E31: Post-vaccination virtue signaling, pandemic lessons, immigration, Caitlyn Jenner for CA & more

this is an incredible fashion disaster we have today david sacks is dressed like where's waldo okay freeburg freeburg is dressed like driving a uh subaru outback oh god unbelievable i mean this is ridiculous hey everybody everybody it's another episode of the all in podcast episode 31 with us today from well it's just rolled out of bed the queen of quinoa himself david friedberg is here let me do my hopefully get that hair it's not going to help have you been studying the homeless problem by by yourself going out on the streets or what what is happening at the free park do we need to do an intervention all right i'm going to go change give me a minute we have to keep the friedberg minutes up we have to keep the friedberg relation ratio up i had somebody stop me in miami and say keep the friedberg ratio high also with us chiming in is where's waldo himself the skipper david sacks the red man is here the skipper is here don't change my nickname don't change my nickname i'm comfortable with rain man don't throw me off yeah definitely definitely okay with rayman of course not the skipper not the skipper and the dictator himself got a full night's sleep i hope this time i did chamomile and of course i'm jay cal the baby seal here in miami look at the view how beautiful it's been an incredible incredible week the tiger has been unleashed i went to austin now i'm in miami jake cal you're more like you're more you're more like a pudgy hyena i don't know you're not really a tiger the quarantine 15 big announcement 10 pounds are gone five to go i'm lifting weights outside in miami it's been amazing field report i get to austin i kid you not i got my mask on 10 people first of all 10 people say i love the all-in podcast every like 15 feet walking in austin and in miami but somebody looks at me with my mask and says are you okay son and i was like what i kid you not and i he said are you vaccinated and i said yeah he's like why you're in a mask and i realized it's time for independent critical thinking sax i got to give it to you another great great tweet for me to copy and adapt to steal your deal flow but i love this tweet that you had where you said early in the pandemic explain the tweet or maybe read the tweet this is well which one i've been blasting about masks about one group of people wouldn't wear masks oh yeah yeah well at the beginning that's right i mean the the the dysfunction of our politics is that half the country wouldn't wear a mask at the beginning of the pandemic and and now the other half of the country won't take them off at its end this is the problem is that the mask has become um it's the equivalent of the red maga hat for team blue this has become some sort of uh virtue signaling uh even when it's not necessary but it's actually destructive because it's performatively sending the signal to people that the vaccines don't work and we have a third of the country today is still vaccine hesitant and this is not helping what we need to be sending the message to them is look get vaccinated so life can get back to normal so you don't have to wear a mask and you know we still have the cdc putting out this ridiculously conservative and timid guidance saying that well if you get vaccinated you can take off your mass outdoors as long as you're not with too many people well like what no i mean look once you get vaccinated you should need to wear a mask outdoors or indoors and you know we had this sort of mini state of the union this past week with biden and it was really like nobody was there no it was like an empty room because everyone because of social distancing and they were all wearing masks even though you know every single one of them is vaccinated and so i think biden really missed an opportunity in that speech yes he said that everyone should get vaccinated but show not tell i mean you know he walks up to the microphone in a mass saying that we should all get vaccinated well what is the mass for why don't you tell people that if you get vaccinated you don't need a mask anymore and so you know that we have this sort of contrast it's actually really it's it's really incredible because to your point he was trying to make some very important points in that speech david and when the camera would actually pan from behind him so instead of looking at him and kamala and nancy pelosi it would look there was nine people and you thought another sold out crowd for no no no no no because because no no no because typically when you give these sort of state of the union or you know these kind of like 100 day because you have everybody in congress you have everybody in the senate you know you have you have typically like a bunch of other officials you have the supreme court like in a state of the union address and there was nobody and it felt really striking to watch that if trump's mistake was not wearing a mask in april of 2020 i think biden's mistake is not taking it off in april of 2021.

why can't we get a political leader who is willing to put on mass at the right time and take him off or do risk assessment just we need a political leader who's reasonably scientific and will actually say here's the intersection of science and common sense that everybody can map to and and copy me because it is to your point david you know the leader of the free world is given that title for a reason it's not it's not complete completely ignore what i say i've been put in this position because i am you know on some dimension expected to be the most thoughtful person in the room and set the example for everybody let's just talk like the important consequence of this and i agree with sax the important consequence of this however is the economic effect it has so for example in san francisco restaurants are only allowed to be at a quarter capacity so there are restaurant owners that want to get back to business that want to generate income again that want to get off of the ppp loan program and all of the government support and they should be able to because most people in san francisco at this point the vast majority in fact are vaccinated and they're vaccinated and the restaurants for no scientific reason are shut down or limited to a quarter capacity and this is the case across a lot of cities and a lot of states in the country right now where the conservatism with respect to coming out of the um you know the major part of this kind of pandemic is what's now keeping the economy or not just keeping the economy because we're fueling the economy with stimulus but is keeping business owners and keeping people that want to participate uh in building and running their businesses from getting back to work because we're so conservative about this and you know what sax is totally right yeah like take the masks off let people go into restaurants and let people go have dinner in san francisco let these places get back to work by the way we have a we have an a b test that's actually nobody's talking about which is that the more conservative version of america's posture right america's sort of like half we don't care and half we care too much but in europe you could see a more you know homogeneous approach to the problem and we print printed a negative 0.6 gdp growth in europe so to your point with all the vaccines that are out there with all of the logic and all of the science not being able to just take the mask off and get back to life as normal was negative 0.6 gdp growth in a quarter where they also printed hundreds of billions of dollars and now you come into the united states last year i don't know if you guys remember this but every forecast i saw had gd from the smartest folks saying q1 gdp would be on a run rate to be around 10 it would be one of the best in history it was only 1.6 so we're on a 6.4 gdp growth run rate guys that's not 10 now it's still a lot but the point is we got to get back to life as normal we have to show that these vaccines work we have to tell people that you can have a normal life you should be going out spending money going back to the office live normally yeah and we should we should just cover the data i mean we should i mean it'd be great to put up the latest cdc data on the screen yeah if you use the cdc as a source for the data as opposed to listening to their interpretations of it uh their policy interpretation it's actually pretty illuminating so out of 87 million people who've been vaccinated there have only been 408 serious cases which would be you count as hospitalization or death related to covet so those are odds of one in 213 000.

the odds of being hit by lightning are one in 180 000. so your odds of being struck by lightning are greater than your risk of getting seriously sick i need this in poker terms i think this sounds like hitting a royal flush twice yeah exactly it's crazy how many royal flushes have we each hit i'll put it i'll put this article up and you guys can share it in the um show notes is it technology review one yeah yeah and i think it it does a good job of speaking to sax's statistic now uh yeah so i think uh sax i think this represents the cdc data in the first paragraph uh in this article but it goes on to kind of speak about the statistical likelihood of these events so you know basically uh you know it opens up by saying you know as of april 20th 87 million people in the united states have been vaccinated and only 7 157 or 0.008 went on to become infected with sars cov2 um 330 of whom were hospitalized and 77 of whom died from the disease and i would guess that that of those people there is likely some immune dysfunction which is a you know a a likely reason why it doesn't mean that every individual has that risk it means that there are certain people out there that are going to have immune dysfunction and won't react well to to won't develop the appropriate kind of protection from the vaccine um and that's you know that small small small small small percent of people are the are where we're kind of seeing you know um actual risk like that's where i get the 408 number is it's the number of hospitalizations plus deaths minus the ones that they say in the footnote were not related to covet right so there's some other like cause um so 408 out of 87 million and by the way i think it's worth just highlighting you know just think about the rationale for why there is conservatism here still right so um if there are still pockets where people have not been vaccinated in the country and there are still areas where people are hesitant to get vaccinated and there's a large unvaccinated population the official guidance the official kind of reasoning i believe is that we need to be conservative to get all of those people to behave in a conservative enough way to keep a you know a surge from occurring regionally um uh around the country and the loss the downside is very negligible uh where people still have to wear masks what i don't think that that calculus accounts for is that the loss is actually not negligible the loss of telling people broadly to keep wearing masks is a hesitancy to go back to work a hesitancy and a conservancy to engage in normal economic activity and so you know i think that we're kind of missing that point in the kind of officiating of this uh of this exit strategy here um and it's uh it's certainly uh i i'm aligned with saxon as i certainly think it's uh it's biting us more than it's helping us to give you an idea just like experience wise when i was in austin every restaurant is at 110 capacity the locals there were like i can't get a reservation for a week or two the town is packed everybody in the country is going to austin and miami because they've just learned that austin and miami have officially declared if you have the vaccine you can go have your life but there is still a little bit of theater on the margins when you go into a restaurant i went in to to get a meal and i didn't have my mask on i kid you not 110 capacity 100 people sitting at the bar 200 people at tables she hands me a mask and i said i'll have one i put it on i said can i ask you a question and she the hostess says uh why should you wear a mask when there's 300 people in here without a mask and the doors are closed i was like that's the exact question she goes it makes no sense the governor wants no mess the mayor wants masks and so they're having their own little version of the national conversation in austin which is locally scared uh or at least the politicians are and then reasonable otherwise um so you literally put your little mask on you walk 10 feet to your table and then take it off for the rest of the time in miami it's a true story i go to miami i walk into i i you know it was i haven't been out in 14 months so i decided i would check out a club and i went to a nightlife club um and people were dancing and having a great time people were also popping bottles and i was like oh my god it's over like and a nightlife club it was a nightlife club and no it was not a yes anyway it was a legitimate club you know here in south beach um and so i took a little insta and i share i fed the insta and immediately i got three comments from friends who were like what are you doing in that club and i wrote back to all three i'm vaccinated and they were like okay i'm not going to go to the nightlife club and i'm like oh my god we're going to go to the nightlife club i was like is this not obvious but i think this was the point i made a few months ago which is i do think that the the subconscious training the fear factor that's been kind of you know built into us over the last year year and a half um it's going to take a while to kind of train our way out of you know people aren't going to be that rational and that conscious about oh i've been vaccinated people are basically the default is fear the what ifs the butts but oh my god people are still getting covet even though they're vaccinated but there's there's variance but they're still going to be the default and i think that's the reason why i think we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why i think that's the reason why i think we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think that's the reason why we're going to be the default and i think this this this is like what again i'll say that i said it like four times default and i think this this this is like what again i'll say that i said it like four times default and i think this this this is like what again i'll say that i said it like four times before but this is what happened after 9 11 and it lasted for years and you know we still have before but this is what happened after 9 11 and it lasted for years and you know we still have before but this is what happened after 9 11 and it lasted for years and you know we still have ridiculous tsa processes we need our leaders to take their masks off get tell everybody they're ridiculous tsa processes we need our leaders to take their masks off get tell everybody they're ridiculous tsa processes we need our leaders to take their masks off get tell everybody they're vaccinated vaccinated vaccinated take their masks off go back to normal life so so that everybody else will feel that it's okay to, because even if you're, even if you're, if you're not fearful, David, the other thing that you are is just guilty.

And, you know, right, totally. And you got to, you got to get rid of that as well. And the only way you'll do it is if highly visible people are now actually going back to life as normal. Yeah, like the peer pressure element of it. It's like, I feel bad, I feel bad going into a store when everyone else is wearing a mask.

And like, I'm crazy, crazy MSNBC moment. And one of the hosts of one of their shows said, I've been fully vaccinated, but I went running in Central Park. So I double masked and I'm like, the virtue signaling was so insane. Like, wait a second, you're out. That's insane. This is the joy read thing.

Yeah, I don't want to see the person's name. Because then if you mentioned who it is, then you might be attacking a person of color or a woman host. So I just said, well, now you're avoiding it, which makes you think that you are so who is it? How am I supposed to say it without being?

But he was, I mean, nobody watches MSNBC. Yeah. What is it? It was the Trump derangement syndrome therapy was MSNBC. The ratings go, I want to have a question for the three of you. Knowing what we've seen here, between the logic of both sides and the media and the insanity.

What do you take away from the year of the pandemic as it comes to a close in how you personally look at the world? Sachs, you want to start like, yeah, I'll tell you, I feel like the American people are constantly being propagandized. And there's almost like an information war being perpetrated on the American people where we cannot get the data, the facts and the truth.

I think it's true now in terms of people not taking off their masks, even though we have the CDC data that basically shows the lightning strike probability of getting COVID. But we saw at the very beginning of the pandemic. Remember, I have all these people. On Twitter, telling me every time I tweet about this, why don't you just listen to the experts, right?

They want me to shut off my brain, and just do whatever the CDC says. And I'm like, well, do you realize the CDC was against mass at the beginning of the pandemic back in March of 2000. Last year, when I was saying we need to wear masks, because looking at the success of the Asian countries, and some of the data coming out of that.

The CDC was very, very slow in adopting mass, they were against it, they were telling us we didn't need to do it. And that was the historical CDC, like, right, they've been around for a long time. And then also, Trump was anti mask. And so you had Trump, Trump was slow to adopt mass too.

And yeah, and absolutely. And so yes, I mean, I've said that there's like a Venn diagram of American politics, where that, you know, that one circle is favored mass wearing one year ago, and then wants to get rid of mass mandates today, the Venn diagram of overlap between those two groups is very small.

I'm in that overlap. I feel like I'm in that like a very lonely part of the political graph. Yeah, Chamath, how has your thinking, you know, now that we've had to process this event in our lifetime, that is probably the most consequential, you know, moment? Yeah, I have, I have, I thought about this a lot, Jason, you asked a really important question.

And I think everybody should probably try to take five minutes, and actually write this down. Because I think, I'll tell you what I learned, I learned, I learned three things. The first thing I learned is intellectual. And it's exactly the same thing that David Sacks said, it is completely shocking to me how much disinformation there is, and also how we are so prone to turning off our brains and not thinking for ourselves.

So it's really shocking. And I think 2020 was the year that that was laid bare, that the institutions that feed you information can't really be trusted, that you can't really trust the interpretation of actual simple data, that nobody wants to think in first principles. So that's the first one, we have stopped thinking for ourselves.

And that's a recipe for disaster. And so that's an intellectual thing that I've realized, and I don't want to do it. And so I'll think for myself, and I'll take the consequences. The second was economic, which is, wow, we have really over rotated to this crazy form of globalism that is going to get undone over the next 30 years.

And that's going to have a lot of implications. And it can be done in a way that can rejuvenate the United States, which I think can fix a lot of the stuff that was created. And we should talk about that later today. And then the third is physiological, which is if you didn't know before, I'm going to tell you now, and it's this three letter word that we make into a four letter word in America, which is the letters F at, we have a fat epidemic in the United States.

And it's a very common disease. And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States. And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States. And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States. And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States.

And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States. And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States. And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States. And it's a very common disease that we have in the United States.

by a combination of food, and a lack of movement, we are setting them up to either die acutely of something like COVID, or chronically by heart disease and diabetes. And that is was like it is now so obvious and by the way, that's the other thing where these healthy fit people were running around double vaccine and or double masking in Central Park, and they don't even know the basic data.

Like even if you thought you were going to go to the hospital, the 80% of all of those millions of hospitalizations were from people that were obese, they had physiologically completely taken their body to a place that it wasn't able to fight. Right. So those are my three takeaways intellectual, economic and physiologic.

insert one thing on that is because I agree with with everything to Martha said is this this idea of laying bare, that laying bare the the sort of corruption of these like institutions that are supposed to be coming up with good policies and educating us about the effects of this virus.

And it turns out they, you know, keep giving us this foolish guidance. But there's also another institution, I think that was laid bare, which are these education unions, right, we had school closures for a year, the learning loss and the isolation that kids are have experienced, we don't even know what the results of this are going to be this could be a generational consequence.

And what we see from the education unions, they didn't want to go back to school, they fought it. You know, we had the whole Oakley school board resign, because they just said, Well, they want to go back to work to be babysitters for their kids. So we could smoke pot.

These are people who don't care about the kids. And after this year, I don't know how anyone can be against school choice or charter schools, or giving parents more involvement in their kids educations. 100% freeberg coming out of the pandemic, and looking at your own psychology and your own life.

What have you learned? And what do you take forward in terms of lessons and how you're going to approach post pandemic life? I'll kind of flip it a little bit. One of the first experiences I had with how broadly people could be influenced in a way that doesn't have grounding or rooting in facts and reality is when I sold my company to Monsanto in 2013.

And J Cal, I think you came with me on one of these trips that I took. I visited my hotel with you. Yeah. And, you know, there was an incredible bias by my team and by me personally, prior to even engaging in conversations with Monsanto against that company because they were deemed to be evil.

And as I as I spent a lot of time personally kind of digging into the facts and the history of the business and kind of how we got here, it was surprising to me like how much of the bias against Monsanto was not rooted in fact, and was in fact, you know, a series of claims that then became truth and reality because of the perception.

And it just became it, things got stuck that way. GMOs are bad, GMOs are evil, that the science of how they work, what they do, why they're useful, was never contemplated, never became part of the dialogue, it was just this assumed fact that this is an evil company that this stuff is bad.

And, you know, this is a long, long topic, we could talk about this, I'm sure for an entire hour and a half about the science and technology behind GMOs, and how we make food and all that sort of stuff. And I'm happy to do that another time. But like, for me, I was just so surprised when I engaged with thoughtful friends of mine who are scientists, even, and they had this bias.

And then when you engage them in a dialogue about like, why, where does that come from? What's the rooting? What's the, what's the, what's the, what's the root of the problem? And it just wasn't there. And I got and I mentioned this to you guys, when I was an executive at the management team in Monsanto, we had a WHO ruling, where a guy got himself elected to the IARC, the this is the cancer research group within WHO.

He was this liberal guy, who was very anti technology who got himself elected to the IARC board, and got a ruling made that Roundup is a possible carcinogen. And that's the sort of thing that I'm going to be talking about in a little bit. But I think that's, that's a very important part of the whole thing.

And I think that's what I've been talking about, and I think that's the whole point of the whole thing, is to be honest, that the truth is the truth, and that's the truth. And I think that's the whole point of the whole thing. And I think that's the whole point of the whole thing.

And I think that's the whole point of the whole thing. And I think that's the whole point of the whole thing. And I think that's the whole point. And I think that's the whole point. And I think that's the whole point. And it's incredible, the implications it's had. And so I've always, you know, for several years now, I've had this kind of belief that like people can be led to believe things that aren't necessarily rooted in objective truth, or in fact, or have empirical evidence to behind them.

And this is this, this goes back to the origins of religion and monarchies and like you know, these myths and these, these, these, these tales we tell ourselves, where we all end up believing something, and there's some influencing factor that that drives that. I think this has just been an incredible manifestation of that the the misinformation on both sides, from the beginning to the end of the pandemic.

And it's just been extraordinary to watch, I don't think you change it, I think social networks amplify it. You know, I think that the the rate at which information or misinformation flows back and forth is making it easier and quicker to kind of adopt this, you know, systemic inaccurate belief system that people might adopt.

And so, you know, it's, it's a big question mark for me, I don't know, you know, how we as a people kind of move forward with like objective fact based decision making and belief systems. And I don't know if we ever will. But well, yeah, it's just how humans are wired, maybe, you know, I haven't given it a lot of thought.

I really like all of your answers, because mine is very similar. Number one, I feel like I was always an independent critical thinker in my life. And that I think I kind of started to pick sides because of Trump that like, I just found him so offensive. And I realized, I have to go back to being just an independent critical thinker, I affiliate with no party, I assume all news stories are fake news.

I assume all data is being manipulated. I assume everybody's got an agenda. I believe everybody's virtue signaling now, and I'm making the decision. I'm making the decisions for myself. And I in the one of the things dovetails exactly what you said Chamath, which is, this was a disease of a of, you know, old people, and fat people, obese people, of which I have been one for far too long.

And this is my commitment is just I got to take my health 100% seriously. Now that I'm 50 years old, I got a trainer, I got a masseuse. I'm working out and doing weights. I'm doing everything. I changed my diet. I'm taking supplements, the stuff we talked about here.

I'm getting a doctor after that episode, we did Chamath, I'm getting that body scan for four fucking grand, or whatever it costs. And I'm just doing it all. Are you saying a masseuse is gonna help you lose weight? No, but I've had a I've had shoulders. Maybe the maybe the No, I just realized I don't stretch.

I don't stretch and my shoulders were getting very tight and being on the computer and everything. So I'm just what a man of the people. What a man of the people. Look at you. Which house are you in? I got a trainer. I got a masseuse. I got a person.

I got $4,000 money on making myself healthy. The third thing, and this is heartfelt and sincere, is that friendship and our loved ones are really with along with health is so important. And I am cherishing every moment, every experience with every friend knowing that the world can shut down and whatever.

And we have to take advantage of every moment. And that that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do me is that the takeaways the can just to build on something. I'm really proud of what you're trying to do. Jason for your health. When I remember I you know, you know how we you all have these high grade school pictures?

Yep. Right. Like you go to like picture day or whatever. Yeah. And there was this crazy contrast that I had in my grade school pictures, there was like, two of them when I was in Sri Lanka. So I was like, you know, five and six. And then great, you know, then I was seven or eight.

And then all of a sudden this crazy Hey, what's up Antonio? Antonio realize he's on an international don't even know who he is. Don't worry. He's like one of the most powerful guys in our industry. What I was gonna say is like, by like, I think when I was like nine or 10.

I had gotten really fat. Really? Because, because when we moved to Canada, it was a very different food supply. And then economically, we were in a different place. We ate what we could afford. And I put on a lot of weight. And that weight carried with me until college.

And then after college, and that's when I said, I got to get in shape exactly for the same reason Jason because like my dad was getting dialyzed. He was constantly, you know, dealing with these health issues. And I said, I don't deal with this. Shit. But that's a rare thing that happens.

If you think about the number of people that are put in this predicament of like, not even forget you, you're able to get a trainer or whatever. But there are a ton of people that can only eat what they can afford. Yeah. Right. And the reality is, it is just meaningfully cheaper to eat at McDonald's, than it is to go to Whole Foods and be able to buy organic food.

And so it's just not even on the agenda for people. So this is what I mean by you, we have to be able to say that it's not that people are fat because they choose to be. That there are these systemic imbalances that make people sick. You know what I mean?

Education and health. These are the things that we need to work on in America. Education, the food supply, healthcare. Like Sachs, you said it, was it last week, Sachs, you said, you know, the, I think this is a great bargain that could happen in America with all this polarization.

If even a Republican conservative, like Sachs can say, everybody should get a great education, and everybody should be healthy. Right? And Sachs isn't a socialist, but this, this isn't, this isn't a socialist. This isn't a socialist. Right. And Sachs isn't a socialist, but this, this isn't a socialist. Right.

And Sachs isn't a socialist, but this, this isn't a socialist. Right. And Sachs isn't a socialist, but this, this isn't a socialist. And Sachs isn't a socialist, but this, this is important. And it's so easy to just get a happy meal, then to eat a salad, you know, or whatever.

I was in Washington, DC this week. And I met with this organization, which anybody who is interested in this should check out called Third Way. And what Third Way is, is a centrist organization, right? So they largely work with Dems to try to pull them here. And I think the Republican version is called the Niskanen, I guess, center.

But the idea is I sat with these guys, and I was like, just teach me something. And they taught me the most incredible thing. You guys know who Pew is? Pew goes out and does all these surveys. The Pew Research Center. They've been doing it for decades. They're the most respected, I think, in surveys.

Pew does this incredible thing where they go to like a whole bunch of countries in the world. And they ask this basically very simple question. I'm going to ask you guys what you think the answer is. On a zero to 10 scale, you're going to be able to do a lot of things.

You're going to be able to do a lot of things. And I think that's where the problem is. And I think that's where the problem is. And I think that's where the problem is. And I think that's where the problem is. And I think that's where the problem is.

And I think that's where the problem is. And I think that's where the problem is. I think that's where the problem is. I think that's where the problem is. And I think that's where the problem is. What do you think Americans think to the following question? How important is hard work to get ahead in life?

Meaning, right, so it's a proxy for how Americans think about hard work. How important is hard work to get ahead in life? Friedberg, what percentage of Americans do you think that say that hard work is important to get ahead in life? And I'll give you a couple of data points in 80%.

Yeah. But the setup is Indonesia, 28% India, 38% Germany. 50% Go ahead. What do you think the answer is? Well, it should be 100%. But what do I think it is in the US? I'm hoping it's above 60. I agree with you, Sacks, 100% is the right answer. And I believe Americans don't believe it.

I'm gonna put Americans at 35%. Because we've seen so many people do that. And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US.

And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US. And I think it's the same thing with the US.

And I think it's the same thing with the US. Or just people think the system is rigged, or the victim culture where people tell everybody don't bother trying because it's rigged, and you just it's the argument sorry, I'll let you give us the answer in a second. But I think the argument is that like entrepreneurism fuels these moments of extraordinary success, but the perception creates the opposite effect, which is someone can get rich very quickly.

And therefore, there's this luck factor or this unfairness factor that is, you know, that is inherent in the system, right. And so what while it does enable hard work to drive, you know, tremendous outcomes, the perception is that holy crap, in three years, you know, Kylie Jenner went on Instagram and became a billionaire or whatever, right.

And people get really kind of blown away by that. And I think it's discouraging and or one person's success. makes it such that other people can't that it's zero sum when in fact, a company, what's your what's your number for America? 80%? The number is 73%. And we are the third highest ranking country in the service.

Great. So it's amazing. Now, if you if you ask then Americans, who better represents the interests of hardworking people? Among Republicans and Democrats, the overwhelming answer is now Republicans. which is really interesting. Democrats even in exit polling basically voted for Biden, because they just really found Trump distasteful. And a lot of the people that, you know, basically said, you know, he's an ass.

And so they voted him out. But it was not because they believed that Democrats could do the job of actually reinforcing the values of hard work. And this goes back to they don't want handouts. People don't want handouts. People, people, people want a fair shot. They want an even starting line.

They don't want an even finishing line. Yeah, they don't they don't know. No one wants paternalism. And everyone wants opportunity. You know, but you take what you're given when it's available to you. No one says no, you know, I spent a lot of time with farmers in the Midwest in the United States, very diehard conservative generally, right.

And, and farmers benefit greatly from significant government, federal government support programs, primarily a crop insurance program and some commodity price support programs. But But they are very anti government. And there's this tremendous irony there, right? Because they don't want to hand out, they want to kind of be left alone, they want to be able to run their business, they want and I'm generalizing, right, but I'm just speaking broadly to kind of the theme of things I hear when I when I meet with farmers.

But when the crop insurance program shows up, and direct support payments show up, you're like, okay, I'll take the check. You know, and so it's hard to say no. But I think the motivation for everyone is universally the same, which is right, I want to have the opportunity to be successful independently.

Are we creating policies that reinforce this? And are we creating the condition that makes people feel less like a victim, less looking for handouts and let's reduce I have a concern about the stimulus checks. I do think it was a smart thing to do to get us out of this.

But do you guys wonder if this generation which is not going back to work, we have a shortage of Uber drivers, we have a shortage of bartenders, waiters, everybody was a lot of people are just choosing not to go to work because they have their stimmies. America is a place where you come to, because you want to grind, you want to find your own little engine room.

And you want to be in there and you want to put in the hours and the people that it attracts from around the world. Speak to that, you know, the way that you can explain, you know, why Indonesia and India are so far to the left on that same question is because it's an extremely homogeneous population with zero immigration or immigration.

Yeah, I actually think the reason why America so far to the right is it itself selects not by you know, some kind of gender age or gender. Age or religion or color of skin. By motivation. It's motivation. Yeah. And it's like, if you're motivated to crush you come to the United States.

Yeah, we've all we're all what are we like, you know, one generation away except Jason you're two generation American. My Irish side is sixth generation. We're all generation except for Jason, right? We all moved here to the United States as immigrants. As immigrants. With motivated family. Yeah. I think that's why I'm the least successful of the group.

Yeah. Yeah, you're the you're the lazy, complacent American. Whereas we're the hungry immigrants. I'm trying. I'm trying. Hey, listen, you're the Daniel Day-Lewis character in gangs in New York. You know, you hate the immigrants. You sit at the boat, you throw eggs at everyone. It's interesting you bring that up.

Yeah. Do you know where my Irish forebearers came from? And when they immigrated to Ireland, the five points. Oh, the five points. We were in the five points. It's exactly accurate. Yeah, of course I was. It makes total sense. You're not Daniel Day-Lewis. You're the heavier. You're the shorter guy, though.

That was kind of the. Not for long. You know what? Yeah. I dropped 10 on my quarantine 15 and I gave it to Saks. Yeah, you did. You're looking good, J-Cal. You look good in Miami. Miami suits you. In a weird way, I got to give J-Cal as much credit for where he came from as Chamath.

Because I don't know, those parts of Brooklyn are maybe as tough as Sri Lanka. Kids with guns. Kids with guns. Yeah, you know, child warriors. You're going to get jumped always wrong with the pasta. By the way, you know, on immigration, I don't know if you guys saw this.

You know, George W. Bush paints now and he paints immigrants. Yes. So, I bought his book. I bought a signed copy of it. I should have brought it to the podcast today, but it's a great book. I highly recommend it. Trigger warning. No, but he actually has some writings in there that talks about the power of immigration and how immigration is so core to the success of the United States, just to our point.

So, this conversation made me think of the book that I just bought this week. Really cool book, by the way. George W. Bush. Amazingly, he's a great writer. Amazingly, great artist. Really captures the personality of immigrants in his work. I think the thing is like everybody wants to come here to work hard.

Everybody that's here is willing to work hard, right? Whether you're first generation or not. And then the question is, can government create policies that allow us to do that and actually just create a safety net to catch us if we fall? Because that's what we also all want. So, there are parts of Biden's bill that I think made a ton of sense, like, you know, making community culture a priority.

You know, you can't just go and start a new college. You can't just go and start a new college. You can't just go and start a new college. You can't just go and start a new college. You can't just go and start a new college. You can't just go and start a new college.

That's a really disruptive idea because it'll put a ton of pressure on for-profit colleges, right, to like get their act together or not. That's a good idea. The child tax credit so that you can actually have subsidized, you know, child care for your kids. That's a good idea. But then where you kind of go astray is then when you start to figure out, you know, the levels of taxation.

Again, we talked about this last time, but, you know, I just think that that's where you can kind of demotivate people to not then put in the hours. I think this is a good segue also into immigration through our southern border and this incredibly polarizing issue and how the media is polarizing it, how the parties are polarizing it.

Just to ask a question to see if we even understand the data, how many people do you think are illegal immigrants in the United States right now? 20 million. Okay. Freeberg Sachs? That's a guess. Yeah, I guess 18 million. I'll take a slight under to come up, but about that.

That's about the right. That's about the right order of magnitude. The last number I heard was like 12 million, but that was a few years ago. Bingo, it's 12. Now, how many people are apprehended at the southern border a year since 2010 every year? Half a million. Anybody else want to take a guess?

50,000. All right. It's 350,000. So, we literally are tearing the country apart. And I know that because I watched the movie Sicario and I'm estimating based on the scene where they round everyone up at the border and took them away. So, that's my guess. Terrifying film and awesome. Like, you will take incredible film.

Just bring a Xanax because you might have a panic attack. My favorite modern director, Denis Villeneuve, he's unbelievable, but we digress. Yes. That scene when they're racing the cars into the border crossing border checkpoint. What it is so intense. Oh my God. It's so intense. So intense. So, if you guys are into sci-fi, that guy directed The Arrival, which is one of my favorite films.

Yeah, that's a fabulous movie too. Another great movie. Beautiful film. So, literally, the country's being torn apart. A country of 330 million over 3 million would be 1%, 0.1% coming into the border. And we just said, immigration is just all these amazing people coming here to who want to strive and who want great things.

Why are we tearing the country up over this issue? This is a tough topic. Well, I think, Jason, I think your point of view on immigration really depends on where you're sitting in the economy. So, I think for all of us who are in Silicon Valley, we know that something like half of startups have an immigrant co-founder.

Totally. So, we've seen like PayPal, I think there were like three or four immigrants on the founding team. Peter was born in Germany. Elon was born in South Africa. Max was born in Russia. I was born in South Africa. And then you go down the list. Same thing with Google.

Sergey Brin came from Russia. He's from China. He's from China. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list.

And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list.

And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And then you go down the list. And here's where their definition of a monopoly, which is brittle, it doesn't account for 20, you know, 2021 tech companies does come into play, because now you can see that they're that they're winding up their pricing power if they can raise prices.

Number one, the second thing that I'll say is the Apple Facebook thing is a very important canary in the coal mine as well. Because it's not as if the five of them can actually work together. There's infighting, right? And so it's Game of Thrones. Well, with this new update to iOS, you know, what those dialogues will essentially do, in my opinion, if I had to guess is limit inventory, right?

So Facebook and Google will have fewer ads that they can actually run in a targeted way. And so the only way that they can keep them growing revenue with fewer impressions is by raising prices even more. And then the last thing I'll say is, you know, this complicated dynamic between Apple, Facebook and Google is that Google still pays Apple almost $7.

$80 billion for search, whereas Facebook pays them nothing. So if you put all these things in a box, I think you're going to see the beginning of the end, this is where now, you can see the end game come into focus, which is wedding. Well, you don't need necessarily new laws and section 230.

Although we'll have that you now see Fang M moving into the line of sight of the traditional antitrust framework, because now they can use very traditional, you know, anti competitive pricing law to go after these guys. I am going to I am going to strongly. Disagree with Chamath. Okay, I've not disagreed with Chamath this strongly since we've done the podcast.

The reason I strongly disagree is because this is not inventory that is being sold at a fixed price where the price is set by the company. Facebook and Google in particular, run an auction model, they are a marketplace business, they have advertisers who show up, and they bid on ads, which is the inventory that they're able to get based on the data that they're able to match to that particular product.

And then they can then sell it to the market. And then they can then sell it to the market. And then they can then sell it to the market. And then they can then sell it to the market. And then they can then sell it to the market. And then they can then sell it to the market.

E31: Post-vaccination virtue signaling, pandemic lessons, immigration, Caitlyn Jenner for CA & more

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