E24: Markets trend down, political pandemic manipulation, stimulus breakdown, biological Patriot Act

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:00 I got to count the other- anoth- another billion dollars I lost. I've lost two bil-

Jason Calacanis 0:04 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:04 ... two billion dollars in the last two days. It's fucking ridiculous.

David Friedberg 0:06 Are you guys recording? Please record this.

Jason Calacanis 0:07 Looks like we (laughs) -

David Friedberg 0:09 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:09 Looks like we need a poker game tomorrow. (laughs)

David Friedberg 0:11 Oh.

David Sacks 0:11 Can you imagine how tilted Chamath is gonna go into the poker game-

David Friedberg 0:13 Yeah. He's gonna, he's gonna be, he's gonna be oooooh.

David Sacks 0:14 ... down multi-million in the market? He's gonna buy in for two million just to try and get even.

Narrator 0:20 I'm going all in. Don't let your winners ride. 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. US stock market. Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 0:38 Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All-In Podcast. We took a week off, and boy that was sad. I missed you guys. I missed my besties.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:49 Well, we should tell, we should tell people, we had a, we had a small medical procedure for one of the besties and, uh, but everything's good and, uh, it was planned, so you know, nothing, nothing out of the ordinary. But we just needed to take a week off, so that's why we missed a week, and that's why we're back.

Jason Calacanis 1:01 Yes. And one of the besties, uh... God, I got so many jokes I'm not gonna tell. (laughs) All the jokes that came into my mind right now would get me canceled. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:09 Would get you canceled? Really?

Jason Calacanis 1:10 I just... I-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10 Well, I-

Jason Calacanis 1:11 ... literally had seven jokes, I can't tell any of them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13 Based on the amount of money that I've lost in the last two days, I'm ready to get canceled, so it's fine.

Jason Calacanis 1:17 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:17 So I'll just, I'll get another.

Jason Calacanis 1:19 Evan.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:19 Put them in the chat and I'm just gonna fucking let them rip.

Jason Calacanis 1:22 All right, everybody. David Sacks, the Rain Man is here, calling in from an undisclosed compound.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:28 Miami.

Jason Calacanis 1:28 Friedberg, the Queen of Quinoa back in action. And the dictator himself, licking his wounds, checking his-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:36 Two billion dollars poorer.

Jason Calacanis 1:37 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:37 A billion a day, keep it going. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:40 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:40 Checking the Apple stock app, hitting refresh and going, "Thank God these companies have fundamentals-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:46 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:46 "... because I haven't seen this much blood since Game of Thrones."

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:49 Jason, Jason, honestly at thi- at this run rate, I can lose a trillion dollars. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:55 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:55 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:55 Chamath, how do you feel today?

Jason Calacanis 1:58 At this pace, you're gonna be replacing me. (laughs) You're sad. Oh, my God.

David Friedberg 2:01 How does today feel compared to last March when the same thing was happening? You know, every day the market was down 10%. And I, and I think, I think we, we-

David Sacks 2:07 Well, this is what's important to remember-

David Friedberg 2:08 ... we made a joke, it was like, it can only go down 10% so many days in a row.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:12 March, March, uh, 31st, you, you guys have to remember that March 31st of 2020, the headlines all over the press, and you can, you know, go to the Wayback Machine and look at these things, but the DOW was down 20 some odd percent. The S&P was down 20%, and it looked like the world was going to end. And then we had our first big stimulus bill, um, and things started to look... China started to reopen slowly and things started to look better. And what's interesting is you have this rotational sort of de-leveraging, uh, that's happening right now. People are repricing in inflation. People are moving into sort of these, you know, overlooked stories, getting out of growth a little bit. And it's a bloodbath. Um, but I would just, I would just encourage us all to remember that we were in some pretty dark days in March of last year as well, and you know, when you looked at it by the end of the year, it looked amazing, so.

David Sacks 3:04 I would just add to that, the markets are looking pretty grim for tech stocks right now, but this all started because of a really great jobs report showing that the economy is roaring back. So we added s- 379,000 jobs in February, which beat expectations by 200,000. They also revised the January gains up 166,000. So now the unemployment rate is down to 6.2%. Remember it was at like 15%, you know, last summer during the, the lockdowns for COVID. So I mean, all of this is fundamentally due to, I think, really great news in the economy because COVID is ending and which kind of begs the question of why we need another $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. But, but I think that ultimately there's a lot of good news in the real economy. And what investors are doing is figuring out how to now price or reprice, uh, all these different stocks in light of the economy roaring back. And so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:00 So just a little, just a little math lesson to build on what you're saying. You know, everybody has a risk-free rate, and all stocks are priced according to that risk-free rate. And when, you know, for the many, for the last sort of year particularly, when risk-free rates were essentially zero to negative, meaning, you know, that's, that's the riskless money where you, that you get from the government, um, it was hard to do anything except be long growth stocks in a big, big way. Um, but David, to your point, if we get two or three more quarters of these kinds of jobs numbers, you're gonna have a, you know, low single digit unemployment number. And what that means is wages will have to go up for businesses to compete. And that's the kind of traditional form of inflation that actually reprces things, because you then you lever up rates to kind of control inflation. When you lever up rates and you... you know, all of a sudden they're not zero but they're two, three, four, five, six percent, this is sort of what brought the tech bubble to a halt in 2000, which is that, you know, you had 6% real rates, and so you can't own businesses that are projecting revenues, let alone profits, in 2026, um-

David Friedberg 5:09 When you can invest your money in a bond and make 6%.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:11 6%. And, you know-

David Friedberg 5:12 And that's what I like... So just for folks that don't know, this week started with this big bond sell-off. And what that means is bonds that used to yield 0%, when you sell them, they're now yielding... ten-year treasuries I think are at one and a half points, right? And so as an investor, if I can make one and a half percent with no risk by owning US treasuries over the next 10 years, that may feel like a better bet than owning some risky asset, um, some speculative company. Now, the other thing that, that it has done, and Chamath, correct me if I'm off on this, but what I'm hearing is that that higher rate, because bonds sold down, because people are expecting inflation to come back up, the interest rates to borrow money are going up. And so if you're a hedge fund or an institutional money manager, over the last year or so, you've been able to borrow money for 0%. You can lever up your portfolio and, and, and buy as many stocks as you want without paying any interest on it.

David Sacks 6:07 And now that rates are creeping back up, people are de-levering. They're, they're taking risk off and that's causing a selloff in both bonds and stocks. And especially on the speculative end of the market where, you know, there's been, um, obviously unchecked kind of investment capital-

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:21 No, you're, you're-

David Sacks 6:22 ... flowing in.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:23 ... you're, you're, you're absolutely right. Like, look, at the, at the end of the day, the cost of borrowing for a company goes up. What that's really saying is the investor that's lending them the money, um, you know, has other alternatives. Um, and so then they're willing to charge you more and more for this, for this capital. And as that happens, you'll see some companies get into potentially some real trouble because, you know, they're gonna be borrowing money at rates where they can't necessarily generate the cash flows in the future to pay those things back. At the same time, as, as you said, if you look at sort of like, you know, this SPAC market has taken a real beating. Um, what are, what are SPACs really? Well, you know, in many ways, SPACs are synthetic bonds, right? And, and the reason is because, you know, if you go and buy a S-... If you go and buy a SPAC, a sh- one share of any SPAC, you have the ability to redeem that if you don't like the deal that it does and get back your coupon, so, you know, your notional rather. So if you were to buy a government, you know, German bond at negative 1% or buy any SPAC where you can put that same, you know, $10 to work and get back $10, well, you'd do that versus getting back $9.90. So in many ways, like, you know, this SPAC market benefited from rates at zero because you could synthetically be long SPACs as almost a way of being synthetically long fixed income. Now, as rates go up, that's not true. So what that leaves in the SPAC market are actually people who wanna own long-term equity. And if you combine that with what we just said, which is the cost of capital going up and the discount rate going up, now all of a sudden companies need to be really real.

David Sacks 8:00 And you're seeing that because if you look at the companies that have just announced SPAC deals just in the last few days, their stocks have gotten absolutely obliterated and they're right on the knife's edge going into the redemption period. So if you have one or two more months of this where all of a sudden bonds look better and, you know, some of these SPACs post-announcement but pre-de-SPACing go through, you know, 10 bucks a share, people will just redeem for $10. Um, and you'll have a, you'll have a bunch of busted IPOs or mergers.

David Friedberg 8:28 By the way, by the way, another thing we're seeing... Sorry, Jason. But another thing I think we're seeing right now is in the near term is a feedback loop. So as selling takes place, what happens is market participants are jumping in and short-selling and participating in the trend of that stock. And so there are these, these kind of experiences that are underway where it's not just about a selloff of owners but it's also about a momentum trade that a lot of people are playing into. And so there is a very short-term, extremely compounded effect, uh, of the de-levering that's happening and the cycling that's happening in these markets. Uh, and so it's super volatile and probably will be for a little bit of, of, of time here, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:04 I think so. I think we need to figure out whether there's really, um, whether there's a real inflation-

David Friedberg 9:11 Risk.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:11 ... drag in cooking someplace. If, if there-

David Friedberg 9:13 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:13 ... if there really is inflation, like, again, you have to think, like, the trillions of dollars we put into the economy eventually has to come out in productive goods and services. And the, all of that excess capital will probably inflate prices. Now, it begs a different question which is we, maybe we've just actually been missing inflation all along because if you ask somebody who lives in a city, you know, what the cost of rent has been, that, that thing has been inflating by feels like 20% a year for years. So, you know, I mean-

David Sacks 9:43 And healthcare and education costs.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:43 And healthcare and education costs.

David Sacks 9:45 I mean, those are the three big ones, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:45 So maybe we've just done a really terrible job in the last few years of actually measuring inflation the way it should be, you know, calling this whole basket-

David Sacks 9:52 Well-

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:52 ... of, you know, uh, you know, CPI ex energy. Like, I mean, it's kind of nutty. Maybe the whole thing just made no sense a few years ago anyways.

David Sacks 9:59 Well, if you look to, to David's point, and David gave me just a huge bag of red pills while we were off this week, so I've been-

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:05 (laughs)

David Sacks 10:05 ... just, I've been on a bender on these red pills. But if you look at those three categories, what do they have in common? Education, healthcare, and housing, massive regulation. Uh, and then if you look at the things that have gone down, consumer goods, electronics, food, et cetera, or, or have stayed flat in terms of inflation, those are things that the free market participates in and drives. The government's not involved.

10:27 And th- the, it's not just the fact there's a lot of government regulation in things like healthcare and education. It's also that the government pays for a significant portion of it. And so there's no reason for the people, you know, who are billing the government to keep costs down. I mean, this is why the price of education, of a college degree keeps going up is because the government's paying-

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:47 Well-

David Sacks 10:47 ... for a lot of it, so.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:48 I, I, I, I, J- David, you probably... I, I think you, you may have seen this but when, you know, when we announced, um, our merger with Clover for IPOC, one of the first slides I put up there was the only place in the market since 2010 where you would've made more money than being long Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon was being long United Healthcare, (laughs) Cigna, Wellspring. And the reason is because healthcare was this incredible thing post-Obamacare. Nobody wants to talk about it on the left because it makes it look terrible but we created massive price inflation and J- UnitedHealthcare was a $30 billion company right before-

David Sacks 11:26 Narrative violation, be careful. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:27 ... right before, right before Obamacare passed. Today it's a $330 billion company. Um, and the level of growth that they and Aetna and, you know, Cigna and, and Wellspring, these com- these companies have, have seen is astounding. So these highly regulated-

David Sacks 11:45 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:45 ... you know, systems of-

David Sacks 11:46 Right because-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:46 ... societal infrastructure, woo, that's where all the gains have been.

David Sacks 11:49 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:49 Regulatory capture, writ large.

David Sacks 11:51 Right. Well, as soon as the government is paying for it, all the suppliers know they can increase their prices. Why wouldn't they?

11:57 Yeah.

11:57 So it, it's... What happens is the government tries to make something free for people and all they end up doing is making it really expensive. Because they make-

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:04 Well, they make it, they, they make it a-

David Sacks 12:05 They make it now.

12:06 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:06 They make it, they make it expensive in this very, in this very convoluted way which is hard to track, right? Because it's like, you know, uh, who's actually paying? Well, you know, the insurance companies want to just book more revenue even if their, you know, per, e- even if their gross aggregate profit grows much, much more slowly, they'd rather, uh-... make the same amount of profit on a billion dollars versus a hundred million dollars. So what do they do? Their incentive is to just jack prices up. Who are paying those prices? Companies pay those prices. Who bears those costs? All of this stuff is really not clear because ultimately downstream, somebody has to pay for this stuff.

Jason Calacanis 12:41 Taxpayers. And it's all obscurified. I mean, lo- I mean look at the tent story that we were sharing on our group, group thread. (laughs) 61 thousand dollars for San Francisco to put people into tents with a no bid contract. Uh, and one question I have for, for you all, um, is if we look back the last time we were at 6% unemployment, July 2014. We look at the unemployment graph. It's spiked up to, as we discussed, 15%, and it has plummeted back down now to, uh, the 6% rate. If we look back on this moment in time and how quickly the economy is recovering from this disaster that we've never experienced before, it looks like this recession is gonna be recovered and we're gonna... we're already back in business in such a short period of time compared to what happened in the Great Recession and the dot-com boom. So i- is America and the US dollar and the economy anti-fragile now, to use a Taleb term? What, what do... how do we look at what happened-

David Sacks 13:44 Hello.

Jason Calacanis 13:44 ... with the economy? Did Trump do everything right with the stimulus?

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:46 This is a, this is a complete outlier in the following way. In a typical recession, what, what has to happen is... so you have a contraction in the economy but you don't know when the bottom is, right? The bottom is some number of months in the future, and government policy is basically trying to create a soft landing where all of a sudden, the cost of capital is low enough now where people say, "Uh, on the margin now, this incremental dollar, I would rather borrow and invest," which drives growth, which can then... gets the economy grow- going. And so, you know, how does, how does a government deal with that? They are looking at economic data and saying, "Okay, you know what? Let me cut rates. I'll cut rates again. I'll cut rates again." And that's really the one tool that they have in their toolbox because they're trying to predict in the future, how many rate cuts do I need to get or have rather, how big do they need to be, um, until I get to that place where you bottom out. The pandemic was the exact opposite because in many ways, we actually hit the bottom in month one because we said, "Everything go to zero right now." Right? When you shut everything down, you technically can't have less economic activity-

Jason Calacanis 14:48 That's true.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:48 ... than zero. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 14:49 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:49 And so, and so in many ways, you price the bottom on day one, boom. And in hindsight, you know, the, the real insight would've been to, to see that-

Jason Calacanis 14:59 (clears throat)

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:59 ... and say, "I'm buying this moment because it only gets better from here." So in, in one ways, like all of the tools are, are actually now, we need to think about them in opposite, and I don't think we have that training to do that well. So we're still going back to the same toolbox, which is why what David said is so true. You know, we're thinking about incremental stimulus as a... as... like a way to get to a soft landing but we've already actually taken the hard medicine a year ago.

Jason Calacanis 15:26 So let, let's, let's tackle that. Sachs, should we... and let's,

Jason Calacanis 15:29 let's take virtue signaling and populism out of this discussion, just on an economic basis, is it necessary to send every American another 600,000, 2,000 knowing what we know today with the unemployment rate going down, or would it be readi- or w- or would we be better off taking that capital and deploying it in education-

David Sacks 15:50 Right. Look, first of all-

Jason Calacanis 15:50 ... uh, unemployment-

David Sacks 15:51 Right. It's-

Jason Calacanis 15:51 ... or something else?

David Sacks 15:52 Well, first of all, it's 1.9 trillion that we don't have. We're borrowing it. I mean, I would extend unemployment for people in those hard-hit sectors that haven't come back yet, but most of this money is going for blue state bailouts of cities that are totally mismanaged. Uh, this is not gonna help states like, uh, California or San Fran- or cities like San Francisco get their house in order because this is gonna bail them out and defer that day of reckoning from their chronic mismanagement. So we're borrowing money we don't have to bail out people, cities and states that don't really deserve it. Um, I do think we should s- help the people who've been impacted but, um, but it doesn't require two trillion. And look, here's the thing, we're already down to 6% unemployment. We're gonna be down to, I'd say probably three or 4% in two quarters. I mean, the economy's coming roaring back and the reason it's coming roaring back is because COVID is ending, right? So the biggest announcement recently, and I think this is playing into what's happening in the stock market as well, is that Biden announced that every American who's over the age of 16 who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by the end of May. By the end of May. I mean, we're gonna have-

Jason Calacanis 16:54 Yeah. What, what, wait, what happened-

David Sacks 16:56 ... 300 million doses-

Jason Calacanis 16:57 ... to the fall? (laughs) Yeah.

David Sacks 16:57 Right. While he was-

Jason Calacanis 16:58 Cut six months off this.

David Sacks 16:59 I mean, he... just, yeah. When he came in office in January, he's p- saying the worst is not over bla-... I mean, that was clearly sandbagging. The worst was over and we're gonna have 300 million doses by the end of May, and the only reason why everybody won't be able to get one is because of states that are, you know, creating these ridiculous hoops to get through.

David Friedberg 17:17 Confiscating them.

David Sacks 17:18 Th- yeah, exactly. Like California right now has, has three million doses sitting on a shelf because of all the crazy hoops that Gavin Newsom has everyone going through because he wants to score, uh, brownie points on equity, right? Um, so if the government would just get outta the way, let everyone who wants to get a vaccine get one without worrying about making sure the exact right person in the exact right line gets one first, this thing will be over by Memorial Day. Over. Now look, there'll still be a case here or there, uh, for sure there'll be... I'm not saying there'll be zero cases of COVID, but there'll be zero pandemic understood as such.

David Friedberg 17:51 By the way, I'll, I'll also say one other, um, you know, important point about the stimulus, uh, one that, that Sachs made. Yesterday, the CBO put out a, a, a projection. Uh, this is the, um, the budget office, uh, at, I think Congress and they said that the, um...... US national debt is likely to reach 202% of GDP by 2051. So the amount of debt that the US government will own, um, is 2X the amount of all the revenue generated by all of the industries in the US, um, o- in, in about 30 years. That's an insane statistic. And the reason that people look at, you know, GDP or debt to GDP is because you have to pay your debt down at some point, so you owe some interest on that debt, you have to pay it down, and every year you have to generate revenue to pay the bond holders. And though how do you, how does the federal government generate revenue? It either issues more debt or taxes. And in order to meet a 202% level of debt relative to GDP, you end up raising taxes so significantly as a percent of GDP to cover the, uh, the, uh, the interest payments and the, and the, the principal payments every year, that you end up stalling out the economy, cutting important services, et cetera. Um, and so we're in a circumstance now where the, the, the benefit we're gonna get from taking on this additional debt relative to economic growth and stimulus, um, doesn't actually, uh, outweigh the cost of that debt, and we're facing a fiscal crunch at some point in the next decade or two. And there is this fl- this big question mark outstanding right now on a global stage. Is the dollar really the safest place, um, to be? I- does everyone really want to be dollar-denominated if this is the circumstance that the US federal government is gonna be facing, uh, 20 years from now?

Jason Calacanis 19:29 Here's a, uh, question for Chamath that I'm curious about. If the government is buying all this debt, shouldn't they be buying some amount of equity as well so they can profit from...

David Friedberg 19:41 Well, the government's issuing debt, Jason.

Jason Calacanis 19:43 No, I know, but isn't the government also going into the market and buying up corporate debt through all of this?

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:49 No, they, they, they-

Jason Calacanis 19:49 And shouldn't they have profits coming from that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:51 No. So th- there, there was a risk last year where, you know, corporates may not have been able to fund their obligations, and so the government basically said, "We're going to be the buyer of last resort and step in." And effe- effectively what they did was they, they, they essentially froze the credit markets, because if you were going to then f- bet on some of these companies not being able to raise capital, you would have gone to the worst part of the, you know, the stack, or you would have bet actually that there was going to be a state transition. So meaning debt is very tightly scripted as, you know, triple A plus, d- you know, double A, A-minus. And these transitions from these tiers of, like, investment grade to junk to whatever are huge events, and basically the government said, "Nope, uh, everybody take your chips and go home 'cause we are gonna backstop companies like Ford or whoever," folks that were teetering. And so they, they effectively said, "This is gonna be, you know, until I tell you otherwise, a rigged game. I'm gonna make sure I backstop these things. These companies will always be able to have money."

Jason Calacanis 20:50 So my question, though, Chamath, is if the government is gonna do that and take that risk, shouldn't they get some warrants or some upside in the company's future success to then create a virtuous cycle here, that if they did backstop it, maybe they had warrants for 5% of the company, like you would give if you were doing a debt instrument?

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:07 They could probably do it if they were, uh, a direct lender and they, they had that chance and they didn't really do it in 2008 when they did it. And I mean, maybe they could have done it in a better way. Here when you enter the open market, there's no such contract, and so you can't negotiate that. Look, I, I, I, I wanna sort of talk about something slightly related to this, which is if you actually looked at that $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, the thing that makes the most sense, and I think nobody would complain about, was saying, "Let's give a means-based test where the poorest Americans get the most money, call it five or six thousand, and the richest Americans get nothing."

Jason Calacanis 21:40 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:40 And I think nobody would disagree with that. And if you added up all of that money, it's probably on the order of 500 or $700 billion, if you did it, if you did a really expansive package. And it, and, and I think people would, I mean, all of us would raise their hands and say, "We shouldn't get a fucking dime." And-

Jason Calacanis 21:56 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:56 ... you know, people, other people-

Jason Calacanis 21:58 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:58 ... should be getting many multiples of 1,400, okay?

Jason Calacanis 22:00 But why should anybody who wasn't impacted, Sax, get anything? Like if you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:05 Right, well-

Jason Calacanis 22:05 ... were not impacted-

David Sacks 22:06 Yeah, of course. Of course.

Jason Calacanis 22:06 ... you didn't lose your job, you're staying home-

David Sacks 22:09 We don't... And we're-

Jason Calacanis 22:09 ... you're not spending money, why should you get anything? Because I think that's all the money going into NFTs and making-

David Sacks 22:14 Right.

Jason Calacanis 22:14 ... bets on GameStop and doing all this-

David Sacks 22:16 Of course.

Jason Calacanis 22:16 ... m- you know, shenanigans with Bitcoin.

David Sacks 22:18 Of course. Look, this is Rahm Emanuel 2.0. Remember Rahm Emanuel back in the 2008, 2009 financial crisis said, "Never let a crisis go to waste"? This is now, "Never let a crisis reach its end." Right? They don't want it to be over, because this crisis-

Jason Calacanis 22:33 Hat's a good segue.

David Sacks 22:34 ... is the justification... Yeah, this crisis is the justification for this piggy bank of spending that this, this wish list that they've wanted to pass for a long time. Very little of i- of it a- actually has to do with helping the people who have been hurt by COVID.

David Friedberg 22:46 Very little, very little.

David Sacks 22:47 Like COVID. Right.

David Friedberg 22:47 In fact, if you actually look at the, the breakdown of this $1.9 trillion bill, it's every typical bill. It has a better title, but ultimately it's a bunch of pork barrels spending. By the way, there, there's a bunch of insanity in there, like COVID testing. I mean, guess what? We don't need to test anyone for COVID in about 30 to 60 days.

Jason Calacanis 23:01 Yeah, you can throw those tests away. We needed them six months ago.

David Friedberg 23:03 There's a couple billion dollars we could save, you know?

Jason Calacanis 23:05 Dummies. (laughs)

David Friedberg 23:05 And the, and the list goes on, but I think the point is, uh, what Sax is making is totally true. W- we're continuing to latch on to the COVID pandemic crisis as a means to an end, um, and we're not really solving, uh, any problems that are outstanding. As the COVID pandemic and the risks... Remember, let- let's just go back a year. If you guys remember, the reason we shut down the economy was to flatten the curve. There was no assumption we were gonna end COVID. The idea was, "Let's make sure that the healthcare system doesn't get overwhelmed with people dying-

Jason Calacanis 23:34 ICUs.

David Friedberg 23:34 ... where we can't handle as many people in ICU beds." And now we're in a situation where we're saying, "You still can't go outside. ICU beds are largely open. You still have to do X and Y and Z. We still need to be testing everyone." And all of those risks and considerations should be coming off the table as more people have had COVID and more people have gotten vaccinated. And instead, we're using the fear that's been embedded in us th- over the past year as a mechanism to drive spending in a way that is clearly economically unsustainable, um, ultimately counterproductive, and unfortunately is being, you know, used as a mechanism for keeping folks in office and, and paying back their friends and all this other sort of nonsense that's going

David Friedberg 24:12 on.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:12 Friedberg, you had a, you had a breakdown of, uh... It, it... By the way, 'cause it's not just the, the federal stimulus bill. You know, the, the California breakdown of what they spent-

David Friedberg 24:21 Insane.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:21 Do you have that-

David Friedberg 24:22 Is-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:22 ... do you have that-

David Friedberg 24:22 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:22 ... or can you fill it out?

David Friedberg 24:23 You know what, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna send the link because it was a... through a FOIA request. They were forced to list it. So California had, had an emergency declaration.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:30 Joke, a total fucking joke, how much money they're wasting.

David Friedberg 24:32 Uh, through that em- through that emergency declaration, it gave the governor the power and the ability to enter into no-bid contracts to meet the, the demands of the, quote unquote, "emergency." And the contracts that were entered into are all publicly listed and available in a link that I will share with you guys, um, and it'll be available online. I don't think a reporter has done what needs to be done, which is to go through those contracts and identify how much money was spent on what, and where that... and why that money was spent, and who ended up benefiting from it. Some of these contracts including, for example, $1.9 billion to PerkinElmer to provide nasal swabs and other, you know, reactive chemistry needed to run COVID tests with an overflow capacity of their lab of 4,000 tests a day, which by the way costs a few thousand dollars, um, for $1.9 billion, and ultimately California didn't really do any of the testing. It was done by private labs. Where did that $1.9 billion go?

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:26 Uh-oh.

David Friedberg 25:26 There was another amount of money. There was $100 million spent on Accenture to build the vaccination website, no-bid contract, $100 million for a freaking three-page website.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:35 What? Didn't that guy build that website in a weekend?

David Friedberg 25:36 There was e- e- the Carbon Health guy did. There was another, um, uh, separately for his own vaccination program that he was running, which, you know, obviously highlights just how inept this whole process is. There was another, um, incredible multi-hundred million dollar contract entered into for a guy, and y- and then I looked up his address on Google Maps, and I looked at his home and his office. It's in, like, a strip mall next to a donut shop, and this guy is the guy, he's a... he's technically a doctor but not really a practicing doctor, who would... who got paid hundreds of millions of dollars to source overflow, um, hospital and doctor capacity for prisons in the uni- in California.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:08 What?

David Friedberg 26:08 Insane the shit that's in there. And so, um, you know, the- the- the- the total kind of, um, I think mismanagement of capital and obviously inability to kind of-

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:17 Why the fuck-

David Friedberg 26:17 ... manage through a crisis, get taken advantage of... Yeah. And I... By the way, I think, I think, the COVID s- the fiscal... the federal COVID stimulus looks very similar in terms of the, the pork and other nonsense that's going on in there. It makes... Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:27 Hey, mainstream media, instead of fucking grinding me about w- you know, a couple hundred million dollars of share sales so that I can allocate it to fucking climate change, why don't you do your goddamn job and fucking tell this story?

David Friedberg 26:38 Yeah, no, 'cause this would take work-

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:40 What a joke.

David Friedberg 26:40 ... and you don't get virtue signaling points.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:42 What a joke.

David Friedberg 26:42 I'll post the link now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:43 David, more... I need more red pills.

David Friedberg 26:45 What a joke.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:45 Get me those red pills from Miami. (laughs)

David Sacks 26:47 So there's one-

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:48 What a fucking joke.

David Sacks 26:48 ... there's one article, like, I... You're right, Chamath, like, they, they... there are so many scandals. By the way, there was one just reported in the San Francisco Chronicle about how the City of San Francisco paid $16 million to, uh, to pay for something like 260 tents or something like that.

David Friedberg 27:04 Tents?

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:05 Tents-

David Friedberg 27:05 Tents?

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:05 ... for homeless people. It was $61,000-

David Friedberg 27:07 By the way, that's the entire budget of Burning Man (laughs) . You just-

David Sacks 27:10 It was $61,000 per tent.

David Friedberg 27:12 You could build an ADU for that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:13 Guys, I have an entire gaggle of reporters sweating every single fucking share that I buy or sell, and these people-

David Friedberg 27:21 And you love it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:21 No, no, I don't. This is... it's-

David Friedberg 27:22 Oh, okay (laughs) .

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:22 ... su- fucking stupid. And, and, and there's tru- there's trillions-

David Sacks 27:26 Trillions.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:26 ... of dollars just swashing around?

David Sacks 27:27 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:27 Like, wha- what... Are we some third world-

David Sacks 27:30 It was all-

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:30 ... fucking banana republic?

David Sacks 27:31 Kinda.

David Friedberg 27:32 Go ahead, facts. Go ahead.

David Sacks 27:32 Uh-

David Friedberg 27:32 San Francisco is, that's for sure. California is-

David Sacks 27:35 All, all this money, all this money, all this money was dished out according to no-bid, uh, contracts, so, so basically there was not a competitive bidding process because it was a COVID emergency. And so yeah, look, I mean, all of, uh, Newsom's big backers in the healthcare industry got these giant no-bid contracts. These, you know, the homeless industrial complex service providers in San Francisco got these giant contracts. None of it was bid out. Uh, and the politicians would love to be able to keep this going because they've never had more power, they've never had m- more degrees of freedom to reward their political supporters. So, uh, you know, I, I think there, there was one really good article I just wanna bring up here, uh, that was by Jonathan Chait. It's called, um-

David Friedberg 28:12 Oh, this is the, uh, intelligencier in the, uh, New Yorker.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:15 Yeah.

David Friedberg 28:15 The New York, New York Magazine.

David Sacks 28:17 Yeah, so-

David Friedberg 28:17 NYMagazine.com

David Sacks 28:17 Yeah, New York Magazine. So yeah, his article's called Zero COVID Risk is the Wrong Standard, and he defines, uh, a term called zeroism. What, what Chait writes is he, he describes zeroism as the following. He says, "Zeroism is an inability to conceive of public health measures in cost-benefit terms. The pandemic becomes an enemy that must be destroyed at all costs, and any compromise could lead to death and is therefore unacceptable." So in other words, if, like, one person might die, then we need to continue all these emergency measures. Um, it's... and, and, and, and this is the thing is that, look, COVID as a pandemic is gonna be over by June. Okay? But there will always be cases of COVID. It's gonna return as a seasonal illness, and the question is are we going to allow zeroism to be the policy every year where we basically give these politicians unlimited power to do lockdowns, shutdowns, no-bid contracts, and on and on and on? You already see with the teachers' unions, right? The education unions are refusing to go back to work even after their members are vaccinated.

David Friedberg 29:21 Unbelievable.

David Sacks 29:21 Yeah, saying that there must be 14 days of no, meaning zero community spread, before they can safely return. So the teachers' unions or the education unions are saying is, "We're not gonna go back to work. We want paid vacation until there's zero cases." Well-

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:33 Can I just say-

David Sacks 29:34 ... this is not realistic.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:35 I mean, I, I, um, I went to get, uh, my daughter's passport updated at USPS. They're working. While I was driving there, I saw all kinds of infrastructure. It was happening. W- we pay into a system that's supposed to guarantee in return some level of commitment by individuals that buy into that same system. Teachers are part of that.

David Friedberg 30:02 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:02 You can't, you can't have a get out of jail free card whenever you want to just say, "No, we're gonna change the rules," and it... but it applies to everybody else. The firefighters have to show up. The cops have to show up. The ambulance people have to show up. The nurses show up, you know, the USPS cl-

David Friedberg 30:16 Uber drivers, BART train conductors-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:19 Everybody shows up-

David Friedberg 30:19 Everybody's going to work, but these people, they need-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:21 ... but these people are fucking teachers.

David Friedberg 30:22 The teachers should... uh, parents should take their kids outta school. That's what they should do, and then just-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:28 Do what, Jason? How, how, how are most people-

David Friedberg 30:30 You basically... Well, if you've got five or six parents together-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:33 How many people work? Jason, people work.

David Sacks 30:34 They can't. Yeah.

David Friedberg 30:34 No, no, but if you got five or six parents together and they could get-

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:37 They don't have time for that shit.

David Sacks 30:38 Jason, who... what are you talking about? This is a fucking normal-

David Friedberg 30:40 Wait, I don't can even finish my sentence.

David Sacks 30:41 Okay, go ahead.

David Friedberg 30:41 Five or six parents get together, and if they had, if they had, um... what do you call it when you give parents a little bit of money for school, uh-

Jason Calacanis 30:48 ... voucher systems. The voucher system would then create the competition. If six or seven families could get 5, 10K each and then run their own little bubble school, their micro-school, this could actually put pressure on the teachers.

David Friedberg 31:02 Well-

Jason Calacanis 31:02 That's not gonna happen.

David Sacks 31:02 Well, it's not gonna-

Jason Calacanis 31:02 Absolutely.

David Sacks 31:02 ... it's not gonna happen, but you actually have a pretty good point. What, what Newsom should do is he should go to these unions and say, "Listen, if you're not gonna go back and you're not gonna teach, no problem. We're gonna take the money that we give to your schools and give them out as vouchers and let the parents do what they want." In other words, "We're going to break your union."

Jason Calacanis 31:17 Thank you. Correct.

David Sacks 31:17 That is what he needs to do.

Jason Calacanis 31:18 It's time to break the unions.

David Sacks 31:19 The problem with Newsom, News- the problem with Newsom is that his biggest contributor, single biggest contributor, is the Education Union. Right? And so look, he has publicly said that, "Yes, I'm in favor of schools reopening," but it's not enough for you to es- espouse the opinion that schools sh- should go back. I mean, you're the governor. You need to go make that happen. You need to go tell the teachers unions, "You must go back right now because there is no incremental COVID risk to the teachers." They've seen this now, that states which have opened schools have not seen an increase in COVID.

Jason Calacanis 31:50 It's crazy.

David Sacks 31:50 There is no science to support this. You need to tell them, "Go back right now or we're gonna break your union." He will not do that because he's an employee of those unions. And by the way, I, I have an update. I have an update on the, on the recall if you guys want it.

Jason Calacanis 32:02 No wait, let's-

David Sacks 32:03 So I talk-

Jason Calacanis 32:03 ... let's get to it in one second 'cause I do wanna-

David Sacks 32:05 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 32:05 ... I, I do wanna just say, um... Well, first off, I wanna make an observation that we are, um, turning into the rational Rush Limbaugh. We're all kind of yelling-

David Sacks 32:12 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 32:12 ... in, in violent agreement, but-

David Sacks 32:14 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 32:14 ... it's like- No, it's infuriating. It is infuriating.

David Friedberg 32:15 It's kind of a little bit silly. Um, but, uh, uh, I am just observing the tone here a little bit. Um, I w- I will say, like, uh, if you guys remember, we talked about this, like, last year, which is, you know, what will life be like post COVID, post the pandemic? And if you guys remember, I said this and I still firmly believe it, and I think we're s- now seeing it play out, which is that the fear that gets created by the actual crisis will persist in terms of the s- the subconscious behavior of the population for a long period of time. That's what happened after 9/11. You know, the insanity that went on with the TSA and security checking and racism against brown people and everything that arose post 9/11 persisted for a very long time as a result of the shock that we all experienced. It- And I don't think people were very cognizant of it occurring. It was just like, "Oh, well, this is now the normal way of life." Everyone is so fearful of catching COVID and they've been so kind of trained and told that they're gonna die from COVID that we're finding ourselves in a circumstance where anything can then be rationalized. And the f- those folks that then have power and the ability can magnify the circumstances into something that i- it seems kind of shocking and absurd if you put on kind of a rational hat. But this is just one manifestation of what I think will be the case. W- w- we were, um... We, we, we all know people that have been vaccinated that are more than two weeks since their second shot of vaccination who are still scared of doing things like being around other people or going into grocery stores because, quote unquote, "There may be a chance that there may be a variant that may not work on the vaccine that I may get that may end up killing me." And if you actually do the math on it and you think about it rationally, you're not gonna get COVID and you're not gonna die, but there is a chance, therefore, I'm gonna change my behavior. And that's part of what I think we're seeing manifest at a very large scale, is this, like, trained fear mind that we all have at this point, um, and policy and everything. And, and by the... Yeah. No, I, I dis-

Jason Calacanis 34:00 And by the way the $1.9 trillion stimulus is, is in part kind of empowered by this fear-

David Sacks 34:04 Well-

Jason Calacanis 34:04 ... that we all have.

David Sacks 34:05 ... I, I, I, I, I, I disagree slightly. So look, y- is there going to be some p- t- PTSD from COVID? Yeah, I'm sure there will be. But I think people are ready to, to get out and, um, a- with a vengeance. And I think people want to... And, and the problem is not that people are, are afraid but that the people doing... The, the health establishment doing the messaging is not out there telling us the right things. I mean, you've got Fauci out there telling people that even after they're vaccinated, they cannot take off their masks until 2022. That-

Jason Calacanis 34:36 (laughs)

David Sacks 34:36 ... they're not gonna be able to dine... No, seriously.

Jason Calacanis 34:38 (laughs)

David Sacks 34:38 They're not gonna be able to dine indoors. They can't go to a movie, a concert, or a sporting event.

Jason Calacanis 34:43 (laughs)

David Sacks 34:43 And they can't socialize indoors except with other also vaccinated people.

Jason Calacanis 34:47 I...

David Sacks 34:47 This is what Fauci is saying.

Jason Calacanis 34:49 (laughs)

David Sacks 34:49 I mean, so no wonder you've got so many people out there saying that they're going to wait and see whether the vaccine works or not. Well, because e- effectively, Fauci and the health establishment, they're being so cautious in their guidance. They're effectively giving anti-vax messaging. They're basically saying that the vaccines don't work very well, which is just stupid. I mean, what they should be doing to-

Jason Calacanis 35:08 Thank you. I mean, they should be going out saying, "Nobody has died who has been... gotten a shot. Nobody has gone to the ICU-

David Sacks 35:13 Correct.

Jason Calacanis 35:13 ... who's gotten vaccinated."

David Sacks 35:14 No, what they need to say, what they need to say-

Jason Calacanis 35:15 Nobody's been on a ventilator who's been vaccinated.

David Sacks 35:17 Right.

Jason Calacanis 35:17 Am I correct with those three statements made that-

David Sacks 35:19 Yes, yes, they need to say, "If you take..."

Jason Calacanis 35:21 No deaths, no ICU, no ventilator-

David Sacks 35:24 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 35:24 ... if you have the shot.

David Sacks 35:25 What we need to be saying is very simple, which is, "If you've been vaccinated, you will not die. If you've been vaccinated, you will not die." Put that on a billboard and everyone's gonna wanna get vaccinated. You know, only 55% of the population right now, uh, says that they're gonna get vaccinated as soon as they can. And it's because-

Jason Calacanis 35:41 I'm ordering a billboard right now from the Besties-

David Friedberg 35:44 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 35:44 ... I think-

David Sacks 35:44 ... that just says, "If you're vaccinated, you won't die. The Besties." (laughs)

David Friedberg 35:47 I think it's pretty reasonable that individuals would still be afraid. You know, 'cause I, I think we learned over the last year that we can't trust the institutions that are supposed to tell us in an objective way. Meaning you can't trust the WHO, you can't trust NIH, you can't trust the CDC, you can't necessarily trust the Surgeon General, you couldn't trust the President. Very complicated, right? So I think it's reasonable that people are skeptical. What I think is unreasonable is when, you know, sort of, like, organized, um, unions or organizations or corporations who have a responsibility to run the infrastructure of this country basically say, um, "E- it... All these rules apply to everybody else but me." Um, that's where I think, uh, we have to really just kinda question ourselves and fix that. That's not cool. It's just fundamentally not reasonable.

David Sacks 36:37 So we have Biden saying that everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by the end of May. We have Gavin Newsom saying that most of the state, but not all of it, will reopen in August. Well, wait a second, you know, May, June, July, Au- August, w- why is there, like, a three-month gap here? It's because of, of, of this zeroism. I mean, I think Newsom has embraced this zeroism philosophy.

Jason Calacanis 36:58 If not zeroism, what's the number? We have 8,000 people die a day in America-

David Friedberg 37:02 ... uh, on average, historically.

David Sacks 37:04 As soon as everyone-

David Friedberg 37:05 On- if it's under 500 deaths a day, should we be going back?

David Sacks 37:08 That's not even the question. That's not even the question. Once everyone can get a vaccine, it's over. If you choose not to get the vaccine, like, sorry.

David Friedberg 37:16 It's on you.

David Sacks 37:17 That's... It's on you. We're moving on.

David Friedberg 37:18 I agree. I agree.

David Sacks 37:18 It's like, "Dude, it's over."

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:19 We're done. Can I ask, can I ask a question?

David Friedberg 37:20 And by the way, the, the equivalent of zeroism would be no one's allowed to drive a car because people die, dies, die in cars all the time. Or, or all cars have to be 35 miles an hour. Or they... Or y- or, or yeah, or no one's allowed to drink alcohol because alcohol has some adverse effect or increases your chance of, of cancer, or, or whatever, or whatever-

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:35 (laughs)

David Friedberg 37:35 ... at some point. Like, do you end up- You just triggered Chamath. (laughs) Alcohols? No wine?

David Sacks 37:39 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:39 Yeah. Sorry, Chamath. Nice Bordeaux and Burgundy doesn't give you cancer.

David Sacks 37:41 No. By the way, uh- (laughs)

David Friedberg 37:42 What's going on with the wine budget post-Spacocalypse? (laughs)

David Sacks 37:45 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:45 I mean, it's gon- it's gonna take a lotta... It's gonna take a lot of more billions before I stop drinking my wine.

David Sacks 37:50 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:50 Um, question. Um, I wanna throw this into the scrum.

David Sacks 37:53 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:53 Um, what do you guys think about-

David Friedberg 37:55 He's a scrummy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:56 Uh, I... By the way, I mean, also, we're all just so punchy 'cause we didn't talk last week. So we're all-

David Friedberg 37:59 Totally. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:00 We're all so agitated.

David Friedberg 38:01 We're all a little excited. We're a little excited.

David Sacks 38:02 (laughs)

David Friedberg 38:02 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:02 None of us have gotten to talk. All of our wives have been telling us what to do.

David Sacks 38:05 (laughs)

David Friedberg 38:05 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:05 We had nobody to vent with, and now we're just going crazy. (laughs)

David Friedberg 38:08 (laughs)

David Sacks 38:08 It's like a bunch of 12-year-old boys who are on timeout.

David Friedberg 38:11 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:11 It's like, it's like, it's like we've been in a two-week timeout, and we're like-

David Friedberg 38:13 We need to get our bikes and go for a bike ride.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:15 No, no, no, guys. Honestly, honestly, like have you guys... Like I have not gotten a word in edgewise with Matt for two weeks.

David Friedberg 38:20 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:20 And I was so looking forward to talking to you guys, so I'm like, "All right, I wanna talk."

David Sacks 38:24 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:25 Um, no, but listen. Uh, what do you guys-

David Sacks 38:27 No, no comments.

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:27 What do you guys think about the, uh, the, the biological Patriot Act thing? You know, there's these vaccination passports that people are talking about. I just wanna get a sense of where you guys think this is going and, and, and what you think about it.

David Friedberg 38:38 This is the, this is the slippery slope that I think ends all slippery slopes with respect to privacy, right? So there, there... I think it was proposed in the EU that you would need to get a, you know, a digitally verified kind of passport stamp that shows that you have been vaccinated in order to travel freely amongst other EU nations. Um, and so if you think about the implications of this, now the government or governments have the ability to demand that in order for you to move around freely, you need to represent something digitally or represent something about some healthcare procedure that you may or may not wanna kind of, uh, you know, take on. So that sound... Everyone kind of nods their head and says, "That seems totally reasonable and rational. It's COVID. We're all at risk. We should protect ourselves." Hard no. Yeah. I wanna... Yada yada." But where does this go next, right? Because then it becomes, "Well, have you had your measles vaccine?" Or, you know, "Hey, you know, do you have, um, herpes?" And therefore, you can't... You have to show someone your herpes passport if you wanna have sex with them or, you know, end up kind of going to a point where we, we really don't have a barrier between what's private and what's nationalized, um, or, or even super nationalized in the, in the context of the EU. Um, and, you know, is there kind of a slippery slope that emerges by allowing this amount of invasiveness of personal decision-making and personal data and making it available to government agencies in order to have access to the liberties that you, you know, believe may be endowed to you as an individual citizen, uh, of the world? Or what do we do? So, Sax.

David Sacks 39:58 Well, I, I, I just think proposals like this are... I, I think they're gonna fade away very quickly once COVID is over. And, and the, and the real issue we have right now is that not enough of the population wants to get vaccinated because, again, the health authorities are being much too conservative in their guidance. So, uh, you know, there's some polling numbers on this that... So only 15% of the public are actually opposed to getting the vaccine. Like you kind of call them anti-vax. But there's another 20 to 30% that are taking this wait and see approach. And, you know, they're gonna make sure that, like, other people go first and don't sprout tails or antlers or something before, you know, they're gonna be willing to get it. But, but the reason why they're all waiting and seeing is because you've got, you know, Fauci and others saying that we're not gonna have normalcy until Christmas or maybe even 2022. So if i- if that's the case, if things aren't gonna be normal till next year, why wouldn't you wait? You know? And I think what we need to be saying is, "Look, go get the vaccine. We're... Everyone who wants it is gonna be able to get it in the next two months. And COVID is over. It's over, guys."

David Friedberg 41:01 But Sax, if there is a digital passport requirement in the EU, where do you think that goes? Like, if you have to show proof of a vaccination in order to enter the EU without quarantine-

David Sacks 41:09 That's nuts.

David Friedberg 41:10 ... where, where does this go?

David Sacks 41:10 Well, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not a great precedent. But I, but I, I, I don't know that it's gonna be necessary, 'cause I just think that COVID is gonna end-

David Friedberg 41:17 There is a self-

David Sacks 41:18 ... so and so quickly.

David Friedberg 41:19 It's, it's a s- this... I, I like Sax's point of view, which is if you decide you're not gonna do this, then you put yourself at risk. But if nobody else can die from it, why do we need to check it? I understand, like maybe in this bridge period, spring to summer, if you go to a Warriors game or a Knicks game, or you wanna go to Burning Man or the EDC, you know, Electronic Daisy Carnival, whatever, uh, Freebird goes to, you know, when he goes to his raves. I mean, Freebird at a rave is kind of the video we need to see, I think. But w- why would... That's fine with me b- in the short term, but in the long term, I don't wanna give them that power. Look what happened with the Patriot Act and then them monitoring our data forever, and the government being able to put, you know, w- what Snowden found out, like they were able to put on the AT&T backbone, the ability to sniff all data. I mean, it's overreaching.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:09 Last January, uh, or February, I think, Jason, it was one of our first pods where I kind of put this marker out there on this biological Patriot Act, and I said, "It, it's coming." I'm gonna put another marker out there. Um, by the way, 'cause like, you know, there may be something like this in New York. I think most cities will have to have them. I think places, Jason, exactly as you say, for sporting events, for concerts. It'll be very hard, um, as the number of strains increase, as the severity ebbs and flows over time, for us to not end up in this place, and I think it will be because certain people will feel a paternalistic, um, desire to sort of... You know, it'll come from a good place, like, "I wanna help everybody," but they'll pass a law and that law will just get perturbed and, and, and it'll create all kinds of crazy consequences. But I wanna put another chit out there, which is, you know, there was a really important civil rights case called Masterpiece Cakeshop versus Colorado, um, Civil Rights Commission.... he went to the Supreme Court and it was basically a, a, a guy who owned, um, a bakery. And he refused, I think it was to make a cake for a same-sex couple. Um, and ultimately, you know, the decision was, yeah, he's allowed. The Supreme Court gave a very narrow ruling that he was allowed to withhold service. And I asked this question, which is, well, what is the difference, frankly, between withholding service from a same-sex couple or withholding service from somebody that isn't vaccinated? Um, because, you know, in the eyes of the business person, you know, as- assuming apparently you're allowed to make these kinds of, you know, judgments, uh, because you're a private business, the implications I think are really vast. Um, and so I'm just gonna put it out there that I think that, uh, it's actually... David, I'll take the other side. So I think that there's going to be these biological Patriot Acts, unfortunately. And then the second thing that I'll say is that I do think that it will get litigated to the Supreme Court, and I think that narrowly what will come down is that businesses will be able to decide. And I think this is actually what will put the vaccination or anti-vaccination movement to the forefront, because I think in this complex global world where we don't know where diseases come from, except we know that they are more communicable, they can be more deadly, and they're more pervasive, and they spread faster just because of the nature in which the world is set up, there's gonna- there's probably gonna be less and less tolerance for anti-vaccination. Now, that may slow down the actual process of getting vaccines to market, um, because we'll wanna make it even safer if we're gonna do forced vaccinations of certain things. But I'm just gonna put a, put a-

David Sacks 44:50 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:50 ... tip out there that I think that that's coming.

David Sacks 44:52 Well, I, I don't know that we need to force people to get vaccinated, but I think that we need to recognize that once people have the option of getting vaccinated, there's no need to have the same public policy response, right? So, so look, if Biden's correct that we're gonna have 300 million doses by end of May, and I think he must be correct 'cause he's been very conservative in his guidance, then we should declare a date certain for the end of COVID. I'm not saying that the virus won't exist. I'm not saying there won't be a smattering of cases. I'm saying from a public policy perspective-

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:22 Yeah.

David Sacks 45:22 ... there's no longer a panic, a raging pandemic to justify these incredible new powers that the government has asserted, right?

David Friedberg 45:29 I mean, what would you do then based on-

David Sacks 45:30 And so, so-

David Friedberg 45:30 ... the number of shots in arms or the number of deaths per day?

David Sacks 45:33 No, it's... Look, once, once everyone can get the vaccine, and I think that'll be-

David Friedberg 45:37 Okay, so availability.

David Sacks 45:39 ... by Memorial Day. Availability. So, I mean, look-

David Friedberg 45:40 Okay.

David Sacks 45:40 ... what we should s- And, and, and it will be available as long as, you know, governors like Newsom get out of the way and stop restricting the administration of it. But I think we need to declare a date certain where we say, "Listen, on June 1st, there is no more justification for government having these extraordinary powers to lock us down, to require us..." I, I don't think we even need to wear a mask beyond June 1st. And by the way, I was pro-mask. I was in favor of a mask mandate a year ago, as you guys know, but there's no need for it after June 1st. There's no need to have these, um, crazy, you know-

David Friedberg 46:10 Certainly not if you're vaccinated, right, Freeberg?

David Sacks 46:12 ... no good contracts.

David Friedberg 46:13 Like, I ma- i- i- you wouldn't- It doesn't matter. I, I, I... It doesn't matter. I, I just, um, you know, I think it's, uh, it's a good point that Sax is making. It's easy for people to say, "Let's wear a mask and protect ourselves." But if you don't care about wearing a mask, but there are plenty of people who do, and I, I think the question is at what point do we allow liberty to kind of play a role here and it's, it's not just about, you know, one, one person's point of view, which, by the way, turned out to be wrong multiple times over the last year, um, is, uh, in terms of what they think that other people should do. You know, what, what does, what does it mean to actually have freedom of choice and, and liberty? Um, it's-

David Sacks 46:47 And it's, yeah.

David Friedberg 46:48 It's a really, it's a really fundamental question. Well, I mean, with the states, they seem to be... Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at states, uh, that is a key. We have Texas has opened up and said no mask mandate. One of the things that hurt us in this was we didn't have a centralized government dictating everything. And now we see like, hey, maybe having-

David Sacks 47:04 Well... Okay, so-

David Friedberg 47:05 ... states make individual decisions is good. By the way, by the way, I, I, I don't know if that's necessarily true. I'll say something about this that I think is important. It may be true that masks stop community spread of the virus, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we stop the spread of the virus. The virus still spread. We still had a lot of viral cases in the United States. We had a lot of deaths that arose. And whatever restrictions we put in place, people still made the choice to go into other people's homes, take their mask off, enjoy free air, enjoy drinks, and give each other the virus. And that's where so much of the spread occurred.

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:32 I think you guys are not confronting this really obvious thing. I think, like, this Masterpiece Cake Shop thing is a really important concept. Like, what happens... I'm just gonna use an extreme example-

David Friedberg 47:43 If it goes to the Supreme Court, you mean?

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:45 No, let's just say th- that, you know, Google's engineers unionize and they decide that, you know, they want everybody else at Google to be vaccinated. And then Google says, "Yeah, you're right. If you wanna work at Google, you need to be vaccinated." Not just for COVID-

David Friedberg 47:59 Private company. Private company.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:00 Not just for COVID. It's a private company. Not just for COVID-

David Friedberg 48:03 By the way, that is a rule at schools, right? I mean, I think my, my, uh, my preschool- Yeah. ... where my kid goes here in San Francisco requires vac- proof of vaccination for the kids in order for them to go to school. But traveling seems to be different. You see, traveling in some places is on-

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:15 But wait just be- just in-

David Friedberg 48:15 ... public infrastructure, some on private infrastructure, right?

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:17 I know, but just, just, j- just focus on this issue. What happens if private organizations pass a decision?

David Friedberg 48:24 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:24 That you have to be vaccinated. It'll go to the Supreme Court and if you look at Masterpiece, they-

David Friedberg 48:29 They'll win.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:30 They will be, they will, they will come out with the right to say that.

David Friedberg 48:33 Which is fine. You can go work somewhere else.

David Sacks 48:36 But why is that, why is that a problem? Exactly.

David Friedberg 48:38 Yeah, no problem. I think we're all in agreement here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:38 Yeah, I'm just cur- I'm just curious how this plays out. If h- if only half the population of America-

David Friedberg 48:42 Well, maybe they'll lose good engineers and the free market will resolve itself where Google- Exactly. ... end up saying, "You know what? We're not gonna pass this mandate 'cause all the good engineers are gonna leave. So let's just leave it, you know, leave it be." Um, and-

David Sacks 48:52 I'm, I'm, I'm more worried about the politicians trying to hold-

David Friedberg 48:57 The government. Yeah.

David Sacks 48:57 Ho- the government trying to hold on to the power-

David Friedberg 48:59 Yeah.

David Sacks 48:59 ... that it's asserted over us over the past year, even after C- COVID's no longer a threat.

David Friedberg 49:03 That's my concern. I don't want them having a database-

David Sacks 49:05 That's the big concern.

David Friedberg 49:05 ... of my medical records. No effing way.

David Sacks 49:07 Right. And so I... This is why... Look, I think we need to declare a date serv- certain that COVID as a pandemic is over. My date is Memorial Day. It's very clear to me that once everyone has the vaccine, it's over.

David Friedberg 49:18 Just make it when you can walk up.

David Sacks 49:19 But look, I think this is...... this is when, yeah, th- this is when it... So, I

David Sacks 49:23 actually think that the Newsom recall, which will be in, will be going on this summer, uh, this is what that election's gonna turn into, in my op- opinion, is, so, so by the way, quick, can I give a quick update on-

Jason Calacanis 49:33 Yes, please.

David Sacks 49:34 Uh, okay, so I talked to the recall, uh, people this morning. They're up to 1.95 million-

Jason Calacanis 49:41 Uh-oh.

David Sacks 49:41 ... signatures.

Jason Calacanis 49:42 He's done.

David Sacks 49:43 So, 50,000 votes short of two million. They will be at or over two million in two weeks, which is the end of the signature period. Their validation rate is about 84%. So, I think this is clearly gonna pass. There will be a recall election. It will be around August. Now, fast forward, Newsom has said the state won't reopen until August, but I think that by May, June, July, you will see just about every other state reopen. Obviously, Texas has already completely reopened, but even blue states like Connecticut have now lifted lockdowns. They still have a mask mandate for the time being, but I think what you could see by this summer is that California will look like a laggard. You'll see that politicians, like Newsom, are holding onto this zeroest philosophy. They're being too restrictive. They look ridiculous compared to other states. And he still probably won't have an agreement with the teachers unions to go back to school. And, uh, I think this could become the big issue in the, in the recall election.

Jason Calacanis 50:39 You wanna make an announcement, Sax?

David Sacks 50:41 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 50:41 You wanna make an announcement now?

David Sacks 50:42 No.

Jason Calacanis 50:43 We have a special announcement? (laughs) I mean, Chamath, Cha- Chamath might be taking a-

David Sacks 50:47 No, I'm, I'm making predictions.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:47 I think Chamath might be taking a hiatus from work, given where the markets are at. He, he could, you know-

David Sacks 50:51 I, I thought, I thought this governor thing would be value destructive. It looks like actually- (laughs) ... I would've saved money.

Jason Calacanis 50:56 (laughs) Like, you would've sold all your positions.

David Sacks 50:57 You should've divested, you should've divested.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:59 Okay, I'm back. Fuck it, I'm doing it. I'm done cashing my chips in.

David Sacks 51:01 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:01 I'm doing it, I'm doing it again. I'm back in, I'm back in.

Jason Calacanis 51:03 Clear the positions.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:04 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 51:04 (laughs)

David Sacks 51:04 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:06 Oh my God.

Jason Calacanis 51:06 I don't mean to be cynical, but if you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:09 I am losing so much money, wow.

Jason Calacanis 51:11 ... lock everybody down in your state, Sax, they can't collect signatures at the supermarket or at restaurants or Disneyland. So maybe-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:19 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 51:19 ... maybe Newsom shut everything down, so that you couldn't collect sigs.

David Sacks 51:23 No, well we got... Well, it's interesting because th- they actually found that direct mail was a very effective way of getting signatures.

Jason Calacanis 51:28 Ooh.

David Sacks 51:28 So, they've gotten around that. But, but remember-

Jason Calacanis 51:30 So, Gavin Newsom is cutting the budget of the US Postal Service? (laughs)

David Sacks 51:33 No, look, Newsom is definitely... There's gonna be a recall election. I think it'll be around August. And now, there's, uh, recall efforts underway for, uh, Chesa Boudin, the, uh-

Jason Calacanis 51:42 The killer DA.

David Sacks 51:43 ... the killer DA of San Francisco. And, oh-

Jason Calacanis 51:45 Fuck boy.

David Sacks 51:46 ... we, eh, as well as Gascon in LA and the San Francisco school board. But-

Jason Calacanis 51:49 Boy.

David Sacks 51:49 ... we gotta talk, yeah, we gotta talk about how Boudin responded to our last pod, right?

Jason Calacanis 51:54 Bok-bok-bok. (laughs)

David Sacks 51:56 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:57 Oh my Lord.

David Sacks 51:58 David, David, I, I have three comments to say before we talk about Boudin. Number one, I've never seen you more energetic.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:03 (laughs)

David Sacks 52:03 Did you get, did you, did you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:05 Where are you?

David Sacks 52:05 Did you get funded? Did you, did you get a-

Jason Calacanis 52:07 He went, he went to Miami. He, he-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:08 Did you download a fourth emotion? Did you download a fourth emotion here? He's in Palm Beach, he's been at the massage parlor every morning.

David Sacks 52:14 No, it's, it's like a buildup.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:14 He's feeling energized.

David Sacks 52:15 You're right. It's like a buildup over the last two weeks. It's like a, you know, uh-

Jason Calacanis 52:19 Yeah, big release.

David Sacks 52:19 ... too much, too much, uh, too much energy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:22 How, I mean, how, how, how little have you spoken in the last two weeks? Has Jaclyn spoken-

David Sacks 52:25 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:25 ... the entire two weeks you're... I know what that feels like.

Jason Calacanis 52:28 She's been zipping.

David Sacks 52:29 You're right, you're right. I, I need, uh, I need the bestie therapy. I didn't realize-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:32 Yeah.

David Sacks 52:32 ... I needed this, but it is, it's, it's bestie therapy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:33 Absolutely, bestie therapy. Talk to the audience.

David Sacks 52:36 It's bestie therapy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:36 Jake Alfreeberg, you guys, you don't know this, but Saxi and I called each other on Friday, and we spoke for half an hour-

David Sacks 52:42 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:42 ... like, as if it's a podcast. (laughs)

David Sacks 52:44 (laughs) Just back and forth.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:46 Do you know you can conference call on an iPhone? Yeah. We were so lonely. He did, he actually- Yeah. ... conference called all four of us. I picked up, and we spoke for half an hour. It felt like a mini pod. It was so wonderful.

Jason Calacanis 52:56 Oh, my God.

David Sacks 52:57 Oh, my God.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:57 We-

Jason Calacanis 52:58 But you know what? Men are too proud to, uh, men are too proud to go to therapy, so they start podcasts.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:02 I was telling a friend of mine-

Jason Calacanis 53:03 Not me.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:03 I was, I was telling, I was telling a friend, like, "This podcast was kind of one of the surprising joys of my life over the last year. It really felt like a great kind of, uh..."

Jason Calacanis 53:10 Wait a second, you got the joy?

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:11 Oh, we had to upgrade your joy. You downloaded joy? Yeah, I acknowledged joy now. Okay.

Jason Calacanis 53:16 He's there both smiling. Wow, it's incredible.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:19 Okay, Sax, go, tell us about Boudin.

David Sacks 53:20 Yeah, tell us about Boudin. So, uh, yeah, let me find the, the tweet. So basically, you know, remember in the last pod two weeks ago-

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:26 (bawk bawk)

David Sacks 53:26 ... we, uh, Chesa was supposed to be on our pod.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:28 (laughs)

David Sacks 53:28 He canceled. And so then, in response to that...

Jason Calacanis 53:31 (laughs)

David Sacks 53:31 Jason, hold the chicken noises for a couple of minutes here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:34 (laughs)

David Sacks 53:34 Hold on. So, uh, I responded to Chesa saying, "Listen, you don't have to come on our pod, but I'll challenge you to debate. Let's do a debate, whatever format you want." And we posted it on, on Twitter. So, he didn't respond, but it, by the way, it got like 180,000 views. So, a lot of people watched the challenge. And so, but the crazy thing is, instead of responding directly, Chesa had a high school friend and campaign worker-

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:58 (laughs)

David Sacks 53:58 (clucking) ... post a blog responding to me. Which, an- and Jason got mentioned too, but it was crazy. It was like, "Why won't you just respond directly?" Anyway, he had this, this, uh, shill respond. And what he basically said was, uh, in this response, was he cited all these charging statistics, and he tried to claim that-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:17 (clucking)

David Sacks 54:17 ... Chesa has charged just as many cases as the previous DA. The problem with that is charging doesn't re- really mean anything, because you can charge someone and then plead the charges down from a felony to a misdemeanor. It doesn't mean that the person was actually punished. It doesn't mean that you locked anybody up. It doe- it doesn't mean that you actually got a conviction to a serious crime or protected the public from anything. The, the real question is not chargings, but dispositions of cases. And that's real q- that- that's the data that we need. And I know there's a bunch of reporters who are trying to get that data-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:49 Mm.

David Sacks 54:50 ... and Chesa's office won't give it to him.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:52 Mm.

David Sacks 54:52 And so, you know, I would, I would challenge this, um, this little, uh, Chesa volunteer, you know, go find out, you know, what, what is the real data on, you know, how many felony charges have been pleaded down to misdemeanors, right? How many felonies have actually been prosecuted? How many felony convictions-

Jason Calacanis 55:11 Well, it's interesting you bring this up.

David Sacks 55:12 ... has Chesa secured?

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:13 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 55:13 It's interesting you bring this up. If you do a search for GoFundMe Chesa Boudin, the number one result should be the f- the, um-... the GoFundMe page I started, it now has 455 donors and $54,000 in funding. And so, I am withdrawing the $54,000 and I have a meeting with the woman from the Marina Times, uh, who's done great coverage of this. And I'm also looking for some data scientists and I'm going to give the money, minus some insurance for when Chesa sues me (laughs) and some errors and omissions insurance. And I'm gonna be giving the $50,000 to a journalist or a data scientist, or they can spend it however they want to, to attack this very issue, which is, just put more sunlight on it. And so, Chesa Boudin is, uh, not happy with me. He's not happy with Sachs, uh, but we are going to put the spotlight on him and it will be through journalism and it will be through-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:08 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 56:08 ... constant pressure. And you can help. If you wanna donate $100, go, just donate it to that. I'm not taking any money, obviously. Um-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:15 This is a really interesting civics experiment, I think, for the rest of the country. And I, I wanna say that I, I don't know enough of these details. I go up to San Francisco every now and then. I don't, I've not liked what I've seen.

Jason Calacanis 56:25 Scary. It's scary.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:27 Um, and it's great that you guys are standing up for your city. The, the thing is, I wonder how much of these recall movements now will pick up steam, not just here, but wherever else they're allowable all around the country. I mean, you know, the San Francisco Board of Education spent all this time and money, you know, basically naval gazing on the renaming of schools.

Jason Calacanis 56:47 Ugh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:47 And then finally, just because they were just so utterly embarrassed, basically had to bag that. Could you imagine that in the most technically advanced and most progressive city in the world, basically, with the kinds of companies and people that we have here, that that's what people were thinking about during the middle of a pandemic when children were at home? Okay. Uh, you have this DA who's gonna get basically recalled. In Los Angeles, you have a DA that's gonna get recalled. In California, you have an entire, you know, governor of, of the state that's gonna get recalled. So, what are we learning? We're learning that people can actually, small numbers of people can be extremely effective at getting change done. Good for you guys.

Jason Calacanis 57:23 And that they represent us and that the distance between what the public clearly wants and what some of these bought and paid for radically insane people, both on the left and the right, that needs to stop. And if people are, you know, going to not-

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:41 People want centrism.

Jason Calacanis 57:41 ... listen to their constituents, we need to stop them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:43 People want, people want centrism. They want simple centrism.

Jason Calacanis 57:46 100%. Rees- people want reason.

David Friedberg 57:49 Yeah, the silliness is that the San Francisco Board of, uh, Education people are elected. When have any of you or any of the people that I know in San Francisco ever actually looked up who's the person on the Board of Education? It's not really a topic that people have paid much attention to. And I think that, um, this experience, when you don't pay attention from a civic perspective on who your elected officials are and take an action in, in electing them, you wake up when a crisis like this occurs and you're like, "Oh, shit, maybe I should pay attention the next time there's an election, and maybe I should be more active and be more thoughtful." Or maybe we should end up in a situation where you allow the mayor or the board of supervisors to appoint the board and have an approval process where there's a little bit more kind of, not just anyone that wants to get elected puts themselves on the ballot, gets elected. No one really pays attention to who's getting elected, and then you wake up to this crisis.

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:36 Isn't, isn't it true that, like, in the Board of Education, there was this wh- the whole thing came to a head because they were trying to, like, staff a committee, again, to waste time on some bullshit.

David Sacks 58:45 Yeah, here's the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:46 And some guy, some guy raised his hand, and, you know, he happened to be this, you know, gay person, uh, in a mixed cultural marriage, I think, and he wanted to be a part of this committee, and he had been kind of like a really good, thoughtful participant. And they said no because he wasn't diverse enough or something.

David Friedberg 59:05 Yes, exactly.

David Sacks 59:06 Yeah, that's exa- that's exa- that's exactly what happened. There was a school board meeting. It started at 4:00 PM, okay? 4:00 PM. And this was the first issue they discussed is whether the, like you said, this, this gay white man was diverse enough to be on a committee. It was a committee where he was volunteering his time.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:21 Time. His good time.

David Sacks 59:22 And everybody thought that he'd be additive. I mean, you know, everybody liked him, but they spent several hours debating whether they should put him on for diversity reasons. Anyway-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:31 'Cause he wasn't, he wasn't woke enough.

David Sacks 59:33 Right. Right, exactly. Then they spent their time talking about renaming schools and taking Abraham Lincoln's names off schools, and even renaming schools. They didn't even know wh- why certain names were what they were. It was-

David Friedberg 59:44 They got the people wrong. (laughs)

David Sacks 59:45 They got the people wrong.

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:45 They got the people wrong.

David Sacks 59:46 And then basically, they didn't even get to the issue of school reopening until midnight, so eight hours later, and then everyone basically had gone to bed and it, the meeting ended. I mean, literally this is what happened. And so the, the, the parents are abs-

David Friedberg 59:57 (laughs) It's like an SNL skit. It's like, insane.

David Sacks 1:00:00 It's, it's insane. And so, you know, the parents are up in arms, and this is triggering a recall movement because the parents just want the schools reopened. And you keep getting these, um, responses from the school board where th- where they keep saying, "Oh, we're, we're listening to your concerns." Or whatever. They keep trying to process them, but they're not doing anything about it, you know? And then, and then they say, "Well, i- in order for us to reopen, we need to establish our testing infrastructure, and we're putting an RFP out for that," and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, what are you talking about? Private schools have reopened. Just reopen, you know? Just reopen.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:33 What do you guys think about, um, Joe Biden's first sort of 60 days in office?

Jason Calacanis 1:00:40 He's executing at a high level with the vaccine. I mean, opening up all those FEMA sites and getting to two million shots a day on average is undeniably great. The fact that he used the War Powers Act to force Merck and to, to do the, uh, J- Johnson & Johnson, uh, and to work with Johnson & Johnson to increase production, undeniable. Um, I'm not ha- and I'm not happy about, you know, um, the teachers and him kowtowing to the teachers, and I'm not happy about just the hint that he wants to start the war machine up again. So, you know-

David Sacks 1:01:12 Yeah, bombing Syria.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:13 Uh...

David Sacks 1:01:13 ... who wants, who here wants to bomb Syria? It's like a rite of passage.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:16 I don't wanna, I don't wanna drop bombs on anybody anymore.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:18 Where, where, where the fuck is Syria? Does anybody know?

David Sacks 1:01:21 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:22 (laughs) I mean, why, wh- wh- what? What? What are we doing?

Jason Calacanis 1:01:24 I mean, it, it, that's the, that, those are the key issues for me. The, the teachers and the bombings. I, I don't want that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:30 I, I'd say, I, I give him an eight out of 10, uh, Jason, because I think the pandemic has been so well handled by him and Zients and that team. I think they've done a very good job. But those two things-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:40 They're focused.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:40 Those two things are huge black marks for me. Like, he... And, and Bloomberg ripped him one, you know? And Mike Bloomberg was on TV and he was just like, "That is a joke. The teachers' unions are jokes. And you need to basically-"

Jason Calacanis 1:01:52 They have to be stopped.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:52 "... tear these people to the ground." You have to... They... And you cannot allow these folks to hold an entire generation of kids hostage, okay?

Jason Calacanis 1:02:00 It's disgusting what they're doing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:00 But then, and then the day, I think it was the same day or the day after, unfortunately, Biden kinda capitulated to the teachers' union. Not cool. And then, this, the bombing of Syria was kind of like, "Why?" Um...

Jason Calacanis 1:02:12 Yeah. The, let's use sac- sanctions, let's use money. I mean, the, the, the legacy of Trump, I think, not starting wars was the one thing, and then him, you know, just backing up the Brinks truck for the light speed, those are the two best things he did. And those are two things that we should say, "You know what? He got those things right. Let's carry those forward." We have to crack the teachers' unions. Uh, the teachers' union, the, the voucher system is the only way to do it. And it's very reasonable to say parents who are paying shit tons of taxes should be able to take that money and educate their kids however they damn please. And if we're gonna spend $15,000, $20,000 per student on public education, as a parent, whether you're in Brooklyn or Boise, Idaho, you should have access to that 15K and you-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:55 I, Jason-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:55 ... should pick where it goes, and you should take control of it. That's the way to stop-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:00 I-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:00 ... this meshuggenah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:01 J Cal, I had the, I had the, this crazy realization as y-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:05 Red pills.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:05 ... as you were saying this.

David Sacks 1:03:06 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:06 Which is like, if you said, if I said to you, you know, "Electricians' union." I would say, thumbs up. "Auto Workers' union." Thumbs up. "SEIU generally." Thumbs up. Um, "Nurses' unions." Thumbs up. But if I say, "Teachers' union," I just have this incredibly negative connotation now of an incredibly political class of people who are going completely out of their way to basically just like have exceptions and asterisks that apply to them and them only. It, it's, I don't, I don't... Is, am I the only one that feels that way? It just seems like it's trending to where like teachers' unions-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:40 I don't think they care about teachers.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:40 ... almost becoming a four-letter word.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:42 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:42 I don't think they care about teachers. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:44 They, they don't care about students. These teachers-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:45 But unions, but unions in general do a very important job.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:47 The union, the union does not care about the teachers or the students, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:48 No, but I think unions in general do a really important job. And I think that, you know, like all these other unions, you, I, I have a very positive thought about what they're meant to be. Like teachers' unions-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:56 You can be pro-union or pro organized labor, but be against this specific union.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:01 That's what I'm saying.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:02 Just like you can be a pro-reforming criminal justice and the unfairness of it, while still being against Chesa Boudin's insanity that people should be able to be murdered and killed and beaten in the streets.

David Sacks 1:04:14 With impunity, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:15 With impunity.

David Sacks 1:04:16 Well-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:16 Like, this is-

David Sacks 1:04:17 D-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:17 ... th- these, this is not an even... Th- this is a completely logical position to have. I want to not put people in jail for cannabis sales, and I wanna remove people from non-vio- for non-violent offenders from their, their incarceration. You can believe that while believing you should incarcerate somebody who murders somebody. This is not a hard logic to understand.

David Sacks 1:04:39 Right, totally. No, you're right. I mean, the, the, the, the... It's, it's a combination of ideology and special interests, um, working against common sense and what the average citizen wants, you know?

Jason Calacanis 1:04:52 Right.

David Sacks 1:04:53 And-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:53 And, and, and it, it's not-

David Sacks 1:04:53 D- do you see, do you see what happened? Do-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:54 ... Republican or, it's not Republican or-

David Sacks 1:04:56 Right.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:56 ... Democrat. David, you and I agree on this. And we're on other sides of the spectrum.

David Sacks 1:04:58 Yeah, of course. We just want, we just want commonsense government that functions for, uh, the people, as opposed to special interests or these radical ideologies.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:06 I wanna have a couple of pops at The Battery and go walk to another bar without having to fear that somebody's gonna stab me for my goddamn iPhone, you know? Or, or, or some poor kid's gonna get attacked by somebody deranged out of their mind on fentanyl.

David Sacks 1:05:21 Look, this is why Newsom's gonna get recalled, is because crime and education are just fundamental issues. We do not feel safe in our cities, crime is out of control, and we're going crazy that we can't send our kids to schools. These are issues that affect cities and suburbs. Everyone's on the same page. And I think you're right, that the teachers' unions have overplayed their hand and exposed themselves as not caring about the kids, just looking out for their own benefits. They wanna be on paid vacation forever, effectively. And do you see, there was a great, um, example where in Oakley, which is a town in the East Bay, the whole, uh, they were caught on, uh, recorded on Zoom.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:55 Oh, the hot mic. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:05:56 Yeah, the hot, there was a hot mic where the entire school board was forced to resign because they got caught mocking parents for th- for, quote, "Wanting their babysitters back so they could smoke pot." I mean, the cynicism here is unbelievable. I mean, the- these people are supposed to care about teaching young people, and they, and they view themselves as just babysitters.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:16 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:06:17 You know? And-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:17 And they view parents as stoners.

David Sacks 1:06:19 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:06:20 Yeah, I mean...

David Sacks 1:06:21 We, we gotta shake up this system. And, and, and the problem is that the-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:24 Competition.

David Sacks 1:06:25 We need competition. And look, the problem is that, that the peop- that when you have unions running the schools, there's no reward for excellence. The bad t- the bad people don't get fired and the good people don't get rewarded. So they, you know...

Jason Calacanis 1:06:38 I- if you're pro... If you're anti-competition, you are a moron. Everything in this world gets better when people compete on the playing field, in the arena, to build better products and services. And in healthcare and in education and in housing, the government, and dare I say it, the far left, is stopping people from competing. We should look at ourselves as customers. And that's what's happening right now. People are saying, "We're the customer. Gavin Newsom and Chesa Boudin, we don't want that product. That product, get the he- get the hell outta here with that product, and give us something reasonable."... no, no person who's Republican, no person who's Democratic, doesn't want safety and doesn't want competition in education. The only people who don't, who want to stop competition in education are special interests. Period.

David Sacks 1:07:30 Amen. Man, you've been-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:32 Sorry, these red pills-

David Sacks 1:07:34 ... you've been snorting those red pills-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:34 ... are fucking great. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:07:34 Man, these red pill-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:36 Man.

David Sacks 1:07:36 Wow.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:36 These Peter Thiel red pills are-

David Sacks 1:07:38 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:07:38 Whoo! God. Man, I thought Adderall was good, but-

David Sacks 1:07:42 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:07:43 God, these Miami, Keith Raboy, Pet-

David Sacks 1:07:46 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:07:46 ... Peter Thiel, Stanford red pills got me lit.

David Sacks 1:07:49 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:07:50 I'm ready to go. All right. Anybody give a shit about NFTs? Non-fungible tokens? I mean, I think it's kinda brilliant, but, uh-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:57 By the way, don't we only have two minutes?

Jason Calacanis 1:07:59 Two minutes. NFTs-

David Sacks 1:08:00 I, I think we should wrap-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:01 I, maybe, maybe-

David Sacks 1:08:01 I think we should wrap on the red pills.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:03 Let's, let's wrap.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:03 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:08:03 Wet