Is is Jake out here? I can’t see him

Why do the two fat guys have to ruin everything I mean get your shit together you

The show started free burger

If

You’d like to skip the bestie Twitter drama and get right into the episode jump to 20 minutes and 48 seconds

Hey everybody. Hey, we’ve got a great show for you today. What a treat

This is gonna be here at the all-in podcast. We cover everything technology business market politic science

And of course the besties emotions and their feelings. I’m Dave Friedberg the king of canoes

Joining me today are the guys that used to be besties first joining us from burly sconey’s boomba boomba palace

The Pied Piper of spax himself to moth Pauly hop a boo you

Chamath welcome. You look great today. Thank you and from one of his many houses the

sass bully himself

David

sacks

And of course our former moderator and host the one and only the internet famous

the Bronx bully

Jason

Calacanis everybody J Cal. Welcome. You’re looking great. You look like you’re ready to do a little jab at a hook

So for those of you joining us today that haven’t been following on Twitter, I’m sorry

Chamath did did you get Kermit the Frog to host the show?

I mean Jesus Christ that opening was the worst most painful thing. I’ve ever heard. It really was not very good. Okay. Well, welcome

Not really feeling great

It’s a failed experiment already, I thought the opening was good. Good job free bird. I think you’re doing well

It’s a fucking four of ten. Stop prejudging his performance

Interrupting already stop interrupting stop interrupting Calacanis

So the moderator is moderating and J Cal has to take the money

dreamers and

I’m gonna mute him. Thank you. So gentlemen, welcome as we know over the past week. There has been a Twitter feud between Jason and

David Sachs and I’m gonna give you guys a little bit of this background for those of you who haven’t followed online

Which I’m assuming is the vast majority of you

But there’s a Twitter account called all in stats and they publish an analysis showing

That J Cal has been talking a lot on our podcast and Sachs

You know kind of quote tweeted and said, you know

Here is statistical proof of Jason’s piss-poor moderation of the all-in pod J Cal if you were moderating correctly

You would be fourth place in airstime interior time instead of tied for first

Your job is to facilitate discussion not dominate it. Stop interrupting and let the grown-ups talk

JCal immediately jumps up with a response

Maybe you could start your own pod with Peter Thiel and Keith or boys and have Tucker Carlson moderate

Sacks as I know it’s rough doing 10 years of this week in startups and never getting to number one

Then Chamath Friedberg and I do it effectively on the first date on the first take

but this is why you need to stick to your lane and

Stop talking over us. Oh my god, so brutal sacks

JCal then responds with a niche podcast about just startups is never gonna be number one

It’s not for a general audience like all-in by design

number two sure trash the guy who is

Relentlessly supported you for decades because you’re obsessed with your stats and forget about the quality of the conversation

Then J Cal blocks David Sachs on Twitter publicly Sachs tells everyone J Cal blocked him and this whole thing

Escalates and snowballs. So the besties have they broken up?

Are they gonna get back together? Is this podcast gonna continue? My mom sent me a text this morning

Has the pod disintegrated Jason pulled out question mark question mark question mark the drama?

Ensues so gentlemen, I leave it to you sacks with your opening remarks and then J Cal you may respond

I’m here to moderate this opening of today’s all-in pod

So we can kind of get past this and hopefully get the besties back together and continue our

Conversations that I think many people find valuable and are super helpful and useful for us and for our listeners

Sacks, please. Well, I mean I can see on Jason’s face that he’s he’s hurt that by my my tweets

you know, I

Maybe he should go first and explain what’s so hurtful

I mean look the reality is about this show that you know breaking balls is part of it

We’ve been doing it for you know, a year and a half and nobody does it more than Jason and then all of a sudden

You know

He’s on the receiving end of a couple of mean tweets and he’s like the schoolyard bully

Who finally gets popped in the nose and goes running to the teacher and he can’t stop balling

So, you know

where is it that somehow the word piss-poor crossed a red line for you after all of the

You know ball-busting you’ve been doing for the last year that somehow that’s out of bounds and now you’re gonna block me

And potentially end the show in our friendship. So explain that to me

big, baby

All right

number one I

want to talk about the statistics in my role on my perception of you David is

that you got a taste of

Fame and celebrity and it’s gone to your fucking head and

You’re out of your ego is out of control

you now have stopped doing your job every day and you are obsessed with your statistics and how you’re perceived on the pod as

Seen by your obsession and your bromance with Henry or Harvey

Bellcaster or whatever you’re sitting there

obsessing over what percentage each of us talk none of the other besties are reading all in stats or

Getting obsessed with Henry Bellcaster and how they’re perceived on the pod

You have taken a championship show

Which I pulled together with my decades of experience and team as the point God

I am the Chris Paul of

Moderating the reason this show is number one is

Because I created a super team

there are four people on this podcast who bring a lot to the table and

You have asked for decades for air cow

I will not pull out a list, but the time that you were gonna get canceled because of

And the other time that your company was in the because the beep was investigating it

You called air cow you called an air cow

you can’t deny it and

nobody

Has benefited more from my skills in media than you

Are you waiting? Are you speaking in an accent?

I’m not speaking an accent. I’m getting this is when I get upset what he’s getting for Clemson. He’s getting for class. He’s controlling it

Okay, I’m bringing the ball up court and I fucking pass the ball to everybody. I am white chocolate on this team

I am the professor. I am Chris Paul

Okay

And I pass the ball now if you want to be a point guard like me and throw crisp

Passes that make the audience laugh and make them cheer and bring down the whole goddamn stadium

Well, sometimes I’m gonna do a no-look pass

It’s gonna hit you in the back of the head or it’s gonna bounce off

You can’t fucking cry about it constantly David. And if you’re looking at the minutes, I

Have to read the story and prep the story so I can put it in your lap

which I love to do I love my role here and

You’re taking my minute count, which is at least two-thirds moderation and you’re saying that’s indicative me being piss poor

Now if it’s all a goddamn joke, that’s fine, but you’re messing with my business

My business is podcasting and performing if you got a problem with me as the moderator

You have my fucking phone number. You can call me

But don’t go out and start some fight with me and then go start hanging out with Henry Bell caster when I’m your boy

Okay, and then everything with you is about your

Call in clubhouse killer and we’ve got to move the pod to that you’re getting out of control David

You need to realize we started a podcast that went to number one instantly and be grateful about that and stay the course

The end I’m done. Well, alright good. Alright, so can I respond? So first of all J Cal I agree

You put the the super team together for this pod. You’re an indispensable part of it

I’m not questioning that, you know, I don’t think we should I don’t think well, let me come to that the adults talk

Let me first

I mean, I’m actually saying some positive things about you before I get into my

Critique, okay. So look you deserve credit for putting this thing together along with with Chamath

It wouldn’t be the same without you. You do bring an element of

entertainment to it

Lord knows if it was just free bird moderating all the time. It’d probably be extremely boring. So

Look I although we’re gonna give him a chance today. So who knows?

But rough start and it’s not that I was angry or upset or concerned about my airtime or any of that stuff

I was frustrated. Okay, because your moderation I have a couple of

Concerns about her or I guess complaints

Okay, one is that you do tend to interrupt and I’d say you interrupt not true more than the others fall

Okay, and specifically not true. Let’s talk about the issue

The the issue where this came up was the Eric Adams issue last pod. Okay, so

You didn’t even go to me this this issue. The Eric Adams issue is all about the current issue

What the audience doesn’t know is that you went to Chamath like three times then you moved on and we had to come back

Said no, listen, I raised my hand to get back into the conversation. We edited that part out. You skipped over me completely

I don’t know how that was good

Passing where was the dish? Okay to me on that issue. Okay, let me explain to you. Can I respond to that? Sure

You’ve got three people on the team who can score I come down the court I pass it sometimes there’s two open guys

You’re the guy who was open who didn’t get the pass and now you’re walking down the court complaining

No, it’s better keeping your head in the game. This would be like not going to Freeburg on a science issue

I understand

To defend the cops

Beating up criminals. I understand that your wheelhouse. No when it comes to that. I’ll make sure it would be it would be a

Great with you. I agree with you. It’s an oversight. I can’t hit every perfect pass. You’re expecting perfection

So then it’s a miss pass and yet now you’re upset about it. Okay, so then so then I basically say listen

I want to talk to this issue. I have three points to make

I’m not through point number two before you’re interrupting me and taking the ball away the specific reason why I said

I have three points is to telegraph to you. Don’t interrupt me bitch. I got three points to make. Okay, what do you do?

You cut me off in the middle of point two. How is that good moderation?

I don’t think you’d do that to Chamath or even Freeburg

This really is about just really is about Chamath versus you and my relationship with each. I love you both

And the reason why I brought up the all-in stats, okay, it’s not cuz I’m concerned about my air time

but but to show a little concerned no because I

They broke down that I was like fourth in air time

And so the only point about that is why are you giving me the hook?

When I’m not talking too much if I were talking too much if I were monologuing it’d be a whole different story

But you’re yanking the mic away from me in the mid sentence before I even had a chance to finish and there’s and there’s one more

Thing okay, which is as soon as I bring up any concern with a moderation, where do you go?

You start calling me Tucker, you know, you start labeling me in this way

Okay, Tucker in the last just like just like a year dinner with Tucker and you’re proving you’re proving my point

Where do you go? It’s called a joke

Yes, but why I’m trying to show entertaining and keep it moving

No part of keeping the show entertaining moving is keeping you guys from monologuing

I have to cut you off and make jokes a year and a half ago at the beginning of the pod

We had to have the last time we had a sort of session like this

It was because you kept trying to paint me as the Trump supporter, which is not my agenda

Okay. Now you’re trying for Trump. Now. You’re trying to hang did you vote for Tucker label on me?

Why aren’t you saying? Hey, let’s hear from George

Well, let’s hear from William Buckley

The reason why you’re choosing those labels is because you know

They are anathema to most people in Silicon Valley and you’re trying to stigmatize me with them

No, that is you’re trying to are you reading from your notes?

Are you reading from you’re trying to hang that albatross over my neck?

Okay, and that is you’re trying to anathema ties me in in the in the view of most people Silicon Valley

You’re causing what I’m trying to do. You’re trying to make a joke

But you are causing the audience to pre judge my message my points before I’ve even had the chance to say what I’m trying to

Do by by a time trying to make a joke even of the left to me

Okay

the result of that is the audience is gonna prejudge what I have to say and probably a third of the audience will never

Want to hear what I have to say because you’ve pre labeled and prejudged me

That is a serious problem and that is fucking with my business

That is fucking with my business a lot more a lot more than me

Calling out your shitty moderation on one show. Oh, so now it is shitty moderation. Okay. I thought it was great

I’m sure now we’re back to it being shitty moderation. Let me ask you

What you’re doing, you know, what are you doing? Did you have to talk?

You know what you’re doing. Have you had dinner with Tucker answer the question?

I’m gonna mute both of you now. Okay, I’m in the moderator Chamath

Do you want to weigh in on these two idiots and talk a little bit about how we can move the show forward and at this

Point I’m thinking about V V vetoing the publication of the show so we can just have this conversation

This was this is so fucking pocket. This is just this is painful. This is this is so stupid Nick edit all this nonsense

Make it 30 seconds and move on

Hey guys, this is a really important powerful thing that we accidentally stumbled into

I’ll make two points. David does get labeled and I don’t think it’s fair and

Jason does an excellent job of moderating and sometimes I think that Jason does get excited and in getting excited

You know, he’s also not just there to moderate. He’s there to contribute as well

And so I think that if you look at the the number of minutes as a guide

It’s not gonna be accurate because he does have two jobs to do whereas the rest of us only have one and

David does bring an enormous amount of clarity to what he says in a very fair way

And it is unfair to him that he gets basically slathered with here’s the crazy guy on the right

So I think what I would just say is just let’s just tone it the fuck down and calm down

Okay, we’re at a million fucking people a week. We could be a 10 million people a fucking week and we could fucking own

The distribution of our ideas to millions and millions of people

Let’s just stay the course and calm the fuck down. Well, I agree with all that. Actually, I agree with 100% in agreement

I want to address the labeling issue. I want to address the legal issue. I am joking

Nine out of 10 times when I talk about trump because it’s hilarious and your relationship with tucker

I think it’s hilarious that you’re part of the keith raboi

And and teal thing and and I don’t think it’s damaging for your business at all

And I think people are telling me i’m purple viewed we’re moving to the center here

So I believe that we’re doing something noble by bringing all these voices together

It’s all a big joke and you know what? I don’t care what you say about me on twitter

I know i’m good at what I do. There’s nothing you could say that can change that. Why did your accent change?

I I think in general you are good at what you do and I and I

And the reason I have two of the top 10 tech podcasts go open up your fucking podcast player

Don’t tell me to get my fucking shoes. I don’t shine shoes anymore foreign number four and number eight

No, nobody’s saying that so I think I think what what david is literally what he said

That’s literally what he’s doing right now is showing why I had to tweet which is you won’t take a note

I can’t tell the guy. Hey, listen, you gotta know for me. It’s not gonna happen on twitter

You got my fucking phone number. Well, it doesn’t happen in private either. We know that you could fucking call me

Oh, really? You’re gonna take a note in private

With your fucking week i’ve tried we’ve had this conversation before we had this specific conversation about the trump thing a year ago

We haven’t talked about trump in six months. You’re back to all your bad habits

Can we just hear an apology from one to the other and tell the other?

Absolutely willing to hear sax’s apology. Tell him what you appreciate about him and what you like about him. Go ahead

Yeah, go fucking christ. Is this therapy? All right, I unblocked fucking sax and i’m following him enough. Thank you

Move on we move forward apologize to each other

Sorry, you tweeted that shit sax. I’m sorry. Come on susie

David apologized to him. Let’s just move on jason. Tell sax you’re sorry for labeling him and you know

You’ll be more conscientious in the future, please. I’m, sorry

That I brought up your relationship with tucker

And that I labeled you

a trump

disciple

I don’t even need an apology. I just want him to recognize me too

So i’m trying to be the bigger man. Fuck it. I take it back

Okay

I unblocked you and you’re followed. I unblocked you and you’re followed that’s enough sax

his feelings were hurt by you telling him that his podcast sucks and

And yeah, piss poor piss poor

Okay, look you asked me to have 10 of your founders on the podcast in the last two years

I counted your team is in the fucking mix trying to get people

We’re not gonna keep it going you’ve benefited from this relationship as well. So thank you for that. I never said I didn’t

Thank you, all i’ve ever said is thank you to you. All right, we good

Look my frustration

Over your moderation boiled off into a couple of tweets last week. I did not mean to hurt your feelings

I was just trying to give you a note

Okay, if you would take the notes in private, I would give you them to you in private

I do think that overall you’re a great moderator your contribution to the show is

Absolutely necessary and essential

Never disputed that I think we should keep doing the show

Um, I didn’t expect you to block me. Honestly, I didn’t expect your feelings to be so hurt by what I said

and

Um, so yeah, look I apologize for that

All I wanted to do is give you a note and I would appreciate if you could try and respect my note

Not mischaracterize it. I think you know what i’m saying, right?

I just want the chance to be able to present my views without the audience pre-judging them because you know

That certain labels will not go over well with our audience

Okay, it’d be like introducing chamath as the michael milken of spax. Okay

There is I edited that out

No, I mean i’m not saying he is

No, i’m saying it would be as if you did that right you understand what you’d be doing

If you labeled him that way I don’t think that is a fair label in fairness

I thought the labeling and the joking about you being the token republican

Was a meta joke about the fact that silicon valley doesn’t have too many of you and teals and reboys, etc

There’s a small I think the whole point of what we were trying to say is silicon valley’s heads up their ass

I agree

So maybe so maybe the problem maybe the problem we’ve we’ve identified is

All these left-leaning people are just sniffing their own balls basically running to a cliff

Shredding. So yeah, a lot of my views like on free speech are the old

Center left exactly and now you’re for universal health care. Look at you. I haven’t moved the whole world’s gone crazy

I mean everyone supported free speech until five minutes ago. Okay, that’s what I went on tucker to discuss you were free market about uh,

Education and you were free market about about health care. Now you’re like, I mean we should have health care

I I am I am a believer in in markets. All right, jason. Let’s start go. Let’s fucking start the show three two

Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. The all-in podcast is back besties unblocked with us again the rain man himself

david sax and david freeberg the queen of quinoa and

from his italian hideaway

gallivanting in

italy chamath polyhepatea the dictator big news for besties this week robin hood

um has filed their s1

and

Paid a fin refined 70 million dollars for outages and misleading

Customers multiple days of outages back in march 2020. We talked about here

And poor communications around options trading risks

robin hood’s s1 highlighted some extraordinary, uh growth during that period as we discussed on the pod

18 million funded accounts

And they’re on a two billion dollar run rate 522 million dollars in revenue in the first quarter up four x

and

Monthly active users have more than doubled 8.6 million accounts to 17.7 million

Just in the last year revenue was up 300

Any thoughts on robin hood’s s1?

Obviously i’m an interested party. It’s the largest fine ever. I think of this type but on the thinner’s largest fine

Yeah, yeah, so it should be a black eye for the company

but the reality is that they’re happy to pay the fine and just

Move on so they don’t have this issue hanging over their heads anymore

And now they’re going to be able to ipo at like a 50 60 70 billion dollar valuation

And so for them, it’s a sort of cost of doing business. I think there’s something a little bit

off about that, but um

That’s kind of how it works freeberg anything. I mean congrats to you

J cal looks like you’re gonna do really well with this deal, huh? It will return

Roughly this one deal will do three or four times

the value of the first fund the launch fund one which was

11 million dollars. Did you invest in the seed round or the a or what round did you invest in?

I think it was the seed round. Um

And so what’s your multiple going to be on a 50 billion dollar market cap, you know?

uh, it would be

500 x

amazing

Amazing congrats big boy. Yeah, it’s a congrats. J cal and i’m happy to see that you’re

Your success is finally catching up to your ego. And so I think

Well, actually between this and the composition, uh, i’m

I

You know, listen, it’s a long way to go before we distribute obviously

But that first fund I did which came after the scouts fund my sequoia scouts portfolio

My only advice to you jason is talk talk to a few seasoned gps like girly fred wilson and figure out the right

distribution strategy one of the biggest things that I see these folks do is

Early stage venture investors thinking that they’re public market investors

Trying to time the market trying to figure out how to do distributions and it never works

Which means do you hold the shares for another year or two

I would distribute that immediately book the win move on. Yeah

you know, it’s interesting a lot of the top firms that i’m in are holding their shares and I had a firm that had

Square and they held some number of them until it’s seven x and then distributed. So I guess technically they get to book that win

What are your thoughts on that sax of when to distribute and how are you doing into your fund?

Yeah, I mean it’s a good question. Um, the reality is that you know

Let’s say that you’re in year four or five of a 10-year fund. You could hold the shares for another five years

And if the shares go up over that five-year period you’ll you’ll do better

So I think the question on irr your your numbers will look better

Well, I mean you’re you’re compensated on the absolute amount of return that you generate and so it might be

If you distribute the shares and then if you’re in carry and you just hold the shares you’ll realize the same gains

You know, you’re not well, it depends what happens to the stock price

I guess I guess what I would say

But hold on a second if the stock were to go 10x and you get 20 of those shares if there were 100 shares

You had 20 if a 10x you’re still getting 20 percent, right?

So it nets out to the same if you hold the shares yourself personally

This is why I think that if you’re in the business of running a multi-fund business

I think you’re better off generally and I think again if you talk to the best firms out there

They typically will not try to guess what’s going to happen in the public markets. They distribute and they move on to their next fund

Um, and then because you have to remember the irrs, you know, you go through these rough patches

It decays quickly and all of a sudden something that looks great can start to look not so great

And the example of that might be snowflake or something

Going down after it went public and if you had distributed it, you would have booked the win at that high multiple

Yeah, and then then you’re thinking to yourself. Wow. I hope it goes back up and then you’re like

Well, when do I distribute it’s all if these are all not things that venture capitalists should be engaged in

They should be there to help build the next the next david versus goliath

I think the the cat argument to that is if you really believe in the company and think you understand it better than the public

Markets do or or because you’ve been on the board and you have information, you know, if you hold it for another

Yes, there’s going to be ups and downs, but let’s say that you plan to hold it for another four or five years

um, yeah, you’ll still get the same 20 25 percent carry, but

Um the point at which that carry will crystallize would be at like a much higher level and so

Essentially you’re preventing your lps from selling is what you’re doing

And so you may get an extra turn of your fund by doing that. How do we feel as lps david freeberg?

but there’s sorry there’s also isn’t there like a

Um, i’m just trying to pull up the goldman sachs report they did in 2019

Where they analyzed 4500 ipos over a 25-year period

And I think that and I could be wrong on this but if I remember some summary of this i’m trying to find it

Sorry, I can’t find it right now. Um, but that they

Basically highlighted that ipos as an index generally outperform the market over some period of time whether it’s one year or three years

And so if you have access to those ipo shares assume you’re a venture investor

You can beat the s&p by 10 15 points

Just generally without having any thought about the business itself or the company itself

Um, and you know participate in 20% carry on the upside from there or 25% carrying the upside from there

And so generally the rule of thumb becomes well, you shouldn’t distribute right away

You should hold is that not kind of a common dogma amongst gps nowadays?

Look at square look at square. I mean square

Like most of the appreciation happened in the public markets

I think sequoia held on to their square shares did way way better because nobody sold effectively for several years

And the best firms do this, right?

I mean like you we hear from girly and others that you know, they hold on to these shares for years

And you know a good business going public

Uh has a much better chance of performing. Well as a public company than you know, just tracking the s&p

Uh after an ipo regardless of the valuation it exits at well

How do we feel as lps chamath your lps in a lot of terrible i’m in 15 terrible you you want your shares?

I I don’t know no offense to any gp out there

But I don’t think they’re as good of a public market investor as I am. So give me the shares

I’ll manage it myself

Uh and get out of the way

Um, I I give money to a lot of to your point a lot of gps

Because I want private market exposure

I don’t want them speculating in the public markets for me. I do that for myself

And so I would rather just get the shares and make my own decision

um

You know a lot of foundations for example are in the situation where they’re there to fund programs

So if they have a you know multi-hundred million dollar position in a great company

and they can’t fund a program or the

You know a hospital system can’t do what they need to do because some gp is speculating in the public markets. I think it’s insane

So give you give it give give the lps the money and move on it’s not your job

Otherwise, you should run a generalized fund

And most people don’t because they can’t

Generally, how do you guys when you are a large owner in a company that goes public?

Or just say the pool of venture investors or owners in a company that goes public

And the lockup is expiring, you know, typically six months after the ipo and you can now distribute your shares to your lps

do those um

You know investors take note of or have concern

About the impact it might have on the stock price when they’re making those distribution decisions. Typically

I think they think about that but a lot of these lps particularly the non-profits

They’re forced day one sellers the minute that they get the stock

They’re just like as soon as the stock gets distributed everyone’s selling and the stock takes a hit right and yeah

You know what? There’s something happening

I mean, uh, this is speculation, um that I don’t have so just you know, take it as that

but my understanding was some investment banks went to

The uh and chamath might know the background on this went to some of the major lps in the world

I’ll leave it at that

And said hey you have a position in I don’t know this cab company

Um, it’s going public. It’s fully valued or it’s very well valued. Would you like to collar your shares?

uh before that and

We will take them off your hands, uh, and and lock you into a certain price for some percentage of it

Basically end running the gp’s decision making process

Of course

There’s a lot about that happens

This is why i’m saying I think the gp is better off if you’re in the venture fund business

Be in the venture fund business do a great job at that

Raise funds distribute cash do what you’re supposed to do, but please don’t try to do some it’s kind of like asking

You know the firemen to also operate on you

I don’t want that take me to the hospital and let the doctor do the job

I think it’s a very valid perspective

I think it’s probably the baseline that vcs should operate from but I do think there are

Exceptions where if the vc has been on a company board for a while

It feels like they have they understand the company better than the public markets

Especially during the first two years as a public company when the markets can be really choppy and the company’s

Trying to find its level and people don’t really understand it. I think there is an argument for

the vc having expertise in that initial public run then they might be doing their own piece of favor by

Holding but but look I I think chamath’s point is well taken

also, uh

Companies are going public earlier

so this is going to become a bigger issue because

It’s an easy decision in year 11. If you were an uber investor an airbnb investor to say, okay

It’s been 11 years. We’re going to give you your shares

But if you’re in year five and the company goes out so early, you know, you could make an argument

Hey, maybe we hold it for two or three years just going back on the previous topic. J cal the um

The finra news on robin hood, right? So finra just

So everyone understands it’s not a government regulator

It’s a private entity. Yeah, it’s called a self-regulatory organization and these sros

Are basically they have a board and a you know, a bunch of people that run them

But they’re pooled and managed by all the participants the private participants in the market

So goldman sachs and morgan stanley jp morgan and all the banks. They are all part of the finra

Sro, and so the way that these sros are set up is to avoid government regulation and to avoid government

Intervention in markets and allows the markets to effectively self-regulate themselves

In a way that everyone in the market is kind of keeping an eye on each other and making sure that this is

Being taken care of and I think one thing to take note of from this fine

Is that it telegraphs that finra and the markets in general the market participants in general may be rather concerned

and rather worried

about government intervention

In some of these new markets and emerging fintech practices

Because they wanted to say look we put the gauntlet down on robin hood. We made them pay the biggest fine ever

We made them pay 70 million dollars

Stay away

We’re taking care of it because the concern everyone’s had is that aoc and elizabeth warren and a bunch of people on capitol hill

Are waving flags saying we need to step in we need to regulate these companies. We need to regulate these practices

We need to protect consumers

And so this fine really signals that the market is a bit concerned

That the government is going to come in and start trying to tell fintech companies how to practice and how to operate and generally tell

All market company, you know market participants how to operate which is a very scary prospect for them

So to me this was really this this was really big news about what it telegraphs the backdoor conversations are, you know

That are going on with market participants right now

what you’re almost saying is that this is a benefit to robin hood to pay the largest fine because it

It says to the you know to the politicians look we’ve already been punished in this, you know

Maximal way you don’t need to layer it on top

So in a way it’s better for robin hood that they paid 70 million instead of 10 million

Yeah, and it’s not it’s not by the way. It’s not even for robin hood. I think all the market participants jp morgan goldman sachs

They all have huge

You know tech teams and they all have acquired fintech companies and they are all trying to go digital

And everyone is worried about the government intervening and changing how this business is transforming

Because as soon as the government gets involved, it’s going to slow down the transformation

It’s going to you know, make things much more challenging

And I think that everyone’s trying to keep the government at bay while the great digital transformation of markets is underway

um, and and I think that’s like the biggest signal from this this finra fine

and there’s

There’s some interesting nuances there that they brought up something like the confetti. So when you buy something

on

Robin hood it used to explode confetti gamification. They’re like, oh we’re going to take that out

And you know, if you go to vegas, they’ve got bells and whistles going off everywhere when you place a bet

Uh, and so it is a little bit of window dressing. I think it’s also interesting that you bring up the self-regulatory

Organizations, there’s two other equivalents for people who are thinking about this the mpa motion picture association

which was formed back in 1922 because people had the same fear about movies and

Valentini, I think was the

the guy who really uh changed

How movies were perceived in the pg-13 era allowing a lot more violence terminator those kind of movies

And then you had a similar thing happen in the video game industry in 90s

Does robinhood still have like the lawsuits with like, uh, massachusetts

Uh, there’s like 10 other lawsuits class actions, etc about um, no, no

More like with with government entities, right like like didn’t massachusetts try to state attorney state attorney general

Yeah, something like that. I think right. Yeah

I don’t know. Um, but the other one that was very interesting was the um es rb

which is the entertainment software ratings board because video games like mortal combat and those and doom were

You know had to self-regulate, right?

Um, so either you regulate yourself jason tomatoes asking a question about lawsuits at robinhood. I know I was trying to deflect

notice

Can we move on to the delta variant because i’m supposed to be

Hysterically afraid of getting covet now because i’ve been vaccinated people keep talking about there’s this delta variant

It’s spreading and then i’m hearing one set of information, which is if you’re vaccinated, it’s not an issue and then

other folks are going on tv saying

This is going to be like we’re going to have to put masks back on in california

I can’t find any data about how many actual cases there are but according to the us cdc 46

Percent of the total u.s. Population has been vaccinated now

Uh and new york new jersey california all well about 50 some people are in the 60 of adults 70 of adults

Florida is still trailing, but I can’t and people are saying this is going to become the dominant variant freeberg

How should we look at the delta variant if you’re vaccinated and then how should we look at it in terms of?

Are we going to go through?

Mandatory masks again, which people are starting to signal already in certain

uh

coastal cities

Yeah, so trevor bedford’s a great guy to follow on this. Uh, he’s a epidemiologist virologist who um on twitter

On twitter. Yeah, uh trvrb is his uh twitter handle

And so he’s aggregated a bunch of good data

so there was a paper published two days ago out of the uk where they were trying to estimate the um,

uh, you know the reproduction rate, uh of

The delta variant and it looks like it’s about 1.3. That means for every person that gets infected with the delta

Variant of the sars-cov-2 virus. That’s the r0 you’re talking about. That’s that’s yeah, some people call r0. Yeah, and so um

It turns out that you know, that number is higher than what we saw with the original sars-cov-2

Which I think was probably closer to 1.1 or so

And so, um, you know what that means is this variant is much more infectious, right?

It could spread through the air that the proteins could last in oxygen much longer and not degrade

All these different reasons why it might be kind of more infectious

Um, and there are some cases of people that have been vaccinated, but this is not the predominance of what we’re seeing

That have tested positive for having this delta variant, but are having mild to moderate symptoms

There aren’t at this point a lot of people

There’s not a lot of data to indicate that this is actually kind of like a lethal risk or fatal risk to people that have

been vaccinated in case in fact that seems to be

Not true and one way that that data is kind of demonstrated right now

Is there was another analysis that was done where they showed what is the reproduction rate of this variant?

Based on what percentage of the population has been vaccinated by state

And they show that you know for a state that’s had maybe 30 percent of its population vaccinated

The r0 is closer to 1.35

When 60 percent of the state is vaccinated the r0 is just at one and so there’s this, you know, um, you know

negatively correlated kind of relationship between how many people have been vaccinated and how

Much this variant is transmitting and that makes intuitive sense, right? Like if people are vaccinated

They’re not going to get infected. The virus isn’t going to hop from person to person to person

Now when you do the analysis of what percentage of the u.s. Population is unvaccinated

And how reproductive this virus is a lot of epidemiologists are saying

That the models indicate that we could see up to 10 percent of the u.s

Population now get hit with this variant and what we don’t know is what percentage of people actually had, you know

SARS-CoV-2 in the first run around last year

But we are seeing this this variant pop up now

The fatality rate doesn’t appear to be much higher than what we saw with SARS-CoV-2 the first time around

And and so there’s no indication to say like hey, this is going to be much more lethal

So when you combine those factors, it seems like at this point, you know, the the death rates in the u.s are remaining flat

And stable while we are going to see and may expect to see a continuing up surge surge up in terms of number of cases

Are we going to require masks?

this goes back to kind of my previous point about

I think we’ve kind of normalized ourselves to masks and shutdowns and lockdowns and all the stuff that we did last year

Thinking that it had an effect a recent paper showed that lockdowns had no effect

on the reproduction rate in the united states because at the end of the day what if a government says lockdown or government says put

Masks on people still have a tendency to do whatever the hell they want to do

And at least in the united states that is the case

That is not the case likely in asian countries where we did see an effect of lockdowns and masks

but in the united states these uh, these restrictions

Obviously had adverse economic effects, but didn’t seem to have a strong epidemiological effect

Based on a recent paper that I will share

In this thing. So so what are we going to do? I don’t know. I feel like we’ve normalized mass

We’ve normalized lockdown. We’ve normalized these responses

But SARS-CoV-2 is going to be here forever and it is going to cycle through variants and that’s the concern right now

Let me make a prediction

I think that what at the end of this thing

what I think I have come to the conclusion of

is

there was

a lot of unknowns

that got

perverted into hysteria and mania

by a handful of organizations to basically

uh sequester power

And what we realized is that these people were incompetent

And they didn’t know what they were doing

Because you ended up in the same place with all of these different distributions of actions

And so now I think when you have this other variant, I think there’s a growing sensation by a lot of people not just americans

that the cdc the who

Whoever it is

Is probably at best guessing and at worst making it up

And the ultimate result is there this it’s almost as if they like being drunk with power

And so I think the last part of what you said freeberg is what I really agree with which is that this is not going

to be tolerated anymore and the reason is because

They are also politicizing science and what they’re doing is when they don’t know

They’re making poor guesses in the name of science, which is just as bad

So, you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the delta variant maybe a lot maybe a little but as far as I can

Tell I think people are tired

of

uninformed

Impacts to their lives and they’re not going to put up with it anymore

Saks chances california goes back to lockdowns or some sort of mask mandates

Uh, well, they are they’re they’re imposing mask mandates indoors in places like la and you have the teachers unions

the the national education union is now

Putting down all these conditions of going back to school in the fall

So I think you could be in a situation where we do not have they will call it school reopening

But we will not have five day a week in-person learning and the schools the public schools that have it are going to have all

sorts of insane

Restrictions and conditions like making kids who really aren’t at risk for covet even even the delta variant

They’re going to force them to wear masks they’re going to

enforce this ridiculous social distancing

They’re talking about making the kids who aren’t vaccinated sit at a separate table like the outcasts

I mean, it’s insane what they’re talking about doing

So why is that insane david not to interrupt you, but i’m just curious for how much you unpack that

Because so so look, I I’m i’m pro vaccine, you know, I think adults should get vaccinated

I don’t think my kids need to get vaccinated

I don’t think that is a wise policy to to force kids to get vaccinated. They’re at very low risk for getting the virus

They’re very low risk for transmitting the virus if they get it and even if they get it

They’re at almost no risk for it being harmful or you know to cause serious illness or death

And so to impose all these restrictions on kids, it’s like we’re living in a time warp, you know back to last summer

We didn’t know as much about the virus

I mean to chamas point they’re imposing all these restrictions which are just unscientific

And it really seems like the real point is to create excuses for the teachers not to have to go back to work

and you know

You know a school system is borked when the truancy is on the part of the teachers not the students

The students want to go back the teachers want to be truant. It’s like they want to be on permanent vacation forever

It is a really broken system

By the way, let me just highlight, um, you know to support

Uh the concern that I think people

Like like people that sax is kind of speaking to might be having

A research letter was published in the journal

Um of the american medalist medical association two days ago

a lead researcher with a guy named harold walsh and this paper is going viral amongst kind of the

You know the the scientific and medical community right now

What these guys did is they measured the carbon dioxide content of children’s lungs

um from wearing masks

And so they were trying to identify like is this a risk to children to actually be wearing masks health wise

And the results are pretty scary

It turns out that you know, um in in in air in in ambient air

0.07 by volume is carbon dioxide when a normal and then they measured kids, you know, randomized control double blind

You know, here’s we’re not double blind

But randomized control there’s kids that have masks and kids that don’t the kids that don’t have masks

Their carbon dioxide when they exhale is about point two eight percent

When you have to wear a surgical mask your carbon dioxide increases to one point three percent

um, and uh

You know when they looked at this in a more detailed way, it turns out that it could be as high as 3.8

And so this starts to reach a medical level

That is concerning for doctors that having these kids wear masks for hours a day

could actually be having an adverse health effect because it is increasing the carbon dioxide content of their blood because

You know their lungs aren’t strong enough to breathe all this carbon dioxide out it builds up in their body

And so there is a now a counterpoint that is being made by scientists and doctors

That may be the benefit of the safety we might get from kids wearing masks and spreading the virus

is um outweighed, uh by the uh,

The cost of their health as a result of wearing these masks and to ask kids to wear masks for eight hours a day

Or it’s five hours a day for nine months a year

Um, we’re just now waking up to the fact that there may actually be consequences to this and i’m not making a strong case

It’s like child abuse. So we sent our five-year-old to a summer camp in la, okay

And the camp is outside and all the the adults are vaccinated. Okay, but they’re making the kids wear masks

And it’s no fun, you know, and they can’t

Play sports the way they need to and we just said the hell with this and we took them out

Now what I don’t understand is why people aren’t laying this at the feet of Gavin Newsom

This is 100 his order, you know, all he has to do is say listen, we don’t need these rules anymore

It’s kids it’s outside and all the adults are vaccinated. What is the point of this?

And you know, and I think we have this recall election now that’s been scheduled for mid-september

You know right now it looks like newsom’s going to cruise to to to winning

But if we had a candidate in california who could say listen, we need five day a week

In you know in person schooling in the fall

No exceptions all the teachers need to go back to work or they’re going to need to be looking for new jobs

We’re not going to kowtow and give in to all these unnecessary unscientific restrictions

Okay, because newsom will not make that guarantee. I think they could they could basically steal this thing

We don’t have anyone standing up saying that

And I think the closer we get to the start of school

If we don’t have that kind of five-day-a-week instruction, I think parents are going to be up in arms about this

I think they will be and I think what we’re going to prove is

None of these folks really know what they’re talking about. And so they will make it up

And someone will have some shred of evidence about something

on either side of any topic

And all it’ll do is obfuscate and confuse and the end of it will be

somebody imposing

Something on to you that will have a negative impact on your life

But for their benefit in the teachers for their benefit, like I don’t want to go back

There’s I mean listen, I want to say all teachers don’t want to go back to school

I know a lot of teachers want to go back to school and teach kids and take the masks off because it’s insufferable

No, you I think you can say you can say the union and separate it from teachers. Exactly

Yeah, I don’t think it’s all teachers. It’s some percentage of teachers, but I think we’re

Going to move david freeberg. Correct me if i’m wrong here

We’re going to move to a two-class system here

If you’re vaccinated you get one set of rules and if you’re not vaccinated you get another and this is where david I think

Kids who are over the age of 11 or 12 who do get vaccinated?

They shouldn’t have to wear a mask at school. But then well, sorry. Can I just say something?

This is what the insanity of this thing is. It’s like, okay, we’re gonna throw around again

We’re probably going to use the word equity

When we make these new rules, but then fine, why don’t you just create a school

That has everybody in it who is vaccinated

Well, I don’t I don’t even understand. I don’t understand this because all of us are vaccinated

So why we don’t need to worry about it?

So in other words, we’re going to impose restrictions on people and force kids or whoever to get vaccinated

To protect whom if all the adults are vaccinated, we’re not protecting anybody

All we’re doing is protecting I guess

Unvaccinated adults that makes no sense to me. Well, they’re taking the risk, right?

I mean if you’re choosing to not get the vaccine at this point friedberg

You’re taking some significant level of risk or some moderate. Well, does the government have a responsibility to protect that person?

I don’t think it matters. What I think matters is remember like the societal responsibility

Is not and cannot be to protect every individual

The societal responsibility is to make sure that society functions

And um, and if we take a zoom back and I just want everyone to reset your brains

Go back to march of last year

And we were talking about the surge of deaths in hospitals and hospitals were going to be overwhelmed

And that was the reason we needed to go into lockdowns and the reason we needed to stop the surge

Even if this delta variant is highly infectious

There are enough people people vaccinated in the united states at this point

That this delta variant is not going to crush our hospital system

It’s not going to cause massive amount of fatalities, which is the reason we went into lockdowns in the first place

All of the concerns that we had last year that rationalized a lot of the extreme behavior that we undertook

No longer exists and we are now talking about continuing those those behaviors

Under a different set of standards and the set of standards is now I can’t put a teacher at risk

I can’t put an individual at risk and even if that individual got infected if the fatality rate is so low

I can still say well they could die

Therefore I can’t have them exposed right and that has become the new standards

What I think saxon that that article kind of talked about is zeroism

You know you get to a point if you’re if you’re fighting a war on a battlefield

And you’re like, well, I can’t let any of my soldiers die. We can’t move down the field

You’re not going to move down the field

You’re not going to win the war and i’m not saying that this is a war the point is society has to progress

The economy has to progress people’s lives have to progress people have to be educated

Life is about progress

And if we halt progress because of the concern that any individual might get harmed

Because of the progress of the group as a whole

We will not go anywhere and we’ve created a new set of standards that I think creates that very reality and it is frightening

Let me let me let me put a finer point on this

Which is just this coat this delta variant is just more covid fear porn

Okay, this is the third variant of concern where they’ve been, you know running around alarms saying that you know

We have to worry the truth is is it more transmissible?

Yes, it is going to I think sweep through areas of the country in the fall that aren’t vaccinated. But the question is

How does it perform against the vaccines and so far the vaccines are holding up?

The the variants none of the variants have really punched through the vaccines in a meaningful way

I think the stats on pfizer were it’s you know

Was it maybe reduced the effectiveness from 95 percent to 88 percent or something like that?

But it wasn’t a material difference. If you are double vax with pfizer, you are protected against the delta variant

And so this is just more fear porn that they keep pumping. I’m agree. I’m in agreement with you and I think this reminds me of

When we were growing up in the 80s

They tried to scare us about sex and hiv

And were you not going to have sex if you were in your 20s in the 90s and into the 80s?

No, you learned about hiv. You learned to use condoms. You learned that you probably couldn’t do

Uh, you know what people did in the 60s and 70s, which had many many partners

You maybe had to have fewer partners maybe longer term partners

But you could you could take your own risk by putting on a condom you could make that decision for yourself here

I think there’s a group of people who don’t want anybody to make any decisions for themselves

And in this case the vaccine is wearing a condom if you’re wearing a condom like your chance of getting hiv go down

Dramatically, it’s just a known fact and we’re at 263 people

On average dying a day. How many of those friedberg do you think are with kovat versus?

from kovat

I have always I I hate doing this because then people think it’s like an inhuman analysis

But the way that actuaries or economists would kind of take a look at this sort of decision tree

And this sort of data

Is the number of life years lost?

Okay

So imagine someone is going to die tomorrow if someone’s going to die tomorrow and they catch kovat today

And they die a day early you have lost a life day and everyone. Yes, that is absolutely devastating and it is awful emotionally

But like when we’re making big decisions, we have to think with the data

And so if someone catches kovat and they and they lose five years and they die five years earlier than they

Statistically would have died. That’s five life years lost when a child dies. You are losing 68 life years, right?

That is an incredible loss of life is one is one way to kind of think about this statistically

and so

You know part of I think what’s been missing in the equation and it’s easy to tell the narrative

By speaking about people that have dead that have died that tested positive for kovat when they died

Is it now speaks to the fact that this is a binary experience and there’s a binary number of lives lost

But the statistical the data-driven exercise which may sound inhuman and may sound awful

But again, we have to make these decisions using data

If we’re going to make large decisions that are going to impact everyone in a meaningful way

Is to look at the number of life years lost and I think if you were to do that you would still find

That the vast majority of deaths associated with kovat are very elderly people

Who are already very close to dying and that’s why we are seeing the fatality rates

So low right now in the united states, even though kovat is still spreading with the delta variant

It is because almost 90 percent of people over 70 have been vaccinated

And as a result the people that are most at risk of dying are well protected and we are not seeing a significant loss of life

Associated with this terrible virus

The terrible virus is still spreading but the life lost is still not there now

Someone might raise their hand and say well, we don’t know the long-term implications long-term ramifications

Long-haul kovid. Yeah, I would raise my other hand and say show me

What the data is

that says that there are those long-term implications ramifications because I can say the what ifs about anything and then

Implement any policy decision I want by just saying what if and we don’t know

We have to say we do know here’s the data in order to make a tough decision

versus saying we need to be you know, protective and use the protective, you know, uh principle of

um

Of precaution or the precautionary principle and be really careful in these circumstances

Uh, because at this point the impact and the damage associated with some of our practices to quote-unquote guard against kovid and

And you know protect people

It’s turning out there are real consequences to those decisions

All right, freeberg final question on kovid. Uh, should you wear two condoms?

In other words, should you get materna and pfizer or j and j and pfizer?

There are studies coming out now to say one plus one equals three

There is some super effect of getting two. I am looking into this

I’m thinking i’m going to get a second vaccine. I might get to get a moderna or a pfizer or j and j just

Don’t wait. Don’t waste the vaccine shots. Let them go to other countries

You know not needed

Not needed even though the studies are starting to show it gives you increased

I mean, do you need your test? Do you need your tesla to go from 180 to 185 miles an hour? I mean like, you know

That’s a good point. I mean look everything we learn about the vaccines makes them look better and better

The protection lasts longer than we thought

the um

They’re more effective against variants than people were afraid of

And now we learn that there is even more protection by sort of this mix and match idea

So the vaccines have worked there are still I think a couple of groups in america that are very vaccine hesitant

um

Evangelicals and african americans are the two groups. I thought it was male republicans

It’s it’s more like evangelicals. And so in a place like mississippi where you have large numbers of both

The vaccine rate’s only like 29 30. It’s actually pretty low in a place like that. You could see the delta variant sweep through

In the fall and you could see a lot of cases. I you know, let me

Let me buck your uh labeling categorization of me jake. I wish I was ready to say it

By saying that I don’t think the leaders on the right are doing anyone

Any favors any of their voters any favors by not coming out and saying look the vaccines work, you know

I think trump could do a lot of good by coming out and just saying listen, I got the vaccine

I’m, pretty sure he did right he did he did and so, you know, I think if you are

in one of those groups

You know, and certainly you’re over like 40. You should be getting the vaccine. I mean they work

Not to harp on this, but what did trump say when you suggested he come out publicly about it?

Nobody’s listening to me

No, it’s fine. Nobody’s listening to me obviously

I mean it it is very weird

that trump

Spent massive amounts of money on the vaccine and now doesn’t want to take credit for project lightspeed by telling everybody to get it

I think he’s got a lot of other issues

I think he’s got a lot of other issues on the plate to deal with including an indictment that just landed yesterday

so maybe you know, maybe he just doesn’t know what to focus on because he he sees his uh,

His budding empire unraveling before him

Did you see the report that said that trump was extremely thrilled by the fact that his cfo was indicted

for two reasons one is it kind of

Indicates that they didn’t have enough to go after him

And two is it’s going to make joe biden look bad and his administration look bad

Uh, because it looks like they’re being kind of prosecuted and persecuted now

But that he views this as a positive and he’s thinking about it as a way to kind of stage a 2024 run

Well, I didn’t I didn’t see that particular story, but I do think that

Okay, well what the charges show I think is that they got nothing on trump directly

Um that I mean this turned out to be a big nothing burger after years of investigation

Just like the whole russia thing. And so it’s 15 felony 15 felony counts

But

Trump was not let me finish trump. Trump was not named. They didn’t get close to trump

All they got was they’re trying to charge. Uh, wesselheim is his cfo with basically receiving certain perks as compensation

Violations, it was crazy. Yeah, this is penny any stuff. It does look like persecution rather than prosecution

And what they’re trying to do is they’re going after this guy wesselheim to squeeze him to try and roll over on trump

Well, good luck with that. That’s about as likely

To happen as uh, putin releasing the p tapes not going to happen. Sorry, j. Cal

Trump is getting away. The one thing I would say I think that I disagree with respectfully is um

This is a 15-year

Tax avoidance scheme that included more than tne included people

Getting their tuition paid for for free and free apartments. So the equipment would be and then hold on

They then knowingly did this and changed the books knowingly so they caught them going into their accounting and changing

To hide it and so the cover-up worse than the crime

This is an explicit way to not pay their taxes

This would be if all of us took our personal residences and our kids

And didn’t pay taxes on it’s it’s significant. Jason. So the total amount for example that this guy got in

uh tuition reimbursements over this 15-year period was about

375 000

The total amount of some other rent perks that he got was for about one point

Six or seven million dollars the total amount of value that I think his son got

You know was spending a thousand dollars a month in a trump owned apartment when you add it all up

For a guy that was accused of you know

Being in cahoots with russia this and that and everything

You pinch the cfo for a few million dollars of effectively again

T and e let’s just say that he did it, you know, some of these checks came directly from trump

It I think I agree with david. It’s a bit of a nothing burger and it really does look like it’s politically motivated

and the reason is because

These kinds of chargers are typically not brought

These are things that typically result in a civil penalty or restatement and you just kind of move on

You know, nobody nobody’s trying to send somebody to jail for you know, getting for miss miscategorizing

I have a theory because we don’t have full information and they weren’t investigating this stuff before trump became a politician. Why weren’t

This if this has been going on for 15 years, why didn’t this investigation happen?

Five six seven years ago. I could tell you why his um

the daughter-in-law of weisselbergs

uh was uh

Received a lot of these perks and then she dropped a dime and gave all the documents to them

My theory on this is because we don’t have complete information yet

I think that they have other I think they have this bigger tax, uh a case around

making the assets

look, um

Smaller when paying taxes and inflating the value of the assets when getting loans

and I think they want to get that and the way to get that is to flip weisselberg because

Trump does not use email and communications. I think that that’s what’s going on here

Um, but yes, you’re right. They’re trying to they’re trying to flip him look

The the kgb had a saying show us the man will tell you the crime, okay

They decided we’re going to go after trump. This is entirely political

They weren’t interested in him five six seven years ago. Once he got into politics. They became interested in him

He became the man and now they are trying to

Roll up and flip all these people and try to get them to turn on trump and give them something

These democratic pitbull prosecutors they are going to make trump look like the victim here

This will rebound I think in a negative way it is a really stupid thing that they’re doing

I mean this this could have happened in so many different ways

The guy was finished and washed up

Right. He was in his little hovel in florida, you know, no twitter account, you know in the one no twitter account no access to his base

Um the one time he actually showed up in new york two or three weeks ago

I don’t know if you guys saw the photos. He looks so disheveled so old so broken

Let the guy wither into obscurity, but instead you pin these charges you create an entire press cycle

You’re going to rally so many people on the right and actually a lot of people in general who feel like wait

What are we doing as a country?

Why don’t we just let it just be done with this guy?

I don’t ever want to hear about him ever again. And instead we’re kind of like bringing it all back front center

I just think it’s a bad look. What do you think about the insurrection commission? Do you think that that should um,

Should be disbanded as well to mob because you think that should that should be pursued

Yeah, because that’s not necessarily about trump that it is about a whole totality of things that really will lead into the fact that we have

a lot of far-right organizations

That need to be understood

We have one far-left organization that needs to be understood all in the same light

Which is that these folks are destabilizing force to democracy

And so yeah, you got to get to the bottom of what the hell happened

Sex do you do you think the insurrection commission is going to be equally kind of politically motivating for

For trump’s face and for folks like that

Well, I just think that

You have to decide as a country whether you’re going to keep

Relitigating, you know what happened in the previous administration?

I mean if we’re going to go back and keep this going, you know, are we going to go back and look at why did the

FBI

Use the steel dossier to go to a fisa court to spy on members of the trump campaign

Had there were 17

Misrepresentations in their uh in their petition to the fisa court. I mean there was clear misconduct there

We’re going to go back and re-litigate that and go after people and punish them. Look, maybe we should okay

But I think that this is the thing about politics. Everyone just wants to move forward

We’re in a new administration now whatever misconduct occurred, I think the punishment was paid at the ballot box

I think it’s just time to move on and I agree with that

And I look I know there’s gonna be a lot of partisans

On both sides who just want to go re-litigate and punish their enemies forever

But you know, I think the american people just want to move forward

Yeah, what are you in the far what are you in the far left want to do?

Well, i’m not on the far left

I mean, I I think that there is a I do think that there is a bunch of gamesmanship here

I think this is a a chessboard that on the left

They’re saying if we we if we have a chance to take trump out of political life

We need to do that because the cost of him getting re-elected in 2024 is too great

and so what we’re talking about here is, you know, what is the best path to doing that and

You know chamath’s right like just letting him fade into obscurity

He may not want to run again because he’s so old and it’s so painful to be president. He’s 75

I mean, he’s going to be 78 or no 70. He’ll be the same age as biden going

I mean, this this is ridiculous. Both of these two guys are one-term presidents. I think that is

Abundantly clear. I think the question is what is biden’s transition plan?

You know, does he actually only stay two years and transitions it to kamala?

I don’t know but there’s no way that he’s running for a second term either. He does not look healthy

I think that much is

At least and i’m and i’m saying this as you know, a centrist democrat. He doesn’t look completely

fit

Um, and it’s only going to get worse and this is the most incredibly stressful job in the world

Neither of these two guys are our long-term solution. It’s time to let it all go

Right. It’s like we had

Four years of just chaos

We now get to have four years to catch our breath

it’s time to find the

late 40s to mid 50s

centrist normal people again

And we have three years to do it

Who do you think that is on the republican side and chamath?

Who do you think it is on the democrat side?

Who’s going to run for the next election cycle because just this morning, by the way

An article came out that um highlighted that several insiders in the white house are completely like up in arms about how

uh chaotic

Uh kamala harris’s offices, which is basically a way of starting to shoot her down, right?

So if you think about the the motivation here someone in the white house is starting to shoot kamala harris down

Which means they’re starting to weaken her a little bit

In terms of whether she could actually be a good replacement for the next term

I don’t know if that’s truly the motivation but that’s typically what these sorts of stories indicate

so if not her

If not her who on the democrat side and you know

If not trump who on the republican side in the next election cycle because those folks are going to start to pop their head up

right the

Well, I mean, I think the I think the person who has enough credibility to take a shot

it’s not clear that she will but if she did she would be really serious and

She could actually get people to be relatively normal as nikki haley

On the right but ron de santis is going to be the rights candidate correct and she’s kind of normal

De santis is definitely the early front runner. Um

There was a straw poll in which he was the first republican to actually run ahead of trump

In a straw poll for what four or five years?

and uh, so yeah, it looks like um now

He’s running for re-election in florida in 2022

So that’s on his plate. Yeah, but I think it looks like he’s going to sweep to victory

He made the right decisions on lockdowns. This is the central feather in his cap that

Before any other governor really he looked at the data saw that to freeberg’s point lockdowns don’t make a difference

He went back to normal the state benefited. You look at per capita covid deaths in florida

It’s middle of the pack, um, which is actually a really good result given how many old people they have

so he did a phenomenal job, I think setting covid policy in

Florida and he did it in the face of a hostile media that was just tearing him limb from limb

And so he showed that he only can find the right policy

But that he’s got the spine to stand up for it. And I think as a result of that. Yeah, he has

galvanized early the republican base

if he wins

Re-election in 2022 by a by a strong margin. I think he does become the putative front runner for 2024

Very similar in a way I think to the way that that george w bush

You know, he he basically won

Re-election in texas two years before he ran for president and on the heels of that victory

He was able to make the case. Look, I just got re-elected

I’m, very popular in a huge state of the country, you know, I should be the front runner

I think de santis is in a similar position. What do you think about nicky haley sex?

I think nicky haley is sort of popular with the establishment wing of the republican party, but she does not

bring together both

The the sort of the establishment wing with the populist wing and what de santis has been able to do

Is get the business republicans and the establishment republicans to get behind him as well as the populist trump base

loves him and that’s that’s the um, that’s the combo you got to have I think to to win the republican nomination and so

Nicky haley, I think you know

Everybody who sort of reads elite media

Is going to over index on her but if you go to the the straw polls and the rallies

She’s not just not going to perform in those polls

There was a very interesting article in politico though over the past week about how de santis is being very careful

Not to do anything to upset trump and I think he understands you see the vp candidate

With trump you think

Well that that that pre-assumes a lot of things happening. I mean look we don’t know what’s going to happen. I think that

You know the the number one way to resurrect trump is what jamal said is to keep poking that bear to fill him

with the the rage to

To sort of counter punch and come back. I think it would be better

however for a new generation of leaders to look we have we’re being run by a gerontocracy right now, so I mean just

Biden is 78. Pelosi is 80. Schumer is 77. McConnell is 80 and trump is 75 and that’s today

Okay in 2024. All those people are going to be in their 80s or just about who will even be alive. I mean

Feinstein will be 91 or 92. It’s time to have a new generation in both parties

Why are we being run by this gerontocracy?

What a joke do we want to move on to the drought and impending uh death and or the facebook fdc dismissal?

Oh, that was incredible

And also at the fdc got two gut punches in a row

Uh, and then you know amazon writes this petition to recuse lena khan

It’s like that’s why she was hired

Incredible she was hired because she’s an expert on amazon

The the amazon the amazon letter was actually extremely well written and basically said I know that she’s in charge

Of basically finding fairness and fairness seems to be that we will get legislated

But we believe that it’s unfair to us. So please take her out of a mix. I just think it was fantastic

I mean, it’s incredible. It’s like isn’t this the point of having her in the job?

It’s like we’ve hired a new prosecutor who specializes in organized crime and the gambino crime family has petitioned to have them

Exactly recused

From doing any organized crime, right? Their argument is that she should be recused because she published um articles

Yeah, that amazon should be broken up and they’re saying she’s already pre-judged the situation there’s no way this is gonna fly

There’s no way she’s gonna get recused

But I think what they’re trying to do is put an argument on appeal

So that if lena khan does break them up somehow they can then go appeal to the supreme court or wherever

And and this is basically reserving an argument they can make later. So just to highlight the fdc

Um brought this case against facebook

Saying that they’re a monopoly and their monopolistic practices are damaging the market the dc federal court threw out the case

And they basically said that the fdc failed to demonstrate in any way

That facebook has a monopoly over anything because they kept using the 60 market share term and they’re like 60 percent what?

And the fdc was never able to give them data or facts to indicate what facebook has a 60 percent share of

There are other social media services. There are other advertising platforms. There are other content sites that are all

In aggregate much larger than facebook. And so the case was dismissed because there was no demonstration at all

Yeah, which is why lena khan is of the traditional definition of a monopoly

And then elizabeth warren comes out two days ago and says we need to rewrite the laws

Uh, the antitrust laws entirely redefine what it means to be a monopoly redefine what this this impacts

and so I think the big question is

how much of a priority is it going to be for this administration and for this congress before they’re out of session and

And we end up with a split congress again to step up and rewrite antitrust laws at this point

Is this really a high priority quest?

Or is it going to get that’s why lena khan is being brought in is to take another approach like we talked about on the last

episode which is

You know the harm is

competition

and not

Uh the monopolistic power but downstream competition as chamath eloquently explained on the last pod the irony of the elizabeth warren

Uh statements was that she released them on twitter. Not her facebook. Somebody dug that or like

She’s talking about the monopolistic powers of facebook on twitter, right? Right. You have an alternative. That’s the point

Um, can I I’d say I mean how big of how big of a like legislative priority is this going to be for democrats?

Because this could be if they rewrite the laws

It could be impactful to amazon apple facebook, you know, everyone’s huge. It’s a huge priority

There’s six bills that just got passed in the house

It’s going to the senate and I do think moving fast

This is one of the areas where you could actually get some bipartisan agreement in the senate

You remember it’s a 50 50 senate all it would take would be a few democrats

To defect and they wouldn’t be able to pass anything, but you got 21 republicans who supported lena khan

So, you know that says to me that legislation is likely I think it’s going to go through I think we are going to see

Some some big changes and in fairness to lena khan this fdc lawsuit that got thrown out was brought before she got there

She didn’t have a chance to shape those arguments. They have 30 days to refile. It’ll be really interesting

To see how she handles this hot potato now whether she brings the lawsuit

In a different way in the next 30 days or whether she lets it drop

but

I do think that of all the big tech companies the argument for breaking up facebook is the weakest because

It’s true. Like it’s it’s harder to say definitively. They have a monopoly in social networking when you’ve got twitter

You’ve got uh snapchat. You’ve got reddit. You’ve got tiktok. You’ve got linkedin

You’ve got so many other companies in social media

But but that does not mean

That the argument against amazon google and apple isn’t strong those companies are clearly monopolies or duopolies in their spaces

Nobody can effectively compete with them their network effects or monopoly scale effects

I think that facebook’s monopolistic impact probably tends towards

some form of information distribution, but it’s a very

Technical argument that has to be framed accurately on the one side or it’s how they’ve aggregated long-tail advertisers on the other

But to your point david on the idea of social networking, I don’t think they’re a monopoly in the least

Well, also they’re re-litigating the approved acquisitions of instagram and whatsapp. I kind of feel like

If you bought these things and you approved it, what is it nine years ago and seven years ago?

Yeah, they said they said if you guys had an issue that you know

The state’s attorney general that filed this the suit against the instagram acquisition and whatsapp

They’re like if you had an issue with it, you should have filed the suit years ago

You waited too long and clearly there’s you know, uh, you know other motivations like just because google was successful buying youtube

Doesn’t mean you can go back in and unwind youtube because they did a great job building youtube

99.999% of youtube success is because of google not because of youtube

They took a small team and they rebuilt that whole thing and they scaled the heck out of it

Let me ask you a question to sax if these companies paid more taxes

And got out of the censorship business

Uh, do you think they could you know, maybe take a little wind out of the sales? Yes

Yeah, of course

Look, the only reason the only reason those 21 republicans have now gotten on board with regulating the power of these big tech companies

Is they see those big tech companies using their gatekeeper power to restrict free speech and it’s all one-sided and as partisan

Against you know their side of the aisle because these companies are populated

Generally speaking by people on the other side of the aisle

And so, you know big tech if they had just reined in their own impulses to want to censor the other side

They would not be in the hot water. They’re in right now

They brought this on themselves now because it seems like facebook is starting to backtrack on the trump ban

Well, they haven’t twitter and I think I think they got a big problem now

No, look, I think they should have been doing this over the last couple years the cat’s out of the bag

What they thought could never happen all of a sudden became arbitrary

And the thing that they did was they started to legislate

A private company started to legislate power

And that’s just a third rail issue the minute you do that

You have every government in the world saying to you’re saying to themselves. Wait a minute

I am only focused on this one thing, right? I don’t take a huge salary

I’ve been grinding at the low levels of politics for 40 50 years to get to this exact place

And now I have a bunch of hipsters in menlo park telling me what I can and can’t say

To the people that I worked a lifetime to basically be able to govern over. I mean, I you know, yeah

You can’t it can’t stand. Yeah, so I think a big mistake that zuckerberg made goes all the way back to 2016

Facebook basically bought into the disinformation argument. They apologized for it

What zuck that was the time for zuckerberg to fight? He should have said no listen

Was the fsb were these bad actors on facebook?

Yes, but when you look at the total number of impressions and page views, it was like a drop of water in the ocean

We’re not the ones who caused this election to go the way it did obama used facebook very effectively in 2008

And nobody had a problem with us then and that was the time to fight

That was the time to fight and to your point david

He actually should have been even more he said the reason trump got elected was not me

But it was obama, you know, he could have really gone on the attack and he would have done himself

Well, look hillary hillary just ran a bad campaign if hillary had just campaigned in wisconsin

It would have gone a different way in 2016

So what zuck should have she had an idiot team?

She had an idiot. She had a terrible team and they were bad at everything including facebook including everything

Social media so zuck should have said listen don’t blame us for the fact. The campaign was bad at social media

They put victory into the jaws of defeat. Uh, let’s uh end on this u.s. Sprinter case. I think it’s super interesting u.s

Sprinter shock. It’s unbelievable richardson test positive for marijuana and it’s suspended a month putting her tokyo olympics in doubt

Uh, she is the gold medal favorite in the women’s 100 meter

Uh, and she could miss the games after testing positive positive

She said she smoked pot when she found out, uh in oregon legally when she found out her mom had died

um, and

It’s on the united states. I don’t being agency

Announced this result on friday

Her explanation is so fucking heartbreaking

I mean, what are we doing here?

Change this decision

Well, there was there was this is similar to the golfer who was about to win the pga

And got kicked out on the final day because he tested positive for covid without any symptoms and an outdoor. He’s outside guys

I cannot imagine a worse drug for a sprinter than marijuana

Yeah, I mean for healing great, but it’s I mean you’re gonna like run the 100

For a cheeseburger. You’re gonna take it up

It’s not a it’s not a performance enhancing drug. What this is is this legalism these bureaucratic legalistic technicalities gone wild

In this case or this runner in the case of the golfer

I mean, it’s like it’s like the bureaucrats enforcing the rules have completely lost sight of what the purpose these rules are

The spirit of the rule is super important

And there was a professional snowboarder

And his name was ross

Rabaglotti from canada and he wanted a medal and they took his medal away

Because he had thc in his system

And qualified him and then they went back and gave him his medal back, I believe

and so this is

Heartbreaking and ridiculous and I I’m not gonna watch the I love watching the olympics. I watch a lot of the olympics

I really enjoy it. Um, I think it’s awesome and i’m just not gonna watch this this year

Fuck it. I I just i’m so offended by this

Like you want these people to take like opioids for their pain?

Uh and suffering when you want to take some anti-depressant. I mean jesus christ jason

Look, I also say like in in our

friend group we have

A handful of nba players and I don’t I don’t think you remember this conversation. Maybe you do. I think we were all together

when they talked about the

up until uh

Marijuana was more widely used in the nba. Yes, the pills that these players were given

Literally borderline opioids crazy ripped their stomach apart ripped everything apart, you know created dependencies

And all of a sudden you had a natural alternative and people are going to judge folks for taking I mean these guys

Are brutalizing their bodies for enter for effectively our entertainment

And then we don’t give them a reasonable way to manage their pain. It’s outrageous

And everybody else is smoking a doobie during halftime or taking a gummy on the way home to sleep

I mean, it’s so hypocritical

And it feels like I mean this country just feels like it’s being run by a bunch of bureaucratic technocratic

weenies

And whether it’s monitors whether it’s we should give them a wedgie and throw them in the locker

That’s what we should do with this. I whoever

Put this person they get a wedgie and get thrown in a locker

I knew you I knew you were a schoolyard bully jk. I’m not a schoolyard bully

But I do think the hall monitors, you know, those pi you were a hall monitor weren’t

Did you volunteer to be a hall monitor

Be honest. No, no, no, you were in the chess club. I liked our chess game sax. Yeah

Okay, this is how I knew this is how I knew that jk out wasn’t real. I knew I knew I had heard him

Okay, I knew he was genuinely hurt

But I knew he would get over it when I got I saw my push notifications or a quest from chess.com

He started a chess game with me

So i’m like, oh, how did I play because i’m a neophyte?

He couldn’t how easy he couldn’t be away for how easy was it to beat me as a 1200 player to my 600

yeah, well the chess.com analysis said that uh, I was never I was never in any danger, but uh,

I thought you played pretty well. And uh, yeah, give me a tip. What’s my tip?

Well, you you didn’t castle fast enough. You let me you let me try to get that bishop out

Yeah, you let me trap your king in the center and then you know, it was a but that but you did good

You did good. All right

I knew I was okay with you when I got to chess.com. I think we need a vegas trip

Maybe we’re all just a little cooped out. Maybe we need to go to vegas do a quick 48-hour run this weekend

Should we do a little 48-hour vegas run?

All right, everybody this has been an amazing episode

So, uh, i’m officially unblocking sax and um, I even followed him

Love you chamath. Love you sax. Love you free bird. Jake. I have something to say to you as well

Which is I appreciate you. I I I love I

System break down. Fuck it back at you

We’ll let your winners ride rain man david

And instead we open source it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with it love us queen of

What what your winners ride

We should all just get a room and just have one big uge orgy because they’re all just useless

It’s like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release it

All in

Are you wearing your boxers? What are you wearing?

Chamath turn around

What are those pants dude? These are my swim trunks. Whoa swim trunks. Ah, there they are

the internet famous legs

I mean these legs are actually but much much bigger. Look look how big they are. Oh, please tell me you’re recording nick

Look at how big these are