市场下行、疫情政治化、刺激方案拆解与「生物版爱国者法案」

Speaker 1 (00:00:00): I got accounted the other another $1,000,000,000 I lost. I've lost $22,000,000,000 in the last 2 days. David Friedberg (00:00:05): Are you guys recording? Please record this. Jason Calacanis (00:00:07): Looks like we Looks like we need a poker game tomorrow. David Sacks (00:00:10): Can you imagine how Tiltich Shamath is gonna go into a poker game. David Friedberg (00:00:13): He's gonna be. He's gonna be. David Sacks (00:00:14): in the market. He's gonna buy in for 2,000,000 just to try and get even. Jason Calacanis (00:00:20): Let your winners ride. Rainman David Sachs. Speaker 5 (00:00:27): And I said -- We open source it to the fans and they've discovered recently. Love you Jason Calacanis (00:00:38): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the all in podcast. We took a week off. And, boy, that was sad. I missed you guys. I missed my best season. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:49): We should tell people we had a We had a small medical procedure for one of the besties and but everything's good, and it was planned. So, you know, nothing nothing out of the ordinary. But We just needed to take a week off. That's why we missed the week, and that's what we're Jason Calacanis (00:01:01): about. Yes. And one of the besties god. I got so many jokes. I'm not gonna tell All the jokes that came into my mind right now would get me canceled. Right? Just fuck. I only had 7 jokes. I can't tell any Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:13): of them. Based on the amount of money that I've lost in the last days, I'm ready to get canceled, so it's fine as Jason Calacanis (00:01:17): much as he got done. I've written -- Put them in the chat, and I'm just gonna fucking let him rip. Alright, everybody. David Sachs, the rain man is here calling in from an undisclosed compound -- Miami. Speaker 1 (00:01:29): -- Jason Calacanis (00:01:29): Bloomberg, the queen of Kinois back in action. And the dictator himself licking his wounds. Check this. Speaker 1 (00:01:36): $1,000,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:37): for a Speaker 1 (00:01:37): 1,000,000,000 Jason Calacanis (00:01:38): a day. Keep it going. Checking the Apple stock app, hitting refresh, and going, thank god, these companies have fundamentals because I haven't seen this much blood since Game of Thrones. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:49): Jason, honestly, at the at this run rate, I can lose a Speaker 1 (00:01:52): $1,000,000,000,000. David Friedberg (00:01:55): Yeah. Tomorrow, Jason Calacanis (00:01:57): how do you pay for the air force than me? I could be sad. David Friedberg (00:02:01): How does today feel compared to last March when the same thing was happening? You know, every day, the market was down 10%. Well, this is what's important to remember. We made a joke. It was like, it can only go down said so many days in a row. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:12): March March 31st, you you guys have to remember that March 31 2020, the headlines all over the press and you can, you know, go to the way back machine and look at these things. But the Dow was down 20 some odd%, the s and p was down 20% And it looked like the world was going to end and then we had our first big stimulus bill and things started to look China started to reopen slowly and things started to look better. And what's interesting is you have this rotational sort of deleveraging that's happening right now. People are re pricing in inflation. People are moving into sort of these, you know, overlooked stories getting out of growth a little bit. and it's a bloodbath. But I would just I would just encourage us all to remember that we were in some pretty dark days in March of last year as well. And, you know, when you looked at it by the end of the year, it looked amazing. David Sacks (00:03:04): So -- I would just add to that. The markets are looking pretty grim for tech stocks right now, but this all started because of a really great jobs report showing that the economy is roaring back. So we added 379,000 jobs in February. which beat expectations by Speaker 1 (00:03:20): 200,000. David Sacks (00:03:21): They also revised the January gains up a Speaker 1 (00:03:23): 166,000. David Sacks (00:03:24): So now the unemployment rate is down to 6.2%. Remember, it was at, like, Speaker 1 (00:03:30): 15%, David Sacks (00:03:31): you know, last summer during the the lockdowns for COVID. So, I mean, all of this is fundamentally due to, I think, really great news in the economy because COVID is ending and which kinda begs the question of why we need another one point $9,000,000,000,000 stimulus bill. But but I think that ultimately, there's a lot of good news in the real economy and what investors are doing is figuring out how to now price or reprice all these different stocks in light of the economy roaring back. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:00): So just a little just a little math lesson to build on what you're saying. You know, everybody has a risk free rate. And all stocks are priced according to that risk free rate. And when, you know, for the many for the last sort of year, particularly when risk free rates were essentially 0 to negative, Meaning, you know, that's that's the riskless money where you that you get from the government. It was hard to do anything except belong growth stocks in a big, big way. But, David, to your point, if we get 2 or 3 more quarters of these kinds of jobs numbers, you're gonna have a, you know, low single digit unemployment number And what that means is wages will have to go up for businesses to compete, and that's the kind of traditional form of inflation that actually reprices things because then you lever up rates to kinda control inflation. When you lever up rates and you, you know, all of a sudden, they're not 0, but 23456 percent. This is sort of what brought the tech bubble to a halt in 2000, which is that, you know, you had 6% real rates. And so you can't own businesses that are projecting revenues, let alone profits in Speaker 1 (00:05:07): 2026. David Friedberg (00:05:08): When you can invest your money in a bond and make percent. 6%. And that's what I like so just for folks that don't know, this week started with this big bond sell off. And what that means is bonds that used to yield 0 per when you sell them, they're now yielding 10 year treasuries, I think, are at 1a half points. Right? And so as an investor, if I can make 1a half percent, with no risk by owning US treasuries over the next 10 years, that may feel like a better bet than owning some risky asset some speculative company. Now the other thing that that it has done and Shamov correct me if I'm off on this, But what I'm hearing is that that higher rate, because bonds sold down, because people are expecting inflation to come back up, the interest rates to borrow money are going up. And so if you're a hedge fund or an institutional money manager, over the last year or so, you've been able to borrow money for 0%. You can lever up your portfolio and and and and buy as many stocks as you want without paying any interest on it. And now that rates are creeping back up, people are delevering. They're they're taking risk off, and that's causing a sell off in both bonds and stocks. And especially on the speculative end of the market where, you know, there's been obviously unchecked kind of investment capital -- No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:21): You're you're ing it. You're you're you're absolutely right. Like, look, at the at the at the end of the day, the cost of borrowing for a company goes up. What that's really saying is the investor that's lending them the money you know, has other alternatives and so then they're willing to charge you more and more for this for this capital. And as that happens, you'll see some companies get into potentially some real trouble because, you know, they're gonna be borrowing money at rates where they can't necessarily generate the cash flows in future to pay those things back. At the same time, as you said, if you look at sort of like, you know, the stock market has taken a real beating, What are what are specs really? Well, you know, in many ways, specs are synthetic bonds. Right? And and the reason is because, you know, if you go and buy a if you go and buy a stock, a one share of any stock, you have the ability to redeem that if you don't like the deal that it does and get back your coupon. So, you know, you're notional rather. So if you were to buy a government, you know, German bond at negative 1% or by any spec where you can put that same, you know, $10 to work and get back $10. Well, you do that versus getting $9.90. So in many ways, like, you know, the stock market benefited from rates at 0 because you could synthetically belong SPAX as almost the way of being synthetically long fixed income. Now, as rates go up, that's not true. So what that leaves in the SPAC market are actually people who wanna own long term equity. And if you combine that with what we just said which is the cost of capital going up, and the discount rate going up, now all of a sudden companies need to be really real. And you're seeing that because if you look at the companies that have just announced back deals just in the last few days, their stocks have gotten absolutely obliterated. And they're right on the knife's edge going into the redemption period. So if you have Speaker 1 (00:08:12): 1 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:12): or 2 more months of this where all of a sudden, bonds look better. And, you know, some of these specs, post announcement, but pre de stacking go through, you know, 10 bucks a share, people will just redeem for Speaker 1 (00:08:24): $10. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:26): And you'll have a you'll have a bunch of busted IPOs or merchants. David Friedberg (00:08:29): By the way, another thing we're seeing sorry, Jason, another thing I think we're seeing right now is, in the near term, is a feedback loop. So as selling takes place, what happens is market participants are jumping in and short selling and anticipating in the trend of that stock. And so there are these these kind of experiences that are underway where it's not just about a sell off of owners, but it's also about a momentum rate that a lot of people are playing into. And so there is a very short term, extremely compounded effect of the delevering that's happening and the cycling that's happening in these markets. Alright. So it's super volatile and probably will be for a little bit of of of time here, right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:04): I think so. I think we need to figure out whether there's really whether there's a real inflation Speaker 1 (00:09:10): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:11): Risk. -- dragon cooking someplace. If if there if there really is inflation, like, again, you have to think, like, the 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars we put into the economy eventually has to come out in productive goods and services. And all of that excess capital will probably inflate prices. Now it begs a different question, which is we maybe we've just actually been missing inflation all along because if you ask somebody who lives in a city, you know, what the cost of rent has been, that that thing has been inflating by feels like 20% a year for years. So -- And health care and education costs. And health care and education costs. Yeah. So maybe we've just done a really terrible job in the last few years of actually measuring inflation the way it should be. You know, it's calling this whole basket of, you know you know, CPI X Energy. Like, I mean, it's kind of nutty. Maybe the whole thing just made no sense a few years ago, like Speaker 1 (00:09:59): -- Jason Calacanis (00:09:59): To to David's point, and David gave me just a huge bag of red pills while we were off this week. So I've been just I've been on a bender on these red pills. But if you look at those 3 categories, what do they have in common? Education, healthcare, and housing, massive regulation, And then if you look at the things that have gone down, consumer goods, electronics, food, etcetera, or or have stayed flat in terms of inflation, Those are things that the free market participant the government's not involved. David Sacks (00:10:27): And the the it's not just the fact there's a lot of government regulation in things like health care and education. It's also that the government pays for a significant portion of it. And so there's no reason for the people, you know, who are billing the government to keep costs down. mean, this is why the price of education of a college degree keeps going up is because the government's paying for a lot of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:47): it. I I so I David, you probably I I think you you may have seen this, but when, you know, when we announced our merger with Clover for IPOC, one of the first slides I put up there was The only place in the market since 2010 where you would have made more money than being long Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon was being launched UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Wellspring. And the reason is because health care was this incredible thing post Obamacare. Nobody wants to talk about it on the left because it makes it look terrible, but we created massive price inflation. And UnitedHealthcare was a $30,000,000,000 company. Jason Calacanis (00:11:26): Narrative violation. Be careful. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:27): Right before right before Obamacare passed, today it's a $330,000,000,000 company. and the level of growth that they and Aetna and, you know, Cigna and and Wellspring, these these companies have have seen is astounding. So these highly regulated, you know, systems of societal infrastructure, that's where all the gains have been. Regulatory capture writ large Jason Calacanis (00:11:51): Right. David Sacks (00:11:51): Well, as soon as the government is paying for it, all the suppliers know they can increase their prices. Why wouldn't they? So if if what happens is the government tries to make something free for people, and all they end up doing is making it really expensive. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:04): Well, they make it they they make it a Jason Calacanis (00:12:05): day because they make it now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:06): They make they make it expensive in this very in this very convoluted way, which is hard to track. Right? Because it's like, you know, who's actually paying? Well, you know, the insurance companies wanna just book more revenue. Even if their, you know, even if their gross aggregate profit grows much, much more slowly, they'd rather make the same amount of profit on a $1,000,000,000 versus a $100,000,000. So what do they do? Their incentive is to just jack prices up who are paying those prices? Companies pay those prices. Who bears those costs? All of this stuff is really not clear because, ultimately, downstream, somebody has to pay for this stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:12:41): Taxpayers. And it's all obscuredified. I mean, look, I mean, look at the tent story that we were sharing on our group group thread, $61,000 for San Francisco. to put people into tents with a no big contract. One question I have for for you all is If we look back the last time we were at 6% unemployment, July 2014, we look at the unemployment graph. It spiked up to as we discussed, 15%. and it has plummeted back down now to the 6% rate. If we look back on this moment in time and how quickly the economy is recovering from this disaster that we've never experienced before. It looks like this recession is gonna be recovered and we're gonna we're already back in business in such a short period of time compared to what happened in the Great Recession and the dot com boom. So is America and the US dollar and the economy anti fragile now to use a toleb term? What do how do we look at what happened with the economy? Did Trump do everything right with the stimulus? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:46): This is a this is a complete outlier in the following way. In a typical recession, What what has to happen is so you have a contraction in the economy, but you don't know when the bottom is. Right? The bottom is some number of months in the future. And government policy is basically trying to create a soft landing where all of a sudden, The cost of capital is low enough now where people say, on the margin now, this incremental dollar, I would rather borrow and invest, which drives growth, which then gets the economy going. And so, you know, how how does a government deal with that? They are looking at economic data and saying, okay. You know what? Let me cut rates. I'll cut rates again. I'll cut rates again. And that's really the one tool that they have in their toolbox because they're trying to predict in the future how many rate cuts do I need to get or have, rather? How big do they need to be? until I get to that place where you bottom out. The pandemic was the exact opposite because in many ways, we actually hit the bottom in month 1 because we said everything go to 0 right now. Right? When you shut everything down, you technically can't have less economic activity than 0. Yeah. And so And so in many ways, you price the bottom on day 1. Boom. And in hindsight, you know, the the real insight would have been to to see that and say, I'm buying this moment because it only gets better from here. So in in one way, it's like all of the tools are are actually now we need to think about them in opposite. And I don't think we have that training to do that well. So we're still going back to the same toolbox, which is why what David said is so true. You know, we're thinking about incremental stimulus as as, like, a way to get to a soft landing, but we've already actually taken the hard medicine a year ago. Jason Calacanis (00:15:26): Let's let's tackle that. Saxx, should we and let's let's take virtue signaling populism out of this discussion just on an economic basis. Is it necessary to send every American another 600,000 to knowing what we know today with the unemployment rate going down, or it'd be better or or we'd be better off taking that capital and deploying it in education Speaker 1 (00:15:49): -- Jason Calacanis (00:15:50): Right. Speaker 1 (00:15:50): -- Jason Calacanis (00:15:50): unemployment or something else. David Sacks (00:15:52): Well, 1st of all, it's 1,900,000,000,000 that we don't have. We're borrowing it. I mean, I would extend unemployment for people in those hard hit sectors that haven't come back yet. But most of this money is going for blue state bailouts of cities that are totally mismanaged. This is not gonna help states like California or or cities like San Francisco get their house in order. because this is gonna bail them out and defer that day of reckoning from their chronic mismanagement. So we're borrowing money. We don't have to bail out people cities and states that don't really deserve it, I do think we should help the people who've been impacted, but but it doesn't require 2,000,000,000,000. And look, here's the thing. We're already down to 6% unemployment. We're gonna be down to, I'd say, probably 3 or 4% in two quarters. I mean, the economy is coming roaring back. And the reason it's coming roaring back is because COVID is ending. Right? So the biggest announcement recently, and I think this is playing into what's happening in the stock market as well, is that Biden announced that every American who's over the age of sixteen who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by end of May. By end of May. I mean, we're gonna Jason Calacanis (00:16:54): have Yeah. What what what happened to the fall? doses. David Sacks (00:16:56): Yeah. Right. Well, he was -- -- 6 months off this. Just yeah. When he came in office in January, he's saying the worst is not over a lot. I mean, that was clearly sandbagging. The worst was over. and we're gonna have 300,000,000 doses by endofMay. And the only reason why everybody won't be able to get one is because of states that are you know, creating these ridiculous hoops to get David Friedberg (00:17:17): through. Confiscating them. David Sacks (00:17:18): Yeah. Exactly. Like, California right now has has 3,000,000 doses sitting on a shelf because of all the crazy hoops that Gavin Newsom has everyone going through because he wants to score browning points on equity. Right? So if the government would just get out of the way, let everyone who wants to get a vaccine get one without worrying about making sure the exact right person in the exact right line gets one first. This thing will be over by Memorial Day. Over. Now look, there'll still be a case here or there. For sure there'll be I'm not saying there'll be zero cases of COVID, but there'll be zero pandemic understood as such. David Friedberg (00:17:50): By the way, I'll I'll also say one other, you know, important point about the stimulus one that that Saxx made Yesterday, the CBO put out a a a projection. This is the the budget office, I think, Congress, and they said that the US National Debt it's likely to reach 202 percent of GDP by Speaker 1 (00:18:11): 2051. David Friedberg (00:18:13): So the amount of debt that the US government will own is 2x the amount of all the revenue generated by all of the industries in the US in about 30 years. That's an insane statistic. And the reason that people look at, you know, GDP or debt to GDP is because you have to pay your debt down at some point. So you owe some interest on that debt, You have to pay it down. And every year, you have to generate revenue to pay the bondholders. And how do you how does the federal government generate revenue, it either issues more debt or taxes. And in order to meet a 202 percent level of debt relative to GDP, you end up raising taxes so significantly as a percent of GDP to cover the the the interest payments and the and the the principal payments every year that you end up stalling out the economy, cutting important services, etcetera. And so we're in a circumstance now where the the the benefit we're gonna get from taking on this additional debt relative to economic growth and stimulus doesn't actually outweigh the cost of that debt. And we're facing a fiscal crunch at some point in the next decade or 2 and there is this this big question mark outstanding right now on a global stage, is the dollar really the safest place to be. Does everyone really wanna be dollar denominated? If this is the circumstance that the US federal government is gonna be facing, Jason Calacanis (00:19:29): Here's a question for Tremov that I'm curious about. If the government is buying all this debt, Shouldn't they be buying some amount of equity as well so they can profit from David Friedberg (00:19:41): Are the government's issuing debt, Jason? Jason Calacanis (00:19:43): No. I know. But isn't the government also going into the market and buying up corporate debt through all of this? Shouldn't they have profits coming from that? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:51): So there there was a risk last year where, you know, corporates may not have been able to fund their obligations. And so the government basically said we're going to be the buyer of the last resort and step in. And it's effectively, what they did was they they they essentially froze the credit markets because if you were going to then bet on some of these companies not being able to raise capital, you would have gone to the worst part of the, you know, the stack or you would have bet actually that there was going to be the state transition. So meaning debt is very tightly scripted as, you know, triple a plus, you know, double a, a minus. And these transitions from these tiers of like investment grade to junk to whatever are huge events. And basically, the government said, nope. everybody take your chips and go home because we are gonna backstop companies like Ford or whoever folks that were teetering. And so they they effectively said, this is gonna be, you know, until I tell you otherwise a rigged game, I'm gonna make sure I backstop these things. These companies will always be able to have money. Jason Calacanis (00:20:50): So my question though, Jamath, is if government is gonna do that and take that risk. Shouldn't they get some warrants or some upside in the company's future success to then create a virtuous cycle here that if they did backstop it, maybe they had warrants for 5% of the company, like you would give if you were doing a debt instrument. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:06): They could probably do it if they were a direct lender and they they had that chance and they didn't really do it in 2008 when they did it. And I mean, maybe they could have done it in a better way. here when you enter the open market, there's no such contract, and so you can't negotiate that. Look. I I I I wanna sort of talk about something slightly related to this, which is If you actually looked at that $1,900,000,000,000 stimulus bill, the thing that makes the most sense and I think nobody would complain about was saying, let's give a means based test. where the poorest Americans get the most money, call it 5 or 6000, and the richest Americans get nothing. And I think nobody would disagree with that. And if you added up all of that money, it's probably on the order of 500 or Speaker 1 (00:21:47): $700,000,000,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:48): If you did it if you did a really expansive package. And and and I think people would I mean, all of us would raise our hands and say, we shouldn't get a fucking dime. And, you know, people other people should be getting many multiples of Speaker 1 (00:22:00): 1400. Jason Calacanis (00:22:01): Okay? should anybody who wasn't impacted Saks get anything? David Sacks (00:22:04): Like, if you were Jason Calacanis (00:22:05): not impacted -- Yeah. David Sacks (00:22:06): Of course. Speaker 1 (00:22:06): -- Jason Calacanis (00:22:06): you didn't lose your job. David Sacks (00:22:08): We don't say Jason Calacanis (00:22:09): calm you spending money. Why should you get anything? Because I think that's all the money going into NFTs and making bets on GameStop and doing all this. Of course. You know, shenanigans with Bitcoin. David Sacks (00:22:18): Of course. Look. This is Rama Manual 2.0. Remember Rama Manuel back in the 2008, 2009 financial crisis said never let a crisis go to waste. This is now never let a crisis reach its end. Jason Calacanis (00:22:31): Right? They don't want it to be over David Sacks (00:22:31): because this crisis is a justification Yeah. This crisis is the justification for this piggy bank of spending that this this wish list that they wanted to pass for a long time. very little of it actually has to do with helping the Speaker 1 (00:22:46): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:46): Very little. Very little. In fact, if you actually look at the the breakdown of this $1,900,000,000,000 bill, It's every typical bill. It has a better title, but, ultimately, it's a bunch of pork barrels. By the way, there there's a David Friedberg (00:22:57): bunch of insanity in there like COVID testing. mean, guess what? We don't need to test anyone for COVID in about 30 days. Speaker 1 (00:23:02): -- Jason Calacanis (00:23:02): throw those tests away. We needed the 6 months, Speaker 1 (00:23:04): $1,000,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:04): we could tell you. David Friedberg (00:23:05): You know? And and the list goes on, but I think the point is what Saks is making is totally true. We're continuing to latch on to the COVID pandemic crisis as a means to an end. And we're not really solving any problems that are outstanding. As the COVID pandemic and the risks remember, let's just go back a year you guys remember, the reason we shut down the economy was to flatten the curve. There was no assumption we were gonna end COVID. The idea was let's make sure that the health care system doesn't get overwhelmed with people dying where we can't handle as many people in ICU beds. And now we're in a situation where we're saying you still can't go outside, ICU beds are largely open. You still have to do x and y and z. We still need to be testing everyone. And all of those risks and considerations should be coming off the table as more people have had COVID and more people have gotten vaccinated. And instead, we're using the fear that's been embedded in us over the past year as a mechanism to drive spending in a way that is clearly economically unsustainable, ultimately counterproductive And, unfortunately, is being, you know, used as a mechanism for keeping folks in office and and paying back their friends and all this other sort of non it's gone. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:12): You had a you had a breakdown of it it by the way, because it's not just the the federal stimulus bill. You know, the the California breakdown of what they spent. Same. have that do you have that? Or can you fill it up? David Friedberg (00:24:23): What what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna send the link because it was a through a FOIA request, they were forced to list it. So California had an emergency declaration. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:30): joke, a total fucking joke. Through that David Friedberg (00:24:32): through that emergency declaration, it gave the governor the power and the ability to enter into no bid contract to meet the the demands of the, quote, unquote, emergency. And the contracts that were entered into are all publicly listed and available in a link that I will share with you guys, and it'll be available online, I don't think a reporter has done what needs to be done, which is to go through those contracts and identify how much money was spent on what and where the and why that money was spent and who ended up benefiting from it. Some of these contracts, including, for example, Speaker 1 (00:25:03): $1,900,000,000 David Friedberg (00:25:05): to PerkinElmer to provide nasal swabs and other, you know, reactive chemistry needed to run COVID tests with an overflow capacity of their lab of 4000 tests a day, which, by the way, costs a few $1000 for $1,900,000,000 and, ultimately, California didn't really do any of the testing. It was done by private labs. Where did that $1,900,000,000 go? There was another amount of money. There was a Speaker 1 (00:25:28): $100,000,000 David Friedberg (00:25:28): spent on Accenture to build the vaccination website. No bid contract. $100,000,000 for freaking 3 days website. Speaker 1 (00:25:34): -- Jason Calacanis (00:25:34): website in a weekend? David Friedberg (00:25:36): There was the Carbon Health guy did. there was another separately for his own vaccination program that he was running, which, you know, obviously highlights just how inept this whole process is. there was another incredible multi $100,000,000 contract entered into for a guy. And and then I looked up his address on Google Maps, and I looked at his home and his office. it's in like a strip mall next to a donut shop. And this guy is the guy he's a he's technically a doctor, but not really a practicing doctor who would who got paid 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars to source overflow hospital and doctor capacity for prisons in the in in California in San, the ship that's in there. And so, you know, the the the the total kind of, I think, mismanagement of capital and obviously inability to kinda manage through a crisis, get taken advantage of. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:19): And, by the way, I think David Friedberg (00:26:20): I think the COVID the fiscal the the federal COVID stimulus looks very similar in terms of the the pork and other nonsense that's going on in there. It makes yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:27): Hey, mainstream media instead of fucking grinding me about, you know, a couple Speaker 1 (00:26:31): $100,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:32): of share sales so that I can allocate it to fucking climate change. Why don't you do your goddamn job and fucking tell this story? Jason Calacanis (00:26:38): Yeah. No. because this would take word. What a joke at Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:40): voucher signaling points. A joke. I'll post the link now. Jason Calacanis (00:26:43): David, more I need more red pills. What a joke. Get me those red pills from Miami. David Sacks (00:26:47): So there's one there's one article, like, you're right, Kamath. Like, they they there's so many scandals, by the way. There was one just reported in the surgical chronicle about how the city of San Francisco paid Speaker 1 (00:26:58): $16,000,000 David Sacks (00:27:00): to to pay for something like 260 10ths or something like that. 10ths. ten homeless people. It was Speaker 1 (00:27:06): $61,000. Jason Calacanis (00:27:07): bullshit of Burning Man. David Sacks (00:27:09): You're just it was $61,000 per Speaker 1 (00:27:11): 10. Jason Calacanis (00:27:11): You could build an ADU for that Guys, I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:14): have an entire gaggle of reporters sweating every single fucking share that I buy or sell, and these people No. No. I don't. This is it's fucking stupid. And and and there's true there's truly some dollars just swashing around. Like, David Sacks (00:27:28): what It was all Speaker 1 (00:27:29): -- -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:29): 3rd world fucking Banana Republic? David Sacks (00:27:31): Kinda. David Friedberg (00:27:32): Go ahead. That's Jason Calacanis (00:27:32): San Francisco is. That's All David Sacks (00:27:34): all this money all this money all this money was dished out according to no bid contracts. So so, basically, it was not a competitive bidding process because it was a COVID emergency. And so yeah. Look. I mean, all of Newsom's big backers in the health care industry got these giant no bid contracts, these, you know, the homeless industrial complex service providers, in San Francisco got these giant contracts. None of it was bid out. And the politicians would love to be able to keep this going because they've never had more power they've never had more degrees of freedom to reward their political supporters. So, you know, I I think there there was one really good article. I just wanna bring up here. that was by Jonathan Chait. Jason Calacanis (00:28:12): Oh, this is the Intelligoncier in the New Yorker. David Sacks (00:28:15): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:28:15): The New York, New David Sacks (00:28:16): York magazine. Jason Calacanis (00:28:17): And why not? David Sacks (00:28:18): Yeah. His article is called 0 COVID risk is the wrong standard, and he defines a term called 0ism. What what Tate writes is he he describes terrorism as the following. He says, terrorism is an inability to conceive of public health measures in cost benefit terms. the pandemic becomes an enemy that must be destroyed at all costs, and any compromise could lead to death and is therefore unacceptable. So in other words, if Like, one person might die, then we need to continue all these emergency measures. It's and and and this is the thing is that, look, COVID as a pandemic is gonna be over by June. Okay? But there will always be cases of COVID. It's gonna return as a seasonal illness And the question is, are we going to allow 0ism to be the policy every year where we basically give these politicians unlimited power to do lockdowns, shutdowns, no big contracts, and on and on and on. You already see with the teachers' unions. Right? The education unions are refusing to go back to work even after their members Jason Calacanis (00:29:19): are vaccinated. David Sacks (00:29:21): Yeah. Saying that there must be 14 days of no, meaning zero community spread before they can safely return. So the teachers unions or the education users are saying is we're not gonna go back to work. We want paid vacation until there's zero cases. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:33): Well, this David Sacks (00:29:34): is not realistic. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:35): I mean, I I I went to get my daughter's passport updated at USPS. they're working. While I was driving there, I saw all kinds of infrastructure. It was happening. We pay into a system that's supposed to guarantee in return some level of commitment by individuals that buy into that same system. Teachers are part of that. Yes. You can't you can't have a get out of jail free card whenever you want to just say no. We're gonna change the rules, and it but it applies to everybody else. The firefighters have to show up. The cops have to show up. The ambulance people have to show up. The nurses show up. You know, the USP drivers, Bart -- Everybody, doctor shows up. Speaker 1 (00:30:20): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:20): going to work, but Jason Calacanis (00:30:20): these people they need. The teachers should parents should take their kids out of school. That's what they should do. And then -- To Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:28): do what, Jason? How how how are most people? Jason Calacanis (00:30:30): Basically, Well, if you got 5 or 6 parents, they can't even work. Yeah. No. No. But if you got Speaker 1 (00:30:35): 5 Jason Calacanis (00:30:35): or 6 parents together and -- They're gonna talk for David Friedberg (00:30:37): that shit. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:37): Vincent, what are you talking about this? Jason Calacanis (00:30:39): I mean, let me finish my sentence. 5, 6 parents get together. And if they had if they had what do you call when you give parents a little bit of money for school Voucher -- Voucher. Speaker 1 (00:30:49): -- Jason Calacanis (00:30:49): voucher systems. The voucher system would then create the competition. If 6 or 7 families could get 510 k each, and then run their own little bubble school, their micro school, this could actually put pressure. Well, David Sacks (00:31:01): it's not gonna it's not gonna happen, but you actually have a pretty point, what what Newsom should do is he should go to these unions and say, listen. If you're not gonna go back and you're not gonna teach, no problem. We're gonna take the money that we gift to your schools and give them out as vouchers. let the parents do what they want. In other words, we're gonna break your union. That is what he needs to do. It's time to break the union. Newsom the problem with Newsom is that his biggest contributor Single biggest contributor is the education union. Right? And so, look, he has publicly said that, yes, I'm in favor of schools reopening. But it's not enough for you to espouse the opinion that schools should go back. I mean, you're the governor. You need to go make that happen. You need to go tell the teachers' unions you must go back right now because there is no incremental COVID risk to the teachers. They've seen this now that states which have open schools have not seen an Jason Calacanis (00:31:48): increase David Sacks (00:31:49): in COVID. There is no science to support this. He's to tell him, go back right now, or we're gonna break your union. He will not do that because he's an employee of those unions. And by the way, I I have an update I have an update on the on the recall if you guys want it. David Friedberg (00:32:02): No. Wait. Let's let's get to it in one second because I do wanna I I do wanna just say Well, first off, I wanna make an observation that we are turning into the rational Russian limbaugh. We're all kind of yelling violent agreement, but Jason Calacanis (00:32:14): it's No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:14): It's in kind David Friedberg (00:32:15): of a little bit silly, but I am just observing the tone here a little bit. I I will say, like, if you guys remember, we talked about this, like, last year, which is, you know, what will life be like post COVID, post the pandemic. And if you guys remember, I said this, and I still firmly believe it. And I think we're now seeing it play out, which is that the fear that gets created by the actual crisis will persist in terms of the the subconscious behavior of the population for a long period of time. That's what happened after 9:11. you know, the insanity that went on with the TSA and security checking and racism against brown people and everything that arose post 911, persisted for a very long time as a result of the shock that we all experienced. And I don't think people were very cognizant of it occurring. It was just like, oh, well, this is now the normal way of life. Everyone is so fearful of catching COVID, and they've been so kind of trained and told that they're gonna die from COVID, that we're finding ourselves in a circumstance where anything can then be rationalized. And if those of folks that then have power and the ability can magnify the circumstances into something that it seems kind of shocking and absurd if you put on kind of a rational hack. But this is just one manifestation of what I think will be the case. We were We we we all know people that have been vaccinated that are more than 2 weeks since their second shot of vaccination who are still scared of doing things like being around other people or going into grocery stores because, quote, unquote, there may be a chance that there may be a variant that may not work on the vaccine that I may get that may end up killing me. And if you actually do the math on it, you think about it rationally, you're not gonna get COVID, and you're not gonna die. But there's a chance, therefore, I'm gonna change my behavior. And that's part of what I think we're seeing manifest at a very large scale is this, like, trained fear mind that we all have at this point and policy and everything. David Friedberg (00:33:58): And and by Yeah. No. By the way, the $1,900,000,000,000 stimulus is is in part kind of empowered by this fear -- Well Speaker 1 (00:34:04): -- -- David Friedberg (00:34:04): that we all Speaker 1 (00:34:04): -- David Sacks (00:34:05): I I I I I disagree slightly. So look. Is there gonna be some p PTSD from COVID? Yeah. I'm sure there will be. But I think people are ready to to get out and with a vengeance. And I think people wanting and and the the problem is not that people are are afraid, but that the people doing the the health establishment, doing the messaging, is not out there telling us the right things. I mean, you've got Fauci out there telling people that even after they've vaccinated, they cannot take off their masks until 2022 that they're not gonna be able to die no. Seriously. They're not gonna be able to time indoors They can't go to a movie, a concert, or a sporting event, and they can't socialize indoors except with other also vaccinated people. This is what Fauci is saying. I mean, so No wonder you've got so many people out there say that they're gonna wait and see whether the vaccine works or not. Well, because effectively falching the health establishment, they're being so cautious in their guidance are effectively giving anti vaxx messaging. They're basically saying that the vaccines don't work very well, which is just stupid. I mean, Jason Calacanis (00:35:07): and they should be going out saying nobody has died, who has been gotten a shot, nobody has gone to the ICU, who's gotten vaccinated. Speaker 1 (00:35:14): -- David Sacks (00:35:14): to say Jason Calacanis (00:35:15): nobody said -- -- on a ventilator who's been vaccinated. Am I correct with those 3 statements? David Sacks (00:35:19): Yes. Yes. They need to say if you Jason Calacanis (00:35:21): take -- No death. No. I see you. No ventilator if you have the shop. David Sacks (00:35:25): What we need to be saying is very simple, which is if you've been vaccinated, you will not die. If you've been vaccinated, you will not die. Put that on a billboard, and everyone's gonna wanna get vaccinated. You know, only 55% of the population right now says that they're gonna get vaccinated as soon as they can. Jason Calacanis (00:35:41): I'm I'm watering a billboard right now from the besties. I think -- That just says if you're vaccinated, you won't die the besties. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:47): I think it's pretty reasonable that individuals would still be afraid You know? because I I think we learned over the last year that we can't trust the institutions that are supposed to tell us in an objective way, meaning can't trust the WHO. You can't trust NIH. You can't trust the CDC. You can't necessarily trust the search in general. You couldn't trust the president. very complicated. Right? So I think it's reasonable that people are skeptical. What I think is unreasonable is when, you know, sort of like organized unions or organizations or corporations who have a responsibility to run the infrastructure of this country. Basically say, all these rules apply to everybody else but me. That's where I think we have to really just kinda question ourselves and fix that. That's not cool. It's just fundamentally not reasonable. David Sacks (00:36:37): So we have Biden saying that everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by endofMay. We have Gavin Newsom saying that most of the state, but not all of it will reopen in August. Well, wait a second. You know? May, June, July, August. Why is there, like, a 3 month gap here It's because of of of the 0ism. I mean, I think Newsom has embraced the 0ism. Jason Calacanis (00:36:58): If not 0ism, what's the number? We have 8000 people die a day in America. on average historically. David Sacks (00:37:04): As soon as everyone Speaker 1 (00:37:05): -- Jason Calacanis (00:37:05): If it's under 500, that's a day, should we be going back? David Sacks (00:37:08): That's not even the question. That's not even the question. Once everyone can get a vaccine, it's over. If you choose not to get the vaccine, like, sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:37:15): It does David Sacks (00:37:16): it's on you. We're moving on. It's high grade. We're gonna Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:19): ask it. Can I That's so David Friedberg (00:37:20): By the way, the equivalent of 0 is would be no one's allowed to drive a car because people die die die in cars all the time. Speaker 1 (00:37:26): -- Jason Calacanis (00:37:26): cars have to be thirty five miles an hour. David Friedberg (00:37:28): Or they or you or yeah. Or no one's allowed to drink alcohol because alcohol has some adverse factor increase that you can't of cancer or or whatever or whatever at some point. Like, do you end up -- You just triggered Chmov? No. Sorry, Chmov. Jason Calacanis (00:37:38): You know why? David Friedberg (00:37:39): Nice Bordeaux in Burgundy doesn't give you cans now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:41): That's what we got Jason Calacanis (00:37:42): with the wine budget post Spackocalypse. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:45): I mean, it's it's gonna take a lot of it's take a lot of more billions before I stop drinking my wine. That's good. Question. I wanna throw this into the scrum. David Friedberg (00:37:53): What do you Jason Calacanis (00:37:54): guys think about Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:55): I by the I mean, also, we're all just so punchy because we didn't talk last week. Jason Calacanis (00:37:59): Totally now. We're also agitated. We're all excited. We're all excited. Speaker 1 (00:38:02): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:03): to talk All of our wives have been telling us what to do. Jason Calacanis (00:38:05): We had nobody to vent with, and now we're just going crazy. It's like a bunch of twelve year old boys who are on time out. It's like it's It's like we've been in a 2 week time. We need to get our bikes and go for a bike ride. No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:15): No, guys. Honestly honestly, like, have you guys like, I have not gotten a word in edgewise with Matt for 2 weeks. And I was Jason Calacanis (00:38:21): so looking forward to talking to you. Got something like that. I I wanna talk. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:25): No. But listen. David Friedberg (00:38:26): Nope. No problem. Jason Calacanis (00:38:26): What do you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:27): guys what do you guys think about the the the biological patriot acting. You know, there's these vaccination passports that people are talking about. I just wanna get a sense of where you guys think this is going and and This is the this David Friedberg (00:38:38): is the slippery slope that I think ends all slippery slopes with respect to privacy. Right? So the the I think it was proposed in the EU, that you would need to get a, you know, a digitally verified kind of passport stamp that shows that you have been vaccinated in order to travel freely amongst other EU nations. And so if you think about the implications of this, now the government or governments have the ability to demand that in order for you to move around freely, you need to represent something digitally or represent something about some health care procedure that you may or may not wanna kind of, you know, take on. So that sound everyone kind of nods their head and says that seems totally reasonable and rational. It's COVID. We're all at risk. We should protect ourselves. I wanna yadayada. But where does this go next? Right? Because then it becomes well, have you had your measles vaccine? Or, you know, hey. You know, do you have herpes? And therefore, you can't you have to show someone your herpes passport if you wanna have sex with them or end up kind of going to a point where we we really don't have a barrier between what's private and what's nationalized or even super nationalized in in the in the context of the EU? And, you know, is there kind of a slippery slope that emerges by allowing this amount of invasiveness of personal decision making and personal data and making it available to government agencies in order to have access to the liberties that you, you know, believe may be endowed to you as an individual citizen. of the world or Jason Calacanis (00:39:56): what do Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:56): you do? What do we do next? David Sacks (00:39:58): Well, I I I just think proposals like this are I I think they're gonna fade away very quickly once COVID is over. And and the the real issue we have right now is that not enough of the population wants to get vaccinated because, again, the health authorities are being much too conservative in their guidance. So, you know, there's some polling numbers on this that so only 15% of the public are actually opposed to getting the vaccine. Like, you kinda call them anti vaxx. But there's another 20 to 30% that are taking this wait and see approach. And, you know, they're gonna make sure that, like, other people go first and don't sprout tails or antlers or something before, you know, they're gonna be willing to get it. But but the reason why they're all waiting and seeing is because you've got, you know, Fauci and others saying that we're not gonna have normalcy until Christmas or maybe even 2022. So if if that's the case, if things aren't gonna be normal till next year, why wouldn't you wait? You know? And I think what we need to be saying is, look. Go get the vaccine where everyone who wants it's gonna be able to get it in the next 2 months, and COVID is over. It's over, guys. David Friedberg (00:41:01): But, Zach, if there is a digital passport requirement in the EU, where do you think that goes? Like, if you have to show proof of a vaccination order to enter the EU with quarantine? Where do you Speaker 1 (00:41:10): -- David Sacks (00:41:10): Well, it's Speaker 1 (00:41:10): -- David Sacks (00:41:10): Yeah. It's it's it's it's it's not a great precedent. But I but I I I don't know that it's gonna be necessary because I just think that COVID's gonna end. Jason Calacanis (00:41:17): There is a -- So David Sacks (00:41:18): so quickly. Jason Calacanis (00:41:19): It's it's a this I I like Saks's point of view, which is if you decide you're not gonna do this, then you put yourself at risk. But if nobody else can die from it, Why do we need to check it? I understand, like, maybe in this bridge period, spring to summer, if you go to a warriors game or a Knicks game, where you wanna go to Burning Man or the EDC, you know, electronic Daisy, Carnival, whatever. Friedberg goes to, you know, when he goes to his raves. I mean, Friedberg out of Rave is kind of a video we need to see, I think. But why would that's fine with me in the short term, but in the long term, wanna give them that power. Look what happened with the Patriot Act and then them monitoring our data forever and the government being able to put you know, what Snowden found out, like, they were able to put on the AT and T backbone, the ability to sniff all data. I mean, it's overreaching. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:09): Last January or February, I think, Jason, it was one of our first pods where I kind of put this marker out there on this biological patriot act, and it said it it's coming. I'm gonna put another marker out there, by the way, because, like, you know, there may be something like this in New York. I think most cities will have to have them. I think places Jason exactly, as you say, for sporting events, for concerts, it'll be very hard as a number strains increase as the severity ebbs and flows over time for us to not end up in this place. And I think it will be because certain people will feel a paternalistic desire to sort of you know, it'll come from a good place like I wanna help everybody, but they'll pass a law and that law will just get perturb, and and and it'll create all kinds of crazy consequences. But I wanna put another chip out there, which is, you know, there is a really important civil rights case called masterpiece Cakeshop Versus Colorado Civil Rights Commission. He went to the Supreme Court And it was basically a a a guy who owned a bakery and he refused I think it was to make a cake for a same sex couple. And ultimately, you know, the decision was, yeah, he's allowed. The supreme court gave a very narrow ruling, but he was allowed to withhold service. And I asked this question which is, well, what is the difference frankly between withholding service from a same couple or withholding service from somebody that isn't vaccinated. Because, you know, in the eyes of the business person, you know, assuming apparently you're allowed to make these kinds of, you know, judgments because you're a private business. The implications I think are really vast. And so I'm just gonna put it out there that I think that it's actually David. I'll take the other side So I think that there's going to be these biological patriot acts unfortunately. And then the second thing that I'll say is that I do think that it will get litigated to the Supreme Court And I think that narrowly, what will come down is that businesses will be able to decide. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:12): And I think this is actually what'll put the vaccination or anti vaccination movement to the forefront because I think in this complex global world where We don't know where diseases come from except we know that they are more communicable. They can't be more deadly and they're more pervasive and they spread faster just because of the nature which the world is set up, there's gonna There's probably gonna be less and less tolerance for anti vaccination. Now, that may slow down the actual process of getting vaccines to market because we'll wanna make it even safer if we're gonna do forced vaccinations of certain things. But I'm just gonna put a Jason Calacanis (00:44:50): put a shit out there, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:50): but I think that that's fine. David Sacks (00:44:52): I I don't know that we need to force people to get vaccinated, but I think that we need to recognize that once people have the option of getting back vaccinated, there's no need to have the same public policy response. Right? So so look. If Biden's correct that we're gonna have 300,000,000 dose by end of May. And I think he must be correct because he's been very conservative in his guidance. Then we should declare a date certain for the end of COVID. I'm not saying that the virus won't exist. I'm not saying there won't be a smattering of cases. I'm saying from a public policy perspective, there's no longer a panic, a raging pandemic to justify these incredible new powers that the government has asserted. Jason Calacanis (00:45:29): Right? What would you do that based on? The number of shots in arms or the number of deaths per day. David Sacks (00:45:33): No. It's look. Once Once everyone can get the vaccine, and then I think that -- Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:45:37): So availabilities. David Sacks (00:45:38): Availability. So, I mean, look. What we should and and it will be available as long as you know, governors like Newsom get out of the way and stop restricting the administration of it. But I think we need to declare a date certain where you say, listen. On June 1st, there is no more justification for government having these extraordinary powers to lock us down, to require us. I I don't think we even need to wear mask beyond June 1st. And, by the way, I was pro mask. I was in favor of a mask mandate a year ago as you guys know. But there's no need for it after June 1st. There's no need to have these crazy -- Certainly not if you're vaccinated in Congress. -- Friedberg? Jason Calacanis (00:46:12): Like, I mean, You David Friedberg (00:46:14): wouldn't matter. I I I it doesn't matter. I I just you know, I think it's it's a good point that Saks is making. It's easy for people to say, let's wear a mask and protect ourselves. But if you don't care about wearing a mask, but there are plenty of people who do. And I I think the question is at what point do we allow liberty to kind of play a role here. And it's it's not just about, you know, what one person's point of view, which by the way turned out to be wrong multiple times over the last year, is in terms of what they think that other people should do. And, you know, what what does what does it mean to actually have freedom of choice and and liberty? Well, I mean, with the states, it's a really fundamental question. Yeah. Well, I Jason Calacanis (00:46:50): mean, if you look at states, that is a key. We have Texas, has opened up and said no mass mandate. One of the things that hurt us in this was we didn't have a centralized government dictating everything. And now we see like, hey, maybe having states -- By the way, by the way, I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:06): I don't know if David Friedberg (00:47:06): that's necessarily true. I'll say something about this that I think is important. It may be true that masks stop community spread of the virus. but it doesn't necessarily mean that we stop the spread of the virus. The virus still spread. We still had a lot of viral cases in the United States. We had a lot of deaths that arose. And whatever restrictions we put in place, people still made the choice to go into other people's homes, take their mask off, enjoy free air, enjoy drinks, and give each other the virus. And that's where so much of a spread occurred. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:32): I think you guys are not confronting this really obvious thing. I think like this masterpiece cakeshop thing is a really important concept. Like, what happens? I'm just gonna use an extreme example. Jason Calacanis (00:47:43): If it goes Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:43): to the David Friedberg (00:47:44): Supreme Court, you mean? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:45): No. Let's just say that, you know, Google's engineers unionize, and they decide that, you know, they want everybody else at Google to be vaccinated. And then Google says, yeah, you're right. And if you wanna work at Google, you need to be vaccinated, not just for COVID. Private company. Not just for COVID. It's a private company. Not for COVID. By the way, that is a rule David Friedberg (00:48:03): at schools. Right? I mean, I think my my my preschool or my kid goes here in San Francisco requires facts proof of vaccination for the kids in order for them to go Jason Calacanis (00:48:11): to school. Speaker 1 (00:48:11): -- Jason Calacanis (00:48:11): seems to be different. And see, traveling in some places is on -- Oh, wait. Just -- Public infrastructure, some on private infrastructure. I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:17): know. But just just just focus on this issue. What happens if private organizations pass a decision Yeah. That you have to be vaccinated. It'll go to the Supreme Court and if you look at Masterpiece, they they're win. They will be they they will come out with the right to say that. Which is fine. You can go somewhere else. Jason Calacanis (00:48:36): Why David Sacks (00:48:36): is that why is that a problem? Exactly. Jason Calacanis (00:48:38): Yeah. No problem. I'm just curious Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:39): how to explain that. If if only how the population of America. David Friedberg (00:48:42): Well, maybe we'll lose good engineers, and the free market will resolve itself where Google end up saying, you know what? We're not gonna pass this mandate because all the good engineers are gonna leave, so let's just leave it you know, leave it be. David Sacks (00:48:52): I'm I'm I'm more worried about the politicians because the whole the whole the government trying to hold on to the power Yeah. Speaker 1 (00:48:59): -- David Sacks (00:48:59): that it's asserted over us over the past year even after COVID's along with Brett. Jason Calacanis (00:49:04): I don't want them having a data base of my medical records. No -- Right. Speaker 1 (00:49:07): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:07): effing David Sacks (00:49:08): way. this is why look. I think we need to declare a date serve certain that COVID as a pandemic is over. My date is memorial day. It's very clear to me that once everyone has the vaccine, it's over, Jason Calacanis (00:49:18): Just maybe when you can walk up. David Sacks (00:49:20): This is when yeah. This is when so I actually think that the Newsom recall, which will be in will be going on this summer. This is what that election is gonna turn into, in my opinion, is. So so, by the way, quick can I give a quick update on Jason Calacanis (00:49:33): Yes, please. David Sacks (00:49:34): Okay. So I talked to the recall people this morning. They're up to Speaker 1 (00:49:38): 1,950,000 -- David Sacks (00:49:41): Uh-oh. -- signature. Jason Calacanis (00:49:42): He's done. David Sacks (00:49:43): So 50,000 votes short of 2,000,000. They will be at or over 2,000,000 in 2 weeks, which is the end of the signature period. Their validation rate is about 84%. So I think this is clearly gonna pass. There will be a recall election. It will be around August. Now Fast forward. Newsom has said the state won't reopen until August. But I think that by May, June, July, you will see just about every other state reopen. Obviously, Texas already completely reopened. But even blue states like Connecticut have now lifted lockdowns. They still have a mask mandate for the time being. But I think what you could see by this summer is that California will look like a laggard. You'll see that politicians like Newsom are holding on to the 0est philosophy. They're being too restrictive. They look ridiculous compared to other states, and he still probably won't have an agreement with the teacher's unions to go back to school. And I think this could become the big issue in the in the -- Do you wanna Jason Calacanis (00:50:40): make an announcement, Saks? You wanna make an announcement now? We have a special announcement. David Friedberg (00:50:45): Chama Chama Chama might be taking a you know, Chama might be taking a hiatus from work given where the markets are. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:50): I think I thought, and I thought this governor thing would be value destructive. It looks like, actually, I would have saved money. David Sacks (00:50:57): You should have listened Okay. I'm back. David Friedberg (00:50:59): Fuck it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Jason Calacanis (00:51:01): I'm doing it. I'm back in. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:02): I'm back in. Speaker 1 (00:51:02): -- David Friedberg (00:51:02): I should say. Jason Calacanis (00:51:05): Oh my god. Speaker 1 (00:51:06): -- Jason Calacanis (00:51:07): to be cynical. But if you -- I am losing so much money down -- Wow. Speaker 1 (00:51:11): -- Jason Calacanis (00:51:11): in your state, Sax, they can't collect signatures at the supermarket or at restaurants or Disneyland. So maybe maybe Newsom shut everything down so that you can collect cigs. David Sacks (00:51:23): Well, it's interesting because they actually found that direct mail was a very effective way of getting signatures. So they've gotten around that. Jason Calacanis (00:51:30): But but remember -- -- is cutting the budget of the US Postal Service. David Sacks (00:51:33): No. Look, Newsom is definitely there's gonna be a recall election. I think it'll be around August. And now there's recall efforts underway for Chase of Budine. Jason Calacanis (00:51:42): The killer DA? David Sacks (00:51:43): The killer DA of San Francisco. Jason Calacanis (00:51:45): Yeah. Oh. Fuck where? We David Sacks (00:51:46): as well as ESCO in LA and the San Francisco School Board. But we've gotta talk yeah. We gotta talk about how Boudin responded to our last pod. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:51:54): Fuck it. Fuck. Oh my god. Lord. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:58): David, I I have 3 comments to say before we talk about booty. Number I've never seen you more energetic. Did you get Speaker 1 (00:52:04): -- Jason Calacanis (00:52:04): Yeah. But where are you? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:05): The red blood plant. Did you Jason Calacanis (00:52:07): did you get away at me? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:08): Did you download 4th emotion? Did you download 4th the motion. She's in David Friedberg (00:52:11): Palm Beach. She's been at the massage parlor every morning. No. It's He's feeling energous. David Sacks (00:52:15): You're right. It's like a buildup. Over the last 2 weeks, it's like a, you know, Jason Calacanis (00:52:19): Yeah. Big relief. David Sacks (00:52:19): Too much too much towards energy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:22): I mean, how how how little have you spoken in the last 2 weeks? Has Jacqueline spoken the entire 2 weeks? I know what that feels like. So you're right. Jason Calacanis (00:52:29): You're right. David Sacks (00:52:29): I I need I need the bestie therapy. I didn't realize I needed this. Jason Calacanis (00:52:33): Absolutely. Bestie therapy. Bestie therapy. David Sacks (00:52:35): So is the audience. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:36): Jacob Friedberg, you guys you don't know this, but Sacksi and I called each other on Friday, and we spoke for half an hour. Jason Calacanis (00:52:42): And like I said, it was a podcast. David Sacks (00:52:44): It's a Jason Calacanis (00:52:44): fucking morrison. You know, you've conquered a mobile phone. We were so lonely. He did. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:50): He actually conference called the all David Friedberg (00:52:51): four of us. I picked up, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:52): and we spoke for half an hour. David Friedberg (00:52:54): it felt like a mini pod. It was so wonderful. Jason Calacanis (00:52:56): Oh my god. Oh my god. You know what? Men are too proud to men are too proud to go to therapy so they start podcast. David Friedberg (00:53:02): I would tell friend Jason Calacanis (00:53:02): of mine. I was I was David Friedberg (00:53:03): telling I was telling a friend, like, this podcast was kind of one of the surprising joys of my life over the last year. It really felt like a great Wait a second. Jason Calacanis (00:53:10): You got the joy? Oh, we had to update your joy. We did -- You Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:13): download a joy? David Friedberg (00:53:14): Yeah. I acknowledge joy now. Jason Calacanis (00:53:16): Okay. He's there, but smiling. Wow. It's incredible. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:19): Okay. Sacks. Go tell us about booty. Yeah. David Sacks (00:53:20): Tell us about booty. Yeah. Let me find the the tweet. So, basically, you remember in the last 5 weeks ago, We Jason was supposed to be on our pod. He canceled. And so then in response to that, Jason hold the chicken noises for a couple of minutes here. Hold on. So I responded to Chases saying, listen. You don't have to come on our pod, but I'll challenge you to debate. Let's do a debate, whatever format you want. and we posted it on on Twitter. So he didn't respond, but it by the way, it got, like, a 180,000 views. So a lot of people watched the challenge. And so but the crazy thing is instead of responding directly, Chasa had a high school friend and campaign worker post a blog responding to me, which and and Jason got mentioned too. But it was crazy. It was like, why won't you just respond directly? Anyway, he had this this shale respond. And what he basically said was in this response was he cited all these charging statistics, and he tried to claim that Chase has charged just as many cases as the previous DA. The problem with that is charging doesn't really mean anything because You can charge someone and then plead the charges down from a felony to a misdemeanor. It doesn't mean that the person was actually punished. It doesn't mean that you locked anybody up. It it doesn't mean that you actually got a conviction to a serious crime or protect the public from anything. The the real question is not chargeings but dispositions of cases. And that's the real that that's the data that we need. And I know there's a bunch of reporters who are trying to get that data. and Chase's office won't give it to him. Mhmm. And so, you know, I would I would challenge this this little Chase volunteer you know, go find out, you know, what what is the real data on, you know, how many felony charges have been pleaded down to misdemeanors. Right? How many felonies have actually been prosecuted? David Sacks (00:55:10): How many felony convictions? It's interesting to bring this up. Jason Calacanis (00:55:12): It's interesting you bring this up. If you do a search for a GoFundMe, Chesobuddin. The number one result should be the the the GoFundMe page I started, it now has 455 donors and Speaker 1 (00:55:26): $54,000 Jason Calacanis (00:55:28): in funding. And so I am withdrawing the Speaker 1 (00:55:31): $54,000 Jason Calacanis (00:55:33): And I have a meeting with the woman from the Marina Times, who's done great coverage of this. And I'm also looking for some data scientists And I'm going to give the money minus some insurance for when Chesapeake and some Harrison emissions insurance, and I'm gonna be giving $1000 to a journalist or a data scientist, or they can spend it however they want to to attack this very issue, which is just put more sunlight on it. And so Chessebuddin is not happy with me. He's not happy with Saxx, but we are going to put the spotlight on him. And it will be through journalism, and it will be through constant pressure. And you can help. If you wanna donate a $100, go just donate it to that. I'm not taking any money, obviously. This is a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:16): really interesting Civic experiment, I think, for the rest of the country. And I I wanna say that I I don't know enough of these details. I go up to San Francisco every now and then. I don't I've not liked what Jason Calacanis (00:56:25): I've seen. It's scary. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:27): it's great that you guys are standing up for your city. The the thing is I wonder how much of these recall movements now will pick up steam not just here, but wherever else they're allowable all around the country. I mean, you know, the San Francisco Board of Education spent all this time and money you know, basically naval gazing on the renaming of schools. And then finally, just because they were just so utterly embarrassed basically had to bag that. Could you imagine that in the most technically advanced and most progressive city in the world basically, with the kinds of companies and people that we have here, that that's what people were thinking about during the middle of a pandemic when children are at home. Okay. You have this DA who's gonna get basically recalled. In Los Angeles, you have a DA that's gonna get recalled. In California, you have an entire governor of the state that's gonna get recalled. So what are we learning? We're learning that people can actually small numbers of people can be extremely effective at getting changed on. Speaker 1 (00:57:22): -- Jason Calacanis (00:57:23): that they represent us and that the distance between what the public clearly wants and what some of these bought and paid for radically insane people, both on the left and the right, that needs to stop. And if people are, you know, going to Not listening to their constituents, we need to stop them. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:43): People want people want centrism. They want simple sentiment. 100%. Rease people want reason. David Friedberg (00:57:49): Yeah. The silliness is that the San Francisco Board of Education people are elected. When have any of you or any of the people that I know in San Francisco ever actually looked up who's the person on the board of education. It's not really a topic that people have paid much attention to. And I think that this experience when you don't pay attention from a civic perspective on who your elected officials are and take an action in electing them, you wake up when a crisis like this occurs, and you're like, oh, shit. Maybe I should pay attention the next time there's an election, and maybe I should be more active and be more thoughtful, or maybe we should end up in a situation where you allow the mayor or the board of supervisors to appoint the board and have an approval process where there's a little bit more kind of not just anyone that wants to get elected, puts themselves on the ballot, gets elected. No one really pays attention to who's getting elected, and then you wake up to this crisis. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:36): Isn't isn't it true that, like, in the board of education, there was the whole thing came to a head because they were trying to, like, staff a committee again to waste time on some bullshit. David Sacks (00:58:45): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:46): Here -- And some guy some guy raised his hand. And, you know, he happened to be this, you know, gay person in a mixed cultural marriage, I think, and he wanted to be a part of this committee, and he had been kind of like a really good thoughtful participant. And they said no because he wasn't diverse enough or something. David Sacks (00:59:05): Yes. That's that's exact that's exactly what happened. There was a school board meeting. It started at 4 PM. Okay? 4 PM. And this was the first issue they discussed is whether the like you said, this this gay white man was diverse enough to be on a committee. It was a committee where he was volunteering his time. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:21): Time. It's good time. David Sacks (00:59:22): Everybody thought that he'd be additive. I mean, you know, everybody liked him, but they spent several hours debating whether they should put him on for diversity reasons. because he wasn't Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:32): he wasn't woke enough. David Sacks (00:59:33): Right. Exactly. Then they spent their time talking about renaming schools and taking Abraham Lincoln's names off schools. and even renaming schools. They didn't even know why certain names were what they Speaker 1 (00:59:44): -- David Friedberg (00:59:44): They got the people wrong. David Sacks (00:59:45): They got the people wrong. And then basically, they didn't even get to the issue of school reopening until midnight. So 8 hours later, and then everyone basically had gone to bed and the meeting ended. I mean, literally, this is what and so the the the parents Speaker 1 (00:59:57): -- David Friedberg (00:59:57): It's like an asset else kit. It's like insane. David Sacks (01:00:00): It's it's insane. And so, you know, the parents are up in arms, and this is triggering a recall move the parents just want the schools reopened, and you keep getting these responses from the school board where where they keep saying, oh, we're we're listening to your concerns or whatever. They keep trying to process them, but they're not doing anything about it. You know? And then and then they say, well, In order for us to reopen, we need to establish our testing infrastructure, and we're putting an RFP out for that and blah blah blah. And it's like, what are you talking about? Private schools, have reopened. Just reopened. You know, just reopened. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:33): What do you guys think about Joe Biden's 1st sort of 60 days in office? Jason Calacanis (01:00:40): Executing at a high level with the vaccine. I mean, opening up all those FEMA sites and getting to 2 million shots a day on average is undeniably great. the fact that he used the War Power's Act to force Merck and to to do the j Johnson and Johnson, and to work with Johnson Johnson to increase production undeniable. I'm not and I'm not happy about, you know, the teachers and him cowering to the teachers. And I'm not happy about just the hint that he wants to start the war machine up again. So, you know Yeah. David Sacks (01:01:12): Bomming Syria. Who wants who here wants to bomb Syria? It's like a right of passage. I don't Jason Calacanis (01:01:16): wanna I don't wanna stop talking. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:17): I just need anymore. Where where where the fuck is Syria? Does anybody know? I mean, why the what? What? What are we doing? David Sacks (01:01:24): I mean, if -- Our our policy Jason Calacanis (01:01:26): is -- -- key issues for me. There's the teachers and the bombings. I I don't want back. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:30): I I'd say I I give him an 8 out of 10, Jason, because I think the pandemic has been so well handled by him in science and that team. I think they've done a very good job. But those 2 things those 2 things are huge black marks for me. Like, he and and Bloomberg ripped him Speaker 1 (01:01:44): 1. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:44): You know? And Mike Bloomberg was on TV and he was just like, that is a joke. The teachers' unions are jokes, and you need to basically tear these people to the ground. You have to they and you cannot allow these folks to hold an entire generation of kids' hostage. Okay. So then David Friedberg (01:02:00): and then Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:01): the day I think it was the same day or the day after. Unfortunately, Biden kinda capitulated to the teacher's union, not cool. And then this the bombing of Syria was kind of like, why? Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:02:12): This let's use sanctions. Let's use money. I mean, The the legacy of Trump, I think, not starting wars was the one thing and then him, you know, just backing up the brings truck for the light speed. Those are the 2 best things he did. And those are two things that we should say. You know what? He got those things right. Let's carry those forward. We have to crack the teacher's unions The teacher's union the the voucher system is the only way to do it, and it's very reasonable to say parents who are paying Shit tons of taxes should be able to take that money and educate their kids however they damn please. And if we're gonna spend 15, $20,000 per student on public patient as a parent, whether you're in Brooklyn or Boise, Idaho, you should have access to that 15 k, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:55): and you should pick Jason Calacanis (01:02:55): where it goes. and you should take control of it. That's the way to stop this meshugonna. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:01): Jake, I had the I had the this crazy realization as you were saying this, which is like, if you said if I said to you, you know, electricians union, I would say, thumbs up. Auto Workers Union, thumbs up. SEIU, thumbs up. Nurses' unions, thumbs up. But if I say teachers unions, I just have this incredibly negative connotation now of an incredibly political class of people who are going completely out of their way to basically just, like, have exceptions and asterisks that apply to them and them only. It's I don't I don't is am I the only one that feels that way? It just seems like It's trending to where, like, teachers' unions almost becoming a four letter word. David Friedberg (01:03:42): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:42): I don't think they care about teachers. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:03:43): They they don't care about students. These David Friedberg (01:03:44): teachers -- But you need Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:45): but you need the general to do a very important job. Speaker 1 (01:03:47): -- Jason Calacanis (01:03:47): while the students But Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:48): I think unions in general do a really important job. And I think that, you know, like, all these other unions, I have a very positive thought about what they're meant to be. You you Jason Calacanis (01:03:56): can be pro union or pro organized labor, but be against this specific union. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:01): That's what I'm saying. Jason Calacanis (01:04:02): Just like you can be pro reforming criminal justice and the unfairness of it while still being against Chesobutin's insanity that people should be able to be murdered and killed and beaten in the streets -- Infuniti. Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:04:15): -- Jason Calacanis (01:04:15): with impunity. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:16): Well -- Like, this is -- Yeah. Speaker 1 (01:04:17): -- Jason Calacanis (01:04:17): the these this is not an even this is a completely logical position to have. I want to not put people in jail for cannabis sales, and I wanna remove people from non for nonviolent offenders from the the incarceration. You can believe that. while believing you should incarcerate somebody who murders somebody. This is not a hard logic to understand. Right. David Sacks (01:04:39): Totally. No. You're right. I mean, the the the the it's it's a combination of ideology and special interests working against common sense and what the average citizen wants. You know? Right. And do you see do Jason Calacanis (01:04:53): you see what happens? Republican or not Republican or Democrat, David. You and I agree on this. And we're on other David Sacks (01:04:59): side of things. We just want common sense government that functions for the people as opposed to special interests or these radical ideologies. Jason Calacanis (01:05:06): I wanna have a couple of pops at the battery and go walk to another bar without having to fear that somebody's gonna stab me for my goddamn iPhone. know, or or or some poor kid's gonna get attacked by somebody deranged out of their mind on fentanyl. David Sacks (01:05:21): Look. This is why Newsom's gonna get be called is because crime and education are just fundamental issues. We do not feel safe in our cities. Crime is out of control, and we're going crazy that we can't send our kids to schools. These are issues that affect cities and suburbs. Everyone's on the same page. And I think you're right that the teachers' unions have overplayed their hand and exposed themselves as not caring about the kids, just looking out for their own benefits, they wanna be on paid vacation forever effectively. And do you see there was a great example where an Oakley which is a town in the East Bay. The whole they were caught on recorded on zoo. Jason Calacanis (01:05:55): Oh, the hot mic? David Sacks (01:05:56): Yeah. The hot there's a hot mic where the entire school board was forced to resign because they got caught mocking parents for for, quote, wanting their babysitters back so they could smoke pot. I mean, the cynicism here is unbelievable. I mean, these these people are supposed to care about teaching young people, and they and they view themselves as just babysitters. Yeah. You know? Jason Calacanis (01:06:17): And they view parents as stoners. Yeah. I mean Speaker 1 (01:06:20): -- David Sacks (01:06:21): We we gotta shake up this system. And and and the problem is Competition. We need competition. And look, the problem is that that the peep that when you have unions, running the schools. There's no reward for excellence. The bad the bad people don't get fired and the good people don't get rewarded. So they, you know, Jason Calacanis (01:06:38): If you're pro if you're anti competition, you are a moron. Everything in this world gets better when people compete on the playing field in the arena to build better products and services. And in health care and in education and in housing, the government And dare I say it the far left is stopping people from competing. We should look at ourselves as customers. And that's what's happening right now. People are saying, we're the customer, Gavin Newsom and Chesobuddin, we don't want that product. That product, get the hell get the hell out of here with that product, and give us something reasonable. No person who's Republican, no person who's democratic, doesn't want safety, and doesn't want comp education education. The only people who don't who want to stop competition education are special interests. Period. David Sacks (01:07:30): Amen. Man. You've been you've Jason Calacanis (01:07:32): been -- Sorry. These red David Sacks (01:07:33): pills are Jason Calacanis (01:07:34): fucking great. David Sacks (01:07:34): Man, these red pills. Jason Calacanis (01:07:35): Wow. These are Peter Thielzer. God, man, I thought Adderall was good, but, god, these Miami, Keith were boy, Pete Peter Kiel. Stanford Red Pills got me lit. I'm ready to go. Alright. Anybody give a shit about NFTs? Non fungible tokens, mean, I think it's kinda brilliant, but Speaker 1 (01:07:57): -- Jason Calacanis (01:07:57): By the way, don't we only have 2 minutes? 2 minutes. And if -- I I David Sacks (01:08:00): think we should wrap I think we should wrap up the Red pills. I mean, You can't beat that. That was hot. Speaker 1 (01:08:04): -- Jason Calacanis (01:08:04): beat some red pills. David Sacks (01:08:06): That was hot. Jason Calacanis (01:08:06): When are we gonna see each other? I I can't take it anymore. I'm like a caged animal. I need to get out of here. I need to get Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:12): on one of your planes Speaker 1 (01:08:13): -- Jason Calacanis (01:08:13): I'm doing a -- -- freepurg. Where's your plane? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:15): Get me home in a way poker game on Wednesday Thursday. Wednesday in LA, Thursday up here. but it's 500 and a 1000, Jason. Jason Calacanis (01:08:24): Oh. Oh. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:26): And you gotta play both, Chase. You gotta play both, Jason. You can't play one or the other. You gotta play both, Jason Calacanis (01:08:30): Oh, boy. David Sacks (01:08:31): Chamath is trying to make his billions back. Jason Calacanis (01:08:33): I don't know if I wanna be in a five hundred one one k game, though. David Friedberg (01:08:37): I'm gonna go pass him any different than the normal game. I mean, like, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:40): In facts. In fact. Jason Calacanis (01:08:41): I just you know, you can't limp in which races. It's just you're gonna get demolished. You got 4 callers at yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:47): Yeah. Rick Solomon will jump the fence with a 7, 8, and buster. And and laugh. I'm laughing. David Friedberg (01:08:52): Nick, he got Nick, he got added all this out. Jason Calacanis (01:08:54): No. You don't. This is the best part. The the Matcha king of Malibu. The Malibu Malibu king. Speaker 1 (01:09:00): -- Jason Calacanis (01:09:00): of Malibu. Tell them, I'll take a match with Echoey. Alright, everybody. For the queen of Kinois, for Rainman David Sachs, and 4 the demolished dictator will rebuild. I believe in you, Chamonte. You can rebuild it. You can rebuild that chippet a chair. Come on. Let's get back in the game, chip in a chair. Give us another. IPO, g h, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:21): whatever. Kill. Jason Calacanis (01:09:23): Let's go, everybody. and we'll see you next time. Love you, guys. Thanks to our sponsors Speaker 1 (01:09:27): -- Jason Calacanis (01:09:27): Bye, guys. -- that don't exist. David Sacks (01:09:28): Okay. Thank you. Gotcha. Jason Calacanis (01:09:29): Back at you. Ditto. I love you besties. Speaker 5 (01:09:34): We'll let your winners ride. Jason Calacanis (01:09:37): Rainman, David Sacker. Speaker 5 (01:09:42): We open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. Jason Calacanis (01:09:50): like, white hair winter's ride? Besty's RV. That is my dog's know this is your driveway. Speaker 5 (01:10:04): We should all just get a room and just have one think you, George, because they're all just useless. It's, like, this, like, sexual tension, and they just need to release them out. Jason Calacanis (01:10:13): What? You're the VP. What? David Sacks (01:10:15): You're every Pure feet. Jason Calacanis (01:10:16): Sweat. Sweat. Where did you get Murphy's arms back?