SPEAKER_05: Jake, how are you going to do your Trump impression? We're going to do your, your, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Everybody I'm getting my Twitter derangement syndrome right before we start the pod.
SPEAKER_00: I want to warm him up. Tech Cruz. This doesn't warm him up. I get some deranged.
SPEAKER_03: Get your show notes up. Hey everybody.
SPEAKER_03: Hey everybody. Welcome to another all in podcast with me today. Of course, the dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya, the queen of kin wa David Friedberg. And of course, yeah, definitely the rain man is here. David Sacks. He's an excellent driver in the driveway. Yeah. Okay, boys. Uh, I guess we made it to episode 22.
SPEAKER_04: Your intro becomes one second longer for every episode we do. It's just so people love it. And people love it. No, they don't. They think it's so stupid. I am.
SPEAKER_03: You have to understand persuasion. What I'm doing is I do the same intro and it warns people. Okay. See, we're still, we're still talking about the intro. Okay. Let's just see.
SPEAKER_02: Everybody's obsessed about it. You proved my point. All right, guys.
SPEAKER_03: Are we going to address elephant in the room, the elephant in the room, or do we just move on to topics? I will say elephant in the room after the last show.
SPEAKER_05: Um, I fought very hard with the three of you to not post that episode. You want it to can't. You want to spike the episode. I wanted to spike the episode and I'll tell you why. Um, I thought it was not good content. I don't think Vlad said anything new or remarkable or interesting. I don't think we had good analysis and I think the whole thing kind of felt flat and felt like a PR stunt. And I felt that truly and honestly, and I, you know, I made the case to you guys that we should cancel. Um, obviously I lost, uh, and I think going forward, we should have a veto, right? But you know, we can talk about that offline. Did you quit the show or did you threaten to quit the show?
SPEAKER_03: I threatened. I quit the show.
SPEAKER_05: I'm going to, after this, I'm going to propose to you my rules, my ground rules for going forward. One of which I think should be no more PR bullshit from Jason's portfolio. But, um, you know, besides that, I think I might be able to hear a bestie guestie.
SPEAKER_02: Is that com.com at the door?
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that we're journalists. By the way, I don't, I don't think that the journalism thing works for us.
SPEAKER_05: I think we're like analysts and commentators and, you know, we have opinions. And so to bring someone on and try and interview them with a four on one format, it just feels weird. It doesn't seem to work. It doesn't create an opportunity for discourse. And frankly, you know, um, when you try and do journalism in this context, you either appear like you're softballing or you appear like you're doing gotcha journalism. And I think both are bad. And so I think it works really well when the four of us just kind of chat and analyze and shoot the shit and have opinions and talk and debate. Um, and so my vote is to kind of avoid doing bestie guesties unless, you know, it's something pretty amazing and critical and we can all kind of build a dialogue with that person around a topic. But, um, yeah, so that's kind of where I'm sitting and how I feel about it. But we've had a lot of debates obviously since, uh, since the last episode about it. Can I, can I, can I build on what you're saying?
SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, this is like, kind of like that really, uh, famous Teddy Roosevelt quote about sort of like the man in the arena with the dust on his face, right? Um, I feel like all four of us are in the grind doing things. And I think what makes the podcast good is it's almost like there's like, you know, in a basketball game of four quarters, there's a timeout and you come off the floor and you can actually just take a second to observe what you're seeing. And then the ref blows the whistle and you go back into the game. And I think for me, what makes this thing so fun is I feel like every Friday for these two hours, you know, it's basically the ref calls a timeout or the coach calls a timeout and we can just kind of take a breath and just observe, all right, what's happened before we get back in the arena. And so, you know, just to your point, um, I don't think we're journalists and I don't think we should try to be, cause I don't think that's the point of what this is. It should be four friends talking about things that are important and then to the extent that it's important and interesting for other people, they'll listen or not listen. And I think these last few weeks we got caught up a little too much in, you know, ratings, where's it ranking? How can we go higher? And it's that the gamification of people's reactions that I think caused us, you know, to do that. Um, whereas the episode before I actually kind of liked because Draymond is legitimately one of our really good friends. You know, we see him. He's a bestie. We see him, we see him many, many times, obviously less during basketball season, but a ton when he's outside, we play poker together, we all hang out together. So it's that to me, I think is sort of in bounds. Um, last week and then also, you know, last week I think we were all supposed to be on point. I'll just tell you personally for me, I had an extremely crushing two weeks of work.
SPEAKER_04: I was extremely tired. Um, I ended up literally unplugging and not doing anything for three days straight and sleeping. Um, and so I didn't even do my best even just to be either supportive or, you know, uh, argumentative with Vlad. So I don't think I got anything out of it myself. Okay. Coming around the horn, Sax, do you, how do you feel that episode stands on its own?
SPEAKER_03: Obviously it's very polarizing. We got barbecued in the comments. We got barbecued on Reddit. We got barbecued on social media, but then there were a large number of people who said they really liked it. Um, my mom, um, David, PR, my portfolio manager.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there were people who liked it. Sequoia thought it was excellent. Right. There's 12 people in the lunch. But Sax, give a sure candid assessment because you weren't as hard as these other two on it.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. I wasn't as hard as these other two. And I do feel like that if they felt they, that we were soft on Vlad, then they should have brought it harder and they should have gone after Vlad and challenged him.
SPEAKER_00: More. That being said, I completely understand and agree with what Freeburg is saying that, look, we're not journalists. We're not playing a game of gotcha. It's not our job to go after Vlad. Um, I think a lot of the, you know, the comments on Twitter, that's what they wanted us to do, but that's not who we are, you know? Um, it's difficult for business to Sax. I mean, if you're attacking Vlad and then the next day we have to go into supporting founder mode,
SPEAKER_03: it's kind of a bad look, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's not what we do, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we, we, we are like, your mouth was saying, we are in the arena, we're doing things, we're not critics sitting on the sidelines pointing out, you know, what the doers of deeds did wrong, you know? And so it's not our job to, you know, run an inquisition on, on Vlad, you know? And so we're not really equipped to do that. I think, I think, freeburg is right, that it doesn't really make sense to have guests on the show, if the job is to, you know, to get to the bottom of something as investigators, you know, we're not we're not investigators. It was, you know, a big story.
SPEAKER_03: Just to sort of put a cap in it from my perspective, you know, I'm always supportive of my guys, I try to be supportive of whoever I invest in, and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. And this is a situation where, you know, people are upset, there were mistakes that were made. And so I think anything other than demolishing Vlad is considered by some constituency as a failure, right? And so what are we supposed to do here? I can't be trashing my own company that I'm an investor and a supporter of and founders who I believe in it just would. Well, I think there was a moment, there was a moment in the pod, Jason, where I think actually, so on the whole, I thought Vlad did it did a good job in accomplishing his objective on our pod, which was the same objective he had in front of Congress, which was basically to run out the clock without saying very much, you know, and, you know, he actually, whoever prepped him for Congress did a pretty good job, because he testified for five hours, and said nothing quotable, you know, which, which is a pretty good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Which is pretty much kind of the goal. That's kind of the goal for your head down. Yeah, exactly. So but there was a moment in the pod last week where I think Vlad got himself in a little bit of trouble. Freeburg did ask actually a pretty tough question about the guy in the street who had lost all of his life savings. How would Vlad respond to that? He made this claim, well, I saved that person money because I shut down trading at the high. And then we pointed out No, I mean, it was a high because you shut down trading, you have the causation backwards. And then you you ran into whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, what are you talking about? I call the timeout. I got in there. But let's Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right, let's move on. Let's do we talk about the insanely high profile guest that was planned for March 5, that just canceled on?
SPEAKER_03: No, we should we should talk to we put it on the table because I you know, this is the other thing about protocol just say freeburg is if we have a guest on you cannot just spike the guest if they took the time to be on that was my unless you tell them before they come on. I may we might
SPEAKER_05: do if we don't like it. Yeah, I think they get that right. None of us do this for a profession. None of us are getting paid. We don't have any advertisers like I completely agree. We're not here to be a PR machine for people. I mean, Vlad had his friggin PR woman sitting on the zoom call while we were doing it last week. You know, I like I just don't think that's a little inside baseball that got interesting. I think explain what happened when
SPEAKER_03: well, no, we don't have to go there, Jason. I just think I just think what freeburg says is right. Like, we we do this, we don't make any money from it. We do it because we like to talk. We I think we all learn from it. I think other folks enjoy it. They learn from it. But I do think that freeburg's right. We're not going to be used as a shill. I think we're learning as this goes. I think we're we're learning what the ground rules should be just like any other business. Flats made mistakes, he's going to change. We've made some mistakes. And we're iterating. And I think one positive iteration that freeburg has proposed is
SPEAKER_04: if any one of us don't like an episode, because we think it's basically moving away from our values, we should be able to spike it. And I support that. I support it generally. But I don't like the idea of inviting a guest on and then it doesn't go well. And then telling you know, from our perspective, it makes us look bad. And then we tell the guest Well, you know, but I think we came out down there for we're killing. No, no, I don't think that's the point. I think what freeburg says is like, look, this is not for to be a marketing thing. And so we're going to ask things that are exposed that are
SPEAKER_04: about having a real conversation, where there's real honesty. And if you're going to just be there and bat around, as Zack said to run the clock out, then we're just going to spike. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think that's communicated ahead. I'm okay. By the way, come with your a game. And this is a great segue to talk about what actually we were a person that was going to come on and realize that they probably were going to get so pilloried that they basically spike themselves is yeah, they opted out
SPEAKER_04: of the blue. So he's like, chess aboudin the district attorney of San Francisco, tell tell the guys what happened sex. Well, no, we invited him to come on the podcast. No, no, we didn't invite him to come. He, an intermediary said that she could get him on the pod. Would we like to have him on the pod? We said, we discussed it, we said, Sure, have chess aboudin on and then go from there sex. We didn't like seek him out. He was
SPEAKER_03: he great. So he but he agreed to be on the show. And then yes, you are scheduler got an email out of the blue, like a day or two ago saying sorry, he's not coming on the show. No explanation. Right? Isn't that what happened? Yeah, that's basically it. I mean, so look, here's what I would say is, chase a Mr. District Attorney, you don't have to come on the show, but I will challenge you to a debate. Anytime, any place, any format on your policies in San Francisco.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have if you have the wave os debate, I am ready. And I thought it was a guy who had a little bit of courage. I mean, there was that night where people were discussing the situation in San Francisco, and on clubhouse and he jumped into the room. So I thought this was a guy who had some cojones. So chase, if you have if you have the cuts, if you have the cojones, if you have the wave os, let's debate, let's
SPEAKER_00: talk about your policies. And by the way, he's an expert. This is what he does. You know, for a living expert, isn't he a defense attorney, sex, you're gonna have it. He was a public defender, he should, he should mop the floor with me. I'm just some shallow tech bro. Yeah, tech bro, tech, who doesn't know anything who he can easily demonize. So I would say, Come on, let's go. Let's do a debate. I'll agree to whatever format you want. But we need to talk about what's happening in San
SPEAKER_00: Francisco, because crime is out of control. And it's his fault. Trigger the young Spielberg Rain Man song right about driving. Boom. With me cackling. Should we like, man, let's talk about it. We should talk about what's happening in San Francisco. Okay. So since since the last pod, there has been another victim. Shariya must must yoga, who was a young, young man from
SPEAKER_00: from originally from Kenya, who he came to the United States for college, just like Hannah Abe, who was killed on New Year's Eve. He went to Dartmouth, all of his advisors said he was brilliant. He had a young wife and a three year old baby. He was in San Francisco for 10 days goes out running and gets hit gets gets killed by another drugged out hit and run driver who had been named. Let's say I think it was Jerry, Jerry Olli, Adams or something like that. I don't have the guy's name, but he was arrested four or five times in the last year. And he was released every single time by boudin's office. It's just like the New Year's Eve story, where you had this repeat offender Troy McAllister hit, you know, he was he had stolen a car, he was fleeing another crime he had committed. He was on drugs, and he killed Hannah Abe and Elizabeth Platt. And this was this was another case where he was caught five times over the past year. And every single time he was not charged by boot and he was just let go. And so we have this case, we have a district attorney who doesn't want to prosecute people. His agenda is decarceration. It's like a fire chief who doesn't believe in using water. Yeah, and
SPEAKER_03: he is part of the burn it all down party. Let me challenge you with the argument he might make, which I think I've heard him make a few times, which is really a position on the criminal justice system, not necessarily on local prosecution. But really, what he says is, once you know, once someone ends up in the criminal justice system in the United States, it causes this cycle of recurrence and the cycle of repeat that is very difficult to get out of the
SPEAKER_05: system. And so when you get out of the system, you don't get out it basically minimizes the opportunity for reform for an individual for criminal to reform themselves and to have a shot at being a successful member of society again in the future. And the objective is find other ways to kind of accelerate reform and not use incarceration as the only tool in the toolbox. What is, you know, what is the argument back to him when he makes that point? Because I've heard him make that point a number of times. And how do you kind of move past that point with him? Yeah, so so the I'm not saying that incarceration is the only answer, but boudin's only answer is decarceration. He doesn't want to prosecute anyone, he doesn't want to lock anybody up. And we see the results immediately. In this community, you have these repeat offenders, now killing people, they should have been locked up. It's, you know, boudin's always putting forth these elaborate theories. This is, you know, the central Chronicle, an article about it.
SPEAKER_00: About why these crimes occur, and he never wants to put the fault on the people who are actually perpetrating the crimes. It's always economic desperation. He just put it forward a theory that a decline in tourism is causing people to commit more home invasions. He never wants to Yes, this was in the circle Chronicle article here. I'll put it up on I mean, it's crazy. I mean, the other thing you left out David, I'll say is, and this was really, you know, hits home to anybody with kids is a food driver for door dash, not that it matters which service but was in San Francisco, Pacific Heights neighborhood, which is the safest and most elite neighborhood in it's, you know, the Beverly Hills or Bel Air of San Francisco. And his car was carjacked with his four year old daughter and two year old boy inside. Now, of course, you should not be looking at the
SPEAKER_03: car. You should not be leaving two kids in the car. Putting that aside, that mistake, which I'm sure this father is suffering over, but he needed to make deliveries. Obviously, he made a mistake leaving the kids in the car. But we all got an amber alert last week on our phones. I mean, this is the law level of lawlessness. It's turned into escape from New York level Gotham City level chaos. And the criminals know they will not be prosecuted. And this is the key criminal justice problem here. If you say you are not going to prosecute crime, and you demonstrate to the hardest core faction of criminals that you don't prosecute, they're going to take advantage of that weakness. And that's what's happening. Let me take the counterpoint just for a second, just so we can construct what the other side of the argument looks like the other side of the argument says, Okay, these folks are largely, you know, engaged in an enormous amount of petty crime to support their drug habit. Right? I think that's probably the and that, you know, underneath that,
SPEAKER_04: is just an explosion of opioids and fentanyl and whatnot. Underneath that is sort of economic uncertainty that's been compounding and just basically cresting over. And so folks would say, Okay, these guys are a victim of a much broader economic malaise that needs to get fixed. I'm just I'm just, you know, you're shaking your head, Jason, but I'm just saying I think that that's where the trail of breadcrumbs grows in the counter argument. So well, these are these are the types of arguments that chase makes in order to obfuscate and disguise that his real agenda is basically radical decarceration. You know, he's got this this childhood background, where his parents went to jail when he was just a baby and he grew up. He says his earliest memories are visiting his parents in jail, and it profoundly affected his political views. And now we have to suffer through this. We're suffering for his childhood trauma.
SPEAKER_00: There's his childhood trauma. And so it's from off, you're right about deeper causes, but it doesn't excuse the need to lock people up when they are dangerous to the community. And it's not just petty crime. I mean, let's let's go through that the actions he's taken as DA Okay, so first week on the job just about he abolished the whole cash bail system, okay, which voters in November, just voted in with Prop 25 to affirm. So voters of California want to cash bail system because it keeps criminals locked up. What chases said is that he would replace cash bail with an algorithm. Well, what exactly is that algorithm? He won't explain what he wants to submit to third party audit. There is no algorithm, they're just letting people go. Okay. Then the next thing he did was fire seven veteran prosecutors in the DA's office, who weren't on board with his agenda. These are people who have spent their whole lives prosecuting murders, rapes, I mean, hardcore crimes. And it takes years of experience to learn how to be a prosecutor like that. So for him to just purge this office of these veteran prosecutors is a disaster for the city. I've been talking to people who used to work in the DA's office, and they tell me that the problem goes much deeper than that, that in addition to the seven veterans, he purged over 30 prosecutors, which is about a quarter of the whole office have left under his reign because they don't like working for him. So you know, and he complains about being short staffed. He says a lot that he can't, you know, prosecute everyone needs to prosecute. So short staff, the reason he's short staffed is no one wants to work for him. You know, by the way, I think it's worth highlighting this guy was elected, right? So the the city, the voters in the city,
SPEAKER_05: runoff, I understand, right?
SPEAKER_03: He won by something like 2000 votes, it was a tiny, tiny number of votes.
SPEAKER_00: Regardless, people voted him in on a platform that he very clearly articulated and is now realizing in office. So there was something about that platform that I think is worth noting was and is appealing, and probably is to a large number of people.
SPEAKER_05: Large. Right. And no, the part of it that's appealing, okay, is that is that is that we do believe that there are too many people in prison, and that a better and a better way to deal with a drug addict who commits a petty theft is to send them to treatment, okay, as opposed to putting them in prison. Right. So I think we can all agree on that. But but his agenda is so much more radical than that. He just doesn't want to lock people up. Take, take Troy McAllister. Okay, this is a dangerous
SPEAKER_00: person who he was, he was facing trial for his third strike. Okay, he committed armed robbery, he robbed a store with a gun, okay. He was facing a third strike for that for that robbery. And one of the first things chase that did when he came in, was basically released him for time served, he basically pleaded that down. That was someone who's facing a life sentence. That is the reason why Hannah Abe and Elizabeth Platt are dead, is because he didn't want to prosecute. That's a violent offender. I'm not disagreeing, by the way, I think like, what is interesting to me is that so many people have an eye on and agree with the notion that criminal justice system needs reform. The problem is realizing that reform with a radical district attorney doesn't really resolve to a solution, it resolves to more problems on a local level. Here's what's happening. And even chase, I said this publicly, which is like, you can't just solve this problem from the DA's office. It is a much bigger and broader problem.
SPEAKER_05: And the radical action he's taking isn't solving any problems. It's creating far more. And I think it is worth noting, though, that there is should and likely will be, especially with Kamala Harris, as vice president, some attempts at reforming on a federal level, you know, how criminals are treated, how the system realizes opportunities for them to reform and come back into society as productive members. To your point, you lose all sense of safety and security, if you try and do it solely on a local level. Well, let me let me ask a question like, look, now we have basically political activism and judicial activism on not just the right, right? People used to pillory Trump for putting in all these, you know, extremely conservative judges who felt they were going to just sort of like legislate their own point of view. You know, Supreme Court nominees who were going to try to overturn Roe v. Wade. But it turns out it's happening on the left as well.
SPEAKER_04: I guess just more at the local level. How pervasive is this? Like, meaning the issues of San Francisco? Are these are these the same issues of other cities and towns in America? Well, I mean, you've got Gascogne in LA, who's running the exact same agenda as Chase Aboudin. He's not prosecuting third strikes. He was just sued by an organization of deputy DA's and the judge is now requiring him to uphold the law, which is three strikes. He will not bring third strike charges on his own.
SPEAKER_00: He's also this is both Gascogne and Boudin now have prohibited prosecutors from attending the parole hearings of dangerous convicts, murderers, rapists, whatever. And victims groups are up in arms because they need a prosecutor to go there and explain to the parole board why this person does not deserve to be released. And so you now have recall movements forming. By the way, they've also done stuff like take death penalty off the table. They've taken taking gang enhancements off the table. They're like voluntarily, they're unilaterally disarming their their their prosecution teams. They're taking away weapons at their disposal to lock people up. And this is why you're already seeing recalls forming around Gascogne in LA. There's now a recall of Boudin forming in San Francisco. Okay, David, David, go back to what Freeburg just said. They're probably not doing a bait and switch on their platform. So let's just like, what do you think it is about what they're saying that resonates on the way in with the plurality of people?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, here's the thing that resonates. And it's not that again, it goes back to this idea that incarceration is definitely not the only answer. This is where I agree. The problem is Boudin is on the other side of it where decarceration is his only answer, right? We need to use multiple weapons or tools in our toolkit here.
SPEAKER_00: So hold on. So for example, okay, let's take that let's take the drug addict who commits a petty theft. We all agree that person should go to treatment, not to jail or prison, right? A nonviolent course, offender, okay, reason. How are you how are you gonna get that person to go to treatment? Because right now, there is no leverage whatsoever to get that person to go to treatment. Because Boudin is just not bringing charges. He's not prosecuting. The choice should be given to that person. Listen, you can either go to jail or you can go to treatment. Yeah, carry it thick. That's right. Right now, we have all these social services. Guess what? Nobody uses them. Because a hardcore addict is not going to avail themselves of those services. I would make the argument that we have a broader, bigger problem with the criminal justice system as it operates. And it is deep. And it is complex. And it is friggin awful. There's a book from a few years ago, that this guy named Shane Bauer wrote. I'm just trying to remember the name. I think it's called American prison. And the guy got the book.
SPEAKER_05: And the guy goes undercover, and he goes and works in a penitentiary in Louisiana. And he reports on what the conditions are like. And these are these these prisons that are run by private companies that are contracted by the state locally. And what it's like to be an employee at one of these companies and what these employees do and how the prisoners are treated. There is no system for reform once you end up behind bars in most prisons in the United States. And that is, you know, he makes the argument others have made the argument that is a has a long history of being a prison. Has a long history that dates all the way back to slavery in the United States. And in some cases, it's just about ineptitude. In some cases about unions, especially in California, where we have a huge cost for for corrections, and for the health care and the pensions for corrections officers. And so there's a lot of complex competing interests in history that relates to why this criminal justice system doesn't largely work on a moral and ethical basis, as we might all kind of, you know, where our hearts and look at like at how things are working. And so the problem is everyone sees this, or a lot of people will see this voters will see this system, treating people poorly being inept, being corrupt, and being racist, and they want to fix it. And the way they fix it is they see a guy who shows up and he's like, I'm a sledgehammer, and I'm going to fix it, I'm going to take care of all these people. And the reality is, when you try and take a shotgun and shoot it inside of a room, it's going to cause more problems than good. And I think that's really what he is. He is a manifestation of the anger of voters and the anger of people that are going to be that look at how complex and racist the system is, and how difficult it is to resolve these problems. And we're all looking for a simple big hammer answer. And he's got the biggest mouth around and the biggest. And that's why people vote for him. All right, Chamath, and then we'll wrap it in.
SPEAKER_03: Absent a few words, specifically racist, if you took that out, you could use that entire statement you said, and describe Trump as well, meaning the left and the right are moving to these polls, where it's all about authoritarian sort of strongmen at the federal, state, local level, folks to your point, David, that just want to go and take a sledgehammer to things and depending on your political beliefs, or depending on the biases, or depending on your life lived,
SPEAKER_04: you're going to gravitate to these two polls. And what's crazy is over the next 20 or 30 years, these polarizing figures will become crisper, sharper, smarter, you know, they'll find a way to foment all of all of the support without any of the long tail shittiness that Trump figured out like Trump was, you know, he's like a beta test of an idea, right? He was like, version 0.1. Wait till we see version 1.0 of the American strongman or strongwoman. It's really going to be fucking scary. Well, yeah. And this is a guy who was a fan of Hugo Chavez long after he revealed himself to be a strongman intent on ruling for life. And so yeah, he is very much in that mold. He is a sledgehammer to the system.
SPEAKER_00: But But look, I think and the problems are big and complicated. But look, we all have a role to play. The reformers have a role to play. Public defenders and defense attorneys have a role to play. And the district attorneys and prosecutors have a role to play. And the problem we have right now and the role of the district attorney is to prosecute. I think that this by the way, sacks is a very difficult problem to solve. I think there are just so many misaligned incentives. It's very clear that we don't try to reform people when they go to prison and that there's a weird incentive when it's a for profit prison and the customers and the revenue is based on how many people you have in the prison.
SPEAKER_03: So if we just get rid of that, there's no private prisons where people have an incentive to keep people in there. And then if we made treatment free for everybody, and had overcapacity of treatment centers, and then we look at the drug schedule and say, these are the drugs that are not these are the drugs that are not harmful. And these are the drugs that are really, really, really harmful. We're looking at a fentanyl issue, like it's a cannabis issue, and that that's drugs. You know, cannabis versus fentanyl is like a nuclear bomb versus like a slingshot. It sure is no comparison between these two things. Right. And but here's the thing, no one's going to treatment when they're not forced to. Of course, right. But there's no treatment to go to maybe the wait for treatment is six. No, no, that's not true. That's not true. We have a lot of social services that aren't being used. There are there is a lot of treatment available. People don't want to do it unless they really have to
SPEAKER_00: let me bring it back to where we were before. Maybe the right thing is to actually have a bunch of these sledgehammer folks go off for the next 10 or 20 years, you know, the Trump's and the chess of boudin's maybe they're all the same. And maybe what we're all just saying is enough's enough. This system doesn't work. So let's just tear it down every single brick of it brick by brick at the local, state and federal level.
SPEAKER_04: All I'm saying is, just I just want to get your reaction to that statement, guys, maybe maybe that's what people are. That is what boudin is doing is he is deconstructing the district attorney's office from the inside. He is destroying it. He is not bringing charges against people. He's driving away all the veteran prosecutor.
SPEAKER_00: But to to bring in, he's bringing in all he's bringing in his own people who all were public defenders and have that mindset. And people are dying. Look, we can see the results right now in the streets. Innocent people are dying. Hannah Abe, Elizabeth Platt, Sharia. It's an emergency. But to chamat's point, is there any validity sacks or free bird to the burn it all down, cause chaos, and then people come in and say, you know what, that's not gonna be fixed. Let's have a new discussion will nuanced be added to this discussion sacks or free bird?
SPEAKER_03: We need to improve things incrementally. Okay, you're not going to make things better by dismantling the whole district attorney's office. I mean, come on. We need to improve things incrementally.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, look, everything looks exponential until it cycles back. So, you know, you're only going to have so much evolution to Gotham in San Francisco until enough people put their hands in the air and say, Okay, no time for a change. Let's go back and let's start fixing this.
SPEAKER_05: They are they are saying that that's why we're having that. I mean, there's a recall Chesa Boudin movement flexing a muscle and making it stronger. I think, you know, we're learning a lot about what approaches to criminal justice reform work and what approaches do not work.
SPEAKER_05: And it is clear that a local only non prosecution position is not going to work with respect to both criminal justice reform and the satisfaction of the society at large. And we're realizing that and I think we are inevitably I mean, there's so many people that are up in arms, we are inevitably going to cycle back the other way at some point. Very soon here. Yeah. And honestly, I think you guys are over intellectualizing this a little bit. You know, when when Sharia died, because he got hit by by that repeat offender, they asked his wife, who's responsible for this? She said, very clearly the DA that is who's responsible.
SPEAKER_00: And she's right. Let's stop over intellectualizing this. I know the problems are big and complicated. Frankly, people like chase up prey on that, because they can kind of obscure what they're doing with your some nice sounding obfuscation, some nice sounding words. But the reality is he's not prosecuting the way he needs to we got to stop this. Yeah, and it is possible to have nuance, and to hold multiple ideas in your head at the same time, David, you can there's a practical reality to people cannot murder people, people cannot drive in cars and run red lights on fentanyl, while saying the criminal justice system is incredibly biased and racist and people who are of color in Texas, you know, wind up in jail for five or 10 years for selling a bag of weed. And then we're investing in companies that are making weed gummies or people are buying weed gummies.
SPEAKER_03: At the same time, you can't have one person who's a black teenager in Texas going to jail for decades for doing what somebody in California or Seattle or Canada is getting an IPO for. I mean, this is a fundamental injustice in the world. And you're right, that's something that chess appraise on. But there must be nuance here where we look at each individual situation, say, what are the ways to solve the problem surgically, not with a shotgun to David freeberg's point, but with maybe a scalpel or a shotgun. Do we want to move on to questions from our audience? Because they submitted hundreds of questions? Or do we want to move on to the Australia news, and Facebook backing out of publishing news? If that's a bad thing? Let's end with the q&a. I think socks, what the fuck is going on with Facebook and Australia and climate change? And this is insanity.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I think what's going on in Australia is contemplating a law that would require Facebook and Google and I think just those two companies to essentially pay royalties for hyperlinks to news publications. And I think this is mostly at the behest of some powerful newspaper magnates down there, I think like Rupert Murdoch and
SPEAKER_00: I love the way you say magnates. It's like, well, they are I mean, you know, and so it but but this issue is going to be very closely watched by Europe and maybe even the US. It's basically a trend, like a wealth transfer from Google and Facebook to the traditional media and to traditional publishers.
SPEAKER_00: This is an issue where I actually side with with Zuckerberg and Facebook on this. I mean, I kind of throw up a little bit in my mouth saying that but but no, but look, a Tim Berners Lee has come out and said that it could really interfere with the open internet and the worldwide web if you start to tax hyperlinks. I mean, historically, hyperlinks and the titles on hyperlinks were were fair use, you could you could use those things without violating somebody else's copyright or need to pay them a royalty. And so I think that it's bizarre to me that that Facebook and Google wouldn't now be able to use hyperlinks. And I'm kind of worried about where that goes. Yeah. And, you know, I Facebook Facebook said that they're not going to publish links now for Australian news. And then but then they followed that up with they were also going to start dismantling any anti climate change content. I don't know if that's just just in Australia.
SPEAKER_04: There's labeling. So there's another thing going on, which is they've decided not to label any posts involving climate change, which is part of the whole censorship debate. And, and so yeah, I mean, well, it's separate but related in the sense that the traditional media is cheering on censorship. But then when Facebook essentially censors these links, because they don't want to pay royalties to the traditional media, then the traditional media is up in arms. And so they're very selective in the traditional media.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're very selective in how they how they view these issues. My principle is very consistent, which is I want an open internet. I'm against censorship in all of its forms. And I and I, you know, and I'm worried that this new Australian law could really lead to some lead to an overall reduction or shutdown.
SPEAKER_03: What's really I think going on is that with fair use the doctrine of fair use is a four part test. You're a lawyer, obviously, you know, all this sex, but to sort of educate people in the audience who don't, there's no specific number of characters, no specific percentage of the original work that you can use you to clear yourself of fair use fair use is a test when it goes before a judge, a judge looks at this four part test, the percentage of the work you used is the public confused. Is there some educational or criticism version of it. So if you were to use 10% of this podcast, and you were to wrap it with, you know, put us in a picture window, and you were 50% of it, there was no confusion that you were commenting on this, that would be fair use, or if you were to use an educational system, and if you were monetizing it. Now, if you were to just clip our podcast, like this one website, clip the podcast, and made 60 clips of it took our file, and I sent them a cease and desist action said, Hey, don't do this. We're doing it ourselves. They fought us, they said, we're fans. And I said, I don't care if your fans are not, you're not linking back, you're not giving us credit, and you're doing 60 clips, if you want to do one or two clips, and you want to comment on it, that's fine. But you can't take all 60 clips and make a 60 clip version of this. And so fairness is in the word fair use. The problem with Zuckerberg and with how Google has used journalists content is they are clipping out specific sections of it and putting it in something called one box on Google. So many of you might have said, How many people you know, how many pounds are in, you know, whatever, or what time is this TV show on? And then the content that was made by the ringer or the New York Times gets clipped, and they put just that section, David, with an algorithm and they give you the answer. So you don't need to go visit that website. This is tipping over into what I would call unfair use, because you're okay. eliminating the person linking now, let me finish. Yeah. If it was just the URL, and you didn't pull the headline, you
SPEAKER_03: didn't pull the abstract, you didn't pull a photo, that would be fine. There's a very easy solution to this, which is, if you want to pull the link, and the headline, you pay $0. But if you want to pull anything else, 100 characters, etc, you need to get a license from that person, unless you are doing actual criticism. So there's nothing to stop anybody in Australia right now, from taking the screenshot of a New York Times story, or an Australian, you know, newspaper story, and writing some commentary on it, you just can't wholesale take everything. And so what we're seeing here is a real time negotiation between private parties into what is fair. And I think Google has a really rich history of sharing revenue. The App Store, they give 70% to app developers, YouTube, they give 55% of creators. And with adsense, they let you put adsense on your website, and they give you 68 cents on the dollar or something in that range. They never actually disclose the exact percentage, but that's what I'm told it is. Facebook has given $0 to Instagram users, $0 to WhatsApp users, $0 to Facebook, folks, they're too greedy. And what Facebook needs to do is either not use the content, or come up with some reasonable payment and come to an agreement with these folks who are now banding together. And they're realizing the traffic we get from Facebook and Google is not worth what they're taking away from with us, which is all that revenue that you know, they earned in the free market. And so this is a free market debate. And I think the government should stay out of it to a certain extent, and let the free market work, which is all publishers should get together in the United States and confront Facebook and say, pay us unless you use anything more than the headline. But Jason, I think these things are interconnected, though, right? On the one hand, if you're, if you have an economic stake in distribution of content, but then you're also then going to decide, under, you know, an opaque definition, what is truth or not truth, you all of a sudden just become, I mean, the
SPEAKER_04: purest form definition of a publisher. Right. And I think it just becomes a very treacherous place for both Facebook and Google to end up in. So it's almost Google's paying the bell, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right. Google's paying for it. Facebook decided not to but Facebook, they said something like only 4% of their their their posts involve this kind of content. So it's just not a big deal for them the way it is for for Google. Well, I think it is a big deal for Facebook. They're just trying to make a point here because Zuckerberg Yeah, yeah. And they're being they're being they're being overly heavy handed in their response. There's no question about it. They're they're throwing their weight around. It doesn't look good. But I'm not defending Facebook. I'm defending the principle. I mean, look, if this Australian principle were used, you wouldn't have the Drudge Report, you wouldn't be able to create a site of news. No, you could if it was commentary, you could put the right commentary. It's when you just rip the links, people are objecting to ripping the links without
SPEAKER_03: any commentary. Judge Report rewrites the headline puts his own spin on it and then links, he would never get caught into this and there is no publication that would ever object. What they're objecting to is taking the photo, taking the first paragraph, and the the this the synopsis is 30 or 40% of the value. And so Facebook is a better and Twitter is with their algorithms are better front pages than the New York Times front page. Well, why isn't this applying to Twitter then? I think it will ultimately they'll go there as well.
SPEAKER_00:
SPEAKER_03: I think this will become the test case, which is if you want to take more than just the headline, and like, you know, basically, that's it, or the URL. If you want to have that little snippet, pay us, pass something, it doesn't have to be a lot. But this could actually solve if these networks that are making 10s to hundreds of millions of billions of dollars, if they just said, you know what 1% of the news organizations to keep them viable, just like anybody else would pay on the licensing fee for terrestrial why is why is the Australian government setting the price? And why are they only applying this to Google and Facebook? Well, I think they're going to go right down the line. I think it's just a starting point. But to my point, I said earlier is I don't think the government needs to do this, right? I think the news organizations on mass should get together and put their foot down and say no. And if they did, they would get paid. It sounds like what the government should do is clarify what fair use entails. Maybe it's just maybe it's a link plus a title. I mean, look, it's never just a link, right? It's a hyperlink
SPEAKER_00: plus the snippet plus the word. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So it is the issue. Right. So fine. So the government should clarify what fair use is. And then if Google and Facebook or whoever want more, they got to go negotiate for it. Exactly. But but Australia is doing more than that. They're setting the price. And they're limiting their overreaching policy just to Google and Facebook because they know that if they applied it to everybody, we do that. We already do this in the United States, David with local carriage of news organizations on terrestrial
SPEAKER_03: TV. So we already have we already mix it up with the FTC doing this with licenses and the public good. So it's the extent. I think the other thing that you know, is going to happen with all of this is like on the other on the other side of this, the actual media organizations themselves that theoretically could benefit from this are frankly just going out of business anyways. There's a you know, there's a Wall Street Journal alert for the owner of the LA Times who's about to sell the times like it's very likely that the times in four or five years doesn't
SPEAKER_04: even exist. So I don't really know where all of this goes. Except that, you know, everybody's just going to be an individual person, blogging and tweeting whatever opinion they want. Right. So there'll be no money to pay anybody because it won't really matter. But what will be left is then these rules on arbitration of fact and fiction. And I think that that's where we're going to end up. That's going to be a crazy place. Because then those folks those folks then really are the puppet masters.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree that these traditional publications have like a fundamental business model problem. And it's not going to be solved. Like I think there's a, like a misplaced blame on Facebook and Google. I mean, the fundamental problem with all these publications are you go search for a news article on something and there's like 10 versions of the same thing, or more 100 versions. And you know, when newspapers we saw thousands of newspapers all across the country, and they had a local geographic monopoly. But once it all got digitized and moved on the way, they were like, oh, I'm going to be a reporter. And then you go online, you realize how much redundancy there was you have 1000 reporters creating the exact same thing. And there needs to be consolidation. It doesn't make sense to have 100 articles. So not only that, but a point we made last time, which is, you know, facts have largely commoditized or most facts like, you know, remember, we used to open the newspaper and look at what the stock market prices were we opened the newspaper and looked at the sports scores. We looked at what happened in this place in this place. Facts about events, facts about the prices of things,
SPEAKER_05: facts about the stores, that's all completely commoditized. I mean, that's like 90% of the content of what people used to read the newspaper for has gone online. And so as we talked about last time, newspapers and publications of the like have largely moved into, you know, different sorts of narrative. And, you know, it's created a marketplace that has a lot more competition, because anyone can write that, as we were seeing with sub stack and medium and as we're seeing with our own podcast, we're seeing with our own podcasts. And I think that's, this feels to me like, you know, I went to a
SPEAKER_05: conference back in 2008. And there was this huge battle between Google and Viacom. And I was at the conference, and I think Larry Page was on stage or someone or Eric Schmidt was on stage, and the Viacom CEO got up, and he's like, when are you going to start paying us for our content? And I think that that and he really screamed at him in a room of like 800 people. And I feel like that same kind of point of view has persisted until there's finally some legislation that they feel kind of gets them justice. Meanwhile, the world has passed them by. And, you know, I think this, this will be kind of some transitory legislation that ultimately the content is going to democratize anyway, and the content creation is going to democratize. Last topic for me, because I really want Friedberg's answer to this, because I also just saw an alert, how the federal government is opening up a vaccination site in Miami Dade County, I actually saw Francis Suarez retweet it. What the hell is going on with vaccinations? Are we going to get vaccinated soon?
SPEAKER_05: And I tweeted about it. And I've repeated it multiple times since that the US has enough supply to vaccinate pretty much anyone that wants to get vaccinated, because we are producing and delivering three to 4 million doses per day in the US right now. And there is a just a fundamental issue, especially like I mean, look at California, you know, they haven't opened up quote unquote, vaccination to people outside of tier or what they're called tier one a. And that's more of a kind of policy issue than an administrative issue than a supply and demand issue. There's enough people that want the vaccine, and there's enough vaccine. So just let people get fucking vaccinated. And so I feel like the market forces are now kind of converging with policy a little bit more than they were a month ago. And the policymakers are no longer fighting and complaining about supply and complaining about constraints. You know, we've got mass vac sites now in California, the amount of money that's being wasted, by the way, in this process makes me feel like I'm going to vomit every time I read about it. That's a whole nother separate issue. But it feels to me like we're probably May, June, when enough people are vaccinated that we can have, you know, a circumstance where people are going to fly without masks and be comfortable doing so. But I'm sure there will be these over, you know, constraining rules around what people can and can't do in public for a very long time. Like I mentioned what happened. I do want to say one thing that I've noticed, we were we were all we played some poker the other night, we were with a friend who was in the same time, and he was playing some poker with people. And it's like, well, you got vaccinated, like, why aren't you? He's like, Well, I don't know if other strains are going to get me or, you know, if this thing's evolving, and other people are gonna get sick. And if you think about what's happened over the last year, people have been conditioned to be afraid. And so even though we're getting vaccinated, even though this thing is moving and working, I'm concerned that we're not going to end up in a more civil state schools aren't opening. People aren't flying, people aren't doing stuff, even after vaccinations and science and data shows that these things are okay. Maybe there's some cases of it. But what I'm saying is like, you know, the human subconscious gets trained first, and then our conscious mind rationalizes what we feel. We've all now been trained over the past year to be very afraid. And then we all come up with these rational excuses about why I can't do x, y and z. It's like, but you've been fucking vaccinated. You're fine. Like all the data, all the science says, go do whatever you want to do. Go into a nightclub, sweaty, next to
SPEAKER_02: people robbing beats. The throbbing nightclub. Yeah, it's like, never seen so animated. It's like that scene from Good Will Hunting. psychology is like, tell us about your rave stories again, activate these forth emotion. Yeah. throbbing rave, give up whole fading music bodies. And did the Molly just kick in freeberg? Did you drop a Molly at the start of the pod? But my point is, like, people are really afraid. And I think I just got the best idea for an episode.
SPEAKER_01: The biggest concern I have is frankly less about are we going to get vaccinated? I feel like the convergence between market forces and government nonsense is now going to allow us to all get vaccinated. But she was really gonna be like, how do you break through these rules and the fear that that basically because I want but I don't understand where where are the max vaccination sites in California and who's eligible? Like, why aren't we just making this thing like a drive through? We should. This is where we can absolutely
SPEAKER_05: we all have absolute violent agreement that California is so messed up with respect to how we're vaccinating. We have so much supply. We're sitting on half our friggin supply right now in California. 30 million vaccines sitting on shelves. We are now at 75% deployed 80% for like four or five million vaccines sitting in storage. It should be a drive through and you just get in line and you go and we're doing is in you know, but what we're doing now is you got to schedule. Oh, yes, scheduling is bullshit. Because you first you got to qualify, then you got to schedule.
SPEAKER_00: An appointment. And then the clinic, whatever is only open from nine to five. And so like, how many doses they really administering when you got to make an appointment, probably one every half hour. So maybe they get through 16 people a day or something like that qualifications. Yeah, and they get fined a million dollars and lose their medical license if they inject the wrong person. So I mean, you're talking about 16 people per day at a site when they could be doing a couple of hundred. I mean, it's crazy. Well, Johnson and Johnson is kind of like a
SPEAKER_00: refrigerator. stable. Right freeberg. So you don't even we now have bought 1.2 billion. But let me go back to freebergs point about my little life get back to normal. I'm not as pessimistic as you are, Dave, about this idea that life will go back to normal. And part of the reason why is I'm seeing so much outrage about school closures right now. California is one of the only states in the country that's still
SPEAKER_00: are, Dave, about this idea that life won't go back to normal. And part of the reason why is I'm seeing so much outrage about school closures right now. California is one of the only states in the country that's still completely closed all the schools, and people are absolutely up in arms. I'd say it's as big an issue as this exploding crime issue. Crime is a big issue in the cities, and school closures is the big issue in the suburbs. And if these two things don't turn around, I think Gavin Newsom is going to get recalled. I mean, people are just on fire about this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: But I mean, my point was like our wealthy conservative friend that lives in Florida was afraid to go do stuff even after he's been vaccinated. Yeah, and I think that's what's permeated everywhere. It's just like there's a shark.
SPEAKER_03: Freeburg, it's like a shark attack. You know, if there's a shark attack at Half Moon Bay or whatever, people don't swim there for a couple of weeks, and then somebody swims and they're like, oh, the water's great. People will jump back in. I think it's April, David, to your point, of when this goes back to normal. Because if you look now, people have been saying, Freeburg, correct me if I'm wrong, would you put a 5x multiplier on the confirmed COVID cases, a 4x multiplier at this point?
SPEAKER_05: 5x I think is the right medium. So if you have 30 million people who've had the vaccine,
SPEAKER_03: had COVID, you're looking at five times that is 150. Now you have 60 million people who have been vaccinated. We're at 210. There were 330 million Americans, 70 million are under our kids. So, you know, we're basically getting to herd immunity. And if you look at the slopes right now, what is causing the drop in cases this massively, David, is it herd immunity, vaccine, or are people suddenly wearing masks? What is it? There's complexity because everyone assumes
SPEAKER_05: that there's one thing that affects the whole population. But remember, the way viruses work is they're hyper local. And so the local population dynamics looked at on a scale is where you see the statistical results of the scale. And so, you know, we saw this in North Dakota, a bunch of people got really sick, they got to herd immunity in communities, and then all of a sudden it dropped off the curve. When you zoom out and that's happening, combined with behavioral changes, combined with vaccines, then you start to see these statistical things happen at scale. So it's not a simple answer, but the answer generally can be, we are coming down the slope, we are getting to a point of, you know, general like low case counts, low death counts, low fatality, and we should be living a normal life, allowing our economy to kind of progress again. And we're still caught up in this kind of fear cycle. Pick a date.
SPEAKER_03: Let's just do this end on this. Pick a date when you think all four besties are vaccinated. I'm going to say April 1st, June.
SPEAKER_03: June, okay. What do you got for your break? I say April 1st, we're all going to be vaccinated. It's literally a choice.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, any one of us could go get vaccinated in the next month. I mean.
SPEAKER_03: How? None of us are over 30 BMI. I mean, SACS was for a minute. California is opening 1B.
SPEAKER_05: A lot of the other states are opening broadly. If any of you wanted to get on a plane and go get vaccinated somewhere else, you could. I mean, there's enough places now that have opened VAX or will in the next 30 days, you can go get vaccinated. Okay, so you say 30 days,
SPEAKER_03: which would be March 15th or something. Yeah, I think that's a choice for the four of us.
SPEAKER_05: If you guys want to hop on a plane, we can go get vaccinated. Does anybody have access to a plane? Sorry, but doesn't that count?
SPEAKER_04: You're saying in an open VAX state, anybody can show up without proof of residency? No, you have to have a driver's license.
SPEAKER_03: I've looked into this.
SPEAKER_05: There have been different ways that this has played out, but generally speaking, there are market forces at play where there's a will, there's a way. Not saying that you're cutting line and screwing people over, but there are vaccinations that are happening all over the country now with people that want to get vaccinated. By the way, in California next week, Tier 1B opens up. So anyone- What does that mean?
SPEAKER_04: What is Tier 1B?
SPEAKER_05: It's a total BS definition. It is absolutely ridiculous. I absolutely think this is the biggest waste of time and money ever. But Tier 1B definition in California is healthcare, sorry, childcare workers. So anyone that's a teacher or works with children. I have kids. If your nanny or your daycare people wanted to, they could go in and get vaccinated. Oh, wait, our nanny can get vaccinated?
SPEAKER_04: Starting next Wednesday in California.
SPEAKER_05: And so all you need to do is go get to a vac site with vaccines. And by the way, a lot of them have vaccination supply now, or they will this weekend. There's apparently a big shipment going out. And also all food and agriculture workers, loosely defined. So people that work in grocery stores, restaurants, farm workers. You're saying if I have a chef, they can get- If you have a chef, they can get vaccinated. No, no, generally. I think two people out of four on here might have chefs.
SPEAKER_03: I think two of us definitely don't. So if you take care of your own kids and cook your own food,
SPEAKER_00: you can't get vaccinated. But if you do that for somebody else, you can. So wait, you're saying if you have a chef
SPEAKER_03: and you have nannies, you get vaccinated?
SPEAKER_00: No, you don't. You don't. What I'm saying is-
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, if you're a chef or a nanny for someone else, you can go get vaccinated next week. Right. David, what do you want for dinner?
SPEAKER_03: I'm coming over right now to make whatever you want. I'll watch your kids this weekend, David. Get me a shot.
SPEAKER_00: It's so insane. We have all these ridiculous job categories and distinctions. It's just like with the lockdown policy, they had 10 pages of exceptions for essential workers. Listen, if you've got a policy with 10 pages of exceptions, the policy doesn't make any sense. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Like all the, and this caused all the controversy in LA. Like anyone that works in the movie business is an essential worker. But people that work in restaurants and bars are not- Let's see this for what it is.
SPEAKER_00: It is payoff to Doosan's political supporters. The politicians are using, they used essential worker exceptions and now they're using vaccines as political capital. They dole them out to their supporters so that in exchange for votes down the road.
SPEAKER_03: Also the, remember the exception, David, if you serve more than seven courses in your prefix, you can get a vaccine. So that is the French laundry. If you add an amuse-bouze and an intermezzo, you qualify for the vaccine. There are people going to states, renting houses, and getting driver's licenses and getting vaccines. I know about this.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's called vaccine tourism.
SPEAKER_05: By the way, think about it this way. In six weeks, I think a lot of those restrictions are gonna fall by the wayside because the supply is gonna completely outstrip the nonsensical restrictions and prioritization methods we put in place. And hopefully, God willing, these idiots who have the ability to vaccinate people open up their sites 24 seven and drop all the bullshit questionnaires and registration requirements, let people drive in, get a shot, wait 15 minutes and leave, and have just some basic principle people on site that can take care of people if they have an adverse allergic reaction and get shots in arms. We have the shots, we have the supply, we're gonna be oversupplied by May. We are gonna have far more shots than there will be demand. And so we just need to get this kind of nonsense thrown out the window.
SPEAKER_03: Straight to Q&A, this is from Videsh. He says, where are you investing your money over the next 10 years? So, Friedberg, you wanna start, and then we'll go to Sax and then Mr. Palihapitiya. I've talked about this pretty largely on the podcast.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, two areas that are super interesting to me that I'm spending a lot of time on is obviously biomanufacturing. So the idea that we can kind of move away from traditional animal-based agriculture and systems of production to systems where we use genetically engineered microbial organisms to produce molecules and materials and food, and that that system of production can have a radical impact on the environment, on the opportunity for jobs, on the cost of goods and things that humans want and consume. And that's a primary area of interest for me, and I think it's a multi-decade. I think by 2050, we should see most of our goods that are manufactured rather than being made in the traditional sense, which is basically old technology scaled up, which is what the Industrial Revolution did, but really shift to a new model of manufacturing where we use a smarter machine, which is a biologic organism to make stuff. So that's my interest. Sax.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I'm focused on the area of bottom-up SaaS, which is basically business software that can go viral, very much in the mold of Yammer, which was a company I founded and sold back a dozen years ago. It was the precursor to Slack, let's be honest.
SPEAKER_03: It could have been 27 billion, but you did not ride your winner. You took the quick billy, and that was not a mistake because it lets you invest in the other 20 unicorns, correct? Kinda, I mean, so- So, oh, you do have a chip on your shoulder about selling too early. Go ahead, let it out, David.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a chip. I would say that around the time that PayPal hit a $200 billion market cap and Slack had a $27 billion outcome, I started realizing, you know, if I just stuck with my ideas longer, you know, I probably would do better. And I'm like, you know, I don't really need to come up with a new thesis or a new idea. I already came up with the idea 12 years ago, which is to make business software viral. I'm just gonna keep investing in that thesis. So it's not that original or new for me, but it is, you know, bottom-up has become the, I would say almost the dominant mode now of SaaS. Explain that to somebody who doesn't understand what you mean, bottom-up.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so bottom-up means that the entry point for the software is any employee in the company. They can just start using it. They go to your website, they start using it, they spread it to their coworkers, as opposed to top-down. Top-down is like the Oracle sales guy who carries a bag and goes to meet with the CIO and sells them a big expensive implementation. And that's traditionally what business software used to be, is a big top-down IT sale. Bottom-up is just going in through the rank and file employees.
SPEAKER_03: All right, Chamath Palihapitiya, for the next 10 years, where are you putting your money?
SPEAKER_04: Two areas. Well, it's not even 10, I would say for the rest of my life. So I think these arcs are multi-decade, but inequality and climate change. And so, you know, the inequality side, what does that mean? It's any business- By the way, the second you said inequality and climate change,
SPEAKER_03: SaaS left.
SPEAKER_04: He went to throw up. He's just like, what?
SPEAKER_02: Is this nonsense? He just read. He went to throw up. He's like, oh God, here we go.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, there he's back now. He's back.
SPEAKER_05: Sax, did you throw up when Chamath said his quality and quality of consciousness to gather your back? He said his woke nonsense, did you just go throw up?
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just saying. Virtuous signal that you threw up.
SPEAKER_02: He had to polish his glock. He just called the security detail. He went and he kissed his gold bricks
SPEAKER_04: that he keeps in his house. No, inequality basically means anything that evens the starting line. So if that's healthcare software that solves a chronic condition, or if that's financial software that drives inclusion, and then climate change is pretty obvious, but the panoply of things that we need to do to basically slow the warming of the earth,
SPEAKER_04: those are the two areas. Huge opportunity. Huge.
SPEAKER_03: For Videsh, if you even care, I take a remora-like approach. If you don't know what a remora is, you ever see like a big shark, and then there's like a bunch of things stuck to it, and it's like following the shark, and it just eats whatever. So basically what I do is I'm getting behind these three guys, and I just draft on these three sharks, and just try to weasel my way onto their cap tables. It's a living, you know, basically. I just go to the poker game and try to. No, in all sincerity, I am vertical agnostic, because I think the great companies make the verticals. They create the categories, and the categories don't exist for the outliers. At your stage, particularly. What's that? At your stage, particularly. Yeah, and so what I do in the early stage is I am focused on the process, and the process I'm trying to master here is what I do at thesyndicate.com, which is find great companies and share it with now 7,000 accredited investors, and let them decide how much they want to invest in each deal and just to give people an idea, we are on a $60 million run rate this year of deploy capital via the syndicate. In other words, it'll be four times, five times what my fund will do. The fund has access to 100% of deals, but the syndicate has access to 60%, roughly.
SPEAKER_05: So now that we've broken our no advertising rule.
SPEAKER_03: No, I mean, we're all talking our book here. Let's take another question, and Angel is available from HarperCollins Business. Oh, here's a good one. By the way, if you want to save money on car insurance,
SPEAKER_05: metromile.com, sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely fantastic.
SPEAKER_03: Also the ticker symbol. What's the biggest investment venture miss you had early starting out? That would have been a ridiculous return. What is our anti portfolio looking like? Friedberg, we'll start with you, then go Chima, then go Sachs. Friedberg.
SPEAKER_05: I was with Jack Dorsey. This is painful.
SPEAKER_05: And at this conference, and he went around and did a pass the hat on who wanted to invest in his new startup called Square. Oh, that's my story.
SPEAKER_03: What is that a 50? Is that a $50 million miss?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm not gonna say it would have been bad. You'd have put 50K in at 10 million. But I mean, the problem here is, by the way, an interesting thing, going back to the point Sachs made earlier, and that we've said in the past, you know, when Square went public, there was a lot of questions and trepidation around its valuation. Big fund managers were poo-pooing the company. And what's the market cap of Square today? Sachs, you might know.
SPEAKER_04: 100, 120.
SPEAKER_05: 120 billion? Wow. I mean, 125 billion today. That's incredible, right? Because when they went public, people were kind of poo-pooing it, saying this is a sub-billion dollar company. It shouldn't be worth anything more than a billion dollars. And look at it just a few years later. Anyway, I missed that one on the seed round. And I've just watched with awe what Jack has continued to innovate to build.
SPEAKER_04: As a public company, it trothed at a $4 billion valuation. It did, right? It did, like, five years ago. And so within five years, it's gone from 4 billion to 124 billion. I was in a venture capital fund that invested in it.
SPEAKER_03: They distributed the shares. I sold half, and I was like, I'll just keep half. I like Jack. I sold half at 72, and now it's at 276. And so ride your winners, folks. Sachs, anti-portfolio, which one is the most painful?
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I haven't missed that much, just to be perfectly frank. Okay, there you go. Jesus Christ, unbelievable.
SPEAKER_03: What a douche. What a douche. What a fucking douche. Well, actually, I analyzed my chess game with Peter Thiel, and actually, my check, my castle, Queenside Castle was actually a brilliant move if he hadn't pinned my- No, I mean, look, I tend,
SPEAKER_00: I, look, I don't overthink these things too much. I mean, it's why I'm in, like, 27 unicorns. If the company looks good, I invest. Is this Phil Hellmuth? It's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02: You have to have a Phil Hellmuth. While you're at that 16th ring. But I've won 29 of the last 30 sessions.
SPEAKER_05: No, what would you say your total, like, multiple is on all your angel investing? Like, do you have a sense of what that number is? That's not the question.
SPEAKER_03: Sachs, answer the question. Come on, the audience asked what you missed. Can you just be humble enough to say you missed something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you. So this was sort of a semi-miss, is that- Oh my God, it's not even a miss. No, no, no, no, back in- Well, here's how I made up for it. No, no, no, no, no. I only put in half my normal amount.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, let me tell you what happened. I did miss it. So back in 2007, I thought Twitter was gonna take off. I had, like, a former employee who wanted to sell secondary. And so, you know, I had a deal worked out to buy, I think, a couple hundred thousand dollars of shares at, I don't know, a $40 million valuation or something like that. And we submitted it to the company and then they rofered it for, because I think for Chris Saka, basically. I don't know if you remember, Saka had set up some secondary. Secondary thing, yeah. So yeah, the fact that I wasn't able to complete that transaction probably cost me a couple hundred million bucks.
SPEAKER_03: Chamath, anti-portfolio, what sticks out? Well, I have a huge anti-portfolio, huge.
SPEAKER_04: Robinhood? Airbnb at a billion, obviously. I actually did invest, I agreed to invest, but then I got into a huge public snafu with Chesky because he was taking a bunch of money off the table and then we ended up not even finalizing the investment. And your letter was published, your email that you sent out.
SPEAKER_05: My email was leaked, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: It was leaked. So I was really pissed when they did that. But anyways, that was a decade ago, not much has changed, I guess. There is one thing that above all others, which is sadly also in my portfolio. So my portfolio, my anti-portfolio is the same thing, you can guess what it is, but that's Bitcoin. At one point, we controlled low single digits, mid single digits of the entire float. And had I held onto that, that's talking about a mid deca billion dollar position. So my anti-portfolio in the unrealized gains or losses, if you will, on Bitcoin is in the many tens of billions of dollars.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, mine is clearly Bitcoin as well because I was reporting on it when it was 10 cents and I was one of the first journalists to write about it and talk about it on my podcast. And I had like maybe 10 of these Bitcoins in a wallet of that was a Mt. Gox and it got hacked and it all went away. And then my wife bought it at under 200. And so now we have a joke in the house that my wife is going to because of her incredible trade, because she saw it as well, return more on her. It's conceivable she'll return more than my entire investing career. So shout out to Jade for getting that one.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I made that mistake too, that's from off made of not huddling enough, long enough. So that is painful. Did you see this article?
SPEAKER_04: I fished this article out, but in 2014, I was buying a land at Martis Camp in Lake Tahoe. And I told the sales guy there, Jeff Hall, I said, hey, listen, I'll buy this lot if you let me buy it in Bitcoin, because I wanted to promote Bitcoin as a transactional infrastructure. So we went to a company called BitPay, they wired it up and I bought it for $1.6 million in Bitcoin. That was 2,800 coins, which right now is worth 140 or $150 million.
SPEAKER_03: What are you going to build on that lot? Are you going to put your- I don't even own that lot. You should make it a grave. You should make it a grave plot. You should just- Well, my ex-wife owns a lot.
SPEAKER_04: I hope she enjoys it, but I'm saying- Literally could have bought the Knicks, Lakers
SPEAKER_03: and the Warriors and been the majority owner in each. All right, let's take another question. What's the number one macro uncertainty or risk you guys are most worried about for your investment portfolios?
SPEAKER_04: There is only one and I think it's inflation, but I think it's important to understand where inflation is coming from. The single biggest risk to all of us is what's going to happen in the following order of operations. I think all of this coming out of the pandemic, basically what you're going to have is four or five major trading blocks in the world. You have China as a standalone. You have Europe as a standalone. You have America slash North America under Biden. I think it could be more North America as a standalone. Then you have these what I would call random friends with benefits, Africa, South America, Japan, Korea. Okay, but those are all bit players to these three huge trading blocks. Everybody was going to go and they're going to go and get vertically integrated. So it sort of builds a little bit on what David said, like you're not going to have one central place where you get this thing basically i.e. China that you ship on a boat to get over here for a whole host of reasons, national security, carbon, et cetera. So you're going to have all these vertically integrated vertically integrated supply chains and resilient economies. You know what that does when you have to try to build that stuff? Prices go screaming higher because instead of having one factory in China making 9 billion iPhone cases, you have now 50 factories all around the world, each with their own infrastructures and costs and whatever. And so I think you're going to reflate the world. I don't know when it happens, but that's sort of the biggest risk to all of what we do is that all of a sudden real rates go to like 6% or 7%. And then all of a sudden you're not going to look at a company trading at 50 times earnings and say, hmm, you're going to question that. So I think that's the biggest risk that I think. Friedberg, what's your risk? Sacks, what's your risk?
SPEAKER_05: Sacks, you go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so actually mine is pretty similar to Chamas, which is I think we're accruing these unpayable deficits and debts and obligations. And all this money has to be paid back at some point. That the US government's incurring. I mean, there's a California version of this where we've accrued a trillion dollars of pension obligations that we have no ability to pay. So yeah, I mean, I think that eventually it translates into inflation, but I think it translates into something even worse, which is at some point people become skeptical about loaning money to the US government. And because they don't want the US to be able to just print dollars to pay back these loans. And the US dollar stops becoming the world's reserve currency. I think the reason why we're seeing Bitcoin go to the moon right now is people are starting to speculate on the idea that this might be the future world reserve currency because it's not subject to manipulation by central banks. And let's think like that world looks, if you think about like a world in which the US dollar is not the world's reserve currency anymore, which the government is basically broke. I mean, that is, it's pretty scary to think about.
SPEAKER_05: There's a Ray Dalio, who's a famous and prominent hedge fund founder of Bridgewater Associates wrote a essay, if anyone's interested, called the big cycle of money, credit, debt, and economic activity. You can find it online. He published it last year, highly recommended reading. He has a few chapters that precede and follow that talks about the grand macroeconomic cycle of governments and societies. And it's really worth the read. I think one really basic principled economic point is that governments operate in such a way that their people ask for goods and ask for services. The government spends on those services by borrowing more than they're making in income in that year. And that is, I think, the premise for a lot of how governments operate around the world. The only way that that works over time is if your future shows that that borrowing allows you to grow your revenue more, and therefore you can underwrite taking on debt to pay in the future. So you force growth. And I've said this a couple of times before, but it is the most basic principle, but it is also the most scary and shocking principle, which is the only way you can afford debt is if you have growth. And that forces you to find growth. And when you're forced to find growth, you get all of these unnatural perturbations in terms of economic activity and market forces. It is not necessarily the case that things should and would always grow. And we force things to always grow because of the mechanism by which we fund our services at a government level. And that is what's basically gonna ultimately lead to a lot of different types of crises, both kind of financial crises, but also societal crises in terms of revolution and pushes for socialism and all the other things that are typically associated with things like inflation. And so it is the big crisis of the 21st century. We underwrote growth in the 20th century, and there's a lot of forces that may kind of bring that all to kind of there this century.
SPEAKER_03: I see one that's maybe a little less acute and a little bit more big picture, which is the number of people living in democracies in the world as a percentage of population, which has been going down, which if you asked anybody, they would be pretty shocked to hear, but just looking at the percentage of humans on the planet, not the percentage of countries, because the percentage of countries that are democracies or flawed democracies is right now at 45%. And we have 55% of regimes are authoritarian or hybrid, and the population of people living in those is growing. So we have countries that are authoritarian that are growing, countries that are democracies, like in Europe or in the West and the US, Canada, are declining or not keeping up pace in terms of population growth. And that is, I think, gonna be the major issue, which is does China win capitalism plus authoritarianism or does democracy plus capitalism work? The next question I think is super fascinating, which is what would each of you wish you could teach every 12-year-old right now? What a great question. Chamath, you wanna go first? Do you have something that comes to mind or you need a minute to think about it?
SPEAKER_04: Wow, it's such a fabulous question. It's a great question. There's so many answers. Very personal for all of us, yeah. There's so many answers there. Well, let's workshop it.
SPEAKER_03: Anybody just have a thought? What comes to mind?
SPEAKER_00: This is very tactical, okay? So I'm sure there's grander things, but just the two things we're not really teaching are coding and financial literacy. Those are the two big, I think, omissions in the curriculum right now and would be very helpful for people to learn.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, I mean, on that theme, I would also then add better eating habits and mental health exercises.
SPEAKER_03: Mm. Freeberg, you got any that come to mind, things you want your 12-year-old or everybody's 12-year-old to learn?
SPEAKER_05: I think the principles of biology and how we, I mean, again, I feel like we underestimate and we don't talk enough about the opportunity and the reality that is about to hit us like a tidal wave of bioengineering. Everything in medicine is moving towards this notion of using biological machines to fix our bodies, not just a molecule, which is the historical way of doing medicine, where you find a molecule, it does something in the body, you stick it in, you turn it into a drug. But we are actually on the precipice of creating machines, biologically engineered or designed cells and proteins that can go into your body and do specific things and enhance your life and improve your health and solve disease. Similarly, like I talked about earlier, bio manufacturing to make all the materials and food in a more sustainable way and a lower cost way. And so I think teaching the principles of DNA, how DNA causes protein, how protein causes function and how cells operate and how that is basically being softwareized and you can basically think about biology now as being software. I think that is the trend of science and engineering. I think computing created a great foundation, but I think that's really, if I were to tell my 12-year-old daughter in eight years what she should consider doing or spending her time studying, it's bioengineering and what the opportunities are that are gonna arise from that.
SPEAKER_03: All great answers. I think for me, again, move it up a level since you guys took some of my answers, financial literacy was definitely gonna be in there for me. But I would say radical self-reliance and entrepreneurialism and resiliency. I think a lot of young people right now don't believe that they have agency in their lives, in the world, that they can create stuff, that they can not be stopped if they go and do something. And there's a victim mentality and culture that the system is rigged against you and that you cannot rise above, which I understand why people feel that way, but I actually think it's less true than ever. And so we have to basically really remind people that if you are radically self-reliant, you can live the American dream, you can create anything you want, there is absolutely nobody who can stop you. And all the knowledge you wanna learn is out there. And so the in radical self-reliance for me is this concept of the ability to learn. And the ability to learn how to learn and having faith that you can learn any skill, even 60, 70%, very quickly is what I see results in people being successful in life, this ability to take on any new topic with a zeal and an understanding that you can master it. Or even 60 or 70% mastery means something going around the horn. We're gonna plan a bestie trip and we might even allow besties to come for the first live bestie show. What is your vote? I want everybody to type it into the chat room. Everybody's gonna type in where they most wanna have a bestie show. All right, I like it. Okay, so Chamath and I both wanna go to New York. Sax wants to go to Miami to see Keith Raboy and Peter Thiel, his besties. Those are his alternate universe besties, by the way. They won't do a podcast together. No. Oh my God. How great would that podcast be?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Oh.
SPEAKER_00: I think that would be, I think you call that the righties. The righties. You've got the besties, you've got the leasties, and you're gonna get the righties. Yeah, I'm starting the leasties.
SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be me, Howard Linzen, Sarah Kohn, and Prof G, Prof G, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't you call it the worsties? The worsties. I mean, wouldn't it be the worst? Yeah, the worsties.
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna do the worsties just as a thing. I had an idea. Here's an idea. If we want to be the number one podcast, Friedberg, do you have any of that Molly from your 1999, 2000 era? I've never done Molly.
SPEAKER_05: I've never done Molly. Okay, sure.
SPEAKER_03: You just made your own synthesis of it and took it. Okay, great. Here's how we become the number one podcast.
SPEAKER_01: We all take Molly at the start of the podcast, and we start the podcast 30 minutes in, and then we see if David Sacks can say, I love you. Oh no. No. No.
SPEAKER_00: No. I just say we've done more self-referential navel gazing bullshit on this pod than any other pod. And I don't know, this is like even worse than- You don't have to listen to it, people. We may need to spike.
SPEAKER_04: Nick will need to edit the fuck out of this and spike it.
SPEAKER_02: Spike it. All right, boys. All right, boys. I love you besties. Love you, David. I gotcha. Love you, other David. I gotcha.
SPEAKER_03: Love you, Chamath Palihapitiya. We upgraded the Davids, by the way, with their outrage and cantankerous firmware, which we saw from Friedberg when he threatened to quit the podcast over the publishing of the Robin Hood.
SPEAKER_04: No, that's why we added the thirst trap feature set. That's why he went to throbbing and pulsating. He was just throbbing and pulsing. We'll see you all next time on the All In Pod.
SPEAKER_02: We'll let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sacks. And it said we open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Westies. Queen of Kinwah. What's going on with you? What, what, your winners ride? What, your winners ride? Besties are gone. Code 13. That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway. Sacks. Oh, man. Oh, man. My haberdasher will meet me at the window. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge order, because they're all just useless. It's like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow. What? You're the B. What? You're a B. You're a B. B? What? We need to get merchies our last.
