Scott Adams's Blog, page 249

Be Useful (A Post About Colin Kaepernick)

I had mixed emotions about NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to remain seated during the National Anthem. The man risked his reputation and his career to make a point, and that makes me want to listen to the message. I have to respect that kind of commitment to what he sees as the right thing to do. His heart is in the right place.

Where the problem comes in for me is that I thought Kaepernick and I were on the same team (America, not the 49ers). It is jarring to see my “teammate” diss my team.

Then I read this article on CNN.com explaining that the national anthem was written by Francis Scott Key, a slave-owning anti-abolishonist. The “lost” verses even mention slavery. And the country that Key’s song celebrated believed that owning people like Colin Kaepernick as slaves was perfectly acceptable. 

If I were African-American, I wouldn’t want to stand for a slaver’s song of celebration. And as Kaepernick’s teammate (America, not 49ers), I have to support him on that. I’m in favor of replacing the national anthem. If the situation were reversed, I would expect my teammates to do the same for me.

But Kaepernick was not specifically protesting the national anthem. He was making a point about America not supporting African-Americans. Again, I applaud the sentiment and I respect the messenger for taking a risk to make the point. 

But is it useful?

I’m not aware of any specific proposals for fixing what Kaepernick thinks needs to be fixed. But it is likely I am under-informed.

And this brings me to my larger point. I think it’s time to re-think what our government is, and what it can do for us. Thanks to the power of social media, any good idea – from anyone – has a solid chance of bubbling up to national attention. Once something becomes big on social media, it has a good chance of making the leap to the mainstream media. And once a proposal reaches the mainstream media, our politicians are forced to deal with it. If they ignore a good idea with widespread public support, they will be held accountable.

So to Colin Kaepernick, I say “good job” making your point. But I ask you to take the next step and solicit specific ideas for change. If I see something good, I’ll do my part as your teammate (America, not 49ers) and give it some attention in this blog and on Twitter.

I heard Trump’s comments on this situation and was disappointed. Trump said something sarcastic about Kaepernick finding a country that he likes better. Persuasion-wise, the stronger play was to support Kaepernick’s right to free speech and invite him to be part of the solution, as I just did.

—

You might like my book because that’s the kind of person you are.

The Most Biased Poll Ever

Note: Yes, I know a Twitter survey with a non-random sample has no scientific validity. And yes, I know my followers are not representative of the public. And yes, I know the survey question leads the witness.

Still, I found this interesting from a persuasion perspective:

The takeaway is that some substantial percentage of the public (but nowhere near 84%) agrees with the notion that Clinton is a bigot against white American men.

Note: Yes, I know white American men have had lots of advantages throughout history. Yes, I know white American men have advantages today. (But mostly the men that have money, such as myself. The poor ones are screwed, same as other poor people.)

For our purposes today, I have no interest in litigating which demographic group is the bigger victim in society. That’s a different conversation. What matters to the election results is that a substantial number of white American men feel that Clinton is a bigot against them.

Again, the reality doesn’t matter. I’m only discussing perceptions here. And according to the public’s perceptions, our next president will either be a despicable bigot or … a despicable bigot.

As far as I can tell, both Clinton and Trump are about as racist as the average American. And by that I mean all of our brains are pattern-recognition detectors. 

Bad ones. Very, very bad ones.

We see patterns where they exist, and also where they do not. And we make decisions based on those real and phantom patterns. Humans don’t have the option of being unbiased. We didn’t evolve that way. 

We do, however, have social conditioning and just enough rational faculties to sometimes overcome our own biases. For example, you might observe a pattern that Elbonians seem unusually dishonest. But your rational mind might decide to check the statistics and discover that the pattern you observe is not backed by studies. Or you might tell yourself that just because many Elbonians are dishonest it says nothing about a specific Elbonian who is a wonderful person. Your social conditioning and your sense of reason can overcome some – but not all – of your pattern-recognition mistakes.

If you think Trump or Clinton are racists or bigots in some extra-bad way, you probably don’t understand how the human mind works. As far as I can tell, both candidates are approximately normal on the bias scale. But they deal with it differently in terms of political strategy.

Trump won the GOP primaries in part because he wasn’t disavowing his racist supporters hard enough. It was the “not hard enough” part that people saw as a “racist dog-whistle.” That was an effective strategy (in the primaries). Beyond that, Trump made some errors that allowed his enemies to pile on the confirmation bias to bolster the impression he is the next Hitler.

Clinton has her own dog-whistle strategy, largely ignoring the plight of white American men, such as Trump’s supporters. The dog-whistle message I’m getting from Team Clinton is “White men screwed you for years. Time to get even.” Clinton’s exact words are – of course – more about equality and goodness. But as my Twitter survey showed, the dog-whistle has a contrary message. As with Trump, the things you don’t say – or don’t say emphatically enough – carry a message too.

As I’m sure you know from your own experience, our private thoughts can be evil to the extreme. You don’t want people judging you by your worst private thoughts. You want people to judge you by what you do. To put it in the simplest terms:

You are what you do. Not what you think.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t see either candidate proposing changes that would be bigoted by design. Voters’ worries are about what we imagine they are thinking.

Lately Clinton has been quoting Maya Angelou “When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time.” It’s a great piece of pseudo-wisdom that probably works more often than not. But where it falls apart is that people do evolve. They improve. They change what they do.

And when you change what you do, you change who you are. Because you are what you do. And it isn’t that hard to change what you do.

Criminals often – albeit not often enough – decide to stop doing crimes. Young people often do horrible things, and later grow out of that behavior. Racists spend time with the people they hate and change their opinions (sometimes). Democrats and Republicans sometimes change parties. People who are ignorant gain knowledge. People who have no opinion on a topic can be persuaded to have one. Alcoholics stop drinking. Addicts stop taking drugs. 

You get the point.

Ideally, people improve over time. At least one hopes we are all trying to move in that direction. So if you are looking at someone’s actions more than ten years ago, and you think it tells you who they are today, you have been hypnotized into bumper sticker thinking. I’ll agree with Maya Angelou that the person you are on Tuesday is the same person you were on Monday. But if you check back in ten years, no one is the same. Usually – but not always – we’re better.

Both Clinton and Trump were terrible people in the past. So was I. So were many of you. I like to think I improved. I want to think you improved too. I’ll bet Clinton and Trump improved too.

For the record, I don’t care what Clinton said about “super predators” years ago. And I don’t care about Trump’s lawsuits from decades ago. Don’t tell me what you hallucinate about either candidate’s private thoughts. Tell me what the candidates are doing lately. Because that’s who they are.

It is a mistake to vote for who a candidate was. Vote for who they are today. And assume the candidates will improve even further. That’s your smart play.

Note: For new readers of this blog, I endorse Hillary Clinton, but only for my personal safety because I live in California. My political preferences don’t align with either candidate. And I don’t think it is wise to hire people as old as Clinton and Trump for jobs that require high energy and mental dexterity.

—

You might like my book because you might like my book.

The Mental Vote

I have a hypothesis that many voters have already voted against Trump – in their minds – months before the first absentee votes are cast. The way that works is that a pollster calls someone who is considering voting for Trump – perhaps the week after the Khan controversy – and that voter decides to punish Trump for being offensive that week. So the wannabe-Trump-supporter “votes” against Trump. But only to the pollster. 

Mentally, the voter has now punished Trump for his bad behavior. If lots of voters do the same thing, it forces Trump to either lose the race or change his offensive ways. So the first time people “voted” against Trump, it happened only in polls, and in their own minds. But it sure felt like a vote, emotionally. And it probably felt good. 

The mental-voting in the polls worked. Trump saw his number fall and started to soften his position to be more inclusive and flexible. The public changed him via the polls.

Obviously Trump is changing in order to win the election. But it should be comforting to know he can change whenever there is a good reason to do so. People were worried that he was too crazy to change anything, even if the situation or the data suggested he should. He has showed us that flexibility isn’t a problem. 

We don’t need to know Trump’s inner thoughts. And we can’t. But we can observe patterns, and it has become clear that Trump is directly responding to public opinion.

The idea that voters have been punishing Trump with their mental-votes is different from the Shy Trump Supporter hypothesis that says people don’t want to admit they support him. The punishers – should this hypothetical group actually exist – would be trying to make Trump change his ways so they can vote for him with a clear conscience. 

Trump did change. If it’s enough change, the mental-voters will feel the invisible influence of reciprocity and vote for him as a reward. 

—

You might like my book because.

The Face of Persuasion

As regular readers of this blog know, both Trump and Clinton have chosen fear as their persuasion tool. Trump wants you to fear terrorists and criminals because he thinks he can make a persuasive case that he’s the solution to those fears. Clinton asks us to fear Trump himself, offering herself as the solution to that fear.

So which fear is stronger, persuasion-wise?

Trump makes us fear dangers that are unlikely to have a personal impact on most of us. It is deeply unlikely that any one specific person in America will die in a terror attack. And if we stay away from high-crime areas, the odds of getting murdered are low too. So Trump’s fears have an abstract quality about them.

Clinton cleverly makes the public fear Trump having access to the nuclear codes. That’s a danger that could – in Clinton’s telling of it – kill us all. By that point of view, if you buy what Clinton is selling, Trump is a danger to you personally. 

On top of that, the risks that Trump discusses have no human faces. We don’t know what the leader of ISIS looks like. We don’t know the specific person who might someday shoot us in Detroit. We don’t know the face of the terrorist who might blow up a building we are in. Trump’s danger is faceless and nameless, at least in our minds.

Clinton, on the other hand, cleverly defined Trump as the biggest risk to the survival of the country. Not only does Trump have a face, but we see that face multiple times a day to remind us. That’s an enormous persuasion advantage for Clinton. She is selling a fear that has a face, and it’s a fear she says could kill you personally, as opposed to killing strangers.

Trump is selling a faceless, abstract flavor of fear. That has far less potency than Clinton’s approach because humans are wired to give extra emotional weight to human faces. 

Fear is the most  powerful persuasion tool, and Clinton has the stronger position there. I still predict Trump will win in a landslide, but he needs to solve for this first.

—

You might like my book because it is shaped like a trapezoid.

Finding the Political Bottom

Here in the USA, we’ve narrowed our search for a new leader to two lying, 70-year old racists. (You should see how bad the other 320 million of us are.)

I’m exaggerating, obviously. There are big differences in the candidates. For example, Clinton has allegedly killed lots of people in the past, whereas Trump will allegedly kill lots of people in the future. That’s very different, timing-wise.

But you probably came to this blog today to find out what I think of Clinton’s “Alt-Right” speech compared to Trump’s “bigot” speech. I will not disappoint you.

Clinton’s speech was a persuasion success. I give it A+ for doing its job of painting Trump as a racist. This successful persuasion approach is probably the work of a Master Persuader on Clinton’s team. The one I call Godzilla.

As Trump supporters already know, all of Clinton’s accusations about Trump being a racist are taken out of context. If you look at any of those situations in proper context, they don’t indicate racism. I detailed that point in this post. I won’t reiterate because at this point in the election cycle both candidates are lying about everything they say. If I have to explain why one of them is lying about something in particular, you haven’t been paying attention.

They are both lying. All the time. About everything.

If that isn’t obvious to you at this point, you are hypnotized. Literally.

But the truth has little or no value when it comes to persuasion. What matters is the pairing of thoughts, and the frequency of the pairings. Clinton makes good use of that phenomena by producing a laundry list of alleged racist acts in Trump’s life and in his words. What matters to persuasion is the volume of the accusations, not the veracity of any of them. Our brains are primed to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. 

As an aside, that is why this defense of the Clinton Foundation was one of the biggest persuasion fails of this election:

For Clinton to succeed in painting Trump as a racist, all she needed was a long list of accusations. She can count on none of the accusations being fact-checked by the media because fact-checkers don’t deal with one candidate’s speculation about what is happening in another person’s brain. Clinton is offering an interpretation of Trump’s words and actions. Fact-checkers don’t deal with interpretations. 

Clinton also associated Trump with various unpopular groups, such as white supremacists, based on the fact that many support him. Obviously there are lots of terrible people supporting every candidate for president, but they don’t all have a label. The existence of the Alt-Right movement allowed Clinton to slap a label on Trump’s supporters to invite what I call word-thinking.

Word-thinking is a popular alternative to reason. A word-thinker ignores facts and logic, and tries to jam all observations into existing labels. For a word-thinker, everyone in the world is either a racist or a good person. The reality is that human brains operate on pattern recognition, which pretty much guarantees that all of us are sexists and racists to some degree. But word-thinkers only see two categories. 

This same type of word-thinking was seen in the GOP primaries. Much of the discussion was about whether or not Trump was a conservative. People believed, quite irrationally, that if Trump didn’t fit into that label with precision, he was not worthy to be president. Word-thinkers are not confined to one side of the political world. It is a universal mental phenomenon. 

Word-thinking is important to persuasion because if you can convince someone to accept a label on an opponent, it turns off their critical thought and turns on their confirmation bias. Nuance is lost. Context is lost. All that matters once the label is accepted is whatever qualities the label already contained.

So Clinton succeeded in associating the Alt-Right label with Trump, even though he isn’t one of them. That was good persuasion technique. By my scorecard, Clinton won that news cycle.

Now we get to the interesting part. Clinton has successfully persuaded over half of the country that Trump is a racist. And you’ve never seen anyone escape from that sort of trap. It’s a death trap.

Well, actually, it’s a death trap for all two-dimensional thinkers who believe facts and logic have any role in politics. But Trump is not burdened by such illusions. He knows reality is subjective. And he knows he can mold it. 

So how does Trump respond?

For starters, Trump is calling Clinton a “bigot” because African-Americans have not made gains under Obama’s administration. But he failed to make the sale. It was too much of a stretch. Word-thinkers had already decided Clinton is one of the good people, not a bigot. No persuasion is likely to change that.

But Trump is always A-B testing. He rarely tries one approach in isolation. He tosses out a lot of ideas and sees which ones work with the public and the media. And he had two other responses to Clinton that have potential, in my view. 

1. Trump is saying Clinton’s accusations of racism are “All they have left.” I like that framing because it makes you think of throwing your gun at the monster after you emptied the magazine. It speaks of a desperate last act, which also makes you think past the sale. And it minimizes the accusations as being desperation politics. 

2. Trump reframed Clinton’s critique of the Alt-Right as an accusation that Trump supporters in general are racist. You probably don’t know why that is so powerful. I’ll explain.

Trump has built his brand around the idea that he will protect legal American citizens of all types – who he loves – against bad people in other countries. Trump is saying he’s on Team America. Period.

But Clinton just insulted 40% of American voters by calling them racists. Clinton literally – and publicly – turned on her own citizens.

Trump, by contrast, has attacked only professionals who are in the cage fight against him, including politicians on both sides, and the media. Judge Curiel is a professional (in a legal battle context). The reporter with the bad arm is a professional. Mr. Khan was acting as a professional because he entered the cage, armed. If you’re a professional – and can defend yourself – Trump doesn’t mind coming after you with a flamethrower.

But Clinton’s Alt-Right speech did not target professionals. Clinton attacked American citizens. Lots of them.

I’m also a professional in this context because I’m writing about politics. If Clinton criticizes me, that’s fair game. I knew what I was getting into. But if she goes after ordinary voters, that’s crossing a line. It is divisive to the point of treason. She crossed that line with the Alt-Right speech. If Trump lets that slide, it’s a mistake. I don’t think he will.

—

If you like books, you might like the one I wrote because it is a book.

Clinton and Trump Switch Brands

Correct me if I’m wrong, but six months ago Donald Trump was nothing but a talking suit full of money and insults. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was an experienced politician full of policy substance.

Then they switched places.

The media tells us that today we will hear Clinton attack Trump with a lot of name-calling. She will also associate Trump with his fringe supporters, especially the racists. Clinton might mention something about policies, but none of that will make news. Now it’s all about the insults and the persuasion. Watch for lots of lip-quivering and dramatic acting around the idea of being disgusted by Trump’s ways. Disgusted!

Trump, meanwhile, is going through The Softening. He’s planning policy speeches on immigration, the economy, and more. Trump is modifying his more extreme policy ideas and becoming more presidential.

The brand reversal isn’t totally clean. Clinton will still say stuff about policies, and Trump will still do plenty of insulting. But overall, Clinton has embraced the full-Godzilla approach in which persuasion matters more than truth. Trump is doing something more like the opposite, including prepping for upcoming debates (even if he says he is not), and talking more about policy. He needs to do those things to prop up his brand to “presidential” level.

I heard Clinton call in to CNN last night and preview her new Trump-is-racist persuasion, and I have to say it was strong. Strong enough to win, unless Trump finds a way to counter it.

The Clinton persuasion method will involve dramatic and repeated shouting of racist claims against Trump. Examples:

1. THE THING HE GOT SUED FOR 40 YEARS AGO!

2. THE THING HE SAID ABOUT THE JUDGE THAT WE MISINTERPRETED!

3. THE DEPORTATION HE NEVER REALLY MEANT!

Trump supporters will try to explain-away each bit of “evidence,” but will fail because of the sheer volume of them, and the limits on TV time. The facts will not matter. What matters is how often voters hear Trump’s name associated with one terrible accusation after another. That’s Godzilla’s persuasion advice, I assume.

Clinton will be using the phenomenon of confirmation bias to sell her persuasion. Once she primes people to see Trump as a racist, any “evidence” they see will fit that world view. You witnessed this week that Trump offered to help the African-American community, but confirmation bias contorted that into some sort of secret racist dog whistle in the minds of his opponents. That is their truth now.

Normally, the best defense against an opponent’s accusations is a persuasion move similar to how Trump expressed “regrets” about sometimes using the “wrong words.” When you accept an accusation, and show regret, it takes the power out of it. Clinton did the same move last night on CNN, telling Anderson Cooper she made a mistake with the email server and regrets it. That was a strong play.

But Trump can’t accept charges of racism and then express regret. Racism doesn’t wash off the way an email security mistake might. Trump can’t embrace the accusations and amplify them, nor can he accept the charges and apology.

So what the heck does he do now?

There is only one high-ground maneuver left for Trump. It’s a risky one, but perhaps the only path available. It involves moving the frame – from whether or not Trump did the things he is accused of doing – to a new frame in which all humans are flawed, but we are trying to improve. Maybe something like this:

“We were all worse people 40 years ago. The goal of life is to improve. I think I have improved, and I want to help America do the same. Let’s improve together.”

People can relate to a sinner who has improved. We all hope to be that person.

At least we should.

—

If you think monkeys are funny, you might like my book. But that would be more coincidence than anything else because the book is not about monkeys.

On a Positive Note...

It is easy to find ugliness in this election cycle, but I thought I would take a moment to point out two remarkable happenings that you might have missed.

Clinton and Trump are the most disliked candidates for president that this country has ever seen. And yet, see what they have accomplished without even getting elected…

Hillary Clinton has already broken the ultimate glass ceiling. I see no discussion – in private or in public – about the role of her gender. Clinton did that for you and your daughters. She took gender off the table for the most important job in the land. It doesn’t matter who gets elected now. Clinton already made the gender sale. In 2016, nearly all American citizens believe a woman can, and will, be president. Because of Hillary Clinton. That’s a big deal.

I know that some of you think Clinton “cheated” because she used the advantage of her husband’s presidency to seek her own destiny. But keep in mind that ALL successful people exploit their unique advantages. Clinton just did it better. She isn’t here by accident.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump turned the GOP into a pro-LGBTQ organization. No one saw that coming. And I think it is sticking. That’s a big deal.

So, while we were watching the two most odious personalities on the planet hurl lies and insults at each other, those two odious personalities were bringing civilization toward the light. And succeeding.

Don’t lose that.

—

You might love my book because I wrote it like a book.

Con Man or Hitler?

Heads are exploding at CNN as pundits try to define Trump’s repeated offers to help African-Americans as typical Hitler behavior. As my regular readers know, what we have here is a perfect trap for cognitive dissonance. The anti-Trumpers have created an identify for themselves – and in the media – as opposing Trump because he’s a racist. Then Trump goes and ruins their mental models by acting all non-racist.

This creates a situation in which the pundits either have to change their self-images and admit they were wrong about Trump all along, or they have to reinterpret Trump’s clearly non-racist actions as racist actions in disguise. Cognitive dissonance happens when people are unwilling or unable to modify their self-image to match the observed facts. In this case, to protect their self-images as wise pundits, they are forced to default to pretzel-like explanations of their reality.

For example…

Some pundits are pushing the interpretation that Trump doesn’t care about the African-American community, and that he’s just trying to be a safer choice for white people who don’t want to support a racist. That’s what a cognitive dissonance argument sounds like. It makes sense, sort of, but not in a persuasive way. It has a delicious pretzel quality to it. That’s the tell.

Yesterday, Trump doubled-down on “The Softening” as I will start to call it. He hinted at a willingness to NOT deport all 11 million illegal immigrants living in this country. Once again, this directly contradicts the Trump-is-Hitler notion and sent pundits into an even faster spin cycle. I thought Paul Begala was going to have a stroke explaining that Trump’s apparent turnaround on deportation is proof he is a “con man.”

Now things get interesting, because…

The anti-Trumpers have two conflicting mental models of Trump now. Is he a racist or a con man?

If Trump is a racist, then his opponents have to explain why being kind to immigrants in this country (his new softened stance), along with his outreach to African-Americans, fits the racist model. If they try to make the new facts fit the old model, they look ridiculous. And that’s what several of the pundits did. They went straight to ridiculous and discredited themselves.

The alternative to maintaining the view that Trump is a racist is the idea that he has been conning the public since the start. Under that mental model, Trump has never been a racist, but he played one on TV to win votes in the GOP primaries. Now his true character is coming out.

But wait…that’s a problem. 

If he’s really just a con man after all – and not a racist – the left loses its best scare-persuasion. Racists are scary, but con men are not. We’re all conning each other all the time – also known as branding, selling, and negotiating – so conning doesn’t sound so scary. It sounds somewhat normal, especially for a politician.

You say Trump lied to get some votes in the primaries? Snore. They all lied. He just did it better.

Trump has created a perfect trap for Clinton’s accomplices. If they interpret Trump’s “softening” as genuine, they lose their most persuasive argument that he is a scary racist. And if they argue that his non-racist actions are further proof he is a racist, they look ridiculous and lose all credibility.

Your move, Godzilla.

For additional entertainment today, watch Trump’s supporters try to explain how his “softening” is actually no change at all. None. Totally the same as before, except for the fact it is totally different. Nothing happening here, folks. Just move along.

—

If you like puppies and sunlight, you might like my book. Because it’s just like that.

Clinton Dodges the Health Question on Kimmel

Watch the first minute of this clip to see Hillary Clinton use the “liar’s dodge” to avoid Jimmy Kimmel’s direct question “Are you in good health?”

When you ask an honest, healthy person if they are in good health, they say, “Yes.” They might also ask why you are inquiring. They might add some details. But they usually answer the question.

Clinton never answered the question about her health. All she did was mock the Trump supporters who keep bringing it up. Clinton intentionally avoided the question while skillfully making you think she addressed it.

This is similar to Donald Trump’s technique in the first debate, when Megyn Kelly asked him about his sexist comments of the past. To avoid answering the question, Trump cleverly mentioned Rosie O’Donnell and used that witticism to run out the clock and avoid the question entirely.

Clinton used a similar maneuver to avoid answering the question of her wellness. She turned the question into a bigger question about the crazy people who keep questioning her health, and she ran out the clock. Kimmel never got back to his question.

If I hadn’t pointed out that Clinton avoided answering the question, you would misremember that she had answered it. That’s good persuasion. In television shows of this type, the producers always tell the guest in advance what the questions will be. Someone with weapons-grade persuasion skills coached Clinton how to dodge the question while making you think she answered it.

Someone like…Godzilla?

—

If you like to read, you might like reading my book. It has words on almost every page.

Making Mexico Pay for the Wall

Is it my imagination, or would a Trump presidency allow for more citizen participation than a Clinton presidency?

In a Clinton administration, citizens might expect that any good ideas bubbling up from voters would be squashed by the special interests. The lobbyists and industry insiders promote legislation for their own benefit, not for the public.

But Trump promises to ignore the moneyed interests. And he’s an entrepreneur at heart. In a Trump presidency, it is easy to imagine good ideas coming from the public and making it all the way to implementation. So in that spirit, I give you my idea for making Mexico pay for the wall.

We have around 11 million citizens of Mexico living in the United States illegally. Suppose we make them the following offer:

1. Register at the nearest Post Office. Just fill out some forms. For fun, we can pass a law to make every Post Office a temporary Mexican embassy, so any Mexican national who enters from American soil is literally self-deporting. Embassies are considered sovereign territory, so it all makes sense.

2. Tax illegal immigrants $100 per year for ten years. This is their penalty for breaking American law, and it gives them the right to stay and try for citizenship after ten years.

That’s a billion dollars per year in tax revenue, coming from Mexican citizens. If we use that money to help pay for the wall, that’s a lot like “making Mexico pay for the wall.”

Secondly, we could work with Mexico to declare the zone around the wall – on both sides – special economic zones that are free from some (but not all) onerous government regulations and taxes (for a few years). Then turn the wall project into a jobs program, and eventually into an enormous tourist destination. If any unemployed young people want to work on the wall, we’ll ship them there, put them up in employee dorms, teach them Spanish, teach them a construction trade, and more.

I wrote about this part of the idea in November. You can see more here.

I can also imagine testing ideas for building inexpensive, planned communities around the wall, initially for the workers, then for other citizens as the workers move on. Somehow the country needs to figure out how to lower the cost of living a quality life. Finding ways to reduce housing costs is a big part of it. This would be a good test bed.

I could also imagine testing out some form of free college or trade school at these worker communities around the wall. The classes would be online, and free. All the government would be doing is making sure the classes were publicized and accredited.

I explained to some folks this morning my idea of taxing illegal immigrants to pay for the wall. I learned that some people really, really want illegal immigrants punished for breaking the law. But it won’t be hard to talk Americans into letting illegal immigrants pay for border security and stay. It’s hard to hate someone who is helping you pay your bills.

That’s my idea for turning the wall into a profit opportunity. If you like it, share it on social media. Add your own twists too.

—

If you like walls, you might like my book. I’m not sure why.