Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another all in podcast. We just got the show notes,

and I’m ripping them up because the president has the Rona. We knew this was a possibility.

We had an incredible docket brewing, but as fate loves irony, we found out on Wednesday night,

I believe, just in a brief timeline here, Wednesday night, Hope Hicks, his personal assistant,

got the Rona. And then, of course, President Trump announced late last night that he,

in fact, had the Rona and that his wife, Melania, also had the coronavirus.

So with us today to discuss all things tech, politics, and coronavirus, David Friedberg,

David Sachs, and Bestie C. Chamath Palihapitiya are with us. I guess maybe we’ll just drop it

right to you, Friedberg. You are our science kid here in the class. What is, when we look at the

president’s physique, he’s clinically obese. Technically, I’m not saying that to be cruel,

but he’s a 74-year-old who’s clinically obese and snorts Adderall. We don’t know that. That’s just

a claim. But seriously, what is the prognosis here? And then, I understand he’s now got a

experimental treatment, was just announced an hour ago at the taping of this on Friday afternoon.

And of course, we wish them all the greatest speedy recovery, etc. But let’s get into the

facts here. I think the overall mortality rate for someone of his age is in, call it the two to

four percent range, right? And for someone with, you know, he’s not known to have diabetes or high

blood pressure, but generally, you can kind of say there’s some risk factors maybe associated.

So, a couple points. But the reality is the treatment that he got is one that’s not available

to the public and is effectively like creating these, you know, taking these antibodies to the

coronavirus. And he got eight grams of this immunoglobulin therapy that is basically a bunch

of antibodies that will eliminate the virus. And they’re not widely available. They’re not publicly

available, these treatments. But, you know, based on the early trials and the general experience

with using synthetic and, you know, polyclonal antibodies for infectious disease like this,

it’s pretty effective. And he should kind of, you know, recover pretty quickly, I would imagine.

So, him dying would basically be a two-outer, him getting this special treatment makes it

a one-outer, if we were talking about this in poker terms. Chamath, when you look at this turn

of events and you saw the news, what was your first thought? That it’s now basically a hundred

percent guaranteed that we will have all of the most transparent data about coronavirus soon. So,

for example, you know, we’ve been in this position where we’ve been debating hydroxychloroquine,

we’ve been debating these, you know, all of these different regimens. And the reality is,

the President of the United States, if he doesn’t get the absolute top-notch care,

we’re all in some ways fucked. So, it’s probably likely that he’s going to get the thing that

folks know to work. And then it’ll be hard for everybody else to not want to ask for that.

And then it’s going to be even harder for everybody to then not get some version of it. And so,

I think probably we’re going to de-escalate a little bit of mask stuff, of testing stuff,

of, you know, what the right course of care is. And, you know, frankly, I’ll be honest with you,

I hope, you know, I wouldn’t vote for him, but I hope he’s well. I don’t want anything to happen

to the guy. And I hope that he recovers and it, you know, he kicks it in the ass and that

whatever he took to get better, everybody else can get it too.

All right, Sax, coming around the horn here, talking about the political ramifications of

this. You were feeling that Trump was likely to lose, but here we are with the October surprise.

And I hate to make this handicapping of the election, but this certainly is going to have

some impact. So, with your Rain Man mind, and when you go through this deck of cards here,

what does your brain, how do you assess this as the Rain Man? Is this going to be a net positive

for his election results? A negative, neutral? Handicap this for us in your mind. You must be

thinking through this. And again, disclaimers, we all want him to get better. Nobody wishes him

well. I’m sure some people do, but nobody wishes him well. I’m seeing a lot of glee, frankly,

on Twitter. Yeah. A lot of people saying, I told you so, or karma’s a bitch or something like that.

You know, sort of implying that Trump getting this was a moral failing, you know. And, you know,

certainly a lot of people are kind of reveling in it. Well, he was certainly careless. I mean,

he didn’t wear masks. He said he didn’t like to wear masks. So, he was careless.

Do you wear a mask inside your house?

No, but if I was in walking around at a debate or something like that,

if I was on an airplane with 20 people, yeah, I would wear a mask.

I mean, you know, there were certainly a lot of precautions around the president,

I mean, more than most people. I mean, any of us could get it from anybody, you know. If,

you know, our wife happens to go out to meet a friend for lunch or something like that,

and then brings it back. So, there’s almost no amount of carefulness you can do to completely

avoid this unless you’re willing to kind of lock yourself alone somewhere. So, I just, you know,

this idea that somehow getting COVID is a moral failing is what I would take issue with. It’s not

altogether unlike the crazy things that the religious right was saying in the 1980s, like,

you know, about AIDS, like when, you know, Jerry Falwell said it was God’s punishment or something

like that, trying to imply that… They called it the gay plague. I mean,

let’s just call it what it is. They basically said…

Right. They implied somehow that this was, you know, some sort of just comeuppance,

you know, or something like that. Retribution from God for being gay.

Retribution, exactly, exactly. And, you know, the virus doesn’t know who it’s infecting,

obviously. It doesn’t target sinners or whatever. And so, I just think that, you know, all this

sort of gleeful sort of blaminess going around is inappropriate, and I think it could really backfire

if Trump rapidly gets better. I mean, if Trump is better in, say, a week and is hitting the campaign

trail again, you know, what previously will have appeared to be a moral failing, it could now be

argued would be a moral strength since he, you know, overcame it so easily. And so, I think that

if he rapidly recovers from this and hits the campaign trail again, it’s going to make him look

strong. I think that if he has a hard time with the virus, if it’s enervating,

the way that I think it took out Boris Johnson, I mean, I’ve heard British commentators say that

Boris Johnson’s just not even the same, doesn’t have the same level of energy even now than he

did before the virus, then I would think it could really hurt Trump in the last, you know,

couple months of this campaign. I mean, guys, look, I think we all know people,

I’m sure you guys do, I do, who have gone through this, and they all say the same thing, which is

this thing really sucks. Now, there are all these people that say, Oh, it’s like dancing on tulips or

daffodils. I’ve never encountered a single person like that. I see that. I see that maybe on Twitter

or a friend of a friend, but all of my friends who’ve gotten it, they have really struggled

through it. Some of these people are older, some of these people are younger. Some of these people

are healthy, some of these people are not. And consistently, they say the same thing, which is

that there’s a couple of days where it literally feels like your chest is being pounded inside you,

you can’t move, you’re just in pain. And then afterwards, the aftermath is you’re at, you know,

50 6070% of your lung capacity, like it does something for a couple of weeks. I mean, Doc

sales is a friend of ours. And he was very public with his experience. He tried to avoid it as best

he could, he got hit with it, he got hit hard. And he said he felt like he was gonna die was the worst

he’s ever experienced. I have friends that still complain two, three, four months after the fact

that they’re at 50 60% of cardiovascular capacity. And, you know, these, these people that I that I’m

specifically thinking about were really healthy going into Coronavirus. And so I don’t know,

I just think it’s something none of us want. I don’t think you would want to wish this on anybody.

You know, especially frankly, the President of the United States as a role. And so I think folks

just need to sort of like, class up here and hope that we figure out that he gets the best care and

then be we all know what it is, and then see that we can get access to it too. That’s, that’s,

honestly, I think that’s all we should be wishing him off.

Did you see Did you see the letter they published on what he’s getting?

So they did the go ahead and read it.

The doctor published it was not too long ago, right? Jason, I saw it on your

just happened like an hour ago. I tweeted it. Yes. So he got eight grams of polyclonal antibodies.

This is the Regeneron formulation. So basically, they’ve isolated the antibodies that neutralize

Coronavirus that patients have presented in their body. And then they use recombinant

DNA technology to produce those antibodies synthetically. So it’s a bunch of antibody

proteins. And then they turn it into an injection into a formula that they can put in your body.

And you now have effectively neutralizing antibodies. So they gave him eight grams,

which is a pretty high dose. And it gets, you know, goes in intravenously, you can have

sometimes an allergic reaction to that, but it seems like he was fine from that,

because they didn’t announce an allergic reaction. And then, you know, the antibodies are now in his

bloodstream, and they bind to the virus. So any virus that’s floating around immediately gets

wiped out, it gets eliminated from the body. So theoretically, this is the way we should treat all

infectious disease. And I do think that, by the way, I do, and I’ve written about this, I think

that is the future of infectious disease is we’re all going to get a polyclonal cocktail every year,

instead of getting a flu shot, you get a bunch of antibodies to all the new stuff that’s emerging.

And it was this, David, just think about this, there was so much raging debate that got politicized

between the left between the right between different folks of people who believed in

different things around what the right course of care was, there was no single source of truth.

I’ll just say this again, when you treat the President of the United States, and he gets

better. That is canonical single source of truth. I’m sorry, but there can be no debate after that,

that the smartest people with the access to all of the research, I mean, let’s be clear,

you don’t think a call went out last night before they deployed the nuclear warhead stuff to all of

the R&D labs and all the big pharma companies and said, What do you got? And the answer came back

at the top of the ticket was this Regeneron cocktail. Yeah, they had, they definitely

have made that call before to prep for this. But yeah, totally great. Now, when you say

it highlights what the future of infectious disease treatment is and should be, which is that

all of us should be getting a booster shot every year of synthetically produced antibodies that

will counteract any new infectious disease floating around in the world. And we’re getting to the

point in the next 1015 years that that should be reality for everyone. Well, I think we Yeah,

it highlights that. But it also highlights that in the absence of the most powerful man in the

world getting the sickness, that we’re all going to basically bitch and point fingers about what

the right solution is. And so it can’t be the case that the next time there’s a crazy illness

that’s floating around in society, we need to go and target, you know, five or six of the leaders

of the G8, plus the Pope, plus this plus that Beyonce, heaven forbid, you know what I mean?

Like, this is crazy. Yeah, this can’t this can’t be how we find single source of truth.

Yeah. Well, I think if I think, politically speaking, I think there’s a lot of upside here

for Trump, if he does get better in a week, I mean, if these polyclonal antibodies work,

then and he emerges from the White House, you know, if it is a fiddle in a week,

he’s gonna say the curious here, you know, I was right, we don’t even need a vaccine,

the curious here, it’s over. And, and all the I told you, so is my my

far off would that be from the truth, David? Well, the polyclonal polyclonal antibodies work,

I mean, it then it’s just a matter of scaling them. Can it be scale freeberg? Is this easily

scalable? Yes. But by the way, I’ll just point out the challenge with this is a lot of people

north of 15% will have because antibodies, remember, they’re a protein. And if your cells

didn’t make that protein, they look like a foreign protein when they show up in your body.

And so very often, when you get a foreign antibody treatment like this,

you will have some sort of allergic reaction, because your body will react and attack that

protein. And so it’s not as simple as just saying, hey, we should just scale this up and give it to

everyone. Because the clinical trials that are going on with it are to figure out what percentage

of people what’s the right way to treat people, what’s the right way to protect them from

anaphylactic shock, all that sort of stuff that comes along with this sort of thing. So it’s not

that simple. We’re making that freeberg, you would admit that many of those questions,

the answer, the answers to many of those questions must have been well in hand,

because there’s just zero way. Oh, Regeneron’s been running these trials since March. 100%.

Yeah, 100%. I can tell you for sure, when Trump got this treatment, I guarantee they gave him

Benadryl. And they gave him a steroid shot. And they probably gave him a little bit of cortisone

or they had it on the side. Because that’s kind of like the standard sort of regimen you would use

when you get this sort of, you know, synthesized or convalescent plasma type treatment. And,

you know, he comes out of this thing on the other end, and he’s fine. But But that treatment

regimen is required. So it’s, you know, you sit down in an ID booth, and you get a fucking ID,

and you get shots to go along with it. So it’s not as simple as just shipping it out to everyone’s

home and giving them that treatment. You know, it only Am I correct that only 300 or so people

have gotten this to date? Is that correct with the trial? I don’t know the answer to that. I know

that convalescent plasma, which is call it the poor man’s version of this treatment, which is

instead of synthesizing the antibodies, you’re taking the actual antibodies from other people

that have had COVID and recovered, you’re isolating those antibodies, and you’re injecting

them in other people’s bodies. So that is what convalescent plasma is, it is effectively a soup

of all the antibodies from recovered patients. polyclonal antibodies is the synthesized version

of those isolated antibodies, where we use fermentation systems and bioengineered cells

to make those antibodies, then we isolate them, and we and we use any chance that the president

would make a bad decision here, because he would get to dictate his treatment as a powerful person,

like Steve Jobs did, tragically, I saw a doctor saying this is one of the problems with powerful

people is that they actually can, you know, make a bad decision, because doctors will let them have

too much of a say. And is that possible in this situation? You think? I think the answer is no,

because they didn’t put out a letter saying he got bleach and UV light.

So he didn’t go with his own treatment protocol. And also, I was just gonna say and also,

you know, it eliminated all of the other less nonsensical, but equally sort of question mark

treatments. And so you know, I think they went right to the answer, which would only have been

really possible. If the best docs basically said, this is what we’re doing. And I think David

mentioned this earlier, that it had been decided well in advance. I think that’s a good insight.

Yeah, there’s a there’s a protocol that was written down months ago, vetted and revetted

probably every week or every month as they get as they got more data. And so the minute it happened,

there was nothing to talk about. And I suspect that that is probably what happened. Because

there is no way you’d want to be, you know, it’s kind of like being a pilot, like, you follow a

systematic set of rules to deal with the overwhelming majority of boundary conditions.

And this seemed like a pretty obvious boundary condition, you would have wanted to have a

protocol for well in advance. So, okay, so I want to just do one handicapping here,

sacks, I’ll have you take this one off the bat. Because this was the chatter on Twitter. Number

one, the first two, I think are just crazy conspiracy. There is he got it on purpose,

or he’s lying. Put those aside for a second, you can answer them if you want to. But the third one

is, hey, what happens if he’s incapacitated and cannot run? Or, God forbid he died. And

so if he’s on a ventilator, if he cannot leave the hospital, he’s in ICU.

It’s not even a question.

It’s not even a question. The 25th Amendment deals with that. Yeah, so it goes to Pence.

And if Pence cannot do it for whatever reason, but he’s I think he’s already

Okay, I was actually going to refer to the election, though, what happens to the election

if in the next three, four weeks, he’s in ICU? What happens then?

Oh, that I don’t know.

Well, I would assume it’s up to the party to make a change to his ballot if they wanted to,

but I think if he’s in the ICU, he stays on the ballot.

So we would literally have an election with him on a ventilator or him. I mean, if he was

unconscious, could he, could people still go vote for him? This is a possibility.

I think these are very low probability outcomes. I think the most likely outcome here is that

because he’s got the best care, he’s, you know, it’s probably like at least 50% that this is over

for him in about a week. And it redounds to his political advantage. I think there’s probably a

40% chance that, you know, he’s got more like a three or four week case, which I think would

hurt him because he just wouldn’t be able to campaign. And then there’s maybe like a five

or 10% chance of something more serious.

I wonder if he’s got, if he, even if he recovers in a week,

the odds are pretty high that he’ll have, you know, a long tail of fatigue, right? And so

if he, if he doesn’t change his, if he changes his strategy and just does things remotely and

whatnot, and doesn’t do rallies anymore, you know, and he doesn’t really come out and say

he’s fatigued, but there’s this behavioral change. Does that change things do you think?

I think he needs to be able to campaign and hold these rallies. I think that’s an essential part

of his election strategy, but also it’s always been his way of, you know, going over the heads

of the media that hates him and talking directly to people and rallying his base and field testing

his ideas. There was that period when during lockdowns, when he just stopped doing rallies

for several months and it really felt like he was adrift. So yeah, I think if he can’t do rallies,

I think, you know, that could easily swing the election a couple of points and cause him to lose.

I think Saksipu is a hundred percent right.

I was in Indiana last week and there were a bunch of folks in the neighborhood where I was staying

and I was walking my dog and they were walking their dog. So we were all kind of walking side

by side and they all were ramping up to go to a Trump rally. They were super excited about this,

this moment to go hear what he has to say. They sounded like they were kind of in this undecided

camp, but they wanted to go to the rally to hear what he had to say and kind of experience that

Trump moment. It was a real kind of ground level, I think, proof point for your statement around

like, you know, people really need to feel and because that’s a big part of his kind of MO,

is that ground level experience.

It is. And I think it was one of the reasons why no one saw his election coming in 2016

is if you turned on the TV and just listened to the commentators, I mean, aside from maybe Fox,

it seemed like everyone just hated him. But if you attended the rallies, you would see that he

was reaching a lot of people, tens of thousands of people at each event and he was flying around

doing three events a day, tremendously energetic. So yeah, I think it would hurt him a lot.

But look, if he’s back on the stump a week from now, you’re probably going to see all sorts of

people on the right saying, you know, I told you so and God healed him and, you know, he must be

the chosen one or, you know, who knows? We could be seeing a Weekend at Bernie’s

moment here. Even if he’s just tired, they’ll prop him up on a big stick and hold him up in

front of the crowds and then put him back in the airplane and fly him back home.

I think we’ll know if he’s too tired because, you know, he gets up there and he talks for like an

hour and a half. An hour and a half? He’s done two or three.

An hour and a half is short for him.

Is it possible we could be talking about Trump having less energy than Biden in a debate,

which I think is a good segue here. Are there going to be two more presidential debates? And

what was our take on the absolutely embarrassing shit show that we saw on Tuesday night, which was

supposed to be the topic today that we’re going to lead off, which was the debate, which seems

unimportant now.

It feels like a year ago.

How do you expect us to comment on something that happened so long ago?

It was 72 hours ago. I mean, come on, people.

Oh my God. It feels like years.

2020 is so exhausting. I think I’ve aged 30 years in one year. It’s like three decades.

That debate was just a dumpster fire. You know, the way that I thought about it was-

Wrong. Wrong.

Yeah.

Not true. I mean, imagine-

No, no, I agree. It was a disaster for Trump. It was a disaster for Trump.

Go ahead, Sax. Explain, because he’s your boy. Are you now not going to vote for him

after that performance?

Just to clarify for the audience, I’m not pro-Trump. I’m just anti-

Just voting for him.

I’m anti-hysteria. I always support the side that seems least hysterical to me at any given time.

Did you vote for Trump last election? Yes or no? Or would you be comfortable even saying that?

I think you’d be surprised if I told you who I voted for.

Really?

Okay, so onto the debate. I think both Biden and Trump both had a trap to avoid.

I think Biden’s trap was appearing senile. I think Trump’s trap was appearing unhinged. I would say

that Biden avoided his trap, and Trump did not. By constantly attacking Biden, interrupting him,

it was counterproductive. I mean, what you want to do with Biden is let the man talk. He’s a gaffe

machine. You know, let him talk, let him say things that will get him in trouble. Instead,

by constantly interrupting him, Trump kind of let him off the hook.

Now look, I mean, both of their bases, it’s like a sporting event. They’re just going to

root for the side they already came to support. But I don’t think Trump helped himself with the

few percent of independents who are still out there looking to make a decision.

I think you’re totally right. It was really surprising because if he had just left him

to his own devices, you would have let it play out. But I thought Biden, to be honest,

there were some moments he was fabulous. So I thought he was excellent on race. I thought he

was incredible in the moment that he basically stood up to Trump about his son, Hunter,

and he looks in the camera and he basically says, look, I love my son, my son’s had troubles,

and I support, I mean, amazing. And so like in those moments, it’s so hard to not see that guy

as presidential. And I don’t, meaning like it’s easy for Democrats or people that are voting for

him like me, but I think if you were a Republican, you got to look at that guy and say, man, that is

a decent dude. Yeah, I thought he did. He did in certain key moments, he did fabulously well.

And in other moments where there were traps, he actually got built up because Trump kept

interrupting and Joe was smart enough to stop talking so that it amplified the sense that

Trump was interrupting him. Trump, to me, seemed pathetic and scared. That was my,

he’s scared of losing. He felt like a bully who had been laughed at by the whole class,

like nobody takes him seriously. The moderator, what’s his name?

Chris Wallace.

Chris Wallace. The moderator was kind of like, what are you doing, sir, please? I think Chris

Wallace, I mean, I know people are critical of him, but Chris Wallace is like, sir, please,

just trying to appeal to basic decency and Trump just not getting it made Trump look so bad.

It’s just, I think, confirmed with people say the demographic he has to win is white women

in a lot of these swing states. I mean, I don’t think women want to vote. I’m not gonna speak

for all women here. But my understanding is women don’t like guys like that who interrupt

constantly and who are belligerent and badgering. And they kind of like a great dad who defended to

your point, Chamath, you know, his son and said, hey, listen, my son’s got problems. My other son

died. And we’re here. I really think I really think and I and I and we talked about this a

little bit before, but the surface area in terms of policy between the Republicans and the Democrats

now are virtually non existent. So look, if you unpack foreign policy, they both hate Russia,

they both hate China, they both need India, and the Middle East is irrelevant because we’re moving

to a carbon neutral, alternative energy world. They also don’t need Russia as an example. So

all of this stuff that used to matter before in so much of the foreign policy that dictate how

Americans would fight wars, spend money, you know, incite democracy, protect certain leaders,

it’s all out the window. And they both think about it the same way because the surface area is so

similar. That’s number one. What about what about the economy?

So number two, economically, they’re so similar, because they both want to spend trillions of

dollars just under a different label. You know, one is sort of under a Green New Deal, and the

other is called an infrastructure bill or whatever it is. And then number three, they will both have

the same Federal Reserve that is tied to the hip of Treasury, who is already committed to be trillions

of dollars a year and Hawk backing up all the debt that basically exists. And so if you put all these

things together, it’s a popularity contest. And this is why I think Joe Biden has an advantage

because in a popularity contest where you’re just picking the figure that you would, you know,

either have a beer with or feel the most comfortable with, there’s an element of this,

which is like, it’s just a decent human being. It’s easier for Biden to get that across than

it is for Trump. And when Trump behaves that way, it just violates some simple rules of decency.

Like there were in the debate against Hillary Clinton, he didn’t act this way. And he was more

it was like watching like a show, like you were kind of like tuning in to see

what the theatrics would be, or in the debates in the primaries in 2016, against the Republicans,

it was theatrical. Here, it was just, it was it was just kind of not, it was, it was pretty

sex in that way, sacks, you think the Democrats put up the right candidate, because if you did

put up Elizabeth Warren, if you did put up a Bernie Sanders, or God forbid, both of them at

the same time, it would be a very stark contrast, you would have the socialist ticket that wants to,

you know, ban the billionaires and stop capitalism and kneecap it and spend a bunch of money

on redistribution of wealth. And here Biden doesn’t. He’s never said redistribution of wealth.

He’s never said ban the billionaires. He’s pro capitalism feels like a safer bet to the majority

of Americans that they did the Democrats actually do a good job putting Biden up there.

I think so. I think he is the most now that we know he’s not senile. I mean, I think there was

some real question about that going into the debate. I think he proved in that debate that

he’s not. And you know, he’s always kind of had the decency card that Jamal talks about.

Now that we know he’s not senile, I think he’s he is the the Democrats most electable candidate

because he is more centrist than certainly in Elizabeth Warren or some of the other

candidates that you mentioned. Elizabeth Warren would have moved the election to be about substance.

And in many ways, strategically, no, but think about this. If you basically converge on roughly

the same strategy with different labels, you make the election one of style. And there are a lot of

people who really want decency back in the presidency more so than they want anything

else because they already come into the election with a level of skepticism that policy, a won’t

change that fast and be to the extent it changes doesn’t affect them. And so, you know, for years,

we’ve been electing people we like, and this is probably the most extreme test of that idea.

I think I think there was like, I mean, like, if you think about that debate, you could probably

simplify it down into the audience being part of three camps, they either know who they’re voting

for Trump, they know who they’re voting for Biden. And then some folks who are kind of maybe

built, they’re changeable. And for the folks that are changeable, there’s a diversity of objectives,

right? There are some folks who care about the decency, some folks who care about policy,

but at the end of the day, I think you go into this debate with an expectation of Trump,

and an expectation of Biden. And I would say that Trump was flat to down relative to expectation,

and Biden was flat to up. And so that’s where I would kind of give the ticker to

Jen, sorry, I don’t want to interrupt. But I just want to read you this headline,

President Trump will be admitted to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday, for a few days.

Yeah, I read that.

Hold on a second.

Well, his doctor said it’s because they’re out of an abundance of caution. They just want to

have him in a place where he can be treated. If and as he needs it, that may be a cover story.

I think that look, if you don’t buy that, I think he’s in trouble.

It is very strange.

When you get a treatment, when you get a treatment like he got today,

you know, eight grams of immunoglobulin therapy like that. It sucks. I’ve had this treatment,

I’ve had immunoglobulin therapy before. And you get knocked out, you’re on all these steroids,

you’re on all this anti allergy stuff. You’re a mess for a day or two. And you know, you want

to get like IVs and stuff that give you all sorts of stuff to go with it. I got to imagine that

after getting that therapy, he’s going to need to be in some degree of care. And I would imagine

it’s probably better to just do that around doctors and with all the equipment than trying

to, you know, kind of bring everything into the White House. So, I don’t read it as negatively.

Well, I mean, do you think it could be like an anaphylactic?

He might be having some reaction. Yeah, totally.

Like I said, a large percentage of people that get these antibody therapies have

some sort of allergic response. It’s all the way from anaphylactic to

Hey, I’m having my throat closing. Hey, I feel I’m getting flushed. I’m getting a fever. There’s

all sorts of ways that this can kind of present. So the world is changing so fast that we can’t

even complete a podcast without being obsolete. Can I say one other thing? What did you guys

think about the fact this is a little morbid, so you can we can choose not to talk about it. But

the stock market basically did nothing today on the news that the most important person in the

free world, theoretically. I think you just answered your own question, Chamath. I can chime

in on this one is I don’t think that people perceive that Trump is good or bad for the

economy either way, and that the economy is separated now from politics, because they think

Biden or Trump are going to have the same policies, which you said before, they have the same

policies. So why does it matter? If Trump were to tragically die, it would not make a difference in

the American economy. It’s not going to affect people buying iPhones. It might shake people

psychologically. But I don’t think in a massive way, because he’s almost out of office. So I

think it’s all baked in. That’s why the market didn’t win. What do you think, Sax?

I want to disagree slightly with the idea this election doesn’t matter. I think it will matter

a lot if the Democrats win the Senate, as well as the presidency, because then they will have

one party control, and they can pass as much legislation as they want. And I think a lot of

things will get signed. And I think the Biden presidency could be very consequential, at least

for two years, while all this legislation is passed, even if he’s not out in front saying

very much. I mean, the significance will be in the pen to sign the legislation. If the Republicans

hold on to the Senate, but Biden wins the presidency, I agree with you that it’s not going

to be a tremendously consequential election, because we’ll have gridlock and divided government

again. And so I think a lot hinges on whether Biden wins with or without the Senate.

I don’t disagree with you. The only thing that I will say is that I think that Biden will drag

the country, especially if it’s a, you know, up and down democratic ticket, back to the 80s and

90s, more to the sort of the George Baker School of diplomacy and governance. And I think that if

I don’t know him to know this, but I think that if he really were to have a legacy,

I’m just, I would suspect that part of again, because he’s mentioned that, you know,

why did he run? He said the pivotal moment was like Charlottesville and Trump’s reaction to

Charlottesville. I think Biden is really moored by this concept of decency. And I think that if,

if he were there, and he thought to himself, I’m going to be here for four years, because that’s

the right responsible thing to do, but no more. I don’t think that you’re going to see a bunch of

crazy legislation pass, I think Biden’s gonna say, guys, this is what I expect to do. By the

way, did you? Because and I and I think I would bet on that because of what he said at the beginning

of the debate. He’s like, I am the Democratic Party. I don’t know if you guys remember that.

That was incredible. That was a very Darth Sidious, Emperor move when he said,

I think he was trying to basically say like, firewall, the far left, or the far left,

the socialist left and say, that rhetoric is not what I was elected on. I was elected on

my platform. I am the party. This is what I believe. And everybody else will have to toe the

line. And by the way, in the end, that’s not such a bad thing. Yeah. It’s a man.

I agree. I think that that was a really important moment for him is for him to say,

look, I’m in charge here, because the Republicans have been making the argument that he’s a Trojan

horse for all these like far left elements. And so, it was very important for him to come

forward and say, no, I’m the one leading this ticket. Now, that being said, and I think it

would be a great thing for the country if Biden brought the Democratic Party back to more of a,

you know, Bill Clinton to, you know, Obama type centrism, or, you know, center leftism,

I guess you could say, as opposed to this sort of like crazy, you know, woke Marxism or Maoism,

whatever you want to call it. But I’m very skeptical that he will, because I think Biden

has always positioned himself throughout his career as being at the center of the Democratic

Party. And I think he moves as the Democratic Party moves. I agree he’s not going to be all

the way to the left of the Democratic Party, but those left elements will drag his sort of center

further to the left, and we’ll end up with sort of a compromise. And I think at the end of the day,

if the Democrats win Congress, he’ll sign whatever they pass.

I’m not so sure. I really, I’m not so sure.

The White House is not that far away. It looks like it’s a 30 minute drive

from Walter Reed sending a helicopter. Is that normal? Because he drove there last time.

Would that be indicative of this is an emergency type situation sending marine one as opposed to

just driving there for 20 minutes? I think they get like, they’d be there’d be a lot of liability

if he had an actual medical emergency. And they were just like, yeah, we’re gonna send him for a

few days out of an abundance of caution. The fact that they said out of an abundance of caution,

I think if there is an emergency, you can’t get away with saying that.

Oh, you can, for sure they would lie.

I don’t know. It’ll come out later, right?

But you’re saying the Trump administration was above lying about the situation?

Well, if he’s unconscious, they got to swear Pence in.

Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons why you got to be careful.

No, I’m not saying he’s unconscious. I’m just saying, is sending marine one like,

I’m just thinking out loud here, is sending a helicopter for a 20 minute ride than a motorcade

like seems a little intense?

I would take a helicopter to the 7-Eleven if I had a helicopter.

You’re taking a helicopter down to the poker game?

Now that is something I would say.

Okay. This is, I think, a good jumping off point to an interesting discussion that blew up on

Twitter earlier this week, which is, we can’t keep up with all the politics, the rhetoric,

the vitriol, and this polarization. So, Coinbase co-founder and CEO, Brian Armstrong,

wrote a letter saying, hey, listen, if you want to talk about politics, that’s fine.

Not at my company anymore. We’re going to have a no politics rule, no debating this stuff,

and we’re going to be ultra, ultra focus, focused, I’m sorry, at work.

And you can check your politics at the door. When you read this,

you’ve come out in support of Brian Armstrong. What was your take on his position about leave

your politics at the door when you get to work? And then we’ll go to you, Jamal.

I think what Brian, so I did compliment it, his manifesto, and I think-

Are you an investor?

I am. I’m a small investor in Coinbase, and I’m friendly with Brian. And so, I certainly

like the idea of defending him against unfair attacks, but I also genuinely like the manifesto.

And I think his argument kind of boils down to three components. I think, number one,

that having these debates on every issue, whatever the issue du jour is, pulls the company’s focus

away from its core mission, which he really emphasized. And that mission is challenging

enough in its own right. Second, he was saying that, and this is something I’ve said before

as well, which is just that politics is just increasingly divisive in our society.

It’s just inherently divisive. And therefore, it’s corrosive to team cohesion. And the more

you have of that in your company, the worse it is for the team. And I think the third thing

he mentioned, which I thought was really interesting, is that the freewheeling

debate or discussion of politics like that we’re having here, but we kind of have our

own little safe zone here, it risks hurt feelings or misunderstandings that can become HR issues,

because people can then complain about it being- They feel unsafe.

They feel unsafe, and they report it. And so, that’s a further distraction to the corporation.

I thought I’d save that moment for this podcast, I’ll be honest. There was a couple of moments I

thought I’d save. Well, I think one of the reasons why this pod sort of works is because we’re all

friends and we’ve created a safe space for us to have these conversations, but the workplace is

very different. And what I read Brian trying to do is to reimpose a true safe space by saying,

leave your politics at the door. Now, I think he’s been deliberately misconstrued by critics

who want to say that, well, you have to leave your conscience at the door. That’s not true.

He’s not saying that you can’t have your own political views or contribute to causes that

you like, but you just got to do it on your own time. Kind of like Mr. Han said in Fast Times at

Ridgemont High, do that on your own time. And that makes sense to me.

I think about this from the point of view of one of the employees working at one of these companies

that doesn’t want to be a party to the debate. If I’m an engineer at Google or Coinbase, I go into

work, and I am captive, right? I don’t have the option of not showing up to work. If I go to a

rally, I have the option of saying, I’m going to go to this rally and walk away because I don’t like

the speaker, or I’m going to go to the rally because I want to participate in this dialogue

or this debate. I can’t do that at work. So it’s unfair for work, which is a place that I as an

employee have to go to every day to be a forum for people to express themselves on political points

that I may or may not agree with, but more importantly, may or may not want to actually

be a party to the discussion around. And I think that’s the most important thing to note here is

like, it’s not about enabling the free speech of the employees that want to debate. It’s about

the protecting the workspace for the employees that don’t want to debate and don’t want to be

exposed to that. And that’s really important. As Chamath is a person of color who, you know,

have, I’m sure some has some strong feelings about what we’ve seen in terms of police shootings,

or maybe in your own personal life experience facing racism. Again, as a person of color,

what are your thoughts on the workplace? Is it? Is it possible for you to leave that at the door?

That was the criticism I think I saw from the, you know, people who were supportive of BLM. And

they said the background here was, they were trying to get Brian to explicitly say Black Lives Matter,

and to, you know, have the company rally behind that. And that he didn’t, he didn’t want to have

that be part of the work environment, and that he was offering people four to six months severance

if they would leave if they don’t like the new rules. So what are your thoughts?

I think that this whole thing became a quagmire unnecessarily. I think that he showed a lot of

naivety. And, frankly, like, a little bit of stupidity, really. It was really poorly written.

And that’s why it’s been so misunderstood and misconstrued. In my opinion, I think a lot of

what he had to say was valid. But when it was so poorly presented, and, you know, the, the essay was

like, eight minutes, and it was rambling, and the mission was like, you know, 97% down on the,

you know, and it’s just like, it was a convoluted fucking mess. So if I had to do it again, if I were

him, or if I was his advisor, and he had asked me, you know, to proofread the essay, what I would

have said is more of the following, which is our mission, which is, you know, I think to create

financial liberty or something, something like that, you guys can find out what it is for the

whole world is unbelievably important. We will talk about every issue through the lens of achieving

our mission. And we will be disciplined about saying which things matter and which things don’t.

So for example, if somebody says, Listen, I really believe in spaying and neutering dogs,

the right answer shouldn’t be Hey, shut the fuck up. It says, Okay,

um, how does that allow us to maximize our users? How does that allow us to achieve our mission?

Why does it allow us to achieve our mission? And if you ask the question, why, four or five times

in a very first principles way, you’ll get to the answer. So I would have rather said,

we are going to train people how to understand what builds up to our mission, and what is

otherwise something that you should leave at home. And in that context, there are a lot of

things actually, that are political that need to be brought, especially into a company like Coinbase,

which is working in crypto, which is all about eliminating the financial barriers of people that

don’t have access to it, like you are trying to dismantle an extremely exclusionary part of the

economy. And so there are potentially many movements that matter. And those movements

in countries in which you will want to gain users may look like political movements.

Well, and that was jack Dorsey’s point he

so I just think, yeah, so I just think it was a it was a, it was kind of a

two super fit. It was very Silicon Valley esque reaction. It was emotional. It was a little

insecure. And it to me, it missed the mark, because there was a lot of validity in what he

was saying, but presented in an kind of in a lens of, you know, Silicon Valley bullshit,

and it was not well thought through. So if he had rewritten it, and he had said 99% of what he said,

but through the lens of why we’re going to think about a first principles way of defining how

everything ladders into the mission, he will train his employees. Instead, what he created

was a schism at a decision point. And I’m not sure that that’s how you maximize value in 2020

as a CEO, because at the end of the day, you have to deal with an entire population cohort,

that is that are in their 20s, early 30s, teenagers that will eventually want to work for you.

And whether we like it or not, they’re different. And one of the things you need to do if you’re

going to run an enormous company is understand the psychology of your employees, understand the

psychology of how movements and decisions are organized, and then play to win. And it’s no

different than anybody else. If you want to be in the job, you know, to be the starting point

guard for the Warriors, you got to know how to fucking pass the ball. And if you’re going to be

the power forward, you have to know how to do a certain set of things that are different than

that. And so I would sort of have framed it there, because I think there was a lot of goodness in

what he said, but presented in a pretty shitty manner. I think it’s good. He brought up the topic,

I do think there’s a tactical issue here. And he he could have laid out the ground rules for I think,

to your point, Chamath, of how we should talk about politics at work. And what are the ground

rules? I think the number one issue here, which people don’t talk about, is that Slack, and email

and forums inside of companies have created a massive distraction. And when somebody goes into

the random channel, which is built into Slack, and I know this is in the weeds. But I have seen

this happen at multiple companies. Now, Slack infects a company, somebody creates a room about

a topic, whether it’s Trump, or police violence, or immigration, whatever it is. And then people

want to sound off on that. And now you’ve got an electronic form, where people are talking about

highly charged issues that makes people feel unsafe. And so what I told my companies was,

the two companies I run, you could talk about politics, if you want to go for a walk with

somebody and have coffee or lunch, and you want to have a two hour discussion about it, go for it.

Please do not put this in electronic form, because it’s a massive distraction. And there’ll be a

record that could create downstream human resources issues. So your report sacks,

I have a suggestion. And this is an organizational design experiment. And maybe somebody listening

will implement at their company, allow 100% free form debate about anything. One condition,

you literally need to have a soapbox. And like in the 1880s Hyde Park in London,

yeah, you put the soapbox someplace in a safe space where you can go and you can talk and people

who want to listen will listen. And people who need to work can work. And people who don’t want

to listen don’t have to be forced. What’s the digital version of that that you’re saying a

literal room, a literal campus, a literal place in your office, you put the soap, you have a

soapbox, you grab it, you put it on the ground, you stand on it, and you say it. And if you’re

not willing to do that, then you know, it’s okay. Are you saying that there’s no digital version of

that? Because what I’m saying is that two things. One is the digital version is actually training

people to ask why? Why does it matter? Now, the reason why it’s important to ask that is because

somebody may say, I’ll use Jason’s example that he loves, we need to support the Uyghurs in China,

the best way to do that is to proliferate our software in the following way, because it will

free them from enslavement of the Chinese, and it will give them access to financial independence.

Wow. I mean, okay, that seems to be paying off the mission. So if you would, if so, you got to

give freedom for people to come up with these ideas, because it may the first version of this

idea may not actually be what the final version is, and the final version may be the killer

feature. So on the digital forum, in the slacks, it should be why? That’s a very respectful question.

But David, it should not be in any digital forum, because it leads to chaos, because we see that on

Twitter. And what’s happening is the Twitter derangement that we all suffer from is now

infected inside the communication system that runs the operating system of the company.

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Since you agree with me, go ahead, Saks.

Yes, I do agree with you on this one. So look, I mean, Chamath is right that I’m sure Chamath

would have written a better letter. But I think we understand the gist of what Brian was trying to

say. And actually, I thought it took a lot of courage to write it. And what he’s basically

saying is that politics has become so divisive in our society that, I mean, it’d be nice if we could

have these reasonable debates the way that we’re having this discussion inside companies, we didn’t

have to have these artificial restrictions. But we do, we have to, you know, it’s the same reason,

you know, that we have the separation of church and state is because people can stop killing each

other over religious wars. And so finally, we had, you know, the Treaty of Westphalia to stop it. And

what Brian’s basically proposing is a treaty for the workplace, because we cannot get along

around politics.

But David, he is the CEO of an $8 billion company,

could he not have hired somebody to edit that essay?

Okay, well, I mean, look, I just, to me,

like if it’s meaning if it’s seriously, well thought through, and if it was as important

as Westphalia, you would probably have a couple of proofreaders.

Corporate, corporate version. Okay, it’s not.

It could have been polished for sure. Here is Jack Dorsey’s response. And I’ll have you guys

respond to it. I think it’s in your wheelhouse in terms of what you said, Chamath. Bitcoin,

aka crypto is direct activism against an unverifiable and exclusionary financial system,

which negatively affects so much of our society, important to at least acknowledge and connect the

related societal issues your customers face daily. This leaves people behind.

I think he’s right, you have to view this problem, not through the lens of your own emotions,

not even through the lens of the frustrations of your employees, you have to help shift the

discussion to say, why does this achieve our mission? And just constantly in a thoughtful,

respectful way, ask why and by the fourth or fifth why it will either be something that doesn’t

matter, and you can dismiss it quickly, or something that actually is rooted in fact,

and probably is something you need to pay attention to. And maybe the way that the

conversation started was probably not with the right language that people given the chance would

have framed it differently. Okay, the worst take, according to the internet’s Twitter’s ability to

ratio people, which is when you get more comments than likes, which is not normally how it works,

people actually taking the time to explain to you how bad your take was, as opposed to liking it

is what a ratio is, if you don’t know, goes to Dick Costolo, who’s a friend of ours.

Me first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first

people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I’ll be happy. I mean, that’s,

that’s enough to get you ratioed and have this thing go supernova. I mean, Mike Cernovich is

retweeting this and losing, like his mind over it, you know, that the former CEO of Twitter is

inciting violence. He’s a comedian as well. Dick Costolo. So I think he’s joking here.

But he adds the explanation point. I’ll happily provide video commentary.

Here’s my disagreement with Dick and with Jack is ultimately the societal value of a company

doesn’t come from whatever platitudes or political statements as its CEO makes, but rather from the

quality of its products and the impact of its products. And in that sense, Dick and Jack are

living in a glass house. I mean, Twitter is a sewer of political diatribe and polemical hate.

You know, it’s, I don’t know anyone who feels better, you know, after spending time on Twitter.

You know, if Facebook is like cigarettes, you know, I don’t know what Twitter is. I mean,

it’s like fentanyl or something. Yeah. So, so, so ultimately, you know, maybe Jack should spend his

time figuring out how to make Twitter into a less socially divisive product instead of, you know,

because just issuing what platitudes is not going to do it. I agree with the, I agree with that. I

don’t think platitudes does it. All I’m saying is, you have to view it through the lens of,

I want to become the most relevant company possible and achieve the most impact. And I

think that there are a lot of times where some of these issues, when presented politically,

underlying it is actually some feature or some capability, or some way of seeing the problem

that unlocks more demand that can help you win and not knowing a priori what the answers to those

questions are. It’s important to train people on a framework versus say you can’t talk because I

guarantee you what will happen is somebody with some killer feature will be too scared to say

something because they’re not sure how to say it well. And you and I both know because we’ve seen

many companies that have gone through that cycle. Those companies decay and die.

Yeah, I think it’d be great if a policy like this wasn’t necessary. I mean, it’s I agree it’s

suboptimal, but I think it’s caused by the fact that people just can’t get along around politics

anymore. Yeah. Friedberg, what is your take on ultimately how Coinbase winds up the year or two

after this? Do they get more resumes of hyper talented people who want to embrace a politics,

social issue free workplace? Or do millennials and you know, Gen Z and this next group of talented

folks say I don’t want to work for somebody who doesn’t want to talk about these issues at work?

And then at the production board where you have a factory where you build companies? Do you have

some rule around this yourself? Or thoughts about how you run your companies?

I think the more clearly you define culture, the more successful your company will be.

And right or wrong about whether or not you enable the debate in the discussion and how you define

the forums for kind of political discussion within your company. The fact that there is

a clear definition and delineation around this point, I think removes the uncertainty. And I

think he’ll do exactly what he’s hoping to do, which is to get people to leave and to attract

other people that better fit with that cultural model. I want to put my game face on. I want to

go to work and I want to win the game. I’m here to play. I’m not here to fuck around. I’m not here

to do other stuff. I want this job because I believe in this mission. And I want this company

to succeed in what it’s trying to do. And I think other places that allow people to run around and,

you know, do things that they may or may not appreciate other people doing, or if you have

this kind of low definition kind of culture, where some people are happy, some people are unhappy,

it all kind of, you know, slows things down. And I wouldn’t kind of encourage anyone to

let that happen. I think it’s really important to just define how it is you want to operate,

be really clear about the rules and the boundaries. And then

that I that I agree with as well. I mean, I think it’s very much within his right. And I think it

took it I do applaud his courage in doing it. I just think that it misses the mark because I think

it was too emotional. I think he can do a 2.0 version and just keep building on the manifesto

and say, hey, based on the feedback I got, here’s how we’re going to do it. No discussion. He on the

Reed Hastings put out that fantastic PowerPoint that I think we all know really well, the cultural

playbook from Netflix. And when did he put that out? Like, almost a decade ago?

No, two decades ago was 2000 2001.

And he’s continued to refine it, right? If you look at there’s recent iterations of it,

and they continue to kind of do a better job of defining, you know, how do they intend to operate

with people? And I think it’s, it’s only continue to reinforce the innovation that drives that

company into the hundred billion dollar plus valuation it’s earned.

Yes. And if you, if there’s one important thing, which is that there’s a

meaningful difference in the average age of a Netflix employee and the average age

of a Silicon Valley company. Now that may be also part of it as well.

I think the one thing that Brian could clarify is that you don’t have to check your conscience

at the door. You it’s not, we’re not saying that you can’t have political views. You’re

allowed to say things on Twitter or take political stands or donate to whoever you want. It’s just

that the company itself is going to be a demilitarized zone. You know, we’re not going

to bring, we’re not going to bring these contentious, divisive debates that really

aren’t related to our core mission inside the company. So we can all work better. So we can

all work better as a team towards the reason that we all joined this company.

But that’s totally fair. But you know, all I’m saying, all I’m saying, again, I’ll just say it

again. That is such an important thing to say. You could have had a proofread a couple of times.

You didn’t.

Could have been, could have come across the way you’re saying it.

It didn’t have to be written by GPT-3. You know what I mean?

Also, I think that it was the, the dunk he did afterwards where he’s like, and

by the way, if you don’t like it, here’s four months severance, get the fuck out.

That was a pretty aggressive move as well. I don’t know how you guys felt.

I think I like the gangster nature of it.

I like it.

I think it’s great. It’s like, if I’m on the team and I believe in what he just said,

I feel great that he’s flushing the shit out. And if I don’t agree with it, it’s like,

fuck yeah, I’ll take it. You know, like it’s really clear. And I think the clear cut definition

of culture is what every company needs to kind of pursue. And it’s an ongoing pursuit,

and you can always do a better job with it.

And culture is what you choose not to do as much as it is what you do, right?

I’m not going to talk about politics.

I think Friedberg is totally right. It takes a lot of courage to say, here’s what I believe.

And if you don’t, if you don’t believe in it, then it’s okay for you to leave. And

here’s a severance package that takes a lot of courage. So I applaud him for that.

I mean, look, it’s a free country, and we all have limited time. We should all go work on

the mission that is most important and inspiring to us. And Coinbase has a very specific mission

that Brian’s defining. He’s trying to find it clearly. And if that mission is important and

inspiring to you, then go work there. And if it’s not, then go work at the place where the mission

does inspire you. And it may be a startup or maybe a political organization, whatever it is,

go do that thing that’s most meaningful to you. That’s kind of my interpretation of what he was

saying. All right, as we wrap here, it was hard for me to interpret because it was so poorly

written. Well, also, I mean, it was also like a huge bomb on Twitter. And people’s reaction to

it was based upon, I think, how they feel at this moment in time. And a lot of people feel this is

why I’m sorry, but communications is important. How you say things, what you say, style is really

important. So whether it’s Biden or Brian, take the time, get it right.

Yeah. All right. So 2021 is going to be upon us before we know it. And I wanted to wrap here with

each of your feelings on the economy, technology and politics, economy, technology, politics,

how do you feel about 2021? Are you optimistic, pessimistic, neutral on those? Economy,

politics? Have you guys ever been to Magic Mountain? Or Disneyland? You ever get in one

of those log rides? And it’s like raging rapids or roaring waters or whatever they’re called?

Sure. And it’s just fucking like you hop in and this thing just takes off down the river.

I don’t know, nothing summarizes better for me. But in so many ways, is that where I feel we are

right now? We’ve all jumped on a bunch of fucking logs, and we’re shooting down this rapid river.

And I think a big part of what I’m feeling and Chamath is in the middle of this. But there’s

this extraordinary velocity of capital right now. And when I say that, I just mean capital is moving

in large amounts very freely. And that creates like once in a generation kind of opportunity.

It’s in part because the Fed has dropped interest rates to zero. So there’s all these trillions of

dollars moving markets, there’s a change in outlook and the world is being shifted in so

many ways. This is this really amazing moment that I think we can all be afraid of because

we’re on a fucking roaring rapid on a log trying to stay afloat. But there is so much happening

in these markets that we kind of operate in. There’s never been a better time to get your

business funded or to take your company public, or to get customers to make quick decisions and

change their behavior, whether they’re a consumer or an enterprise customer. Money and decisions

are happening at a money’s moving at a faster pace than we’ve ever seen and decisions are

happening at a faster pace than we’ve ever seen. That’s my general sentiment. I don’t think it

stops going into 2021. There’s just another kind of floodgate about to open with this election one

way or the other. But these we’re in the middle of this kind of raging rapids right now. And it’s,

it’s a it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty scary, but also kind of exciting kind of time.

It’s so it’s so well said keen. Well, I really agree with you. I, I think that it’s kind of like,

you used to take a second to make a $1 decision and a minute to take $100 decision, the amount

of money being flooded into the economy now allows you to make $100 decision in a second,

right? So like the order of magnitude of the mental barrier that it takes

has changed. And I agree with you. I was thinking earlier this week that it’s really incredible time

to be alive for one very in one very specific way, which is obviously there’s stuff that’s

happening that’s really turbulent. But there is a chance that a bunch of us can really

like, change things in a meaningful way. And I find it exciting. So I’m generally like,

I’m super bullish on the economy, super bullish on tech. And I think I’m actually

kind of like, reasonably optimistic about politics, I think that we’re going to find

our civility soon. And, and I don’t know why that’s going to happen or how it’s going to

get triggered. But I think honestly, like the election of Biden will go such a long way to just,

um, you know, just showing what is rewarded, and then to figure out how to reward the folks that

were supporting Trump in the first place, for purposes of economic, you know, pushback,

could be a nice de escalation, in fact, and maybe an olive branch of Biden can bring that

Republican Party into the conversation. Yeah. And sax sax had this really beautiful thing that he

posted on Twitter, which was like, you know, a lot of San Francisco’s dysfunction is really going

to spread wealth throughout the rest of the country. Because a lot of cities that were

shut out of all these tech gains will now see it. And now you can imagine all kinds of people,

there’s a guy that I, you know, follow on Twitter, he lives in Bowie, Maryland, he’s a engineer at

VMware, this black guy, and he was just talking about how he got promoted, and he’s now a principal

engineer. And, you know, and I just thought, like, this is really fucking cool, like there’s going to

be all this redistribution of opportunity all around the country. And that’ll happen because

of Coronavirus, because of people’s frustration with California, because, you know, of a handful

of us, how fed up we’ve gotten with the culture of Silicon Valley, including, by the way, right,

what Brian Armstrong wrote, which was, which, again, still very important. And so we’ll all

be better off for that. So I don’t know, I’m pretty optimistic.

Sachs Tech Economy Politics 2021.

Well, I’m super bullish about, you know, how about the entrepreneurial energy in the American

economy. It’s 100 times greater than when we started out our careers in this business,

you know, 20 years ago, in terms of the number of companies that get funded, the ideas,

the tools that are available, the funding. I mean, when you think about it, this might be the

first time in human history where money is chasing the, like throwing money at the ideas. I mean,

throughout history, until I’d say the last 10, 20 years ago, you know, the people who had no money,

but had great ideas, always had to go hat in hand to go find the capital. And now it’s completely

the other way around. There’s so many VCs, and they’re all racing around trying to find the

people with ideas. And so- It was worse than that,

they had to go give their ideas to a big company and take a salary.

Right. Like so Tesla, you know, Nikola Tesla, the original inventor didn’t profit at all from his

ideas, you know. And so that was pretty common. And so just this, just how entrepreneurial

the US economy has become, I’m very, the new economy is completely taken over and I’m bullish

on that. I think the, you know, the tweet that Chamath was referencing, you know, I said that

San Francisco’s loss is going to be America’s gain, the rest of America’s gain, because

middle America was really left out of the new economy. It’s just not where it was taking place.

And so, you know, globalization really gutted industrial America, agricultural America,

they didn’t get to participate in the enormous wealth creation of the last two or three decades.

And I think, you know, I guess, you know, because of what San Francisco has done

in terms of driving out companies, I think the companies are going to be, you know,

tech companies are going to be all over the US now.

Yeah, totally. It’s so, it’s fucking awesome.

Should be super interesting. And so let’s just lay the odds as we wrap here on Biden winning.

Biden, 65, 35, approaching 70, 30.

Okay. David, you got a handicap for me on Biden winning?

What do you think, Sax?

Well, I mean, the betting line is like, somewhere in the 60 to 70% range. And so you’d have to say

that the betting markets are probably, you know, pretty accurate. I guess, you know, probably there’s

a 70% chance of him winning if I had to bet on that line. I’d probably take the 30% underdog,

because I think, you know, there’s all, things are so in so much turmoil right now that anything

could still happen.

So you think there’s a chance that Trump could win?

Yeah, and it’s probably bigger than 30%. Yeah, it’s probably bigger,

it’s slightly bigger than what the betting markets are giving him credit for.

Friedberg, what are your thoughts?

Probably right. Yeah, I don’t have anything to add to that.

All right. Any spackulation that we want to end with, Chamath, on the, I just noticed that Emile

from Uber is doing a spack. Mark Pincus is doing a spack. Everybody’s doing spacks now.

Any spackulation on what we’re going to see in that market?

Nope. God bless them. And I love you all, besties.

All right, besties.

Back to the grind.

Back to the grind. We’ll see you next time. You know what to do, share this podcast with

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