E18: Inauguration talk, breaking down the $1.9T stimulus, the case for recalling Gavin Newsom & more

00:00:00.000 | Hey everybody, it's me, Jason Calacanis. Welcome, welcome.

00:00:03.180 | Hey everybody, it's me, Jason.

00:00:05.440 | Thank God Trump's out.

00:00:06.720 | I hate Trump, and I love myself.

00:00:09.920 | Hey everybody, happy days are here again.

00:00:34.100 | Champagne cart of bottles popping, boof, clinko again.

00:00:38.140 | Happy days are here again.

00:00:39.900 | Yay, Sachs is so happy Trump's out of office.

00:00:45.600 | He gave an amazing speech about how great Biden's inauguration was.

00:00:52.460 | Welcome to the All In Podcast.

00:00:55.420 | Oh my gosh.

00:00:57.940 | With me today in our post-inauguration afterglow is the dictator,

00:01:04.220 | the queen of quinoa, David Friedberg,

00:01:07.840 | and rock star,

00:01:09.880 | Biden, the blue wave, diving in.

00:01:13.680 | No more red pills.

00:01:15.540 | The blue wave is David.

00:01:18.680 | Rain Man Sachs is with us.

00:01:21.520 | David, how did it feel to watch Biden's inauguration speech,

00:01:26.520 | which you said hit all the notes,

00:01:29.360 | and I see you wearing blue today.

00:01:31.680 | Let me have a sip of my boof, clinko,

00:01:33.240 | and tell us you've got the blue jacket,

00:01:35.240 | the blue shirt, and the blue headset on.

00:01:37.600 | You've ridden the blue wave.

00:01:39.760 | Tell us how you feel with Biden in office.

00:01:41.920 | I'm going to drink my boof.

00:01:43.000 | Jason, I'm just happy to see that you're happy.

00:01:47.120 | Ah.

00:01:47.640 | And does this mean that your Trump derangement is over?

00:01:54.860 | You've gone cold turkey?

00:01:58.080 | You're on the wagon?

00:01:59.720 | And I'm just happy to have my friend back

00:02:03.920 | and not have you part of this Trump derangement zombie horde

00:02:09.000 | that you've been in for the last few years.

00:02:11.820 | I'll tell you two quick stories.

00:02:13.980 | The first one turned out not to be true,

00:02:17.220 | but there was a New York Times alert

00:02:19.600 | that came out this weekend saying that

00:02:21.520 | they were going to lift the travel ban.

00:02:25.800 | And for a moment, I was a little in shock.

00:02:30.800 | And I'm Canadian.

00:02:34.180 | My family's in Canada.

00:02:35.280 | I haven't seen them in a year.

00:02:36.200 | My mom is 80 years old.

00:02:37.620 | I haven't seen her in a year.

00:02:38.880 | I haven't seen her in a year.

00:02:40.120 | And then the second was on the day of the inauguration,

00:02:45.040 | Biden signed an EO, I guess, that starts to basically create

00:02:51.740 | a path to citizenship.

00:02:54.180 | And there are two women in my life

00:02:59.040 | who I think are just lovely, lovely people who I've never

00:03:04.220 | been able to hire.

00:03:05.680 | And now this gives us a path to hire them.

00:03:08.680 | And I think that's a great way to kind of

00:03:10.680 | kind of get them to the point where they're like,

00:03:12.680 | "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States."

00:03:13.680 | And I think that's a great way to kind of

00:03:15.680 | kind of get them to the point where they're like,

00:03:17.680 | "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States."

00:03:18.680 | And I think that's a great way to kind of

00:03:19.680 | kind of get them to the point where they're like,

00:03:20.680 | "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States."

00:03:21.680 | And I think that's a great way to kind of

00:03:22.680 | kind of get them to the point where they're like,

00:03:23.680 | "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States."

00:03:24.680 | And I think that's a great way to kind of

00:03:25.680 | kind of get them to the point where they're like,

00:03:26.680 | "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States."

00:03:27.680 | And like simple, humane, good things.

00:03:30.680 | And I'm not trying to sort of jump on the Biden bandwagon.

00:03:32.680 | I think that he's got a lot of work to do.

00:03:36.680 | But I do think that just at a level,

00:03:39.680 | simple, basic level of humanity,

00:03:40.680 | it was a different, it was a big sea change.

00:03:43.680 | How did you take it, Freeberg?

00:03:44.680 | I'm curious, did you cry as well?

00:03:47.680 | I observed the inauguration.

00:03:49.680 | It was interesting.

00:03:50.680 | Oh, we didn't upgrade your firmware, sorry.

00:03:52.680 | We were supposed to push the two David firmwares

00:03:55.680 | for the ability to cry.

00:03:57.480 | But did you feel any emotion?

00:03:59.480 | Of the three emotions we've given you in your programming,

00:04:02.480 | did any of them move at all?

00:04:05.480 | I don't remember.

00:04:06.480 | I mean, I don't remember the origin

00:04:07.480 | of my non-emotional characterization, Jason.

00:04:11.480 | But yeah, I think it was-

00:04:14.480 | It's just based on every interaction

00:04:15.480 | we've ever had with you, but continue.

00:04:17.480 | Right, I guess that makes sense.

00:04:18.480 | So I feel like the Biden moment on inauguration day,

00:04:27.280 | it really did feel like a sigh of relief

00:04:30.280 | because so much of Trump, love him or hate him,

00:04:33.280 | has been driven by a degree of tension, right?

00:04:36.280 | I mean, he came in to office on the premise

00:04:40.280 | that he was gonna drain the swamp.

00:04:42.280 | I mean, that's kind of a very kind of active position.

00:04:45.280 | He's gonna go in, he's gonna change things.

00:04:48.280 | And I think the Biden tone is like,

00:04:50.280 | let's take it down a notch.

00:04:52.280 | Let's all take a deep breath.

00:04:53.280 | And I feel like that generated a collective sigh of relief.

00:04:57.080 | I'll also say that I watched that with the eyes

00:05:00.080 | of someone who voted for Trump.

00:05:02.080 | I didn't vote for Trump, but I don't think I voted this year.

00:05:08.080 | I can't remember, it was in the middle of the pandemic.

00:05:11.080 | But I basically feel like there was a lot of folks,

00:05:15.080 | it's easy to say, let's unite the country

00:05:18.080 | when you're on the winning side.

00:05:21.080 | And when you're not, and you're sitting there

00:05:24.080 | and your guy got kicked out of office,

00:05:26.880 | and your guy claimed that he got kicked out

00:05:29.880 | because of fraudulent activity,

00:05:30.880 | and you're one of the 46% of Americans

00:05:33.880 | that are already disapproving of Biden's performance

00:05:37.880 | in his first two days of office.

00:05:39.880 | You don't look at that as a moment of relief.

00:05:42.880 | You don't look at that as a moment of respite.

00:05:45.880 | And I feel like there's a little bit of a missed point of view

00:05:49.880 | in terms of how we're all covering it and talking about it.

00:05:51.880 | It certainly feels good to take the tension down

00:05:53.880 | and take a deep breath and have leadership not be putting the tension down.

00:05:56.680 | But there's a lot of anger and disappointment

00:05:59.680 | still festering out there.

00:06:00.680 | And I think we need to be very cognizant of why and what we can do.

00:06:03.680 | And it would have been nice to see Biden not just say, let's unite,

00:06:06.680 | but actually step over the line and declare some of the policies

00:06:10.680 | and points of view of the other side as being valid

00:06:12.680 | and engaging more directly on those points

00:06:15.680 | versus saying we'll all work together in the future.

00:06:17.680 | And we're already seeing this rift with McConnell and others

00:06:21.680 | in terms of how to deal with the filibuster in a unified Senate.

00:06:24.680 | And I just don't think that we're going to be able

00:06:26.480 | to make it that we're there.

00:06:28.480 | So, yeah.

00:06:29.480 | Yeah.

00:06:30.480 | Sax, what are your thoughts?

00:06:31.480 | And then we'll go to you, Chamath.

00:06:32.480 | Yeah.

00:06:33.480 | I mean, look, I'm not going to swoon over an octogenarian reading cliches

00:06:36.480 | off a teleprompter.

00:06:37.480 | I'm sorry.

00:06:38.480 | I just can't do it.

00:06:39.480 | Now, that being said, you know, the inauguration speech struck

00:06:42.480 | all the right notes of, you know, reconciliation, lowering the temperature,

00:06:45.480 | coming together.

00:06:46.480 | These are the things you're supposed to say at an inauguration.

00:06:49.480 | These are the presidential layups, if you will.

00:06:52.480 | It's kind of a weird thing that Trump could never quite get these layups in.

00:06:56.280 | Biden did what he was supposed to do.

00:06:58.280 | And I agree that there is a sense of relief in the temperature being lowered

00:07:03.280 | and the situation in Washington feeling a bit depressurized.

00:07:09.280 | And so I think he deserves credit for that.

00:07:11.280 | That's all for the good.

00:07:12.280 | I think the problem Biden's going to have is not just sort of the Trump right

00:07:18.280 | opposing him, but the unsilver warriors in his own party.

00:07:22.280 | You know, unsilver warriors, I think, was the most memorable line in his speech.

00:07:26.080 | There are people, I think, you know, on the left who aren't really on board

00:07:30.880 | with the reconciliation agenda.

00:07:32.080 | I mean, shortly after the election, you had AOC proposing a truth and reconciliation

00:07:37.080 | commission to go after everyone from the Trump era.

00:07:41.080 | I don't think that's exactly the kind of reconciliation Biden's talking about.

00:07:44.080 | You have, I think, the repressive hand of big tech playing into this revenge agenda

00:07:49.080 | by acting as a speech cartel.

00:07:51.080 | And now we have the rest of the tech stack jumping on board with the speech cartel.

00:07:55.880 | You had an announcement from a whole bunch of finance companies, PayPal, Stripe,

00:08:00.880 | Square, that said they would cancel the accounts and by implication livelihoods of anyone connected to January 6.

00:08:09.680 | Well, what exactly does that mean?

00:08:11.680 | I mean, there were many thousands of people at this rally on the mall.

00:08:15.880 | Only a few percent of them breached the Capitol and even smaller percentage engaged in violence.

00:08:20.680 | But everybody who was at the mall and really everyone in the MAGA movement is, quote unquote, connected.

00:08:25.680 | So, you know, that's a lot of people.

00:08:27.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall, but they're not getting out of the mall.

00:08:30.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:33.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:35.480 | So, you know, we've got a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:36.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:37.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:38.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:39.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:40.480 | And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.

00:08:41.480 | that basically would create a domestic patriot act to uh to create giant new surveillance powers

00:08:48.280 | for the state to go after people they they deem to be traitors and seditionists and domestic

00:08:53.480 | terrorists um and you know i actually tweeted a letter by rashida to lay but the squad opposing

00:09:00.120 | this it's the first time i've stood with the squad i was proud to because the last thing the

00:09:04.760 | state needs right now is uh is more surveillance powers and this idea that we're fighting a war

00:09:12.200 | against fellow americans based on basically political dissent that's not going to create

00:09:16.920 | reconciliation that's going to lead to the next step in this horrible tit for tat game just to

00:09:22.760 | build on this for a second um there's a rasmussen poll that came out today today's friday january

00:09:28.520 | 22nd so two days after the inauguration and biden's disapproval rating is 45 percent

00:09:33.560 | and you know all of a sudden you can think again as you said three days ago you know a lot of people

00:09:42.200 | were on the losing side and are now on the winning side and today um a lot of people that were on the

00:09:48.920 | winning side are quote unquote on the losing side and you see how reflexive the reaction is it's

00:09:54.520 | like an auto hate right it's like auto disapproval and so if that's the case it just it just begs the

00:10:01.000 | question

00:10:03.400 | how much room and how much tolerance will we have as a society if we start to go after folks that

00:10:09.640 | is you know that effectively have an enormous amount of political dissent are there fringes

00:10:15.720 | of both parties that need to get basically found out exposed and put in jail whether they're

00:10:21.480 | antifa on the left or you know the far right extremists on the right absolutely um but

00:10:27.720 | hopefully the fbi already has enough power to do that and that's already their remit and what we're

00:10:32.680 | not going to have to do is pass an enormous number of laws i mean i've said this before like the

00:10:37.320 | patriot act was so crazy because it was a foreign actor and a foreign event on domestic soil that

00:10:41.560 | created it but you know between the pandemic and now what happened in the capital a biological

00:10:46.280 | patriot act a domestic patriot act these are all in the offing and i think what we're going to have

00:10:52.920 | to do is again it sounds cheesy but find the common ground so that we can expose who are at

00:10:58.840 | the fringes of both parties who are the real crazy people around the world and then we're going to

00:11:01.960 | have to do is to round those folks up and deal with them with the laws that we have today because

00:11:08.120 | otherwise the unintended consequences for the overwhelming majority of the americans who are

00:11:12.840 | just normal folks is going to be a little scary i thought a really interesting reconciliation moment

00:11:20.520 | happened with the woman who stole nancy pelosi's laptop i don't know if you guys were have read

00:11:26.520 | that story but uh this woman who stole the laptop and was considering selling it to the russians or

00:11:31.240 | she's 22 years old and she's obviously was misguided in doing this and the judge

00:11:38.100 | basically explained to her that she was releasing her to her mother's you know care and that her

00:11:44.060 | mother would go to jail if you know she did anything further but she said listen you know

00:11:49.660 | you're a beneficiary of the constitution you are getting a speedy trial you are getting

00:11:54.580 | representation and she used it almost as a civics lesson and i think we had a discussion maybe two

00:12:00.980 | episodes when the pod got a little hot um which was great for ratings by the way

00:12:05.640 | and for our relationships and it resulted in a reconciliation dinner that we had

00:12:11.760 | a little a little uh wives dinner our wives brought us together for dinner to just make

00:12:16.720 | sure everything was on the well chamath chamath brought us together for dinner

00:12:20.320 | and brought wives and brought wives yeah and uh no i mean it was it was a good thing because

00:12:25.680 | frankly jason i was starting to hate you just just a little bit just a little bit but uh

00:12:30.720 | but but i could feel the hate you know and uh chamath uh being uh empathetic as he is recognize

00:12:37.100 | the situation and uh so we've decided to do you know at least a quarterly besties dinner

00:12:41.980 | to make sure that uh yeah that the contentiousness does not get out of hand and interfere with our

00:12:47.940 | friendships which are more important than our politics ultimately that's what we all hope

00:12:53.240 | is comes out of this podcast which is a deeper understanding and reconciliation of of issues that

00:13:00.460 | we disagree on and breaking bread having a meal or having a civil conversation even if it gets a

00:13:06.500 | little heated keeping it civil is important i thought that this is the way to handle it

00:13:10.980 | a lot of these we're going to be able to use some amount of judgment on the people

00:13:14.820 | who storm the capital and say okay this person's misguided they took a selfie this person broke

00:13:20.920 | windows and then this person you know threw a fire extinguisher at a cop and we have to make

00:13:25.480 | sure that the justice system is deployed in in a fair way and

00:13:30.200 | that we're not going to be able to do anything about it and i think that's the way to do it

00:13:34.280 | and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the

00:13:37.400 | way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think

00:13:40.440 | that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and

00:13:42.440 | i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it

00:13:43.440 | and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way

00:13:44.440 | to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's

00:13:45.440 | single person involved, find the appropriate crime, make sure that they're punished. But the idea of

00:13:51.040 | passing broad sweeping surveillance powers over every American citizen is fucking nuts.

00:13:56.000 | It's bonkers. And by the way, all that's going to do is create these honeypots for

00:14:00.640 | foreign governments to want to attack anyways, because if that capability exists, it exists in

00:14:05.280 | code, on servers, somewhere, and folks in China and other places will want to find out where that

00:14:11.840 | is, and they will be attacking it all day long. And so the last thing we need is we're already

00:14:16.240 | leaking enough information about ourselves online willingly and unwittingly. I don't want there to be

00:14:23.280 | a honeypot. That's the first thing. The second thing I just want to say is I thought it was

00:14:26.880 | incredible. What Mitch McConnell did just back to your comment, Jason, about making sure folks get

00:14:32.800 | the right adjudication. I think Mitch McConnell set the stage to have Donald Trump impeached.

00:14:38.080 | And the reason I think that is this was the first time

00:14:41.600 | he was completely unequivocal, which is that Donald Trump provoked all these folks.

00:14:46.320 | And I think what it allows the Republican Party to do is to get together under closed doors,

00:14:51.440 | behind closed doors, circle the wagons and say, it's either him or us, we choose right now.

00:14:57.520 | And I think what's going to happen, if I had to guess, is that that allows a lot of people to

00:15:02.000 | break ranks and support the impeachment in the Senate that's going to start on Monday.

00:15:06.800 | And I think there's a real chance now that this impeachment goes through and he gets convicted.

00:15:11.280 | Jason Wong:

00:15:11.520 | Yeah.

00:15:11.600 | I think it's worth just thinking about the implications of that. If you did that,

00:15:16.480 | there are Trump loyalists, there aren't really GOP loyalists. And I guess there are GOP loyalists,

00:15:22.960 | but there are a lot of Trump loyalists that are not loyal to the GOP at this point. And Sax,

00:15:28.000 | correct me if I'm wrong, but if Trump does actually create a fringe party, does create a

00:15:32.880 | patriot party, as he suggested he might, you could see up to 20 million Americans joining that party.

00:15:41.520 | That would reduce the ranks of the Republican Party significantly. And in kind of,

00:15:44.800 | my understanding is in political theory, what would result is you always have a balance in

00:15:50.240 | the parties. And so the parties kind of adjust left or right to create that balance. Ultimately,

00:15:55.120 | it's just kind of the organic way this works. In order for the Republican Party to gain,

00:16:00.080 | you would probably see a lot of membership move over to the Republican Party, which means that the

00:16:06.800 | Democratic Party is going to move further left. And, you know, think about the implications.

00:16:11.440 | If Trump does act, if they do actually kick Trump out of the party, and he does set up a fringe

00:16:16.240 | party, you will likely see the Democrats move further left, creating a much more kind of

00:16:23.360 | conflicting story for some of the centrists than what they're telling today of what's going to

00:16:27.440 | happen in the future. And that's a very different America in the next two to three years that could

00:16:32.000 | be created if they took that risk. And I think they have to associate that calculus when they're

00:16:37.280 | making this decision. You know, you can talk about justice and wanting to kick them out of the party.

00:16:41.360 | The implications of him leaving the party are rather profound.

00:16:44.160 | Oh, it would fracture the Republican Party. It would be,

00:16:48.240 | I guess the best historical analog would be when Teddy Roosevelt left the party to form the Bull

00:16:55.760 | Moose Party. He actually fractured the Republican Party and that allowed, I think, Woodrow Wilson to

00:17:00.400 | win the presidency, beating Taft. Yeah, I mean, the Republicans would basically lose every election

00:17:06.400 | from now until Trump is no longer, you know, a force in American politics. If

00:17:11.280 | he created, I guess the... Or they'd have to move left, right? I mean, in order for them to gain,

00:17:16.640 | you know, more people, they'd have to get the centrist Democrats. They'd have to move left,

00:17:19.680 | and that'll give the Democrats the ability to move left. Yeah, I mean, it would be a dream scenario

00:17:25.040 | for the Democrat Party. I'm surprised. I'd be surprised at the end of the day if enough

00:17:31.760 | Republicans went along with this to fracture the party. But look, I understand that on some basis,

00:17:41.200 | you know, Trump caused what happened at the Capitol. He convened everybody. He rabble-roused.

00:17:46.080 | But I think that, frankly, if you have a trial, I think the question we have to ask is, like,

00:17:52.560 | what agendas does this serve? Does this serve a reconciliation agenda, or does this serve a

00:17:56.880 | revenge agenda? I mean, the guy's already out of office. I thought we canceled the Trump reality

00:18:02.240 | show, and this is like bringing it back for another season. Because this trial is going

00:18:06.400 | to be a shit show. Just like all things Trump, you have a trial in the Senate, and it's going to turn

00:18:11.120 | into a total farce, okay? And, you know, look, I think cosmically, Trump was reckless. He was

00:18:18.000 | responsible. But when you actually look at the legal definition of incitement, it's actually

00:18:22.960 | very hard to prove incitement. So now Trump's going to get his lawyers up there, and they're

00:18:27.280 | going to be pushing back on this, and it's going to consume the country for months. And I just think

00:18:32.880 | we should be moving forward right now. The guy's already out of office. I thought it was going to

00:18:35.040 | be three days and done. Why would it take months? I'm curious. You're just saying you overhang from

00:18:40.080 | it? Well, the best feeling is that it's going to be three days. Well, I'm— Well, they're talking

00:18:41.040 | about the best feeling. They're going to start at mid-February, right? It's not going to be

00:18:43.840 | three days. This goes on until the trial's over. I mean, it'll be at least a week of discussion,

00:18:50.880 | right, Sax? So, Sax, is it— Do you think the GOP preventing Trump from being able to run again

00:18:59.520 | is worth the week of animosity, let's call it? I don't— I think we should just move on

00:19:06.000 | as a country. And I, you know, at the end of the day, I think that's what's good for Biden's agenda

00:19:10.960 | I mean, this will become very consuming. What's good for the GOP, though? If you're—

00:19:15.520 | as a person who would align themselves with Republicans mainly, I would say,

00:19:19.760 | what do you think is best for your party, the party you're a part of?

00:19:23.440 | Just moving on. Just moving forward. What if Trump comes back and gets the nomination in 2024?

00:19:28.960 | I mean, I think that is definitely a risk you take, but I think that—

00:19:33.360 | Do you want to take that risk? I'll leave it to the voters to decide what makes sense.

00:19:38.800 | Got it. Okay. Interesting.

00:19:40.880 | I think that the only salvation for the Republicans is to repudiate Trump.

00:19:45.280 | And I actually agree with Friedberg. I think that this creates the opportunity for this— I think

00:19:52.960 | Trump wants to call it the Patriot Party— to be sort of center-right. I think Democrats probably

00:19:58.640 | ebb over time, you know, center-left. And then the Republicans actually are this interesting power

00:20:04.320 | broker because they can actually tack to the middle and be centrist, you know, about a social

00:20:09.680 | safety net combined with a social safety net combined with a social safety net combined with

00:20:10.800 | a social safety net combined with, you know, small government. If you could somehow

00:20:13.360 | tiptoe and balance on that line, I think that is the winning strategy that people want.

00:20:19.360 | But I think that's my point is the Republican Party is going to have to move left in order to

00:20:24.320 | create balance between the two parties again, because they are going to lose 20 million voters

00:20:29.360 | to the Patriot Party. And that's the profound shift that's going to happen. And when the

00:20:33.760 | Republican Party moves left, the Democrats are going to move further left. And so—

00:20:38.800 | Maybe. I don't think that moving that far left is going to be a good idea. I think that's a good

00:20:40.720 | strategy. I think that's a good strategy. I think that's a good strategy. I think that's a good strategy.

00:20:40.960 | is a really winning strategy for them. No, but I think Friedberg is right. So as an example,

00:20:45.040 | I think I can say this, but like I had a call this week with the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez.

00:20:51.680 | What an unbelievably impressive guy. Holy fucking shit, this guy is amazing. What he's done in Miami

00:21:02.160 | is incredible. I mean, the GDP growth is like Chinese GDP growth, 10%, 8%, 6.5%. He's running

00:21:10.080 | fiscal service, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government,

00:21:10.640 | he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running

00:21:11.040 | the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government,

00:21:11.360 | crime is down, down, down. He's done an incredible job. This guy's a fundamental centrist.

00:21:16.400 | And when you talk about what his beliefs are, I was like, what is this guy? Is he a Democrat? Is

00:21:21.520 | he a Republican? He's like, honestly, I'm a centrist. And so my point is, if whoever tacks

00:21:28.160 | to the middle will find the ability to attract incredible leaders that I think are our next

00:21:36.320 | generation set of leadership. So in that way, Trump,

00:21:40.560 | as a change agent, Sachs was a success in that he broke the system. And this was Peter Thiel's kind

00:21:47.600 | of concept when he put him in. And I know you don't speak for Peter, but Peter's idea was, hey,

00:21:52.800 | this person is a change agent, he's going to be this, you know, drain the swamp. So maybe that

00:21:57.120 | didn't happen. But he has basically made everybody reconsider what party they want to be part of and

00:22:03.680 | what they actually want on the political agenda. And now we've never been more focused on politics,

00:22:09.600 | and how our country runs.

00:22:10.480 | And I think that's what's really interesting about this. And I think that's what's really

00:22:11.440 | interesting about this. And I think that's what's really interesting about this. And I think that's

00:22:12.080 | what's really interesting about this. And I think that's what's really interesting about this.

00:22:12.480 | Well, you're right that Trump was a classic disruptor. You know, Keith Ravoy has this line

00:22:17.600 | about founders that disruption is created by disruptive people. And Trump was, you know,

00:22:24.720 | one of those very disruptive people. I mean, just to take two examples, I mean,

00:22:28.960 | he created a total realignment on our views around China. I think it's now a bipartisan

00:22:33.440 | consensus that, you know, we should not keep feeding China and making, you know, keep feeding

00:22:40.400 | the Chinese tiger and turning into a dragon. Everyone seems to think now that some reappraisal

00:22:45.760 | is warranted. And the other big issue was the forever wars of the Middle East. You know, I think

00:22:50.960 | Trump first created a realignment within the Republican Party when he said no more Bushes,

00:22:56.000 | he meant no more of these stupid foreign wars. And I think that was an important realignment.

00:23:00.800 | So yeah, I mean, he's been a very disruptive figure. I think that

00:23:04.480 | everyone's breathing a sigh of relief because we've moved on. I think that he unnecessarily

00:23:10.880 | was incendiary and sort of pressurized the situation. But I think the best thing at this

00:23:16.000 | point is to move forward and not keep rehashing the Trump era.

00:23:18.960 | Speaking of rehashing, I don't know if you guys know about what is happening with Facebook,

00:23:27.200 | but they have an oversight board they created last year in the spring. And the oversight

00:23:33.520 | board is not to do the day to day policing of Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp activity, but

00:23:40.240 | it's to be a place where people who have been have had content removed or have had their accounts

00:23:45.920 | suspended to appeal. They have taken the Trump case as it were and given it to their Supreme

00:23:54.320 | Court, which is the oversight board. And the oversight board is going to make a judgment

00:24:00.400 | basically on should Trump get his social media accounts back. They have complete autonomy from

00:24:06.160 | Facebook. They are funded by Facebook with 120 or $130 million.

00:24:10.160 | Over the next six years. So they're getting like $20 million a year to run this. They've got a

00:24:14.400 | really amazing bench of intellectuals, public intellectuals, and they're sort of above Facebook

00:24:21.040 | in this regard. What do we think should happen to Trump's social media accounts? Should he have

00:24:27.680 | a path to reclaiming them? And with this board that exists as this a budsman, as I talked about

00:24:34.320 | in the last episode, what do we think of this process? And do we think maybe Twitter and

00:24:40.080 | YouTube should join this oversight board? Let's separate these two things. And actually,

00:24:44.080 | Jason, you just framed it perfectly. Let's separate the two issues. One is,

00:24:47.280 | is any of us comfortable with a random set of people that some people will like and other people

00:24:52.800 | not like making these decisions on our behalf that are not necessarily trained to make these

00:24:56.720 | decisions? I mean, these aren't elected trained judges or lawyers that sit for a bar exam. These

00:25:02.000 | are just private citizens ultimately at the end of the day. I think that if you allow this to happen

00:25:09.280 | at scale, I think that if you allow this to happen at scale, you're going to be able to do a lot of

00:25:10.000 | things. There's going to be a bunch of decisions that you'll be okay with and support. I think a

00:25:13.360 | lot of people probably are cheering when Trump got blocked. But if you can abstract it away and think

00:25:18.880 | about all the people that you actually care about, what if the administration was on the other side,

00:25:23.200 | and now all of a sudden, you know, these people to curry favor with the administration went in

00:25:27.280 | a different direction and people that you cared about got blocked. It is an untenable situation.

00:25:32.160 | And I think this is the slippery slope that the framers never intended. I don't think it should

00:25:37.040 | be people like this, making any decision like this. I think it's a slippery slope that the

00:25:38.080 | framers never intended. I don't think it should be people like this, making any decision like

00:25:39.920 | this. And in many ways, it's a, it's a fig leaf for these companies to pretend they're doing the

00:25:44.640 | right thing while they're really shirking the real responsibility. Friedberg, do you agree?

00:25:49.120 | It's hard to say on the specific. So I think we should just take a broader point of view on this,

00:25:54.640 | which is how do tech companies create independence in the platforms that they're

00:26:00.240 | building so that they don't get scrutinized as monopolists. And so there are several

00:26:04.960 | examples of this being done both successfully and not successfully across

00:26:09.840 | the tech ecosystem. Google made Android open sourced. And by making the Android operating

00:26:15.840 | system open source, they were able to have their own forked versions that they were able to install

00:26:20.800 | on phones with partners like HTC and Samsung and others, that they could then have their search

00:26:26.400 | engine be the primary search engine. So the entire Android operating system is available

00:26:31.200 | for anyone to work on for anyone to fork for anyone to use. And then Google's iteration of

00:26:35.840 | that open source platform and Google's contributions, which they were making

00:26:39.760 | regularly, allowed them to kind of have a great commercial outcome without being the

00:26:44.320 | owner of the operating system, having learned from the mistakes of Microsoft in the past.

00:26:47.680 | Facebook tried to take a similar approach with Libra, and it was a total shit show and a disaster.

00:26:53.280 | I don't know where it is today. But they tried to create this also independent board

00:26:57.520 | to provide oversight and to, you know, to kind of do the, you know, all the open source work

00:27:04.480 | on the Libra currency. And Facebook was going to then use that on their platform

00:27:09.680 | to try to get a better kind of, you know, token, cryptocurrency solution. And obviously,

00:27:16.320 | there was so much scrutiny because no one believed the independence. And I think we're hearing the

00:27:19.920 | same thing now about the Facebook oversight board. Jack Dorsey is now taking the same approach with

00:27:24.320 | Blue Sky, which is meant to be this open sourced, you know, independently managed

00:27:30.960 | social media protocol system. And so Twitter would effectively become an application layer on top of

00:27:39.600 | the Facebook oversight board. And so, you know, we're seeing a lot of this, you know,

00:27:42.960 | the big tech platforms in order to be able to do this, you know,

00:27:46.080 | they're not going to be able to do it. And so, you know, we're seeing a lot of this

00:27:49.680 | kind of open source approach to how do you decide what goes on social media? How do you decide what's

00:27:54.480 | inappropriate and appropriate? And what technology protocols are available for everyone to use and

00:27:58.880 | what business and arbitration protocols are available for everyone to use in an open sourced

00:28:04.240 | way. And we'll see where Jack goes with Blue Sky. He seems to be doing a better job messaging

00:28:09.520 | the media in order to avoid the monopolistic allegations and the allegations of control and

00:28:14.080 | influence. They're creating independence, independent systems, and the tit or miss.

00:28:19.440 | And I don't think we yet know, I think in the next year or two, we'll see how Blue Sky,

00:28:23.280 | Libra, the Facebook oversight board and some of these other platform.

00:28:26.320 | What would you do, David? What would you do? Let me just put it to you. If you were in charge,

00:28:31.280 | you were the CEO of Facebook or Twitter. Would you have a path to reinstating Trump? Yes or no?

00:28:36.400 | Can I jump in on that?

00:28:37.440 | Yeah, let me just get freebergs. Would you?

00:28:39.440 | Yes or no? reinstate Trump?

00:28:41.040 | Oh, yeah, 100%. We should have a path to it. I think the like I've said in the past,

00:28:44.960 | having some objective, I think that number one, I don't think it was inappropriate for them to kick

00:28:48.880 | him off the platform from a legal perspective. I don't. Saxon, I might disagree, but we can

00:28:53.280 | probably argue for an hour. But I think from a freedom of speech point of view,

00:28:55.920 | they're private companies with private accounts, and they did what they wanted to do.

00:28:58.800 | Was it the right thing to do? I don't think that was the right thing.

00:29:01.840 | So you give them a path to getting his account back for so I think you need to create an

00:29:05.520 | objective system. And you need to give everyone whether it's Trump or whomever else, everyone

00:29:09.360 | has to have the same set of standards that they're held to and then a universal approach that anyone

00:29:14.640 | can appeal and okay, but that's the approach. But knowing what Trump did on January six,

00:29:19.280 | would you let him back on your platform if you were CEO? Is the question I'm trying to get out

00:29:23.200 | of your freebird. But okay, David, you go. Yeah, I mean, so so here's the fundamental

00:29:27.280 | problem is that the town square is now owned by Facebook and Twitter, the town square got

00:29:33.040 | privatized. And our speech rights are now in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey as a

00:29:39.280 | matter. I mean, you do not have speech rights in the modern world if you get deplatformed by big

00:29:44.160 | tech. And until now, there's been no way to appeal their decisions. We have had no transparency into

00:29:49.360 | their decision. So I think Facebook creating this appeals board is a step in the right direction.

00:29:54.160 | But you know, they're calling it their Supreme Court. But I'll tell you, my Supreme Court is the

00:29:58.960 | Supreme Court, you know, at the end of the day, we all know that the most important part of a trial

00:30:03.360 | is jury selection. And Zuckerberg is still picking these 20 people. And you know, actually, just in

00:30:09.200 | case in point, he picked the top, he picked the four and the four pick the next 16. And then they

00:30:14.480 | don't have an ongoing ability to pick the next ones. And they have some amount of terms. So just

00:30:20.480 | to give you Okay, well, fair enough. And like I said, look, I don't want to

00:30:24.400 | criticize this move on its own, because it is a step in the right direction. We need

00:30:28.560 | an appeals process when people get canceled. Okay. That part is good. But what I would like to see,

00:30:34.640 | like I said, my Supreme Court is the Supreme Court, and they've spoken to this issue. And I would like to

00:30:39.120 | see these social networking monopolies apply a First Amendment standard, a speech policy broadly

00:30:45.360 | consistent with the First Amendment. And sometimes that will mean allowing speech we don't like,

00:30:50.720 | but it will result in a greater level of speech protection for all of us.

00:30:54.480 | Well, it would be back on the platform. No, but hold on a sec, if you're going to go by that

00:30:58.720 | standard. The problem is with this oversight board concept is that it completely violates exactly

00:31:03.680 | what the Supreme Court is meant to be, which is a country by country set of governance and standards.

00:31:09.040 | And it's not just about the laws. Like I'm just looking at the oversight board people right now,

00:31:12.640 | these people look incredibly well credentialed. Emmy Palmore of Israel, Catalina Botero Marino of

00:31:19.040 | Colombia, Nigat Dad from Pakistan, Helle Thorning-Schmidt from Denmark, Catherine Chen from

00:31:24.160 | Taiwan, Jamal Green from the United States, Alan Rusbridger from UK, Andreas Sajo from Hungary,

00:31:30.320 | and it goes on and on. How are we supposed to adjudicate a set of standards at a national level?

00:31:38.960 | We have the are all these people from all these different countries supposed to apply on US

00:31:43.120 | constitutional right of free speech and have an idea would be they would use some global standard,

00:31:48.240 | but then also take into consideration local standards. That's what they've their stated

00:31:51.600 | purposes and why they're so diverse. The setup for that though, Jason,

00:31:54.960 | is that then we know when, when there's a, you know, the Hindu nationalist BJP party has a

00:31:59.920 | specific point of view. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be specific kinds of

00:32:04.480 | free speech laws there. You know, Poland's gonna have a different point of view, and they're not

00:32:08.160 | going to respect the free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be

00:32:08.880 | specific kinds of free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be

00:32:09.200 | specific kinds of free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be

00:32:09.920 | specific kinds of free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be

00:32:10.480 | specific kinds of free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be

00:32:11.440 | case in point. Australia passed a potential law, or is considering passing a law, which is basically

00:32:17.840 | around if you know, treating Facebook and Google as quasi publishers and that, you know, they're,

00:32:23.600 | I think that they have to pay some kind of royalty now for articles that are shared or published or

00:32:27.440 | whatever. And Google said, I'm out. And then Facebook said, I'm out too.

00:32:32.400 | And so what does that mean for, you know, 200 million people, you're

00:32:38.800 | out? What does that mean? You're out, you can make money when the gettings good. And all of a sudden,

00:32:42.480 | you build this public infrastructure, when the country's rules change, I actually respect that

00:32:47.680 | more than trying to create some of this broad, holistic governance committee, because I think

00:32:52.320 | it's a shit show. You can't cherry pick which laws you want to observe and respect and, and then which

00:32:57.280 | laws you don't.

00:32:58.000 | Yeah, I think Chamath makes an excellent point about how difficult this is going to be to

00:33:02.640 | implement. Let me propose an alternative that actually comes from former law professor of mine

00:33:08.720 | University of Chicago, Richard Epstein, he made the point that he wants to apply common carrier

00:33:15.120 | regulation, at least in the US to these monopolies. And the example he gives is that the

00:33:20.880 | railroad monopolies could not deny you service based on your political views. And you know, this

00:33:25.760 | is this is a this is a real issue. Imagine, you know, going back in time, you know, we had the

00:33:31.360 | Lincoln Douglas debates, for example, the way that Lincoln and Douglas went around the country was by

00:33:36.080 | train. Imagine if some railroad

00:33:38.640 | magnate, some oligarch said, Mr. Lincoln, I don't like your views, I'm not going to give you passage

00:33:44.080 | on my railroad monopoly. The common carrier rules would have prevented them from doing that. And what

00:33:50.800 | Epstein suggests we do is if you're a essentially a monopoly, a speech monopoly in the in the US,

00:33:58.160 | one of these platforms that has, you know, the gigantic network effects, you have to apply

00:34:03.520 | the common carrier rules. It's an interesting concept, I think, let's move on to

00:34:08.560 | the economy. And it'd be very interesting. We'll monitor obviously, what the this oversight board

00:34:14.160 | does, we're going to monitor what's going to happen with this January six.

00:34:18.160 | In the way that sorry, Jason, the last thing on this is you can tell if you if you

00:34:23.600 | graphed and I'm sure somebody listening to all in can graph and tweet this, but

00:34:29.280 | if you graphed the price to earnings ratio of big tech, has all of these issues,

00:34:38.480 | have come out like, you know, if you looked at a time series of their PE,

00:34:42.000 | and you put on their, you know, things like George Floyd, things like the capital riots,

00:34:48.240 | you know, all of these things that have created these flashpoint issues around free speech,

00:34:54.000 | flashpoints, the massacre in New Zealand and Christchurch that was live streamed on Facebook,

00:34:58.720 | all of this stuff, what you'll see is, at least capitalism is voting that these companies will not

00:35:03.760 | be allowed to be companies much longer. Mm hmm.

00:35:08.400 | Smart money is betting that they're going to be regulated, and something's going to change,

00:35:11.920 | it's going to be a quasi governmental organization, exactly that the level of regulation at a

00:35:15.760 | government by government level is going to be so onerous as to make these companies quasi nonprofits

00:35:21.360 | that work on behalf of countries, they're gonna become utilities, right, they're getting they're

00:35:25.360 | going to get regulated, like utilities at some point, or they're going to have to adopt some

00:35:30.880 | governance, like we've talked about, or other options will emerge. And I think what Jack is

00:35:36.960 | doing with the, is it the government? Yeah, I think the government is going to adopt some governance,

00:35:38.320 | the blue sky is what they're calling it blue sky. Yeah, yeah, what they're really doing with

00:35:41.920 | blue sky is saying your profile and your data is going to be stored on some blockchain or

00:35:48.960 | some decentralized system like Bitcoin, or like any other peer to peer service, which means

00:35:53.760 | it's not on their server, Twitter just pulls all that data together. So we would all have

00:35:59.520 | our own domain names and calacanis.com or sax.com slash profile dot, whatever the HTML equivalent is

00:36:08.240 | is, let's just call it dot social, you know, your sacks dot social URL would be your profile on

00:36:15.680 | Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else. And when you post it to it, it would post to Facebook and

00:36:19.520 | Twitter. Therefore, they could say we don't actually host this stuff. We're just pulling

00:36:23.200 | it together, which then destroys their business model perch moths point. What do we think,

00:36:27.200 | as a little aside is going to happen with the tick tock case.

00:36:31.280 | Now that Trump is out of office and Biden is in office, we sort of alluded to China sacks being

00:36:38.160 | a super important thing that we all have consensus on now what should happen with tick tock? And do

00:36:43.680 | you think Biden will go after tick tock and say, Hey, we got to get this out of here because it's,

00:36:47.040 | you know, essentially spyware and jock ma was just resurfaced. And let's just talk

00:36:52.480 | about China for a second. Yeah, I think the sad reality is that the whole tick tock thing is

00:36:57.200 | going to get swept under the rug. I think there'll be no restrictions on tick tock.

00:37:02.400 | I think what we need the issue with like, with banning tick tock, though, is that it's just

00:37:08.080 | one place where China can collect data on all of us. I mean, the reality is there's thousands of

00:37:13.520 | places. And so, you know, I do think that taking some action on tick tock is warranted, but it

00:37:18.800 | would it is a little bit of selective enforcement. But what I would like to see is some guarantee

00:37:25.200 | some assurance that that tick tock is not is collecting data in the way they're saying they're

00:37:31.120 | collecting it and that there's not sort of spyware within the app. And I don't think we know for sure.

00:37:38.000 | Whether there's spyware or not, I'll say it. I'll say it slightly differently. I've maintained

00:37:41.680 | this for a while, but it is inconceivable that inside of big tech in every single

00:37:47.120 | company that you define big tech is not at least one spy from Russia, China, India, Israel,

00:37:57.840 | Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. Did I tell you guys I had a spy working for me? A climate?

00:38:05.120 | No, you got to rest. Did I tell you guys about this? No, tell us a

00:38:07.920 | story. It's public. So I'll share it. We had a data scientist named high tower, great guy,

00:38:13.120 | worked on our remote sensing team, and worked on our nitrogen model, which predicted nitrogen

00:38:20.000 | content and soil and was very deep in the in the in the code base and everything. And shortly after

00:38:26.320 | I had left, I found out this climate just for the audience. My company I started and ran was

00:38:32.240 | acquired by Monsanto in 2013, which is a big seed company. A lot of people know it for other things.

00:38:38.640 | And so I left and I found out that the guy quit, went to the airport, and the FBI intercepted him

00:38:45.840 | at the airport and they found tucked into his bag a thumb drive and he had downloaded all of

00:38:50.880 | our code base for our nitrogen models. And he was taking them to give them to the Chinese government.

00:38:55.520 | And so he's in jail right now. He's in prison in the US right now. But this was like the most

00:38:59.440 | nondescript, super nice scientist, data scientist guy you've ever met, like you would have had zero

00:39:06.400 | suspicion. And, and it turns out, this is the part, how many of those exist in Facebook,

00:39:11.760 | and it was so and by the way, it was so easy for him to get access to our code base. And he pulled

00:39:15.520 | all this stuff down. And he had the whole model. And you know, there's a lot of articles about what

00:39:19.600 | happened in our case. But you're right, it's happening all over the place. And, and I don't

00:39:25.920 | think that we fully appreciate like, how much of America's IP is stored in software,

00:39:30.480 | and data, and how accessible that is to employees inside of these organizations, and that the security

00:39:36.320 | is not adequate to protect that data and that IP.

00:39:39.760 | And then the crazy thing is like, you know, when just to connect the two dots here on this

00:39:43.200 | Jack Muffin, like when you saw that video, where like, you know, basically, he was forced to,

00:39:48.000 | you know, show fealty.

00:39:50.720 | I'm okay.

00:39:51.360 | I'm okay. And you know, this is all about the Chinese Party.

00:39:54.640 | I'm not being held captive.

00:39:55.840 | My gosh, like, I mean, these are all quasi governmental companies.

00:40:00.320 | Alibaba exists, because of the largesse of the Communist Party.

00:40:06.240 | And Xi Jinping, if that wasn't clear after last week, I mean, and so to your point, like, you know,

00:40:11.520 | if any company gets a hold of US user data, or otherwise, it's effectively the Chinese government

00:40:17.120 | getting a hold of that data.

00:40:18.080 | Yeah, we don't need proof, David, when Jack Ma disappears, and then comes back and looks,

00:40:22.560 | he looked nervous on that video. I'm no expert, but he did not look like he was the Jack Ma,

00:40:28.400 | who was giving speeches and inspiring people.

00:40:31.440 | And I don't know what this does to entrepreneurship in China. But I mean, who

00:40:36.160 | in China is going to start a company now and want to be the next Jack Ma or Jeff Bezos?

00:40:42.400 | No, I think Jason, it's even simpler.

00:40:44.400 | What happens?

00:40:45.200 | It makes entrepreneurship even simpler, meaning for those entrepreneurs that thought that there

00:40:49.680 | was a balance between financial imperative and moral imperative, there's no balance.

00:40:54.320 | You can flush the moral imperative down the fucking toilet. They, China will allow you to

00:40:58.240 | get super rich and super successful, as long as you super toe the line. And that's the message.

00:41:06.080 | Right. It's like what Putin did with Khodorkovsky in Russia. It's like he basically told all the

00:41:11.440 | oligarchs, you work for us now. And that's basically the message from the CCP to Jack Ma

00:41:21.440 | and to every other entrepreneur in China is you work for us now. And by the way,

00:41:24.800 | civil military fusion was a policy expressly announced by President Xi.

00:41:30.480 | One other data point on this, I think it's really interesting is that Biden just,

00:41:36.000 | announced that he was keeping on Christopher Wray as the head of the FBI.

00:41:40.240 | Christopher Wray gave a speech back in July at the Hudson Institute about the counter espionage

00:41:48.320 | efforts that the FBI is engaged in. And he was saying that the FBI has more cases now related to

00:41:55.360 | Chinese counterintelligence. He said that the FBI is opening a new China related

00:42:01.520 | counterintelligence case every 10 hours.

00:42:04.000 | Wow, two a day.

00:42:05.920 | Two a day. And of the nearly 5000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway

00:42:12.080 | across the country, almost half are related to China. So this is directly from a speech he gave

00:42:17.440 | in July. So I think it's really interesting. Now, at the time that he gave this speech,

00:42:21.680 | you know, a lot of people were saying, well, this is just Trump's more of Trump's China baiting.

00:42:25.520 | But I think that by Biden keeping on Christopher Wray, there's a continuity of policy there.

00:42:31.760 | And I think, you know, focusing on TikTok is probably the wrong thing. We need a more

00:42:35.840 | comprehensive policy to deal with counterintelligence.

00:42:38.720 | Well, it's a good start, though, to say if you hit scale,

00:42:42.000 | we're not going to let you operate here. And we want reciprocity. Adding to this

00:42:45.440 | outgoing Secretary of Pompeo and is the day before the inauguration, tweeted, I have determined that

00:42:53.120 | the People's Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in China

00:42:59.040 | targeting the Uyghurs, Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups. That's quite a bomb.

00:43:05.760 | And I think this signals we are going to keep resetting this relationship. And what an

00:43:12.720 | incredible opportunity for us to bring factories back here bring, as we've talked about here,

00:43:16.480 | manufacturing back, correct, Freiburg?

00:43:19.040 | That's what I think. Let's kick it off. We got we got 3 million factories in China. I think we've

00:43:25.600 | got less than 100,000 in America. Let's go.

00:43:28.720 | It will be so glorious. It will be so fucking glorious. I mean, think about this, right? Look,

00:43:33.600 | think about the amount of money like at the end of the day, what is a government's purpose? Is it to

00:43:37.920 | run a profit? No. You know, that's our job, right? Is it to run at breakeven? I would actually say no.

00:43:45.040 | I think it's to basically promote the prosperity of current and future generations of its citizens.

00:43:51.200 | And so you should be investing. So if you should be investing, so if we're going to be printing,

00:43:56.160 | you know, trillions of dollars, and you know, we should talk about the stimulus bill,

00:43:59.440 | because Biden's going to rip in another 2 trillion, which I think is a perfect and then

00:44:03.520 | by the way, and then after that, there's going to be this it's amazing infrastructure bill,

00:44:06.880 | put the money to work. Let's reclaim a bunch of this capability on shore and let's re build

00:44:14.640 | America.

00:44:15.120 | Okay, freeberg, you looked at the $1.2 trillion stimulus package that Biden is

00:44:21.280 | proposing. How much of that goes towards rebuilding factories in America?

00:44:25.600 | Well, none. So remember, there's

00:44:28.320 | Yeah, but it's 1.9 billion. It's 1.9 trillion.

00:44:33.440 | 1.9 trillion. Yeah.

00:44:34.640 | Oh, I'm sorry.

00:44:35.680 | And so just to put that in context, you know, Wall Street has talked about there were going to be

00:44:39.600 | four massive stimulus bills, you know, since last April, May, I think they've talked about this. And

00:44:45.120 | we're seeing this come to fruition now. And Chamath, correct me if you've heard differently,

00:44:48.800 | but there's always been the expectation, we would have the big first stimulus, which we had last

00:44:53.040 | March, then a second stimulus, people have been waiting for the state stimulus or the local

00:44:58.000 | government stimulus, which this one now captures. And then the fourth program was always going to be

00:45:02.640 | infrastructure.

00:45:03.360 | Yeah.

00:45:03.680 | And we haven't seen details of the proposed Biden infrastructure plan yet.

00:45:07.680 | But I'm pretty sure it's going to have a lot of green energy stuff tied up in it. But let's just

00:45:12.960 | let's just hit the numbers, right. So in 2009, post financial crisis to keep the global economy

00:45:19.440 | from collapsing. Congress passed an $800 billion aid package. 800 billion was extraordinary at the

00:45:28.720 | time. And we've never seen anything like it. TARP. And last March,

00:45:33.280 | if you'll recall, we passed this emergency $2 trillion package, you know, more than 2x what

00:45:39.520 | we had during the financial crisis. And now just in December, right before the year wrapped up,

00:45:44.000 | Congress passed another $900 billion package. And now we're talking about this $1.9 trillion package

00:45:49.520 | getting passed. So we've eclipsed anything you could have ever considered possible in terms of

00:45:55.760 | fiscal stimulus. At this point, the M1 money supply, which I sent the link out ahead of this

00:46:01.280 | for Nick to share, has been a huge step forward. It's incredible.

00:46:03.200 | It's gone up by 75% in just the past year. And now if we break down the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill,

00:46:09.280 | you know, a huge chunk of it, and this is what Wall Street's been waiting for,

00:46:13.520 | is $350 billion is going to state and local governments. So think about San Francisco,

00:46:19.040 | or the state of California, the city of Chicago, the city of New York,

00:46:24.080 | all of these folks have seen their revenue decline. And they've had to run massive emergency

00:46:28.640 | programs. Where's that money coming from? They haven't been able to raise taxes, they've had to

00:46:32.720 | put a whole lot of money into it. And they've had to put a whole lot of money into it. And they've

00:46:33.120 | had to hold on receipts. And so this is meant to bridge the gap at the local level. And this

00:46:38.400 | is really important. Because so much of capital markets still very much fund local and state

00:46:46.160 | governments through municipal bonds. And those bonds, if they start to default are going to have

00:46:50.640 | a dangerous rippling effect in the economy. So bridging the state and local government budgets

00:46:55.840 | with this $350 billion package turned out to be, you know, an absolute need and be Republicans prior

00:47:03.040 | to the election. We're pushing hard against this and saying, let those states fail. They're mostly

00:47:07.040 | blue states, let those cities fail. They're mostly blue cities, they're mismanaged, they're being

00:47:11.280 | stupid about how they're operating. So this is a big deal. There's 160 billion for COVID fighting,

00:47:16.640 | some of which, you know, I throw up on $20 billion for vaccination, which equates to about $150 per

00:47:23.200 | person they expect to vaccinate, which is an extraordinarily high cost. If you actually think

00:47:27.120 | about it on a first principles basis, it's ridiculous how inefficient they're going to be at

00:47:30.880 | this $50 billion for testing. So it's a huge cost. And it's a huge cost for the government. So it's

00:47:32.960 | a huge cost for the government. So it's a huge cost for the government. So it's a huge cost for

00:47:33.200 | the government. So it's a huge cost for the government. So it's a huge cost for the government.

00:47:33.360 | $40 billion for protective gear and supplies. And what this indicates to me is so much of what goes

00:47:39.520 | on in government and government spending is skating to where the puck used to be not skating to where

00:47:44.640 | the puck is going. And it's almost like by the time this money gets deployed, I'm not sure we're

00:47:49.440 | going to need as much protective gear and supplies. I'm not sure we're going to need as much testing

00:47:53.280 | if we can actually get the vaccinations done in the next 90 to 100 days, and much of the country

00:47:57.520 | starts to recover from this. You've now got $150 billion program sitting out there that doesn't need

00:48:02.880 | out there and it's a waste of money. What we should be doing is taking that money and investing

00:48:06.560 | in biomanufacturing infrastructure so we can more quickly develop and deploy vaccines in the future.

00:48:12.320 | What would it cost to build a factory just back of the envelope that was capable of making the next,

00:48:18.160 | you know, let's call it one to two shots. It's not a lot. So let me I'll give you guys the

00:48:25.600 | unit economic build and you can do the math at home. Four grams per liter is the expected yield

00:48:32.800 | of a of a biomanufacturing facility and a liter is like you know how many liters of water do you

00:48:38.400 | have in a tank, you can build half million liter facilities for a couple hundred million dollars.

00:48:45.280 | And that's four grams per liter every seven days. And a vaccine or the the the antibody therapies

00:48:51.760 | that we've seen the antibody therapies are about two grams and that'll save someone's life. The the

00:48:57.520 | vaccines are a fraction of a gram. And so you can start to kind of do the math on how just a few

00:49:02.720 | billion invested in building some of these biomanufacturing facilities that are modular

00:49:07.420 | and can be very quickly reprogrammed to make a new molecule can be used to support the

00:49:13.100 | future vaccine supply chain and the future antibody therapeutic supply chain, which is

00:49:18.660 | critically needed in this country. And if I were to take $160 billion for COVID fighting,

00:49:22.820 | give me 10% of that, and we'll be ready for any virus in the future. And we'll be able

00:49:27.740 | to print out vaccines for the whole country within 30 days. And so a little bit again

00:49:32.060 | of this is not really forward thinking it's scientists and doctors saying what they need,

00:49:35.980 | what they're talking about is last year's need. They're not thinking in terms of what

00:49:38.960 | the industrial supply chain needs are going to be in the future on an ongoing basis for

00:49:42.000 | this country at this point, I'm not seeing it. And so I feel a little bit let down by

00:49:46.160 | that. And I hope that the infrastructure programs that are going to be proposed in the next

00:49:49.400 | email in the next bill, we'll start to encompass some of that work.

00:49:53.940 | Paradoxically, it's going to cost a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear weapons. So

00:49:59.180 | we're literally going to spend a trillion dollars over the next decade open.

00:50:01.400 | Upgrading our nuclear.

00:50:03.560 | That's a nutty statistic. Is that true? That's nutty.

00:50:06.680 | That's right. I'm reading a headline right here.

00:50:09.020 | Wow. Here's my little wish list for this infrastructure bill. I think when you look

00:50:15.380 | at some of the most compelling work that's happened in the developing world, so like,

00:50:20.340 | if you're going to go and, you know, build a massive water facility or an energy installation,

00:50:26.420 | a lot of people are worried, hey, listen, I have to deal with, you know,

00:50:30.740 | local currency risk. I have to deal with, you know, corruption. I could have the government,

00:50:36.320 | you know, take away this facility from me without notice. The rule of law may not be strong. And the

00:50:41.300 | World Bank has this mechanism where you can basically go and insure, you know, for I think

00:50:45.860 | it's like 1% or 2% of your project cost, the whole project. And it really makes things work. I would

00:50:52.160 | love to see the US government effectively create a program that is similar but different in the

00:50:59.000 | following way. There are some enormous things that are going to happen in the future. But I think,

00:51:00.080 | you know, there are enormous things America needs to do where the IP exists with our allies. And

00:51:08.900 | there is an enormous fear, what would happen if that IP leaked specifically to China. One example

00:51:16.160 | is if you believe and you care about climate change, and the making of batteries, there's an

00:51:23.300 | enormous amount of IP that sits with the Japanese. That you know, if we could license and work with,

00:51:29.420 | you know, the Japanese government, as a country, we could build factories all over the country. And

00:51:33.200 | we would be the leader in climate. But that'll take the US government to basically work bilaterally

00:51:38.600 | with the Japanese government to basically say, listen, if it takes the NSA to fucking protect

00:51:43.340 | this shit, we will do it. But you can send- Or you run them. We could just give them

00:51:48.200 | their sovereignty in those factories or something.

00:51:49.640 | Yeah, you know, these are for profit companies that are, you know, relatively risk averse.

00:51:53.420 | They're not going to rip in 10 million bucks to $10 billion to build, you know, a cathode plant in

00:51:57.860 | the US. I would, other people would. But that's my hope in the infrastructure bill is that we take

00:52:03.680 | some of these things that have worked in the developing world, and we use it to grease the

00:52:08.180 | skids in how we rebuild America, it would be fucking glorious.

00:52:11.540 | And also just think about how much a nuclear power plant costs, it's like six to $9 billion

00:52:15.200 | to build a nuclear power plant. And we haven't built many new ones. And we're on the way there.

00:52:21.260 | But if part of this trillion dollars, we could build 10 more of those, energy independence would

00:52:26.000 | continue and global warming would go down. Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

00:52:27.200 | Would go down. Anything to add there, David looks like you want to come.

00:52:30.440 | Well, I just did just one final word, you know, the, the, the great Senate leader,

00:52:37.040 | Everett Dirksen famously said that, you know, billion here, a billion there,

00:52:41.540 | pretty soon, you're talking about real money. And now we're talking about a trillion here and

00:52:46.040 | a trillion there. And these are really big numbers. And I think we should be very concerned

00:52:52.220 | about debt and deficits. No one's really talking about this yet. But all of this money has to be

00:52:56.360 | paid back at some point.

00:52:57.140 | Well, what's the worst that can happen, David, let's actually do that. I mean,

00:53:02.300 | I'm asking the question in a non joking way. What is the worst that can happen?

00:53:06.080 | Oh, I mean, inflation, inflation, inflation, well, not not just so inflation, because the

00:53:11.300 | government will eventually have to monetize the debt by printing more money. The dollar stops

00:53:15.200 | becoming the world's reserve currency, maybe Bitcoin becomes the world's reserve currency,

00:53:19.100 | maybe something else does. It could be lead to, you know, very severe, to basically a debt crisis

00:53:26.000 | in the future. What would that be? Well, I think it's going to be a very severe crisis in the future.

00:53:26.240 | What would that look like for companies and citizens of America?

00:53:29.660 | Well, if you're middle, if you're middle class, your savings get wiped out, you know, if you so,

00:53:34.520 | so if you're super rich, the reality is there's already been tremendous asset inflation. So

00:53:39.800 | there's already been a lot of inflation. But frankly, if you are very rich and own assets in

00:53:45.080 | the stock market, you're you're sort of, you're protected, you know, but if you're a middle class

00:53:49.940 | person with most of your savings in your bank account, that money is not worth a lot less,

00:53:54.260 | or you're destroyed, or your home.

00:53:56.180 | Yeah, you get destroyed by that. It's really very sad.

00:53:59.120 | So if you are equities, and the market is on a rip, you know, paying an extra couple of million

00:54:04.340 | dollars for your second home is not a big deal, because your equities have gone up more than that

00:54:09.080 | or equal to that. And if you're right, somebody who get makes income, we have a separate issue.

00:54:14.360 | Let's look, this is this is a this is a bigger issue. But but I think we should talk about this

00:54:18.740 | at some point, because this is what the grand fallacy of technology was supposed to be. Like,

00:54:23.540 | you know, if you if you break down capitalism into its,

00:54:26.060 | to most natural states, you have labor, and you have capital, right, you have workers,

00:54:30.800 | and you have owners. And the biggest problem that technology did was it drove a wedge,

00:54:36.200 | and it created an extremely small owner class, and an extremely massive labor class. And so the

00:54:42.440 | reality is that a very few very handful of people can can get extremely wealthy by being owners of

00:54:48.020 | these next generation assets. And then everybody else is essentially, you know, rendered as labor.

00:54:53.720 | And so this wealth inequality,

00:54:56.000 | which is grows and grows and compounds. And so we have to figure out a way.

00:55:00.020 | Yeah, how's that different than the past? Because I think it's got I think I think

00:55:03.980 | technology accelerated that dynamic. Well, I think is jumping in on this. I mean,

00:55:08.420 | I think that technology creates bigger winner take all outcomes. And that's fed into inequality. But

00:55:13.820 | the good thing about tech or the tech ecosystem is that frankly, we have option pools, right? We

00:55:18.740 | have broad based ownership of these companies. If you go work for a Google or Facebook, whatever,

00:55:23.840 | you get an option grant. No, come on.

00:55:25.940 | That's 10,000 people. That's 10,000 people.

00:55:29.360 | That's no one.

00:55:30.080 | And they're and they're replacing 2 million jobs with 10,000 people.

00:55:33.320 | I mean, this is why this is why we need to have 100% participation in the markets by everybody

00:55:39.740 | in the country. Joe Greenblatt, who I had on my podcast recently is a proponent of this chamath

00:55:44.120 | they saw you tweeting about it. When you're born in the United States, we should put $5,000 in a

00:55:48.800 | 401k that you can't touch until you're 65 years old. That is in whatever index funds. And every

00:55:55.880 | person born gets that $5,000 and cannot touch it. And then we see where it winds up. I'm not sure.

00:56:00.500 | It doesn't solve the problem that a lot of people have to climb up a hill first, right? They take on

00:56:06.560 | a lot of debt to get education to put themselves in a position to ultimately be able to generate

00:56:11.000 | the income to do that. And I think, you know, sure, given $5,000 at the beginning, but it's

00:56:14.840 | not going to get them where they need to be. But it does solve one portion of the problem,

00:56:18.680 | which is they don't have participation. And we could take out the wondering both of you are

00:56:22.940 | going to be like, I think both of you are right. I think like there needs

00:56:25.820 | to be something that allows people to have a line of sight to savings, like a lot of about being

00:56:32.000 | invested in anything where you own it, whether it's real estate, or whether it's a piece of

00:56:37.280 | artwork, or whether it's stocks and bonds. So many people don't even know how to begin

00:56:42.080 | and don't understand the concept of ownership. And so they are stuck in being in the ghetto of labor.

00:56:47.120 | And I think like one of the biggest things we can do is you can give them the taste of ownership,

00:56:52.280 | so that they understand that difference so that they want to be an owner.

00:56:55.760 | Yeah, okay. Number one, yes. And then to David's point, number two is we still have a responsibility

00:57:01.340 | to educate people so that they can actually have skills that they can monetize. And we have a

00:57:06.980 | responsibility to do that. And right now, we make it so fucking hard. And we trick people because

00:57:12.740 | like we, we send them down the path of getting a $200,000 art history degree, and then they end up

00:57:17.780 | working at a Starbucks and then there, which is impossible to monetize. I mean, it's ridiculous.

00:57:22.340 | You can't monetize that you can't. By the way, by the way, what you're saying to him,

00:57:25.700 | is the reason I think retirement accounts were set up in the US was to shift away from pension

00:57:30.500 | fund models where people were getting a fixed income at retirement, and shifting them to a

00:57:34.760 | model of equity and ownership in the markets where they could participate actively on a tax free

00:57:39.440 | basis. But obviously, it hasn't done enough. You know, I think the big difference between

00:57:44.720 | the Industrial Revolution, the first and second Industrial Revolution and where we are with

00:57:48.920 | software in the last two to three decades is the capital required, right? It's very little capital

00:57:55.640 | to build a highly valuable software business. It required a lot of capital to build oil infrastructure

00:58:00.500 | and railroad infrastructure and factories. And so to your point, you get extraordinarily different

00:58:05.180 | outsized returns today than you did 100 years ago, as an owner versus labor, that and the bridge to

00:58:11.660 | try and give people ownership through retirement accounts certainly hasn't been enough. And so

00:58:15.980 | so to your point, to your point, David, I saw this study, it was fucking crazy. I'm

00:58:20.060 | going to get the exact numbers wrong. But the trend is accurate. When when when

00:58:25.580 | people used to actively manage their 401k, there was a very small participation rate. But the mean

00:58:31.940 | return was off the charts and the amount of dollars as a function of their paycheck was off

00:58:36.260 | the charts, call it, you know, 5060 cents of every theoretical dollar you could put into it. The

00:58:42.620 | minute that we went to passive, and that you know, you could sort of trickle money in the number of

00:58:48.380 | people that participated literally more than doubled. But then the amount of that max dollar

00:58:53.720 | went off of a cliff. And then the number of people that participated literally more than doubled.

00:58:55.520 | And so the problem that we've had is we haven't taught people, you know, we've misdirected some of

00:59:01.760 | them to say have a 401k, it replaces your pension, as if it's the solution, that's still not the

00:59:07.160 | solution. And we need to have ways of teaching people how to actually manage it. It's not that

00:59:12.680 | hard. And the basics can be taught very simply. But right now, we are massively exacerbating this

00:59:19.520 | wealth gap the way that we behave. And then all of this money that's going to go in this 1.9 trillion,

00:59:24.140 | whatever, how many trillion comes afterwards, is frankly, for the few that are smart enough to take

00:59:29.120 | advantage of it will be amazing, but it'll still push the overwhelming majority of Americans who

00:59:34.940 | are stuck in labor, deeper and deeper into that ghetto, and they'll never get up.

00:59:39.200 | It is definitely every little bit helps, right? Like if you have the 401k, that helps. And then,

00:59:45.320 | you know, educate people. And I think if we gave everybody an ISA at birth, or an I, you know,

00:59:50.180 | an income sharing agreement for these 20 professions, and the government provided, why,

00:59:54.080 | Jason, why is it that, you know, for example, if to invest in a startup,

00:59:58.220 | you either have to have more than $5 million, or more than, you know, a million bucks a year,

01:00:03.260 | it's more than they're gonna change it. And so if you're, if you're a product manager,

01:00:07.100 | that's like really, really talented, or if you're like, you know, somebody else who's just got a,

01:00:11.900 | you know, a PhD in nuclear biology, and frankly, is, you know, is decided to teach for 60,000. And

01:00:17.540 | you can't participate, even though you have the intellect to judge. Like, we're just like, kind

01:00:21.920 | of like compounding. It's even worse than that.

01:00:24.020 | The person who's changing the accreditation laws at the SEC and working on this said, I cannot,

01:00:29.840 | I'm writing the accreditation laws. And because I make 150k a year, whatever it is under 200k,

01:00:35.480 | I can't participate. And I'm the one responsible for the law.

01:00:39.140 | That person must be one of the most sophisticated people in the world.

01:00:42.080 | It literally is the most sophisticated person in the world when it comes to accreditation.

01:00:45.800 | This is why we need to move to sophisticated investor, not accredited, and just some test.

01:00:50.960 | And if you did that, every single Uber,

01:00:53.960 | Lyft driver, Postmates driver, Airbnb host, or person who used the cash app or PayPal would have

01:01:00.800 | said I can as one of the first users, I have access to buy shares, I'm just gonna say this,

01:01:04.880 | I'll buy them. This problem has to get fixed. Because I think in the next 10, I think in the

01:01:10.040 | next 10 and 20 years, the United States is going to fucking reemerge like a phoenix. And the reason

01:01:16.640 | the reason is going to because of innovation around climate change and agriculture and

01:01:20.660 | biotechnology and technology. These four areas are going to

01:01:23.900 | recast GDP. But what that also means is that we're going to create, you know, 20 or $30 trillion a year

01:01:31.160 | for the next 10 and 20 years, 300 500 trillion. How the fuck do we make sure that more than 18

01:01:39.320 | people participate? Absolutely.

01:01:41.600 | Well, so I agree with a lot of what you guys are saying. But I can tell you every single one of the

01:01:48.260 | companies that I've invested in are looking to hire people right now. They cannot hire people

01:01:52.640 | soon enough. It's not a good idea. It's not a good idea. It's not a good idea.

01:01:53.840 | It's their biggest challenge. And it's not just coders, it's salespeople, it's marketing people,

01:01:58.460 | it's HR people, it's every every role in their company, they have trouble trying to hire the

01:02:03.500 | right person. And and they give options to all those people. So it's not just a small number

01:02:08.420 | of founders getting equity. This is basically a new category of call it entrepreneurial labor.

01:02:14.240 | It's labor who gets ownership in the company that's never existed before. And really,

01:02:19.340 | what this comes down to is we need more people participating in the new economy. If you

01:02:23.780 | participate in the new economy, then you get ownership. And if you're in the old economy,

01:02:27.920 | then you really are stuck in labor. And so what we need to do is spread the opportunity

01:02:32.840 | that that technology represents to more people across the minimum wage, maybe we should have

01:02:38.120 | a minimum equity participation. So we have the minimum wage over here. But if you're working

01:02:41.960 | for an entrepreneurial enterprise, why not get a minimum, you know, participation in equity?

01:02:46.340 | Because the free market takes care of that. I mean, if you have the free market,

01:02:49.820 | hasn't taken care of it, David. No, it has no, no, the free market has I agree with David,

01:02:53.720 | the free market has the problem. How does a person working at Walmart ever participated

01:02:57.920 | in the Walmart appreciation? That's the point, they will, they will leave and go to a company

01:03:02.180 | that gives them equity. And that's why you'll see this. This is convenient to say, but if Walmart's

01:03:06.500 | the only job within an hour of their house, it's not. They got to have the right skills, Jason. And

01:03:11.720 | so this all comes back to education. You know, we got to we got to why not let the people who are in

01:03:16.880 | rank and file jobs, the 30 million truck drivers, cashiers, etc, have equity participation as a

01:03:22.340 | right. I think I think you're saying

01:03:23.660 | something different. Should they? Absolutely. Should the company that does that be created?

01:03:29.240 | Absolutely. Will they be rewarded with all the people that want to work there? Absolutely. So

01:03:34.280 | now somebody should go and start that fucking company.

01:03:36.800 | Okay. I just think it's an interesting concept. I mean, we do have a minimum wage,

01:03:41.840 | why not have a minimum Jason, just participation, you know, the same woman that ran Elon out of

01:03:47.480 | California, Lorena Gonzalez, she's doing another thing now, who's proposed a new bill? Like, do you

01:03:53.600 | prefer to basically pick the equity thresholds? Because that's what you're saying? Well, no,

01:03:59.720 | let's pivot. Let's pivot to California. Okay, let's pivot to another disaster. So the recall

01:04:06.560 | is well on its way, they need to get 1.5 million signatures, we're at 1.1 or 1.2. But we actually

01:04:12.500 | really need to because there's some verification process that goes on. So in all likelihood,

01:04:16.580 | we will see Gavin Newsom recalled. We agree on that. Yeah, I'll tell you this, the stats I heard,

01:04:22.700 | there's about a million called a million million one signatures, they've seen about an 85%

01:04:27.440 | verification rate today. Saks correct me if I'm wrong on this, they're getting they're getting

01:04:31.520 | about 200,000 signatures a week. They're, you know, the cost for marketing and attracting

01:04:37.700 | people to get these signatures is coming in at like three to six bucks a signature. So it's

01:04:41.720 | really not a lot of money is needed to be spent to get this done. And, you know, even if the

01:04:46.640 | verification rate drops to 75 or 65%, you're still on track at this rate,

01:04:52.640 | to hit the recall target by March 17, which is the deadline. And so it appears highly likely

01:04:58.520 | they're going to get there. So am I right on all that? Yeah, I think they're at 1.2 million

01:05:03.320 | signatures. That's what I heard. And they're trying to get they're trying to get to 2 million

01:05:06.920 | to have a buffer so that you know, they that you know, they don't get pushed under the 1.5 is the

01:05:13.400 | number they need. Yeah, they need 1.5 million certified signatures 70% of the way there,

01:05:18.380 | according to the website, recall Gavin 2020.com, which I think I think I think they will get there.

01:05:22.580 | I think they'll get there and then there and then the recall election would take place about four to

01:05:28.880 | five months after. After that, there's a couple of months where it moves through the Finance Committee,

01:05:34.640 | the recall election has to be budgeted. And then Newsom would have the opportunity to set a date

01:05:41.120 | within I think 60 to 80 days roughly. So I think we're looking at July for a recall election.

01:05:49.760 | And sacks, how do you get? How does a candidate

01:05:52.520 | get on the ballot because Chamath is asking for a friend?

01:05:55.460 | Wait a second, I want to be on to that. Can should we have all four besties be on?

01:06:02.000 | Yeah, we should we should we should all run.

01:06:04.040 | As we all four. Can we run? We're gonna let the voters decide a squad.

01:06:09.500 | We're gonna we're probably we're probably gonna have four Kardashians on there. So four besties

01:06:14.480 | on there. And one extra Kardashian.

01:06:16.760 | Yeah, so the it's it's it's stunningly easy to be a replacement candidate, we should expect they'll

01:06:22.460 | probably be about 150 replacement candidates on the ballot every every third tier C-list celebrity

01:06:28.880 | is gonna, you know, like, you know, back to Gary Coleman did it like, you know, 20 years ago,

01:06:34.280 | they're all very C-list celebrities. Yeah, to try and boost their Q rating. I'm sure we'll see

01:06:41.000 | Kathy Griffin on there. I mean, what she'd been doing. And so it's gonna be a farce.

01:06:45.920 | Andy Dick is gonna run.

01:06:49.520 | Can we can we just, can we just, can we, by the way, can we talk about why he's getting

01:06:55.580 | recalled? Because I do get this question a lot from people in tech and out of tech.

01:06:59.540 | And I just want to highlight some of the reasons I've heard. And I'd love to hear why you guys

01:07:04.520 | think he's, you know, why there's this push against him. But from people within the tech

01:07:08.540 | community, I've heard that the ad hoc lockdown rules have really pissed a lot of people off in

01:07:14.360 | terms of when businesses are allowed and not allowed to be open and kind of the responsiveness

01:07:17.900 | and the guiding principles around this. And I think that's a really good question. And I think

01:07:19.460 | that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really

01:07:19.940 | good question. And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question.

01:07:20.540 | Obviously, the you know, the inability to fight against the tax rate, but no one wants to be

01:07:24.680 | publicly saying that the failed vaccine rollout the failed testing, you know, sacks, Chamath, Jason,

01:07:32.780 | what do you guys think is the reason he's getting recalled? What are the top five reasons?

01:07:36.920 | hypocrisy is number one. I think it's the hypocrisy of going to those restaurants and then making

01:07:41.720 | people not go to the beach, which is crazy. And then I think number two is the virus. We've only

01:07:46.040 | deployed 37% of our doses in the last five years. And that's a huge number. And I think that's a huge

01:07:49.400 | in California. And that makes us you know, of the major states

01:07:53.960 | that are putting out a lot of these vaccines. One of the worst

01:07:57.300 | performers. Second, yeah. Well, we're Florida, and New York are

01:08:02.940 | the other large states and they're at 5649 and 50%. We're

01:08:06.360 | still stuck at 37%. California, the cradle of innovation and

01:08:10.660 | technology, and this bum, he's a bum. 37% we should be leading

01:08:16.040 | should be 70%. He's a bum. Can I get

01:08:18.720 | a new? It's new some derangement syndrome. Oh my

01:08:22.160 | god. No.

01:08:23.300 | besties. Jason just has a problem with anyone in

01:08:29.060 | authority. You know, it's the hair. It's a problem.

01:08:31.340 | Jason fucking hair. It's the hair is too good. French

01:08:34.640 | laundry, the hypocrisy and then get to work. So personality,

01:08:40.520 | personality for you is the biggest driver. Is that right,

01:08:42.740 | Jason? No, it's literally the performance of their

01:08:45.600 | watch.

01:08:46.020 | Washington, DC, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, all

01:08:49.680 | 66 to 73% of their vaccines are both their double us. Now it's

01:08:54.480 | smaller states, but still, we're goddamn California.

01:08:57.420 | Here's what I would say as a list. Number one, we're the most

01:09:03.240 | heavily taxed. Number two, we are we have some of the worst

01:09:08.760 | infrastructure in the country. We have some of the lowest and

01:09:12.940 | poorest performing schools in the country. We have the highest

01:09:15.700 | homeless rates for veterans in the country. We have the worst

01:09:19.420 | preparedness for climate in the country. And so it's basically

01:09:24.160 | just a complete bungling at every level. And so and then the

01:09:30.040 | fourth or the then the last which is the biggest one is we

01:09:32.580 | have now created an inhospitable culture for innovation. And the

01:09:38.200 | biggest problem with that is if these climate jobs and these

01:09:41.260 | technology jobs and these biotechnology jobs pivot to

01:09:45.380 | more accepting and progressive local and state managements,

01:09:52.280 | like Austin, Texas and Miami, Florida, we lose these things

01:09:56.540 | forever. This is a multi generational decay that we're

01:09:59.600 | starting. And so if we care about the state, I love

01:10:02.500 | California, I love San Francisco, I love how eclectic and

01:10:05.480 | unique and different it is, I was always happy to pay 10 1112

01:10:09.380 | 1314% because it was worth it. Now, I don't know what we get

01:10:14.000 | for it.

01:10:14.900 | And so I think we I think I think he should get recalled. I

01:10:17.600 | just think he's he's trash.

01:10:18.980 | Yeah, and just just underscore the point on lockdowns. We now

01:10:25.040 | have certainly more cases, we have more deaths. And we have

01:10:30.520 | more deaths per capita than Florida. Despite the fact that

01:10:34.460 | Florida has no lockdowns and a much older population. And so I

01:10:38.480 | was just in Florida a few weeks ago, like,

01:10:40.420 | you know, like Jamal was saying, you know, Suarez, the mayor, the

01:10:44.420 | mayor there has created really a land of the free. I mean, it's

01:10:47.480 | really unbelievable. You can go to bars, you can go to

01:10:49.520 | restaurants, there's no lockdown whatsoever. They don't have as

01:10:52.640 | big a problem as California does right now.

01:10:54.500 | Why do you think that is?

01:10:55.760 | Because because well, because I think that the scientific basis,

01:10:59.960 | yeah, I think the lockdowns only forestalled the problem.

01:11:03.600 | Eventually, the virus finds a way around them. And I also

01:11:06.360 | think the thing that's happening in Florida is that okay, so my

01:11:09.500 | aunt lives there. She's in her 70s. She's not going to bars and

01:11:12.440 | restaurants because she knows she's highly at risk. And so just

01:11:15.860 | because the government doesn't lock down doesn't mean that

01:11:18.180 | people don't take sensible precautions on their own. And so

01:11:22.280 | and so I think that what's happened is that people are

01:11:24.340 | going out to bars and restaurants are low risk. And

01:11:27.680 | they're keeping the economy going over there. And instead,

01:11:29.780 | in California, we have this very draconian lockdown policy, and

01:11:33.480 | it's put all these small businesses out of out of work.

01:11:35.780 | No, it's worse. It's not a draconian lockdown policy. It's

01:11:38.180 | a whipsaw. Oh, it's open. Okay, great. Now go and invest in a

01:11:41.320 | bunch of catbacks to make sure that you're safe. And then you're

01:11:42.320 | going to have to go to the hospital. And then you're going to

01:11:42.320 | have to go to the hospital. And then you're going to have to go to

01:11:42.420 | sure there's outdoor dining. Oh, hold on your clothes. What is

01:11:45.600 | that? It's just so dumb. Tons of tons of restaurants. bar owners

01:11:49.560 | in San Francisco spent on average $30,000 building outdoor

01:11:53.400 | seating for their facility only to have it all shut down three

01:11:55.920 | and a half weeks later in comment. Can you imagine being

01:11:58.920 | an owner of that business? No, it's

01:12:00.480 | unfair. No, I mean, you would literally they're going to kill

01:12:03.420 | themselves. The tragedy of it. People lose everything and

01:12:06.720 | there'll be suicides, depression, domestic violence.

01:12:08.860 | This guy's and then this guy's having dinner at French

01:12:11.160 | Laundry during the whole I mean, it's just such a I just

01:12:14.100 | got a note what a bad he will he's he's actually been banished

01:12:17.480 | from being at the French Laundry. Apparently, it's been

01:12:21.420 | renamed the Sri Lankan laundry and some notable Sri Lankan

01:12:25.200 | billionaire has bought the French Laundry. French Laundry,

01:12:28.240 | by the way, got a laundry, they got a $2.6 million PPP law that

01:12:33.280 | got forgiven. So you know, there's a there's a lot of heat

01:12:35.840 | on the French Laundry as a whole. What does it cost to go

01:12:38.320 | to French Laundry $800 a person?

01:12:39.980 | Anybody who wants who's

01:12:41.100 | listening to this who wants to go to the French Laundry, stay

01:12:43.720 | at home, pour a bunch of salt on whatever you're gonna eat.

01:12:47.100 | Okay, melt a stick of butter in the microwave, stick a butter in

01:12:50.800 | the microwave, drink it and then basically take $1,500 light it

01:12:54.900 | on fire. You've been to the French Laundry. Here's what you

01:12:58.480 | do. Take a really great steak trash and throw out 80% of it

01:13:03.840 | up places. The cube in the middle of a big large plate.

01:13:07.020 | That is that's not even nouveau riche. It's just nouveau stupid.

01:13:10.380 | Oh, I got trash.

01:13:12.660 | Meanwhile, people are down in like, Texas getting like a brisket

01:13:16.980 | burrito for $4.

01:13:19.940 | But I think California really needs to fix this. We need to

01:13:23.160 | figure out what's going on. And I just want to ask one more

01:13:26.380 | question of you guys. You don't think that this you know, because

01:13:29.400 | I was having this debate with my family about Newsom. And I was

01:13:32.100 | telling them about the perspectives I was hearing from

01:13:34.020 | tech people, and why everyone's so against Newsom. And I've heard

01:13:37.080 | all these different things that you guys have shared today. And,

01:13:40.160 | you know, they're very, you know, and I'm hearing a lot of

01:13:42.260 | people kind of making the counterpoint like, this is a

01:13:44.640 | very difficult time. It's been an impossible year for everyone

01:13:48.940 | everywhere. So first of all, you know, Newsom was dealt a pretty

01:13:52.200 | difficult hand to play. And at the same time, we are all

01:13:56.040 | psychologically primed to look for grass being greener on the

01:13:59.920 | other side, I think a big part of you know, certainly there's a

01:14:02.280 | lot of people leaving California, my belief for Texas

01:14:04.920 | and Florida, primarily because of taxes, and then you justify

01:14:08.880 | it with all the things that are wrong with California. But we're

01:14:11.340 | all really primed right now. With this notion that it's a

01:14:15.920 | difficult place to be. But we're also really having a shitty

01:14:19.020 | year, we've had this pandemic businesses have been shut, you

01:14:21.600 | know, everyone's sick, the economy's having issues. I mean,

01:14:24.640 | you know, there's a really difficult hand that's been

01:14:26.640 | dealt.

01:14:27.000 | Well, I don't buy that as an excuse for Newsom. I mean, look,

01:14:31.740 | it is true that we're going through a very difficult time.

01:14:33.780 | But the reason I don't buy that as an excuse for Newsom is

01:14:35.940 | because this is not April or May of 2020.

01:14:38.660 | When we thought the fatality rate was 7%. And you know,

01:14:41.000 | lockdowns could lockdowns could be justified then. But we now

01:14:44.420 | have so much more data, we've seen that states that did not do

01:14:48.260 | lockdowns, like Florida and Texas, frankly, have been no

01:14:50.720 | worse off than those that have done very severe lockdowns. And

01:14:53.420 | so what is the point of continuing with this facade? And

01:14:57.140 | that is what I think we can legitimately blame Newsom for is

01:15:00.140 | the failure to learn and to change course based on data.

01:15:03.920 | And where is the daily press briefing on the data?

01:15:08.440 | Well, I think the data is not 100% accurate. And so I think we

01:15:12.980 | have to be very careful about this. We have to be very careful

01:15:15.300 | about what we're doing. We have to be very careful about what we're

01:15:17.400 | doing. And that's what makes for an idiot. I think, and by the way,

01:15:19.960 | most of the spread is not happening at businesses. It's

01:15:22.440 | happening in homes. And in California, we have a

01:15:24.440 | particularly difficult problem, because of multi generational

01:15:27.080 | family homes, especially in the Latino communities that have been

01:15:30.640 | hardest hit by COVID. And the, the transmission rate and just

01:15:34.180 | skew with diabetes as well. But yeah, the transmission rate in

01:15:36.220 | those communities is three to five x what it is elsewhere. And

01:15:38.220 | then also, suffering the biggest hardships because businesses are

01:15:41.580 | closed.

01:15:42.120 | Well, by the way, this goes to the vaccination strategy just

01:15:45.060 | being so idiotic, like, you know, if you wanted to be

01:15:47.580 | equitable, then why weren't we just rolling through and

01:15:50.980 | basically getting those families to be vaccinated first,

01:15:53.860 | independent of age, you know, you're you're you're apparently

01:15:57.500 | got all these vaccination sites, nobody shows up.

01:16:00.000 | I spoke to SF DPH, Department of Public Health about this last

01:16:03.740 | week, and they told me that they cannot get those communities.

01:16:06.500 | They're very non trusting of the vaccine.

01:16:08.000 | And they're having a real struggle getting people to sign

01:16:10.880 | up to take the vaccine. The problem is, even if that is the

01:16:13.680 | case, the problem is you should not be holding up vaccines for

01:16:17.220 | one community then get everybody else vaccinated. So they cut the

01:16:21.440 | head off this fucking transmission.

01:16:23.260 | Over 60. Get it. That's it. There's nothing to discuss.

01:16:26.380 | Let's wrap up everyone. Everyone gets it. But you allocate a

01:16:29.160 | certain number of doses to you basically have like a TSA

01:16:32.060 | pre check line. If you're over 60, or you're in certain

01:16:34.220 | communities, you jump to the front of the line, and that's

01:16:35.940 | it. But everyone can stand in line and put fucking vaccines.

01:16:37.780 | Put fucking shots in arms because everyone I know that's

01:16:40.360 | over 65 can't even get an appointment and it's bullshit.

01:16:43.240 | And the whole thing is incompetence.

01:16:46.120 | So I think but I think what Zach said is so right. It's like in

01:16:48.980 | these moments, J Cal, and freeberg, like a light gets

01:16:53.440 | shone on the ability for people to figure things out. And then

01:16:57.380 | you know what the intellectual capability of these people are.

01:17:01.360 | And like, look, we saw the intellectual incapability of

01:17:05.540 | Trump.

01:17:05.980 | Because we all

01:17:07.560 | adapt.

01:17:07.980 | This guy could not adapt. Okay. And, and so we are now seeing

01:17:12.360 | the intellectual incapability of Gavin Newsom. And I just think

01:17:16.800 | they're part of the same lot. They're just kind of, you know,

01:17:20.020 | people who are in over their head,

01:17:23.220 | and they're beholden to people who got them there. And their

01:17:27.300 | number one concern is staying in office, which means appeasing a

01:17:30.600 | bunch of special interests. Speaking of special interests,

01:17:33.420 | David Sachs is still on tilt about conservatives being

01:17:37.420 | canceled. David, you wanted us to wrap with this Wilkinson

01:17:42.040 | cancellation. So every podcast, we're going to have a right

01:17:46.180 | winger who's canceled and David's justification for putting them

01:17:48.860 | back on the platform. God, David.

01:17:49.880 | Well, actually, so yeah, this is this is this is the issue

01:17:54.940 | of the week with David. Yes, yes, it's well, this is

01:17:58.780 | actually it's not a it's not a left wing it. So this is the

01:18:02.200 | issue to draw on social media right now is that a writer named

01:18:04.900 | Will Wilkinson was just fired from his job and canceled.

01:18:07.240 | But here's the thing. It was he's not a conservative. He's

01:18:10.060 | actually a liberal. What? And it was it Yes. And it was a right

01:18:13.540 | wing tweet mob that got together to get fired. Yes. And so how

01:18:19.280 | did you get this mob together to get them canceled?

01:18:21.160 | It? Yeah. So we're back everybody so much for the wives

01:18:27.400 | dinner. My God. Yeah. I need another wives dinner.

01:18:30.760 | Well, no, I look I feel the need to speak out on this because I

01:18:34.620 | gotta make it really clear that I do not support candidates. I

01:18:37.060 | do not support cancel culture when perpetrated by the right

01:18:40.300 | against the left. I think it's what did he do? Okay, so he

01:18:44.080 | posted a tweet making a joke that maybe was important. It's

01:18:47.260 | not that funny, basically saying that if we want unity, the one

01:18:50.920 | thing that like the Trumpers and the Biden supporters can agree

01:18:53.500 | on is hanging Pence. You know, it is what is hanging?

01:18:58.420 | lynching. lynching. lynching or hanging? He said he said hang I

01:19:03.700 | think no, I think he said I said hang.

01:19:06.880 | He said, whatever. And it's inciting violence on the march.

01:19:09.880 | But go ahead, sex. It's in poor taste.

01:19:11.700 | Well, no, look, it's a it's a it's a joke. That's not actually

01:19:15.580 | that funny. And maybe in poor taste. What he's referring to is

01:19:18.220 | the fact that the you know that there were people on January six

01:19:21.820 | who were going after Mike Pence, right? That was sort of the

01:19:24.200 | joke. Anyway, look, he that's not the point. He deleted it. He

01:19:28.500 | apologized for it. His boss is still fired him for it. Nobody

01:19:32.480 | believes that he was trying to incite violence. Okay. I mean,

01:19:36.700 | come on. We all know that was not inciting violence. But but

01:19:41.200 | the mob pretended that he was in order to create its phony

01:19:45.880 | outrage. And then his bosses have to pretend that he was in

01:19:51.340 | order to get to appease the mob and they pretend like it was

01:19:54.340 | incitement to violence so they can fire him. And then he even

01:19:57.460 | had to pretend that he was inciting violence because he

01:20:00.700 | had to then objectively apologize for it. And there's

01:20:03.400 | this that's the thing about cancel culture I really don't

01:20:05.260 | like is just it's just so fake.

01:20:06.520 | And phony. We all have to pretend and things that aren't

01:20:09.580 | true in order to pacify some you know, tweet mob whose outrage is

01:20:13.860 | manufactured anyway. And I don't like seeing the right doing this.

01:20:17.860 | And that's what I tweeted about. And then we had all these people

01:20:20.460 | on the right responding to me saying an eye for an eye, you

01:20:23.080 | know, you know, the left deserves this too. Now they're

01:20:25.360 | gonna get a taste of their own medicine. And the problem with

01:20:27.940 | that is look, you know, you're you might win this particular

01:20:31.580 | battle, but you're losing the war because you're now buying

01:20:34.120 | into the premise of cancel culture.

01:20:36.340 | You're not buying into this idea that we need to economically

01:20:39.640 | cancel people who disagree with us. And I really reject that.

01:20:43.900 | It's certainly bad timing to say, Lynch or hang, whichever

01:20:48.740 | word he used, obviously, lynching is a much worse word.

01:20:51.040 | After people were chanting hang Mike Pence, but he was making a

01:20:55.180 | commentary on that. The joke didn't land. And when the joke

01:20:58.620 | doesn't land, you need to just take ownership of that and say

01:21:01.400 | that you shouldn't be canceled. Just to say it was a poor

01:21:03.340 | attempt at humor. I apologize. Right. And Jason,

01:21:06.160 | you know better than anybody else.

01:21:07.660 | When a poor joke doesn't land. So

01:21:10.360 | here's one thing to learn about comedy. People don't remember

01:21:15.220 | the jokes that don't land. They remember the ones that land.

01:21:18.060 | Okay, everybody. It's like investing in startups. It's like

01:21:21.100 | it you got a lot of losers to find the few winners.

01:21:23.260 | Absolutely. That's my I'm a volume guy. You know that

01:21:25.680 | governor Chamath calm governor sacks.com Governor freeberg.com

01:21:30.260 | and government. Can I just say Jason, Jason, if Newsom is

01:21:33.300 | recalled, I would like to put my name on the ballot. And

01:21:35.980 | I'm going to put my name on the ballot. I'm going to put my name

01:21:38.540 | on the ballot. I'm going to put my name on the ballot. And my my my

01:21:40.780 | commitments are quite simple. I just want to, I'm going to cut

01:21:43.300 | the taxes to zero. And I'm going to basically create an

01:21:45.820 | incredibly pro climate change. jobs and protect jobs and pro

01:21:52.120 | biotech jobs, economy, and I'm going to raise teacher salaries,

01:21:56.260 | and I'm going to give everybody a school voucher. Okay, we have

01:21:59.200 | it. Maybe, maybe on the next episode, we can all declare that

01:22:03.820 | we're running for governor and present our platform. Oh, let's

01:22:05.800 | go to governor Chamath calm governor sacks.com.

01:22:08.200 | Governor.

01:22:08.540 | Let's register our domain names. But register your domain name

01:22:11.920 | before the pod goes.

01:22:12.820 | registered all four of them. All redirect to my Twitter handle.

01:22:16.240 | Thank you guys. We'll see you all.

01:22:20.080 | On the podcast. Love you, besties. Love you, sacks. Back

01:22:24.700 | at you.

01:22:25.120 | Let your winners ride.

01:22:32.080 | Rain Man David sacks.

01:22:35.020 | We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy.

01:22:41.380 | Love you.

01:22:42.360 | West is queen of kin.

01:22:43.660 | besties are

01:22:51.600 | dog taking a driveways.

01:22:55.600 | Oh, man.

01:22:59.320 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy

01:23:03.940 | because they're all

01:23:04.360 | just like this like sexual tension that we just need to

01:23:07.360 | release.

01:23:07.720 | Our house.

01:23:08.120 | What you're about to be.

01:23:10.880 | Your feet.

01:23:12.880 | We need to get more cheese.

01:23:15.860 | I'm going all in.

01:23:17.860 | I'm going all in.

01:23:26.000 | Thank you.

01:23:27.100 | you

01:23:27.220 | Thank you.

E18: Inauguration talk, breaking down the $1.9T stimulus, the case for recalling Gavin Newsom & more

Chapters