Jake, how are you going to do your Trump impression?

We’re going to do your your. OK. Yeah.

Everybody, I’m getting my Twitter.

Don’t get a derangement syndrome right before we start the pod.

I want to warm him up.

Ted Cruz. This doesn’t warm him up.

I get some deranged.

Get your show notes up, bitches.

Let your winners ride.

Rain Man, David Sack.

And instead, we open source it to the fans,

and they’ve just gone crazy with it.

Love you. Queen of Kinwa.

Hey, everybody.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to another all in podcast with me today.

Of course, the dictator Chamath Palihapitiya,

the queen of Kinwa, David Friedberg.

And of course, yeah, definitely the rain man is here.

David Sacks is an excellent driver in the driveway. Yeah.

OK, boys, I guess we made it to episode 22.

Your intro becomes one second longer for every episode we do.

It’s just people love it.

And people, it’s so laborious.

You know, they don’t.

They think it’s so stupid.

I am. You have to understand persuasion.

What I’m doing is I do the same intro and it warms.

OK, see, we’re still we’re still talking about the intro.

OK, let’s just see.

Everybody’s obsessed about it.

You prove my point.

All right, guys.

Are we going to address elephant in the room?

The elephant in the room, or do we just move on to topics?

I will say elephant in the room after the last show.

I fought very hard with the three of you to not post that episode.

You wanted to can’t you want to spike the episode?

I wanted to spike the episode.

And I’ll tell you why.

I thought it was not good content.

I don’t think Vlad said anything new or remarkable or interesting.

I don’t think we had good analysis.

And I think the whole thing kind of felt flat and felt like a PR stunt.

And I felt that truly and honestly.

And I, you know, I made the case to you guys that we should cancel.

Obviously, I lost.

And I think going forward, we should have a veto, right?

But, you know, we can talk about that offline.

Did you quit the show or did you threaten to quit the show?

I threatened to quit the show now.

I’m going to after this, I’m going to propose to you my rules,

my ground rules for going forward, one of which I think should be

no more PR bullshit from Jason’s portfolio.

But, you know, besides that, I think I might.

I think I hear a bestie guestie.

Is that calm, calm at the door?

And I don’t think that we’re journalists.

By the way, I don’t I don’t think that the journalism thing works for us.

I think we’re like analysts and commentators and we have opinions.

And so to bring someone on and try and interview them with a four on one format,

it just feels weird.

It doesn’t seem to work.

It doesn’t create an opportunity for discourse.

And frankly, you know, when you try and do journalism in this context,

you either appear like you’re softballing

or you appear like you’re doing gotcha journalism.

And I think both are bad.

And so I think it works really well when the four of us just kind of chat

and analyze and shoot the shit and have opinions and talk and debate.

And so my vote is to kind of avoid doing bestie guesties unless,

you know, it’s something pretty amazing and critical.

And we can all kind of build a dialogue with that person around a topic.

But yeah, so that’s kind of where I’m sitting and how I feel about it.

We’ve had a lot of debates, obviously, since since the last episode about it.

Can I can I build on what you’re saying?

You know, this is like kind of like that really famous Teddy Roosevelt quote

about sort of like the man in the arena with the dust on his face, right?

I feel like all four of us are in the grind doing things.

And I think what makes the podcast good is it’s almost like there’s like,

you know, in a basketball game of four quarters,

there’s a timeout and you come off the floor

and you can actually just take a second to observe what you’re seeing.

And then the ref blows the whistle and you go back into the game.

And I think for me, what makes this thing so fun

is I feel like every Friday for these two hours,

you know, it’s basically the ref calls a timeout or the coach calls a timeout.

And we can just kind of take a breath and just observe.

All right, what’s happened before we get back in the arena?

And so, you know, just to your point, I don’t think we’re journalists

and I don’t think we should try to be because I don’t think

that’s the point of what this is.

It should be four friends talking about things that are important.

And then to the extent that it’s important and interesting for other people,

they’ll listen or not listen.

And I think these last few weeks, we got caught up a little too much in,

you know, ratings, where is it ranking?

How can we go higher?

And it’s that the gamification of people’s reactions

that I think caused us, you know, to do that.

Whereas the episode before, I actually kind of liked

because Draymond is legitimately one of our really good friends.

We see him many, many times, obviously less during basketball season,

but a ton when he’s outside.

We play poker together.

We all hang out together.

So that to me, I think is sort of inbounds.

Last week, and then also, you know, last week,

I think we were all supposed to be on point.

I’ll just tell you personally for me,

I had an extremely crushing two weeks of work.

I was extremely tired.

I ended up literally unplugging and not doing anything for three days straight

and sleeping.

And so I didn’t even do my best even just to be either supportive

or, you know, argumentative with Vlad.

So I don’t think I got anything out of it myself.

Okay.

Coming around the horn sacks.

How do you feel that episode stands on its own?

Obviously, it’s very polarizing.

We got barbecued in the comments.

We got barbecued on Reddit.

We got barbecued on social media.

But then there were a large number of people who said they really liked it.

My mom.

A job.

David PR manager.

Right.

I mean, there were people who liked it.

Sequoia thought it was excellent.

Right.

There’s 12 people in the lunch.

So give us your candid assessment because you weren’t as hard as these other two on it.

Yeah, I wasn’t as hard as these other two.

And I do feel like that if they felt that we were soft on Vlad,

then they should have brought it harder.

And they should have gone after Vlad and challenged him more.

That being said, I completely understand and agree with what Freeburg is saying that,

look, we’re not journalists.

We’re not playing a game of gotcha.

It’s not our job to go after Vlad.

I think a lot of the comments on Twitter, that’s what they wanted us to do.

But that’s not who we are.

You know, it’s difficult for business to sex.

I mean, if you’re attacking Vlad, and then the next day we have to go into

supporting founder mode, it’s kind of a bad look, isn’t it?

Yeah, I mean, it’s not what we do, right?

I mean, we are, like Jamal was saying, we are in the arena.

We’re doing things.

We’re not critics sitting on the sidelines, pointing out, you know, what the doers of

deeds did wrong, you know?

And so it’s not our job to, you know, run an inquisition on Vlad, you know?

And so we’re not really equipped to do that.

I think Freeburg is right that it doesn’t really make sense to have

guests on the show if the job is to, you know, to get to the bottom of something as

investigators, you know?

Yeah.

We’re not investigators.

And it was, you know, a big story, just to sort of put a cap in it, from my perspective.

You know, I’m always supportive of my guys.

I try to be supportive of whoever I invest in, and I try to give them the benefit of

doubt.

And this is a situation where, you know, people are upset, there were mistakes that

were made.

And so I think anything other than demolishing Vlad is considered by some constituency as

a failure, right?

And so what are we supposed to do here?

I can’t be trashing my own company that I’m an investor in and a supporter of and founders

who I believe in.

It just wouldn’t be authentic either.

Well, I think there was a moment in the pod, Jason, where I think actually, so on the whole,

I thought Vlad did a good job in accomplishing his objective on our pod, which was the same

objective he had in front of Congress, which was basically to run out the clock without

saying very much, you know.

And, you know, he actually, whoever prepped him for Congress did a pretty good job because

he testified for five hours and said nothing quotable, you know, which is pretty much the

best he can do in that situation.

It’s kind of the goal for him.

Keep your head down.

Yeah, exactly.

So, but there was a moment in the pod last week where I think Vlad got himself in a little

bit of trouble.

Freeberg did ask actually a pretty tough question about the guy in the street who had

lost all of his life savings.

How would Vlad respond to that?

He made this claim, well, I saved that person money because I shut down trading at the high.

And then we pointed out, no, I mean, it was a high because you shut down trading.

You have the causation backwards.

And then you ran in and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know.

Well, my guy was on the floor.

I got to pick him up.

What are you talking about?

I called a timeout.

I got in there.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

All right, let’s move on.

Let’s do we talk about the insanely high profile guest that was planned for March 5th that

just canceled on us?

No, no, no, we should.

We should talk.

Do we put it on the tape?

Because I, you know, the other thing about protocol, I’ll just say Freeberg is if we

have a guest on, you cannot just spike the guest if they took the time to be on.

That was my.

Unless you tell them before they come on.

I may spike you if we don’t like it.

Yeah, do they get that right?

None of us do this for a profession.

None of us are getting paid to do that.

We don’t have any advertisers like I completely agree.

We’re not here to be a PR machine for people.

I mean, Vlad had his friggin PR woman sitting on the Zoom call while we were doing it last

week.

You know, I like I just don’t think that’s a little inside baseball that got interesting.

I think explain what happened when.

Well, no, we don’t have to go there, Jason.

I just think I just think what Freeberg says is right.

Like we we do this.

We don’t make any money from it.

We do it because we like to talk.

We I think we all learn from it.

I think other folks enjoy it.

They learn from it, but I do think that Freeberg’s right.

We’re not going to be used as a shill.

I think we’re learning as this goes.

I think we’re learning what the ground rule should be just like any other business.

Vlad’s made mistakes.

He’s going to change.

We’ve made some mistakes and we’re iterating and I think one positive iteration that Freeberg

has proposed is if any one of us don’t like an episode because we think it’s basically

moving away from our values, we should be able to spike it and I support that.

I support it generally, but I don’t like the idea of inviting a guest on and then it doesn’t

go well and then telling, you know, from our perspective, it makes us look bad and then

we tell the guest, well, you came out good and we came out down.

Therefore, we’re killing you.

No, no, no, I don’t think that’s the point.

I think what Freeberg says is like, look, this is not for to be a marketing thing.

And so we’re going to ask things that are exposed that are about having a real conversation

where there’s real honesty.

And if you’re going to just be there and bat around, as Saks said, to run the clock out,

then we’re just going to spike it.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

I think that’s communicated ahead.

I’m okay.

By the way, come with your A game.

And this is a great segue to talk about what actually we were a person that was going to

come on and realize that they probably were going to get so pilloried that they basically

spiked themselves is.

Yeah, they opted out.

Chesa Boudin, the district attorney of San Francisco.

Tell the guys what happened, Saks.

Well, no, we invited him to come on the podcast.

No, no, we didn’t invite him to come.

He, an intermediary said that she could get him on the pod.

Would we like to have him on the pod?

We said, we discussed it.

We said, sure, have Chesa Boudin on and then go from there, Saks.

We didn’t like seek him out.

He was.

Well, okay, got it.

So he, great.

So he, but he agreed to be on the show.

And then you, our scheduler got an email out of the blue, like a day or two ago saying,

sorry, he’s not coming on the show.

No explanation, right?

Isn’t that what happened?

Yeah, that’s basically it.

I mean, so look, here’s what I would say is, Chesa, Mr. District Attorney, you don’t have

to come on the show, but I will challenge you to a debate anytime, any place, any format

on your policies in San Francisco.

So if you have the huevos to engage in a debate, I am ready.

And I thought Chesa was a guy who had a little bit of courage.

I mean, there was that night where people were discussing the situation in San Francisco

and on Clubhouse, and he jumped into the room.

So I thought this was a guy who had some cojones.

So Chesa, if you have the chutzpah, if you have the cojones, if you have the huevos,

let’s debate.

Let’s debate.

Let’s talk about your policies.

And by the way, he’s an expert.

This is what he does, you know?

For a living.

He’s an expert.

Isn’t he a defense attorney, Saks?

You’re going to have a.

He was a public defender.

He should mop the floor with me.

I’m just some shallow tech bro.

Yeah, tech bro.

Tech bro.

Who doesn’t know anything, who he can easily demonize.

So I would say, come on, let’s go.

Let’s do a debate.

I’ll agree to whatever format you want, but we need to talk about what’s happening in

San Francisco because crime is out of control, and it’s his fault.

Trigger the young Spielberg Rain Man song right about.

Here we go.

Drop it, boom.

I’m the rain man with me.

Cackling behind.

Should we talk about it?

Let’s talk about it.

We should talk about what’s happening in San Francisco.

Okay, so since the last pod, there has been another victim.

Sharia Masioka, who was a young man from originally from Kenya.

Who he came to the United States for college, just like Hannah Abe, who was killed on New

Year’s Eve.

He went to Dartmouth.

All of his visors said he was brilliant.

He had a young wife and a three-year-old baby.

He was in San Francisco for 10 days, goes out running and gets hit, gets killed by another

drugged out hit and run driver who had been named.

Let’s see, I think it was Jerry Oli Adams or something like that.

I don’t have the guy’s name, but he was arrested four or five times in the last

year and he was released every single time by Budin’s office.

It’s just like the New Year’s Eve story where you had this repeat offender, Troy McAllister,

hit, he had stolen a car, he was fleeing another crime he had committed.

He was on drugs and he killed Hannah Abe and Elizabeth Platt.

And this was another case where he was caught five times over the past year and every single

time he was not charged by Budin, he was just let go.

And so we have this case, we have a district attorney who doesn’t want to prosecute people.

His agenda is decarceration.

It’s like a fire chief who doesn’t believe in using water.

He is part of the burn it all down party.

Let me challenge you with the argument he might make, which I think I’ve heard him make a few

times, which is really a position on the criminal justice system, not necessarily on local

prosecution, but really what he says is once someone ends up in the criminal justice system

in the United States, it causes this cycle of recurrence and the cycle of repeat that is very

difficult to get out.

It basically minimizes the opportunity for reform for an individual, for a criminal to

reform themselves and to have a shot at being a successful member of society again in the future.

And the objective is find other ways to kind of accelerate reform and not use incarceration

as the only tool in the toolbox.

What is, you know, what is the argument back to him when he makes that point?

Because I’ve heard him make that point a number of times.

And how do you kind of move past that point with him?

Yeah, so I’m not saying that incarceration is the only answer, but Budin’s only answer

is decarceration.

He doesn’t want to prosecute anyone.

He doesn’t want to lock anybody up.

And we see the results immediately in this community.

You have these repeat offenders now killing people.

They should have been locked up.

It’s, you know, Budin’s always putting forth these elaborate theories.

This is, you know, the Central Chronicle had an article about it, about why these crimes

occur.

And he never wants to put the fault on the people who are actually perpetrating the crimes.

It’s always economic desperation.

He just put it forward, a theory that a decline in tourism is causing people to commit more

home invasions.

He never wants to, yes, this was in the Central Chronicle article.

Here, I’ll put it up on the screen.

I mean, it’s crazy.

I mean, the other thing you left out, David, I’ll say is, and this was really, you know,

hits home to anybody with kids, is a food driver for DoorDash, not that it matters which

service, but was in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, which is the safest

and most elite neighborhood in, it’s, you know, the Beverly Hills or Bel Air of San

Francisco.

And his car was carjacked with his four-year-old daughter and two-year-old boy inside.

Now, of course, you should not be leaving two kids in the car.

Putting that aside, that mistake, which I’m sure this father is suffering over, but he

needed to make deliveries, obviously.

He made a mistake leaving the kids in the car.

But we all got an Amber Alert last week on our phones.

I mean, this is the level of lawlessness.

It’s turned into escape from New York level, Gotham City level chaos here.

And the criminals know they will not be prosecuted.

And this is the key criminal justice problem here.

If you say you are not going to prosecute crime and you demonstrate to the hardest core

faction of criminals that you don’t prosecute, they’re going to take advantage of that weakness.

And that’s what’s happening.

Let me take the counterpoint just for a second, just so we can construct what the other side

of the argument looks like.

The other side of the argument says, okay, these folks are largely engaged in an enormous

amount of petty crime to support their drug habit, right?

I think that’s probably the – and that underneath that is just an explosion of opioids and fentanyl

and whatnot.

Underneath that is sort of economic uncertainty that’s been compounding and just basically

cresting over.

And so, folks would say, okay, these guys are a victim of a much broader economic malaise

that needs to get fixed.

I’m just – you’re shaking your head, Jason, but I’m just saying I think that that’s where

the trail of breadcrumbs grows in the counter argument.

Well, these are the types of arguments that Chesa makes in order to obfuscate and disguise

that his real agenda is basically radical decarceration.

He’s got this childhood background where his parents went to jail when he was just a baby

and he grew up.

He says his earliest memories are visiting his parents in jail and it profoundly affected

his political views.

And now we have to suffer through this.

We’re suffering for all of them.

Through his childhood trauma.

Through his childhood trauma.

And so, Tramath, you’re right about deeper causes, but it doesn’t excuse the need to

lock people up when they are dangerous to the community.

And it’s not just petty crime.

Let’s go through the actions he’s taken as DA, okay?

So, first week on the job just about, he abolished the whole cash bail system, okay?

Which voters in November just voted with Prop 25 to affirm.

So, voters of California want the cash bail system because it keeps criminals locked up.

What Chesa said is that he would replace cash bail with an algorithm.

Well, what exactly is that algorithm?

He won’t explain.

He won’t submit to third-party audit.

There is no algorithm.

They’re just letting people go, okay?

Then the next thing he did was fire seven veteran prosecutors in the DA’s office who

weren’t on board with his agenda.

These are people who have spent their whole lives prosecuting murders, rapes, I mean,

hardcore crime.

And it takes years of experience to learn how to be a prosecutor like that.

So, for him to just purge this office of these veteran prosecutors is a disaster for the city.

I’ve been talking to people who used to work in the DA’s office, and they tell me that

the problem goes much deeper than that.

That in addition to these seven veterans he purged, over 30 prosecutors, which is about

a quarter of the whole office, have left under his reign because they don’t like working

for him.

So, and he complains about being short-staffed.

He says a lot that he can’t prosecute everyone he needs to prosecute because he’s so short-staffed.

The reason he’s short-staffed is no one wants to work for him, you know?

By the way, I think it’s worth highlighting, this guy was elected, right?

So, the city, the voters in the city.

In a runoff, I understand, right?

He won by something like 2000 votes.

It was a tiny, tiny number of votes.

Regardless, people voted him in on a platform that he very clearly articulated and is now

realizing in office.

So, there was something about that platform that I think is worth noting was and is appealing,

and probably is to a large number of people.

Large number.

Right?

No, the part of it that’s appealing, okay, is that we do believe that there are too many

people in prison and that a better way to deal with a drug addict who commits, say,

petty theft is to send them to treatment, okay, as opposed to putting them in prison.

Right.

So, I think we can all agree on that.

But his agenda is so much more radical than that.

He just doesn’t want to lock people up.

Take Troy McAllister, okay?

This is a dangerous person who – he was facing trial for his third strike, okay?

He committed armed robbery.

He robbed a store with a gun, okay?

He was facing a third strike for that robbery, and one of the first things Chesa did when

he came in was basically release him for time served.

He basically pleaded that down.

That was someone who’s facing a life sentence.

That is the reason why Hannah Abe and Elizabeth Platt are dead, is because he didn’t want

to prosecute.

That’s a violent offender.

I’m not disagreeing, by the way.

I think what is interesting to me is that so many people have an eye on and agree with

the notion that criminal justice system needs reform.

The problem is realizing that reform with a radical district attorney doesn’t really

resolve to a solution.

It resolves to more problems on a local level.

And even Chesa said this publicly, which is like, you can’t just solve this problem from

the DA’s office.

It is a much bigger and broader problem, and the radical action he’s taking isn’t solving

any problems.

It’s creating far more.

I think it is worth noting, though, that there is, should, and likely will be, especially

with Kamala Harris as vice president, some attempts at reforming on a federal level how

criminals are treated, how the system realizes opportunities for them to reform and come

back into society as productive members.

But to your point, you lose all sense of safety and security if you try and do it solely

on a local level.

Well, let me ask a question.

Look, now we have basically political activism and judicial activism on not just the right.

People used to pillory Trump for putting in all these extremely conservative judges who

felt they were going to just sort of legislate their own point of view, Supreme Court nominees

who were going to try to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But it turns out it’s happening on the left as well, I guess, just more at the local level.

How pervasive is this?

Like, meaning the issues of San Francisco, are these the same issues of other cities

and towns in America?

Well, I mean, you’ve got Gascon in LA who’s running the exact same agenda as Chesa Boudin.

He’s not prosecuting third strikes.

He was just sued by an organization of deputy DA’s, and the judge is now requiring him to

uphold the law, which is three strikes.

He will not bring third strike charges on his own.

He’s also, this is both Gascon and Boudin now, have prohibited prosecutors from attending

the parole hearings of dangerous convicts, murderers, rapists, whatever, and victims

groups are up in arms because they need a prosecutor to go there and explain to the

parole board why this person does not deserve to be released.

And so you now have recall movements forming.

By the way, they’ve also done stuff like take death penalty off the table.

They’ve taken gang enhancements off the table.

They’re like voluntarily, they’re unilaterally disarming their prosecution teams.

They’re taking away weapons at their disposal to lock people up.

And this is why you’re already seeing recalls forming around Gascon in LA.

There’s now a recall of Boudin forming in San Francisco.

David, go back to what Freeberg just said.

They’re probably not doing a bait and switch on their platform.

So let’s just like, what do you think it is about what they’re saying that resonates

on the way in with the plurality of people?

Yeah.

Here’s the thing that resonates, and it’s not that – again, it goes back to this idea

that incarceration is definitely not the only answer.

This is where I agree.

The problem is Boudin is on the other side of it where decarceration is his only answer,

right?

We need to use multiple weapons or tools in our toolkit here.

So hold on.

So for example, okay, let’s take the drug addict who commits a petty theft.

We all agree that person should go to treatment, not to jail or prison, right?

A nonviolent –

Of course.

Offender, okay.

Reasonably.

But how are you going to get that person to go to treatment?

Because right now there is no leverage whatsoever to get that person to go to treatment because

Boudin’s just not bringing charges.

He’s not prosecuting.

The choice should be given to that person.

Listen, you can either go to jail or you can go to treatment.

Yeah, carrot and stick.

What’s it going to be?

Yeah.

That’s right.

Right now we have all these social services.

Guess what?

Nobody uses them because a hardcore addict is not going to avail themselves of those services.

I would make the argument that we have a broader, bigger problem with the criminal justice system

as it operates, and it is deep, and it is complex, and it is frigging awful.

There’s a book from a few years ago that this guy named Shane Bauer wrote.

I’m just trying to remember the name.

I think it’s called American Prison.

The guy goes undercover, and he goes and works in a penitentiary in Louisiana.

And he reports on what the conditions are like.

And these are these prisons that are run by private companies that are contracted by the

state locally, and what it’s like to be an employee at one of these companies, and what

these employees do, and how the prisoners are treated.

There is no system for reform once you end up behind bars in most prisons in the United

States.

That is, you know, he makes the argument.

Others have made the argument.

That has a long history that dates all the way back to slavery in the United States.

In some cases, it’s just about ineptitude.

In some cases, it’s about unions, especially in California where we have a huge cost for

corrections and for the healthcare and the pensions for corrections officers.

So there’s a lot of complex, competing interests in history that relates to why this criminal

justice system doesn’t largely work on a moral and ethical basis, as we might all kind

of, you know, wear our hearts and look at like how things are working.

And so the problem is everyone sees this or a lot of people will see this voters will

see this system, treating people poorly, being inept, being corrupt, and they want to assist

being racist, and they want to fix it.

And the way they fix it is they see a guy who shows up and he’s like, I’m a sledgehammer.

And I’m going to fix it.

I’m going to take care of all these people.

And the reality is, when you try and take a shotgun and shoot it inside of a room, it’s

going to cause more problems than good.

And I think that’s really what he is.

He is a manifestation of the anger of voters and the anger of people that look at how complex

and racist the system is and how difficult it is to resolve these problems.

And we’re all looking for a simple big hammer answer.

And he’s got the biggest mouth around.

And that’s why people vote for him.

All right, Chamath, and then we’ll wrap it up.

Absent a few words specifically racist, if you took that out, you could use that entire

statement you said, and describe Trump as well.

Meaning the left and the right are moving to these polls, where it’s all about authoritarian

sort of strongmen at the federal, state, local level, folks, to your point, David, that just

want to go and take a sledgehammer to things.

And depending on your political beliefs, or depending on the biases, or depending on your

life lived, you’re going to gravitate to these two polls.

And what’s crazy is over the next 20 or 30 years, these polarizing figures will become

crisper, sharper, smarter.

They’ll find a way to foment all of the support without any of the long tail shittiness that

Trump figured out.

He’s like a beta test of an idea, right?

He was like version 0.1.

Wait till we see version 1.0 of the American strongman or strongwoman.

It’s really going to be fucking scary.

Well, yeah, and this is a guy who was a fan of Hugo Chavez long after he revealed himself

to be a strongman intent on ruling for life.

And so, yeah, he is very much in that mold.

He is a sledgehammer to the system.

But look, I think, and the problems are big and complicated, but look, we all have a role

to play.

The reformers have a role to play.

Public defenders and defense attorneys have a role to play.

And the district attorneys and prosecutors have a role to play.

And the problem we have right now and the role of the district attorney is to prosecute.

I don’t think that this, by the way, Saks, is a very difficult problem to solve.

I think there are just so many misaligned incentives.

It’s very clear that we don’t try to reform people when they go to prison and that there

is a weird incentive when it’s a for profit prison and the customers and the revenue is

based on how many people you have in the prison.

So if we just get rid of that, there’s no private prisons where people have an incentive

to keep people in there.

And then if we made treatment free for everybody and had overcapacity of treatment centers,

and then we look at the drug schedule and say, these are the drugs that are not.

These are the drugs that are not harmful.

And these are the drugs that are really, really, really harmful.

We’re looking at a fentanyl issue like it’s a cannabis issue and that that’s drugs.

You know, cannabis versus fentanyl is like a nuclear bomb versus like a slingshot.

It’s sure there’s no comparison between these two things.

Right.

But here’s the thing.

No one’s going to treatment when they’re not forced.

Well, of course.

Right.

But there’s no treatment to go to.

Maybe the wait for treatment is six weeks.

No, that’s not true.

In a lot of places.

We have a lot of social services that aren’t being used.

There are there is a lot of treatment available.

People don’t want to do it unless they really have to.

Let me bring it back to where we were before.

Maybe the right thing is to actually have a bunch of these sledgehammer folks go off

for the next 10 or 20 years.

You know, the Trumps and the Chesapeudines, maybe they’re all the same.

And maybe what we’re all just saying is enough’s enough.

This system doesn’t work.

So let’s just tear it down.

Every single brick of it, brick by brick at the local, state and federal level.

All I’m saying is just I just want to get your reaction to that statement, guys.

Maybe maybe that’s what people are.

That is what Boudin is doing is he is deconstructing the district attorney’s office

from the inside.

He is destroying it.

He is not bringing charges against people.

He’s driving away all the veteran prosecutors.

But to to bring in it, he’s bringing in all his he’s bringing in his own people

who all were public defenders and have that mindset.

And people are dying.

Look, we can see the results right now in the streets.

Innocent people are dying.

Hannah Abe, Elizabeth Platt, Sharia.

It’s an emergency.

But to Chamath’s point, is there any validity, Sachs or Friedberg, to the burn it all down,

cause chaos, and then people come in and say, you know what?

That’s not going to.

This needs to be fixed.

Let’s have a nuanced discussion.

Will nuance be added to this discussion, Sachs or Friedberg?

We need to improve things incrementally, OK?

You’re not going to make things better by dismantling the whole district attorney’s

office.

I mean, come on.

We need to improve things incrementally.

I mean, look, everything looks exponential until it cycles back.

So, you know, you’re only going to have so much evolution to Gotham in San Francisco

until enough people put their hands in the air and say, OK, you know, time for a change.

Let’s go back and let’s start fixing this.

They are.

They are saying that.

That’s why we’re having that.

I mean, there’s a recall Chesa Boone movement, flexing a muscle and making it stronger.

I think, you know, we’re learning a lot about what approaches to criminal justice reform

work and what approaches do not work.

And it is clear that a local only non-prosecution position is not going to work with respect

to both criminal justice reform and the satisfaction of the society at large.

And we’re realizing that.

And I think we are inevitably.

I mean, there’s so many people that are up in arms.

We are inevitably going to cycle back the other way at some point very soon here.

Yeah.

And honestly, I think you guys are over intellectualizing this a little bit.

You know, when Sheria died because he got hit by that repeat offender, they asked his

wife, who’s responsible for this?

She said very clearly the D.A.

That is who is responsible.

And she’s right.

Let’s stop over intellectualizing this.

I know the problems are big and complicated.

Frankly, people like chase a prey on that because they can kind of obscure what they’re

doing with, you know, some nice sounding obfuscation, some nice sounding words.

But the reality is he’s not prosecuting the way he needs to.

We got to stop this.

Yeah.

And it is possible to have nuance and to hold multiple ideas in your head at the same time.

David, you could there’s a practical reality to people cannot murder people.

People cannot drive in cars and run red lights on fentanyl while saying the criminal justice

system is incredibly biased and racist.

And people who are of color in Texas, you know, wind up in jail for five or 10 years

for selling a bag of weed.

And then we’re investing in companies that are making weed gummies or people are buying

stock in weed companies at the same time.

You can’t have one person who’s a black teenager in Texas going to jail for decades for doing

what somebody in California or Seattle or Canada is getting an IPO for.

I mean, this is a fundamental injustice in the world.

And you’re right.

That’s something like chess or praise on.

But there must be nuance here where we look at each individual situation, say, what are

the ways to solve the problem?

Surgically, not with a shotgun, to David Freeburg’s point, but with maybe a scalpel and a sniper

rifle.

Do we want to move on to questions from our audience because they submitted hundreds of

questions?

Or do we want to move on to the Australia news and Facebook backing out of publishing

news if that’s a bad thing?

Let’s end with the Q&A.

I think, Sax, what the fuck is going on with Facebook in Australia and climate change?

And this is insanity.

Yeah.

So, I think what’s going on in Australia is contemplating a law that would require Facebook

and Google, and I think just those two companies, to essentially pay royalties for hyperlinks

to news publications.

And I think this is mostly at the behest of some powerful newspaper magnates down there,

I think, like Rupert Murdoch and folks like that.

I love the way you say magnates.

Well, they are.

I mean, you know.

But this issue is going to be very closely watched by Europe and maybe even the US.

It’s basically like a wealth transfer from Google and Facebook to the traditional media

and to traditional publishers.

This is an issue where I actually side with Zuckerberg and Facebook on this.

I mean, I kind of throw up a little bit in my mouth saying that.

But look, Tim Berners-Lee has come out and said that it could really interfere with the

open internet and the worldwide web if you start to tax hyperlinks.

I mean, historically, hyperlinks and the titles on hyperlinks were fair use.

You could use those things without violating somebody else’s copyright or need to pay them

a royalty.

And so, I think that it’s bizarre to me that Facebook and Google wouldn’t now be able to

use hyperlinks.

And I’m kind of worried about where that goes.

Well, Facebook said that they’re not going to publish links now for Australian news.

But then they followed that up with they were also going to start

dismantling any anti-climate change content.

I don’t know if that’s just in Australia.

Well, there’s labeling.

So, there’s another thing going on, which is they’ve decided now to label

any posts involving climate change, which is part of the whole censorship debate.

It’s separate but related in the sense that the traditional media is cheering on censorship.

But then when Facebook essentially censors these links because they don’t want to pay royalties to

the traditional media, then the traditional media is up in arms.

And so, they’re very selective in how they view these issues.

My principle is very consistent, which is I want an open internet.

I’m against censorship in all of its forms.

And I’m worried that this new Australian law could really lead to an overall reduction or shutdown.

Here’s what’s really, I think, going on is that with fair use, the doctrine of fair use,

it’s a four-part test.

You’re a lawyer.

Obviously, you know all the sacks.

But to sort of educate people in the audience who don’t, there’s no specific

number of characters, no specific percentage of the original work that you can use to clear

yourself of fair use.

Fair use is a test.

When it goes before a judge, a judge looks at this four-part test.

The percentage of the work you used, is the public confused?

Is there some educational or criticism version of it?

So, if you were to use 10% of this podcast, and you were to wrap it with, put us in a picture

window, and you were 50% of it, and there was no confusion that you were commenting on this,

that would be fair use.

Or if you were to use it in an educational system, and if you were monetizing it.

Now, if you were to just clip our podcast, like this one website,

clipped the podcast and made 60 clips of it, took our file, and I sent them a cease and

desist, actually, and said, hey, don’t do this.

We’re doing it ourselves.

They fought us.

They said, we’re fans.

And I said, I don’t care if you’re fans or not.

You’re not linking back.

You’re not giving us credit.

And you’re doing 60 clips.

If you want to do one or two clips, and you want to comment on it, that’s fine.

But you can’t take all 60 clips and make a 60 clip version of this.

And so fairness is, in the word, fair use.

The problem with Zuckerberg and with how Google has used journalist content is, they are clipping

out specific sections of it and putting it in something called one box on Google.

So many of you might have said, how many people, you know, how many pounds are in, you know,

whatever, or what time is this TV show on?

And then the content that was made by the Ringer or the New York Times gets clipped,

and they put just that section, David, with an algorithm, and they give you the answer.

So you don’t need to go visit that website.

This is tipping over into what I would call unfair use, because you’re eliminating the

person linking.

Now, let me finish.

Yeah.

If it was just the URL, and you didn’t pull the headline, you didn’t pull the abstract,

and you didn’t pull a photo, that would be fine.

There is a very easy solution to this, which is, if you want to pull the link and the headline,

you pay zero dollars.

But if you want to pull anything else, 100 characters, etc., you need to get a license

from that person, unless you are doing actual criticism.

So there’s nothing to stop anybody in Australia right now from taking a screenshot of a New

York Times story or an Australian, you know, newspaper story and writing some commentary

on it.

You just can’t wholesale take everything.

And so what we’re seeing here is a real-time negotiation between private parties into what

is fair.

And I think Google has a really rich history of sharing revenue.

The App Store, they give 70% to app developers.

YouTube, they give 55% to creators.

And with AdSense, they let you put AdSense on your website, and they give you 68 cents

on the dollar or something in that range.

They never actually disclose the exact percentage, but that’s what I’m told it is.

Facebook has given zero dollars to Instagram users, zero dollars to WhatsApp users, zero

dollars to Facebook folks.

They’re too greedy.

And what Facebook needs to do is either not use the content or come up with some reasonable

payment and come to an agreement with these folks who are now banding together.

And they’re realizing the traffic we get from Facebook and Google is not worth what they’re

taking away from us, which is all that revenue that, you know, they earned in the free market.

And so this is a free market debate.

And I think the government should stay out of it to a certain extent and let the free

market work, which is all publishers should get together in the United States and confront

Facebook and say, pay us unless you use anything more than the headline.

But Jason, I think these things are interconnected, though, right?

On the one hand, if you have an economic stake in distribution of content, but then you’re

also then going to decide under, you know, an opaque definition, what is truth or not

truth, you all of a sudden just become, I mean, the purest form definition of a publisher.

Right?

And I think it just becomes a very treacherous place for both Facebook and Google to end up in.

So it’s almost better –

Well, Google is paying the bill, by the way.

Yeah, no, you’re right.

Google is paying for it.

Facebook has decided not to.

But Facebook, they said something like only 4% of their posts involve this kind of content.

So it’s just not a big deal for them the way it is for Google.

Well, I think it is a big deal for Facebook.

They’re just trying to make a point here because Zuckerberg’s –

Yeah, yeah.

And they’re being overly heavy-handed in their response.

There’s no question about it.

They’re throwing their weight around.

It doesn’t look good.

But I’m not defending Facebook.

I’m defending the principle.

I mean, look, if this Australian principle were used, you wouldn’t have the Drudge Report.

You wouldn’t be able to create a site of news links.

No, you could if it was commentary.

You could put the link and write commentary.

It’s when you just rip the links.

People are objecting to ripping the links without any commentary.

Drudge Report rewrites the headline, puts his own spin on it, and then links.

He would never get caught into this, and there is no publication that would ever object.

What they’re objecting to is taking the photo, taking the first paragraph,

and the synopsis is 30% or 40% of the value.

And so Facebook is a better – and Twitter with their algorithms – are better

front pages than the New York Times front page.

Well, why isn’t this applying to Twitter then?

I think it will ultimately.

They’ll go there as well.

I think this will become the test case, which is if you want to take

more than just the headline, and basically that’s it, or the URL,

if you want to have that little snippet, pay us.

Pay us something.

It doesn’t have to be a lot.

But this could actually solve – if these networks that are making tens to hundreds

of millions of billions of dollars, if they just said, you know what,

1% to the news organizations to keep them viable,

just like anybody else would pay a licensing fee for terrestrial radio or other things.

Why is the Australian government setting the price?

And why are they only applying this to Google and Facebook?

Well, I think they’re going to go right down the line.

I think it’s just a starting point.

But to my point, I said earlier, is I don’t think the government needs to do this.

Right.

I think the news organizations en masse should get together and put their foot down and say no.

And if they did, they would get paid.

It sounds like what the government should do is clarify what fair use entails.

Yeah, just the link.

And then maybe it’s a link plus a title.

I mean, look, it’s never just a link, right?

It’s a hyperlink plus the snippet.

Plus the word.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes, the snippet is the issue.

Right.

Fine.

So the government should clarify what fair use is.

And then if Google and Facebook or whoever want more, they got to go negotiate for it.

Exactly.

But Australia is doing more than that.

They’re setting the price.

And they’re limiting their overreaching policy just to Google and Facebook,

because they know that if they applied it to everybody.

By the way, we do that.

We already do this in the United States, David,

with local carriage of news organizations on terrestrial TV.

So we already mix it up with the FTC doing this with licenses and the public good.

So it’s the extent.

I think the other thing that is going to happen with all of this is like on the other side of

this, the actual media organizations themselves that theoretically could benefit from this

are frankly just going out of business.

Anyways, there’s a Wall Street Journal alert for the owner of the LA Times,

who’s about to sell the Times.

Like it’s very likely that the Times in four or five years doesn’t even exist.

So I don’t really know where all of this goes, except that everybody’s just going to be an

individual person blogging and tweeting whatever opinion they want, right?

So there’d be no money to pay anybody because it won’t really matter.

But what will be left is then these rules on arbitration of fact and fiction.

And I think that that’s where we’re going to end up.

That’s going to be a crazy place.

Because then those folks, those folks then really are the puppet masters.

Yeah, I agree that these traditional publications have like a fundamental business model problem.

And it’s not going to be solved.

Like I think there’s like a misplaced blame on Facebook and Google.

I mean, the fundamental problem with all these publications are you go search for

a news article on something and there’s like 10 versions of the same thing or more, 100 versions.

And you know, when newspapers, we used to have thousands of newspapers all across the country,

and they had a local geographic monopoly.

But once it all got digitized and moved online, you realize how much redundancy there was.

You have thousands of reporters creating the exact same thing.

And there needs to be consolidation.

It doesn’t make sense to have 100 articles.

Not only that, but a point we made last time, which is, you know,

facts have largely commoditized or most facts.

Like, you know, remember we used to open the newspaper and look at what the stock market

prices were.

We opened the newspaper and looked at the sports scores.

We looked at what happened in this place and this place.

Facts about events, facts about the prices of things, facts about sports scores.

That’s all completely commoditized.

I mean, that’s like 90% of the content of what people used to read the newspaper for

has gone online.

And so, as we talked about last time, newspapers and publications of the like have largely moved

into, you know, different sorts of narrative.

And, you know, it’s created a marketplace that has a lot more competition because anyone can

write that, as we’re seeing with Substack and Medium.

And as we’re seeing with our own podcast.

We’re seeing with our own podcast.

And I think that’s, this feels to me like, you know, I went to a media conference back

in 2008, and there was this huge battle between Google and Viacom.

And I was at the conference and I think Larry Page was on stage or someone or Eric Schmidt

was on stage and the Viacom CEO got up and he’s like, when are you going to start paying

us for our content?

And I think that that, and he really screamed at him in a room of like 800 people.

And I feel like that same kind of point of view has persisted until there’s finally some

legislation that they feel kind of gets them justice.

Meanwhile, the world has passed them by.

And, you know, I think this, this will be kind of some transitory legislation that ultimately

the content is going to democratize anyway, and the content creation is going to democratize.

Last topic for me, because I really want Friedberg’s answer to this, because I also

just saw an alert, how the federal government is opening up a vaccination site in Miami

Dade County actually saw Francis Suarez retweeted.

What the hell’s going on with vaccinations?

Are we going to get vaccinated soon?

I said it in December, and I tweeted about it.

And I’ve repeated it multiple times since that the US has enough supply to vaccinate

pretty much anyone that wants to get vaccinated, because we are producing and delivering three

to 4 million doses per day in the US right now.

And there is a just a fundamental issue, especially like, I mean, look at California, you know,

they haven’t opened up, quote, unquote, vaccination to people outside of tier or what they’re

called Tier 1A.

And so this is much more of a kind of policy issue than an administrative issue than a

supply and demand issue.

There’s enough people that want the vaccine, and there’s enough vaccine to just let people

get fucking vaccinated.

And so I feel like the market forces are now kind of converging with policy a little bit

more than they were a month ago.

And the policymakers are no longer fighting and complaining about supply and complaining

about constraints.

You know, we’ve got mass vac sites now in California.

The amount of money that’s being wasted, by the way, in this process makes me want to

vomit every time I read about it.

That’s a whole nother separate issue.

But it feels to me like we’re probably May, June, when enough people are vaccinated that

we can have, you know, a circumstance where people are going to fly without masks and

be comfortable doing so.

But I’m sure there will be these over, you know, constraining rules around what people

can and can’t do in public for a very long time.

Like I mentioned, what happened?

I do want to say one thing that I’ve noticed, we were we were all we played some poker the

other night, we were with a friend who got vaccinated.

And I was like, he said, This is my first time playing poker with people.

And I was like, Well, you got vaccinated?

Like, why aren’t you?

He’s like, Well, I don’t know if other strains are going to get me or, you know, if this

thing’s evolving, and other people are going to get sick.

And if you think about what’s happened over the last year, people have been conditioned

to be afraid.

And so even though we’re getting vaccinated, even though this thing is moving and working,

I’m concerned that we’re not going to end up in a more civil state.

Schools aren’t opening.

People aren’t flying, people aren’t doing stuff, even after vaccinations and science

and data shows that these things are okay.

Maybe there’s some cases of it.

But what I’m saying is, like, you know, the human subconscious gets trained first.

And then our conscious mind rationalizes what we feel.

We’ve all now been trained over the past year to be very afraid.

And then we all come up with these rational excuses about why I can’t do x, y, and z.

It’s like, but you’ve been fucking vaccinated.

You’re fine.

Like, all the data, all the science says, go do whatever you want to do.

Go into a nightclub, sweaty, next to people, robbing beats.

Yes.

And tell us about the throbbing nightclub.

Yeah, it’s like that scene from so animated.

It’s like that scene from Good Will Hunting.

Remember when he talks to the psychologist, like, tell us about your rave stories again.

Activating these emotions.

Throbbing, rave, give up to the mob, pulsating bodies.

And did the molly just kick in Friedberg?

Did you drop a molly at the start of the pod?

But my point is, like, people are really afraid.

And I think I just got the best idea for an episode.

The biggest concern I have is, frankly, less about are we going to get vaccinated?

I feel like the convergence between market forces and government nonsense

is now going to allow us to all get vaccinated.

But the issue is really going to be like, how do you break through these rules and the fear

that basically I want, but I don’t understand where are the max vaccination sites in California

and who’s eligible?

Like, why aren’t we just making this thing like a drive through?

We should.

This is where we can absolutely right now.

It’s ridiculous.

We all have absolute violent agreement that California is so messed up with respect to

how we’re vaccinating.

We have so much supply.

We’re sitting on half our friggin supply right now in California.

30 million vaccines sitting on shelves.

We are now at 75 percent deployed.

80 percent.

California’s got like four or five million vaccines sitting in storage.

It should be a drive through.

And you just get in line and you go.

And some places we’re doing is, you know, but what we’re doing now is you got to schedule.

Oh, yeah, scheduling is bullshit.

Because first you got to qualify, then you got to schedule an appointment.

And then the clinic or whatever is only open from nine to five.

And so like how many doses they really administering when you got to make an appointment?

Probably one every half hour.

So maybe they get through 16 people a day or something like that.

Improved qualifications.

Yeah.

And they get fined a million dollars and lose their medical license if they inject the wrong

person.

So, I mean, you’re talking about 16 people per day at a site when they could be doing

a couple of hundred.

I mean, it’s crazy.

Well, Johnson and Johnson is coming and that’s refrigerator stable, right?

Freeburg.

You don’t even need it.

We now have bought 1.2 billion vaccines.

But let me go back to Freeburg’s point about when will life get back to normal.

I’m not as pessimistic as you are, Dave, about this idea that life won’t go back to normal.

And part of the reason why is I’m seeing so much outrage about school closures right now.

California is one of the only states in the country that’s still completely closed all

the schools and people are absolutely up in arms.

I’d say it’s as big an issue as this exploding crime issue.

Crime is a big issue in the cities and school closures is the big issue in the suburbs.

And if these two things don’t turn around, I think Gavin Newsom is going to get recalled.

I mean, people are just on fire about this.

Yeah.

But I mean, my point was like our wealthy, conservative, you know, friend that lives

in Florida was afraid to go do stuff even after he’s been vaccinated.

Yeah.

And I think that’s what’s permeated everywhere.

It’s just like there’s a shark.

Freeburg, it’s like a shark attack.

You know, if this is shark attack, you know, at Half Moon Bay or whatever, people don’t

swim there for a couple of weeks.

And then somebody swims and they’re like, oh, the water is great.

People will jump back in.

I think it’s April, David, to your point of when this goes back to normal.

Because if you look now, people have been saying, Freeburg, correct me if I’m wrong.

Would you put a 5x multiplier on the confirmed COVID cases, a 4x multiplier?

Yeah, 5x I think is the right median.

So if you have 30 million people who’ve had the vaccine, had COVID, you’re looking at

five times that is 150.

Now you have 60 million people who have been vaccinated.

We’re at 210.

There were 330 million Americans, 70 million are under our kids.

So, you know, we’re basically getting to herd immunity.

And if you look at the slopes right now, what is causing the drop in cases this massively,

David?

Is it herd immunity, vaccine, or people suddenly wearing masks?

What is it?

There’s complexity because everyone assumes that there’s one thing that affects the whole

population.

But remember, the way viruses work is they’re hyperlocal.

And so the local population dynamics looked at on a scale is where you see the statistical

results of the scale.

And so, you know, we saw this in North Dakota, a bunch of people got really sick, they got

to herd immunity in communities, and then all of a sudden, it dropped off the curve.

When you zoom out, and that’s happening, combined with behavioral changes combined with vaccines,

then you start to see these statistical things happen at scale.

So it’s not a simple answer.

But the answer generally can be, we are coming down the slope, we are getting to a point

of, you know, general, like, low case counts, low death counts, low fatality, and we should

be living a normal life, allowing our economy to kind of progress again.

And we’re still caught up in this kind of fear, fear, fear.

Pick a date.

Let’s just do this end on this pick a date when you think all four besties are vaccinated.

I’m gonna say April 1, June, June, okay, what do you got free break?

I say April 1, we’re all going to be vaccinated, literally a choice.

I mean, any one of us could go get vaccinated in the next month.

I mean, how?

None of us are over 30 BMI.

I mean, sacks was for a minute.

California is opening one be a lot of the other states are opening broadly.

If any of you wanted to get on a plane and go get vaccinated somewhere else, you could.

I mean, there’s enough places now that have open VACs, or will in the next 30 days, you can go

get vaccinated.

Okay, so you say 30 days, which would be March 15?

I think that’s a choice for the four of us.

If you guys want to hop on a plane, we can go get vaccinated.

Does anybody have access to it?

But sorry, but doesn’t that you’re saying in an open VAC state,

anybody can show up without proof of driver’s license.

I’ve looked into this.

There have been different ways that this has played out.

But generally speaking, there are market forces at play where you know, where there’s a will,

there’s a way not saying that you’re cutting line and screwing people over.

But there are vaccinations that are happening all over the country now,

with people that want to get vaccinated.

And by the way, in California next week, tier one B opens up.

So anyone does that mean?

What does tier one be?

It’s a total bs definition.

It is absolutely ridiculous.

I absolutely think this is the biggest waste of time and money ever.

But tier one B definition in California is healthcare workers, sorry,

childcare workers.

So anyone that’s a teacher or works with children, kids,

if your nanny or your daycare people, you know, wanted to, they could go in and get vaccinated.

Oh, wait, our nanny can get vaccinated.

Starting next Wednesday in California.

And so all you need to do is go get to a vac site with vaccines.

And by the way, they all a lot of them have vaccination supply now,

or they will this weekend.

There’s apparently big shipment going out.

And also all food and agriculture workers loosely defined.

So people that work in grocery stores, restaurants, farm workers,

you’re saying anyone, anyone, if you have a chef, they can get back to no, no,

I think two people out of four on here might have chefs.

I think two of us definitely don’t.

So if you take care of your own kids and cook your own food, you can’t get vaccinated.

But if you do that for somebody else, you can.

So wait, you’re saying if you have a chef and you have nannies, you get vaccinated?

No, you don’t.

I’m saying is, is you.

Yeah.

If you’re a chef or a nanny for someone else, you can go get vaccinated next week.

Right.

But David, what do you want for dinner?

I’m coming over right now to make whatever you want.

I’ll watch your kids this weekend, Dave.

Get me a shot.

It’s so insane.

We have all these ridiculous job categories and distinctions.

It’s just like with the lockdown policy.

They had 10 pages of exceptions for essential workers.

Listen, if you’ve got a policy with 10 pages of exceptions,

the policy doesn’t make any sense.

Like all the and this caused all the controversy in LA.

Like anyone that works in the movie business is an essential worker.

But people that work in restaurants and bars are not.

Let’s see this for what it is.

It is payoff to do some political supporters.

The politicians are using they use essential worker exceptions.

And now they’re using vaccines as political capital.

They dole them out to their supporters so that in exchange for votes down the road.

Remember the exception, David, if you serve more than seven courses in your prefix,

you can get a vaccine.

So that is the French laundry.

If you add an amuse-bouze and an intermezzo, you qualify for the vaccine.

There are people going to states, renting houses and getting driver’s licenses.

Vaccine tourism.

And getting vaccines.

I know about this.

It’s called vaccine tourism.

By the way, think about it this way.

In six weeks, I think a lot of those restrictions are going to fall by the wayside

because the supply is going to completely outstrip the nonsensical

restrictions and prioritization methods we put in place.

And hopefully, God willing, these idiots who have the ability to vaccinate people

open up their sites 24-7 and drop all the bullshit questionnaires and registration requirements,

let people drive in, get a shot, wait 15 minutes and leave,

and have just some basic principled people on site that can take care of people if they have

an adverse allergic reaction and get shots in arms.

We have the shots.

We have the supply.

We’re going to be oversupplied by May.

We’re going to have far more shots than there will be demand.

And so, you know, we just need to get this kind of nonsense thrown out the window.

All right.

Straight to Q&A.

This is from Videsh.

He says, where are you investing your money over the next 10 years?

So, Friedberg, you want to start and then we’ll go to Saks and then Mr. Polihopatia.

I’ve talked about this pretty largely, you know, on the podcast.

Two areas that are super interesting to me that I’m spending a lot of time on is obviously

biomanufacturing.

So, the idea that we can kind of move away from traditional animal-based agriculture

and systems of production to systems where we use genetically engineered microbial organisms

to produce molecules and materials and food and that system of production can have a radical

impact on the environment, on the opportunity for jobs, on the cost of goods and things

that humans want and consume.

And that’s a primary area of interest for me.

And I think it’s a multi-decade.

I think by 2050, you know, we should see most of our goods that are manufactured rather

than being made in the traditional sense, which is basically old technology scaled up,

which is what the Industrial Revolution did, but really shift to a new model of manufacturing

where we use a smarter machine, which is a biological organism to make stuff.

So, that’s my interest.

Saks.

Yeah.

So, I’m focused on the area of bottom-up SaaS, which is basically business software that

can go viral very much in the mold of Yammer, which was a company I founded and sold back

a dozen years ago.

It was the precursor to Slack, let’s be honest.

Right.

It could have been $27 billion, but you did not ride your winner.

You took the quick billy.

And that was not a mistake because it lets you invest in the other 20 unicorns, correct?

Kind of.

I mean, so.

So, oh, you do have a chip on your shoulder about selling too early.

No, no, it’s not a chip.

I would say that around the time that PayPal hit a $200 billion market cap and Slack had

a $27 billion outcome, I started realizing, you know, if I just stuck with my ideas longer,

you know, I probably would do better.

And I’m like, you know, I don’t really need to come up with a new thesis or a new idea.

I already came up with the idea 12 years ago, which is to make business software viral.

I’m just going to keep investing in that thesis.

So, it’s not that original or new for me, but it is, you know, bottom up has become

the, I would say almost the dominant mode now of SaaS.

Explain that to somebody who doesn’t understand what you mean, bottom up.

Yeah.

So, bottom up means that the entry point for the software is any employee in the company.

They can just start using it.

They go to your website.

They start using it.

They spread it to their coworkers, as opposed to top down.

Top down is like the Oracle sales guy who carries a bag and goes to meet with the CIO

and, you know, sells them a big expensive implementation.

That’s the, and that’s traditionally what business software used to be,

is a big top down IT sale.

Bottom up is, is just going in through the rank and file employees.

All right.

Chamath Palihapitiya, for the next 10 years, where are you putting your money?

Two areas.

Inequality, well, it’s not even 10.

I would say for the next, for the rest of my life.

So, it’s, I think these arcs are multi-decade, but inequality and climate change.

And so, you know, the inequality side, what does that mean?

It’s any business –

By the way, the second you said inequality and climate change, Sachs left.

He went to throw up.

He was just like, what is this nonsense?

He just ran.

He went to throw up.

He’s like, oh God, here we go.

He’s back now.

He’s back.

Sachs, did you throw up when Chamath said inequality and climate change out of your bag?

When he said his woke nonsense, did you just go throw up?

No, I, I, I’m upset.

He burnt your signal and you threw up.

He had to polish his glock.

He just called a security detail.

He went and he kissed his gold bricks that he keeps in his house.

No, inequality basically means anything that evens the starting line.

If that’s healthcare software that solves a chronic condition or if that’s financial

software that drives inclusion, and then climate change is pretty obvious, but the

panoply of things that we need to do to basically, you know, slow the warming of the earth,

those are the two areas.

Huge opportunity.

For Videsh, if you even care, I take a Remora-like approach.

If you don’t know what a Remora is, you ever see like a big shark and then there’s like a

bunch of things stuck to it and it’s like following the shark and it just eats whatever.

So basically what I do is I’m getting behind these three guys and I just draft on these

three sharks and just try to weasel my way onto their cap tables.

It’s a, it’s a living, you know, basically I just go to the poker game and try to.

No, in all sincerity, I am state, I am vertical agnostic because I think the great companies

make the verticals.

They create the categories and the categories don’t exist.

At your stage, particularly.

Yeah.

What’s that?

At your stage, particularly, yeah.

And so what I do in the early stages, I am focused on the process and the process I’m

trying to master here is what I do at thesyndicate.com, which is find great companies and

share it with now 7,000 accredited investors and let them decide, you know, how much they

want to invest in each deal.

And just to give people an idea, we are on a $60 million run rate this year of deploy

capital via the syndicate.

In other words, it’ll be four times, five times what my fund will do.

The fund has access to 100% of deals, but the syndicate has access to 60% roughly.

So now that we’ve broken our no advertising rule.

No, I mean, we’re all talking our book here.

Let’s take another question.

And Angel is available from HarperCollins business.

Oh, here’s a good one.

By the way, if you want to save money on car insurance, metromile.com.

Sorry, go ahead.

Absolutely fantastic.

Also the ticker symbol.

What’s the biggest investment venture miss?

You had early starting out.

That would have been a ridiculous return.

What is our anti portfolio looking like?

Friedberg?

We’ll start with you.

Then go Chabot.

Then go sacks.

Free.

I was with, um, Jack Dorsey and, um, and, uh, at this conference and he went around and

did a pass the hat on who wanted to invest in his new startup called square.

That’s my story.

What, what is that?

A 50, is that a $50 million miss?

Um, yeah, I’m not going to say it, it would have been 50 K in at 10 million, but I mean,

the problem here’s, by the way, an interesting thing, going back to the point Saks made earlier

and that we’ve said in the past, you know, when square went public, there was a lot of

questions and trepidation around its valuation.

Big fund managers were poopooing the company.

And what’s the market cap of square today?

Saks, you might know.

100, 120, 120 billion.

Wow.

I mean, 125 billion today.

That’s incredible.

Because like when they went public, people were kind of poopooing it saying this thing

is a, this is a sub billion dollar company, you know, it shouldn’t be worth anything more

than a billion dollars and look at it just a few years later.

Um, anyway, yeah, I missed it.

I missed that one on the seed round.

And, um, and I’ve just watched with, with awe at what Jack has continued to innovate.

As a public company, it troughed at a $4 billion valuation.

It did, right?

It did like five years ago.

And so within five years, it’s gone from 4 billion to 124 billion.

I was in a venture capital fund that invested in it.

They distributed the shares.

I sold half and I was like, I’ll just keep half.

I like Jack.

I sold half at 72.

And now it’s at 276.

And so ride your winners, folks.

Saks, anti-portfolio, which one is the most painful?

Honestly, I haven’t missed that much to speak.

Okay, there you go.

Jesus Christ.

Unbelievable.

What a douche.

What a douche.

What a fucking douche.

Well, actually, um, I, I analyzed my chess game with Peter Thiel.

And actually my check, my castle, uh,

Queen’s eye castle was actually a brilliant move.

If he hadn’t pinned my, no, I mean, look, I, uh, I, I, I tend, I, I look,

I don’t overthink these things too much.

I mean, it’s why I’m in like 27 unicorns.

If the company looks good, I, I invest.

Is this Phil?

It’s Phil Helmuth here.

Unbelievable.

Phil Helmuth.

Well, you know, I got my 16th ring, but I’ve won 29 of the last 30 sessions.

No.

What would you say your total like multiple is on all your angel investing?

Like, do you have a sense of what that number is?

Saks, answer the question.

Come on.

The audience asked what you missed.

Can you just be humble enough to say you missed something?

No, no, no.

I’ll tell you.

I’ll tell you.

So this was a semi, sort of a semi-miss is that, um, is that-

Oh my God.

It’s not even a miss.

It’s a semi-miss.

No, no, no.

Back in-

Well, here’s how I made up for it.

No, no, no.

I only put in half my normal amount.

No, no, no.

Let me tell you what happened.

I did miss it.

So, uh, back in 2007, um, I thought Twitter was going to take off.

I had a, like a former employee who wanted to sell secondary.

And so, you know, I had a deal worked out to buy, I think a couple hundred thousand

dollars of shares at, I don’t know, a $40 million valuation or something like that.

And, um, we submitted it to the company and then they rophered it for, cause I think Chris

Saka, for Chris Saka, basically, I don’t know if you remember Saka had set up like some

secondary-

Secondary thing.

Yeah.

So, yeah, the fact that, you know, I wasn’t able to complete that transaction probably

cost me, you know, a couple hundred million bucks.

Chamath, anti-portfolio, what sticks out?

Well, I have a, I have a huge anti-portfolio.

Huge.

Robinhood.

You know, Airbnb at a billion, obviously.

I actually did invest.

I agreed to invest, but then I got into a huge public snafu with, with Chesky, cause

he was taking a bunch of money off the table.

And then we ended up not even finalizing the investment.

And your letter was, your letter was published.

My email was leaked.

Yeah.

It was leaked.

So I was really pissed when they did that.

But anyways, that was a decade ago.

Not much has changed, I guess.

There is one thing that above all others, which is sadly also in my portfolio.

So my portfolio, my anti-portfolio is the same thing.

You can guess what it is, but that’s Bitcoin.

At one point, you know, we controlled low single digits, mid single digits of the entire

float.

And had I held on to that, that’s talking about, you know, a mid deca billion dollar

position.

So my anti-portfolio in, in the unrealized loss and unrealized gains or losses, if you

will, on Bitcoin is in the many tens of billions of dollars.

Yep.

Mine is clearly Bitcoin as well, because I was reporting on it when it was 10 cents.

And I was one of the first journalists to write about it and talk about it on my podcast.

And I had like maybe 10 of these Bitcoins in a wallet of, that was Mount Gox and it

got hacked and it all went away.

And then my wife bought it at under 200.

And so now we have a joke in the house that my wife is going to, because of her incredible

trade, because she, she saw it as well, return more on her.

It’s conceivable she’ll return more than my entire investing career.

So shout out to Jade for getting that one.

Um, actually, I made that mistake too, that Chamath made of, of not hodling enough, long

enough.

So that, that is, did you guys see, did you see this article?

I fished this article out, but in 2014, I was buying, uh, uh, landed Martus camp in

Lake Tahoe.

And I told the sales guy there, Jeff Hall, I said, Hey, listen, I’ll buy this lot.

If you let me buy it in Bitcoin, because I wanted to promote Bitcoin, Bitcoin as a

transactional infrastructure.

So we went to a company called Bitpay.

They wired it up and I bought it for $1.6 million in Bitcoin.

That was 2,800 coins, which right now is worth 140 or $150 million.

What are you going to build on that lot?

Are you going to put your, I don’t, I don’t even own that lot.

You should make it a grave.

You should make it a grave plot.

You should just, well, my, my ex-wife owns a lot.

I hope I have, you know, she enjoys it, but I’m saying.

You literally could have bought the Knicks Lakers and the Warriors and been the majority

owner in each.

All right.

Let’s take another question.

What’s the number one macro uncertainty or risk you guys are most worried about for your

investment portfolios?

There is only one, and I think it’s inflation, but I think it’s important to understand where

inflation is coming from.

The single biggest risk to all of us is what’s going to happen in the following order of

operations.

So I think all of this sort of at the coming out of the pandemic, basically what you’re

going to have is like four or five major trading blocks in the world, right?

You have China as a standalone, you have Europe as a standalone, you have America slash North

America under Biden.

I think it could be more North America as a, as a standalone.

And then you have these sort of what I would call random, you know, friends with benefits,

Africa, South America, Japan, Korea.

Okay.

But those are all bit players to these three huge trading blocks.

Everybody was going to go and they’re going to go and get vertically integrated.

So it sort of builds a little bit on what David said.

Like you’re not going to have, you know, one central place where you get this thing,

basically, i.e.

China that you ship on a boat to get over here for a whole host of reasons, national

security, carbon, et cetera.

So you’re going to have all these vertically, you know, vertically integrated supply chains

and resilient economies.

You know what that does when you have to try to build that stuff?

Prices go screaming higher because instead of having one factory in China making 9 billion

iPhone cases, you have now 50 factories all around the world, each with their own infrastructures

and costs and whatever.

And so I think you’re going to reflate the world.

I don’t know when it happens, but that’s sort of the biggest risk to all of what we do is

that all of a sudden, you know, real rates go to like six or seven percent.

And then all of a sudden, you’re not going to look at a company trading at 50 times earnings

and say, you know, you’re going to question that.

So I think that’s the biggest risk that I think.

Friedberg, what’s your risk?

Sachs, what’s your risk?

Sachs, you go ahead.

Yeah.

So actually, mine is pretty similar to Tomas, which is I think we’re accruing these unpayable

deficits and debts and obligations.

And, you know, all this money has to be paid back at some point that the U.S.

government’s incurring.

I mean, there’s a California version of this where we’ve accrued a trillion dollars of

pension obligations that we have no ability to pay.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that eventually it translates into inflation, but I think

it translates into something even worse, which is at some point people become skeptical about

loaning money to the U.S. government because they don’t want the U.S. to be able to just

print dollars to pay back these loans.

And the U.S. dollar stops becoming the world’s reserve currency.

I think the reason why we’re seeing Bitcoin go to the moon right now is people are starting

to speculate on the idea that this might be the future world reserve currency because

it’s not subject to manipulation by central banks.

And, you know, and let’s think like that world looks – if you think about like a world

in which the U.S. dollar is not the world’s reserve currency anymore, in which the government

is basically broke, I mean, that is – it’s pretty scary to think about.

There’s a Ray Dalio who’s a famous and, you know, prominent hedge fund founder of

Bridgewater Associates wrote an essay, if anyone’s interested, called The Big Cycle

of Money, Credit, Debt, and Economic Activity.

You can find it online.

He published it last year.

Highly recommended reading.

He has a few chapters that proceed and follow that talks about the grand macroeconomic cycle

of governments and societies, and it’s really worth the read.

I think one really basic principled economic point is that governments operate in such

a way that their people ask for goods and ask for services.

The government spends on those services by borrowing more than they’re making in income

in that year, and that is, I think, the premise for a lot of how governments operate around

the world.

The only way that that works over time is if your future shows that that borrowing allows

you to grow your revenue more, and therefore, you can underwrite taking on debt to pay in

the future.

So, you force growth.

And, you know, I’ve said this a couple of times before, but it is the most basic principle,

but it is also the most scary and shocking principle, which is the only way you can afford

debt is if you have growth, and that forces you to find growth.

And when you’re forced to find growth, you get all of these unnatural perturbations in

terms of economic activity and market forces.

It is not necessarily the case that things should and would always grow.

And we force things to always grow because of the mechanism by which we fund our services

at a government level, and that is what’s basically going to ultimately lead to a lot

of different types of crises, both kind of financial crises but also societal crises

in terms of, you know, revolution and pushes for socialism and all the other things that

are typically associated with things like inflation.

And so, it is the big crisis of the 21st century will be, you know, we underwrote growth in

the 20th century.

And there’s a lot of forces that may kind of, you know, bring that all to kind of bear

this century.

I see one that’s maybe a little less acute and a little bit more big picture, which is

the number of people living in democracies in the world as a percentage of population,

which has been going down, which if you asked anybody, they would be pretty shocked to hear.

But just looking at the percentage of humans on the planet, not the percentage of countries,

because the percentage of countries that are democracies or, you know, flawed democracies

is right now at, you know, 45%.

And we have 55% of regimes are authoritarian or hybrid.

And the population of people living in those is growing.

We have countries that are authoritarian that are growing countries that are democracies,

like in Europe or in the West and the US, Canada are declining or not keeping up pace

in terms of population growth.

And that is, I think, going to be the major issue, which is does China win capitalism

plus authoritarianism?

Or does democracy plus capitalism work?

The next question I think is super fascinating, which is what would each of you wish you could

teach every 12 year old right now?

What a great question.

Chamath, you want to go first?

Do you have something that comes to mind?

We need a minute to think about it.

Wow, it’s such a fabulous question.

It’s a great question.

There’s so many answers.

Very personal for all of us.

Yeah.

There’s so many answers there.

Well, let’s workshop it.

Anybody have a thought?

What comes to mind?

This is very tactical.

Okay, so I’m sure there’s like grander things.

But just the two things we’re not really teaching are coding and financial literacy.

Those are like the two big, I think, omissions in the curriculum right now.

And would be very helpful for people to learn.

Oh, I mean, on that theme, I would also then add

better eating habits and mental health exercises.

Freeberg, you got any that come to mind?

Things you want your 12 year old or everybody’s 12 year old to learn?

I think the principles of biology and how we…

I mean, again, I feel like we underestimate.

And we don’t talk enough about the opportunity and the reality

that is about to hit us like a tidal wave of bioengineering.

Everything in medicine is moving towards this notion of using biological machines

to fix our bodies.

Not just a molecule, which is the historical way of doing medicine,

where you find a molecule, it does something in the body, you stick it in,

you turn it into a drug.

But we are actually on the precipice of creating machines, biologically engineered

or designed cells and proteins that can go into your body and do specific things

and enhance your life and improve your health and solve disease.

Similarly, like I talked about earlier,

biomanufacturing to make all the materials and food

in a more sustainable way and a lower cost way.

And so, I think teaching the principles of DNA,

how DNA causes protein, how protein causes function,

and how cells operate and how that is basically being softwareized.

And you can basically think about biology now as being software.

I think that is the trend of science and engineering.

I think computing created a great foundation.

But I think that’s really…

If I were to tell my 12-year-old daughter in eight years what she should consider doing

or spending her time studying,

it’s bioengineering and what the opportunities are that are going to arise from that.

All great answers.

I think for me, again, move it up a level since you guys took some of my answers.

Financial literacy was definitely going to be in there for me.

But I would say radical self-reliance and entrepreneurialism and resiliency.

I think a lot of young people right now don’t believe that they have agency in their lives,

in the world, that they can create stuff, that they cannot be stopped if they go and do something.

And there’s a victim mentality and culture that the system is rigged against you and

that you cannot rise above, which I understand why people feel that way.

But I actually think it’s less true than ever.

And so we have to basically really remind people that if you are radically self-reliant,

you can live the American dream.

You can create anything you want.

There is absolutely nobody who can stop you.

And all the knowledge you want to learn is out there.

In radical self-reliance, for me, is this concept of the ability to learn.

And the ability to learn how to learn and having faith that you can learn any skill,

even 60%, 70% very quickly, is what I see results in people being successful in life.

This ability to take on any new topic with a zeal and an understanding that you can master it.

Or even 60% or 70% mastery means something.

Going around the horn, we’re going to plan a bestie trip.

And we might even allow besties to come for the first live bestie show.

What is your vote?

I want everybody to type it into the chat room.

I everybody’s going to type in where they most want to have a bestie show.

All right, I like it.

Okay, so Chamath and I both want to go to New York.

Sax wants to go to Miami to see Keith Raboy and Peter Thiel, his besties.

Those are his alternate universe besties, by the way.

They won’t do a podcast together.

No.

Oh my God, how great would that podcast be?

I think that would be, I think you call that the righties.

The righties.

You’ve got the besties, you’ve got the leasties, and you’re going to get the righties.

I’m starting the leasties.

It’s going to be me, Howard Linzen, Sarah Cohn, and Prof G, Prof G.

Now, why wouldn’t you call it the worsties?

The worsties.

Yeah.

I’m going to do the worsties just as a thing.

I had an idea.

Here’s an idea.

If we want to be the number one podcast, Friedberg, do you have any of that Molly from your 1999,

2000 era?

I’ve never done Molly.

I’ve never done Molly.

Sure.

You just made your own synthesis of it and took it.

Okay, great.

Here’s how we become the number one podcast.

We all take Molly at the start of the podcast, and we start the podcast 30 minutes in, and

then we see if David Sax can say, I love you.

Can I just say we’ve done more self-referential naval gazing bullshit on this pod than any

other pod, and I don’t know.

This is like even worse than-

You don’t have to listen to it, people.

We may need to spike-

This is worse than Vlad.

Nick will need to edit the fuck out of this and spike it.

Spike it.

All right, boys.

Here we-

Love you.

All right, boys.

I love you, besties.

Love you, David.

I gotcha.

Love you, other David.

I gotcha.

Love you, Chamath Palapatiya.

We upgraded the Davids, by the way.

No, that’s why we added the thirst trap feature set.

That’s why he went to throbbing and pulsating.

He was just throbbing and pulsating.

We’ll see you all next time on the All In Pod.

And they’ve just gone crazy with it.

Love you, besties.

The queen of quinoa.

I’m going all in.

What your winner’s line?

What your winner’s line?

Besties are gone.

That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

Oh, man.

My avatar will meet me at-

We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy,

because they’re all just useless.

It’s like this sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

What the beep.

What the beep.

What the beep.

We need to get merch.

Besties are gone.

I’m going all in.

I’m going all in.