E59: Twitter's content warning algo, equity audits, politicians trading stocks, Fed's next move

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:00 Let's talk about the sweaters, okay? Let David- l- let's start with you 'cause I love it.

David Sacks 0:04 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:04 I love it.

Jason Calacanis 0:04 David-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:05 I (censored) love that sweater.

David Sacks 0:06 I decided to up my sweater game for Chamath. This is Tom Ford.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:10 I love it. It's beautiful.

Jason Calacanis 0:11 Tom Ford?

David Sacks 0:11 Tom Ford. The buttons are made out of endangered rhino horn.

David Friedberg 0:16 (laughs)

David Sacks 0:17 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:17 (laughs) We just lost a third of the audience.

David Sacks 0:20 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:20 So my sweater-

Jason Calacanis 0:21 Oh. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:21 ... is a, is a very light Italian cashmere made by a company called Doriani, Doriani Cashmere. Uh-

Jason Calacanis 0:28 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:28 ... this right here is a li-

Jason Calacanis 0:28 I thought we weren't doing plugs for our startups here. (laughs)

David Sacks 0:30 (laughs) This is how we're monetizing the All-In pod, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 0:32 Here we go. Doriani Cashmere just got a free-

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:34 Now, this right here, this right here is, uh-

Jason Calacanis 0:35 Glow-up.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:35 ... a little, uh, young calf leather.

David Sacks 0:38 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:38 Very soft, very soft.

David Sacks 0:40 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:40 And the buttons, uh, like David's, uh, are made from shark fin.

David Sacks 0:44 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:45 And for those of you at home who would like to spend $150 and stay warm, may I recommend the marine layer?

David Sacks 0:51 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:51 You can find it on Union Street Jacket.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:54 By the way. I mean, how, how tilted-

Jason Calacanis 0:54 You can also find that jacket on Church Street?

David Sacks 0:57 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:58 How tilted is Sweater Karen listening to this? Sweater Karen, if you're listening-

Jason Calacanis 1:02 Sweater Karen. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03 ... I mean, you must be-

Jason Calacanis 1:04 I will never reveal. Sweater Karen got back to me (laughs) and she was like, "Oh my God, he's so tilted."

David Sacks 1:08 I think I know who she is. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:10 Sweater Karen can kiss my brown ass.

Jason Calacanis 1:12 Oh. (laughs) So, uh, Jade comes home last night, I kid you not. She's like, "You, I, I don't like you in the T-shirts. Uh, I got you some sweaters." And I... 'Cause, you know, we're going to the mountains for the, for the holiday and I was like, "Did you watch the podcast about the sweaters?" She's like, "No, I don't listen to your podcast." I was like, "Okay, fair enough." Um, and I'm like h- I'm looking at these things. They're all in these boxes and she's got this bunch of sweaters. I said to her, "Oh my..." I was like, "What did you spend on this?" She said, "$3,000." I was like, "I'm not comfortable spending $3,000 on a sweater."

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:36 That's half a sweater.

Jason Calacanis 1:37 "Let alone eight of them."

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:38 (laughs) And she says, "Yeah, it's half a sweater." (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:38 And she goes, "No, no, it's 3,000 for all eight." (laughs)

David Sacks 1:40 (laughs) Yeah, Chamath is like, "Is that a sleeve?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:42 That's a... (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:43 He's like, "It's 3,000 for all eight sweaters." (laughs)

David Sacks 1:45 (laughs) Four buttons and a waistband?

Jason Calacanis 1:46 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:47 That might be a vest for Chamath. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:50 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:50 I, I think that's the box the sweater came in was 3,000.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:54 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:54 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:54 So I got my three-quarter zip-

David Sacks 1:55 Oh my God.

Jason Calacanis 1:55 ... and I'm feeling good. I'm feeling really good.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:57 Oh my God.

Jason Calacanis 1:57 I feel pretty sexy in it, I'll be honest.

Narrator 2:00 Let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sacks. I'm going all in. And I said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Wes. Queen of Quinoa. I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 2:16 Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to (laughs) the All-In Podcast. Yes, breaking into the top 50 podcasts week after week because of you, the amazing audience, telling your friends about the pod-

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:27 Th- it's been two weeks, so it's week and week.

David Sacks 2:29 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:29 All right. Week, that's what I said, week after week.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:32 A week and a week.

Jason Calacanis 2:33 Week after week.

David Sacks 2:33 (laughs) A week and a week. It's more accurate.

Jason Calacanis 2:35 For two weeks, hitting the top 40 podcast-

David Sacks 2:37 Uh.

Jason Calacanis 2:38 ... episodes in the world, thanks to the fans. With me, of course, the dictator himself in a, uh, amazing sweater.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:45 Light, light cashmere gilet.

David Sacks 2:47 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:47 The sultan of science. I found out from his mom, h- she much prefers the sultan of science to queen of quinoa, so that's what we're going with going forward. David Freiberg, who had a great party, uh, up in, um, beep. And I really enjoyed going.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:03 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:03 And Sacks, who didn't go to beep's party or to Freiberg's party.

David Sacks 3:08 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:08 He stayed home and played chess on his iPhone. The Rain Man himself, David Sacks. Welcome to the pod, everybody.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:16 Okay, you want my two New York stories?

David Sacks 3:17 My one true bestie, Jason Calacanis. Rest in peace.

Jason Calacanis 3:20 It's true. No, that's not true. I, I really wanted to come, but Nat's breastfeeding and so I couldn't come.

David Sacks 3:25 The helipad was shut down. Chamath couldn't land. You were getting breastfed? (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:29 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:29 God,

Narrator 3:29 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:29 ... the kitchen got open. Oh, geez. Um, there was like... Was there a Curb Your Enthusiast? Oh, no, it was, um, this great show called Afterlife from Ricky Gervais. There's literally a scene in it where a woman, they work for a local newspaper that's going out of business and they're going to do local stories. And the big story in town is a woman is making pudding, uh, incredibly delicious pudding, and it's from her breast milk. (laughs) And they go and cover the story. Anyway, I'll just leave it at that. It's a pretty amazing story.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:05 Do you wanna know my two New York stories or not?

Jason Calacanis 4:07 Yeah, let's hear it. What, wait, you said you had a helicopter story? What's that about?

David Sacks 4:10 He had a helicopter story.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:10 Uh, heli- helicopter's also a New York story.

Jason Calacanis 4:12 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:12 So, uh, I, uh, went to Deepdale to play golf with, uh, a certain well-known individual and, uh, we chopper, we chopper back.

Jason Calacanis 4:24 A finance individual?

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:26 Uh, politics.

Jason Calacanis 4:27 Media?

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:27 Well-known political-

Jason Calacanis 4:28 Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:29 ... individual.

Jason Calacanis 4:29 Whoa.

David Sacks 4:30 Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 4:30 Oh, political. Huh?

David Sacks 4:30 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:31 So this is not a rock and roller. You do not wanna step foot in a helicopter with a rock and roll star.

Jason Calacanis 4:35 So... No, but, so here, so here's my story, which is why I, I, I totally freaked out about the helicopters and I can't... This was eight years ago. We played Deepdale, which is just, you know, outside New York, get in this... The chopper lands in the middle of the thing. I was like, "Okay, that's fine." You know, and we're going and I'm already feeling kind of skittish. I don't like helicopters. Get to the East Side Heliport, and the East Side Heliport is basically right by the East River.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:58 Yep.

Jason Calacanis 4:58 And so the helicopter descends and one of the skis doesn't actually land on the fucking-

David Sacks 5:05 Oops.

Jason Calacanis 5:05 ... thing. And so he d-

David Sacks 5:07 Tilty poop?

Jason Calacanis 5:08 ... it does a little tilty poops and then the guy comes back up and then he lands. You, I'm honestly like I-

David Sacks 5:14 That is-

Jason Calacanis 5:15 ... have never been more scared in my life. All right, that's it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:19 And I was like, "That's it."

Jason Calacanis 5:20 We're having a bestie ban.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:20 Never again.

Jason Calacanis 5:21 I don't want any besties. It's a bestie ban for life. We're making a pact here. Nobody in fucking helicopters.

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:25 It's cr- it's crazy. So that's why I'm on New York story. Ne- last New York story was, I was there two days ago, or for the last couple days-

Jason Calacanis 5:31 For Comic-Con?

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:31 ... in the middle of th- in the middle of this Omicron breakout. Uh, n- by the way, had a beautiful dinner, uh, after the game. Draymond, Kevin Durant, me, bunch of friends.

Jason Calacanis 5:42 Did you go to the game?

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:43 Uh, no, we went to the private room at Carbone. It was so brutal though, I have to tell you. I feel so disgusting with myself. I had a work dinner and I have sushi at the work dinner. And then, you know, Dray texts after the game, he's like, "Hey, look, we're all having dinner at Carbone." I said, "Okay, I'll, I'll head through." I went to the hotel. I called Nat and I said, "I'm brushing my teeth."... and she said, "But you're going out." And I said, "Yes, but if I brush my teeth, I'm not going to eat a second dinner."

Jason Calacanis 6:08 A second dinner. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:09 And I thought, you know, and then, but I made the key mistake-

Jason Calacanis 6:12 Get the Carbone. Uh-oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:12 ... but I didn't floss. So I was unflossed, but I brushed my teeth.

Jason Calacanis 6:17 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:18 I show up and fucking I lose it. And-

Jason Calacanis 6:20 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:20 ... wine and dessert and bread and pasta.

Jason Calacanis 6:22 Uh, rigatoni?

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:23 Pasta, pasta.

Jason Calacanis 6:23 Alla vacca. Uh-oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:24 Uh, it was really brutal.

Jason Calacanis 6:25 Uh-buh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:25 And by 3:00 AM I stumble home and I felt so bad 'cause I had to wake up at like, you know, 8:00 in the morning. No, my first meeting was at 7:45.

Jason Calacanis 6:34 Well, congratulations to Steph Curry, by the way.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:37 I... Incredible, no?

Jason Calacanis 6:38 The greatest shooter of all time.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:39 He, he's a virtuoso.

Jason Calacanis 6:41 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:42 Anyways, that was my, that was my New York story.

Jason Calacanis 6:45 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:45 I, I gained, you know-

Jason Calacanis 6:46 Here's my, here's my Carbone.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:47 One kilo, I gained one kilo. 2.2 pounds I gained-

Jason Calacanis 6:50 Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:50 ... in two days.

Jason Calacanis 6:51 Uh, here's my Carbone story. Hardest thing to, hardest reservation to get in New York. Sacks is like, "J Cal, I need a help, I need a favor. What's the best place in New York to do a closing dinner?" I'm like, "I got you. I got my guy." Get my guy on the horn. My guy's like, "Okay, I got you." Carbone, Friday fucking night, 8:00, hardest ticket in New York. You know what Sacks does? Goes dark.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:11 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:11 Friday afternoon, 1:00 PM he's like, "Yeah, we're not gonna make it."

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:16 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 7:16 I'm like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:17 Oh my God.

Jason Calacanis 7:17 My friend is like, "J Cal, your guy burned the Carbone res?"

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:24 That was the Bird IPO. I was gonna take the founder out to dinner that night at Carbone and then it turned into, like, the big group dinner with, like, 30 people, so it moved over to 100%

7:32 Well, by the way, the, the, the, the private room, which is, like, you know, not in the restaurant, but it's, like, a little bit on the side, it only fits, like, 15, 20 people.

Jason Calacanis 7:41 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:42 So it's not like you, you... And, and that's a, that's, then it's really tight.

Jason Calacanis 7:45 How, how, what, let me ask you a question.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:46 You mean it's not.

Jason Calacanis 7:46 What was Steph's, uh, how did Steph feel of-

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:50 No, Steph wasn't there. Draymond-

Jason Calacanis 7:51 Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:51 ... Kevin, me, Benny Fowler, Morel, but just a bunch of our friends.

Jason Calacanis 7:56 You say Kevin. Kevin Durant?

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:57 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 7:58 Kevin Durant still, uh, friendly with, uh-

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:01 He's, honestly, he's, he's such a great guy.

Jason Calacanis 8:04 I love Kevin Durant. I wish he had stayed.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:05 He's a, he, he really, he is really, really, really a great guy.

Jason Calacanis 8:08 I wish he had stayed.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:09 Super, super sensitive, cool.

8:11 He's friends, again, with, uh-

8:12 Yeah, he was-

8:12 ... Diddy, all good.

8:13 ... always, he was always, he was always friends with Diddy.

Jason Calacanis 8:14 I mean, I think that when they had their blowup it was more like they're brothers and there was just a little bit of tension.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:19 Like when you started talking like Joe Pesci?

8:23 (laughs)

8:24 Did, did Kevin Durant ever start talking like Joe Pesci?

8:27 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 8:28 (laughs)

David Friedberg 8:28 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 8:29 Inside Baseball.

Jason Calacanis 8:30 All right, uh, it was an eventful week on Twitter where only one week into the new Twitter CEO's reign, Jack is gone and already David Sacks has been flagged. (laughs) It's, I, it can't be a coincidence that you were talking about them flagging accounts at the end of free speech and then, uh, pull it up on the screen everybody. "Investors should be spending their time finding good investments, not endlessly debating interest rates, inflation and tax policy. But that's the uncertainty Washington has created." That's a great tweet. Uh, I like that tweet actually. And then the flag, the conversation from Sacks has been flagged. "Some conversations can get heavy. Don't forget the human behind the screen."

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:16 Do you think that this is, that's machine learned or do you think that that's a, an editor that goes in there and actually just manually-

David Friedberg 9:22 Machine learned.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:22 ... flags.

David Friedberg 9:23 Machine learned for sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:24 No, I, I think that's a great question.

9:25 But what did, but what is in there that actually triggers-

Jason Calacanis 9:27 The word debating. Washington.

David Friedberg 9:31 Interest rates, tax policy.

Jason Calacanis 9:33 Endlessly debating.

David Friedberg 9:33 Washington.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:34 I, I'm not sure, I'm not sure that you could build a-

Jason Calacanis 9:36 Or maybe it's the ratio.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:38 I don't, I don't know how you would build a function that would weight this in a way where this could get flagged of all the things you could say with those words. This is so benign.

David Friedberg 9:45 Well, I think it's the kind of... Uh, it seems to me this thing's trying to ward off bullying attacks on Sacks, which I don't think Sacks needs to be too worried about.

Jason Calacanis 9:53 Oh right, 'cause you're telling this to people who would reply.

Chamath Palihapitiya 9:55 You're saying it's there to protect me.

David Friedberg 9:57 It's to protect you. It's one of those things where they're, like, trying to get people to not insult you in the comments.

Jason Calacanis 10:02 They're talking about that's his life breath.

David Friedberg 10:02 Maybe you get a lot... Do you get, do you get a lot of insults in comments on your tweets?

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:06 Oh, undoubtedly, but, uh-

David Friedberg 10:08 So it could just be a blanket tweet.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:09 ... but, but this tweet, this twe- this, this tweet's comments section were, was pretty benign.

Jason Calacanis 10:12 Oh right, and it may not be about the tweet, it might be about the replies.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:15 No, but see this wasn't-

Jason Calacanis 10:16 So it might be that you're getting-

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:17 ... that hot, this wasn't that hot.

Jason Calacanis 10:18 Huh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:19 I think Chamath might be onto something. You know, Michelle Taylor got the same label around the same day for a tweet that seemed totally innocuous too.

10:27 Mm-hmm.

10:28 So what I wonder about is, you know, is this label to protect us or is it a way... Is it sort of a passive aggressive way for snowflakes at Twitter to, like, label-

10:38 (laughs)

10:38 ... people they don't like and it sort of suggests they're vaguely disreputable?

10:43 I don't think it's that. I don't think it's that at all.

10:45 Either that-

Jason Calacanis 10:45 You see, it's a right, it's a left wing conspi- it's a, it's the, it's the libs going after the, the, the right, Sacks.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:50 No, no, no. Uh-uh.

Jason Calacanis 10:50 You're paranoid.

Chamath Palihapitiya 10:50 I haven't seen any liberals getting... I haven't seen any, like, left wing people getting-

10:54 Actually, wait a second.

10:54 ... labeled this way.

David Friedberg 10:54 It seems to be a blanket attempt at trying to kind of mute the tone a little bit across the, the debating that happens and the comments that come across in the replies. And I think they're just-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:03 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 11:03 ... trying to, like, get everyone to tone it down a bit. And maybe it's a warning label.

Jason Calacanis 11:06 I feel like if you read the story before you tweet it-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:08 It'd be really interesting to know whether this was algorithmic or it was editorial 'cause I think if it's editorial, it does actually... I don't think it's as extreme as what David just said, but it skews more in the realm of, like, people with an ax to grind can flag one thing over another or not. Right? But if it's algorithmic, I think that that algorithm probably just needs a lot of tweaking 'cause it's not very good.

Jason Calacanis 11:27 Well, anyway, this-

David Friedberg 11:28 Doesn't it say that there's a person behind the tweet? It's like trying to get people to not say-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:33 The warn- there's nothing wrong with the warning.

David Friedberg 11:35 ... kind of repugnant, repugnant things.

Jason Calacanis 11:35 The warning is charming.

David Friedberg 11:36 Charming.

Jason Calacanis 11:36 The warning's charming. Be nice to each other.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:37 Charming.

David Friedberg 11:37 It is. It's try- it's trying-

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:38 It's ridiculous.

David Friedberg 11:39 ... to get you to be nice to each other.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:40 It's ridiculous.

Jason Calacanis 11:41 Like your mom inserting herself and being like, "Now remember, be nice."

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:44 It's, it's there to suggest that there might be something wrong with the content that's being posted.

Jason Calacanis 11:50 Well, you know what?

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:50 In other words, in other words, the content is so triggering that, you know, it needs warning labels.

David Friedberg 11:55 Do you guys think that paternalism has a role on social networks to try and mollify the, the kind of discourse being too acrimonious? Like...

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:04 I think we need some, some of the transparency that Jack Dorsey repeatedly promised at all the congressional hearings. Remember when he got hauled up there, he promised that they would give more transparency about-... the way that their algorithms worked. Where is that in-

Jason Calacanis 12:16 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:16 ... it hasn't been delivered up. They promised it. Now Jack Dorsey's skipped out of town and there's a new guy in charge. Uh, well, we need to know how these algorithms work because they are pressing their thumb on the scale, you know, of debate in the marketplace of ideas by suggesting that some ideas are sketchier than others.

Jason Calacanis 12:35 They should just put here, "This was algorithmically done based on..." They should explain it. Underne- or there should be a little question mark. You hover the question mark, "Based on the words in the thread, it feels like things are getting heated here. We did this with an algorithm." Or, "Users reported this as a heated thread, so we put this here." Or, "A human did."

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:52 "A human decided." No, "We decided."

Jason Calacanis 12:54 "A human decided, yeah."

David Friedberg 12:54 But you want it to be an open marketplace of ideas, but the fact is, it's Twitter's marketplace of ideas.

Jason Calacanis 12:59 Yeah.

David Friedberg 12:59 And Facebook's is Facebook's marketplace of ideas. And at the end of the day, I don't think you're gonna get away from any of these centralized social networks having anything but some degree of moderation to play a role in trying to-

Jason Calacanis 13:10 In a related thing, they didn't just target Sax. Also, Chamath, uh, you didn't see this, but, uh, they flagged one of your tweets, uh, just this afternoon. Pull it up. As you can see here-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:19 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 13:19 ... it's a slightly different one. Uh, it says, "Layers are for players. This conversation will drift-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:24 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 13:24 ... "to $5,000 sweaters." So a big warning for Chamath-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:28 Uh...

Jason Calacanis 13:28 ... to just... And for the people replying, be careful. This-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:31 Well, that-

Jason Calacanis 13:32 ... innocuously-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:33 ... that must be, that must be then, that must have been human, uh, you know-

Jason Calacanis 13:36 That's human generated, for sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:37 ... human initiated.

Jason Calacanis 13:37 And, uh, this one came in for Prof G. Another one came in for Prof G., so. And i- in this case, I think they're actually trying to think about-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:45 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 13:45 ... uh, the public good. This guy is full of shit. (laughs) He thought JCPenney would beat Amazon.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:50 Uh, how many, how many hours of MasterClass Adobe Photoshop did you take to, to get this little joke?

Jason Calacanis 13:55 I got people for my... I didn't make these. My meme team did. I'm convinced-

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:00 You have a meme team.

Jason Calacanis 14:00 ... that there's two ways to raise your next fund in Silicon Valley. One, have one of the top 50 podcasts in the world, or two, have a strong meme game. And I'm going for both. Sax-

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:09 So...

Jason Calacanis 14:09 ... now has a warning on his. And this is one-

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:11 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 14:11 ... they put it on your profile page, Sax. Read it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:13 Yeah, this is crazy. Warning-

Jason Calacanis 14:14 Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:14 ... this person has interesting things to say.

Jason Calacanis 14:17 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:17 If you, if you're too interesting-

Jason Calacanis 14:18 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:18 ... you get labeled now. It's really crazy.

Jason Calacanis 14:20 It's getting that across.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:20 No, I saw J Cal... I saw J Cal having too much fun with this and I'm like, "I gotta get in on this act."

Jason Calacanis 14:24 (laughs) You're like, "I need a meme team."

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:27 Yeah, exactly.

Jason Calacanis 14:27 I'm literally... If anybody out there, I don't care if you're a m- I need a comedian. I, I'm, I'm willing to pay on a pay-per-meme, a pay-per-viral, whatever it takes.

Jason Calacanis 14:37 Okay. Uh, in a related story, Democrats want racial equity audits at tech companies. According to the Washington Free Beacon, uh, which Sax, correct me if I'm wrong, that's some sort of wacky right-wing, uh, publication? Uh...

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:50 Never heard of it.

Jason Calacanis 14:52 Okay. Washington Free Beacon, "If instituted orders would have veto power over every product or initiative, that's not an exaggeration," is what the story says. One proposal from House Democrats would fine companies 20,000 a day for not completing biennial independent racial equity audits. A left-wing nonprofit called Color Of Change is pushing for these audits. Last week, their president called for independent auditors to vet new products from tech companies before they're released in front of Congress. 2018, Color Of Change successfully pushed Facebook into completing an audit. They called for more restrictions on Trump's posts. Color Of Change itself pushed for Trump to be permanently banned from the platform.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:30 Just so you know, this is exactly the, the, the rough version of what happened to Microsoft in their DOJ settlement. Their antitrust settlement was effectively an oversight where lawyers at the DOJ were the product managers and had, not effectively veto right, but you had to approve product (laughs) features before you could push them for 10 years. You know, this is essentially what caused Bomber's reign to be so, you know, ignominious. It's like you couldn't do anything because like you had, you had a plan to do something and you'd have to go to these random folks who didn't really have the context to make a, a, a decision one way or the other on features. So, I mean, the idea that they would do this is a pretty, it's pretty crazy.

Jason Calacanis 16:06 I need a point of clarification here. I've heard the term, uh, racial audits or racial equity audits. My understanding of those were to understand the composure of the company, uh, in terms of, you know, the diversity in the company. But this is something different. This is in the product to make sure the product isn't racist. Can products be racist? What, uh, what's an example of a product being racist? I don't understand what they would f- find.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:33 Let me unpack this for you, okay?

Jason Calacanis 16:35 Yeah, please.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:35 What they are basically saying is that these big companies and the... For example, they've called on Google to ha- conduct one of these audits. They want all these big companies to conduct these audits. These so-called auditors are actually political consultants who are-

Jason Calacanis 16:49 Ah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:49 ... members of the Democratic Party, who are friends of the senators who are pushing for this. They're political activists.

Jason Calacanis 16:54 Oh, it's a grift.

Chamath Palihapitiya 16:55 And it's partly a grift, but it's more than that because, you know, when you conduct an audit, let's just take this word audit for a second, okay? You bring in a big five accounting firm and they will check your numbers according to generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP, and make sure that the numbers are what you've reported them to be. That is the purpose of an audit. And if the auditor ever says that you've done anything wrong, like you have to fix it. There's no choice. Or you can appeal to some other auditor and have them redo the work, okay, according to these generally accepted principles. With an equity audit, what exactly are the principles that are being enforced or checked here? There is no generally accepted list of equity principles that must be enforced to these companies. Basically, you have to do whatever this political activist tells you to do. I mean, it's essentially like bringing in a party commissar to now take over the company-

Jason Calacanis 17:46 Hm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:46 ... or at least be inside the company telling the executives and officer of the company what to do. It's something that, frankly, the CCP would do.

Jason Calacanis 17:53 It does feel a little like, uh, yeah, Stasi-like. Didn't we have all of the companies, uh, on their own, from Twitter to Google to Facebook release their own diversity stats years ago?

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:09 I think this is about more-

Jason Calacanis 18:09 And they'd do it yearly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:10 ... than diversity. It's about equity. It's about equity, so-

Jason Calacanis 18:12 So let's explain the difference in what that means. This is somehow-

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:15 Well, I mean-

Jason Calacanis 18:15 ... how the company's run, like the day-to-day life of the employees there, not just the composure and the breakdown of the employees?

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:21 Look, equity, equity means anything that progressives say it means. We've seen on this program before how equity has jumped the shark. There's now, uh, there was a provision in the infrastructure bill for tree equity, so-I mean, really, any disparity that occurs that progressives don't like can now be called a violation of equity and this gives them the authorization to come in there and start giving orders.

Jason Calacanis 18:41 Hmm. It's very weird that it... I don't understand how the product then review gets stopped.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:47 Well, maybe-

Jason Calacanis 18:48 Is that meant to throttle you from releasing product as a punitive?

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:51 Let me give you an example. So-

Jason Calacanis 18:53 Please, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:53 ... recently, you know, I wrote a piece called The No Buy List, where I... Basically, you had companies like PayPal and some of these other financial firms were starting to deny service to customers, to users, based on their political affiliations. And not just, like, people who are in, you know, well-known hate groups that, like, everybody sort of, you know, eschews and wants to stay away from. But these are people with relatively down the middle conservative, you know, conservative groups, and they were being denied service by, you know, fintech firms. So now, I'm not saying that this is what this means, but if this equity auditor tells you, "Well look, I don't think it's equitable to allow these conservative groups to, you know, be a user of your product," well, what's the company gonna do? They're gonna have to listen to that. And, and that, that is a plausible scenario given that it's already occurred.

19:42 We've all... We've, we said this so many times on the pod, but I just wanna say it again for... 'Cause I guess a lot of folks are new and listening. Whenever you hear equity used by a politician, it usually means there's a power grab involved.

Jason Calacanis 19:54 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:55 Because if you really want things to be fair, you want things to be, um, equal, right?

Jason Calacanis 19:59 Meritocracy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:59 You want equality. But whenever you start throwing the word equity around and say, "We want racial equity," it's a bunch of s- you know, a small number of people who, you know, basically have and live by what I... You know, what's often called luxury beliefs, who wanna judge other people, who wanna be morally absolutist, and then who wanna basically, like, uh, you know, exercise a power grab. And we have to push back on that stuff because it... It's just a slippery, slippery slope.

Jason Calacanis 20:28 Well, this also seems like overbearing red tape for companies. I mean, if the company has no problems, no complaints against it, you know, releases their diversity numbers, like, what is the point of going in there and auditing them?

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:40 No, but let- let's use, let's use an example that builds on what David said. Let's take Square, okay? One of the, one of the most incredible things that Square did was, in a hackathon essentially, build the Cash App.

Jason Calacanis 20:49 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:50 And one of the most incredible things that happened in the Cash App was that it really started to blow up in urban communities, okay?

Jason Calacanis 20:56 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:56 And it starts to normalize banking, opening up bank accounts, having more savings, understanding, you know, an on-ramp into crypto. You know, Cash App has probably done more to get Black and Brown people into crypto and to save money and to understand their cash than almost anybody else. As, as like-

Jason Calacanis 21:14 100%.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:14 ... almost explicit strategy. And so is somebody supposed to go in there and just, you know, arbitrarily judge whether there's too many white people that work at Square or not enough Black people and so XYZ thing has to change? Or such and such a feature doesn't actually speak to folks so you can't do it? It's insanity. It's like-

Jason Calacanis 21:32 Well, also to s- to your point, Sax, is what, what are the... What, what do these people know? Like, what is their qualification and what, where, what's the goal?

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:40 Right. And, and to build on Shammas' point, if these senators... So I think Cory Booker was the one who proposed this. If these senators want those specific policies implemented in the Fortune 500, let them pass a bill to do it, and let all of our elected representatives vote on that bill.

21:56 Mm-hmm.

21:57 And then we can see if it'll really... If it's popular enough to pass and whether it passes constitutional muster. They won't do that because these bills, if they were directly concretized before-

22:07 They don't have legs.

22:08 ... would be very unpopular.

22:09 They don't have legs.

22:09 So instead what they do is tell you, "Well, we're not gonna do this directly. We're gonna put pressure on these big companies to hire one of our political friends," again this, like, commissar-like person, "and empower them to tell these companies what to do." So it's, it's really kind of insidious what they're doing, and they're kind of covering it all up with these nice-sounding names. I mean, who could be against a racial equity audit, right? Because-

Jason Calacanis 22:31 Racists (laughs) .

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:32 Yes. If you're, if you're against it, you must be-

Jason Calacanis 22:35 You're a racist, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:35 ... a racist and you must not believe in auditing companies.

Jason Calacanis 22:38 Right. Right, so there's like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:39 It's a word game.

22:39 You have to... You just... It's a word game. It's, it's using words that are really loaded and mean a lot to a lot of us, right? If I hear racism and race, my ears perk up.

Jason Calacanis 22:48 Triggering, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:50 Uh, it's not triggering, but my ears perk up, and I have, I have a lot of in-built opinions on it that have been governed by 45 years as living as a, as a Brown man.

Jason Calacanis 23:00 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:00 And so, okay, it stands to reason that I'm gonna pay attention. But on the surface, if you say racial equity audit, it also doesn't seem actually all that bad. It seems, like, reasonably benign, and that seems like an okay thing to do. It's just that most of us then stop at that point and move on.

Jason Calacanis 23:14 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:14 But if you actually look at the rules, again, I would just say whenever political frameworks use the word we need to create more equity-

Jason Calacanis 23:22 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:23 ... the outcomes are horrible. For example, look in healthcare. You know, if... We have used this idea of healthcare equity, health equity, and we've misused it to such a degree, and all we see is that now the system is so perverted, it also doesn't work for the majority of people that have actually had the healthcare system work for, right? Like, at the top of the pecking order has always been white men, have always gotten the best care, and we've always measured our healthcare progress in America based on the longevity of men, white men. You know, 78, 79, 80 years old, and then it started (laughs) to degrade and people were curious what was happening, and underneath it all was just a bunch of power grabs. Under the realm of equity, we passed all these crazy laws, we basically didn't do anything to really create more accountability and a cost-based system-

Jason Calacanis 24:07 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:08 ... and here we are. So, at some point, when the citizenry hears that word, you're gonna have to put your thinking cap on and actually take the opposite view, which is, "Hold on, this is a really nice-sounding word. It may not be what I think it is, and I gotta pay attention because... More than if I didn't hear the word at all."

Jason Calacanis 24:26 Anything to add, uh, on race, Friedberg-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:29 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 24:29 ... representing, um...

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:31 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 24:32 ... South Africans?

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:33 Fundamentally, I, I don't think this is about race, JColleague, I think this is about power.

24:36 Power. It's about power.

Jason Calacanis 24:37 It's a power... It feels like a power grab. Also, it feels like a little gri- it feels like a little bit of a grift.I know I had heard on the back channel that a lot of the people who are criticizing some big tech companies who were getting... You know, I'm not gonna say who or under what moniker-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:51 Sweater, Sweater Karen? Is it Sweater Karen?

Jason Calacanis 24:53 Not Sweater Karen. But there was a group of people who were, like, attacking big tech-

Chamath Palihapitiya 24:56 Sweater Karen, if she has an opinion on sweaters, she must have an opinion on racial equity. Come on.

Jason Calacanis 25:00 Okay, enough. Leave Sweater Karen out of this. The issue is, um, they would complain and create these, you know, basically, you know, Twitter mobs and then they'd say, "Oh, yeah, and hire us for $20,000. We'll come in and fix the problem for you." (laughs) So they were creating the-

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:13 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 25:14 ... Twitter mob-

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:15 That's so brutal. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 25:15 ... to then come in and solve the problem.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:17 That's so brutal.

Jason Calacanis 25:17 And it was like, "Oh, wow, that is..." Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:20 That's so brutal.

Jason Calacanis 25:20 That is so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 25:21 That's so dirty.

25:22 No, I mean, these HR consultants-

25:23 So brutal.

25:23 ... who've written these books, like, on the... was it, uh, DiAngelo or whatever on White Fragility and, uh, you know, how, how to Be an Antiracist? I mean, they're all making a fortune in corporate fees, you know, charging $20,000, $30,000 per, per gig. I mean, it is absolutely a racket.

David Friedberg 25:39 I'm not a fan of equality of outcome. I'm more a fan of equality of opportunity. And I think, um-

Jason Calacanis 25:46 Cancel.

David Friedberg 25:46 ... many, many of these sorts of folks try and identify methods to drive equality of outcome, and it inhibits the competitive forces that cause the best person, the best idea, the best business, the best market model to win. And, uh, you know, I think it, it's easy to conflate the two when you don't really think through it, but it is certainly appropriate and reasonable to make sure that folks aren't discriminated against when they apply for a job. I don't think it's appropriate to then apply considerations of race and other factors when people are equally in the same job on who gets to have the chance at the bonus. It is the best performer that should have the chance at the bonus. And the same should be true in marketplaces, and the same should be true at business. Um, and I think that what we're really seeing is this fundamental effort to try and generate equality in outcomes, um, in lots of different manifestations. And we're seeing it more frequently and, and more severely than we've seen it historically. But it's not, uh... I don't think it's the right model, and it's only gonna lead to, to demise of marketplace dynamics and the things that cause forces for success and progress, um, uh, to win.

Chamath Palihapitiya 26:57 You know, we, um, we mentioned this a couple of times. I'll just say it again. Um, but we are about to have probably the most significant movement and questioning of equity versus equality, um, because I think in the next month, or maybe in the next two months, we're going to sort of see a pretty strict opinion on affirmative action. And, uh, if you talk to legal scholars, the overwhelming consensus is this is gone. Um, and, you know, we're gonna have to figure out how to rebuild, you know, what was a really important system that tried to give folks at least, you know, getting to the starting line in the same way. But it's not gonna... it's not really gonna exist in the s- in the same way, shape,

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:37 or form.

Jason Calacanis 27:37 Speaking of Karens, uh, Elizabeth Warren, uh, was bashing-

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:41 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 27:41 ... Elon over taxes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 27:42 Goodness, what

Narrator 27:43 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 27:43 Uh, and Elon, um, has a Twitter handle, um, with some followers, and he responded. Uh, Elizabeth Warren says, "Let's change the rigged tax code so the Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else." Unfortunately for, uh, Elizabeth Warren, uh, Elon Musk is pretty good at Twitter. He replied, "And if you opened your eyes for two seconds, you would realize I pay more taxes than any American in history this year." (laughs) He pay- which is, I, I guess, true. He paid more in taxes now than any American in history. As a side note, Elizabeth Warren has a $12 million net worth, and I saw that he paid no taxes on her equity holdings, because she didn't sell anything, which is how the tax code works.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:27 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 28:27 And, uh, Elon then responded, uh, "Don't spend it all at once. Oh, wait, you already did." (laughs) And then, you know, after the warmup replies, Elon really, you know, uh, got in the zone and, uh, like Steph Curry, just started draining half-court shots.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:45 He ratioed her every single time. Wow.

Jason Calacanis 28:46 Ratioed with 50,000 replies. "You remind me of when I was a kid, and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason. Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen." Elon also responded to Bernie Sanders's (laughs) , uh, tweet today about climate change. Bernie Sanders said, "When future generations ask us, 'What did we do to stop the climate crisis?' how will we answer?" And, uh, Elon said, " (clears throat) ." And so great tweets. Uh, but to the bigger picture, did these people even know what's going on in the world?

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:20 No, they woke up, they woke up on the wrong side of the tilt bed.

Jason Calacanis 29:24 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:25 Yeah. (laughs)

29:25 Because, uh, in, in, like, a 24-hour period, he was the Time Person of the Year, the FT Person of the Year, and they just went into super mega tilt mode.

Jason Calacanis 29:36 And the Build Back Better Act got shelved, and he paid-

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:39 And then, and then Build Back Better-

Jason Calacanis 29:40 ... tax on $20 billion in sales.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:42 ... got shelved and... Um, well, I mean, you know, I think we, we talked about this last week, but that bill is dead now. I mean, they pushed it to March to (laughs) basically avoid a down vote. Nothing's gonna happen. David, you're right.

Jason Calacanis 29:52 But wait a second.

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:52 I think this bill is dead.

Jason Calacanis 29:53 We said last week, wouldn't it be hilarious if Elon said, "Kill it," and then it got killed?

Chamath Palihapitiya 29:58 Well, I don't, I don't think that that's why the bill is dying. I think the real reason is that we now see a Fed posture which is actually pretty reasonable-

Jason Calacanis 30:07 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:07 ... which actually says, "Oh, wait, there's way too much money in the system as it is."

Jason Calacanis 30:12 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:12 You know, the Fed two days ago basically said, "We're gonna see up to three rate hikes next year, probably 50 basis points each." So, you know, it's basically acknowledging that these, these last, you know, several years, we have printed way too much money, and they're trying to fix the problem that they created. So that's, I think, the real reason. And then the CBO comes out and basically says, the Congressional Budget Office, and says, "This thing is a white albatross that's gonna cost way more than you guys think it will." And so it puts Biden in this very awkward situation, which is, you know, on the one hand, he supports Powell, um, and, you know, he supports institutions or has historically, like the CBO-... but he effectively then has to push back on both of them all in one fell swoop to try to ram this bill down people's throats and the support is... I think it's crumbling. And so, you know, to save face, they basically said, "Well, we'll put a pin on this and we'll revisit it in March." But you guys know what's going to happen. In the next three months, there's going to be some other crisis, most folks will forget, and it may just allow them to move on without having to actually deal with the potential of this thing getting defeated, which would just be, I think, cataclysmically bad for-

Jason Calacanis 31:19 Sacks.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:20 ... for Democrats.

Jason Calacanis 31:20 You were on CNBC today. I thought you said something really important where you said, "Hey listen, maybe if we just calm things down for a year, we can s- you know, get through..." I'm not sure what the exact quote was, but maybe you could unpack that sentiment you had on CNBC today, because I thought that was pretty important.

Chamath Palihapitiya 31:38 Yeah. Well, I mean, I agree with what Chamath said. This, um... I mean this, this BBB bill was particularly anachronistic once the 6.8%, you know, inflation print came out. In other words, we're in a hyperinflationary environment and here comes this bill that the CBO says if, you know, over 10 years would cost $5 trillion, that's the last thing we need is more money printing when, you know, we've got this inflationary fire out of control. So, I think that is why the, the bill is being shelved, probably not to return. Um, I think the, the larger problem that we have in the markets is that this, there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty being created right now by Washington. We've had tremendous uncertainty over spending, uh, over taxes, over interest rates. And the conversations that I'm having with friends who are investors in really every asset class, real estate, VC, crypto, the conversations are all the same. What's interest rates gonna do? What's the macro picture gonna be? I've never seen investors who should be focused on, "Hey, do I invest in this company or buy this building?" Whatever. Those aren't the conversations. It's all... Everyone's a macroeconomist now. And so we're all so distracted by this. And so now the Fed, a couple days ago, finally gave us clarity. I mean, what they basically said is they're gonna, um, accelerate the taper. They'll, they'll end quantitative easing at the end of Q1, and then we're basically gonna get quarter point-

Jason Calacanis 32:59 Explain what that means to people who don't know what they've been purchasing and why.

Chamath Palihapitiya 33:03 Yeah. I mean, quantitative easing is kind of a weird term. What it means is that the Fed has been going into the bond market and buying bonds. Um, I think basically mortgage-backed securities and treasuries, and they've been buying, I think, about 90 billion a month. They're gonna cut that back to 60 billion a month, and, uh, that'll continue-

33:22 Just to explain it-

33:23 Yeah.

33:23 ... a little bit more. When you do that, what you're doing is you're giving somebody that owns those bonds money. Okay? So the Fed prints money-

33:32 Which is the government basically. Yeah. (laughs)

33:32 The government prints $100, takes that $100, steps into the market, and takes something from you, in this case, it's a bond, and gives you that hun- freshly printed $100. What are you going to do? Well, you're probably going to go and spend that. You're gonna buy other things, and that's the cycle of inflation that quantitative easing basically creates. And so when you ca- when you talk about tapering, what that means is slowing down the money printing machine and slowing down you stepping in the market and buying assets with money that you've created out of thin air.

Jason Calacanis 34:05 And it's up-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:05 Right.

Jason Calacanis 34:05 ... to other people to buy those assets if other people see value in them-

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:08 You, you then, you then-

Jason Calacanis 34:09 ... they can buy them.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:09 ... are forced to find the real market clearing price.

34:12 Yeah, those, those bonds are now on the Fed's balance sheet. And so there's a very interesting chart showing assets that are owned by the Fed, and it went up by something like three trillion during COVID. So, that is the sort of monetary stimulus that's been pumped into the market over the last couple of years. Separately, we've had something like six or seven trillion of just spending by the government. So, you know, tremendous amount of-

Jason Calacanis 34:35 And so that three trillion is not thrown away. So, we're clear.

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:38 Right.

Jason Calacanis 34:38 We're gonna get interest on that and people... Some number will default, some of them will get paid back. It's a way of stimulating the economy. But we now know after the s- uh, stimmy checks and all the stimulus we did during the pandemic, we don't need to put more fire or oxygen or kerosene on what we got going in this economy. Correct, David?

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:56 Yeah, I mean, we, it w- we should show that chart about how much the F- the Fed's balance sheet has grown over the last-

Jason Calacanis 35:02 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:02 ... couple of years. But, you know, the, the argument I think would be the reason why they d- they buy these assets is if they're buying bonds, it basically means that it keeps the yield down, right? Because if they weren't the ones buying them, someone else would have to buy these bonds to keep the government funded, and they might demand a higher interest rate, a higher yield on the bonds.

Jason Calacanis 35:22 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:23 So, this... By having the Fed come in and increase the demand for the government's debt, it means that the government can sell its debt more cheaply.

Jason Calacanis 35:31 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:32 So, when they stop doing that, um, I think you can expect that, you know, interest rates are going to need to rise in order to make our debt attractive to, you know, to bond buyers.

35:43 The other thing, the other thing, by the way, that the Fed did when they did that was, it wasn't just government bonds that they were buying. They decided completely arbitrarily, um, at one point to start buying certain corporate debt. So, they own like Ford debt, GM debt, United Airlines-

Jason Calacanis 36:00 Commercial paper, that's called. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:02 No, no, no. Like w- well, not... I mean, commercial paper is sort of more very-

Jason Calacanis 36:06 Short-term.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:06 ... fast turn, short-term duration. But like, how do you make a decision to bu- start buying corporate bonds? It's like buying corporate equities. Do you buy Google versus Facebook? Do you have a view?

Jason Calacanis 36:14 Like, who is the capital allocator making that decision? So, more importantly-

David Friedberg 36:17 But more importantly who, who's, who's setting the price?

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:18 Who's setting the price? So, you know, these guys have been off the reservation for a long time. I think it's fair to say that they were forced into action without a playbook in the middle of a once in a, you know, lifetime, once a century pandemic. Fair enough. And I think they actually did a pretty reasonable job. But we just kept the tap on for so long-

Jason Calacanis 36:38 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 36:39 ... and now we're like dealing with this stuff trying to figure out how do we actually compensate. So, the idea that we would add knowing all of this... So, it's one thing I think if Biden passed the bill five months ago, six months ago, 'cause we didn't know any of this stuff-... but to do it now knowing that, I think that it's really hard. And I bet you that it's not just Manchin on the Democrats that are having a little bit of heartburn and second thoughts, it's probably more, because I suspect that they could have forced his hand, really, if it was just up to him. But I suspect there are other Democrats who are now teetering on the fence thinking, "I don't want my legacy to be tied to this when they're, we're printing 6, 7, 8% inflation, for me to basically keep the money printing machine on," 'cause it's in- it's insane.

Jason Calacanis 37:23 This is like The Sopranos episode where he gave them, like, they fronted the guy, like, 45 boxes of ziti and, like, you wake up and this guy can't pay the bill on the poker game. Like, where, can we even afford to pay this back at some point?

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:33 Yeah, look, I think when, when March comes around and this bill's supposedly gonna be brought back off the table, we're gonna be into the election season in 2022 and I don't know that Democrats are gonna wanna defend this. Um-

37:43 Hmm.

37:43 ... I think there is a view on the Democratic side that if they deliver enough goodies to their base, then that will help them win elections. But I think what helps you win elections more than delivering goodies to your special interests, is for the economy to be healthy.

Jason Calacanis 37:58 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:59 And if they are sort of pressurizing this inflation situation, that is, I think, ultimately, that could backfire. I think that's gonna be worse for the economy. Frankly, I think Manchin's doing Biden a favor because if the economy does grow by 4% next year, as the Fed is predicting it is, and if inflation comes down, because you stop printing money the way they're doing, then, you know, I think the Democrats will do better in the election if the economy is good. I mean, one of the reasons why they did so poorly, you know, in the off-year election, uh, a month ago, is that there's tremendous economic anxiety out there. People are seeing the inflation at the gas tank, when they go to buy food. And, um, you know, if that continues, I think they're gonna do very poorly next year. I wanna just, like, uh, bring up this chart from Fred on total assets on the Fed balance sheet. I think it is really interesting to look at this thing because th- so the F- the Fed had about a trillion of assets until 2008, okay? Then we had the financial crisis and they doubled it. That's when quantitative easing began. Uh-

38:58 (laughs)

38:58 ... it went to 2 trillion. But then from roughly 2009 to about 2020, before COVID, somehow the balance sheet grew from 2 trillion to 4 trillion. So, and it had gotten to four and a half and they were starting to shed assets, so they were starting to get off drugs, but it was still from two to 4 trillion between this, like, 2009 and 2020 period when supposedly we weren't in a crisis. So, you know, they've continued this quantitative easing. Then COVID hits and the amount grows from four to 7 trillion just in 2020. And since then, it's gone from seven to a little under 9 trillion, uh, just in the last, you know... Well, they, they, they did-

39:40 How do we get these things-

39:41 ... $3 trillion-

39:41 ... off our books every d- I mean, these are 20-year bonds.

39:43 Eventually, they gotta sell 'em. Well, I- either they're gonna have to sell the assets-

39:46 Or they kind of do.

39:47 ... and... Well, well, it's not like that. They, they basically are the, are, the, the Fed is the one who bought the government debt.

39:54 Hmm.

39:54 So their buying is, call it a 10-year treasury. So yeah, I guess they could just wait til the, the bond gets paid off, but, um, but I guess they could do that. But, but now the Fed has an incentive not to let the assets get toxic, right? So-

40:08 Ah.

40:09 ... if, you know, the assets would get toxic if, you know, if interest rates go up too high, that drives bond prices down, and now all the assets on their books are worth a lot less.

40:18 Hmm.

40:18 Um-

40:18 Yeah, this is, this is like the point where we have to just call it and say, "Okay, you know what? Let's move on," meaning in the sense that, like, we have to go to these root causes because the money is, more money is not gonna fix what we're dealing with. So, I just put something in the group chat and I just wanna get your guys' reaction to it because when I saw it, it blew my mind. There was a study, okay, that was just published a few days ago and it said the following thing, "Children born during the pandemic have experienced a catastrophic drop in cognitive development of 22 IQ points."

Jason Calacanis 40:55 Shh. Yep, I saw this.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:56 22.

Jason Calacanis 40:56 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:56 And when you look at it, the people that were the most affected were male children and children of lower socioeconomic families. But everybody was affected. Yet you see the amount of money that we're spending already, so adding more money to something is not gonna make it better if what we're spending today is basically just getting flushed down the toilet. And these are the kinds of things that really matter. How do you allow an entire generation of kids to s-

Jason Calacanis 41:25 It's crazy.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:25 ... to see, to s- to suffer... By the way, what does that show? That means that teachers actually are unbelievably important. So number one, they should get paid a lot more, okay? Let's just put it that way.

Jason Calacanis 41:34 And there should be more of them and smaller class sizes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:35 Exactly. But if you, if you have, you know, these completely screwed up incentives between, you know, the organizations, the unions that represent these teachers and then the parents who have completely different incentives, and they basically fight to never be in the classroom and to not really teach, this is the measurable outcome.

Jason Calacanis 41:52 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 41:53 The IQ of our children (laughs) , I mean, we are pushing-

Jason Calacanis 41:56 Their verbal ability, their executive function, their scores are going down.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:00 How do they recover from that?

Jason Calacanis 42:03 Gonna be a lot of tutoring. It's gonna be a lot of summer school.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:05 More Zoom? (laughs) Shh.

Jason Calacanis 42:05 I mean, Zoom's not gonna do it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:07 I don't think more Fortnite and Roblox fixes this problem.

Jason Calacanis 42:09 No, definitely not.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:12 A- and I feel terrible because like, you know, as a parent, that's, that was my solution, right? I was struggling with the Zooms like every other parent. And then in the evenings, I was just so burnt and just feeling so beside myself in the middle of the pandemic, bef- whereas I had a no iPad rule for my kids, that I broke down.

Jason Calacanis 42:29 Yep.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:29 You know?

Jason Calacanis 42:29 Everybody did. I mean, it's like-

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:30 Everybody did.

Jason Calacanis 42:31 ... you're in your home with your kids all day long. It's not how it's supposed to work, and yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:35 But so the point is, like, this is where the government should step in and actually say, "Okay, here, let me take leadership on this topic."

Jason Calacanis 42:40 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:41 Right? And talk to the unions, fix whatever needs to be fixed, amp up the, the money into charter schools, do whatever you need to do, but please fix the problem. But randomly spending money to try to, to buy votes, I think people see through that. It just doesn't work.

Jason Calacanis 42:56 And related to that, Omnicron is spreading like crazy. Uh, New York City has now-

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:00 Oh, Omnicron (laughs) .

Jason Calacanis 43:02 (laughs) Omnicron, Omicron.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:04 There is no N.

Jason Calacanis 43:06 Omicron.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:07 Omicron.

Jason Calacanis 43:07 Omicron, yes. I- I'll learn how to pronounce it when it's gone.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:11 Omicron. Omicron.

Jason Calacanis 43:12 Uh, is spreading like crazy in New York City and in the UK, amongst other places. Uh, the NBA and the NFL are seeing surges.

David Friedberg 43:21 I've had a ton of people I know test positive this week. Have you guys had that? Family, friends? Crazy.

Jason Calacanis 43:26 No. No, not one person.

David Friedberg 43:27 It's insane how many people are... I know so many people -

Jason Calacanis 43:29 In New York City? East Co-

David Friedberg 43:32 Related, yeah. And a lot of people that don't have, um, any symptoms.

Jason Calacanis 43:35 So here's the chart of cases. Uh, cases spiking, but hospitalizations and deaths are flat or going down, um, in places where these outbreaks are occurring. The UK, uh, charts are even starker. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence. Everybody on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter, uh, young people in New York who went to SantaCon are saying they all got it. But if you look at this chart-

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:55 I'm sorry, but what, what is SantaCon?

Jason Calacanis 43:56 SantaCon is the worst holiday of the year. It's a time when a bunch of young people dress as Santa Claus and get drunk. And you have 10,000 people-

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:06 Sorry, but like-

44:07 It's a bar crawl.

Jason Calacanis 44:08 It's a bar crawl.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:09 Like, Sexy Santa?

David Friedberg 44:09 This is like SantaCon. Do you see this? You see how, you see how Monty's wearing his Santa outfit?

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:14 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 44:14 Aww, Monty Claus.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:16 (bells jingling)

David Friedberg 44:16 That's what goes on. Everyone wears their little Santa outfit and they go bar crawling.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:20 So it's not Sexy Santa?

Jason Calacanis 44:21 Well, actually, I have a story about that. I was in San Francisco when I first moved up here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:26 Oh my god. I don't... I don't... You were Sexy Santa?

Jason Calacanis 44:28 No. (laughs) I literally took my daughters out for pizza, uh, at Tony's, uh, in, uh, North Beach. And, you know, I got my three daughters and there's all these people walking around. They're like, "Look, Dad, it's Santa Claus." Like, a lot of them. And so there's 1,000 Santa Claus descend on North Beach. And I turn around, and I kid you not, there are two old guys, I'm talking 70 years old, and they're wearing a baseball... uh, a Santa hat, Santa boots, and nothing in between. Literally (laughs) buck naked in, on the streets of... Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:05 Bro, you're, you're so, you're so demented. Okay? You're like this, like, like, unky perv. Like, every time I get those text messages, I don't know what to think.

Jason Calacanis 45:13 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:14 Did you guys click on the Twitter link where Jason was like, "Guys, search for the Folsom Street Fair on Twitter"?

Jason Calacanis 45:19 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:19 I can't, I can't unsee what I saw.

Jason Calacanis 45:22 I was like, "Why is Folsom Street-"

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:24 It was awful.

Jason Calacanis 45:24 "... trending?" I was like, "I thought there was a terrorist attack."

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:28 Bro, that was so brutal. You, you should-

Jason Calacanis 45:29 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:29 You can't send that shit around. Like, it's so brutal. It's like, "Oh, oh."

Jason Calacanis 45:33 I'm like, "Guys, don't click on Folsom." I was like, "Don't click on Folsom."

Chamath Palihapitiya 45:34 I was like, "Oh, this is a Twitter link. What is it about? Web 3.0?" (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 45:38 Not exactly. Uh, the Folsom Street Fair, I'm gonna go ahead and say don't search for that. Um, if you have kids around, it's a little bit intense. Um, but anyway, the, uh, SantaCom was on Saturday, December 11th. And so, here we are five days late- you know, four or five days later and this stuff hitting. If that's true, it almost perfectly mirrors the original outbreak after St. Patty's Day in March 2020. And if you look on social media, all the CityMD lines, uh, where people get tested are around the block. And 30 NBA players have entered the COVID protocol in the last two weeks, about 7% of the league. And, uh, we had a big question mark of would this be less, more contagious? It obviously is, check. Less deadly, it apparently is.

David Friedberg 46:19 Some studies show as much as 40 times more infectious than Delta. Um, highly contagious, extreme- very much airborne.

Jason Calacanis 46:27 (clears throat)

David Friedberg 46:28 It's going everywhere. Uh, like I said last time, if it does end up having low severity and low, um, hospitalization rate and low death rate for vaccinated or vaccinated plus boosted populations, uh, this could end up being a massive immunizing event, meaning like a lot of people will develop new antibodies and resistance and, um, you know, that could be a net good thing. But it's certainly the case that this is not a one-strain, one-shot and done pandemic. This is an endemic kind of circumstance. We're gonna be in this for a while. And, um, you know, the circumstances are one that may kind of require, you know, an adaptation in terms of how we live and operate. And especially as it relates to things that are so important, like keeping businesses open and schools, um, you know, I think we're gonna use recent memory to guide future decision-making, or at least politicians. And, you know, kind of lawmakers will, and they'll say, "Hey, this is what we did last time this happened." And we just saw this in California where they're like, "Last time, like, we told everyone go into lockdown or wear masks indoors again," and we're seeing that behavior again. Certainly, it, it may have an impact in terms of the spread, but this is highly contagious and it's gonna spread everywhere. And I think there's just some adaptation that maybe is gonna be needed here over the long run. There's no end, there's no end in sight.

Jason Calacanis 47:45 There's no end in sight, but, uh, it is less deadly, and so it could be mass immunizing and that has led people to think of this herd immunity, potentially, if there's not another variant. Um, Zach, if the NBA and the NFL are learning to live with COVID, and obviously when we were in Miami, there's no COVID, in Austin, there's no COVID.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:04 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 48:04 Is everybody now just go... 'Cause it seems like the politicians now, whether it's in Europe, we're seeing the protests, uh, and I, I think we'll see them here in the United States if this keeps up, Australia obviously having protests as well. The public has decided, I think, "We're willing to have 1,000 people die a day or a certain number of people die today to get back to normal." So what, what do you think the end game here is going into 2022?

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:26 I'll make a prediction for 2022. Okay? I will predict that even the blue areas of the country are gonna have fatigue with all these COVID restrictions. And so even the blue state governors who are addicted to their state of emergencies and their restrictions and lockdowns and closures and mask mandates, even they are gonna have to give them up in 2022 because the country is sick and tired of this. Peter Pham had a really good tweet, uh, just the other day, maybe you guys can dig it up, where he had a friend visit him from Texas. And they've been living normally there since like July of 2020, roughly. Kids in school. Occasionally someone gets sick, but they've been living normally, okay? It's a manageable problem.And he couldn't believe, uh, Peter's friend could not believe how they're living in LA, where still everyone's living in fear. They've... We now have a new one-month indoor mask mandate thanks to, you know, Governor Newsom, who still is ruling the state under a state of emergency. What- what good is that gonna do? So, I think, you know... But- but- but I think that some of these blue areas, people are so petrified still-

Jason Calacanis 49:33 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:33 ... of the virus, and I think it's just because of they're the ones who have been ingesting all this fear porn coming from the media, and... But I, but I think it's gonna break. I think the- the finally, this hysteria and panic will break, it'll crest over the blue parts of the country in 2022. They're already back to normal in the red parts. And especially Omicron, you can't stop this, okay? I mean-

Jason Calacanis 49:56 I think that's the gr- the- the salient point here.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:58 Nothing works-

Jason Calacanis 49:59 It's- it's spreading, you're all gonna get it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:00 Look, the-

Jason Calacanis 50:01 The end.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:01 ... the- the l- the little stupid vax card that you have to show everywhere to get, like, popcorn-

Jason Calacanis 50:05 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:05 ... at- at a movie theater, like in, you know, in San Francisco, doesn't do anything because vaccinated people can spread it too. So, that doesn't do anything, and the mask mandate doesn't do anything, um, you know. And so none of this stuff does anything except getting a vaccine reduces the severity of the illness if you get it-

Jason Calacanis 50:23 And losing weight, Zach.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:24 ... and losing weight.

Jason Calacanis 50:24 And we can't have that conversation.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:25 Those things, those consequences are mainly on the person who decides to do it. I-

Jason Calacanis 50:29 That's what we have to say, is we just have to tell everybody, you know, "Listen, lose weight, get in shape, eat healthy, get vaccinated, get back to life." That's it. That's the best you can do. I'm... I believe everybody's gonna get it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:40 We're- we're starting to see, like, a real divergence in American life where, and I think Omicron's... I- if we have lockdowns under Omicron, and really, the- the big issue is school closures. If we go back to school closures in blue states-

Jason Calacanis 50:53 Uh-huh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 50:53 ... and have more of the learning loss that Chamath was talking about, and I bet we do, whereas in red states, they're still out there learning normally and they're dealing with it, just like they deal with the outbreak of a flu season or cold season, but they, you know, they're just managing it, we're gonna... There's gonna be... We're gonna be living in two different Americas. But I, but I don't believe this is sustainable. I think eventually these governors who are holding onto their power and their restrictions are gonna lose in 2022. The ones who haven't given it up are gonna, are gonna basically, uh, fall to a red wave in November '22. I think Newsom might be the only one left standing.

Jason Calacanis 51:29 Have any schools closed? I see everybody's canceling their Christmas parties. JP Morgan canceled that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:34 We're close.

Jason Calacanis 51:35 San Francisco.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:35 We're close.

Jason Calacanis 51:36 Every Christmas party's been getting canceled. Um, and I wonder if schools... I mean, teachers unions, I think they gotta be having a meeting right now about it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:44 They don't even... The- the teacher unions don't even acknowledge that learning loss exists.

Jason Calacanis 51:48 I mean, this is why-

Chamath Palihapitiya 51:48 Such a lost cause.

Jason Calacanis 51:49 ... I decided to home school for the year of the pandemic, and I kept my home school teacher for, you know, a couple of hours a day, and, uh, my kids have done wonderfully, and it's great to have the ability to afford to be able to do that, but not everybody can have an after-school tutor.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:02 Let me up-level this for a second, okay? So I'll... Uh, maybe I'm spilling the beans on one of my predictions I'll make at the predictions episode we do. But first we had COVID, okay? Then we had the overreaction to COVID, both politically and economically. Economically, we pumped 10 trillion-plus of spending and monetary and QE and all this sort of stuff. Politically, we had these restrictions, school closures, lockdowns, mandates, okay? I think we're about to enter a new phase, which is the correction to the overreaction, and I think we're already in the correction. So the market's been correcting, gross stock's been correcting for the last five or six weeks. I now think that we're... Th- there was a bit of a political correction with Youngkin winning in Virginia. Remember, that state swung 10 points relative to a year ago. And I think you'll see a further correction, both political and economic, in 2022.

Jason Calacanis 52:55 A- And-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:55 So we may not be completely past COVID, but I think we are gonna be past this sort of overreaction to COVID.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:02 What'd you guys think about Succession?

Jason Calacanis 53:04 Oh, no, I haven't seen it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:05 Oh, good. I loved it.

Narrator 53:07 I haven't seen it yet.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:07 Don't say anything.

53:08 I loved it.

53:08 Jeremy Strong. Jeremy Strong. Let's talk about the Jeremy Strong thing.

53:11 But but but but but go back.

Jason Calacanis 53:11 Jeremy Strong, okay? Jeremy Strong is a weirdo, uh, according to a New Yorker profile, and there's been a huge response to it. Uh, this profile came out-

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:19 This is Kendall, Kendall Roy on Succession.

Jason Calacanis 53:21 Kendall Roy, who is woke and dumb and ineffective as an executive. And obviously the show is modeled after Rupert Murdoch and Fox and the kids there, who are not dopey, actually. In the article, it hinted that most of Succession's coworkers dislike him due to his intensity and mething acted... me- method acting rituals. He won't rehearse with anybody, he's in character all the time, like Daniel Day-Lewis. He won't get makeup whenever everybody else does 'cause he doesn't wanna reduce the energy and the buildup. Uh, the a- article notes there is a fine line that Strong walks between being a legendary (laughs) method actor and just a completely awesome networker.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:03 Wait, can I tell you why this story was interesting to me and why I sent this to you guys?

Jason Calacanis 54:07 Go ahead. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:08 Okay. So here's a guy who, in many ways, is a virtuoso, and the reason... I mean, he's a, he's a really good actor because I despise Kendall Roy on that show. Uh, and I was wondering, like, is this guy just a terrible actor or is he such a good actor that... I hate them.

Jason Calacanis 54:24 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:24 I hate him. And that's why I was attracted to this article, and in it or after it... So basically what happens is he's a virtuoso, just... And I'll come back to it in a second. These people at The New Yorker, who I guess are just jealous or wanna write clickbait, try to destroy this guy. But what they didn't factor is that when they published this article, all these other actors would come to his defense and do it really publicly.

Jason Calacanis 54:50 Yes, Anne Hathaway, uh, Jessica Chastain-

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:54 Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain-

Jason Calacanis 54:54 Aaron Sorkin wrote a letter.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:56 Exactly, that Jessica Chastain published to Twitter because Aaron- Aaron Sorkin doesn't have access to social media (laughs) by design.

Jason Calacanis 55:03 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:03 And in all of it, they said, "This is the most incredible person we've seen." Aaron Sorkin says, "This guy is as good as Dustin Hoffman."

Jason Calacanis 55:10 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:10 Which is like... That's as...

Jason Calacanis 55:11 As good as it gets.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:12 So why was it interesting to me? It's... You have these people-... who are grinding-

Jason Calacanis 55:18 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:18 ... and trying to perfect their craft, be a virtuoso. You talked about Steph Curry grinding, trying to perfect his craft.

Jason Calacanis 55:23 Right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:23 Just a little Steph Curry story as a tangent. He, he brought in this team where they basically started to map out all of the, uh, circumferences of the ring, of the, of the net, and he practiced this summer literally trying to get it perfectly in to create this very specific kind of swish. And he just kept shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting, not, you know, all the time, but every day for some number of shots, trying to get the ball perfectly-

Jason Calacanis 55:48 Ah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 55:48 ... into the basket. That is a level of perfectionism and if, that's being a virtuoso that none of us can really appreciate. But you see the output and we all love it.

Jason Calacanis 55:58 He's already the GOAT and he's trying to outdo himself.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:01 Here's a different guy in a completely different theater, in this case acting, trying to also be really legendary and putting himself through all kinds of stuff and still not lose himself in it. Okay?

Jason Calacanis 56:13 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:13 So much so that all of these other people really appreciate how amazing he is. And to me, what I don't like is that then these critics who don't do anything, who've never accomplished anything at all in their lives feel-

Jason Calacanis 56:27 Mass judgments.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:27 ... feel so triggered that they have to judge him.

Jason Calacanis 56:29 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:29 It's one thing to not have that skill. I'll never be as good of an actor as Jeremy Strong. I'll never be as good of a b- basketball player as Steph, but I don't hate these people for that.

Jason Calacanis 56:38 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:38 I'm so happy that people like this exist. But there is a strain of people that exist and who-

56:45 Senator Karen.

56:45 ... also have a, and then who also have a platform-

Jason Calacanis 56:47 Senator Karen McConnell. (laughs)

David Friedberg 56:48 Yeah. Well, I was about to connect the dots for you, is like-

Jason Calacanis 56:50 Good callback.

David Friedberg 56:50 ... look at, yeah, look at how the politicians feel the same way about-

Jason Calacanis 56:53 Media, politicians-

David Friedberg 56:54 ... private market participants, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 56:55 Social media ads-

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:55 Who decide to try to destroy people.

Jason Calacanis 56:57 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:57 So instead what these people do is they take a shortcut. They're the critics. They're not in the arena, okay? The folks in the arena are booking wins and losses constantly.

Jason Calacanis 57:07 It's a scoreboard.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:08 But you have this, you have this strain of impotent critic-

Jason Calacanis 57:11 Whoop.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:11 ... that doesn't actually know how to do for themselves and they somehow have a platform and then what they end up doing is cutting corners and then some subset of those start to cheat. Queue David.

57:25 Well, yeah. There's a story that the Congress back in 2012 passed a bill called The STOCK Act to prohibit, um, members of Congress from trading on their insider knowledge based on, you know, b- based on legislative actions they're about to take. And it's been widely flouted by dozens of, you know, representatives and senators and the problem is there's no punishment. It's something like a $200 fine or something like that that gets waived, uh, in most of these cases. So, it's completely hypocritical because these are the, these politicians, like Senator Karen, they're constantly demonizing and attacking other people to make themselves look better. And then here they are, they've got dirty hands, um, and they ask Pelosi, they said to Pelosi, "Well, don't you think that members of Congress should be prohibited from trading stocks, right? Because their actions have such a huge consequence on them?" And Pelosi said, "No, it's a f- it's a free market. It's a free market. We should be free to, to do that." It's like, huh, you know, I don't remember that being a defense every time you've wanted to regulate some, you know, industry that, uh, that, that you don't think-

Jason Calacanis 58:29 Also, doesn't, doesn't the president have to divest when they take the presidential office? Isn't that a thing?

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:34 Divest or they put, they put their assets in a blind trust.

58:36 Trust, in a blind trust. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 58:37 Yeah, so they're blind, so why, why would senators, congress-

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:41 Totally.

Jason Calacanis 58:41 ... people be any different than the president?

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:43 No, it's ab- it's absurd that elected officials should be able to engage in insider trading. It makes no sense.

58:48 The Fed, uh, actually had this issue as well. Two, um, two folks on the Federal Reserve Board resigned and then Powell issued, uh, a whole bunch of, I think, new laws tr- or regulations inside the Fed to try to fix it. And the same issue occurs with federal judges. And there are federal judges that are consistently trading in the equities of the companies that are in front of them.

Jason Calacanis 59:11 What?

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:11 And so how can you, how can you adjudicate a case? There was one judge that had 130 plus conflicts, trading conflicts, 130 plus, and he is the one that's there where AT&T or Facebook or Google has an issue. I mean, how can you actually assume that these folks are being impartial if that's the case? And there are no consequences for this. And yet, you know, if you're... Again, going back to where we started, somebody in the arena trying to do something, you, you just got to think to yourself, like, you have critics that are bashing you, you have folks that are basically flouting the law because they can, and then you put these two together and it's like this is so... It's kind of depressing, to be honest with you. You, you start to lose-

Jason Calacanis 59:53 They're all grifters-

Chamath Palihapitiya 59:53 ... a little bit of faith in the system.

Jason Calacanis 59:53 Let's be honest, they're, I mean, these, these politicians are grifters. That's it. And full stop. I mean, they're just grifting and... I mean, except for, uh, apparently except for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They should just buy the companies they hate. Why aren't they buying Amazon and Tesla? They would be total proponents of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk if they did.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:12 Yeah, in fairness to Warren, I've seen her tweet that she supports the banning of the insider trading by-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:16 Ah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:16 ... congressional representatives. But I don't exactly see her fighting for it, uh-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:19 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:00:20 ... you know, as hard as she's denouncing people like Elon, so. Um, look, I mean, it's, it's characteristic of e- of elected officials that they, um, what is it? They see the, the splinter i- you know, i- in somebody, you know, in somebody else's eye, but not the, the log in their own or something like that. Isn't that the expression? But, you know, who's taking advantage of this issue is Blake Masters, who's running for the Senate in Arizona, just tweeted about that this would be the first thing he would fix if he gets elected, which is to ban insider trading by elected officials. And I, I think it's remarkable that, you know, politicians as shrewd as Nancy Pelosi are just ceding this issue to Republicans. I mean, I don't know why Republicans wouldn't make this a major plank of their platform for 2022.

1:01:04 David, Nancy Pelosi is, I think, the third or fourth richest person in Congress. Her husband is a very sophisticated private e- equity investor. There are these meme stocks that follow Nancy Pelosi's stock trading account, or pretend to-

1:01:18 (laughs)

1:01:18 ... that were, you know, recently, by the way, banned by Twitter, right?

Jason Calacanis 1:01:22 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:22 (laughs) Sorry.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:22 That was weird, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:24 Protecting her.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:25 Protecting her, effectively.

David Friedberg 1:01:26 Protecting her. Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:26 So, you know, she has an incentive to not. Her seat of power is not necessarily the salary that she earns by being House leader, but it's by translating that in a bunch of different ways. And one way, apparently it turns out, is being an active equity investor in the market.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:41 It's unbelievable that's allowed. I don't know how this isn't just like an A+ fantastic issue for-

Jason Calacanis 1:01:47 Such a great one.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:48 ... Republicans. They should make it an absolute plank of their platform.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:50 Well, here we go. Florida Republican Brian Mast, uh, was late in disclosion- disclosing (laughs) purchase of up to $100,000 in stock in an aerospace company, which had just testified before a committee, he says. Kentucky Republican Rand Paul was 16 months late disclosing that he bought ... his wife bought stock in a pharma company that manufactures an antiviral COVID-19 treatment.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:11 Right.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:11 Nevada Democrat Susie Lee failed to properly disclose more than 200 trades-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:16 Yeah, just to be clear-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:16 ... worth as much as $3 million. I mean, this is bonkers.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:18 Yeah, just to be clear, the violations have been on both sides of the aisle.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:22 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:22 I'm not at all trying to say that Republicans are better on this than Democrats.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:26 No, thi- this is good-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:27 However, I have not-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:27 ... this is good bipartisan cooperation.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:29 Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's ridiculous. This is the political class in Washington-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:33 No public records.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:33 ... engaging in bad behavior, but, but, but the difference is this, which is that Pelos- uh, the only leader of a party I've heard defend this is Pelosi. And I think this is a fantastic issue for outsider candidates, really on both sides, to run on.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:47 Totally agree with him.

David Friedberg 1:02:47 Well, this is, this is also something that Biden can take, because Biden has never tried to do this stuff, you know?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:52 Oh my God, Biden's got so many shady dealings and conflicts.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:55 W- are you talking about his kid- No, no.

David Friedberg 1:02:57 No.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:57 ... selling paintings to China, or he had-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:58 There's a lot of Rich Bidens out there.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:00 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:00 Apparently he's got a rich brother, he's got a, you know-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:02 No, no, no, no, no, no.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:02 ... hunter who's paid a lot of money.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:03 Hunter is just-

David Friedberg 1:03:04 Maybe that's true, but Joe Biden has been really down the middle. Come on, be, be fair.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:08 Hunter is brilliant. I mean, he's selling paintings.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:10 Yeah, but why are they buying Hunter Biden paintings for about $500,000?

Jason Calacanis 1:03:14 Well, I mean, he's a great artist.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:16 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:03:16 I mean, why do people buy ... I don't know if you saw Melania's coming out with NFTs today. (laughs) So she's-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:22 Okay, if you say so.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:22 ... Melania is sec- everybody is securing the bag now. I mean, if ... And by the way, the presidential grift is always the best. Just as a case in point, Trump's SPAC is worth over two billion, and BuzzFeed, which makes 360 million a year and I think has $100, $200 million in cash, is worth like 600.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:39 Yeah, but he's not in office. He's not in office.

David Friedberg 1:03:41 That's misstated, Jason. Trump's SPAC, his shares that he's gonna be receiving, are worth close to 20 billion.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:48 What?

David Friedberg 1:03:48 20 billion.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:49 But he's not in office anymore, so I'm not sure that that's-

David Friedberg 1:03:51 The SPAC, the shares that he's gonna receive, the stock is-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:54 Oh, the future.

David Friedberg 1:03:54 Yeah, the, the sh- the ... What you're counting is the market cap of the cash and trust, the value of the shares that are already public at the SPAC.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:01 Ah. Right, right, right, right. I gotcha. Right.

David Friedberg 1:04:01 The, the Trump ... The value of the Trump entity is gonna be closer to 20 billion.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:05 Oh, is that right? Wow, that's even-

David Friedberg 1:04:06 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:06 ... crazier, with no revenue. These poor media people-

David Friedberg 1:04:09 Well, the SEC, apparently the DOJ sent a bunch of inquiries on this asking, uh, for background on the transaction, because there's no business, there's no contract, there's no employees. It's just a whole-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:20 But by the way-

David Friedberg 1:04:21 ... idea.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:21 Just, just to make sure that everybody understands, this is n- this is a bipartisan thing as well. The, the ultimate bag securers, the Obamas, got, I think, 50 million plus each for their book deals, and they got supposedly high eight figures, like 50, 60, 70, $80 million from Netflix.

David Friedberg 1:04:39 Sorry, hold on a second, hold on a second. When you said, when you called them bag securers, I was really triggered there for a second. So am I supposed to take that offensively, that you're saying Michelle Obama and Barack Obama secured the bag?

Jason Calacanis 1:04:49 Secured the bag is a term for getting the money.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:52 Okay, okay, so I get-

Jason Calacanis 1:04:52 The, the Obamas are doing it-

David Friedberg 1:04:54 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:04:54 ... the Clintons did it-

David Friedberg 1:04:55 Right, it's a thing.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:56 ... and the Trumps are doing it.

David Friedberg 1:04:57 It's just a thing.

Jason Calacanis 1:04:57 It's a thing, secure the bag.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:58 But, but Jason, we're, we're not against everybody not being able to make money. Uh, the issue is trading on your office in a way that, uh, where you are trading on your insider information that your office has given you.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:12 Sure, but I mean, here-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:13 That, or if you're selling influence. If you sell a book ... Hold on a second. If you sell a book when you're out of office, is that really a problem? Is that on the same, the same thing?

Jason Calacanis 1:05:20 No, I wanted to point out the Netflix one. What was Netflix's existential crisis for the eight years Obama was in office? Anybody remember? Nobody remembers? Net neutrality.

David Friedberg 1:05:31 Nobody cares.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:32 Could they get ... Would they have to pay Verizon? What was, uh, the Obama's position on net neutrality? They were for net neutrality. Netflix stock went up 40, 50 X under Obama. It could all be a coincidence, I'm just saying.

David Friedberg 1:05:45 What the fuck?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:46 So you're saying it's like ... You're saying it's a disguised lobbying payment to Obama?

Jason Calacanis 1:05:50 I think it's like-

David Friedberg 1:05:51 Are you serious?

Jason Calacanis 1:05:52 I think it's like, uh-

David Friedberg 1:05:53 You and I are out of your mind.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:54 I think it's happened to us all. I mean, I ... Listen, the Clintons were doing speaking gigs for Goldman Sachs at half a million dollars.

David Friedberg 1:05:59 Um, this is kind of my cue to go to dinner now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:01 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:06:01 Okay, so here's the MRA.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:03 You know, the main way that Winston Churchill supported himself was writing books. I think it's okay for politicians to write books, and if ... Because ultimately the public buys them, and that's how they make money.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:12 But what about when the book is $50 million and the normal price would be 10? That's the problem.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:16 Well, I mean, if ... I, I, I guess you might have a point. If the advance was so in excess of the expected sales-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:21 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:21 ... that it raises a question of what the real motive is-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:24 Correct. That's what I'm talking about.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:24 ... for the payment. But I don't ... But is that, is that what happened? Is that true?

Jason Calacanis 1:06:27 Nobody gets paid a $50 million events. Nobody gets an eight-figure deal-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:30 You never saw it.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:30 ... but who's never made a documentary before. No, I mean, if the book sold five million copies, it still wouldn't be worth it. Uh, let's move on to MRNA so we keep our freed, uh, Friedberg Factor high.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:41 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:06:41 I'm like so, I'm like so, I'm so ready to go to dinner.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:43 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:06:44 Rick Thompson gave me a wonderful bottle of wine, by the way. I'm gonna go drink it tonight.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:47 Oh, yeah, br- I'm so super tilted that you, you, you, you should ... Like, it's like, I mean, I don't know- What, did I criticize the Obamas? Yeah, I can't deal with it. (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:06:53 You can't deal with it. You can't deal with it, that there's a not ... It's a no-fly zone for you?

Jason Calacanis 1:06:56 It's a no-fly zone for you?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:06:56 I'm super tilted. I mean, this is worse than sweater Karen.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:59 What, what about the Clintons? Can I, can I, uh, go after their 500 paid speaking gigs from Goldman Sachs? Yeah, yeah. That's okay?

David Friedberg 1:07:07 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:07 Okay, fine. Just don't touch- Uh ...

David Friedberg 1:07:08 ... the Obamas.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:09 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:09 But I mean, J- Jason, are you, are you doing exactly what-... Senator Karen did to Elon, which is-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:15 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:15 ... by virtue of the fact that they're making money, that you are now-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:19 No, no, I think it's disproportionate.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:19 ... imputing evil motives to it.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:20 No, it's just a disproportionate to what they should get paid.

David Friedberg 1:07:23 By your assessment, their assessment's the same about Elon.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:25 I'd pay a lot of money for Michelle Obama to do much of anything. I think she's just a total badass.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:29 Eight-figure deal for somebody who's never made a film, uh, for Netflix? I don't think it makes sense.

David Friedberg 1:07:33 Who cares? You- you- you- you said the same thing about Rivian. I don't know, man. You're projecting a little bit.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:36 I- I totally agree, and I want... Here we go. If this was on the second floor, I'd jump out the window right now.

David Friedberg 1:07:40 Yeah, you're at, uh...

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:42 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:07:42 Let winners be winners, J-Cal.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:44 I think, I think I just... I think we should differentiate between insider trading-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:47 Sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:47 ... bad and should not be allowed. Influence peddling, bad, should not be allowed. And somebody out of office making money-

David Friedberg 1:07:53 Monetizing their influence?

Jason Calacanis 1:07:54 Exactly.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:54 Well, no, no, no. Not monetizing their influence.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:56 They're, they're, they're getting-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:57 And if they did that, that's a problem.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:58 ... fame. Getting paid for services is fine.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:07:59 But getting, getting paid to sell tickets or books, that's... If that's what it is, it's fine.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:03 If... That's fine.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:03 It's totally fine.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:04 Unless it's disproportionate to the reality. Let's put a, let's put a pin in it, put a pin, put a pin in it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:08 Okay, fine, fine. I agree with that. I agree with that.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:08 MRNA, no bugging.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:09 Wait, no, no, no. Jason, say you like the Obamas, or I quit on the podcast right now.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:12 I totally love the Obamas. I would vote Obama in-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:15 Thank you.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:15 ... for a third term.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:16 Okay.

David Friedberg 1:08:16 Didn't you get paid a $50,000 speaking fee recently to speak at a conference?

Jason Calacanis 1:08:20 Yes, he did.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:20 I get paid all the time, and I'm worth that.

David Friedberg 1:08:22 Overpaid, overpaid.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:22 Overpaid.

David Friedberg 1:08:23 Overpaid.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:24 You're worth $8.50 and a fucking Subway sandwich.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:27 Overpaid, overpaid.

David Friedberg 1:08:28 You're worth like $2,500.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:29 I just got paid 15 grand to do a 50-minute speaking gig.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:31 I'm brutal.

1:08:31 Who are you trying to influence? Who are they paying you to influence, J-Cal?

Jason Calacanis 1:08:34 Nobody.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:34 I mean, honestly, J-Cal. Jason-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:35 I have no influence. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:36 Jason, Jason, you're worth like a, like 30% less than a high-end escort, okay? No offense.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:41 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:08:43 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08:43 (laughs)

1:08:43 Oh man, that's expensive.

1:08:44 600 bucks.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:44 So I don't know, really, there's a, there's a... Are high-end escorts, are you saying...

David Friedberg 1:08:49 700 bucks. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:08:49 What's 30% more than 50? You're saying it's like 80 grand? (laughs) Right? And it's, I don't know, 60, 70 grand. I didn't realize that. Um,

Jason Calacanis 1:08:57 all right, talk to us about the MRNA news for cancer, Freeberg, that came out this past week.

David Friedberg 1:09:03 So, I think the article that you guys sent around was one related to, uh, an oncology treatment that uses MRNA tech. But I, I think it's... What, what I wanted to kinda... What I thought would be interesting to talk about for a second is just zooming out on MRNA technology as a whole, um, which, you know, has been theorized for, you know, the be- the, the potential of it's been talked about for 50 years. Um, if we talk about, real quick, what, what RNA is, remember your DNA, your genetic code, uh, you know, defines, um, the, uh, uh, the printing of proteins in your cells. And so every three letters of DNA is, is an amino acid. A bunch of amino acids in a, in a row form a protein, and that protein has some function in your body. The way that the DNA gets translated into protein is through these MRNA snippets. So, uh, a little snippet of RNA is a copy of DNA which floats over from the DNA strand, and it floats into what's called the ribosome, and the ribosome's the protein printer in the cell. And there's lots of ribosomes, and there's lots of RNA floating around all the time, and