Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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ships on Mars, that an Earth run by people like Bernie Sanders will never be able to build one. So they'll never be able to get to Mars and cause any trouble because their technology will never be able to get to Mars." And the reason that's funny is because it sort of makes sense that if we don't escape to Mars we will be doomed by anything that happens on Earth. So it turns out that Trump, at l…

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you can post things, maybe you can tweet on it or whatever is the equivalent of tweeting. So we'll all be waiting for that. That'll be fun.

Kind of makes you wonder who would be part of that platform, doesn't it? Because I don't know if it can happen in two or three months because I haven't heard of anybody who's been approached, have you? If you've been approached by this, whatever this new platform is, to be part of it, unless it's just Trump himself, which is entirely possible. But if anybody's been approached to be part of any kind of a Trump media thing, let me know. Tweet at me or DM me or something.

Here is an idea that will sound crazy until you think about it. Are you ready? This will sound like the worst idea and then it's just going to sort of sit there for a while until it sounds good to you.

You know how in business when you sign a contract it's fairly common — Snickers, quiet over there. It's fairly common in business to sign a contract with a clause in it that says if you have a dispute it will be solved by mediation. Now mediation, I got to do something about my dog. All right, wake up. Yeah, there we go.

Now mediation means that you're going to get a result from a mediator, somebody does that for a living, that will not make either side happy in all likelihood, right? It might make one of them happy and the other unhappy, but it's probably going to be some middle ground compromise sort of thing. No, I didn't throw the Kleenex box at her. I just wanted her to hear it.

So here's my crazy idea. We're watching the Democrats and Republicans be unable to govern because now they have arbitration. So it's called arbitration, yes. And so the Democrats and the Republicans can't get anything done because they don't want to vote for the other side and therefore not much can get done.

What would happen if we had a mediator or an arbitrator, somebody who would say, "All right, this is an important issue." I'll take one that we haven't dealt with as much. Let's say transportation, some kind of an infrastructure bill. All right, just to pick something that's maybe upcoming.

What would happen if the Democrats and Republicans just couldn't decide? They just couldn't decide. So what do you do? Just have no bill? That doesn't work because that's where we are now, right? Just nothing happens.

But what would happen if the Democrats and the Republicans under some trigger say, "All right, we can't work this out," and just give it to the arbitrator and say, "This is what we think. The other side says this is what they think." But here's the key. The Democrats and Republicans would have to agree in advance to accept the decision.

And then suddenly somebody says basically Joe Manchin. That basically he's the arbitrator, right? Joe Manchin gets to decide because he's the only one who will cross lines.

Now okay, here's the question I'm anticipating. Who elects the mediators or the arbitrators? Because then you'd have a situation where all of our elected representatives would be neutered and an unelected person would make the decision. But wait, it's not a problem because the elected people would be selecting. They would have selected the arbitrator.

So it's a pr

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ocess by which the elected people decide in advance that this is how they'll make a decision. But it would still be the elected people who had created the system that created the outcome. It would just be a reasonable person making the decision who is neither Democrat nor Republican in terms of bias. Watch how that idea sounds bad, crazy, when you first hear it. And it's going to sort of gnaw at…

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