Using Persuasion to Create Assets Out of Nothing

Guest Post by Scott Adams

Yesterday President Trump unexpectedly said he would be “honored” to meet North Korea’s Kim Jung-un.

And that’s how a Master Persuader creates an asset out of nothing.

I’ll explain.

By holding out the possibility of meeting with Kim Jung-un, President Trump has conjured out of thin air a virtual “asset” that he can use for negotiating with North Korea. I’m sure the North Korean leader would like the international respect and recognition that such a meeting would confer. Best of all, Jung-un could use that future meeting as evidence for his citizens that he stared-down America and negotiated a great deal in which we remove some of our military assets while they end their nuclear weapons program. Or something like that.

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The point is that President Trump created this “asset” out of nothing but persuasion. Now Kim Jung-un has something to gain, and something to lose. And that option simply didn’t exist a week ago.

Do you think this was a unique situation?

Consider that President Trump has already built a border wall with Mexico out of nothing but persuasion. Immigration from Mexico is down more than 50% just from Trump’s persuasion alone. I suppose we will get something like a physical wall someday too. But for now, Trump’s Wall of Persuasion is doing a lot of work.

Now take a look at the stock market. Optimism about a Trump presidency has increased the value of the stock market by a gazillion dollars (approximately) since election day. In other words, President Trump’s persuasion created a lot of something out of nothing. Again.

I hadn’t heard much about the alleged trillion dollars held offshore by American corporations until Trump started talking about repatriating it. If the tax code is tweaked just right, much of that money will come back. That’s like Trump’s persuasion creating something out of nothing too.

President Trump cancelled TPP, criticized NAFTA, and warned China that trade negotiations will be aggressive. That collection of persuasion will probably create money out of nothing for America.

Before President Trump came to office, some NATO countries were not paying their agreed share of the expenses. Now countries are starting to step up. That change came from nothing but persuasion.

If you think climate prediction models are unreliable, President Trump just conjured up a few trillion dollars in cost savings by favoring job creation and economics over CO2 reduction. Obviously that could be the wrong bet, but you see a consistent pattern: Trump traded something that might not be based on reality – the fear of global warming – for something he knows is real – the economic growth and cost savings.

President Trump’s tax plan will attempt to conjure up free money too, using a Trump variant of supply-side economics. The idea is that by cutting taxes you stimulate the economy and make the tax cuts pay for themselves by creating more income that can be taxed. In the past, corporations would have banked the extra cash from any tax savings and continued moving their operations to cheaper offshore workers. But in the Trump administration, moving operations outside the USA is harder. That means corporate tax savings will have a far greater chance of leading to higher employment here. And employment is THE biggest variable in economic prosperity. If the tax cuts create higher employment, Trump will have once again conjured something out of nothing.

A year ago, President Trump’s critics were calling him a “con man.” But they never said he was bad at it.

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Cheesesteak
Cheesesteak

The logic of this article escapes me. I’m pretty sure illegal immigration was actually down under Obummer. The real job market sucks and there is only so much lettuce to pick.
Persuasion only works, as long as no prove is required, as in the stock market, or anything else for that matter. I could persuade you that I want to sell you my house for 100.00 dollars. You, of course want to do the deal, but I say just wait a little longer and I’ll do it. Wait a little more and a little more and eventually you will call “Bullshit” and move on.
Trump’s actions to date have been loud and clear
More Wars
More Tax breaks for the 1%
Caved on the “Wall” 25 billion LMAO that is fucking chump change
Caved on cutting the EPA from 30% to 1%
Caved on being tough on China instead he wants to be tough on Russia LMAO
Seems like he golfs more than “Black Jesus”
Musloids still pouring into the country

TPP got repealed, but rest assured, all the GS vampires he has loaded his administration with are burning the midnight oil on “TPP 2.0), which will probably fuck us even harder.

Men go insane in herds and become sane one by one. Many people have already called “Bullshit” on Trump. Eventually the rest of the herd will follow.
I know I have

Unimaginable
Unimaginable

Trump “creating assets out of mid-air” and this little ribbon on top:

“A year ago, President Trump’s critics were calling him a ‘con man’. But they never said he was bad at it.”

What is funny is that anyone reading Scott’s blog who is of the “leftist persuasion” will agree with his summations because it appears he is slamming Trump as a bullshit artist. When, in fact, Scott is persuading them into accepting the benefits of Trump’s positions in spite of the Donald’s “fortunate incompetence”, also known as “fools luck”.

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fleabaggs
fleabaggs

When Trump persuades $250,000,000,000,000,000,000.00 in derivatives plus lots of other bad Karma not to implode or explode I’ll be impressed.

CCRider
CCRider

That sure wasn’t my take on his “conditional” offer to meet with pajama boy. I think that meeting him was Trump’s inclination (which I’d favor) but after he blurted it out TPTB straightened his ass out on just who gives the orders and he had to walk it back. Mc Stain couldn’t wait to get his puss on air to denounce the very idea as legitimizing Jung-un. The conditional offer Trump was told he could offer was for Jung-un to unilaterally back down. It’s a non-starter “Now Kim Jung-un has something to gain, and something to lose”. The way I see it he backs down or gets a war he can’t win. What is the possible gain? Capitulate in front of the whole world? I’ll believe it when I see it.

i forget
i forget

A conman is by definition a bad man. But when trumpy talks I don’t hear a conman. I hear demented. Which must say something about any who are actually conned.

musket
musket

Simon and Garfunkel once sung, ” Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”. Nothing has changed. We all see or project our thoughts, visions and desires into the world around us….

Austrian Peter

Ah, so true and perceptive (forgive pun). It is said that our brains cannot process all the visual information we are seeing when travelling at 70 mph, in fact, according to tests, we only actually see just 30% of reality and the brain fills in the rest. It is true also at lower speeds such that simple accidents occur because “we didn’t see the other car” or “person” and it is correct, our brain missed it. Same is true of what is heard, touched or tasted. We experience what we “expect to experience”. I know I have drunk a cup of coffee believing it to be tea, and sure enough, it tastes of tea! Any other examples out there?

BL
BL

Last Scott Adams article for me, he is bordering on insipid at this point.

jay

how someone could actually write this article and put it on the internet with their name on it is beyond me.

Trump has no fucking idea what he’s doing and the only reason why he got elected is exactly what this website talks about in many different articles: our populace is full of a bunch of celebrity worshipping dumbasses.

he can’t persuade me to even give him an inch of credibility.

Alfred1860
Alfred1860

I liked Adams’s approach to analyzing Trump and his chances through the late stages of the campaign through the inauguration, but now it just seems that he’s so invested in Trump that he can’t back away. He’s decided upon a theory and disregards anything that doesn’t support that theory (h/t to The Boxer reference), and its becoming really obvious.

“which we remove some of our military assets while they end their nuclear weapons program.”

NK will never, ever, voluntarily give up their nuclear capability. Adams obviously has no idea how NK and much of the rest of the world (who are wishing they’d never sold out) regard the USA.

xrugger

Yeah, that’s it for me with this guy. “Conjuring something out of nothing” indeed. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing as a nation for the past 50 or 60 years? Look where that’s gotten us.

I suppose it’s only logical that a people who have come to rely on economic alchemy, political sleight-of-hand, and magical dirt theory for their daily dose of distraction would eventually elect a guy like this. I guess it’s also to be expected that apologists like Dilbert would desperately attempt to transmogrify all of Trump’s flip-flopping and backtracking into something resembling competence.

I fear the country has elected a consummate con-man alright…and not in a good way.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Xr.
Right. With his logic Obama really did earn the peace prize.

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