E25: Biden's vaccine mandate, "equity" in distribution, NFT speculation, impact of inflation & more

00:00:00.000 | does anybody have any thoughts on this i mean i think it's incredible um

00:00:05.200 | so does friedberg's dog

00:00:09.080 | rain man david sacks

00:00:15.440 | and it said we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy

00:00:21.780 | love you guys

00:00:22.740 | hey everybody hey everybody welcome to another episode of the all-in podcast it's been a week

00:00:33.020 | it's been a minute with us today of course the queen of quinoa david friedberg and the rain man

00:00:39.960 | himself calling in from a nondescript mansion in one of 17 cities the rain man himself david sacks

00:00:47.000 | and cackling like a dictator who got his two billy back

00:00:52.440 | you guys are welcome to another episode of the all-in podcast it's been a week it's been a minute

00:00:52.720 | and he's back in the game chamath palihapitiya for those of you he's re he's re-billionized

00:00:59.360 | he re-billionized is he gonna get a car with doors that go like this doors that go like this

00:01:04.320 | let's talk a little bit about the vaccine biden says everybody who's an adult is qualified by

00:01:12.480 | may 1st he's instructed the states to do that we are now hitting uh 2.x million a day we had a

00:01:19.460 | three million shot day i believe friedberg

00:01:22.420 | and uh obviously the 1.9 billion dollar covid slash uh everybody gets a big slice uh bill got

00:01:30.720 | passed 1.9 trillion with a sorry that's what i said 1.9 trillion no somebody put 1.9 billion

00:01:35.360 | in the notes yes 1.9 trillion uh 1.9 billion is what the covid um the covid nft went for

00:01:41.900 | the covid nft went for one as i said in the past a trillion here trillion there

00:01:46.000 | soon enough it's real money yeah yeah well biden biden's speech really kind of begged the question

00:01:51.660 | of why is it that the nft is going to go to the nft and the nft is going to go to the nft and the

00:01:52.120 | why we still need this two trillion dollar bill if covid is going to be over in may but putting

00:01:58.340 | that aside i think biden's speech was very welcome in that he called for states to drop all these

00:02:05.900 | crazy eligibility requirements that are actually preventing people from getting vaccinated at this

00:02:10.040 | point he says that every adult american should be able to get a dose by may 1st and he's right and

00:02:15.540 | you know there's a sharp contrast with gavin newsom in california who keeps playing political

00:02:20.160 | games with the administration of the state and the state of the art and the state of the art and

00:02:21.820 | administration of these doses. So in California, yesterday, just yesterday, we added 250,000 more

00:02:29.020 | doses of unused inventory so we the amount grew to 4.5 million unused doses sitting on a shelf,

00:02:36.280 | only 215,000 people got vaccinated. So we're actually building inventory faster than we're

00:02:42.460 | building the population of people getting vaccinated. And it's because of all these crazy

00:02:46.600 | rules and requirements, you have to go make an appointment, you know, and that really actually,

00:02:51.100 | it's kind of productive, because it discriminates against people who are less computer savvy,

00:02:55.300 | don't know how to navigate the website, or, you know, communities who don't want to enter their

00:02:59.680 | name in a government database, which, you know, there's a lot of people in California don't want

00:03:04.180 | to, you know, put put their names in a government database. And so it works against those communities

00:03:08.260 | getting vaccinated. At this point, we should just drop all the requirements, drop the website,

00:03:12.580 | let anyone who wants a vaccine just get in line and get vaccinated, it'll go much faster.

00:03:17.260 | The problem is that we throw around this

00:03:20.380 | word equity, and that we need to do something with equity. And in fact, I think that people

00:03:25.120 | who use that word are stupid. I think what they're trying to say actually, is we don't want

00:03:29.980 | inequity. And the most inequitable thing is to actually take the most impoverished and fragile

00:03:36.160 | of the population and prevent them from actually getting the vaccine because they're the ones that

00:03:40.840 | actually need to be working, and can't afford to actually not work or can't afford to be sick or

00:03:45.880 | can't afford to, you know, find solutions to childcare.

00:03:49.660 | It's this weird word that like, you know, the extreme left uses now to describe policies that

00:03:57.520 | are just frankly, poorly thought out and even more poorly executed.

00:04:01.120 | It might even be more pernicious than that, correct, Freeberg, in that anybody who gets a

00:04:06.760 | shot is helping everybody else because they are now a blocker in the system. I know this is

00:04:11.560 | incredibly simplistic. But I'm a simplistic guy. And it just seems to me that

00:04:15.700 | Well, it's a different way of thinking about the benefit of vaccination. And I've said it in the podcast, but I'm not sure if it's the same thing.

00:04:16.660 | I'm not sure if it's the same thing. I'm not sure if it's the same thing.

00:04:16.840 | I'm not sure if it's the same thing. I'm not sure if it's the same thing.

00:04:16.840 | thinking about the benefit of vaccination. And I've said it in the past, but the benefit of

00:04:21.040 | vaccination is to get enough people vaccinated that the virus generally stops spreading,

00:04:26.540 | and then the pandemic ends. And that's the objective. It's not about creating equitable

00:04:30.700 | protection for individuals. And as Americans, it's interesting, we think about it in terms of

00:04:35.480 | an individual benefit. It's like, how much do I get? What do I get from this vaccine?

00:04:39.200 | I want to get protected, the other guys getting protected before me, who gets to go first,

00:04:43.480 | yada, yada, and it becomes this kind of competitive, you know, frothing for a vaccination.

00:04:47.920 | And the reality is, if we get enough people vaccinated fast enough, the pandemic ends.

00:04:52.660 | If we can get 200 million shots in arms, this goes back to I think this tweet I sent in early

00:04:57.980 | January, December, we get 200 million shots in arms, we can be done with the pandemic based on

00:05:03.140 | how many the efficacy of transmission rate reduction, combined with the fact that a certain

00:05:08.620 | number of people have already developed immunity to this thing, we get to the point that there

00:05:12.700 | should be kind of a

00:05:13.460 | you know, think about a network, and you start turning nodes off the network suddenly becomes

00:05:17.160 | really hard to see transmission happen across the network. And, and so the prioritization of,

00:05:23.720 | you know, who gets the vaccine over, you know, how fast we are deploying the vaccine has been

00:05:28.120 | a critical error from day one, in my opinion. Now, look, all that being said, I feel like we

00:05:34.640 | could sit here and criticize and argue about tactics and strategy all day long about this,

00:05:39.400 | and, you know, make politicians look like idiots and administrators look like idiots. But the true

00:05:43.300 | thing is, we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not

00:05:43.440 | going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that.

00:05:43.500 | The truth is, we are now seeing 3 million shots a day. In Biden's speech, he said, which, if you'll

00:05:49.900 | remember, is what I said, we really should be targeting is about 1% of the population every day.

00:05:53.780 | And that's roughly where we are. Biden said in his speech that we are in a war footing,

00:05:58.440 | which is effectively what we said the other day, the federal government is operating 600 mass

00:06:03.200 | vac sites. And we are right now getting shots in arms for all of the issues with prioritization

00:06:08.300 | and nonsense that's going on. I feel very in the United States. I agree with you. I agree with you.

00:06:13.420 | I agree that Biden has the correct posture on this, which is war footing. We are not doing that

00:06:18.100 | in California. I mean, I just talked about how we're building inventories faster than we're

00:06:21.760 | getting vaccines administered. Newsom just announced that 40% of the vaccines are now going

00:06:26.900 | to be basically separated out and reserved for equity zones. And you know, it's what does that

00:06:34.720 | even mean? It means that certain communities, only people in certain communities can get those

00:06:39.700 | vaccines. And they're going to be distributed out through this complicated system. And they're

00:06:43.400 | going to be distributed out through this complicated system of local community groups.

00:06:45.120 | All that does is put money through some no-bid contract to some shitty technical company,

00:06:50.420 | a bunch of consultants that then take advantage of the system, get paid hundreds of millions or

00:06:55.740 | billions of dollars to do nothing. I mean, I tweeted out there's this bot that now scrapes.

00:07:02.840 | And by the way, before I tweeted out this thing about this bot, which is, I think-

00:07:07.540 | Yeah, I sent it to you. It's the California vaccines available bot.

00:07:10.800 | Exactly. And all it does is it scrapes.

00:07:13.380 | It scrapes that myturn.ca website. But before that, in our group chat, there was another friend

00:07:18.020 | of ours who wrote his own scraper, if you guys remember. And it was really shocking because all

00:07:23.060 | it would show is page after page after page of completely open and available vaccine slots.

00:07:29.120 | Yeah.

00:07:29.620 | You know, at the Moscone Center and other places. And you think all of this stuff is just a bunch

00:07:35.120 | of, I'll be blunt, rich white people sitting in a room with their head up their ass. And they come

00:07:40.720 | up with these stupid fucking rules. And then they try to implement it. And they're like,

00:07:43.360 | implement them with words like equity and all that happens is that you compound inequality

00:07:49.240 | and let's go back and let's go back to freeberg's first point which is that all these unvaccinated

00:07:56.020 | people who can't get vaccinated faster become a giant Petri dish for the virus that can continue

00:08:01.000 | spreading and experimenting on morphing and more things so maybe we actually do get a vaccine

00:08:05.380 | resistant strain the new strains the variants have been popping up so far are not a vaccine

00:08:10.120 | resistant but the longer the pandemic goes on the longer there's a chance that one could arise and

00:08:15.520 | then we're back to square one on this thing so it's going to hurt everybody um and and here's

00:08:20.680 | the crazy thing is that you know I think we all know a lot of I know dozens of people who've been

00:08:26.200 | vaccinated in California and they all come to me and tell me they're whispering about it you know

00:08:30.340 | because they don't want to tell anyone they're scared of being cancelled they're scared of being

00:08:34.780 | cancelled because you know um Newsom and and the equity people have created this idea that if you

00:08:39.880 | get a

00:08:40.100 | vaccine you're taking away from somebody else in reality you're not because anybody who's high risk

00:08:44.840 | has already gotten the vaccine by now or has had access to get the vaccine and all you're doing

00:08:49.340 | right now if you get the vaccine is taking a dose off the shelf where there's 4.5 million

00:08:54.020 | doses sitting there and it's increasing by millions every week and so what we need to do is

00:08:59.660 | um well let me make a PSA actually starting on Monday uh you could anyone in California can

00:09:06.080 | get the vaccine with the doctor's note and they're saying that doctors have total

00:09:10.080 | discretion to give the note so let me just make a PSA to everyone out there if you're in California

00:09:14.580 | just go get a doctor's note starting on Monday and go get the vaccine yeah you know stop stop

00:09:19.800 | worrying about Newsom's stupid rules let's also just remember so two points on that not everyone

00:09:25.200 | has the ability to go just get a doctor's note it's really hard for people that have to go to

00:09:29.760 | public clinics and so on to get a doctor's note what we are seeing is a lot of people just hacking

00:09:34.980 | the website almost like Soviet Union era bread lines where they go to the website they type in

00:09:39.060 | something that's not true

00:09:40.060 | to get themselves a slot and that's how a lot of people are kind of filling the void the reality is

00:09:44.740 | and I just want to go back to the point I was making at the beginning I think we're skating

00:09:48.280 | out of this thing and I think that the inventory surplus which is absolutely being built up at a

00:09:54.040 | staggering rate in the United States right now if you look at the inventory forecast from J and J

00:09:58.360 | Pfizer and Moderna relative to the deployment rate of the vaccines right now you are correct we are

00:10:03.460 | building up a surplus an inventory surplus and the rate of buildup per day is increasing right now so

00:10:08.800 | one million extra shots

00:10:10.040 | a day two million extra shots a day being probably half a million to a million and so we're building

00:10:14.180 | up an inventory and so what happens of the 30 million we have we have already in inventory so

00:10:19.280 | so what's happening is there are natural Market Dynamics where what we are all pointing out and

00:10:23.900 | saying is starting to play out in terms of people kind of hacking the system there's so much supply

00:10:28.520 | there are many vac sites now you can go to any supermarket any pharmacy in California to get

00:10:32.660 | a shot and everyone's just clicking the box and saying yes I qualify and they're going in and

00:10:36.860 | getting shots so the market demand is starting to meet the supply

00:10:40.020 | even though there are government and regulatory forces that are trying to inhibit that from taking

00:10:43.920 | place and so I do feel pretty good when you look at kind of the inventory forecast and you look at

00:10:48.060 | how many shots are being given per day that in 45 days or so we're going to get to a point that we're

00:10:52.860 | starting to skate out of this thing and kind of call it can I ask you can I ask you a question

00:10:56.220 | despite the idiocy of the process that regulators have kind of put in place yeah I just have a quick

00:11:01.080 | science question because I I was trying to find the answer to this but I would love for you to tell us

00:11:05.400 | what is the real efficacy

00:11:10.000 | of the vaccine and what is your transmittability like your your carrier status once you've gotten

00:11:16.060 | for example like you know let's just say you take the the Pfizer vaccine right yeah if you

00:11:21.640 | get the Pfizer vaccine how many days until this is like pretty good and you know like what is really

00:11:29.200 | the risk profile between the first shot and the second shot I'll share this link and then we can

00:11:33.820 | post it on the um show on the on the show notes and people can take a look at it but it's an

00:11:38.620 | excellent paper published by the University of California at the University of California in the

00:11:39.980 | past and it's published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing basically a population of

00:11:44.300 | unvaccinated against Pfizer vaccinated with half a million in each population half a million people

00:11:48.800 | yeah and um yeah and they showed basically the accumulated infection rate severe hospitalization

00:11:55.340 | rate and death rate of each of the two populations over time and that really kind of I think highlights

00:12:00.800 | the efficacy of the vaccines and at what time period they become efficacious on each of those

00:12:05.600 | metrics and by the way even after the first dose across a population of half

00:12:09.960 | a million people the margin of error on death um shows that there may even be complete protection

00:12:16.380 | against death after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine uh within seven days of getting that shot

00:12:22.200 | pretty powerful statistic what just to describe the chart for those people listening you have two

00:12:26.700 | populations and ones in blue ones in red and it's the time is you know in days on the bottom axis and

00:12:33.300 | when you get to day eight one line goes sideways and the other one goes keeps going straight up so

00:12:39.000 | it's day eight after the Pfizer that you're basically protected according to this chart

00:12:43.740 | and that's on the first shot and like I think it adds like one or two cases yeah that's right there

00:12:49.200 | have been zero deaths so I think day eight is the day and the second dose seems like to me you know

00:12:55.260 | it's just this unbelievable extra another amazing chart which maybe we can dump in the show notes is

00:13:01.020 | what's happening in San Francisco we hit 10 000 shots a day at the end of February March 1st

00:13:06.120 | we're doing now 2 000 shots a day

00:13:08.980 | so we literally have dropped 70 or so we're at 3 000 shots I think from the peak yeah so this crazy

00:13:15.340 | wokeness is resulting in you know in this this virtue signaling that you know oh we can't give

00:13:21.700 | any shots to anybody unless we get this group first or that group first is now leading to

00:13:25.540 | everybody hacking the system the hack that I've heard is since teachers are getting it child care

00:13:30.820 | people and food service people are getting it people are now starting to get jobs at DoorDash

00:13:36.460 | or saying they're a teacher and if you check that box according to you know the back Channel that

00:13:42.280 | I've heard you go get the shot and you don't get they don't ask you for anything other than your

00:13:47.740 | driver's license no one's checking it's just a driver's license the pharmacies the grocery stores

00:13:52.660 | the mass vac sites the sfdph California dph administered sites the federal sites no one's

00:13:57.280 | checking you sign up you check a box on the website it says I attest that this is true and

00:14:02.380 | you go and show your ID and get your shot and so a lot of people have kind of initially started

00:14:07.840 | skirting around the rules by going to be a DoorDash driver for a day or what have you and

00:14:11.860 | then saying I'm a food and AG worker and then now generally people I think are just clicking on the

00:14:15.820 | box and going in and getting a shot now sorry just to go back on the previous question Chamath I

00:14:20.560 | shared it figure two uh Nick in this uh paper I shared particularly box E shows the deaths due

00:14:27.940 | to covet 19 of a vaccinated population a non-vaccinated population and then it shows

00:14:32.320 | a documented SARS Cov2 infection and you'll see that you basically have almost no incremental

00:14:37.960 | infections in the vaccinated population starting around 28 days after your first dose and so you

00:14:44.080 | know that's really when you could say you've got you know really good kind of protection from the

00:14:48.280 | vaccine and you're already starting to get the benefits early on antibody studies have also

00:14:52.840 | shown that there's this big jump up that happens around that period of time um and so call it three

00:14:58.480 | weeks after your first shot and then in particular the fourth week uh you're really kind of like

00:15:02.260 | locked in with a protective um you know capacity now your question around transmissibility is one

00:15:07.900 | that's still being studied which is if I've got a vaccine am I going to be able to pick up the virus

00:15:12.220 | and transmit it to someone else um right now you know they're saying well we don't have evidence

00:15:16.900 | one way or the other but I mean generally the way that the virus is spread is you develop an

00:15:22.540 | infection in your body your body then makes lots of copies of the virus and then you cough and spit

00:15:26.920 | them out in the air and that's how people get it so theoretically you could carry some virus on

00:15:30.760 | your mouth or on your nose where those cells

00:15:32.200 | don't have immune protectiveness and you know the vaccine the virus is still alive but it's not

00:15:37.000 | spreading in your body you're not creating a lot of superfluous virus to spread in the world so you

00:15:41.800 | know the basic science of it is you should not be spreading covid if you've been vaccinated right I

00:15:46.780 | mean you may have some on your skin or your nose or something for a short period of time but you're

00:15:50.620 | not going to develop a systemic infection that you're then going to kind of start exerting

00:15:54.520 | everywhere um so I think we should we should we should start to transition to this world of

00:15:58.960 | feeling really good and safe and enjoying ourselves yeah we hit five hundred

00:16:02.140 | thousand shots a day sacks in California and now we're down to 150 000. we've literally gone down

00:16:08.620 | two-thirds under the management of Governor hair gel it's yeah I mean because you know and and what

00:16:17.080 | was his in his state of this the state speech which went over like a lead balloon the the most

00:16:23.200 | notable quote was we're not going back to normal normal was never good enough normal accepts

00:16:28.240 | inequity so because there might be some inequity in the world

00:16:32.080 | around the wrong person in line getting these doses we're never going back to normal and he's

00:16:37.180 | basically ensuring that result by taking forever with these vaccines but let me let me um let me go

00:16:42.940 | back to to this point about efficacy so I think freebird gave the stats on look the bottom line

00:16:48.160 | here is that vaccines work that is the message we should be getting out to people is that they work

00:16:53.260 | and the thing I've been really surprised by in the reactions I'm seeing to my own tweets

00:16:57.640 | on Twitter about this is how loud the anti-vax voices are

00:17:02.020 | and how loud and sort of when you say anti-vax you you don't mean not take the vaccine you mean the

00:17:08.200 | vaccine doesn't work and we're never getting rid of covid the forever is COVID people yeah

00:17:13.360 | well there's no it's it there's there's actually a lot of people on Twitter who got really angry

00:17:18.700 | when I when I just tweeted um I tweeted something about how it's over Biden it's over I tweeted it's

00:17:24.520 | over you know um right Biden says we can all get the vaccine um in May if if you decide not to do

00:17:31.960 | it that's on you the rest of us are moving on and I got a lot of all I was really saying is look once

00:17:37.300 | the vaccine's available there's no need for any of these coveted restrictions anymore but a lot

00:17:41.020 | of people interpreted that to as me saying something that you should be forced to get the

00:17:45.640 | vaccine or something like that now look I don't think you should be forced to get it but I think

00:17:49.900 | it's highly effective it works and uh but I'm surprised at how loud these sort of anti-vax voices

00:17:55.900 | are it's usually like a conspiracy theory around around the vaccine and I think part of the reason

00:18:01.900 | those voices are are so loud is because they're unopposed because all the people who believe in

00:18:07.120 | the vaccine are getting it but they're all afraid of like like you were saying jcal of being canceled

00:18:11.740 | and so there's a conspiracy of silence around this you know what we all need to be saying is

00:18:16.180 | look go get vaccinated it works take the win America take the win we screwed this thing up

00:18:21.520 | for 14 months can we just take the goddamn win and move on I'll give you a I'll give

00:18:25.840 | you a little thing that that always pops into my mind and all of these things whenever I hear

00:18:31.840 | a politician or some like Naval gazing intellectual use the word inequity I think like this is a power

00:18:38.860 | grab because the word equity is really about ownership whereas the word equality is about

00:18:44.140 | balance right and and power hungry politicians love the word equity and inequity because it's

00:18:51.700 | their opportunity to grab power and to tell us how things should be done or to do things differently

00:18:56.740 | in a way where you know they can enforce their mandate which is typically ill-formed and not very

00:19:01.780 | strong um and I would just encourage all of us whenever you hear the word equity or inequity this

00:19:07.720 | huge huge red light should be going off in your head saying whatever this person says next is a

00:19:13.420 | crock of horse and it's probably a power grab whereas if you hear people really talking

00:19:18.220 | about solving inequality there's really no mechanism to solve inequality through power

00:19:23.200 | well I think that's a great point around the language that gets used and I have a similar

00:19:28.120 | uh concern about the way that the word privilege gets used we used to have

00:19:31.720 | a term in this country called success yeah people were successful or not and you know success had

00:19:38.260 | a connotation of being earned whereas privilege has a connotation of being unearned well I mean

00:19:43.540 | now sometimes privilege is earned success and sometimes it's unearned and you know but but when

00:19:49.360 | you start using the word privilege to describe all success it implies that there's something you know

00:19:54.640 | unjust or unearned about it it needs to be reallocated so you know I that to me is another

00:19:59.800 | one of these political words is we

00:20:01.660 | shouldn't be confusing success with privilege yeah they're two very different things I have

00:20:05.440 | an example of this Oprah Winfrey is successful Prince Henry is has privilege it's privilege

00:20:13.360 | it's privilege I shoehorned the uh Meghan Markle story finally I mean I do want to talk about the

00:20:19.660 | Meghan Markle story actually at some point before the end of this podcast but before we do that right

00:20:23.320 | now uh okay uh Joe Lonsdale actually also had a tweet um a pretty unapologetic set of tweets around

00:20:30.520 | you know the

00:20:31.600 | casting of this this concept of privilege and I thought it was really on point I really agreed

00:20:35.800 | with what he was saying and it's effectively what you're saying David it's like people right

00:20:39.880 | now I find are just so well not not people the people that take the time to wallow in Twitter

00:20:46.600 | um mostly at least as I interact with them um are just so bitter

00:20:52.960 | and I think that there is no um magnanimous happiness for other people's success anymore it it

00:21:01.540 | I think I think like we live in a culture now where everybody feels it is so zero-sum when it's

00:21:06.880 | not in fact zero-sum um and people just begrudge other people's success especially by the way when

00:21:14.800 | it's earned and the reason is because there's an entire generation of people of all different ages

00:21:20.980 | and you know but this this last five or ten years who tap themselves out now some were legitimately

00:21:27.760 | prevented from success but there's a lot of people that bought into this narrative of wow it's a whole

00:21:32.500 | conspiracy that's set up against me so I'm not even going to try and they are often the loudest

00:21:37.360 | and the most embittered absolutely um and and the reason is because you know everybody wakes

00:21:41.560 | up in their 40s and 50s and starts to rationalize their choices in their lives and what they really

00:21:46.900 | feel deep down inside is oh my God I just let an entire decade go by of blaming other people

00:21:52.540 | yeah and I think there's a surprisingly large amount of that

00:21:56.980 | this ideology of victimization doesn't teach people the right things because you start to

00:22:02.080 | think that you know if you're wallowing in your oppression then you don't have agency over your

00:22:06.040 | own life you're blaming other people for not being successful not getting ahead when what you should

00:22:09.940 | be doing is focusing on working and improving your own life and getting ahead or also just redefining

00:22:15.940 | what happiness means happiness doesn't mean what that other person has and then saying because I

00:22:20.560 | don't have that I have nothing happiness is really like introspectively figuring out like what really

00:22:25.540 | makes you complete

00:22:26.380 | it

00:22:26.920 | and I mean not to get too syrupy about it but it's like that's what we've also lost the script

00:22:30.940 | on so when you when you put all of these things together there's just a bunch of people that sit

00:22:35.560 | on the sidelines they either are too scared to enter the arena or they don't want to enter the

00:22:41.020 | arena they don't want the failure that comes from it because they've grown up in a culture where you

00:22:45.520 | know they had the kindergarten soccer ball handed to them the gold star and everything they've ever

00:22:49.900 | done participation trophy um and now what we really need are people in the arena more than ever folks

00:22:56.740 | who are trying and saw a problem and it's okay and there's just not enough of them what instead is

00:23:02.080 | there's just a lot of people who just want to and complain and I think this is the backlash to

00:23:07.060 | the Meghan Markle interview is is this miscasting that this is an extremely privileged person or you

00:23:12.640 | know Harry and Meghan both are very privileged and but but I think what they're trying to do by making

00:23:18.100 | all these sort of accusations of racism against their own family is they're trying to ground that

00:23:23.320 | privilege in victim status and and this is the thing that I think is really important is that

00:23:26.680 | the thing about privilege is privilege is a social concept it's got nothing to do with with success

00:23:31.840 | which is either earned or unearned and so the way that people get uh to maintain their privilege is

00:23:37.420 | is they again they ground it in some sort of victimization um it creates these very perverse

00:23:42.820 | incentives my reaction to the Meghan Markle uh Prince Harry interview was the following I had a

00:23:48.700 | lot of um sympathy uh for um what she was saying um but on the other side

00:23:56.620 | I also thought you must have known what you were getting into on the way in

00:24:00.340 | and there was it was be and now and look I'll say this as a Canadian and a Sri Lankan so the

00:24:06.580 | queen and the monarchy is an increa like I can't describe to you guys because you're not

00:24:11.200 | part of the Commonwealth but it is just a definitional part of who we are as we grow up and

00:24:20.440 | I don't know what the equivalent American construct is I guess there isn't one really um and so you

00:24:26.440 | know the monarchy is a part of who we are as we grow up and I don't know what the equivalent American construct is I guess there isn't one really um and so you know the

00:24:26.560 | monarchy is an incredibly important thing but we all know that it's this kind of like anachronistic

00:24:34.180 | thing that just kind of I don't look for us it's not like I mean like if you said to

00:24:39.520 | me despite all my and raging against the machine and society and blah blah blah and stature and

00:24:44.320 | whatever if if I could be invited to meet the queen I would be there in eight nanoseconds

00:24:48.520 | okay I think the equivalent is the presidency we we actually feel that way about the presidency

00:24:52.600 | like going to visit the president is a big deal the presidency is not an endowed kind of circumstance

00:24:59.020 | there's something about there's something about the queen my point is though we all know a that

00:25:03.340 | it's important it's a great symbol of of the Commonwealth I'm very proud of all of that but

00:25:07.900 | we also know it's anachronistic and it doesn't make much sense and so what what do you uh what

00:25:13.540 | do you think you were marrying into and I think you know my perspective was I felt bad for her

00:25:18.340 | I can't believe you know it got to the place where like people wouldn't get

00:25:21.580 | help for her when she was sick and you know and then they were questioning Harry's or the the kids

00:25:27.640 | uh Archie's uh skin color I mean this is insanity like these people are stuck in the 1800s but then

00:25:36.040 | you realize they are actually stuck in the 1800s because they're not allowed to have a normal life

00:25:39.880 | they're not allowed to actually interact so you know are they at fault or they or is the system

00:25:44.560 | that creates these sort of like voyeuristic you know exotic animals in a zoo that we call the king

00:25:50.200 | the queen these princes

00:25:51.280 | is the system at fault I don't know I I was kind of like 50 50 on the interview but my perspective

00:25:56.440 | was the monarchy is in a really tough spot over the next 30 or 40 years because again so now let

00:26:02.200 | me tell you where my belief is I'm kind of a little bummed by the whole thing the monarchy

00:26:06.220 | doesn't mean what it what it what it used to be for me David what's what was more enthralling to

00:26:11.980 | you this week Tucker versus Taylor or the queen versus Oprah and Prince Henry I didn't I didn't

00:26:19.540 | spend I didn't spend a tremendous amount of time on either one I mean look I if I were if I were

00:26:25.480 | Harry I would probably do the same thing which is to basically leave look the first thing I did my

00:26:30.340 | career was Lee was quit the the firm right I you know who wants to work for a firm um you know it's

00:26:36.580 | very tracked um so I don't blame him leaving going to California you know that's what we that's what

00:26:42.040 | we all did right I mean he was being that's a very that's a very entrepreneurial American thing to do

00:26:46.960 | what what I what I had a problem with was the way that they're attacking their own family because

00:26:51.220 | they're being paid seven million dollars to do this interview no no no hold on they were not

00:26:56.740 | there was the first question Oprah asked and they were very clear they were not getting paid now they

00:27:01.000 | did sign a hundred million who made the seven million though no Oprah did Harpo did oh well

00:27:05.740 | she's a genius yeah she's a genius no no let's just be clean again Oprah Oprah is our queen

00:27:11.560 | it's even worse it's even worse if they did the interview for free and didn't even get a piece of

00:27:21.040 | the back end so all they did was attack and besmirch their family uh for for none of that

00:27:26.440 | and look I I I guess my my point is so so why would they do it if it's not even about the

00:27:31.420 | money I mean it's about this idea of defining their privilege grounding it in victim status

00:27:36.100 | and I think there's something very fake and phony about that and I think that's why people had this

00:27:41.260 | uh reaction to it where frankly they were I I don't think they're on the side of the royal

00:27:46.120 | family because it's it is outdated but I think the there was a lot of skepticism towards what

00:27:52.180 | Harry had a little bit of a problem with the like live from our 15 million dollar Montecito mansion

00:27:58.180 | no Jason I mean it was that was not for that house that was a friend they have a 15 million

00:28:04.840 | dollar house I know but they also have a 15 million dollar house next to Oprah well it's

00:28:08.680 | actually for that they put five million down they

00:28:11.200 | know it's public they put five million down and they took out a mortgage it's uh someone listed

00:28:15.160 | this whole thing no it's an honest question does the do the taxpayers of the UK fund the Princess

00:28:20.140 | that's the whole point they went and did a deal with Netflix and they start and Spotify and now

00:28:24.160 | they have a salary and they're making money like everybody else so I mean I'm not I'm not I don't

00:28:28.420 | have an issue with any of that no I don't have an issue with that I thought the taxpayers were

00:28:31.420 | funded the lifestyle they do fund the lifestyle of the other princes right sure yeah so I mean

00:28:37.900 | that's the thing can we talk about something important yeah

00:28:41.020 | okay so a people nft sold for 69 million dollars I mean this week this one is crazy all the dumbest

00:28:49.420 | happened this week Taylor Loren to this weekend dumb slaughtered on well yeah dumb so I miss I

00:28:56.260 | miss Tucker versus Taylor but actually the the real uh the person who took on Taylor that did

00:29:01.480 | a brilliant job was Glenn Greenwald I don't know I don't know if you guys read his post but that was

00:29:06.280 | brutal brilliant Savage brilliant and basically what he said is that look you've got a lot of people

00:29:09.100 | who are going to be like you know what I'm not going to be able to get a job in the future

00:29:09.100 | you're going to be able to get a job in the future you're going to be able to get a job in the future

00:29:09.880 | you're going to be able to get a job in the future you're going to be able to get a job in the future

00:29:10.120 | is that look you've got these class of reporters out there who their job is to go out and they're

00:29:15.940 | like little Hall monitors you know trying to bust people for whatever they might say in a clubhouse

00:29:21.340 | room not just public figures but private people too they're in the business of destroying lives

00:29:25.960 | and reputations you know that that's basically their business model but then the second anyone

00:29:30.640 | has any criticism for them they claim it's harassment which is just absolute nonsense

00:29:35.680 | and they want to be funny they want to be immune from criticism the only person that was inoculated

00:29:40.060 | in the first place is the only person that was inoculated in the first place is the only person

00:29:40.060 | that was inoculated in the first place is the only person that was inoculated in the first place is

00:29:40.060 | the only person that was inoculated in the first place is the only person that was inoculated in the first place is

00:29:40.060 | the only person that was inoculated in the first place is the only person that was inoculated against

00:29:40.600 | against social justice wokeness to write that article is Glenn Greenwald because he is you

00:29:44.680 | know he's gay he's got brown kids he lives in Brazil you know with uh I mean it's it's fat it's

00:29:50.380 | like you can't irresistible force moving the immovable meeting the immovable object he he's

00:29:56.380 | not completely immune because he was he was attacked you know and and people said pretty

00:30:00.400 | nasty things about him but yeah he definitely has some I think Greenwald is an unbelievable

00:30:04.660 | writer who calls it like he sees it um I don't agree with everything he says all the time um

00:30:10.000 | but you know he's right to call this stuff out there was another bunch of social justice nonsense

00:30:14.020 | this week as well this this poor guy had to like give out this crazy apology tweet because he said

00:30:19.240 | he liked to exercise what happened wait what is that story okay this is the greatest okay there's

00:30:23.500 | a kid I've been telling you Jason I want you to exercise because I love you 20 pounds look at me

00:30:27.700 | I'm looking for sex boo I wanted yeah I want both of you guys to exercise tell me about it oh by the

00:30:32.380 | way public service announcement covid vaccine CA is the bot so at covid vaccine it just tweets every

00:30:38.860 | five minutes a hundred

00:30:39.940 | different places you can go pretend to be a door dash driver and get a shot sorry I mean

00:30:43.960 | if you were vaccinated check a box check the box let's go let's roll people don't let Newsome take

00:30:51.520 | away your health yeah don't let Newsome put don't focus on equity yeah I mean while he's at like uh

00:30:57.880 | Jason tell us about this uh okay tell us about this tweet thing what happened there's a kid

00:31:00.760 | named Dom he's an entrepreneur he's building a company it's a good company it's funded by Stripe

00:31:05.380 | you know it's raised hundreds of millions of dollars like good for this guy yeah but he likes

00:31:09.880 | you know he's kind of like trying to engage on Twitter and he basically said I feel so much

00:31:15.640 | better and I'm performing at such a higher level since I got my diet and my exercise right I mean

00:31:20.740 | people who are not getting their physical right are really underperforming at work it's such an

00:31:26.020 | opportunity or whatever and then you know the the large and in charge you know fat is beautiful you

00:31:32.620 | know contingent basically tried to cancel him sorry but did he say that you have to be skinny no he

00:31:38.860 | said you will perform if you're fat you're underperforming basically he didn't use the

00:31:44.200 | word fat but he said if you're not in shape you're underperforming at work which I said is there

00:31:48.580 | science behind this and yeah sure people showed me a hundred studies that show if you lose weight

00:31:53.020 | you have better concentration and focus I mean it's pretty obvious but he did the cardinal uh

00:31:57.520 | sin as uh here I'll read you the tweet an important lesson I learned well into my career if you are not

00:32:02.920 | physically fit and healthy then you are underperforming at work pretty basic probably not very controversial but

00:32:08.800 | he did what David Sachs always advises uh and the the the advice he gave to Trump which is never

00:32:16.660 | apologize um and he apologized Dom apologized and took the tweet down which then the mob really went

00:32:23.860 | after him and he said I screwed up and I'm extremely sorry I have recently spent a lot

00:32:30.160 | of energy focused on my fitness eating and sleep in my enthusiasm for my new fitness regime I posted

00:32:35.800 | a tweet that was meant to celebrate my new healthy lifestyle but the thing is I'm not going to be able to do that

00:32:38.740 | but that's not how it came across and I see now how I don't understand with all the problems that we

00:32:47.380 | have that need fixing I mean this is what people were focused on this but no but here's the kicker

00:32:54.460 | of the apology this is something I really need to improve on and I will well no I'm not making

00:32:59.680 | fun of him I just think it's sad what the hell is going on I mean don't apologize if you believe

00:33:05.560 | being healthier is you know good

00:33:08.680 | then you should say it and you know let the chips roll with it people can debate it but I mean can't

00:33:14.320 | we have a debate about that because this is in the middle of a covid crisis when the top two vectors

00:33:19.180 | are age and obesity period if you're fat you die from covid that's that's how it works and you got

00:33:25.600 | both those problems you're old and fat you guys didn't say stupid all right I'm doing good today

00:33:33.340 | all right today in uh all in nonsense apparently

00:33:38.620 | there's so much money in the system that an nft just sold for 69 million dollars after we talked

00:33:44.800 | about the previous one billy bought for six million dollars I don't know that he bought

00:33:48.340 | it for six million dollars but somebody bought one last week nfts seem like a real thing it's

00:33:52.720 | reasonable to trade stuff but 69 million dollars I think it's incredible I mean like like the the

00:33:58.840 | I saw the breakdown of like the number of bitters here let me actually just get this uh data up

00:34:03.640 | because I think you guys will find it really incredible my thesis on this or my theory rather

00:34:07.960 | is um

00:34:08.560 | um that there are a bunch of people who have stakes in these crypto assets and then they all

00:34:15.520 | premeditate decide to buy up these nfts to get the market started and then once it started like

00:34:22.780 | Jason that's honestly art right you know you know this but I've been buying art for a decade plus

00:34:28.420 | and this is exactly how it works in the art market you know we go in there certain people will go and

00:34:34.000 | buy and then what the gallerist says is oh did you know that chamath just bought this piece or such a

00:34:38.500 | person bought this other piece and then all of a sudden the price spins up and then they feed into

00:34:42.400 | it I mean this is where you know an enormous amount of money has been made by gallerists

00:34:46.960 | over the last 20 or 30 years now it just happens in a different medium so the the bidding breakdown

00:34:52.060 | by the way of this nft is incredible 33 active bitters 91 of the bitters were new to Christie's

00:34:58.360 | 55 came from the Americas 27 of bitters were from Europe and 18 were in Asia the age breakdown is

00:35:06.520 | the most interesting six percent were gen Z so 97 to 2012. 58 of bitters were Millennials 94 and

00:35:15.280 | between 81 and 96 wow 33 Gen Xers and three percent baby boomers so this is really like

00:35:21.100 | a transitional change in you know basically deciding what's valuable and I don't think

00:35:26.560 | this I don't think this was any different than you know when you had this transition from you

00:35:30.160 | know sort of impressionist in the art world like if you moved from the body of work where you know

00:35:34.660 | these impressionist paintings were just going for

00:35:36.460 | um high tens low hundreds of millions of dollars and I think it peaked around Van Gogh

00:35:41.200 | um and then you know basically it went from there off of a cliff where you can basically

00:35:46.600 | give away impressionist paintings uh and everything went to contemporary and you know

00:35:50.680 | sort of like this post-modern stuff and that was a decisional change by boomers what is what

00:35:56.680 | does giveaway mean to you Chamath hey you know tens of millions yeah exactly so okay

00:36:05.080 | so I think on the nft stuff and and people he's people as the artist there's two things going on

00:36:11.800 | right so one is on a technology level nfts non-fungible tokens there they are it's a

00:36:17.680 | legitimate technology for creating provenance on a blockchain you know if a piece of art

00:36:23.200 | um basically gets put on a blockchain you have perfect provenance but that doesn't mean that

00:36:27.940 | all nfts are valuable in fact most of them won't be it's just a technology then you have the other

00:36:33.700 | thing that's happening is on an art level what these sort of um these sort of prestige galleries

00:36:39.040 | and so on they're saying that people is now a major artist and there's and the reason someone

00:36:44.260 | becomes a major artist is because they usher in like an or become representative of some new wave

00:36:49.720 | of art like Chamatha saying you've got impressionism you've got modernism I mean the reason why Jackson

00:36:54.520 | Pollock sells for whatever 100 million dollars no no 300 to 600 okay it's because he represents an

00:37:01.960 | important wave in art

00:37:03.640 | and some of those waves fizzle out and they turn into Ponzi schemes and some of them become real and

00:37:08.680 | people are speculating that this digital art will be a major wave and they're saying that people is

00:37:13.660 | the most important artist and they're kind of betting on that now do I think it's gonna last

00:37:18.520 | um I don't know I mean hard to say you said that no you said the key thing though the key feature

00:37:23.920 | of nfts which I think is amazing is that you can actually have ownership and provenance written

00:37:28.660 | into a blockchain now you take that abstraction you can apply to all kinds of surface areas and

00:37:34.000 | it makes a ton of sense any kind of other asset would make sense if you own a car if you own

00:37:39.340 | clothes if you own watches if you own wine um what happens if you own a house now all of a sudden if

00:37:45.760 | you can prove ownership over this stuff not only can you trade it but you can also borrow against

00:37:50.260 | it and I think that that is a really interesting idea where once you financialize all of these

00:37:56.320 | physical assets that we own you do a little bit of a trade-off between the two and you can actually

00:37:58.180 | you do eliminate an enormous amount of inequality in the system because you can actually get real

00:38:05.080 | transparent pricing like now could you yeah block blockchains blockchains are a ledger right they're

00:38:09.100 | a perfect Ledger system and so like everything every type of possession that relies on title

00:38:15.880 | should eventually be blockchained so art art's a good example you know I um helped found a company

00:38:21.820 | back in 2017 called Harbor which was a blockchaining uh real estate and and I'm getting

00:38:27.700 | a uh acquired so now acquired or acquired no it got acquired we're gonna make money we're gonna

00:38:38.380 | make money as an LP I just wanted a clarification yeah no we're we're not gonna make like SPAC type

00:38:43.420 | money but we'll make a little bit of money on that deal so so don't worry um but but yeah look

00:38:48.340 | I think I I think we're in the early early stages of this type of technology you're gonna see

00:38:53.020 | eventually blockchaining of every of every type of asset where title is important David I think that

00:38:57.220 | this is such an amazing idea because like if you think of all of the opaque lending markets where

00:39:02.380 | people can't get access to reasonable cost of capital and they own assets you know you end up

00:39:07.960 | in these crazy worlds where like if you look at the the housing crisis uh or the great financial

00:39:12.520 | crisis you know there was like so much crazy lending but behind that lending was like double

00:39:16.900 | triple mortgages it's happening right now in the car market all of that stuff doesn't necessarily

00:39:21.880 | need to exist because if you have clear provenance and the ability to price risk you just get you know

00:39:26.740 | people can borrow a reasonable amount of money at a reasonable rate and pay it back and you know you

00:39:31.960 | can trade assets you could sell assets it's a really big deal I think I think um if you take

00:39:36.940 | a zoom out on the uh you know the notion of what an nft represents it's it doesn't feel too

00:39:43.240 | dissimilar from other um what I would argue is like non-productive assets like if you think about

00:39:48.580 | where one's capital goes where an individual puts their capital the first thing is kind of essentials

00:39:56.020 | right things you need like food and medicine and housing and clothing and whatnot and then you kind

00:40:01.300 | of enter into these kind of you know non-extend you know kind of discretionary spending for a

00:40:06.160 | consumer you know nice stuff nice clothes luxury goods things that are basically going to diminish

00:40:10.000 | then as you think about allocating the leftover capital you're either going to allocate your

00:40:14.560 | leftover capital into investable assets that are either productive or non-productive a productive

00:40:19.240 | asset is something you buy that you expect to return it produces some value for you as you own

00:40:25.060 | it such as owning a home where you get the value of living in it or owning a car where you get the

00:40:29.980 | utility of driving around in it or owning a bond which issues a you know a you know a coupon or a

00:40:35.920 | stock that's gonna you know generate cash flows at some point in the future theoretically

00:40:39.760 | um the non-productive assets are these assets that are just not designed to do that but they're a

00:40:45.280 | store of value that you expect at some point to realize some return

00:40:47.980 | um you know because someone else will pay a higher price to you for that non-productive asset this is

00:40:54.340 | like a piece of art or you know some piece of gold or something you know something that you kind of

00:40:59.440 | hold or you know more increasingly you know digital assets and it seems like the explosion

00:41:05.200 | in digital assets is you know as Jason pointed out at the beginning like as we've kind of moved

00:41:09.580 | to a highly kind of overvalued segment of productive assets as things that market is

00:41:14.620 | very frothy it's very difficult to kind of find productive assets that are worth putting capital

00:41:18.160 | into there's continually more interest in non-productive assets across the board because

00:41:23.560 | there's excess capital in the system and uh it turns out that when that happens there's enough

00:41:28.180 | of a market dynamic that emerges in non-productive assets that gives people a reason to put their

00:41:32.260 | capital in and expect to have a return on them in the future as soon as the market starts shrinking

00:41:36.580 | as soon as um you know you start having effects that are deflationary you know money will pour

00:41:41.080 | out of that market in general that's always what happens with the art market and has for hundreds

00:41:44.620 | of years um and it's a it's a it's the digital means of kind of realizing that same market

00:41:50.020 | transition that my my question is do you get the rights I guess this is a dependent on the terms

00:41:57.100 | that are set in the smart contract but in the case of the people if I were to buy it for 69 million

00:42:01.720 | do I have the rights to it so that I can print t-shirts and sell hundred dollar t-shirts or can

00:42:07.780 | I create 10 000 more of these can I monetize it is what I'm asking that's a great great great

00:42:13.480 | question I I don't know but that's a fabulous question by the way because the alternative like

00:42:17.320 | as you pointed out the artist and and other folks have rights to art um even though the original

00:42:23.680 | painting is what's sold you know the original um master of a Bruce Springsteen song could be sold

00:42:31.120 | to a collector but the rights the rights on that track for reproducing it making money off it or

00:42:36.280 | owned by a publishing house so you can own the physical magnetic tape but not own the rights to

00:42:41.380 | exploit and over time those rights fall away so if you think about what that nft represents it

00:42:45.520 | represents that particular chain of

00:42:47.300 | electrons and you know this is this is these bite these bits that represent this image

00:42:52.280 | um and it's not necessarily make a hundred more and then he could change he could change one pixel

00:42:57.560 | theoretically or two pixels and he could go print a bunch of stuff and go not right not really because

00:43:02.420 | those images were ones that he had he had this rhythm of creating like one a day I think for

00:43:06.560 | a very long period of time all into this master right exactly so there's a this is a it's a one

00:43:11.600 | of one another interesting uh one of one that just happened was these uh performance

00:43:17.280 | artists or I guess like underground digital artists uh bought a Banksy for 125 or 125 000

00:43:24.060 | dollars I get thousands and millions confused uh just that's a joke everybody well that's a that's

00:43:31.500 | a huge joke you want to use for this episode is hashtag cancel Chamath go ahead uh yeah good luck

00:43:36.360 | anyways these four guys bought bought this Banksy um for 125 000 they brought it to a warehouse in

00:43:47.260 | Brooklyn they took a high-res image of it okay so they took a picture of it and they created a one

00:43:55.660 | of one nft right okay then they created a YouTube video of them burning the original Banksy oh so now

00:44:04.480 | all you had was the digital manifestation of this physical thing wait for it and then they sold it

00:44:13.480 | for three hundred and like fifty thousand dollars so they 3x their money

00:44:17.240 | it's the most incredible story um I I can find the link and I'll put it in the show notes as well

00:44:23.060 | but it just shows you what's happening and then I also think last thing on nfts I saw that I think

00:44:27.620 | it was like Kings of Leon just put out an album and it was like it's like 50 bucks for a song or

00:44:32.540 | something like that and it comes with like a bunch of uh interesting content so it's the

00:44:36.380 | beginning of something guys I just think that you need sort of like popular content to get

00:44:42.800 | this movement going but it seems to me like this is what people want to do they want to own digital

00:44:47.220 | assets they want to have provenance they want to have custodial relationships with it they want to

00:44:52.020 | basically but it's just like it's like art and posters right anyone can put the poster up in

00:44:56.820 | their room anyone can buy a copy for five bucks but who owns the original and owning the original

00:45:01.440 | may be visually identical maybe graphically identical but uh it is truly about that notion

00:45:07.920 | of that that theoretical human mind construct of ownership um that that creates that distinction

00:45:13.800 | and you just effectively have to count on other human minds believing the same

00:45:17.200 | thing in the future for you to be able to reclaim that value that that monetary value

00:45:21.940 | um or you're going to take a loss on it I mean Chamath have you ever sold art that you bought

00:45:26.260 | you know I've uh I've sold very little um I tend to buy and accumulate with this idea of

00:45:33.460 | eventually endowing something with just because it's like you know I think there are two ways

00:45:37.180 | to buy art one is speculatively and the other one is to tell a story

00:45:40.540 | um I took the second path um and so you know it's stuff that means a lot to me so it's hard for me to

00:45:47.180 | start with it even though it sits in a free port in Delaware so it's not exactly you know out and

00:45:51.860 | about um with this idea that at some points people will get to really enjoy it once by the way I mean

00:45:57.080 | one of the things that happens in the art world and correct me if I'm wrong on this but you buy

00:46:00.320 | this art and you don't ever a lot of art doesn't get resold so everyone kind of buys it under the

00:46:05.300 | notion that it's going to be worth more in the future and they can sell it for more but very few

00:46:08.960 | people actually do end up selling it no no that's it so here's in the trading market right but like

00:46:14.660 | I mean generally like a lot of collectors end up endowing art or or gifting it and when you gift it

00:46:20.960 | you get an appraisal done and you get a deduction on the appraised value right and so you can

00:46:25.940 | definitely do it that way so uh one one interesting story is that um one of the large auction houses

00:46:30.920 | has a financial arm and uh the most incredible thing is like over like the last 50 years

00:46:36.620 | um their cumulative default rate was 30 basis points on their book like cumulative

00:46:44.540 | not like a year or a month but ever nobody defaults well because they borrow money for

00:46:52.220 | the purposes of maybe buying other things or whatever and then they will very you know trade

00:46:57.320 | out of things and trade up to things and trade across things but it's a very vibrant market

00:47:02.480 | of buying and selling it just happens to be very informal and a little bit closed and very much

00:47:09.500 | for insiders and you know another reason that I think that nfts will will change because

00:47:14.420 | it'll will change this is that it just makes it available to everybody because you put all art on

00:47:19.820 | a very level playing field and really at the end of the day what is art it's a commentary on society

00:47:24.380 | and I think that having that level of transparency on that kind of stuff is I think is going to be

00:47:28.400 | really valuable because you don't want one or two people who you fundamentally disagree with as being

00:47:33.260 | a tastemaker for a kind of art that you think is fundamentally flawed right you'd rather it's just

00:47:38.240 | it's no different than being able to go to 95 different media sites to read the content you want

00:47:42.740 | or you know being able to listen to a thousand people and you know you're going to be able to

00:47:44.300 | listen to a thousand different kinds of music all of it in its totality is a commentary on society

00:47:49.100 | and I think what society says is we want transparency and we want choice and this is where

00:47:54.020 | I think like that's why I think so I think this is a good a good dovetail into what's happening with

00:48:00.440 | the stimulus bill and where we started which was is this even necessary um we have uh stimulus

00:48:06.380 | checks going out in the amount of 2 000 per individual in households with under 150k I believe

00:48:14.180 | at the income level which means people who were not impacted by financially in any way by what's

00:48:21.920 | happened under covid are going to get in a family of five ten thousand dollar checks uh even if

00:48:26.900 | nobody was laid off or that's only that's only like nine percent of the bill Jason yeah I mean

00:48:32.060 | so it's it was 450 million out of 1.9 trillion so what do we think the impact we sort of have I have

00:48:38.960 | a working Theory oh sorry go ahead what are your general thoughts on this is it necessary and then

00:48:43.460 | what's the what are the second order effects that we each predict will happen over the next 18 months

00:48:49.640 | when all of this capital gets injected so the the latter is what I've been focused on trying

00:48:54.260 | to figure out and I saw some really interesting data which basically I'll ask you guys a question

00:48:59.300 | because maybe you guys know the answer but if you measure wealth inequality when do you guys

00:49:05.420 | think was the most recent period where there was the least wealth inequality the least well sorry

00:49:13.340 | how do you define that uh you can measure it like the Ginny index or you can measure it as like you

00:49:18.680 | know the gap between the top decile and the bottom decile in terms of uh wealth and accumulated assets

00:49:24.860 | well would it be before the robber Barons no it was the between the robber Barons and now the period

00:49:31.160 | of the least inequality in recent history was in the late 70s which is an incredible stat to say

00:49:36.320 | where the gap between the top decile and the bottom decile was like you know kind of like on an index

00:49:42.200 | like 60.

00:49:43.220 | 65 whereas today it's sort of like at 100. um now what happened then and it's this is really

00:49:50.900 | interesting wasn't that an inflationary period there you go so what happened and as it turns out

00:49:56.600 | inflation is a phenomenal way to decrease level of the playing field absolutely it decreases

00:50:03.080 | people's richness so it makes rich people poorer that's really the most effective tool that you

00:50:09.020 | have to recalibrate it's very very hard to redistribute money

00:50:13.100 | and I think every attempt at doing that has largely failed but the one consistent way and

00:50:18.500 | if you go back periods before that you know into the beginning of the but in an inflationary

00:50:23.600 | environment borrowing costs go up so you know businesses and people that rely on borrowing to

00:50:29.240 | grow their net worth or investing assets to grow their net worth kind of suffer more than people

00:50:32.960 | that what have a home have a you know wages go up in an inflationary environment right wages go up

00:50:38.120 | which which actually if you think about like what you said before like you know as people get wealthier

00:50:42.980 | they they move their money into you know essentially financial assets and away from sort

00:50:47.480 | of like working assets and when you know interest rates go up and the the risk-free rate goes up then

00:50:53.240 | the attractiveness of those assets go down yeah and so what happens is shares and technology

00:50:57.620 | companies go down but what what actually also happens is that your cost of capital

00:51:03.140 | for a traditional business because it's higher they have to then charge more which means that

00:51:07.880 | they're paying their employees more and those folks um on a marginal basis tend

00:51:12.860 | to then you know take those dollars and spend those dollars so inflation is this very productive

00:51:18.680 | mechanism of actually redistributing wealth and actually homeowners benefit homeowners benefit as

00:51:24.200 | well but like you know it shrinks it shrinks the the wealth you know mild inflation mild inflation

00:51:31.940 | is probably good it's better than probably deflation but if it tips over into hyperinflation

00:51:40.280 | then it destroys everyone's savings

00:51:42.740 | right and rich people have the ability to protect their assets against inflation a lot better than

00:51:47.060 | middle class people do so you know you look at like Venezuela we are Germany hyperinflation yeah

00:51:53.720 | people just hyperinflation destroyed the value of of of uh where are we seeing inflation where

00:51:59.360 | do we anticipate we'll see inflation I saw today Tesla's Tesla raised the price on all their cars

00:52:04.340 | except for two well they have to because the inputs of you know if you think about like if

00:52:08.420 | you break down a Tesla and you look at where the money goes the money really is in the batteries and

00:52:12.620 | you break down the batteries it goes into three critical inputs lithium nickel and cobalt and the

00:52:16.460 | prices are highly suspect and um they're they're very poorly predicted and so the cost of tests

00:52:23.540 | are going to go up by 20 or 30 percent and there's nothing that there's nothing that Tesla could do

00:52:28.760 | and by the way you'll see this across all commodity products if inflation takes hold in a in a

00:52:34.160 | meaningful way um including uh you know food products Ag products you know um all commodities

00:52:41.540 | you know metals

00:52:42.500 | um but um the businesses that will benefit the most and this is really interesting from a

00:52:47.420 | technology perspective and I think it played in part my understanding is speaking to a number of

00:52:51.560 | PMs about this portfolio managers at funds um is that you know technology companies don't have a

00:52:57.800 | lot of hard assets um and so they have less kind of um you know value accretion and they don't

00:53:03.320 | play in a commodity supply chain so it's much more difficult for a technology company to say

00:53:08.120 | raise rates by thirty percent whereas a food company can raise rates by thirty percent one of

00:53:12.380 | the ways to look at this is to look at the um you know the book value or the capex you know property

00:53:17.900 | plant and equipment of a business and businesses that have a lot of pp e are generally going to do

00:53:22.820 | better in an inflationary environment they're going to have more throughput on that pp they're

00:53:27.500 | going to have higher dollars per unit of pp e and so you'll see you know this is why there was a

00:53:32.420 | shift of dollars into what are traditionally called kind of value stocks or you know kind of

00:53:36.080 | bigger industrial companies away from you know softer kind of tech companies which don't really

00:53:41.240 | really benefit from this inflationary trend um and so there's going to be you know some sort of play

00:53:46.160 | out in in those sorts of products probably more jcal than I think David do we see it in SAS because

00:53:52.160 | I've noticed that SAS prices are going up and that people are just keep adding to the price of these

00:53:58.760 | SAS products I was pricing out all the virtual conference you know stuff like hop in and all

00:54:04.220 | that airmeet and whatever and I was just shocked at how much they wanted to charge you know 15 50 100

00:54:09.740 | 000 a year and I was like but

00:54:11.120 | can I use like zoom and this for that you know in a chat room slack room and are we going to see it

00:54:16.580 | happen in SAS where people are going to start raising the prices and just increase their profit

00:54:19.880 | margin because their employees are going to demand more money because they're part of this cycle

00:54:23.420 | I I think that's a function of pricing power going up for SAS companies as they become more

00:54:29.300 | established and entrenched those companies are very profitable I don't think they're

00:54:33.020 | experiencing wage pressure in any way I think they're just becoming more successful their

00:54:37.580 | pricing power is going up as they become not necessarily Monopolus

00:54:41.000 | but as they have more market share and they dominate their categories they can increase

00:54:45.140 | prices but I want to go back to this idea of the 1970s because I want to I want to challenge the

00:54:50.600 | idea that the U.S economy was doing well in the 1970s so Chamath mentioned the the Ginny index

00:54:56.480 | there was a different kind of metric called the misery index um that uh was was a much more

00:55:03.560 | popular index that was used around that time and the misery index um it was defined by a Brookings economist and it was a kind of a

00:55:07.760 | um it was defined by a Brookings economist and it was basically the sum of the unemployment rate and

00:55:13.700 | the inflation rate and in 1980 the misery index was 19.7 percent this is why Ronald Reagan got

00:55:21.680 | elected is because you had a CPI which the inflation rate of 12.5 percent and then you

00:55:28.340 | had unemployment of another 7.2 percent on top of that and you know the 1970s were uh especially the

00:55:37.640 | late 70s were an economic disaster for the country so maybe things were more nominally equal but

00:55:43.700 | everyone was equally more equally poor um and what you saw in the 1980s is that they got you

00:55:50.480 | know inflation under control uh Paul Volcker at the Fed broke inflation that lowered interest

00:55:56.060 | rates enormously that allowed people to buy homes um the stock market went up and um you know it

00:56:02.660 | was an economic boom so I don't know that this idea that we we want to introduce a lot of inflation

00:56:07.520 | into the system is a good idea like I said I think mild inflation of say two percent is better than

00:56:13.400 | two percent deflation the other way but uh but I I think we should be very careful here about um

00:56:19.700 | about uh inflation and making sure it doesn't get out of control

00:56:23.180 | and the other index to look at is the quality of life index which is typically you know health care

00:56:30.380 | um and then the property price to your income ratio commuting pollution uh safety

00:56:37.400 | and those kind of things and you know the United States is 15th on that list with obviously the

00:56:42.980 | Nordics and Australia uh Germany New Zealand just being at the top of those rankings in America we've

00:56:49.940 | never really thought about that right we don't really even discuss happiness you know and that

00:56:54.680 | and that quotient we don't index for that happiness and low stress I think we're talking

00:56:59.240 | a lot about quality of life in San Francisco now because that's a community that's very

00:57:03.200 | rich and yet it's a miserable city to live in because crime is out of control you know Jason

00:57:07.280 | you and I have been to focusing on this uh DA Chase a buden who's had an enormous impact on people's

00:57:13.880 | quality of life because he's simply not prosecuting uh theft in the city there's actually it was a

00:57:19.160 | crazy tweet where a city council member was inside City Hall calling for a hearing on the rampant rise

00:57:26.840 | and theft in the city and meanwhile his car was broken into right outside City Hall I mean you

00:57:31.460 | can't make this stuff up and then the other thing that came out were a whole series of statistics

00:57:37.160 | of scopes showing or sorry trials and convictions basically Chesa has not been uh has not been

00:57:44.000 | conducting any trials he hasn't been convicting anyone it turns out that the number of trials and

00:57:49.160 | convictions that he's gotten in the 14 months he's been DA is one-tenth of what Gascon got

00:57:55.340 | when he was DA and by the way Gascon's not the model DA or anything I mean Gascon is facing a

00:58:01.640 | recall in LA for dereliction of duty and he's still 10 times more productive than Chase a budin

00:58:07.040 | um just a quick update uh many of you uh when I mentioned the GoFundMe for uh to put a journalist

00:58:15.200 | on Chesa if you just type in GoFundMe Chesa c-h-e-s-a into the Google we added eight thousand

00:58:22.100 | dollars since last week so we have 58 000 that's going to a journalist and a data journalist to

00:58:26.540 | cover this exact issue so thanks to the folks who donated I'm not taking any money from it

00:58:30.500 | I'm donating obviously um other than a small other than a small finder's fee no zero dollars

00:58:36.920 | I'm donating to it I basically said I'll be one percent of it whatever the final number is I think

00:58:43.040 | the marina times has done a great job with this um yeah and there have been a couple other sources

00:58:47.240 | as well but but how dishonest was it I mean this has been a recurring theme on the pod so I just

00:58:51.860 | want to touch on it Chase has sent his little mouthpiece his little minion the high school

00:58:56.000 | friend to go out and challenge us writing that blog post saying that it was a lie that Chaser

00:59:02.240 | wasn't prosecuting anybody and lo and behold the numbers have come out he tried to claim that

00:59:06.800 | uh Chesa had the same rate of charging that goes Gascon did and that was true but the problem is

00:59:13.160 | he's been pleading down all these charges he's not taking anyone to trial he's not convicting anyone

00:59:17.780 | he's certainly not locking anybody up so I mean what what a lie that was well and criminals are

00:59:24.020 | just so savvy that they actually understand what the chances are of them actually getting convicted

00:59:30.380 | and they shape their grift and their crime to whatever the environment they're in is just like

00:59:36.680 | people who deal drugs just like people who take these hardcore fentanyl drugs they just pick the

00:59:40.940 | market where they're going to be most welcome so they're not going to do it down in Palo Alto or

00:59:45.620 | San Mateo or Mill Valley they're going to do it on Turk Street yeah so so I think that's how it starts

00:59:51.320 | but I gotta tell you you know I'm in LA right now and um there was a an episode like last week at

00:59:57.500 | um opus style but like oh yes and it's it's on Cannon Street and downtown Beverly Hills a lot of

01:00:06.560 | celebrities go it's a great Italian place there's a lot of outdoor seating there was basically a

01:00:12.080 | mugging of someone's just sitting at a table apparently they were wearing a really nice watch

01:00:16.340 | and some and and they were they were robbed at gunpoint in the middle you know the middle of

01:00:22.220 | the of the restaurant yeah lunchtime and then there was a struggle over the gun I don't know

01:00:26.600 | why the guy just didn't hand over the watch but anyway he struggled over the gun four shots went

01:00:31.100 | off one of them bounced off the concrete and hit a woman in the leg oh my God so this is like it's

01:00:36.440 | getting I mean it's getting out of hand sounds like San Paolo where they chop people's arms off

01:00:39.920 | for the watch I mean they literally will drive by apparently and just cut your arm off if they can't

01:00:45.200 | if you don't give them the watch well I just you know the criminals are starting to feel emboldened

01:00:48.860 | because Gascon and budine are not they're not having trials they're not prosecuting they're

01:00:53.180 | not locking people up and so they're graduating to more and more serious offenses I'm sure they

01:00:57.980 | probably didn't want to shoot anybody or maybe that wasn't their intention they just want to

01:01:02.060 | steal the watch but it resulted in a shooting just like the deaths of

01:01:06.320 | Hannah Abe and Elizabeth Platt when you had you know Troy McAllister you know hit them with the

01:01:11.480 | car so I mean the fact that we're not locking people up is resulting in in in people dying

01:01:17.720 | and a lot of risky very risky behavior all right as we wrap here a lot of spacks going out we

01:01:23.120 | obviously saw um another I guess Roblox was a direct listing um just curious only only

01:01:29.900 | underpriced by 50 percent it's the same same problem as the IPO just so so basically what

01:01:36.200 | you're saying is Bill Gurley's on his headset walking around El Camino Real no what I'm saying

01:01:43.220 | is what I'm saying is uh irrespective of what the the goals of the direct listing were the result is

01:01:50.180 | the same as a traditional IPA there you go um well can I give a shout out to a company that David

01:01:55.640 | Sachs um sure oh pipe yes which is an incredible company that basically like helps you capitalize

01:02:04.460 | your contracts with your customers

01:02:06.080 | and it's just it's just basically this incredible thing that I'm seeing and it's and there's a

01:02:11.420 | couple of others that do it as well um clear Bank is another one but you can fund your company

01:02:16.640 | non-dilutably and at some point I think we should actually talk about the state of the Union in

01:02:21.320 | Venture maybe we can do that in a couple of next episodes I have a lot of thoughts on where I think

01:02:24.740 | Venture Capital is going and when I see things like pipe I'm just like completely so happy

01:02:30.140 | because I just think it's uh it's it's it's going to change the the the way in which Venture Investing

01:02:35.960 | is done it's a it's a very brilliant idea you can go to pipe.com twist to get 12 months free

01:02:40.700 | um pipe.com is a two-sided Marketplace if you have reoccurring SAS revenue or any kind of

01:02:47.660 | reoccurring revenue somebody did it with the sub stack so I think pomp Liano the guy who

01:02:52.700 | pumps Bitcoin he has a newsletter that makes whatever quarter million dollars a year

01:02:58.760 | um he sold for 95 cents on the dollar his forward-looking subscriptions for the year and bought

01:03:05.840 | Bitcoin with it when it was at 35. so he's like doubling down but if you're a SAS company and we

01:03:11.660 | have many of them in our portfolios you could take all of your monthly contracts sell them on

01:03:16.520 | the Marketplace to somebody else not pipe pipe doesn't buy it it's some other financial person

01:03:21.440 | who says I'll give you 94 cents on the dollar give you 92 cents on the dollar give you 85 cents on

01:03:25.400 | the dollar and so if you were if you have a 10 million dollar book of business paying monthly

01:03:30.560 | you can get that 10 million now and deploy it but Jason I think more customers I think this

01:03:35.720 | is good this is a good maybe way to end but I think let's agree that the next pod let's talk

01:03:39.980 | let's start with the future of venture capital 100 I mean it's changing dramatically it's changing

01:03:44.720 | dramatically and I I think these non-dilutive ways of growing a company will completely impact

01:03:48.740 | pricing you know pre-money post money the amount of equity that employees can and should own in

01:03:54.500 | these businesses you know what is the value of Brands like you know it it like people will know

01:04:00.380 | who David Sachs is and who Harry Hurst is people that sincerely don't even care anymore like you

01:04:05.600 | know hey if I'm calling from Sequoia what does that mean anymore um they're gonna say who from

01:04:10.340 | Sequoia is called uh so these are all really interesting topics that I think we're talking

01:04:14.180 | about another path is just the public markets you know right I mean public markets are becoming the

01:04:18.380 | new late stage private market and it's really you know both the SPAC and early stage IPO and direct

01:04:23.240 | listing models are um are changing dramatically and it's um and there's more speculative risk

01:04:29.600 | seeking in the public markets in a way that I don't think we've ever seen um and it's uh it's creating

01:04:35.480 | an opportunity for companies that are still you know what in a traditional um kind of sense might

01:04:41.120 | be called you know early stage or still businesses with a lot of risk being able to go public and and

01:04:46.760 | you know kind of take their companies out and let the public markets wager on on how well they're

01:04:51.680 | going to execute and and how well they're going to be able to develop their product or their market

01:04:55.340 | and it's by the way it's something we've seen historically with biotech where there's kind

01:04:58.760 | of very binary kind of bets that happen and binary outcomes because the markets are known

01:05:02.840 | and you don't need to kind of productize or build a business around it but

01:05:05.360 | now we're actually taking both business risk market risk technology risk product risk

01:05:09.140 | um at all stages and I think you're going to see these um these scenarios where people will build

01:05:15.920 | public portfolios public uh public company portfolios that will perform a lot like venture

01:05:21.380 | portfolios right you'll have one or two businesses that'll have a 10 bagger and you know a chunk

01:05:26.360 | that'll go to zero and a chunk that'll have some modest return on them and it's going to be yeah

01:05:30.500 | it's going to be this tremendous learning experience because a lot of people will put

01:05:33.260 | all their money into one stock that they think is

01:05:35.240 | already been made it's already it's already done things it's Netflix it's Netflix it's you know

01:05:39.860 | their promise of the future is 100 certain and the reality is their promise of the future is

01:05:44.480 | five percent certain and so depending on the price you're entering and how many of these

01:05:47.900 | things you buy you could build a portfolio that could have a good return but it's um it's going

01:05:52.280 | to be a lot of speculative betting and a lot of losses and if you don't diversify you're going

01:05:56.360 | to lose a lot of money and you know so the question is also how does it evolve regulatory

01:06:00.200 | wise Chamath how are you communicating that to the market because you'll have some spacks that go out

01:06:03.980 | I would think Virgin Galactic is in that more like they're a deep tech researching phase and

01:06:10.880 | then you have other ones that are already you know churning the the ringing the register right

01:06:16.220 | so how do you communicate that to retail investors or the audience or that's up to them to do the

01:06:20.840 | research how do you think about that I mean there's as well as the bad inventory that's

01:06:24.920 | getting added no look yeah I do a tweet storm I do a one pager I have a multi-hour detailed investor

01:06:33.020 | presentation that's taped I have a multi-hour detailed investor presentation that's taped I have a multi-hour detailed investor presentation that's taped

01:06:33.860 | and then we have a typically a 100 to 300 page s4 so you can ingress into finding out the true story

01:06:43.360 | of a business at whatever point you want it really just does come down to doing your work I mean a lot

01:06:47.360 | of the folks on Twitter you know when you see the market straight down and they complain my reaction

01:06:51.620 | is stop crying and do your own work and there isn't there like we have complete transparency in

01:06:57.740 | this process so it is up to people to do their job and the thing that I think is happening right now

01:07:03.020 | is people think that they don't know what's going on and they're like well I don't know what's going on

01:07:03.740 | they don't have to do a job and that money is free and it's not it's hard to make it it's hard

01:07:07.680 | to make good investments it's hard to build a company everything is hard nothing is really

01:07:11.300 | easy because if it was easy everybody would be doing it all the time and so that's that's what

01:07:16.640 | I would love to leave people with I really got to go guys I love you guys let's but let's start with

01:07:20.780 | venture capital next week yeah love you boys free David's love you love you David's back

01:07:25.300 | okay love you guys I love you I love you too ma I love you I do love you I mean we love each other

01:07:33.620 | and we can say it and then the guys on this side love you they're working on bye guys look at look

01:07:38.840 | at Jake out dragging it out stop dragging everything out we're dragging it out because

01:07:43.160 | we love you David we'll see you all next time bye bye red bread pills got me lit red pills got me

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01:09:39.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:40.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:41.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:42.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:43.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:44.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:45.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:46.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:47.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:48.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:49.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:50.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:51.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:52.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:53.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:54.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:55.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:56.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

01:09:57.260 | just a huge bag of red pills while we're off this week

E25: Biden's vaccine mandate, "equity" in distribution, NFT speculation, impact of inflation & more

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