All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E33: Apple’s hypocrisy, America’s math failure, crypto’s regulatory correction, Clubhouse’s future, UFOs & more

Episode Date: May 22, 2021

Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr....ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Referenced in the show: The Verge - Apple employees circulate petition demanding investigation into ‘misogynistic’ new hire https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-hiring-antonio-garcia-martinez-chaos-monkeys-facebook The Verge - Apple employees call for company to support Palestinians in internal letter https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/20/22446059/apple-employees-palestinians-support-internal-letter-tim-cook Vox - Full transcript: 'Chaos Monkeys' author Antonio García-Martinez on Recode Decode https://www.vox.com/2016/8/9/12415696/antonio-garcia-martinez-chaos-monkeys-recode-decode-podcast-transcript Business Insider - Tobi Lutke's Email https://www.businessinsider.com/shopify-ceo-email-to-managers-we-are-not-a-family-2021-5 TK News by Matt Taibi - On the Hypocrites at Apple Who Fired Antonio Garcia-Martinez https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who-canceled The Information - Seven Apple Suppliers Accused of Using Forced Labor From Xinjiang https://www.theinformation.com/articles/seven-apple-suppliers-accused-of-using-forced-labor-from-xinjiang Persuasion - America Is Flunking Math https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-america-is-flunking-math-education Bloomberg - Gap With White House on Infrastructure Is Widening, GOP Says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-21/biden-offers-to-cut-infrastructure-proposal-to-1-7-trillion St. Louis FED - 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE TED - A prosecutor's vision for a better justice system https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_foss_a_prosecutor_s_vision_for_a_better_justice_system?language=en Tweets: https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1394328675768705030 https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1395056042841559041 https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1393462058407010307 https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1395060902253064195 https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1395062765702713358 https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1395073652840796160 https://twitter.com/cabot_phillips/status/1394654014596337667 https://twitter.com/ALLIN_STATS Show Notes: 0:00 Apple's hypocrisy re: AGM firing 25:48 America is failing math 40:10 Inflation fears slowing down, infrastructure bill restructuring, corporate tax loopholes 50:10 Clubhouse's plummeting download numbers, David Sacks gives the besties a scoop 57:46 Crypto correction: regulation, centralized coins, potential black swans 1:13:30 Friedberg's science corner: UFOs 1:19:18 Sacks presses other billionaires on their support Chesa Boudin #allin #tech #news

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Freeberg, freeberg. What's up? It seems like you have a piece of shit on the side of your mouth or is that a birthmark? That's it. Oh, no, that's a birthmark. I got you. Did you record that? Yeah, absolutely. Jesus. Look at this guy. He takes a shirt off for one fucking selfie and now everybody who's fat and pal on the show, the other three of us is gonna be ridiculed. I'm having steak tonight as T.D.A.K. tonight. I'm lifting twice a week now. Ugh! Come on, Saks, come get some. Let's fucking go.
Starting point is 00:00:31 Three, two. What? You're like your winner's ride. Rainman David Saks. I'm going to win. And I said we open sources to the fans and they've just got in podcast with me again, the dictator himself to off poly hapatiha rain man David sacks definitely with us definitely
Starting point is 00:01:01 a great driver his dad let's him drive in the driveway. And of course, everybody's favorite. The queen of Kenwa, the science conductor himself. David Freiburg. Queen, queen. The queen. Lot of activity online. It's been a little bit of chaos since we all got together here.
Starting point is 00:01:22 I guess we should talk about this Apple story with Antonio Garcia Martinez. You may have heard that he was hired by Apple to, I guess, run their ad efforts. I have a little bit of information on what he was going to do there in terms of ads, which is really interesting. Tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us. Okay. Well, anyway, you know how we're basically... Start at the beginning and assume people don't know who Antonio Garcia Martinez was. Antonio Garcia Martinez was a Facebook developer. He is some really smart guy who uses a lot of big words and wrote a book called Chaos Monkeys,
Starting point is 00:02:01 which is a great book where he takes a very Jack Carrowack kind of, you know, a lot of pros. And he wrote this book about his time at Facebook. The problem is, he said some things in the book that would be five years later problematic. At the time, they were actually considered problematic by some folks. And in the full quote, maybe less problematic, but he was essentially ousted because of the following problematic quote. The quote is, most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, costeted and naive despite their claims of worldliness and generally full of shit, they have their self-regarding entitlement feminism and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is come. The epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they become precisely the sort of uses bagage
Starting point is 00:02:59 you trade for a box of shotgun shells or a Jerry can of diesel. And they shortened that quote to be that most women are soft and weak and foolish. So in context, in context, in this book, he was contrasting the Bay Area women he had dated with the mother of his kids, who he describes as strong and tall and tough and amazing. But still, the quote's a little gnarly and the quote, when it's out of context, becomes particularly gnarly. And of course, this led to a petition at Apple, which then led to him being fired, which now is going to lead to him probably getting a $10 million settlement. Of course, there's a lot of hypocrisy being brought up here because Apple has allegedly been using or Apple's supply
Starting point is 00:03:53 chain has slave labor in it from the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities. And obviously, Apple gave Dr. Dre billions of dollars for beats by Dre and he has even more massage and mystic series of lyrics and was also accused of physically assaulting I believe his wife and other people he dated. Who Dr. Dre? Dr. Dre? Dr. Dre, yeah. So anyway, what do you think? Okay, there you go, next story. No, I'm happy to jump into this. I think, Jason, I think you're, you focus a little bit too much
Starting point is 00:04:39 and I saw your, your pod was that co-lias on this. A lot of good takes, but I think you're a little too focused on what AGM, as, I think it's easier to just call him by his initials, what he did as opposed to what the employees at Apple did. And there's at least four things that Apple did, or five things that Apple did wrong. I mean, number one, I think there was a very good reason not to hire this guy, which is that he wrote a best-selling tell-all book about the last big tech company he worked at. So if you're a big tech company, why in the world would you hire him? So that was stupid decision number one, but they did decide
Starting point is 00:05:14 to hire him. And once they hire him, they got to treat him like any other employee and give him a chance to show what he can do. And so that leads to mistake number two, which is these 2,000 employees who signed this petition really distorted and took out a context, that passage. And I know the passage is cringe, okay? And gnarly and it could, you know, certainly appear as sexist, but you have to put it in its context. And the larger, this is a work of literature, this is a bestselling book.
Starting point is 00:05:40 It's 150,000 words, they or taking 150 words out of context. And the context was, like you said, he's describing the mother of his children, the love of his life, and as this sort of Linda Hamilton-esque in Terminator-type figure, or Charlize Theron in Mad Max. And this passage is not in there to describe all women. It's just basically a literary flourish to contrast the woman that he loves, being such a badass compared to every other woman. And when Kira Swisher interviewed AGM five years ago, she bought this passage, he explained it, and she said, yeah, okay, I get it. So, you know,
Starting point is 00:06:18 it's certainly the case that people can understand the context if they choose to and they simply are not choosing to understand the context, which brings me to mistake number three, which is these 2000 employees lied in their petition by claiming that their safety is threatened by Apple hiring AGM. That is simply untrue. It's physically impossible in the era of zoom when everyone's working from home. But this guy is not a threat to anyone's safety, but they use that claim, they make that claim because they know that if you accuse someone of threatening your safety, it will trigger the machinery of HR to remove that person from the workplace. This is the language of safetyism. And it's a specific tactic to basically get somebody canceled and removed
Starting point is 00:07:05 from the workplace. Okay. And then that leads to the next mistake, I think mistake number four, which is the bosses of Apple caved into this pressure. They were total cowards. They never even gave AGM the chance to explain himself. They never asked, and what did you intend by this passage? What were you trying to do? And by the way, they knew about this book. When they hired it. Yeah, by the same time it's even worse. They knew about the book. They had vetted and they talked to many people
Starting point is 00:07:30 as when a big tech company hires somebody for a major position like this. They call all the references. And all of this is uncovered and dealt with. Of course, they knew about it. And then when the mob complains, they fire him similarly without subjecting the decision to proper HR processes.
Starting point is 00:07:47 This is HR by a mob rule. It's totally unacceptable. No company should be run this way. And then finally, that brings us number five is that in explaining their decision and trying to justify their cowardice and giving it to the mob, they said that they fired him because of his behavior. AGM never had a chance to engage in any behavior.
Starting point is 00:08:04 He barely started at the job. This wasn't because of his behavior. A.G.I.M never had a chance to engage in any behavior. He barely started at the job. This wasn't because of his behavior. This is because of the book that he wrote five years ago. So what they're saying is that if you ever publish a written work at any time in your life, years and years ago, that that can somehow constitute present day behavior, and that other people in the workplace
Starting point is 00:08:23 can have a problem with that behavior. And this is why the workplace can have a problem with that. This is not behavior. And this is why he's going to have a giant defamation suit and settlement because they are making him unemployable in the tech industry by claiming that he was fired for some some sexist behavior. He was not. What do you think you'll get paid in a settlement? I put it at 10. 10 million. Well, I was just thinking
Starting point is 00:08:45 he's a half million dollar a year employee to a million with his RSU. So let's just put it out of million unemployed for 10 to 20 years because of this or the damages to his reputation. And it doesn't value that back. So, and yeah, so I think 10 million is the number. My curiosity in this was just, did those 2000 employees feel the same way about Dr. Dre? Of course not. Or do they feel the same way about some of the movies that they sell in the iTunes store? Or do they feel the same way about some of the games that they enable to the app store? In the app store? Or some of the subscriptions that are sold.
Starting point is 00:09:27 Right. Do they care? Do they care that much about what's happening in their Chinese supply chain? I mean, I think it seems at least on the outside the answer is no, but it would be interesting to get an explanation of that from the same HR people. I don't know whether the guy should have been fired or not, but I do think that you should have a predictable standard. And every company is allowed to do what they want. If the standard at Apple is that we are going to hold you accountable for everything you've
Starting point is 00:09:54 done in the past, irrespective of whether you've disavowed it or not, so be it, that's they're right. And I think that the employees of that company have a right to do that. I think this is that if you start to arbitrarily enforce it, you go down this weird place, which is like, basically I think what they're saying is, if it's good for business, we're going to ignore it. If it's not obvious that it's good for business, we'll act because it's a low cost way
Starting point is 00:10:19 of keeping the masses, you know, that the medicated. And I think that's what's even scarier to the 2000 people. It's not that maybe they should feel proud that they got their pound of flesh, but they really should figure out how they want to stand on all these other points because to Cherry Pick puts the whole company in just a weird posture that's not scalable. Freeberg? I'm less interested in the hypocrisy and the values debate, which is obvious as kind of the first order point with all this stuff. It's like,
Starting point is 00:10:52 do the employees have the right values? Is their hypocrisy by management? Is their hypocrisy by the employees? What strikes me, though, is a failure of leadership at these organizations. You guys think back to Brian Armstrong's kind of purging of the woke mob and the political discourse that was happening at Coinbase a few months ago. He took a point of strong leadership to a new level. And I think it highlighted when the leader steps up and says, this is how we're going to operate.
Starting point is 00:11:20 These are how we're going to make decisions and puts his foot down. People will leave and you evolve the culture. And I think it indicates to me that certain companies, as they've gotten really big and really successful, like Apple and even Alphabet and various other kind of large tech companies, the leaders no longer lead, the employees lead, the narrative on culture and the narrative on values. And it speaks to two things.
Starting point is 00:11:47 One is that there perhaps aren't founder leaders running those organizations anymore that there are managers whose job is to keep the wheels on and keep the wheels from falling off. So they have more to lose and they are constantly trying to protect the downside than they are trying to be aggressive about growing to the upside. And then I think it's just, you know, secondly, this kind of, you know, failure to kind of define what your values are
Starting point is 00:12:16 from a leadership perspective and the void gets filled by the employees, the void gets filled by the mob. And so while it's this one kind of, you know, debatable point today and this one kind of hypocritical point today, it's really interesting to see that this isn't happening at other companies that are founder led.
Starting point is 00:12:32 And if it is, the, you know, the culture gets three cents would have handled this completely differently. Steve Jobs would not have led his employees tell him who or should be hired. Let's have a just, really clear point of view about who we hire, why we hire them, and how we make decisions, and not let the democ democratic kind of rule, or the emplory rule.
Starting point is 00:12:51 It's not even difficult. It's not like all employees took a vote. How much of this chameau has to do with the coddling of Silicon Valley employees for two decades, vis-a-vis, you get driven to school on your school bus, you sit on, you know, you get your lunch prepared for you We do your dry cleaning every Friday you get to come and nest challenging questions to the leaders and this concept of like You know everybody has a voice at work as opposed to this is a company controlled by shareholders and or a founder
Starting point is 00:13:19 And you work for it and there is a trade of services here vis-a-vis what Toby had to say a Shopify, which is this is not a family, this is a sports team. You are here to perform. We are here to perform for our customers the end. So the, in fact, if you if you had a chance and maybe Nick we can post it in the show notes, but the email that Toby Lutke wrote to Shopify employees was unbelievable. That to me is like, that's a tour de force. That should be basically like, that should be minted in sold as an NFT. And what's an NFT?
Starting point is 00:13:51 We forgot about those. And it was just an incredible email, Jason, to your point. And the way that that started, if I may be getting these facts wrong, but there was an emoji of a noose inside of a Slack channel. And then folks got quite upset with it. And so I think Toby's response was to basically shut down the whole channel and say, hey guys, we're losing the script about why we're here.
Starting point is 00:14:20 And I think Brian Armstrong's essay was a version of that. The question is, why are we here? If I had to guess, I think it's because we've pumped so much money into Silicon Valley companies. They didn't know where to spend it. And so I actually think that what we've really done is over-hired far too many people into many of these companies. And so they kind of are very smart people sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
Starting point is 00:14:44 And so obviously they're just going to get distracted, meaning I remember like, you know, at Facebook, there was barely enough people to keep the lights on for a while. Then I remember by the time I was leaving, I was like, wow, there's way too many people here. A lot of them and most of them are all really, really smart. But it wasn't obvious to me what many of them did. And you know, people would look at me and then say, oh, you know, that's wasn't obvious to me what many of them did. And people would
Starting point is 00:15:05 look at me and then say, oh, that's a really arrogant thing to say, and that's not true in everybody's valuable. I don't know. If you look at Google, I've always thought that company could probably run by 2,000 people. But there's 200,000 people, so the 198 other thousand of them need to find something to do. It's probably the same at Apple. It's probably the same at all these big tech companies. And that's the leverage that you get from technology. It's naturally massively deflationary. So, but if you keep pumping billions and billions and billions of dollars
Starting point is 00:15:37 into these companies where the app experience is written by 50 or 100 critical people or managed by 500 or 1,000 critical people, this is the natural byproduct, I think, of all of that. By the way, Freeberg said, organizations want to grow, right? Like, how many organizations say, you know, we should be small, we don't need this many people. So you're saying something really important.
Starting point is 00:15:59 Not enough founders and boards understand the difference between growing a business and growing an org. Those are two totally different things. And the reason is because we've lost sight of very simple financial metrics in Silicon Valley, meaning if you go to any other industry where there is a cost of capital, people understand what return on invested capital means. They know how to measure it. They know what operating leverage means. They know what margin expansion means.
Starting point is 00:16:25 We only have valuation. We have valuation. And they seek that out. Here, we think about exactly, as you said, valuation. And so this idea that having 100 people do the work and see margins lift is antithetical to the Silicon Valley culture. It's, oh, as margins go up, let's just keep running the same profitable business, but instead have a 500 people.
Starting point is 00:16:43 Exactly. What do you think you're an operations machine? People would say on a COO basis, you're one of the top three to five in the history of the valley. What do you say, COO man? Yeah, I mean, look, Jamoth is right, that in a company that's well run and well led
Starting point is 00:16:59 where people don't have time on their hands to engage in these shenanigans. So yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. I think companies and startups are increasing people don't have time on their hands to engage in these shenanigans. So yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think companies and startups are increasingly have to choose whether they want to be Apple or whether they want to be Coinbase or Shop Five for that matter. And this this week at Apple, there's a new petition circling.
Starting point is 00:17:21 Now there's a petition by a thousand employees calling for Tim Cook to denounce the Israelis and endorse the Palestinian side of the conflict. Yeah. That could work. Well, of course. Does he have a position on abortion? Is there an abortion position at the point? Well, but now that they've given into the the woke mob, there's no reason for the mob to stop. They're going to be circulating in petition every week. And that's kind of the point is so and actually, AGM himself had a really good quote about this. He did a great interview with Matt Taiibi. And he laid out the choice that companies face like
Starting point is 00:17:53 this. He said, it's interject. This is Antonio Garcia Martinez saying, it's interjecting the whole fucking Twitter cesspool with all the dog piles and all the performances signaling and all that crap into a corporate setting and replicating those dynamics and calling it work. That's basically what happened is what's happening is you these employees are performing Twitter at work on Slack on Slack and they're pretending like it's really work and it's not and I think you know Founders are gonna have to make a decision. Do you stand up and take a Brian Armstrong light position or a Toby position, or do you eventually degenerate into some sort of...
Starting point is 00:18:32 Or a base camp, by the way. Or a base camp, the most woke virtual signaling founders on Twitter decided to take the most libertarian or Spartan approach, you know, stoic approach of Toby to give you Toby's quote. Well, but, well, base camp, just to finish the base camp thought. So, to base camp, try to accommodate this sort of like work mentality. And what they found is that they got pushed so far, it became so distracting, they eventually had to move to the Armstrong position.
Starting point is 00:19:03 And that's kind of my point is once you give in. Yeah, it's going to move to that. Yeah, that's my point. I mean, and if you don't believe what I said was like, listen, if you believe that a organization that allows political speech and this kind of stuff as a primary function inside the company, well, then go build a competitor to base camp and show that that system works better. Here's Toby's quote, to help you make this more clear to team members. You're some pointers about what Shopify is not. Shopify, like any for profit company is not a family. The very idea is preposterous.
Starting point is 00:19:35 You are born into a family. You never choose it and they can't unfamily you. It should be massively obvious that Shopify is not a family, but I see people, even leaders casually use the term like Shoppy Fam, which will cause the members of our teams, especially junior ones that have never worked anywhere else to get the wrong impression, the dangers of family thinking, quotes,
Starting point is 00:19:56 are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team, italicized, not a family. We literally only want the best people in the world. The reason why you join Shopify is because I hope while other people you met during interview process were really smart, caring and committed. This is magic and it creates a virtuous magnetism on talented people because very few people in the world
Starting point is 00:20:19 have this in themselves. People who don't should not be part of this team. I mean, when I was a face I was a, when I was a face, strong, when I was a Facebook, we used to convene the senior team. And, you know, I was like, I want, I really wanted fire at the bottom, five or 10% of the company. And we would force stack rank. And we did it for about three or four years.
Starting point is 00:20:38 And then the excuse was it's too big. And there are too many people and the roles are too diverse and you can't rank. I actually don't believe that even to this day. I think it's pretty obvious who the real thousand X kind of employee contributors are and by the way, they exist in every function. There's thousand X salespeople, there's thousand X product managers, there's the thousand X people
Starting point is 00:20:59 that work in facilities. They exist in every job function and companies I don't think do a good enough job of figuring out who they are. And so instead, what happens is people that are not even a hundred X or not even a 10X are really more like a one or 1.1 X can basically hide in all of that noise. And I think that if you could separate HR into two things, or there's really three things. One is like benefits, which is critical. The second is actually like safety and the ability to whistle blow if there's something really nefarious or bad that's happened.
Starting point is 00:21:33 And then the third that's really valuable, I think, is organizational design, right? How do you put people in good jobs and how do you allow them to have a huge amount of autonomy to run and build a career? But all of this other policing stuff to me just seems like it coddles to the lowest 25%. I don't know if, and this is my intuition, to the lowest 25% performers of everything. Of course it does. And just to close this story up and wrap to our next,
Starting point is 00:21:58 and Tony AGM announced that he is going to take a year, wait for it, to write for Subsnack. So he is gonna get paid $10 million. I would guesstimate in a settlement by Apple. He's going to get a half million dollar in advance. I'll take you over. I'll take you over. I'll take you over.
Starting point is 00:22:15 We can bet on this. I said such a good line. We can bet on it. We can bet on it. Yeah, we can bet on it. I'll take you over. I'll take you over. I'll take you over.
Starting point is 00:22:23 I'll take you over. I'll take you over. I'll take you. Well, go give it a different bet. I'll take the over who's got a line of 10 anybody want the under I'll take you Well go go give it a give a different bed. Nothing. I'll tell you a different line set a different line. I think 10's a good line Could you go to think like if they offer him seven or even? I Mean it's gonna be something like that. I don't know what the big what the number is but we'll never know I'll make a line 15.6. I'll take the under. big, what the number is, but. We'll never know. I'll make a line. 15.6. I'll take the under.
Starting point is 00:22:46 I'll take the under. Wow, really? Yeah, 15's way too much. David? Now David's quiet, so. I'd say under 15. Yeah, that's not a good line. Good thing the 11 would have been a bad line.
Starting point is 00:22:56 11.5. I mean, 11.5. Okay, let me do the 11.5. What do you take? Timoth can afford the book against all three of us. Okay, 11.5. Timoth takes the over. 11.5. freeberg sex.
Starting point is 00:23:06 Yeah, I don't know, under. Can I just tell you why? If you look at the last four year compounding of Apple stock, right? And so if you think about reasonable number of grants as his level of seniority, plus the acute compounding, plus whatever he would have gone. Oh, you should be part of his team.
Starting point is 00:23:20 Somebody said in this clip, because that's the argument is, I do think you end up getting to probably show me, and then you have to include the other option. Yeah, you get a buy now price at 15 and call. And also, you could make the argument they've rendered him unemployable in the industry. So he's for gone. Incomparable.
Starting point is 00:23:38 In the future. Then it could be 20, so mental suffering. What about suffering? He is going to suffer. He's going to need to be on meds. My client is suffering, he's in therapy twice a week, he can't get out of bed, he's not gonna be able to be in functional relationships,
Starting point is 00:23:52 and he's too scared to leave the house. He should wait on the substack because he's gonna make so much money on substack, it's gonna mitigate his damages. Yeah, don't take that deal. Don't take your time, just wait on the substack. Wait a minute, I'll give you guys another step. Do you guys know what Apple's market cap divided by employees is?
Starting point is 00:24:08 Apple is, Apple's market is probably 7 million in employee. Anyone else? Wait a second. It's got a hundred thousand employees, and it's worth 2 trillion. OK, there's 150,000 employees, 2.1 trillion. So it's 14 million in employee. Perfect. So the other way to think about
Starting point is 00:24:25 it is if Apple's going to lose one or two good employees over this, they happily pay up to get the guy to be quiet. So it's worth one employee to pay $14 million. Well, no, I mean, well, you're not dividing by all the slave labor in China. And the old, I'll recall, I'll recall. They actually cause zero. So that was bad, sorry. Or all the petnabas. I mean, it's dark, but it's true. I mean, this is a hypocrisy of Apple.
Starting point is 00:24:57 They've literally got slave labor in their supply chain, not that they wanted in their supply chain, but how do you know that? How do you know that? Let's just go through this, because like, this is a common narrative, but has anyone actually like gotten to the bottom of? Well, that's why I said reported.
Starting point is 00:25:11 I mean, yeah. It is known. Again, I don't like pushing narrative. Okay, okay. Actually, I tweeted something that, I mean, I retweeted something that came from, I think a pretty valid source that author from the Atlantic who I think is pretty legit.
Starting point is 00:25:29 Also, I just think just in terms of his quote, if you had taken the word woman out of the quote, most people in the Bay Area are soft and weak. And it's on be apocalypse. I don't think you're recruiting from the Bay Area. But related to this story in terms of Chimalt's point about, But related to this story, in terms of Chimaltz Point about 1,000 ex-performers, America is really doing a bad job at math and Gary Tan, the venture capitalist, retweeted and participated in a tweet thread about immigrants who know that standardized tests is probably your best shot at getting somewhere.
Starting point is 00:26:03 Your money social size can't take you. The rules are well standardized. And he tells this story about this. But there was a persuasion article about us failing math and that they're going to be in California getting rid of the gifted programs for math because it's unfair to the kids who are not gifted as a kid who is was not gifted. And to the three kids on the program who are not gifted. As a kid who was not gifted and to the three kids on the program who were in gifted programs, or at least two of you were,
Starting point is 00:26:30 I have no problem with there being a gifted program, but any thoughts on this? I think it's shameful. Yeah, it really is. It's, I mean, like we are really doing our level best to just completely fuck our population. Why, I mean, why is this even, how could this even be possible? It's like, it's kind of like the equivalent.
Starting point is 00:26:52 It's the moral equivalent of actually saying, you know what, we're going to eliminate welfare for the bottom. Five percent. Like, our job as a society is to kind of like find the broadest set of solutions for the most number of people and solve for both extremes. So, when you're dealing with education, you both need to understand that there are folks that need some kind of structural support.
Starting point is 00:27:17 Look, when I came to Canada, I had ESL, English as a second language. You take that so that you can learn the native language of a country. It didn't mean that I was stupid. It just meant that I was behind. If I had dyslexia or something else, I would need some kind of support. One of my children had a speech impediment. We had a speech therapist. This is what you do. But on the other side, if you have a kid who's an incredibly high performer who has a potential to just completely crush, hey, like you should be able to give that kid a pathway to achieve and give back. So the idea that you would eliminate anything at the extremes is kind of
Starting point is 00:27:50 completely uncompassionate and stupid, just totally fucking stupid. Well, it's in the name of having a more equitable math class. Again, I hate that word. Please don't use that word. That is, that is the least. This, I mean, this goes back to the point I made a few episodes ago that, you know, you can have progress or you can have a quality, but it's very difficult to have both. And, you know, if you want to try and make everyone equal and give no one the opportunity to have more or get more than anyone else because of whatever the circumstance may be, whether it's earned or whether it's read, no, but this is my point.
Starting point is 00:28:24 Like, you know, you limit the ability for everyone to progress as a group because we're now limiting the ability for folks to take calculus. I know equality, look, I'll use a video game example. Equality means we all get to play Grand Theft Auto. Not that we have somebody who actually plays for us and gets to the same answer and just gives you a ticket. That's a year of what your results are.
Starting point is 00:28:43 On the same score. On the same score. Yeah. So that is what a quality means is that we all get to play and we all get a chance. Versus equity, which is leveling everyone. Equity is leveling everybody and saying here's your result. Right. By the way, it's the same as the sum of the percentage.
Starting point is 00:28:58 Whatever the misnomer is, but the notion of leveling everyone where no one can be ahead of anyone else by too far. Obviously limits as a group, our ability for the top death style to increment or the top quartile to increment. I got to think, look, let's again use our friends because instead of ours, but we know a lot of really smart people who have really, really smart kids. We also know people in general that are in tough circumstances who also probably have really smart kids. Just purely selfishly for me, I want those kids doing the best they can to figure out what the hell they can invent for us in the future. Why would you slow those kids down? It's kind of like saying, you know what, like how about a black athlete? Would
Starting point is 00:29:44 it be preposterous to say, you know what, you don't have a right to go to the NBA and make money for your family. I'm going to slow you down because there's another white kid that's going to go through four years of college. So you know what, you're going to have to go through four years of college and you're going to have to pay for it. Well, actually, what I would propose to them is when I go up to dunk that we just, the rim automatically lowers two feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. And then when you go for a like, that we just, the rim automatically lowers two feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. So I can dunk, and then when you go for a life, we'll just raise it six inches.
Starting point is 00:30:09 It'd be more equitable for me. That's more equitable. Yes, more equitable. Well, let me add another layer to this. So I agree with you guys that what we should be thinking about is opportunity. We should always be asking what increases opportunity for the most people,
Starting point is 00:30:22 and that's how we should measure political programs. And we're not doing that here. We are sort of leveling down, but I would say it's even more nefarious than that. Which is, I think what's happening is that the education establishment is completely failing our kids and our schools. And what they're trying to do is destroy
Starting point is 00:30:39 the evidence of that failure. And so they're hiding, they're hiding the results. Now, this persuasion piece, yes, this persuasion piece lays out the statistics, which are pretty grim, okay? So according to these like global measurements by OECD, okay, math proficiency in the US, we rank 37 in the world, okay?
Starting point is 00:31:01 And there's only 37 developed nations in the world according to the developed, so we're last among developed countries. China, which is our main global competitor, is number one. Okay, and we achieve these horrible results to spite ranking fifth in the world in per people spending. So it's not a spending problem. Okay. And as we know, to extent we do have high performing mass students in the US, a huge majority of them are actually foreign born. And so we're actually kind of cheating our numbers a little bit.
Starting point is 00:31:28 It's even worse than it appears. Now, what is the education establishment doing about this? How are they hiding the failure? Well, when school comes back in the fall, they're planning to eliminate accelerated math. Okay? That means that there's no more algebra for eighth graders who are ready to take it on. There's no more calculus for high schoolers who want to do the AP classes and get a jump on STEM for college. The entire idea of gifted students is now under attack, like we talked about in the name
Starting point is 00:31:56 of equity, has become a catch-all for every bad idea. And the University of California system has now abandoned the SAT and ACT. So they temporarily got rid of those requirements during the pandemic, but now... They've never wasted the crisis. They've never wasted the crisis. And now they say they're not bringing back their requirements until at least 2025, and you can bet it's never going to return at all. And so here's the thing, they're trying to get rid of measuring how bad we are at mass,
Starting point is 00:32:24 so we want to have to think about it. They just want to give everyone a gold star and a pat's the thing, they're trying to get rid of measuring how bad we are at mass. So we want to have to think about it. They just want to give everyone a gold star and a pat on the back and just say how I don't know what to do. You know what this reminds me of, sax is when you threw away the digital scale I got you. Right. I'm not fat because I'm not measuring it. Oh my God. It's like, we really, it's the movie idiotocracy. It literally, we are doing the movie idiotic.
Starting point is 00:32:52 Have you guys seen the idiotic- Why don't we just eliminate all admissions programs at every university and just have one global admissions board where every campus is the same. What is the difference between MIT and Stanford and Caltech and the University of Arkansas? In my opinion, there shouldn't be. It's more equitable to just have somebody go close to home
Starting point is 00:33:13 because you can save money. Carbon emissions are lower, right? You can just take the bus to the local school. Also, competition is one centralized place. Teach you. Why have anybody come base? Of course. If I said this, you think that I was a crazy person
Starting point is 00:33:26 Except that's basically what we're now telling all of our high school. I'm also getting rid of Michelin stars And I'd like you out to take off their review system because it's not equitable Like we should not have Michelin stars anymore every Every restaurant is the same every I restaurant you get three quarters of a star We should not the health department should not give ranks of letters and they should not be forced to post it because that's inequitable. Absolutely. You know? Also, you can game, you can game the health test.
Starting point is 00:33:52 Okay, so let me just ask the counterpoint question, which is standardized testing, for example, benefits people that can afford tutors and special classes to get ahead. For more tutors. Well, therefore, it's higher income people that can always, the point is they can always layer on additional tutoring. They can always layer on additional classes. And they're, they're for, they can always. There's a finite number of math.
Starting point is 00:34:18 There's a finite score. Friedberg, you can only get 800 on the math ace, I think. I'll be somewhat flip floppy here. I don't believe in standardized tests that much. I never did well, particularly in standardized tests. I do think that they can be gameed, but that's different from what we're talking about. What we're saying is if kids show aptitude,
Starting point is 00:34:38 we are explicitly choosing to not give them a chance to develop at their potential. And the problem is we do this in other areas. We do it in athletics, we do it in music, we do it in the arts, but we're not gonna do it in STEM. That's what we're choosing to do. That is what's crazy. So choose to get rid of the SAT or ACT, whatever you want.
Starting point is 00:34:59 I don't care. But if you are the LeBron James of Physics, Jesus Christ, like let that kid become the LeBron James of physics. I'll tell you, like, I am, I got into UC Berkeley because I had great standardized test scores because I had an aptitude for what we sure say, too, free bird. Let's do this. I got a, let's do this. 800 math. And I think it was a 720 verbal. Okay. So you got a 1520 out of 1600 at the time. I got Yeah, and I was 11 and I got a 800 on the map I was obviously sassy. I was a 750 math 720 verbal
Starting point is 00:35:39 14 Seven are you writing this down? This is pre this is pre the inflation. There was a big, uh, I was, I was, I was 15, 10 on the SET. Oh, we were. Okay. So I woke up for 100 points. 500, I wrote it on each of you in Canada. I was just kind of like, we didn't even write it, but I went and I wrote it just for shits and giggles.
Starting point is 00:35:58 I didn't do well. You just said you work at its innerized test. So what are you talking about? You're in the top 3%. Yeah. Yeah, you know, but generally, like, I was in a good test, I was in probation and college academic for the first time, not a good test.
Starting point is 00:36:11 But look, the reason why these tests got invented was actually to prevent discrimination. I think it was back in the 50s. Right. I think it was like, in that time, it was Jews being kept out of the Ivy League. And one of the ways that they corrected for that was they made everyone take the same
Starting point is 00:36:26 test. And so you could see the scores and it would shine some light on, you know, making sure that people didn't just get in because they were legacies that they got in because, you know, they had good, good scores. And there's been decades of work since then to try and eliminate bias in the test. And so the claims of bias now in the test really aren't supported. Now, to Freeberg's point, obviously, that if you take some rich kid who lives in the suburbs who gets a 1,400 and you compare that to a kid in the inner city who doesn't
Starting point is 00:36:59 have, who grew up poor, doesn't have the advantages, and that can't get to 1300. Well, which score is better? Probably the 1300. And so you can take that into account, in my view, in the admissions process, but eliminating the scores all together. Why would you want to have less information to make a decision? There's no reason not to get rid of these. I would just think more holistically about how you accept students. And I mean, isn't more competition and having better teachers, what we should be focusing on here as opposed to even
Starting point is 00:37:29 standardized testing or got for big canceling programs, let's just invest in more competition for schools. Well, so in Canada, we had this thing where when I was graduating, we had specific different kinds of math contests and computer-signed contests and other things that you could write, the Putnam, etc. And those things were actually really instructive because they were purely verticalized things
Starting point is 00:37:53 that could test your aptitude. And the school that I went to University of Waterloo would look at a lot of those things and adjust for it because my grades were decent, but some of those won this one specific math test I took was pretty good, I remember. And then they would adjust it exactly as David said to what is this kids background in his circumstances? And they called it a fronch factor. They would just adjust my marks. And that's how I got into Waterloo. And I didn't think I was going to. So there's all kinds of ways where you can be smart about it. But again, we're talking
Starting point is 00:38:22 about guys, don't lose sight of what you're saying. We are actually going to cut all these kids off at the knees starting in grade eight. So forget about all of this stuff. By the time that these kids graduate, they're going to be, I honestly, they're going to be like really dumb. Right. The problem, the problem ultimately isn't just measurement. It's the denial of opportunity to learn. It's about, it's about getting rid of the learning and the classes. That's the biggest problem. You have to move to a state with the gifted program now. If your kid is really smart, you have to give it up. Or a lot of public education, which doesn't help anybody. I mean, literally,
Starting point is 00:38:53 schools don't have to teach. We've now designed a system to summarize. Schools don't have to compete for students. Teachers don't have to compete for jobs or for their employment. And now we're saying students don't have to compete. So if you remove competition from the human condition, you're just not gonna have any performance. There's going to be no progress. And as a species, we need progress. We need to solve global warming. We need to solve a lot of issues.
Starting point is 00:39:21 And don't we wanna live longer and better lives? Like, where is the optimistic nature of the human species? Competition is at the core of excellence. And to just take it out of everything, the whole stack, that's the smartest thing you've ever said, way smarter than 1120 SAT score. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:39:43 It's only 1120. And the only missing that we're still talking about our SAT scores like 30 years? There was the average. So we're proclaiming your three 20 points above average, David. What's a BSD? What's lame is the four of us all remember down to the number? What are scores? That's what's lame. I think I was 11, 21, 50. I got to look it up. All right. Do we want to go to the crypto meltdown or talk about inflation or do we should do we dovetail those together or do you just want to go straight to UFOs? Well, Brighton, they just, they just, a press release just hit the wire and they just cut
Starting point is 00:40:15 the infrastructure bill from 2.3 trillion to 1.7 trillion. Oh, so we're doing our job here at the end. And Bogas. And I had heard from somebody that there just is not the broad-based support for capital gains tax, so that's not going to happen. And it looks like the corporate tax will probably go to 25%, not even up to 28%. And interestingly, I didn't realize this, but one of the biggest features of the bill that has the most popularity is that they're closing this loophole around IP that sits outside the United States,
Starting point is 00:40:50 and that more than the corporate taxes will raise almost a trillion dollars of revenue. I agree with that one. Why should you put your, why is Apple, I mean, you want to talk about hypocrisy, putting their IP in Ireland so they don't pay taxes in that company, everybody's doing their, why does that exist?
Starting point is 00:41:04 It's so un-American. Well, it's a subsidiary that has different taxation on it and, you know, to kind of that capital and that, uh, and that earnings. Right, but it's outside the US. That IP was made in California. It was not made in Dublin, no offense to, you know, my home country. I remember Facebook. We did that, we did this exact thing, we signed over all the IP, and then the IRS sued Facebook,
Starting point is 00:41:30 and I remember like I was called either to, I was subpoenaed, and we went through like a whole multi-year trial, it may still be going on, and it was around this issue, which was the IRS said, hey, Facebook, how come you, you know, you poured it this over there? And I think Facebook's answer was, yeah, we paid the tax and I think they did. They don't think they did anything wrong because the law is allowed it.
Starting point is 00:41:49 But it effectively helped shield then tens of billions of dollars of future taxes. I mean, I remember reading about this and I'm like, how does this pass the SNF test? Well, it's where the revenue is recognized, J.K.L. So you basically can produce the IP here and then transfer it here subsidiary. When you transfer it here subsidiary, you can recognize the earnings in that subsidiary and that subsidiary pays taxes in its local jurisdiction. I think the issue Facebook had was that they transferred the IP and they undervalued what the future value would be from that IP transfer and that's why the IRS sued them.
Starting point is 00:42:24 This accounting snafu in terms of like what did you value it be from that IP transfer and that's why the IRS sued them is this accounting Snathu in terms of like what did you value it at the moment you transferred it? Here's another idea. Why doesn't why don't they look at as part of this IP licensing? Where does the consumption of that IP a car? And where do the employees who maintain that IP a live? J.L. It's a very smart idea. The problem is that's the slippery slope that then gets to local taxation. The thing is we have all these global tax treaties where these large corporate entities can basically play this game and they're not subject to local tax.
Starting point is 00:42:54 But that's the thing that's going to really start the undoing of the big monopolies. Because if you start to abandon these global tax treaties and you're starting to see it, France is trying to do some stuff, the UK is trying to do some stuff, states individually start to abandon these global tax treaties. And you're starting to see it. France is trying to do some stuff, the UK is trying to do some stuff. States, individually in the United States are trying to sue these companies or tax them more. That's the first way to chip away at these monopolies. Is to basically say, fuck your global tax treaty.
Starting point is 00:43:18 You need to pay X amount of dollars to be here. And it already exists because of these, you know, realists, sorry, the retail tax nexus and how e-commerce companies have to pay local tax in the areas. But once it sort of touches a whole bunch of other industries and countries, I think that you're going to have that. That's why I think Janet Yellen yesterday said that, you know, she's in support of trying to have a global minimum tax of 12%. Basically, trying to get to the end state and tell every country, let's all circle the
Starting point is 00:43:50 wagons and agree that we'll all just charge everybody 12%. And then we won't go all our separate ways. The problem is that if you have a lot of usage in a country, that country doesn't care what the taxation is in Zimbabwe or Canada. If I'm the UK or France, I'm like, I look at the top 20 apps in my country and I'm like, wait a minute, these guys would be paying me $50 billion a year in tax.
Starting point is 00:44:12 It's hard to get away from the incentive to not want a taxis companies right now. Sax. Any thoughts? Yeah, I don't have a huge thought in the IP issue. It seems like I know the Republican proposal on the infrastructure was $600 to $800 billion. Biden's proposal initially was $2.3. HMATH is right now. They're down to $1.7.
Starting point is 00:44:32 I think that the markets have been choking on the size of all of this tax and spend. And there's been all these reports of inflation spiking. And so the gross stocks have just been hammered because we're all expecting big interest rate increases to control the future inflation. So, Biden's been horrible for gross stocks so far. And it really, I guess that what it shows is that, you know, what are gross stocks? Gross stocks are future investment.
Starting point is 00:45:00 And it shows the way that the government can crowd out. When you have excess government spending I guess you can call it an investment if you want but when you have excess government spending it starts a crowd out private investment because it raises interest rates and that You know decreases the the value of gross stocks and there's less money that flows into that Yeah, it does seem like the market reaction to the infrastructure bill and to inflation has made Biden reconsider his approach. And maybe he just came out too hot.
Starting point is 00:45:35 I don't think Biden is reconsidering. I think it's people like Joe Manchin. Remember, it's a $50,000,000,000fourter chris and cinema that the moderate there's a three or four moderate democrats in the senate who i think are receiving the message a lot of the really well the last pod that the markets are sending a message to washington i think some of those centers democrats read the message i don't think bines aware of and i don't know what he's aware of he doesn't seem to aware of anything
Starting point is 00:46:01 to me but i think the moderate democrats are getting a message and they're telling they're telling the White House the package is too big. And I think that's why it's come there. The other thing that I think people may be getting their heads around, here's what's changed since last week. There's a growing body. If I had to say, the beautiful thing about the markets
Starting point is 00:46:20 is that it is an extremely elegant voting mechanism in the short term. I mean, Buffett says it's a voting machine in the short term and a weighing machine in the long term. But if you look at sentiment and how things are voted on in the public markets in real time, it's incredibly illustrative. So there's a body of people now that are voting a very different scenario than inflation. What they're voting for now is this idea that by the fall, a lot of this short-term pent-up demand will have worked its way through the system, and instead we'll be back to this realization that we've had for the last 20 years, which is, hey, wait a minute, people don't actually want to buy more
Starting point is 00:46:58 of these physical goods. They're going to go back to consuming the way they did before. It's going to reflexively push towards technology companies again, and we're going to go back to consuming the way they did before. It's going to reflexively push towards technology companies again, and we're going to have this rebirth of growth. And you would say, well, how would you know that that vote is likely? And this one incredible thing happened this last week, which I just wanted to throw out here. One thing that I look at is this thing called 10-year break-even, which is basically a thing that the Federal Reserve of St. Louis publishes,
Starting point is 00:47:24 and what it basically shows is like what people think collectively, trillions of dollars, what the 10-year break-even interest rate is going to be. And it peaked last week at 2.54%. And it's fallen 13 basis points just in the last week, down to 241. And I don't know whether it's sustained or whatever, but there is a growing idea that the worst may be behind us. And if you layer on top of this now, Biden pulling back, right, on stimulus because he can't get it done, pulling back on cap gains, pulling back on corporate taxation, and a more measured policy of investment. We could all be back by the fall.
Starting point is 00:48:07 So we're basically taking the medicine and getting back to where we were, but we still have massive asset inflation. We're seeing in houses, cars, and other things. Well, we may have just pulled forward demand, meaning, you know, people are like, okay, I'm flush with money. The savings rate in the United States has been, you know, going at an incredible clip. People may pull forward all that spending and say, I was going to buy a car 18 months from now, or I was going to buy a house two years from now. Fuck it. I'm going to do it now because prices are going up too fast. I don't want to miss out. But then they're out of the market now for the next many number of years. And this is
Starting point is 00:48:40 what I'm saying, where you see this short-term spike of demand, and then things get back to normal. If that's what we see, good times are back in growth stock. Yeah. All in podcast. I literally, I did like two or three early stage deals recently, and I had members of my syndicate say, like, how does this valuation make sense? And I said to them, you know, it actually does it make sense if you're looking at it with the traditional metrics, but all valuations are higher at all stages. So I'm going to selectively, you know, overpay
Starting point is 00:49:15 compared to what we were paying a year or two ago. You know, if I really love a company, but I will sit out a lot of, I'm sitting out a lot of rounds right now that I just can't get my head around the valuation. So hopefully some, there's always a trickle down. There's always a trickle down from gross stocks in the public markets to venture, right? Because the last private investors, like the big funds who do the super late-stage stuff, they're just doing an arbitrage on what they pay versus what the company's going
Starting point is 00:49:43 to list for publicly. So when they see those valuations go down, they adjust, and then it works its way all the way down the stack. So, you know, gross stocks have to spend a hammered, and especially all the recent listings, the IPOs and SPACs and everything, and that's going to trickle its way down, I think, to venture. I think we have the lead indicator on that as clubhouse, right? Which will be the canary in the coal mine.
Starting point is 00:50:08 I don't know how you guys reckon so. Explain what's going on with clubhouse, just for those of us. Explain what it is. Okay, so clubhouse is a casual audio space. You go into a room and you're immediately taken to a live conversation with people speaking on stage and an audience, audience members can be promoted to the stage and start talking. So you're, wait, hold on, it's in an app, and it's all audio.
Starting point is 00:50:29 So there's an app, there's an app you go in, and it's all audio. Yes. So it's like amateur night at a strip club, but for words. Or more comedy club, or whatever, you just bring public on stage. Yeah, it's kind of like the champagne room, but a little different.
Starting point is 00:50:41 So anyway, it's more like a place in the pod. But a little. Um, so anyway, there we got more. Like the bad Apple two thousand signatures from Apple to remove all in from the podcast. Yeah, we just lost three rags in the Apple podcast thing up. So what's very interesting about this app is that it had a massive number of downloads during the pandemic because people were home and people were not doing anything at night because they were sheltering in place. And they had in, you know, two million downloads in January, 9.5 million in February of this
Starting point is 00:51:14 year and then came crashing down 2.7 million in March and 922 in April. But at the same time, their valuation over months went from a hundred million in their seed when they had like three or four thousand users To a billion to four billion in the last round of financing for a company with zero revenue and Let's call it a couple of million people using the app and what's really interesting is the same venture firm led all three rounds Allah Sequoia's investment in WhatsApp, where they did all the private funding. She have no outside capital marking this valuation, a $4 billion valuation, $4 billion. Well, they got an acquisition offer from Twitter
Starting point is 00:51:55 for $4 billion and they turned, they did this. Was that ever confirmed? I've heard it was real. So basically the reason why the $4 billion private round happened was so that we keep going as independent company, they could basically take some ships off the table through secondary and go for the bigger outcome. But yeah, they could have just sold to Twitter for 4 billion. They may end up regretting that.
Starting point is 00:52:18 But it's just really a function of a broader inflation, valuation inflation. Or is this just a function of there was a company that was a social network with hyper growth and then it turns out that the product had no stickiness and the hyper growth went away. And it collapsed. The souffle collapsed. Can I just point out,
Starting point is 00:52:36 and forgive me if any of you guys are investors in this company or anyone that's listening cares, but like if this thing came out before YouTube, people would say, you know, this is interesting, but it needs an asynchronous killer. It needs a thing where you can like record a conversation, post it online and people can come and watch it and listen to it when they want. It was always so crazy to me that you had to be logged into the app to listen to what was going on.
Starting point is 00:53:01 And if you didn't, you missed the conversation. And there was no way to like go watch the recording of the conversation. Like am I crazy to think that this was just like, I if you didn't, you missed the conversation and there was no way to go watch the recording of the conversation. Like, am I crazy to think that this was just like, so silly. I think you nailed it that they don't have Async in there. And actually, I've got a little bit of disclosure to make here.
Starting point is 00:53:15 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what? What? The beat got wet, but it's been a little bit. It's still a short story. It's breaking news story, okay. So I think I understand what Clubhouse did wrong, Async is a huge part of it, but rather than tell you exactly, I'm gonna show you
Starting point is 00:53:32 because I've been incubating a new laptop. What? What? That we're on test flight right now. And you guys, after this pod, I can demo it for you. And if you guys want to invest, I'm going to close around this week for it. Meeks getting wet.
Starting point is 00:53:50 And so if you guys want to wait for your vacation, what's the value? What's our inside of all in? What's the bestie vow? Yeah, what's the bestie vow? I'll talk to you guys about offline. How much money do you want to raise? We're raising 10 million bucks
Starting point is 00:54:01 and we already have commitments and but I'm creating room for you guys. Yeah. So 500K each. I'll take it. Sounds like 500K each. We're raising 10 million bucks and we already have commitments and but I'm creating room for you guys. Yeah 500K each. I'll take sounds like 500K each. Where is it? It's about an offline but but the apps on test flight. I think we're ready to launch in a few weeks. Can I say? Can I say what's it? Wait, what's it called? Can you tell me? Yeah, I'll say it. It's called call in. Call in. Call in. I thought it was, I thought it was going to be called Glob mouse. Does this have a podcast? Does this have a broadcast girl? Like are we going to do the
Starting point is 00:54:32 podcast on it? We absolutely could do the podcast on it and it would be awesome. Nick would be out of a job so I don't think you would like to much. No, we're not the quality level but I think it's good for call ins. If we wanted you to do a call ins show it would be good for that. Yes, it'd be great, it'd be great to do exactly and that's why it's called call in is. If we wanted you to do a call-inshow, it would be good for that. It's a call-in. It'd be great to do exactly. That's why it's called call-in is because the ability for you to take callers is obviously a huge feature. But also, we could host after parties for our fans to chop up the latest episode and talk about it. These fans are getting crazy. Do you guys see that all-in stats? Twitter handle? I don't know the Twitter handle off the top of my head, but some of these kids are doing,
Starting point is 00:55:08 they're using machine learning or something to know what percentage of time we each speak on the pod and how many monologues and they're doing all these statistics. It's crazy. That's really cool. I was gonna say in defensive club held for a second, I don't know the app per se, but I think like why and Dresan did all of that in my opinion is because they're pressing
Starting point is 00:55:30 a hot hand, which makes a ton of sense from their perspective. It's like, you know, I think that they're going for the kill shot because I think they're basically set up, they're basically set up to become Sequoia. If they really, I mean, I think if you think about like which two firms are really crushing on all cylinders right now, obviously Sequoia has always been the perennial number one. But if you think about the heater that Andriesson is on, it's incredible. And so from their perspective, the $4 billion valuation is less important than what is their
Starting point is 00:56:00 real capital at risk. And that's probably a 100 or 150 million, which in the grand scheme of having 40 or 50 billion dollars of AUM, if you consider the value of all their public positions as well, that's a really reasonable risk to take. So I think if you read it that way, it's kind of like, they're taking a shot to try to just, you know, go for it.
Starting point is 00:56:17 If it does become worth 10 billion or 50 billion, also, if it only gets sold for 500 million, they get their money out first. So what does it matter? What does it matter? They're going for the $100 billion outcome. I mean, they've seen that Instagram sold too soon. They saw that snap turned down a $3 billion offer
Starting point is 00:56:33 from Facebook and now it's worth 80 billion. So they're going for the $100 billion outcome. You two 1.6 billion. Yeah, and now it's worth hundreds of billions. So they're hoping it's gonna be like that. But Jamat, Jamat is right. Look, if they had is right, look, if they had taken what say 20% of a $4 billion outcome,
Starting point is 00:56:48 800 million, that doesn't even pay back their fund, right? But if it ends up being $100 billion outcome, they make 20 billion. Now it's like a coin base for them. What do you think they gave to the founders? Well, to keep them in the game, because $4 billion, they owned 80%. Yeah, they took off the they took chips off the table.
Starting point is 00:57:07 But here's the thing, all those decisions were made before the recent collapse and engagement at Clubhouse. I'm not sure anybody would be paying four billion for it now, given everything that's gone wrong. But, you know, who knows? It's still pretty early. And just for people who are curious, there is a Twitter handle all in underscore stats. And yeah, it's all in stats.com. I don't know, we're not affiliated with these maniacs, but we, we'd love the stands and we're
Starting point is 00:57:35 going to do something in person in September. Congratulations to the stands for losing their minds. I think it's a pretty good way for them to capture a bunch of attention on the Twitter. All right, crypto is getting absolutely hammered. And I, it's, the Chinese have once again said that they're basically sabre rattling about cryptocurrency. They're obviously going to do their own. Jason, I think you have to talk about China in a slightly broader lens and just what's
Starting point is 00:58:04 happening in crypto because like this is the same week Where they basically they've they've forced you know, Zhang Yaming to resign from Byte dance. I mean, you know Last week it was or last month. It was the CEO pin dual dual and just got yours MIA They're going for the jugular. I mean it's like we're what why are they taking out all their top CEOs? This would be like putting Elon and Jeff Bezos on the bench. Is it they just don't want any heroes? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:58:31 I mean, I guess maybe the speculative part in me would say, they're showing them who's really in charge of these companies. I mean, it would be crazy to your point if the government of the United States forced Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg and evil to resign. It's like, hey, sorry, I'm sorry, you need to leave right now and put somebody else in it. And deactivate their badges.
Starting point is 00:58:55 Yeah, we just, we just relentlessly criticize them, right? But yeah, we just demonize them. We're just trying to cancel them. But look, but they deserve that level of scrutiny because the amount of power they have. But yeah, we don't put them in jail or house arrest or drive them out of their companies. And that is a big advantage for the U.S. economy. The Treasury Department here in the United States is doing a little saber rattling. They want to know anytime there is a $10,000 transaction in any kind of digital token. And they're talking about a CBDC to do their own cryptocurrency. So they're putting out a white paper for feedback this summer.
Starting point is 00:59:33 And we are now seeing a pullback on Bitcoin from mid-60s to now into the 36, 37,000 per Bitcoin. Do you think this is the end of the beginning, beginning of the end? It's the beginning of the beginning. David Rubenstein was on CNBC today, and David Rubenstein, for those you guys don't know, is was a co-founder of Carlisle Group, you know, more blue chip and blue blooded, you cannot get. And very connected in Washington. And he said it best where he said effectively, the people want this. And the government will have no choice except to support it
Starting point is 01:00:14 because you can't take something like this with this much institutional and retail demand away. So we have to go to the place where now crypto needs to be like everything else. And maybe the crypto stands get upset with that because they don't like it that, you know, a bunch of their parents are all of a sudden going to be buying tokens and stuff, but they got to get over it. Then this stuff should be, you know, transacted in the same way you transact anything else.
Starting point is 01:00:37 You buy it, you sell it, you get a tax return, you pay your taxes and you move on. This reminds me of the transition that we all went through with, I don't know if you remember, Kaza and Napster and BitTorrent. Like everybody, we, a lot of our contemporaries in their 30s, you know, whatever, 10, 20 years ago, were like, you can't stop it, you can't stop it and it got stopped. You know, like you made it illegal
Starting point is 01:01:01 and you prosecuted people and then you came up with solutions that were regulated like Spotify or Netflix, and you gave the consumers what they wanted. So David, you think this is a similar path right now that we're going through, which is the crypto zealots and the stands are gonna basically have to get used to as Tramot saying, their parents buying it and crypto not being this underground thing, but being regulated in a major way in the United States.
Starting point is 01:01:28 Is that a good or bad thing? I think the thing that's happening quietly behind the scenes is that major Wall Street players, institutions, endowments, and so forth. Over the past year have decided that Bitcoin and crypto is a legitimate asset class and they've been allocating to it. Huge, huge pools of capital, balance sheet capital have been allocating into it. I don't think that's gonna change.
Starting point is 01:01:51 This is probably a pretty good buying opportunity. We've seen these crashes and Bitcoin many, many times over the years, it plummets down and then it goes back up and it eventually goes back up, reaches a new peak. So this is probably a pretty good entry point for the next rally. We don't know when that's gonna be, but the whole point of Bitcoin is that
Starting point is 01:02:10 it's censorship resistant. And China can do its best to try and stamp it out, but I don't think they'll be successful at that. You don't? I don't know. You're so wrong about that. That is the most naive take, worst take you've ever had.
Starting point is 01:02:23 How's China gonna stop Bitcoin? How do they stop VPNs? They put people ever had. How's China going to stop Bitcoin? How do they stop VPNs? They put people in jail. How do they stop the religion? They put people in jail. They may make it incredibly hard for Chinese citizens to get a hold of Bitcoin. I agree with that, but they're not going to be able to stop Bitcoin. They're not going to stop Bitcoin in the West, but they will stop it in China.
Starting point is 01:02:40 They will. 100% for stock. And you know how many servers are in China? I mean, go talk to the people who were in Tiananmen Square about what happened. The miners will have to move out. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They will. They any Bitcoin transaction over $10,000. Do you think that that and Americans can be prosecuted for not reporting, right? So I don't know how much that starts. That's fine. Fine, so what?
Starting point is 01:03:11 So what? So what? Get over it. But do you think that you don't get rid of 20% of the transactions that might have been in the face? No, this is the Silk Road fallacy that, you know, that the only legitimate use for crypto or just 20% I didn't say, okay fine.
Starting point is 01:03:25 But so maybe it makes that that small fraction of illegitimate or illicit use cases. What do you think, flyers? No, sex, I think the point is that they're trying to chase down, it's not about illegal use cases, it's about not reporting a taxable gain on your Bitcoin before you use that money to buy something. Sure, of course, about tax evasion.
Starting point is 01:03:44 But look, but that's course, about Activation. But look, but that's not, that's not gonna stop Bitcoin usage. You know, smart people who've been trading Bitcoin been paying taxes on it for years. That's not, I don't think that's really an issue.
Starting point is 01:03:55 If you were in China and you had created your wealth in China or many, many other countries all over the world and there were currency restrictions and controls and the government was asserting more and more power and we're putting business leaders under house arrest and seeking to put them under their thumb. You would be trying to convert as much of your net worth into Bitcoin as possible. So that all you have to do is if you ever had to flee the country,
Starting point is 01:04:18 you wouldn't have to have dollars in your suitcase or gold bricks or diamonds. You'd simply have to have a password in your brain that you could access at any computer terminal when you got out of the country. And so that, I think, that sort of digital gold is a phenomenal use case at Bitcoin. And the more oppressive all these countries become, the more they increase the value of that use case. Well, you think is the black swan event in crypto and Bitcoin in particular? Taxation in the United States. There's a different taxation like you do on cigarettes.
Starting point is 01:04:53 That would be for me. The United States putting a tax on it. That makes it less competitive with our national coming cryptocurrency. The CBDC that the United States will launch in the next two or three years, they're going to say, if you want to use any of these other currencies, there's a 10% tax on them, we want you using ours, the legitimate one. There's a very negative black swan that obviously has never occurred, but if anyone ever manages to counterfeit a Bitcoin, or this is the double spend problem, right? If you could ever double spend or figure out a way to create Bitcoins or counterfeit them whatever that weren't
Starting point is 01:05:29 in the blockchain, if the number of Bitcoins ever grew beyond the 21 million that's just built into the way that the whole thing works. If that ever happened, Bitcoin is instantly worthless. That would be the black swan on the negative side. I think the black swan on the call. If it didn't happen in the first 11 years, what do you think the light is in our first?
Starting point is 01:05:46 What is it on our first? The percentage basis that it happens in the 20th. Exactly. It's too expensive now. And it's too visible. Like the way that it would have happened, it would have happened in the first two or three years. Well, the argument could be maybe opposite
Starting point is 01:05:57 that now it's so valuable that it's worth investing to figure out how to have it. To make a target, yeah. And rather than have it be about a diminishing probability, it could be an increasing probability over time, which is that the pathways to get there start to get resolved whereas in the past, you didn't have enough time to resolve those pathways. It would have to be highly theoretical here, but certainly there's a lot of technical account that it's open source and that everybody can see it.
Starting point is 01:06:22 So you would think that everybody would discover the vulnerability at the same time, right? In an open source project. Well, no, I think the issue, practically speaking, in this would be that you would see those resources getting organized, meaning you'd see silicon being bought and volume by some centralized player. And then you'd have to see water and power come together as well. And this is where I think it's just not realistic, where today that I think the horse has left the barn because if you try to basically capture enough hash rate to kind of like overpower this network,
Starting point is 01:06:54 it's like the scene in Austin Powers where he's screaming in front of a steamroller, but the steamroller is moving it like one foot a minute. Right, you see it coming. It's just like you just see it coming. What would you have a black swan freed bird? You asked a load of questions, so do you have one? I think about it a lot.
Starting point is 01:07:11 I don't really, I mean, it's a black swan, it's because it's a black swan. So you don't really see it coming, but like, you know, the thing about Bitcoin, which has always given me pause, is the fact that the only way it works is if everyone believes that more people are gonna believe in it tomorrow than believe in it today.
Starting point is 01:07:34 Well, that's the only way it appreciates. Yeah, but for a variety of reasons, it's also the only way that it works because if it starts to depreciate, it becomes almost like this unwinding circumstance. There are moments where it unwinds, but then people kind of say, well, you know what more people are going to get on this? There's the Chinese argument, there's the Argentinian argument, there's all the reasons
Starting point is 01:07:55 why people will try and store wealth in the system. That becomes a rationale for continuing to bet on it. My observation is so many people that are active in Bitcoin compare Bitcoin to the price of the dollar, which to me seems like it doesn't make sense relative to the intention of Bitcoin, which is to not be part of the monetary system that uses the dollar as kind of the de facto
Starting point is 01:08:20 system of value. And so why have the comparison to the dollar as the objective for Bitcoin? Why is the objective not transactions, use cases, number of people that are active on the network, et cetera, et cetera? And nobody buying it is buying it as a substitute for a dollar. So yeah, that's right. And so then it becomes this rationale that it's like it's an investment that you put money in in the form of dollars or your local currency with the intention that you will be able to get more of your local currency out at some point in the future.
Starting point is 01:08:52 The only way that works is if you expect someone else will buy it from you at a higher price in the future, therefore it's all about propagating the marketing around the Bitcoin. Whereas if your objective was really about making this become a replacement currency system or replacement monetary system, you would ultimately care less about what's the dollar value per coin and you would care more about how many people are using it. How active? Let me build on that question. Let me take a look at that. So, Sachs or Tremoth, if this CBDC, an American know, starts to move towards a Bitcoin blockchain-like experience.
Starting point is 01:09:27 What would America start to look like if 10 or 20% of your dollars instead of being held in a bank were on a blockchain with an American? It's a government, a government-backed blockchain doesn't accomplish anything that people are, it's centralized, and only is it centralized, but also it's still prone to debasement, right? And so, look, human beings have used everything from gold coins to seashells as money. We can make anything money that's easy to transact if we all agree on it. That's the sense in which Bitcoin is the bubble that becomes true if everyone believes it.
Starting point is 01:10:03 That's right. Provided the number of Bitcoins to A 21 million and that the technology enforces the scarcity. The problem we have with the US dollar is the government can just print as many of them as they want. Yeah, you can't denominator problem. You can't change it. Yeah, and so I think there's a positive black swan as well, positive for Bitcoin, which
Starting point is 01:10:21 is Stanley Druckermiller thinks that the next 15 years, the US dollar would no longer be the world's reserve currency Well, what's gonna replace it the positive black swan would be that Bitcoin becomes if not the a World Reserve currency and unofficial world reserve currency why because people trust it They trust the decentralization more than they trust any government. And that would that would be a change. Is that in, is the United States and China, are they going to let Bitcoin become the world's reserve currency? Well, it's not a choice that they have. You sure? So yeah, there's nothing they can do. What about the law and guns and jail and tax? I don't know what that means. There's nothing that they could do to stop it before.
Starting point is 01:11:08 There's nothing that they can do to stop it now. Well, you can't get the New York Times in China and you can't practice religion there. So they have a pretty easy system. They put you in jail. They want to stop Bitcoin. They could just put you in jail. How? By finding out that you have Bitcoin and just because they have a hundred percent view into the
Starting point is 01:11:27 internet there. They have how? Because they have routers. That's how they capture all the weavers is they know their location because they have mobile phones and when they use signal or any other encrypted technology, they catch them. No, I don't think that's how it works. That's how they catch all the dissidents there is they they have them and they also have apples entire fair no center is controlled by the Chinese government. There's no ledger somewhere that says this specific wallet address equals David Sacks and there's not going to be one anytime soon. And so you'll have these centralized wallet authorities that actually you know have a lot of account information but the reality is the sophisticated actors,
Starting point is 01:12:05 you know, use tumblers, they watch sort of like their paths in a way where it's very difficult to figure out who these people are. Now, if you don't, if you use a site that doesn't have KYC, that's always going to be the case. And, you know, people with huge amounts of Bitcoin are sophisticated enough to know how to stay anonymous if they want to. For everybody else who doesn't care because for them it's sort of an investment asset class and an, you know, a hedge, then they're not going to care either. And the point is when enough people own it, governments aren't in a position to track record of them just waking up one day and pulling the plug on anything is zero. That's not how people do things. You have
Starting point is 01:12:44 to have like centralized policy and support. And I don't see it one way or the other of all the things that China and the United States will face over the next 30 or 40 years. This is like 50th on the list. Sax, what do you think? Any closing thoughts? I mean, I think we've said it. So yeah, I mean, look, I think if you're gonna stay in a place like the United States, you need to comply with tax law. You're absolutely gonna report your Bitcoin
Starting point is 01:13:10 and hold needs if it's required. But if the reason you're buying Bitcoin is because you're fleeing a country, or you're worried about fleeing a country, you're obviously not gonna report it. And that's the advantage of it is that it's a portable money supply. That again, you can just, you
Starting point is 01:13:26 don't have to carry anything with you. You just put a password in your brain wallet. Tell me about UFOs before we leave. I mean, can you believe this thing? This is the craziest thing I, I, so there was a, yeah, there was a 60 minutes episode that just happened. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligent, literally said the crafts we're seeing are, and then in quotes, far beyond anything that work capable of there's nothing we could build that would be strong enough to endure the amount of force and acceleration imagine a technology that can do 700 G forces flight 13 miles per hour evade radar and has every no obvious signs of propulsion and yet can clearly defy the effects of Earth's
Starting point is 01:14:03 gravity that's precisely what we're seeing from the director of advanced aerospace threat identification program. I mean, is this real? Like how is what? What do we do? What? Our government says there are crafts that outtrip our arsenal by at least a hundred years to a thousand years at the moment and we're like, what do you think, Friedberg? You're the scientist here. There's a, if you read the original treatment written by Arthur Clark for the movie 2001 of Space Odyssey, which was written before the movie, and then the book was written after the movie, he makes a really compelling point. And the point he makes is that when civilizations achieve a sophisticated enough level of technology, there's no longer a need to physically transport yourself from start to start and transport yourself around
Starting point is 01:14:53 the universe. Think about this for a second. Take what we have from virtual reality today and fast forward 200 years. And then take what we have in terms of the ability to print and create anything we want on demand and fast forward 200 or 300 years. And then take what we have in terms of, you know, the ability to print and create anything we want on demand and fast forward two or 300 years. Those two conditions alone might give us the ability to strap on something to our brain. And literally, and remember, our brain is simply sensing what our body is given. And if you can control what your brain is sensing through some strap on device or whatever, you don't actually need to physically be in the place where that happens. So if we can remotely sense what's going on somewhere
Starting point is 01:15:29 else in the universe or some other part of our planet and we can remotely pick up those signals and view them or experience them, you just feel you don't need to physically be there. And it's all this, oh sorry, all this via a strap-on. Okay. Yeah. And then secondly, I should use the term. And then secondly, if you could print it, you know, are a bull. Yeah. But think about if you guys ever watched the TV show Star Trek next generation, which I would guess maybe one of you. The replicator. I never or the replicator or the holodeck. And you could walk in there. Number three on my list of Star Trek. Yeah. Seriously. If you walk in and you could literally recreate the physical space that you want to be in to accomplish anything, the holodeck. And then you could print anything. Why would you use all the energy and all of this work
Starting point is 01:16:09 to transport physical matter from one part of the universe to the other when all matter is transmutable and the only thing that differentiates things is the photons coming off that matter, which is just a sense it. So if you can sense things remotely while you're physically here, why go through the trouble? Why go through the trouble? And so the art of the day. The same reason that we go to Hawaii and not just watch a movie. No, because we don't have enough of the sensing capabilities today to truly recreate being in Hawaii.
Starting point is 01:16:35 Imagine if we did. And we are very much on the path to doing that. And in two, three hundred years, we have the ability to physically recreate what it's like for our body to be in Hawaii in every form. Smell, taste, color, everything about being there physically and our body experiences it. Why the hell would you fly to Hawaii? You could meet people, you could socialize. So in a world where that technology exists, which could, by the way, be neurolink, right, where you can, you know, put these signals directly into the brain, et cetera, moving physical matter from one part of the universe to the other makes zero sense.
Starting point is 01:17:05 All matter is transmutable. You can convert one atom to another using technology locally. So you wouldn't do that. And so that's the premise of 2001 is that you've got these local communication pods that just transmit information from different parts of the universe. You don't need to physically transport yourself.
Starting point is 01:17:20 So that's the macro kind of argument against this notion that UFOs or aliens are in a physical spacecraft visiting. It's so old school technology that it makes no sense. It's like saying, oh my gosh, all these people are coming over to the United States on horses from Europe. It's just like, why would they do that? Why would they use a horse?
Starting point is 01:17:39 So I think that's the argument against UFOs being aliens in spacecraft. Now, is it a really cool technology that has this advanced capability and there are these crafts that are in our sky and someone has that technology maybe? But I'm not sure about this general piece of something. I mean, you blew my mind with that, so yeah. Saxa, you obviously don't care. So we, I just, I have no way for this
Starting point is 01:18:04 to increase the IRR of my fund or to get me another home. Beep, boop, boop, boop, boop on an earth. What would I want to go? I just somehow feel like if there are really UFOs, it would be like an even bigger story. Like we'd all know it. You know, it's not going to be some like weird, friends conspiracy thing. Here's the thing. I do not care about emotions like humans.
Starting point is 01:18:25 I tell you why this is more about the emotions of others. Every single photograph that's been taken in the last year is absolutely recognizably better than the one taken 10 years ago. And every single photo or video of these aliens looks like it was shot on a camera from 1950 on films that was left in some basement.
Starting point is 01:18:48 Meanwhile, Pixar movies can recreate literally the ocean, the limo room. We're recording this on Zoom. Why can't it get me a clear shot? There's not one clear shot of this. Show me the alien in 4K high-death. Definitely. If you do, it's a face of sludge. We're at the camera by the engine and we can see the engine.
Starting point is 01:19:06 Like, why can't we get a shot of the, until then, I will be traveling between my homes. Live the time. That's life. I am living my best life, not in San Francisco. We will get Chesa boot in recalled. I will tell you, Saks, I don't think you need to harp on the Chesa point anymore because I don't hear anyone
Starting point is 01:19:22 making the case on the other side anymore. Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin Moskovitz? Yes! What from a set? Yes, Nick pull up the tweet. So, you know, I didn't basically block because look, they're... Oh, we fired him up.
Starting point is 01:19:35 Here we go. No, we get to see it. Then we can take off. Insert quarter here. No, my rage. No, my rage. Chesa, just before the optimization inserted, yes. Run rage.
Starting point is 01:19:44 Run rage. Run rage. rage has a beautiful, good, good, inserted, run rage, run rage function now. No, look, we're taking all this heat from these stupid reporters who are talking about our donations, you know, like asking, what are we up to? Look, we're very public about what we're up to. But there's been terrible tweet from Dustin. There have been these tech billionaires, Dustin Mosse Mossowitz, Reed Hastings, and Mike Krieger, and they've been donating money to Chase a Boody and Gasco and an O.A.
Starting point is 01:20:14 What's this appointing? Horrible. So I asked, I just said, why you don't any money, the sincerity, and Dustin's still defending it. I really said, and then he said, I'm gonna mute you now, because you didn't want to take it. Wait, wait,, and then he said, I'm gonna mute you now, because you didn't wanna take it. Wait, wait, just in fairness, let me pull this up. Dustin's quote is,
Starting point is 01:20:29 I live in the city and I'm not going anywhere. Crime happens to me too, trust me. We write extensively about why of our grants here. You know, here's the thing. I think Dustin read Hastings and their spouses are very involved in criminal justice reform. And what we have to do is give somebody like Dustin or Reed Hastings the benefit of the doubt here and say,
Starting point is 01:20:49 we understand your donations. We're meaningful to you and you want it to maybe lower the incarceration of black people in jail for crimes that were not violent. And we agree. Let's first this conversation. To two, because not giving them the benefit of the Dalmatian explain why. Okay, so this is a good example. This retacings thing is a good example.
Starting point is 01:21:12 By the way, just today was announced, that he donated three million to Gavin Newsom in any event. So, you know, he keep, he, he, look, he's on that side of the spectrum. By the way, there's a little backstory there. I don't know if you guys remember when there was pressure on the Facebook board to kick Peter Teal off back in 2016.
Starting point is 01:21:29 It was re-hasting. That was from Reed Hastings. That was from Reed Hastings, okay. So the guy's very close-minded. I think it's his wife is actually handling this. Well, he was the board member who pushed to get Peter off because he couldn't handle the fact that there might be another board member
Starting point is 01:21:42 who would disagree with him politically. So it's a very close-minded point of view. But let's take this example of crime in LA, okay? So we had this election where George Gascone, who was a failure as DA in San Francisco, he goes down to LA and runs against the veteran DA down there, Jackie Lacey, who happens to be a black woman, a veteran, season, DA, competent. Nobody had a problem with her.
Starting point is 01:22:09 I think she's a Democrat, okay? It's not like this is a right-wing person. And so George Gaskone basically fails his way out of San Francisco, goes down to LA, and he basically dislodges her from that seat with $15 million. An unprecedented amount has in a DA election. Where did that money come from? Five million came from source, five million came from Rehdacings,
Starting point is 01:22:30 five million came from BLM. Now, in any other context, the idea that you're gonna fire a talented, competent, seasoned veteran, black woman and replacer with, an incompetent white male, that would be seen as institutional racism, but nobody complained about it at all, but it's outrageous.
Starting point is 01:22:53 And it's the most charitable- What is the most charitable view of why they're supporting gas-going and chesa- Well, there's this decarceration as to agenda. And so, yes, you're right that they see mass incarceration as a problem. But the problem is, but the solution is not mass decarceration. We need something in between.
Starting point is 01:23:17 And the problem with gas-gone and chase a booty, they just want to let everybody out. They don't want to, they also don't want to add anybody. So I think if their agenda is to lower the number, adding people is against that. There are people who need to go to jail. Murderers need to go to jail. People dying every day in San Francisco
Starting point is 01:23:35 by at the hands of repeat offenders who Chesa Boudin has made the decision to let them out of jail, even though they should be in jail. These are dangerous violent felons. The problem with this is, I think, Chimath, I would like to get your feedback on it is, you know, when a person gives these kind of donations and they make it their public persona and it doesn't go well, how does one, How does one, I don't know, disentangle or reconcile, they made a bet that had a bad outcome. Because this is obviously a bad outcome. You don't want the city to devolve into chaos.
Starting point is 01:24:16 I don't particularly care about San Francisco. I think the two of you guys can talk about it on online. No, I'm going to get rid of my place in the city. Colin, but I couldn't care less about how that's They got done to be a closing box free bird. I got nothing to say. Okay, I want to add this one thing. Look, so I care because I live there, but this trend,
Starting point is 01:24:36 this is not just San Francisco, this whole idea of these radical decarcerationists, they are running for DA in every major city. This is going to be a national trend and they're going to cause a lot of Carnage a lot of death and destruction until the people realize and There will inevitably be a backlash to this and hopefully just not to make people No fair enough. I don't want to be too flippant. My point is it's a really important debate It's going to happen in every city
Starting point is 01:25:04 But folks need to get engaged in those cities and do something about it. If you want to hear the argument of why this is happening, you can go watch the TED Talk on YouTube of Adam Foss, FOSS. He was the original like proponent of the DA's coming in to drive the decarceration movements. the DA is coming in to drive the de-carceration movements. And I just think it's important to be informed of the other perspective in evaluating where folks are coming from that are their proponents for this movement. Yeah, I'm trying to be charitable towards their position, Dustin, and Reed, if you wanna come on the pod
Starting point is 01:25:39 and be a bestie guestie, I guess, maybe? Dustin, Dustin respond to me and said, listen, we don't know what the counterfactual is if we had a more aggressive DA that was his argument We don't know the counterfactual so I of course so I posted a list of people of innocent victims who've died Okay, because directly because of a decision that chase a boodine made that's your counterfactual. Yeah, that's your counterfactual all right listen, it's been an amazing episode and no plugs, no ads, no nothing. If you like the show, great. And if you don't like it, how the hell did you make it to the minute 75 for the queen of Kenwa, the dictator
Starting point is 01:26:17 himself, Jamali Pabritia? I'm having steak tonight. He's having steak tonight. Tonight. If you're vegan, David Friedberg, you're not invited to steak tonight. He's having the internet tonight. Take tonight. If you're vegan, David Friedberg, you're not invited to take dinner. You're having beer tonight. I'm having beers tonight. You're having beers and roasted eggplant tonight. You never eat in fish in your life, never had sushi, and sacks is even everybody.
Starting point is 01:26:38 I don't know if I'm already getting it. I'm already getting it. I don't know. Yeah. Sacks, you're even talking about sacks as hell. Where's your first second and third dinner tonight? I'm on a seafood diet. I eat I see the food and I eat it. This can't be happening.
Starting point is 01:27:06 This can't be happening. This can't be happening. It's happening. This is your Twilight Zone episode. I just thought I'd go, I decided I'm going twice a week with the trainer and I just bought the Hydro. So now I have Tonal, Peloton Tread and I got the Hydro. I'm going from Smart Machine to Smart Machine.
Starting point is 01:27:22 Hey, are you spouting? Oh, I got it. It's Chimoff. Oh, good question. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Hey, are you? Spat. Oh, I got it. It's Jamoth. Oh, good question. No, no, no comment. Comment. Okay. Sorry. I just heard from Tweet. People have other things to do. Guys, I got a call.
Starting point is 01:27:34 We got a call. I got a call. I got a call. I got a call. All right, everybody. Love you guys. Love you guys. Love you guys. Love you guys. Yeah, get a salad. Okay, we love you. Hi, Bessies.
Starting point is 01:27:42 How are you to salad? And of course, the dictator here. Jamal-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-chim-ch I'm a victim. It's hard to make good investments. It's hard to build a company. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim.
Starting point is 01:28:12 I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim.
Starting point is 01:28:20 I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. And it's a point. You have to figure out whether you actually want your kids dead. I'm a dick dude. I know we're not. It's for you. You're more of a blank rush.
Starting point is 01:28:30 I'm a dick dude. I'm pink on the spot. People tend money is free. And it's not. I pick up the slot. People tend money is free. But it's not. I get thousands of bills.
Starting point is 01:28:43 I get thousands of bills. I get thousands of billions. I get thousands of billions. I get thousands of billions. Firing on also a dish. I'm a shot out of a dog, my hero. A hundred millionaires walk the front. More than that. I just want to be called king. The little guy getting run over.
Starting point is 01:29:02 I just can't stay back. I'm the big turner. I, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, it's all about you, you can figure it out. The rugged individualism, that's just not realistic. Like I'm taking a photo with you. Anybody who wants, who's listening to this, who wants to go to the French laundry, stay at home, pour a bunch of salt on whatever you're gonna eat. Okay, no, just take a butter in the microwave. Take a butter in the microwave, drink it, and then basically take a $1500, splint fire and you've been a little bit more shot. I'll be good to know, I'll be good to know, I'll be good to know, I'll be good to know. It's hard to make it. It's hard to make good investments. It's hard to build a company.
Starting point is 01:29:54 Because it was easy, everybody would be doing it all the time. This one man for yourself, it's all about you. You can figure it out. The rugged individualism, that's just not realistic. Like I'll be good to know. For yourself, it's all about you, you can figure it out. The Rocket League Divoratism, that's just not realistic, like a...

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