#AIS: Joe Lonsdale on the problem with higher education

00:00:00.000 | All right, next up, Joe Lonsdale.

00:00:04.000 | We go.

00:00:05.560 | Joe Lonsdale's going to come up.

00:00:07.000 | He's going to tee it up for about five or ten minutes in a solo dolo.

00:00:10.020 | He told me he's burning the house down.

00:00:12.540 | Let your winners ride.

00:00:16.760 | Rain Man, David Sack.

00:00:19.620 | And it's said, we open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

00:00:26.360 | Love you, man.

00:00:26.980 | He's the queen of quinoa.

00:00:28.760 | I'm going all in.

00:00:30.500 | Well, hello, Miami.

00:00:31.680 | It's good to be here from Austin for a day.

00:00:33.700 | We're the second best tech city here.

00:00:37.320 | It's not too bad.

00:00:38.060 | How many people actually live in Miami?

00:00:40.280 | I'm curious.

00:00:40.900 | There's a crowd.

00:00:41.500 | We've been over that.

00:00:42.220 | So everyone's flown in town like me.

00:00:44.200 | That's pretty cool.

00:00:44.760 | Well, you know, I'm generally an American optimist, but I want to talk about a lot of

00:00:50.160 | stuff that's broken right now that we know how to fix, but we aren't.

00:00:53.600 | And, you know, talking to these guys, especially hearing from Elon and everyone today, it's

00:00:57.680 | just so exciting.

00:00:58.300 | What are some?

00:00:58.760 | Civilization is going towards what it could be doing.

00:01:01.040 | But if you talk to a lot of our smartest friends, you look at guys like Dahlia or Bridgewater

00:01:05.740 | and others, you know, they see America in decline.

00:01:07.580 | They see decadence.

00:01:08.400 | They see decay.

00:01:09.540 | And I think there's a lot of important questions we're facing right now.

00:01:11.800 | Why do these happen to a civilization?

00:01:13.320 | Why, when there's so many exciting things going on that we know can make a really great

00:01:17.680 | future for our kids and grandkids and for humanity, why is this stuff breaking?

00:01:22.020 | And I want to tell you a little story.

00:01:23.960 | I have a policy group in Austin, and we follow the homeless population there.

00:01:28.340 | And we're going along with a middle-aged Mexican gentleman who had just lost his job, and he

00:01:32.720 | went into the homeless center.

00:01:33.640 | He's really struggling.

00:01:34.980 | And he says, you know, I really want to try to find a job.

00:01:37.300 | I want some job training.

00:01:38.260 | And the person working there, she says, you know, sir, you deserve a home.

00:01:42.720 | And he said, yeah, that's great, but can I get some training?

00:01:44.960 | And she said, you don't need to worry about that.

00:01:46.300 | You need to worry about getting a home for people just like you and what you deserve.

00:01:49.340 | And I want to back up about the situation in Austin, because we're seeing this all over

00:01:53.480 | the country right now.

00:01:54.300 | You know, in 2018, the mayor of Austin went to San Francisco and L.A.

00:01:57.980 | And, you know, he was asking them for advice on what to do for homelessness.

00:02:01.220 | There wasn't really homelessness downtown.

00:02:02.640 | It's funny.

00:02:03.180 | This is funny to me, too.

00:02:04.220 | But there's actually a reason he was asking them for advice.

00:02:06.640 | And it's a special interest thing where there's actually hundreds of millions of funding that

00:02:10.520 | goes to these groups, NSF and L.A., that work on this, and to all of their friends and to

00:02:14.480 | all the people with their politics.

00:02:15.560 | And it's a huge money spigot for politicians, because they're very powerful in those other

00:02:19.920 | cities.

00:02:20.180 | In Austin, they didn't have that money spigot, and he wanted it.

00:02:22.440 | And you know what they told him?

00:02:23.940 | I heard this from both sides.

00:02:24.880 | He said, you know, you have to show people that capitalism doesn't work.

00:02:27.660 | And he said, you know, you have to show people that capitalism doesn't work.

00:02:27.720 | You've got to put it in their faces, and then you'll get funding.

00:02:30.760 | And he went back to Austin, and he brought all the camps downtown.

00:02:33.200 | Homeless deaths spiked.

00:02:34.760 | Homeless trafficking spiked.

00:02:35.800 | Sex trafficking spiked.

00:02:36.700 | Drugs spiked.

00:02:37.320 | But the funding went way up for him and his friends.

00:02:40.060 | They got massive new funding, you know, unaccountable sources of money for these people.

00:02:43.480 | And then, of course, they start deploying the answers, which is the Housing First strategy.

00:02:48.640 | And by the way, this is not just like a right versus left thing.

00:02:51.420 | I think Housing First was first deployed under W. Bush.

00:02:53.860 | So this is a general strategy.

00:02:56.080 | You guys probably know in L.A., they spend...

00:02:57.460 | $800,000 per new home trying to solve this problem.

00:03:00.800 | There's 7,000 nonprofits right now, you know, funded by HUD around our country with the same philosophy.

00:03:06.800 | And the philosophy is no pay for performance, no transparency, no accountability, just build the homes.

00:03:11.600 | And, you know, when I first heard about this a decade ago, I thought, wow, that makes sense.

00:03:14.760 | There's 5,000 homeless people.

00:03:16.100 | Let's build 5,000 homes.

00:03:17.500 | It turns out that there's still about a couple percent of our society that really don't have a home,

00:03:22.700 | but they're living kind of on the edge on people's couches, with other family, with friends.

00:03:26.060 | So the actual demand for housing is...

00:03:27.200 | I mean, it turns out maybe it's about 6 million, 10 million.

00:03:30.700 | It's effectively infinite.

00:03:31.640 | There's infinite demand for homes in our society.

00:03:33.540 | And who do you think gets these homes when we build them?

00:03:35.440 | So this guy, we were following, you know, a few hundred people with my philanthropy group,

00:03:39.160 | and our team goes back in with him.

00:03:41.500 | And he gets in line, and he's been leaving between a camp that they helped him set up in downtown

00:03:45.640 | and a relative's house, but he's, you know, he's saying he's living outside in camp.

00:03:49.400 | And he goes back, and he just missed getting a home, and he's frustrated.

00:03:52.460 | And they're explaining the points to him, and he says, "Wait a second.

00:03:54.960 | So you're saying that if I was on drugs, I would qualify

00:03:56.940 | for a home?"

00:03:57.940 | And they said, "Well, we don't like to say it that way, but that's true."

00:04:00.040 | And he says, "You're saying if I committed a crime, I'd qualify for a home."

00:04:03.080 | And they're like, "Well, yeah, but that's...

00:04:04.680 | Yeah, we don't like to say it that way, but that's true.

00:04:06.440 | That would have given you enough points to qualify for a home."

00:04:10.040 | And what happens here, if you try to bait this system, you know, 7,000 of these groups

00:04:13.660 | around the country, you're screamed at as a racist, you're screamed at with ad hominem

00:04:18.060 | attacks.

00:04:19.060 | There's three things.

00:04:20.060 | One, there's not the intellectual humility to see that there may be other answers that

00:04:23.060 | may be correct.

00:04:24.060 | Two, there's no respect for the dignity of...

00:04:26.680 | Of everyone in this conversation.

00:04:28.180 | If you disagree, you are a bad person.

00:04:30.560 | And three, there's no passion for the truth.

00:04:32.760 | These people are not trying to pursue the truth.

00:04:34.680 | These people already have the truth, and they're giving it to you as a dogma.

00:04:38.620 | And this is true of pretty much every of these broken areas in our society, and there's a

00:04:42.080 | lot of them.

00:04:43.080 | There's a lot of them right now.

00:04:44.080 | There's, like, we have 50 training programs that we spend a lot of money on the federal

00:04:47.920 | government.

00:04:48.920 | They're not accountable.

00:04:49.920 | They don't tend to work.

00:04:50.920 | They're very broken.

00:04:51.920 | There's no transparency.

00:04:52.920 | There's no competition.

00:04:53.920 | There's no debate.

00:04:54.920 | You're for it or against it.

00:04:55.920 | And you're a bad person if you're against it.

00:04:56.420 | There's these vocational schools around the country.

00:04:59.120 | Texas vocational schools were really underperforming seven years ago.

00:05:04.120 | And what we did is we ended up actually changing them so that the schools were only going to

00:05:08.740 | be funded based on the salaries of the students coming out.

00:05:11.300 | If you tie it to graduation rates, it doesn't work because they can graduate everyone.

00:05:13.840 | We tied to the salaries coming out.

00:05:15.480 | We got the salaries coming out to go up 117% just by putting in that accountability.

00:05:20.320 | But most of the country doesn't do that.

00:05:21.620 | Most of the country, there's vocational schools.

00:05:23.200 | People go.

00:05:24.200 | Very low graduation rates.

00:05:25.160 | They fail.

00:05:26.160 | They fail.

00:05:26.900 | We're not going to go into the K-12 issues you guys know about.

00:05:28.700 | But one fact most people don't know is the education inequality in this country is far

00:05:33.680 | greater than the wealth inequality.

00:05:35.640 | Far greater.

00:05:36.640 | So there's, I mean, you know, and you guys probably see there's an infant formula production

00:05:39.760 | thing which is a crisis right now.

00:05:40.900 | There's really basic policy mistakes around that.

00:05:43.180 | The way we run our prisons, our probation and parole, there's all sorts of ways to run

00:05:46.780 | them much better.

00:05:47.780 | We're not doing it though.

00:05:48.780 | You know, I'll give you one other example because Elon was speaking today.

00:05:51.400 | Austin Infrastructure.

00:05:52.400 | I'm very excited about his boring company.

00:05:53.900 | And, you know, in Austin, we passed the law.

00:05:55.900 | We passed the $6 billion, $7 billion plan to build a really small amount of infrastructure.

00:06:00.780 | It's already ballooning cost of $12 billion.

00:06:03.460 | For less than half the original money, for $3 billion, you could do over 100 times as

00:06:07.400 | many tunnels in terms of what they're building right now.

00:06:11.600 | And you do it with 100 more stations.

00:06:14.400 | And so basically for a tiny fraction of the cost, and again, I go and talk to the city

00:06:17.800 | and talk to the guys.

00:06:18.800 | There's no intellectual humility.

00:06:19.800 | They don't respect your dignity.

00:06:23.240 | Elon's a bad guy.

00:06:24.240 | We don't like Elon, whatever.

00:06:25.640 | I'm kind of extreme version.

00:06:27.400 | And they're not interested in the truth.

00:06:28.920 | They're really not.

00:06:29.920 | They're just interested in what they're going to do their way.

00:06:32.080 | And so can you kind of come back to this?

00:06:33.800 | What's going on in our society?

00:06:35.140 | Where is this coming from?

00:06:36.140 | And, you know, say what causes decadence, decay, and decline?

00:06:38.840 | I think the more important question is what actually works?

00:06:41.560 | Why is our society functional?

00:06:43.480 | And I think you have to take it back to the Enlightenment, right?

00:06:46.240 | If you look at the exponential growth that's happened, that's created the wealth that all

00:06:49.440 | of us enjoy, it really happened over the last few centuries, kind of post-Enlightenment.

00:06:54.440 | And you had a society that really...

00:06:55.380 | A society that really cared about pursuit of the truth, really cared about competition

00:06:58.720 | of ideas, right?

00:06:59.720 | I mean, and you need the virtues for this to work, right?

00:07:02.180 | The classical virtues that we talk about in our civilization, justice, wisdom, temperance,

00:07:06.380 | courage.

00:07:07.380 | You need the courage to actually fight for the truth.

00:07:09.800 | And so a long time ago, you tended to have religious dogma, which could be some form

00:07:14.600 | of virtue signaling, some form of, you know, basically keeping out outsiders.

00:07:19.260 | And then you had separately debate and substance.

00:07:21.600 | And debate and substance generally lost to religious dogma.

00:07:24.120 | And what was unique about it was that it was a kind of a...

00:07:25.120 | It was unique about the Enlightenment.

00:07:26.120 | What was unique about our university system, which we created, was the liberal universities

00:07:31.120 | were a place to have debates where substance could actually win against, you know, dogma

00:07:36.560 | and against, you know, people who disagree.

00:07:38.960 | You actually had to disagree civilly and you actually had to pursue truth.

00:07:42.560 | You had to have the intellectual humility to know that you don't have all the answers.

00:07:47.340 | You had to respect the dignity of people who are debating and you had to fight for a passion

00:07:50.460 | for the truth.

00:07:51.780 | And what's happened instead is that most of our universities have been conquered.

00:07:54.860 | Conquered by dogma and by religion.

00:07:57.560 | They no longer have these things.

00:07:59.020 | So once again, we have the idea of heretics and blasphemy.

00:08:01.480 | We don't call that...

00:08:02.480 | We don't use those words, but that's what we're facing right now.

00:08:04.800 | If you disagree with people, you're a heretic and you're committing blasphemy.

00:08:08.580 | If you speak against all sorts of these things you're not supposed to speak against.

00:08:11.800 | If you say that DEI is actually causing problems, if you say that here's why ESG is wrong, that's

00:08:17.660 | like it's blasphemous.

00:08:18.660 | You're not...

00:08:19.660 | This isn't your stuff.

00:08:20.660 | You're not allowed to attack these days.

00:08:21.660 | You're in trouble.

00:08:22.660 | You're told not to speak against it again or else you're fired.

00:08:23.860 | There's been written about...

00:08:24.860 | I'm talking about lots of corporations right now.

00:08:26.540 | This happens to all sorts of people.

00:08:28.360 | And this is happening first and foremost on our campus.

00:08:31.100 | What's happened is this zero-sum, historically illiterate, intolerant, virtue signaling religion

00:08:35.820 | has completely taken over and is silencing people.

00:08:38.700 | And our founders were quite fond of heretics.

00:08:42.300 | I don't know if people realize that, but that was kind of the equivalent debate 300 years

00:08:45.960 | ago to this woke religion is that Benjamin Franklin, he said, "I think all heretics I

00:08:50.500 | have known have been virtuous men.

00:08:52.640 | They have the virtue of courage."

00:08:53.940 | Or they wouldn't...

00:08:54.600 | They venture their heresy.

00:08:56.200 | They cannot afford to be deficient in other virtues due to the numerous enemies they provoke.

00:09:02.480 | And so I think thinking what's going on here, all of us, first of all, need to go back and

00:09:06.900 | think about where do we not have enough humility to try to learn more?

00:09:12.740 | Where are we not respecting people who disagree and actually engaging them and debating them

00:09:16.740 | as opposed to calling them names, running them off?

00:09:19.720 | And frankly, I think we should also remember it's actually really good to be offended.

00:09:23.680 | It's the opposite of safe spaces.

00:09:24.820 | There's this weird cultural thing with the millennial generation, I guess I'm barely

00:09:28.120 | part of it, unfortunately, where you're basically supposed to protect people from being offended.

00:09:32.740 | You're supposed to protect them from blasphemy.

00:09:34.480 | I think it has to be the opposite if our civilization is not going to decline.

00:09:37.620 | I think we actually have to go out of our way to learn that when we're offended, we

00:09:40.840 | have to be stronger.

00:09:41.840 | It doesn't mean you're somehow elevated as a victim if you're offended.

00:09:45.600 | That's your problem if you're offended and you just stop and think about it.

00:09:49.160 | And we need to use that to advance our civilization again.

00:09:52.620 | So that's my statement.

00:09:53.520 | That's my statement for today.

00:09:54.520 | Jason wanted me to add a bunch more blasphemy, but I'm going to hold off on that.

00:10:07.820 | I think you did enough.

00:10:08.820 | I think you did enough.

00:10:09.820 | Let's talk.

00:10:10.820 | Let's chop it up.

00:10:11.820 | Get in here.

00:10:12.820 | Let's talk about why people feel like they're victims.

00:10:18.120 | What do you think in our country makes certain people feel that they're victims?

00:10:23.360 | What are the reasons that people feel that they've been victims?

00:10:24.360 | What are the valid reasons people might feel that they have gotten a raw deal in America?

00:10:25.360 | I mean, I think all of our ancestors have gone through this.

00:10:30.360 | I'm Jewish and Irish.

00:10:31.360 | When my ancestors came over, there were signs saying no dogs are Irish allowed.

00:10:36.360 | My grandfather was only promoted to a certain level at Abbott because he was a Jew.

00:10:39.360 | I actually didn't realize they'd hired a Jew and they laughed and said, oops, that

00:10:42.360 | was a mistake.

00:10:43.360 | You can only get to this level.

00:10:44.360 | Yeah.

00:10:45.360 | And so, I mean, I think there has been some pretty horrible things everywhere in the world,

00:10:48.360 | frankly, not just America.

00:10:49.360 | I think everywhere you look, there's always been groups that have been victimized.

00:10:50.360 | I think that's the problem.

00:10:51.360 | I think that's the problem.

00:10:52.360 | Yeah.

00:10:52.480 | Yeah.

00:10:52.560 | been groups that have been treated pretty badly. I'm Irish as well. Irish need not apply. We had

00:10:58.340 | a pretty horrific famine. And I'm lucky. And it's obviously a lot easier to be Irish than it is to

00:11:03.100 | be someone who's black in America. Or Jewish and the Holocaust. Yeah. So you would agree

00:11:07.840 | different people's experiences are on a spectrum of the suffering, correct? 100%.

00:11:14.780 | And so people who've suffered more deserve a little more empathy and perhaps a little bit more

00:11:22.340 | consideration. They deserve more empathy, but it doesn't mean you should embrace

00:11:26.500 | philosophies that are wrong or harmful, right? So I mean, if you look at the, obviously,

00:11:31.740 | there's a lot of truth and positive parts of the BLM movement the last couple years,

00:11:35.780 | but it's actually led to thousands more deaths in the black community because of the things that it

00:11:40.180 | was pushing, because of the bad ideas. We got another one of these things?

00:11:43.660 | Yeah, one more, one more. How many more of these do we got to do?

00:11:47.320 | This is like way more work than I thought I was signing up for. Way

00:11:52.120 | more work. Someone get this man a drink. We should have had cocktails. I never agreed to be in the

00:11:58.600 | conference business when we started doing this pod. J. Cal, I respect you for what you've been

00:12:04.360 | able to do, but this is way too much work. You guys said you wanted to do a look at,

00:12:08.900 | yeah, all these fans are here. You're doing the Q&A tomorrow. Okay, sounds good. I think,

00:12:14.040 | you know, Joe, candidly, I think that is where the argument breaks down a bit is people have

00:12:21.900 | had different experiences, and I would disagree that people have to stop thinking like victims.

00:12:29.260 | I think sometimes we have to think very deeply about the suffering people have had, especially

00:12:35.340 | when it's different than the suffering that you and I have had. And I'm not virtue signaling here.

00:12:41.340 | I'm just countering the argument. I think that's fully true. What I was reeling against is I gave

00:12:45.820 | 10 examples of ways in which our society is broken and hurting poor people, hurting working class people,

00:12:50.300 | Sure. like the waste

00:12:51.680 | and wasting money on things in dysfunctional ways. And all of that is happening because we're like

00:12:56.400 | going to this illiberal society where we're not able to actually like debate things logically.

00:13:01.760 | Sure. And respect other people on the other side of the argument. And it's all about

00:13:06.080 | demonizing people who disagree with us. Yeah.

00:13:07.760 | Right. And I think that's just really, really scary right now.

00:13:10.160 | Do you, there's a website, people have tweeted this, I think the website is called

00:13:16.160 | whatthefuckhappenedin1971.com. Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:13:20.400 | Yeah. Where if you

00:13:21.460 | go to this website. I don't. Tell me.

00:13:23.780 | So in 19, if you look back socioeconomically, there's a whole bunch of charts and graphs of

00:13:28.820 | everything from GDP to, you know, labor participation rates, et cetera. And there is a

00:13:36.020 | moment in 1971 where just trend lines break. And, you know, Dorsey tweeted this out a little while

00:13:42.900 | ago. A bunch of people have talked about it and everybody has tried to figure out what actually

00:13:48.260 | happened in 19-- I mean, there's a couple of really good explanations, I think, right?

00:13:51.240 | Yeah. But I think the two biggest ones, I think the two biggest ones by far is one is tech driven

00:13:55.480 | globalization. And the other one is going off the gold currency, which over-financialized the economy.

00:13:59.880 | Yeah. So I think the gold currency one was important. I think the one that people don't

00:14:03.400 | talk about, whether you agree with it or not, I'd love to get your perspective is, you know,

00:14:07.640 | the move to the Great Society had a whole bunch of things that I think were meant to do meaningful

00:14:14.440 | good. And I-- And then broke down the family as well, which is a huge problem in America.

00:14:18.840 | Yeah. And this is, yeah. So, I mean, we talk about things that, you know, we talk about things that,

00:14:21.020 | you know, we talk about things that make civilization prosper. I think you get the

00:14:24.220 | classical virtues and you get a strong families, which by the way, for whatever reason, I still

00:14:28.620 | can't tell BLM was strongly against, which I think is like just horrible. So I think it is a problem

00:14:32.860 | in the white community as well, by the way. It's like almost half of kids are born out of wedlock

00:14:36.060 | right now. And if you statistically look at that, those kids just on average vastly underperform.

00:14:40.940 | This doesn't mean to say there's aren't one-off cases and you should get divorced if it's the

00:14:44.140 | right thing to do. But it's like it's really bad for society as a whole statistically. You can't

00:14:48.620 | argue against that. And exactly. We've accidentally created

00:14:50.800 | the incentives towards divorce in the 1960s, which obviously wasn't intentional, but this is

00:14:55.620 | a huge problem. We're not supposed to talk about it. It's like a conservative thing, I guess.

00:14:58.500 | And talk about the financialization and moving off the gold standard as well. How did that

00:15:03.420 | change socioeconomic dynamics in America? Well, basically, it made it so there's like

00:15:07.900 | a lot more money around. And so I think it put more returns into finance. So I benefit from this

00:15:14.620 | as do you as an investor. But making things. Yeah. I think it put more returns into

00:15:20.580 | finance and because there's this explosion of credit and money relative to so I think finance

00:15:25.960 | outperformed labor in terms of it's an advantage for finance, which is not what you necessarily

00:15:30.400 | want. It also really, really helped accelerate tech driven globalization, which probably was good for

00:15:35.920 | India and China and Southeast Asia and even Africa. But it basically forced workers in the

00:15:41.320 | US to compete against all these people directly. And so you had people paid like 15 times as much

00:15:46.400 | in the US, these other people. And then it just wasn't sustainable. So over time, you know, you're

00:15:50.360 | time these other people out competed about over the last 50 years which is really tough

00:15:54.040 | you you find it hard to find your tribe in silicon valley oh yeah intellectually has it become easier

00:16:02.280 | harder the same you know i i've just given up on like having even a tribe so much as like let's

00:16:07.560 | work on this together let's actually make prisons have lower risk stativism and higher employment

00:16:12.280 | and here's how we're gonna do it we're gonna put these transparency and accountability incentives

00:16:16.200 | and it's hard for anyone to really disagree with that unless you're running the prisons union

00:16:19.160 | and so like we got we're getting all these laws passed from probation and parole and that we're

00:16:22.680 | getting all these laws passed for adamant educational school work better yeah and what's

00:16:25.800 | annoys me chamath is that i feel like as people who've succeeded we all sort of have a duty to go

00:16:31.720 | and fix these problems and almost no one else is working on that that does annoy me um and then in

00:16:37.560 | terms of like for example i want to talk specifically because you mentioned higher ed but

00:16:41.240 | if you go a little bit before this um we have no real form of competition in the school system yes

00:16:48.120 | um you need to use some mechanism for good ideas to win in bad ideas and and the the existing

00:16:53.960 | framework has been charter schools um but that's been attacked under every you know sort of way

00:17:00.520 | shape or form how um how does that problem get solved how do we get kids um you know so so the

00:17:07.480 | problem if you just give everybody choice right now and you give them say funding take the money

00:17:11.320 | where they want it basically defunds the public schools which then hurts the poor kids the most

00:17:15.720 | uh and so i understand why people are against like total choice of schools and i think that's a good point

00:17:16.120 | um but i think that's a good point and i think that's a good point and i think that's a good point

00:17:16.120 | and so i understand why people are against like total choice of schools and i think that's a good point

00:17:16.120 | and so i understand why people are against like total choice for everyone it's kind of just kind

00:17:19.000 | of more like policy detail i think the way to get around that is you just give the poor kids choice

00:17:23.880 | because if you just gave the poor kids choice and now it's very clear you're just doing it

00:17:27.480 | to help them but even them being able to choose will put pressure and get rid of the hurt the bad

00:17:30.920 | schools and help the good schools so you just need some mechanism let's do the mechanism through the

00:17:34.440 | poor kids because that helps them the most like that that's that's my view seems actually like

00:17:37.480 | a reasonable it's gonna compromise right because why shouldn't the i mean my kids have choice

00:17:41.960 | where to go with my with my wife and i why shouldn't poor kids have that choice so there's

00:17:45.320 | there's things that teachers you're going to have to make sure that they're going to have that choice

00:17:46.040 | you're going to hate that but at least it's a way to kind of kind of maybe build support for it and

00:17:49.960 | is there a way for unions to to actually do the the part of the job which is about protecting workers

00:17:55.160 | with but disentangle some of the financial incentives to aggregate you know dues participate

00:18:02.440 | actively you just got to change the power structure right now they're totally in charge

00:18:05.720 | they don't want to give an inch i get it because every time they give an inch they're going to lose

00:18:08.840 | more power later on if they see that they're losing some battles then they then they have

00:18:12.920 | to negotiate and they're going to be more reasonable they say oh yeah you're right we're

00:18:15.240 | going to get rid of the bottom 20 we're going to you know you got to get to a point where the power

00:18:18.920 | changes enough that they're willing to then work with you that's it but i mean the bigger the

00:18:24.040 | bigger thing i think is we actually need leaders who are courageous who could speak up about

00:18:29.880 | problems and in the midst of everyone yelling and screaming and saying you're not supposed to say

00:18:33.560 | things you say actually i don't care what you're not supposed to say this is my version of the

00:18:38.040 | truth and this is what's going to be the best in society and what we're teaching at universities

00:18:41.560 | right now is the opposite of that what we're teaching is joe just don't say that joe what's

00:18:45.160 | going on in the world why are you causing problems for yourself joe you know you're not

00:18:47.400 | supposed to talk about these things and i'm so sick of it because like this is why all this

00:18:51.240 | stuff's broken it's because no one's speaking up you bought a college my my friends barry weiss and

00:19:00.840 | neil ferguson and i uh along with a couple a bunch of others are starting a new university in austin

00:19:06.120 | yes did you buy an existing university we're just starting from a clean sheet we got 500 acres in

00:19:12.440 | the water it's really pretty it's about 15 acres of land and we're just starting from a clean sheet of paper we got 500 acres in the water it's really pretty it's about

00:19:14.200 | 15 acres of land and we're just starting from a clean sheet of paper we got 500 acres in the water it's really pretty it's about

00:19:14.760 | 15 minutes from the tesla giant tesla plant about 30 minutes from downtown

00:19:18.760 | what we're going to build you teach what will the majors be and what will be the approach

00:19:23.720 | you know the the hypothesis you know as entrepreneurs our job is to find these gaps

00:19:27.720 | in the world where something should exist but doesn't and it seems like for the first time

00:19:31.400 | in a few generations uh you could actually build a university that competes with the other very top

00:19:36.200 | universities and attracts the very you know most talented kids one of my obnoxious views on this

00:19:40.440 | which i think the stage might might might agree with just because it's in our direction

00:19:43.720 | is that used to be the smartest people in the world a lot of them became professors

00:19:47.960 | and now you get a lot of the very smartest people becoming innovators becoming builders like my

00:19:51.480 | smartest friends i got to drop out of their phds from mit and stanford and caltech actually found

00:19:56.200 | more intellectual expression and satisfaction you know in the entrepreneurship world than they did

00:20:00.360 | there and so therefore in order to compete you know you want not only the top professors but you

00:20:04.520 | want to involve a lot of top innovators and you know we want to teach you want to teach the history

00:20:09.240 | of thought in in the free civilizations you want to actually see like like how the alignment come

00:20:13.400 | about what were the books what were the debates that people were having when they're found in the

00:20:16.440 | country and kind of kind of learn that core uh and then we also want to have centers where you know

00:20:21.480 | keep it interdisciplinary it was one of the key things universities this is again somewhat technical

00:20:25.320 | but they're broken because you get these departments to get conquered by certain ideology

00:20:29.000 | so you get certain people to only allow people who think like them to be in those departments

00:20:32.600 | so you want to you want to spread it out keep it just how much of this is because of tenure

00:20:36.360 | tenure is a big problem you want to have some protection tenure originally was a great thing

00:20:41.080 | protected you to say what you want and practice now it's usually it's usually the other way around

00:20:45.480 | and it's pretty and yeah it's just not good yeah but yeah no there's there's a huge gap there i

00:20:50.200 | think we could fix it and my goal obviously is not to have everyone educated through one great

00:20:53.880 | university it's to put pressure on other universities to change and to help build

00:20:57.560 | multiple new ones which i think we need to do and the school that you start interdisciplinary by

00:21:02.600 | nature which means that not necessarily known as for technical people for mathematics there'll be

00:21:08.360 | like a center of like political economy and history there'll be a center of data science

00:21:12.760 | and innovation and you know etc there'll be centers you know of you know arts and writing

00:21:17.560 | and stuff so i think you want different there's different skills i think everyone should get the

00:21:21.080 | kind of core is this for profit or is he gonna no it's non-profit it's probably it's part of me

00:21:26.600 | wishes i made it for profit because i need to make money because it'd be easier to raise money for it

00:21:30.120 | but we've talked to him we've raised about 100 million dollars non-profit

00:21:33.640 | for it we have the land uh so i mean it's it's gonna work i put my name on it so i'll pay for

00:21:38.200 | it

00:21:38.280 | raised a hundred million dollars for this yeah the non-profit yeah we have

00:21:41.560 | and uh when do you plan on opening it fall of 2024 is our goal for the first class be about

00:21:50.200 | the size of caltech at first is the hope it's pretty ambitious project yeah well our country

00:21:56.360 | our country needs some some more leaders right now who are courageous and know the thing how do you

00:22:00.280 | how do you uh how do you how do you think you'll recruit the first class

00:22:04.920 | how do you get uh yeah you want you want to do much more active recruiting than most of

00:22:08.120 | our top colleges right now especially because we won't be as known at first but i'll tell you what

00:22:11.640 | we have a seminar this summer of 80 kids and we had 44 000 increase of from kids about it we have

00:22:17.400 | uh you know when we first the first two weeks after the story was out on twitter in november

00:22:20.680 | that we're doing this we had 4 400 professors apply because these professors are fleeing a lot

00:22:24.920 | of the professors by the way a lot of them on the moderate left they're being attacked by the

00:22:27.800 | extremes for again talking about and saying things you're not supposed to talk about and say and so

00:22:32.120 | so a lot of them are trying to fleet other environments there's a huge demand for it right

00:22:35.400 | now it's super weird that

00:22:37.960 | college kids yeah are against having debates and discussions so much worse i just find it so weird

00:22:45.800 | like that was like one of the best parts of college because i don't have a i mean i haven't

00:22:49.000 | been in college so the last five years have just gotten totally crazy like that like we had a woman

00:22:53.160 | professor really smart woman you know definitely on the left but like she was applying from nyu law

00:22:59.000 | school asking us are we going to do a new law school because she can't stand that anymore

00:23:01.960 | and we say well what's going on she said well for example we used to use

00:23:04.920 | a socratic method in my law school and i would ask tough questions from

00:23:07.800 | both sides of the kids and now in order not to trigger people i have to write them an email a

00:23:12.040 | week ahead of time to make sure i can ask the question and that i'm going to ask in class next

00:23:15.560 | week so if you were to ask a lawyer this is the train a lawyer i mean it's just this is this is

00:23:19.400 | where we are at this point so that's nyu law school this is nyu that's the policy of nyu i

00:23:25.480 | think we got a bigger cycle i don't know but like this is this our universities have just gone crazy

00:23:30.280 | the last five years like is that an isolated incident or no no y'all has more administrators

00:23:35.080 | than students these administrators are on the whole

00:23:37.640 | more likely to be neo-marxist than to be than maybe republicans i mean it's just like these

00:23:41.640 | things have gotten very extreme what do you think sex

00:23:44.840 | about did you ever think you would get this bad when you were about the university and you know

00:23:54.440 | i mean you lived at a time i mean the time at stanford was uh a pretty bold time when

00:24:01.000 | you were there in terms of freedom of speech in terms of debate vibrancy

00:24:04.760 | yeah what basically happened is all those radicals who are being

00:24:07.480 | inculcated and trained and brainwashed at stanford that we were reacting to what if 25 30 years ago

00:24:14.280 | they all graduated and then they went off into society and took over all these institutions

00:24:19.480 | and that's the problem we have today matt taibbi and glenn greenwald were talking about it earlier

00:24:24.760 | today where if you actually look at polling the biggest divide in america in terms of political

00:24:29.880 | and cultural beliefs is whether or not you have a college degree so if you're basically a college

00:24:36.360 | graduate you remember that you're a university graduate you're a graduate graduate and you're

00:24:37.320 | a member of the professional class if you're not a college graduate you're a member of the working

00:24:41.720 | class that is the biggest divide and um you know the the members of the professional class by and

00:24:48.120 | large have very very far left views on socio-cultural issues that's just a fact i mean

00:24:54.760 | whether you agree with it or not um and that is creating a huge amount of tension in our society

00:24:59.560 | because two-thirds of the country is working class one-third is a professional class and in

00:25:07.160 | the middle-class it's a lot of people working class and in the middle-class it's a lot of people

00:25:09.240 | working class and in the middle-class it's a lot of people working class and in the middle-class

00:25:13.080 | it's a lot of people working class and in the middle-class it's a lot of people working class

00:25:15.880 | and in the middle-class it's a lot of people working class and in the middle-class it's a lot

00:25:18.120 | of people working class and in the middle-class it's a lot of people working class and in the

00:25:21.000 | middle-class it's a lot of people working class and in the middle-class it's a lot of people

00:25:23.080 | working class and in the middle-class it's a lot of people working class and in the middle-class

00:25:27.080 | it's a lot of people working class and in the middle-class it's a lot of people working class

00:25:29.800 | and you go down the list, they have views

00:25:32.600 | that are fundamentally in tension and in conflict

00:25:35.120 | with the views of most of the country.

00:25:37.120 | The working class of the country.

00:25:38.520 | Now, if you're a member of that class,

00:25:39.840 | you may think it's a good thing.

00:25:40.800 | We're gonna push our views onto the country,

00:25:44.180 | whether they like it or not,

00:25:45.320 | and we're gonna convert them.

00:25:46.540 | - That's what you call the elite class, right?

00:25:48.140 | - That's the elite.

00:25:49.280 | And that's what basically,

00:25:51.180 | now like what I'm describing is not like a criticism.

00:25:54.760 | I think it's just like-

00:25:55.580 | - I think that's what Charles-

00:25:56.420 | - I think it's a factual critique of what's happening.

00:25:58.720 | - Well, yeah, I don't think it's partisan either.

00:26:00.780 | I mean, there are people who are Republicans or Democrats

00:26:04.300 | in both- - Right.

00:26:05.140 | There are elites in both parties,

00:26:06.740 | and there are certainly working class people

00:26:08.400 | in both parties.

00:26:09.240 | But what I would say is that the parties are now

00:26:10.840 | in the process of resorting around this sort of political

00:26:15.020 | and cultural divide.

00:26:16.340 | And historically, the Democrats were the party

00:26:19.140 | of the working class.

00:26:19.980 | They are now much more the party of the professional class.

00:26:23.880 | And they buy into the belief set of sort of the college

00:26:28.240 | educated, - Right.

00:26:28.700 | - the, you know, those sort of,

00:26:31.860 | you call it the woke sensibility.

00:26:34.420 | And the Republicans are in the process of transforming

00:26:36.280 | into a working class sort of populist party.

00:26:39.160 | - Yeah.

00:26:40.000 | - And look, there are, in both parties,

00:26:42.140 | there are outliers who don't quite fit in anymore.

00:26:44.120 | But that's the fundamental transformation that's happening.

00:26:47.160 | - Yeah.

00:26:48.000 | I mean, you guys fit into that.

00:26:49.980 | You're people in the Republican party

00:26:52.580 | who don't fit in it anymore.

00:26:54.320 | - I mean, I wouldn't even necessarily mind that dynamic

00:26:56.680 | you described so much if they weren't breaking everything.

00:26:58.680 | And if they weren't not allowing conversations

00:27:00.380 | about how broken things are and the better ideas, right?

00:27:02.320 | It's just a very strange, illiberal nature to this.

00:27:05.000 | - Right, well, so I think, and I just connected

00:27:06.640 | with what we were talking about with Glenn,

00:27:08.300 | you know, Greenwald and Taibbi, is that,

00:27:10.700 | look, if you're part of the elite

00:27:13.420 | and you control all of these institutions,

00:27:15.440 | all of this cultural high ground,

00:27:17.120 | but the country is not with you,

00:27:19.040 | and just in terms of the sheer numbers,

00:27:20.920 | you are gonna use the tactics that people in power

00:27:24.380 | always use to suppress the greater numbers.

00:27:27.260 | That's where censorship comes from.

00:27:28.660 | The people who are running these institutions don't,

00:27:31.660 | they want the debate to be over.

00:27:32.960 | They want the power to end the debate

00:27:35.960 | because they're not otherwise gonna win that debate.

00:27:38.560 | - Well, we're very interested in seeing where you take it,

00:27:44.980 | and we appreciate you taking the time to share your views.

00:27:48.800 | Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Alonzo.

00:27:50.280 | - Thanks.

00:27:51.120 | - Thanks, guys.

00:27:51.960 | - We'll let your winners ride.

00:27:56.040 | - Rain Man, David Sacks.

00:27:58.640 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

00:28:00.400 | - And it said, we open sourced it to the fans,

00:28:02.640 | and they've just gone crazy with it.

00:28:04.500 | - Love you, Westies.

00:28:05.340 | - I'm the queen of Kinwah.

00:28:06.540 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

00:28:07.880 | ♪ What your winners like ♪

00:28:09.460 | ♪ What your winners like ♪

00:28:11.680 | ♪ What your winners like ♪

00:28:13.320 | - Besties are gone.

00:28:14.460 | - Go 13.

00:28:15.300 | - That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

00:28:18.000 | - Sacks.

00:28:18.840 | - Wait, no, no, no.

00:28:19.680 | - Oh, man.

00:28:20.520 | - Oh, man.

00:28:21.360 | - My hot basher will meet me at Westies.

00:28:23.760 | - We should all just get a room

00:28:24.840 | and just have one big huge orgy

00:28:26.420 | 'cause they're all just useless.

00:28:27.260 | It's like this sexual,

00:28:28.620 | they're all just a bunch of attention,

00:28:29.460 | but they just need to release somehow.

00:28:31.860 | ♪ What your beat ♪

00:28:32.940 | ♪ What your beat ♪

00:28:33.780 | ♪ What your beat ♪

00:28:34.620 | ♪ What your beat ♪

00:28:35.460 | ♪ What your beat ♪

00:28:36.300 | - We need to get merch.

00:28:38.140 | ♪ Besties are back ♪

00:28:38.980 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

00:28:39.980 | ♪ What ♪

00:28:43.540 | ♪ What ♪

00:28:46.220 | ♪ I'm going all in ♪

#AIS: Joe Lonsdale on the problem with higher education

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