Is Chamath in a room with his PR crew right now like rehearsing and practicing and this pod is ruined

Hey everybody, so I just wanted to make sure based on last week’s pod

It was absolutely clear. I care about human rights

Many of you know my origin story. But for those of you that don’t I

Was born in a country that’s no stranger to civil war and religious and political persecution

Growing up my family and I felt those effects it affected our safety

It’s in part what led my family to file for refugee status and stay in Canada. So this is a

Real part of my lived experience that said, you know

I realized that what I said last week lacked empathy particularly towards others

Who are dealing with persecution in this case the Uyghurs and based on what I read this week

I think what’s happening to them in Western China is a terrible situation. I

Also want to talk about this idea about nobody caring

Look, if we take a step back and replace Uyghur with other really important issues like the conflict in Yemen the potential war in the Ukraine

gun control school shootings healthcare equity

We’re faced with horrible events every day

However, the unfortunate state of the world today is that we’ve also normalized this routine of being confronted with something tragic or horrible or

unjust and

Being allowed to react with thoughts and prayers and this was the real intent of what I was trying to get across

So when I talk about my line, it’s not about whether something matters or not

It’s about which issues of all the important issues we face every day

Where I have the expertise and I believe I have the ability to have a real impact even if just by a little

For me those areas happen to be climate change life sciences and deep tech

But just because this is where I spend my time

It’s not to take away from any of the real work. Any of you are doing in other areas and

Then lastly, I just wanted to explain to people who may be new to the pod because of last week

That this is a place where four of us four friends talk about a whole wide range of things. We explore our curiosities

We try to learn from each other. We challenge each other, but we’ve always done it in a really supportive space

And I hope you keep that in mind as you listen and watch going forward

And hopefully it can you can bring some of that to your own conversations. That’s I have to say

Well said

Sacks, I mean, I know you have something to say but I’ll say I got a lot of messages this past week after the show

where

Which which I felt a little bit hurt by and mischaracterized and maybe it was simply I said the wrong thing at the wrong time

and

So I want to just be very clear about a couple of points if I can take a minute

That’s all right with you guys

Yeah

So I said I just wanted to I was gonna actually send this out on Twitter and I decided it was better just to address

It on the pod. So to be clear. I strongly believe in and

support absolute freedom of all people and this means de facto

I strongly disagree with the suppression of free speech denial of religious freedom imprisonment harm capital punishment

Slavery and genocide. I thought this was obvious when we were having our conversation. I did not know I’m not in favor of genocide

I’m not in favor of genocide. I’m not in favor of slavery or capital punishment or suppression of religious freedom

I thought this was obvious the conversation

I tried to have was the wrong conversation at the wrong time, which was to trying to talk about the broader

China V US narrative that is swelling and will continue to swell this decade

I think that the primary function of civilized society or any advanced social system is to take care of and protect those that cannot

Take care of or protect themselves and this is usually done by government

But when government fails and government is in fact the oppressor

I think it is the responsibility of other governments and other peoples to step in and have a voice and to take action

And so that is that is kind of my moral framework. I think it’s important

I don’t deny any of the harm being done to the Uyghur population in China. I don’t agree

With it on a principled basis and I don’t think that what the Chinese government is doing. It’s right

And the point that I was trying to make during our conversation was a very different one that I think got completely lost in the moment

Which was really just about what’s going on with the China US narrative right now. I’m not pro China

I’m also not anti China

I am particularly interested in understanding the broader China US dynamic and what it means for the world over the coming decade and decades

I think it’s really important for us when we evaluate these things and to understand them to not just take sides

but to understand the context in the broadest way possible and

that’s why I am trying to get both sides and understand the mindset of the people that are involved in running these governments and

The way that this of this world is going to evolve as this economic tension continues to mount

And so that that’s where I was trying to go

And I was just trying to highlight where I think everything is headed over the next decade or two

Independent of what are obvious human rights issues going on

so

Let me just stop there and say thanks for letting me say that but that was important for me to just be really clear

On because clearly I wasn’t clear last week

Well, I’ll just add to what you said that I also thought it was implied that you care about these things and that you’re not

In favor of them. I didn’t think that need to be spoken

Yeah, so I think it’s it’s nice that you’re clarifying it

But I think any reasonable person would understand that if you care deeply as a vegan about factory farming that you also care

About humans and you know genocide and torture or whatever issue. So I I think it’s like enough

Your statement is so obvious that I wonder if you even had to have made it, but I’m glad you did sax

Okay, so I guess first I should say that

You know what’s happening to the Uyghurs and China’s indefensible you’ve got reports of upwards of a million

You know of these people being held in detention camps. There’s reports of

Mass sterilization and rape. It’s like ethnic cleansing over there

So that’s absolutely wrong and it’s one of a growing list of issues that we have serious problems with China on

Which include theft or intellectual property cyber espionage the bullying of their neighbors?

Their crackdown on dissidents the list goes on and on

I mean

I think we have to be clear-eyed about the challenge and the threat that China represents and we’ve discussed that on this pod many times

That being said, you know, I think we saw this week was really about cancel culture, right?

you had in response to last week’s pod you have this online mob form and

They want to take what Jamal said and interpret in the worst possible light

so they can turn the outrage meter up to 11 and everyone gets to basically go on Twitter and

Virtue signal and say what great people they are and because Chamath is a bad person

And I just want to speak to that issue

I mean

There’s a huge amount of hypocrisy

Going on in that because how many of the people who are tweeting their outrage and their denunciation of Chamath are

Doing it from a device made by forced labor in China wearing their Nikes

Made by forced labor in China on their way to target to buy cheap goods made in China

I mean those people have actually lifted a finger in the real world to help the Uyghurs

How many of them have sacrificed an economic benefit?

In any way and so when Chamath said nobody cares

I thought it was a really startling statement by him

But if you define

caring as doing something more than just virtue signaling and expressing your feelings as actually making a sacrifice or

Taking a risk in the real world. I thought he was frankly telling us a very uncomfortable truth

We haven’t really most of us done anything and in that sense

I think the reason why his comments hit such a nerve

I don’t think you get the kind of pylon that we got unless

He’s saying something that’s hitting a nerve and I think the nerve the thing that he exposed is that

we’re not really doing more than virtue signaling on this issue and

Then came all the you know, all the hypocrites. You’ve got the NBA

Denouncing him issuing a statement when what have they done? I mean when Daryl Maury spoke up

on behalf of the protesters in Hong Kong the NBA shut down and sanctioned him and

You know LeBron James said he was uneducated

Actually, I think Daryl Maury was pretty educated about what was going on. So you’ve got those hypocrites

You got the White House issuing a statement

disavowing

Chamath but Hunter Biden went over to China to manage billions of dollars for them and profited by his business dealings over there

So there are a bunch of hypocrites and the list goes on and on and so, you know

I think that if

In order for the mob to summon the outrage that it summons

It requires them to I would say first put the worst possible light on what Chamath is saying and to ignore

I’d say the fundamental truth of it and second to engage in this massive

Hypocrisy and that is the way that cancel culture operates and I don’t think we should buy into it

So I appreciate what what Chamath said. I think he’s clarifying his remarks

He’s showing that he does care and he does have empathy as we all should

But I think there was a fundamental truth in what Chamath said last week and that is what people are so uncomfortable with

Okay, well said I have feelings and

Most of all, I’m thankful we had the discussion

The goal of this pod

I think what makes it special and why?

You all who are listening come here every week is because you know

We’re gonna be honest with you and we’re gonna tackle these hard discussions and I think Friedberg’s comments and sax’s comments

Really

Explain that and what our intent here is and is human rights is one of the hardest issues to discuss

That’s why you don’t hear it being discussed and there are not easy answers. And I think you know, I was challenged

By my besties on the episode and their questions and their challenges were absolutely critical

Yeah, yes, how can we care about one group of people when the people in our backyard?

We’re not caring about are we going to invade countries? These are very nuanced difficult questions, but we must have

This discussion and if we try to cancel people with a 20-second clip that looks completely different

If you look at the two-minute clip or you take the time to have a 40-minute

listen of the whole segment you get a totally different picture and I

Think it’s very important to raise awareness about human rights

And it is an issue that I have been passionate about my whole life

And I’m not trying to virtue signal or score any points here

but I know firsthand that raising awareness and having the discussions reduces the violations because

Dictators despots and people doing this kind of stuff do not want the heat of

What happened this past week and what happened this past week is that more awareness was raised about the Uyghurs and the situation?

That they’re going through. I

Think then you know as somebody who’s monitored the situation then I’ve seen in the last couple of years

Perhaps this was a tipping point and that is something good that can come out of that

Discussion now on a personal basis. I have had some feelings of guilt

Because I was very hard for me to watch what happened to Chamath this week and to watch people dunking on him

and then let’s face it I brought the topic up and

I dug in with my feelings and it got a little heated and and I’m suddenly being portrayed as

You know like a hero in this discussion that that’s not the intent and there’s there’s no hero or villain in this

There is a hard discussion in this and I am extremely proud of my friendship with each of you, especially you Chamath

I am extremely proud of your candidness and tackling these issues and making people think about them and

You know, I’m just so proud to be friends with each of you and I’m so proud of the work

We hear we do here every week and I think it’s important work

And I feel like I get smarter every week and and I hope the audience does too and I hope we can keep having these

discussions

Yeah, now let’s yeah make fun of each other I mean, I don’t know if we’re allowed to laugh

This is like so serious and heavy. But so what you’re saying is Thank You Chamath

Now that’s going to be clipped for 20 seconds I’m going to get canceled. Jason Calacatt is thanking Chamath

But Saxe’s point about I mean look we’ve talked about cancel culture a lot on this show

You know, we’ve always been I think generally able to be third-party observers to what’s happened

And it was really interesting to go through the cycle this week

where

You know, there was just kind of a an echoing narrative

On one thing that was said with one direction. There were a few pieces though Chamath, right?

I mean it wasn’t there a piece from the Atlantic and some other pieces that kind of highlighted that

Things that you said were things that a lot of people won’t say and that’s what was really so shocking for so many people

What’s the Peter Thiel?

Comment on this whole on all of this stuff. Yeah, he said if no one’s saying it

It’s probably true or if you’re not allowed to say it, it’s probably true. Yeah, if you’re not allowed to say it

But

Yeah, it was what you think based on the the mob that formed and you know

It’s already kind of blown over and that’s the way this kind of cancel culture starts

But for that sort of that white hot really intense day or two, you would think that like Chamath had practiced genocide himself

You know it

you know because everybody comes out and the way that they

Make themselves feel better is by virtue signaling on this issue

And again, I would just say that well, I think we should be thinking about what do we do?

You know, how do we actually make a difference because I don’t think just virtually on the issue is gonna do it

and

You know at the same time that this mob was forming against Chamath

We had a two-hour Biden press conference in which Biden never mentioned the Uyghurs once the press corps never mentioned the Uyghurs once

So does that mean the Uyghurs are below their line

You know, why wasn’t it mentioned, you know, shouldn’t we be ganging up on Biden?

Well, why is you know, why is the press getting up on Chamath when they’re not getting up on Biden for that?

So there is a fair amount of hypocrisy here. I actually think Jason

I think you make an excellent point that by discussing these issues and raising these issues

it creates a little bit of a check on the people perpetrating these atrocities because

They don’t like to be exposed that way and you know, maybe we should be boycotting the Beijing Olympics

I mean, maybe that should be on the table. Maybe we should be boycotting the NBA. I mean, let’s have that

Conversation. Yeah, or maybe everybody who goes I wouldn’t want to see the athletes miss the Olympics

But maybe they could each just raise their hand and do a you

Or some sort of a signal to show they support the situation or they’re aware of it with the Uyghurs

There could be some, you know modest protest or statement they could make without ruining, you know, their lives work

I always hate when the Olympics get canceled for some political reason because I think those people work so hard for it

But racing awareness, you know is a noble goal in all of this and then also doing things is a noble goal

and

Yeah, I mean I it was very weird to watch the

The mob form and then dissipate and

Just who was you know, taking the time to actually listen to the full episodes

It was clear from that Atlantic article and some of the nuance takes that they listen to the full

discussion because there are bullet points here like

Like there was somebody asked me a very challenging question

I think it might have been you freeberg like are we going to start invading countries over human rights?

and then there’s more suffering and death and pain from the wars and and when do you decide as

The the democracies of the world to invade the dictatorships of the world to

Promote human rights like this is a very difficult issue

That the world has had to deal with sadly before and there is no easy answer there, you know

There’s a point that I also try to make on the last episode like freeberg did which is I

Think it’s I think it’s actually great to have these ideals and we should have moral clarity about what’s happening

And I think it what’s happening is

Wrong it’s outrageous. It’s an atrocity

But but the question is what we do about it and

and the the reality is even though it’s important to speak out about human rights these types of

fulminations about human rights when they become this sort of

You know when people when we get to this like frenzy

it’s been the prelude and pretext for every misguided foreign intervention that we’ve had over the last 20 years and

the example

The iraq war. I mean saddam hussein was suddenly hitler

you know the the goals of nation-building afghanistan for 20 years our invasion of

Libya, we got rid of gaddafi and we replaced it with chaos for years

We were talking about how evil the taliban and their social system was and then we just handed afghanistan back to them a few weeks

ago

exactly, so

You know

and so these types of um, you know when when you kind of you whip people up

Over human rights. I mean I agree with the sentiment and I agree with the moral clarity, but I also can’t help

But recognize that neocons and the military industrial complex and the washington blob have used this type of rhetoric

For decades to corral us and stampede us

Into wars and foreign interventions that don’t make any sense and we all recognize after the whole project has gone wrong like afghanistan

We become suddenly more realistic about the whole thing and suddenly, you know, we’re not talking about you know

The the the sort of the moral atrocities of the taliban anymore

But the discipline is they’re still there. They’re still there the discipline though is to be able to check ourselves

Before we get into these interventions and I don’t think we do a good job of that

We’re whipping ourselves up into these mobs and we’re in a frenzy

And the the raising awareness is something that has been lacking the you know certain organizations

And I think it’s very important that we don’t take organizations that have engaged with a country. Let’s say china or saudi arabia

They may have engaged in good faith with the goal of you know

Engagement is a positive for humanity in the world. Okay, if we engage with china and we are co-dependent on each other

Um that will lead to a better arc for human rights and for humanity and less wars because our

Economies are entangled and we do business together. Okay. This is a a fine premise

What the dictators and despots want you to do is to fight each other and not look at the human rights atrocities

So it’s easier for us to say. Oh the nba. Oh apple. Oh

You know pick the uh, the the company or corporate interest or organization that has engaged

um, but by raising awareness, um

Consistently

It gives other people the ability to talk about this

Some organizations weren’t willing to even talk about this or say the name

Uyghurs and if we keep talking about the uyghurs the chances that that situation improves

I think there’s a chance it does improve but I do think this like notion that the four of us can get together on

a podcast and not get canceled

Because you know, we we don’t collect money from advertisers and we started having these conversations amongst friends and we just put it on the internet

Um, first of all, it’s a great kind of reflection of what you can do in the united states

The freedom of speech that we have and we can just put this on the internet. Anyone can watch it around the world

Uh, I don’t know how many people are watching it, but mostly freedom of speech mostly freedom of speech

But I do think that it’s it’s pretty valuable and I do think that that’s

You know an important point for us is you know as much as chamath got completely

destroyed this week

Um, you know the I gotta I gotta say other than covid i’m uh, i’m feeling pretty good you feel better

You’re pretty bummed for a day or two

I mean, I think the the covid thing was scary because four of my five kids got it. Um,

So I was just like oh my god, how’s everyone doing by the way?

I’ll be very honest with you. So, uh between both houses, um, you know mine and my ex-wife’s

Four of the five kids got it

Our nanny got it nat did not and the youngest baby did not

Uh, there’s a real difference between in my house

how the boys

Experienced covid and how the girls experienced covid quite honestly it

Like we you know, we’ve expressed certain symptoms specifically a really bad sore throat and a cough

That the girls in our house did not the girls had more intestinal issues. The boys roughly did not

So it all manifested kind of in odd ways

Uh, but god my god, I mean what a pain in the ass

Well to be going through that and then also like monitoring twitter and inbound your phone must have been blowing up

I wasn’t doing any of that. Okay, jason start the pod. Let’s go. All right. Well, okay everybody welcome to the podcast with us

Uh the sultan of science who’s got a new startup. He launched we’ll hear about that later in the show

the rain man himself and

dare I say

the dictator

I

I was like, yeah, it’s not like we it’s not like we didn’t warn you we

Got a 63 episodes. We called him the dictator. This was about to happen

Let’s start the show everybody you guys were like after 20 years of friendship

It’s like I don’t know the list is like 9 000 items long. I was like, yeah, i’m gonna cancel and we got a long list

All right, uh, so first up I think we should start with um,

A duo of stories that relate to each other microsoft announced. It’s buying activision blizzard

For 68 billion dollars of cash microsoft’s got a lot of cash

um

and I think we all understand like why this is a great idea for microsoft with xbox and

Obviously activision owns call of duty which has 120 million or so monthly active users

They also own a bunch of nerd stuff from blizzard like diablo world of warcraft my favorite starcraft

And those have upwards of 40 million

They also had black king if you remember that they make candy crush and those kind of casual games which have a quarter billion users

But even with all these, uh, it’s a highly fragmented market, but in related news

Alina khan the I believe 32 year old head of the ftc

Uh who has written a bunch of pieces we talked about this on all in episode 36

sat down with cara swisher and andrew ross sorkin for an interview

and

uh, basically

We’re moving or she intends to move the goalposts on antitrust

I want to play three clips and have you each react to them. Here’s the first one

and this is her take on changing the antitrust from consumer harm to

now shift to

Does this deal and we’ll take the activision deal here as uh, but one example, but you could take the instagram and the youtube deals

as well

Do these deals substantially reduce competition?

In the future. Let’s watch the first clip in certain cases

Maybe too much success. And so the question is when is the regulator supposed to say?

This could work and if it works, it’s actually worked too well

It’s an interesting question and I think you know for enforcers the real question is is this a deal that could lessen competition

And in hindsight all deals to some degree all deals to some degree

Substantially less than competition or tend to create a monopoly

Um, and there’s also indication that congress wanted enforcers not just to act when you know

The third and fourth companies are merging or the first and second but actually in the incipiency when you said see trends towards

Concentration that those can also be important moments for enforcers to jump in

So, uh, what do we think?

Uh freeberg about this sort of new rubric

not consumer harm because obviously if

Microsoft buys activision and makes those part of game pass and you get call of duty for free with your game pass

And the candy crush games and blizzard games. That’s good for consumers. They get a whole bunch of more games

It would be like disney buying star wars. You get all the star wars stuff in disney plus for the same low price

Yeah, look saxes are legal eagle here

But but i’ll just say um before uh, you know, he probably speaks better informed than me

Um, if it’s not about consumer harm and it’s about decreasing competition in this broadly I would argue subjective sense

Then um, what’s scary is that there are going to be decisions made by interpreters of what is and isn’t competitive

And ultimately if they’re not trying to keep in mind the best interest of the consumer

Then it is in fact going to cause consumer harm at some point not necessarily

Deals that they block but there will be deals that they may block that may have benefited consumers

Meaning prices go down

Imagine having all of your products integrated in one streaming service instead of having to pay for three streaming services

So instead of paying 70 across

HBO max and disney plus and netflix you get everything in one

But today the regulators would not let those businesses merge because that would be anti-competitive under this context

And so this is going to be a touchy debate and it’s going to be difficult

I think ultimately to rationalize this if there is going to be a point

In the future where we can actually show that consumer harm would be caused by decreasing competition in the marketplace

And so I would be nervous about that subjectivity and the slippery slope it enables

I think it’s a great point think about it

If you had to pay instead of for disney plus you paid for pixar plus disney plus marvel plus and star wars plus

It’d be chaos in your household to manage all those accounts. It’s a much better offering better consumer experience

Yeah, much better consumer experience and and cheaper and this is why by the way, I said, sorry

I’ll say this is what I said in the past

It’s we use the term monopoly as if it’s de facto evil and bad

But not all monopolies or businesses that have very big moats is another way to kind of describe them

Are necessarily bad for the customer you get cheaper products you get better products you get more of an advantage

They may ultimately be yielded to be anti-competitive in a harmful way

Not necessarily always but let me explain to you where she’s coming from like there’s a fundamental pillar of capitalism that says that excess returns

Must get competed away. So if a capitalist system is to be efficient if a company has profit margins of 99

competitors emerge pushing those profit margins down to something reasonable where you get to some sort of equilibrium and

The whole principle of what she’s saying is in in the absence of competition

We don’t really know what the equilibrium

Return really looks like and she’s not saying that but that is the implicitness of what she’s saying

And so in the if you allow all of this stuff to aggregate

Maybe google shouldn’t have 45% EBITDA margins maybe in a really competitive society

They would only have 18%

And that’s actually better net net for the system

The problem is that counterfactual to your point Friedberg is impossible to measure

How do you know?

And how much value do you need to take away of the panoply of things that google does?

To figure that out and that’s I think where the problem with it, but you know, let’s be clear

I in 2019 I wrote in my annual letter

There’s a section called the the tightening of the regulatory noose and meaning it was a framework for how to basically dismantle big tech

And element number one of that was a changing regulatory landscape

And it’s really incredible to see it in front of our eyes. We got a bill that just left judiciary

right that was

Effectively voted across the aisle that’s now going to go to the floor of the senate

Which is going to rewrite some of these anti-competitors like 75 25 and it was the 50 50 committee of democrats and republicans

So clearly across the aisle clearly across the aisle

Uh, and I mean the funny thing about that was speinstein and padilla the two democratic senators from california where most of these companies are

In in the wall street journal article that I read railed against it, but still voted for it to go to the floor

So it’s I think some version of that is going to pass. She’s going to go and scrutinize these companies

I still think this microsoft activision deal on balance gets done

Because if you take the absolute values away from it

The reality is that it’s an adjacent part of microsoft’s core business and there’s nothing fundamentally

Monopolistic about what would happen if you let microsoft and activision come together

Could it reduce competition in the future?

I think would be her new lens and if xbox has call of duty and sony playstation doesn’t or the next console doesn’t

Maybe it does you could make the argument sax. What are your takes on this?

Very hard

To apply standard of reducing future competition because as aaron ross sarkin said very clearly

all

of these

Reduced competition. It’s now we got to get into what does the word substantially mean in this context?

Yeah, so my take on on lena khan is that she’s got some worthwhile observations

On the problems posed by these big tech monopolies, but I don’t think she’s got the right remedies

So on the observations, I think she’s correct broadly speaking that these big tech companies the fangs

They have way too much power in the marketplace

There are now gatekeepers over the internet that control all these powerful platforms

and broadly speaking

it is time I think to

to basically

Have some limits on those powers make sure they don’t abuse it

I think she’s also right that the traditional standard of consumer harm doesn’t really capture

That sort of concept of market power for these free ad-based services right because there is no pricing

um

and furthermore

I think she’s got a point when she says that you know

When you say no pricing you mean facebook and google the consumer doesn’t pay so how can there be consumer harm, right?

So clearly that there’s that standard of consumer harm doesn’t really capture the market power dynamic

And then I think the last observation she makes which I think is pretty

Pretty valid is this idea that you know when facebook bought instagram at that time it didn’t seem to

Be a problem, but it definitely allowed them to extend their monopoly

From the desktop into mobile and it probably should be scrutinized harder. My problem is with her remedies

I mean what she’s basically saying

Is first of all, like you said any deal that could decrease competition in the future is a problem

Well, the whole goal of business and making business moves like an acquisition

Is to build your moat is to win is to win create a more competitive offering so there’s no limiting factor

There’s no bright line test there at least with consumer harm. There’s a bright line test, which is about pricing, right?

It’s mathematically measurable. You could create a model around it here. There’s absolutely nothing

And so what it’s going to do is completely politicize

The process of getting a an m&a deal approved and you can see this when she’s talking about the impact on labor

I mean, this is a total

This is a total sop to the labor

constituency in the democratic party because look

Facebook and google no matter how powerful monopolies they may be they don’t have a dominant position in the labor market

This is not true

They’re competing for the same engineers that every tech company is competing for so she’s bringing a purely political consideration in now

And so again, there’s no bright line rule. It’s going to be heavily political companies trying to get a merger approval

Never know whether they’re good or not and even after they get approved

They’ll never know they’re good and I have a big problem with her saying that any deal

That they approve can be reopened and re-evaluated a decade into the future and reversed

The actions they’re taking companies need certainty. That’s the that’s the real issue

It’s the the rules of capitalism have been that

the smarter slash more strategic

You know entity

If they can run their plays more efficiently has the right to win

Um, this is almost trying to say actually not really and that is very problematic. Yes

You never know you’re good and then the problem that it’ll create in the equity market specifically is how do you actually?

Drive shareholder returns and then what do all these shareholders then do?

If these companies are rendered to basically stay where they are

So you take a snapshot?

I mean you take a snapshot of the economy and you say this was what it will be from now on

But it’s sax’s point is really interesting

It’s going to require mna to become kind of a political maneuvering process similar, you know create sort of these

uh, you know, um

Obfuscated gates where you don’t really know what it’s going to take to get through there

And then you’ve got to go do what you do when you try and convince foreign governments to work with you or allow you

To do a transaction in a foreign government in a foreign country

Well, you got to go in and you got to go figure out the politicians who they want who they are

What they want and then put together a political consortium that’s going to approve the deal

Given that there’s now going to be subjective

Uh, you know validation whereas before I think the the criteria were much more objective

Let me play this other clip. This is the clip that the sax was referencing

Alina khan also talks about how labor uh

Unions are trying to get in on the action slash griff. See on the other side

Some of this research has showed that labor markets are significantly concentrated

um, and it’s led to you know additional thinking at the policy level of

How this should be affecting what anti-trust enforcers are doing. So the justice department, um, including in the last administration started looking at

No poach agreements, uh more closely instances in which employers may be colluding to suppress wages

Um, both agencies have been looking at the ways in which mergers in particular may lessen competition for labor

um

And have downstream effects on workers in ways that are harmful and that also needs to be on our radar

so I think this is an ongoing conversation, but

Increasingly the question is, you know, how we implement some of these priorities and not you know, whether they’re important

But this is the first time you’ve included labor

this is something laborers wanted for a long time the idea of looking at antitrust through the lens of

Unemployment essentially

Yeah, there’s an interesting history here

I mean, um, you know, there were cases in which uh, you know

Unions were supportive of transactions because they thought they would lead to more downstream benefits

But I think um, we started to see uh through retrospective studies instances in which you know

Mergers actually ended up having a harmful effect. And so I think that is what’s significantly contributing to this

This is this is also part of what I said in 2019

The third element of that plan was you have to change the rules on stock-based compensation

So instead of her talking about it as labor

I think the the more accurate way to say it is like there’s very valuable human capital in technology business a few people have

You know discontinuous impact on these businesses

And it has been a stated strategy of all of big tech to use their balance sheets to buy small companies

In their incipiency to use her words not because it helps advantage their monopoly

But it prevents the leakage of human capital

Into other ideas and it prevents those other ideas from really flourishing

That’s really what’s been happening for years in silicon valley, and we all know that

You know, all the aqua hiring we see is about hoarding talent

And you’d rather pay these people millions of dollars a year if you’re big tech

To basically work on next to nothing

Then take the risk of them going across the street to a competitor and then having them

Do something that disrupts you and this was such a this is such a no the only way

But the sorry just to finish the old one of the ways that you can change it is you have to change

The way that stock-based compensation works how it’s accounted for

you know how you can actually deal with it on a gap basis how

Capitalists then treat that in terms of their earnings if you don’t do that

None of the models change people look past it people look through it

They don’t think it’s a real cost which it is

And then you’re allowed to continue to do it. That’s really the underlying issue

So much so chamath that the human the hoarding of human capital was a reoccurring theme on the silicon valley hbo show

Where people in hooli were getting paid millions of dollars and hanging out on the roof

Uh freeberg when you look at this

Uh human capital labor being brought into it. Isn’t the point of a lot of mna?

to

Um eliminate jobs and eliminate redundancy. So if you brought in youtube at google

I’m, not sure if you were there at that time period the distinct concept was hey

We already have an advanced ad network. We already have accounting and we already have servers around the world and storage

You don’t need to hire those people. We can get rid of them or whatever

And we get rid of that redundancy

Large-scale consolidation. That’s certainly true

Most mna and technology is the opposite where an acquisition takes place and the acquisition

Gets fueled by further investment after the acquisition is made when youtube was acquired

There was a few dozen employees there and then very quickly google scaled that team the engineering team the infrastructure team

They even had their own independent ad sales team

um to thousands of employees

And without that it would have been very difficult for youtube to achieve that scale both from a product success perspective an infrastructure perspective

But also an employee-based perspective with the amount of capital

It would have taken to go and raise that from venture capitalists

Maybe nowadays where there’s billions of dollars floating around it would be different

But back then it would have been very hard. And so what’s the same for uh, whatsapp and instagram?

Yes, exactly whatsapp was 19 people when it was acquired and now it’s thousands i’m certain and instagram’s the same

And so what we’ve seen traditionally or not traditionally but over the last 10-15 years with internet-based acquisitions

Is not about consolidation and reduction in costs

But about taking and enabling technology and accelerating it on an existing platform

Now number one it makes that new technology or product far more successful far more far-reaching and more consumers benefit from it

Number two is it now makes that platform harder to compete with so as a platform

It’s going to be a lot harder to catch up with the cash flows being generated at google and at facebook

Given how quickly they reinvest that capital in new technology to further their advancement

To your point, yeah, but I would say

What what’s what’s been so significant over the past 15 years that people are lifting their head up

Is that it has been both beneficial to consumers?

And anti-competitive so that was exactly what I was going to get to here

Your youtube example is the perfect one because if you look at youtube think about all the joy education

Communication it has created on a global basis as a juggernaut free and it’s free

That has helped humanity so much in this new lens

But no one else can make a video ad site like

Exactly. So we’re now looking at all the benefit that youtube has created for humanity

Versus the fact that it’s going to be impossible to displace youtube now to your point sax

How do you get past the bright line? Do you have a suggestion?

for a way and would you now look at something like youtube and say we shouldn’t have

Allowed that to happen youtube was on debt store because of the lawsuits and the server bills. We all know that

Right. Well, this is the uncertainty that’s going to be created and

I think this administration’s creating tremendous business uncertainty

I think the reaction of a lot of big tech companies is this is going to be to stop

Doing m&a until the situation gets clarified because they just don’t know

Um, you know targets are target companies are going to want to have huge breakup fees

And it’s just going to have a chilling effect on the market for m&a

I mean business needs certainty and they’re not giving it in this business environment

Um trim up before we get to you just let me kind of make one point about that last clip

on on the labor point

Listen, this feels to me just like when the administration

uh talked about clean tech and clean energy and electric vehicles, but then they only gave the subsidy to the

car companies

That were uh that were basically union shops and so give tesla the same. That’s right

They excluded tesla. They excluded tesla from the ev center

They tried to pretend that ford and gm were the ones driving the ev revolution in the u.s

It was laughable what they were trying to do. There is there a shoehorning a union agenda

Into clean tech and I think that’s what lena horn was doing in that clip

she was shoehorning a union agenda into antitrust law and it’s a bit absurd because

Facebook and google even though they are very powerful companies when it comes to talent

They are in a war for talent just like everybody else. They compete

It’s not a union issue there. These are not factory. These are not mistreated employees

These are very well-paid employees and moreover

The market is highly competitive and we don’t need them trying to insert this union agenda into antitrust law

You got to think that for example going back to microsoft activision

obviously the bankers

Would have called apple and facebook and google as well. I mean, it’s absurd that they wouldn’t have

Yeah, it has to be the minute that you think you have a bona fide offer

One of the things you have to do is essentially, you know

Get an opinion letter and also to make sure that as a public market shareholder

You can justify that you’ve evaluated all the other options, right? Sure

um

But it’s really quite telling to david’s point. I don’t think that if you were facebook or google or apple

You could have credibly made an offer because the calculus in the back of your head was not whether it had business logic

But whether you could actually get it through the fdc

But microsoft did because microsoft is no longer seen as a threat and look we said this we said this in our awards show

Two or three episodes ago, you know, they have really been the most untouched

Uh in the last decade by antitrust scrutiny whether it domestically or internationally

they’ve largely skated under the radar after

Paying the price for an entire decade

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that microsoft’s effectively pivoted with the exception of this gaming into being an

enterprise software company and

The politicians just care a lot less about enterprise software. It doesn’t capture the public’s imagination. It’s the big consumer

You know companies that get all of that attention fascinating point

like literally the consumer and the bread and circuses of this is what’s driving it like

People hate big tech and trump got banned from it. Yada. Yada

But I gotta say, you know these um increasing restrictions on big tech and the these

Prohibitions and the chilling effect the uncertainty

It’s one thing to do it when the market is just completely ripping and we can sort of afford

To run these experiments and tinker with these these rules, but I gotta say i’m starting to get pretty worried here

That you know, we had jeremy grantham is sort of a old school. Yeah old school kind of bearish type market commentator

He had this expression that the yeah, I mean it’s more one of these stop clock right twice a day things

Jeremy grantham has never found a market. He didn’t yeah. Yeah, exactly

but but but a stop clock can be right twice a day and

The the line he had today is we’re seeing the popping of a super bubble

And you know, we’ve been talking about bubble. Yeah, exactly. Basically, that’s not that’s not true. But I mean, it’s good. Yes

It’s evocative. Well the the sense in which it might be true is that I mean we’ve talked about this last few months

Is that you had the fed and the the the federal government?

Pump a 10 trillion of liquidity into the market over the past two years because of covet now

They’re starting to pull that back

And there was I think a general asset inflation across asset classes certain types of assets

Clearly got more inflated than others. We’ve seen a huge correction in growth stocks. We’ve seen a huge correction

in uh in crypto

Basically anything long dated as the fear of interest rates increasing has gone up. They’ve massively corrected

but

so the concern is that

You know with the losses we’re seeing

And I mean every day it just keeps like you’ve seen more red that this could turn into a recession

you know popping of bubbles is usually followed by

Uh by recessions or so. I think you know the fortunes of the economy could turn really quickly here

And that is that is the marginal risk the marginal risk is actually for a recession

We we talked about this before by the way, just to your point

You’re right that we pumped in 10 trillion dollars

But over the last three weeks and really over the last two and a half months we have actually eviscerated

10 trillion dollars of value as well. So if you want to measure it

We put 10 trillion of excess capital in but we’ve now destroyed 10 trillion dollars of equity

Destroyed it by lowering the prices or repricing stuff

Yeah, we’ve repriced everything crypto. I mean crypto in the last couple of days has just been

Schlocked

Yeah, uh growth stocks have been shellacked. Um, biotech stocks have been just absolutely spoken. Everything is getting crushed

COVID stocks, but david is saying something really important the risk in my opinion is not

of

Runaway inflation anymore. And the reason was what happened this weekend was incredibly important

And we have seen this happen just a few years ago so this weekend

uh, china cut interest rates now

As we know we are dealing in the united states with this issue of whether we should raise rates

And by how much because we’re worried about inflation while if you’re cutting rates

It’s because you’re worried about the other problem, which is that the economy is basically turned over and you need to become more accommodating

Right. You need to incentivize businesses to spend by turned over you mean

It’s slowed down

People are not building companies not doing new projects

So you want to insight you want to give them an incentive or maybe?

Some catalyst to start some new company or start some new project because all the real estate projects have wound down in 2018

here’s exactly what happened the setup was

The fed we were everybody was worried about what the fed was going to do on interest rates

The fed was looking at china as the canary in the coal mine the leading indicator of what we should do

And at the end of 2018

Uh, jerome powell decided to raise rates

And we raised rates

And then enter 2019

and uh, the chinese economy turned over and uh

We realized that their economy was not nearly as strong as we thought it would be

And so our reaction was disproportionate to what the actual data on the ground said we entered a recession in 2019

That’s when you guys probably saw

Trump going crazy blaming powell. I mean most of us ignored it because you know, we were all dealing with you know

Trump derangement syndrome, but the underlying thing of what he was saying was hey, hold on a second

Uh, you just caused a recession in america by raising too quickly

The fed is now in this really delicate situation where china cut rates last week

We have an fomc meeting the open markets committee that sets rates on wednesday. I think of this coming week

What is he supposed to do?

You know bill ackman two weeks ago. It was advocating for a 50 basis point raise in this meeting

So that’s way beyond what people even thought is supposed to happen

We should just remember that bill ackman has bets macroeconomic bets in the market if he’s calling for a 50 point raise

I guarantee you you’re gonna make a lot of money. You’ll make a lot of money. No conflict. No interest. Yeah

My only point is the setup is a very complicated one for the fed coming into this week and

The risk is to a recession because if we over correct

Yes, and the leading indicators all around the world tell us that their economies are weak

Then inflation may have actually been much more transitory than we thought and right now we have to decide

Because if we over correct we’re going to plunge the united states economy into a recession

This is why uh

I think friedberg when you look at this when you have so many different things happening at once and you’re trying to pilot a plane

Or a car, you know in rain on ice going really fast

Maybe there’s something wrong with the brakes and you got to be very delicate

With you know how you steer into this what is the right strategy here on a policy basis?

coming out of omicron

Um, should we just take a pause on raising rates?

What do you think the right situation here obviously putting a bunch of regulation on top of big, you know mergers and acquisitions and

That’s going to create headwinds

I don’t know how many different variables we want to add to the mix of an economy that feels like we’re in a perfect storm

I don’t know. Look a lot of us kind of talk about

The valuation of things in markets as being the economy, but it’s not

The economy is the productivity of businesses that are valued in the market

And as long as the productivity of the businesses in the market continues to improve that businesses continue to grow that

There’s stability to pricing that’s not run away or or declining

and either inflationary or too deflationary

um

You know, I think those are the indicators that matter most now the reality is over the last couple of years

We’ve had trillions of dollars that have flowed into these markets for free

And those trillions of dollars have created lots of mini asset bubbles

Lots of little new markets have emerged nfts

Random cryptocurrencies that don’t actually do anything the collectibles market the art market. There are lots of

I mean there are and lots of examples of these speculative early stage businesses that have gone public

And uh people back them and they they said look when there’s this much money around i’m going to start making more risky bets

i’m going to make more speculative bets

And uh regardless the money’s coming out of the markets

The money’s going to come out one way or another and as it starts to come out

These little bubbles are the first that are going to pop and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the economy is at risk

It means that there are valuation bubbles that are going to burst they’re going to decline

And no interest rate policy is going to change that because the inevitable

Growth in the underlying economy the inevitable end to the pandemic

Is what’s ultimately going to drive capital out of these markets?

And back into ultimately more productive assets and less speculative assets

And so this is a transition that i’m not sure you can really kind of manage

I think underlying businesses and the growth of the economy and the ability for people to get jobs

There’s an incredible number of open jobs are in the u.s

Right now three million open job listings go apply for a job million eleven million, whatever it is

Go go go sign up for a new job three point. What is it sax three million three point seven percent unemployment?

There are not a lot of people

Yeah, there are not a lot of people in the u.s

That don’t have an option to go out right now and go improve their their working condition

There are a lot of open jobs in the u.s

And salaries have gone up. That’s what I mean. You’re working condition. You can go make more money and um,

And so, you know the economy underlying there are lots of great businesses that are growing and doing well and there’s stability that’s emerging

And then there’s a bunch that aren’t and there are a bunch that were always speculative and that they were hyped and overvalued

And you know as those assets get devalued a lot of us that have most of our

Worth and income coming from capital are uh are gonna feel the burn

I have two questions by the way that we I want to go around the horn on

Uh first jamal if we could do if each of you could do one thing

To one or two things

Uh to manage this economic policy in the next year

What would it be like?

What two things do you think we should do david one or two things be the top of the list?

That regulators should do in terms of managing this

seemingly chaotic situation

Just feel not to it just feels to me like we’re pinballing from one overreaction to another

So we overreacted in terms of flooding the zone with liquidity because of covid

I mean remember like druckenmiller

He was like the one of the only voices about a year ago when they did that to that last two trillion dollar

Stimulus bill the covid relief bill. Yep

And he said look retail is already 15 percent above trend meaning if you looked at demand the demand side of the economy

It had fully recovered and was actually above trend people were spending

More money and then we flood the zone with another two trillion and then lo and behold six months later

We have this inflation and then in response to that inflation. We’re now jacking up rates

So quickly that I think we’re risking such a mass point or recession

So we’re pinballing from one overreaction to another and I just the big meta thought I had this week was just how many of our problems

Are just self-inflicted right now. I mean even on covid right?

We could live with this variant of covid omicron

You know chamath and all of our friends. We’ve

Everyone I know in the last few weeks basically has had it and it’s been very mild

It’s basically been a cold but in large swaths of the country. We’re not choosing to live with it

We’re at each other’s throats about these vaccine mandates these other restrictions and okay

And similarly and and the same thing just to make even more local

We’ve got a crime wave in america going on right now. Why because we emptied the jails last year

And stopped prosecuting totally self-inflicted. Okay. So what things do we need to do?

Just if you had one or two things that you think we should do one

You said we’re ping-ponging. So you think more consistent policy communicating?

I don’t I think that you want some neat little answer that’s tweetable and there is none. No, it’s I wanted you

I mean, let me explain that was a good idea

There’s no one or two things anybody can do

I think there’s a collective set of things that we have to do in an organized way

So look just to set up, right?

We have had more

Activity and hedging

Than in any other period in recent memory

Except the great financial crisis just to set the tone of where we are in terms of volatility in the capital markets

Mutual funds who don’t short stocks, right? The multi-trillion dollar mutual fund complex whose only job is to buy

Has been a net seller

Hasn’t even started buying a single thing yet

We have an fomc meeting

That’s going to happen next week

Where jerome powell and the you know, the fed has to decide what to do in the face of incomplete data

It’s not as if we’ve even stopped all of the purchasing

Uh of assets that we’ve been doing. We’re still putting money into system

I just want to be clear. We were debating when we stopped the spigot

We’re not even debating when we shrink our balance sheet as a country. So

We are in a really complicated moment. And I think the risk is

that there is

An overreaction to incomplete data and we plunge the u.s. Economy into a recession

And I just think that that that has to be really thoughtfully measured and we guys we’ve seen this in 2019 2018 19

I’m afraid break any thoughts. Uh, no, i’m not an economist and i’m not a central banker. And so I have no clue

okay, um

the next thing

But to my point, I mean we are dealing with balancing the risks of inflation against the risk of recession

I think that is fundamental and right now

All the statements have been so hawkish

that

you know the markets have been

just flowing red now for months and

It’s starting. I think I think the the balance of risk is

starting to make recession possible in a way that

Didn’t seem possible two three months. Doesn’t the repricing of assets though? Like we look at peloton, you know, it’s down

Whatever 80 you look at zoom is down 70 80 percent when you see those things that were obviously mispriced

Uh rivian, uh, which we talked about. I wouldn’t use the term mispriced

They were priced. I would say they’re repriced. They’re repriced. They were mispriced. They’re not repriced

Someone paid something someone someone sold them for something. They were they were priced

Yesterday they paid 25 percent more and then today they’re paying 25 percent less

What difference does it make whether it’s yesterday an hour ago or a year ago?

Priced every day pricing changes. Well, no, here’s the thing about the pricing

The pricing was based on people with a lot of money placing a lot of bets

Uh, maybe who are new retail? Okay, fine. What’s the point? The market condition changed

Well, I think maybe we had enthusiastic people

Betting things up without looking at fundamentals is my point. I think sax agrees with me here on this

So I think I think you’re right about that. Yeah

Yeah, so now you have market participants who were gambling on like momentum now

We’re repricing stuff. Do we think where are we at in this repricing or correct pricing assets?

We’re in the eighth in my opinion. I think we’re in the eighth inning of of the tech drawdown

So got it

If you’re a high growth tech company, you’ve been smashed for three months in a row as you said jason

We’re off some stocks are off 80

You know 50 to 80 percent of their highs. That’s like dot-com era corrections. It really is that’s crashed

That’s dot-com era crash

if you’re if you’re uh

If you’re in other areas like value, you’ve had a pretty good rally if you’re in crypto

You’re just starting to get smoked now

if you’re in um

Why is it crypto? This is I want your thoughts on this trim up

Why isn’t crypto getting smoked like peloton and zoom is because those people are hodlers or something

Well crypto I think has slightly different dynamics than than individual stocks like a peloton

But I think that you’re gonna see no earnings release for one, right?

There’s you’re gonna because like you have to understand what all the all the market is is who’s bidding and who’s coming into the market

I mean, there’s still thousands of millions of people from around the world stepping into the crypto markets each day

That are putting more money into these markets and that balances out the withdrawals and that’s all that crypto is there’s no

Underlying business that you’re valuing the peloton release was really bad. Okay. I mean it was very strange. Yeah

Well, I think it was strange. It was just like uh, we’re just gonna basically stop producing anything

Because all of our inventory will meet our demand for the foreseeable future. That’s a

That’s not a good statement if you’re supposed to be a high growth

Okay, so if we’re seeing 50 to 80 percent

Sachs gavin baker had a tweet that’s capital allocator. Yeah

Yeah the bottom of the market

He and it was a phrase something like when we shoot the generals and his comment was the generals are big tech

When those things trade down 25 the bottom is in and I think that collectively most people think that

We’re a little bit oversold

In all areas except big tech. I think big tech is down 10 11 12

Percent when you see this thing really get cracked is when those folks, you know

Trade down another 10 or 15 and then I think we’re kind of through most of the pain

So peloton and zoom were kind of mid-tech. I don’t know what we call those but I would call them like mid-tech

They’re obviously not big tech, but they’re not small either mid-tech gets their asses kick 50 to 80 percent big tech 15

But if big tech goes down 30 then we start really seeing a bottom and we consider netflix part of that

Because I think big tech you have to remember is basically the index and in the last

10 or 20 years you’ve never seen drawdowns more than 15 to 25

You’ve never seen it and in when you’ve ever had a 15 to 25 percent drawdown meaning the market goes off 15 or 25

You have to remember the thing that we have also done over the last 20 years has created so much money on the sidelines

always looking

For a cheap buying opportunity and so the minute that these things so even you know in march of 2020

Remember when we started to do this pod and it literally looked like the world was ending

Yeah, the bottom existed for a week

Yep

And then within a week the entire 25

Loss in the stock market was wiped out and we were back to normal. So that’s when I sold

Don’t take our advice

Okay. Well, let’s talk specifically about nef. I think it was good that we talked about panicked at the lows

Oh my god, I did too. I remember selling I remember selling slack going

This is the dumbest thing but I have no choice because I was how about literally going to 15

How about when uber goes to 15 from 45?

I was ready to basically curled up in a ball and said i’m not selling but i’m not feeling good, right?

By the way, this is why I was saying jason like any comment you made earlier. I think you made a comment about um,

You know, what do you do right now to drive or make change in these markets?

And i’m not sure

That at the end of the day

The drive or the change is being made as much as the change that’s being made is being driven by the market itself

There is just so many dynamics at play that it’s very difficult to kind of ascertain where things are headed next what’s going on?

And we’re all going to sit here and we’re all going to speculate

We’re going to flip a coin. It’s going to come up heads. It’s going to come up tails. We’re going to be right

We’re going to be wrong

it’s really difficult to kind of put put our foot down and for any of us to put our foot down and say this is

What I think needs to happen and this is what I think should happen or could happen or will happen

Half of us will be right half of us will be wrong. But man, let’s take another stock

I think it’s interesting to talk about this netflix was at 700. Uh, just a couple of months ago. It’s at 390 today

Um, this is an incredible large business. Yeah, that’s like a real business that you can assess what’s going on in the business itself

Well, they think they’re not going to grow

Uh, 20 30 percent a year. They think I grow eight nine ten percent a year, but a fabulous business, right? Like, uh, great business

Incredible. So is that now the time so is this growing so much? I mean time netflix is so saturated

It is it has achieved such incredible market share by growing so quickly every year for years and years and end

At some point the growth was going to slow down. They hit their natural audience. I think

I think netflix is going to be the best example

of consumer surplus at scale and what I mean by that is

They have given so much value

Away for an incredibly small amount of money

Like if you think about the value you get from netflix as compared to what you would get from comcast

And you spend ten bucks a month ten dollars or fifteen dollars for netflix versus a hundred bucks for comcast

There was such a huge gap in value

um

But netflix had to spend so much money to keep people entertained. The real question is

At what point do they start to sort of like run out of the things that they can do to keep people?

Engaged and otherwise they jason do what you did, which is you have a subscription to hbo max

You have a subscription to disney plus yeah

I mean the headwinds are the competition everybody gets in the game. The only real winner is the consumer. Yeah

uh

And any individual company I think gets gets into a real tough spot

And I think what you saw was their earnings release basically said just that disney’s doing a great job competing against us

Hbo max is doing a great job competing against us

So we’re not sure

With the incremental dollar that we can give you the growth that we’ve given you before when we had no competition

That’s by the way

Lena’s lena khan’s comment, which is the other side of the coin

Which is when you have more competition the consumer does when it contains prices

It just doesn’t contain asset inflation, which does impact the shareholders of these companies

Uh, yeah, and still even at this level 172 billion dollars. They have a 35

xp

I mean one way that to look at this here

I think your point is an interesting one chamath where you talk about how much value they’ve given away over the years and what

They have today

You can always look at the balance sheet of a business a public company

And in the balance sheet, there’s this um

this line goodwill, um, no, well not even goodwill just the um, uh, the accumulated loss, um,

The accumulated deficit and if you look at that, um on netflix, they basically run the business right now

As of their last earning statement, which was december 31st negative 40 million dollars

So in terms of the total net cash that they’ve generated as a business since their founding as a business

They’ve lost 40 million dollars. So, you know, and meanwhile the question is okay. What’s the you know, so they’re not necessarily

Uh at a stage where they’ve been generating cash

But for many many years amazon had a similar strategy where they were reinvesting all their capital

And that capital was going into building the business and growing the platform and adding the next layer of growth

The question is has netflix from a fundamental business perspective not a valuation perspective

Have they added enough growth platforms into the business?

Have they found enough other products services or ways to build

Linear video they don’t have gaming. They don’t have anything else. They did start doing sports. They don’t have comedy

Really? They they they are dabbling. They dabbled with doing a couple of podcasts

They dabble with doing a couple of games and there’s rumors that they might try to get the other 20 or 30

Percent of people who don’t pay by creating a lighter version that was ad supported in other words

You’re not going to get the new season of ozark, but maybe you can get the first two or three

Uh, you’re a year behind the production schedule, but you can watch it all with ads

So why isn’t netflix in video games and sports?

It’s such an obvious one and that’s why I think they released a series of games based on their ip

So as their ip grows and I think that’s what you’ll see with disney pluses

Think about an app store inside of disney plus a merch store inside of disney plus I think there’s so many verticals next to them

Why is there no merch store inside? Why don’t they own spotify or have a spotify competitor?

Well, I think spotify sees themselves as a that’s a that’s a really good point, you know

When you look at the peloton, I was looking at the peloton. Um

Earnings when you know this it was down 25 yesterday or the day before

And I was like this is an incredible business because they have 2.1 million subscribers that pay 40 bucks a month

It’s incredible. I mean, it’s a money printing machine money printing machine. I actually have a subscription

I don’t even have a peloton peloton. I don’t have you just pay 500 a year to use the classes. I have the app

It’s crazy. I don’t even use the app, but I think that’s 20 bucks for the just an app

Yeah, but the point I was trying to make is when you look at it

You know, there’s about 30 percent of that revenue that goes right back to the music labels for the music

So, you know to your point like, uh, there’s just an enormous value in actually

Music, you know, so as netflix built library values and content they could be they could point it to music as well

There’s all these things they could do to reignite growth

A lot of people discount the value of having a subscription consumer business when you have a consumer’s credit card on file

And they’re paying every month for something

It’s an incredible point because you don’t have the friction of getting the sale done. You’ve already done the sale

Yep

Now the question is can you upsell them some new service or some new addition that they’re not paying for today?

So obvious. Yeah, it’s so obvious, right?

and so like by the way

I’ll say this like for years google struggled with this question, which is what is google’s consumer subscription business because google did not have

Consumer credit cards across its platform despite a billion daily users

And so google for years was strategically trying to figure out what business can or should we be in?

To have a subscription model with consumers because once you have that

Then you can charge for all sorts of stuff. You can charge for storing photos

You can charge for accessing audio. You can charge for accessing unlimited

If that’ll be the i’ll take the contrarian side of this. Okay, here we go. Yeah, go ahead peter

Well, no, look I I invest in b2b subscription businesses

I hate b2c subscription businesses and the reason is just the churn rates what we see when we look at

b2c subscription businesses is five percent monthly churn is not uncommon. It’s pretty much the standard so

Call that 50 60 churn in the subscription base every year

So effectively you’re rebuilding the company from scratch every two years. I don’t see like how you can build a successful business

I’ll tell you why you’re wrong about this

But when you contrast that to b2b with b2b subscription businesses

You do lose some customers, but the ones who stick with you keep adding seats for more employees usually

And so actually it expands your land and expands your courts are actually

Your cohorts are growing 20 every year instead of shrinking 50

Now obviously there are some of these b2c subscription businesses like netflix and peloton. They are obviously valuable. They’ve defied gravity

Well netflix has done it because they spend billions of dollars on content and peloton’s got it because they

Plop a expensive machine in your house

So you can’t forget about it and that keeps you a little bit more recurring

Than like a lot of these subscriptions which are just very easy to cancel

But so look they’ve been able to make it work, but i’m most here’s why I think you’re wrong

It turns out these are so low priced these subscriptions that you get a lot of consumers

Trialing them. So because it’s only five or ten bucks a month to use something like a spotify or a disney

um because they’re so low price you do get a little bit of

Sampling and that’s why the rate’s higher whereas in business

There is a massive onboarding of people have to take their time to set up the software learn how to use it

So if you’re going to commit to it, it does reduce it and you do have land and expand

But what we’re talking about with product expansion is the equivalent in sass of land and expand

So imagine if disney plus or spotify

After you listen to an album or it’s in your top rotation

They showed you the merch for that band or after you completed the season of mandalorian or book of boba fett

They showed you the merchandise and said here’s a limited edition of

Um grogu baby yoda when we tried to get baby yoda stuff last christmas

Disney dropped the ball. They didn’t have any

Uh, and they could have had all that made and they would have sold millions of we were buying stuff on etsy

The reason baby yoda works is because it’s leveraged off a platform

This massive disney platform of which this b2c subscription service is just one piece. I mean look obviously there are

valuable consumer subscription businesses, so

The way i’m approaching it can’t be right in all cases

However, I think people really get themselves in trouble when they start to value

These b2c subscription businesses the same as the b2b ones in one case

You in the b2c case

churn is the predominant characteristic and it means that you’re gonna have to spend more

On marketing or cogs or content or what have you to keep rebuilding the user base

Whereas in the b2b context the user base is compounding on its own

And that’ll that just makes for I think a more finally attractive business opportunity. Yes, but it grows slower again just

At the end of the day, these are all variables just the weights just changed. I agree with david that consumer

Churn businesses or consumer businesses have much higher churn

Than enterprise and enterprises have negative churn, which means that they just naturally grow

But the reality is consumers just have an unbounded tam that enterprises do not

And the way that the way that the ltvs work, uh

Just tend to be different and the cash flow cycle of these companies tend to be very different

And that’s why you see netflix get these enormous valuations that enterprise subscription businesses do not

What some people are now doing when they look at consumer consumer businesses

They look at churn is they take out the ones that are based on credit card

To look at like people who actually unsubscribe because they don’t want it but not because their credit card

So basically so if you think about like netflix’s business if it’s churning two and a half percent per month

Let’s call that 30 of the user base is a trading every year

They’ve got to rebuild their user base from scratch every three or four years now

They can do that. Um, I guess at some point though, they may run out of

You know greenfield opportunity to grow their customer base

um, but you know, it’s going to pressurize their margins because they’re going to have to constantly

Spend on content original content to retain you you have to spend on marketing to keep going after the portion

You’re you’re leaving out the archive. These archives are going to be super valuable and I don’t think we even know how to value

These archives yet because if you look at the marvel archive or the star wars archive

These things just keep printing money year after year and then you’ll see netflix and hbo max

we’ll keep being able to go back to them hbo max being the canonical example now because

You didn’t think that that business would have

You know a lot of ip to build on but suddenly you have the many saints of newark

Um, and the uh, sex in the city reboot. I mean they’re going right down the line

When you own the franchise it has value disney has shown that you own the best franchise

Hbo max is now showing it and then that means netflix will show it next but how much of netflix’s content do they even own?

Are they licensed? No now it’s 100

Netflix is 100 they stopped and that’s why disney started taking it off

Their whole spend that I think they’re spending 20 billion or something. It’s all on original content

So that that’s why they made that move is because they knew they were going to have the disney content the marvel content pulled

Where do we want to go next guys? Because I have covid

Uh, I want to I want I want sax to to talk to me about his

What’s going on with fauci?

Oh my gosh, this is quite a story. This really is. Um, i’m trying to get my head around the story

And i’d be totally honest, can you slow it down and explain it to us? Because I think we all please my head is

Okay, so um a series of emails have come out that were requested of the freedom of information act and what they show

Is that at the nih?

Fauci and francis collins who was the head of it. They had a series of conversations with scientists

Around uh, january. Sorry january 31st or february 1st. There are emails

On february 1st summarizing those conversations and basically what they say is that a

group of scientists advised

Fauci and collins that covid likely came from a lab how they know because it had you know

Hallmark signatures like the furan sites the same reasons we now believe

Uh, the the virus came from a lab, okay

But by february 4th officials at so three days later officials at the nih including fauci

Had come to the conclusion

That the virus must have been passed zoonotically from an animal like a pangolin

It didn’t come from the lab and furthermore. They were starting to use language like conspiracy theory to discredit

The the lab leak the lab leak idea

Um, so that within a few days they were all in

on this sort of so-called zoonotic theory

and

they really began a

campaign

In the words of collins a devastating takedown

Of scientists who were trying to discuss the lab leak theory that became the official position

Why social?

Why well, okay. So this is where it gets really interesting

um

Obviously, I can’t speculate to modus, but here’s what we know the nih fauci’s division

Years ago, there was a debate in the scientific community about how we study viruses

Fauci’s an epidemiologist. He wants to study them makes sense. The debate

Is over whether you should enhance the viruses as a way to study them so-called gain-of-function research

Their fauci is on the side of uh engaging in that kind of research. There are other scientists

Who think it’s crazy they lose

The nih then makes grants to a group called the eco health alliance as run by

Uh a british scientist named peter daszak. Okay, by the way, who doesn’t who doesn’t support eco health and an alliance?

Branding yeah, exactly. We love puppies. Yeah. We’re yes

Angel puppy love. Yes, exactly

So so eco health alliance, which is has neither been good for the ecology for our health

or uh

Yes, so they then provide funding

To the wuhan institute of virology to study bat viruses where get you know function research then occurs

This lab in wuhan is known to have had leaks in the past

So just from a security choice not the best recipient of a grant, but that is what happens

Okay, and then we know the history from there. It’s almost certain that what’s what’s the what’s the element?

of this story that has to deal with the lancet and the yes, i’ll tell you that worked for fauci and then uh

And then that person got a grant afterwards what well and then just one other thing. I want to point out here

Um, so we’re clear. This has become a very partisan issue, but the original foas were done by buzzfeed

And the washington post sorry the foyer releases were done by buzzfeed and washington post

and now you have ran paul on the other side of it who seems like really wacky and

Obviously conspiracy right wing so you have this like really weird partisanship. That’s now been embedded in it. Okay

Yes

So sax, can you explain the partisan nature and then has a question?

I almost want to take uh chamath’s question first about who is this dazzic guy and what is this lancet letter?

Let me come back to the partisan thing

I’m, just going to try to establish the facts before we get into the partisan mess of this thing

So peter dazzic is the guy who made these grants to the wuhan institute of virology, okay

There is one other interesting fact when the west wanted to come in and investigate what happened in this lab

China approved one person from the west to come in and conduct the investigation. Guess who that was

Peter dazzic. Okay. He was the only guy

The ccp let in to go look at this lab. He then comes out of this

Whatever he did and says it has to be the zoonotic theory. He endorsed the wet market idea. It cannot be lab leak

That is a conspiracy theory and then he

Rounds up a group of scientists to write a letter to the lancet

Which is a respected scientific publication which incredibly respected. Yes, which he signs

In which he basically advocates the zoonotic theory, but he goes further and says there is no way

that it could be lab leak and anyone who says as a conspiracy theorist and that has

An incredibly chilling effect

On the scientific community because no scientist wants to be labeled a kook or conspiracy theory or heretical to the lancet

Exactly, and this is a tight-knit ecosystem

of um of

Insiders and institutions and grants no scientists wants to lose their funding, right?

And then furthermore big tech starts censoring as disinformation the lab leak theory because they say well these officials

Look at all the scientists we have to follow the science, right? So the science according to this letter from the lancet

Is basically on the side of the zoonotic theory

So you then have downstream censorship of this so that is who peter daszak is and and and in this letter

In the lancet, he never disclosed his conflict of interest, which is the fact that he funded

This wuhan institute of virology to conduct the type of research that might have led to the leak of the virus

So this guy is hopelessly conflicted and has a reason to want to suppress and cover up a lab leak

And he never disclosed it and look so does fauci. I mean because fauci

funded daszak

so imagine when in february

of 2020

When the lab leak is coming across the desk of fauci

Does he tell the president? Mr. President? He’s at the right hand of the president. Mr. President. We might have funded this thing

We funded daszak who funded the wuhan lab

we

Collectively the united states government might have some responsibility in this. Do you think that conversation ever took place?

When he was making his recommendations, he was hopelessly conflicted and if the truth about this had come out and look i’m not saying

He had any intentional role. I’m not saying he wanted this to happen

I’m, not even saying that he knew for sure that daszak was funding the wuhan lab

Okay, let’s just give fauci the benefit of the doubt, but we all know how politics works if it had come out in february of

2020 that fauci had funded the guy who funded the wuhan lab and that’s where the virus

Likely came from his career would have been finished. Okay finished. We know that as a political reality

And so within days of scientists advising fauci. Hey, this thing probably came from the lab. The nih has consolidated around

The idea that this is a conspiracy theory and they work to suppress it and they wage a public campaign

I gotta tell you when I have learned all these facts. I gotta tell you what I compare it to

It’s almost like we learned all those revelations about bill cosby that here’s this guy on tv for years

Pretending to be america’s dad and then we find out he’s a monster fauci has been on tv for years lecturing us about covid

He’s been like america’s dad america’s doctor and lo and behold we find out that he has a role

In this whole thing and look i’m not saying his intent was not to of course

It wasn’t anybody’s intent has been always to help people. So it’s a little bit of course

I’m gonna give him i’m gonna give him the benefit of every doubt here

I’m gonna give him the benefit of every doubt. Okay, just called him bill cosby

I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt in the sense that he didn’t want this to happen

He didn’t have any he didn’t cause that but we know for a fact that he funded dazic who funded this lab

It’s where the virus came from. Come on

We know that and he covered it up he engaged in a campaign. Okay, we suppress the lab leak theory that is a conflict of interest

Let’s get let’s get freebie again on the science. What do you think as some a man of science?

Friedberg the sultan of science in fact about uh, these emails and the chances that fauci

essentially was

Funding gain of research and then attempting to cover it up, which is the accusation. That’s a question of science

Look there. Um, I mentioned this in the past jamie science community, you know, jamie metzel did a um a podcast interview with lex friedman

It’s worth listening to

Uh, it’s a couple hours long if you’ve got some time to kill

Um, but he does a good job contextualizing

These matters and what may have gone on that led ultimately to

Um the the lab leak and also the lab leak cover-up

I don’t know what happened with fauci and emails. I have not read this stuff

um, so I

You know, I have no reason to believe that fauci is malintentioned in the sense that

He has some reason to harm or hurt

um, I I could see that

There is a certain degree of nervousness to accuse the biggest

Foreign government and potential u.s adversary of causing a global pandemic and not wanting that sort of conflict to arise

At a period of time when you really need to take care of your people

And we really need to focus internally as a country on how do we get through this pandemic?

And making that I gotta respond to that I gotta respond to that

I have to respond to that

I’m, not saying that fauci or anyone involved in that process should have accused china

But that’s not what was their decision that what was not was debated. They decided to stop the debate altogether

They decided to suppress the debate

What would you have done in that seat sax you’re sitting in that seat and the country is potentially facing a pandemic that could wipe

Out millions of americans. I’ll tell you where do you prioritize?

If I was sitting at the nih and I wasn’t hopelessly conflicted I would probably have just said listen

I don’t know what the origin of the virus is. Let that debate continue

I would not have tried to wage a public campaign against the people against the scientists who were honestly

pursuing in good faith

Where this virus might have come from so we can learn things maybe how to avoid something like this from happening again

the people at the nih should not have engaged in that type of

Politically minded pr campaign they just shouldn’t that’s not their job as scientists and then to find out that they have a conflict of interest

On top of that that might be motivating that desire

That is not that is not appropriate. I think it’s really important freeberg

You can probably agree with this that at some point some journalist

should really simplify this for all of us because it’s it’s a

It’s an incredibly important

Topic that we need to look at at the end of all of this assuming that omicron is the end of this chapter

Because it’s been a horrible chapter for the world

um

But we do need an accounting of the truth, right?

I think that’s really important

there was an episode many ago when I said I don’t know and I don’t care about whether or not the virus came out of

China and um again, I was somewhat kind of misstated as the intention of why I said that the reason I said that

And what I really meant

Was that what happened even if it was a lab leak?

What happened was really the tip of the iceberg

The ability to bioengineer pathogenic organisms is becoming ubiquitous

The toolkit to do gain-of-function research as it’s being called in the press is a very simple toolkit

The ability to engineer organisms that can cause catastrophic harm to the human species

Is becoming available on the internet and with tools that any of us can buy and use in our garage

And so what i’m more questioning and what i’m more concerned about and what I care more about

Is what is our global biodefense strategy?

How are we getting ahead of the next wave of this happening?

And it’s not about the who said he said she said those things

It’s really important to understand how we even know we need biodefense when they’re saying it came zoonotically

They’re saying it came from an animal when actually was created in the lab

If you want to have biodefense, we got to first say that whether it did or did. Yeah, you’re right whether it did

Separate question to me whether it did or didn’t

The tooling to do this is absolutely possible and the ability for these sorts of viruses to leak out and be made

And turned into a weapon is significant. It’s a real risk

And so i’m with you guys. I think both of you guys are figuring out. How do we solve this problem?

Like how do we yeah, both of you guys are but both of you guys are saying nuanced versions of

David is saying we have to have

An honest accounting of what happened if we could if we’re supposed to actually have an eco health alliance. Yeah

I’m, not by the way

Yeah, yeah, i’m not just making i’m not dismissing that. Yeah, and you’re saying

we need to actually formalize gain-of-function research because

Everybody has it and so it’s going to be inappropriate for us to ignore it

We need to assume game and function research leads to dangerous pathogenic bioorganisms

And one doesn’t cancel the other and then we need to formulate it doesn’t and then we need to formulate a biodefense strategy

I’m, just saying like we don’t the implication the reason why sax’s thing is important to me is the implications

We have to have an honest accounting of these implications. We saw another implication just this week in flint, michigan

They shut down

Indefinitely the public school system in flint, michigan

Okay, this is a society just to give you a sense of the facts here. 90 are minority

80 why did they shut it down because 80 percent because of covid. Yeah because of the fear

Uh of of catching covid and spreading covid

Uh, but and 90 are minority kids 80 are in poverty. I don’t know how you know

80 of kids who are in poverty are expected to have

A laptop and internet access on a consistent basis. This is the same place that screwed up the water system

so, uh, I don’t I so I think like we have to have an honest accounting of um,

Of all of these things because the implications are real

This is the biggest story of our lifetimes covet

I mean, it might be the biggest international incident since world war ii and the fact that

The major let’s call it prestige publications have not really fully investigated. Hold on

It’s unbelievable conundrum to me because this started

with

Um a massive amount of coverage from buzzfeed washington post new york times in june of last year 2021

They were covering this like crazy vanity fair did a major investigation and then it seems to have gone

Silent and then ran paul has been going after this and it all of a sudden became partisan

So the only coverage i’m seeing of it

That’s independent is the intercept

But then everything else is the hill and you know, really weird far right stuff that want to like, you know

Fauci needs to be whatever and how did it become so partisan if it started

With left-leaning publications getting this information sacks, like how did this become partisan? It’s because the president changed in the middle

Of all this like what?

Do you have an honest?

Handicapping of why we can’t get

You know like a consensus on what’s actually happening here from the press. Is it ran paul’s too polarizing?

well

I think what happened is if you go back to february of 2020

If you look I just had this conversation with ashley rinsberg on my call-in show and you know, he’s

Now available

Can I he he literally wrote the book on the new york times and I asked him about their coverage of

You could trade that on robert

So fine, can I can I finish

Sorry, this is the guy who literally this is the guy who literally wrote the book on

The new york times and I asked him about the new york times coverage of of covet and covet origins

He says that on february 17th. So basically two weeks after

These officials at the nih settle on the conspiracy theory narrative

that

That narrative is then published almost word for word verbatim using the same language

Not just the new york times in the washington post across all these major publications. So what you see there is a pr campaign

It’s a concerted effort

You don’t get the same words and language being used across all the major publications at the same time

Unless somebody’s pushing that narrative. We all know this. This is corporations do this, right?

They run pr campaigns. That is what basically happened. And so

the prestige media got on board this zoonotic theory and this idea look

Like they’ve done so many times they got on board wmd in iraq before realizing it was a total farce and a hoax

Okay, they so they got themselves on record behind this conspiracy theory idea

and similarly

I think the democrats got themselves on record as being pro fauci and everything

Because of you know tds right anyone who’s standing up to trump must be correct and defend it

And so all of this happened in 2020

And so by the time we now fast forward to let’s call it an honest

Investigation of the origins the virus which should be bipartisan. This should not be partisan

We should all want to know what happened

We should all want to take the politics out of it because without knowing what happened. How do we prepare for it in the future?

Everyone’s already like hopelessly committed to positions. They took in 2020 and I think this was driving the partisanship

Yeah, I think you’re right

Yeah, I mean that’s the thing i’m trying to get to is like when I saw you wanted to put it on the docket

i’m like

Trying to grok this and I can’t find i’m finding

all the

left-leaning coverage from june of 2021

None since then and then it’s all right coverage now, and I think it’s something we need to get

Some independent coverage with so i’ll take credit. I’ll take credit for saying fauci is the biggest political luther at our all-in

Uh podcast recap. Thank you. I’ll take my bow now

Well, I mean and the the other thing that’s kind of my half our predictions have come true already. I mean right now

We’re so correct on these things

um, the thing that’s I think just infuriating right now is that everybody is trying to manipulate the public

And they have not understood that in this media environment the truth comes out

Kind of not only eventually but pretty quickly

So stop trying to game the public either way that the vaccines don’t work. Jason

They’ve delayed the public reckoning on this by what like two years. Well, here’s the thing

There’s a so I agree with you on that

There’s also a fuller release that happened in the uk

where and it’s a little too much to get into right now, but

This fuller release now is looking at all the people who died in the uk of covid

Uh, and it turns out like maybe more people are dying because they didn’t get their cancer or a large number of people

Died because they didn’t go in to get tested for cancer and all of this is going to come out eventually and not

putting out every day

the ages

um, and the comorbidities of people who died of covid just led to this

Feeling that we’re getting gamed and turning on cnn and seeing the case counts in a cumulative chart

Is like a startup giving me like the cumulative number of people who registered for their company

But for their product we don’t care about that. We want to know your daily active users

What about what about the catastrophic impact of school closures that we’ve been talking about in this show repeatedly?

You know

Everything’s being manipulated stop manipulating the public look you you have to realize that there is huge political motivations here because

Huge cya going on because the heads of the teachers union said there is no learning loss

They are the ones who lobby to shut the schools down. They sure as hell aren’t going to admit their mistake now

They’re covering it up. And so any politician who takes their money is basically they’re going to muffle their criticism

There’s only one really honest like left-wing guy i’ve seen acknowledge the school closure issue, which was jonathan chait had a great article

in new york magazine

Saying that progressives must acknowledge the mistake of school closures because otherwise we can’t learn from it

He has been a voice in the wilderness on that side of the aisle

We got to wrap up now that uh, sax has cracked open the plugs

Uh, what are we all working on because I want to give a plug to friedberg

Who did a great interview?

On a tech podcast called this week in startups where he announced canna

So it’s a dual plug here, uh friday’s episode of this week in startups

Uh, maybe you could tell us a little bit about the launch of canna your new uh, yeah, we’re just we’re just announcing the business

Um, which I talk about a lot on jason’s pod

So definitely worth hearing but as you guys know i’ve talked a lot about this concept of decentralized manufacturing where we can kind of move

old school industrial production systems

Which are super inefficient. We use lots of resources move stuff into factories process them and then ship the products back out

And um, you know technology now allows us to have more distributed or decentralized manufacturing

um

Potentially so what you know what we’ve been working on for three years at this point is a company called canna

Which is really about you know, uh

Printing beverages in your home so you can use a single device

to print a iced coffee or iced tea

cocktail juice wine soda

Etc. Um all using a single flavoring system and water from your from your sink

We talked more about it on the pod, but I think this is a big theme, you know, forget about canna for a second

But generally like the systems of old like, you know

The industrial revolution created all these old school systems that are big contributors to carbon emissions and are super resource inefficient

Uh, and I do think that everything from 3d printing to biomanufacturing to this system that we kind of introduced today with canna

Um can completely reinvent our global industries in different ways

Um and ultimately lead to cheaper products better products and products that use much less natural resources and put less carbon out

um, and so it’s been a big thing that we’ve been working on i’m excited to kind of

Open it up a little bit and talk more about what we’re doing. So, um, thanks for having me on

Did you hire the muth, uh as a spokesperson he may or may not have his brand on here

We’ll see there. So right now the business is um

Uh is signing up lots of different folks that can create digital beverage brands

And so if any of you guys want to have jcals

You know hard cider hard cider. Um, here we go. We’ll uh, we’ll be launching that but but that’s

Actually told me his his new um, his new soda that he’s going to be bringing it’s called

Muth cola it has five times the sugar of coca-cola other than that

It’s just like any other colder, but you get five times the calorie if it rips out like maple syrup

Uh, yeah, i’d like to i’d like to do a plug. You got a plug. I’m, sorry project

I want to I want to say it again. Um

in genesee county in michigan flint

Indefinitely shut down their public schools this week what is going on? You have thousands of kids

um who at best will have to learn via zoom and internet access that most of these kids may or may not have because

again

uh

You know, they’re they’re in poverty

And so I just want to make sure that everybody just understands that everybody tweet that and self-inflicted wounds. Well, here’s the thing

These kids, um, this is one of eric adam’s 90 90 percent minority 80 percent in poverty

Um all virtual until further notice. Well, here’s what’s gonna happen. It goes right against the cdc guidelines

okay, and uh

This is really the accounting of the cost

And we are as we said before learning loss in our kids is going to be the single biggest thing

We look back in 20 years coming out of this pandemic

Uh and realize was the the the biggest price we paid for this so

And here’s the stupidity of it the what the and eric adams and the in the new york city, uh,

You know sort of uh leadership. We’re talking about this when these kids are in school

Okay

There’s a chance they’re gonna get omicron like everybody got omicron like everybody has it now like it’s crazy

How many people in our circle have it? The only person who doesn’t have is phil helmut

now

um

What’s gonna happen when they go home or they’re not in school and they’re

Hanging out with their friends or looking for something. They’re gonna get it. Anyway

What eric adams said is that school is the safest place for them to be. Yes, totally

Totally and school shutdowns are just so insane to me right now

Unicef had an article which i’ll dig up where they said that the cost in future earnings by this generation

Of students who suffered learning loss is going to be 17 trillion

Worldwide, uh, that’s going to be the economic impact from this thing not to mention the

Stunted emotional development by locking these kids down for anxiety ptsd. I mean this is going to create depression in kids

We need to solve this. We got it. We got to get we got to get the schools in flint open

All right, everybody for the dictator chamath poly hoppitya

David friedberg the sultan of science and the rain man himself. David sacks. I’m jake. I will see you next time

Episode 65. Love you besties

Let your winners ride

rain man david sacks

And it said we open source it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with it love us queen of

Foreign

We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they’re all just useless

It’s like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release somehow

Foreign