The Pomp Podcast - #243 Scott Adams on the Coronavirus and the Upcoming Presidential Election

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. His recent books include Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America (2019) and Win Bigly (2017). In this conversation, Anthony and Scott discuss the Coronavirus, the impact on the healthcare system and the economy, how he evaluates President Trump's response, what his current thoughts on the November election are, why he recently sold Bitcoin, and what his best advice to business leaders is during the current environment of uncertainty.  =============================== CRYPTO.COM-----The only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link http://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. TAXBIT-----Refund-maximizing, cryptocurrency tax software you can depend on. Visit taxbit.com/invite/pomp and receive 10% off your tax plan today by signing up for a free trial. LEDGER----- Ledger hardware wallets empower you to optimally secure, own and control your crypto. Visit ledger.com and give yourself peace of mind by knowing that your cryptocurrencies are safe.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. Some of his recent books that I would recommend are Win Bigly, Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter, and Loser Think, How Untrained brains are ruining America. In this conversation, we discuss coronavirus, the impact on the healthcare system and the economy, how he evaluates President Trump's response, what his current thoughts on the November election are, why he recently sold Bitcoin, and what

his best advice to business leaders is during the current environment of uncertainty. I really enjoyed this conversation and Scott didn't disappoint. But before we get into the episode, I want to talk about our three sponsors. The first is Crypto.com. You guys know them as a longtime sponsor of the podcast and they've got a great URL. They're an all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, and invest crypto all from one place. You can join over 1 million users to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, and invest crypto in the crypto.com app. That's right, they've got a mobile app. Go download it and you can earn 50 US dollars with my code POMP2020 or use the link in the description when you sign up for one of their

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thousands of people do their crypto tax filings and IRS crypto tax audits. Taxbit.com slash invite slash pump. Now for the third sponsor, we're going to do something new. We're going to play a pre-recording that Ledger did as a new sponsor. Once you listen to it, we'll then get into the episode with Scott. I hope you guys go and check out Ledger and then enjoy the episode with Scott. liquidity firms like uphold bitstamp crypto.com index and dunamu are already using ledger vault to operate their business at scale while maintaining the highest standards of security to protect their clients funds visit ledger.com vault to learn more control scalability agility because security is not enough anthony pompliano is a partner at morgan creek digital all opinions

expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Mr. Scott Adams here. Thanks so much for coming to do this during these chaotic times. Well, what else am I going to be doing? I'm not going to the stores. I'm not going to the bars. I got a little time. Let's do some podcasting here. Absolutely. So let's just jump right into the coronavirus or COVID-19, which everyone is

freaking out, sitting at home wondering how important and real is this. What are just your general thoughts? I know you've shared a lot online, but just kind of give us kind of what are you thinking today as we go through this well of course the scariest part is the fear of the unknown you know i i have this weird situation i think most of you are experiencing it which is i'm in the middle of a crisis but by eight o'clock at night you know if i turn off my phone i'm not really in a crisis i'm just home like every other night petting my cat getting ready for bed you know watch something funny on on youtube so it's it's a weird kind of crisis is where there's this floating unknown. Is there some doom coming toward me? And let me give you

some thoughts to make you feel a little more comfortable with it. The basics of food and electricity and Wi-Fi and all that stuff, it'll be fine because those are the priorities and we have plenty of capacity to take care of the priorities. The stuff we don't have, and it's only temporary, is to make some widgets and make your commemorative plates and stuff that really isn't going to affect your life that much for a month or so. So most of us are going to get some much needed time off. We're going to spend some more time with our families and the experts of the world are going to get this under control.

Now, I've been watching the events very carefully and it's not something I advise for everybody Because it takes a big psychological mental load to expose yourself to all of the news about this and sort of live with it in your mind. So much so that I'm forcing myself to take, you know, one hour breaks during the day, you know, spacing them out. Because I don't like to be more than an hour out of the news, just in case something comes up I need to know about. But you need to you need to really take care of yourself. And in so doing, you're taking care of the rest of the world, because if you can keep yourself out of a hospital bed, you've you've saved a life. I mean, honestly, it's that it's that simple at this point. So I'm taking care of myself. but here's the hopeful part. And good news is often invisible until it appears. And that's what's happening. And I try to remind people that all we're talking about is what the virus is doing. Now, what the virus is doing is scary if it were the only thing happening. In other words,

that virus starting small and then ramping up and going crazy all of a sudden, that's all we're talking about. And that's super scary. But at the same time, we've never seen the situation that's happening on the human side. You know, the virus is one story, but that's half the battle. The humans are building weapons right now. This feels a lot like World War II. You know, World War II, Europe is getting ravaged, but the United States is off and we've bought ourselves some time. We know we're going to be in it, but we have time that Europe didn't have to prepare. And so we convert our factories and we go into war footing and we start building weapons culminating with the actual, you know, nuclear weapon, atomic bomb. And we're really good at

this when the smartest people have enough time. And I think the president bought us some time with the closing of the airports. But when the best people in the world are working on something, what you should expect is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing until there's something. And it might be an atomic bomb. You know, it might be, did you know we made 100,000 tanks on Wednesday. Hello, Hitler. So what you should expect is not hear a ton of great news until it turns. And when it turns, it'll probably turn quickly and then the markets will return, et cetera. And the things we're already seeing is a lot of news about drugs that are working in the lab. And anecdotally, they're working great on patients. Now, I'm not an expert, so I won't talk

about what they are, but they're known existing drugs. And here's the good news. Because they're drugs that are already used for other things, one was used for AIDS, one is used for, I think, malaria. We have an understanding of the risk because they went through the FDA for those things. If they also work for this new thing, the only danger would be there's something special about this that has some extra complication, but we're not seeing it. So already the smartest people in the world, and we're seeing lots of reports on it, have tested things that clearly work. And there are several candidates and they need more information about it. But here's the main inspirational thought here. We've had big problems in the past. I mentioned World War II,

Of course, there was a Spanish flu in 1918. But we've never had a situation like this that was a global problem when all the smartest people could talk to each other instantly. Because the smartest people in the world, the scientists, the doctors, are learning. So they're in the acquisition phase now where they're learning as quickly as they can. And I saw today there was a call from doctors to get a website to spawn up really quickly where all the doctors working around the world can share what they found out. Now, at first, it's anecdotal, but that tells you what to look at. And that call went out yesterday. Already, companies have stepped up.

There probably will be a thousand different websites that do that. I think the government's going to have to say, okay, thank you, thank you, 999 of you who did this without even being asked, but we're going to pick this one. This one's solid. And that problem was solved. Now, I thought we were already there, but just having the internet doesn't mean that the right people have the right platform. That's the platform, is one of them. And meanwhile, other platforms like this are being built all over the place. So imagine the power of for the first time in human history, it's never happened. The first time in human history, all the smartest people in the world are focused on the same problem at the same time

and can communicate. And it's the and can communicate part that was spotty, but it's going to go into hyperdrive by the end of the week, I would guess. I mean, it's going to happen really quickly. A website isn't that hard. so you we're going to get a handle on this really quickly and uh i don't know if the the handle starts in one week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks but we can hold on because our basic services will work i do think the government will respond with some something like universal basic income temporarily people who are who can't get paid i see people all over who are stepping up to help. I don't want to be too specific about what I'm doing in this domain, but I've stepped

up in the people in my personal circle, make sure everybody's cool. Other people are doing the same. We're definitely going to get through it. One of the things that nobody smart is questioning is that we can get through it. We're talking about how much pain it will be, but we know we're going to get there. And we know the markets will recover because there's nothing systemically that's wrong with them. This is just this new foreign invader of the virus. And we'll get it under control. We always do. We've been around us versus them and them being other humans or another country, etc. This is one of the first times, to your point, where it's us as humans versus an outside threat

in the age of information. How much of that plays into the psychological element of the response versus something that's more of, hey, we can just shoot it, we can drop bombs, et cetera? Yeah, it's an invisible invader that makes it scarier. You know, if you're going to do a scary movie, having the monsters sneak up on you, you don't see it coming, that's always the scariest thing. So by its nature, because you can't physically see it,

it just makes it a little bit scarier and harder to deal with, of course. But that brings also the question of President Trump, because I've been saying forever that he's the best I've ever seen in persuasion. But what good is persuasion against a virus? So this is a mismatch between a talent stack, which is, in my opinion, the best we've ever seen in terms of communication, mass communication to the crowds and persuasion. But it doesn't work on something that doesn't have a brain.

So if this were a robot invasion or an alien invasion or, in this case, a virus, those are all unthinking foes. And this is a case where I think the president has come up to speed on this now. I mean, the public and the government are very connected with social media and everything else. And the public said very clearly, it's great that we're hearing from the president. It's great you're putting the resources on it, but your messaging is a little off. And I've said that as well. And I'm a big supporter of his communication skills, as I said. But he's not quite the right fit for a brainless foe. And that makes sense, because all of his life, he built an expertise about convincing people. So he has learned from the quick, he very quickly

learned that he needs to be shown so that the public knows he's fully focused, and he's doing that, but quickly turn it over to the experts to give us the details. This is just one of those rare situations where salesmanship is the wrong tool, and it's hard for him to break that habit, I think, at this point. But we're in good shape. All the decisions, I would say, are solid. Even things later, people will say, you should have done X, Y, or Z sooner. Sure. You know what else you could have done sooner? Everything that's a good idea. You know, it's the weakest, lamest, I actually wrote a chapter in my book about it, Loser Think, about how the person who says you should have done it sooner is the most useless person in the room, now and later.

Everything could have been done sooner. In the context of an emergency, you don't want to be looking back yet. I mean, you can glance back, but keep focused on the future. We'll have plenty of time to, you know, dissect it later. But for now, let's just say that the nature of an emergency is acting, acting wrong, correcting, acting again, not quite right, correcting. So emergency responses are fast corrections. So everybody who says you should have done it sooner doesn't understand the nature of emergency response. You take your best shot, but you've got to do a lot of improvising, and we're seeing that happening successfully. Yeah. I guess part of this really is, in the book that you wrote, Winn Bigley, which is actually

very well done, and I'm a huge fan and recommend it to people all the time, you talk about that weapons-grade persuasion. What I wonder is, normally that weapons-grade persuasion is pointed at the constituency, but how much of that can be used to kind of cooperate resources or move those resources internally to actually make this a non-political issue and to kind of work with other countries, et cetera? Is it possible to take that salesmanship and almost use it internally in government and geopolitics, or is it only something that works on the constituency? would say. You know, this crisis is so big and so important that persuasion is almost a useless tool. We've reached a point where there are good ideas and there are bad ideas, but persuasion is

just sitting on the sidelines. And anybody who tries it, you know, you're seeing people try to get a little political, get a little edge, and you see them getting slapped back hard. I mean, The people who cross that line that do, well, let's talk about politics today. Honestly, I blocked James Woods on Twitter for talking politics. And he's one of my favorite follows, you know, one of the most fun people to follow on Twitter. But not this week. You know, not today. I want to hear zero about AOC's problem or whatever the problem.

I want to see Ted Cruz tweet out something that AOC said, which he just did, agreeing. um, that, that we need to get out of the politics. I forget what the message was, but it doesn't matter. It's the point that Ted Cruz agreed with AOC. That's the world we're living in. So I'm getting suggestions and ideas coming into me from, you know, Democrats and Republicans. I'm sharing them with Democrats and Republicans. None of this matters. And I believe that the president is, um, surprisingly because, you know, I'm criticizing the communication, But I think the decision making, and I think the resources are probably getting directed just about the way they need to. We see them trying to get rid of some red tape. That seems to be happening. So, you know, everybody will do the should have happened sooner stuff, the lowest level of criticism. But we're heading in the right direction. So you should be happy about that. there's almost this element of like the enemy of my enemy is my friend right and i think that's

kind of what you're talking about here uh one of the ideas that you had around um the virus though that i found very interesting was uh there's a lot of regulation and red tape uh in the health care and pharmaceutical world uh some of that for very good reasons some of it's just pure bureaucracy but you had talked a little bit about this idea well if we know healthy individuals have a very low mortality rate when they get infected with this, especially young people. Is there some sort of, you know, kind of sandbox where we say, if you would like to volunteer as a healthy young person to actually have the virus affect you or infect you, and then we can use them as kind of testing patients for vaccines, et cetera. You know, one, I'll caveat the whole thing with this

is an idea, and I think every idea should be explored. It's not necessarily you saying that this is the perfect solution, but it's just an idea. Maybe you can explain a little bit more about what you're talking about there and kind of the pros and cons as you see them. So I'm discovering this as we talk about different topics on the virus. Whenever there's a good idea, I try to put it out there just in case nobody thought of it yet. So I feel like I'm a sort of an idea curator at the point, you know, it's just something I can do and everybody's jumping in and doing what they can do. But that idea, very quickly, people said, already happening. So here's the good news. People are, and I think in Great Britain, they're paying them. Maybe we're

paying them in this country for ethical reasons. But apparently, that's already happening. So the idea here is that you take somebody who maybe wants to take the vaccine, and you give them the vaccine, and you just say, look, the only way we're really going to find out in a quick time, if this works, is we're going to have somebody who's infected slobber all over you. Now they wouldn't do that. They would just take some lab sample and expose them to it. But the point is that the normal way you would test things is you would just give somebody a vaccine and let them live their life. And then you check back in a year and you say, well, these thousands of people, how many of you got this disease just living your normal life? We don't have time for that.

We need somebody to step up and say, look, you know, I'm in good shape. I don't think I'm a high risk. You know, give me the vaccine and then slather that stuff on me and let's see what happens. If I get infected, I'm taking that risk knowingly as a patriot for whichever country you're in, really for the world. I mean, it's not even a patriot thing anymore. It's a world citizen thing. And I speculated that we would have no shortage of patriots, again, patriot for the world, who would say, yeah, let me go first. I mean, I'm in sort of the target zone.

I'm over 60. I've got a little asthma history. So I'm just hiding. But even I would step up to that if it were necessary. Like if that moved the ball forward, I'd say, yeah, I'm even in a high-risk group. but i'll go so i think you're there's no shortage of heroes i call them ordinary heroes just just people who would say you know the whole world is at risk take me take me first the great thing about human beings is that you know in a crowd of 100 you know 97 will run away from the danger

but three will stand up and just start walking directly at it and you'll never see an exception to that. There's no civilization. There's no tribe, no town where you don't get three out of a hundred. And that's a low estimate. It's way more than that. Who would say, yeah, I'm going to run toward that danger because it's good for the 97 who ran away. Yeah. And this brings the point of the 97 that are quote unquote running away, right? In some cases, they actually are running away. In some cases, they're just simply the ones who are most affected. And I think what we're seeing in the healthcare industry is we're exposing the flaws, right? So the hospitals can't handle this many cases. There's tons of supply chain issues around personal protective equipment,

all of these things. Even I saw you tweeting about the telemedicine is being overwhelmed with people who don't actually want to go into a physical location, but can't keep up with demand. Like, how do you think the world changes on the healthcare side, kind of once we get out on the other side of this? So right now it's kind of, let's solve this problem, but how does healthcare and that industry really change over time because of it? Well, a bunch of ways that are predictable and then a bunch of ways we can't predict. One of the things that I'm most excited about is that there will be a whole bunch of good news coming out of the bad news. Even World War II produced a number of inventions. I think radar

was one of them. I'm not good on history, but I think that was one. And what we just did and we're doing right now is we're putting the best minds in the world, medical and scientific, together. And they're working on a problem that's sort of a class of problems. They won't just learn about this. They'll learn about the larger group of this. And what that produces, you can't predict, But we're putting the smartest people in the world together. We're networking them. They'll know each other after this is done. They'll probably create platforms for a better sharing of information.

That has almost unlimited potential for where that can go. And it's just because you put the brains in the same places. I mean, it's the same thing that happens with Silicon Valley. It's the same thing that happens with a Microsoft town. A bunch of geniuses move there. and then you've got the right situation for startups, right? Maybe they came to work for Microsoft, but now they start dating each other and cross-pollinating

and suddenly, hey, I got an idea. It doesn't fit in Microsoft. I'm going to start my own company. So you're going to see something like happened in the startup world by having them all in one place. Really important. The cross-pollination is just essential. That's why you don't see a startup community

like spring up in the middle of Idaho or something. It's the people connection that makes it happen. So we just did that by necessity with the top smartest scientists in the medical community. That's going to turn into something. The other thing is that I feel as though it's close to guaranteed that there will be some red tape that's removed. Because we're removing some red tape temporarily in a number of ways. And some of it we're going to say, you know, it'll work better without that red tape. Let's just keep it that way.

So some of it will be that kind of improvement. We'll certainly be toughened against pandemics. We'll certainly have better plans for the next one. We'll certainly have better ability to flex. We'll certainly be moving our drug pipeline from China to the United States, guaranteed. There's just no chance that's not happening. And by the way, if you hear that your government is not making that happen, change your president, find one that will. That's not optional anymore. But I think you can count on President Trump doing it. And whoever else, if we get another president, I think you could count on them doing it as well, any party. At this point, it's just a given. So that'll happen. And then I was early on, I was suggesting that we drop the licensing requirements across state so that telemedicine people, a doctor in Utah that is not yet has a big problem, could take some calls from people in, let's say, New York City who are. At the moment, it's illegal. Why? Is it because New York City thinks that a doctor in Idaho is not qualified? Well, maybe you should talk to his patients because they think they are. They think these doctors are qualified. I don't think in the context of an emergency, there's any argument whatsoever that makes any sense. They should keep that restriction. So at least temporarily get rid of it. And what will happen if they temporarily get rid of that restriction? will answer the question. People will realize there was no reason for it in the first place. You know, it had to do with, I don't know, lobby groups or the AMA or some damn reason that had to do with the economics of doctors, but not the well-being of patients. So I think you'll see things like that that are temporary reductions in regulations, but they'll become permanent.

So I would expect actually a pretty big gain. Now consider also the fact that we're all getting trained for hygiene. What is the world going to look like with all these habits we've developed for good hygiene? I'll be washing my hands immediately after this because I just coughed in my hand. I don't have the virus, by the way. If I talk too much, it's just my normal baseline, so don't worry about it. So hygiene, better hygiene, what's that going to do to the normal flu. What are we going to, how are we going to treat the normal flu now that we found all these treatments that apparently are going to work for this specific coronavirus? Do they work for every virus? You know, will we end up taking hydroxychloroquine? That's the official name. I

think I nailed it. Hydroxychloroquine, whatever. Will we start taking that for regular flu? And then people will say, well, it's a good thing we had this other flu because we wouldn't have known this really helps. And the regular flu is whacking people by the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. So if I had to guess, we're going to come out of this with all kinds of new capabilities and streamlined processes, things we didn't know we needed, and we're going to be hardened for the next challenge. Yeah, I'm generally with you in terms of there's like these regulation improvements that we'll get, mainly because in times of emergency or necessity, we just will kind of ignore regulation and then realize, oh, wait,

that could have been not there in the first place. I actually think the way people work is very similar, right? All of a sudden people realize, wait a minute, I don't think we all actually need to go to this office, right? And some of this remote work or work from home and the tools, et cetera, could actually suffice. I saw a joke online that said, maybe we don't actually need all those meetings. They could have just been emails, right? And then people realize that Not only just work from kind of how they work changes, but then there's the economy as well. And obviously, I think there's a lot of people who are kind of worried that the economy is going to grind to a halt, mainly because people are being encouraged to not leave their homes. So it's not a, hey, I don't know if I have enough money.

It's more of a you can't leave your home and therefore your economic activity is going to fall off a cliff. How are you thinking about coronavirus impact on the economy and kind of where we are right now? Well, here's where people who don't have any background with economics are at a great disadvantage because they have just less vision on the problem. And so I would think it looks scarier because you hear people who don't know much about economics say, hey, it's all falling apart. And if you don't know any better, you might believe them. But I have a degree in economics. I've got an MBA from a top school, and I've talked to lots of other people who have similar credentials. And let me tell you, there's one thing that 100%, and when do you get 100% of people agreeing on anything, right? But I would say that 100% of economists, 100% of big finance and economic people, people who really understand it, 100% of them say it's temporary, and with good reason, because they've seen other shocks.

I saw, I think it was Morgan Stanley or somebody, I forget, who said that this is more like 9-11 than it is like the slump of 2008-2009, meaning that there was an external shock, but it didn't really change all our resources and systems, except in that little area, and then our security got tighter. But basically, the economy was still the economy when we woke up and shook it off. That's our situation now. so this virus is like a neutron bomb it's affecting people but it didn't break any machines didn't break any processes the internet's going to work fine so the moment that we we get the word the the uptick is going to be just breathtaking you know the the moment your government says you know we're we got a handle on this it's safe to go back to some of your other things or even if we just figure out how to do the other things better in different ways

the the recovery will be just breathtaking the only thing we don't know is is when we're going to get the green light to take the country back to full health you know the moment the president says it's go time people are really ramped up the other thing i've suggested is we've got a whole nation that's going to be stuck at home for i don't know a while and take some classes if you come in at the end of this and you haven't developed a whole new skill, well, you did it wrong. If you were out in the job market and you had, let's say, some job that got removed, you were a server or whatever, well, pick up a new skill. Find a skill that you can learn in a few months that adds well with whatever you do or whatever you're going to

add later that makes you more valuable. So as your income comes down, you can compensate by building your skill up while you're waiting. Because when you go back, you're going to go back with a higher skill and a higher income, it'll pay for itself. So think of this time off as a little bit an opportunity for investment in yourself. Take an online course. They're cheap and widely available. I think it's great advice. And it'll be one of those things where when we get out the other side of this, people who use their time wisely will be very obvious and people who didn't, I think will also be very obvious. So hearing you talk about the economy, it sounds like you subscribe to the idea that this is temporary. We get this kind of shock really

out of uncertainty and fear. The second that that uncertainty and fear gets removed, we kind of go back into this raging bull market. Are you worried about any kind of what I'll call ancillary damage, meaning that that economic slowdown, it pops the credit bubble, or there's any other issues that could cause kind of a more prolonged recession or financial crisis? Or do you really just look at it as this is a self-contained around coronavirus once that's gone then then we're off to the race but my guess is that certain industries will get just completely whacked but our main industries won't so if you're invested in cruise ships i think that's a risky thing i don't i'm just not sure how that comes back uh but if you have any kind of a normal

business i mean is apple going to sell fewer iphones a year from now probably not you know is Google not going to get advertising for their searches? I think they'll be fine. So the biggest, most important and robust parts of the economy are not affected by this, but there are definitely some pockets. Restaurants are going to get whacked, hotels, travel, all that stuff's going to have some trouble. But they're going to adjust, and they'll figure out how to make it work,

and I think in the long run we'll be fine. But it's your specific question about credit. So it's not going to be a near-term problem because you can run up the debt to create loans. And by the way, the banks are going to do amazingly well, which is weird. So they'll take losses in those few industries that are getting hit. But all the people who simply had to pause their business and they're in a cash crunch are going to go to their bank. And this is every bank's dream. I was a banker once. I used to make loans to businesses. That was one of my past jobs. And here's the customer that never comes in. You want them to come in, but these are the ones that will come in. Here's my business that's been operating profitably for 12 years in a row. You can tell. Here's my statements.

I would like to get a loan because I have a temporary cash flow problem because I had to shut down for a few months. A bank, their eyes will get as big as plates because they want that business. That's like free money because not only does it make sense for the business owner because they know they can pay for it. They just spin back up and they're back in business. And the bank says, I can't make a better loan than that. You can't make a better loan than somebody has a temporary specific problem that's already solved. But otherwise, their business model has been demonstrated. So people probably will have access to credit. Banks will probably be the most top performing industry is my guess, at least for a little while. um the energy energy energy part of i have to tell you i have i'm having a psychosomatic itching problem it's because you're watching if nobody were watching this wouldn't be happening

but there's a part of my nose on the outside that there's itching and a couple other places in my faces and i'm quite aware that they're entirely psychosomatic because i'll just use this to i'll wash my hands as soon as i'm done but the point is uh we're probably all having that same little issue uh we're all in this together yeah nothing embarrasses me anymore so you know i'll uh i'll do what i have to do um i don't know i think i made a point there and i forgot a true legend no so so i think all that makes a lot of sense in terms of how um you know kind of the ancillary reactions, if you will, on the economy. But then that brings us to kind of the response of the government, right? And so forget about kind of the lawmaker side. Let's just think

about kind of monetary and fiscal stimulus and the potential things that could happen there. We're already seeing what I've been calling kind of monetary stimulus bombs being dropped, right? Kind of the emergency rate cut within two weeks, all the way down to zero, the $700 billion. It looks like Trump is prepared to ask for about another $800 billion in all sorts of stimulus, et cetera. How are you thinking about the various options people have at their disposal and what will work, what won't work? Is anything a sacred cow when we shouldn't go, maybe negative interest rates or something else? Just talk about that a little bit. The more you know about economics, the more you realize you don't know anything. That's something that probably happens with a

lot of experts, you start digging down and you realize, wow, there's a lot more I don't know that I do know. And I'll tell you, I'm not sure anybody's smart enough to know that some of these big technical changes, like the changes to the interest rates, I'm not even entirely sure those have a real world effect more than a psychological effect. But the economy is a psychology engine. So when they do things that boost confidence, that's the right thing to do. So I tend to look at the big hard-to-understand stuff like money supply and whatever as unfathomables. It's like, I don't know, but it sounds like something good. And if the public thinks it sounds good and if it builds their confidence, that is the thing you want to do.

So there's that. But I agree with, I think Tom Cotton is saying this now, a Republican, and I think Andrew Yang has said this repeatedly, and I think everybody in the middle is starting to say, you know, maybe UBI, universal basic income, might not make sense as an ongoing thing, but boy, does it make sense now. You know, as one of the people who's going to be stuck with the problem of paying off the national debt, I don't see a better reason to run up the debt. Maybe I've never seen a better reason to run up the debt than what we have right now. So if you say to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, the debt's already an emergency. We owe however many trillions. We can't add two more trillion to that. To which I say, compared to what? Compared to what? I mean, I'm one of the people who's going to have to pay off that debt, right? Because I have money. It's not poor people who pay off debts. It's people with money. and I'm here to tell you I'm okay with universal basic income people got to eat you got to keep the lights on right well the lights will stay on but you know people were temporarily within a paycheck they still need to go to the

grocery store or order their online groceries and I don't think for me that shouldn't be even a discussion because unless we have another way to solve that specific problem of getting those people who are staying at home you know a paycheck. If somebody doesn't have a better answer, and I haven't heard one, we should do that today. You know, I don't know why Congress hasn't already done that. It feels like a today problem, not next week. Yeah, it's really interesting you bring this up. Was it yesterday or the day before I got in an Uber here in New York City? And when I got in, the gentleman had on medical gloves, the driver, and he had a N95 mask on. And next to him on the console, he had a

bunch of hand sanitizer and wipes. And we just started talking and, you know, I basically said, you know, how's it going? Is demand going down? You know, do you think Uber will kind of shut down and Lyft shut down, et cetera? And he said something really interesting. He goes, a couple of people have gotten in and asked me, why am I still driving? Obviously, given the fact that I'm worried about the virus, given all the kind of personal protective equipment. And he said, and I keep reminding them, I still have bills to pay. I still have to feed my family. I still have rent to pay, right? No one's going to kind of give me any help. And so I'm going to keep driving until they tell me to get off the road and i thought it was you know just kind of

the perfect example of somebody who that that's what he has to do right that's his living and he's going to keep doing it until um either they tell me to get off the road or uh or he's got to you know somehow get through this um you know kind of tough time yeah um people are gonna be making a lot of tough decisions one one thing that might be a little ray of hope is that the the restaurants are going to become, um, delivery kitchens basically. And the existing delivery people presumably are maxed out because, you know, I used, I used food delivery four times yesterday. You know, once, once was a supermarket order that we'd put in a week ago.

It just took a week to get here. And three times I, um, told my my crew here that they could just use as much DoorDash as they want as long as they use the obviously it's local restaurants it's just to support the local restaurants so I basically took the cap off for my family it's like you're hungry I don't need to be be with you I don't need to you know you don't need to ask me if you're hungry go support a restaurant by going to your computer and push the buttons you know get a tip to the the delivery guy So I think you're going to see Uber people becoming food and product delivery people on top of whatever little bit of human cargo they have. So that could help a little.

For sure. And then in terms of the UBI, I've got this friend, Travis Kling, who always says that quantitative easing is just UBI for rich people. And kind of the idea that if we're going to, quote-unquote, bail people out or we're going to inject kind of this liquidity into the Wall Street finance world, is there really that big of a difference between handing that money directly to people? And I think you get into some semantics between UBI versus MMT, and people have different versions of this. But at the end of the day, it's the concept of the government getting money to individuals so that they can put that money in their pocket and hopefully stimulate that economic activity. Do you mind if I curse? You're free to do whatever you want. So you've been warned if you're listening.

The idea of doing any kind of a trickle down approach in this emergency is batshit fucking crazy. Anyway, we should just cut it out. Like, you know, unless there's some economist who's going to disagree with me, I don't think so. You've got people who need a check today so they can buy some food, you know, whatever they need to buy. I think UBI, we should be past the argument on that, you know, at least for the temporary version. The permanent one, I think, is the end of the question at the moment. But we can trial it, see what happens in the emergency. Maybe we learn something also, although it's a unique situation. So probably we wouldn't learn what we need to learn about a normal situation. But I'm watching Congress and I'm saying, you know, I'm very forgiving about the issue of when did you start, you know, because everything could have been done sooner. But I don't think there's a pushback on this basic idea that you can't wait for it to trickle down.

And I'm real unhappy if there's any politician saying something like that. Be they Republican or be they Democrat, you're not qualified for your job if you're talking about waiting for it to trickle down and hope the business is kind to its employees and stuff like that. No, just give them the check. Give it to them right now. Today is the day. you know it's an emergency we're operating under what i call tv time you know for people who work on live tv if you've ever been in that situation i've been in a lot you know waiting for the countdown and you'll be chatting with the host and there'll be seven seconds until airtime and

the host will turn to me and start a conversation and i'll be sitting there you know the first time that happened to me, I'd be like, don't you realize there are only seven seconds? You can't start a conversation. What are we going to do in seven seconds? And then you realize that they do the thing, you respond, you go back and forth, the light goes on, they look at the camera and boom, it's game time. So there's this weird sense of compressed time in the live TV world that we need to take to Congress. Because without exaggeration, the UBI thing should be done today. And I don't mean that hyperbolically. I mean, actually, Congress should get together and say, all right, let's just do this thing, because we know we got to do it sooner or later. Let's just approve this

thing. That's a today thing. They should be on TV time. Yeah. And I don't remember all of the details, but I think it was in 2008 under George Bush. I can't remember if it was a tax credit or an actual check, but as part of the financial crisis, I think it was like a $450 thing. It wasn't exactly UBI, but it's not like this has never happened before. And to your point about this kind of being a bipartisan thing at this point, I saw a bunch of headlines yesterday that Mitt Romney is even supporting kind of a $1,000 check for individuals. And there was a lot of kind of, you know, kind of excitement that Mitt Romney is saying this. Yeah, we've got, we've got, you know, AOC, you know, Andrew Yang, Mitt Romney, I think Tom

Cotton is somewhere in that neighborhood. I'm there. It's the whole spectrum. If you can't get that done today, when people in the entire spectrum agree on it, I got some questions about Congress. That's a today thing. I hate to harp on that, but it's not a tomorrow thing. Yeah. And so that brings me to, let's get away from the individuals and kind of the UBI. Now what we're seeing is a lot of industries going to government and saying, hey, we need assistance, we need bailouts, you know, kind of a whole spectrum of how people are articulating what they're asking for, but essentially what they're asking for are bailouts. And whether it's the airlines or other industries. And I think what's quickly becoming a somewhat

controversial debate is a lot of these companies that are asking for help are also companies that had very high percentage of their free cash flow devoted to stock buybacks. So any ideas kind of around how you evaluate the bailouts of certain industries and kind of how do we pick which ones get help, which ones don't? And then also, does the stock buyback stuff play into any of this, in your opinion, or is that kind of a separate issue and shouldn't enter the discussion? Well, you're raising the question of what's fair in a sense, as opposed to what is possible. It's probably possible to bail out these industries, you know, given running up our debt, but we know we can do that. So it's possible, but is it fair? That's really the question people are going to

ask. And let me give you my emergency crisis answer to the question of, is it fair? Don't care. Don't bother me with that. The last thing I'm going to even engage with you is on the question of fairness during an emergency. And I had to have this conversation yesterday with somebody, not Christina, but somebody in my life, where I had to explain that fairness is just nothing that will have any weight. Don't tell me that argument. Don't tell me what's fair. Don't want to hear it. We're in a position of you have to do what you have to do. So it's a greater good situation. and if the greater good is that we have a airline that goes back to health we just got to do that all right that's not a you know oh it's so unfair the stockholders of the airlines you know got got

some free cash don't care you know i'm not even going to have that conversation with you the conversation is airlines yes or airlines no if it comes down to that it's going to be airlines yes and don't tell me anything else. Just be quiet. Take your feelings about the fairness. Do whatever you need to do to process them, but they're not part of the decision. That's the ordinary world. In the ordinary world, we'll talk about fairness. In emergency world, it's not a thing. Yeah, and it's interesting that you kind of position it that way of fairness doesn't enter the equation. I think that's a pretty accurate way to evaluate it. The other thing that I've heard people argue is what I'll call more kind of the

free market capitalism, which is, hey, if they've been bad allocators of capital, does that then mean that we should encourage more competition? Whether that is kind of in the extreme of let some companies fail and they'll get replaced by new challengers, or actually should we divert resources to help new challengers enter the market? How do you think about that balance between maybe not bailing out industries versus letting them completely fail versus bail out and then actually create a new paradigm or a new world for that industry moving forward, whether that's new regulatory issues or competition. Yeah, I think that conflates the long-term strategy with the short-term. The short-term is we can't have no airline travel. The long-term

is how do you do it in the best possible way? And I think it's a mistake to mix those. We're in an emergency situation. How do we get back to something close to business as normal? That's the only thing I care about. If you're also trying to complicate that by, well, let's not let this crisis go to waste. Maybe we could change some things and change the industry and tweak it.

Well, every time you add complexity, you're slowing things down. you're adding a new point of failure giving somebody else a reason to say no to what they should be saying yes to so this is no time to get clever and it's at least in that way in terms of adding complications and planning for something that well maybe that would be better in some some way it's just not the time for that but yes maybe we learn something from this that once we're past the danger zone we can apply it in the future but i don't want to look back don't want to don't want to focus about what the airlines did in the past don't want to talk about fairness want to look at the future and the greater good focus on that not the past not fairness

yeah you've got a very kind of we're an emergency let's solve the emergency i think viewpoint which frankly is not um not commonly held by a majority of people so it's kind of refreshing to hear that um let's switch gears a little bit because i think coming out of this uh you know health care issue and then the subsequent economic slowdown. Attention at some point will shift back to politics and the election. Where do you stand? We're recording now kind of mid-March of 2020. What are you thinking about election and kind of the various candidates' probability of winning? And then also even do we have the election in November? Does that get postponed? Is that going to be kind of compromised in any way? What are the thoughts there? Well, I've been saying

for, I don't know, years now that the president was on a glide path to a landslide re-election unless, and I always added this, or at least I tried to always add it, unless something big changes. And then I also added, I tried to do this every time, and it will. So every production has the caveat that if things go the way it looks, this is where it ended up, but they never do. Never. Don't expect it to. So don't straight line your predictions. That's always a mistake. I'd rather look at the tools and the big picture rather than straight lining my predictions. So that said, with that caveat in mind, here's what it looks like at the moment. I think the coronavirus took the odds of a Trump landslide from 100%, basically, in my personal opinion, to something closer to 50-50.

because this is going to hurt him and it doesn't mean that he did a bad job because i don't see evidence of his decisions being suboptimal i just don't see it you know the the people who don't like him do see it we live in this world of two movies so to the extent that people can say see that's what i was telling you all along if you know we get in a crisis you know he might stumble he should have done something sooner or i'm a super genius and i would have done it differently And they'll make claims like ridiculous things. You know, this is coming. People, his opposition will say, you know, you should have brought all the experts together and make people work. And to which the rest of us are going to say, what exactly did you see happening? That's what I saw happening. You brought all the experts together and they did their job and we got past it. now the big question is turnout in November are we still going to be worrying about crowds enough that people say you know I think I think I'm gonna

sit this one out and I think the odds are at least 50-50 that that will be the case maybe not for everybody but let's say you have an election in which the advice is if you're above a certain age rethink it or do it or you should do it by mail. Now, you hear that and you think, well, that's good. They still vote. They just do it by mail. But remember, you're talking about old people. I don't know how many old people out of 100 could be converted to actually voting by mail, even if they thought it were a good idea. Would they know how to do it? It's just an extra level of complexity. So you could see turnout being the only thing that defines the election, and the coronavirus could be a big influence on

turnout. So that's one way I could go. That's the 50% odds, I'd say. The other 50% is that whether or not the virus is still with us, it took a hit over the summer and things returned to normal enough, and the polling places put in procedures to keep people away enough. I mean, you can imagine that there's a special polling place for seniors that we just wouldn't have needed before. And we say, look, if you've been self-quarantining and you did a good job and you have no symptoms, use this polling place. It will still keep you separated, but there's a little extra safety. So you're going to see massive, massive adjustments as people learn to do be remote. Maybe finally we'll be able to vote digitally from our phones on an app. There's

got to be a way to do that. I mean, seriously, if you can take a picture of me voting, how likely am I going to fake that vote? You should have an app where as I'm voting, it's taking a picture of me. So there's no question who's doing it when. It's like, there's a picture of me. You don't have to look at it. You could just store my image somewhere in case it ever comes up, but certainly we can, there's certainly got to be a way we can fix online voting and make that work. It's not, this isn't like a, you know, or it's probably a new world. So I think you'll see that. Now let's talk about the candidates. I made a bold prediction that I felt a little bit bad about, but it was more to wake people up. We've got three old

candidates. And if they keep meeting people, then I don't know how they can turn it off, really. Because even if they don't do rallies, it's the nature of the job that you're just going to have a lot of human contact. We're not going to put Bernie behind a glass cage. Biden, he's not behind glass. And it doesn't take too much contact of, remember, the people that they have contact with are hyper-social, hyper-connected people. That's who gravitates to these jobs. And I just can't see them not get infected. So I think we've got three elderly statesmen here, counting Trump, Biden, and Bernie, and they're really at risk because I don't know that people are going to be able to tell them to stand down. And I think that they might be willing to take the risk

because they think there's a big gain at the end, not just personally, but for the country and their view. So we could lose one of them, and we could lose two of them. That's not beyond the realm of possibility, and that would be just an immense tragedy. So that's a wild card. I wouldn't put the odds that high, but is there a solid 10% that one of them doesn't make it to November? No, of course, there will only be two that matter in terms of the election by that time. So that improves the odds that, you know, we've got something to actually vote for. But the other wild card is Biden's just capability. It looks like he's a lock to get the nomination.

Anything could change. But it looks like, you know, he's on that path because Bernie seems to have stopped fighting. I think Bernie is looking for the influence at this point, maybe get Biden to take on some policies. And he's already starting to do that. So it looks like it's going to be Biden. And we've all watched the videos. I thought his debate was unexpectedly good. Surprisingly. I mean, he seemed vigorous and as good as you'd expect Joe Biden to do at this age. So he didn't show too obvious signs of mental decline. But we have seen him in that mode. We're not doctors.

We can't diagnose him. But to the public, it looks that way. And if it looks that way to the public, they will treat it as a truth, even if they're not doctors either. So the Biden, I don't think there's more than a 30% chance he's going to seem completely competent by Election Day. even to his own team. So I think the most likely outcome is Biden runs, he gets slaughtered by Trump as we're getting off the coronavirus. And that's the most likely path. But I think even the most likely path is 50% at this point. Let's take it to 51% to make it the most likely path. Now, I think that it's really well articulated kind of path through how a lot of this

could potentially unfold. One of the things that you said was one of the candidates contracting or being infected with coronavirus. And I'm with you there in terms of just the high degree of social interaction, the societal pressure to shake hands, especially when you are kind of, especially the president and your meeting constituents, et cetera. What do you think would happen? Let's say if Trump actually was infected with coronavirus, like, you know, One, would they even tell us or would they hide that for, you know, as long as they could? And then two, kind of how does maybe the everyday, you know, work of a politician or the government, does it change at all? Or is it just something that's more health related?

And that would be the. Well, it sounds like the sound just cut off from you. I'm going to assume that they can still hear me and keep talking until that gets resolved. But my expectation is that the government will function pretty well, no matter what, because we have backups and backups, and most of it's done by career people, and some people can be on vacation or call in and it'll work just fine. I don't think there's any chance that Trump would hide a positive diagnosis only because there's too much and too many people would know. And you'd notice if he was staying away from people in a different way. We haven't seen that. So if he disappears and they say, well, he's he's a self-quarantined or something, then start asking some questions. But if you don't see that, I think you're safe safely that he doesn't have that diagnosis.

The other two, I think, would play as straight. You know, you have your question because there's a legitimate reason for the leader of a country to maybe not show weakness. You know, you could make an argument there might be some case where that makes sense, but it will never make sense

for a candidate because you know, the news would get out. You'd lose trust in them. That's the end of it. I think they just have to say they had it. It might even help them. You know, I think nobody's on the campaign trail. So if somebody is going through the coronavirus and recovering on camera and the public's watching it or watching as it unfolds and they do recover, they're going to get the

best healthcare, obviously. Maybe it's an advantage. There certainly is such a thing as a sympathy vote. If somebody battles through it and recovers, you might say, well, that's one leader that's not going to get it in all likelihood because they already got it. So I'm not too worried about the ongoing operation of the government. I'd say that's a very low risk, not one that I'm even entertaining. Got it. Go ahead. Oh, I just wanted to check to see if your audio was working, but it is. So go ahead. yeah we're still good um you've talked a lot about or maybe not a lot but uh you you started

talking about bitcoin um given the recent crash and and kind of the economic uh situation etc what are you kind of thinking about that today and i think you even had some bitcoin but sold it at some point is that right yeah i i owned it in a fund um so i didn't own it directly but i got rid of the fund uh before any of this this business started i just got rid of it for Bitcoin reasons, not for coronavirus reasons. But I'm no expert on Bitcoin. And I wouldn't give you financial advice, even if I were. But I'll just tell you what I did. What I did was I held Bitcoin as sort of a hedge because it seemed like it might go up. I laughingly said that I was going to own it to stop other people from getting rich without working. Because I was

watching all these people getting rich without working and i thought well i could stop that right now i'll just i'll just buy a bunch and it was the last day it went out basically i mean it's bounced around but and i actually sold it for i don't know 20 or 30 percent gain when it was popped up for a little bit but uh it never really was the bitcoin of old it wasn't the bitcoin that was you know doubling every few days or whatever it was doing so yeah um in in a jokey way i i say I killed Bitcoin by buying it. And I actually announced it when I did it. I actually said, this is the end of Bitcoin. I just bought something. I wasn't even joking because I think I somehow have an uncanny ability to sense the end of a good thing. Sometimes I realize it and

sometimes I invest, but I have this uncanny ability to say, yeah, now's the time. Oh, based on my experience, when I'm saying now's the time, that would be a good time to reconsider being in this at all. So I knew I was getting in late, took a little game, got out. I don't recommend you get in or get out. I was interested to see if it tracked gold as a safe harbor, but it didn't. And it didn't do it in such a visible way that it would be hard to maintain in the argument that it's a safe place to put money in a crisis. It's definitely a different place to put money. So if you're just somebody who wants to diversify, you can make an argument for diversification, but I'm talking about 5% of your portfolio, not 50%. So that's the only

financial advice I like to give is diversification because that's universally just always a good idea. Yeah. So the one thing I think that it's not so much convincing people, the one thing that I think is happening, again, kind of how you caveat and say not with 100% certainty, but I think that the liquidity crisis that a lot of the investment community has gone through over the last really two, three weeks. I did this research on what happened to gold in 2008. And gold over the summer of 2008 went down about 30%. But it ended the crisis up from kind of start to finish up about 3x. And what it looks like when you kind of look with hindsight bias and, you know, 2020 visions, you know, in hindsight, is that the liquidity crisis, anything with a liquid market

It got sold. Everything went down in kind of value as those sellers tried to exit. But then when the government responded with all the monetary stimulus, et cetera, people then ran back to gold. Right. And it kind of ended the crisis up again. History doesn't always. But that's that's opposite of how it's supposed to work. Gold should have gone up during the crisis. But when the government made good moves to end the crisis, gold should have gone down, but it went up. So that tells you it's not a safe storage in an emergency. It's just operating the same as stocks. In your example, I'm not giving anybody advice here. I want to be clear on that. I'm just saying that your example proves that gold is not a safe storage. It doesn't prove the opposite. Yeah. And I think my point here being that, you know, if you kind of look at what's happening now, right, what happened in 2008 liquidity crisis, gold draws down. We're seeing gold draw down again. Now it's down, you know, 10, 12%, whatever it is. Bitcoin is obviously down about 50%. So again, it doesn't mean it's going to happen again, but it looks very similar to kind of that liquidity crisis in 2008. So, you know, we'll see what happens. But how do you think about your other investments?

So take out the highly speculative stuff like a Bitcoin, et cetera. How do you generally think about investing given, you know, you've got kind of multiple income streams and building a business and books and all of that, but just be interested to how you at least framework wise think about. Well, in terms of stock investing, diversification is the only word I like to use, and it's the only thing you need to do. So if you're buying an unmanaged stock fund or a spider, as we're called, it's a different form. But if you go for a low fee, large grouping of stocks that you can buy with one purchase and you own the whole basket, if it's a broad index like the Fortune 500, that's where I put most of my money, then you have the same fate as the country, basically. So you wed your success financially to the United States. So if the United States does well, you're going to do well, guaranteed. It can't go any other way.

That basket of stocks just moves with the country. Now, historically, that's always been a great investment. Now, of course, you know the person who invested in that one stock and they made a lot of money and you think, well, I can do that too. No, you can't. No, you can't. But if you don't believe me, because I'm a cartoonist, I get it. I do have a degree in economics and an MBA, as I said earlier.

but if you don't believe me, just Google it for yourself. Do a little research. Should you, as an independent investor, buy individual stocks? 100% of experts, and again, this is rare to get 100% of experts in the same place, but 100% of experts will say, no, you shouldn't do that because you don't know anything about these companies. That's a risky thing to do. There are some exceptions. A company like Apple or Amazon or Berkshire Hathaway, they sort of operate like a fund themselves, or they might have a monopoly in the case of Amazon. I hate to say it, but it's basically a monopoly. um you know iphone is basically a monopoly you know not not illegal monopoly but it works that way so if you have something that's gigantic and distributed and acts like monopoly maybe a little bit of your money there but even apple could have some kind of shock that takes it out of business

that didn't affect your other stocks anything could happen we've you know name the number of successful computer companies that don't exist. Hello, gateway computer. I mean, you could be surprised even by big companies. So diversification period. But if you're in a position where you have a good size portfolio and you want to see if you can get some kickers with your, let's say, the 10% that isn't going to ruin you if you guess that wrong, then you might go into some funds of some industries that you know will be good in the long run i recently sold off some biotech fund i had you know before this this ugliness started so it was good timing just got lucky but is biotech going to be a smaller industry in 10 years probably not i mean but but you should

still diversify within that industry and i call them the the kickers it's the thing that could go up 400%. And it did. I think I had a 400% gain on that fund. But that's rare. I also had for a while, a fund of the oil companies. Because here's my thinking. And this perfectly displays why people are bad at investing. I said to myself, well, there's one thing that's not going to change. Oil is going to be hard to get. And we'll be expensive supply and demand. We'll always need more of it. It's hard to get. The supply might be more restricted. It's the easiest investment in the world. I'm not even betting on an individual company. I've got a group of companies. Of course that industry is going to be fine, except that it isn't. And then Putin decided that oil should be

$20 a barrel or whatever the hell he's doing. And suddenly the shale business collapses and the industry starts you know you know melting now could i have seen that coming maybe some people were smarter and saw it coming i maybe it's possible but it was a hard one so that's why it's so important that even if you're getting a little you know 10 of your portfolio if you're putting in these even funds of an industry that's the most solid industry you've ever seen in your life can all change tomorrow so that's where diversification is your friend i think that makes a lot of sense um last thing before i let you go uh there's a lot of people when i ask kind of what questions do you have for scott um that we're asking some version of uh business leaders

today especially in times of uncertainty and fear and obviously the the coronavirus the economic impact etc kind of how would you if you were talking to them how would you kind of either coach them or guide them through these times, right? Both in terms of externally, maybe how they communicate with customers or other partners, et cetera, but then also internally as a leader of a company with employees and kind of all of that going on. Just how do you think about that as either the CEOs of these businesses should be thinking or actually any execution type stuff? Well, the good news is I think that by the time you've become a CEO of a major company, you don't need my advice. And that means that they're taking the position of employees

first, maybe customers first, depending on the nature of your business. But if at the end of this crisis, your employees think, wow, they really cared about me. In some cases, they paid me to not go to work. They were flexible. They did everything. They said the right things. that company is going to be stronger after this because the employees are going to remember that people remember when you do them a favor it's a basic principle of reciprocity so people who feel like they got treated well are going to be really good employees because they're going to be paying back sort of every day just by their actions their loyalty etc so the smart ceos but of course only the ones who have the wherewithal to be able to do this are going to be real kind to their

employees and that's a good investment right now it's a good investment for the country but it's also good for the company so i think anybody smart enough to be a major ceo knows that they're all going to be compared and if um you know if amazon i'll just pick random companies but if amazon did a great job for its employees and you didn't they're going to know and it's going to cost you so i think people know that there's a big price to be paid in a national emergency if you don't step up. People are also expecting their companies to help with the emergency. So it's not enough to just, you know, help your employees, but they're going to have to, you know, build a factory, convert something, help something, be part of the

answer. It's not a spectator sport. If your CEO is not taking care of the employees first, but then also seeing what can be done to help on the larger problem for the country and the world, they're probably not doing it right so those are the things you need to get right you know first empathy but you know empathy first then you know then tell say what you're going to do you know play it straight don't scaremonger don't play it down you know play it as straight as the government is at least the fauci um take your lead from him and i think you're set and it's not really a complicated thing, but if you lead with empathy, take care of your people, it'll come back to you. The best solutions are usually the simplest, which is definitely true right now.

I end each conversation with two questions and then let you ask me one to finish up. The first is, what is your favorite book or the most important book you've read, but it cannot for you be one that you have written? Yeah. I would say that the book Influence by Robert Cialdini is a must read for anybody in any kind of a business or organization, anybody who deals with people and needs to influence them. So to understand the world and how irrational people are and how easily they're influenced by things you wouldn't necessarily think were influential. So I would say that's the number one book, and everybody should have read that if they're in the business world, at least. And then aliens. Are you a believer, non-believer, think they're real?

Well, I'm a believer of simulation theory. And believer, of course, I'll put that in quotes. The idea behind simulation theory, just for anybody listening who doesn't already know, is that the odds of us being a real civilization versus someone else's computer simulation is very low. Because for every civilization that will be able to build a simulated software, let's say, civilization, and then look at it, let it run out, run out its evolution. for everyone that can do that they're not just going to make one they'll make lots of them so the the odds of us being the original species versus something that the original species created that is more of a virtual you know hologram and software and we think we're real but we're not the odds are that we're a simulation and you know if you calculate the odds it's probably a trillion to one which doesn't mean it's true but at least as we see the world it looks like it's probably

a trillion to one in favor of it. So I like the odds. So when you say, that's why I put a quote on belief. Well, I don't believe it. I simply observe that these things are true. And that would give us an odds of a trillion to one that we're not real. Not real in the sense of being an original species. So if you were a software simulation, would the simulators build worlds that you weren't going to visit? And the answer is no. You wouldn't use resources to build an alien planet that nobody in your Earth simulation could ever see,

unless it's just for fun. You have some other simulation going. But probably it's just us, because that's the way a programmer would make it. They'd say, I'll build one world. I'm not building two worlds. That's just somebody else's simulation. But in your world, this is it.

So probably we're a simulation and probably we're programmed like any, like a human programmer would program. And there are resource constraints and you would not build worlds that you did not visit. And so now under the simulation theory, it is unlikely that there would be aliens, but could be. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe like a video game where you have to go up to another level. Yeah. You have to win this level and beat the coronavirus before you see the

aliens. So I guess anything's possible, but I'm not betting on aliens. As soon as you said, get to the next level, I thought coronavirus may be the end of this level. Yeah. Well, when we beat it, we'll be the end of the level. It's not going to beat us. Absolutely. What one question do you have for me to, to finish up? uh i do have a question for you so you asked me to be on because you've been following my work for a while pick out the one thing that i've said or you've read about me that made the most

impact that in a real world way that changed something you did um i think that my favorite thing you've ever written is the book win bigly and i think that you in a very clear way articulated this idea of weapons grade persuasion. But one of the things that I took out of there that I think previously many people debated was, is this something that is innate in somebody, nature versus nurture type thing? And the anecdotes that you used in terms of, You know, I think there was an example of the logo or the mottos for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And kind of one was very data driven and testing. The other was kind of just, you know, make America great again. Those types of things were the Rosie O'Donnell example at the debate, et cetera.

What I think that it really showed me was there is some people, right, that there's probably a small group of people, but some people who have more of an innate ability or inclination to have that persuasion. And it's probably more nurtured over time, their experiences, you know, where they grow up, who they interact with, et cetera. But it really made me think kind of critically about the idea of what happens when those people then also focus on becoming better at what they're already good at, right? Kind of, if I'm good at something, could I become great at it? And it really made think through, there's probably not that many people who are good at something that focus on it enough to become great, because being good at it means that they get by just good enough.

But people like, you know, maybe it's a John F. Kennedy or a Martin Luther King who kind of already have the charisma and have the ability to be persuasive, etc. And then actually focus on improving it. You know, it turns them into kind of world class, if you will. And so I think that just those anecdotes really kind of said, well, what if you use the innate ability and then overlay it with kind of the professionalism of trying to be great at it? It just really made me think a lot. And you were one of the only people who I think has talked about that in detail. Great. Yeah, I think of persuasion like any other skill. People have a natural ability, but everybody can be better at it. So it's sort of like learning to write. You won't necessarily

become Shakespeare, but everybody can learn the technique of writing better. So persuasion is just that. And you're right. If you start with a President Trump personality, it becomes weapons grade because he takes bigger risks. He goes bigger than people in that, that accentuates his technique. But for a regular person, you know, you could be an introvert and it would still be really helpful stuff because everybody's persuading all the time. Thank you for that answer i appreciated that absolutely where um where can people go find you online where would you like them to go visit to to find out more about uh the books and all the work that you've done well the good news is i'm uh i'm minorly famous so you could just google my name and

everything will pop out but dilbert.com for the comic and then for um other commentary scott adam says all one word scott adam says uh on twitter and that'll get you to everything else awesome well scott listen i really appreciate you doing this especially during uh the chaotic coronavirus times but i think people are really going to enjoy this one so i appreciate you taking the time to do it thank you thanks for having me uh like i said i'm gonna have a lot of time in the house so might be doing some extra podcasting so thanks for spending some time I really, I enjoyed this and let's do it again. Hey everyone, Pop here.

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