E31: Post-vaccination virtue signaling, pandemic lessons, immigration, Caitlyn Jenner for CA & more

1. 0:00 – 2:47

   Bestie intro, Jason's trip recap

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:00

      This is an incredible fashion disaster we have today.

   2. JCJason Calacanis0:03

      (laughs)

   3. DSDavid Sacks0:03

      (laughs)

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:03

      David Sacks is dressed like Where's Waldo, okay?

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:06

      (laughs)

   6. DFDavid Friedberg0:07

      (laughs)

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:07

      Uh, Freiberg- Freiberg is dressed like-

   8. JCJason Calacanis0:10

      (laughs)

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:11

      ... (censored) driving a fucking-

   10. JCJason Calacanis0:12

       (laughs)

   11. DSDavid Sacks0:12

       (coughs)

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:12

       ... uh, Subaru Outback.

   13. DSDavid Sacks0:13

       Oh, God.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:14

       It's unbelievable. I mean, this is ridiculous.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg0:16

       I'm going all in.

   16. JCJason Calacanis0:17

       (laughs) Two.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg0:19

       Don't let your winner slide.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:22

       Rain Man, David Sacks.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg0:25

       I'm going all in.

   20. DSDavid Sacks0:26

       And I said- We open-sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Wes. Hey.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:31

       Queen of Quinoa.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg0:32

       I'm going all in.

   23. JCJason Calacanis0:35

       (laughs) Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. It's another episode of the All In podcast, episode 31. With us today from, well, he's just rolled out of bed, the Queen of Quinoa himself.

   24. DSDavid Sacks0:47

       (laughs)

   25. JCJason Calacanis0:47

       David Freiberg is here.

   26. DSDavid Sacks0:49

       Let me do my hair.

   27. JCJason Calacanis0:50

       Hopefully, get that hai-... It's not gonna help.

   28. DSDavid Sacks0:52

       (laughs)

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:52

       Uh, has-

   30. DFDavid Friedberg0:52

       Have you been studying the homeless problem by-
2. 2:47 – 16:07

   Sacks on hypocrisy and virtue signaling surrounding wearing masks post-vaccination, Biden's address

   1. JCJason Calacanis2:47

      Sacks, I gotta give it to you, another great, great tweet for me to copy and adapt-

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya2:53

      (laughs)

   3. DSDavid Sacks2:53

      (laughs)

   4. JCJason Calacanis2:53

      ... to steal your deal flow.

   5. DFDavid Friedberg2:54

      (laughs)

   6. DSDavid Sacks2:54

      (laughs)

   7. JCJason Calacanis2:55

      But I love this tweet that you had.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg2:57

      Yeah.

   9. JCJason Calacanis2:57

      Where you said, "Early in the pandemic..." Explain the tweet or maybe read the tweet. This is-

   10. DFDavid Friedberg3:01

       Well, which one?

   11. JCJason Calacanis3:02

       This, to me-

   12. DFDavid Friedberg3:02

       I've been blasting.

   13. JCJason Calacanis3:03

       The one about masks, about one group of people wouldn't (laughs) wear masks.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg3:07

       Oh yeah, yeah. Well, at the beginning, th- that's right, I mean, the, the, the dysfunction of our politics is that half the country wouldn't wear a mask at the beginning of the pandemic and, and, and now the other half of the country won't take them off at its end. This is the problem is that the mask has become, um, it- it's the equivalent of the red MAGA hat for Team Blue. This has become some sort of, uh, virtue signaling, uh, e- even when it's not necessary. Um, but it's actually destructive, because it's performatively sending the signal to people that the vaccines don't work. And we have a third of the country today is still vaccine hesitant, and this is not helping. What we need to be sending the message to them is, "Look, get vaccinated so life can get back to normal so you don't have to wear a mask." And, you know, we still have the CDC putting out this ridiculously conservative and timid guidance saying that, "Well, if you get vaccinated, you can take off your mask outdoors as long as you're not with too many people." Well, like, what? No, I mean, look, once you get vaccinated, you shouldn't need to wear a mask outdoors or indoors. And, you know, we had this s- this, uh, sort of mini State of the Union this past week with Biden, and it was this really, like, jarring image-

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya4:22

       Nobody was there.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg4:22

       No, it was like an empty room-

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya4:24

       Empty room.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg4:24

       ... because of room because of social distancing and they were all wearing masks, even though you know every single one of them is vaccinated. And so I think Biden really missed an opportunity in that speech. Yes, he said that everyone should get vaccinated, but show, not tell. I mean, you know, he walks up to the microphone in a mask saying that we should all get vaccinated. Well, what is the mask for? Why don't you tell people that if you get vaccinated, you don't need a mask anymore? And so, you know, th- we have this sort of, um, contrast where-

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya4:50

       It's actually really, it's, it's really incredible because, to your point, he was trying to make some very important points in that speech, David. And when the camera would actually pan from behind him, so instead of looking at him and Kamala and Nancy Pelosi, it would look, there was nine people.

   20. JCJason Calacanis5:06

       Yeah.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:06

       And you thought, "I mean-" (laughs)

   22. JCJason Calacanis5:08

       Another sold-out crowd for-

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:10

       No, no, no, but do you-

   24. JCJason Calacanis5:10

       ... President Ambien.

   25. DSDavid Sacks5:11

       (laughs)

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:11

       No, because, because t- no, no, no, because typically when y- when you give these sort of State of the Union or, you know, these kind of like-

   27. JCJason Calacanis5:17

       Yeah.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:17

       ... hun- 100-day addresses, it is packed, because you have everybody in Congress.

   29. JCJason Calacanis5:21

       Yes.

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:21

       You have everybody in the Senate, you know, you have, you have typically, like, a bunch of other officials, you have the Supreme Court-
3. 16:07 – 30:02

   Pandemic lessons

   1. JCJason Calacanis16:07

      Knowing what we've seen here, between the illogic of both sides and the media and the insanity, what do you take away from the year of the pandemic as it comes to a close in how you personally look at the world? Sachs, you wanna start? Like, you're-

   2. DFDavid Friedberg16:23

      Yeah. I'll tell you. I feel like the American people are constantly being propagandized and there's almost like an information war being perpetrated on the American people, where we cannot get the data, the facts and the truth. I think it, it's true now in terms of people not, uh, taking off their masks, even though we have the CDC data that basically shows the, the lightning strike probability of getting COVID. Uh, but we saw at the very beginning of the pandemic... Remember, I have all these people on Twitter telling me every time I tweet about this, "Why don't you just listen to the experts?" Right? They want me to shut off my brain and just do whatever the CDC says. And I'm like, "Well, do you realize the CDC was against masks at the beginning of the pandemic back in March of 2000 last year when I was saying we need to wear a mask 'cause I was looking at the success of the Asian countries and some-

   3. JCJason Calacanis17:11

      Yeah.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg17:11

      ... of the data coming out of that?" The CDC was very, very slow in adopting masks. They were against it. They were telling us we didn't need to do it.

   5. JCJason Calacanis17:19

      And that was the historical CDC, like, right? They've been around for a long time. And then also Trump was anti-mask. And, and so you had-

   6. DFDavid Friedberg17:27

      Tr- Trump, Trump was slow to adopt masks, too, and yeah, and absolutely. And so, yes. I mean, I've said that there's like a Venn diagram of American politics where the, you know, eh, the one circle is favored mask wearing one year ago and then wants to get rid of mask mandates today. The Venn diagram of overlap between those two groups is very small. I'm in that overlap. I feel like I'm in that, like a very lonely part of the, the political graph. Um...

   7. JCJason Calacanis17:52

      Yeah. Chamath, how has your thinking, you know, now that we've had to process this event in our lifetime that is probably the most consequential, uh, you know, moment...

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya18:04

      Yeah. I have, I have, I- I've thought about this a lot. Jason, you ask e- an, a really important question. And I think everybody should probably try to take five minutes and actually write this down, um, because I think...Uh, I'll tell you what I learned. I learned th- I learned three things. Um, the first thing I learned is intellectual and it's exactly the same thing that David Sacks said. It is completely shocking to me how much disinformation there is, and also how we are so prone to turning off our brains and not thinking for ourselves. So, it's really shocking and I think 2020 was the year that that was laid bare, that the institutions that feed you information can't really be trusted, that you can't really trust the interpretation of actual simple data, that nobody wants to think in first principles. So that's the first one. We have stopped thinking for ourselves and that's a recipe for disaster. And so that's an intellectual thing that I've realized, and I don't want to do it. And so I'll think for myself and I'll take the consequences. The second was economic, which is, wow, we have really over-rotated, um, to this crazy form of globalism that is gonna get undone over the next 30 years, and that's gonna have a lot of implications and it can be done in a way that can rejuvenate the United States, which I think can fix a lot of the stuff that was created. And we should talk about that later, uh, today. And then the third is physiological, which is, if you didn't know before, I'm gonna tell you now, and it's this three-letter word that we make into a four-letter word in America, which is th- the letters F-A-T. We have a fat epidemic in the United States. Almost 80% of every single person that was hospitalized because of COVID was clinically obese. And you can't say it.

   9. JCJason Calacanis19:57

      And you can't say it.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya19:57

       And this ha- And you're not allowed to say it.

   11. JCJason Calacanis19:58

       And you're not allowed to say it.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya19:58

       If you say that somebody is fat or if you say that somebody is obese, it's all of a sudden, like, you know, you're gonna get virtue signal canceled. And instead what we're doing is, we're leaving an entire generation of people, completely abandoning them, because we're not confronting the problem that by a combination of food and the lack of movement, we are setting them up to either die acutely of something like COVID, or chronically by heart disease and diabetes. And that, it was like, it is now so obvious. And by the way, that's the other thing, where these healthy, fit people were running around double-vaxxing in, or double-masking in Central Park, and they don't even know the basic data. Like, even if you thought you were gonna go to the hospital, the 80% of all of those millions and millions of hospitalizations were from people that were obese. They had physiologically completely taken their body to a place that it wasn't able to fight.

   13. JCJason Calacanis20:55

       Right.

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya20:56

       So those are my three takeaways.

   15. JCJason Calacanis20:57

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya20:57

       Intellectual, economic, and physiological.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg21:00

       Can I just insert one thing on that? Is, 'cause I agree with, with everything Chamath just said, is this, this idea of laying bare. The laying bare the, the sort of corruption of these, like, institutions that are supposed to be coming up with good policies and educating us, and it turns out they, you know, keep giving us this foolish guidance. But there's also another institution I think that was laid bare, which are these education unions, right? We had school closures for a year. The, the learning loss and the isolation that kids are, have experienced, we don't even know what the results of this are gonna be. This could be a generational consequence. And what did we see from the education unions? They didn't want to go back to school. They fought it. You know, we had the whole Oakley School Board resign because they just said, "Well, they want us to go back to work to be babysitters for their kids so we can smoke pot." These are people who don't care about the kids. And after this year, I don't know how anyone can be against school choice or charter schools or giving parents more involvement in their kids' educations.

   18. JCJason Calacanis21:59

       100%. Freeberg, coming out of the pandemic and looking at your own psychology and your own life, what, um, have you learned and what do you take forward in terms of lessons and how you're gonna approach post-pandemic life?

   19. DFDavid Friedberg22:15

       I'll kinda flip it a little bit. Um, one of the first experiences I had with how broadly people could be influenced in a way that doesn't have grounding or rooting in fact and reality is when I sold my company to Monsanto in 2013. And J-Cal, I think you came with me on one of these trips that I took, uh, folks to-

   20. JCJason Calacanis22:35

       Yeah, I visited Monsanto with you. It was very educational.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg22:38

       Yeah. And we'd ... And, um, you know, there was an incredible bias by my team and by me personally, prior to even engaging in conversations with Monsanto, against that company because they were deemed to be evil. And as I, as I spent a lot of time personally kind of digging into the, the facts and the history of the business and kind of how we got here, it was surprising to me, like, how much of the bias against Monsanto was not rooted in fact and was in fact, um, you know, a series of claims that then became truth and reality because of the perception, and it just became, it, it, things got stuck that way. GMOs are bad, GMOs are evil. That the science of how they work, what they do, why they're useful was never contemplated or it never became part of the dialogue. It was just this assumed fact that this is an evil company, that this stuff is bad. And, um, you know, this is a long, long topic. We could talk about this, I'm sure, for an entire hour and a half about the science and technology behind GMOs and how we make food and all that sort of stuff, and I'll be happy to do that (laughs) another time. But, like, for me, I was just so surprised when I engaged with thoughtful friends of mine who were scientists even, and they had this bias. And then when you engage them in a dialogue about, like, "Why? Where does that come from? What's the rooting?" It just wasn't there. And I got r- And, and I mentioned this to you guys. When I was an executive at the man- at the management team in Monsanto, we had a WHO ruling where a guy got himself elected to the IARC, the, um, this is the cancer research group within, uh, WHO. He was this liberal guy who was very anti-technology who got himself elected to the IARC board and, um, got a ruling made that, uh, Roundup is a possible carcinogen. And that ruling led to a $10 billion lawsuit that Monsanto, or now Bayer, is settling, um, which wasn't rooted in the science or the fact that, that the other scientists on the committee had kind of pre- previously kind of purviewed, uh, previewed and gone through and said, "This isn't cancerous." And it's incredible the implications it's had.And so I've always... You know, for, for several years now, I've had this kind of belief that, like, people can be led, um, to believe things that aren't necessarily rooted in objective truth, uh, or in facts, or have empirical evidence to- to- behind them. And this is- this- this goes back to the origins of religion and monarchies and, like, you know, the- these myths and these- these- these- these tales we tell ourselves, uh, where we all end up believing something and there's some influencing factor that- that drives that. I think this has just been an incredible manifestation of that. Um, the- the- the misinformation on both sides from the beginning to the end of the pandemic, um, and it's just been extraordinary to watch. I don't think you change it. I think social networks amplify it. Um, you know, I think that the- the rate at which information or misinformation flows back and forth is making it easier and quicker to kind of adopt this, you know, systemic inaccurate belief system that people might adopt. And so, um, you know, it's a- it's a- it's a big question mark for me. I- I don't know, you know, how we as a people kind of move forward with (laughs) like objective fact-based decision-making and- and belief systems, um, and I don't know if we ever will, uh, but, um-

   22. JCJason Calacanis25:28

       Well, I, uh-

   23. DFDavid Friedberg25:29

       It's just how humans are wired maybe, you know?

   24. JCJason Calacanis25:32

       I've been giving it a lot of thought. I- and I really like all of your answers because mine is very similar. Number one, I- I feel like I was always an independent critical thinker in my life, and that I think I kinda started to pick sides because of Trump that, like, I just found him so offensive, and I realized I have to go back to being just an independent critical thinker. I affiliate with no party. I assume all news stories are fake news. I assume all data's being manipulated. I assume everybody's got an agenda. I believe everybody's virtue signaling now. And I'm making the decisions for myself. And I- a- and the- i- m- one of the things dovetails exactly with what you said, Chamath, which is, this was a disease of a- of, you know, old people and fat people, obese people, of which I have been one for far too long. And this is my commitment is just I- I gotta take my health 100% seriously now that I'm 50 years old. I got a trainer, I got a masseuse. I'm working out-

   25. DFDavid Friedberg26:23

       (laughs)

   26. JCJason Calacanis26:24

       ... I'm doing weights, I'm doing everything. I changed my diet. I'm taking supplements. The- the stuff we talked about here, I went right to my doctor after that episode we did, Chamath. I'm getting that body scan for four fucking grand or whatever it cost, and I- I'm just doing it all. And then there's-

   27. DFDavid Friedberg26:37

       Are you saying a masseuse is gonna help you lose weight? (laughs)

   28. JCJason Calacanis26:40

       No, but I've had a- I've had shoulder (beep) -

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya26:42

       Maybe the (beep) . Maybe the (beep) .

   30. JCJason Calacanis26:44

       (laughs)
4. 30:02 – 48:04

   Immigration, Americans self-selecting as hard workers, understanding two different types of immigration

   1. JCJason Calacanis30:02

      you know, or whatever.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:02

      I was in Washington DC this week and, um, I met with this organization which, um, uh, e- anybody who is interested in this should check out called Third Way. And what Third Way is, is a centrist organization, right? So they- they largely work with the Dems to try to pull them here, um, and I think the Republican version is called the Niskansen, I guess, Center. But the idea is, I- I sat with these guys and I was like, "Just teach me something." And they taught me the most incredible thing...You guys know who Pew is? Pew goes out and does all these surveys-

   3. JCJason Calacanis30:36

      The Pew Research Center.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:36

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. JCJason Calacanis30:36

      They've been doing it for decades. They're, they're the most respected, I think, in surveys.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:40

      Pew does this incredible thing where they go to, like, a whole bunch of countries in the world, and they ask this basically very simple question. I'm gonna ask you guys what you think the answer is. On a 0 to 10 scale, where 10 is important, what do you think Americans think to the following question? How important is hard work to get ahead in life? Meaning... Right? So, it's a proxy for how Americans think about hard work. How important is hard work to get ahead in life?

   7. JCJason Calacanis31:13

      Friedberg.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:14

      What percentage of Americans do you think that say that hard work is important to get ahead in life? And I'll give you a couple of data points. In Indonesia-

   9. JCJason Calacanis31:22

      I would... I don't know. 80%? Yeah.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya31:24

       But the setup is Indonesia, 28%. India, 38%. Germany, 50%. Go ahead. What do you think the answer is?

   11. DFDavid Friedberg31:32

       Well, it should be 100%, but what do I think it is in the US? Um... I- I- I'm hoping it's above 60. (laughs)

   12. JCJason Calacanis31:42

       I agree with you, Sax. 100% is the right answer, and I believe Americans don't believe it. I'm going to put Americans at 35%.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg31:49

       'Cause we've seen so many people get lucky and get rich in, in the United States.

   14. JCJason Calacanis31:53

       Yeah, it's... Or, or just people think the system's rigged, or the victim culture where people tell everybody, "Don't bother trying 'cause it's rigged," and you just... It's... You know the argument.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg32:00

       I, I think the argument. Sorry, Chamath. I'll, I'll let you give us the answer in a second. But I think the argument is that, like, entrepreneurism fuels these moments of extraordinary success, but the perception creates the opposite effect, which is someone can get rich very quickly and therefore there's this luck factor or this unfairness factor that is, um... You know, that is-

   16. JCJason Calacanis32:18

       Right.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg32:18

       ... inherent in the system, right? And so, wha- while it does enable hard work to drive, you know, tremendous outcomes, the perception is that, "Holy crap. In three years, you know, Kylie Jenner went on Instagram and became a billionaire," or whatever, right? And, and people get really kind of blown away by that, and I think it's discouraging and-

   18. JCJason Calacanis32:35

       Or one person's success pro- makes it such that other people can't, that it's zero sum.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg32:42

       That's right.

   20. JCJason Calacanis32:42

       When in fact, a company, right-

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:43

       So, it's great. What's your, what's your number for America?

   22. DFDavid Friedberg32:45

       80%.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:47

       The number is 73%, and we are the third highest ranking country in the survey.

   24. JCJason Calacanis32:52

       Wow. That's great.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya32:54

       So, it's amazing. Now, if you, if you ask then Americans, "Who better represents the interest of hardworking people?" Among Republicans and Democrats, the overwhelming answer is now Republicans, which is really interesting. Democrats, even in exit polling, basically voted, uh, for Biden, uh, because they just really found Trump distasteful. And a lot of the people that, um, you know, basically said, "You know, he's an ass." And so they voted him out. But it was not because they believed that Democrats could do the job of actually reinforcing the values of hard work. And this goes back to-

   26. DFDavid Friedberg33:28

       Yeah, they don't want handouts. People don't want handouts.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya33:29

       They don't want handouts.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg33:30

       Yeah.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya33:31

       People, people, people want a fair shot. They want an even starting line.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg33:34

       Yeah.
5. 48:04 – 1:00:44

   How Darwinian free trade has negatively impacted the US middle class

   1. DFDavid Friedberg48:04

      it.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya48:04

      And so it has-

   3. DFDavid Friedberg48:04

      It's like the masks, you know?

   4. Well, I, I think that, I think Freeberg made an interesting connection to the issue of free trade. So, you know, look, uh, you know, I majored in economics in college. You know, I, I was like a believer in free trade, like sort of completely ardent free trade because why? It creates economic efficiency. And so, you know, if, if-

   5. It's logical.

   6. ... it's logical and if people lose their jobs or their factory closes because-

   7. Yeah. Definitely logical.

   8. ... we're not as good, then yes, just let... You let the chips fall where they may. I think what we've learned over the last 20 or 30 years is that we have to consider the distributional consequences of a policy like free trade because it's about, well, who benefits and who loses? And yes, American consumers have benefited from the flow of cheap goods from China and other places but we've seen our manufacturing-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya48:49

      American producers have lost.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg48:51

       ... capabilities have lost. Have lost, yeah.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya48:52

       Yeah.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg48:52

       And so throughout the, the Midwest and the Rust Belt, you've got these empty factories. They just line up like, like tombstones up in, you know, places like Detroit. And, and you've got the... You've got these towns that used to be factory towns that are now just-... kinda empty and the people are, like, hooked on fentanyl, and it's a social disaster. And so, I think, you know, what I've kind of learned about this is you have to take into account the consequences of these policies. And it can't just be about-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:17

       So you've evolved your position.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg49:18

       I have. It can't just be about a Darwinian economic efficiency anymore. You have to think about who, who wins and who loses.

   15. And by the way-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:26

       Can I give you a little history?

   17. DFDavid Friedberg49:27

       ... what, what, what's ironic- Sorry.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:28

       Everybody's got, everybody's got feedback on this one.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg49:30

       No, but I mean, what's ironic is-

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:30

       Go Freeberg, Chamath, and me.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg49:32

       ... a lot of the current globalization policy that the United States embraced over the last two or three decades, um, I think, Sax, correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of this, um, originated during the Clinton era, uh, which was-

   22. Oh, yeah.

   23. ... uh, you know, a Democratic president. And then, ironically, the free trade Republicans are the ones who have flipped over the last couple of years to realize the economic consequence on the production side in the United States is so severe that we need to now limit free trade. And if you remember, Paul Ryan, you know, who was the House speaker a few years ago, had this, um, six-point plan for the Republicans going into the primaries. And one of the key points was to, you know, enable the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They were trying to continue to push free trade. And I think that the policy shift is ironic because it's always been kind of a red issue, then it became a blue issue, then it became a red issue. Um, and I think, you know, like everything, we are evolving our points of view as we experience and learn more things and get more data. Um, and perhaps pro- the rate of progress isn't the thing to optimize for, but the rate of progress balanced against the equality of progress seems to be where the United States is at right now.

   24. To respond to what, what Freeberg said about, uh, about how this happened, so there's an old saying in Washington that the best, sorry, that the worst ideas are bipartisan. And the idea of bringing, um, China into the World Trade Organization and giving them sort of MFN trading status, that happened under Clinton, but it was absolutely a bipartisan decision. And part of the reason why our p- our politics are so roiled today-

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:56

       Well, no, it was proposed-

   26. DFDavid Friedberg50:57

       ... and, and wh-

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:57

       ... it was proposed Clinton, it was passed then Bush.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg50:59

       Right, okay, but they both supported it. It was a bipartisan sort of disaster. And I think one of the reasons why our politics are so roiled today, you've d- you've got this populism on the right and you've got a populism on the left. And th- where they both agree is in restraining, uh, is having a more protectionist, uh, trade policy.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya51:15

       That's right, yeah.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg51:16

       Yeah.
6. 1:00:44 – 1:07:48

   Caitlyn Jenner for CA Governor, crime & homelessness

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:00:44

      impossible.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:44

      Speaking of politics, can we just shift to Caitlyn Jenner real quick before we wrap 'cause we're almost out of time?

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:00:48

      Caitlyn Jenner is officially running for governor and, uh, I guess people are making light of it but, Sax, you- you actually wrote a considered post on it, so unpack it for us.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:59

      Yeah, I was defending Caitlyn Jenner. I mean, look, I mean, the- the... W- what Caitlyn Jenner came out and said is that Gavin Newsom's DAs, Chesa Boudin and, uh, George Gascón in LA are presiding, I'm putting words in her mouth, presiding over a crime wave and she was calling him out on that. And what yous then immediately saw was all of Gavin's people come out and criticize her for being stupid because supposedly she didn't know that DAs were locally elected. Well, I think a couple of points there. First of all, why hasn't Gavin Newsom come out and distanced himself... from Chesa Boudin and Georges Gascón and what they're doing in those cities. He hasn't done that because he's been cozying up to their side, the, the sort of progressive, extreme radical, decarcerationist wing of the party. And the reason we know that is because he, he recently had, uh, a, a job to fill, the Attorney General spot in California. He could have chosen anybody for that job and he chose, um, uh, an East Bay assemblyman named, uh, Rob Bonta for it, who is an ally of Chesa Boudin and Gascón and this progressive DA alliance. And so, yeah, it's true that Newsom didn't appoint these DAs but he's appointing their allies to posts that are even more important. The, you know, the, the Attorney General of all of California. And so I think it was a very legitimate issue for Caitlyn Jenner to come out and call out Gavin Newsom on. And I think she's onto something here, which is, there's a lot of issues in California. There's a lot of things that are wrong, from homelessness to unemployment and these crazy COVID restrictions. Uh, but the number one issue, I think, has to be crime. We are seeing an explosion of crime in our c- in our streets. We all know there are large parts of LA and San Francisco that we do not feel comfortable walking around in anymore. The, th-

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:02:49

      Oh my God, you'd be crazy to walk down the street with a child.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:02:51

      The, the, the livable area where you can... where you feel safe living or opening a business or walking around has drastically shrunk in the last few years. And if you do not feel safe in your city, nothing else politically matters. The government's first responsibility is to protect its people. And I think if Caitlyn Jenner can keep speaking out on issues like this, I think maybe she has a shot.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:03:15

      Yeah, I think that she's got a credible shot if she has a reasonable economic policy behind it and, you know, this, uh, the school voucher thing on education. Those are the things that'll carry, uh, California voters because I do think... And by the way, uh, here's where I think we should take some credit. The best thing about this podcast, other than the fact that we used ourselves to keep us sane-

   8. JCJason Calacanis1:03:37

      (laughs)

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:03:37

      ... it's, it's made it... It's made it fashionable, fashionable to think independently again. And eventually what becomes fashionable becomes de rigueur. And what that means is, I think that there will be more and more people that will think for themselves. And if she has reasonable policies and a platform that's understandable, she can win.

   10. JCJason Calacanis1:04:01

       Uh, and-

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:04:02

       And that's an incredible testament, I think, to people making their own decisions.

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:04:08

       And being able to have a reasonable conversation with people with different opinions, I think, is the other takeaway from the podcast, that people always give me that feedback when, when they, uh, see me on the street or whatever and talk to me about it. And as a, as a point, uh, going to Austin, they are now dealing with tent city problems like LA, uh, and the same problems that, that they're dealing with, we're dealing with in San Francisco. So I went for a walk around the lake a couple of times, it was great. And, y- you know, there were a lot of tents and they're literally taking the most beautiful lake in the entire beautiful part of the city and it's becoming camp central. It... They're basically ruining it for the, the actual citizens who are not homeless. Austin lifted the tent ban they had, uh, in Texas. Now Texas is voting now. The entire conversation when I was in Austin, all conversations did not go to NFTs, crypto, the border, or anything. It went to tent city. And people in Austin who are very liberal were saying, "I, I'm voting to ban tent city. I'm voting, I'm voting against, you know, this insanity because it's... We don't want to become San Francisco."

   13. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:14

       Yeah.

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:05:14

       "We don't want to become LA." So the... And these are liberal people and the i- the concept that a city would allow people to camp in the center of the city and ruin it for everybody else is insane.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:26

       Dude, Port- Portland's version of Hamsterdam is still up and running. It's been a year.

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:05:30

       I mean, if people want to camp we have campgrounds for that.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:33

       It's insane.

   18. JCJason Calacanis1:05:33

       Send the campers to the campgrounds.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg1:05:35

       Can I tell you the secret origin story of Miami and why Miami is now a tech hub? It's because of this issue. It's because a tech entrepreneur got punched in the face by a homeless person in San Francisco. I don't know if he'd want me to tell this story. I'll find out afterwards and you can beep out his name, but basically (beep) who is a prolific tech founder, he's got (beep) . I don't know if he'd want me to tell this story but he was out just walk-

   20. JCJason Calacanis1:06:00

       We can do two beeps, it's fine.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:01

       We'll do two beeps. Anyway, he was out walking around San Francisco and a crazy homeless person just walked up and punched him in the face for no reason. And this is something this homeless person's done many times. The cops were there and just kind of shrugged, didn't want to prosecute it, didn't want to write up a ticket. He's like, "No, I really want to press charges." So the cop's like, "Okay, fine." So then, you know, he presses charges, nothing happens. The DA office basically keeps g- you know, giving him the runaround until he basically says, "Fine, forget it." He drops charges. He just moves. He just votes with his feet. So he moves to Miami. He was the first one from that sort of, um, like the sort of the core like Silicon Valley plugged in ecosystem to move out to Miami. He says he, he did a seed round. Then he talked to Keith Rabois and he's the one who convinced Keith Rabois to move to Miami. So Keith Rabois then does the-

   22. JCJason Calacanis1:06:53

       Series A?

   23. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:53

       He did the Series A.

   24. JCJason Calacanis1:06:54

       (laughs)

   25. DFDavid Friedberg1:06:55

       So (beep) was the seed investor of Miami and he got Rabois to do the Series A. And then Rabois, you know, he's very, you know, prominent and loud on social media. He's been evangelizing the whole thing. And then he got Deline and Founders Fund and their whole noise machine to move, you know, their circus to Miami.

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:07:11

       (laughs)

   27. DFDavid Friedberg1:07:11

       And now look at it. Look at it.

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:07:13

       Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg1:07:13

       Yeah. But it's, it's a... There's-

   30. JCJason Calacanis1:07:15

       I'm here.
7. 1:07:48 – 1:12:06

   Big Tech earnings

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:07:48

   2. DFDavid Friedberg1:07:48

      Let's wrap on a quick fang. Um, I, I don't kn- uh, uh, you must've seen, every single major tech company had a massive blowout quarter. And when I say massive, I mean unbelievable, and-

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:08:01

      The five, the five tech companies now, collectively this year, um, will make more than $1.2 trillion, trillion with a T, of revenue. If those five companies were a country, it would be the 14th largest country in the world.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:17

      Wow. We're not talking market cap here, folks. We're talking cash in the bank account.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:08:21

      Just revenue. No, no, just revenue.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:23

      Revenue, right. We're not talking profits.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:08:24

      Really, yeah. Which is, which I, which I think is a good proxy for GDP, and so the point is, you know, if these companies were countries, collectively fang, uh, would be, um, a top 15 country and, and if you... And so I guess really what we've learned is what we've known, which is, okay, these are monopolies. They have pricing power. You know, unfortunately Facebook had to actually even disclose that, you know, inventory only grew by 12% but prices grew by 35%. Um, you know, Google basically showed the same thing. And if you go back to sort of like the pillar of antitrust law which is that 1970 odd Supreme Court case, it defined what's called the consumer welfare test, right? So, so, you know, the FTC and DOJ, they're relatively toothless in the face of companies cutting prices, but they can really act when companies raise prices. And here's where their definition of a monopoly, which is brittle, it doesn't account for 20 s- you know, 20, 21 tech companies, does come into play because now you can see that they're, that they're winding up their pricing power if they can raise prices, number one. The second thing that I'll say is the Apple-Facebook thing is a very important canary in the coal mine as well, because it's not as if the five of them can actually work together. There's infighting, right? And so-

   8. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:43

      Yeah, it's Game of Thrones.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:09:45

      ... what this n- Well, with this new update to iOS, you know, what those dialogues will essentially do, in my opinion if I had to guess is limit inventory, right? So Facebook and Google will have fewer ads that they can actually run in a targeted way, and so the, the only way that they can keep then growing revenue with fewer impressions is by raising prices even more. And then the last thing I'll say is, uh, you know, this complicated dynamic between Apple, Facebook, and Google is that Google still pays Apple almost $70 or $80 billion for search, whereas Facebook pays them nothing. So if you put all these things in a box, I think you're gonna see the beginning of the end. This is where now you can see the end game come into focus which is-

   10. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:26

       Red wedding? (laughs)

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10:28

       Well, you don't need necessarily new laws and Section 230, although we'll have that. You now see fang M moving into the line of sight of the traditional antitrust framework because now they can use very traditional, you know, anti-competitive pricing law to go after these guys. Freeberg.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:44

       I am gonna, I am gonna strongly disagree with Chamath, okay? And I, I have not disagreed with Chamath this strongly since we've done the podcast. The, the, the reason I strongly disagree is because this is not inventory that is being sold at a fixed price where the price is set by the company. Facebook and Google, in particular, run an auction model. They are a marketplace business. They have advertisers who show up and they bid on ads, which is the inventory that they're able to get based on the data that they're able to match to that particular ad slot. If the advertisers can get more value by bidding a higher price because of the data that they're getting that shows that this customer is more likely to click on the ad and ultimately buy something, they will bid more for the ads. What has been such an incredible juggernaut of a business for both Google and then Facebook, which was effectively a mimic of Google's system, was this auction model. And the innovation has been in getting more data as you, uh, as you, uh, track consumers around the internet, and secondly is in the smart ad targeting, which is where the algorithm figures out which ad to show the consumer based on whether that consumer is likely to click on the ad or not. And the more consumers click on the ads, the more advertisers are willing to pay for an impression because that ad is now gonna con- that ad is now gonna convert to more revenue for them. That is why this is not a monopolistic approach-

Episode duration: 1:21:38