Episode 3032 CWSA 11/30/25 — Scott Adams Philosophy

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Back to episode — Episode 3032 CWSA 11/30/25

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ng a narrative. We're not seeing reporting. Then I asked Grok, and remember again, Grok doesn't have to be right all the time, but I'll tell you what Grok said because it's interesting. I've told you before that one of the ways you can predict the future is by looking at insurance. And so I wondered, are these boats privately owned? Not boats, ships. Are these tankers privately owned? And if they…

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f and maybe that puts some pressure on Zelensky that his best friend is already being chased out of office under accusations of corruption. And I said, well, I had a few other arguments, but my argument was that we might be closer to some kind of negotiated settlement than people realize.

I'm completely going to change that today because I spent some time trying to figure out also using Grok for context. I wanted to see how close Russia was to economic defeat. So it's a war. There's sort of a two-part war. One part of the war is killing humans and trying to be the last living humans. So that's one way to look at the war. The other way is that they're both attacking each other's economies and that the real war is economic. So whoever can economically defeat the other one will be the winner. And I was trying to figure out what would be a scenario in which Putin would be willing to make peace right now. And here's where I think I was very wrong the other day. There is no scenario in which it makes sense for him to stop the war. You know, if he's only losing two tankers that, by the way, were not even owned by Russia. The tankers that get blown up are owned by wealthy individuals and different countries. And Russia doesn't even lose anything except two out of a thousand tankers.

So there is according to Grok there is definitely impact on Russian citizens. So they've got eight or nine percent inflation. Their GDP is kind of flat and people are feeling the pinch but it's not the end of the world. You know Russia is not in any kind of a depression. And it looks like they can kind of keep going on. And one of the things that Putin has going for him is he doesn't seem to have to satisfy his public that much because he's going to stay in power and he can control his own media. And so if it doesn't get too much worse, he's better off just winning. And if you factor in ego, you know, you have to factor in ego. I don't see him quitting now because if he quit now, even if he banked the gains and said, "Okay, we have the Donbass and we've got Crimea and we got a few things we wanted." If he did, it would still look like a lot of war for not a lot of gain. I think he has to p

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robably gain more before his legacy looks good and he can argue that it made sense to have the war in the first place because even though he doesn't need to make his population love him, you know, the way American politicians might, he still needs some kind of popular support. So I would say that Ukraine does not look like it could take out Russia's energy infrastructure before Russia could take…

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Wisdom from this episode

"It's a war. There's sort of a two-part war. One part of the war is killing humans and trying to be the last living humans. The other way is that they're both attacking each other's economies and that the real war is economic. So whoever can economically defeat the other one will be the winner."

Every war has two fronts: the physical battle to outlast the enemy in lives, and the economic battle to outlast them in resources. The side that wins economically usually wins overall.

"One of the things that Putin has going for him is he doesn't seem to have to satisfy his public that much because he's going to stay in power and he can control his own media. And so if it doesn't get too much worse, he's better off just winning."

Authoritarian leaders can sustain costly wars longer than democratic ones because they control the media and don't need strong public approval to stay in power.

"If you factor in ego, you know, you have to factor in ego. I don't see him quitting now because if he quit now, even if he banked the gains... it would still look like a lot of war for not a lot of gain."

When predicting what a leader will do, you must factor in ego. Quitting can look like failure even if some gains were made, so they often choose to continue.