Back to episode — Episode 1724 Scott Adams - Elon Musk Might Buy Twitter Today. And More
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l. There you go. Now let's talk about immigration. Rasmussen had a little poll, and 35 percent of people they polled—adult, you know, likely voter types—support the trend of rising illegal immigration. So 35 percent of the people who vote or likely to vote, more than a third, are in favor of increasing illegal activity, specifically immigration. Would you have guessed it was that high? It's funn…
← Previous segment →he's raised the money and it looks like they could make a deal. Twitter and Elon Musk today. So there might actually be an announcement today that Elon Musk is buying Twitter and it's going through.
Now I'm a little skeptical. It seems a little too easy. Were any of you expecting it to be this easy? And it could be that the threat of lawsuits was big enough that the board just said we're out, which would be pretty rational. Pretty rational.
I should mention that I own some Twitter stock, so I guess it would be good for me if he buys it, although I would have held it longer than that. But yeah, so it isn't my—I suppose as an investor it wasn't exactly my preference. But as an American, I guess I like the benefit to free speech.
Speaking of Elon Musk, it makes me think of Bill Gates. There's a meme that's being fact-checked. So Reuters facts and others are saying it's not true and the photo has been doctored. There's a photo of Bill Gates crossing the street in which he has enormous breasts. Now I'm not talking about his just unflattering photos that you've seen. I'm talking about actually photoshopped gigantic breasts. And Reuters felt the need to fact-check that because there would be some people who imagined he had transitioned and he had enormous breasts. But it's not true. It is not true. He has only average-sized breasts. So if you thought that Bill Gates had enormous breasts, totally untrue. They're larger than average. They're healthy sized.
All right. Speaking of freedom, once Elon Musk buys Twitter and returns free speech to all of us, which I think we would all applaud, I think the first order of business is he should ban Disney from the platform. Because I love free speech, but Disney? Am I right? Let me at those guys. So I do like free speech, but with the exception of stuff I don't like. So I will make an exception.
So I have been convinced by the people on the internet who have made a good argument. Lots of times I don't change my mind. I don't change my mind. But this is one of those cases where when you're faced with a superior argument, I think you have to fold to it. And so the argument I've been presented with the last several days is that yeah, free speech is great unless it's something you really, really don't like. And then it starts interfering with the actual workings of the government. And if your free speech is the kind that actually matters, the kind that would change something, that's extra dangerous.
So the kind of speech that I think free speech should allow is the kind that agrees with all my personal views. But beyond that I'd really like to see stuff banned. So I'm hoping Elon Musk will just start banning the stuff I don't like. Because otherwise I don't think I could support this as a stockholder. I'd have to vote against it. I needed him in there banning. I don't want—because if people start giving their opinions then things will happen I don't like and that would be weak. And I don't want to be weak, so I want to be strong and violate the Constitution for things that I like and things I want.
Okay, some of you can't even tell what I'm kidding. Can you? How many of you don't know that I'm not serious? Raise your hand. Come on, raise your hand.
All right. Well, I am hearing some terrible arguments about the Disney thing. But are you all bored with that? Is everybody done with the Disney story? Because here's what I think happened. I think I would say hey, free speech isn't more important than these things. Then people would say, are you a groomer? And I'd say oh, I don't even think that's the right conversation. And then I'd say hey, free speech is still important. And somebody would say but Disney's deal is better than other corporations. And I'd say I don't even think that's the topic. And that—so I don't know if I ever even had a real conversation about it because you couldn't get anybody to even stick to the topic. It was like, well, what about this other thing?
All right, so there's nothing there for us to talk about, I guess. But let me give you one useful lesson, a micro lesson on analysis. And this is probably the most important thing that economists or people trained in that or people who have business training get right that people who don't have that kind of training get wrong and don't know that is wrong. It's what I call the comparison problem. If you compare the wrong things, you're obviously going to come to a wrong conclusion, right?
So one of the things that I heard the most from—but only from people who don't have good comparison skills—is that Disney was getting a sweetheart deal compared to other corporations. And why should they get the extra deal? That's not the right comparison. If you're comparing Disney to any other corporation, that's completely nonsensical. You might as well compare them to a grapefruit.
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Well, a grapefruit doesn't get a good deal, so why does Disney? It wouldn't make any sense. Just because they're a corporation and something else is a corporation, that doesn't mean they should be compared for everything. Here's the comparison you should make. How many gigantic corporations who could credibly go to a state and say we can bring in 60,000 employees and millions of travelers to your…
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