Patrick McKenzie — Money laundering, big tech censorship, SBF & Japan

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

July 24, 2024

Duration

2h 2m

Channel

Dwarkesh Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

I talked with Patrick McKenzie (known online as patio11) about how a small team he ran over a Discord server got vaccines into Americans' arms: A story of broken incentives, outrageous incompetence, and how a few individuals with high agency saved 1000s of lives. Plus unconstitutional censorship, money laundering, Factorio, and a friendly debate about crypto. Enjoy! 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒

• Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/patrick-mckenzie
• Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/3RFuS7b/
• Spotify: http://spoti.fi/3APeQ3L
• Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒

• This episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue. Go to https://stripe.com/ to learn more. If you’re interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/advertise 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 – Why hackers on Discord had to save thousands of lives 00:18:09 – How politics crippled common sense vaccine distribution 00:39:02 – Fundraising for VaccinateCA 00:51:52 – Why tech needs to understand how government works 00:59:41 – What is crypto good for? 01:13:50 – How the US government leverages big tech to violate rights 01:25:19 – Can the US have nice things like Japan? 01:27:24 – Financial plumbing & money laundering: a how-not-to guide 01:38:25 – Maximizing your value: why some people negotiate better 01:42:57 – Are young people too busy playing Factorio to found startups? 01:50:11 – Thinking well and finding true rigor 01:58:13 – The need for a post-mortem

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Patrick McKenzie

  guest

• Dwarkesh Patel

  host

• Narrator

  other

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Patrick McKenzie and Dwarkesh Patel, Patrick McKenzie — Money laundering, big tech censorship, SBF & Japan explores discord volunteers outperformed governments in America’s chaotic vaccine rollout Patrick McKenzie recounts how a handful of tech volunteers on Discord created VaccinateCA, an ad‑hoc vaccine‑finder that effectively became the U.S. clearinghouse for COVID vaccine locations, exposing severe failures in public health logistics and software capacity.

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