Hey everybody, it's me, Jason Calacanis. Welcome, welcome. Hey everybody, it's me, Jason. Thank God Trump's out. I hate Trump, and I love myself. Hey everybody, happy days are here again. Champagne cart of bottles popping, boof, clinko again. Happy days are here again. Yay, Sachs is so happy Trump's out of office.
He gave an amazing speech about how great Biden's inauguration was. Welcome to the All In Podcast. Oh my gosh. With me today in our post-inauguration afterglow is the dictator, the queen of quinoa, David Friedberg, and rock star, Biden, the blue wave, diving in. No more red pills. The blue wave is David.
Rain Man Sachs is with us. David, how did it feel to watch Biden's inauguration speech, which you said hit all the notes, and I see you wearing blue today. Let me have a sip of my boof, clinko, and tell us you've got the blue jacket, the blue shirt, and the blue headset on.
You've ridden the blue wave. Tell us how you feel with Biden in office. I'm going to drink my boof. Jason, I'm just happy to see that you're happy. Ah. And does this mean that your Trump derangement is over? You've gone cold turkey? You're on the wagon? And I'm just happy to have my friend back and not have you part of this Trump derangement zombie horde that you've been in for the last few years.
I'll tell you two quick stories. The first one turned out not to be true, but there was a New York Times alert that came out this weekend saying that they were going to lift the travel ban. And for a moment, I was a little in shock. And I'm Canadian.
My family's in Canada. I haven't seen them in a year. My mom is 80 years old. I haven't seen her in a year. I haven't seen her in a year. And then the second was on the day of the inauguration, Biden signed an EO, I guess, that starts to basically create a path to citizenship.
And there are two women in my life who I think are just lovely, lovely people who I've never been able to hire. And now this gives us a path to hire them. And I think that's a great way to kind of kind of get them to the point where they're like, "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States." And I think that's a great way to kind of kind of get them to the point where they're like, "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States." And I think that's a great way to kind of kind of get them to the point where they're like, "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States." And I think that's a great way to kind of kind of get them to the point where they're like, "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States." And I think that's a great way to kind of kind of get them to the point where they're like, "Oh, I'm going to go to the United States." And like simple, humane, good things.
And I'm not trying to sort of jump on the Biden bandwagon. I think that he's got a lot of work to do. But I do think that just at a level, simple, basic level of humanity, it was a different, it was a big sea change. How did you take it, Freeberg?
I'm curious, did you cry as well? I observed the inauguration. It was interesting. Oh, we didn't upgrade your firmware, sorry. We were supposed to push the two David firmwares for the ability to cry. But did you feel any emotion? Of the three emotions we've given you in your programming, did any of them move at all?
I don't remember. I mean, I don't remember the origin of my non-emotional characterization, Jason. But yeah, I think it was- It's just based on every interaction we've ever had with you, but continue. Right, I guess that makes sense. So I feel like the Biden moment on inauguration day, it really did feel like a sigh of relief because so much of Trump, love him or hate him, has been driven by a degree of tension, right?
I mean, he came in to office on the premise that he was gonna drain the swamp. I mean, that's kind of a very kind of active position. He's gonna go in, he's gonna change things. And I think the Biden tone is like, let's take it down a notch. Let's all take a deep breath.
And I feel like that generated a collective sigh of relief. I'll also say that I watched that with the eyes of someone who voted for Trump. I didn't vote for Trump, but I don't think I voted this year. I can't remember, it was in the middle of the pandemic.
But I basically feel like there was a lot of folks, it's easy to say, let's unite the country when you're on the winning side. And when you're not, and you're sitting there and your guy got kicked out of office, and your guy claimed that he got kicked out because of fraudulent activity, and you're one of the 46% of Americans that are already disapproving of Biden's performance in his first two days of office.
You don't look at that as a moment of relief. You don't look at that as a moment of respite. And I feel like there's a little bit of a missed point of view in terms of how we're all covering it and talking about it. It certainly feels good to take the tension down and take a deep breath and have leadership not be putting the tension down.
But there's a lot of anger and disappointment still festering out there. And I think we need to be very cognizant of why and what we can do. And it would have been nice to see Biden not just say, let's unite, but actually step over the line and declare some of the policies and points of view of the other side as being valid and engaging more directly on those points versus saying we'll all work together in the future.
And we're already seeing this rift with McConnell and others in terms of how to deal with the filibuster in a unified Senate. And I just don't think that we're going to be able to make it that we're there. So, yeah. Yeah. Sax, what are your thoughts? And then we'll go to you, Chamath.
Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not going to swoon over an octogenarian reading cliches off a teleprompter. I'm sorry. I just can't do it. Now, that being said, you know, the inauguration speech struck all the right notes of, you know, reconciliation, lowering the temperature, coming together. These are the things you're supposed to say at an inauguration.
These are the presidential layups, if you will. It's kind of a weird thing that Trump could never quite get these layups in. Biden did what he was supposed to do. And I agree that there is a sense of relief in the temperature being lowered and the situation in Washington feeling a bit depressurized.
And so I think he deserves credit for that. That's all for the good. I think the problem Biden's going to have is not just sort of the Trump right opposing him, but the unsilver warriors in his own party. You know, unsilver warriors, I think, was the most memorable line in his speech.
There are people, I think, you know, on the left who aren't really on board with the reconciliation agenda. I mean, shortly after the election, you had AOC proposing a truth and reconciliation commission to go after everyone from the Trump era. I don't think that's exactly the kind of reconciliation Biden's talking about.
You have, I think, the repressive hand of big tech playing into this revenge agenda by acting as a speech cartel. And now we have the rest of the tech stack jumping on board with the speech cartel. You had an announcement from a whole bunch of finance companies, PayPal, Stripe, Square, that said they would cancel the accounts and by implication livelihoods of anyone connected to January 6.
Well, what exactly does that mean? I mean, there were many thousands of people at this rally on the mall. Only a few percent of them breached the Capitol and even smaller percentage engaged in violence. But everybody who was at the mall and really everyone in the MAGA movement is, quote unquote, connected.
So, you know, that's a lot of people. And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall, but they're not getting out of the mall. And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall. And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.
So, you know, we've got a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall. And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall. And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.
And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall. And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall. And I think that's a lot of people who are trying to get out of the mall.
that basically would create a domestic patriot act to uh to create giant new surveillance powers for the state to go after people they they deem to be traitors and seditionists and domestic terrorists um and you know i actually tweeted a letter by rashida to lay but the squad opposing this it's the first time i've stood with the squad i was proud to because the last thing the state needs right now is uh is more surveillance powers and this idea that we're fighting a war against fellow americans based on basically political dissent that's not going to create reconciliation that's going to lead to the next step in this horrible tit for tat game just to build on this for a second um there's a rasmussen poll that came out today today's friday january 22nd so two days after the inauguration and biden's disapproval rating is 45 percent and you know all of a sudden you can think again as you said three days ago you know a lot of people were on the losing side and are now on the winning side and today um a lot of people that were on the winning side are quote unquote on the losing side and you see how reflexive the reaction is it's like an auto hate right it's like auto disapproval and so if that's the case it just it just begs the question how much room and how much tolerance will we have as a society if we start to go after folks that is you know that effectively have an enormous amount of political dissent are there fringes of both parties that need to get basically found out exposed and put in jail whether they're antifa on the left or you know the far right extremists on the right absolutely um but hopefully the fbi already has enough power to do that and that's already their remit and what we're not going to have to do is pass an enormous number of laws i mean i've said this before like the patriot act was so crazy because it was a foreign actor and a foreign event on domestic soil that created it but you know between the pandemic and now what happened in the capital a biological patriot act a domestic patriot act these are all in the offing and i think what we're going to have to do is again it sounds cheesy but find the common ground so that we can expose who are at the fringes of both parties who are the real crazy people around the world and then we're going to have to do is to round those folks up and deal with them with the laws that we have today because otherwise the unintended consequences for the overwhelming majority of the americans who are just normal folks is going to be a little scary i thought a really interesting reconciliation moment happened with the woman who stole nancy pelosi's laptop i don't know if you guys were have read that story but uh this woman who stole the laptop and was considering selling it to the russians or she's 22 years old and she's obviously was misguided in doing this and the judge basically explained to her that she was releasing her to her mother's you know care and that her mother would go to jail if you know she did anything further but she said listen you know you're a beneficiary of the constitution you are getting a speedy trial you are getting representation and she used it almost as a civics lesson and i think we had a discussion maybe two episodes when the pod got a little hot um which was great for ratings by the way and for our relationships and it resulted in a reconciliation dinner that we had a little a little uh wives dinner our wives brought us together for dinner to just make sure everything was on the well chamath chamath brought us together for dinner and brought wives and brought wives yeah and uh no i mean it was it was a good thing because frankly jason i was starting to hate you just just a little bit just a little bit but uh but but i could feel the hate you know and uh chamath uh being uh empathetic as he is recognize the situation and uh so we've decided to do you know at least a quarterly besties dinner to make sure that uh yeah that the contentiousness does not get out of hand and interfere with our friendships which are more important than our politics ultimately that's what we all hope is comes out of this podcast which is a deeper understanding and reconciliation of of issues that we disagree on and breaking bread having a meal or having a civil conversation even if it gets a little heated keeping it civil is important i thought that this is the way to handle it a lot of these we're going to be able to use some amount of judgment on the people who storm the capital and say okay this person's misguided they took a selfie this person broke windows and then this person you know threw a fire extinguisher at a cop and we have to make sure that the justice system is deployed in in a fair way and that we're not going to be able to do anything about it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's the way to do it and i think that's single person involved, find the appropriate crime, make sure that they're punished.
But the idea of passing broad sweeping surveillance powers over every American citizen is fucking nuts. It's bonkers. And by the way, all that's going to do is create these honeypots for foreign governments to want to attack anyways, because if that capability exists, it exists in code, on servers, somewhere, and folks in China and other places will want to find out where that is, and they will be attacking it all day long.
And so the last thing we need is we're already leaking enough information about ourselves online willingly and unwittingly. I don't want there to be a honeypot. That's the first thing. The second thing I just want to say is I thought it was incredible. What Mitch McConnell did just back to your comment, Jason, about making sure folks get the right adjudication.
I think Mitch McConnell set the stage to have Donald Trump impeached. And the reason I think that is this was the first time he was completely unequivocal, which is that Donald Trump provoked all these folks. And I think what it allows the Republican Party to do is to get together under closed doors, behind closed doors, circle the wagons and say, it's either him or us, we choose right now.
And I think what's going to happen, if I had to guess, is that that allows a lot of people to break ranks and support the impeachment in the Senate that's going to start on Monday. And I think there's a real chance now that this impeachment goes through and he gets convicted.
Jason Wong: Yeah. I think it's worth just thinking about the implications of that. If you did that, there are Trump loyalists, there aren't really GOP loyalists. And I guess there are GOP loyalists, but there are a lot of Trump loyalists that are not loyal to the GOP at this point.
And Sax, correct me if I'm wrong, but if Trump does actually create a fringe party, does create a patriot party, as he suggested he might, you could see up to 20 million Americans joining that party. That would reduce the ranks of the Republican Party significantly. And in kind of, my understanding is in political theory, what would result is you always have a balance in the parties.
And so the parties kind of adjust left or right to create that balance. Ultimately, it's just kind of the organic way this works. In order for the Republican Party to gain, you would probably see a lot of membership move over to the Republican Party, which means that the Democratic Party is going to move further left.
And, you know, think about the implications. If Trump does act, if they do actually kick Trump out of the party, and he does set up a fringe party, you will likely see the Democrats move further left, creating a much more kind of conflicting story for some of the centrists than what they're telling today of what's going to happen in the future.
And that's a very different America in the next two to three years that could be created if they took that risk. And I think they have to associate that calculus when they're making this decision. You know, you can talk about justice and wanting to kick them out of the party.
The implications of him leaving the party are rather profound. Oh, it would fracture the Republican Party. It would be, I guess the best historical analog would be when Teddy Roosevelt left the party to form the Bull Moose Party. He actually fractured the Republican Party and that allowed, I think, Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency, beating Taft.
Yeah, I mean, the Republicans would basically lose every election from now until Trump is no longer, you know, a force in American politics. If he created, I guess the... Or they'd have to move left, right? I mean, in order for them to gain, you know, more people, they'd have to get the centrist Democrats.
They'd have to move left, and that'll give the Democrats the ability to move left. Yeah, I mean, it would be a dream scenario for the Democrat Party. I'm surprised. I'd be surprised at the end of the day if enough Republicans went along with this to fracture the party. But look, I understand that on some basis, you know, Trump caused what happened at the Capitol.
He convened everybody. He rabble-roused. But I think that, frankly, if you have a trial, I think the question we have to ask is, like, what agendas does this serve? Does this serve a reconciliation agenda, or does this serve a revenge agenda? I mean, the guy's already out of office.
I thought we canceled the Trump reality show, and this is like bringing it back for another season. Because this trial is going to be a shit show. Just like all things Trump, you have a trial in the Senate, and it's going to turn into a total farce, okay? And, you know, look, I think cosmically, Trump was reckless.
He was responsible. But when you actually look at the legal definition of incitement, it's actually very hard to prove incitement. So now Trump's going to get his lawyers up there, and they're going to be pushing back on this, and it's going to consume the country for months. And I just think we should be moving forward right now.
The guy's already out of office. I thought it was going to be three days and done. Why would it take months? I'm curious. You're just saying you overhang from it? Well, the best feeling is that it's going to be three days. Well, I'm— Well, they're talking about the best feeling.
They're going to start at mid-February, right? It's not going to be three days. This goes on until the trial's over. I mean, it'll be at least a week of discussion, right, Sax? So, Sax, is it— Do you think the GOP preventing Trump from being able to run again is worth the week of animosity, let's call it?
I don't— I think we should just move on as a country. And I, you know, at the end of the day, I think that's what's good for Biden's agenda I mean, this will become very consuming. What's good for the GOP, though? If you're— as a person who would align themselves with Republicans mainly, I would say, what do you think is best for your party, the party you're a part of?
Just moving on. Just moving forward. What if Trump comes back and gets the nomination in 2024? I mean, I think that is definitely a risk you take, but I think that— Do you want to take that risk? I'll leave it to the voters to decide what makes sense. Got it.
Okay. Interesting. I think that the only salvation for the Republicans is to repudiate Trump. And I actually agree with Friedberg. I think that this creates the opportunity for this— I think Trump wants to call it the Patriot Party— to be sort of center-right. I think Democrats probably ebb over time, you know, center-left.
And then the Republicans actually are this interesting power broker because they can actually tack to the middle and be centrist, you know, about a social safety net combined with a social safety net combined with a social safety net combined with a social safety net combined with, you know, small government.
If you could somehow tiptoe and balance on that line, I think that is the winning strategy that people want. But I think that's my point is the Republican Party is going to have to move left in order to create balance between the two parties again, because they are going to lose 20 million voters to the Patriot Party.
And that's the profound shift that's going to happen. And when the Republican Party moves left, the Democrats are going to move further left. And so— Maybe. I don't think that moving that far left is going to be a good idea. I think that's a good strategy. I think that's a good strategy.
I think that's a good strategy. I think that's a good strategy. is a really winning strategy for them. No, but I think Friedberg is right. So as an example, I think I can say this, but like I had a call this week with the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez.
What an unbelievably impressive guy. Holy fucking shit, this guy is amazing. What he's done in Miami is incredible. I mean, the GDP growth is like Chinese GDP growth, 10%, 8%, 6.5%. He's running fiscal service, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, he's running the government, crime is down, down, down.
He's done an incredible job. This guy's a fundamental centrist. And when you talk about what his beliefs are, I was like, what is this guy? Is he a Democrat? Is he a Republican? He's like, honestly, I'm a centrist. And so my point is, if whoever tacks to the middle will find the ability to attract incredible leaders that I think are our next generation set of leadership.
So in that way, Trump, as a change agent, Sachs was a success in that he broke the system. And this was Peter Thiel's kind of concept when he put him in. And I know you don't speak for Peter, but Peter's idea was, hey, this person is a change agent, he's going to be this, you know, drain the swamp.
So maybe that didn't happen. But he has basically made everybody reconsider what party they want to be part of and what they actually want on the political agenda. And now we've never been more focused on politics, and how our country runs. And I think that's what's really interesting about this.
And I think that's what's really interesting about this. And I think that's what's really interesting about this. And I think that's what's really interesting about this. And I think that's what's really interesting about this. Well, you're right that Trump was a classic disruptor. You know, Keith Ravoy has this line about founders that disruption is created by disruptive people.
And Trump was, you know, one of those very disruptive people. I mean, just to take two examples, I mean, he created a total realignment on our views around China. I think it's now a bipartisan consensus that, you know, we should not keep feeding China and making, you know, keep feeding the Chinese tiger and turning into a dragon.
Everyone seems to think now that some reappraisal is warranted. And the other big issue was the forever wars of the Middle East. You know, I think Trump first created a realignment within the Republican Party when he said no more Bushes, he meant no more of these stupid foreign wars.
And I think that was an important realignment. So yeah, I mean, he's been a very disruptive figure. I think that everyone's breathing a sigh of relief because we've moved on. I think that he unnecessarily was incendiary and sort of pressurized the situation. But I think the best thing at this point is to move forward and not keep rehashing the Trump era.
Speaking of rehashing, I don't know if you guys know about what is happening with Facebook, but they have an oversight board they created last year in the spring. And the oversight board is not to do the day to day policing of Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp activity, but it's to be a place where people who have been have had content removed or have had their accounts suspended to appeal.
They have taken the Trump case as it were and given it to their Supreme Court, which is the oversight board. And the oversight board is going to make a judgment basically on should Trump get his social media accounts back. They have complete autonomy from Facebook. They are funded by Facebook with 120 or $130 million.
Over the next six years. So they're getting like $20 million a year to run this. They've got a really amazing bench of intellectuals, public intellectuals, and they're sort of above Facebook in this regard. What do we think should happen to Trump's social media accounts? Should he have a path to reclaiming them?
And with this board that exists as this a budsman, as I talked about in the last episode, what do we think of this process? And do we think maybe Twitter and YouTube should join this oversight board? Let's separate these two things. And actually, Jason, you just framed it perfectly.
Let's separate the two issues. One is, is any of us comfortable with a random set of people that some people will like and other people not like making these decisions on our behalf that are not necessarily trained to make these decisions? I mean, these aren't elected trained judges or lawyers that sit for a bar exam.
These are just private citizens ultimately at the end of the day. I think that if you allow this to happen at scale, I think that if you allow this to happen at scale, you're going to be able to do a lot of things. There's going to be a bunch of decisions that you'll be okay with and support.
I think a lot of people probably are cheering when Trump got blocked. But if you can abstract it away and think about all the people that you actually care about, what if the administration was on the other side, and now all of a sudden, you know, these people to curry favor with the administration went in a different direction and people that you cared about got blocked.
It is an untenable situation. And I think this is the slippery slope that the framers never intended. I don't think it should be people like this, making any decision like this. I think it's a slippery slope that the framers never intended. I don't think it should be people like this, making any decision like this.
And in many ways, it's a, it's a fig leaf for these companies to pretend they're doing the right thing while they're really shirking the real responsibility. Friedberg, do you agree? It's hard to say on the specific. So I think we should just take a broader point of view on this, which is how do tech companies create independence in the platforms that they're building so that they don't get scrutinized as monopolists.
And so there are several examples of this being done both successfully and not successfully across the tech ecosystem. Google made Android open sourced. And by making the Android operating system open source, they were able to have their own forked versions that they were able to install on phones with partners like HTC and Samsung and others, that they could then have their search engine be the primary search engine.
So the entire Android operating system is available for anyone to work on for anyone to fork for anyone to use. And then Google's iteration of that open source platform and Google's contributions, which they were making regularly, allowed them to kind of have a great commercial outcome without being the owner of the operating system, having learned from the mistakes of Microsoft in the past.
Facebook tried to take a similar approach with Libra, and it was a total shit show and a disaster. I don't know where it is today. But they tried to create this also independent board to provide oversight and to, you know, to kind of do the, you know, all the open source work on the Libra currency.
And Facebook was going to then use that on their platform to try to get a better kind of, you know, token, cryptocurrency solution. And obviously, there was so much scrutiny because no one believed the independence. And I think we're hearing the same thing now about the Facebook oversight board.
Jack Dorsey is now taking the same approach with Blue Sky, which is meant to be this open sourced, you know, independently managed social media protocol system. And so Twitter would effectively become an application layer on top of the Facebook oversight board. And so, you know, we're seeing a lot of this, you know, the big tech platforms in order to be able to do this, you know, they're not going to be able to do it.
And so, you know, we're seeing a lot of this kind of open source approach to how do you decide what goes on social media? How do you decide what's inappropriate and appropriate? And what technology protocols are available for everyone to use and what business and arbitration protocols are available for everyone to use in an open sourced way.
And we'll see where Jack goes with Blue Sky. He seems to be doing a better job messaging the media in order to avoid the monopolistic allegations and the allegations of control and influence. They're creating independence, independent systems, and the tit or miss. And I don't think we yet know, I think in the next year or two, we'll see how Blue Sky, Libra, the Facebook oversight board and some of these other platform.
What would you do, David? What would you do? Let me just put it to you. If you were in charge, you were the CEO of Facebook or Twitter. Would you have a path to reinstating Trump? Yes or no? Can I jump in on that? Yeah, let me just get freebergs.
Would you? Yes or no? reinstate Trump? Oh, yeah, 100%. We should have a path to it. I think the like I've said in the past, having some objective, I think that number one, I don't think it was inappropriate for them to kick him off the platform from a legal perspective.
I don't. Saxon, I might disagree, but we can probably argue for an hour. But I think from a freedom of speech point of view, they're private companies with private accounts, and they did what they wanted to do. Was it the right thing to do? I don't think that was the right thing.
So you give them a path to getting his account back for so I think you need to create an objective system. And you need to give everyone whether it's Trump or whomever else, everyone has to have the same set of standards that they're held to and then a universal approach that anyone can appeal and okay, but that's the approach.
But knowing what Trump did on January six, would you let him back on your platform if you were CEO? Is the question I'm trying to get out of your freebird. But okay, David, you go. Yeah, I mean, so so here's the fundamental problem is that the town square is now owned by Facebook and Twitter, the town square got privatized.
And our speech rights are now in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey as a matter. I mean, you do not have speech rights in the modern world if you get deplatformed by big tech. And until now, there's been no way to appeal their decisions. We have had no transparency into their decision.
So I think Facebook creating this appeals board is a step in the right direction. But you know, they're calling it their Supreme Court. But I'll tell you, my Supreme Court is the Supreme Court, you know, at the end of the day, we all know that the most important part of a trial is jury selection.
And Zuckerberg is still picking these 20 people. And you know, actually, just in case in point, he picked the top, he picked the four and the four pick the next 16. And then they don't have an ongoing ability to pick the next ones. And they have some amount of terms.
So just to give you Okay, well, fair enough. And like I said, look, I don't want to criticize this move on its own, because it is a step in the right direction. We need an appeals process when people get canceled. Okay. That part is good. But what I would like to see, like I said, my Supreme Court is the Supreme Court, and they've spoken to this issue.
And I would like to see these social networking monopolies apply a First Amendment standard, a speech policy broadly consistent with the First Amendment. And sometimes that will mean allowing speech we don't like, but it will result in a greater level of speech protection for all of us. Well, it would be back on the platform.
No, but hold on a sec, if you're going to go by that standard. The problem is with this oversight board concept is that it completely violates exactly what the Supreme Court is meant to be, which is a country by country set of governance and standards. And it's not just about the laws.
Like I'm just looking at the oversight board people right now, these people look incredibly well credentialed. Emmy Palmore of Israel, Catalina Botero Marino of Colombia, Nigat Dad from Pakistan, Helle Thorning-Schmidt from Denmark, Catherine Chen from Taiwan, Jamal Green from the United States, Alan Rusbridger from UK, Andreas Sajo from Hungary, and it goes on and on.
How are we supposed to adjudicate a set of standards at a national level? We have the are all these people from all these different countries supposed to apply on US constitutional right of free speech and have an idea would be they would use some global standard, but then also take into consideration local standards.
That's what they've their stated purposes and why they're so diverse. The setup for that though, Jason, is that then we know when, when there's a, you know, the Hindu nationalist BJP party has a specific point of view. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be specific kinds of free speech laws there.
You know, Poland's gonna have a different point of view, and they're not going to respect the free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be specific kinds of free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be specific kinds of free speech laws.
And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be specific kinds of free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be specific kinds of free speech laws. And so when Modi wants to get elected, there's going to be case in point.
Australia passed a potential law, or is considering passing a law, which is basically around if you know, treating Facebook and Google as quasi publishers and that, you know, they're, I think that they have to pay some kind of royalty now for articles that are shared or published or whatever.
And Google said, I'm out. And then Facebook said, I'm out too. And so what does that mean for, you know, 200 million people, you're out? What does that mean? You're out, you can make money when the gettings good. And all of a sudden, you build this public infrastructure, when the country's rules change, I actually respect that more than trying to create some of this broad, holistic governance committee, because I think it's a shit show.
You can't cherry pick which laws you want to observe and respect and, and then which laws you don't. Yeah, I think Chamath makes an excellent point about how difficult this is going to be to implement. Let me propose an alternative that actually comes from former law professor of mine University of Chicago, Richard Epstein, he made the point that he wants to apply common carrier regulation, at least in the US to these monopolies.
And the example he gives is that the railroad monopolies could not deny you service based on your political views. And you know, this is this is a this is a real issue. Imagine, you know, going back in time, you know, we had the Lincoln Douglas debates, for example, the way that Lincoln and Douglas went around the country was by train.
Imagine if some railroad magnate, some oligarch said, Mr. Lincoln, I don't like your views, I'm not going to give you passage on my railroad monopoly. The common carrier rules would have prevented them from doing that. And what Epstein suggests we do is if you're a essentially a monopoly, a speech monopoly in the in the US, one of these platforms that has, you know, the gigantic network effects, you have to apply the common carrier rules.
It's an interesting concept, I think, let's move on to the economy. And it'd be very interesting. We'll monitor obviously, what the this oversight board does, we're going to monitor what's going to happen with this January six. In the way that sorry, Jason, the last thing on this is you can tell if you if you graphed and I'm sure somebody listening to all in can graph and tweet this, but if you graphed the price to earnings ratio of big tech, has all of these issues, have come out like, you know, if you looked at a time series of their PE, and you put on their, you know, things like George Floyd, things like the capital riots, you know, all of these things that have created these flashpoint issues around free speech, flashpoints, the massacre in New Zealand and Christchurch that was live streamed on Facebook, all of this stuff, what you'll see is, at least capitalism is voting that these companies will not be allowed to be companies much longer.
Mm hmm. Smart money is betting that they're going to be regulated, and something's going to change, it's going to be a quasi governmental organization, exactly that the level of regulation at a government by government level is going to be so onerous as to make these companies quasi nonprofits that work on behalf of countries, they're gonna become utilities, right, they're getting they're going to get regulated, like utilities at some point, or they're going to have to adopt some governance, like we've talked about, or other options will emerge.
And I think what Jack is doing with the, is it the government? Yeah, I think the government is going to adopt some governance, the blue sky is what they're calling it blue sky. Yeah, yeah, what they're really doing with blue sky is saying your profile and your data is going to be stored on some blockchain or some decentralized system like Bitcoin, or like any other peer to peer service, which means it's not on their server, Twitter just pulls all that data together.
So we would all have our own domain names and calacanis.com or sax.com slash profile dot, whatever the HTML equivalent is is, let's just call it dot social, you know, your sacks dot social URL would be your profile on Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else. And when you post it to it, it would post to Facebook and Twitter.
Therefore, they could say we don't actually host this stuff. We're just pulling it together, which then destroys their business model perch moths point. What do we think, as a little aside is going to happen with the tick tock case. Now that Trump is out of office and Biden is in office, we sort of alluded to China sacks being a super important thing that we all have consensus on now what should happen with tick tock?
And do you think Biden will go after tick tock and say, Hey, we got to get this out of here because it's, you know, essentially spyware and jock ma was just resurfaced. And let's just talk about China for a second. Yeah, I think the sad reality is that the whole tick tock thing is going to get swept under the rug.
I think there'll be no restrictions on tick tock. I think what we need the issue with like, with banning tick tock, though, is that it's just one place where China can collect data on all of us. I mean, the reality is there's thousands of places. And so, you know, I do think that taking some action on tick tock is warranted, but it would it is a little bit of selective enforcement.
But what I would like to see is some guarantee some assurance that that tick tock is not is collecting data in the way they're saying they're collecting it and that there's not sort of spyware within the app. And I don't think we know for sure. Whether there's spyware or not, I'll say it.
I'll say it slightly differently. I've maintained this for a while, but it is inconceivable that inside of big tech in every single company that you define big tech is not at least one spy from Russia, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. Did I tell you guys I had a spy working for me?
A climate? No, you got to rest. Did I tell you guys about this? No, tell us a story. It's public. So I'll share it. We had a data scientist named high tower, great guy, worked on our remote sensing team, and worked on our nitrogen model, which predicted nitrogen content and soil and was very deep in the in the in the code base and everything.
And shortly after I had left, I found out this climate just for the audience. My company I started and ran was acquired by Monsanto in 2013, which is a big seed company. A lot of people know it for other things. And so I left and I found out that the guy quit, went to the airport, and the FBI intercepted him at the airport and they found tucked into his bag a thumb drive and he had downloaded all of our code base for our nitrogen models.
And he was taking them to give them to the Chinese government. And so he's in jail right now. He's in prison in the US right now. But this was like the most nondescript, super nice scientist, data scientist guy you've ever met, like you would have had zero suspicion. And, and it turns out, this is the part, how many of those exist in Facebook, and it was so and by the way, it was so easy for him to get access to our code base.
And he pulled all this stuff down. And he had the whole model. And you know, there's a lot of articles about what happened in our case. But you're right, it's happening all over the place. And, and I don't think that we fully appreciate like, how much of America's IP is stored in software, and data, and how accessible that is to employees inside of these organizations, and that the security is not adequate to protect that data and that IP.
And then the crazy thing is like, you know, when just to connect the two dots here on this Jack Muffin, like when you saw that video, where like, you know, basically, he was forced to, you know, show fealty. I'm okay. I'm okay. And you know, this is all about the Chinese Party.
I'm not being held captive. My gosh, like, I mean, these are all quasi governmental companies. Alibaba exists, because of the largesse of the Communist Party. And Xi Jinping, if that wasn't clear after last week, I mean, and so to your point, like, you know, if any company gets a hold of US user data, or otherwise, it's effectively the Chinese government getting a hold of that data.
Yeah, we don't need proof, David, when Jack Ma disappears, and then comes back and looks, he looked nervous on that video. I'm no expert, but he did not look like he was the Jack Ma, who was giving speeches and inspiring people. And I don't know what this does to entrepreneurship in China.
But I mean, who in China is going to start a company now and want to be the next Jack Ma or Jeff Bezos? No, I think Jason, it's even simpler. What happens? It makes entrepreneurship even simpler, meaning for those entrepreneurs that thought that there was a balance between financial imperative and moral imperative, there's no balance.
You can flush the moral imperative down the fucking toilet. They, China will allow you to get super rich and super successful, as long as you super toe the line. And that's the message. Right. It's like what Putin did with Khodorkovsky in Russia. It's like he basically told all the oligarchs, you work for us now.
And that's basically the message from the CCP to Jack Ma and to every other entrepreneur in China is you work for us now. And by the way, civil military fusion was a policy expressly announced by President Xi. One other data point on this, I think it's really interesting is that Biden just, announced that he was keeping on Christopher Wray as the head of the FBI.
Christopher Wray gave a speech back in July at the Hudson Institute about the counter espionage efforts that the FBI is engaged in. And he was saying that the FBI has more cases now related to Chinese counterintelligence. He said that the FBI is opening a new China related counterintelligence case every 10 hours.
Wow, two a day. Two a day. And of the nearly 5000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country, almost half are related to China. So this is directly from a speech he gave in July. So I think it's really interesting. Now, at the time that he gave this speech, you know, a lot of people were saying, well, this is just Trump's more of Trump's China baiting.
But I think that by Biden keeping on Christopher Wray, there's a continuity of policy there. And I think, you know, focusing on TikTok is probably the wrong thing. We need a more comprehensive policy to deal with counterintelligence. Well, it's a good start, though, to say if you hit scale, we're not going to let you operate here.
And we want reciprocity. Adding to this outgoing Secretary of Pompeo and is the day before the inauguration, tweeted, I have determined that the People's Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in China targeting the Uyghurs, Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups. That's quite a bomb.
And I think this signals we are going to keep resetting this relationship. And what an incredible opportunity for us to bring factories back here bring, as we've talked about here, manufacturing back, correct, Freiburg? That's what I think. Let's kick it off. We got we got 3 million factories in China.
I think we've got less than 100,000 in America. Let's go. It will be so glorious. It will be so fucking glorious. I mean, think about this, right? Look, think about the amount of money like at the end of the day, what is a government's purpose? Is it to run a profit?
No. You know, that's our job, right? Is it to run at breakeven? I would actually say no. I think it's to basically promote the prosperity of current and future generations of its citizens. And so you should be investing. So if you should be investing, so if we're going to be printing, you know, trillions of dollars, and you know, we should talk about the stimulus bill, because Biden's going to rip in another 2 trillion, which I think is a perfect and then by the way, and then after that, there's going to be this it's amazing infrastructure bill, put the money to work.
Let's reclaim a bunch of this capability on shore and let's re build America. Okay, freeberg, you looked at the $1.2 trillion stimulus package that Biden is proposing. How much of that goes towards rebuilding factories in America? Well, none. So remember, there's Yeah, but it's 1.9 billion. It's 1.9 trillion.
1.9 trillion. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. And so just to put that in context, you know, Wall Street has talked about there were going to be four massive stimulus bills, you know, since last April, May, I think they've talked about this. And we're seeing this come to fruition now. And Chamath, correct me if you've heard differently, but there's always been the expectation, we would have the big first stimulus, which we had last March, then a second stimulus, people have been waiting for the state stimulus or the local government stimulus, which this one now captures.
And then the fourth program was always going to be infrastructure. Yeah. And we haven't seen details of the proposed Biden infrastructure plan yet. But I'm pretty sure it's going to have a lot of green energy stuff tied up in it. But let's just let's just hit the numbers, right.
So in 2009, post financial crisis to keep the global economy from collapsing. Congress passed an $800 billion aid package. 800 billion was extraordinary at the time. And we've never seen anything like it. TARP. And last March, if you'll recall, we passed this emergency $2 trillion package, you know, more than 2x what we had during the financial crisis.
And now just in December, right before the year wrapped up, Congress passed another $900 billion package. And now we're talking about this $1.9 trillion package getting passed. So we've eclipsed anything you could have ever considered possible in terms of fiscal stimulus. At this point, the M1 money supply, which I sent the link out ahead of this for Nick to share, has been a huge step forward.
It's incredible. It's gone up by 75% in just the past year. And now if we break down the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, you know, a huge chunk of it, and this is what Wall Street's been waiting for, is $350 billion is going to state and local governments. So think about San Francisco, or the state of California, the city of Chicago, the city of New York, all of these folks have seen their revenue decline.
And they've had to run massive emergency programs. Where's that money coming from? They haven't been able to raise taxes, they've had to put a whole lot of money into it. And they've had to put a whole lot of money into it. And they've had to hold on receipts. And so this is meant to bridge the gap at the local level.
And this is really important. Because so much of capital markets still very much fund local and state governments through municipal bonds. And those bonds, if they start to default are going to have a dangerous rippling effect in the economy. So bridging the state and local government budgets with this $350 billion package turned out to be, you know, an absolute need and be Republicans prior to the election.
We're pushing hard against this and saying, let those states fail. They're mostly blue states, let those cities fail. They're mostly blue cities, they're mismanaged, they're being stupid about how they're operating. So this is a big deal. There's 160 billion for COVID fighting, some of which, you know, I throw up on $20 billion for vaccination, which equates to about $150 per person they expect to vaccinate, which is an extraordinarily high cost.
If you actually think about it on a first principles basis, it's ridiculous how inefficient they're going to be at this $50 billion for testing. So it's a huge cost. And it's a huge cost for the government. So it's a huge cost for the government. So it's a huge cost for the government.
So it's a huge cost for the government. So it's a huge cost for the government. So it's a huge cost for the government. $40 billion for protective gear and supplies. And what this indicates to me is so much of what goes on in government and government spending is skating to where the puck used to be not skating to where the puck is going.
And it's almost like by the time this money gets deployed, I'm not sure we're going to need as much protective gear and supplies. I'm not sure we're going to need as much testing if we can actually get the vaccinations done in the next 90 to 100 days, and much of the country starts to recover from this.
You've now got $150 billion program sitting out there that doesn't need out there and it's a waste of money. What we should be doing is taking that money and investing in biomanufacturing infrastructure so we can more quickly develop and deploy vaccines in the future. What would it cost to build a factory just back of the envelope that was capable of making the next, you know, let's call it one to two shots.
It's not a lot. So let me I'll give you guys the unit economic build and you can do the math at home. Four grams per liter is the expected yield of a of a biomanufacturing facility and a liter is like you know how many liters of water do you have in a tank, you can build half million liter facilities for a couple hundred million dollars.
And that's four grams per liter every seven days. And a vaccine or the the the antibody therapies that we've seen the antibody therapies are about two grams and that'll save someone's life. The the vaccines are a fraction of a gram. And so you can start to kind of do the math on how just a few billion invested in building some of these biomanufacturing facilities that are modular and can be very quickly reprogrammed to make a new molecule can be used to support the future vaccine supply chain and the future antibody therapeutic supply chain, which is critically needed in this country.
And if I were to take $160 billion for COVID fighting, give me 10% of that, and we'll be ready for any virus in the future. And we'll be able to print out vaccines for the whole country within 30 days. And so a little bit again of this is not really forward thinking it's scientists and doctors saying what they need, what they're talking about is last year's need.
They're not thinking in terms of what the industrial supply chain needs are going to be in the future on an ongoing basis for this country at this point, I'm not seeing it. And so I feel a little bit let down by that. And I hope that the infrastructure programs that are going to be proposed in the next email in the next bill, we'll start to encompass some of that work.
Paradoxically, it's going to cost a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear weapons. So we're literally going to spend a trillion dollars over the next decade open. Upgrading our nuclear. That's a nutty statistic. Is that true? That's nutty. That's right. I'm reading a headline right here. Wow. Here's my little wish list for this infrastructure bill.
I think when you look at some of the most compelling work that's happened in the developing world, so like, if you're going to go and, you know, build a massive water facility or an energy installation, a lot of people are worried, hey, listen, I have to deal with, you know, local currency risk.
I have to deal with, you know, corruption. I could have the government, you know, take away this facility from me without notice. The rule of law may not be strong. And the World Bank has this mechanism where you can basically go and insure, you know, for I think it's like 1% or 2% of your project cost, the whole project.
And it really makes things work. I would love to see the US government effectively create a program that is similar but different in the following way. There are some enormous things that are going to happen in the future. But I think, you know, there are enormous things America needs to do where the IP exists with our allies.
And there is an enormous fear, what would happen if that IP leaked specifically to China. One example is if you believe and you care about climate change, and the making of batteries, there's an enormous amount of IP that sits with the Japanese. That you know, if we could license and work with, you know, the Japanese government, as a country, we could build factories all over the country.
And we would be the leader in climate. But that'll take the US government to basically work bilaterally with the Japanese government to basically say, listen, if it takes the NSA to fucking protect this shit, we will do it. But you can send- Or you run them. We could just give them their sovereignty in those factories or something.
Yeah, you know, these are for profit companies that are, you know, relatively risk averse. They're not going to rip in 10 million bucks to $10 billion to build, you know, a cathode plant in the US. I would, other people would. But that's my hope in the infrastructure bill is that we take some of these things that have worked in the developing world, and we use it to grease the skids in how we rebuild America, it would be fucking glorious.
And also just think about how much a nuclear power plant costs, it's like six to $9 billion to build a nuclear power plant. And we haven't built many new ones. And we're on the way there. But if part of this trillion dollars, we could build 10 more of those, energy independence would continue and global warming would go down.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Would go down. Anything to add there, David looks like you want to come. Well, I just did just one final word, you know, the, the, the great Senate leader, Everett Dirksen famously said that, you know, billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking about real money.
And now we're talking about a trillion here and a trillion there. And these are really big numbers. And I think we should be very concerned about debt and deficits. No one's really talking about this yet. But all of this money has to be paid back at some point. Well, what's the worst that can happen, David, let's actually do that.
I mean, I'm asking the question in a non joking way. What is the worst that can happen? Oh, I mean, inflation, inflation, inflation, well, not not just so inflation, because the government will eventually have to monetize the debt by printing more money. The dollar stops becoming the world's reserve currency, maybe Bitcoin becomes the world's reserve currency, maybe something else does.
It could be lead to, you know, very severe, to basically a debt crisis in the future. What would that be? Well, I think it's going to be a very severe crisis in the future. What would that look like for companies and citizens of America? Well, if you're middle, if you're middle class, your savings get wiped out, you know, if you so, so if you're super rich, the reality is there's already been tremendous asset inflation.
So there's already been a lot of inflation. But frankly, if you are very rich and own assets in the stock market, you're you're sort of, you're protected, you know, but if you're a middle class person with most of your savings in your bank account, that money is not worth a lot less, or you're destroyed, or your home.
Yeah, you get destroyed by that. It's really very sad. So if you are equities, and the market is on a rip, you know, paying an extra couple of million dollars for your second home is not a big deal, because your equities have gone up more than that or equal to that.
And if you're right, somebody who get makes income, we have a separate issue. Let's look, this is this is a this is a bigger issue. But but I think we should talk about this at some point, because this is what the grand fallacy of technology was supposed to be.
Like, you know, if you if you break down capitalism into its, to most natural states, you have labor, and you have capital, right, you have workers, and you have owners. And the biggest problem that technology did was it drove a wedge, and it created an extremely small owner class, and an extremely massive labor class.
And so the reality is that a very few very handful of people can can get extremely wealthy by being owners of these next generation assets. And then everybody else is essentially, you know, rendered as labor. And so this wealth inequality, which is grows and grows and compounds. And so we have to figure out a way.
Yeah, how's that different than the past? Because I think it's got I think I think technology accelerated that dynamic. Well, I think is jumping in on this. I mean, I think that technology creates bigger winner take all outcomes. And that's fed into inequality. But the good thing about tech or the tech ecosystem is that frankly, we have option pools, right?
We have broad based ownership of these companies. If you go work for a Google or Facebook, whatever, you get an option grant. No, come on. That's 10,000 people. That's 10,000 people. That's no one. And they're and they're replacing 2 million jobs with 10,000 people. I mean, this is why this is why we need to have 100% participation in the markets by everybody in the country.
Joe Greenblatt, who I had on my podcast recently is a proponent of this chamath they saw you tweeting about it. When you're born in the United States, we should put $5,000 in a 401k that you can't touch until you're 65 years old. That is in whatever index funds. And every person born gets that $5,000 and cannot touch it.
And then we see where it winds up. I'm not sure. It doesn't solve the problem that a lot of people have to climb up a hill first, right? They take on a lot of debt to get education to put themselves in a position to ultimately be able to generate the income to do that.
And I think, you know, sure, given $5,000 at the beginning, but it's not going to get them where they need to be. But it does solve one portion of the problem, which is they don't have participation. And we could take out the wondering both of you are going to be like, I think both of you are right.
I think like there needs to be something that allows people to have a line of sight to savings, like a lot of about being invested in anything where you own it, whether it's real estate, or whether it's a piece of artwork, or whether it's stocks and bonds. So many people don't even know how to begin and don't understand the concept of ownership.
And so they are stuck in being in the ghetto of labor. And I think like one of the biggest things we can do is you can give them the taste of ownership, so that they understand that difference so that they want to be an owner. Yeah, okay. Number one, yes.
And then to David's point, number two is we still have a responsibility to educate people so that they can actually have skills that they can monetize. And we have a responsibility to do that. And right now, we make it so fucking hard. And we trick people because like we, we send them down the path of getting a $200,000 art history degree, and then they end up working at a Starbucks and then there, which is impossible to monetize.
I mean, it's ridiculous. You can't monetize that you can't. By the way, by the way, what you're saying to him, is the reason I think retirement accounts were set up in the US was to shift away from pension fund models where people were getting a fixed income at retirement, and shifting them to a model of equity and ownership in the markets where they could participate actively on a tax free basis.
But obviously, it hasn't done enough. You know, I think the big difference between the Industrial Revolution, the first and second Industrial Revolution and where we are with software in the last two to three decades is the capital required, right? It's very little capital to build a highly valuable software business.
It required a lot of capital to build oil infrastructure and railroad infrastructure and factories. And so to your point, you get extraordinarily different outsized returns today than you did 100 years ago, as an owner versus labor, that and the bridge to try and give people ownership through retirement accounts certainly hasn't been enough.
And so so to your point, to your point, David, I saw this study, it was fucking crazy. I'm going to get the exact numbers wrong. But the trend is accurate. When when when people used to actively manage their 401k, there was a very small participation rate. But the mean return was off the charts and the amount of dollars as a function of their paycheck was off the charts, call it, you know, 5060 cents of every theoretical dollar you could put into it.
The minute that we went to passive, and that you know, you could sort of trickle money in the number of people that participated literally more than doubled. But then the amount of that max dollar went off of a cliff. And then the number of people that participated literally more than doubled.
And so the problem that we've had is we haven't taught people, you know, we've misdirected some of them to say have a 401k, it replaces your pension, as if it's the solution, that's still not the solution. And we need to have ways of teaching people how to actually manage it.
It's not that hard. And the basics can be taught very simply. But right now, we are massively exacerbating this wealth gap the way that we behave. And then all of this money that's going to go in this 1.9 trillion, whatever, how many trillion comes afterwards, is frankly, for the few that are smart enough to take advantage of it will be amazing, but it'll still push the overwhelming majority of Americans who are stuck in labor, deeper and deeper into that ghetto, and they'll never get up.
It is definitely every little bit helps, right? Like if you have the 401k, that helps. And then, you know, educate people. And I think if we gave everybody an ISA at birth, or an I, you know, an income sharing agreement for these 20 professions, and the government provided, why, Jason, why is it that, you know, for example, if to invest in a startup, you either have to have more than $5 million, or more than, you know, a million bucks a year, it's more than they're gonna change it.
And so if you're, if you're a product manager, that's like really, really talented, or if you're like, you know, somebody else who's just got a, you know, a PhD in nuclear biology, and frankly, is, you know, is decided to teach for 60,000. And you can't participate, even though you have the intellect to judge.
Like, we're just like, kind of like compounding. It's even worse than that. The person who's changing the accreditation laws at the SEC and working on this said, I cannot, I'm writing the accreditation laws. And because I make 150k a year, whatever it is under 200k, I can't participate. And I'm the one responsible for the law.
That person must be one of the most sophisticated people in the world. It literally is the most sophisticated person in the world when it comes to accreditation. This is why we need to move to sophisticated investor, not accredited, and just some test. And if you did that, every single Uber, Lyft driver, Postmates driver, Airbnb host, or person who used the cash app or PayPal would have said I can as one of the first users, I have access to buy shares, I'm just gonna say this, I'll buy them.
This problem has to get fixed. Because I think in the next 10, I think in the next 10 and 20 years, the United States is going to fucking reemerge like a phoenix. And the reason the reason is going to because of innovation around climate change and agriculture and biotechnology and technology.
These four areas are going to recast GDP. But what that also means is that we're going to create, you know, 20 or $30 trillion a year for the next 10 and 20 years, 300 500 trillion. How the fuck do we make sure that more than 18 people participate? Absolutely.
Well, so I agree with a lot of what you guys are saying. But I can tell you every single one of the companies that I've invested in are looking to hire people right now. They cannot hire people soon enough. It's not a good idea. It's not a good idea.
It's not a good idea. It's their biggest challenge. And it's not just coders, it's salespeople, it's marketing people, it's HR people, it's every every role in their company, they have trouble trying to hire the right person. And and they give options to all those people. So it's not just a small number of founders getting equity.
This is basically a new category of call it entrepreneurial labor. It's labor who gets ownership in the company that's never existed before. And really, what this comes down to is we need more people participating in the new economy. If you participate in the new economy, then you get ownership.
And if you're in the old economy, then you really are stuck in labor. And so what we need to do is spread the opportunity that that technology represents to more people across the minimum wage, maybe we should have a minimum equity participation. So we have the minimum wage over here.
But if you're working for an entrepreneurial enterprise, why not get a minimum, you know, participation in equity? Because the free market takes care of that. I mean, if you have the free market, hasn't taken care of it, David. No, it has no, no, the free market has I agree with David, the free market has the problem.
How does a person working at Walmart ever participated in the Walmart appreciation? That's the point, they will, they will leave and go to a company that gives them equity. And that's why you'll see this. This is convenient to say, but if Walmart's the only job within an hour of their house, it's not.
They got to have the right skills, Jason. And so this all comes back to education. You know, we got to we got to why not let the people who are in rank and file jobs, the 30 million truck drivers, cashiers, etc, have equity participation as a right. I think I think you're saying something different.
Should they? Absolutely. Should the company that does that be created? Absolutely. Will they be rewarded with all the people that want to work there? Absolutely. So now somebody should go and start that fucking company. Okay. I just think it's an interesting concept. I mean, we do have a minimum wage, why not have a minimum Jason, just participation, you know, the same woman that ran Elon out of California, Lorena Gonzalez, she's doing another thing now, who's proposed a new bill?
Like, do you prefer to basically pick the equity thresholds? Because that's what you're saying? Well, no, let's pivot. Let's pivot to California. Okay, let's pivot to another disaster. So the recall is well on its way, they need to get 1.5 million signatures, we're at 1.1 or 1.2. But we actually really need to because there's some verification process that goes on.
So in all likelihood, we will see Gavin Newsom recalled. We agree on that. Yeah, I'll tell you this, the stats I heard, there's about a million called a million million one signatures, they've seen about an 85% verification rate today. Saks correct me if I'm wrong on this, they're getting they're getting about 200,000 signatures a week.
They're, you know, the cost for marketing and attracting people to get these signatures is coming in at like three to six bucks a signature. So it's really not a lot of money is needed to be spent to get this done. And, you know, even if the verification rate drops to 75 or 65%, you're still on track at this rate, to hit the recall target by March 17, which is the deadline.
And so it appears highly likely they're going to get there. So am I right on all that? Yeah, I think they're at 1.2 million signatures. That's what I heard. And they're trying to get they're trying to get to 2 million to have a buffer so that you know, they that you know, they don't get pushed under the 1.5 is the number they need.
Yeah, they need 1.5 million certified signatures 70% of the way there, according to the website, recall Gavin 2020.com, which I think I think I think they will get there. I think they'll get there and then there and then the recall election would take place about four to five months after.
After that, there's a couple of months where it moves through the Finance Committee, the recall election has to be budgeted. And then Newsom would have the opportunity to set a date within I think 60 to 80 days roughly. So I think we're looking at July for a recall election.
And sacks, how do you get? How does a candidate get on the ballot because Chamath is asking for a friend? Wait a second, I want to be on to that. Can should we have all four besties be on? Yeah, we should we should we should all run. As we all four.
Can we run? We're gonna let the voters decide a squad. We're gonna we're probably we're probably gonna have four Kardashians on there. So four besties on there. And one extra Kardashian. Yeah, so the it's it's it's stunningly easy to be a replacement candidate, we should expect they'll probably be about 150 replacement candidates on the ballot every every third tier C-list celebrity is gonna, you know, like, you know, back to Gary Coleman did it like, you know, 20 years ago, they're all very C-list celebrities.
Yeah, to try and boost their Q rating. I'm sure we'll see Kathy Griffin on there. I mean, what she'd been doing. And so it's gonna be a farce. Andy Dick is gonna run. Can we can we just, can we just, can we, by the way, can we talk about why he's getting recalled?
Because I do get this question a lot from people in tech and out of tech. And I just want to highlight some of the reasons I've heard. And I'd love to hear why you guys think he's, you know, why there's this push against him. But from people within the tech community, I've heard that the ad hoc lockdown rules have really pissed a lot of people off in terms of when businesses are allowed and not allowed to be open and kind of the responsiveness and the guiding principles around this.
And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. Obviously, the you know, the inability to fight against the tax rate, but no one wants to be publicly saying that the failed vaccine rollout the failed testing, you know, sacks, Chamath, Jason, what do you guys think is the reason he's getting recalled?
What are the top five reasons? hypocrisy is number one. I think it's the hypocrisy of going to those restaurants and then making people not go to the beach, which is crazy. And then I think number two is the virus. We've only deployed 37% of our doses in the last five years.
And that's a huge number. And I think that's a huge in California. And that makes us you know, of the major states that are putting out a lot of these vaccines. One of the worst performers. Second, yeah. Well, we're Florida, and New York are the other large states and they're at 5649 and 50%.
We're still stuck at 37%. California, the cradle of innovation and technology, and this bum, he's a bum. 37% we should be leading should be 70%. He's a bum. Can I get a new? It's new some derangement syndrome. Oh my god. No. besties. Jason just has a problem with anyone in authority.
You know, it's the hair. It's a problem. Jason fucking hair. It's the hair is too good. French laundry, the hypocrisy and then get to work. So personality, personality for you is the biggest driver. Is that right, Jason? No, it's literally the performance of their watch. Washington, DC, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, all 66 to 73% of their vaccines are both their double us.
Now it's smaller states, but still, we're goddamn California. Here's what I would say as a list. Number one, we're the most heavily taxed. Number two, we are we have some of the worst infrastructure in the country. We have some of the lowest and poorest performing schools in the country.
We have the highest homeless rates for veterans in the country. We have the worst preparedness for climate in the country. And so it's basically just a complete bungling at every level. And so and then the fourth or the then the last which is the biggest one is we have now created an inhospitable culture for innovation.
And the biggest problem with that is if these climate jobs and these technology jobs and these biotechnology jobs pivot to more accepting and progressive local and state managements, like Austin, Texas and Miami, Florida, we lose these things forever. This is a multi generational decay that we're starting. And so if we care about the state, I love California, I love San Francisco, I love how eclectic and unique and different it is, I was always happy to pay 10 1112 1314% because it was worth it.
Now, I don't know what we get for it. And so I think we I think I think he should get recalled. I just think he's he's trash. Yeah, and just just underscore the point on lockdowns. We now have certainly more cases, we have more deaths. And we have more deaths per capita than Florida.
Despite the fact that Florida has no lockdowns and a much older population. And so I was just in Florida a few weeks ago, like, you know, like Jamal was saying, you know, Suarez, the mayor, the mayor there has created really a land of the free. I mean, it's really unbelievable.
You can go to bars, you can go to restaurants, there's no lockdown whatsoever. They don't have as big a problem as California does right now. Why do you think that is? Because because well, because I think that the scientific basis, yeah, I think the lockdowns only forestalled the problem.
Eventually, the virus finds a way around them. And I also think the thing that's happening in Florida is that okay, so my aunt lives there. She's in her 70s. She's not going to bars and restaurants because she knows she's highly at risk. And so just because the government doesn't lock down doesn't mean that people don't take sensible precautions on their own.
And so and so I think that what's happened is that people are going out to bars and restaurants are low risk. And they're keeping the economy going over there. And instead, in California, we have this very draconian lockdown policy, and it's put all these small businesses out of out of work.
No, it's worse. It's not a draconian lockdown policy. It's a whipsaw. Oh, it's open. Okay, great. Now go and invest in a bunch of catbacks to make sure that you're safe. And then you're going to have to go to the hospital. And then you're going to have to go to the hospital.
And then you're going to have to go to sure there's outdoor dining. Oh, hold on your clothes. What is that? It's just so dumb. Tons of tons of restaurants. bar owners in San Francisco spent on average $30,000 building outdoor seating for their facility only to have it all shut down three and a half weeks later in comment.
Can you imagine being an owner of that business? No, it's unfair. No, I mean, you would literally they're going to kill themselves. The tragedy of it. People lose everything and there'll be suicides, depression, domestic violence. This guy's and then this guy's having dinner at French Laundry during the whole I mean, it's just such a I just got a note what a bad he will he's he's actually been banished from being at the French Laundry.
Apparently, it's been renamed the Sri Lankan laundry and some notable Sri Lankan billionaire has bought the French Laundry. French Laundry, by the way, got a laundry, they got a $2.6 million PPP law that got forgiven. So you know, there's a there's a lot of heat on the French Laundry as a whole.
What does it cost to go to French Laundry $800 a person? Anybody who wants who's listening to this who wants to go to the French Laundry, stay at home, pour a bunch of salt on whatever you're gonna eat. Okay, melt a stick of butter in the microwave, stick a butter in the microwave, drink it and then basically take $1,500 light it on fire.
You've been to the French Laundry. Here's what you do. Take a really great steak trash and throw out 80% of it up places. The cube in the middle of a big large plate. That is that's not even nouveau riche. It's just nouveau stupid. Oh, I got trash. Meanwhile, people are down in like, Texas getting like a brisket burrito for $4.
But I think California really needs to fix this. We need to figure out what's going on. And I just want to ask one more question of you guys. You don't think that this you know, because I was having this debate with my family about Newsom. And I was telling them about the perspectives I was hearing from tech people, and why everyone's so against Newsom.
And I've heard all these different things that you guys have shared today. And, you know, they're very, you know, and I'm hearing a lot of people kind of making the counterpoint like, this is a very difficult time. It's been an impossible year for everyone everywhere. So first of all, you know, Newsom was dealt a pretty difficult hand to play.
And at the same time, we are all psychologically primed to look for grass being greener on the other side, I think a big part of you know, certainly there's a lot of people leaving California, my belief for Texas and Florida, primarily because of taxes, and then you justify it with all the things that are wrong with California.
But we're all really primed right now. With this notion that it's a difficult place to be. But we're also really having a shitty year, we've had this pandemic businesses have been shut, you know, everyone's sick, the economy's having issues. I mean, you know, there's a really difficult hand that's been dealt.
Well, I don't buy that as an excuse for Newsom. I mean, look, it is true that we're going through a very difficult time. But the reason I don't buy that as an excuse for Newsom is because this is not April or May of 2020. When we thought the fatality rate was 7%.
And you know, lockdowns could lockdowns could be justified then. But we now have so much more data, we've seen that states that did not do lockdowns, like Florida and Texas, frankly, have been no worse off than those that have done very severe lockdowns. And so what is the point of continuing with this facade?
And that is what I think we can legitimately blame Newsom for is the failure to learn and to change course based on data. And where is the daily press briefing on the data? Well, I think the data is not 100% accurate. And so I think we have to be very careful about this.
We have to be very careful about what we're doing. We have to be very careful about what we're doing. And that's what makes for an idiot. I think, and by the way, most of the spread is not happening at businesses. It's happening in homes. And in California, we have a particularly difficult problem, because of multi generational family homes, especially in the Latino communities that have been hardest hit by COVID.
And the, the transmission rate and just skew with diabetes as well. But yeah, the transmission rate in those communities is three to five x what it is elsewhere. And then also, suffering the biggest hardships because businesses are closed. Well, by the way, this goes to the vaccination strategy just being so idiotic, like, you know, if you wanted to be equitable, then why weren't we just rolling through and basically getting those families to be vaccinated first, independent of age, you know, you're you're you're apparently got all these vaccination sites, nobody shows up.
I spoke to SF DPH, Department of Public Health about this last week, and they told me that they cannot get those communities. They're very non trusting of the vaccine. And they're having a real struggle getting people to sign up to take the vaccine. The problem is, even if that is the case, the problem is you should not be holding up vaccines for one community then get everybody else vaccinated.
So they cut the head off this fucking transmission. Over 60. Get it. That's it. There's nothing to discuss. Let's wrap up everyone. Everyone gets it. But you allocate a certain number of doses to you basically have like a TSA pre check line. If you're over 60, or you're in certain communities, you jump to the front of the line, and that's it.
But everyone can stand in line and put fucking vaccines. Put fucking shots in arms because everyone I know that's over 65 can't even get an appointment and it's bullshit. And the whole thing is incompetence. So I think but I think what Zach said is so right. It's like in these moments, J Cal, and freeberg, like a light gets shone on the ability for people to figure things out.
And then you know what the intellectual capability of these people are. And like, look, we saw the intellectual incapability of Trump. Because we all adapt. This guy could not adapt. Okay. And, and so we are now seeing the intellectual incapability of Gavin Newsom. And I just think they're part of the same lot.
They're just kind of, you know, people who are in over their head, and they're beholden to people who got them there. And their number one concern is staying in office, which means appeasing a bunch of special interests. Speaking of special interests, David Sachs is still on tilt about conservatives being canceled.
David, you wanted us to wrap with this Wilkinson cancellation. So every podcast, we're going to have a right winger who's canceled and David's justification for putting them back on the platform. God, David. Well, actually, so yeah, this is this is this is the issue of the week with David.
Yes, yes, it's well, this is actually it's not a it's not a left wing it. So this is the issue to draw on social media right now is that a writer named Will Wilkinson was just fired from his job and canceled. But here's the thing. It was he's not a conservative.
He's actually a liberal. What? And it was it Yes. And it was a right wing tweet mob that got together to get fired. Yes. And so how did you get this mob together to get them canceled? It? Yeah. So we're back everybody so much for the wives dinner. My God.
Yeah. I need another wives dinner. Well, no, I look I feel the need to speak out on this because I gotta make it really clear that I do not support candidates. I do not support cancel culture when perpetrated by the right against the left. I think it's what did he do?
Okay, so he posted a tweet making a joke that maybe was important. It's not that funny, basically saying that if we want unity, the one thing that like the Trumpers and the Biden supporters can agree on is hanging Pence. You know, it is what is hanging? lynching. lynching. lynching or hanging?
He said he said hang I think no, I think he said I said hang. He said, whatever. And it's inciting violence on the march. But go ahead, sex. It's in poor taste. Well, no, look, it's a it's a it's a joke. That's not actually that funny. And maybe in poor taste.
What he's referring to is the fact that the you know that there were people on January six who were going after Mike Pence, right? That was sort of the joke. Anyway, look, he that's not the point. He deleted it. He apologized for it. His boss is still fired him for it.
Nobody believes that he was trying to incite violence. Okay. I mean, come on. We all know that was not inciting violence. But but the mob pretended that he was in order to create its phony outrage. And then his bosses have to pretend that he was in order to get to appease the mob and they pretend like it was incitement to violence so they can fire him.
And then he even had to pretend that he was inciting violence because he had to then objectively apologize for it. And there's this that's the thing about cancel culture I really don't like is just it's just so fake. And phony. We all have to pretend and things that aren't true in order to pacify some you know, tweet mob whose outrage is manufactured anyway.
And I don't like seeing the right doing this. And that's what I tweeted about. And then we had all these people on the right responding to me saying an eye for an eye, you know, you know, the left deserves this too. Now they're gonna get a taste of their own medicine.
And the problem with that is look, you know, you're you might win this particular battle, but you're losing the war because you're now buying into the premise of cancel culture. You're not buying into this idea that we need to economically cancel people who disagree with us. And I really reject that.
It's certainly bad timing to say, Lynch or hang, whichever word he used, obviously, lynching is a much worse word. After people were chanting hang Mike Pence, but he was making a commentary on that. The joke didn't land. And when the joke doesn't land, you need to just take ownership of that and say that you shouldn't be canceled.
Just to say it was a poor attempt at humor. I apologize. Right. And Jason, you know better than anybody else. When a poor joke doesn't land. So here's one thing to learn about comedy. People don't remember the jokes that don't land. They remember the ones that land. Okay, everybody.
It's like investing in startups. It's like it you got a lot of losers to find the few winners. Absolutely. That's my I'm a volume guy. You know that governor Chamath calm governor sacks.com Governor freeberg.com and government. Can I just say Jason, Jason, if Newsom is recalled, I would like to put my name on the ballot.
And I'm going to put my name on the ballot. I'm going to put my name on the ballot. I'm going to put my name on the ballot. And my my my commitments are quite simple. I just want to, I'm going to cut the taxes to zero. And I'm going to basically create an incredibly pro climate change.
jobs and protect jobs and pro biotech jobs, economy, and I'm going to raise teacher salaries, and I'm going to give everybody a school voucher. Okay, we have it. Maybe, maybe on the next episode, we can all declare that we're running for governor and present our platform. Oh, let's go to governor Chamath calm governor sacks.com.
Governor. Let's register our domain names. But register your domain name before the pod goes. registered all four of them. All redirect to my Twitter handle. Thank you guys. We'll see you all. On the podcast. Love you, besties. Love you, sacks. Back at you. Let your winners ride. Rain Man David sacks.
We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy. Love you. West is queen of kin. besties are dog taking a driveways. Oh, man. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just like this like sexual tension that we just need to release.
Our house. What you're about to be. Your feet. We need to get more cheese. I'm going all in. I'm going all in. Thank you. you Thank you.