't know that I could do that so the reason is brilliant is that when you ask the people who were in favor of reparations to come back with a detailed plan you can know in advance that the detail plan will just be laughable like actually just laughable and then you don't have to be the person who's against reparations you're the person who tried to get a committee to come up with a plan well it's not your fault if the committee came up with a laughable plan that nobody would possibly Implement that's not your fault so Gavin Newsom for the win here's the plan that the committee came up with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors met Tuesday this is from Fox News site in official discussions on the reparations with five million dollar payments on the table for every eligible black adult in the city oh no I'm not done I'm not done the board expressed quote unanimous support for reparations during the meeting even after Stanford University Hoover institution calculated that the proposal would cost non-black families in the city at least six hundred thousand dollars each members of the San Francisco board also expressed interest in other forms of reparations because that's not enough for the city's roughly 50 000 black residents including a guaranteed annual income of ninety seven thousand dollars a year for 250 years for 250 years each person well what is the average life lifespan of a black resident of San Francisco I know they must they I think they live longer there probably to a thousand but anyway ninety seven thousand dollars for 250 years and wait hold on and a home that they would purchase for one dollars for a family one dollar so they want one dollar home purchases now since the person selling the home obviously has to be compensated you would have to add the you know roughly I don't know what's a home in San Francisco million dollars two million dollars so you'd have to add a million dollars to each black families say so the six hundred thousand dollars per non-black a resident that they have to pay you have to jack that up in other you know maybe a hundred thousand to buy all the homes but also to pay the uh the annual 9700 000 for 250 years well probably each non-black resident um maybe a million dollars maybe a million dollars per non-black resident as their fee to pay for the fact that none of them have anything to do with uh with slavery all right well um I'd like to double down on something that got me in trouble and say that uh as I tweeted I don't want to spend time near any cluster of white people who have been poisoned by wokeness narratives is that racist is it racist to say I don't want to be near any cluster of white people who are who have the that mindset now I don't think I would have been canceled for saying that would I no super racist super racist but it does not include conservatives like white conservatives great and by the way uh black conservatives love them you know I don't even know if I've ever seen a black conservative who wasn't doing well have you is it my imagination or is it every time I have any encounter with a black conservative young younger older they seem to have done okay like they have you know jobs and families usually and like all the things you'd imagine you know signify some kind of personal success so um I think when I got in trouble my hyperbole disguised the fact that I was talking about a mindset not anything genetic was there any of you who misunderstood my comments about the context of staying away from I won't say it again out loud but people who have a mindset that you're the problem why would you want to be around people whose mindset is you're the problem did anybody figure out when I said hey black Americans are being poisoned largely by white people to believe that white people are the problem why would you want to be around that literally nobody disagreed with the idea it's just that it's racist so I'll say the same thing about white people white people who are in a Democrat cluster I'm sure there are some of them that are just great even I'm sure there's some progressives who are actually just great people have a little bit different opinion I don't mind them of course and of course I'd judge everybody individually because you have to it's the only smart thing to do judge people individually and when I say judge people individually that's not a race frame have I ever explained that when I say I'm adamant about every individual must be treated as an individual not a race not a religion that's based on math that's not based on any racial anything that that's a personal success math-based strategy the more people you have access to the more successful you will be it's called networking those are the people who offer you jobs so it's about mindset and it's not about race it never was about race it was never about race but the my hyperbole quite intentionally made it look that way all right uh RFK Jr was on the video recently I was listening to him and he reminds us that before Obama's presidency it was illegal for the CIA to manipulate the minds of Americans they could do it in other countries but it was illegal for them to try to brainwash Americans Obama changed that and made it legal again to brainwash Americans so do you think that he made it legal just in case anybody ever wanted to or do you think that the CIA immediately said whoa we better immediately start a department to manage the uh the opinions of Americans well if you've learned nothing from what I've taught you about the Dilbert kind of organizations the moment it was legal you should assume that somebody at the CIA said you know what if you were to give me a promotion and a budget I could run the department that is in charge of this and we won't go wild we'll only use it when it's necessary for you know Public Safety for example maybe we'll stop a bank run how about that maybe we'll stop a bank run that would be good I wouldn't mind that would you mind if you found out later that the CIA had had managed somehow managed our minds to uh to stop a bankrupt some say they would mind unless I respect that opinion yeah some will say they mind others would say you know what under that specific situation I'd rather they stepped in and I think both could be supported I I think smart people could be on both sides of that question but does it make you wonder now let me ask you this do you think the CIA uh totally said this isn't our thing or do you think the CIA said oh this is exactly our thing we got to stop this Bank Run and if the if the CIA wanted to stop a bankrupt how would they do it well what would be the tools they would employ well what they would use is people people who were willing to do what they asked them to do so they would go to newspapers and they would go to networks and various but they would also make sure that they got some prominent voices that were persuasive to say what they wanted to say did you see a number of prominent voices that were on the side of controlling the bank run and taking care of it well you did now I'm not saying that they were I'm not saying that they were CIA influenced I'm saying that's how they would do it which is different from any individual being part of that so I'm not making an accusation about any individual I'm just saying wouldn't be surprised oh somebody says me no no nobody nobody contacted me well that's a good point if nobody contacted me but would people think that I was pro-cia or a Critic of the CID how would you interpret my public work as a Critic of intelligence agencies 50 members of whom signed the laptop from hell disinformation well somebody says I'm both and that's fair yeah I'm both because I think we need the CIA but clearly you know if you look at the the behavior of our intelligence organizations in the last several years they do seem weaponized against us and they do seem politically politicized so I've been saying that for a long time all right so here's here's my question to you if the CIA had the legal ability to manage public Minds and and brainwashed people would they act against their critics do you think the CIA would act to minimize their critics some say yes because it's legal it would be legal to um to protect their own brand if they could argue that that was good for the country oh yeah we don't want the CIA to be dismantled that would keep the country in a weak state so we'll manipulate people into thinking we're awesome and one of the ways we do that might be to get rid of our critics do you remember when the newspapers canceled me but suspiciously only Democrats seem to be really really angry whereas conservatives once they were the once they heard the context I was talking about conservatives almost to a person said he shouldn't be canceled for that even if they didn't like it even if they thought you know I was over the line or too offensive pretty much conservative said you know still it's not cancelable in their opinions and pretty much it was just Democrats versus Republicans in the end so my first take on this was that it was really political meaning that the newspapers wanted to get rid of me and anybody was a Democrat wanted to get rid of him and I would say that if you look to the last several years anybody who was paying attention could see that I could move the dial how many would agree with that statement that in the realm of politics that I can move the dial I can actually change people's opinions in a way that's important right so the locals people mostly say yes they're a little bit ahead of the yeah you see yeses here now those of you who don't agree like there's some no's right so those of you who say no the only point I'm going to make is look at all the s's so I'm not going to say I am or am not influential I'm just going to say look at the S's if the public thinks I'm influential do you think the CIA thinks so do you think the CIA hasn't noticed me do you think the CIA who is an expert on persuasion doesn't know exactly what I can do and what I can't do of course I do they know exactly how much influence I have and which direction I'm likely to push it it is not necessarily in their favor and then the newspapers canceled me how many newspapers did it take to create the run on newspapers it's like a run on banks like if the first few newspapers say we must cancel you let's say the Washington Post Washington Post was the second big paper if the Washington Post cancels me do you think these smaller papers can keep me in the pages nope it really only took the Washington Post because once they took a stand the other papers just sort of yeah yeah yeah because the Washington Post is a newsmaker they decide what is true for the smaller newspapers so how much would the CIA have to tweak a knob to get rid of me as a public figure they needed one editor in one place to write it to write an editorial and say cancel this guy that's all it would take one editor in one place do you think the newspapers did this on their own because they couldn't I'm not saying they didn't it's entirely possible it's just what you thought it was public complaint the newspapers had too much pressure newspapers also didn't like me because I'm critic criticized the news a lot and so it was just a news thing it was just business and there was nothing suspicious here very possible but I can't really conceive of a situation where the CIA wouldn't want to take me out and they have the ability it's one phone call one phone call cancels me worldwide now do you think that I will have as much influence after being canceled what do you think will I have as much influence after being canceled well it would be a good bet that I would go away like Roseanne right if you were going to bat you'd bet okay it's going to be a Roseanne situation you know he might come back in five years or something but basically he's off the field for the next election cycle somebody says this is not an issue for the CIA let me tell you why it is the CIA does want to protect its own power and its own mission and I'm a Critic it's pretty straightforward if people don't try to get rid of their critics when they can I don't know I wouldn't understand the CIA if they couldn't act on things that they thought were important so I'm not going to make a claim that the CIA decided to cancel me I'm going to make the following claim it would look just like this it would look exactly like this and you wouldn't be able to know now the problem is not me because you know I know some people say when I talk about my situation it's whining or complaining I'm not whining or complaining I'm just describing my life is fine I'm in a good place I got I don't have a problem in the world right uh but you should know that you can't tell what stories are real anymore if the CIA decides that's your narrative well that's your narrative in the in the news will they only have to get a few news people to say is true and then it's a big story everybody's talking about so if you thought it was hard for the CIA or anybody else to change the entire narrative or to take on a person it's not it's one phone call it's just one phone call that's it you can change the whole narrative which doesn't mean they're doing it it's just that they could all right uh Rasmussen did a poll on designated the cartels as terrorist organizations it turns out 79 of likely U.S voters are in favor of designated the Mexican drug cartels as a serious threat to the United States um who would disagree with that I mean seems obvious right see let me see we disagree um okay well 20 strongly disagree with that 20 but then there's another 10 percent that are not sure so let's say the 10 percent that are not sure yes they found out a little more they could go either way unless it's one sort of a coin flip so take half of them and add it to the 20 oh yeah that would be 25 percent or not in favor of it huh very surprising very surprising I don't know um I wonder how many of the people who said they wanted to be designated as a terrorist organization how many of them know that that guarantees military action I'm not sure if the people answering the poll knew that they were voting for war they're voting for a hot War they sort of favor of that now I do I'm in favor of a hot War um a limited one I mean one that just goes after the bad guys but I can say that loud all right um here's a shift in the narrative that I'm seeing and you can decide if I have anything to do with this right so your assignment will be as I mentioned a few different related stories to see if anything that happened to me recently allows people to talk this way in public in other words have I had any impact accidentally on broadening the discussion Zone things you can say out loud here are some things that people are saying out loud which I'm not agreeing with this is important these are not things I agree with the point is people are saying it out loud that the problem with Silicon Valley Bank was a diversity hire now as people point out you know most of the leadership was white men but the person in charge of risk management may have been a diversity let's say influenced higher now I'm not going to say that that was why the person got hired I'm just saying that that's the conversation and I don't know that we would have had that conversation out loud before and the out loud part is okay we should at least look at whether this was caused by a diverse a yeah A diversity hire we should look at it people are saying that out loud I don't think you could say that out loud I don't know a month ago it seems like you couldn't say that here's another one South the report is that Southwest Airlines has consciously decided to reduce the the risk or reduce the safety to get more diversity in their pilots that's actually being spoken about out loud and in the news that your plane might go down because of diversity hiring now again this is not my opinion my only point is that it's now a conversation people are actually saying this out loud now and then the third one Joe Rogan I just saw he was saying on his his show that he'd vote for Trump over uh Biden because Biden's just an empty shell of a human at this point but he pointed out that the Biden Administration couldn't even hire good people because he used Sam Brinton as the you know the cross-dressing bag stealing guy used him as an example of somebody who clearly in Joe's opinion was a diversity hire and clearly could not have been the best choice the implication is there was a better choice so again I have no opinion on whether Sam Brenton was brilliant at his job he could have been I mean I I don't There's No Smoking Gun in my opinion this says that any of these people are less qualified There's No Smoking Gun but it is part of the conversation now and it should be because it might have mattered like it might be true that Sam Brinton is purely A diversity hire now why do I say that let me explain to you everything about every big organization here's the thing in any big organization whether it's business or government it is better to appear woke because everyone can observe it right away you can see it how many people of color do you have on your board how many people did you hire what is your diversity it's just obvious but um that's more important to look whoa because people can see it compared to being competent which is often invisible do you know what happens if you're good at your job nobody notices because there are no problems right if the risk manager at Silicon Valley Bank had done everything right you would never even known that was a bank I literally never heard of that bank I'd never heard of it the only reason we even talking about it is that you know somebody was not competent but we don't know if that's because of a diversity Iris that would be a leap that's not an Evidence um but here's what you can know for sure managers being managers and leaders being leaders they will choose to look good compared to performing well does anybody disagree with that if they have to choose now the first choice we all say is but Scott but Scott you can do both you can have great diversity hires and you can have great performance there's no conflict at all I'm not saying there's a conflict I'm not saying that I'm saying that the managers don't care if there's a conflict they're going to manage to what you can see they're not going to manage to a long-term output that you can't determine if it's because of who they hired or not right the Silicon Valley Bank is a perfect example there are people saying oh this might have been the diversity higher problem but there will always be people who say reasonably there's no direct link there's no direct link it's really about interest rates and you know the the environment and whatever so you managers will always manage to that which can be confirmed by everybody the things you can see and it will never manage to the things that can't be proven the things that can't be proven you can manage those by the way you talk about it this is the same reason that a new leader likes to come in and then change all the metrics and and the Departments because what it does is it erases the past and so you can't be compared to what you've done before because once you've reorganized all the measurements of who's doing what are now obsolete so you erase the past and then you say the new things we're doing yeah they're not paying off now of course it's early but these changes I've made if you wait five years well we'll be in good shape then I've really set this up for the future no it's not good now because it's an investment right so if Zuckerberg were not the head of his company and he said all right Facebook maybe isn't killing it at the moment but look what I'm doing with meta right meta is Zuckerberg's way of saying we're doing something good that you can see hey look at this pictures of us and meta hey look at these goggles that you wear hey it's all visual and it diverts you from the fact that their Core Business doesn't have a future because young people don't use it so you see this effect everywhere all the time it's Universal it's every company every organization managers manage to what can be seen and easily agreed upon by observers especially their bosses but also the public so it's not a case and this is where everybody will go wrong it's not a case of uh there are not enough diversity hires that might also be the case might also and that would be systemic racism blah blah blah but if you have a situation where everybody has to have a high number of diversity hires and everybody's scrambling for the same limited pool of of people in the theory and in practice you will always get lower performance not because the people are bad but because the managers will manage to the look not the reality does that am I clear enough about that distinction there could also be a question that there just aren't enough you know the limited pool of who everybody wants to hire because everybody's looking at the same pool of people it might just be a shortage of people that would give you a terrible result too but you don't even need that those people could all be better than everybody else and the fact that people are managing to the look still gets you to a bad place every time so it's a Dilbert problem and I would summarize it this way I'd say that wokeness is a good goal that became a bad system I would on top of what I've said already every good idea gets ruined by um exaggerating it to absurdity let me give you a concept are taxes a good idea no some absolute to say no no taxes I think taxes are a good idea because it allows you to fund the military yeah fund the military but are the current level of taxes good no it's too much everything that's good in small amounts will eventually be ruined by people who have figured out how to make money by taking it too far right when I say that the base idea of woke is a good goal I got a lot of pushback but here's what I mean on day one on day one it was a good idea by day three it was already ruined on day one it looked like you know wouldn't it be great if we treated everybody with the same level of respect and that's what I think wokeness is at its base to which I say yes yes on board everybody should be treated as their own individual and respect them totally unless they're individual performance you know says otherwise absolutely but as soon as you go from treat everybody with respect and oh and by the way I'd like to be called by these pronouns to which I also say okay you know don't judge me if I get it wrong but I like calling people what they like to be called it's just polite and next thing you know white people are hired what like we immediately went from treat everybody with respect to everyone except white people that's where we are now it's it's literally just anti-white now does that mean it was always a bad idea no no it's like everything else everything starts as a good idea it just turns to when it gets extended by the the grifters and the the media like everybody's got to talk about it they've got a signal they've got to be on that team and actually you know Drew Barrymore is underneath in front of a trans activist on her shower that was big news today and I think that was a trivial trivial you know news bit but yeah everything goes too far so here's what I'm going to do for the world um if you've been watching me for a while if you've read my past books you know that I always talk about systems being better than goals and you know that I like to reframe things so I'm going to show you the first draft of my four page Power.
Point presentation the title of I think you can see it there I'll read it the racism mindset and the success mindset choose one now I could just go home after the title page because that's the whole story they're incompatible they're incompatible the racism mindset or the entire topic has lots of good historical things we should all know so in terms of information it's pretty good I like the information but if you make it your focus and you build your systems around looking backwards you're doing everything that's the opposite of what successful people do and I'll detail that on this page so on one column I showed you an earlier version of this I'm just refining it because I think it's important so on one column you've got the things that racism cares about Equity well I'll just read it to you Equity uh focusing on the past injustices systemic racism reparations dividing people by race that's the racism mindset does that uh turn the things into a presser and victim model resentment resentment of current people for not doing enough as well as old you know the long bed and then the racism mindset is basically could be summarized as I can't because I can't succeed because racism I can't get this job because racism so it's a camp because philosophy now the success mindset has a direct or pretty direct someone who's a little indirect but correlation where what you would do for Success would be instead of focusing on Equity you would say how about winning how about winning have you ever heard anybody in the success industry like somebody who really knows about how to do success have you ever said if you work hard you could be average you know if you put your your muscles into it and your brains and you work hard you could be as good as other people that's ridiculous the the any success uh Mentor will tell you why aren't you trying to win if everybody tries to win and we're playing by Fair rules and we're not breaking any laws the whole society is better just everybody try to win that works how about uh focusing on the past versus focusing on the future if you want to be successful you have to focus on the future it's not optional nobody ever got successful just thinking about the past or how about systemic racism it's a real thing you can't forget about it can't ignore it but if you have a success mindset you're not thinking about what's stopping you you're thinking optimistically nothing can stop me oh your problem is systemic racism no problem that won't stop me oh your problem is that you're short let's say you're a man and you're short no problem I'll work with that I'll make that work your problem is that you're less healthy or maybe you're disabled no problem I'll make that work yeah I can make that work so the success mindset is all about the problems won't stop you the racism mindset is all about the racism did stop you it did and it's going to keep stopping you so that's what your brain should focus on the cleanest one is reparations reparations is you owe me something whereas the success mindset is what can you what can you do for other people and also reciprocity if you're Jeff Bezos talk about Amazon right what made Amazon work he says and a obsessive focus on the customer did that work out for Amazon yeah I use Amazon specifically because I can feel their obsessive focus on the customer you can feel it it's like it's like an actual feeling right everything from the one click shopping to how easy it is to you know reorder things it is insanely customer focused and that's Jeff Bezos that's all Jeff Bezos he is forcing them to be customer focused and probably there's a big problem when they're not my guess that you probably get fired if you lose that Focus for a minute now that's a Winner's attitude but uh looking at things as you know as reparations you owe me as a short-term strategy at best uh the racism mindset you know divides people by race but if you're in a success mindset you're uh playing their odds why would you limit yourself to part of the public by you know by thinking that some people are against you stay away from these people whatever network is you you try to meet as many people as you can from wherever might come in handy um of course the racism mindset is about resentment and how does that work if you're trying to find a mentor imagine your uh young black person you're trying to make it in the world you're in a big company and you'd like to find a mentor because everybody would like it's good to have a mentor but most of them are white what do you do if you have resentment toward white people for racism it's going to be harder to get a mentor because I think that resentment is going to come through pretty quickly like people are going to notice yeah you can't really hide it it would come out in your language and the things you focus on et cetera and then the camp because it turns into the can-do mindset was success so that's the list the I I think you should be um at least at the very least you should agree that the lists don't line up would you agree would you agree that the racism mindset the way it's being used in America is opposite of the success mindset that's the thing that bugs me the most and part of the things part of what is misunderstood about me is that I'm coming from everything from a success filter not a race filter but if you come from that filter it can be really jarring it can be jarring to somebody who's in the other filter it's very jarring as we learned but I should also say that you don't want to ignore history you want to teach the history of course but don't focus on it you should focus on strategies for the future it's just a focused question don't forget that and then here's the kill shot all right I'll read these but you can see it's just three points um the kill shot is the persuasive uh dagger then I'm gonna put into some people reading this here's the dagger a child who learns the tools and strategies of success will do better in life than one who is taught to see Life as a racist struggle how does that feel how does that feel yeah you're killing your kids by teaching them the wrong frame you're just ruining their lives and you know it you can't argue with it because nobody's going to argue that ignoring the tools and strategies of success to focus on Race struggle is a good strategy literally no one would believe that and yeah we're doing it so that's that's the dagger that here's some explanation point two the media raise race grifters well-meaning teachers see I'm not not insulting teachers but well-meaning teachers and professional activists are poisoning race relations and destroying the future of black American Kids by teaching them a losing mindset do you think the Asian American kids are are learning to focus on race or are they learning to focus on building a talent stack which is Central to success maybe they're focused on staying in a jail and not doing drugs which are essential to success right now we got to stop pretending that every culture is being raised with useful mentoring messages it's just not happening some of the cultures are getting useful mentoring success related messages and the Black Culture is being poisoned into thinking there's a reason that's going to hold them back and nothing's going to change it that's what they're taught and I would I would imagine that the progressive white part of the population is taught the same thing so they would be on board with that but it doesn't matter as much that progresses whites buy into that frame because it's not them it's not them they're probably going about their own lives however they want but I'm watching something that looks like a black Holocaust with you know obviously that's hyperbole I'm looking at something that's a disaster for black Americans and I don't think they're doing it to themselves I believe that white America is allowing the situation that is the current situation to me it looks like the media assigns people's opinions and the media is still controlled by white people so if we have these opinions it's because somebody told the left and the right what to think largely and then they adopted those opinions and those opinions are not coming mostly from black people right it wasn't black people who canceled me I had zero cancellations from anybody black zero it was all white people so I don't see the blame being squarely on anybody in Black America I see the yeah I see the uh the teachers unions being evil and they're they're a mixture of everything I see white Americans being creating the situation that's not good for anybody and I think the only people who can save themselves are black Americans because if black Americans rely on white people to help them with their reparations they're going to get the Gavin Newsom treatment yeah oh yeah yeah we'd love to help you how about you do a committee and come back with your recommendations on reparations huh and then I'm helping look at me being supportive good good going there I'm so supportive no only black American can help Black America and if you think that I'm talking about like white tricks for Success no it's what all black successful people do it's all what white successful people do it's all the same look to the Future be optimistic use some gratitude have reciprocity just basic stuff build a you know stay on the jail build Us Talent stack have systems over goals there's like 12 things you have to learn it'll take you 20 minutes to learn all all 12 of them right it would take you 20 minutes to learn all the techniques of success 20 minutes and and then you're good to go there will still be lots of racism but you'll cut through it like hot poker through butter and then my final statement here to close down is the reason no one told you this before is because there is a high social penalty for doing so there's a high social penalty for being honest on this topic I don't know if you know anybody who had that issue now my my my problem was not the honesty it was the hyperbole the honesty part everybody was okay with but I did cause a little trouble more than I thought by a little extra hyperbole but I was as you know the people who have watched me use this pattern before they know that I was causing trouble to draw a fire I didn't think I'd draw that much it was a calculated risk I knew there was a risk so that's why I'm not complaining the reason I'm not complaining is because I intentionally did something with a high risk that I had in my opinion a potential High reward for the country not for me and maybe it didn't work out so far I'm pretty happy with how things are turning out so we don't know we don't know all newspapers ended up not being able to run it because my syndication company and then my book publisher canceled me so uh that cancels distribution so they couldn't newspapers couldn't carry it even if they wanted to yeah so here's this is the message that I plan to die on this hill and I'm going to die on the hill that uh all the ESG CRT Dei are crushing the chances for black American success and because they are such an important part of my country that's bad for me right it's bad for me when black Americans don't do well that's bad for me and that's why I've put so much attention in trying to fix that specific situation um but maybe the CIA took me out for political reasons maybe the Democrats took me out for political reasons the only thing I know is that the conservative part of the country understands this message completely true or false most of you are lean right if you're watching this even though I don't uh yeah every one of you is agreed every one of you is agreed look at the comments absolutely zero pushback I got canceled for this this is the way I did it so it's my own damn fault but look at the bigger look at the bigger picture was canceling me good for Black America well let me ask you this question was canceling me good or bad for Black America because this is what I'm bringing right this is what I'm praying this is my offer it's free right and by the way you don't need to buy it in my books like I have a book that I think is good you can't buy it at the moment because it's canceled but if you could buy it it would just be one of the things you could do I'm proposing that the that the the tools of success are so widely available you can just Google it you could pick up a different book you could ask somebody who's successful I don't care where you get it that's the unimportant part so that's why I'm interested in working on homeschooling because I think you could make a difference in the curriculum by just introducing a module about personal success in a module about personal success if you could do it well I think would guarantee the homeschoolers outperformed everybody else they probably already do but it would just make it clean and I would I would make a following bet that if you gave me a group of randomized black Americans or even poor let's say let's say low income so they're randomized except they're all low income and you compare that to a randomized group of white kids and you say Scott you're going to work with the randomized group of black kids you're going to teach them the tools of success that work for everybody and then the the white kids will just be the control group they're just taught at regular education come back in 20 years who's making more money I guarantee it's my group I guarantee it you you should you should place a very large bat on that if the group that has the tools of success does well I would do it I could probably uh making a web series um a web series teaching the rules of success the trouble is I don't know if people are watching videos that are longer than 30 seconds so if I did it it would be a series of 30 second reels it's probably the only way to do it yeah because kids aren't going to read it you can turn it into a course for a teacher and then the teacher could work with the kids but uh for mass communication it's hard to reach kids you need something really simple yeah I I'm trying not to say tick tock because I want Tick Tock to go away homeschooling is great only if the parents are well educated that's probably true although I think that's changing my understanding is that the home school Market is now robust enough that you can find videos of good teachers you know I think people coordinate to have maybe the smartest parent teach a few of them or something I think they're finding workarounds but you're true but it's true if the parents aren't starting with a good basis of knowledge it's going to be harder Charter Schools yeah I'm in favor of all of those alternative schooling things all right that's all I got for you today Stevie we'll talk about how the bell curve Is for Suckers actually I'll do it right now anytime I have this kind of conversation somebody says belka or belker or bell curve and you know what that means the idea is that the the racially let's say uh provocative members of the of the white Community think that that's the whole explanation here's why I disagree most people are average that's my whole argument I'm only talking about average people if it's true that there are more white people who are genius scientists how does that affect you and me suppose it's true suppose there's a bunch of freaks who are white that are so smart you know they're they're the quantum physicists and stuff suppose that's true what does that have to do with the guy who walks in for the job in your company nothing nothing it doesn't tell you anything about an individual the fact that there might be some freakishly smart people in one group excuse the average uh is it isn't there now um all right so my point is you're talking about the exceptions now how about Black America do they have uh an unusual number of people who because of poverty and even low nutritional stuff is there is there anything that's skewing that average probably right but if the average person you know the the people in let's say the 80 bulk of both the White and the black population if anybody in that middle 80 percent of white or black comes into your office for an interview and they have roughly similar credentials you can't tell them apart you you have no idea who's going to be good on the job nobody can do that it's just not a thing right there it's because the middle is just the middle the the the Geniuses that may have been skewing it and the people who don't have any job and never will we're skewing it in another group they're not the people we're talking about right they're just not the people so when you tried to deal with if you're using an average to decide how to deal with an individual that's just nonsense uh there may be some use for that information but I think it's overused so so I reject it as useful right I'm not rejecting it as I don't know if the science is measuring the right thing or not I don't know how much IQ is really telling you about success I mean it's highly correlated but there may be other things that are correlated that are they're sort of obscuring the real thing going on so those are all interesting topics but when you're talking about personal success it's about the person standing in front of you it's not about anybody's average it's the person standing in front of you all right that's all for now You.
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well
let's talk about all the stories
would you like to talk about banking
sorry I just I nodded off there
you know I was a banker for a number of
years I started my career as a banker
thought I'd be a big old Banker guy so I
know a little bit about banking
a little bit so let's talk about
Silicon Valley Bank so here's something
I know that people just figured out
I'm not the one person who knew it you
knew it too
but here it is
when the idea of banks you know was
created
and then it evolved into you know modern
banking it was a good design
and one of the things that was good
about it is that even if there was
something that looked like a banking
weakness
communication among people was so slow
that unless you saw a line forming in
front of the bank you couldn't tell
there was a bank run
so you wouldn't know to get into in on
it because you wouldn't even know what
was happening
so Bank runs were naturally let's say
prevented just by poor communication
suddenly you've got Twitter and the
internet
suddenly not only can you instantly tell
people there might be a problem
everybody knows at the same time that's
a big problem but it's worse they don't
even have to go stand in line they just
pull out their app and say Boop all my
money move it somewhere else Boop
so when you have those two things that
went from sort of a little bit difficult
to do find out what's happening with
your bank number one and two actually go
stand in a long line to get your money
out
there was a natural slowdown so we now
have a banking system that was created
for slow communication and inefficient
withdrawals
and then those two things changed
that's a big problem so I would say that
social media
and banking apps that are just more
efficient are actually the risk of the
system
you know almost as much as bad decisions
and you know poor risk management
the the fact that that we have two
mismatched systems our communication
system
is mismatched with our banking system
that has to get fixed I don't know
exactly what the fix is but there has to
be something that's like
maybe I hate to say government
regulation but banks are heavily
regulated for a reason there's a reason
to regulate it right that that's the one
place you really want some regulation in
my opinion yeah if you're going to have
if you're going to get rid of all
regulation and get rid of banking last
you want to keep that one around not not
too much regulation but you want
something
so what would we do maybe some kind of a
government break
where
the brakes just gone now there's an
analogy to this whole banking problem
that I've been thinking about have you
ever thought about how unfair it is that
if somebody knows to form a let's say
LLC limited liability Corporation or a
corporation which takes a lawyer you
have to need a lawyer to do that if
somebody does that little bit of
paperwork they protect themselves
individually from all kinds of legal
risks
and you know bankruptcy and stuff but if
you don't do that paperwork you don't
have those protections
does that sound like a good system to
you
if you happen to know to do it you're
protected
just from some paperwork
and if you didn't know to do it you
wouldn't be protected
that's a terrible system here's a better
system
if you're a business you have all the
protections of a corporation
how about that
what's wrong with that if you if you're
in business you get all the protections
of a corporation you don't have to do
the paperwork
I don't see any problem with that
right and how about this for banks oh
taking taking that concept
How about if you're a depositor the
government protects you
how about that
well I don't I don't think they're
having limits
is I've seen some really bad takes
and it goes like this if you don't have
uh if you don't have a 250 000 limit
that's really a strict limit and you
really stick to it and you never change
it it will incentivize bad behavior
so let's take this example with Silicon
Valley Bank
all right let's say the Silicon Valley
Bankers who made the mistakes let's say
that they were aware there was a good
chance that even the 250 would be
guaranteed beyond that if something went
wrong so under those conditions if those
leaders and especially the risk
management person
so with the risk management person say
to myself to themselves well I thought I
was evaluating the risk properly
but you know
all those depositors would be protected
huh so I guess I don't have that much
risk the only risk would be let's see I
would lose all of my money
I would lose my reputation forever
uh it would be dangerous to go outside
if I ran into a depositor
and everything that I care about my life
would be destroyed
I'm gonna do it because the depositors
are protected Maybe
that's the actual thinking I actually
saw
like an actual adult
say that the executives would be
disincentivized
um
by what happens with the depositors as
if they would not be disincentivized by
losing all of their own money
you don't think that's enough you don't
think that the risk of losing everything
that's what happened to the executives
I mean they made some money before they
lost their jobs but do you think anybody
in the real world who's an executive is
thinking to themselves well yes this
will definitely destroy my life but what
I really care about is that 250 000
limit and I think the government will
protect a little bit more because I did
that one time so I'm going to change
everything I'm doing because the
depositors not about my entire life
being on the line
it's insane it's just crazy no no
changing the amount that's protected for
depositors will make no difference to to
anybody's decision making because they
don't give a the whole problem is
that the executives didn't care about
the the depositors am I right the entire
problem is that the executives were not
working for the benefit of the
depositors they never would they never
will it's not the real world people just
don't care they care about their own
situation and that's not going to change
and and to watch actual adults
in the real world in 2023 get up there
and imagine that those Executives would
have acted differently
if the 250 had been a bigger number
come on
that's crazy
am I wrong
does anybody disagree I don't believe
there's anybody disagreeing I don't see
any disagreement in the comments that I
usually do right that that's how poorly
managed we are or that's how that's how
that's how capable our leaders are
there were real leaders arguing that
point and still are still are that's
still being that's still a point that's
being made by
supposedly serious adults
how can he possibly believe that crazy
all right
um
the other thing we learned about Silicon
Valley Bank is that the speed of mass
hysterias in general you know I'll call
it bank run a Mass list area because
you're causing the problem by thinking
is a problem it's a little different
than a mass hysteria but you can see the
parallels
um so now anything that could have been
a mass hysteria before it becomes one
almost instantly because of the speed of
communication
so that's a problem
right I'm gonna talk about some other
perceptual problems
and then it'll be a theme by the time
I'm done so put a pin in that
um Zuckerberg at Facebook he's cutting
uh 11 000 I guess eleven thousand people
got caught in November another 10 000
being cut
um do you say to yourself uh oh how
could Facebook possibly continue as a
company if they get rid of one out of
four employees which is what it will be
when they do this latest round they will
lost one out of four employees
do you know what the experts say
you're not going to notice the
difference
because the the tech companies that were
wildly profitable
they end up doing a lot of let's say
optional stuff
a lot of optional stuff you know a lot
of people working on you know the next
big thing that doesn't work out and
somebody else is also working on the
next big thing so it's a whole bunch of
people who are working on stuff that's
not the core business
because they can make an argument for it
and because the budget allowed it
so here's my parallel to that my first
uh Dilbert experience kind of when I
when I left the phone company I'm sorry
when I left the bank and went to the
phone company local phone company it
wasn't long after the divestiture from
where all the phone companies were owned
by ATT
so once the individual phone companies
were created they got some allocation of
capital from what I've been the master
entity that was very profitable
so it turns out that the company I
worked for had big piles of money coming
in
just because of the divestiture and had
nothing to do with their business there
was just vast piles of capital that we
had to employ
how many of the things that we spent
that money on were necessary do you
think
because we realized early on that
whatever we established as our budget
for the group I was working in it
probably would be sort of the good
starting point so after that Capital
started trickling out because it
wouldn't last forever
we'd have a large budget and then we'd
be able to say hey we better keep having
this large budget you might have to cut
some other things but look at all these
things we're doing
so people were fighting to spend the
most budget
because that was their best interest
I'm not making that up we had
conversations about how to overspend
and like move some expenses into the
current year to make sure that our
expenses were as high as possible
that was a real thing that happened
real thing
now do you think that a bank like
Silicon Valley Bank which at one point
looked pretty profitable do you think
that all the things they were doing were
like right on target to their basic now
and they were doing lots of social
things and donating money to politics
and all that stuff Facebook I assume
it's the same thing if you got rid of 25
of the workforce no problem how about
what percentage of Twitter did Elon Musk
fire
I don't know the numbers like half or
something
does anybody have that percentage I'm
not sure I've seen it exactly
a little technical problem here
oh no technical problem on locals
looks like locals is down I'm gonna
reboot locals
see if that works
well we should
should be one click and back in business
back in business sorry about the
technical problem there all right so he
says 50 percent
50 at Twitter and has anybody noticed
that Twitter is worse
now there have been there have been a
few like technological problems but I
think there always were oh is it 75 did
he get rid of 75 percent
my personal subjective experience is
that Twitter is better
I feel it's better
it's got a little more features
I don't know to me it looks better
um
and that is not unusual from the Dilbert
perspective but uh I think they're
hiding the bigger story here
's the bigger story on Facebook
do you know anybody under the age of 18
who uses Facebook
I don't
no nobody now they do use you know
subsets of the corporation they use
for sure and they you know might be
using Whatsapp
but actual Facebook
I I think the real story here is that
Facebook has no no potential for the
future unless they become an entirely
different company which to Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg's credit is exactly what he's
trying to do
he is a good manager I gotta say
you know say what you will about him for
any political stuff or any other
problems you have but he has proven to
be a durable and reliable
leader who has a good vision of the
future so I I think he can own that I
appreciate him for that
and you stayed out of trouble too have
you noticed how much trouble Zuckerberg
stays out of he's really really good at
staying out of trouble
you know you don't notice it because you
don't notice the trouble he didn't cause
but he's just really good at not causing
any controversies
yeah however I think the problem is that
if he doesn't make Meadow work
Facebook has no future
when all the tech companies
got dumped during the beginning of the
pandemic and I bought in because I
thought oh this is the best price I'll
ever get turns out Amazon is lower than
that Amazon is lower than before the
pandemic at the moment so that didn't
work out the other one's dead
but the one that I I wouldn't even touch
was Facebook like I never was even
tempted to own Facebook because some of
the best advice I got early on
was don't
you know don't get too interested in
anything the kids don't want to use
because the timer is on it's it can't
last
all right
um
this is just a story about me this is
just about me so if you'll indulge me
it's sort of a
I don't know signed other times sort of
thing but there's some Gentleman on
Twitter who was really really mad at me
today
but I can't get interested enough to
find out why
but he's really really mad
and he's he's talking about how uh
people who follow me on Twitter are
doing things and that's my fault
I guess people who follow him on Twitter
follow me on Twitter
are doing something to him and he
doesn't like it so somehow that's my
fault but I don't even know who he is
now the only thing I know is he may be
in the media and may have said something
about me but I wasn't reading any of
those stories
like I don't know what he said
but
he reminded me because I said you know
can you leave me out of this I don't
even know who you are he was all mad at
me for the things I've done to him I
literally didn't even know who he was
that's like a typical day for me so I
asked him on Twitter you know hey you
know I don't even know what this story
is about can he lead me out of it
so he tweets that I had once retweeted a
deep fake that involved him
and so that was that was on me because I
had retweeted a deep fake that I guess
in his mind was not complimentary or
something
but when I did when I retweeted it I
labeled it in the retweet
right above it in clear language there's
the AI version
like I'm calling it out as a defect
and he got mad at me
for doing that because I guess more
people saw it but I called it down as
not real I mean I couldn't have been
more clear it was one census and it just
said that it's the AI version
so
I guess I could have been more clear but
he is hella mad I just think it's funny
that he's so mad at me and I don't even
know why
and I'm not and I'm not incentivized to
find out it just doesn't matter
all right there was a Russian jet
that uh messed with one of our Predator
no what what kind of drones a Reaper
drone I guess so did you know that the
United States was flying Reaper Jones
over the Black Sea
well why were we doing that
why
I feel like that's direct American
involvement in a war zone
I realize I'm supposed to be on the
American side here and I am
but why do we do that and why do we
think we can get away with that
flying American even even though it's a
drone it's unmanned but it's a major
it's a major military asset and we're
just flying it around Russia's
neighborhood now I get that it wasn't in
their territorial Zone but it is a hot
War it's a hot War if you fly your
military Assets in and around a hot War
somebody's going to mess with it
so
I don't know I think that's just two
countries
bumping chests I didn't see much there
for a story you see neither side once
wants it to escalate so it won't you
would need at least one side to be
willing to escalate and neither side
wants to escalate and then some direct
confrontation so I don't even have a
problem with Russia knocking that drone
down I guess I had some technique where
they tried to fly their Jets over it and
dump their fuel on it I'd never heard of
that
is that something they invented on the
spot or is that an actual thing dumping
your fuel on the on the Drone but I
guess that didn't work then somehow they
actually clipped the
the propeller or something they clip
something and it went down but did they
intentionally do you think they
intentionally put their Jets so close to
it that it clipped it
and it hurt the Drone more than it hurt
the jet
you say yes
I can't imagine being brave enough
to knock down a drone with my plane
and hoped that I would get back okay and
that doesn't sound right to me
it sounds like maybe they were getting
close to do to do something else and
maybe hit it accidentally
I don't know
or maybe the Drone maybe the Drone
closed the Gap and it wasn't the jet
it's possible the Drone went after the
jet
which would be dumb
but maybe they may have may have thought
well let's just bump this chat and see
what happens
I don't know
none of it I think will become anything
big
um
you see the New York Times was talking
about how DeSantis
is now uh saying he's not crazy about
defending Ukraine and then it's a
territorial dispute now this would put
DeSantis in the same uh
the same bucket As Trump trump was
already there being not crazy about this
war
and as the New York Times but it would
if you put the support of trump plus
DeSantis together 75 percent of
Republicans at least the leaders of 75
of Republicans given that you know
people like different leaders
out of Ukraine
75 but here's what's missing in the
conversation
I don't think Trump or DeSantis can
describe what it looks like if we leave
and without that it's not a real opinion
it's just it's just a political opinion
sounds good sounds good to the base
but what would it look like
how in the world
would you not expect the Ukrainian
people to be crushed by Russia
you got to be able to say that out loud
see if you can't say that out loud you
don't belong in the conversation
I like the Willie Brown
statement on that
yeah if you're not willing to say we
should get out of there and I fully
understand that Ukraine and the
Ukrainian people will be crushed by this
and I fully understand that it would
look like America is backing away from a
fight and I fully understand that it
could uh embolden Russia but we don't
know
we don't know but it could embolden them
that would be a greater risk and it
might give them a recovery time to get
their energy dominance back over Europe
because you because you can imagine the
Europeans would start signing deals
again
am I wrong
yeah they would just start signing deals
again as soon as the war was over so
we'd have to understand that getting out
of Ukraine means giving everything back
crushing Ukraine having wasted our money
wasted a reputation wasted all those
lives
now it still might be the best idea
if it sounded like I said to you so
don't do it I didn't say that
because I don't know what the best ideas
but I know that I don't want to follow a
leader who can't describe it
just describe your plan
here's my plan we pull out in six months
Russia will definitely wipe out Ukraine
you know they'll fight boldly but lose
in the long run then the ukrainians will
maybe be starved like the Hall of DeMar
um and certainly the older leaders will
be executed that we've we've had over
here and you know we're pretty happy
with zelinski but you'd obviously be
tortured and executed and just describe
it
now if you can say that directly to the
American people and then say
and we should still do it
we should still do it because the
alternative is even worse
that's somebody I would believe
that's somebody I could follow
that would be a real leader
tell us the truth
and I can handle the hard truth
I can handle that I can't I can't handle
half a truth I can't handle an obvious
lie but if the San Francisco Trump could
give us the actual truth here's what it
looks like and it's really really gonna
suck for these people but we need to do
it
I'll listen to that I'm not I'm not
pre-convinced but I'm going to listen to
that but I'm not going to listen to oh
we shouldn't be there oh we shouldn't be
there is just
that's for
public consumption that has nothing to
do with policy that's just for do you
think do you think that if DeSantis
became president tomorrow he could
actually pull the trigger and start
pulling people out no it would take
about a minute and a half for the you
know the
what he called the military-industrial
complex to own him
take about a minute and then he'd be
like oh well we definitely want to phase
out but not so quickly you know we have
to do it right so it might take two
years which coincidentally is exactly
the amount of time the war would have
taken on its own
so I think it would instantly turn into
we got to do what we're already doing
because it's too late to turn back
I think that's the truth I think it's
too late to turn back might be
but we'll see yeah
uh once again I'd like to give a public
congratulations to Gavin Newsom for one
of the one of the best political plays
of the year I've told you before that he
uh instead of saying no to reparations
uh well actually this is more the San
Francisco board but the San Francisco
board came up with the recommendations
so here's what they came up with
huh
I was going to try to read it without
laughing but I don't know that I could
do that
so the reason is brilliant is that when
you ask the people who were in favor of
reparations to come back with a detailed
plan you can know in advance that the
detail plan will just be laughable
like actually just laughable and then
you don't have to be the person who's
against reparations you're the person
who tried to get a committee to come up
with a plan
well it's not your fault if the
committee came up with a laughable plan
that nobody would possibly Implement
that's not your fault so Gavin Newsom
for the win here's the plan that the
committee came up with the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors met Tuesday
this is from Fox News site
in official discussions on the
reparations with five million dollar
payments on the table for every eligible
black adult in the city
oh no I'm not done I'm not done
the board expressed quote unanimous
support for reparations during the
meeting even after Stanford University
Hoover institution calculated that the
proposal would cost non-black families
in the city at least six hundred
thousand dollars each
members of the San Francisco board also
expressed interest in other forms of
reparations because that's not enough
for the city's roughly 50 000 black
residents including a guaranteed annual
income of ninety seven thousand dollars
a year for 250 years
for 250 years each person
well what is the average life lifespan
of a black resident of San Francisco
I know they must they I think they live
longer there probably to a thousand
but anyway ninety seven thousand dollars
for 250 years and wait hold on and a
home that they would purchase for one
dollars for a family
one dollar so they want one dollar home
purchases
now since the person selling the home
obviously has to be compensated you
would have to add the you know roughly
I don't know what's a home in San
Francisco million dollars two million
dollars so you'd have to add a million
dollars to each black families say so
the six hundred thousand dollars per
non-black
a resident that they have to pay you
have to jack that up in other you know
maybe a hundred thousand to buy all the
homes but also to pay the uh the annual
9700 000 for 250 years well probably
each non-black resident
um
maybe a million dollars
maybe a million dollars per non-black
resident as their fee to pay for the
fact that none of them have anything to
do with uh
with slavery
all right well
um I'd like to double down on something
that got me in trouble and say that uh
as I tweeted I don't want to spend time
near any cluster of white people who
have been poisoned by wokeness
narratives
is that racist
is it racist to say I don't want to be
near any
cluster of white people
who are who have the that mindset
now I don't think I would have been
canceled for saying that would I
no super racist super racist but it does
not include conservatives
like white conservatives great and by
the way
uh black conservatives love them
you know I don't even know if I've ever
seen a black conservative who wasn't
doing well
have you
is it my imagination or is it every time
I have any encounter with a black
conservative young younger older
they seem to have done okay
like they have you know jobs and
families usually and like all the things
you'd imagine you know signify some kind
of personal success
so
um
I think when I got in trouble
my hyperbole
disguised the fact that I was talking
about a mindset not anything genetic
was there any of you who misunderstood
my comments about the context of staying
away from I won't say it again out loud
but people who have a mindset that
you're the problem
why would you want to be around people
whose mindset is you're the problem
did anybody figure out when I said hey
black Americans are being poisoned
largely by white people to believe that
white people are the problem
why would you want to be around that
literally nobody disagreed with the idea
it's just that it's racist so I'll say
the same thing about white people
white people who are in a Democrat
cluster
I'm sure there are some of them that are
just great
even I'm sure there's some progressives
who are actually just great people have
a little bit different opinion
I don't mind them
of course and of course I'd judge
everybody individually because you have
to it's the only smart thing to do judge
people individually and when I say judge
people individually that's not a race
frame
have I ever explained that when I say
I'm adamant about every individual must
be treated as an individual not a race
not a religion that's based on math
that's not based on any racial anything
that that's a personal success
math-based strategy the more people you
have access to
the more successful you will be
it's called networking those are the
people who offer you jobs so
it's about mindset and it's not about
race it never was about race
it was never about race but the my
hyperbole quite intentionally made it
look that way all right
uh
RFK Jr was on the video recently I was
listening to him and he reminds us
that before Obama's presidency it was
illegal for the CIA
to manipulate the minds of Americans
they could do it in other countries
but it was illegal for them to try to
brainwash Americans Obama changed that
and made it legal again to brainwash
Americans
so do you think that he made it legal
just in case anybody ever wanted to
or do you think that the CIA immediately
said whoa we better immediately start a
department to manage the uh the opinions
of Americans
well
if you've learned nothing from what I've
taught you about the Dilbert kind of
organizations the moment it was legal
you should assume that somebody at the
CIA said you know what if you were to
give me a promotion and a budget I could
run the department
that is in charge of this and we won't
go wild we'll only use it when it's
necessary for you know Public Safety for
example maybe we'll stop a bank run
how about that maybe we'll stop a bank
run that would be good I wouldn't mind
that would you mind if you found out
later that the CIA had had
managed somehow managed our minds
to uh
to stop a bankrupt
some say they would mind unless I
respect that opinion yeah some will say
they mind
others would say you know what under
that specific situation I'd rather they
stepped in and I think both could be
supported I I think smart people could
be on both sides of that question
but
does it make you wonder
now let me ask you this do you think the
CIA uh totally said this isn't our thing
or do you think the CIA said oh this is
exactly our thing we got to stop this
Bank Run
and if the if the CIA wanted to stop a
bankrupt how would they do it
well what would be the tools they would
employ
well what they would use is people
people who were willing to do what they
asked them to do
so they would go to newspapers
and they would go to networks and
various but they would also make sure
that they got some prominent voices
that were persuasive to say what they
wanted to say
did you see a number of prominent voices
that were on the side of
controlling the bank run and taking care
of it well you did now I'm not saying
that they were
I'm not saying that they were CIA
influenced I'm saying that's how they
would do it
which is different from any individual
being part of that so I'm not making an
accusation about any individual
I'm just saying
wouldn't be surprised
oh somebody says me no no nobody nobody
contacted me well that's a good point if
nobody contacted me
but would people think that I was
pro-cia
or a Critic of the CID
how would you interpret my public work
as a Critic of intelligence agencies
50 members of whom signed the laptop
from hell
disinformation
well somebody says I'm both and that's
fair yeah I'm both because I think we
need the CIA
but clearly you know if you look at the
the behavior of our intelligence
organizations in the last several years
they do seem weaponized against us and
they do seem politically politicized so
I've been saying that for a long time
all right so here's
here's my question to you if the CIA
had the legal ability to manage public
Minds
and and brainwashed people would they
act against their critics
do you think the CIA would act to
minimize their critics
some say yes
because it's legal it would be legal to
um
to protect their own brand
if they could argue that that was good
for the country oh yeah we don't want
the CIA to be dismantled that would keep
the country in a weak state so we'll
manipulate people into thinking we're
awesome and one of the ways we do that
might be to get rid of our critics
do you remember when the newspapers
canceled me
but suspiciously only Democrats seem to
be really really angry
whereas conservatives once they were the
once they heard the context I was
talking about conservatives almost to a
person said he shouldn't be canceled for
that even if they didn't like it even if
they thought you know I was over the
line or too offensive
pretty much conservative said you know
still it's not cancelable in their
opinions
and pretty much it was just Democrats
versus Republicans in the end
so my first take on this was that it was
really political
meaning that the newspapers wanted to
get rid of me and anybody was a Democrat
wanted to get rid of him and I would say
that
if you look to the last several years
anybody who was paying attention could
see that I could move the dial
how many would agree with that statement
that in the realm of politics
that I can move the dial I can actually
change people's opinions in a way that's
important
right so the locals people mostly say
yes they're a little bit ahead of the
yeah you see yeses here now those of you
who don't agree
like there's some no's right so those of
you who say no
the only point I'm going to make is look
at all the s's so I'm not going to say I
am or am not influential
I'm just going to say look at the S's
if the public thinks I'm influential do
you think the CIA thinks so
do you think the CIA hasn't noticed me
do you think the CIA who is an expert on
persuasion doesn't know exactly what I
can do and what I can't do
of course I do they know exactly how
much influence I have and which
direction I'm likely to push it
it is not necessarily in their favor
and then the newspapers canceled me
how many newspapers did it take to
create the run on newspapers it's like a
run on banks like if the first few
newspapers say we must cancel you let's
say the Washington Post
Washington Post was the second big paper
if the Washington Post cancels me do you
think these smaller papers can keep me
in the pages nope it really only took
the Washington Post
because once they took a stand the other
papers just sort of yeah yeah yeah
because the Washington Post is a
newsmaker they decide what is true
for the smaller newspapers
so how much would the CIA have to tweak
a knob to get rid of me as a public
figure
they needed one editor
in one place
to write it to write an editorial and
say cancel this guy that's all it would
take one editor in one place
do you think the newspapers did this on
their own
because they couldn't I'm not saying
they didn't
it's entirely possible it's just what
you thought it was public complaint the
newspapers had too much pressure
newspapers also didn't like me because
I'm critic criticized the news a lot and
so it was just a news thing it was just
business and there was nothing
suspicious here very possible
but
I can't really conceive of a situation
where the CIA wouldn't want to take me
out
and they have the ability
it's one phone call
one phone call cancels me worldwide now
do you think that I will have as much
influence
after being canceled
what do you think
will I have as much influence after
being canceled
well it would be a good bet that I would
go away like Roseanne right if you were
going to bat you'd bet okay it's going
to be a Roseanne situation
you know he might come back in five
years or something but basically he's
off the field for the next election
cycle
somebody says this is not an issue for
the CIA let me tell you why it is
the CIA does want to protect its own
power and its own mission
and I'm a Critic
it's pretty straightforward if people
don't try to get rid of their critics
when they can
I don't know I wouldn't understand the
CIA if they couldn't act on things that
they thought were important
so I'm not going to make a claim that
the CIA decided to cancel me
I'm going to make the following claim
it would look just like this
it would look exactly like this and you
wouldn't be able to know now the problem
is not me because you know I know some
people say when I talk about my
situation it's whining or complaining
I'm not whining or complaining I'm just
describing
my life is fine
I'm in a good place I got I don't have a
problem in the world right
uh
but you should know
that you can't tell what stories are
real anymore if the CIA decides that's
your narrative well that's your
narrative in the in the news will they
only have to get a few news people to
say is true and then it's a big story
everybody's talking about
so if you thought it was hard
for the CIA or anybody else to change
the entire narrative or to take on a
person it's not it's one phone call
it's just one phone call that's it you
can change the whole narrative
which doesn't mean they're doing it it's
just that they could
all right uh Rasmussen did a poll on
designated the cartels as terrorist
organizations it turns out 79 of likely
U.S voters are in favor
of designated the Mexican drug cartels
as a serious threat to the United States
um who would disagree with that I mean
seems obvious right see let me see we
disagree
um okay well 20 strongly disagree with
that 20 but then there's another 10
percent that are not sure
so let's say the 10 percent that are not
sure
yes they found out a little more they
could go either way unless it's one sort
of a coin flip so take half of them and
add it to the 20 oh
yeah that would be 25 percent
or not in favor of it
huh very surprising very surprising
I don't know
um I wonder how many of the people who
said they wanted to be designated as a
terrorist organization how many of them
know that that guarantees military
action
I'm not sure if the people answering the
poll knew that they were voting for war
they're voting for a hot War they sort
of favor of that now I do I'm in favor
of a hot War
um
a limited one I mean one that just goes
after the bad guys but
I can say that loud
all right
um here's a shift in the narrative that
I'm seeing and you can decide if I have
anything to do with this right so your
assignment will be as I mentioned a few
different related stories
to see if anything that happened to me
recently allows people to talk this way
in public
in other words have I had any impact
accidentally on broadening
the discussion Zone things you can say
out loud
here are some things that people are
saying out loud which I'm not agreeing
with this is important
these are not things I agree with the
point is people are saying it out loud
that the problem with Silicon Valley
Bank was a diversity hire
now as people point out you know most of
the leadership was white men
but the person in charge of risk
management
may have been a diversity
let's say influenced higher now I'm not
going to say that that was why the
person got hired I'm just saying that
that's the conversation
and I don't know that we would have had
that conversation out loud before
and the out loud part is okay we should
at least look at whether this was caused
by a diverse a yeah A diversity hire
we should look at it people are saying
that out loud I don't think you could
say that out loud
I don't know a month ago it seems like
you couldn't say that here's another one
South the report is that Southwest
Airlines has consciously
decided to reduce the the risk or reduce
the
safety to get more diversity in their
pilots
that's actually being spoken about out
loud and in the news
that your plane might go down because of
diversity hiring now again this is not
my opinion my only point is that it's
now a conversation people are actually
saying this out loud now
and then the third one Joe Rogan I just
saw he was saying on his his show that
he'd vote for Trump over uh Biden
because Biden's just an empty shell of a
human at this point but he pointed out
that the Biden Administration couldn't
even hire good people because he used
Sam Brinton as the you know the
cross-dressing bag stealing guy used him
as an example of somebody who clearly in
Joe's opinion was a diversity hire and
clearly could not have been the best
choice
the implication is there was a better
choice
so again
I have no opinion on whether Sam Brenton
was brilliant at his job
he could have been
I mean I I don't There's No Smoking Gun
in my opinion this says that any of
these people are less qualified There's
No Smoking Gun but it is part of the
conversation now
and it should be
because it might have mattered
like it might be true that Sam Brinton
is purely A diversity hire now why do I
say that
let me explain to you everything about
every big organization
here's the thing in any big organization
whether it's business or government it
is better to appear woke
because everyone can observe it right
away
you can see it how many people of color
do you have on your board how many
people did you hire what is your
diversity it's just obvious
but
um
that's more important to look whoa
because people can see it compared to
being competent
which is often invisible
do you know what happens if you're good
at your job
nobody notices because there are no
problems right if the risk manager at
Silicon Valley Bank had done everything
right
you would never even known that was a
bank I literally never heard of that
bank
I'd never heard of it the only reason we
even talking about it is that
you know somebody
was not competent
but we don't know if that's because of a
diversity Iris that would be a leap
that's not an Evidence
um
but here's what you can know for sure
managers being managers and leaders
being leaders they will choose to look
good compared to performing well does
anybody disagree with that
if they have to choose now the first
choice we all say is but Scott but Scott
you can do both you can have great
diversity hires and you can have great
performance there's no conflict at all
I'm not saying there's a conflict
I'm not saying that
I'm saying that the managers don't care
if there's a conflict
they're going to manage to what you can
see they're not going to manage to a
long-term output that you can't
determine if it's because of who they
hired or not right the Silicon Valley
Bank is a perfect example
there are people saying oh this might
have been the diversity higher problem
but there will always be people who say
reasonably
there's no direct link
there's no direct link
it's really about interest rates and you
know the the environment and whatever so
you managers will always manage to that
which can be confirmed by everybody the
things you can see
and it will never manage to the things
that can't be proven
the things that can't be proven you can
manage those by the way you talk about
it this is the same reason that a new
leader likes to come in and then change
all the metrics and and the Departments
because what it does is it erases the
past
and so you can't be compared to what
you've done before because once you've
reorganized all the measurements of
who's doing what are now obsolete so you
erase the past and then you say the new
things we're doing yeah they're not
paying off now of course it's early but
these changes I've made if you wait five
years well we'll be in good shape then
I've really set this up for the future
no it's not good now
because it's an investment right so if
Zuckerberg were not the head of his
company
and he said all right Facebook maybe
isn't killing it at the moment but look
what I'm doing with meta
right meta is Zuckerberg's way of saying
we're doing something good that you can
see hey look at this pictures of us and
meta hey look at these goggles that you
wear hey it's all visual
and it diverts you from the fact that
their Core Business doesn't have a
future because young people don't use it
so you see this effect everywhere all
the time it's Universal it's every
company every organization managers
manage to what can be seen and easily
agreed upon by observers especially
their bosses but also the public
so
it's not a case and this is where
everybody will go wrong it's not a case
of uh there are not enough diversity
hires
that might also be the case might also
and that would be systemic racism blah
blah blah but if you have a situation
where everybody has to have
a high number of diversity hires
and everybody's scrambling for the same
limited pool of of people
in the theory and in practice you will
always get lower performance
not because the people are bad but
because the managers will manage to the
look not the reality
does that am I clear enough about that
distinction there could also be a
question that there just aren't enough
you know the limited pool of who
everybody wants to hire because
everybody's looking at the same pool of
people it might just be a shortage of
people that would give you a terrible
result too but you don't even need that
those people could all be better than
everybody else
and the fact that people are managing to
the look still gets you to a bad place
every time
so it's a Dilbert problem
and I would summarize it this way I'd
say that wokeness is a good goal that
became a bad system
I would on top of what I've said already
every good idea
gets ruined by
um
exaggerating it to absurdity let me give
you a concept
are taxes a good idea no some absolute
to say no no taxes I think taxes are a
good idea because it allows you to fund
the military
yeah fund the military
but are the current level of taxes good
no it's too much everything that's good
in small amounts will eventually be
ruined by people who have figured out
how to make money by taking it too far
right when I say that the base idea of
woke is a good goal I got a lot of
pushback
but here's what I mean on day one on day
one it was a good idea by day three it
was already ruined
on day one it looked like you know
wouldn't it be great if we treated
everybody with the same level of respect
and that's what I think wokeness is at
its base
to which I say yes yes on board
everybody should be treated as their own
individual and respect them totally
unless they're individual performance
you know says otherwise absolutely but
as soon as you go from treat everybody
with respect and oh and by the way I'd
like to be called by these pronouns to
which I also say okay you know don't
judge me if I get it wrong but I like
calling people what they like to be
called it's just polite and next thing
you know white people are hired
what
like we immediately went from treat
everybody with respect to everyone
except white people
that's where we are now it's it's
literally just anti-white
now does that mean it was always a bad
idea no no it's like everything else
everything starts as a good idea
it just turns to when it gets
extended by the the grifters and the the
media like everybody's got to talk about
it they've got a signal they've got to
be on that team and actually you know
Drew Barrymore is underneath in front of
a trans activist on her shower that was
big news today
and I think that was a trivial trivial
you know news bit but yeah everything
goes too far
so
[Applause]
here's what I'm going to do
for the world
um if you've been watching me for a
while if you've read my past books you
know that I always talk about systems
being better than goals
and you know that I like to reframe
things so I'm going to show you the
first draft of my four page PowerPoint
presentation the title of
I think you can see it there I'll read
it the racism mindset and the success
mindset
choose one
now
I could just go home after the title
page because that's the whole story
they're incompatible
they're incompatible the racism mindset
or the entire topic has lots of good
historical things we should all know
so in terms of information it's pretty
good
I like the information but if you make
it your focus and you build your systems
around looking backwards you're doing
everything that's the opposite of what
successful people do
and I'll detail that
on this page
so
on one column I showed you an earlier
version of this I'm just refining it
because I think it's important
so on one column you've got the things
that racism cares about Equity well I'll
just read it to you Equity uh focusing
on the past injustices systemic racism
reparations dividing people by race
that's the racism mindset does that uh
turn the things into a presser and
victim model resentment resentment of
current people for not doing enough as
well as old you know the long bed and
then the racism mindset is basically
could be summarized as I can't because
I can't succeed because racism I can't
get this job because racism so it's a
camp because philosophy now the success
mindset has a direct or pretty direct
someone who's a little indirect but
correlation
where what you would do for Success
would be instead of focusing on Equity
you would say how about winning how
about winning
have you ever heard anybody in the
success industry like somebody who
really knows about how to do success
have you ever said if you work hard you
could be average
you know if you put your your muscles
into it and your brains and you work
hard you could be as good as other
people
that's ridiculous the the any success
uh Mentor will tell you why aren't you
trying to win
if everybody tries to win
and we're playing by Fair rules and
we're not breaking any laws the whole
society is better just everybody try to
win
that works how about uh focusing on the
past versus focusing on the future if
you want to be successful you have to
focus on the future it's not optional
nobody ever got successful just thinking
about the past or how about systemic
racism it's a real thing
you can't forget about it can't ignore
it but if you have a success mindset
you're not thinking about what's
stopping you you're thinking
optimistically nothing can stop me oh
your problem is systemic racism no
problem that won't stop me oh your
problem is that you're short let's say
you're a man and you're short no problem
I'll work with that I'll make that work
your problem is that you're less healthy
or maybe you're disabled no problem I'll
make that work
yeah I can make that work
so the success mindset is all about the
problems won't stop you the racism
mindset is all about the racism did stop
you it did and it's going to keep
stopping you so that's what your brain
should focus on
the cleanest one is reparations
reparations is you owe me something
whereas the success mindset is what can
you what can you do for other people
and also reciprocity if you're Jeff
Bezos talk about Amazon right what made
Amazon work
he says and a obsessive focus on the
customer
did that work out for Amazon yeah
I use Amazon specifically because I can
feel their obsessive focus on the
customer you can feel it it's like it's
like an actual feeling right everything
from the one click shopping to how easy
it is to you know reorder things it is
insanely customer focused and that's
Jeff Bezos that's all Jeff Bezos he is
forcing them to be customer focused and
probably there's a big problem when
they're not my guess that you probably
get fired if you lose that Focus for a
minute
now that's a Winner's attitude
but uh looking at things as
you know as reparations you owe me as a
short-term strategy at best
uh the racism mindset you know divides
people by race but if you're in a
success mindset you're uh playing their
odds why would you limit yourself
to part of the public
by you know by thinking that some people
are against you stay away from these
people whatever network is you you try
to meet as many people as you can from
wherever might come in handy
um of course the racism mindset is about
resentment and how does that work if
you're trying to find a mentor
imagine your uh young black person
you're trying to make it in the world
you're in a big company and you'd like
to find a mentor because everybody would
like it's good to have a mentor but most
of them are white
what do you do
if you have resentment toward white
people for racism
it's going to be harder to get a mentor
because I think that resentment is going
to come through pretty quickly like
people are going to notice
yeah you can't really hide it it would
come out in your language and the things
you focus on et cetera and then the camp
because it turns into the can-do mindset
was success
so that's the list the I I think you
should be
um
at least
at the very least you should agree that
the lists don't line up
would you agree would you agree that the
racism mindset the way it's being used
in America is opposite of the success
mindset
that's the thing that bugs me the most
and part of the things part of what is
misunderstood about
me is that I'm coming from everything
from a success filter not a race filter
but if you come from that filter it can
be really jarring
it can be jarring to somebody who's in
the other filter it's very jarring as we
learned but I should also say that you
don't want to ignore history you want to
teach the history of course but don't
focus on it you should focus on
strategies for the future it's just a
focused question don't forget that and
then here's the kill shot all right I'll
read these but you can see it's just
three points
um the kill shot is the persuasive uh
dagger then I'm gonna
put into some people reading this here's
the dagger a child who learns the tools
and strategies of success will do better
in life than one who is taught to see
Life as a racist struggle
how does that feel
how does that feel
yeah
you're killing your kids by teaching
them the wrong frame
you're just ruining their lives and you
know it you can't argue with it because
nobody's going to argue that ignoring
the tools and strategies of success to
focus on Race struggle is a good
strategy
literally no one would believe that and
yeah we're doing it
so that's that's the dagger that here's
some explanation point two the media
raise race grifters well-meaning
teachers see I'm not not insulting
teachers but well-meaning teachers and
professional activists are poisoning
race relations and destroying the future
of black American Kids by teaching them
a losing mindset
do you think the Asian American kids are
are learning to focus on race
or are they learning to focus on
building a talent stack which is
Central to success maybe they're focused
on staying in a jail and not doing drugs
which are essential to success
right now we got to stop pretending that
every culture is being raised with
useful
mentoring messages it's just not
happening some of the cultures are
getting useful mentoring success related
messages and the Black Culture is being
poisoned into thinking there's a reason
that's going to hold them back and
nothing's going to change it
that's what they're taught and I would I
would imagine that the progressive white
part of the population is taught the
same thing
so they would be on board with that but
it doesn't matter as much
that progresses whites buy into that
frame because it's not them
it's not them they're probably going
about their own lives however they want
but I'm watching something that looks
like a black Holocaust
with you know obviously that's hyperbole
I'm looking at something that's a
disaster for black Americans and I don't
think they're doing it to themselves
I believe that white America is allowing
the situation that is the current
situation
to me it looks like the media assigns
people's opinions and the media is still
controlled by white people
so if we have these opinions it's
because somebody told the left and the
right what to think largely and then
they adopted those opinions and those
opinions are not coming mostly from
black people
right it wasn't black people who
canceled me
I had zero cancellations from anybody
black zero
it was all white people
so
I don't see the blame
being squarely on anybody in Black
America
I see the yeah I see the uh
the teachers unions being evil and
they're they're a mixture of everything
I see white Americans
being creating the situation that's not
good for anybody
and
I think the only people who can save
themselves are black Americans
because if black Americans rely on white
people
to help them with their reparations
they're going to get the Gavin Newsom
treatment
yeah oh yeah yeah we'd love to help you
how about you do a committee and come
back with your recommendations on
reparations huh and then I'm helping
look at me being supportive
good good going there
I'm so supportive no only black American
can help Black America
and if you think that I'm talking about
like white tricks for Success no it's
what all black successful people do it's
all what white successful people do it's
all the same
look to the Future be optimistic use
some gratitude have reciprocity just
basic stuff build a you know stay on the
jail build Us Talent stack have systems
over goals there's like 12 things you
have to learn it'll take you 20 minutes
to learn all all 12 of them
right
it would take you 20 minutes
to learn all the techniques of success
20 minutes
and and then you're good to go there
will still be lots of racism but you'll
cut through it like
hot poker through butter
and then my final statement here to
close down is the reason no one told you
this before is because there is a high
social penalty for doing so
there's a high social penalty for being
honest
on this topic
I don't know if you know anybody who had
that issue now my my my problem was not
the honesty it was the hyperbole the
honesty part everybody was okay with
but
I did cause a little trouble more than I
thought
by a little extra hyperbole but I was as
you know
the people who have watched me use this
pattern before
they know that I was causing trouble to
draw a fire
I didn't think I'd draw that much
it was a calculated risk I knew there
was a risk so that's why I'm not
complaining the reason I'm not
complaining is because I intentionally
did something with a high risk that I
had in my opinion a potential High
reward
for the country not for me and
maybe it didn't work out
so far I'm pretty happy with how things
are turning out
so we don't know
we don't know
all newspapers ended up not being able
to run it because my syndication company
and then my book publisher
canceled me
so uh that cancels distribution so they
couldn't newspapers couldn't carry it
even if they wanted to
yeah
so here's this is the message that I
plan to die on this hill
and I'm going to die on the hill that uh
all the ESG CRT Dei are crushing the
chances for black American success and
because they are such an important part
of my country
that's bad for me right it's bad for me
when black Americans don't do well
that's bad for me and that's why I've
put so much attention in trying to fix
that specific situation
um
but maybe the CIA took me out for
political reasons maybe the Democrats
took me out for political reasons the
only thing I know is that the
conservative part of the country
understands this message completely
true or false most of you are lean right
if you're watching this even though I
don't
uh yeah every one of you is agreed every
one of you is agreed look at the
comments
absolutely zero pushback
I got canceled for this
this is the way I did it so it's my own
damn fault but look at the bigger look
at the bigger picture
was canceling me good for Black America
well let me ask you this question
was canceling me good or bad for Black
America because this is what I'm
bringing
right this is what I'm praying this is
my offer
it's free
right and by the way
you don't need to buy it in my books
like I have a book that I think is good
you can't buy it at the moment because
it's canceled but if you could buy it
it would just be one of the things you
could do I'm proposing that the that the
the tools of success are so widely
available you can just Google it
you could pick up a different book you
could ask somebody who's successful I
don't care where you get it that's the
unimportant part
so that's why I'm interested in working
on homeschooling because I think you
could make a difference in the
curriculum by just introducing a module
about personal success
in a module about personal success if
you could do it well
I think would guarantee the
homeschoolers outperformed everybody
else they probably already do but it
would just make it clean
and I would I would make a following bet
that if you gave me a group of
randomized black Americans
or even poor let's say let's say low
income so they're randomized except
they're all low income and you compare
that to a randomized group of white kids
and you say Scott you're going to work
with the randomized group of black kids
you're going to teach them the tools of
success that work for everybody
and then the the white kids will just be
the control group
they're just taught at regular education
come back in 20 years who's making more
money
I guarantee it's my group
I guarantee it
you you should you should place a very
large bat
on that if the group that has the tools
of success does well
I would do it I could probably
uh
making a web series
um
a web series teaching the rules of
success
the trouble is I don't know if people
are watching videos that are longer than
30 seconds
so if I did it it would be a series of
30 second reels
it's probably the only way to do it yeah
because kids aren't going to read it you
can turn it into a course for a teacher
and then the teacher could work with the
kids but uh for mass communication it's
hard to reach kids
you need something really simple
yeah I I'm trying not to say tick tock
because I want Tick Tock to go away
homeschooling is great only if the
parents are well educated that's
probably true although I think that's
changing
my understanding is that the home school
Market is now robust enough that you can
find videos of good teachers you know I
think people coordinate to have maybe
the smartest parent teach a few of them
or something I think they're finding
workarounds but you're true but it's
true if the parents aren't starting with
a good basis of knowledge it's going to
be harder
Charter Schools yeah
I'm in favor of all of those alternative
schooling
things all right that's all I got for
you today
Stevie we'll talk about how the bell
curve Is for Suckers actually I'll do it
right now anytime I have this kind of
conversation somebody says belka or
belker or bell curve and you know what
that means the idea is that the the
racially let's say uh provocative
members of the of the white Community
think that that's the whole explanation
here's why I disagree
most people are average
that's my whole argument
I'm only talking about average people
if it's true that there are more white
people who are genius scientists how
does that affect you and me
suppose it's true
suppose there's a bunch of freaks who
are white that are so smart you know
they're they're the quantum physicists
and stuff suppose that's true
what does that have to do with the guy
who walks in for the job in your company
nothing nothing it doesn't tell you
anything about an individual the fact
that there might be some freakishly
smart people in one group excuse the
average
uh is it isn't there now um
all right so my point is you're talking
about the exceptions now how about Black
America do they have uh an unusual
number of people who because of poverty
and even low nutritional stuff
is there is there anything that's
skewing that average probably right but
if the average person you know the the
people in let's say the 80 bulk
of both the White and the black
population if anybody in that middle 80
percent of white or black
comes into your office for an interview
and they have roughly similar
credentials
you can't tell them apart
you you have no idea who's going to be
good on the job nobody can do that it's
just not a thing right there it's
because the middle is just the middle
the the the
Geniuses that may have been skewing it
and the people who don't have any job
and never will we're skewing it in
another group they're not the people
we're talking about
right they're just not the people so
when you tried to deal with if you're
using an average
to decide how to deal with an individual
that's just nonsense
uh there may be some use for that
information
but I think it's overused
so so I reject it as useful right
I'm not rejecting it as I don't know if
the science is measuring the right thing
or not I don't know how much IQ is
really telling you about success I mean
it's highly correlated but there may be
other things that are correlated that
are they're sort of obscuring the real
thing going on
so those are all interesting topics but
when you're talking about personal
success it's about the person standing
in front of you
it's not about anybody's average
it's the person standing in front of you
all right that's all for now YouTube I'm
going to talk to locals people a little
bit more best live stream you've seen
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