SPEAKER_03: Is Chamath in a room with his PR crew right now like rehearsing and practicing and this pod is ruined
SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody, so I just wanted to make sure based on last week's pod It was absolutely clear. I care about human rights many of you know my origin story, but for those of you that don't I Was born in a country that's no stranger to civil war and religious and political persecution Growing up my family and I felt those effects it affected our safety It's in part what led my family to file for refugee status and stay in Canada. So this is a real part of my lived experience That said, you know, I realized that what I said last week lacked empathy particularly towards others Who are dealing with persecution in this case the Uyghurs and based on what I read this week I think what's happening to them in Western China is a terrible situation I also want to talk about this idea about nobody caring Look if we take a step back and replace Uyghur with other really important issues like the conflict in Yemen the potential war in the Ukraine gun control school shootings healthcare equity We're faced with horrible events every day However, the unfortunate state of the world today is that we've also normalized this routine of being confronted with something tragic or horrible or unjust and Being allowed to react with thoughts and prayers and this was the real intent of what I was trying to get across So when I talk about my line, it's not about whether something matters or not It's about which issues of all the important issues we face every day Where I have the expertise and I believe I have the ability to have a real impact even if just by a little For me those areas happen to be climate change life sciences and deep tech But just because this is where I spend my time It's not to take away from any of the real work any of you are doing in other areas And then lastly I just wanted to explain to people who may be new to the pod because of last week That this is a place where four of us four friends talk about a whole wide range of things We explore our curiosities. We try to learn from each other. We challenge each other But we've always done it in a really supportive space and I hope you keep that in mind as you listen and watch going forward And hopefully you can bring some of that to your own conversations. That's all I have to say
SPEAKER_04: Well said Sax I mean, I know you have something to say but I'll say I got a lot of messages this past week after the show where
SPEAKER_03: Which which I felt a little bit hurt by and mischaracterized and maybe it was simply I said the wrong thing at the wrong time And so I want to just be very clear about a couple of points if I can take a minute that's all right with you guys Yeah, so I said I just wanted to I was gonna actually send this out on Twitter and I decided it was better just to address It on the pod. So to be clear I strongly believe in And support absolute freedom of all people and this means de facto I strongly disagree with the suppression of free speech denial of religious freedom imprisonment harm capital punishment slavery and genocide I thought this was obvious when we were having our conversation. I did not know I needed to be not in favor of genocide I'm not in favor of genocide. I'm not in favor of slavery or capital punishment or suppression of religious freedom
SPEAKER_03: I thought this was obvious the conversation I tried to have was the wrong conversation at the wrong time Which was to try to talk about the broader China v. US narrative That is swelling and will continue to swell this decade I think that the primary function of civilized society or any advanced social system is to take care of and protect those that cannot take care of Or protect themselves and this is usually done by governments But when government fails and government is in fact the oppressor I think it is the responsibility of other governments and other peoples to step in And have a voice and to take action and so that is that is kind of my moral framework I think it's important. I don't deny any of the harm being done to the Uyghur population in China I don't agree with it on a principled basis and I don't think that what the Chinese government is doing is right And the point that I was trying to make during our conversation Was a very different one that I think got completely lost in the moment Which was really just about what's going on with the China US narrative right now I'm not pro-China. I'm also not anti-China I am particularly interested in understanding the broader China US dynamic and what it means for the world over the coming decade and decades I think it's really important for us when we evaluate these things and to understand them to not just take sides But to understand the context in the broadest way possible and that's why I am trying to get both sides and understand the mindset Of the people that are involved in running these governments and the way that this of this world is going to evolve as this economic tension continues to mount And so that that's where I was trying to go and I was just trying to highlight where I think everything is headed over the next decade or two Independent of what are obvious human rights issues going on so let me just stop there and say thanks for letting me say that but that was important for me to just be really clear on because clearly I wasn't clear last week Well and I'll just add to what you said that I also thought it was implied that you care about these things and that you're not in favor of them
SPEAKER_04: I didn't think that need to be spoken so I think it's nice that you're clarifying it but I think any reasonable person would understand that you're not in favor of them And any reasonable person would understand that if you care deeply as a vegan about factory farming that you also care about humans and you know genocide and torture or whatever issue So I think it's like your statement is so obvious that I wonder if you even had to have made it but I'm glad you did. Sax
SPEAKER_01: Okay so I guess first I should say that what's happening to the Uyghurs in China is indefensible you've got reports of upwards of a million of these people being held in detention camps There's reports of mass sterilization and rape it's like ethnic cleansing over there so that's absolutely wrong and it's one of a growing list of issues that we have serious problems with China on Which include theft over intellectual property, cyber espionage, the bullying of their neighbors, their crackdown on dissidents, the list goes on and on I mean I think we have to be clear eyed about the challenge and the threat that China represents and we've discussed that on this pod many times That being said, what I think we saw this week was really about cancel culture right you had in response to last week's pod you have this online mob form and they want to take what Chamath said and interpret in the worst possible light So they can turn the outrage meter up to 11 and everyone gets to basically go on Twitter and virtue signal and say what great people they are because Chamath is a bad person And I just want to speak to that issue I mean there's a huge amount of hypocrisy going on in that because how many of the people who are tweeting their outrage and their denunciation of Chamath Are doing it from a device made by forced labor in China wearing their Nikes made by forced labor in China on their way to Target to buy cheap goods made in China How many of those people have actually lifted a finger in the real world to help the Uyghurs, how many of them have sacrificed an economic benefit in any way And so when Chamath said nobody cares I thought it was a really startling statement by him but if you define caring as doing something more than just virtue signaling and expressing your feelings As actually making a sacrifice or taking a risk in the real world I thought he was frankly telling us a very uncomfortable truth We haven't really most of us done anything and in that sense I think the reason why his comments hit such a nerve I don't think you get the kind of pile on that we got unless he's saying something that's hitting a nerve and I think the nerve the thing that he exposed is that we're not really doing more than virtue signaling on this issue And then came all the you know all the hypocrites you've got the NBA denouncing him issuing a statement when what have they done I mean when Daryl Morey spoke up on behalf of the protesters in Hong Kong the NBA shut down and sanctioned him And you know LeBron James said he was uneducated actually I think Daryl Morey was pretty educated about what was going on so you've got those hypocrites You've got the White House issuing a statement disavowing Chamath but Hunter Biden went over to China to manage billions of dollars for them and profited by his business dealings over there So there are a bunch of hypocrites and the list goes on and on and so you know I think that if in order for the mob to summon the outrage that it summons It requires them to I would say first put the worst possible light on what Chamath is saying and to ignore I'd say the fundamental truth of it And second to engage in this massive hypocrisy and that is the way that cancel culture operates and I don't think we should buy into it So I appreciate what Chamath said I think he's clarifying his remarks he's showing that he does care and he does have empathy as we all should But I think there was a fundamental truth in what Chamath said last week and that is what people are so uncomfortable with
SPEAKER_04: Okay well said I have feelings and most of all I'm thankful we had the discussion The goal of this pod I think what makes it special and why you all who are listening come here every week is because you know we're going to be honest with you And we're going to tackle these hard discussions and I think Friedberg's comments and Saxe's comments really explain that and what our intent here is And is human rights is one of the hardest issues to discuss that's why you don't hear it being discussed and there are not easy answers And I think you know I was challenged by my besties on the episode and their questions and their challenges were absolutely critical And yes how can we care about one group of people when the people in our backyard we're not caring about are we going to invade countries These are very nuanced difficult questions but we must have this discussion and if we try to cancel people with a 20 second clip that looks completely different If you look at the two minute clip or you take the time to have a 40 minute listen of the whole segment you get a totally different picture And I think it's very important to raise awareness about human rights and it is an issue that I have been passionate about my whole life And I'm not trying to virtue signal or score any points here but I know first hand that raising awareness and having the discussions reduces the violations Because dictators, despots and people doing this kind of stuff do not want the heat of what happened this past week And what happened this past week is that more awareness was raised about the Uyghurs and the situation that they're going through I think then as somebody who's monitored the situation then I've seen in the last couple of years Perhaps this was a tipping point and that is something good that can come out of that discussion Now on a personal basis I have had some feelings of guilt because it was very hard for me to watch what happened to Chamath this week And to watch people dunking on him and then let's face it I brought the topic up and I dug in with my feelings and it got a little heated And I'm suddenly being portrayed as a hero in this discussion that's not the intent and there's no hero or villain in this There is a hard discussion in this and I am extremely proud of my friendship with each of you Especially you Chamath, I am extremely proud of your candidness and tackling these issues and making people think about them And I'm just so proud to be friends with each of you and I'm so proud of the work we do here every week And I think it's important work and I feel like I get smarter every week and I hope the audience does too And I hope we can keep having these discussions Can we now make fun of each other?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, now let's make fun of each other, I mean I don't know if we're allowed to laugh, this is so serious and heavy
SPEAKER_01: So what you're saying is thank you Chamath
SPEAKER_05: Now that's going to be good for 20 seconds, I'm going to get cancelled Jason Calacanis, thanks Chamath
SPEAKER_03: But Sax's point about, I mean we've talked about cancel culture a lot on this show We've always been generally able to be third party observers to what's happened And it was really interesting to go through the cycle this week Where there was just kind of an echoing narrative on one thing that was said with one direction There were a few pieces though Chamath, right? I mean wasn't there a piece from the Atlantic and some other pieces that kind of highlighted that things that you said were things that a lot of people won't say And that's what was really so shocking for so many people What's the Peter Thiel comment on this whole, on all of this stuff?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah he said if no one's saying it, it's probably true
SPEAKER_03: Or if you're not allowed to say it, it's probably true
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you're not allowed to say it
SPEAKER_02: But yeah it was really
SPEAKER_03: Well you'd think based on the mob that formed
SPEAKER_01: And you know it's already kind of blown over and that's the way this kind of cancel culture starts But for that sort of, that white hot really intense day or two You would think that Chamath had practiced genocide himself You know, because everybody comes out and the way that they make themselves feel better is by virtue signaling on this issue And again I would just say that I think we should be thinking about what do we do You know, how do we actually make a difference because I don't think just virtue signaling on the issue is going to do it
SPEAKER_01: And you know, at the same time that this mob was forming against Chamath, we had a two hour Biden press conference In which Biden never mentioned the Uyghurs once, the press corps never mentioned the Uyghurs once So does that mean the Uyghurs are below their line? You know, why wasn't it mentioned? You know, shouldn't we be ganging up on Biden? Why is the press ganging up on Chamath when they're not ganging up on Biden for that? So there is a fair amount of hypocrisy here I actually think, Jason, I think you make an excellent point that by discussing these issues and raising these issues It creates a little bit of a check on the people perpetrating these atrocities because they don't like to be exposed that way And you know, maybe we should be boycotting the Beijing Olympics I mean, maybe that should be on the table, maybe we should be boycotting the NBA I mean, let's have that conversation Yeah, or maybe everybody who goes there
SPEAKER_04: I wouldn't want to see the athletes miss the Olympics, but maybe they could each just raise their hand and do a U Or some sort of a signal to show they support the situation or they're aware of it with the Uyghurs There could be some, you know, modest protest or statement they could make without ruining, you know, their lives work I always hate when the Olympics get canceled for some political reason because I think those people work so hard for it But raising awareness, you know, is a noble goal in all of this and then also doing things is a noble goal And yeah, I mean, it was very weird to watch the mob form and then dissipate And just who was, you know, taking the time to actually listen to the full episodes It was clear from that Atlantic article and some of the nuanced takes that they listen to the full discussion Because there are bullet points here like there was somebody asked me a very challenging question
SPEAKER_04: I think it might have been you, Freiberg Like, are we going to start invading countries over human rights? And then there's more suffering and death and pain from the wars And when do you decide as the democracies of the world to invade the dictatorships of the world to promote human rights? This is a very difficult issue that the world has had to deal with sadly before And there is no easy answer there, you know Right, well you're right, this is a point that I also tried to make on the last episode like Freiberg did
SPEAKER_01: Which is, I think it's actually great to have these ideals and we should have moral clarity about what's happening And I think what's happening is wrong, it's outrageous, it's an atrocity But the question is what we do about it And the reality is, even though it's important to speak out about human rights, these types of fulminations About human rights when they become this sort of, you know, when we get into this frenzy It's been the prelude and pretext for every misguided foreign intervention that we've had over the last 20 years And the example The Iraq war, I mean Saddam Hussein was suddenly Hitler The goals of nation building Afghanistan for 20 years, our invasion of Libya We got rid of Gaddafi and we replaced it with chaos For years we were talking about how evil the Taliban and their social system was
SPEAKER_03: And then we just handed Afghanistan back to them a few weeks ago
SPEAKER_01: Exactly, so you know, and so these types of, you know, when you kind of whip people up over human rights I mean, I agree with the sentiment and I agree with the moral clarity, but I also can't help but recognize That neo-cons and the military industrial complex and the Washington blob have used this type of rhetoric For decades to corral us and stampede us into wars and foreign interventions that don't make any sense And we all recognize after the whole project has gone wrong, like Afghanistan We become suddenly more realistic about the whole thing And suddenly, you know, we're not talking about the moral atrocities of the Taliban anymore But the discipline is to be able to check ourselves before we get into these interventions And I don't think we do a good job of that, we're whipping ourselves up into these mobs and we're in a frenzy And the raising awareness is something that has been lacking
SPEAKER_04: You know, certain organizations, and I think it's very important that we don't take organizations that have engaged with a country Let's say China or Saudi Arabia They may have engaged in good faith with the goal of, you know, engagement is a positive for humanity in the world Okay, if we engage with China and we are codependent on each other That will lead to a better arc for human rights and for humanity And less and worse because our economies are entangled and we do business together Okay, this is a fine premise What the dictators and despots want you to do is to fight each other and not look at the human rights atrocities So it's easier for us to say, oh, the NBA, oh, Apple, oh, you know, pick the company or corporate interest or organization that has engaged But by raising awareness consistently, it gives other people the ability to talk about this Some organizations weren't willing to even talk about this or say the name Uyghurs And if we keep talking about the Uyghurs, the chances that that situation improves I think there is a chance it does improve
SPEAKER_03: But I do think this like notion that the four of us can get together on a podcast and not get cancelled Because, you know, we don't collect money from advertisers and we started having these conversations amongst friends and we just put it on the internet First of all, it's a great kind of reflection of what you can do in the United States with the freedom of speech that we have We just put this on the internet, anyone can watch it around the world I don't know how many people are watching it Mostly freedom of speech
SPEAKER_03: Mostly freedom of speech But I do think that it's pretty valuable and I do think that that's an important point for us As much as Chamath got completely destroyed this week I gotta say, other than COVID, I'm feeling pretty good
SPEAKER_02: You feel better
SPEAKER_03: You're pretty bummed for a day or two
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think the COVID thing was scary because four of my five kids got it So I was just like, oh my god How's everyone doing by the way?
SPEAKER_02: I'll be very honest with you, so between both houses, you know, mine and my ex-wife's Four of the five kids got it, our nanny got it, Nat did not, and the youngest baby did not There's a real difference between, in my house, how the boys experienced COVID and how the girls experienced COVID Quite honestly, we've expressed certain symptoms, specifically a really bad sore throat and a cough That the girls in our house did not The girls had more intestinal issues, the boys roughly did not So it all manifested kind of in odd ways But my god, I mean, what a pain in the ass
SPEAKER_04: Well, to be going through that and then also like monitoring Twitter and inbound, your phone must have been blowing up I wasn't doing any of that
SPEAKER_02: Okay, Jason, start the pod, let's go
SPEAKER_04: Alright, well okay, everybody, welcome to the All In Podcast with us The Sultan of Science, who's got a new startup he launched, we'll hear about that later in the show The Rain Man himself, and dare I say, the dictator, Shmah Papea Petita I was like, guys
SPEAKER_05: It's not like we didn't warn you
SPEAKER_01: We got 63 episodes, we called him the dictator, this was about to happen
SPEAKER_05: We'll start the show everybody
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you guys were like, after 20 years of friendship, it's like, I don't know, the list is like 9000 items long
SPEAKER_05: I was like, yeah, I'm gonna cancel them, we got a long list here
SPEAKER_04: Alright, so first up, I think we should start with a duo of stories that relate to each other Microsoft announced it's buying Activision Blizzard for $68 billion of cash Microsoft's got a lot of cash And I think we all understand why this is a great idea for Microsoft with Xbox And obviously Activision owns Call of Duty, which has 120 million or so monthly active users They also own a bunch of nerd stuff from Blizzard like Diablo, World of Warcraft, my favorite, Starcraft And those have upwards of 40 million They also had Blood King, if you remember that They make Candy Crush and those kind of casual games, which have a quarter billion users But even with all these, it's a highly fragmented market But in related news, Alina Khan, the, I believe, 32 year old head of the FTC Who has written a bunch of pieces, we talked about this on All In episode 36 Sat down with Kara Swisher and Andrew Ross Sorkin for an interview And basically, we're moving, or she intends to move the goalposts on antitrust I want to play three clips and have you each react to them. Here's the first one And this is her take on changing the antitrust from consumer harm to now shift to Does this deal, and we'll take the Activision deal here as but one example But you could take the Instagram and the YouTube deals as well Do these deals substantially reduce competition in the future? Let's watch the first clip
SPEAKER_06: In certain cases, maybe too much success And so the question is, when is the regulator supposed to say, this could work And if it works, it's actually worked too well
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting question, and I think, you know, for enforcers, the real question is Is this a deal that could lessen competition? And in hindsight I don't want all deals to some degree, all deals to some degree are going to lessen competition
SPEAKER_06: Yes, substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly
SPEAKER_00: And there's also indication that Congress wanted enforcers not just to act when The third and fourth companies are merging or the first and second But actually in the incipiency, when you see trends towards concentration That those can also be important moments for enforcers to jump in
SPEAKER_04: So what do we think, Friedberg, about this sort of new rubric Not consumer harm, because obviously if Microsoft buys Activision and makes those part of Gamepass And you get Call of Duty for free with your Gamepass And the Candy Crush games and Blizzard games, that's good for consumers They get a whole bunch of more games, it would be like Disney buying Star Wars You get all the Star Wars stuff in Disney Plus for the same low price Look, Sax is our legal eagle here
SPEAKER_03: But I'll just say before, you know, he probably speaks better informed than me If it's not about consumer harm and it's about decreasing competition In this broadly, I would argue, subjective sense Then what's scary is that there are going to be decisions made by interpreters of what is and isn't competitive And ultimately, if they're not trying to keep in mind the best interest of the consumer Then it is in fact going to cause consumer harm at some point Not necessarily in all deals that they block But there will be deals that they may block that may have benefited consumers Meaning prices go down Imagine having all of your products integrated in one streaming service Instead of having to pay for three streaming services So instead of paying $70 across HBO Max and Disney Plus and Netflix You get everything in one But today the regulators would not let those businesses merge Because that would be anti-competitive under this context And so this is going to be a touchy debate And it's going to be difficult, I think, ultimately to rationalize this If there is going to be a point in the future where we can actually show that consumer harm would be caused By decreasing competition in the marketplace And so I would be nervous about that subjectivity and the slippery slope it enables
SPEAKER_04: I think it's a great point Think about it, if you had to pay instead of for Disney Plus You paid for Pixar Plus, Disney Plus, Marvel Plus and Star Wars Plus It would be chaos in your household to manage all those accounts It's a much better offering Better consumer experience Much better consumer experience and cheaper And this is why I said in the past
SPEAKER_03: We use the term monopoly as if it's de facto evil and bad But not all monopolies or businesses that have very big moats Is another way to kind of describe them Are necessarily bad for the customer You get cheaper products, you get better products, you get more of an advantage They may ultimately be yielded to be anti-competitive in a harmful way But not necessarily always But let me explain to you where she's coming from
SPEAKER_02: Like there's a fundamental pillar of capitalism that says that excess returns must get competed away So if a capitalist system is to be efficient If a company has profit margins of 99% Competitors emerge pushing those profit margins down To something reasonable where you get to some sort of equilibrium And the whole principle of what she's saying is In the absence of competition We don't really know what the equilibrium return really looks like And she's not saying that But that is the implicitness of what she's saying And so if you allow all of this stuff to aggregate Maybe Google shouldn't have 45% EBITDA margins Maybe in a really competitive society They would only have 18% And that's actually better net for the system The problem is that counterfactual to your point, Freeberg, is impossible to measure How do you know? And how much value do you need to take away of the panoply of things that Google does To figure that out And that's I think where the problem with it But let's be clear In 2019 I wrote in my annual letter There's a section called the tightening of the regulatory noose Meaning it was a framework for how to basically dismantle big tech And element number one of that was a changing regulatory landscape And it's really incredible to see it in front of our eyes We got a bill that just left judiciary That was effectively voted across the aisle That's now going to go to the floor of the Senate Which is going to rewrite some of these anti-competent bills It was like 75-25 and it was a 50-50 committee of Democrats and Republicans
SPEAKER_04: So clearly across the aisle
SPEAKER_02: Clearly across the aisle And the funny thing about that was Feinstein and Padilla, the two Democratic senators from California Where most of these companies are In the Wall Street Journal article that I read Railed against it but still voted for it To go to the floor So I think some version of that is going to pass She's going to go and scrutinize these companies I still think this Microsoft Activision deal on balance gets done Because if you take the absolute values away from it The reality is that it's an adjacent part of Microsoft's core business And there's nothing fundamentally monopolistic about what would happen If you let Microsoft and Activision come together
SPEAKER_04: Could it reduce competition in the future? I think would be her new lens And if Xbox has Call of Duty And Sony PlayStation doesn't Or the next console doesn't Maybe it does You could make the argument Sax, what are your takes on this? Very hard to apply standard of reducing future competition Because as Aaron Ross Sorkin said very clearly All of these reduce competition Now we've got to get into what does the word substantially mean in this context
SPEAKER_01: Yeah so my take on Lita Khan is that she's got some worthwhile observations On the problems posed by these big tech monopolies But I don't think she's got the right remedies So on the observations I think she's correct Broadly speaking that these big tech companies, the FAANGs They have way too much power in the marketplace They are now gatekeepers over the internet They control all these powerful platforms And broadly speaking It is time I think to basically Have some limits on those powers, make sure they don't abuse it I think she's also right that the traditional standard of consumer harm Doesn't really capture that sort of concept of market power For these free ad based services right Because there is no pricing And furthermore I think she's got a point when she says that When you say no pricing you mean Facebook and Google
SPEAKER_04: The consumer doesn't pay
SPEAKER_01: So how can there be consumer harm right So clearly that standard of consumer harm doesn't really capture The market power dynamic And then I think the last observation she makes Which I think is pretty valid Is this idea that when Facebook bought Instagram At that time it didn't seem to be a problem But it definitely allowed them to extend their monopoly From the desktop into mobile And it probably should be scrutinized harder My problem is with her remedies I mean what she's basically saying Is first of all like you said Any deal that could decrease competition in the future Is a problem well The whole goal of business and making business moves like an acquisition Is to build your moat Is to win Is to win to create a more competitive offering So there's no limiting factor There's no bright line test there At least with consumer harm There's a bright line test which is about pricing right It's mathematically measurable You could create a model around it Here there's absolutely nothing And so what it's going to do is completely politicize The process of getting an M&A deal approved And you can see this when she's talking about The impact on labor I mean this is a total Okay yes so let's go to that clip This is a total sop to the labor Constituency in the Democratic Party Because look Facebook and Google No matter how powerful monopolies they may be They don't have a dominant position in the labor market This is not true They're competing for the same engineers That every tech company is competing for So she's bringing a purely political consideration in now And so again there's no bright line rule It's going to be heavily political Companies trying to get a merger approval Never know whether they're good or not And even after they get approved They'll never know they're good And I have a big problem with her saying that Any deal that they approve Can be reopened and reevaluated A decade into the future and reversed I mean the actions they're taking against Instagram now
SPEAKER_04: Companies need certainty That's the real issue The rules of capitalism have been that
SPEAKER_02: The smarter slash more strategic entity If they can run their plays more efficiently Has the right to win This is almost trying to say actually not really And that is very problematic You never know you're good And then the problem that it'll create in the equity market specifically is How do you actually drive shareholder returns And then what do all these shareholders then do If these companies are rendered to basically stay where they are And you take a snapshot of the economy And you say this is what it will be from now on
SPEAKER_03: But it's in Saks' point it's really interesting It's going to require M&A to become kind of a political maneuvering process Similar you know create sort of these Obfuscated gates where you don't really know what it's going to take to get through there And then you've got to go do what you do when you try and convince foreign governments That they're going to work with you or allow you to do a transaction in a foreign government In a foreign country Where you've got to go in and you've got to go figure out the politicians Who they want, who they are, what they want And then put together a political consortium that's going to approve the deal Given that there's now going to be subjective validation Whereas before I think the criteria were much more objective Let me play this other clip
SPEAKER_04: This is the clip that Saks was referencing Saks Akan also talks about how labor unions are trying to get in on the action slash grift See you on the other side
SPEAKER_00: Some of this research has showed that labor markets are significantly concentrated And it's led to you know additional thinking at the policy level Of how this should be affecting what anti-trust enforcers are doing So the Justice Department including in the last administration Started looking at no-poach agreements And mostly instances in which employers may be colluding to suppress wages Both agencies have been looking at the ways in which mergers in particular May lessen competition for labor And have downstream effects on workers in ways that are harmful And that also needs to be on our radar So I think this is an ongoing conversation But increasingly the question is you know how we implement some of these priorities And not you know whether they're important But this is the first time you've included labor
SPEAKER_06: This is something labor's wanted for a long time The idea of looking at anti-trust through the lens of unemployment essentially Yeah there's an interesting history here
SPEAKER_00: I mean you know there were cases in which you know unions were supportive of transactions Because they thought they would lead to more downstream benefits But I think we started to see through retrospective studies Instances in which you know mergers actually ended up having a harmful effect And so I think that is what's significantly contributing to this
SPEAKER_02: Look this is also part of what I said in 2019 The third element of that plan was you have to change the rules on stock based compensation So instead of her talking about it as labor I think the more accurate way to say it is like There's very valuable human capital in technology business A few people have you know discontinuous impact on these businesses And it has been a stated strategy of all of big tech to use their balance sheets To buy small companies in their incipiency to use her words Not because it helps advantage their monopoly but it prevents the leakage of human capital Into other ideas and it prevents those other ideas from literally flourishing That's really what's been happening for years in Silicon Valley And we all know that You know all the aqua hiring we see is about hoarding talent And you'd rather pay these people millions of dollars a year if you're big tech To basically work on next to nothing Then take the risk of them going across the street to a competitor And then having them build something that disrupts you And this was such a known thing
SPEAKER_04: But the only way
SPEAKER_02: Sorry just to finish One of the ways that you can change it is you have to change the way that stock based compensation works How it's accounted for How you can actually deal with it on a gap basis How capitalists then treat that in terms of their earnings If you don't do that None of the models change People look past it People look through it They don't think it's a real cost Which it is And then you're allowed to continue to do it That's really the underlying issue So much so, Chamath
SPEAKER_04: That the hoarding of human capital was a reoccurring theme on the Silicon Valley HBO show Where people in Hooli were getting paid millions of dollars and hanging out on the roof Freeberg, when you look at this human capital labor being brought into it Isn't the point of a lot of M&A To eliminate jobs and eliminate redundancy So if you brought in YouTube at Google, I'm not sure if you were there at that time period The distinct concept was, hey we already have an advanced ad network We already have accounting And we already have servers around the world and storage You don't need to hire those people, we can get rid of them or whatever And we get rid of that redundancy Large scale consolidation, that's certainly true
SPEAKER_03: Most M&A in technology is the opposite Where an acquisition takes place And the acquisition gets fueled by further investment after the acquisition is made When YouTube was acquired there was a few dozen employees there And then very quickly Google scaled that team The engineering team, the infrastructure team They even had their own independent ad sales team To thousands of employees And without that it would have been very difficult for YouTube to achieve that scale Both from a product success perspective, an infrastructure perspective But also an employee based perspective with the amount of capital it would have taken to go and raise that from venture capitalists Maybe nowadays where there's billions of dollars floating around it would be different But back then it would have been very hard I think that's the same for WhatsApp and Instagram
SPEAKER_02: Yes exactly, WhatsApp was 19 people when it was acquired
SPEAKER_03: And now it's thousands I'm certain and Instagram's the same And so what we've seen traditionally, or not traditionally but over the last 10-15 years With internet based acquisitions Is not about consolidation and reduction in costs But about taking and enabling technology and accelerating it on an existing platform Now number one, it makes that new technology or product far more successful Far more far reaching and more consumers benefit from it Number two is it now makes that platform harder to compete with So as a platform it's going to be a lot harder to catch up with the cash flows being generated at Google and Facebook Given how quickly they reinvest that capital in new technology To further their advancement And to your point But I would say what's been so significant over the past 15 years That people are lifting their head up Is that it has been both beneficial to consumers and anti-competitive So that was exactly what I was going to get to here
SPEAKER_04: Your YouTube example is the perfect one Because if you look at YouTube Think about all the joy, education, communication it has created on a global basis As a juggernaut And it's free And it's free That has helped humanity so much in this new lens But no one else can make a video ad site
SPEAKER_03: Exactly There's no competition So we're now looking at all the benefit that YouTube has created for humanity
SPEAKER_04: Versus the fact that it's going to be impossible to displace YouTube now To your point, Sax How do you get past the bright line? Do you have a suggestion for a way And would you now look at something like YouTube and say we shouldn't have allowed that to happen YouTube was on debt's door because of the lawsuits and the server bills We all know that
SPEAKER_01: Right Well this is the uncertainty that's going to be created And I think this administration is creating tremendous business uncertainty I think the reaction of a lot of big tech companies is going to be to stop doing M&A Until the situation gets clarified Because they just don't know Target companies are going to want to have huge break up fees And it's just going to have a chilling effect on the market for M&A I mean business needs certainty And they're not giving it in this business environment Tramal before we get to you Can I make one point about that last clip on the labor point Listen, this feels to me just like when the administration Talked about clean tech and clean energy and electric vehicles But then they only gave the subsidy to the car companies that were basically union shops They didn't give Tesla the same That's right, they excluded Tesla, they excluded Tesla from the EV They tried to pretend that Ford and GM were the ones driving the EV revolution in the US It was laughable What they were trying to do there is they were shoehorning a union agenda into clean tech And I think that's what Lena Horne was doing in that clip She was shoehorning a union agenda into anti-trust law And it's a bit absurd because Facebook and Google, even though they are very powerful companies When it comes to talent, they are in a war for talent Just like everybody else, they compete against each other There's not a union issue there These are not factory employees These are not mistreated employees These are very well paid employees And moreover, the market is highly competitive And we don't need them trying to insert this union agenda into anti-trust law You've got to think that, for example, going back to Microsoft Activision
SPEAKER_02: Obviously the bankers would have called Apple and Facebook and Google as well I mean, it's absurd that they wouldn't have Of course, it's processed The minute that you think you have a bona fide offer One of the things you have to do is essentially get an opinion letter And also to make sure that as a public market shareholder You can justify that you've evaluated all the other options Sure But it's really quite telling to David's point I don't think that if you were Facebook or Google or Apple You could have credibly made an offer Because the calculus in the back of your head was not whether it had business logic But whether you could actually get it through the FTC But Microsoft did
SPEAKER_04: Because Microsoft is no longer seen as a threat And look, we said this in our awards show two or three episodes ago
SPEAKER_02: They have really been the most untouched in the last decade by anti-trust scrutiny Whether domestically or internationally They've largely skated under the radar after paying the price for an entire decade I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Microsoft's effectively pivoted
SPEAKER_01: With the exception of this gaming into being an enterprise software company And the politicians just care a lot less about enterprise software It doesn't capture the public's imagination It's the big consumer companies that get all of that attention Fascinating point
SPEAKER_04: Literally the consumer and the bread and circuses of this is what's driving it People hate big tech and Trump got banned from it, yada yada But I gotta say, these increasing restrictions on big tech
SPEAKER_01: And these prohibitions and the chilling effect, the uncertainty It's one thing to do it when the market is just completely ripping And we can sort of afford to run these experiments and tinker with these rules But I gotta say, I'm starting to get pretty worried here That we had Jeremy Grantham as sort of a Old school? Yeah, old school kind of bearish type market commentator He had this expression that the, yeah, I mean it's one of these stop clock, right twice a day things Jeremy Grantham has never found a market he didn't have
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly
SPEAKER_01: But a stop clock can be right twice a day and the line he had today is that we're seeing the popping of a super bubble And you know we've been talking about Super bubble Yeah, exactly But that's not true but I mean it's good
SPEAKER_02: It's evocative Well the sense in which it might be true is that
SPEAKER_01: I mean we've talked about this the last few months is that you had the Fed and the federal government Pump a 10 trillion of liquidity into the market over the past two years because of COVID Now they're starting to pull that back And there was I think a general asset inflation across asset classes Certain types of assets clearly got more inflated than others We've seen a huge correction in growth stocks We've seen a huge correction in crypto Basically anything long dated as the fear of interest rates increasing has gone up They've massively corrected But so the concern is that You know with the losses we're seeing And I mean every day it just keeps like you've seen more red That this could turn into a recession You know popping of bubbles is usually followed by By recessions So I think you know the fortunes of the economy could turn really quickly here And That is the marginal risk
SPEAKER_02: The marginal risk is actually for recession We talked about this before By the way just to your point You're right that we pumped in 10 trillion dollars But over the last three weeks And really over the last two and a half months We have actually eviscerated 10 trillion dollars of value as well So if you want to measure it We put 10 trillion of excess capital in But we've now destroyed 10 trillion dollars of equity Destroyed it by lowering the prices
SPEAKER_04: Or re-pricing stuff Yeah we've re-priced everything I mean crypto in the last couple of days has just been shellacked
SPEAKER_02: Growth stocks have been shellacked Biotech stocks have been just absolutely smoked Meme stocks, Covid stocks But David is saying something really important The risk in my opinion is not Of runaway inflation anymore And the reason was what happened this weekend was incredibly important And we have seen this happen Just a few years ago So this weekend China cut interest rates Now as we know We are dealing in the United States with this issue of whether we should raise rates And by how much Because we're worried about inflation Well if you're cutting rates It's because you're worried about the other problem Which is that the economy is basically turned over And you need to become more accommodating Right you need to incentivize businesses to spend by lowering By turned over you mean
SPEAKER_04: It's slowed down People are not building companies Not doing new projects So you want to give them an incentive Or maybe some catalyst To start some new company Or start some new project Because all the real estate projects have wound down In 2018 here's exactly what happened
SPEAKER_02: The set up was The Fed Everybody was worried about what the Fed was going to do on interest rates The Fed was looking at China As the canary in the coal mine The leading indicator of what we should do And at the end of 2018 Jerome Powell decided to raise rates And we raised rates And then enter 2019 And the Chinese economy turned over And we realized that their economy Was not nearly as strong as we thought it would be And so our reaction was disproportionate To what the actual data on the ground said We entered a recession in 2019 That's when you guys probably saw Trump going crazy blaming Powell I mean most of us ignored it Because we were all dealing with Trump derangement syndrome But the underlying thing of what he was saying was Hey hold on a second You just caused a recession in America By raising too quickly The Fed is now in this really delicate situation Where China cut rates last week We have an FOMC meeting The Open Markets Committee that sets rates On Wednesday I think of this coming week What is he supposed to do? You know Bill Ackman two weeks ago Was advocating for a 50 basis point raise In this meeting So that's way beyond what people even thought is supposed to happen
SPEAKER_01: We should just remember that Bill Ackman has bets Macroeconomic bets in the market If he's calling for a 50 point raise I guarantee you he'll make a lot of money No conflict no interest My only point is the set up is a very complicated one for the Fed coming into this week
SPEAKER_02: And the risk is to a recession Because if we over correct And the leading indicators all around the world tell us that their economies are weak Then inflation may have actually been much more transitory than we thought And right now we have to decide Because if we over correct We're going to plunge the United States economy into a recession This is why I think
SPEAKER_04: I think Friedberg when you look at this When you have so many different things happening at once And you're trying to pilot a plane Or a car you know in rain on ice Going really fast maybe there's something wrong with the brakes You've got to be very delicate with you know how you steer into this What is the right strategy here on a policy basis Coming out of Omicron Should we just take a pause on raising rates What do you think the right situation here Obviously putting a bunch of regulation on top of big you know mergers and acquisitions And that's going to create headwinds I don't know how many different variables we want to add to the mix of an economy That feels like we're in a perfect storm I don't know look a lot of us kind of talk about
SPEAKER_03: The valuation of things in markets as being the economy but it's not The economy is the productivity of businesses that are valued in the market And as long as the productivity of the businesses in the market continues to improve That businesses continue to grow That their stability to pricing that's not run away or declining Neither inflationary or too deflationary You know I think those are the indicators that matter most Now the reality is over the last couple of years We've had trillions of dollars that have flowed into these markets for free And those trillions of dollars have created lots of mini asset bubbles Lots of little new markets have emerged NFTs Random crypto currencies that don't actually do anything The collectibles market The art market Peloton And lots of examples of these speculative early stage businesses that have gone public And people backed them And they said look when there's this much money around I'm going to start making more risky bets I'm going to make more speculative bets And regardless the money is coming out of the markets The money is going to come out one way or another And as it starts to come out These little bubbles are the first that are going to pop And that doesn't necessarily mean that the economy is at risk It means that there are valuation bubbles that are going to burst They're going to decline And no interest rate policy is going to change that Because the inevitable growth in the underlying economy The inevitable end to the pandemic Is what's ultimately going to drive capital out of these markets And back into ultimately more productive assets and less speculative assets And so this is a transition that I'm not sure you can really kind of manage I think underlying businesses and the growth of the economy And the ability for people to get jobs There's an incredible number of open jobs that are in the US right now 3 million open job listings Go apply for a job 11 million Whatever it is go sign up for a new job
SPEAKER_04: 11 million 3.7 million 3.7% unemployment There are not a lot of people in the US
SPEAKER_03: That don't have an option to go out right now And go improve their working condition There are a lot of open jobs in the US And salaries have gone up That's what I mean your working condition You can go make more money And so the economy underlying There are lots of great businesses that are growing and doing well And there's stability that's emerging And then there's a bunch that aren't And there are a bunch that were always speculative And that they were hyped and overvalued And as those assets get devalued A lot of us that have most of our worth and income coming from capital Are going to feel the burn I have two questions that I want to go around the horn on
SPEAKER_04: First, Chamath If we could do If each of you could do one thing To one or two things To manage this economic policy in the next year What would it be? Like what two things do you think we should do David? One or two things Be the top of the list That regulators should do in terms of managing this Seemingly chaotic situation Or not do
SPEAKER_01: It just feels to me like we're pinballing from one overreaction to another So we overreacted in terms of flooding the zone with liquidity because of COVID I mean remember like Druckenmiller He was like the one of the only voices about a year ago When they did that to that last two trillion dollar stimulus bill The COVID relief bill And he said look retail is already 15% above trend Meaning if you looked at demand The demand side of the economy It had fully recovered and was actually above trend People were spending more money And then we flood the zone with another two trillion And then low and behold six months later we have this inflation And then in response to that inflation we're now jacking up rates So quickly that I think we're risking to Chamath's point a recession So we're pinballing from one overreaction to another And I just The big meta thought I had this week was just how many of our problems Are just self inflicted right now I mean even on COVID right We could live with this variant of COVID Omicron You know Chamath and all of our friends Everyone I know in the last few weeks basically has had it And it's been very mild It's basically been a cold But in large swaths of the country we're not choosing to live with it We're at each other's throats about these vaccine mandates These other restrictions Okay so your number one is stop overreacting And similarly and the same thing just to make it even more local We've got a crime wave in America going on right now Why? Because we emptied the jails last year And stopped prosecuting Totally self inflicted Okay so what things do we need to do
SPEAKER_04: Just if you had one or two things that you think we should do One you said we're ping ponging so do you think more consistent policy Communicated better
SPEAKER_02: I think that you want some neat little answer that's tweetable and there is none No I just wanted your
SPEAKER_04: Let me explain If you actually thought that was a good idea
SPEAKER_02: There's no one or two things anybody can do I think there's a collective set of things that we have to do in an organized way So look just to set up right We have had more activity and hedging Than in any other period in recent memory Except the great financial crisis Just to set the tone of where we are in terms of volatility in the capital markets Mutual funds who don't short stocks right The multi trillion dollar mutual fund complex whose only job is to buy Has been a net seller Hasn't even started buying a single thing yet We have an FOMC meeting That's going to happen next week Where Jerome Powell and the fed has to decide what to do in the face of incomplete data
SPEAKER_02: It's not as if we've even stopped all of the purchasing of assets that we've been doing We're still putting money in the system I just want to be clear We were debating when we stopped the spigot We're not even debating when we shrink our balance sheet As a country so We are in a really complicated moment And I think the risk is that there is an overreaction To incomplete data And we plunge the US economy into a recession And I just think that that has to be really thoughtfully measured And guys we've seen this in 2018-19
SPEAKER_04: A free break any thoughts?
SPEAKER_03: No I'm not an economist and I'm not a central banker And so I have no clue Okay the next thing I would
SPEAKER_01: But to my last point I mean we are dealing with balancing the risks of inflation against the risk of recession I think that is fundamental And right now all the statements have been so hawkish That you know the markets have been just flowing red now for months And it's starting I think the balance of risk is starting to make recession possible In a way that didn't seem possible two or three months ago Doesn't the repricing of assets though
SPEAKER_04: Like we look at Peloton you know it's down whatever 80% You look at Zoom is down 70-80% When you see those things that were obviously mispriced Rivian which we talked about I wouldn't use the term mispriced
SPEAKER_03: Repriced I would say they're repriced
SPEAKER_02: They were mispriced they're not repriced
SPEAKER_04: No someone paid something for them and someone sold them for something
SPEAKER_03: They were priced against gravity If yesterday they paid 25% more and then today they're paying 25% less
SPEAKER_01: What difference does it make whether it's yesterday an hour ago or a year ago
SPEAKER_03: Everyday pricing changes Well no here's the thing about the pricing
SPEAKER_04: The pricing was based on people with a lot of money placing a lot of bets Maybe who are new to the market in retail
SPEAKER_02: Okay fine what's the point Jason
SPEAKER_03: The market condition changed
SPEAKER_04: Well I think maybe we had enthusiastic people betting things out without looking at fundamentals Is my point I think Sax agrees with me here on this I think you're right about that So now you have market participants who were gambling On like momentum Now we're repricing stuff Do we think where are we at in this repricing or correct pricing of assets We're in the 8th in my opinion
SPEAKER_02: I think we're in the 8th inning of the tech drawdown So if you're a high growth tech company you've been smashed for 3 months in a row As you said Jason we're off Some stocks are off 80 50-80% of their highs That's like dot com error correction
SPEAKER_04: It really is That's crash that's dot com error crash If you're in other areas like value you've had a pretty good rally
SPEAKER_02: If you're in crypto you're just starting to get smoked now If you're in
SPEAKER_04: Why is it crypto I want your thoughts on this Why is it crypto getting smoked like peloton and zoom Is it because those people are hodlers or something Well crypto I think has slightly different dynamics than individual stocks like a peloton
SPEAKER_02: But I think that you're going to see A lot of people are going to see this as a peloton release for one All that the market is is who's bidding and who's coming into the market
SPEAKER_03: I mean there's still thousands of millions of people from around the world Stepping into the crypto markets each day That are putting more money into these markets And that balances out the withdrawals And that's all that crypto is There's no fundamental underlying business that you're valuing The peloton release was really bad
SPEAKER_02: It was very strange
SPEAKER_04: I don't think it was strange
SPEAKER_02: It was just like we're just going to basically stop producing anything Because all of our inventory will meet our demand for the foreseeable future That's not a good statement if you're supposed to be a high growth public business Okay so if we're seeing 50-80% SACS
SPEAKER_04: Gavin Baker had a tweet that said
SPEAKER_02: Capital allocator Yeah the bottom of the market And it was a phrase something like when we shoot the generals And his comment was the generals are big tech When those things trade down 25% the bottom is in And I think that collectively most people think that we're a little bit oversold In all areas except big tech I think big tech is down 10-11-12% When you see this thing really get cracked Is when those folks trade down another 10-15% And then I think we're kind of through most of the pain So Peloton and Zoom were kind of mid tech
SPEAKER_04: I don't know what we call those but I would call them mid tech They're obviously not big tech but they're not small either Mid tech gets their asses kicked 50-80% Big tech 15% But if big tech goes down 30% then we start releasing a bottom And we consider Netflix part of that
SPEAKER_02: I don't think you'll ever see that because I think big tech you have to remember is basically the index And in the last 10-20 years you've never seen drawdowns more than 15-25% You've never seen it And when you've ever had a 15-25% drawdown meaning the market goes off 15-25% You have to remember the thing that we have also done over the last 20 years is created so much money on the sidelines Always looking for a cheap buying opportunity And so the minute that these things so even you know March of 2020 Remember when we started to do this pod And it literally looked like the world was ending The bottom existed for a week And then within a week the entire 25% loss in the stock market was wiped out and we were back to normal That's when I sold
SPEAKER_03: We do
SPEAKER_04: Don't take our advice folks Okay well let's talk specifically about Neff I think it was good that we talked about Palatine I panicked at the lows
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god I remember selling, I remember selling slack going this is the dumbest thing but I have no choice How about when Uber goes to 15
SPEAKER_04: How about when Uber goes to 15 from 45 I was ready to puke I basically curled up in a ball and said I'm not selling but I'm not feeling good right now This is why I was saying Jason like any comment you made earlier
SPEAKER_03: I think you made a comment about you know what do you do right now to drive or make change in these markets And I'm not sure that at the end of the day the drive or the change is being made As much as the change that's being made is being driven by the market itself There is just so many dynamics at play that it's very difficult to kind of ascertain where things are headed next What's going on and we're all going to sit here and we're all going to speculate We're going to flip a coin It's going to come up heads, it's going to come up tails We're going to be right, we're going to be wrong It's really difficult to kind of put our foot down And for any of us to put our foot down and say this is what I think needs to happen And this is what I think should happen or could happen or will happen Half of us will be right, half of us will be wrong Let's take another stock I think it's interesting to talk about this
SPEAKER_04: Netflix was at $700 a month ago It's at $390 today This is an incredible large-cap business That's a good one to talk about the business
SPEAKER_03: That's like a real business that you can assess what's going on with the business itself Well they think they're not going to grow 20-30% a year
SPEAKER_04: They think they're going to grow 8-9-10% a year But a fabulous business, right? Great business So is that now the time? Netflix is so saturated
SPEAKER_03: It has achieved such incredible market share by growing so quickly every year For years and years and years to come At some point the growth was going to slow down They hit their natural audience I think Netflix is going to be the best example of consumer surplus at scale
SPEAKER_02: What I mean by that is they have given so much value away for an incredibly small amount of money If you think about the value you get from Netflix as compared to what you would get from Comcast And you spend $10 or $15 for Netflix versus $100 for Comcast There was such a huge gap in value But Netflix had to spend so much money to keep people entertained The real question is at what point do they start to run out of the things that they can do to keep people engaged Otherwise they, Jason, do what you did which is you have a subscription to HBO Max You have a subscription to Disney Plus Everybody gets in the game The only real winner is the consumer And any individual company I think gets into a real tough spot And I think what you saw was their earnings release basically said just that Disney is doing a great job competing against us HBO Max is doing a great job competing against us So we're not sure with the incremental dollar that we can give you the growth that we've given you before when we had no competition That's by the way Lina Khan's comment Which is the other side of the coin Which is when you have more competition the consumer does win It contains prices It just doesn't contain asset inflation which does impact the shareholders of these companies Yeah and still even at this level
SPEAKER_04: $172 billion they have a 35 XPE ratio One way to look at this
SPEAKER_03: I think your point is an interesting one Chamath Where you talk about how much value they've given away over the years and what they have today You can always look at the balance sheet of a business, a public company And in the balance sheet there's this line Goodwill No, well not even goodwill, just the accumulated loss The accumulated deficit And if you look at that on Netflix they basically run the business right now as of their last earnings statement Which was December 31st, negative $40 million So in terms of the total net cash that they've generated as a business Since their founding as a business They've lost $40 million So meanwhile the question is So they're not necessarily at a stage where they've been generating cash But for many many years Amazon had a similar strategy Where they were reinvesting all their capital And that capital was going into building the business and growing the platform and adding the next layer of growth The question is, from a fundamental business perspective, not a valuation perspective Have they added enough growth platforms into the business? Have they found enough other products, services, or ways to build customers? No, they have one product They have linear video, they don't have gaming, they don't have anything else
SPEAKER_02: They did start doing sports They don't have sports, they don't have comedy really
SPEAKER_04: They are dabbling They dabbled with doing a couple of podcasts, they dabbled with doing a couple of games And there's rumors that they might try to get the other 20 or 30% of people who don't pay By creating a lighter version that was ad-supported In other words, you're not going to get the new season of Ozark But maybe you can get the first two or three You're a year behind the production schedule But you can watch it all with ads Why isn't Netflix and video games and sports?
SPEAKER_02: It's such an obvious one
SPEAKER_04: And that's why I think they released a series of games based on their IP So as their IP grows, and I think that's what you'll see with Disney Plus Think about an app store inside of Disney Plus, a merch store inside of Disney Plus I think there's so many verticals next to them Why is there no merch store inside of it? Why don't they own Spotify or have a Spotify competitor?
SPEAKER_04: Well, I think Spotify sees themselves as a That's a really good point
SPEAKER_02: When you look at the Peloton, I was looking at the Peloton earnings When it was down 25% yesterday or the day before And I was like, this is an incredible business because they have 2.1 million subscribers Paying 40 bucks a month It's incredible It's a money printing machine Money printing machine, I actually have a subscription I don't even have a Peloton You just pay $500 a year to use the classes
SPEAKER_04: I have the app, it's crazy, I don't even use the app
SPEAKER_02: I think that's 20 bucks for just that app But the point I was trying to make is when you look at it There's about 30% of that revenue that goes right back to the music labels for the music So to your point, there's just an enormous value in actually music As Netflix built library values and content, they could point it to music as well There's all these things they could do to reignite growth A lot of people discount the value of having a subscription consumer business
SPEAKER_03: When you have a consumer's credit card on file And they're paying every month for something It's an incredible point because you don't have the friction of getting the sale done You've already done the sale Now the question is can you upsell them some new service or some new addition that they're not paying for today It's so obvious By the way, I'll say this, for years Google struggled with this question Which is what is Google's consumer subscription business Because Google did not have consumer credit cards across its platform Despite a billion daily users So Google for years was strategically trying to figure out what business can or should we be in To have a subscription model with consumers Because once you have that, then you can charge for all sorts of stuff You can charge for storing photos, you can charge for accessing audio You can charge for accessing unlimited video I'll take the contrarian side of this
SPEAKER_01: Okay, here we go
SPEAKER_04: Go ahead, Peter, Jim
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, look, I invest in B2B subscription businesses I hate B2C subscription businesses And the reason is just the churn rates What we see when we look at B2C subscription businesses Is 5% monthly churn is not uncommon It's pretty much the standard We also call that 50-60% churn in the subscription base every year So effectively you're rebuilding the company from scratch every two years I don't see how you can build a successful business that way I'll tell you why you're wrong about this But contrast that to B2B With B2B subscription businesses, you do lose some customers But the ones who stick with you keep adding seats for more employees, usually And so actually your cohorts are growing 20% every year Instead of shrinking 50% Now obviously there are some of these B2C subscription businesses Like Netflix and Peloton They are obviously valuable They've defied gravity Well, Netflix has done it Because they spend billions of dollars on content And Peloton's got it because they Plop an expensive machine in your house so you can't forget about it And that keeps you a little bit more recurring Than a lot of these subscriptions which are just very easy to cancel So look, they've been able to make it work But most of these businesses Here's why I think you're wrong It turns out these are so low priced, these subscriptions
SPEAKER_04: That you get a lot of consumers trialing them So because it's only 5 or 10 bucks a month to use something Like a Spotify or a Disney Because they're so low priced, you do get a little bit of sampling And that's why the rate's higher Whereas in business, there is a massive onboarding Of people have to take their time to set up the software, learn how to use it So if you're going to commit to it, it does reduce it And you do have land and expand But what we're talking about with product expansion Is the equivalent in SaaS of land and expand So imagine if Disney Plus or Spotify After you listen to an album or it's in your top rotation They showed you the merch for that band Or after you completed the season of Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett They showed you the merchandise and said Here's a limited edition of Grogu Baby Yoda When we tried to get Baby Yoda stuff last Christmas Disney dropped the ball, they didn't have any And they could have had all that made and they would have sold millions of them We were buying stuff on Etsy The reason Baby Yoda works is because it's leveraged off a platform
SPEAKER_01: This massive Disney platform of which the B2C subscription service is just one piece I mean look, obviously there are valuable consumer subscription businesses So the way I'm approaching it can't be right in all cases However, I think people really get themselves in trouble When they start to value these B2C subscription businesses The same as the B2B ones In one case, in the B2C case Churn is the predominant characteristic And it means that you're going to have to spend more on marketing or cogs or content or what have you To keep rebuilding the user base Whereas in the B2B context, the user base is compounding on its own And that just makes for, I think, a more firmly attractive business opportunity Yes, but it grows slower
SPEAKER_02: Again, at the end of the day these are all variables Just the way it's just changed I agree with David that consumer churn businesses Or consumer businesses have much higher churn than enterprise And enterprises have negative churn Which means that they just naturally grow But the reality is consumers just have an unbounded TAM that enterprises do not And the way that the LTVs work just tend to be different And the cash flow cycle of these companies tend to be very different And that's why you see Netflix get these enormous valuations that enterprise subscription businesses do not What some people are now doing when they look at consumer businesses and they look at churn
SPEAKER_04: Is they take out the ones that are based on credit card To look at people who actually unsubscribe because they don't want it But not because their credit card changed So basically, if you think about Netflix's business
SPEAKER_01: If it's churning 2.5% per month, let's call that 30% of the user base is at trading every year They've got to rebuild their user base from scratch every three or four years Now, they can do that I guess at some point though, they may run out of greenfield opportunity to grow their customer base But it's going to pressurize their margins Because they're going to have to constantly spend on content Original content to retain you They're going to have to spend on marketing To keep going after the portion of the market they've acquired Yeah, but the archives, you're leaving out the archives
SPEAKER_04: These archives are going to be super valuable And I don't think we even know how to value these archives yet Because if you look at the Marvel archive or the Star Wars archive These things just keep printing money year after year And then you'll see Netflix and HBO Max will keep being able to go back to them HBO Max being the canonical example now Because you didn't think that that business would have a lot of IP to build on But suddenly, you have the Many Saints of Newark And the Sex and the City reboot I mean, they're going right down the line There's going to be an entourage reboot
SPEAKER_01: When you own the franchise, it has value Disney has shown that You own the best franchise, it's going to have value
SPEAKER_04: HBO Max is now showing it And then that means Netflix will show it next Yeah, but how much of Netflix's content do they even own?
SPEAKER_01: Are they licensing it? No, now it's 100%
SPEAKER_04: Netflix is 100%, they stopped And that's why Disney started taking it off Their whole spend, I think they're spending 20 billion or something It's all on original content So that's why they made that move Is because they knew they were going to have the Disney content and the Marvel content pulled Where do we want to go next? Guys, because I have COVID
SPEAKER_02: I want Sax to talk to me about his What's going on with Fauci? Oh my gosh, this is quite a story
SPEAKER_01: This really is I'm trying to get my head around this story
SPEAKER_04: I'd be totally honest, my head is spinning Can you slow it down and explain it to us? Because I think we all want to understand what's going on
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so a series of emails have come out
SPEAKER_01: That were requested of the Freedom of Information Act And what they show is that At the NIH, Fauci and Francis Collins, who was ahead of it They had a series of conversations with scientists Around January 31st or February 1st There are emails on February 1st summarizing those conversations And basically what they say is that A group of scientists advised Fauci and Collins That COVID likely came from a lab How did they know? Because it had, you know, hallmarks, signatures, like the Furin sites The same reasons we now believe the virus came from a lab But by February 4th, officials at So three days later, officials at the NIH Including Fauci Had come to the conclusion that The virus must have been passed zoonotically From an animal like a pangolin It didn't come from a lab And furthermore, they were starting to use language like conspiracy theory To discredit the lab leak idea So within a few days, they were all in On this sort of so-called zoonotic theory And they really began a campaign In the words of Collins, a devastating takedown Of scientists who were trying to discuss the lab leak theory That became the official position Why? Why? Well, okay, so this is where it gets really interesting Obviously, I can't speculate to Motus
SPEAKER_01: But here's what we know The NIH, Fauci's division Years ago, there was a debate in the scientific community About how we study viruses Fauci's an epidemiologist, he wants to study them Makes sense The debate is over whether you should enhance the viruses As a way to study them So-called gain-of-function research Fauci is on the side of engaging in that kind of research There are other scientists who think it's crazy They lose The NIH then makes grants to a group called the EcoHealth Alliance It's run by a British scientist named Peter Daszak By the way, who doesn't support EcoHealth and an alliance?
SPEAKER_02: Credible branding
SPEAKER_04: And we love puppies Yes, so
SPEAKER_01: Angel puppy love
SPEAKER_03: Yes, exactly So EcoHealth Alliance, which has neither been good
SPEAKER_01: For the ecology, for our health, or our alliances Yeah, keeping a bad name to alliances everywhere
SPEAKER_01: Yes, so they then provide funding To the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study bat viruses Where gain-of-function research then occurs This lab in Wuhan is known to have had leaks in the past So just from a security choice, not the best recipient of a grant But that is what happens, okay And then we know the history from there It's almost certain that this virus picked up What's the element of the story that has to deal with the Lancet and the person that worked for Fauci
SPEAKER_02: And then that person got a grant afterwards? Just one other thing I want to point out here
SPEAKER_04: So we're clear This has become a very partisan issue But the original FOAs were done by BuzzFeed and the Washington Post The FOIA, sorry The FOIA releases were done by BuzzFeed and Washington Post And now you have Rand Paul on the other side of it who seems really wacky and obviously conspiracy right wing So you have this really weird partisanship that's now been embedded in it Okay, yes
SPEAKER_01: So, Sax, can you explain the partisan nature of the Chima'a question as well?
SPEAKER_04: I almost want to take Chima'a's question first about who is this Dazza guy and what is this Lancet letter
SPEAKER_01: Let me come back to the partisan thing I'm just going to try to establish the facts before we get into the partisan mess of this thing So, Peter Daszak is the guy who made these grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology Okay There is one other interesting fact When the West wanted to come in and investigate what happened in this lab China approved one person from the West to come in and conduct the investigation
SPEAKER_01: Guess who that was? Peter Daszak Okay, he was the only guy the CCP let in to go look at this lab He then comes out of this whatever he did and says it has to be the zoonotic theory He endorsed the wet market idea It cannot be lab leak That is a conspiracy theory And then he rounds up a group of scientists to write a letter to the Lancet Which is a respected scientific publication Incredibly respected Yes, which he signs In which he basically advocates the zoonotic theory But he goes further and says there is no way that it could be lab leak And anyone who says that is a conspiracy theorist And that has an incredibly chilling effect on the scientific community Because no scientist wants to be labeled a kook or a conspiracy theorist Or heretical to the Lancet
SPEAKER_01: Exactly, and this is a tight knit ecosystem of Insiders Insiders and institutions and grants No scientist wants to lose their funding, right? And then furthermore, big tech starts censoring his disinformation The lab leak theory because they say well these officials Look at all the scientists, we have to follow the science, right? So the science, according to this letter from the Lancet
SPEAKER_01: Is basically on the side of the zoonotic theory So you then have downstream censorship of this So that is who Peter Daszak is And in this letter in the Lancet He never disclosed his conflict of interest Which is the fact that he funded This Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct The type of research that might have led to the leak of the virus So this guy is hopelessly conflicted And has a reason to want to suppress And cover up a lab leak and he never disclosed it And look, so does Fauci I mean because Fauci funded Daszak So imagine in February of 2020 When the lab leak is coming across the desk of Fauci Does he tell the president, Mr. President He's at the right hand of the president Mr. President, we might have funded this thing We funded Daszak, we funded the Wuhan lab We collectively, the United States government Might have some responsibility in this Do you think that conversation ever took place? When he was making his recommendations He was hopelessly conflicted And if the truth about this had come out And look, I'm not saying he had any intentional role I'm not saying he wanted this to happen I'm not even saying that he knew for sure That Daszak was funding the Wuhan lab Let's just give Fauci the benefit of the doubt But we all know how politics works If it had come out in February of 2020 That Fauci had funded the guy who funded the Wuhan lab And that's where the virus likely came from His career would have been finished Finished, we know that as a political reality And so within days of scientists advising Fauci Hey, this thing probably came from the lab The NIH has consolidated around The idea that this is a conspiracy theory And they work to suppress it And they wage a public campaign I gotta tell you, when I have learned all these facts I gotta tell you what I compare it to It's almost like when we learned all those revelations About Bill Cosby That here's this guy on TV for years Pretending to be America's dad And then we find out he's a monster Fauci has been on TV for years Lecturing us about COVID He's been like America's dad, America's doctor And lo and behold We find out that he has a role In this whole thing
SPEAKER_04: And look, I'm not saying Of course it wasn't his intent Of course it wasn't I'm gonna give him the benefit of every doubt here
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give him the benefit of every doubt Okay
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt In the sense that he didn't want this to happen He didn't cause that But we know for a fact That he funded DASIC who funded this lab It's where the virus came from Come on, we know that And he covered it up He engaged in a campaign to suppress the lab leak theory That is a conflict of interest
SPEAKER_04: Let's get Friedberg in on the science What do you think as a man of science Friedberg, a sultan of science in fact About these emails And the chances that Fauci Essentially Was funding Gain of research and then attempting to cover it up Which is the accusation
SPEAKER_03: Of science I mentioned this in the past Or science community Jamie Metzl did a podcast interview With Lex Friedman, it's worth listening to It's a couple hours long He's got some time to kill But he does a good job Contextualizing these matters And what may have gone on That led ultimately to The lab leak and also the lab leak cover up I don't know what happened with Fauci I have not read this stuff I have no reason to believe that Fauci is malintentioned In the sense that He has some reason to harm or hurt I could see that There is a certain degree of nervousness To accuse the biggest Foreign government and potential US adversary Of causing a global pandemic And not wanting That sort of conflict to arise At a period of time when you really need to take care of your people And we really need to focus Internally as a country on how do we get through this pandemic And making that I gotta respond to that
SPEAKER_01: Hold on, let's free bird fetch No, I have to respond to that
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that Fauci or anyone Involved in that process should have accused China But that's not what was Their decision and what was not was debated They decided to stop the debate Altogether, they decided to suppress The debate
SPEAKER_03: What would you have done in that seat, Sax? You're sitting in that seat and the country is potentially facing a pandemic That could wipe out millions of Americans Where do you prioritize? I'll tell you what
SPEAKER_01: If I was sitting at the NIH and I wasn't hopelessly conflicted I would probably have just said Listen, I don't know what the origin of the virus is Let that debate continue I would not have tried to wage A public campaign Against the people, against the scientists Who were honestly pursuing In good faith where this virus might have come from So we can learn things Maybe how to avoid something like this from happening again The people at the NIH Would not have engaged in that type of Politically minded PR campaign That's not their job as scientists And then to find out that they have a conflict of interest On top of that That might be motivating that desire That is not appropriate I think it's really important
SPEAKER_02: Friedrich, you can probably agree with this That at some point, some journalist Should really simplify this For all of us It's an incredibly important Topic that we need to look at And I think we need to look at the end of all of this Assuming that Omicron is the end of this chapter Because it's been a horrible chapter for the world But we do need an accounting of the truth, right? I think that's really important
SPEAKER_03: There was an episode many ago when I said I don't know and I don't care about whether or not The virus came out of China Again, I was somewhat misstated As the intention of why I said that The reason I said that, and what I really meant Was that what happened, even if it was a lab leak What happened was really the tip of the iceberg The ability to bioengineer pathogenic organisms Is becoming ubiquitous The toolkit to do gain-of-function research As it's being called in the press Is a very simple toolkit The ability to engineer organisms that can cause catastrophic harm To the human species Is becoming available on the internet And with tools that any of us can buy and use in our garage And so what I'm more questioning And what I'm more concerned about and what I care more about Is what is our global bio-defense strategy How are we getting ahead of the next wave of this happening And it's not about the who said, he said, she said What lab did we get of It's really important to understand the technology How do we even know we need bio-defense
SPEAKER_01: When they're saying it came zoonautically They're saying it came from an animal When it actually was created in the lab If you want to have bio-defense We've got to first say that it came from a lab Yeah, you're right
SPEAKER_03: Separate question to me Whether it did or didn't The tooling to do this Is absolutely possible And the ability for these sorts of viruses To leak out and be made And turned into a weapon is significant It's a real risk And so I'm more Both of you guys, I think both of you guys are saying I'm more interested in figuring out how do we solve this problem Like how do we Both of you guys are saying nuanced versions of
SPEAKER_02: David is saying we have to have An honest accounting of what happened If we're supposed to actually have An eco-health alliance Yeah, by the way, I'm not disparaging that
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, I'm not dismissing that And you're saying
SPEAKER_02: We need to actually formalize gain-of-function research Because everybody has it And so it's going to be inappropriate For us to ignore it going forward
SPEAKER_03: We need to assume gain-of-function research Leads to dangerous pathogenic bioorganisms And then we need to It doesn't And then we need to formulate a bio-defense strategy I'm just saying like we don't The implication
SPEAKER_02: The reason why SACS's thing is important to me Is the implications We have to have an honest accounting of these implications We saw another implication just this week in Flint, Michigan They shut down Indefinitely the public school system in Flint, Michigan Okay, this is a society Just to give you a sense of the facts here 90% are minority Why did they shut it down? Because of covid? 80% because of covid Because of the fear Of catching covid and spreading covid But 90% are minority kids 80% are in poverty I don't know how You know 80% of kids who are in poverty Are expected to have A laptop and internet access On a consistent basis This is the same place that screwed up the water system So I think we have to have an honest accounting Of all of these things Because the implications are real This is the biggest story of our lifetimes, covid
SPEAKER_01: I mean it might be the biggest international incident since World War II And the fact that The major, let's call it prestige publications Have not really fully investigated What happened This is the conundrum to me
SPEAKER_04: Because this started With a massive amount of coverage From Buzzfeed, Washington Post, New York Times In June of last year, 2021 They were covering this like crazy Vanity Fair did a major investigation And then it seems to have gone silent And then Rand Paul has been going after this And it all of a sudden became partisan So the only coverage I'm seeing of it That's independent is the intercept But then everything else is the hill And you know really weird far right stuff That want to like you know Fauci needs to be whatever And how did it become so partisan If it started with left leaning publications Getting this information, Sax Like how did this become partisan Is it because the president changed in the middle Of all this Do you have an honest handicapping Of why we can't get You know like a consensus on what's actually happening here from the press Is it Rand Paul's too polarizing Well I think what happened is
SPEAKER_01: If you go back to February of 2020 If you look, I just had this conversation with Ashley Rinsburg On my Colin show And you know he's been plugged What what what Now available at any age
SPEAKER_05: Colin Can I, he literally wrote the book on the New York Times
SPEAKER_01: And I asked him about their coverage of Robin Hood account You can trade that on Robin Hood
SPEAKER_04: So fine
SPEAKER_05: Can I finish
SPEAKER_01: Sorry This is the guy who literally This is the guy who literally wrote the book on The New York Times And I asked him about the New York Times coverage Of COVID and COVID origins He says that on February 17th So basically two weeks after These officials at the NIH settle on The conspiracy theory narrative That
SPEAKER_01: That narrative is then published almost word for word Verbatim using the same language Not just the New York Times In the Washington Post Across all these major publications So what you see there Is a PR campaign It's a concerted effort You don't get the same Words and language being used across all the major Publications at the same time Unless somebody is pushing that narrative We all know this This is, corporations do this right They run PR campaigns That is what basically happened And so the prestige media Got on board this zoonotic theory And this idea Look, like they've done so many times They got on board WMD in Iraq before Realizing it was a total farce And a hoax, okay So they got themselves on record Behind this conspiracy theory idea And similarly I think the Democrats got themselves on record As being pro-Fauci and everything Because of, you know, TDS, right? Anyone who's standing up to Trump Must be correct and defended And so all of this happened in 2020 And so by the time we now fast forward To, let's call it an honest Investigation of the origins of the virus Which should be bipartisan This should not be partisan We should all want to know what happened We should all want to take the politics out of it Because without knowing what happened How do we prepare for it in the future? Everyone's already, like, hopelessly committed To positions they took in 2020 And I think this was driving the partisanship Yeah, I think you're right
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing I'm trying to get to Is, like, when I saw you wanted to put it on the docket I'm, like, trying to grok this And I can't find, I'm finding All the left-leaning coverage From June of 2021 None since then And then it's all right coverage now And I think it's something we need to get Some independent coverage with, so I'll take credit, I'll take credit
SPEAKER_03: For saying Fauci is the biggest political Luther At our all-in podcast recap Thank you, I'll take my bow now Well, I mean, and the other thing that's kind of
SPEAKER_04: Infuriating
SPEAKER_01: I know, we're so correct on these things
SPEAKER_04: The thing that's, I think Just infuriating right now Is that everybody is trying to Manipulate the public And they have not understood That in this media environment The truth comes out Kind of not only eventually But pretty quickly So stop trying to game the public either way That the vaccines don't work
SPEAKER_01: But Jason, they've delayed the public reckoning on this By, what, like, two years? Well, here's the thing, so I agree with you on that
SPEAKER_04: And there's also a FOA release that happened in the UK Where, and it's a little too much to get into right now But this FOA release now is looking at All the people who died in the UK Of COVID And it turns out, like, maybe more people Are dying because they didn't get their cancer Or a large number of people died because they didn't Go in to get tested for cancer And all of this is going to come out eventually And not putting out every day The ages And the comorbidities Of people who died of COVID Just led to this feeling that we're getting gamed And turning on CNN and seeing the case counts In a cumulative chart Is like a startup giving me, like, the cumulative Number of people who registered for their company For their product We don't care about that, we want to know your daily active users What about the catastrophic impact of school closures
SPEAKER_01: That we've been talking about on this show repeatedly And everything's being manipulated Stop manipulating the public
SPEAKER_04: Look, you have to realize
SPEAKER_01: That there is huge political motivations here Because huge CYA Going on because the heads Of the teachers union said There is no learning loss, they are the ones Who lobby to shut the schools down They sure as hell aren't going to admit their mistake now They're covering it up, and so any politician Who takes their money Is basically, they're going to muffle their criticism There's only one really honest Like, left wing guy I've seen Acknowledge the school closure issue Which was Jonathan Chait had a great article In New York Magazine Saying that progressives must acknowledge The mistake of school closures Because otherwise we can't learn from it He has been a voice in the wilderness On that side of the aisle
SPEAKER_04: Now that Saks has cracked open the plugs What are we all working on Because I want to give a plug to Friedberg who did a great Interview on a tech podcast Called This Week in Startups Where he announced KANA So it's a dual plug here Friday's episode of This Week in Startups Maybe you could tell us a little bit about Your new replicator We're just announcing the business
SPEAKER_03: Which I talk about a lot On Jason's pod As you guys know I've talked a lot about This concept of decentralized manufacturing Where we can move old school Industrial production systems Which are super inefficient We use lots of resources, move stuff into factories Process them and then ship the products back out Technology now allows us to have more distributed Or decentralized manufacturing Potentially What we've been working on for three years At this point is a company called KANA Which is really about Printing beverages in your home So you can use a single device To print iced coffee or iced tea Cocktail, juice, wine, soda, etc. All using a single flavoring system And water from your sink We talk more about it on the pod I think this is a big theme Forget about KANA for a second I think the systems of old The industrial revolution Created all these old school systems That are big contributors to carbon emissions And are super resource inefficient I do think that everything From 3D printing to biomanufacturing To the system that we introduced today With KANA Can completely reinvent our global industries In different ways And ultimately lead to cheaper products Better products and products that use Much less natural resources and put less carbon out It's been a big thing that we've been working on I'm excited to open it up a little bit And talk more about what we're doing Thanks for having me on Did you hire the mute as a spokesperson? He may or may not have his brand on here
SPEAKER_02: We'll see
SPEAKER_03: Right now the business is Signing up lots of different folks That can create digital beverage brands If any of you guys want to have JCal's Hardsider We'll be launching that Phil, how about you? Phil Hobbuth Actually told me
SPEAKER_04: His new soda that he's going to be bringing It's called Muth Cola It has 5 times the sugar Of Coca Cola Other than that it's just like any other colder But you get 5 times the calories
SPEAKER_02: It just drips out like maple syrup I'd like to do a I want to say it again In Genesee County in Michigan Flint Indefinitely shut down their public schools This week you have thousands Of kids Who at best will have to learn via Zoom and internet access That most of these kids may or may not have Because again They're in poverty And so I just want to make sure That everybody just understands that Everybody tweet that and talk about it
SPEAKER_04: Self-inflicted wounds Well here's the thing This is one of Eric Adams' points
SPEAKER_02: 90% minority In Flint and poverty All virtual until further notice It goes right against the CDC guidelines Okay And this is really The accounting of the cost And we are as we said before Learning loss in our kids is going to be the single Biggest thing we look back at 20 years Coming out of this pandemic And realize was the Biggest price we paid for this
SPEAKER_04: And here's the stupidity of it Eric Adams And the New York City You know sort of leadership were talking About this when these kids are in School okay there's a chance they're going to get Omicron like everybody got omicron like everybody Has it now like it's crazy how many people In our circle have it the only person who doesn't have it is Phil Hellmuth Now What's going to happen when they go Home or they're not in school And they're hanging out with their Friends or looking for something they're going to get it Anyway what Eric Adams
SPEAKER_01: Said is that school is the safest place for them to be Yes totally totally
SPEAKER_05: And school shutdowns
SPEAKER_03: Are just so insane to me Right now it makes no freaking sense
SPEAKER_01: UNICEF had an article which I'll dig up Where they said that The cost in future earnings By this generation of students Who suffered learning loss is going to be 17 trillion Worldwide that's going to be the economic Impact from this thing not to mention The stunted social and emotional Development by locking these kids down Anxiety PTSD
SPEAKER_04: I mean this is going to create depression In kids we need to Solve this we got to get the
SPEAKER_02: Schools and flint open
SPEAKER_04: Alright everybody for the dictator Chumath Palihapitiya David Friedberg The Sultan of Science and The Rain Man himself David Sacks I'm Jake Hell we'll see you next time Good 65 love you besties bye bye
SPEAKER_02: Oh man
