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Let's talk about the sweaters, okay?
Search this video
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Let David, let's start with you cuz I love it. I love it.
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David, I love that sweater.
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to up my sweater game for Chamath. This is Tom Ford. love it. It's beautiful. Tom Ford? Tom Ford.
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The buttons are made out of endangered rhino horn.
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Wait, just lost a third of the audience.
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So, my sweater is a is a very light Italian cashmere made by a company called Doriani, Doriani cashmere.
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Uh this right here is the little for our sweaters.
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Is that where we're monetizing the All-In pod? Yeah. Here we go.
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Doriani cashmere just got a free plug.
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This right here, this right here is a little young calf leather. Very soft, very soft.
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And the buttons, uh like David's, uh are made from shark fin.
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And for those of you at home who would like to spend $150 and stay warm, may I recommend the Marine Layer?
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You can find it on Union Street Jacket.
0:52
I mean, how how tilted find that jacket on Turk Street.
0:58
How tilted is sweater Karen listening to this.
0:59
Sweater Karen, if you're listening Sweater Karen.
1:01
I mean, you must be I'll never reveal.
1:04
Sweater Karen got back to me and she was like, "Oh my god, he's so tilted."
1:07
I think I know who she is.
1:10
Sweater Karen can kiss my brown ass.
1:12
So, I Jade comes home last night, I kid you not.
1:14
She's like, "You I I don't like you in the t-shirts.
1:16
I got you some sweaters."
1:17
And I cuz you know, we're going to the mountains for the for the holiday and I was like, "Did you watch the podcast about the sweaters?"
1:22
She's like, "No, I don't listen to your podcast."
1:24
I was like, "Okay, fair enough."
1:25
Um and I'm like, I'm looking at these things around these boxes and she's got this bunch of sweaters.
1:29
I started I was like, "What did you spend on this?" She said $3,000.
1:31
I was like, "I'm not comfortable spending $3,000 on a sweater." That's half a sweater. eight of them.
1:37
No, no, no, it was $3,000 for all Yeah, Chamath is like, "Is that a sleeve?"
1:41
That's a He's like, "IT'S $3,000 FOR FOUR BUTTONS AND A WAISTBAND?
1:47
THAT MIGHT BE A vest for Chamath.
1:50
I I think that's the box the sweater came in was $3,000.
1:54
So, I got my three-quarter zip and I'm feeling good. I'm feeling really good.
1:55
I feel pretty sexy in it, I'll be honest. Let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sacks.
2:07
And I said, "We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it." Love you, bestie. Queen of Quinoa. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody.
2:15
Welcome to the All-In podcast.
2:17
Yes, breaking into the top 50 podcast week after week because of you, the amazing audience, telling your friends about the weeks, so it's week and week.
2:30
WEEK AFTER I SAID, WEEK AFTER WEEK. A week and a week. A week and a week.
2:35
Hitting the top 40 podcast episodes in the world, thanks to the fans.
2:38
With me, of course, the dictator himself in a amazing sweater.
2:44
Light light cashmere suede.
2:44
The Sultan of Science, I found out from his mom.
2:50
She much prefers the Sultan of Science to Queen of Quinoa, so that's what we're going with going forward.
2:56
David Friedberg, who had a great party uh up in beep and I really enjoyed going.
3:02
And Sacks, who didn't go to beep's party or to Friedberg's party.
3:05
He stayed home and played chess on his iPhone.
3:12
The Rain Man himself, David Sacks.
3:14
Welcome to the pod, everybody.
3:14
Okay, you want me to do New York stories? Jason Calacanis. It's true. No, that's not true.
3:20
I I really wanted to come, but Nats breastfeeding, and so I couldn't come.
3:24
The helipad was shut down. Chamath couldn't land. BREASTFED?
3:33
UH THERE WAS LIKE WAS THERE A CURB YOUR Enthusiasm Oh, no, it was um this great show called After Life from Ricky Gervais.
3:42
There's literally a scene in it where a woman they work for a local newspaper that's going out of business and they're going to do local stories.
3:49
And the big story in town is a woman is making pudding, uh incredibly delicious pudding, and it's from her breast milk.
3:59
And they go and cover the story.
4:01
Anyway, I'll just leave it at that.
4:03
It's a pretty amazing story.
4:04
Do you want to know my two New York stories or not? Yeah, let's hear it.
4:08
Well, wait, you said you had a helicopter story.
4:08
What's that I had a helicopter story.
4:10
Helicopters also New York stories, so uh I uh went to Deepdale to play golf with uh a certain well-known individual and uh we chopper we chopper back. A finance individual? Uh politics.
4:27
Well-known political individual. Oh, well, okay. Okay.
4:31
Sacks is not a rock and roller.
4:31
You do not want to step foot in a helicopter with a rock and roll star.
4:35
no, but so here so here's my story, which is why I I I totally freaked out about helicopters and I can't This was 8 years ago.
4:42
We played Deepdale, which is just, you know, outside New York.
4:44
Get in this the chopper lands in the middle of the thing.
4:47
I was like, "Okay, that's fine, you know."
4:50
And we're going and I'm already feeling kind of skittish.
4:51
I don't like helicopters.
4:54
Get to the East Side Heliport and the East Side Heliport is basically right by the East River.
4:56
And so, the helicopter descends and one of the skis doesn't actually land on the [ __ ] oops thing.
5:03
And so, he does it does a little tilty poops and then the guy comes back up and then he lands.
5:12
You I honestly like I have never been more scared in my life. that's it.
5:18
And I was like, "That's it. Never again." any besties.
5:21
It's a bestie ban for life.
5:23
We're making a pact here.
5:23
Nobody in [ __ ] talks to So, that's my my New York story.
5:25
Last New York story was I was there 2 days ago for the last couple days.
5:28
For Santa Clara in the middle of the middle of this Omicron breakout.
5:32
Uh by the way, had a beautiful dinner after the game.
5:38
Draymond, Kevin Durant, me, bunch of friends. to the game?
5:42
No, we went to the private room at Carbone.
5:44
It was so brutal though, I have to tell you.
5:46
I feel so disgusting with myself.
5:47
I had a work dinner and I have sushi at the work dinner.
5:52
And then, you know, Dray texts after the game.
5:54
He's like, "Hey, we're all having dinner at Carbone."
5:55
I said, "Okay, I'll I'll head through." I went to the hotel.
5:58
I called Nats and I said, "I'm brushing my teeth."
6:02
And she said, "But you're going out."
6:04
And I said, "Yes, but if I brush my teeth, I'm not going to eat a second dinner."
6:09
And I thought, you know, and then but I made the key mistake. But I didn't floss.
6:12
So, I was unflossed, but I brushed my teeth. Okay.
6:17
I show up and [ __ ] I lose it.
6:20
And wine and dessert and bread and pasta pasta pasta. Uh it was really brutal. And by 3:00 a. m.
6:26
I stumble home and I felt so bad cuz I had to wake up at like, you know, 8:00 in the morning.
6:31
No, my first meeting was at 7:45.
6:33
Well, congratulations to Steph Curry, by the way. Incredible, no?
6:37
Greatest shooter of all time. He's a virtuoso. Yeah.
6:41
Anyways, that was my that was my New York story. Yeah.
6:45
I I gained, you know, Here's my here's my Carbone I gained 1 kilo. 2.
6:48
2 lbs I gained in 2 days.
6:51
Uh here's my Carbone story.
6:51
Hardest thing to Hardest reservation to get in New York.
6:55
Sacks is like, "J Cal, need a help, need a favor.
6:57
What's the best place in New York to do a closing dinner?" I'm like, "I got you. I got my guy." Get my guy on the horn.
7:01
My guy is like, "Okay, I got you."
7:02
Carbone, Friday [ __ ] night, 8:00, hardest ticket in New York.
7:08
You know what Sacks does? Goes dark.
7:11
Friday afternoon, 1:00 p. m.
7:11
He's like, "Yeah, we're not going to make it."
7:16
I'm like, my friend is like, "J Cal, your guy burned the Carbone res?" That was the Bird IPO.
7:25
I was going to take the founder out to dinner that night at Carbone and then it turned into like the big group dinner.
7:29
It's like 30 people, so it moved over to Carbone West.
7:32
the the the the private room, which is like, you know, not in the restaurant, but it's like a little bit on the side, it only fits like 15, 20 people.
7:38
So, it's not like you you can And that's it that's then it's really tight.
7:45
How how what Can I ask you a question?
7:46
What was Steph's uh How did Steph feel?
7:49
Uh no, Steph wasn't there.
7:49
Draymond, Kevin, me, Benny Fowler, Moral, but just a bunch of our friends. Kevin Durant? Yeah.
7:58
Kevin Durant still uh family with uh He's honestly he's he's such a great guy. I love Kevin Durant.
8:05
He He really He is really really really a great Wish he had stayed.
8:08
Super super sensitive cool.
8:11
He's friends again with uh Draymond.
8:12
It's always He was always friends with that when they had their blow up, it was more like they're brothers.
8:18
And it was just a little bit tense.
8:20
started talking like Joe Pesci.
8:23
Did Did Kevin Durant ever start talking like Joe Pesci? HEY, INSIDE BASEBALL.
8:28
ALL RIGHT, uh it was an eventful week on Twitter.
8:30
We're only one week into the new Twitter CEO's reign.
8:35
Jack is gone and already David Sacks has been flagged.
8:42
It's a guy It can't be a coincidence that you were talking about them flagging accounts and the under free speech.
8:48
And then, pull it up on the screen, everybody.
8:53
Investors should be spending their time finding good investments, not endlessly debating interest rates, inflation, and tax policy.
8:59
But that's the uncertainty Washington has created. It's a great tweet.
9:04
Uh I like that tweet, actually. And then, the flag.
9:07
The conversation from Sacks has been flagged.
9:10
Some conversations can get heavy.
9:14
Don't forget the human behind the screen.
9:15
Do you think that this is that's machine learned, or do you think that that's an editor that goes in there and actually manually flags? Machine learned.
9:23
No, I said that's a great question.
9:24
But what is But what is in there that actually triggers Washington.
9:30
Interest rates, tax policy, Washington.
9:34
I'm I'm not sure I'm not sure that you could build uh it's the ratio.
9:37
I don't I don't know how you would build a function that would weight this in a way where this could get flagged.
9:41
Of all the things you could say with those words, this is so benign.
9:44
Well, I think it's the kind of It seems to me this thing's trying to ward off bullying attacks on Sacks, which I don't think Sacks needs to be too worried about.
9:52
All right, cuz they're telling this to people who would reply.
9:54
You're saying it's there to protect me. It's to protect you.
9:57
It's one of those things where they're like trying to get people to not insult you in the comments.
10:02
You're talking about that Do you get a Do you get a lot of insults in comments on your tweets?
10:04
Oh, undoubtedly, but So it could just be a blank This tweet this tweet this this tweet's comment section was pretty benign. Oh, right.
10:10
It may not be about the tweet.
10:13
It might be about the replies.
10:14
No, this wasn't that hot. This wasn't that hot.
10:18
I think Chamath might be onto something.
10:20
You know, Michelle Tandler got the same label around the same day for a tweet that seemed totally innocuous, too.
10:26
So, what I wonder about is, you know, is this label to protect us or is it a way Is it sort of a passive-aggressive way for snowflakes at Twitter to like label people they don't like and sort of suggest they're vaguely disreputable? I don't think it's that. I don't think it's that.
10:44
It's a right It's a left-wing conspi- It's a It's the It's the libs going after the the right. Sacks, you're paranoid.
10:51
any liberals getting I haven't seen any like left-wing people getting this label before.
10:54
a blanket attempt at trying to kind of mute the tone a little bit across the the debating that happens in the comments that come across in the replies, and I think they're just trying to like get everyone to tone it down a bit.
11:05
I think it's a way to destroy before you tweet it.
11:06
It'd be really interesting to know whether this was algorithmic or it was editorial, cuz I think if it's editorial it does actually, I don't think it's as extreme as what David just said, but it skews more in the realm of like people with an axe to grind can flag one thing over another or not. Right?
11:20
But if it's algorithmic, I think that that algorithm probably just needs a lot of tweaking cuz it's not Well, anyway, this Doesn't it say that there's a person behind the tweet?
11:30
It's like trying to get people to not say But what about the warning The warning is charming. The warning is charming.
11:37
It's try- It's trying to get you to be nice to each other. It's ridiculous.
11:41
mom inserting herself and being like, "Now remember."
11:43
It's It's there to suggest that there might be something wrong with the content that's being posted. Well, you know what?
11:50
words, in other words, the content is so triggering that, you know, it needs warning labels.
11:54
Do you guys think that paternalism has a role on social networks to try and mollify the the kind of discourse being too acrimonious, like I think we need some some of the transparency that Jack Dorsey repeatedly promised at all the congressional hearings.
12:09
Remember when he got hauled up there, he promised that they would give more transparency about the way that their algorithms worked. Where is that?
12:15
And it hasn't been delivered up. They promised it.
12:17
Now Jack Dorsey's skipped out of town and there's a new guy in charge.
12:21
Uh well, we need to know how these algorithms work because they are pressing their thumb on the scale, you know, of debate in the marketplace of ideas by suggesting that some ideas are sketchier than others.
12:33
They should just put here, "This was algorithmically done based on" They should explain it.
12:38
Under There should be a little question mark.
12:39
You have the question mark.
12:39
"Based on the words in the thread, it feels like things are getting heated here.
12:43
We did this with an algorithm."
12:45
Or "Users reported this as a heated thread, so we put this here."
12:50
Or "A human No, we decided. We decided, yeah.
12:52
But you want it to be an open marketplace of ideas, but the fact is it's Twitter's marketplace of ideas.
12:58
And Facebook's is Facebook's marketplace of ideas.
13:00
And at the end of the day, I don't think you're going to get away from any of these centralized social networks having anything but some degree of moderation to play a role in the platform.
13:10
thing, they didn't just target Sacks.
13:12
Also, Chamath, you didn't see this, but they flagged one of your tweets just this afternoon. Pull it up.
13:16
As you can see here, it's a slightly different one.
13:21
It says, "Layers are for players.
13:21
This conversation will drift to $5,000 sweater."
13:25
So, a big warning for Chamath to just And for the people replying, be careful.
13:31
Well, that That must be That must be then That must have been human uh you know, human initiated. sure.
13:37
And uh this one came in for Prof G.
13:39
Another one came in for Prof G, so And in this case, I think they're actually trying to think about the public good.
13:45
This guy is full of [ __ ] He thought J. C.
13:48
Penney would beat Amazon.
13:49
How many How many hours of MasterClass Adobe Photoshop did you take to to get this I got people from my I didn't make these. My meme team did.
13:57
I'm convinced that there are two ways to raise your next fund in Silicon Valley.
14:01
One, have one of the top 50 podcasts in the world, or two, have a strong meme game, and I'm going for both.
14:07
Sacks now has a warning on his.
14:11
And this one they put it on your profile page. That's great. Yeah, this is crazy.
14:13
Warning, this person has interesting things to say.
14:15
If you If you're too interesting, you get labeled now. It's really crazy.
14:18
No, I saw I saw J Cal having too much fun with this, and I'm like, I got to get in ON THIS ACT.
14:25
YOU'RE LIKE, "I NEED A MEME TEAM."
14:25
I'M LITERALLY If anybody out there, I don't care if you're I need a comedian.
14:29
I'm I'm willing to pay on a pay per meme, a pay per viral, whatever it takes.
14:34
Okay, uh in a related story, Democrats want racial equity audits at tech companies.
14:42
According to the Washington Free Beacon, uh which Sacks, correct me if I'm wrong, that's some sort of wacky right-wing uh publication. Uh Never heard of it. Okay. Washington Free Beacon.
14:52
If instituted, orders would have veto power over every product or initiative that's not an exaggeration is what the story says.
14:59
One proposal from House Democrats would fine companies $20,000 a day for not completing biennial independent racial equity audits.
15:06
A left-wing nonprofit called Color of Change is pushing for these audits.
15:11
Last week, their president called for independent auditors to vet new products from tech companies before they're released in front of Congress.
15:20
2018, Color of Change successfully pushed Facebook into completing an audit.
15:23
They called for more restrictions on Trump's posts.
15:25
Color of Change itself pushed for Trump to be permanently banned from the platform.
15:29
Just so you know, this is exactly the the the rough version of what happened to Microsoft in their DOJ settlement.
15:35
Their antitrust settlement was effectively an oversight where lawyers at the DOJ were the product managers and had not effectively veto right, but you had to approve product features before you could push them for 10 years.
15:47
You know, this is essentially what caused Ballmer's reign to be so, you know, ignominious.
15:51
It's like you couldn't do anything cuz like you had you had a plan to do something and you'd have to go to these random folks who didn't really have the context to make a a decision one way or the other on features.
16:02
So, I mean, the idea that they would do this is a pretty It's pretty crazy.
16:05
I need a point of clarification here.
16:06
I've heard the term uh racial audits or racial equity audits.
16:10
My understanding of those were to understand the composure of the company uh in terms of, you know, the diversity in the company, but this is something different. This is in the product?
16:24
To make sure the product isn't racist? Can products be racist?
16:25
What What's an example of a product being racist?
16:30
I don't understand what they would find.
16:33
Let me unpack this for you, okay?
16:33
What they are basically saying is that these big companies, and they for example, they've called on Google to conduct one of these audits.
16:41
They want all these big companies to conduct these audits.
16:45
These so-called auditors are actually political consultants who are members of the Democratic Party, who are friends of the senators who are pushing for this.
16:53
They're political activists. a grift.
16:54
And it's partly a grift, but it's more than that because you know, when you conduct an audit, let's just take this word audit for a second, okay?
17:01
You bring in a big five accounting firm, and they will check your numbers according to generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP, and make sure that the numbers are what you purported them to be.
17:10
That is the purpose of an audit.
17:12
And if the auditor ever says that you've done anything wrong, like you have to fix it. There's no choice.
17:17
Or you can appeal to some other auditor and have them redo the work, okay?
17:21
According to these generally accepted principles.
17:22
With an equity audit, what exactly are the principles that are being enforced or checked here?
17:29
There is no generally accepted list of equity principles that must be enforced these companies.
17:34
Basically, you have to do whatever this political activist tells you to do.
17:38
I mean, it's essentially like bringing in a party commissar to now take over the company or at least be inside the company telling the executives and officer of the company what to do.
17:49
It's something that, frankly, the CCP would do.
17:53
It does feel a little like uh yeah, Stasi-like.
17:59
Didn't we have all of the companies uh on their own, from Twitter to Google to Facebook, release their own diversity stats years ago?
18:07
I think this is not about diversity. It's about equity. It's about equity.
18:12
So let's explain the difference in what that means.
18:14
This is somehow how the company's run?
18:16
Like the day-to-day life of the employees there, not just the composure and the breakdown of the employees?
18:21
Look, equity equity means anything that progressives say it means.
18:22
We've seen on this program before how equity has jumped the shark.
18:26
There's now There was a provision in the infrastructure bill for tree equity.
18:29
So, I mean, really any disparity that occurs that progressives don't like can now be called a violation of equity, and this gives them the authorization to come in there and start giving orders. Mhm.
18:43
It's very weird that the I I don't understand how the product then review gets stopped.
18:47
Is that meant to throttle you from releasing product as a punitive Let me give you an example.
18:51
So, recently, you know, I wrote a a piece called the the no buy list, where I basically you had companies like PayPal and some of these other financial firms were starting to deny service to customers, to users, based on their political affiliations.
19:05
And not just like people who are in you know, well-known hate groups that like everybody sort of, you know, issues and wants to stay away from.
19:14
But these are people with relatively down-the-middle conservative you know, conservative groups, and they were being denied service by, you know, fintech firms.
19:24
So, now I'm not saying that this is what this means, but if this equity auditors tells you, "Well, look, I don't think it's equitable to allow these conservative groups to, you know, be a user of your product."
19:34
Well, what's the company going to do?
19:36
They're going to have to listen to that.
19:39
And And that that is a plausible scenario given that it's already occurred.
19:41
We've We've said this so many times on the pod, but I just want to say it again for cuz I guess a lot of folks are new and listening.
19:49
Whenever you hear equity used by a politician, it usually means there's a power grab involved.
19:53
Because if you really want things to be fair, you want things to be equal, right? Meritocracy. You want equality.
19:59
But whenever you start throwing over the word equity around and say we want racial equity, it's a bunch of you know, a small number of people who, you know, basically have and live by what I you know, what's often called luxury beliefs, who want to judge other people, who want to be morally absolutist, and then who want to basically like you know, exercise a power grab.
20:22
And we have to push back on that stuff because it this just a slippery slippery slope.
20:26
Well, this also seems like overbearing red tape for companies.
20:31
I mean, if the company has no problems, no complaints against it, you know, releases their diversity numbers, like what is the point of going in there and auditing them?
20:40
let's use let's use an example that builds on what David said. Let's take Square, okay?
20:43
One of the one of the most incredible things that Square did was in a hackathon essentially build the Cash App. Yeah.
20:49
And one of the most incredible things that happened in the Cash App was that it really started to blow up in urban communities, okay?
20:54
And it starts to normalize banking, opening up bank accounts, having more savings, understanding, you know, an on-ramp into crypto, you know, Cash App has probably done more to get black and brown people into crypto and to save money and to understand their cash than almost anybody else as as a almost explicit strategy.
21:16
And so is somebody supposed to go in there and just you know, arbitrarily judge whether there's too many white people that work at Square or not enough black people and so XYZ thing has to change or such and such a feature doesn't actually speak to folks so you can't do it. It's insanity.
21:30
It's like to to your point Sachs is what what are the what do these people know?
21:36
Like what is their qualification and what where what's the goal? Right.
21:40
And and to build on Chamath's point, if these senators, so I think Cory Booker was the one who proposed this, if these senators want those specific policies implemented in the Fortune 500, let them pass a bill to do it and let all of our elected representatives vote on that bill, Mhm.
21:57
and then we can see if it'll really if it's popular enough to pass and whether it passes constitutional muster.
22:00
They won't do that because these bills, if they were directly concretized in the form of proposals, would be very unpopular.
22:08
So instead what they do is tell you, well, we're not going to do this directly, we're going to put pressure on these big companies to hire one of our political friends, again, this like commissar like person, and empower them to tell these companies what to do.
22:21
So it's it's really kind of insidious what they're doing and they're kind of covering it all up with these nice sounding names.
22:26
I mean, who could be against a racial equity audit, right? Because Racist.
22:31
Yes, if you're if you're against it, you must be a racist and you must not believe in auditing companies. Right.
22:38
Well, you have to have a You have to you just it's a word game.
22:41
It's it's using words that are really loaded and mean a lot to a lot of us, right?
22:46
If I hear racism and race, if my ears perk up, it's not triggering, but my ears perk up and I have I have a lot of inbuilt opinions on it that have been governed by 45 years as living as a as a brown man.
22:59
And so okay, it stands to reason that I'm going to pay attention, but on the surface if you say racial equity audit, it also doesn't seem actually all that bad.
23:07
It seems like reasonably benign and that seems like an okay thing to do.
23:10
It's just that most of us then stop at that point and move on.
23:14
But if you actually look at the rules, again, I would just say whenever political frameworks use the word we need to create more equity, the outcomes are horrible.
23:23
For example, look in healthcare.
23:24
You know, if you we have used this idea of healthcare equity, health equity, and we've misused it to such a degree and all we see is that now the system is so perverted, it also doesn't work for the majority of people that have actually had the healthcare system work for it, right?
23:40
Like at the top of the pecking order has always been white men.
23:42
Have always gotten the best care and we've always measured our healthcare progress in America based on the longevity of men, white men, you know, 78, 79, 80 years old and then it started to degrade and people were curious what was happening and underneath it all was just a bunch of power grabs.
23:59
Under the realm of equity, we passed all these crazy laws, we basically didn't do anything to really create more accountability and a cost-based system. And here we are.
24:08
So at some point when the citizenry hears that word, you're going to have to put your thinking cap on and actually take the opposite view, which is hold on, this is a really nice sounding word.
24:22
It may not be what I think it is and I got to pay attention because more than if I didn't hear the word at all.
24:26
Anything you have on race, Friedberg, representing uh South Africans?
24:32
Fundamentally, I I don't think this is about race, Chamath.
24:34
I think this is about power. Power. It's a power grab.
24:36
It feels like a power grab.
24:38
Also it feels like a little it feels like a little bit of a grift.
24:40
I know I had heard on the backchannel that a lot of the people who are criticizing some big tech companies who were getting, you know, I'm not going to say who or under what Sweater sweater Karen? Is this sweater Karen?
24:53
But there was a group of people who were like attacking big tech Sweater Karen, if she has an opinion on sweater, she must have an opinion on racial equity. Come on.
24:59
Okay, I doubt Leave sweater Karen out of this.
25:01
The issue is they would complain and create these, you know, basically, you know, Twitter mobs and then they'd say, oh yeah, and hire us for $20,000, we'll come in and fix the problem for you.
25:10
So they were creating the Twitter mob to then come in and solve the problem. That's so brutal.
25:17
was like, oh wow, that is Yeah. brutal. That's so dirty.
25:20
No, I mean, these HR consultants who've written these books like on the was it D'Angelo or whatever on white fragility and you know, how how to be an anti-racist.
25:29
I mean, they're all making a fortune in corporate fees, you know, charging 20, 30,000 dollars per per gig.
25:38
I mean, it is absolutely a racket.
25:39
I'm not a fan of equality of outcome.
25:42
I'm more a fan of equality of opportunity and I think many many of these sorts of folks I try and identify methods to drive equality of outcome and it inhibits the competitive forces that cause the best person, the best idea, the best business, the best market model to win.
26:02
And you know, I think it it's easy to conflate the two when you don't really think through it, but it is certainly appropriate and reasonable to make sure that folks aren't discriminated against when they apply for a job.
26:11
I don't think it's appropriate to then apply considerations of race and other factors when people are equally in the same job on who gets to have the chance at the bonus.
26:24
It is the best performer that should have the chance at the bonus and the same should be true in marketplaces and the same should be true in business.
26:32
And I think that what we're really seeing is this fundamental effort to try and generate equality in outcomes in lots of different manifestations and we're seeing it more frequently and and more severely than we've seen it historically, but it's not I don't think it's the right model and it's only going to lead to demise of marketplace dynamics and the things that cause forces for success and progress to win.
26:56
You know, we we mentioned this a couple times.
26:58
I'll just say it again, but we are about to have probably the most significant movement and questioning of equity versus equality because I think in the next month, maybe in the next two months, we're going to sort of see a pretty strict opinion on affirmative action and if you talk to legal scholars, the overwhelming consensus is this is gone.
27:21
And you know, we're going to have to figure out how to rebuild you know, what was a really important system that tried to give folks at least, you know, getting to the starting line in the same way.
27:34
But it's not going to it's not really going to exist in this in the same way, shape or form.
27:36
Speaking of Karens, Elizabeth Warren was bashing Elon over taxes.
27:43
And Elon has a Twitter handle with some followers and he responded.
27:49
Elizabeth Warren says, let's change the rigged tax code so the person of the year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.
27:57
Unfortunately for Elizabeth Warren, Elon Musk is pretty good at Twitter.
28:01
He replied, and if you opened your eyes for two seconds, you would realize I pay more taxes than any American in history this year.
28:09
He paid which is I guess true.
28:12
He paid more in taxes now than any American in history.
28:16
As a side note, Elizabeth Warren has a $12 million net worth and I saw that she paid no taxes on her equity holdings cuz she didn't sell anything, which is how the tax code works.
28:27
And Elon then responded, don't spend it all at once.
28:30
Oh wait, you already did.
28:35
And then, you know, after the warm up replies, Elon really you know, got in the zone and like Steph Curry just started draining half court shots.
28:44
He ratioed her every single time.
28:46
Ratioed her her with 50,000 replies.
28:48
Yeah, you remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason.
28:55
Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen.
28:57
Elon also responded to Bernie Sanders' tweet today about climate change.
29:02
Bernie Sanders said, when future generations ask us, what did we do to stop the climate crisis? How will we answer?
29:10
And Elon said, and so great tweets.
29:13
Uh But to the bigger picture, did these people even know what's going on in the world? No, they woke up.
29:19
They woke up on the wrong side of the tilt bed. Yeah.
29:25
Because in in like a 24-hour period, he was the Time Person of the Year, the FT Person of the Year, and they just went into super mega tilt mode.
29:34
And the Build Back Better Act got shelved and he got Better got shelved and well, I mean, you know, I think we we talked about this last week, but that bill is dead now.
29:46
I mean, they pushed it to March to basically avoid a down vote.
29:50
Nothing's going to happen. David, you're right.
29:51
I think this bill is dead.
29:53
We said last week, wouldn't it be hilarious if Elon said to kill it and then it got killed?
29:58
Well, I don't I don't think that that's why the bill is dying.
29:59
I think the real reason is that we now see a Fed posture, which is actually pretty reasonable, which actually says, "Oh, wait, there's way too much money in the system as it is." Yeah.
30:11
You know, the Fed 2 days ago basically said, "We're going to see up to three rate hikes next year, probably 50 basis points each."
30:18
So, you know, it's basically acknowledging that these these last, you know, several years we have printed way too much money and they're trying to fix the problem that they created.
30:27
So, that's I think the real reason.
30:30
And then the CBO comes out and basically says, the Congressional Budget Office, and says, "This thing is a white albatross that's going to cost way more than you guys think it will."
30:38
And so, it puts Biden in this very awkward situation, which is, you know, on the one hand, he supports Powell.
30:46
Um, and, you know, he supports institutions or has historically like the CBO.
30:50
But, he effectively then has to push back on both of them all in one fell swoop to try to ram this bill down people's throats and the support is I think it's crumbling.
30:57
And so, you know, to save face, they basically said, "Well, we'll put a pin on this and we'll revisit it in March."
31:04
But, you guys know what's going to happen.
31:05
In the next 3 months, there's going to be some other crisis.
31:06
Most folks will forget and it may just allow them to move on without having to actually deal with the potential of this thing getting defeated, which would just be, I think, cataclysmically bad for Sacks. for Democrats. You were on CNBC today.
31:20
I thought you said something really important where you said, "Hey, listen, maybe if we just calm things down for a year, we can, you know, get through."
31:31
I'm not sure what the exact word was, but maybe you could unpack that sentiment you had on CNBC today cuz I thought that was pretty important.
31:37
Yeah, well, I mean, I agree with what Chamath said.
31:39
This, um, I mean, this this BBB bill was particularly anachronistic once the 6.
31:45
8% you know, inflation print came out.
31:48
In other words, we're in a hyper-inflationary environment and here comes this bill that the CBO says, "If, you know, over 10 years, would cost $5 trillion."
31:58
That's the last thing we need is more money printing when, you know, we've got this inflationary fire out of control.
32:04
So, I think that is why the the bill is being shelved, probably not to return.
32:09
Um, I think the the larger problem that we have in the markets is that just there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty being created right now by Washington.
32:16
We've had tremendous uncertainty over spending, uh, over taxes, over interest rates.
32:21
And the conversations that I'm having with friends who are investors in really every asset class, real estate, VC, crypto, the conversations are all the same.
32:33
What's interest rates going to do?
32:34
What's the macro picture going to be?
32:36
I've never seen investors who should be focused on, "Hey, do I invest in this company or buy this building?" whatever.
32:40
Those aren't the conversations.
32:42
It's all everyone's a macroeconomist now.
32:43
And so, we're all so distracted by this.
32:45
And so, now the Fed a couple of days ago finally gave us clarity.
32:50
I mean, what they basically said is they're going to, um, accelerate the taper.
32:53
They'll they'll end quantitative easing at the end of Q1.
32:57
And then we're basically going to get quarter Explain what that means to people who don't know what they've been purchasing and why.
33:03
Yeah, I mean, quantitative easing is kind of a weird term.
33:05
What it means is that the Fed has been going into the bond market and buying bonds.
33:08
Um, I think basically mortgage-backed securities and treasuries.
33:12
And they've been buying, I think, about 90 billion a month.
33:17
They're going to cut that back to 60 billion a month.
33:20
And, uh, that'll continue Just to explain it a little bit more.
33:22
When you do that, what you're doing is you're giving somebody that owns those bonds money. Okay?
33:30
So, the Fed prints money.
33:32
The government prints $100, takes that $100, steps into the market, and takes something from you, in this case it's a bond, and gives you that freshly printed $100.
33:44
What are you going to do?
33:44
Well, you're probably going to go and spend that.
33:47
You're going to buy other things.
33:47
And that's the cycle of inflation that quantitative easing basically creates.
33:53
And so, when you call when you talk about tapering, what that means is slowing down the money printing machine and slowing down you stepping in the market and buying assets with money that you've created out of thin air.
34:04
And it's up to other people to buy those assets.
34:05
If other people see value in them, You you then you then are forced to find the real market clearing price.
34:10
Yeah, those those bonds are now on the Fed's balance sheet.
34:14
And so, there's a very interesting chart showing assets that are owned by the Fed.
34:18
And it went up by something like 3 trillion during COVID.
34:23
So, that is the sort of monetary stimulus that's been pumped into the market over the last couple of years.
34:29
Separately, we've had something like six or seven trillion of just spending by the government.
34:33
So, you know, tremendous amount of trillion is not thrown away, so we're clear.
34:37
We're going to get interest on that and people some number will default, some number get paid back.
34:40
It's a way of stimulating the economy, but we now know after the stimmy checks and all the stimulus we did during the pandemic, we don't need to put more fire or oxygen or kerosene on what we got going in this economy. Correct, David?
34:55
Yeah, I mean, we we should show that chart about how much the the Fed's balance sheet has grown over the last couple of years.
35:01
But, you know, the the argument I think would be the reason why they do they buy these assets is if they're buying bonds, it basically means that it keeps the yield down. Right?
35:12
Because if they weren't the ones buying them, someone else would have to buy these bonds to keep the government funded.
35:17
And they might demand a higher interest rate, a higher yield on the bonds.
35:21
So, this by having the Fed come in and increase the demand for the government's debt, it means that the government can sell its debt more cheaply. Mhm.
35:30
So, when they stop doing that, um, I think you can expect that, you know, interest rates are going to need to rise in order to make our debt attractive to, you know, to bond buyers.
35:43
The other thing the other thing, by the way, that the Fed did when they did that was it wasn't just government bonds that they were buying.
35:50
They decided completely arbitrarily, um, at one point to start buying certain corporate debt.
35:57
So, they own like Ford debt, GM debt, Commercial paper, that's called, yeah. No, no, no.
36:02
That Well, not I mean, commercial paper is sort of more very fast turn, short-term duration.
36:06
But, like, how do you make a decision to start buying corporate bonds?
36:09
It's like buying corporate equities.
36:11
Do you buy Google versus Facebook?
36:12
Do you have a view Who's the capital allocator making that decision?
36:15
So, who's More importantly, who's who's setting the price? Who's setting the price?
36:18
So, you know, these guys have been off the reservation for a long time.
36:22
I think it's fair to say that they were forced into action without a playbook in the middle of a once-in-a, you know, lifetime, once-in-a-century pandemic. Fair enough.
36:33
And I think they actually did a pretty reasonable job.
36:34
But, we just kept the tap on for so long. Yeah.
36:39
And now we're like dealing with this stuff, trying to figure out how do we actually compensate.
36:42
So, the idea that we would add, knowing all of this.
36:45
So, it's one thing, I think, if Biden passed the bill 5 months ago, 6 months ago, cuz we didn't know any of this stuff.
36:54
But, to do it now knowing that, I think that it's really hard.
36:57
And I bet you that it's not just Manchin on the Democrats that are having a little bit of heartburn and second thoughts.
37:03
It's probably more because I suspect that they could have forced his hand really if it was just up to him.
37:09
But, I suspect there are other Democrats who are now teetering on the fence thinking, "I don't want my legacy to be tied to this when the we're printing 6, 7, 8% inflation for me to basically keep the money printing machine on cuz it's it's insane."
37:22
This is like the Sopranos episode where he gave him like he fronted the guy like 45 boxes of ZDs and like you wake up and this guy can't pay the bill in the poker game.
37:30
Like, where can we even afford to pay this back at some point?
37:34
Yeah, look, I think when when March comes around and this bill is supposedly going to be brought back off the table, we're going to be into the election season in 2022 and I don't know that Democrats are going to want to defend this.
37:42
Um, I think there is a view on the Democratic side that if they deliver enough goodies to their base, then that will help them win elections.
37:49
But, I think what helps you win elections more than delivering goodies to your special interest is for the economy to be healthy. Yeah.
37:57
And if they are sort of pressurizing this inflation situation, that is, I think, ultimately that could backfire.
38:05
I think that's going to be worse for the economy.
38:06
Frankly, I think Manchin's doing Biden a favor because if the economy does grow by 4% next year as the Fed is predicting it is, and if inflation comes down because you stop printing money the way they're doing, then, you know, I think the Democrats will do better in the election if the economy is good.
38:23
I mean, one of the reasons why they did so poorly, you know, in the off-year election, uh, a month ago is that there's tremendous economic anxiety out there.
38:32
People are seeing the inflation at the gas tank, when they go to buy food.
38:34
And, um, you know, if that continues, I think they're going to do very poorly next year.
38:41
I wanted to like, uh, bring up this chart from FRED on total assets on the Fed balance sheet.
38:45
I think it is really interesting to look at this thing because so, the the Fed had about a trillion of assets until 2008. Okay?
38:53
Then we had the financial crisis and they doubled it.
38:55
That's when quantitative easing began.
38:56
Uh, it went to 2 trillion.
38:58
But, then from roughly 2009 to about 2020, before COVID, somehow the balance sheet grew from 2 trillion to 4 trillion.
39:10
So, and it had gone to 4 and 1/2 and they were starting to shed assets.
39:12
So, they were starting to get off drugs.
39:16
But, it was still from 2 to 4 trillion between this like 2009 and 2020 period when supposedly we weren't in a crisis.
39:23
So, you know, they've continued this quantitative easing.
39:25
Then COVID hits and the amount grows from 4 to 7 trillion just in 2020.
39:30
And since then, it's gone from 7 to a little under 9 trillion, uh, just in the last, you know, Well, they they they did 3 trillion. off ever? day?
39:41
I mean, these are 20-year bonds.
39:43
Eventually they got to sell them.
39:43
Well, I either they're going to have to sell the assets What are they going to do?
39:47
Well, well, it's not like that.
39:47
They they basically are the are the Fed is the one who bought the government debt.
39:54
So, they're buying let's call it a 10-year Treasury.
39:55
So, yeah, I guess they could just wait till the the bond gets paid off, but um but I guess they could do that.
40:02
But but now the Fed has an incentive not to let the assets get toxic, right?
40:05
So, if you know, the assets would get toxic if you know, if interest rates go up too high.
40:14
That drives bond prices down and now all the assets on their books are worth a lot less.
40:18
Yeah, this is this is like the point where we have to just call it and say, "Okay, you know what? Let's move on."
40:24
Meaning in the sense that like we have to go to these root causes because the money is more money is not going to fix what we're dealing with.
40:32
So, I just put something in the group chat and I just want to get your guys's reaction to it because when I saw it, it blew my mind.
40:37
There was a study okay, that was just published a few days ago and it said the following thing.
40:45
Children born during the pandemic have experienced a catastrophic drop in cognitive development of 22 IQ points. Yeah, 22. Yeah.
40:55
And when you look at it, the people that were the most affected were male children and children of lower socioeconomic families.
41:05
But everybody was affected.
41:07
Yet you see the amount of money that we're spending already.
41:09
So, adding more money to something is not going to make it better if what we're spending today is basically just getting flushed down the toilet.
41:19
And these are the kinds of things that really matter.
41:20
How do you allow an entire generation of kids to crazy to see to to suffer.
41:25
By the way, what is that show?
41:29
That means that teachers actually are unbelievably important.
41:30
So, number one, they should get paid a lot more.
41:32
Okay, let's just put it that way.
41:34
should be more of them and smaller class sizes. Exactly.
41:35
But if you if you have you know, these completely screwed up incentives between you know, the organizations, the unions that represent these teachers and then the parents who have completely different incentives and they basically fight to never be in classroom and to not really teach, this is the measurable outcome. Yeah.
41:51
The IQ of our children, I mean, we are Their verbal ability, their executive function, their scores are going down.
42:00
How do they recover from that?
42:03
I mean, a lot of tutoring.
42:03
It's going to be a lot of summer school.
42:05
I mean, Zoom's not going to do it.
42:07
think more Fortnite and Roblox fixes this problem. No. Definitely not.
42:11
And and and I feel terrible because like you know, as a parent, that's that was my solution, right?
42:14
I was struggling with the Zooms like every other parent and then in the evenings, I was just so burnt and just feeling so beside myself in the middle of the pandemic.
42:25
Where- whereas I had a no iPad rule for my kids, I broke down. Yeah. You know. Everybody did.
42:29
I mean, it's like you're you're home with your kids all day long.
42:33
It's not how it's supposed to work and the point is like this is where the government should step in and actually say, "Okay, here, let me take leadership on this topic." Right?
42:40
And talk to the unions, fix whatever needs to be fixed, amp up the the money into charter schools, do whatever you need to do, but please fix the problem.
42:50
But randomly spending money to try to buy votes, I think people see through that. It just doesn't work.
42:56
And related to that, Omicron is spreading like crazy.
42:58
Uh New York City had an Omicron. Omicron. Omicron. There is no N. Omicron. Omicron. Omicron, yes.
43:07
I'll I'll I'll learn how to pronounce it when it's gone. Omicron. Omicron.
43:11
is spreading like crazy in New York City and in the UK amongst other places.
43:18
The NBA and the NFL are seeing surges.
43:21
I've had a ton of people I know test positive this week. Have you guys had that? Family, friends, crazy. No. No.
43:28
how many people are I know so many people that tested positive. East Coast? Related, yeah.
43:32
And a lot of people that don't have um any symptoms.
43:33
So, here's the chart of cases uh cases spiking, but uh hospitalizations and deaths are flat or going down um in places where these outbreaks are occurring.
43:44
The UK uh charts are even starker.
43:46
There's a lot of anecdotal evidence.
43:47
Everybody on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter uh young people in New York who went to Santacon are saying they all got it, but if you look at this chart what is Santacon?
43:55
Santacon is the worst holiday of the year.
43:58
It's a time when a bunch of young people dress as Santa Claus and get drunk and you have 10,000 people It's a bar crawl. This is sexy Santa. Do you see this?
44:11
Do you see how Do you see how Monty's wearing his Santa outfit? Aw, Monty Claus. That's what goes on.
44:15
Everyone wears their little Santa outfit and they go bar crawling. So, it's not sexy Santa.
44:21
Well, actually I have a story about that.
44:23
I was in San Francisco with my first born daughter last year. You were sexy Santa? No.
44:26
I literally took my daughter's out for pizza uh Tony's uh in North Beach and you know, I got my three daughters and there's all these people walking around like, "Look, Dad, it's Santa Claus." Like a lot of them.
44:40
And so, there's a thousand Santa Claus descend on North Beach.
44:45
And I turn around and I kid you not, there are two old guys.
44:49
I'm talking 70 years old and they're wearing a baseball a Santa hat, Santa boots, and nothing in between.
44:59
Literally [ __ ] naked in on the streets of Yeah.
45:05
Bro, you're you're so you're so demented, okay?
45:07
You're like this like like a hunky perv.
45:09
Like every time I get those text messages, I don't know what to think.
45:14
Did you guys click on the Twitter link when Jason was like, "Guys, search for the Folsom Street Fair on Twitter."
45:19
I can't I can't unsee what I saw.
45:19
I was like, "Why is Folsom Street trending?" Trending.
45:24
I was like, "I thought there was a terrorist attack." Bro, that was so brutal.
45:28
You you should You can't send that [ __ ] around. Like it's so brutal.
45:31
I was like, "Guys, don't click on FOL- I WAS LIKE, DON'T click on Folsom."
45:34
I was like, "Oh, this is a Twitter link. What is it about? Web 3. 0?" Not exactly.
45:38
Uh the Folsom Street Fair, I'm going to go ahead and say don't search for that.
45:42
Um if you have kids around, it's a little bit intense.
45:45
Um but anyway, the uh Santacon was on Saturday, December 11th and so, here we are 5 days late you know, 4 or 5 days later and this stuff uh hitting.
45:53
If that's true, it almost perfectly mirrors the original outbreak after St.
45:56
Paddy's Day in March 2020.
46:00
And if you look on social media, all the CityMD lines uh where people get tested are around the block and 30 NBA players have entered the COVID portal or called in the last 2 weeks.
46:10
That's about 7% of the league and uh we had a big question mark of would this be less more contagious?
46:15
It obviously is, Chamath. Less deadly? It apparently is.
46:19
Some studies show as much as 40 times more infectious than Delta.
46:22
Um highly contagious, extreme very much airborne. It's going everywhere.
46:30
Uh like I said last time, if it does end up having low severity and low um hospitalization rate and low death rate for vaccinated or vaccinated plus boosted populations, uh this could end up being a massive immunizing event, meaning like a lot of people will develop new antibodies and resistance and um you know, that could be a net good thing, but it's certainly the case that this is not a one strain, one shot and done pandemic.
46:54
This is an endemic kind of circumstance.
46:56
We're going to be in this for a while and um you know, the circumstances are one that may kind of require, you know, an adaptation in terms of how we live and operate.
47:05
And especially as it relates to things that are so important like keeping businesses open and schools.
47:10
Um you know, I think we're going to use recent memory to guide future decision-making or at least politicians and you know, kind of lawmakers will and they'll say, "Hey, this is what we did last time this happened."
47:22
And we just saw this in California where they're like, "Last time like we told everyone go into lockdown or wear masks indoors again."
47:28
And we're seeing that behavior again.
47:31
Certainly it may have an impact in terms of the spread, but this is highly contagious and it's going to spread everywhere.
47:38
And I think there's just some adaptation that maybe is going to be needed here over the long run.
47:43
There's no end There's no end in sight.
47:44
There's no end in sight, but it is less deadly and so, it could be mass immunizing and that has led people to think of this herd immunity potentially if there's not another variant.
47:54
Um Chamath, if the NBA and the NFL are learning to live with COVID and obviously when we were in Miami, there's no COVID and Austin, there's no COVID. Yeah.
48:04
Is everybody now just go cuz it seems like the politicians now, whether it's in Europe we're seeing the protests uh and I I think we'll see them here in the United States if this keeps up.
48:13
Australia obviously having protests as well.
48:15
The public has decided, I think, we're willing to have a thousand people die a day or a certain number of people die today to get back to normal.
48:21
So, what what do you think the end game here is going into 2022?
48:26
I'll make a prediction for 2022, okay?
48:26
I will predict that even the blue areas of the country are going to have fatigue with all these COVID restrictions and so, even the blue state governors who are addicted to their state of emergencies and their restrictions and lockdowns and closures and mask mandates, even they are going to have to give them up in 2022 because the country is sick and tired of this.
48:49
Peter Pham had a really good tweet uh this other day.
48:54
Maybe you guys can dig it up where he had a friend visit him from Texas and they've been living normally there since like July of 2020, roughly.
48:59
Kids in school, occasionally someone gets sick, but they've been living normally, okay?
49:06
It's a manageable problem.
49:06
And he couldn't believe uh Peter's friend could not believe how they're living in LA where still everyone's living in fear.
49:13
They've We now have a new 1-month indoor mask mandate thanks to, you know, Governor Newsom who still is ruling the state in our state of emergency.
49:23
What what good is that going to do?
49:24
So, I think, you know, but but but I think that some of these blue areas people are so petrified still of the virus and I think it's just because of they're the ones who have been ingesting all this fear porn coming from the media.
49:40
And but I but I think it's going to break.
49:42
I think the the finally this hysteria and panic will break.
49:44
It'll crest over the blue parts of the country.
49:48
In 2022, they're already back to normal in the red parts.
49:51
And especially Omicron, you can't stop this. Okay?
49:55
I mean I think that's the the salient point here. Nothing works.
49:58
You're all going to get it.
50:00
The the little the little stupid vax card that you have to show everywhere to get like or at a movie theater like in you know in San Francisco, it doesn't do anything because vaccinated people can spread it, too.
50:09
So, that doesn't do anything.
50:12
And the mask mandate doesn't do anything.
50:13
Um, you know, and so none of this stuff does anything except getting a vaccine reduces the severity of the illness if you get it. And losing weight.
50:23
And we can't have that conversation.
50:25
consequences are mainly on the person who decides to do it.
50:29
we have to say is we just have to tell everybody, you know, listen, lose weight, get in shape, eat healthy, get vaccinated, get back to life. That's it.
50:37
That's the best you can do.
50:37
I'm I believe everybody's going to get it.
50:40
We're we're starting to see like a real divergence in American life where and I think Omicron's if we have lockdowns under Omicron and really the the big issue is school closures.
50:48
If we go back to school closures in blue states and have more of the learning loss that Chamath was talking about and I bet we do.
50:56
Whereas in red states, they're still out there learning normally and they're dealing with it just like they deal with the outbreak of a flu season or cold season, but they you know, they're just managing it.
51:06
We're going to there's going to be we're going to be living in two different Americas.
51:11
But I but I don't believe this is sustainable.
51:12
I think eventually these governors who are holding onto their power and their restrictions are going to lose in 2022.
51:21
The ones who haven't given it up are going to are going to basically fall to a red wave in November 22.
51:24
I think Newsom might be the only one left standing. closed?
51:30
I see everybody's canceling their Christmas parties. JP Morgan canceled that. We're closed. We're closed.
51:35
Every Christmas party's been getting canceled.
51:38
Um, and I wonder if schools I mean, teachers unions I they they got to be having a meeting right now about even the teacher unions don't even acknowledge that learning loss exists.
51:48
I mean, this is why I decided to home school for the year of the pandemic and I kept my home school teacher for, you know, a couple of hours a day and my kids have done wonderfully and it's great to have the ability to afford to be able to do that, but not everybody can have an afterschool tutor.
52:00
Let me up level this for a second.
52:03
Okay, so maybe I'm spilling the beans on one of my predictions I'll make at the predictions episode we do.
52:07
But first we had COVID, okay?
52:10
Then we had the overreaction to COVID both politically and economically.
52:15
Economically, we pumped 10 trillion plus of spending and monetary and QE and all this sort of stuff.
52:21
Politically, we had these restrictions, school closures, lockdowns, mandates, okay?
52:26
I think we're about to enter a new phase, which is the correction to the overreaction.
52:31
And I think we're already in the correction.
52:35
So, the market's been correcting, growth stocks been correcting for the last five or six weeks.
52:38
I now think that we're there was a bit of a political correction with Youngkin winning in Virginia.
52:45
Remember that state swung 10 points relative to a year ago.
52:47
And I think you'll see a further correction both political and economic in 2022.
52:55
So, we may not be completely past COVID, but I think we are going to be past this sort of overreaction to COVID.
53:00
What do you guys think about Succession?
53:04
OH, NO, I HAVEN'T SEEN IT. JEREMY STRONG. JEREMY STRONG.
53:08
LET'S TALK ABOUT THE JEREMY STRONG THING.
53:10
Jeremy Strong, okay, Jeremy Strong is a weirdo according to a New Yorker profile and there's been a huge response to it.
53:19
Uh, this profile came out Kendall Roy on Succession.
53:20
Kendall Roy who is woke and dumb and ineffective as an executive.
53:28
And obviously the show is modeled after Rupert Murdoch and Fox and the kids there who are not dopey actually.
53:33
In the article it hinted that most of Succession's coworkers dislike him due to his intensity and nothing acted and method acting rituals.
53:43
He won't rehearse with anybody.
53:43
He's in character all the time like Daniel Day Lewis.
53:47
He won't get makeup whenever everybody else does cuz he doesn't want to reduce the energy and the build up.
53:53
Uh, the article notes there is a fine line that Strong walks between being a legendary method actor and just a complete uh, the awesome networker.
54:03
Wait, can I tell you why this story was interesting to me and why I sent this to you guys? Yeah.
54:06
Okay, so here's a guy who in many ways is a virtuoso and the reason you mean he's a he's a really good actor because I despise Kendall Roy on that show.
54:19
Uh, and I was wondering like is this guy just a terrible actor or is he such a good actor that I hate them? Yes. I hate them.
54:25
And that's why I was attracted to this article.
54:26
And in it or after it so basically what happens is he's a virtuoso just I know I'll come back to it in a second.
54:34
These people at the New Yorker who I guess are just jealous or want to write clickbait try to destroy this guy.
54:41
But what they didn't factor is that when they published this article all these other actors would come to his defense and do it really publicly.
54:47
Yes, Anne Hathaway Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain Aaron Sorkin wrote a letter Exactly that Jessica Chastain published to Twitter because Aaron Aaron Sorkin doesn't have access to social media by design.
55:03
And in all of it they said this is the most incredible person we've seen.
55:05
Aaron Sorkin says this guy is as good as Dustin Hoffman.
55:08
Which is like this is As good as it gets.
55:11
So, why was it interesting to me?
55:13
It's you have these people who are grinding and trying to perfect their craft, be a virtuoso.
55:19
You talked about Steph Curry grinding, try to perfect his craft.
55:21
Just a little Steph Curry story as a tangent.
55:26
He he brought in this team where they basically started to map out all of the circumferences of the ring of the of the net.
55:33
And he practiced this summer literally trying to get it perfectly in to create this very specific kind of swish.
55:41
And he just kept shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting not, you know, all the time, but every day for some number of shots trying to get the ball perfectly into the basket.
55:50
That is a level of perfectionism and it that's being a virtuoso that none of us can really appreciate, but you see the output and we all love it.
55:56
He's already the goat and he's trying to outdo himself.
56:00
Here's a different guy in a completely different theater in this case acting trying to also be really legendary and putting himself through all kinds of stuff and still not lose himself in it, okay?
56:13
So much so that all of these other people are really appreciate how amazing he is.
56:17
And to me what I don't like is that then these critics who don't do anything, who've never accomplished anything at all in their lives Pass judgments.
56:26
feel so triggered that they have to judge him.
56:28
It's one thing to not have that skill.
56:30
I'll never be as good of an actor as Jeremy Strong.
56:32
I'll never be as good of a basketball player as Steph.
56:36
But I don't hate these people for that.
56:38
I'm so happy that people like this exist.
56:40
But there is a strain of people that exist and then it also have a and then who also have a platform Senator Karen, yeah.
56:47
I was about to connect the dots for you.
56:48
It's like look at yeah, look at how the politicians feel the same way about private market for sure.
56:54
Who decide to try to destroy people.
56:54
So, instead what these people do is they take a shortcut. They're the critics.
57:01
They're not in the arena, okay?
57:01
The folks in the arena are booking wins and losses constantly.
57:07
But you have this you have this strain of impotent critic that doesn't actually know how to do for themselves.
57:16
And they somehow have a platform and then what they end up doing is cutting corners and then some subset of those start to cheat. Cue David.
57:23
Well, yeah, it's a story that Congress back in 2012 passed a bill called the STOCK Act to prohibit uh, members of Congress from trading on their insider knowledge based on, you know, based on legislative actions they're about to take.
57:38
And it's been widely you know, representatives and senators.
57:47
And the problem is there's no punishment.
57:48
It's something like a $200 fine or something like that that gets waived uh, in most of these cases.
57:50
So, it's completely hypocritical because these are the these politicians like Senator Karen, they're constantly demonizing and attacking other people to make themselves look better.
58:02
And then here they are, they've got dirt on their hands.
58:05
Um, and they asked Pelosi.
58:05
They said to Pelosi, well, don't you think that members of Congress should be prohibited from trading stocks, right?
58:13
Because their actions have such a huge consequence on them.
58:14
And Pelosi said, "No, it's a it's a free market. It's a free market.
58:18
We should be free to to do that." It's like, huh?
58:20
You know, I don't remember that being a defense every time you've wanted to regulate some, you know, industry that uh, they they didn't take it seriously.
58:30
the president have to divest when they take the presidential office? Isn't that a thing?
58:34
divest or they put they put their assets in a blind trust. Yeah, so they're blind.
58:37
So, why why why would senators, Congress, people be any different than the president?
58:42
It's it's absurd that elected officials should be able to engage in insider trading. It makes no sense.
58:47
The Fed actually had this issue as well.
58:50
Two folks on the Federal Reserve Board resigned and then Powell issued a whole bunch of I think new laws tried or regulations inside the Fed to try to fix it.
59:00
And the same issue occurs with federal judges.
59:03
And there are federal judges that are consistently trading in the equities of the companies that are in front of them.
59:10
And so how can you how can you adjudicate a case?
59:12
There was one judge that had 130 plus conflicts, trading conflicts.
59:19
130 plus and he is the one that's there where AT&T or Facebook or Google has an issue.
59:26
I mean, how can you actually assume that these folks are being impartial if that's the case?
59:30
And there are no consequences for this.
59:32
And yet, you know, if you're again, going back to where we started, somebody in the arena trying to do something, you just kind of think to yourself like you have critics that are bashing you, you have folks that are basically flaunting the law because they can, and then you put these two together and it's like this is so it's kind of depressing to be honest with you.
59:51
You start to lose a little bit of faith in this.
59:54
I mean this these politicians are grifters. That's it. And full stop.
59:56
I mean they're just grifting and I mean except for apparently except for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, they should just buy the companies they hate.
1:00:06
Why aren't they buying Amazon and Tesla?
1:00:08
They would be total proponents of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk if they did.
1:00:12
Yeah, in fairness to Warren I've seen her tweet that she supports the banning of the insider trading by congressional representatives, but I don't exactly see her fighting for it.
1:00:19
You know, as hard as she's announcing people like Elon.
1:00:20
So, look, I mean it's it's characteristic of of elected officials that they What is it?
1:00:29
They see the the splinter, you know, in somebody, you know, in somebody else's eye but not the the log in their own or something like that.
1:00:36
Isn't that the expression?
1:00:38
But you know who's taking advantage of this issue is Blake Masters who's running for the Senate in Arizona just tweeted about that this would be the first thing he would fix if he gets elected, which is to ban insider trading by elected officials.
1:00:50
And I I think it's remarkable that you know, politicians as shrewd as Nancy Pelosi are just seeding this issue to Republicans.
1:00:58
I mean I don't know why Republicans wouldn't make this a major plank of their platform for 2022.
1:01:04
Nancy Pelosi is I think the third or fourth richest person in Congress.
1:01:06
Her husband is a very sophisticated private equity investor.
1:01:12
There are these meme stocks that follow Nancy Pelosi's stock trading account or pretend to that were, you know, recently by the way banned by Twitter, right? Yeah. That was weird. Yeah. Protecting her.
1:01:25
Protecting her effectively.
1:01:25
So, you know, she has an incentive to not.
1:01:26
Her seat of power is not necessarily the salary that she earns by being house leader, but it's by translating that in a bunch of different ways.
1:01:36
And one way apparently it turns out is being an active equity investor in the market.
1:01:41
It's unbelievable that's allowed.
1:01:41
I don't know how this isn't just like an A+ fantastic issue for Republicans.
1:01:45
They should make it an absolute plank of their platform. we go.
1:01:50
Florida Republican Brian Mast was late in disclosing disclosing a purchase of up to 100,000 in stock in an aerospace company which had just testified before a committee he sits.
1:02:00
Kentucky Republican Rand Paul was 16 months late disclosing that he bought his wife bought stock in a pharma company that manufactures an antiviral COVID-19 treatment. Right.
1:02:11
Nevada Democrat Susie Lee failed to properly disclose more than 200 trades Yeah, just to be clear. as 3 million. I mean this is bonkers.
1:02:19
to be clear, the violations have been on both sides of the aisle.
1:02:21
I'm not at all trying to say that Republicans are better on this than Democrats. this is good.
1:02:26
This is good bipartisan cooperation. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean it's ridiculous.
1:02:30
This is the political class in Washington engaging in bad behavior.
1:02:34
But but but the difference is this, which is that Pelosi the only leader of a party I've heard defend this is Pelosi.
1:02:40
And I think this is a fantastic issue for outsider candidates really on both sides to run on.
1:02:48
Well, this is this is also something that Biden can take because Biden has never tried to do this stuff, you know.
1:02:52
god, Biden's got so many shady dealings and conflicts.
1:02:54
What are you talking about? His kid?
1:02:55
Selling paintings to China?
1:02:57
There's a lot of rich Bidens out there.
1:02:59
Apparently he's got a rich brother.
1:03:00
He's got a, you know, Hunter is paid a lot of money.
1:03:02
No, maybe maybe that's true.
1:03:04
But Joe Biden has been really down the middle. Come on, be be fair. Hunter is brilliant.
1:03:08
I mean he's selling paintings.
1:03:09
Yeah, but why are they buying Hunter Biden paintings for $500,000?
1:03:14
Well, I mean he's a great artist.
1:03:16
I mean why are people buying I don't know if you saw Melania is coming out with NFTs today. So, she's okay. Okay. She's saying so.
1:03:22
Everybody's securing the bag now.
1:03:24
I mean if And by the way, the presidential grift is always the best.
1:03:28
Just as a case in point, Trump's SPAC is worth over 2 billion.
1:03:35
And BuzzFeed, which makes 360 million a year and I think has 102 million million cash is worth like 600. He's not in office. That's misstated, Jason.
1:03:41
Trump's SPAC, his shares that he's going to be receiving are worth close to 20 billion. What? 20 billion?
1:03:48
But he's not in office anymore, so I'm not sure that he's going to receive the stock is Yeah, the what you're counting is the market cap of the cash in trust, the value of the shares that are already public and stuff.
1:04:01
The Trump the value of the Trump entity is going to be closer to 20 billion. Oh, is that right?
1:04:05
Wow, that's even crazier with no revenue.
1:04:07
These poor media Well, the SEC apparently the DOJ sent a bunch of inquiries on this asking for background on the transaction because there's no business, there's no contracts, there's no employees.
1:04:17
It's just a whole But by the way, idea.
1:04:19
Just to make sure that everybody understands this is this is a bipartisan thing as well.
1:04:25
The the ultimate bag secures, the Obamas got I think 50 million plus each for their book deals.
1:04:35
And they got supposedly high eight figures like 50, 60, 70, 80 million dollars from Netflix. Sorry, hold on a second. Hold on a second.
1:04:40
When you say when you call them bag secures, I was really triggered there for a second.
1:04:43
So, am I supposed to take that offensively that you're saying Michelle Obama and Barack Obama secured the bag?
1:04:47
Secured the bag is a term for getting the money.
1:04:52
The the Obamas are doing it.
1:04:54
The Clintons did it and the Trumps are doing It's a thing. Secure the bag.
1:04:57
But Jason, we're we're not against everybody not being able to make money.
1:05:01
The issue is trading on your office in a way that where you are trading on your insider information that your office has given you.
1:05:13
Or if you're selling influence.
1:05:13
If you sell a book, hold on a second.
1:05:15
If you sell a book when you're out of office, is that really a problem?
1:05:19
Is that on No, I wanted to point out the Netflix one.
1:05:22
What was Netflix's existential crisis for the eight years Obama was in office? Anybody remember? Nobody remembers. Net neutrality.
1:05:32
Could they get Would they have to pay Verizon?
1:05:33
What was the Obamas' position on net neutrality?
1:05:38
They were for net neutrality.
1:05:41
Netflix stock went up 40, 50X under Obama.
1:05:42
It could all be a coincidence. I'm just saying.
1:05:44
What the [ __ ] So, you're saying it's like you're saying it's a disguised lobbying payment to Obama.
1:05:49
I think it's like Are you serious?
1:05:51
I think it's like Listen, the Clintons were doing speaking gigs for Goldman Sachs at half a million dollars.
1:05:59
of my cue to go to dinner now. Okay, here's the MRNA.
1:06:01
You know, the main way that Winston Churchill supported himself was writing books.
1:06:04
I think it's okay for politicians to write books.
1:06:08
And if because ultimately the public buys them and that's how they make money.
1:06:12
What about when the book is 50 million and the normal price would be 10? That's the problem.
1:06:16
Well, I mean if I I I guess you might have a point if the advance was so in excess of the expected sales that it raises a question of what the real motive is for the payment.
1:06:23
But I don't But is that is that what happened?
1:06:25
Is that really Nobody gets paid a 50 million dollar advance.
1:06:28
Nobody gets an eight figure deal.
1:06:29
Obama has never made a documentary before.
1:06:33
No, I mean if the book sold 5 million copies, it still wouldn't be worth it.
1:06:37
Let's move on to MRNA so we keep our freed free bird factor high.
1:06:39
I'm like so I'm like so I'm so ready to go to dinner.
1:06:43
Rick Thompson gave me a wonderful bottle of wine by the way.
1:06:45
I'm going to go drink it tonight.
1:06:46
I'm so super tilted that you like it's like I mean What?
1:06:49
Could I criticize the Obamas?
1:06:51
Yeah, I can't deal with this.
1:06:53
You can't deal with them?
1:06:53
Is that A NO FLY ZONE for you? I'm super tilted.
1:06:57
I mean this is worse than sweater Karen.
1:06:58
What What about the Clintons?
1:07:01
Can I Can I go after their 500K speaking gigs for Goldman Sachs? Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, okay, fine.
1:07:08
Just don't touch the Obamas.
1:07:08
But I mean Jason, are are you are you doing exactly what Senator Karen did to Elon, which is by virtue of the fact that they're making money that you are not imputing evil motives to it.
1:07:20
No, it's just a disproportionate to what they should get paid.
1:07:22
By your assessment, their assessment's the same about Elon.
1:07:24
I pay a lot of money for Michelle Obama to do much of anything.
1:07:26
I think she's just a total hack.
1:07:28
Somebody who's never made a film for Netflix, I don't think that makes sense.
1:07:32
You you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you I totally agree.
1:07:38
If this is on the second floor, I jump out the window right now.
1:07:39
Yeah, you let uh Let winners be winners, J Cal.
1:07:44
I think we should differentiate between insider trading Sure.
1:07:45
bad and should not be allowed, influence peddling bad should not be allowed, and somebody out of office making money. influence. Exactly.
1:07:53
No, no, not monetizing their influence.
1:07:55
And if they did that, that's the problem.
1:07:57
Getting paid for services is fine.
1:07:58
Getting paid to sell tickets or books.
1:08:00
That's If that's what it is, it's fine.
1:08:02
It's It's it's disproportionate to the reality.
1:08:05
Let's MRNA no No, no, no.
1:08:09
Jason, say you like the Obamas. All right. I I love the Obamas.
1:08:12
I would vote Obama in for a third term.
1:08:15
Didn't you get paid a $50,000 speaking fee recently to speak at a crypto conference? Yes, he did. Overpaid. Overpaid. Overpaid.
1:08:24
You're worth eight eight dollars and 50 cents in a [ __ ] Subway sandwich.
1:08:28
You're worth like $2,500.
1:08:28
I was paid 15 grand to do a 50 minute speaking gig.
1:08:32
Who are they paying you to influence, J Cal? I mean honestly, J Cal. I have no influence.
1:08:36
Jason Jason you're worth like like 30% less than a high end escort, okay? No offense. Oh man. It's $300. 70 bucks.
1:08:46
There's a high end escort.
1:08:46
Are you saying What's 30% more than 50?
1:08:48
You're saying it's like 80 grand an escort. I don't know. 60, 70 grand. I didn't realize that.
1:08:54
Um All right, talk to us about the MRNA news for cancer free year.
1:09:00
That came out this past week.
1:09:02
So, I think the article that you guys sent around was one related to an oncology treatment that uses MRNA tech.
1:09:09
But I think it's what I wanted to kind of what I thought would be interesting to talk about for a second is just zooming out on MRNA technology as a whole, which, you know, has been theorized for, you know, the potential of it's been talked about for 50 years.
1:09:23
If we talk about real quick what what RNA is.
1:09:26
Remember your DNA, your genetic code, you know, defines um the uh the printing of proteins in your cells.
1:09:36
And so, every three letters of DNA is as an amino acid, a bunch of amino acids in a in a row form a protein, and that protein has some function in your body.
1:09:46
The way that the DNA gets translated into protein is through these mRNA snippets.
1:09:50
So, a little snippet of RNA is a copy of DNA, which floats over from the DNA strand, and it floats into what's called the ribosome, and the ribosome is the protein printer in the cell.
1:10:01
And there's lots of ribosomes, and there's lots of RNA floating around all the time, and it's being copied over.
1:10:06
So, some chemical triggers the expression of that gene, of that sequence of DNA into RNA, that then turns into protein.
1:10:13
And so, a chemical induces the protein.
1:10:15
Then the protein does something interesting, and the protein has a function in your body.
1:10:18
And some of those proteins in human body can, you know, do bad things, and some of them can do good things.
1:10:24
And so, the idea has always been that we can actually use proteins as a way to modulate our health and modulate disease.
1:10:31
For example, creating a protein that can attach to cancer cells and signal immune cells to come and kill those cancer cells, as an example.
1:10:38
And some people have genetic problems where their DNA prints the wrong protein, and then that protein is malformed or causes some harm to your health.
1:10:47
And so, the idea for RNA technology has always been that instead of having DNA be the source of truth for the proteins that get expressed in your body, can we stick RNA directly into cells and use that RNA to trigger the production of proteins that can do specific things in your body.
1:11:04
And remember the biggest segment of the pharma market, or a huge segment of the pharma market, is what's called biologic drugs, which are largely antibodies, which are a type of protein that have some specific function.
1:11:14
But very many of these proteins are hard to get into the body and get them into the right place and get them to do the things we want them to do.
1:11:21
So, it would be a lot easier if we could get RNA into the right cells to get those cells to make the right protein to do that thing that we want them to do.
1:11:29
So, everything from cancer treatment to genetic diseases, and there's RNA interference, and there's RNA or what are called oligonucleotides that can be used to block specific bad proteins from being produced in your cells or is kind of another kind of course of treatment.
1:11:47
So, making proteins that we think are therapeutic and blocking the production of bad proteins are kind of the the mainstay of this idea behind RNA technology.
1:11:55
And Moderna was started to pursue this effort at a flagship pioneering, which is an incubation shop in in Boston.
1:12:02
And they really kind of struggled for years to find the right footing of what's the right business model and the right product and and the FDA kind of struggled with approving this stuff, and then boom, COVID hit.
1:12:10
And when COVID hit, it was like, "Holy crap, let's accelerate this RNA technology, use it for vaccines, which have been in development for years."
1:12:17
And the protein that's being produced is the same protein you find on the the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which triggers an immune response and builds up your immunity to that virus.
1:12:25
And now the floodgates are open.
1:12:28
And this is incredible because the frontiers in RNA over the next decade could change the course of how we treat disease and change the course of of outcomes for many diseases from genetic diseases all the way through to cancers.
1:12:43
And so, we're starting to see those floodgates open.
1:12:45
I think there's now a few, a handful of these uh you know, RNA interference products that have been approved by the FDA, and we're now starting to see many more of these cancer and immunotherapy drugs start to get approved as RNA therapies.
1:12:59
But it really I think was lit by by the breakthrough with COVID and everyone kind of seeing the benefit of this and the lack of side effects, and we've now got I think a validation in the market and acceptance from consumers that this technology could transform the industry in the same way that Genentech transformed the pharma industry with biologic drugs in the '80s and '90s. So, it's super exciting.
1:13:23
And you know, we we can do updates regularly on our show if you guys want to talk about more of the cool stuff that's coming out, but man, this is going to transform how medicine is delivered and and the potential of things that we can kind of treat.
1:13:34
Let me ask you a question.
1:13:34
Let me ask you a question. Would the if we looked at the total number of deaths from COVID and then the potential death, you know, deaths avoided or early deaths or more life days added, however you want to do it, from mRNA and the impact on cancer over the next say 30 or 40
1:13:50
years, in other words, the impact it would have on the people living today who lived through COVID, do you think net net uh we'll see the prevention of cancers through this new technology could actually make you know, uh be basically the silver lining to what happened during COVID? It's a good question. Um let me give you It's a good question.
1:14:07
Um let me give you the counterpoint in the late '90s, there was a a gene editing um clinical trial that took place.
1:14:16
And they tried to uh and and a patient and they and they delivered the gene editing technology via virus.
1:14:21
And so, the virus goes in, it spreads around, and it and it has this this this molecule that would edit the gene, and and and it was for a genetic disease.
1:14:29
And a patient that they gave it to, a young guy, got this uh this virus, and he actually died from it.
1:14:34
And they shut down all clinical trials for years, and it was like, "Boom, that's the end."
1:14:40
So, um there there are a lot of scientists, a lot of doctors have argued for years that that particular case caused so many lives to be lost because we lost years of progress in being able to run clinical trials during that time and get drugs to market that could treat people.
1:14:54
people. And you're right, maybe the opposite has happened here that while these clinical trials may have taken years and years and years to get through in a normal setting, perhaps the pandemic was the accelerant we needed to
1:15:06
get more of these to market faster, and millions of people whose lives would have been lost or would be lost otherwise to cancer and other genetic diseases and so on over the years to come will be saved because these therapies will get to market faster. Um
1:15:16
Um and so, yeah, it's it's a it's a it's a great point, and and maybe I don't know what the calculus is between the lives lost in the pandemic versus the lives gained via these treatments coming to market faster, but it's it's certainly a good way to think about it.
1:15:28
The the the way to look at it, we could look at the days of life lost, right?
1:15:31
And if we actually could actually predict how long somebody's going to live, and the you know, extension of life, I I think we could come out of this ahead.
1:15:39
Uh finally on our docket, London Breed calls for better policing in San Francisco after this insane surge in crime. Here's the video.
1:15:45
And it's time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end.
1:15:54
And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies, and less tolerant of all the [ __ ] that has destroyed our city.
1:16:10
We are going to turn this around.
1:16:12
This is a city that has a population of less than 1 million people with an over $12 billion budget.
1:16:21
The residents of this city have been extremely generous in providing us with the resources we need to make a difference.
1:16:29
And now, the priorities we need to make must be to protect them.
1:16:35
Must be to turn things around in their neighborhoods.
1:16:37
When you are in a room full of people, I would say probably anywhere between 90 and 95% of folks could raise their hand and say that either their car has been breaking into broken into, or they've been a victim in some capacity or another. That is not okay. That is not acceptable.
1:16:56
Sacks, I thought crime was down and that everything was great and that we were going to defund the police. What is happening here?
1:17:01
What what's the big turnaround?
1:17:04
Well, it's it's exactly what I was saying that first of all, I loved it. I love what she said.
1:17:07
It's exactly what I've been saying for the last year, and it's really great to hear her say the same types of things.
1:17:13
I started this this campaign back in January after New Year's Eve, you had those two women get killed by a repeat offender who was released by Chesa Boudin, and then as I dug into it, I saw that he was doing this all the time.
1:17:27
It was part of his agenda of decarceration.
1:17:28
So, and you know, a year later, like we've talked about throughout this this whole time, and the city has totally degenerated into some sort of dystopian Gotham-like city.
1:17:40
This did feel like the beginning of a Batman movie.
1:17:41
I mean, it was a strong statement. I thought it was great.
1:17:43
This is just the beginning of what needs to be done.
1:17:46
I predict that London Breed is going to eventually butt heads with Chesa Boudin.
1:17:52
There is no way that he will support this agenda of fixing the city.
1:17:57
She wants to increase the police presence.
1:18:00
So, like you said, she is going to refund the police, not defund the police.
1:18:05
Chesa Boudin is I mean, the only people he's passionate about prosecuting are police officers. Yeah.
1:18:11
So, we have a huge problem that the police department is actually we have too few of them. We are understaffed. Who would take that job?
1:18:17
It's not just because of budget, it's also because they're demoralized, and they've got, you know, they've got this prosecutor.
1:18:23
By the way, there was a case just recently where um a repeat offender bashed a vodka bottle over the head of a cop, and Chase just announced that he's getting sent to mental health diversion instead of being prosecuted. I want to What?
1:18:40
You can attack a cop and not go to jail in the city of San Francisco? Yes. Yes.
1:18:46
This is why the cops are demoralized.
1:18:47
So, in order for London Breed to fix the problem, she is going I think she's on the right track here. He's got to go.
1:18:53
So, here's my prediction.
1:18:56
On February 15th, they are having the recall election for the education board, and I predict that that board, at least two of the three are going to be recalled.
1:19:05
The parents are sick and tired or sick and tired of it.
1:19:07
They are going to be out.
1:19:09
I think that's going to embolden London Breed to then support the recall of Chesa Boudin in the June election.
1:19:17
And and I think between that to pick his replacement when he's recalled. Yes, exactly.
1:19:20
So, that's what she's doing. She basically flipped.
1:19:21
She was quiet up until this point.
1:19:23
The progressive left are slowly eating it themselves.
1:19:29
Yeah, I mean I think this is self-preservation, right?
1:19:30
Chamath, I mean if she didn't make a change here, she's going to be out of office, too. She'll get recalled. self-preservation.
1:19:36
They're realizing that these policies don't work.
1:19:40
Moral absolutism didn't work on the left or the right.
1:19:43
These guys have tried in a small scale to do what a certain fraction of the Democratic Party has been trying to do at a national level. It doesn't work.
1:19:54
Overspending, under-policing, under-educating, it doesn't do anything.
1:19:57
There I think there is going to be a schism.
1:19:59
I think it started after the Youngkin victory in Virginia, and I think it's going to accelerate throughout for the next year, and especially after the red wave in November 2022.
1:20:10
There's going to be a schism between liberal pragmatists and these extreme radical progressives.
1:20:14
I think London Breed represents She's obviously very liberal, but I think she's pragmatic.
1:20:21
I think she wants to find solutions that work.
1:20:23
Whereas Chesa Boudin is a radical ideologue who will never change, no matter no matter how much evidence is presented to him that his policies don't work and are backfiring.
1:20:32
I think there's a simple formula.
1:20:33
The person who gets you into the mess is likely not the right person to get you out of the mess. And Well said.
1:20:39
she she talks about San Francisco having a $12 billion a year budget.
1:20:45
Can you guys imagine if she was the CEO of a tech company that had $12 billion a year in OPEX, and she ran the business into the ground, would the board say, "Go ahead, turn it around?" Absolutely not.
1:20:58
The board would step in, and in this case, the board is the citizens of San Francisco, and they would say, "Let's find the right person to turn this thing around."
1:21:05
And while she stood up and said the right things, and and may maybe it would echo, and I think, you know, even if it echoes within David Sacks's heart, I'm sure it's echoing in a lot of hearts of more liberal San Franciscans, but I think that the apathy being asleep at the wheel and allowing the disorganization across the departments within that city is ultimately her responsibility.
1:21:30
And I don't think that any amount of, you know, verbiage or action she might take at this point justifies the damage she has caused while being the leader of that city.
1:21:40
And I think that you'll And by the way, I think you'll see to Sacks's point earlier, I think you'll see the same response across the nation where folks feel like the the leaders that got them into the mess that they're in locally, in cities and and elsewhere around this country, are going to vote those folks out of office because they want a change.
1:22:01
And it's the same reason we saw folks vote Trump into office, and the same reason we saw folks vote Trump out of office.
1:22:06
The more you want to see a change, the more you're going to make a change with your political electorate.
1:22:11
Friedberg is so, so right.
1:22:13
There is a phenomenal Twitter account.
1:22:15
And his name is Rob Henderson, and he's like a PhD student right now.
1:22:18
I think he's in Europe on scholarship.
1:22:20
You know, this this this this guy has has an incredible background which you can talk about later, but Rob Henderson has this thing which I love, which is that, you know, a lot of this stuff is born out of what he calls luxury beliefs, right?
1:22:33
he calls luxury beliefs, right? Like defunding the police is a luxury belief if you're like this rich, middle-class, cloistered person that can sit behind a gate, have armed security, yada yada yada, because you're not living in the ghetto where the byproducts of the byproduct of defunding the police
1:22:50
are born out, or decarceration are born out, or, you know, if you send your kid to a private school, you can completely be for all these crazy, radical ideas like defunding, you know, advanced placement, defunding the gifted program, because if your kid's smart, you'll just pay for a tutor, and you can do whatever you want. Those luxury beliefs exist
1:23:06
Those luxury beliefs exist more in the progressive left in such a small cohort of people than in any other political class that we have in America.
1:23:17
And when they get a hold of power, they've now had the right to show whether those luxury beliefs can actually work.
1:23:27
The data says it doesn't.
1:23:29
Let's go with competence. I mean, how about that?
1:23:31
Like just keep people safe and make the education system beliefs belong in social sociology textbooks, in anthropological articles.
1:23:39
They They They're They're better off in like where beatniks smoke pot and talk about it over a glass of wine.
1:23:45
Let me clean up something just So, look, I have no special desire to defend London Breed.
1:23:51
I'm sure there are many No, look, I'm sure there are many better people you got as mayor. Breed brand sweater? Yeah. Is that London Breed? Top forward. Top forward. No, sorry.
1:24:03
Top forward, top forward.
1:24:05
Top forward, top forward.
1:24:05
Look, I I'm sure there are better mayors, but just to I I I think I think we have to sort of temper what you said based on the realities of politics in San Francisco, which are which are this.
1:24:15
We actually have a weak mayor.
1:24:17
The mayor can't do anything without a vote without the vote of the Board of Supervisors, and the supes are controlled right now by a bunch of crazies who are basically allies Dean Preston and Matt Haney and Hillary Ronen, who are who are allies of Chesa Boudin, okay?
1:24:33
So, London Breed, I think, wants to do some good things.
1:24:37
I think that she is more pragmatic than these ideologues.
1:24:42
I think that she could have been more aggressive and more outspoken about standing up to them. However, Yeah. earlier, okay?
1:24:49
But I think she is now doing the right thing in terms of the speech she just gave, basically calling for refunding the police, and we're sick of the [ __ ] and we're going to take action.
1:24:58
Those are the right things to be saying right now.
1:25:00
She did the right thing in terms of supporting the recall of the school board.
1:25:04
And what I'm saying is let's give her a chance to see if she does come out in favor of the recall of Chesa Boudin, cuz I think that's where it's headed.
1:25:12
And if she gets on board with that, and she shows she's pragmatic, she may actually survive this red wave that's coming.
1:25:17
if she gets out of office?
1:25:17
It's happening all around the country, right?
1:25:21
We saw Bill de Blasio, who was the first real progressive leftist elected to a major city.
1:25:26
He completely ran New York City into the ground.
1:25:28
Now Eric Adams is going to go clean it up, right?
1:25:30
We had Glenn Youngkin, who basically ran a centrist campaign take over Virginia. It's over. It's over, Johnny. Let's call it. It's over. Centrism, pragmatism.
1:25:40
Enough of these extreme polar opposites, okay? Right.
1:25:46
Let Let Antifa and the Proud Boys go and make love to each other in some deserted island. It's over. It's done.
1:25:52
Let's stop talking about it.
1:25:53
Somebody said to me, like Proud Boys and what's the other group?
1:25:57
Oath Keepers or something?
1:25:59
They This woman who's guy said She's like Oh, you know, it was Rachel Maddow.
1:26:06
She's like, "I think these are like gay activist groups, aren't they? Like Proud Boys?
1:26:10
It sounds like a gay activist group."
1:26:14
I think we're seeing the the correction of the overreaction the pandemic caused, what what Neil Ferguson calls pandemic politics that we that the pandemic bred a strain of radical politics that we saw all over the country, and I think On both sides.
1:26:28
And I think the country is going to come out of that.
1:26:30
see these idiots go to Cheesecake Factory and do a sit-in without their masks on?
1:26:35
And that that's their form of protest.
1:26:37
It's like, "We're going to go into the Cheesecake Factory." you talking about?
1:26:42
It was a Cheesecake Factory protest.
1:26:45
And now it's going national with people who are anti-mask, anti-vax.
1:26:47
They're don't want to have to show their cards or wear a mask when they walk to their seats, so they're literally doing sit-ins at Cheesecake Factory.
1:26:54
And I was like, "I would protest going to a Cheesecake Factory.
1:26:58
I'm not going to protest in a Cheesecake Factory."
1:26:59
Well, some people aren't on a diet like you, Jason. They enjoy cheesecake. Oh.
1:27:03
Well, how where are you at? What's the number?
1:27:06
Sacks, just give us the number.
1:27:06
What's your weight today? 170. I'm 174.
1:27:08
So, I'm right I'm right I'm coming right up behind you. You hear the steps?
1:27:12
You hear the Sacks, I'm going to tell you, bro, I love your sweater.
1:27:15
I'm going to drive to the city, come to the mausoleum, and make love to you with that sweater. Oh my god.
1:27:20
All right, everybody, we'll see you next week on the All-In podcast. Love you, besties. Love you, Sacks. Love you, Sacks. Back at you. Rain Man, David Sacks.
1:27:37
And I said we open-sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, besties. I swing a king wah. Besties are back.
1:27:52
That is my dog taking a dump in your driveway, Sacks. Oh, man.
1:28:00
We should all just get a room and just have us one big huge orgy, cuz they're all just useless.
1:28:03
It's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow. What? You're a deep freak. Wet your feet. What? We need to get merged. Besties are back. I'm going all in.