What’s called a sax LP meeting?
Is it an LP meeting or you go? Are you going to like Peter Thiel a little layer?
It’s 9 a.m. You must be there must be a call going on. It’s actually booted to Ben. Eh, it’s a dish sacks
Every week that Chamath is in Italy another button guts undone
We open sources
Hey everybody, hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the all-in podcast episode 36 back with us today on the
program the queen of quinoa
science
Spectacular
Friedberg is with us again with leading off last episode Friedberg with a great
Friedberg science monologue the crowd went crazy for it. How does it feel coming off that an epic performance in episode 35?
tell us what were you thinking going into the game and
Yeah, well, I was thinking I would talk about the Alzheimer’s drug approval at Biogen
I felt like I did it when we were done
Great. Yeah, it’s just it’s like literally interviewing quiet Leonard. I feel like a 50-point game
Okay, and with us Rain Man David Sachs with layers for players
He’s been styled and groomed
And he’s in some random hotel room. How are you doing rain, man? Good good. I’m not I’m not in a hotel room. I’m oh
Your home just happens to look like a five-star resort. Got it. Forgot that
And give us an idea coming into today’s game
With the layers you obviously are here to dominate and get your monologues up
Gotta be hard for you to look at the stat line and see yourself trailing in monologues behind the dictator
Referring to all in statistics. Yeah, where some maniac is breaking down how many minutes we each talk
Jason I’m really happy with my performance for me. It’s about quality not quantity. I like to stick and stick and jab
Okay, got it. Got it. What are we talking about right now? What what what?
Hell are you talking about right there is a Twitter account done
You know how this the all-in stands have a ton of skills
Like there is an audience for this podcast that has more skills
Then you know, it’s like the 5% of the most skilled people in the world. Listen to this podcast. So
In addition to doing the merge in addition to doing who’s the guy Henry who does all those incredible videos with animations?
in addition to those
Every time I start crushing those things are great. Those are amazing
Of course you have young Spielberg who led the charge dropping credible credible tracks and now we have this new crew that is
Analyzing somebody put you know, we’ll put in the show notes a link to it, but they do
some type of AI analysis of
The audiophiles and they tell us who had the most monologues and then the running time and then historic running time
So they’re actually looking at it trying to figure out
You know who is speaking the most and they thought Friedberg was gonna run away with the episode
But it kind of disappeared in the second half of the game and Schmott obviously came around the corner and took his 27%
But they live a pie chart of how much we each talk. I have a I always have a very strong first and third quarter
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and then
He gets frustrated when he passes the ball and somebody misses a shot
It’s kind of like LeBron in the early days
So kicking off today Lena Khan has been confirmed to the FTC with bipartisan support interesting
And this is obviously going to be a challenge for big tech on Tuesday
The Senate voted 69 to 28 to confirm Lena Khan who is a very well-established critic of big tech
And this is obviously really unique because she’s 32 years old and she’s leaving FTC, which is
Unbelievable. I did a little research on her and watch some videos
she’s basically written two amazing papers and
The first paper came out in 2017 Amazon’s antitrust paper the second one came out in June
And was about the separation of platforms and commerce and when you hear her speak, she is incredibly
Credible and knowledgeable it is as if
one of the four of us were discussing that she could come into this podcast and speak credibly about Amazon’s businesses as opposed to the
charades we saw
At different hearings where the senators and Congress people just absolutely had no idea what they’re talking about
Some of the items I picked up from a talk. She gave in Aspen
is that
She she formed a lot of these opinions by talking to venture capitalists who were concerned about Amazon’s dominance and other companies
And the competitive space and she is looking at consumer welfare
One of the lenses of antitrust, which will I’m sure David Sachs will have some thoughts on as our resident attorney here
And the framing of those in terms of harm of the consumer. She believes there’s other harm that happens
And she thinks one remedy is to kill Amazon basics because the marketplace shouldn’t own the goods as well
She’s concerned about cloud computing a consolidation because that creates fragility
And that is another type of consumer harm while she freely admits that prices have gone down services are free
And this is a consumer benefit. So she wants to rethink the entire
Concept and she is savvy. She brought up Facebook buying a novo the
Reportedly spyware VPN to give them a little advantage as to what was being used on phones and maybe give them a little product
roadmap information she also
Brought up Amazon studying the sales of other products to inform Amazon basics a claim that Amazon says they don’t do
But everybody knows they do do because all that information is publicly available
She talked about Amazon’s VC arm using data to invest in and buying companies. Why wouldn’t they that makes total sense?
That’s great signal for them. She seems to want Amazon Web Services spun out which I think would just double
The value of it or maybe add 50% to the value of it and she gave very pragmatic
Examples like maybe separating Google Maps from Android and when you turn on your Android phone
You you would have to install maps or maybe you would pick from the different maps that are out there different
Programs and that there would be integration in them and people could swap out
You know MapQuest or Apple Maps in their Google searches
So a lot of actually very interesting pragmatic approaches and she doesn’t think these need to be decade-long lawsuits
She thinks this is going to be a negotiation
and that people will kind of work together on it, but this is all with the backdrop of
Partisan politics and you know one group of people looking at this through the lens of wealth and
Inequality and another group looking at it through censorship sacks since you are our counsel here. What are your thoughts on this appointment?
Yeah, I mean the interesting thing is that you know, Lena Khan is the the Bernie approved candidate
She is liked by the progressive left. But at the same time she got 21 Republicans to
Support her and so this
Nomination, you know sailed through confirmation. I think what she’s saying it what she’s saying. I think there’s
There’s a very good good argument to it that and I’ve said similar things in the past
Which is you know, what she’s basically saying especially in the case of Amazon is look you’ve got this company Amazon that controls
essential
infrastructure AWS the whole distribution supply chain going all the way from the port to warehouses to
To logistics and distribution that is going to be owned by a scaled monopoly player. You have a massive economies of scale
It’s pretty clear
they’re going to dominate that and what they’re doing is systematically going category by category and
using the monopoly monopoly profits they make by owning the sort of core infrastructure and
subsidizing their entry into each of these new categories that Amazon basics and others and
She calls that you know
It’s predatory pricing and she’s afraid that Amazon’s is gonna end up dominating every category every
Category that you could build on top of this core infrastructure. I think it’s actually a pretty valid concern
I think you see something analogous happening with Apple and Google and the app stores
We had a congressional hearing pretty recently in which you had Spotify on other apps
Complaining about what Apple was doing to them saying they are making our service non-viable with the 30% rake that they’re charging
You remember Bill Gurley had a great post about this saying just because you can charge a 30% rake doesn’t mean you should
Right now we’re seeing this blowback from this massive 30% rake and you had Spotify saying look
Apple is doing this to basically make us
Infeasible relative to Apple Music. So I think there is a legit point here
Which is that if you own the monopoly platform the sort of essential infrastructure
You cannot use it to basically take over every application on top that can be built on top of that platform
That I think is a very appropriate
Use of of antitrust law and I think so. I think that’s the good here now. I think that there there are some
some concerns or some potential downsides and
You know and the downside that I see is that we used to think we used to judge
antitrust law in terms of
Consumer welfare and so we so there was a limiting principle
To the actions of government, which is you would just look at prices and the effect on prices here
You know the the sort of movement that Lena Khan represents the so-called hipster antitrust movement
They’re concerned about power and they want to restructure markets to avoid sort of concentrations of power
I don’t see the limiting principle there. And so I think what the
Market share be a limiting principle
Well, it would be a limiting principle in terms of who you could take action on but it wouldn’t be a limiting principle in
Terms of how you would restructure the market
And I think what we’re in for over the next few years is potentially a hyper politis
politicization of big tech markets
I think these 21 Republicans might soon feel like the dog who caught the bumper in the sense that yes
They’re finally gonna have the regulation of big tech
they’ve been calling for but they might not like all of the results because we because what could happen is a very intrusive meddling by
government in
the markets of technology and it could go well beyond sort of this this this gatekeeper principle
That we’ve been talking about that. I think what would be a valid reason to regulate to mock
I think she has to be careful in focusing on Amazon. So if you break down antitrust law, there are really
Three big buckets where the attack vectors are and I’m not going to claim to be an expert, but I think
They’re relatively easy to understand. So you have the first principle body, which is called the Sherman Act
That’s the thing that everybody’s looked at and that’s you know, sort of where
most current
Antitrust
Enforcement action has failed on tech companies because it largely looks at the predatory nature of pricing power that certain
Companies have and you have to remember this thing was written in the 1800s
And so, you know, what did people do when they control things? They just they drove prices up tech does the exact opposite, right?
they constantly drive prices down and
What’s counterintuitive is it turns out that in the olden days driving prices up drove out competition
Today driving prices down drives out competition. Yes, right. So, you know you make gmail infinite storage
Nobody else can compete with why switch you why switch you make you know
Photos completely subsidized you make certain music products effectively free and you subsidize that you know
You create enormous amounts of content blah blah blah
So give the Sherman Act then somewhere along the way we realized okay, we need to add something
We created this thing called the Clayton Act that was around M&A
Right. We added to that a lot of folks that are listening probably have heard of Hart Scott Rodino HSR
We’ve all gone through it right on M&A events. We have to file these HSR clearances when you make big investments
for example, you know, I just made a
Climate change thing. We had to file HSR
And then there’s this FTC a which is the Federal Trade Commission Act. That is where she can get, you know
If to use a poker term
You know a little frisky why because the FTC a
has these two specific things which says you can have an unfair method of competition or an unfair or
deceptive act or practice
now it falls on her and her team to basically build the strongest case around those two dimensions and
My only advice to her I wrote this in 2019 in my investor letter as well. Just thinking about the breakdown of big tech
If you’re gonna go after these guys, that’s the body of law that probably is the most
Defensible
But you probably have to start, you know, whether you like it or not with Facebook or Google
And the reason is there are more examples how you can use that language under the FTC a
To give those folks a hard time. I think it’s much harder the example would be Chamath that
We are giving away this product losing money on it to keep you in our store and moat you into our
Advertising Network, etc
That’s an example. Yeah, that’s yeah or or you know, we then we then and
Because then when you have control then you can show that then the first part the Sherman Act part
Kicks in why so you’ve seen 15 or 20 years of Google
Facebook less Apple by the way
Using their edge to decrease price and for the first time in the last quarter both of these two companies
And they were the only two of big tech that announced an increase in pricing, right?
They saw a diminishing of CPM inventory
And so they had to figure out ways to grow inventory as users started to stagnate and what they really said is we’re ramping up
CPMs and CPMs. I think we’re up 28 30 percent in a quarter. Yeah, and there’s a lot of competition right now for it
Put these two ideas together
Which is step one is you surreptitiously basically take all the costs out of the system and then step to raise price over time
There’s probably something there
Friedberg when we look at her age and her obvious
Deep deep knowledge. Do you see that as an overall plus?
I mean obviously if you know David framed her as the Bernie approved candidate
But then conceded that 20 Republicans are backing her. What do you what do you think about?
The massive credibility she has Friedberg in terms of she’s actually understands this deeply
clearly
I’m sure she’s not dumb
If that if that’s what you’re asking, I’m not sure. I mean, it’s a 32 year old
I mean, do we have we seen an appointment like that before? I mean, I don’t know. Yeah, that’s good for her. Um, yeah
So I just feel like there’s a bit of a cycle underway
Where we have this kind of anti wealth anti wealth accumulation
Sentiment as an undercurrent right now, you know, obviously Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and others are our key vocal
Proponents of change that’s needed to keep this kind of wealth disparity from continuing to grow and one of the solutions is to reduce the
monopolistic
Capacity of certain business models specifically in technology
The downside that I don’t think it’s realized and and that inevitably comes with
this action under this new kind of business model of the the technology age or the digital age is
the damage to consumers
And so, you know as as Chamath and David pointed out like historically antitrust has been about protecting the consumer
And the irony is the more monopoly or the more monopolistic or the more market share amazon gains
the cheaper things get for consumers
And um, and it’s unfair to small businesses and to business owners and to competitors
But consumers do fundamentally benefit and so the the logical argument she made in her paper that was widely distributed a few years ago
Um what was around this notion?
That in this new world, it’s not about consumer harm
And we need to look past the impact to consumers and look more at kind of the you know
The fact that this company maybe prevents innovation and prevents competition, but ultimately if the consumer is harmed
In the resolution of that concern
We’re not going to wake up to it for a while
And then consumers one day are going to wake up and they’re going to be like wait a second
Why am I paying five bucks for gmail?
And you know, why am I paying an extra ten dollars for shipping to get my amazon products brought to me every day?
And you know all the things that I think we’ve taken um
for granted
in the digital age
With the advent of these, you know
Call it monopolistic kind of business models where they accumulate market share and they can squeeze pricing and keep people out and the bigger
They get the cheaper they get and therefore it’s harder to compete
Consumers have benefited tremendously. I I think all of us would be hard-pressed to say I would love to pay 10 bucks a month
For gmail i’d love to pay for facebook
And at the end of the day these models i’d love to pay more for shipping with amazon
Um, and so, you know, it becomes a value question, right? What do you value more?
Do you value the opportunity for competition and innovation in the business world or do you value as a consumer?
Better pricing and I don’t think that we’re really having that debate
And I think that that debate will inevitably kind of arise over the next couple of years if and as freeberg
How much this kind of played out?
And I think to be clear freeberg what you’re saying is this is driven by the extraordinary wealth of jeff bezos zuckerberg, etc
It’s easy to pinpoint that problem
And then not involve the repercussions to consumers
If you try and change how business operates in a free market system
And these businesses are successful
Because they have customers that like competition
And they drive in a competitive way of pricing down and they prevent people from coming in and competing
Not by entering into contracts and antitrust enforcement all this sort of stuff
They’re doing it because they’re scaling and offering lower prices
I mean this like peter teal and mark andreessen have separately argued for this in really intelligent ways probably
In a far more articulated way than I can
But and they did this early on which is you know
We want to find businesses that can become monopolies because if you can reduce your pricing and improve your pricing power with scale
It’s going to be harder and harder for someone to compete and therefore
The capital theory is rush a bunch of capital into these businesses help them scale very quickly
I mean
This is obviously the basis of uber and others
And then get really big really fast create the moat create the moat drop the pricing and then no one can compete with you on
Pricing consumers benefit and you’ve created the big business and you’ve locked everyone
Okay, so let me go around the horn here and frame this for everybody. Let’s assume that
Uh, big tech does get breaking up this broken up. This is uh an exercise
um, we assume it gets broken up and
YouTube and android are spun out instagram whatsapp are spun out aws is spun out
And you know app stores are allowed on
Apple’s platform
Uh ios for the first time I want to know if this is good bad or neutral
For the following two people so these breakups occur
Is it good bad or neutral for consumers and then two is it good bad or neutral for startups sax?
I generally would lean towards saying yes
I mean a lot depends on better neutral for each party startups and for consumers
I I think it could ultimately be good for for both
But it really depends on how it’s done
And I think there is a big risk here that this just degenerates into
sort of hyper
politicization
You get intensive amounts of lobbying by big tech in washington
That what happens is, you know, you have a good cop bad cop where lena khan just becomes the bad cop
She’s there to kind of keep big tech in line threatens to break them up
And then the good cop is you know biden
And the administration and then they they become the protection under the extortion racket they raise on
You know ungodly amounts of money and really it’ll be a bonanza for for all elected officials because now
Big tech’s gonna have to increase his donations even more super cynical. Wow. That’s the that’s the cynical take so we could end up
With something much worse than what we have now, but but I think the legit I think the words you’re going to hear a lot
Okay
Are common carrier because what she seems to be saying is look
If you’re a tech monopoly that controls core infrastructure, we need to regulate you like a common carrier
You cannot summarily deny service to your competitors who are downstream applications built on top of your platform
Conservatives can get behind that because that is the argument they’ve been making about facebook cutting off free speech is you are a speech utility
You should be regulated as a common carrier. You cannot cut off people
Summarily, you cannot discriminate against people who should be allowed to have free speech on your platform
And so I think there is I think the left and the right here can cut a deal
Where they regulate these guys these big tech companies as common carriers. I think that is what we’re headed towards
So a bakery can deny service as we talked about previous issue to a gay couple who wants a cake because it’s a tiny little
Company and there’s other choices
But when we’re talking about facebook and twitter
There are not other choices and once you’re removed like trump has been from the public square
There is no recourse you are essentially zeroed out chamath
Is it good for startups bad for startups neutral same thing for consumers if you know one chunk of every company got cleavered off
uh, it’s
Unanimously good for startups in any
Scenario in which they get involved and I think in most cases in which the government gets involved. It’s
It’s good for consumers as well
And why in both cases
So for startups, it’s just because I think right now we have a massive
human capital sucking sound
um that big tech creates in the ecosystem
Which is that there is an entire generation of people?
That are basically unfortunately frittering away their most productive years
Getting paid what seems to them like a lot of money
Uh, but is what is effectively just you know
Um payola to not go to a competitor or go to a startup at by big tech
So to explain that clearly for example, like if you’re a machine learning person
Right, uh those machine learning people
um, you know can get paid
750 to a million dollars a year to stay at google
And instead they won’t go to a startup because they take sort of the bird in the hand, right?
You multiply that by a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand very talented, you know technical people
And that’s actually what you’re seeing every day now
Those numbers are actually much higher, you know, if you’re if you’re a specific ai person, you can get paid five ten million dollars a year
my point is
They could have started a startup and they could have and frankly
They they look let’s be honest
They go to google facebook and whatever and I don’t think anybody sees the real value of what they’re doing in those places except getting
Paid now they’re making a rational economic decision for themselves. And so nobody should blame them for that
um
But if startups had more access to those people
Um, or if you know those engineers finally said, you know what enough’s enough i’m actually going to go and try something new
That’s net additive to the ecosystem. It’s net additive to startups, right?
That’s that’s that’s for them and then for consumers. I think the reason why it’s positive is that it’ll start to show you
In which cases you had been giving away something that you didn’t realize was either valuable or you didn’t realize you were giving away
In return for all of these product subsidies that you were getting
And I think that’s the next big thing that’s happening
You can see it in the the enormous amount of investment apple for example
Is making in both advertising the push to privacy as well as implementing the push to privacy, you know this last
WWDC
You know, they really threw the gauntlet down, you know, they they were really trying to blow up
Um the advertising business models of google and facebook
And as consumers become more aware of that
They’re probably willing to pay more
So a simple example is you know, there are a lot of people now who will pay higher prices for food
If they know it to be organic
right
There are people who will pay higher prices for electricity or for an electric car because of its impact or the lack thereof in
The climate so it’s not to say that people always want cheaper faster better, right?
I mean, sometimes people will buy an iphone because it’s
Obviously protecting their privacy and they know it’s not an ad based model. And in fact apple is now
making that part of their process, so
Freeberg I asked the other gentlemen, uh, if they thought some large unit being chopped off of every company youtube aws
Uh instagram you pick it
Um would be a net positive for startups or negative or neutral and the same thing for consumers. What do you think?
Which gentleman did you ask you mean?
I was specifically referring to the ones who are wearing layers
Yes
i’m using the term
Lightly, so if you guys go back a few years ago, you’ll uh, remember there were these I think there were congressional hearings
And uh, jeremy stoppelman from yelp was pretty vocal
about how google
Um was redirecting
Search engine traffic to their own kind of reviews and they were pulling yelp content off the site
But then they said to yelp if you don’t want us to pull your content, you can turn the web crawler
Toggle off and we won’t crawl your site, but your site is publicly available. We can crawl it and we show snippets on our
Home page, but then their argument was well
You’re using our content to drive your own reviews
And they made this whole kind of case that google’s kind of monopoly in search was harming their ability to do business
Um, you know the counter argument was well
If you guys have a great service consumers will go to your app directly or your website directly to get reviews
They won’t go to google and so it created a little bit of this kind of noise for a while
I think there was some follow-up and this is all very much related because
Ultimately if he was able to get google to stop
Providing a review service his business would do better
Because then google would effectively redirect search traffic to his site as opposed to their own internal site
So it is inevitably the case that in-house apps or in-house services that compete with third-party services when you’re a platform business
um are
You know if they’re removed, it’s certainly going to benefit the competitive landscape, which is typically startups
You know imagine if apple didn’t have apple maps pre-installed on the iphone
Everyone would download and use google maps, right? I mean, they’re
Mapquest whatever or map quest or whatever and so, um, you know
Or whatever startup came along in like ways and said hey, we’ve got a better map
But because they have this ability to kind of put that apple maps in front of you as a consumer
And it’s a default on your phone. You’re more likely to just click on it and start using it and you’re done
it certainly opens up this window, but I think the question is what’s
Ultimately best for the consumer if you believe that consumers will choose what’s best for themselves
You’re starting to kind of manipulate with the market a bit and sax
I don’t know. I think you’ve got a different point of view on this but yeah
Well, i’m a i’m a free markets type of guy but
My experience at paypal really changed my thinking on this because paypal
You know was a startup that launched effectively as an involuntary app on top of the ebay market at that time ebay
Had a monopoly on the auction market and that was the key sort of beachhead market for online payments
So we launched on top of ebay. They were constantly trying to
Dislodge us and remove us from their platform and really the only thing keeping them from just switching us off
Was a was an antitrust thread. We actually spun up
You could call it a lobbying operation where we would send information to the ftc and the doj and say listen
You’ve got this auction monopoly here. That’s taking anti-competitive actions
Against us this little startup
and you know
And so we were able to rattle the saber and and sort of brush them back from the plate
From taking a you know a much more dramatic action against us
and frankly
We did something kind of similar with visa mastercard because paypal was essentially an application on top of visa mastercard as well
We offered merchants the ability to accept visa mastercard, but also paypal payments which were gradually
Eating into and supplanting the the credit card payments
And so, you know visa mastercard had a very dim view of paypal and they were constantly
You know, they were constantly making noise about switching us off
And I I do think that without the threat of antitrust hanging over these big monopolies or duopolies
It would have been very hard for us as a startup
To get the access to these networks that we needed
and so it really kind of changed my thinking about it because
You know if you let these giant monopolies run
Wild run run amok. They will absolutely stifle innovation
They will become gatekeepers
And so you have to have the threat of antitrust action hanging over their heads or you will stifle innovation
Absolutely. I mean if you just look at the interesting google flights over time i’m looking at a chart right now
We’ll put it into the notes
Google flights, you know, I know some of us don’t fly commercial anymore
But you know for somebody who’s uh looking for flights on a regular basis
watching
Google intercept flight information put up google flights and it’s an awesome product and
Just expedia and bookings.com
So jason that was a company called ita software based out of boston and ita was acquired by google
Ita was the search engine behind flight search for most companies. It was like 70 phds
They were all statistics guys, and they basically built this logistical model that identified, you know
Flights and pricing and all this sort of stuff. Oh, wow. So that should never been allowed. Well, they created a white label
uh search capability
That they then provided and they were making plenty of money providing this as a white label search capability to expedia and kayak and all
the online, uh travel agencies
And google wanted to be in that business because travel search was obviously such a big vertical
And rather than just buy a travel search site
They bought the engine that powers travel search for most of the other so gangster
And then they also revealed the results in their own search result homepage
uh, which effectively cut off the otas and the otas are big spenders on google ads, so
So basically google this is how nefarious it is if i’m hearing what you’re saying freeberg correctly
They watched all this money being made by those otas
They watched where they got their data from then they bought their data source and then they decided you know
What we won’t take your cost per click money. We’ll just take your entire business. I don’t know
So so let me just let me just say it another way
What’s best for consumers? So does a consumer because what happens a lot in the dictatorships, I guess
Don’t want to make money in online advertising. There are a lot of these ad arbitrage businesses
This is one way to think about it where um, you know
A service provider will pay for ads on google to get traffic
The ads will come to their site and then they will either make money on ads or you know
Kind of sell that consumer in another way, right?
And so that’s effectively what the otas were is they were they became
intermediaries online search engine intermediaries that were arbitraging google’s ad costs versus what they could get paid for the consumer
And so google right look at this and they’re like wait a second
We’re only capturing half the pie
And consumers don’t want to have to click through three websites to buy a flight or buy a hotel
And by the way, if they did they would keep doing it
So why don’t we just give them the end result right up front?
And then consumers will be happier the less time they have to spend clicking through sites and looking at other shitty ads
The happier they’ll be and the product just works incredibly. Well consumers consumers lives less arduous
While building a power base that then could make their lives miserable
What I think lena khan is saying though is you can’t just look at the short-term interests of consumers
You got to look at their long-term interests
What’s in the long-term interest of consumers is to have competition in the short term
These giant monopolies can engage in predatory pricing to lower the cost for consumers
And so just looking at the price on a short-term basis isn’t enough
And they can trick people to giving them something else that they don’t know to be valuable
So in the case of these, you know, a lot of these companies, what are they doing?
They’re tricking them to get enormous amounts of user information. Yep
personal information
User-generated content and they get nothing for it
And then on the back of that if you’re able to build a trillion look at look at the value that youtube has generated
Um economic value and then try to figure out how much of that value is really shared
With the creator community inside of youtube i’m guessing it’s less than 50 basis points
They get 55 percent of revenue. Yeah, but you’re saying downstream with all that data
Google’s making a massive amount of money. I just want to if you if you impute the value of all of the pii that google
basically
Personally identifiable information all the cookies that they drop all that information and you equate it to an economic enterprise value
Not necessarily yearly revenue like a discounted cash flow over 20 years
You would be in the trillions and trillions of dollars
And then if you discounted the same 20 years of revenue share that they give to their content producers
It will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars at best and so you’re talking about an enormous trade-off where google
basically has
um built
You know a multi-trillion dollar asset and has leaked away less than 10 or 15 percent of the value
But that’s an example where they are giving people something that they think is valuable
But in return they’re able to build something much much more valuable
Hold on
I just want to address like sax’s point
Which is the regulators are now going to start to think about the long-term interest consumer over the short-term interest of the consumer
as um effectively giving the regulatory throttle
uh to uh elected officials
And this means that you’re now giving another throttle right another controlled, uh joystick
Um, uh to to folks that may not necessarily come from business
Um that may not necessarily have the the appropriate background
And that may have their own kind of political incentives and motivations to make decisions about what is right
And what is wrong for consumers over the long term and ultimately those are going to be value judgments, right?
There’s no determinism here. There’s no right or wrong
They’re going to be decisions based on the kind of opinion and nuance
Of of some elected people and so it is a very dangerous and kind of slippery slope to end up in this world
Where the judgment of some regulator about what’s best for consumers long term versus the cold hard facts
Oh prices went up prices didn’t you know, uh, but really saying well this could affect you in the future in this way
Um starts to become kind of a really, you know, scary and slippery slope
Uh, if we kind of embrace this, uh, this this new regulatory order
All right, moving on big news this week. Uh, apple had a gag order. It has been revealed
Um, this is unbelievable. It’s pretty crazy. Um,
And we we only have partial information here, but the justice department subpoenaed apple in february of 2018
about an account that belonged to donald mcgann who obviously was the
Trump’s white house counsel at the time and obviously was part of the campaign
He is very famously, uh known for being interviewed by mueller and at that
This is the time period by the way, we’re talking about here in february of 2018
When mueller was investigating manafort who of course
Was super corrupt and went to jail and then was subsequently pardoned because they he was also involved in the campaign in 2016
It’s possible that this related to mueller. It’s unknown at this time
Uh, many other folks were also caught up in this dragnet rod rosenstein was his second and it’s um unclear if the fbi agents were investigating
uh, whether mcgann was the leaker, uh, or not trump, uh,
Had previously ordered mcgann the previous june to have the justice department remove mueller which mcgann
refused and threatened to resign and mcgann later
Revealed that he had in fact leaked his resignation threat to the washington post
Uh, according to the times disclosure that agents had collected data of a sitting white house counsel
Uh, which they kept secret for years is extraordinary. Go ahead sacks
Well, I I just think let’s get all the facts out here. I think you’re missing some of the key facts
So the the justice department under trump starts this investigation into leaks of classified information. They’re on a mole hunt effectively
And they start uh making they subpoena the doj subpoenas records
From apple and it goes very broad and they end up subpoenaing the records
Not just of mcgann who’s the white house counsel, which is very bizarre and curious
So they’d be investigating their own white house counsel, but they also uh, well, it wasn’t
ships
Yes, but they’re all they also subpoena records of adam schiff and smallwell and members the house intelligence committee
And so you have now, um an accusation
Which is being breathlessly reported on cnn and msnbc that here you had the trump administration
Investigating its political enemies and using the subpoena power of the doj with apple’s compliance
To now spy on their political enemies that that those are some big jumps
Those are some big jumps set up. Yeah, and and that those are some big jumps because
Um, according to preet bahara and some other folks who are in the industry
Um who who have done these actual subpoenas they could have been subpoenaing, you know, one of manafort’s, you know corrupt, you know
partners in crime
And then those people he could have been talking to many people in the trump administration and then subsequently family members and others
So he might have not been the target. He could have been caught up in the metadata of other people
Yeah, so this might not be trump saying get me his iphone records it could be
There’s some dirty person
They know they’re dirty and that person had reached out to other people and they might have even done one more hop from it
schmuck thoughts
I mean
Okay, that’s one version. Yeah, and then you know the other the other version which is important is
You subpoena your own lawyer by going to apple
Getting basically god knows what data associated with this man’s account
And then you know institutes a gag order on that company so that they can neither tell the person
Until now when the gag order expired nor tell anybody else nor have any recourse to the extent that they think that this is illegitimate
That to me smells really fishy
And so, you know like there are other mechanisms that that we know of like visa requests and other things that these big companies
Have to deal with all the time
This at least the way that it’s written and how it’s been reported is something outside of the pale
And so I think you have to deal with it with this question of like what the hell was going on over there
Yeah, it does seem like they were going
uh
I mean, you know kindly maybe mole hunting more nefariously witch hunting
um, but they were trying to pin it on people and
They may have used this blanket
Sort of deniable plausibility of the russia, you know imbroglio
But really what these guys were doing was they were investigating anybody that they thought was a threat
And that is a really scary thing to have in a democracy
And then the fact that these big tech companies basically just turned it over and didn’t have any recourse to protect the user
or to inform the public
Forget trump for a second. I think we don’t
Necessarily want that to be the precedent that holds going forward
Yeah, and the interesting thing here is that sax
jeff sessions
Rosenstein and bar all say they’re unaware of this. So what would be the charitable reason they were unaware of it?
or what would be the
Nefarious reason or is that important at all? Because that’s really strange
Well, they would go after the white house council and adam schiff and those top three people would have no idea
Are they lying?
I mean what’s next is the se you know, are we going to basically go to a point where like, you know
every single
No, but I mean like every single post that one makes on facebook is basically surveilled
If you make an anonymous post on twitter, will you be tracked down?
I remember like as much as everybody thinks there’s anonymity on the internet
There really isn’t and you should just completely assume
That you are trackable are being tracked have been tracked. Everything is in the wide open
It’s just a matter of whether it’s disclosed to you or not or whether it’s brought back to you or not
So, yeah, so look I mean I I agree with jamath that this stinks
and it’s an invasion of people’s civil liberties, but I would not make it too partisan because
The obama administration was engaging in similar activity back in 2013
And I don’t think people realize this the there’s an old saying in washington that the real scandal is what’s legal
And the fact of the matter is that what the trump administration did was certainly suspicious and it might have been politically motivated
We don’t know but it was legal the doj convened a federal grand jury
Got these, uh got these subpoenas present them to apple and got this information
And in a similar way back in 2013, the obama administration did something similar. It’s quite extraordinary
They subpoenaed the records of the ap they for they for two months. They got the records of reporters
and five branches of the ap and all their mobile records and they were on a
Mole hunt to try and find leakers of classified information
So the trump administration basically did exactly what the obama administration did the only new wrinkle
Is that they’d only went after reporters. They actually subpoenaed records of members. You’re missing one huge
You’re missing one huge
Difference trump was under investigation
For espionage and treason at the time. So it is slightly different. Um,
I I don’t think it’s that different in the sense that trump used powers that were pioneered by the obama administration
They just took them. They just took them. Well one little step in addition to that sacks in addition to that
um
When obama did it all the top brass at the department of justice were aware of this and in this case
You have three people who are running the department of administration all claiming. They don’t know no
In 2013, there’s a new york times article on this i’m going to post on the in the show notes, but
It said that when first of all the ap was not informed about the subpoenas until a number of months later
So it was a secret
seizure of records same thing here with the gag order
And so you have people being investigated. They don’t even know they’re being investigated
Investigated they can’t even get a lawyer spun up to oppose the invasion of their rights
I agree with you, but the attorney general knew about that
Maybe the attorney general did but the white house claims that it didn’t know so
In any event, I mean look what we I my view on this is that we shouldn’t try to make this too partisan
What we have here is an opportunity to hopefully get some bipartisan
legislation to fix the issue and I think the fix should be this that
when you
Investigate somebody when you subpoena records from a big tech company, you have to notify them
You should not be able to do that secretly because the fact of the matter is that apple and these other big tech companies
Don’t have an incentive to oppose the subpoena. They’re not your lawyer
And actually brad smith the president of microsoft had a great op-ed
In the washington post that we should post that we should put in the show notes where he said these secret gag orders
Must stop he said that in the old way of the government subpoenaing records is that you would have
Essentially offline records you’d have a file cabinet and the government would come with a search warrant
That present the search warrant to you and then you could get a lawyer to oppose it
Well, they don’t do that anymore because your records aren’t in a file cabinet somewhere
They’re in the cloud. And so now they don’t even go to the person who’s being investigated, right?
They just go to a big tech company seize the records and then put a gag order on top of this
You don’t even know you’re being investigated. That’s the part of it. That’s and by the way, it’s even more pernicious than that sacks because
to
Combine this with the previous story
What incentive does apple have to say to an administration that could break them up? We’re not going to cooperate
of course
Zero incentive
They are not your agent in this and here’s the thing. Those are your records
They’re in the cloud, but they’re your records and every other privacy context
We say those records belong to you not to big tech. So what they’re not apples
This is why apple’s moving everything to your phone, right?
But just this point why should the government be able to do an end run around you the target of the investigation?
Go to big tech get your records from because they’re not your records. Well, first of all, they’re not your records
These companies tricked all of us
By giving it to us for free so that we gave them all of our content
They are fair point just like they are not just the custodian. They are the trustee
of our content
And it’s a huge distinction in what they’re allowed to do and jason brings up an incredible point
which is which is that of course, they’re now incentivized to have a back door and
Live under a gag order because their their defense
In a back room is you guys, you know when when in the light
Somebody says we should break you up in the dark. They can say guys. Come on
We got a back door. You just come in gag order us. Give us we’ll give you what you want
You want a honeypot, right? You don’t want this thing all over the internet
And can you imagine how credible david that is to your point?
because that is a body of
Concentrating power that I think is very scary in fairness to apple friedberg
They have locked down the phone and they’ve moved all of this information from the cloud or they’re starting this process and saying
We’re going to keep some amounts of data encrypted on your phone
And of course with the san bernardino shooting they refused
In a terrorist shooting a known terrorist shooting to not give a back door
Um, well, that’s a crazy standard. It’s like, you know what?
Okay, there was a san bernardino shooter and they were like, nope. Sorry. That’s a bridge too far
But you know don mcgann and basically like, you know
Political espionage they’re like, here you go. I don’t know. I don’t know. How do you make these decisions?
Let me ask you guys a question. Go ahead free bird. Would you be?
Could you see yourself?
thriving in a world
Where all of your information was completely publicly available
But also all of everyone else’s information was completely publicly available
Yes
Oh, everybody has all their nudes on the web is what you’re saying. Everybody
There’s a there’s a there’s a book by stephen baxter called the light of other days
It’s one of my favorite sci-fi books. I sent it out to all of my uh investors this last
We do like a book thing every year
And I reread it recently
but the whole point of the book is that there’s like a wormhole technology that they discover and they can figure out how to like
Look in you can boot up your computer and look in anywhere and see anything and hear anything you want
and so all of a sudden society has to transform under this kind of
New regime of hyper transparency where all information about everything is completely available
But I think the fear and the concern that we innately have with respect to loss of privacy
Is that there’s a centralized or controlled power that has that information?
But what if there was a world that that you evolved to?
Where all of that information is generally available quite broadly and i’m not advocating for this by the way
I’m, just pointing out that like the sensitivity we have is about our information being concentrated
In the hands of either a government or a business
um, and
I think you have to kind of accept the fact that more information is being generated about each of us every day
Than was being generated by us a few weeks ago or months ago or years ago, basically
Everybody everybody’s the truma and everybody’s the truman show is what you’re saying. Well in a geometrically growing way
Information which we’re calling pii or whatever is being generated about us and I think the genie’s out of the bottle
Meaning like the the cost of sensors the access to digital the digital age and what it brings to us from a benefit perspective
Is creating information about us and a footprint about us that I don’t think we ever kind of contemplated
But as that happens, the question is where does that information go?
Can you put that genie back in the bottle?
And I think there’s a big philosophical point which is like if you try and put the genie back in the bottle
You’re really just trying to fight information wants to be free information wants to grow
What’s the name of the book you were talking about there?
The light of other days by stephen baxter and arthur c clark helped write it
But the book is most interesting about the philosophical implications of a world
Where all information is completely freely available
Any anyone? Yeah, completely transparent
And so like do we see ourselves because I think there’s two paths one is you fight this and you fight it and you fight
It every which way which is I want my pii locked up. I don’t want anyone having access to it
Yada, yada, yada
You’ll either see a diminishment of services or the other one is you do or you’ll see a selfie on twitter
Where you take a shirt off or you’ll see this concentration of power
Where we all kind of freak out where the government or or some business has all of our information
The other path is a path that society starts to recognize that this information’s out there. There’s you know, whatever
It’s not just about pii here. This is about due process
This is about our fifth amendment right to due process. You have the government secretly investigating people
They could never do this if they had to present you with a search warrant
They are doing an end run around that process by going to big tech just to put some numbers on this
Big tech is getting something like 400 subpoenas a week for people’s records. They only oppose four percent of them
Why they have no incentive to how many of those?
Do you know how many of those are secret or not?
We don’t know how many of them have a gag order
They are required to tell the target what happened but not if there’s a gag order attached to it
We don’t know how many have a gag order
You should have the right to send your own lawyer to oppose the request not if you want to
For it if you want to see an amazing movie the lives of others, uh, which is about
the state security service in east berlin germany, uh
Also known as the stasi and the impact of literally in your apartment building
There are three people spying on the other 10 people
And they’re the postman and you know
the housewife and the teacher and they’re all tapped and secretly recording to each other it leads to chaos and bad feelings and
obviously when east berlin, um
When the wall came down all of this came out and it was really dark and crazy
Yeah, I mean look let me connect this to the censorship issue actually because in my view they’re both very similar civil liberties issues
Which is in the case of the censorship issue you have the government
Doing an end run around the first amendment by demanding that big tech companies engage in censorship that the government itself could not do
You have something very similar taking place here with these records. The government is demanding secrecy
About its seizure of records. They’re imposing that on big tech. They’re making big tech do its dirty work for them
They could never do that
Directly if they had to go to the target of the investigation and ask for their and and subpoena the records that way
So what you have here is a case where we not only need to be protected against the power of big tech
We need to be protected against the power of government
usurping
the powers of big tech to engage in
You know behavior they couldn’t otherwise engage in and let’s be honest big tech and the government are
uh overlapping and
in cahoots
Or they’re inside. Yeah, they’re in some really crazy dance. The money is flowing freely from
Lobbyists and it’s a very very complicated relationship. It’s a very complicated. It’s a very complicated relationship
All right, seven day average for covid deaths is uh now at
332
um
Finding cases of people who have had covid
Um is now becoming like almost shocking. Uh, I don’t know if you guys saw but uh, the point guard chris paul, uh,
Who is having an incredibly winning season in the nba? He basically got covid
They said he was vaccinated so it could be a mild case, but he’s been
Uh pulled out indefinitely and he’s about to play in the western conference final. So it’s pretty crazy and freeberg. Uh, obviously
california’s opened up after 15 months and
We were the first to shut down the last to open up and we were hit the least I think of any state or amongst
the least of any
We were certainly the least of any large state
Um, and you’re being asked
To still wear a mask at your office
I’m also being asked to take off my shoes when I get on an airplane
Yeah, 20 years later, and yeah, I don’t think al-qaeda exists anymore
Uh, yeah, maybe some yeah parts of it explain what’s happening to you in the presidio, which is a lovely state park
uh here in california
My office in the presidio in california san francisco county and the federal government have all removed mask mandates
But our our landlord has determined in their
Judgment that everyone should still wear a mask to go to work
And so to go into my rented office and work. I have to wear a mask
um, and I think it’s it’s an issue for a lot of people who like there’s people that um,
I’ve been
Probably a couple restaurants this week and you know
You go to some restaurants and everyone’s just chilling the employees are not wearing masks
There’s other restaurants where they’re being told they have to keep wearing masks by their manager or their boss
um, and so
this brings up this big question, which is like we’ve now got the kind of
Psychic shadow of covid that that’s gonna it’s gonna it’s gonna cast a very long shadow. You predicted it you predicted it and um,
And so people that that are in power
Want to continue to kind of impress upon, you know, whatever, you know employees or tenants or what have you they might have
Um in whatever they deem their judgment to be which is obviously in many cases an underinformed uninformed non-scientific
and um
And non-mandated judgment about effectively what people should have to wear
So if the threat or the risk has been removed
And all of the health officials and all of the government agencies are saying the threat has been removed
You no longer need to kind of wear masks
But your boss or your manager or your landlord tells you you have to wear a mask
To conduct your business or to go to work
Um, you know, it’s going to bring up this whole series of challenges and questions I foresee
For the next couple of months at least and maybe for several years about what’s fair and what’s right
And and there will always be the safety argument to be made on the other side
So it’s very hard to argue against that and oh, well, the inconvenience is just a mask
It’s not a big deal
But for you know a number of people to to now kind of be told, you know
What to do and what to wear it’ll take a year
To sort all these things out because they’ll all get prosecuted or not prosecuted but litigated
And they’re going to go to court they will get litigated for sure there will there will be lawsuits on this
And and what’s going to happen is that you’re going to basically have again jason back to that example of the the bakery in colorado
um private institutions will be allowed some level
of independence in establishing
um, you know certain employee guidelines and so on exactly and you you’ll have to conform to those and
um, it is what it is. I mean, I I just it was very strange in austin
in terms of these
Covid uh dead enders who just will not let it go
i’m in austin where nobody is wearing a mask and then there were like I went into lululemon and
They like two people charged me with masks in hands
And they were like you have to wear a mask and I was like do I and they’re like, yes, it’s our policy
I was like fine. I’ll put it on. I don’t care
You know, no big deal thing. This thing has really fried a bunch of people’s brains. I mean, it’s crazy
I mean, it’s it’s basically like you’ve taken an entire group of folks and kidnapped them
And kidnapped them essentially. It’s stockholm syndrome. It’s incredible. No, everyone’s
Everyone’s been held hostage, you know in a prison for the last year
and so you’ve kind of
Accepted that this is the new reality. I gotta wear a mask. I gotta wear gloves
um, and you know
It’s the similar sort of shift in reality that I think was needed going into this
Where people didn’t believe what it was and now it’s hard for them to believe what it’s become
We flagged this human nature. Yeah
Yeah, we we flagged on this pod a few months ago the threat of zeroism. Yeah, which is that we wouldn’t let
You know all the special rules and restrictions lift until there were zero cases of covet
And we all know that’s never going to happen covet will always be around in the background
And just to add a layer to what’s happening here in california is yeah on june 15th. We lifted the restrictions
But governor newsom has not given up his emergency powers and he’s he says he will keep them until covet’s been extinguished
So he’s now embraced zeroism
on behalf of uh
This sort of authoritarianism. Yeah, and you know, so we’ve got this like golden state caesar
and now I
What’s interesting is I don’t think this is just because he’s a tyrant. Although he’s certainly been heavy-handed
I think it’s because that the I think it’s more about corruption than ideology because
federal funds
Emergency funds from the federal government keep flowing to the state
As long as we have a state of emergency
And so the longer he keeps this thing going
The more money he gets from the federal government that he can then use in this recall year to pay people off
And so we’ve already seen he’s been buying every vote he can right
He gave 600 bucks to everyone making under 35 000. He’s forgiving all the traffic fines and parking tickets
he’s doing this this lottery ticket, uh thing for getting the vaccine and so he just wants to keep the the um,
the gravy train from washington
California even though
It’s what government governor timoth would have done
I mean, it reminds me of 9 11 where people were just like hey, we can keep this gravy train. No, I mean like
9 11 is the perfect kind of psychic, you know scenario, uh, you know replaying itself with covid
There are behavioral changes that have lasted forever. There are regulatory changes this, you know department of homeland security
I mean you go through the amount of money that gets spent by the tsa every year
And the qualified risk and the qualified benefit
Completely unquantified right like the amount of money that flows into these programs because you can make the the subjective statement
There is a threat there is risk therefore spend infinite amounts of money right like it’s because because you never kind of put
Pen to paper and say what is the risk? What is the probability?
What is the severity of loss and therefore let’s make a value judgment about how much we should spend to protect against that downside
And we’re now doing the same thing with covid
We’re not having a conversation about how many cases how many what’s the risk?
Should we really still be spending billions of dollars of state funding?
To continue to protect a state where 70% of people are vaccinated and we and we have a massive surplus
And we’re still giving people money
Who may or may not need it and we’re doing it indiscriminately speaking of discussions and hard topics and being able to have them
YouTube which kicked off a ton of people on the platform for talking about things that were not approved by the who
Has taken professor brett weinstein’s podcast down because he had a very reasonable discussion
About ivermectin and its efficacy or lack of efficacy. This is a doctor a phd talking to an md
Um, and the video was removed apple did not remove
This episode these people should not be the gatekeepers of the truth. They have no idea what the truth is
Let’s talk about the the john stewart appearance on steve
Well, that’s what I was about to don’t tell this which is
Yeah, he killed he killed on steven colbert
But the things he was saying about the lab leak would not have been allowed on youtube
If it was three months ago that you would have been removed for it
Even as a comedian the performance was amazing. He basically says
You know the wuhan
Uh, covid lab is where the wuhan, you know, uh, no, the disease is named after the lab. So
Where do you think it came from was like a panel in you know mated with a bat
I mean this isn’t and he goes on this whole diatribe. It’s incredibly funny. Yes, but then at the end of it
Well, I I had two takeaways. I don’t know if you guys felt this at first I was like
I had john stewart’s a little unhinged here
Like I mean there was a part of it that was funny and then there was a part of it
Which is like wow, john stewart’s been trapped indoors a little for 15 months
Yeah, yeah, so I I thought that as well to be honest, but then the second thing which I saw on twitter was
all these people reminding
Uh anybody who saw the tweet that this exact content would have not been allowed on big tech platforms
Were it said three or six months ago?
And I was like wow, this is this is really nuts meaning it takes a left-leaning
smart funny
Comedian to say something satire
If the if the right if the right would have said it would have just been instantly banished and that’s like that’s kind of crazy
Yeah, the great quote was I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science science has in many ways helped ease the suffering
of this pandemic
Uh, which was more than likely caused by science
yeah, well
It was a funny line where he said something like uh, if there was an outbreak of chocolatey goodness in hershey, pennsylvania
It wouldn’t be because you know, whatever the pangolin kissed the bat. It’s because there’s a fucking chocolate factory there
Like I don’t know maybe a steam shovel made it with a cocoa bean
There’s a fucking chocolate factory
He was so funny, he’s so he’s so fun, so I I agree with jamal’s takeaways, I mean this was
Great example of of censorship run amok at these big tech companies
but the other thing I saw that was really interesting was steven colbert lose control of his audience and
You know stewart killed on that show, but you could see steven colbert was I think visibly nervous very uncomfortable
Yeah, very uncomfortable. He did not know what was coming and he was trying to and when and when john stewart kept pushing this
He was like well, uh, he’s not trying to qualify
Well, so what you’re saying is now that falchi has said this might be a possibility
You’re saying it might be a possibility and john stewart was having none of it
He ran right over that said no the name is the same. It’s obvious. Come on
And yeah, like colbert kept challenging him. I don’t know if you saw this part where he said hey listen
Is it possible that they have a lab in wuhan to study the coronavirus disease because one there are a lot of novel
Coronavirus diseases because it’s a big bat population and then stewart is like no i’m not standing for that
He goes I totally understand
It’s the local specialty and it’s the only place to find bats. You won’t find bats anywhere else
Oh, wait, austin, texas has thousands of people out of a cave every night at dusk
And he wouldn’t let it go. So it’s just great watching it was it was a reminder frankly of how funny
Both john stewart and stephen colbert were about 15 years ago
And I frankly I don’t think stephen colbert is funny anymore because no because he’s got to keep his job
He’s carrying water. He’s also too woke and and yeah, yes
He’s become very polemical and and what stewart reminded us is that comedy is funny
when it’s making fun of the people who are pretentious and basically who aren’t telling the truth and
Stephen colbert has become so polemical that he’s lost sight of the comedy and john stewart brought it back and I hope you know
Colbert colbert had this element of satire which even stewart because stewart was in your face funny
Whereas colbert was like subtle and dry and you had to think about it. There was layered
And for sure, he’s totally lost it totally totally lost
Well, if you know and then and then and then I thought stewart came out swinging hard
I do think though sax you have to agree
Did it seem to you though?
Like stewart had not like he just needed more human to human interaction. Absolutely. He was a caged tiger, man
He was a caged tiger. They let him out. He was like, you know going off. Absolutely
But it was the funniest thing john stewart’s done in many years and the reason is because
He connected with the fact that here is this obvious thing that we’re not allowed to say
And that is what comics should be doing. Yes, put a light on it
I mean if comedy is tragedy plus time, I think that this is a great moment for us to
Reflect on like I think we’re gonna go back to normal pretty quick
Um, if you remember after 9 11, there was this idea that comedy was over forever
You were not going to be able to make fun of things and that this was the end of satire people were this is you know
Um a bridge too far etc. And I think we’re back. We’re back and that’s it
You know, we can joke about the coronavirus we can talk about it
We don’t need to censor people for having an opinion. We’re all adults here
um, you know the idea that
You know, we have to take down people’s tweets because they have some crazy theory or put a label on them
Like we went a little crazy during the pandemic
And tried to stifle discussions for what reason?
Exactly. Like when we look back on this, it’s gonna look really strange that we
Demanded that we put labels on people questioning or having a debate including doctors
Doctors were not allowed to debate
to the public on youtube or twitter about
Uh, what was the drug that trump kept promoting?
Hydroxychloroquine chloroquine like remember that whole chloroquine. I think this uh,
Ivermectin or whatever it is
It’s just triggering people because it feels like that last drug
Which is a drug that may or may not work to slow down the progression of covid
But anyway, this is all over if you haven’t gotten your goddamn vaccine, please get it. Stop denying science
Stop denying science and climate change climate change is not real
Oh my god, the youtube just canceled their account javad. What are you doing?
We talk about science as if science is a definitive answer to a question
It’s a process a process by which you come to answers you test them and look hydroxychloroquine may have been completely wrong
But let the debate happen. The answers came out. Anyway, i’ll tell you a fundamental premise of science. It’s a challenge assumptions
and so when you challenge, um
An existing hypothesis or kind of an existing thing that we hold to be true
You are engaging in science and the rigorous debate around what works and what doesn’t work was notably absent over the past year
Because everything became about the political truth
You’re either true or you’re false based on your political orientation and we reduced everything down to kind of this one
Politics this one-dimensional framework, which we have a tendency
Let me just point this out to you guys. I was going to mention this a few weeks ago
But like think about every conversation you have
how um common it is now to immediately think about what the person on the other side that you’re talking to just said
And then trying to put them on a blue or red spectrum
It’s it’s it’s how we’ve all kind of been reprogrammed over the past decade or so
Where it used to be about the topic itself?
And the objective truth finding or the or the specifics of what we’re talking about
and now it’s become about you immediately try and resolve them to being conservative or
Or not red or blue trump or not purple
And so every conversation you kind of try and orient around that simple
Ridiculous one-dimensional framework and it’s a complete loss of the discovery of objective truth in all matters in life
And all matters in that affect all of us
Um, and it’s uh, it’s really quite uh stark and sad. This is why we need a new
Political party the reason party. I think it’s less about that
I think it’s more about everyone just reorienting themselves when you have a conversation just notice yourself doing it
And then recognize that maybe that’s not the way to make a decision about the conversation or about having an opinion or a point of
View but have an opinion or a point of view about the topic itself
Not about the orientation of the topic on a on a single dimensional spectrum
And then layer identity politics into that so not only your politics
But your gender your race your sexual preference the color of your skin
and now how is anybody supposed to have a reasonable argument when I have to process like
Oh chamath’s from
You know sri lanka, but he went through canada and he worked for I mean, it’s well
It’s so reductive that no one gets
It’s so reductive that no one gets to have an identity anymore
Right because we we are all complex and all issues are complex and they are all nuanced
And when you reduce everything down to kind of this one-dimensional framework
You lose any ability to have depth to have nuance to have said another way the issues are complex enough
We don’t have to put identity politics or political, you know leanings on top of it
All right, so we had the worst fire season, uh in california ever last year
Obviously as chamath said global warming is a conspiracy
um by the chinese, uh as per your guy trump, uh sacks and uh
There is climate change in switzerland. There is a center called the center for climate change
There is a reason that there’s climate change in switzerland. It’s coming from that lab. Ah, the center did it
Look at the side
Look at the side. It says
They’re getting paid to propagate this conspiracy theory. Yeah. Uh, all right, so it’s it’s going to be the worst
Well, we are at risk more than ever right? So we’re entering june
So as of june 1st, the california snowpack is down to zero percent of normal. That’s never happened before
So it’s the lowest it’s ever been there. There is absolutely like no snowpack in the entire sierra in the entire state
40 of the state is in a state of extreme drought right now
We’ve had 16 000 acres burned as of a few weeks ago up from 3600 during the same time period the same day of the year
last year
um, and so the the tinder is there now remember
uh last year was the highest um
Uh california has ever seen we burnt 4 million acres
Uh last year california has about 33 million acres of farmland of forest land representing about a third of our total land size in the state
Um, you know 60 of that land is federal 40 is private
um, and so the the big kind of variable drivers this year are going to be um,
You know a wind and heat and we’re already seeing a few heat waves
But it’s the wind that kind of kicks these things off, but the tinder is there right? So like the state is dry
um, the uh, the the the snowpack is gone. We’re on severe water restrictions in a lot of counties throughout the state
Um, it’s worth I think talking about the carbon effect, you know last year
Um based on the forests that burnt in california
Uh, we released about one and a half times as much carbon into the atmosphere from our forest fires as we did from
cars burning fossil fuels in the state
um, and so
Wow, so here’s some statistics for you guys, which I think are just worth highlighting
Um, there’s about 2 billion metric tons of carbon stored in california forest land, which is about 60 tons per acre
um, so there’s
About 9 million new tons of carbon sequestered per uh
In california by our forest land per year when there’s a fire
We release about 10 tons per acre. So about one sixth of the carbon in that in that forest land
The rest of the carbon doesn’t burn up
So remember when there’s a forest fire typically the outside of the tree burns the whole thing doesn’t burn to ash
And so a forest fire can actually if you look at the longitudinal kind of effect of it
burning forests
Can actually preserve the carbon sequestration activity versus, you know, just removing forest or removing trees
And so there is to some extent, um, you know an effort that has been shut down several times
Which is to do these kind of controlled burns through the state, but it’s met with such resistance
Uh given that it’s so controversial. No one wants to have smoke in their in their neighborhood
It shouldn’t be it shouldn’t be controversial
The problem is you can’t present simple data and have people have a logical conversation about it and the cost per acre
To clear land and farm to forest land in california is it ranges depending on the complexity of the land
But it’s somewhere between 50 and a thousand dollars. So call it a couple hundred dollars per acre
So you can very quickly kind of do the math on a carbon credit basis chamath. So it’s about 40 bucks per ton
Uh for for carbon credit today
So you’re actually you know
You can kind of preserve about four hundred dollars per ten per ton by not putting carbon into the atmosphere
And if you can actually manage farmland forest land clearance and forest land preservation
Uh from fire at a cost of four hundred dollars or less and there was an active carbon credit market
You should be able to cover the cost of managing that forest land back
But we’re at incredibly high risk this year
It doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily going to have a fire because weather is the key driver
The weather is highly very wind we need wind we need wind and we need a heat wave with wind and then there will be
Fires, but then what do they do when the when the wind kicks up right now, uh, the electric company turns off power
In california because they don’t want to be blamed when a power line goes down and starts a fire
So we have these regular moments. This is where we just lose power. Yeah, this is not just a california problem
I know everyone wants to beat up on california, but like the whole western us go look at google maps
You’ll see how much green stuff there is on google maps. It’s green up and down the western half of the u.s. Friedberg
It was trump, right that um raking up the forests, uh to put it in
Uh layman’s terms or simple terms is an actual thing that helps 60 percent of forest land in california is uh federal land
And uh, it was the federal government’s responsibility to manage that that cost down to manage that risk down. What is the incentive?
What is the motivation? You know, what are the key drivers? Those are obviously it does work to clear it though
It theoretically when you reduce the amount of tinder you will reduce the risk of a burn, right?
And so the cost but the cost of doing so as we mentioned it probably a couple hundred dollars per acre
And so who’s gonna let’s say you want to do that on five million acres, you know
Wouldn’t this create a bunch of jobs? Oh, wait, we’re paying people to stay home
Yeah, like it would create a ton of jobs. I mean, I hate to be like that guy, but like could we
Thirty five dollar an hour jobs for people i’ve heard scuttlebutt that
Newsom is so worried about fire season that they’re going to try and accelerate the recall election
So it happens before there was you know, the conventional wisdom the conventional wisdom would do that too. He’s so smart
No, if chamat did it it would be strategic
The conventional wisdom was that you’d want to wait as long as possible to do the recall because the longer you wait the longer
You get the rebound of the economy from kovid, right?
But now they’re talking about accelerating it to beat fire season because it’s looking really bad
And
That we needed much more aggressive forest management. It’s not just climate change. It’s also forest management
We don’t do it in california anymore. And so I think we are in for a really hellish fire season
We are going to have a terrible we’re going to have a terrible fire season
Um, there’s going to be brownouts
Probably throughout a lot of the western states
What played out in texas that affected folks a few months ago, I think will
Some version of that will happen
in many places in the u.s. This is
And it’s all roughly avoidable
And the critical principle act this year is the progressive left
They need to marry
Their disdain for climate change
And their disdain
for
Uh the things that need to happen to prevent it because right now these two things
For them are just like it’s cataclysmically
not possible
um for us to agree on for example as friedberg says a controlled burn program
as a mechanism of sort of like fighting climate change or you know, investing more in
the
The greenification of the economy so that we can actually eliminate the use of a lot of these
Non-sustainable energy sources all these things basically just come down to a group of individuals
deciding
That they can both have an opinion on something as important as climate change
But then are also willing to then go and act right now. They won’t until they do
Um, it’s just going to spill over everywhere
It’s going to be a very bad fire season
And the only reason I know that it is is that every year before it has been every single year has gotten warmer
It’s not you don’t need to be a genius here better. Yes, by the way
Let me just correct a statistic. I said because the statistic I gave was a few weeks ago
um, but as of today we are actually at the average, uh,
The historical average in terms of number of acres that are burnt in california as we have seen historically
I will also say that you know close to one sixth
of um california’s, uh, uh, uh forest land burnt last year
So there is a tremendous amount of tinder that has been removed from the risk equation
And we typically burn about a million acres a year. I think we burnt like four million last a little over four million last year
so, you know as you look at the the cumulative kind of um reduction of burnable acres, we’re we’re actually
The good thing that’s going on is we’re actually at a lower risk scenario going into this year in terms of total amount of tinder
The risk of the tinder catching is higher because it’s drier
NASA, but but when you add this all up, there’s certainly a high probability of a bad fire season
But there could be a scenario here where we end up with less than a million
Zero scenario that’s going to happen. NASA publishes temperature studies. They do measured
measurements of how
Uh much warming there is in the earth
Last year we set yet another record. It was the seventh year in a row where it was
Warmer than all the previous successive years. It’s just going in the same place
I mean and so if we’re all of a sudden supposed to bet
That a trend that has effectively been reliable for the last decade is going to turn
I’m, not sure that that’s a bet you’d want to make
Or that the wind is not going to blow that
There’s no reason to make that bet. I mean, this is like betting on a one-outer
We need we need we need the left to take control of this issue and solve it get ready for martian skies over
california
Literally i’m thinking about an escape plan from california
And i’m putting a generator in this month. I bought six new air filters, you know, like beautiful
That’s not that’s not good enough
Well, I have my house is totally sealed and I have the air purifiers in I have a built-in air purifier for the house
And I have six portable ones in each every bedroom
Are you coming back in august?
Uh in at the end of august, but by the way, let me let me tell you where it really the rubber meets the road
Uh, just again
I’m speaking to the progressive left. They care apparently so much
About minorities. I just want to make sure you guys understand that, you know air quality
disproportionately affects minorities why
Because we are not not me anymore, but you know minorities are the ones that typically live near
industrial output near transportation through ways and thoroughfares
Yeah, it is it is statistically proven that blacks brown other minority people are the worst people to suffer from
Respiratory diseases and airborne illnesses and these are things that are that are happening today
So again, I want to go back to the same group of individuals who apparently believe in climate change
But don’t believe in nuclear. They don’t believe in control burns
They believe in inequality, but they don’t want to do what’s necessary to regulate emission
What are we doing guys?
Just at some point do the job do the job. I think do your fucking job
I I what you’re saying is correct your mouth
but I think it’s a sad statement about the progressive left that the only way to reach them through an argument is to argue for
That there’s a disparate impact on a minority. The reality affects all americans. Yes, exactly. Exactly
It’s bad red pill. Give me those red pills. Come on
Come on, sacks. You’re holding out. No, but but
But chamath understands that audience. He is making the argument
they’re going to respond to but the argument that they and everyone should be responding to is
Inequality is bad for everybody the planet all humans. Exactly. What are you guys going to do for fire season?
Do you actually i’m thinking about renting a house?
Like I rented a house in chicago and lake michigan last year and I went there and it was a great escape for a month
To get away from fire season
But I I don’t I don’t i’m very scared to be in california during all of this to be completely honest with you
I don’t just want to be there. Um, yeah, i’m out
I’m gonna try to figure out some come back in uh late of august and hopefully everything has calmed down by then
Although it won’t because it gets very very hot at the end of august
September was the heart of it. It’s typically the heart of it part of it
Jake, how do you think you’re gonna go to miami or austin or something?
you know, I I I went back to austin for a wedding and uh, I met the governor, um, and
Uh, don’t care you went this wedding and you met
Oh
You gotta beep that out you went to
Sweating about the governor. Yes. Um and
going to austin
In 2021 is like when I would come to san francisco and go to the battery
in
2003 and sack
2013 and sacks would say why don’t you live here?
There’s so much going on in san francisco come to san francisco and I did
Uh, and I I got the last five years of the peak but uh, austin very appealing to me
And then I’ve been looking at beach houses in um, miami and
I’m, uh, i’m 50 of the way there folks. Oh my god. I mean the fact that you can now buy a beach house. I mean
God bless america
God bless america
And I forgot that I convinced you to move up to san francisco yet another way in which I
Have contributed to the monster your career towards. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I’m gonna use call-in every day
call-in syndicates underway
Everything you wouldn’t even be a vc if it wasn’t for me. You’d still be a media figure. That’s right
I’d be doing conference producing you’re you’re you and naval really pushed me towards it and then special
Thank you to you and chamath, uh billy
Uh for anchoring, uh, and dave goldberg. We love you. We love you. You know what?
I mean, I I tweeted the other day
At the end of the day
You know our lives are a collection when we look back on them of memories with our friends
And you know, I include family and friends
And this podcast not to get all gushy and and whatever is uh been a delight over the you know
Really hard pandemic that’s now ending and it’s I just i’m really happy that we get to spend this time every week together every week
I get uh, you know a little bit of excitement
Uh, like I used to get when we go you host poker, uh sacks or chamath, you know those days when we’d have a poker game
Uh sky dayton would tell me and you know, uh, I I get a little tingly feeling
Uh, like oh my god
I’m gonna see my friends tonight and play poker and laugh
And you know
We got that amazing note from the woman who said she was really having a hard time during the pandemic and that the podcast
All on podcast really helped her and you know shout out to sam. Thanks for that. Yeah, sam that really made our week. So shout out sam
Um, that was amazing long way of saying I love you sax. Well, I love you
Jake you are the stephen colbert to my john stewart
I think it’s the opposite. I think you know, I I have to call I have to come on your show and red pill you
And make sure that you’re you’re saying the truth and not getting too wrapped up in your trump derangement syndrome or whatever
at the end of the day
You know, we we are I think all of us working through
Complex issues to friedberg. I really loved your contribution today about how complex these issues are and layering more complexity onto them
Of our identities our wealth
You know our histories immigrants not whatever politics
These issues are so hard and in some ways also so easy with technology and world-class execution
That the world needs to have more reasonable conversations
And I think that what we’ve demonstrated here is that four friends can have reasonable discussions and laugh about life and enjoy life
And that should be for everybody listening. That’s what sam said in her note to us, which was very heartwarming. So thank you
Yeah, that was great. Yeah, I mean love you guys. Love you sax
Jesus fucking asperger
Must download new directions to escape forest fires
Love program active love l-o-v-e querying dictionary a feeling of affection for another entity or human
Like I like playing video games till 2 a.m. And my dog
can I say it to a very similar to coding or
Problem solving using my computer do I
17 b subroutine overheating must play chess with peter teal and stop saying I love you
My shirt was so expensive
Yes
How do I look with four collars four you say no, it’s more two but also two chins
Two shirts are better than one
Twice as good
Sax is adding shirts to
Love you guys
We open sources to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with it
Our
We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they’re all just useless
It’s like it’s like sexual tension, but they just need to release them out
What you’re about to be
Foreign