E49: Coinbase CEO reflects on controversial blog, state of the markets, 1000 unicorns & more

00:00:00.000 | Guys, my dog.

00:00:01.000 | Is in jail?

00:00:02.000 | Joker's in jail?

00:00:03.000 | Joker got in jail again.

00:00:04.500 | Okay, so he's been jailed in Italy.

00:00:06.760 | He was jailed in Palo Alto.

00:00:08.320 | When will that dog learn?

00:00:09.920 | I've spent quality time with that dog.

00:00:10.920 | Wait, why did he get jailed?

00:00:11.920 | He's out of control.

00:00:12.920 | Why did he get jailed?

00:00:13.920 | He got jailed because-

00:00:14.920 | He's a runner.

00:00:15.920 | He went to...

00:00:16.920 | He's a runner.

00:00:17.920 | He's a runner.

00:00:18.920 | He's a track star.

00:00:19.920 | We sent him to like the dog walker where he goes and runs around and they come pick him

00:00:24.760 | up but then the guy opened the van door.

00:00:27.120 | He dug off?

00:00:28.120 | He dug off.

00:00:29.120 | Anyways, he gets found.

00:00:31.620 | They're trying to call me because I guess my number is on the thing which I hadn't realized.

00:00:37.280 | You don't pick up?

00:00:38.280 | Can't reach me.

00:00:39.280 | Well, I'm in DC in New York and they put them in the kennel and we get this picture and

00:00:44.500 | Nick you can post the picture but you know because I sent it to you.

00:00:47.680 | Poor Joker in dog jail.

00:00:48.680 | He's a great dog.

00:00:49.680 | But he is-

00:00:50.680 | Wait, is he back?

00:00:51.680 | Did you get him back?

00:00:52.680 | Now he's back.

00:00:53.680 | We got him back but he's back.

00:00:54.680 | He's out of jail again.

00:00:55.680 | Honestly, he's only going to learn if he goes to jail.

00:00:56.680 | You should get a little tag for him.

00:00:58.240 | A little remote tracking tag.

00:01:00.020 | That's not- I mean, it's great but it doesn't stop him from escaping.

00:01:03.080 | That dog.

00:01:04.080 | There's something wrong with that dog.

00:01:05.080 | Remember when he came out when Zax came over?

00:01:06.080 | Yeah.

00:01:07.080 | And the dog was like growling at him and Zax was like, "I'm not punched in the corner."

00:01:12.080 | It's the only dog that doesn't like me.

00:01:15.180 | He's so cute.

00:01:16.180 | Every other dog.

00:01:17.180 | Every other dog loves me.

00:01:18.180 | What country was that dog trained in?

00:01:19.180 | No, he's not been trained.

00:01:20.180 | He's not been trained.

00:01:21.520 | We have to train him.

00:01:22.520 | I get it.

00:01:23.520 | He hasn't been trained but he's so cute.

00:01:25.180 | Did you train that dog to hate white people?

00:01:27.240 | No.

00:01:28.240 | That dog is a little racist.

00:01:29.240 | I'll say it.

00:01:30.240 | All right, everybody.

00:01:31.240 | Welcome to another episode of All In, the podcast that you've been listening to for

00:01:56.040 | 48 episodes.

00:01:57.040 | Here we are.

00:01:58.040 | We're on the precipice of greatness, 49 episodes in.

00:02:02.220 | With us again today, the queen of quinoa, your science ambassador, David Friedberg.

00:02:08.600 | Also on the pod, the Rain Man himself.

00:02:12.380 | Definitely his dad lets him drive in the driveway, David Sachs.

00:02:16.040 | And batting cleanup, the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya.

00:02:22.000 | What did we all think of last week's pod with Balaji?

00:02:25.040 | I felt it got cut off too soon.

00:02:28.040 | soon. I was getting into a groove with biology and I'm trying to figure out how to pick that

00:02:31.820 | up with him. Cause I thought they were getting into some pretty interesting discussion towards

00:02:35.660 | the end. And we obviously ran out of time to Martha had to hop off. So, uh, it would,

00:02:40.080 | it would have been great to keep that conversation going. Apology. I really do think there's

00:02:43.660 | a big question Mark on like, how does the decentralized centralized web or decentralized

00:02:48.860 | social networks in particular work with respect to kind of that, you know, recommendation

00:02:53.420 | application layer, which is effectively what search solved on the internet. Um, and so

00:02:57.940 | I'm, I'm, I'm curious to keep the conversation going and seeing, you know, what this means.

00:03:01.820 | I made the decision to end the pod because Chamath had to go, Saks had to go. There was

00:03:06.460 | a hard stop. And I was like, I don't want to keep this going without the other besties.

00:03:11.600 | And people were very upset. They thought I, um, shut it down abruptly, but we had a certain

00:03:15.920 | amount of time and we can always have them back. So everybody relax. But I did look at

00:03:19.120 | the stats. We each came in with our, you know, whatever percent prorotic, whatever percentage

00:03:23.400 | data, and he had double. So he had 40% and we all had basically, which is right for a

00:03:26.760 | guest. I think I felt right. Didn't it feel right. I think it's important to hear what,

00:03:30.840 | when folks come on, what they have to say. Um, he's a really smart guy and you know,

00:03:37.660 | you can kind of just let him go and riff for a while. Um, and then just react to him. So

00:03:42.460 | I think it's, it's lovely to hear such a deep thinker think out loud, quite honestly. Yeah.

00:03:48.780 | And even if you don't agree with him, I don't agree with him on a lot of his points about,

00:03:52.420 | you know, decentralized everything.

00:03:53.380 | I think centralized works for, you know, many things better. I'm curious, Saks, you know,

00:03:58.800 | looking back on it, were there moments that you felt maybe you disagreed with him more

00:04:02.880 | or agree with him more and wanted to lean into a conversation? Obviously it's very hard

00:04:06.000 | to have five people on a pod and only get a certain amount of airtime, et cetera.

00:04:10.140 | Well, look, I think, um, I think biology is a great guest to have on once in a while.

00:04:15.260 | I mean, it does kind of turn the pod a little bit more into a Ted talk. Uh, definitely have

00:04:20.680 | that vibe, but the, the fans.

00:04:23.360 | Yeah.

00:04:24.360 | Liked it. And I mean, biology should have his own show. I mean, he can go for a while.

00:04:27.640 | I mean, he's got a lot to say for hours. Yes. And he has, he has, and, and I think he should

00:04:32.540 | do his own show because there's definitely a huge fan base for it. And, uh, and if people

00:04:36.820 | want more biology, I interviewed him for about an hour on purple pills, which is kind of

00:04:41.700 | the, the, I don't know if you want to call solo pod solo show that I do where I occasionally

00:04:46.560 | interview people on call and download call in and, uh, go check out purple pills. Uh,

00:04:52.300 | so yeah. You know, I think it's, it's a great, it's a great podcast. I think it's, it's a great

00:04:53.340 | podcast.

00:04:54.340 | Yeah.

00:04:55.340 | I think it's, it's a great podcast. I think it's a great podcast. I think it's a great

00:04:56.340 | podcast. And you know, I gave a biology, a little pep talk coming in saying, Hey, listen,

00:04:57.920 | it's a round table discussion and I've interviewed you before, and you can kind of tip into the

00:05:02.160 | monologuing and explaining very big picture things. So just try to pass the ball a little

00:05:06.640 | bit here. Um, and I, and I think he, he did adjust his game a little bit, but it's, you

00:05:11.160 | know, it's hard to have somebody like that on. I think you pointed it out. Sacks that

00:05:14.740 | it's more like a Ted talk for him.

00:05:16.260 | We're having a conversation and he's used to being interviewed. And I think that is a,

00:05:20.320 | that's a transition, but you know, um, it was fine.

00:05:23.320 | Let's move on.

00:05:24.320 | Yeah. Okay. So I think we'll start off with something we talked about on episode nine,

00:05:29.820 | which was Coinbase, the CEO, Brian Armstrong wrote a very controversial blog, very, very

00:05:35.300 | controversial blog post, uh, exactly a year ago, Coinbase is a mission focused company

00:05:40.440 | at the time he was dealing with a never ending debate inside his own company about black

00:05:46.940 | lives matter about social justice and any number of issues.

00:05:50.000 | And he said, listen, the company is mission focused. Our mission

00:05:53.300 | is to, you know, make people more financially independent, literate, et cetera. And we're

00:05:58.760 | going to ban any discussions on our electronic communications. You can do things on your

00:06:03.140 | own time. And it was quite controversial at the time. We had a good discussion. I re-listened

00:06:07.160 | to our discussion. I re-listened to our discussion on that pod and we all universally felt like

00:06:12.240 | it was the right move. Well, he went ahead and, uh, picked up the hornet's nest. He did

00:06:17.680 | not have to talk about this ever again. Everybody had forgotten about it and he grabbed the

00:06:22.220 | hornet's nest.

00:06:23.280 | He ran into the end zone and spiked it.

00:06:25.020 | Jason, can you, well, before you do that, can you say how many people left as a result

00:06:29.900 | of his blog post and all, do you know those stats? Cause I think those were

00:06:32.900 | I don't have those stats handy, but it was a dozen or two.

00:06:35.460 | It was 5% ended up leaving. There was a big article about it. You gotta, this was, I think,

00:06:40.560 | I think it was worth him doing a followup post. This was the one year anniversary of

00:06:44.660 | his blog post and he was kind of giving us a status update. And what he basically said

00:06:48.800 | is that the policy had worked. Um, so you got to, so first of all, should we just review

00:06:53.260 | what the policy was?

00:06:54.260 | Yeah.

00:06:55.260 | The policy was that they were going to declare the workplace to be politically neutral, that

00:07:00.080 | people would leave their politics to the door. They would not have sort of extraneous political

00:07:06.160 | conversations at work. That doesn't mean you couldn't support whatever causes you wanted

00:07:11.180 | on your own time or tweet whatever you want on your own time. But while you're at work,

00:07:15.660 | they would declare it to be sort of a political DMZ, like a demilitarized zone. Basically

00:07:20.600 | all he was doing was reasserting the old.

00:07:23.240 | Center the old etiquette of, Hey, when you go to work, you you're not engaged in your

00:07:28.480 | point to leave it. Yeah. You're paid to work. You're not there to engage in political activism.

00:07:34.140 | So that was the policy. And of course, uh, the, the, the, the woke mob became completely

00:07:38.740 | hysterical about it, uh, as it turns. And so then what happened is that Brian offered

00:07:44.260 | everyone a very generous severance policy. If they didn't want to stick around policy.

00:07:48.480 | Yes. Extremely generous. So they made it really absurdly generous, right? They made it really

00:07:53.220 | easy for people to check out if they want to check out. Well, only 5% took the policy

00:07:57.040 | people. Yes. And then on the heels of that, there was a gigantic New York times hit piece

00:08:01.520 | against the company, the usual disinformation and slanders, um, against the company. And

00:08:07.700 | then now we have this follow-up piece.

00:08:09.220 | And I think what Brian basically reported is that today Coinbase is a more aligned company

00:08:14.840 | because everyone who's there wants to be there for the mission. That's what they focus on

00:08:18.280 | when they go to work. He talked about how they had hired top talent away from other

00:08:22.200 | companies.

00:08:23.200 | And basically he put out the bat signal and people came running because you know, we have,

00:08:28.060 | they wanted neutrality. They did not want it. People are voting with their feet to come

00:08:32.260 | work. They're fed up with the politics and distraction. And, and I think the employees

00:08:36.800 | were secretly relieved that he declared this policy. Basically he took the heat on himself

00:08:42.440 | for the larger benefit of all the employees who just want it to be there and work and

00:08:46.320 | not have to wonder whether they're doing something right or wrong because they're on the wrong

00:08:50.140 | side of a political issue.

00:08:51.180 | Free.

00:08:52.180 | Berg. Nailed it.

00:08:53.180 | You said in our episode nine, which you can go back to free, but you may not remember

00:08:56.260 | your comments, but you said, what about the employees who just want to come to work and

00:09:00.740 | don't want to engage in political space? Now you're infringing on them to force them to

00:09:04.420 | be participate in these discussions and they don't have a choice because they need to feed

00:09:07.780 | their families need to go to work. And so free, we're going to take a little victory

00:09:10.680 | lap there. He says in this tweet storm, I'll just read the third part of it. One of the

00:09:14.860 | biggest concerns around our stance was that it would impact our diversity numbers. Since

00:09:18.820 | my post we've grown our head count about 110% doubled it. While our diversity numbers have

00:09:23.160 | remained the same or even improved in some metrics. So all of the hand wringing and pearl

00:09:28.840 | clutching that this would have a negative effect on the company has turned out to be

00:09:33.080 | wrong. Go ahead, Chamath and then free.

00:09:35.280 | I mean, if you want, it's like, I think it's important to set the context for what this

00:09:39.260 | is. There is a, um, a productivity war going on inside of, um, institutions around the

00:09:46.920 | world. And what's happening is that, um, people's personal beliefs are bumping up against what

00:09:53.140 | the government is doing. And, um, goals, operational goals of a company are, or a university or

00:09:59.460 | all these other places. And so this is probably the first big example. This is a, what is

00:10:04.360 | a 50, $60 billion public company, um, $50 billion public company that basically said

00:10:10.280 | enough's enough.

00:10:12.020 | This is our mission. Everybody else, um, basically just needs to shut the fuck up. And I think

00:10:16.980 | that that's very important. Now, if they then go off and actually crush their goals, that's

00:10:21.960 | the one missing piece.

00:10:23.120 | And all of this, because when that happens, then you can write a through line through

00:10:27.700 | all of this and say, okay, this is in part what allowed them to do it. So I think that

00:10:32.160 | the, um, the, um, the, the folks that, you know, uh, were really up in arms still have,

00:10:39.360 | uh, one small straw in the fight, which is that if these guys don't achieve their goals,

00:10:46.080 | they'll point to this as one of the reasons why, but if Brian

00:10:49.120 | diversity is strength, you know, like, yeah, you're suppressing free speech.

00:10:53.100 | You know that argument. But I think if Brian then goes and delivers a couple of knockout

00:10:58.640 | quarters and a couple of knockout years, then, um, you know what he will be able to say definitively,

00:11:04.200 | which no one can refute is we leave our politics at the door. We define our okay. R's and then

00:11:08.960 | we go and we build things that people need, um, as a company. And then you go off and

00:11:14.040 | you can do whatever you want. And I think that that's very powerful for, uh, many companies

00:11:18.460 | and institutions.

00:11:19.460 | Friedberg. You heard my recap of what you said last time. I'm not sure if you remembered

00:11:23.080 | this and what are your thoughts today?

00:11:24.580 | I think it's, um, it's worth just noting less about the particularities of what was said

00:11:31.000 | in the particular issue at hand here. And I, I would look more to kind of Brian's, um,

00:11:37.780 | leadership style as an excellent example of defining and creating strong culture, culture

00:11:42.860 | in an, uh, organization can give that organization what it needs to succeed. It puts everyone

00:11:49.020 | aligned in a specific way on how we make decisions, how we operate. It doesn't matter what the

00:11:53.060 | his particular beliefs and opinions were what to exclude, what to include in the dialogue and the

00:11:57.300 | discourse and the model for discourse within the organization. I think what matters that he put

00:12:01.300 | a line in the sand and he said, this is what we're going to do. This is what's in.

00:12:05.700 | And this is what's out. And organizations that do that and do that effectively generally win,

00:12:10.820 | they win more, they do better. The teams are aligned, the teams are more unified.

00:12:15.140 | And I think that definition may sometimes be controversial. And you'll notice that as

00:12:18.500 | companies get bigger, go public, they're larger, they bring in professional managers and the

00:12:22.900 | founder CEO steps out, they generally don't do that, right? They generally try to not do that

00:12:28.900 | definitional work, because they're trying to minimize loss, and not kind of take the bet on

00:12:33.460 | maximizing long term gain and doing the things that they think culturally define or will enable

00:12:38.100 | success long term. So I think it's a great example of leadership generally on how you kind of can,

00:12:43.300 | can be very vocal about defining a strong culture.

00:12:46.420 | Elon calls it I think Elon calls it corpo speak.

00:12:48.820 | What happens? Like,

00:12:51.540 | when you're meeting most companies,

00:12:52.740 | when they get bigger, they gravitate towards corpo speak. And then what happens is

00:12:56.820 | some cohort of employees who are really good, just feel trapped in this kind of morass of mediocrity.

00:13:03.460 | And by the way, look at Elon's, you know, call it attrition rate, right? By the typical large

00:13:09.300 | scale public company corporate metric of like, how many people are leaving per year, you'd say,

00:13:13.140 | oh, my gosh, something's up with that organization. But it really speaks to a strong culture. There's

00:13:17.540 | a company that's famous for this called Bridgewater Associates, you know, run by Ray Dalio $100 billion

00:13:22.180 | hedge fund.

00:13:22.580 | One of the best performing investment vehicles of all time. And they have incredible culture.

00:13:26.740 | I've talked about Ray Dalio's book principles before and some of the work he's done on this,

00:13:30.500 | where he is so adamant about getting culture right within the organization, how you operate,

00:13:34.980 | that they almost have, I think, a 30% attrition rate after the first year of people that come in,

00:13:39.620 | because they not only try and screen for these elements of what they consider to be the right

00:13:43.140 | cultural fit for their organization upfront, but then they also screen people the heck out of the

00:13:47.140 | door if they're not a good fit. And I think Elon has a similar sort of model. And you know, I think

00:13:51.860 | Brian, the way he's been doing it for a long time, he's been doing it for a long time. He's been doing it for a long time.

00:13:52.420 | The way he speaks about the organization is a similar model. And it's about defining the lines.

00:13:56.820 | It's about being very crystal clear about what's in and what's not.

00:13:59.780 | Whatever if you as a CEO and a founder, whatever you believe, you need to believe in it strongly.

00:14:05.540 | And you communicate it clearly, and then communicate it and then let people vote.

00:14:09.540 | They vote with their feet, they don't get to vote whether to change it. They just get to vote

00:14:13.460 | whether they get to stay or whether they go. And I think that that's a really smart.

00:14:17.300 | I think that's well said.

00:14:18.420 | Yeah, I think there's one other issue here. Jake, Jake, how this goes back to your point about why

00:14:22.260 | Brian have to bring this back up? Was it unnecessary? Did he spike the hornet's nest in

00:14:26.100 | the end zone? Here's why I think it was necessary. If you go to point seven and eight of his tweet

00:14:31.060 | storm, he says, it was the most positive reaction I've gotten from any change I've made in the

00:14:35.940 | history of the company, which is saying something, how could something be so negative in the press,

00:14:40.420 | but turned out to be incredibly, incredibly positive with every stakeholder 95% of

00:14:44.260 | employees privately, all the investors were telling him it was a great thing.

00:14:48.500 | And then what he says is the only sense I can make of it is there's a huge mismatch right now.

00:14:52.100 | Between people stated and revealed preferences, and we're operating in an environment of virtue

00:14:56.900 | signaling and fear of speaking up. So to me, this is the point of this tweet storm and bringing up

00:15:02.980 | now is without people like Brian standing up and saying what the truth is that look,

00:15:10.020 | everybody wants this, they're just afraid to articulate the principle.

00:15:13.940 | We keep, we keep encouraging this climate of fear. And you know, the alternative to Coinbase, one of

00:15:21.940 | the other companies we've talked about is Apple. I mean, you can basically choose to be Coinbase or

00:15:26.260 | Apple. What has Apple done? They booted out Antonio Garcia Martinez because of a passage in his book

00:15:32.180 | that they knew about. And ever since then, the company's been roiled by boycotts and petition

00:15:36.980 | writing from the employees about some new cause every couple of weeks.

00:15:40.100 | And eventually that'll show up in the operating results of the business.

00:15:43.140 | It's just a matter of time.

00:15:44.420 | Right. And so, so why, why does that go on? I mean, I'm sure most employees at Apple don't want to be

00:15:49.780 | constantly royal.

00:15:51.780 | Right.

00:15:52.020 | By these like petition campaigns. But they have to put up with it because everyone's so afraid

00:15:57.700 | to speak up. And that's why it's important that what Brian did, we have to basically

00:16:01.540 | recognize that this woke mob who's cowed everyone to silence is maybe 5% of these companies. And if

00:16:08.580 | everybody just acts like Brian, the problem will be over.

00:16:11.380 | Well, we know, we know what the trail of breadcrumbs is right now.

00:16:14.740 | And I think we should probably, you know, shine a light on it, which is that that 5% is exactly

00:16:21.620 | the same as Donald Trump, they just exist on the left, you know, and there's, there's more and more

00:16:26.900 | research that shows that just as much as we thought they were right, authoritarians, they're

00:16:33.540 | also left authoritarians. And this is what we're seeing that, that the craziness that you know,

00:16:38.820 | everybody decries on the right, actually also exists on the left.

00:16:42.100 | And they just put a button on that before we pivot to the next story.

00:16:45.540 | Armstrong was very clear that the mission is about global wealth inequality. So staying

00:16:51.460 | focused on that, in his mind is the high order a bit and will result in the most great change.

00:16:57.460 | So paradoxically, or ironically, you know, all these woke people attacking Coinbase,

00:17:02.260 | Coinbase might do more for wealth inequality, and justice in the world,

00:17:07.060 | if they stay focused, then if they try to tackle everything, and you know, this is a road to

00:17:12.100 | nowhere for Apple, I think, Sax, you pointed this out about how if you were running Apple,

00:17:16.260 | you would fire anybody who does a petition, because I'll tell you where Apple is about to

00:17:21.300 | to basically land by enabling all of this woke mob inside their own company by coddling them,

00:17:28.420 | addressing them, and not keeping them focused, they will eventually get to the fact that China

00:17:35.140 | is, you know, has 3 million Uyghurs in a concentration camp, and those Uyghurs

00:17:40.340 | are proven to be providing through slave labor, equipment and components

00:17:47.220 | to companies that eventually make their way to Apple products. Ergo,

00:17:51.140 | Apple supports slavery. And that's what the employees will eventually get to. And that will

00:17:56.180 | cause chaos. But there's something even closer, more closer to home that that's probably true,

00:18:00.820 | or could be true. I don't know. It is true. But, you know, the fact that Apple had the most

00:18:06.980 | important security leak in their entire software career, just a few months ago,

00:18:12.900 | is also quite important. Like you had a zero, why is it important? You had a zero, so the iOS 4.0

00:18:20.980 | 14.8 exists because of why? Because a researcher or a set of researchers in Toronto discovered that

00:18:27.860 | there was a zero click exploit in iOS that allowed you to basically turn on the microphone, turn on

00:18:34.020 | the camera, you know, grab anything you needed from iPhones, it was the most secure device

00:18:39.140 | until two months ago, when it turned out it was actually the most insecure device.

00:18:43.460 | So you're saying… I tend to think those kinds of

00:18:46.100 | technical mistakes happen when people take their eye off the ball. And I think people take their eye

00:18:50.820 | off the ball, because they're demoralized with dealing with distractions. Sax?

00:18:57.060 | Yeah, I mean, I think it's the whether it's the Uyghurs or the security issue, it's a good example

00:19:03.940 | of the employees at Apple, see the spec in somebody else's eye, but not the log in their own.

00:19:09.780 | I mean, that's, that's the principle. And, and they would be much better off focusing on dealing

00:19:15.780 | with their own internal issues. But but let's go, can we go back to that article that Chamath

00:19:20.660 | referenced about?

00:19:21.220 | Yeah, well, let me get free, you got anything else on this issue that you want to before we

00:19:25.460 | segue over?

00:19:26.260 | No.

00:19:26.980 | I thought this is a really great article. Do you want to explain it, Jayco?

00:19:29.540 | Yeah, I'll just give you a quick overview. And then you can dive right in since you put

00:19:32.340 | it on the docket. Psychiatrist and author Sally Sattel, hopefully I'm pronouncing that correct,

00:19:36.340 | wrote an article for the Atlantic entitled The Expert Somehow Overlooked Authoritarians on the

00:19:40.340 | Left. The main point here is that Trump's presidency sparked a ton of research and coverage

00:19:45.460 | of authoritarianism on the right, but mostly ignored the left with some researchers even

00:19:49.300 | suggesting that the left wing…

00:19:51.060 | that left wing authoritarianism isn't real. In an email to Sattel, a social psychologist from

00:19:56.500 | Rutgers said the following. For 70 years, the law, the lore in the social sciences has been

00:20:02.180 | that authoritarianism has been found exclusively on the political right. Why is that? One reason

00:20:07.380 | left wing authoritarian authoritarianism barely showed up in social psychology research is that

00:20:12.180 | most academic experts in the field are based at institutions where prevailing attitudes are far

00:20:17.060 | to the left of society as a whole. Sachs?

00:20:19.540 | Well, actually,

00:20:20.340 | Chamath put this on the docket. So, Chamath, do you want to introduce what you liked about it?

00:20:24.980 | The reason I saw this and I thought it was so interesting was basically we had

00:20:28.980 | an entire body of research trying to understand why some folks are attracted to these authoritarian

00:20:38.020 | figures like Trump. And overwhelmingly, all the research at the time said they only exist on the

00:20:44.180 | right. And, you know, you… and all of this started after Hitler. And so, there was all this

00:20:50.180 | research around the, you know, social and attitudinal reactions to Hitler and how he came

00:20:55.700 | to power and then all of the iterations of folks like him on the right afterwards. And so, people

00:21:01.380 | put Trump in that category and then they said it can only exist there. But as it turns out,

00:21:06.500 | when this person did this research and she surveyed 7,000 people and all of this data was

00:21:10.980 | very well summarized in this Atlantic article, which I'm sure we can post in the show notes that

00:21:15.940 | folks should read, lo and behold, it actually exists on both sides.

00:21:20.020 | So, as it turns out, the extreme right and the extreme left are exactly the same.

00:21:25.540 | They're moral absolutists. They believe in themselves and themselves only. And they believe

00:21:31.220 | anybody else that outside of where they are is fundamentally in the wrong. And if you actually

00:21:37.300 | look at that and see how Trump behaved in his presidency and now how you see how the left

00:21:44.500 | names and shames, you actually find a lot of commonality. So, the reason I found that article

00:21:49.860 | interesting is that it actually says again what we've been saying, which is

00:21:52.980 | coming down the middle and finding, you know, reasonable compromise is the only way forward

00:21:58.740 | because the minute you start moving in either direction, you are the same. And that person is

00:22:04.260 | an ugly person that we don't want around. Let me give the money quote and then get

00:22:08.100 | your feedback, Friedberg. The similarities in the study included, quote, "similarities between

00:22:12.900 | authoritarianism on both sides, left and right, preference for social uniformity, check, prejudice

00:22:18.100 | toward different groups, different

00:22:19.700 | others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity,

00:22:25.460 | aggression and punitiveness toward perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and,"

00:22:32.260 | as Chamath pointed out, "moral absolutism." Friedberg?

00:22:36.020 | I think authoritarian figures resolve when

00:22:39.860 | a population feels insecure. So, I mean, we talked about this last pod, but I do think that

00:22:49.540 | you know, the notion of freedom emerges after the comfort of security has been provided. And I think

00:22:56.820 | the absence of security drives people away from the drive towards freedom. Like, when you have a

00:23:03.780 | feeling of insecurity with respect to kind of your ability to get a job, I mean, remember,

00:23:08.900 | Hitler rose to power when unemployment, you know, post-Weimar Republic was skyrocketing.

00:23:16.580 | People, you know, couldn't get jobs, they couldn't afford food.

00:23:19.380 | And the authoritarian figure was going to provide the security needed, I think,

00:23:24.100 | to resolve the concerns that the population had. And then, you know, people latch on to that. So,

00:23:29.620 | you know, there are moments in time when I think authoritarianism can emerge

00:23:33.700 | with different forms of resolution. It doesn't necessarily mean that the authoritarian actor

00:23:37.940 | needs to take a left or a right point of view. They're just going to give you a path to security

00:23:42.820 | when you're feeling insecure. If you don't feel insecure, you're going to say, "That's ridiculous."

00:23:46.260 | So, countries that are wealthy, countries that are

00:23:48.500 | privileged with the opportunities that maybe the United States has are less likely and less

00:23:53.460 | inclined to fall in, you know, in favor of authoritarian leaders. And then as we slip

00:24:00.740 | backwards economically, unemployment-wise, etc., we're more likely to be in favor of

00:24:06.900 | those sorts of actors. And so, I think that, you know, we'll see them emerge.

00:24:09.940 | But don't you think it's crazy that we actually didn't think it could exist in one end of the

00:24:14.740 | political spectrum and now it does? You have a point in that or no?

00:24:17.460 | I never really understood the point of that.

00:24:18.340 | I never understood the whole like, "Hitler is purely a right-wing guy." Like, he was a,

00:24:23.300 | you know, a socialist and he was trying to enable like, you know, socialized services and socialized

00:24:27.940 | systems for people, you know, in a lot of political circles that would be argued as being

00:24:32.100 | a very kind of left point of view. And so, I don't know if it... Yeah, I...

00:24:36.180 | Let's go beyond Hitler. You're right, the Nazi party was a national socialist party. That's

00:24:42.340 | what the name of the party was. But there's also Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao. I mean, if you're paying

00:24:48.180 | attention to history, you know that there's been authoritarianism on the left, not just the right.

00:24:54.020 | But, you know, in the universities and in the media, they only want to focus on the

00:24:59.540 | right-wing version of it. And I think what this study does is it upends 70 years of dogma that,

00:25:05.140 | you know, authoritarianism is only to be found on the political right. I mean, it obviously can be

00:25:12.020 | found on the political left as well. And you can see that in cancel culture, in speech restrictions,

00:25:18.580 | in these very aggressive Covid mandates that are now happening. You can see it in the sort of the

00:25:27.860 | ghoulishness. Anytime somebody on the right, you know, dies from Covid, I mean, there's always some

00:25:35.140 | chortling on the part of the left about this. The harsh penalties for noncompliance. I mean, right now...

00:25:41.220 | A lot of rigidity is the one that stands out for me, like, there is just on the left, they make a decision. Amazon is

00:25:47.860 | bad, and they cannot move off of that. Right, David? Like, even if...

00:25:51.940 | What about willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior? And what about aggression

00:25:55.460 | and punitiveness towards perceived enemies? Cancel culture. That would be cancel culture.

00:25:58.980 | That to me is...

00:25:59.700 | It begs a good question, which is, what socialist

00:26:04.420 | regimes have come to power without an authoritarian figure? Has there... I'm just trying to...

00:26:12.340 | None. They're all revolutionaries. And actually, the study has a really good point,

00:26:17.700 | about this, which is they say that the researchers describe what they call anti-hierarchical aggression.

00:26:23.700 | So, one of the traits of authoritarianism is, they call it an outsized concern for hierarchy.

00:26:29.220 | But, you know, leftists think that they don't believe in hierarchy, but actually they do.

00:26:33.380 | They believe in an anti-hierarchical hierarchy, which is they want to turn upside down the social hierarchy,

00:26:39.540 | and they're willing to justify... The ends justify the means. In other words, if you can turn the hierarchy upside down, they'll let you do anything.

00:26:47.540 | And it's actually pretty scary. That's where the revolution comes from.

00:26:51.380 | Here's a practical thing, J. Cal, about what you said, which illustrates this point even further.

00:26:56.980 | Right now, we have a three and a half trillion dollar bill meandering through Congress. And,

00:27:04.100 | you know, it's very much a question mark about whether it gets passed or not.

00:27:06.980 | And one of the elements that's in there is free community college. Now, when it passes, if it passes,

00:27:17.380 | there's a lot of support that that's something that the government should do. It's a good thing.

00:27:22.100 | But if you're a private company like Amazon, who just announced that they will give you free college,

00:27:26.820 | they're still a bad company. And this is the example of this intellectual rigidity that

00:27:33.220 | doesn't actually see the forest from the trees. What do you really want? Do you want the process

00:27:37.380 | where you control and you meter out progress? Or do you actually want the outcome where

00:27:42.820 | somebody can get a job where they make fifteen or twenty dollars an hour and also now get

00:27:47.220 | college paid for? Yes, I personally want the latter.

00:27:50.420 | Yeah, we much better if the government didn't have to provide.

00:27:52.740 | I'd love I'd love it if the government could pay for it. But I'm really glad that Amazon is in a

00:27:56.820 | position to pay for it as well. But if you start to become absolutist and say, well, no, it just

00:28:01.860 | needs to be top down and metered out this way. And any private organization that wants to try to do

00:28:06.660 | it is still bad. I think that's where that rigidity holds us all back. It's unnecessary.

00:28:11.620 | Here's where I see the rigidity, Chamath is they keep saying gig workers are bad. Nobody should be

00:28:17.060 | allowed to be a gig worker. And David had a great interview with the ride sharing guy on call in

00:28:21.220 | in which they talked about the fact and this is somebody who is super pro advocate of drivers said,

00:28:26.900 | listen, 80% of people do not want to do shift work. They do not want the government dictating

00:28:33.300 | how they work. And I talked anecdotally with an Uber driver says making like 70 bucks an hour

00:28:39.300 | during peak hours. They were fighting to get minimum wage for drivers. Now drivers are making

00:28:46.900 | 40 $50 an hour. Uber rides have gone and Lyft rides. It's a massive competition free market

00:28:52.980 | works. Well, and they can't take the win. They still are so rigid on the left that they're

00:28:58.500 | demanding whatever that woman's name is, who is you know, in the pocket of the arena Gonzalez,

00:29:03.380 | Lorraine Gonzalez in the pocket of the unions. How cynical are they? The victory is upon them.

00:29:10.900 | People are getting paid five times more, three times more wage, and they still want to screw them

00:29:15.780 | the takeaway for a lot of people. The takeaway for a lot of people is that they're not going to do it.

00:29:16.740 | A lot of people should be that your spidey senses should go up. When folks present solutions as a

00:29:23.060 | choice of one source only. Ah, you know, when things when things can only happen in one way,

00:29:31.700 | and it's the way that I feel the most comfortable. Yeah, your spidey sensor should go up and you

00:29:36.020 | should think to yourself really is that is that really the only way like can't we have choice?

00:29:41.220 | Can't we have different ways of solving this? Can't we maybe we can run an experiment and see

00:29:44.980 | what happens? Go ahead, sex. Well,

00:29:46.580 | I think your spidey sense should also go up whenever somebody is basically saying that

00:29:51.780 | speech needs to be censored for some higher purpose. You know, that that that whatever

00:29:57.220 | people are trying to abridge and take away our rights and our sort of long held values,

00:30:04.820 | our freedoms, you have to start getting concerned. And there's always a reason why they want to do it.

00:30:10.500 | In the study, the quote that the left wing authoritarians agreed with was getting rid of

00:30:15.860 | inequality,

00:30:16.420 | equality is more important than protecting the so called right to free speech. So there's always

00:30:20.500 | some higher reason the means always justify the the ends always justify the means. But but that's

00:30:26.740 | that's what you have to look out for is when they're taking away your right to speech to

00:30:29.780 | another fun proof point. Fun because it's Dave Chappelle that you can listen to or watch to

00:30:35.860 | see a flavor of this left wing authoritarianism is called redemption song,

00:30:40.660 | which is a little clip he put out recently. And the the entire clip is more about him

00:30:46.260 | getting his body of work back from Comedy Central. But the part in the beginning talks about

00:30:52.020 | folks on the left that really tried to dunk on him when he got COVID. And you should just listen to

00:30:59.780 | his reaction and how he frames it. Because I think it's pretty powerful. And again, it explains that

00:31:04.420 | extremism on both sides, they actually end up looking the same.

00:31:07.780 | Yeah, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies. And I think that applies to

00:31:12.260 | anyone who anyone who defies the whatever the

00:31:16.100 | conventional wisdom is on COVID. There's another another example in the study of that, that the

00:31:23.060 | people who the left wing authoritarians agreed with the statement, I cannot imagine myself

00:31:26.980 | becoming friends with a political conservative. So you know, you've got these social groups that

00:31:31.380 | are completely uniform. And by the way, there have been like studies for a long time showing that

00:31:36.100 | liberals are twice as likely as conservatives to be upset if their son or daughter were to

00:31:41.220 | marry someone of the opposite party. So this has been this has been turned up in polls for a while.

00:31:45.940 | But this and you've seen it on universities and college campuses, right. But there's this idea that

00:31:51.140 | you know, anybody of the other political side is just suspect, you know, morally suspect needs to

00:31:57.460 | be shunned, needs to be expelled. Like those are the people you have to be concerned about.

00:32:02.740 | Yeah, you can't be friends. I can't be friends with you,

00:32:05.620 | Sachs, because you voted for Trump. It's just ridiculous.

00:32:07.860 | No, but it's, I think it's the derangement to give the other side of this. I think Trump was so

00:32:15.780 | extreme and so trolling and so great. I mean, if you think about his superpower, it was to troll

00:32:21.460 | the left and put them into such a deranged mindset that they did actually become that which they

00:32:27.300 | hated most. Right, but he did. He did troll the left. But But here's, but here's the thing is that

00:32:32.500 | we only hear in the media about the authoritarianism of the Trump administration. How

00:32:38.820 | many times were they screaming fascism during the Trump years? And, and now today, and of course,

00:32:45.620 | you know, if you go to MSNBC, it's January six all day all the time. That's all they want to talk

00:32:50.260 | about. But you there's a total blind spot with respect to the authoritarian tendencies of the

00:32:55.140 | left, which we see right now in COVID policy. I mean, it is getting so extreme right now.

00:33:00.660 | And I mean, Freeberg, you posted a the breaking news that just announced by a press conference,

00:33:05.860 | Gavin Newsom is now implementing mandated COVID vaccines for all public K through 12 schools

00:33:11.620 | in California starting this fall. Wait, wait, these students?

00:33:16.180 | Yeah, all eligible kids in all in all public schools, in all public schools,

00:33:20.900 | in order to go to school in California, you have to have a vaccine.

00:33:24.020 | I mean, kindergarten, kindergarten? Well, I mean, they're not eligible. Yeah,

00:33:28.820 | if it's when they're eligible, they're, they're, they're gonna be eligible very soon.

00:33:32.580 | I mean, look, I so so we have a 13 year old and 11 year old and a five year old, the 13 year old

00:33:40.580 | got vaccinated. She wanted to we supported it, the 11 year old wasn't eligible. She didn't get a

00:33:45.300 | vaccine. She got COVID. For me, it was a mild case. And our five year old isn't eligible for

00:33:49.460 | the vaccine. He never got COVID. Now, if if and when a new vaccine comes out that our five year

00:33:55.380 | old is eligible, I don't think he needs it. I mean, I'm not anti vax. I mean, I'm glad I got

00:34:00.100 | the vaccine. I'm glad you know, going to school by 13 year old vaccine. Yeah, he goes to school.

00:34:05.300 | Question is, do you if it is safe? Do you want them going to school catching it,

00:34:09.220 | spreading it? And do you want them to not have to wear a mask? Because you say conclusively,

00:34:14.420 | what say for a five or six year old at this point, it's a little hard, their bodies are developing.

00:34:18.980 | And yeah, you need some time. Do we really need to mandate this? I mean, why? Why can't parents

00:34:23.300 | make up their own decision? Because of other people in society would be impacted? I mean,

00:34:27.300 | you also see this, you know, look, I think I think vaccines maybe are complicated to

00:34:31.300 | debate because vaccines do actually provide protection. Let's talk about these mass

00:34:35.220 | mandates, which I supported at the beginning of the pandemic, because it's all we had to fight it.

00:34:39.540 | But you take an example like San Francisco still has these stringent mass mandates that may or

00:34:44.260 | not be effective. And I think that's a good example of how we can do this.

00:34:46.980 | So I think that's a good example of how we can do this. And I think that's a good example of how

00:34:49.940 | we can do this. And I think that's a good example of how we can do this. And I think that's a good

00:34:51.460 | example of how we can do this. And I think that's a good example of how we can do this.

00:34:51.780 | Yeah, I mean, that's what she said. She was like, she was basically like,

00:34:55.700 | it's Tony, Tony, Tony, guys, what do you want me to do?

00:34:57.620 | I'll risk the COVID, which is personal freedom.

00:35:00.180 | I had to give her that one.

00:35:00.980 | If you want to risk, if you want to risk COVID to play poker, or see your favorite artist,

00:35:06.020 | I mean, I mean, what do you want to do? What do you want her to do?

00:35:07.940 | What do you think about? Let me ask this question.

00:35:09.940 | What she said when she got caught was actually correct, which is we should be out supporting

00:35:14.980 | restaurants, we should be out supporting nightlife, adults should be able to make their

00:35:18.260 | own decision about the risks they're willing to take. The problem is she's not willing to give

00:35:22.180 | the rest of us that choice. Right.

00:35:24.260 | And we can all make our own choice. And by the way, look, the idea that the COVID is not going

00:35:29.060 | to get you with you know, once you take off your mask, when you get to the table, you know, we've

00:35:34.740 | talked about this, right? Yeah, you wear the mask and the made or

00:35:37.780 | do you stand to the table, then you take it off to eat and drink. And the COVID somehow

00:35:41.780 | between getting in. She was saying she was like, I listen, they were like, you weren't eating,

00:35:47.380 | we have you on video, you weren't drinking. She's like, it's unrealistic for an adult to put the

00:35:51.220 | mask on and off in between sips and bites. And I was on a flight and I was flying coach as opposed

00:35:56.580 | to business class recently. And when I was in business class, I was eating and drinking.

00:36:01.460 | There was no entire foreign language so far you're speaking what are you saying?

00:36:07.620 | Most people pay for a plane ticket and then they get on an airplane.

00:36:11.140 | So but the interesting thing was when I was in business class, I was eating my meal,

00:36:14.980 | I was drinking no issues. I had the mask off for whatever 20 minutes I was eating and drinking.

00:36:19.540 | When I was in coach, same situation, the flight attendant was going up and down the aisle.

00:36:25.060 | And while people were eating and drinking, if they didn't have the mask on, she was kind of being like

00:36:28.580 | a whole monitor saying please put your mask on in between bites. And I was like, okay.

00:36:34.340 | Yeah. And when we supported this mask man,

00:36:37.460 | day way at the beginning of the vaccine, we all thought the government's going to distribute N99,

00:36:41.140 | or at least N95 high quality 3M masks, right? We never got those. We never got them.

00:36:46.180 | Where's our testing kits?

00:36:47.460 | I know people are like walking around wearing these cloth masks, these loose fitting cloth

00:36:51.940 | masks. It's ridiculous. The COVID goes, you know, through the bottom, over the top, through the

00:36:57.140 | side, go right through it. I mean, like it doesn't do anything.

00:37:00.340 | Yeah, you're the lone ranger. Yeah. How's that work?

00:37:02.500 | I mean, I look if you wear a high quality, like, you know, PPE type,

00:37:07.300 | mask, I think it might be helpful. But you know, it's a marginal benefit once we have vaccines.

00:37:13.220 | Oh, by the way, just as we end this, what do we think of

00:37:16.740 | Andrew Wiggin? Well, you can't comment on this, maybe because you're an owner on the team, but

00:37:22.500 | a number of NBA players, high profile ones, in fact, in New York and California,

00:37:28.180 | where you're not allowed in the arena, if you're not vaccinated,

00:37:31.700 | are now deciding to sit out their home games. So Kyrie Irving being the highest profile

00:37:37.140 | one is refusing to get the vaccine. And he will be getting paid. He's got a $200 million contract

00:37:44.420 | max player, I think he gets 40 50 million a year. He's going to give up half of his salary to not

00:37:50.580 | 20 million a year to not get the vaccine at least and leave his team to not play with them in home

00:37:56.100 | games. What are our thoughts on mandating NBA players who are playing inside an arena to be

00:38:03.620 | vaccinated? DC Draymond interview?

00:38:05.460 | I did.

00:38:06.980 | What did what did a day have to say about this?

00:38:09.220 | He says he's so fucking strong, isn't he?

00:38:12.180 | Yeah, he was like, this is ridiculous that we don't like respect each other is like,

00:38:16.340 | we've made this so political. And it's all like antagonistic, as opposed to meta,

00:38:20.980 | recognizing that there are differences and people have differences of opinion and respecting them

00:38:25.380 | and embracing each other for those differences rather than like, attacking each other and finding

00:38:29.620 | fault in each other and forcing them. And it's a great point. But

00:38:32.660 | I don't know. I mean, I don't think that this point is any different than

00:38:36.820 | the point about, you know, mandating a vaccine for anything, any workplace, any school. I mean,

00:38:42.180 | if you're going to mandate if you're going to mandate vaccines for workplaces and mandate

00:38:45.780 | vaccines for schools, you know, the NBA is gonna, you know, not be kind of excluded here. It's what

00:38:51.460 | it is.

00:38:51.780 | Right, just happens to be a bigger paycheck and a higher profile stage.

00:38:55.300 | I think as a matter of policy,

00:38:57.220 | the right policy here is to let private employers decide whether they're going to require

00:39:01.460 | vaccination or not. I think I think private organizations have the right to do that. If you

00:39:06.420 | know if a restaurateur wants to say that we are going to be an all vax restaurant, you want to,

00:39:10.580 | you know, they're only going to take clientele who are vax, that should be their right to do it.

00:39:14.740 | If another restaurant says we don't care, people can go to that restaurant if they want. You know,

00:39:19.300 | I think that the free market can sort of sort this out. I don't know that we need the government

00:39:22.980 | imposing it. If the NBA decides this is what they want to do, they can't.

00:39:25.940 | The NBA has decided, what do you think of that decision?

00:39:28.260 | Well, I mean, what I wonder about is how necessary it is.

00:39:31.700 | I mean, given the fact that, you know, all the players are young and healthy,

00:39:35.940 | and if they want the vaccine, they can get the vaccine. Look, I'm really glad I got it. You know,

00:39:42.100 | I think it but but I just you know, if given that everybody is vaccinated now who wants it,

00:39:49.460 | I just you know, what is the point of forcing that last 10% of holdouts to do something they

00:39:55.060 | don't want to do? I mean, this is where I think the authoritarian I would resist the authoritarian

00:39:59.620 | impulse.

00:40:00.500 | Freiburg, is there a new pill that's coming out? I saw a story today about this. I don't

00:40:05.860 | know if want to cover that or go to unicorns first.

00:40:07.540 | Merck published some results on this, basically, antiviral pill, it effectively

00:40:15.940 | inhibits RNA replication in viruses, and it's kind of, it was designed to be kind of broadly

00:40:23.940 | applicable. It was, you know, discovered at Emory University years ago, and they were testing it for

00:40:29.620 | influenza. And then even pre pre COVID, they were testing it on other kind of coronaviruses. Asar,

00:40:35.780 | and MERS. And so the the data that they just published shows that there's a 50% reduction in

00:40:43.060 | hospitalizations 50% in hospitalizations, water for people that are test positive for SARS CoV

00:40:51.860 | two infection, and then they start the pill within some number of hours, you take a few of these

00:40:55.780 | pills, I think they said five days, right? Yeah, well, I think it will they did the test on like,

00:41:00.340 | it was effectively Yeah, four or five days. That's right. When you end up reducing the number, the,

00:41:05.700 | the percentage of people that end up in the hospital by 50%. Now, you know, so the idea is

00:41:11.060 | that for countries that don't have access to vaccines, you can very cheaply make this chemistry,

00:41:17.220 | it's a cheap molecule that you could theoretically produce at scale, and you could ship it all over

00:41:21.140 | the world. And countries that don't have, you know, broad scale vaccination programs, they can

00:41:25.940 | make these pills available quickly and cheaply. And then you know, as people get infected with SARS

00:41:30.980 | CoV two, they just pick up this pill, you know, put it in every pharmacy, go grab a couple. And

00:41:35.620 | then you know, the hospitalization rate goes down, we don't yet know if it reduces the transmission

00:41:40.660 | rate. So there's a lot of question marks on like, does this actually solve the problem of the

00:41:45.460 | pandemic? It's certainly another instrument to blunt the, you know, the impact announced the

00:41:50.500 | name of it. It's mall new all new peer review, mall new peer review, the government. And by the

00:41:57.140 | way, there wasn't a lot of people in the study, no one that took the pill died, people that didn't

00:42:01.940 | take the pill did die in the in the infection in the infected population, because they were

00:42:05.540 | not the only ones that took the pill. And so I think that's a really important question, because

00:42:09.380 | they split them, right? They gave some people a placebo and some people the pill, the people that

00:42:12.740 | had the placebo, there were deaths. No one in the group that had the pill, the actual pill died. And

00:42:18.420 | so, you know, so theoretically, we don't yet have enough data to know. But there's also a big

00:42:23.060 | question on the side effects. Typically, these anti viral RNA kind of blocking drugs have other

00:42:30.820 | side effects. They're usually pretty mild, but you know, so there'll be a little bit more studying.

00:42:35.460 | So I think that's a really important question. And I think that's a really important question.

00:42:36.500 | I think that's a really important question. I think that's a really important question.

00:42:36.660 | I'm going to make it I'm going to make a prediction. Here we go.

00:42:39.060 | I think that the combination of vaccines and what is equivalently Tamiflu for COVID,

00:42:46.900 | which is effectively what this is, is the one two punch we need, so that this basically is rendered.

00:42:53.780 | You're missing the three, you're missing a key piece there, the testing,

00:42:57.300 | you must have testing to know that you have to take this.

00:42:59.780 | But I think that that's a I think like the testing is, it's not efficient, but the solution

00:43:05.380 | is, it's not efficient, but the solution is, it's not efficient, but the solution is, it's not

00:43:06.020 | efficient. My point is, if you have a combination of all these things, this is like a flu, which

00:43:09.940 | means that there'll be less ability for folks to not show up to work, which means that most of the

00:43:14.820 | economy will get back going. And I think then we can get back to really addressing what are all

00:43:21.380 | that 10 or $12 trillion? How does it show up in the economy? That's where the inflation comes from.

00:43:26.100 | That's where all this other stuff. So I'm, I'm pretty excited by what I read today. But now my

00:43:31.540 | mindset is going to 18 months from now, midterm inflation, and then I'm going to be able to go

00:43:35.300 | back to the midterm inflation. I think that's going to be what it's all about.

00:43:38.900 | We ordered 1.7 million courses of this alcohol. It's a we just call basically this is the

00:43:44.100 | equivalent of a Z pack. So and call those the impact. If this hits,

00:43:48.580 | I've taken probably 1.7 million Z packs. That's just on the way back from Vegas.

00:43:53.700 | So I mean, this feels like the end game and they are going for emergency use. So let's

00:44:00.660 | keep our fingers crossed. This would mean the stock market's gonna rip Jamath.

00:44:05.220 | No stock market is in a little bit of precarious position because if you have to if you have to

00:44:10.580 | reposition yourself for inflation, there's a lot of tech stocks that will get just absolutely

00:44:16.260 | obliterated like well when you when you when you have inflation, so the the order of operations,

00:44:22.740 | inflation means prices go up. The government sees prices going up and they say how do we control

00:44:29.460 | that they raise interest rates so that the cost of borrowing goes up so that then less money is

00:44:33.940 | being spent, right? So that when you have inflation, you're going to have to go back to the

00:44:35.140 | stock market. So that's the thing that I think is really important. And I think that's the thing

00:44:36.100 | that I think is really important. And I think that's the thing that I think is really important.

00:44:37.380 | When you do that, then all of a sudden people have to think about how much money you're going to make

00:44:42.180 | in the future. Because if you're not investing as much in the future, you won't make as much in the

00:44:45.860 | future. And when you discount all those dollars back, there's less of them. And so all of a

00:44:50.420 | sudden, you start to think about oh my gosh, well, I want dollars today, not dollars 10 years from

00:44:54.980 | now. That really puts a lot of pressure on tech stocks because we trade on multi year valuations

00:45:02.740 | in the future. So inflation is very bad for tech stocks. And so we're going to have to think about

00:45:05.060 | how much money we're going to make in the future. And that's the thing that I think is really important

00:45:05.620 | when you're investing in technology stocks. Inflation tends to be good for companies that

00:45:08.340 | make money today. Why? Because if I get $1 today, I can put it in this in the, you know, bond markets

00:45:14.340 | or I put it into a savings account and I can get more interest than I would have otherwise.

00:45:18.260 | And then separately, you also want to own things that are physical and real because those have more

00:45:23.220 | value. So all of that has to then get worked out into the economy and we have to make a bunch of

00:45:28.340 | economic decisions. So now the solution for that in all of those cases, though, if you're a hyper

00:45:34.980 | gold company, you'll be okay. So if you're growing more than 50 60% a year, you're fine.

00:45:38.820 | But if you're growing 20 or 30%, and you're kind of a middling business, and rates are going up,

00:45:43.780 | and inflation is going up, you're in a very, very, very precarious spot. And

00:45:48.420 | Sachs, what do you think?

00:45:49.620 | Okay, well, there was, there was a great article in the Wall Street Journal over the past week

00:45:55.060 | called University endowment's mint billions in the golden era of venture capital is basically

00:46:00.020 | talking about I mean, these these university endowments are like gaining 50% year over year,

00:46:04.340 | there's been like nothing

00:46:04.900 | Nothing like it before. There's so many unicorns being created. There's an interview,

00:46:08.900 | there's a separate article in I think, PitchBook as well about the rate of unicorn or crunch base.

00:46:14.020 | Yeah, that the rate of unicorn creation, I think last year, it was like one every few days. Now

00:46:19.220 | it's it's more than one a day bonkers. And so you know, we're getting multiple unicorns now created

00:46:24.740 | every day this year. It's just this golden era VC this engine of wealth and prosperity creation. So

00:46:31.540 | that's the good news. And to connect this to a point we were talking

00:46:34.820 | about earlier, if the radicals on the left would just allow the golden goose to keep laying

00:46:41.300 | golden eggs, we're going to have enough wealth and prosperity to pay for all these progressive

00:46:46.820 | programs in the long run, but they're not willing to wait. And so you have in Washington, for

00:46:52.420 | example, I think a political program that really could upset the apple cart. I mean, you're talking

00:46:58.100 | about a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, it'll probably get brought down to somewhere between 1.5%

00:47:04.740 | and two, then you got a 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill, they've already spent

00:47:09.380 | 1.9 trillion on a COVID relief bill. This is after the 6 trillion.

00:47:13.380 | What would you advise should be the amount spent?

00:47:16.340 | Well, okay, good question. So last year, the federal government

00:47:20.180 | generated record tax receipts, the most revenue it's ever raised, and it was about

00:47:26.260 | 19 and a half percent of GDP. When Bill Clinton left office, he broasted about the fact that

00:47:33.140 | government

00:47:34.660 | spending was only 18 and a half percent of GDP. Last year, it was about 30% of GDP. My theory on

00:47:41.060 | this is that if you have government spending as a share of the economy at around 20%, from a tax

00:47:50.020 | spending standpoint, things basically work. But as you try to go up to 25% and 30%, it starts to

00:47:57.060 | break, you have too much deficits and debt, too much money printing, too much taxation,

00:48:02.340 | too much inflation, you become more

00:48:04.580 | brittle, and you start to you basically are, you know, unhealthy, you're killing the golden goose.

00:48:09.780 | And so, you know, all we have to do is let the economy keep ripping 20% of it is going to is

00:48:16.580 | going to be government share. And you'll be able to fund more and more progressive programs over

00:48:21.780 | time, as society gets richer. And by the way, this this prosperity that's being created in

00:48:29.220 | the tech ecosystem, it's available to everybody who has a good idea. I mean, this is not so

00:48:34.500 | as we all know, so it's not just government that's creating advancement, and economic opportunity for

00:48:40.740 | disadvantaged people, the tech economy is creating it as well. And what I worry about is, is why are

00:48:45.460 | we taking so much risk in upending this whole system that is working quite well?

00:48:50.500 | Well, the other thing is, this is all in the face of there being 11

00:48:54.100 | million open jobs, there's 1.4 jobs for everybody who's unemployed. So

00:48:59.700 | the idea that in some ways, society is broken, and people can't be employed. Now, these might not be

00:49:04.420 | the only jobs, there's only 4 million, there's only 4 million people looking for work. There's

00:49:08.260 | 11 million outstanding jobs. Yeah, I mean, it is bonkers. Friedberg,

00:49:12.420 | do you think this is sustainable? What are your thoughts on spending and turning over the apple

00:49:17.220 | cart as sex is saying, the longer you guys have me on this podcast, the more likely it is you guys

00:49:23.940 | are going to unmask me as a diehard libertarian. I will not let my tendencies, you know, come out

00:49:30.580 | in full force. The spending is ridiculous. And there's a lot of waste. So I mean,

00:49:34.340 | I'll just leave it at that. What I think is interesting, though, is this unicorn creation

00:49:38.900 | system. This unicorn creation machine. You know, it's worth highlighting, because I think that that

00:49:44.820 | crunch space article showed that these unicorns in aggregate were worth like what one and a half

00:49:49.460 | trillion dollars or something. And so those are all private companies.

00:49:53.140 | $3.4 trillion.

00:49:54.740 | $3.4 trillion. So is that the amount of both bills?

00:49:58.260 | 3.4 trillion is the total market cap of all the private unicorns, not just in the US,

00:50:04.260 | but the world. And right now in Washington, they're talking about three and a half trillion

00:50:07.700 | dollar reconciliation bill, same size. Can you imagine government spending,

00:50:12.260 | basically the entire value of the tech ecosystem in one year? It's bonkers, right?

00:50:17.700 | And so this, but by the way, I mean, like, I think that that 3.5 trillion, you can kind of

00:50:22.100 | think about that as being the future economy of the future global economy, right? So the entire,

00:50:27.300 | I just pulled up the latest quarterly stat, but the entire market cap of public US companies,

00:50:34.180 | which is the US, is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:36.340 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:39.460 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:41.620 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:43.620 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:44.820 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:45.780 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:46.740 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:48.180 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:48.740 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:49.380 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:50.260 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:50.580 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:52.260 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:52.340 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:52.420 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:52.980 | And so the total market cap of public companies is $3.4 trillion.

00:50:53.060 | It used to be that technology companies started in Silicon Valley,

00:50:56.740 | sold technology to traditional industries.

00:51:00.100 | What's happening in Silicon Valley today and over the last 10 years or so,

00:51:04.340 | is that technology "companies" are becoming the next industrial companies.

00:51:09.220 | They are replacing the traditional industries.

00:51:10.420 | Profound insight. Profound insight.

00:51:11.060 | Profound insight. Profound insight.

00:51:12.260 | And so this is what we saw. Airbnb is a hotel chain without hotels.

00:51:17.140 | Uber is a transportation company without vehicles.

00:51:20.820 | DoorDash.

00:51:21.460 | DoorDash. But even more importantly, there's an entire emergent class of life sciences companies,

00:51:26.980 | of novel hardware companies. And these businesses are leveraging their core technology competence

00:51:32.980 | to create an advantage in replacing an old model of doing industry.

00:51:37.220 | They're not selling into the old school companies.

00:51:39.140 | And so I think that the... And people are freaking out about some of these big investors

00:51:43.060 | like Tiger Global coming in and writing crazy checks. If you take an index,

00:51:46.980 | if you take an index of the $3.5 trillion today and said, "You know what?

00:51:51.860 | These guys today are going to be worth more than the $46 trillion market cap of all the

00:51:58.340 | other public companies that sit today in the next 20 or 30 years."

00:52:01.540 | That's a pretty good way to place your money over a 30-year horizon.

00:52:04.980 | I'm going to go ahead and put as much money as I can into the index of the private companies

00:52:09.220 | and expect that they're going to be worth more than $46 trillion in 30 years.

00:52:12.180 | I'm going to make a 10-bagger. That's a retirement fund for my family.

00:52:15.540 | And so it makes a ton of sense. I think that these...

00:52:17.460 | These unicorns, given the advantages that are evolving from software and sciences and so on,

00:52:23.940 | do end up playing out. It's going to be ugly. And what will happen is you'll end up seeing

00:52:28.500 | the asymmetry. You'll see the like, "Oh my gosh, it's something that's a thousand X,

00:52:31.620 | 100X return." It'll become $100 billion public company or $200 billion public company.

00:52:35.940 | And then there'll be a bunch of them that are going to die.

00:52:37.380 | And people are going to focus on the depths and say this was overhyped. The bubble is over.

00:52:41.620 | But the reality is the index of companies today,

00:52:43.860 | I would be willing to bet 20 to 30 years from now is worth more than the

00:52:46.820 | $46 trillion of all the public companies today.

00:52:49.300 | So Chamath, one of the things we're seeing here, and you're playing a small part in it,

00:52:53.220 | or a large part, depending on who you talk to,

00:52:54.900 | we now have over 6,000 publicly traded companies on US exchanges.

00:52:59.860 | No, we have less than 4,000. We have about 3,800.

00:53:02.340 | Okay. No, we had 3,600 in 2016, according to the research I have here. According to MarketWatch,

00:53:08.980 | 6,000 public traded companies in US exchanges. So what's the right number here?

00:53:11.380 | They could be counting the pink sheets and over-the-counter stuff, which is...

00:53:14.260 | Oh, okay. Got it. We're seeing dramatically more publicly traded

00:53:16.740 | companies. Many speculative ones or ones where you're getting to buy in in year four, five,

00:53:23.220 | or six. Obviously, you're part of that with all the different IPOAs through... What are you up to

00:53:29.140 | now? What's the... Yeah, we have six tech SPACs. We have four biotech SPACs.

00:53:33.540 | Perfect. I mean, I've started or invested in a bunch

00:53:36.580 | of others that have gone public. So let's look at this through the lens of the public markets as

00:53:41.860 | well. My macro view is exactly what Friedberg said. We are much better off with the

00:53:46.660 | many technology companies being birthed and being viable because over the long arc of time,

00:53:53.380 | those companies will rebuild things that are today inefficient and broken in a better way.

00:53:58.580 | The world becomes better. The question is for a lot of people, well, what if the wealth isn't

00:54:06.100 | better because it's only a fraction of the number of people with a very specific skill set that

00:54:11.620 | many other people don't have? That I think is a valid argument. But then there's a different way to

00:54:16.580 | attack this problem, which is you could actually do something really meaningful around corporate

00:54:21.780 | interest rates and corporate tax policy that would then get it. Even if those thousand companies,

00:54:29.300 | if you assume that that $3.4 trillion, 10Xs, that's $34 trillion of eventual market cap.

00:54:34.100 | That's going to be supported by trillions of dollars of earnings.

00:54:37.220 | But maybe those things only have a million or two million employees, but there's eight billion,

00:54:41.700 | eight odd people in the world. Well, the way you get the money into the government's coffers so that they

00:54:46.500 | can reallocate it to everybody that doesn't work at those thousand companies is through sensible

00:54:51.220 | tax policy that goes after the companies because those companies will still do the job. It's not

00:54:57.700 | like you're going to choose to not work at a world-beating startup in a mission that you care

00:55:02.980 | about because of the corporate tax rate. Nobody's going to do that. I think this is where if you

00:55:08.820 | actually take a step back and think of the bigger picture, the answer is right in front of us. We

00:55:14.740 | just choose not to listen. This is why

00:55:16.420 | again, what Trump did was stupid. He focused on corporate tax policy, cutting it unnecessarily.

00:55:23.220 | Now what we're doing is we're fighting over tax policy. Part of the reason why this bill

00:55:27.780 | isn't going to get passed is because of corporate tax policy and trying to raise it again.

00:55:30.900 | Really, what we should do is actually raise it, leave personal rates roughly where they are. Elon

00:55:36.900 | even said when asked by Kara Swisher this week, he's like, "I pay 53% taxes. What about you?"

00:55:43.060 | Yeah. It's going to 57%.

00:55:46.340 | 53%, 57%, 61%. Who cares?

00:55:49.060 | Sure. Whatever. It's all the same.

00:55:50.660 | He has to... The point he made was, listen, the ProPublica article was

00:55:54.420 | really disingenuous. They said he got a tax refund and they never explained,

00:55:59.940 | "Well, that's because he overpaid his taxes massively the year before." They're selectively

00:56:05.220 | pulling information. The fact is he said, "I will be the first money into SpaceX and Tesla.

00:56:10.900 | I'll be the last money out." That is something we want more founders to do, which is

00:56:16.260 | never sell their shares and have more skin in the game.

00:56:19.540 | Sorry. I'm sorry. I disagree with that. I think that that's a bunch of fucking malarkey.

00:56:24.900 | Why?

00:56:25.620 | If you choose to not sell, so be it.

00:56:28.500 | Okay.

00:56:29.220 | But look at the good that Bill Gates has done by selling down Microsoft.

00:56:33.460 | Well, I mean, yeah.

00:56:35.620 | COVAX shouldn't exist. The Bill Gates Foundation shouldn't exist.

00:56:38.900 | No, no, no, no.

00:56:39.380 | All the reproductive protection. It had to be paid somehow.

00:56:42.100 | He did that when he hit 60 years old. I'm sure when other-

00:56:44.980 | No. No.

00:56:46.180 | He started to do it when he was 40 years old, Jason.

00:56:48.660 | Elon sold PayPal and he was able to use that money to reinvest in Tesla and SpaceX.

00:56:53.940 | I think Elon's putting all the money back into two companies that are solving two major issues

00:56:59.620 | for humanity.

00:57:00.100 | But he wouldn't have been able to do that if he hadn't sold in the first place.

00:57:02.660 | Exactly. My point is, let's not conflate the problem. If you generate wealth,

00:57:08.580 | I think that you should be bound, morally bound by society to put the money back to work.

00:57:16.100 | He chooses to put the money back to work by reinvesting so aggressively into the things

00:57:20.420 | that he's doing. That's laudable.

00:57:21.860 | Yeah, I think that's virtuous. Yeah.

00:57:24.260 | I agree. But it's not the only way. Bill Gates took a different path,

00:57:27.460 | which is to basically take all those profits, sell it down, to then be able to go and put it

00:57:32.020 | into the Gates Foundation. People will take multiple paths. The point that's the same among

00:57:36.180 | all these people is there's a moral obligation they feel to do the right thing for the future.

00:57:40.180 | Agreed. Then we're in agreement.

00:57:41.460 | Let's just celebrate that, not some tactical thing about buying and selling stock.

00:57:45.220 | By the way, one other-

00:57:46.020 | One other point I'd make, Chamath. You said that we should tax the wealth creation and distribute

00:57:52.260 | it. There's another way to get that redistribution of wealth, which is to enable access to the

00:57:57.460 | investments earlier by public pension funds, by the endowments, by the places where people,

00:58:03.300 | by the retirement funds, where a broader swath of the population have savings sitting.

00:58:09.300 | Change the accreditation laws.

00:58:11.380 | We've historically forced the narrative that everyone in the United States needs to have a home

00:58:15.940 | and have 80, 90% of their wealth tied up in a piece of real estate. Then we end up with these

00:58:19.780 | massive inflationary bubbles to keep that book value growing for them. The reality is if that

00:58:25.380 | money was put more productively into building businesses via retirement funds that had access

00:58:30.580 | to venture capital, the public pension funds already do, but they probably under-allocate

00:58:34.900 | to venture capital today relative to where they're putting their overall funds.

00:58:37.700 | We talked about the endowments are crushing it.

00:58:39.460 | Look at the returns.

00:58:40.020 | That's another way. By the way, if that was the model, you wouldn't need to tax.

00:58:42.900 | Well, by the way, one of the brilliant provisions in this,

00:58:45.860 | reconciliation bill is they're actually disallowing retirement funds to invest in

00:58:50.660 | alternative assets, including startups and venture capital funds.

00:58:55.220 | Insane. That is so wrong. So frigging wrong.

00:58:58.740 | Yeah.

00:58:58.980 | What?

00:59:00.100 | That's in there.

00:59:00.740 | They literally are taking pension funds and saying, you can't have access to them.

00:59:07.460 | You as an individual through a 401k or IRA cannot invest in alternative assets.

00:59:15.780 | Yes, partly in response to that.

00:59:17.460 | Well, they should just make it a cap. Don't you think they should cap Peter Thiel's

00:59:20.740 | massive gain?

00:59:23.620 | Why? Why cap anything? Who's to say?

00:59:25.940 | Well, because it was against the spirit of it. The spirit of the Roth was, let's discuss this

00:59:30.020 | as a specific issue. I'll tee it up for you, Sax. Peter Thiel put his Facebook stock in his Roth.

00:59:35.380 | And yeah, you're supposed to get that tax free so you can have a great retirement.

00:59:40.420 | He did that as an end run around paying taxes on the Facebook investment that became worth billions

00:59:45.460 | of dollars reportedly. So now they're saying you can have a Roth, but anything above 50 billion,

00:59:50.340 | you got to pay tax on because the goal here isn't for you to use it as a shelter

00:59:54.580 | against some massive venture gains, Sax.

00:59:58.420 | I don't have a huge problem with them putting a cap on the benefit of these accounts. However,

01:00:04.340 | my issue with what's in the bill, there's a couple of issues. One is like we said, they're disallowing

01:00:09.060 | investments and alternatives, which I just think is bad for savers. Why would you want to do that?

01:00:13.620 | Terrible.

01:00:14.100 | Second,

01:00:14.500 | Super.

01:00:14.820 | Yeah.

01:00:15.380 | I mean, I think it's a good point. I think it's a good point. I think it's a good point,

01:00:16.420 | because it's just a matter of what happens when you exceed the cap. And right now what they're

01:00:19.780 | saying is you have to distribute out all of those funds and then subject them to immediate taxation

01:00:26.500 | at ordinary income rates, which is confiscatory because you could have made the investment

01:00:31.620 | outside the retirement account and paid long term cap gains rates.

01:00:36.420 | If you do go over, it should be long term tax, of course.

01:00:38.900 | Yeah. And furthermore, it's even worse than that, because what they're saying is,

01:00:42.420 | let's say that you do have an alternative.

01:00:45.060 | Like an investment in a startup or a venture fund, you have to distribute it out and pay tax on that,

01:00:50.100 | even though that investment is not liquid.

01:00:52.260 | Right. So you should be able to take it out and just be treated normal cap gains

01:00:55.780 | and not have to liquidate it. Do you think?

01:00:57.700 | Well, what it's going to do is it's going to get it's going to give people an incentive. It's going

01:01:01.380 | to warp the incentives for saving because what it's going to say to people is you want to do well,

01:01:05.220 | but not too well.

01:01:06.420 | Right.

01:01:06.580 | Because if you hit the cap, you're now subject to a confiscation.

01:01:09.860 | You get penalized. Yes, it should be.

01:01:11.220 | So it shouldn't be a penalty. Yeah, exactly. I think the way to work is,

01:01:14.980 | you have a cap at any distribution above that, you basically that becomes the basis for future

01:01:19.700 | taxation.

01:01:20.260 | I think all of this can be summarized more simply, I think that we have,

01:01:23.940 | unfortunately gotten so confused, that we've decided to fix the finish line

01:01:31.220 | and stagger the starting line. Right? Because all of this still doesn't apply to rich people.

01:01:36.100 | No, this is vindictive against people.

01:01:38.100 | Rich people can do all of these different things. They can set up these

01:01:41.460 | out of state trust, they can set up generation skipping trust, they can be,

01:01:44.660 | you know, qualified investors, they can have QSBS deductions. And so what this will do,

01:01:51.700 | unfortunately, is entrenched the kind of wealth gains that Peter Thiel was able to generate in a

01:01:59.140 | very visible way that will just piss everybody off. And I think instead, you got to go back

01:02:04.020 | to a different litmus test. So, Jason, you have been the strongest advocate for

01:02:11.540 | letting people participate in the economy. I have always agreed.

01:02:14.340 | I've always agreed with that. We need to figure out how we can make sure that it isn't abused.

01:02:19.620 | But that's the best way is to educate folks about financial literacy so that they can actually be a

01:02:24.980 | part of it. Even the starting line, let everybody be able to put stuff into this stuff and learn

01:02:29.780 | about it.

01:02:30.500 | I mean, what Peter did essentially was put lottery tickets into his,

01:02:33.620 | you know, non tax retirement fund, lottery tickets being buying stocks in private companies early.

01:02:39.380 | But regular Americans aren't allowed to do that. So rather than retroactively try to

01:02:44.020 | penalize Peter because you disagree with his politics, or because he did it too well,

01:02:47.940 | I think it's better that everybody be allowed to be an accredited investor and do what Peter did,

01:02:52.260 | which is everybody should be able to take their 401k or their Roth and be able to buy

01:02:57.060 | the next LinkedIn Uber. So if you were a civilian and you took an Uber,

01:03:01.140 | or you use LinkedIn to hire somebody in year two, and you had an opportunity to buy those shares,

01:03:06.420 | you should be allowed to buy it because you're a human resources person or Uber driver and you

01:03:10.100 | realize this is a great service that will change the world. It doesn't take a genius to figure that

01:03:13.460 | out. Freebird?

01:03:14.980 | Yeah, look, I mean, the downside is you see speculative concentrated bets that white people

01:03:20.820 | out. That's the reason the protective provisions are in there. So I think there are probably

01:03:25.380 | sensible ways of managing that, you know, around, you know, qualifying, you know, pools of these

01:03:33.620 | investments in a way creating indexes against them, etc. And maybe that's the right way to

01:03:38.820 | provide access. But you know, giving individuals that maybe, you know,

01:03:43.060 | don't have the right kind of point of view on a particular investment, the ability to put all of

01:03:48.020 | their capital into that investment. Generally, I would say go for it. The problem is we've socialized,

01:03:54.580 | you know, protection, right? So and this is the same with healthcare. In a model for governing

01:04:01.540 | or model for a state where you provide socialized care for people through healthcare, socialized

01:04:06.340 | healthcare, or you provide socialized support for people through the Social Security system and

01:04:11.940 | other services like that.

01:04:12.500 | It's difficult to say, okay, the government's going to be your backstop, and it's going to

01:04:17.860 | provide the support for you. And we're also going to let you take risky behavior. And that's where I

01:04:23.300 | think the two have to go hand in hand. If you want to get rid of one, you got to get rid of the other.

01:04:27.540 | And so because otherwise, we all end up paying the cost of the person that takes the you know,

01:04:32.660 | outsized risk. And then we all end up having to foot the bill for that person taking that risk. So

01:04:37.380 | if we're all going to be there to protect that person, we have to tell them you can't take

01:04:40.740 | unnecessary risks.

01:04:41.540 | Okay.

01:04:42.340 | Okay, hey, Sax, let me ask you a conspiracy theory here. Peter Thiel supported Trump when

01:04:50.980 | Trump was teetering on the Access Hollywood tape, and he went to bat for him, he gave him a big

01:04:58.660 | donation at that time, then obviously did the Republican National Convention, and was a key

01:05:03.460 | intellectual influencer in his election plan. Now the Democrats are in and suddenly the focus,

01:05:11.380 | focus becomes this one outsized Roth IRA, and we're going to rewrite the law so that Peter Thiel has to

01:05:18.100 | take $5 billion or so is one of the estimates that I saw online on CNBC out of his IRA. Do you think

01:05:24.820 | this is specific vindictiveness on the part of the Democrats to try to attack? Specifically, Peter

01:05:32.340 | Thiel? I know he's your bestie. Well, yeah, I mean,

01:05:34.580 | it does feel and I'm not I'm not a Peter Thiel apologist, but this feels vindictive and personal.

01:05:38.420 | So yes and no. Okay, so Peter Thiel is a vindictive Democrat.

01:05:38.820 | So yes and no. Okay, so I'm not a Peter Thiel apologist, but this feels vindictive and personal.

01:05:38.980 | So yes and no. Okay, so Peter Thiel is a vindictive Democrat.

01:05:39.060 | So yes and no. Okay, so Peter Thiel is a vindictive Democrat.

01:05:39.300 | So yes and no. Okay, so what I would say is there have been proposals over the last I think going

01:05:44.820 | back to maybe even 2014 on providing some restrictions or caps on, you know, these,

01:05:51.780 | these IRAs and the Roth IRAs. However, there's never been a proposal as punitive

01:05:57.300 | and retroactive and confiscatory. That's what they're doing here. And specifically,

01:06:02.340 | it's the fact that they're going to force Peter to distribute out everything above the cap,

01:06:07.700 | and then tax the rest of the money. And so, Peter, I think, you know,

01:06:08.740 | is going to be a very good candidate for the cap. So I think Peter Thiel is a vindictive Democrat.

01:06:09.700 | So yes and no. Okay, so what I would say is there have been proposals over the last I think going

01:06:10.660 | back to maybe even 2014 on providing some restrictions or caps on, you know, these IRAs and

01:06:10.660 | retroactive and confiscatory. That's what they're doing here. And specifically, it's the fact that

01:06:10.820 | that's just changing the rules. That part I think is directed at Peter and I've actually heard

01:06:16.900 | that staffers on Capitol Hill are calling this the Peter Thiel provision. So let me just confirm

01:06:21.860 | that part for you. So what I would say is I think there is a sensible way to provide some

01:06:27.780 | restrictions on these retirement accounts, but the way they're doing it is so punitive. I think

01:06:32.900 | it is motivated by political revenge against Peter Chamath, what do we think of the number of, you

01:06:38.500 | know, unicorns being created in the private markets, obviously, when a company hits unicorn

01:06:42.340 | status, I think they're going to start buzzing around and maybe knocking on your door and SPACs

01:06:46.900 | and boards might start thinking about that. These companies sometimes have $10 million,

01:06:51.540 | $30 million in revenue, 50 million in revenue, and they're becoming worth a billion dollars.

01:06:56.660 | Do these valuations make sense writ large? And are you concerned that this is a bubble?

01:07:01.060 | I don't think there's a bubble.

01:07:03.540 | Okay. Explain why there's not a bubble in early stage private companies.

01:07:08.260 | I think it's because of what we just talked about, which is that these companies,

01:07:12.500 | by and large, are growing at incredibly fast rates, and they are replacing legacy

01:07:18.820 | incumbents that are growing very slowly or not at all, who have basically won for a long time

01:07:26.500 | with inferior products. And so as these superior products with more nimble organizations get

01:07:33.060 | capitalized to go to market, they're just going to win. And so I think what we're seeing is a whole

01:07:38.020 | sale replacement of the economy from the old to the new. And so that's why these companies will

01:07:44.020 | do well. And I think it's going to be a really powerful force in the world because the world

01:07:51.220 | should be a little bit more efficient and fairer when you have all this modern technology working

01:07:57.300 | on your behalf. So I'm a real supporter of all of this. I think there's going to be even more.

01:08:02.660 | And I think the thing that we have to be comfortable with is whenever something goes from a

01:08:07.780 | fringe thing, which is what venture capital was, Jason, when all of us were first in Silicon Valley

01:08:12.740 | 20 years ago, to today in 2021, we're sitting here, this is going to become a fundamental part

01:08:20.660 | of the economy. And when that happens, there'll be more and more money. The returns won't be as

01:08:26.740 | good. That'll be okay, but there'll be a lot of progress. And so we're going through the

01:08:31.060 | same transition that private equity did in the '80s and '90s, that hedge funds went through the

01:08:37.540 | same transition. And so we're going to see a lot of growth in the future. And I think that's

01:08:40.580 | going to be a big part of the economy. And I think that's going to be a big part of the economy.

01:08:41.140 | The kid from Lightspeed, a bunch of other folks, obviously our friend Bill Gurley is stepping back.

01:08:45.940 | The kid. Why do you call people kids?

01:08:47.780 | Jeremy Liu.

01:08:48.420 | He's 50. He's 50. Yeah, that kid from-

01:08:50.500 | Wait, am I doing something wrong here? I'm busy creating a venture firm at

01:08:53.860 | age almost 50 and all these people are-

01:08:55.860 | You're on the wrong side of this distribution curve, Sachs.

01:08:58.500 | What are we thinks behind this? They just made too much money in their-

01:09:00.820 | They made a ton of money.

01:09:02.020 | Or is it because it's too competitive now and it's too hard?

01:09:04.500 | They're moving to Wyoming.

01:09:05.780 | I would say it's slightly different.

01:09:07.300 | I don't know. I mean, I know all of those guys, but I don't know what their motivation is. But

01:09:13.460 | what I would say is I tend to think that the mindset of venture has a relatively short half

01:09:20.500 | life. And I think it's about 15 years. And I think that there is a... And because company building is

01:09:28.420 | roughly a 10-year arc, like when you get into something early. And so I think that there is

01:09:34.180 | like a newness whenever you start. I don't think it matters what your

01:09:37.060 | age is. And then there is this sort of like death march that sets in by year eight or nine.

01:09:48.580 | And then you try to see it through to returning the capital and making sure all the employees and

01:09:54.660 | founders you've been invested with land the ship. And I think what these guys did was get to that

01:10:01.220 | place and say, "Okay, I've had this 15-year beautiful arc. Do I want to do another 15-year arc?"

01:10:06.820 | And for a lot of people, it won't make much sense. And then also, I think your patience to do it goes

01:10:13.060 | away, right? Because it's like, you guys know what it is. We all know what it's like.

01:10:16.980 | It's exhausting. It's grinding.

01:10:17.060 | It is exhausting. It's exhausting. The amount of drama I'm dealing with right now in my portfolio

01:10:22.340 | is bonkers. I don't know if you're seeing this, Sax, but the amount of shenanigans,

01:10:27.860 | bad behavior, fraud, lying, backstabbing is at an all-time high.

01:10:32.900 | That would be your portfolio, J.K. Yeah.

01:10:34.740 | No, it's like, no, no. It's literally, you're going to get a lot of money. It's literally, you're

01:10:36.580 | going to get a lot of money. It's literally three companies. I'm literally dealing with

01:10:38.580 | three companies with drama out of 350. I think one out of 100 is probably fine. But I am seeing

01:10:44.740 | all kinds of shenanigans. Even in the diligence phase, I'm seeing a ton of bad behavior.

01:10:47.460 | No, Jason, I meant something more tactical, which is like, for example,

01:10:50.820 | yesterday, we're starting something really ambitious in batteries. And I have to sit

01:10:56.740 | there for an hour, and we have to go through ordering the equipment, setting up the lab,

01:11:00.740 | getting the-

01:11:01.380 | Human resources.

01:11:02.580 | And there's only so much of that that you have the energy to do after

01:11:06.340 | a certain amount of time. It's important work. You have to do it right, but it feels

01:11:11.780 | a little low leverage. Now, for that CEO, it's everything. And so you have to be on top of your

01:11:18.500 | game to help that person. And I think this is where I appreciate their honesty in basically

01:11:24.580 | saying, "Guys, I don't have that level of detailed focus in me anymore." And that's important because

01:11:31.460 | in a next generation of folks who want to put in that 15-year journey-

01:11:34.180 | You need somebody committed. You need somebody who's

01:11:36.100 | super committed.

01:11:37.140 | Yeah. And I do think there's a difference between being a partner in a large partnership where you

01:11:42.980 | kind of have your portfolio of companies and, to Chamath's point, you're going to be on that

01:11:47.540 | arc with them. And then kind of building a firm from scratch where, quite frankly, I would go

01:11:53.620 | crazy the way that you're dealing with Jason and Chamath is saying, "I would get burned out if I

01:11:58.820 | didn't have a team." So we now have a pretty big team.

01:12:02.260 | How many?

01:12:02.660 | Well, just on the investment team, I think we've got about 15,000.

01:12:05.860 | 15 people. And then we now have a bunch of operating partners. So we were looking at what

01:12:10.660 | Andreessen Horowitz has done with services. We had this big debate in the venture community for

01:12:14.260 | a long time about whether venture firms should offer services and operating partners. And Andreessen

01:12:20.820 | went hog wild with that. They've got like 200 people doing it. And I think they've proven that

01:12:24.980 | it works in the sense... It's not totally clear how much value they're delivering, but it clearly

01:12:29.860 | works in the sense that founders would like the services if they can get them.

01:12:34.020 | It creates marketing, but I mean,

01:12:35.620 | it's not necessarily a marketing strategy. It's great marketing.

01:12:37.620 | Because if you're a great founder, when you were a great founder, you wouldn't want Andreessen

01:12:40.740 | Horowitz telling you how to run your HR and doing your marketing for you at Yammer.

01:12:44.580 | Right. But so what we've done is focus on bringing on not 200 people, but an expert in every

01:12:51.140 | functional area that a SaaS company might need. Because you do want access to an expert when

01:12:55.860 | you're setting up the department, you want to go talk to the digital marketing person or the legal

01:12:59.780 | person or, you know, we have an executive briefing center now. So we do believe that there is a

01:13:05.380 | version of the services model that makes a lot of sense. And we are building that. If I had to do all

01:13:09.060 | of that value add myself, yeah, I would burn out. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a very good point.

01:13:14.100 | I literally last week launched the syndicate.com/saas, a SaaS syndicate, just for the same

01:13:19.620 | reason. So I can build a group of individuals who are focused just on that and who have that domain

01:13:24.820 | expertise. But the great founders do not want you up in their business. So I'm concerned with like...

01:13:32.260 | That's why we have like kind of, we call it a teach them how to fish model.

01:13:35.140 | Yes. Exactly. Where we don't want to do the work, we want to give them an expert as a resource

01:13:39.140 | who can meet with them, show them some best practices and then they...

01:13:41.700 | Do you have people though coming to you expecting you to do the work? Because that's what I

01:13:44.980 | have happen sometimes is they're like... No. Although...

01:13:46.980 | Can you find us a developer? And I'm like,

01:13:48.500 | no, but I can talk to you about finding developers, but I don't have a

01:13:52.740 | recruiter on staff. Do you have a recruiter on staff?

01:13:54.340 | Yeah, we actually do now. We have three recruiters on staff. So...

01:13:56.900 | So you're paying a half million dollars a year to recruit for your company. So that's a big advantage.

01:14:01.780 | Basically. Basically.

01:14:03.140 | That's a big advantage. Is it working? Are

01:14:04.900 | you actually landing developers? Yeah. I mean, look, we can't...

01:14:07.620 | Freeport and I don't give a fuck about any of this.

01:14:09.780 | All right. Well, anyway, this is us in the weeds. So you want to talk about some...

01:14:12.740 | Okay. Well, just to kind of up level it for a second. I just want to go back to this like

01:14:16.660 | golden era point when we're talking about venture capital, because look, obviously in the weeds,

01:14:22.180 | we're going to talk about our problems, but I really think that what's happening

01:14:26.660 | here with a thousand new unicorns being minted every year is just unbelievable.

01:14:30.820 | If you look at the number of billionaires in the US, I just Googled this,

01:14:34.660 | there were 614 billionaires in the US as of October 2020. Now there's probably more,

01:14:39.780 | I don't know, let's say there's a thousand. Well, if you're minting a thousand new unicorns every

01:14:43.460 | year, how many billionaires is that creating? I mean...

01:14:45.700 | And how many millionaires? More importantly, how many people who were making 50 to $250,000

01:14:50.820 | a year before they joined the ecosystem and now are worth millions will buy homes,

01:14:54.340 | hire people, start the next... But let me just give you guys the

01:14:57.060 | counterpoint to that, which I'm not necessarily arguing, but this is what I think the narrative

01:15:01.380 | is, which is that those businesses that are kind of, you know,

01:15:04.340 | accumulating wealth and accumulating revenue are effectively destroying the old economy and

01:15:10.260 | shutting down companies and shutting down jobs. Wait, there's 11 million job openings.

01:15:13.460 | That's bullshit. I don't believe it's a zero sum game.

01:15:16.340 | Yeah. I think it's creative

01:15:18.500 | destruction. But it's disruptive. It is disruptive,

01:15:20.100 | right? So there is kind of a temporal flux and there's a flux of people across from the old

01:15:24.500 | economy to the new economy. And it's that flux that I think creates the great uncertainty and

01:15:28.820 | the great heartache that everyone's trying to solve for.

01:15:30.900 | That's the hand-wringing. That's the hand-wringing framework.

01:15:32.020 | Guys, this is why it is so important to me.

01:15:34.020 | It's so important to get corporate taxation right. Because if you're going to replace

01:15:38.100 | GDP dollar for dollar, don't focus on the fewer employees that work there. Focus on the largest

01:15:44.340 | number possible, which is the revenue that these employees are helping to generate for these

01:15:48.740 | companies. So if you had much, much higher corporate taxation, you can play around with

01:15:53.460 | all the personal taxation you want. But if a lot of people do get shut out of the economy, you're

01:15:58.020 | not going to make nearly as much for the government as you would by taxing companies more.

01:16:02.820 | You know... Chamath,

01:16:03.700 | should there be a backstop? Because we know tax law is so sophisticated, and if you're intelligent,

01:16:09.700 | you could make it seem like you didn't make any money because you're investing, you're distributing,

01:16:13.460 | yada yada. Should there just be a, "Hey, listen, whatever you want to do with your taxes is fine,

01:16:17.940 | but X percent of your top line revenue is your base tax, and you cannot get around that."

01:16:24.740 | Should there be something like that? There's a couple things that this tax bill attempted to do,

01:16:28.740 | which could be really powerful if it does get passed. I think that corporations

01:16:33.380 | should pay a large tax. I think that they should be forced to spend a certain percentage on R&D,

01:16:38.500 | and I think they should be forced to spend a certain percentage on basically benefits

01:16:43.540 | for their employees. I think that would do a lot to level the playing field. Then I do think that

01:16:50.500 | you can have much higher individual taxation, but you need to make it simpler because there's too

01:16:55.860 | many easy ways, like that ProPublica article showed, for you to play games for individuals

01:17:01.940 | to not pay taxes.

01:17:03.060 | Yes. You've got to simplify all of this stuff because it's too complicated. If you're

01:17:08.340 | rich enough to hire a fleet of lawyers, you will work your way around it.

01:17:13.220 | Yes.

01:17:13.460 | Period.

01:17:14.660 | They repealed it as part of the… The AMT was for corporations was repealed as part of the

01:17:21.220 | Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, I think. I don't know where that stands,

01:17:25.220 | but it does seem like a lot of companies because of…

01:17:27.380 | I don't know how that makes sense, J. Cal. Some businesses run high margins,

01:17:30.980 | some are low margins, some are losing money, some are losing money.

01:17:32.740 | Some are over investing.

01:17:33.540 | No, it's complicated. I don't have the solution. That's why I'm sort of saying…

01:17:36.100 | I think one of the optics issues here is people are like, "That company didn't pay any taxes.

01:17:42.100 | That company sells this many iPhones. That company sells this many…"

01:17:44.500 | Yes, but I mean, that's because they're doing what tax laws were designed to do,

01:17:48.020 | which is to encourage investment.

01:17:50.020 | So how do you fix it? Give me a solution, Friedberg.

01:17:52.420 | I think that once businesses are mature and they start dividending cash and making

01:17:56.020 | distributions and they're profitable, that might be the time to tax them. I'm not sure that like…

01:17:59.380 | Why would they ever do that if they had an army of people saying, "Hey, you don't have

01:18:02.420 | to."

01:18:02.740 | You don't want to do it because if they're investing in growth, they're creating jobs

01:18:05.860 | and they're growing the economy. And that's what we want to do.

01:18:07.380 | Okay, so their status quo is fine. I don't think they're creating as many jobs as you think,

01:18:10.820 | but they are growing the economy. That's why you have to tax the corporation because that's

01:18:14.580 | the effective proxy for taxing GDP.

01:18:17.300 | Yeah. Look, I would be all about… Let me just… I'll wear my libertarian hat again for a second,

01:18:22.980 | but like I would be all about taxation if I felt like my dollars had a positive ROI where they

01:18:27.700 | ended up. And the problem right now is like government spending is set up in such a way that…

01:18:32.100 | That it's effectively been gamified and people extract capital from the government

01:18:35.940 | and my dollars are not getting a positive ROI for me or for society. I would rather have them sit

01:18:40.260 | somewhere else.

01:18:40.420 | Which is why you left… Let's be honest. That's why you left San Francisco. I mean,

01:18:43.380 | it's just they're spending more…

01:18:44.500 | That's not why I left San Francisco. I've got a family and I need a backyard. So,

01:18:48.020 | that's a little different.

01:18:48.740 | But isn't part of it that you are…

01:18:50.500 | San Francisco is a separate degree of incompetence, but yes, you're right.

01:18:53.860 | They're spending more than ever and it's getting worse.

01:18:56.740 | San Francisco is a whole another nightmare, J Cal. Well, I'm just speaking in general.

01:19:00.260 | Or California writ large.

01:19:01.780 | In general. Right now, whether it's the state level or the federal level,

01:19:05.860 | it feels to me and I think it feels to a lot of people that dollars aren't being spent in a way

01:19:10.580 | that's generating a return for the taxpayer. And I think we all feel that way. And I think that's

01:19:15.460 | what's frustrating. It's not about how much one's being taxed. It's about how are those tax dollars

01:19:19.780 | being spent? And are they being spent in a way that secures the future of our nation, of our

01:19:24.660 | people, of our livelihoods, etc. And giving everyone access to opportunity. What's happened is we've

01:19:31.460 | created things like student loan programs, and housing programs, and infrastructure programs

01:19:37.220 | that are literally just giving away money to private companies that are profiteering off

01:19:41.060 | of government spending. Right.

01:19:42.340 | And it's crony capitalism as our favorite professor Scott Galloway says.

01:19:46.100 | It's one thing I really do agree with him on. It is that there is this notion of crony capitalism

01:19:51.780 | where the United States and state governments and even local governments as seen in San Francisco,

01:19:56.180 | California, all the way up to the federal level, are spending money in a way that I think we all

01:20:00.180 | feel that it's a waste of time. And I think that's what's really important. And I think it's a waste of time.

01:20:00.480 | Yeah, I think it's a waste of time. And I think it's a waste of time. And I think it's a waste of time.

01:20:00.980 | And I think it's a waste of time. I think it's a waste of time.

01:20:01.420 | It's benefiting some disproportionately to most. Now, if there was a high degree of taxation,

01:20:06.780 | and everyone was benefited in a meaningful way, and those programs were well managed, and

01:20:10.660 | capital flowed meaningfully to support everything we want to support, great. I think everyone would

01:20:15.420 | raise their hand, raise two hands and say, tax the heck out of me. Let's make that happen. But that's

01:20:19.500 | not what happens. And I think that's the primary aversion to high taxation.

01:20:22.820 | Sachs, you got the final word?

01:20:24.700 | Yeah, I mean, look, what I'm worried about is taxes are going up big time, no matter what

01:20:29.500 | happens in Washington. I think that's the primary aversion to high taxation.

01:20:30.160 | Yeah, I think that's the primary aversion to high taxation. Spending is going up big time,

01:20:32.800 | we now have peacetime deficits that are the biggest that they've ever been. The national debt,

01:20:40.000 | the peacetime national debt is the highest it's ever been. We have a looming debt crisis in China,

01:20:45.680 | we have supply chain shortages.

01:20:47.360 | What could go wrong?

01:20:48.560 | I mean, you know, there's a lot of things here that could upset the apple cart. And what I'm

01:20:54.160 | afraid of is we're going to look back at this year, the 1000 unicorns being minted and say,

01:20:59.200 | that really was the

01:20:59.840 | golden era and everything happened. And after that, we really screwed up.

01:21:03.360 | Sachs, you sound like the old guy at Starbucks. It says that every generation

01:21:06.480 | and complains about the last generation, golden era, and it's all down.

01:21:09.440 | How much does music suck today?

01:21:10.640 | Normally, normally,

01:21:12.080 | I will say how impressive it is that 10 years ago, none of those unicorns existed. And it is

01:21:16.800 | likely the case that $3 trillion of value was created via private funding and private companies

01:21:21.920 | over the last 10 years. So all these entrepreneurs, all these employees, anyone working at

01:21:26.000 | these businesses, anyone involved in these businesses should be thrilled about the fact

01:21:29.520 | that you from zero created three and a half trillion dollars of value in 10 years.

01:21:33.280 | That's extraordinary.

01:21:34.560 | Yeah, I'm not trying to create nostalgia about the past. I'm talking about the present and trying to

01:21:39.120 | preserve it because I'm seeing some storm clouds on the horizon.

01:21:42.160 | Yeah, I would like to play the best song from Tony, Tony, Tony is really

01:21:45.680 | Yeah.

01:21:45.840 | Okay, everybody, we're heading out this one's for you London breed.

01:21:50.320 | State approved entertainment. You can take off your mask for this entertainment. It's so good.

01:21:59.200 | I need you guys watch Squid Game. Anybody watch Squid Game?

01:22:02.000 | No, we have lives.

01:22:03.600 | Nobody watched Squid Game.

01:22:06.000 | Okay, my kid my kids been talking about that. Should I be letting them watch Squid Game or

01:22:09.520 | is it?

01:22:09.680 | No, it's the most violent Korean horror dystopian.

01:22:12.960 | Show ever watched they're going to be scarred for life.

01:22:16.720 | Oh, I want to watch that.

01:22:17.680 | Hey, Sax, as a follow up, did you? Did you stop your kids from from TikTok?

01:22:22.880 | Did you take your kids off TikTok?

01:22:24.240 | They told Yeah, I went in there. I'm like, kids, what are you watching?

01:22:28.960 | I'll tell you in a second.

01:22:32.400 | Yeah, so did you take your kids off TikTok?

01:22:36.400 | Yeah, I went in there. I was like, kids, what are you watching? They're like,

01:22:39.360 | dad get the hell out of here.

01:22:40.480 | Yeah.

01:22:41.040 | He was like, okay, I'll be right back.

01:22:45.440 | If you can tell me to turn off by my name. I'll do it. David. See you later.

01:22:50.800 | The conversation was what do you want? I was watching on TikTok. I hear it's all

01:22:55.200 | sex and drugs. They're like, no, watching dance. Okay, go ahead. I trust you.

01:22:58.720 | The dance videos are literally like, absolutely sex and drug based every single one of them.

01:23:07.200 | It is so deviant.

01:23:08.320 | No, stop it is not that you're so exaggerating.

01:23:11.600 | I am so not exaggerating. Literally, the if you listen, take the most obscene lyric to

01:23:17.360 | obscene hook to any rap song. That's what trends.

01:23:21.120 | Oh my god, it's so true, guys. Every generation says the same about the next. It's unbelievable,

01:23:26.000 | right?

01:23:26.240 | No, but it is like explicit. Listen, whatever.

01:23:28.480 | I mean, like, you know, Pearl Jam. And you know, all the way back to the Beach Boys.

01:23:34.880 | They said it about Elvis and shaking his hips.

01:23:36.720 | Yeah, exactly.

01:23:37.760 | Yeah. But I mean, no, this when I say it's explicit. It is literally explicit.

01:23:41.600 | You just don't get the youth J Cal. You don't understand them.

01:23:44.560 | I think I understand it a little bit too well. Anyway, do not you see you? Listen, I Oh, hey,

01:23:51.760 | guys, are we going to do the all in summit or not? I went to the code conference. And I was like,

01:23:56.000 | this was amazing to get back to.

01:23:57.760 | Yeah. You got to say something.

01:23:58.240 | You got to stop talking about ideas and actually just doing them.

01:24:01.040 | What are you talking about? We created this. I'm just trying to get by in Jason.

01:24:04.240 | Take a day to do it. Go.

01:24:05.680 | Let's do it. Okay. All right. I need your buy in. We have a voting system.

01:24:09.040 | You're rolling.

01:24:09.840 | Take a Miami. Miami. Miami. Okay. First year,

01:24:13.280 | Miami second year, Italy. Not Rome. All right, we'll do first year, Miami. Second year, Italy.

01:24:18.880 | Make it somewhat accessible.

01:24:22.000 | I think we do domestic.

01:24:22.880 | You have a cane so you can't get there. You old fucking bastard. So here's how it's gonna work.

01:24:27.440 | 250 tickets, 200 for purchase, 50 for scholarship, all in summit,

01:24:32.720 | three days, Miami, Sax and I are off to the races.

01:24:35.360 | Why don't you make it more people, bro? Why do you have to keep it so exclusive? You're just so

01:24:39.280 | exclusive. I want to, what is it? I want to invert the top down hierarchy to what? I want to be a

01:24:46.400 | left wing authoritarian. What is it that I have to believe in?

01:24:49.120 | That is what you are, a left wing authoritarian.

01:24:51.600 | I'm like, listen, I just want to be rich and powerful. I don't care what party I am. I just want money and wealth.

01:24:57.200 | Money, status and power.

01:24:58.560 | Let me tell you, let me tell you why I like this idea is because to the points we're talking about

01:25:02.640 | with Coinbase earlier, we, you know, we have these conferences in the tech industry and they're

01:25:08.080 | frankly run by people who hate tech and the tech industry and people who are successful.

01:25:14.560 | They love the 7500 tickets.

01:25:16.000 | Right, exactly. And so the, I see these tech founders going up on these stages and subjecting

01:25:21.120 | themselves to these interrogations by people who hate them. And I'm like, what are they doing? Like,

01:25:25.920 | it makes no sense.

01:25:26.800 | Yeah.

01:25:26.960 | I'm putting up a form. I'm going to let people take deposits. I'm going to pick a month

01:25:30.800 | and we're going to go. How many people went to the conference guys you went to this week?

01:25:33.920 | Uh, I, the, uh, code conference, I think was probably three or 400 by design.

01:25:37.920 | Um, it was a third or half.

01:25:40.080 | How much, how much were the tickets?

01:25:41.360 | I didn't actually buy a ticket cause I didn't want to be in the conference itself

01:25:45.840 | because I was concerned about a breakthrough virus, but I did host the poker game with Sky and Brooke

01:25:49.600 | tickets, I think are 8,000 for code. And I think Ted is up to 10 or 15.

01:25:54.320 | So maybe, so how much are we charging?

01:25:55.760 | Maybe like 25 million.

01:25:56.720 | $7,500.

01:25:58.240 | We're charging 7,500. So 200 tickets.

01:26:00.720 | And then 50 scholarships for people who wouldn't be able to afford it.

01:26:03.760 | So the gross revenue here is 1.5 million.

01:26:07.200 | And what's our cost going to be?

01:26:08.960 | Cost will be a million.

01:26:10.400 | So wait, so we're, so we're making profit on this deal?

01:26:13.760 | No, I'm making a profit.

01:26:14.800 | Cause I'm going to run it.

01:26:15.600 | I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.

01:26:18.560 | We spend, we spend what we make.

01:26:21.920 | I am buying the wine and you will shut the fuck up.

01:26:26.240 | I'm buying the wine and you will shut the fuck up.

01:26:26.480 | Okay. So then it's going to be, it's going to cost 2 million.

01:26:29.520 | So it's going to make 1.5.

01:26:31.040 | No, no, no, no.

01:26:31.360 | And if he's doing the wine, it's going to cost 2 million.

01:26:34.080 | I want, I want a wine budget so that everybody that comes

01:26:36.640 | is, it feels like they've had an exceptional food and beverage experience.

01:26:40.800 | Jamant is going to spend half a million dollars on wine. No joke.

01:26:43.760 | So then it has to be 10K a ticket, but you know what?

01:26:46.080 | The people who are coming can afford it. They don't care.

01:26:47.840 | We're not privileging you with some profiteering.

01:26:50.880 | I'm not profiteering off of it.

01:26:52.000 | Honestly, the reason I want to do it most is I want to play poker for three days and I want

01:26:56.240 | to have us, the four of us interview the most iconoclastic, interesting people.

01:27:01.680 | And I want to do it for the fans so that some number of fans get to come who wouldn't normally

01:27:05.600 | be able to come to a conference at this level. And I just think it would be a blast. It'd be

01:27:09.520 | fun to get together.

01:27:10.320 | Okay. Stop talking about it and do it. We're all okay. I'll do it. All right. I just want

01:27:13.200 | to make sure everybody's bought in. I mean, I'll set a date. Okay.

01:27:17.920 | Not, not the first week of February. Cause I think I have a,

01:27:21.360 | I'm thinking March, April, March, April, also not the third week of February. Cause I think I'm

01:27:26.000 | skiing in Europe. Can you just give us the dates you're not

01:27:32.400 | gallivanting around Europe and other places.

01:27:35.440 | Bro, I'm grinding every day here. You see what I'm doing? It's like,

01:27:38.480 | I know I'm working hard too. I mean, it's crazy right now. It's like the,

01:27:42.320 | I've never seen the market like this. I mean, it is bonkers.

01:27:45.040 | What's that?

01:27:47.440 | Exactly. All right, everybody. We'll see you next time for the dictator Chamath Palihapitiya

01:27:53.840 | for the Rain Man, David Sachs and the queen

01:27:55.760 | of quinoa, David Freedberg. I'm J Cal and we'll see you on episode 50. Bye-bye.

01:28:01.520 | We'll let your winners ride.

01:28:04.480 | Rain Man, David Sachs.

01:28:07.360 | I'm going all in.

01:28:10.320 | And instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

01:28:14.080 | Love you, ESQ.

01:28:14.960 | I'm the queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

01:28:16.800 | Let your winners ride. Let your winners ride. I'm going all in. Besties are gone. Gold 13.

01:28:25.520 | That's my dog taking a

01:28:27.520 | drive away.

01:28:28.080 | Wait, no, no.

01:28:29.280 | Oh, man.

01:28:31.680 | My avatars will meet me at

01:28:33.120 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just

01:28:37.040 | useless. It's like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release them out.

01:28:40.560 | Wet your feet.

01:28:43.280 | Wet your feet.

01:28:44.720 | Your feet.

01:28:45.280 | We need to get merch.

01:28:48.080 | Besties are back.

01:28:48.560 | I'm going all in.

01:28:50.320 | What?

01:28:51.360 | What?

01:28:53.360 | What?

01:28:55.280 | I'm going all in

01:28:58.360 | you

E49: Coinbase CEO reflects on controversial blog, state of the markets, 1000 unicorns & more

Chapters