E18: Inauguration talk, breaking down the $1.9T stimulus, the case for recalling Gavin Newsom & more

1. 0:00 – 20:22

   Bestie intro, Inauguration talk, Impeachment implications

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      Hey, everybody. It's me, Jason Calacanis. Welcome, welcome.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:04

      Hi, everybody. It's me, Jason.

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:05

      Thank God Trump's out. (upbeat music) This is the-

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:07

      I hate Trump and I love myself. (laughs)

   5. JIJason Calacanis (pre-recorded intro/outro)0:13

      I'm going all in. Let your winner slide. Rain Man, David Sachs. I'm going all in. And I said we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

   6. JCJason Calacanis0:24

      Love you, bestie.

   7. JIJason Calacanis (pre-recorded intro/outro)0:25

      Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:30

      Hey, everybody. Happy days are here again.

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:34

      (laughs)

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:34

       Champagne car- bottles popping, Veuve Clicquot again.

   11. JCJason Calacanis0:38

       (laughs)

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:38

       Happy days are here again.

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:41

       (claps)

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:41

       Yay. Sachs is so happy. Trump's out of office.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:45

       (laughs)

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:45

       He gave an amazing speech about how great-

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:50

       (laughs)

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:50

       ... Biden's inauguration was. Welcome to the All In podcast.

   19. JCJason Calacanis0:57

       (inhales deeply) Oh my gosh.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:58

       With me today in our post-inauguration afterglow-

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:03

       (laughs)

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:03

       ... is the dictator, Trumpy Pypatia.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:05

       (laughs)

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05

       The queen of quinoa, David Friedberg. And riding the blue wave, diving in, no more red pills, the blue wave is David Rain Man Sachs is with us. David, how did it feel to watch-

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:25

       (sighs)

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:25

       ... Biden's inauguration speech, which you said hit all the notes? And I see you're wearing blue today.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:31

       (claps)

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:31

       Let me have a sip of my Veuve Clicquot and tell us, you've got the blue jacket, the blue shirt, and the blue headset on. You've ridden the blue wave. Tell us how you feel with Biden in office. I'm going to drink my Veuve.

   29. DSDavid Sacks1:43

       J- Jason, I'm, I'm just happy to see that, uh-

   30. JCJason Calacanis1:46

       (exhales)
2. 20:22 – 34:07

   Trump as a successful change agent, Facebook's Oversight Board overseeing Trump's appeal

   1. JCJason Calacanis20:22

      is gonna have to move left in order to create balance between the two parties again, because they're gonna lose 20 million voters to the Patriot Party. And that's the profound shift that's gonna happen. And when the Republican Party moves left, the Democrats are gonna move further left. And so, it's-

   2. DFDavid Friedberg20:39

      Maybe. I don't think that moving that far left is a really winning strategy for them at this point.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya20:42

      No, but I think, I think Friedberg is right. So as an example, I, I think I can say this, but, like, I, I had a call this week with, um, the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez. What an unbelievably impressive guy. Holy fucking shit, this guy is amazing.

   4. JCJason Calacanis20:59

      Hmm.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya20:59

      Um, what he's done in Miami is incredible. Um, I mean, the GDP growth is like Chinese GDP growth, 10%, 8%, (laughs) 6.5%. He's running fiscal surpluses. You know, crime is down, down, down. He's done an incredible job. This guy's a fundamental centrist. You know, and when you talk about what his beliefs are, I was like, "What is this guy? Is he a Democrat? Is he a Republican?" I was like... He's like, "Honestly, I'm a centrist."

   6. DFDavid Friedberg21:25

      Hmm.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya21:25

      You know? And, and so my point is if, whoever tacks to the middle will find the ability to attract incredible leaders that I think are n- are, are our next generation set of leadership.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg21:39

      So in that way, Trump, as a change agent, uh, Sacks, was a success in that he broke the system. And this was Peter Thiel's kind of concept when he put him in, and I know you don't speak for Peter, but Peter's idea was, "Hey, this person's a change agent. He's gonna be this, you know, drain of the swamp person."

   9. DSDavid Sacks21:56

      Yeah.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg21:56

       Maybe that didn't happen, but he has basically made everybody reconsider what party they wanna be part of and what they actually want on the political agenda. And now we're so... Uh, we've never been more focused on politics and how our country runs in our lifetime, have we?

   11. DSDavid Sacks22:12

       Well, T- Trump, you're right that Trump was a classic disruptor. You know, Keith Rabois has this line about founders that, uh, uh, disruption is created by disruptive people.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg22:23

       Hmm.

   13. DSDavid Sacks22:23

       And Trump was, you know, one of those very disruptive people. I mean, uh, just to take two examples, I mean, he created a total realignment on our views around China. I think it's now a bipartisan consensus that-

   14. DFDavid Friedberg22:34

       Yup.

   15. DSDavid Sacks22:35

       ... you know, we should not keep feeding China, uh, and making, you know, keep feeding that, the, the Chinese tiger and turning into a dr- a dragon. Um, everyone seems to think now that, that some reappraisal is warranted. And the other, the other big issue was the forever wars of the Middle East, you know? I think Trump first created a realignment within the Republican Party when he said, "No more Bushes." He meant no more of these stupid foreign wars. Um, and I think that was an important realignment. Um, so yeah, I mean, he's been a very disruptive figure. I think that, um, everyone's breathing a sigh of relief because we've moved on. I think that he unnecessarily was incendiary and sort of pressurized the situation. Um, but I think the best thing at this point is just to move forward and not keep rehashing the Trump era.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg23:20

       Speaking of rehashing, um, I don't know if you guys know about what is happening with Facebook, but they have an oversight board they created last year in the spring. Uh, and the oversight board is not to do the day-to-day policing of Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp activity, but it is to be a place where people who have been, have had content removed or have had their accounts suspended to appeal. They have taken the Trump case, as it were, and given it to their Supreme Court, which is the Oversight Board. And the Oversight Board is, uh, gonna make a judgment basically on should Trump get his social media accounts back. They have complete autonomy from Facebook. They are funded by Facebook with $120 or $130 million over the next six years. So they're getting like $20 million a year to run this. They've got a really amazing bench of intellectuals, public intellectuals, and, and, and they're sort of above Facebook in this regard. What do we think?... uh, should happen to Trump's social media accounts? Should he have a path to reclaiming them? And would this, uh, board that exists as this ombudsman, as I talked about in the last episode, what do we think of this process? And, and do we think maybe Twitter and YouTube-

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya24:40

       Let's, let's-

   18. DFDavid Friedberg24:40

       ... should join this oversight board?

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya24:42

       ... let's separate-

   20. DFDavid Friedberg24:42

       Okay.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya24:42

       ... these two things. And actually, Jason-

   22. DFDavid Friedberg24:44

       Okay.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya24:44

       ... you just framed it perfectly. Let's separate the two issues. One is, is any of us comfortable with a random set of people that some people will like and other people not like making these decisions on our behalf, that are not necessarily trained to make these decisions? I mean, these aren't elected trained judges or lawyers that sit for a bar exam. These are just, you know, private citizens ultimately, at the end of the day. Um, I think that if you allow this to happen at scale, there's gonna be a bunch of decisions that you'll be okay with and support. I think a lot of people probably are cheering when Trump got blocked. But if you can abstract it away and think about all the people that you actually care about, what if the administration was on the other side and now, all of a sudden, you know, these people took curry favor with the administration, went in a different direction, and people that you cared about got blocked? It is an untenable situation, and I think this is the slippery slope that the framers never intended. I don't think it should be people like this making any decision like this. And in many ways, it's a, it's a fig leaf for these companies to pretend they're doing the right thing while they're really shirking the real responsibility.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg25:48

       Friedberg, do you agree?

   25. JCJason Calacanis25:50

       It's hard to say on the specifics. So I think we should just take a broader point of view on this, which is, how do tech companies, um, create independence in the platforms that they're building so that they don't get scrutinized as monopolists? And so there are several examples of this being done, both successfully and not successfully, across, um, the tech ecosystem. Google made Android open source, and by making the Android operating system open source, they were able to have their own forked versions that they were able to install on phones in, with partners like HTC and Samsung and others, um, that they could then have their search engine be the primary search engine. So the entire Android operating system is available for anyone to work on, for anyone to fork, for anyone to use, and then Google's iteration of that open source platform and Google's contributions, which they were making, uh, regularly, um, allowed them to kind of have a great commercial outcome without being the owner of the operating system, having learned from the mistakes of Microsoft in the past. Um, Facebook tried to take a similar approach with Libra, and it was a total shit show and a disaster. Uh, I don't know where it is today. But they tried to create this also independent board, um, to provide oversight, uh, and to, you know, to kind of do the, the, you know, all the open source work on the Libra currency. And Facebook was gonna then use that on their platform, um, as their kind of, you know, uh, token, uh, cryptocurrency, uh, solution. Um, and obviously there was so much scrutiny because no one believed the independents. And I think we're hearing the same thing now about the Facebook Oversight Board. Jack Dorsey is now taking the same approach with Bluesky, which is meant to be this, um, open source, um, uh, you know, uh, independently managed, um, uh, social media protocol system. And so Twitter would effectively become an application layer on top of this open sourced approach to how do you decide what goes on social media, how do you decide what's inappropriate and appropriate, and what technology protocols are available for everyone to use, and what business and, and, um, arbitration protocols are available for everyone to use in an open sourced way. And we'll see where Jack goes with Bluesky. He seems to be doing a better job messaging and organizing teams of people to work on this, and I don't see the pushback that Facebook is getting with their oversight board. So it, it... Un- unfortunately, a lot of these... The, the, the big tech platforms, in order to avoid the monopolistic allegations and the allegations of control and influence, uh, they're creating independence, uh, independent systems and it's hit or miss. And I don't think we yet know. I think in the next year or two we'll see how Bluesky, Libra, the Facebook Oversight Board, and some of these other platform-

   26. DFDavid Friedberg28:25

       What would you do, David? Let me just put-

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya28:26

       ... de-platforming approaches.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg28:28

       What would you do? Let me just put it to you. If you were in charge, you were the CEO of Facebook or Twitter, would you have a path to reinstating Trump, yes or no? And I don't mean to say that-

   29. DSDavid Sacks28:36

       Can, can I jump in on that?

   30. DFDavid Friedberg28:37

       Yeah.
3. 34:07 – 44:15

   Will Big Tech be regulated like utilities? Friedberg tells a spy story

   1. DFDavid Friedberg34:07

      think. Let's move on to, um, the economy. Uh, and it'll be real interesting. We'll, we'll monitor obviously what the... this oversight board does. We're going to monitor, uh, what's going to happen with this, uh, January 6th, uh, insurrection.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:19

      By the way, the... Sorry, Jason, the last thing on this is...

   3. DFDavid Friedberg34:21

      Yeah.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:22

      Y- you can, you can tell. If you've... If you graphed, and I'm sure somebody, uh, listening to All-In can graph and tweet this. But if you graphed the price-to-earnings ratio, um, of big tech as all of these issues have come out. Like, you know, if you looked at a time series of their PE.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg34:42

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:43

      Um, and you put on there, you know, things like George Floyd, things like the Capitol riots, you know, th- all of these things that have created these, um...

   7. DFDavid Friedberg34:52

      Flashpoints.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya34:52

      ... issues around free speech, flashpoints, the, the massacre in New Zealand, in Christchurch, that was live-streamed on Facebook, all of this stuff. What you'll see is at least capitalism is voting that these companies will not be allowed to be companies much longer.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg35:07

      Hm. So the smart money-

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:09

       And, and-

   11. DFDavid Friedberg35:09

       ... is betting that they're going to be regulated and something is going to change.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:12

       It's going to be a quasi-governmental organization, exactly. That the level of regulation at a government-by-government level, um, is going to be so onerous as to make these companies quasi-nonprofits that work on behalf of countries.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg35:23

       Well... Yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna become utilities, right? They're getting... They're gonna get regulated like utilities at some point. Or they're going to have to adopt some governance, like we've talked about, or other options will emerge. And I think what Jack is doing with the... Is it Blue Sky, is what they're calling it?

   14. DSDavid Sacks35:39

       Blue Sky, yeah.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg35:40

       Yeah. What, what they're really doing with Blue Sky is saying your profile and your data is going to be stored on some blockchain or, or-

   16. DSDavid Sacks35:48

       Decentralized system, yeah.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg35:48

       ... or some decentralized system like Bitcoin or like any other peer-to-peer service, which means it's not on their server. Twitter just pulls all that data together. So we would all have our own domain names, and calacanis.com or saks.com/profile. whatever the HTML equivalent is. Let's just call it .social. You know, your saks.social URL would be your profile on Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else. And when you posted to it, it would post to Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, they could say, "We don't actually host this stuff. We're just pulling it together," which then destroys their business model, per Chamath's point. What do we think, um, as a little aside, is gonna happen with the TikTok case, uh, now that Trump is out of office and Biden is in office? We, we sort of alluded to China Saks being, um, a super important thing that we all have consensus on now. What should happen with TikTok? And do you think Biden will go after TikTok and say, "Hey, we got to get this out of here because it's, you know, uh, essentially spyware," and Jack Ma was just resurfaced? And let- let's just talk about China for a second.

   18. DSDavid Sacks36:54

       Yeah, I think the sad reality is that the whole TikTok thing is gonna get swept under the rug.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya36:59

       Hmm.

   20. DSDavid Sacks36:59

       Um, I think there'll be no restrictions on TikTok. I think what we need, uh... The, the, the issue with like, with, uh, banning TikTok though is that it's just one place where China can collect data on all of us. I mean there, the reality is there's thousands of places. And so, you know, I do think that taking some action on TikTok is warranted, but it would... It, it is a little bit of selective enforcement. Um, but what I would like to see is some guarantee, some assurance that, um, that TikTok is n- I- is collecting data in the way they're saying they're collecting it, and, and that there's not, um, s- sort of spyware, uh, within the app. And I don't think we know for sure whether there's spyware or not.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:39

       I'll say it, I'll say it slightly differently.

   22. DSDavid Sacks37:41

       Hmm.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:41

       I've maintained this for a while, but it is inconceivable that inside of big tech at every single company that you define big tech is not at least one spy from Russia, China, India, Israel, Pakistan.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg38:00

       Saudi Arabia.

   25. JCJason Calacanis38:02

       Did I tell you guys I had a spy working for me at Climate?

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya38:05

       No.

   27. JCJason Calacanis38:06

       He got arrested.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya38:06

       No. No.

   29. JCJason Calacanis38:06

       Did I tell you guys about this?

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya38:07

       No, tell us the story.
4. 44:15 – 55:06

   Breaking down the $1.9T Stimulus package, needs for infrastructure bill, worst-case scenarios

   1. JCJason Calacanis44:15

   2. DFDavid Friedberg44:15

      Okay, uh, Freeberg, you looked at the, um, uh, $1.2 trillion stimulus package that Biden is proposing. How much of that goes towards rebuilding factories (laughs) in America?

   3. JCJason Calacanis44:26

      Well, none. So, so remember, the- (laughs) ... there's a, Wall hi- (laughs) Yeah, but, uh- And it's 1.9 billion. Yeah. Right? It's 1.9 trillion. Um- 1.9 trillion, yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah, and so... And so just to put that in context, you know, Wall Street has talked about there were gonna be four, um, four massive stimulus bills. You know, since last April, May, I think they've talked about this, and we're seeing this come to, to fruition now. And Chamath, correct me if you've heard differently, but there was always been the expectation we would have the big first stimulus, which we had last March, then a second stimulus. People have been waiting for the state stimulus or the local government stimulus, which this one now captures, and then the fourth program was always gonna be infrastructure. And we haven't seen details of the proposed Biden infrastructure plan yet, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna have a lot of green energy, uh, stuff tied up in it. But let, let's just, let's just hit the numbers, right? So, i- in 2009 post-financial crisis, to keep the global economy from collapsing, um, Congress passed an $800 billion, uh, um, uh, aid package. 800 billion was extraordinary at the time, and we'd never- TARP. ... seen anything like it. Uh, TARP. And, um, last March, if you'll recall, we passed this emergency $2 trillion package, you know, more than 2X what we had during the financial crisis. And now just in December, right before the year wrapped up, Congress passed another $900 billion package. And now we're talking about this $1.9 trillion package getting passed. So we've eclipsed anything you could have ever con- uh, considered possible, um, in terms of, uh, fiscal stimulus. At this point, the M1 money supply, which I sent the link out, uh, ahead of this, uh, for, uh, Nick and Shannon-

   4. DFDavid Friedberg46:02

      Incredible.

   5. JCJason Calacanis46:03

      ... uh, has gone up by 75%, uh, in just the past year. And now if we break down the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, um, you know, a, a huge chunk of it, and this is what Wall Street's been waiting for, uh, is th- $350 billion is going to state and local government. So think about San Francisco or the state of California, um, uh, the s- the city of Chicago, the city of New York. Um, all of these folks have seen their revenue decline, and they've had to run massive emergency programs. Where's that money coming from? They haven't been able to raise taxes. They've had to put a hold on, on receipts. And so, um, this is meant to bridge the gap at the local level, and this is really important, because so much of, uh, capital markets, um, still very much fund local and state governments through municipal bonds. And those bonds, if they start to default, are gonna have a dangerous rippling effect in the economy. So, um, bridging the state and local government budgets with this $350 billion package turned out to be, um, you know, an absolute need. And the Republicans prior to the, the election were pushing hard against this and saying, "Let those states fail. They're mostly blue states. Let those cities fail. They're mostly blue cities. They're mismanaged. They're, they're, they're being stupid about how they're operating." So this is a big deal. There's 160 billion for COVID fighting, some of which, you know, I throw up on. $20 billion for vaccination, which equates to about $150 per person they expect to vaccinate, which is an extraordinarily high cost if you actually think about it on a first principles basis. It's ridiculous how inefficient they're gonna be at this. $50 billion for testing, $40 billion for protective gear and supplies. And what this indicates to me is so much of what goes on in government and government spending is skating to where the puck used to be, not skating to where the puck is going. And it's almost like by the time this money gets deployed, I'm not sure we're gonna need as much protective gear and supplies. I'm not sure we're gonna need as much testing. If we can actually get the vaccinations done in the next 90 to 100 days and much of the country starts to recover from this, you know, you've now got $150 billion program sitting out there that doesn't need to be out there and it's a waste of money. What we should be doing is taking that money and investing in biomanufacturing infrastructure so we can more quickly develop and deploy vaccines in the future.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg48:12

      What would it cost to build a factory, just back of the envelope, that was capable of making the next, you know, let's call it-

   7. JCJason Calacanis48:19

      One to two, one to two billion.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg48:20

      ... one billion vaccine shots?

   9. JCJason Calacanis48:21

      One to two billion. Yeah, it's e- it's not a lot. So, so here's the- Not a lot. Let me... I'll, I'll give you guys the unit economic build and you can do the math, uh, at home. Four grams per liter is the expected yield of a, um, uh, of a biomanufacturing facility. And a liter is like, you know, how many liters of water do you have in a tank? You can build half million liter facilities for a couple 100 million dollars, and that's four grams per liter every seven days. And as vaccine or the, the, um, the antibody therapies that we've seen, the antibody therapies are about two grams, and that'll save someone's life-... uh, the, uh, the vaccines are a fraction of a gram. And so, you can start to kind of do the math on how just a few billion dollars, uh, invested in building some of these bio-manufacturing facilities that are modular and can be very quickly reprogrammed to make a new molecule, um, uh, can be used to support the future vaccine supply chain and the future anti, uh, antibody therapeutic supply chain, which is critically needed in this country. And if I were to take $160 billion for COVID fighting, give me 10% of that, and we'll be ready for any virus in the future, and we'll be able to print out vaccines for the whole country within 30 days. Um, and so a little bit, again, of this is not really forward-thinking. It's scientists and doctors saying what they need. What they're talking about is last year's need. They're not thinking in terms of what the industrial supply chain needs are gonna be in the future on an ongoing basis for this country. At this point, I'm not seeing it. And so, I feel a little bit let down by that, and I hope that the infrastructure programs that are gonna be proposed in the next stimu- in the next bill will start to encompass some of that work.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg49:53

       Paradoxically, it's gonna cost a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear weapons. So, we're literally gonna spend a trillion dollars over the next decade ope- uh, upgrading our nuclear weapons-

   11. JCJason Calacanis50:04

       That's a nutty, nutty statistic.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg50:05

       ... that we don't actually use.

   13. JCJason Calacanis50:05

       Is that, is that true? That's nutty. Wow.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg50:07

       That's what I, I'm reading a headline right here. Um...

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:10

       Wow. Here's my, here's my little wish list for this infrastructure bill. I think, um, when you look at some of the most compelling work that's happened in the developing world, so like if you're gonna go and, you know, build a massive water facility or, uh, an energy installation, um, a lot of people are worried, "Hey, listen, I have to deal with, um, you know, local currency risk. I have to deal with, you know, um, corruption. I could have the government, you know, take away this facility from me without notice. The rule of law may not be strong." And the World Bank has this mechanism where you can basically go and insure, you know, for wh- I think it's like 1 or 2% of your project costs, the whole project, and it really makes things work. I would love to see the US government effectively create a program that is similar but different in the following way. There are some enormous things America needs to do where the IP exists with our allies, and there is an enormous fear what would happen if that IP leaked specifically to China. One example is, if you b- believe and you care about climate change, um, and the making of batteries, um, there's an enormous amount of IP that sits with the Japanese, um, that, you know, if we could license and work with as a country, we could build factories all over the country, and we would be the leader in, in climate. But that'll take the US government to basically work bilaterally with the Japanese government to basically say, "Listen, if it takes the NSA to fucking protect this shit, we will do it." Um, but you could say-

   16. DFDavid Friedberg51:46

       Or you run them. They, they, we could just give them their sovereignty in those factories or something.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:49

       Ah, you know, these are, these are, these are for-profit companies that are, you know, relatively risk-averse. They're not gonna rip in 10 million bucks, $10 billion to build, you know, a cathode plant in the US. I would, other people would. Um, but tha- that's my hope in the infrastructure bill, is that we take some of these things that have worked in the developing world, and we use it to grease the skids in how we rebuild America.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg52:10

       I mean-

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:10

       It would be fucking glorious.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg52:11

       And also, just think about how much a nuclear power plant costs. It's like $6 to $9 billion to build a nuclear power plant, and we haven't built many new ones (laughs) , and w- we're on the way there, but if part of this trillion dollars we could build 10 more of those, energy independence would, uh, continue and global warming would go down. Uh, anything to add there, David? It looks like you wanna comment.

   21. DSDavid Sacks52:30

       Well, I did- d- d- just one final word, you know, the, um, the, the, the great Senate leader, uh, Everett Dirksen famously said that, you know, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money." And now, we're talking about a trillion here and a trillion there, and these are really big numbers. Uh, and I think we should be very concerned about debt and deficits. No one's really talking about this yet, but all of this money has to be paid back at some point. Um, and-

   22. DFDavid Friedberg52:58

       Well, what's the worst that can happen, David? Let's actually do that.

   23. DSDavid Sacks53:01

       (laughs)

   24. DFDavid Friedberg53:01

       I'm g- I mean, I'm asking the question in a non-joking way. What is the worst that can happen?

   25. DSDavid Sacks53:06

       Oh, I mean, a debt crisis.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya53:08

       Inflation. Inflation.

   27. DSDavid Sacks53:09

       Infla- Well, not, not just... So, inflation because the government will eventually have to monetize the debt by printing more money. The dollar stops becoming the world's reserve currency. Maybe bit- Bitcoin becomes the world's reserve currency, maybe it's something else does. Um, it could be, lead to, you know, very s- severe, uh, to basically a debt crisis in the future.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg53:26

       What would that look like for companies and citizens of America?

   29. DSDavid Sacks53:30

       Well, if you're middle, if you're middle class, your savings get wiped out, you know? If you, so, so if you're super rich, the reality is there's already been tremendous asset inflation, so there's already been a lot of inflation, but frankly, if you are very rich and own assets in the stock market, you're, you're sort of, you're protected, you know? But if you're a middle-class person with most of your savings in your bank account-

   30. JCJason Calacanis53:52

       Or your home.
5. 55:06 – 1:04:00

   How the tech ecosystem plays into inequality & how to fix it

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya55:06

   2. JCJason Calacanis55:06

      Well, I think it's, uh, jumping in on this, I mean, I, I, I think that technology creates bigger winner take all outcomes and that's fed into inequality. But the good thing about tech or the tech ecosystem is that frankly we have option pools, right? We have broad-based ownership of these companies. If you go work for a Google or Facebook or whatever, um, you get, you get option-

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya55:25

      No, come on.

   4. JCJason Calacanis55:25

      ... grants. Yeah, but it's just- No, no, no, no.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg55:27

      10,000 people. That's 10,000 people.

   6. JCJason Calacanis55:29

      Yeah. That's, that's no one, right?

   7. DFDavid Friedberg55:30

      Right?

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya55:30

      And they're, and they're replacing two million jobs with 10,000 people.

   9. JCJason Calacanis55:34

      Well, I don't... I-

   10. DFDavid Friedberg55:34

       I mean, this is why, uh, this is why we need to have 100% participation in the markets by everybody in the country. Joe Greenblatt, who I had on my podcast recently is a proponent of this. Chamath, I saw you tweeting about it. When you're born in the United States, we should put $5,000 in a 401 (k) that you can't touch until you're 65 years old. That is in whatever index funds and every person born gets that $5,000 and cannot touch it. And then we see where it winds up.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya55:59

       I'm not sure it solves it, it doesn't-

   12. DFDavid Friedberg56:00

       If everybody had a stake, we wouldn't-

   13. JCJason Calacanis56:01

       (laughs)

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:01

       But it doesn't, it doesn't solve the problem that a lot of people have to climb up a hill first, right? They take on a lot of debt to get education, to put themselves in a position to ultimately be able to generate the income to do that. And I think, you know, sure, give them $5,000 in the beginning, but it's not going to get them where they need to be.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg56:16

       But it is-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:17

       Um-

   17. DFDavid Friedberg56:17

       It does solve one portion of the problem, which is they don't have participation. And we could take out the wondering what-

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:22

       I think both of you are right.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg56:22

       ... your retirement's going to be like.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:23

       I think both of you are right. I think, like, there needs to be, um, something that allows people to have a line of sight to savings. Like a lot, a lot of about being invested in, uh, in anything where you own it, whether it's real estate or whether it's a piece of artwork or whether it's stocks and bonds, so many people don't even know how to begin and don't understand the concept of ownership. And so they are stuck in being in the ghetto of labor. And I think like one of the biggest things we can do is you can give them a taste of ownership so that they understand that difference, so that they want-

   21. DFDavid Friedberg56:54

       Yes.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:54

       ... to be an owner.

   23. DFDavid Friedberg56:56

       Yes.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:56

       Okay? Number one.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg56:57

       Yes.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:57

       And then to, to David's point, number two, is we still have a responsibility to educate people so that they can actually have skills that they can monetize and we have a responsibility to do that.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg57:08

       Absolutely.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:08

       And right now, we make it so fucking hard and we trick people because, like we, we send them down the path of getting a $200,000 art history degree, and then they end up working at a Starbucks and then they're fucked.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg57:19

       Which is impossible to monetize. I mean, it's ridiculous.

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:22

       You can't monetize that. You can't monetize that.
6. 1:04:00 – 1:17:32

   Recalling California Governor Gavin Newsom, California's lockdown incompetence

   1. DFDavid Friedberg1:04:00

   2. DSDavid Sacks1:04:00

      Let's, let's pivot, let's pivot to California.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:04:01

      Let's pi- Okay, let's pivot to another disaster.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:04:03

      California. (laughs)

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:04:05

      (laughs)

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:04:05

      So w- the recall is, uh, well, uh, on its way. They need to get 1.5 million signatures. We're at 1.1 or 1.2, but we actually really need two because there's some verification process that goes on. So in all likelihood, we will see Gavin Newsom recalled? We agree on that?

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:04:20

      Uh, yeah. I'll tell you the s- the stats I heard. Uh, y- there's about a million, call it a million, million and one signatures. They've seen about an 85% verification rate to date. Uh, Sax, correct me if I'm wrong on this. They're getting a- they're getting about 200,000 signatures a week. Um, they're, you know, the cost for marketing and attracting people to get these signatures is coming in at like three to six bucks a signature. So it's really not a lot of money is needing to be spent to get this done. And, um, you know, even if the verification rate drops to 75 or 65%, you're still on track at this rate to hit the recall target by March 17th, which is the deadline. And so it appears highly likely they're gonna get there. Sax, am I, am I right on all that?

   8. DSDavid Sacks1:05:01

      Uh, yeah, I think they're at 1.2 million s- uh, signatures. That's what I heard.

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:05:04

      Yeah.

   10. DSDavid Sacks1:05:04

       And they're trying to get, they're trying to get to two million to have a, a buffer so that, you know, they, that, you know, they don't get pushed under the one... But 1.5 is the, is the-

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:05:13

       The target.

   12. DSDavid Sacks1:05:13

       ... number they need. Yeah. They need 1.5 million certified signatures.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:17

       70% of the way there, according to the website recallgavin2020.com, which I believe is the official-

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:05:21

       I think, I think, I think they will get there. I think they'll get there, and then their, uh, and then the recall election would take place about four to five months after, uh, after that. There's a, a couple of months where it moves through the finance committee. The, uh, recall election has to be budgeted. And then, um, Newsom would have the opportunity to set a date within, I think, 60 to 80 days roughly. So I think we're looking at July for a, um, a, a recall election.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:05:49

       And Sax, how d- how do you get, um, how does a candidate get on the ballot? 'Cause Chamath, um, is asking for a friend.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:55

       (laughs)

   17. DSDavid Sacks1:05:56

       (laughs)

   18. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:56

       (laughs)

   19. DSDavid Sacks1:05:58

       It's, it's, it's-

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:58

       Wait a second. I wanna be on, too, then. Can... Should we have all four besties be on? As in all four?

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:06:02

       Yeah, we should all, we should all run.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:06:04

       As in all four?

   23. DSDavid Sacks1:06:05

       All four?

   24. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:05

       Can we run as a team? Can we run as a team?

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:06:07

       (laughs)

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:06:07

       We're gonna... Let the voters decide.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:09

       A squad?

   28. DSDavid Sacks1:06:09

       We're gonna, we're pro- we're probably gonna have four Kardashians on there.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:13

       (laughs) Yeah.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:06:13

       So we might as well have four besties on there. Um-

Episode duration: 1:23:28