拜登疫苗强制令、分配中的「公平」、NFT 投机与通胀冲击

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:03): I mean, I think it's incredible. Zoda's Friedberg style. Jason Calacanis (00:00:11): The lighter winter side. Rainman David Sanders. Speaker 3 (00:00:22): Love you Speaker 4 (00:00:27): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Be all in podcast. It's been a week. It's been a minute with us today, of course. The queen of Kinwad, David Friedberg, and The rain man himself calling in from a nondescript mansion in 1 of 17 cities, Jason Calacanis (00:00:44): the rain man himself, David Sacks. Speaker 4 (00:00:47): and cackling like a dictator who got his 2 Billy back, and he's back in the game. Chamath Palihapitiya Jason Calacanis (00:00:57): for those of you David Sacks (00:00:57): who -- He's re he's reorganized. He reorganized? Jason Calacanis (00:01:00): Is he gonna get a car with doors that go like this? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:03): Doors that go like this. Doors that go like this. Jason Calacanis (00:01:07): Let's talk a little bit about the vaccine. Biden says everybody who's an adult is qualified by May 1st has instructed the states to do that. We are now hitting 2 point x 1,000,000 a day. We had a 3,000,000 shot day, I believe, Friedberg and, obviously, the $1,900,000,000 COVID slash Everybody gets a big slice. Bill got passed. 1,900,000,000,000 David Friedberg (00:01:32): with a key. Sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:01:32): That's what I said. 1,900,000,000,000. No. Somebody put 1,900,000,000,000 in the notes. Yes. 1,900,000,000,000 1,900,000,000 is what the COVID -- David Friedberg (00:01:39): As as Saks Jason Calacanis (00:01:40): has said in the past -- -- went for. The COVID NFT went for 1.9. As Saks David Friedberg (00:01:43): has said in the past, a trillion here or trillion there, -- soon enough. It's real money. Yeah. David Sacks (00:01:48): Yeah. Well, Biden Biden's speech really kinda beg the question of why we still need this $2,000,000,000,000 bill if COVID is gonna be over in May. But putting that aside, I think Biden's speech was very welcome in that He called for states to drop all of these crazy eligibility requirements that are actually preventing people from getting vaccinated at this point. He says that every adult, American should be able to get a dose by May 1st. And he's right. And, you know, there's a sharp contrast with Gavin Newsom in California who keeps playing Speaker 3 (00:02:19): political games with the administration of these doses. So in California, yesterday, David Sacks (00:02:19): just yesterday, we added Jason Calacanis (00:02:27): 250,000 more doses of unused in inventory. So we the amount grew to 4,500,000 David Sacks (00:02:28): unused doses sitting on a shelf. Only 215,000 people got vaccinated. So we're actually building inventory faster than we were building the population of people getting vaccinated. And it's because of all these crazy rules and requirements. You have to go make an appointment. You know? And that really actually it's counterproductive because it discriminates against people who are less computer savvy, don't know how to navigate the website, or, you know, communities who don't wanna enter their name in a government database, which, you know, there's a lot of people in California who don't wanna, you know, put put their names in a government database. And so it works against those communities getting vaccinated. At this point, we should just drop all the requirements, drop the website, let anyone who wants a vaccine just get in line and get vaccinated, it'll go much faster. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:17): The problem is that we we throw around this word equity and that we need to do something with equity. And in fact, I think that people who use that word are stupid. I think what they're trying to say actually is we don't want inequity. And the most inequitable thing is to actually take the most impoverished and fragile of the population and prevent them from actually getting the vaccine because they're the ones that actually need to be working and can't afford to actually not work or can't afford to be sick or can't afford to you know, find solutions to childcare. I it's this weird word that, like, you know, the extreme left uses now to to describe policies that are just frankly poorly thought out and even more poorly executed. Jason Calacanis (00:04:01): It might even be more pernicious than that. Correct? Friedberg in that anybody who gets a shot is helping everybody else because they are now a block in the system. I know this is incredibly simplistic, but I'm a simplistic guy, and it just seems to say that. It's a David Friedberg (00:04:16): it's a different way of thinking about the benefit of vaccination. And I've said it in the past but the benefit of vaccination is to get enough people vaccinated that the virus generally stops spreading and then the pandemic ends. And that's the objective. It's not about creating equitable protection for individuals. And as Americans, it's interesting we think about it in terms of an individual benefit. It's like how much do I get? What do I get from this vaccine? I wanna get protected. The other guy's getting protected before me. Who gets to go first? Yada Yada, and it becomes this kind of competitive, you know, frothing for a vaccination. And the reality is if we get enough people vaccinated fast enough, the pandemic ends. If we can get 200 million shots in arms, this goes back to, I think, this tweet I sent in in early January, December. If we get 200,000,000 shots in arms, we can be done with the pandemic based on, you know, how many the efficacy of transmission rate reduction combined with the fact that a certain number of people have already developed immunity to this thing, we get to the point that there should be kind of a, you know, think about a network and you start turning nodes off the network suddenly becomes really hard to see transmission happen across the network. And and so the prioritization of, you know, who gets the vaccine over, you know, how fast we are deploying the vaccine has been a critical error from day 1 in my opinion. Now look, all that being said, I feel like we could sit here and criticize and argue about tactics and strategy all day long about this and and, you know, make politicians look like idiot administrators look like idiots. But the truth is, we are now seeing 3,000,000 shots a day. In Biden's speech, he's which If you'll remember is what I said we really should be targeting is about 1% of the population every day, and that's roughly where we are. Biden said in his speech that we are in a war footing, which is effectively what we said the other day. The federal government is operating 600 mass vac sites, and we are, right now, getting and arms. David Friedberg (00:06:06): For all of the issues with prioritization and nonsense that's going on, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:10): I feel Jason Calacanis (00:06:10): -- David Sacks (00:06:10): In the United States. I agree with the I agree that Biden has the correct posture on this, which is war footing. We are not doing that in California. I mean, I just talked about how we're building inventories faster than we're getting vaccines. administered. Newsom just announced that 40% of the vaccines are now gonna be basically separated out and reserved for equity zones. And, you know, it's it's Jason Calacanis (00:06:34): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:34): What does that even mean? David Sacks (00:06:35): It means that certain communities only people in certain communities can get those vaccines. and they're gonna be distributed out through this complicated system of local community groups. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:06:45): All that does is put money through some no bid contract to some shitty technical company, a bunch of consultants that then take advantage of the system get paid 100 of 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 of dollars to to do nothing. I mean Jason Calacanis (00:06:58): -- David Sacks (00:06:59): Right. Exactly. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:00): I tweeted out there's this bot that now scrapes. And and by the way, before I tweeted out this thing about this bot, which is, I think Jason Calacanis (00:07:06): -- Yeah. I sent it to you. It's the it's the California vaccines available bot. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:11): Exactly. And all it does is it it it's it scrapes that my turn ca website. But before that, in our group chat, there is another friend of ours who wrote his own scraper, if you guys remember. And it was really shocking because all it would show is page after page after page of completely open and available vaccine vaccine slots. Yeah. You know, at the Moscone Center and other places, And you think all of this stuff is just a bunch of I'll be blunt. rich white people sitting in a room with their head up their ass. And they come up with these stupid fucking rules and then they try to implement them with words like equity and all that happens is that you compound inequality. And and and let's go let's David Sacks (00:07:51): go back and let's go back to Friedberg first point, which is that all these unvaccinated people who can't get vaccinated faster become a giant petri dish for the virus to continue continue spreading and experimenting. Oh, I'm morphing. And morphing. So maybe we actually do get a vaccine resistant strain. The new strains, the variants have been popping up so far, are not a vaccine resistant. But the longer the pandemic goes on, the longer there's a chance that one could arise. And then we're back to Square 1 on this thing. So it's gonna hurt everybody. And and and here's the crazy thing is that, you know, I think we all know a lot of I know dozens of people. who've been vaccinated in California. And they all come to me and tell me they're whispering about it. You know? Because they don't wanna tell anyone that got vaccinated. canceled. they're scared of being canceled because, you know, Newsom and and and the equity people have created this idea that if you get a vaccine, you're taking away from somebody else. In reality, you're not because anybody who's high risk has already gotten the vaccine by now or has had access to get the vaccine. And all you're doing right now, if you get the vaccine, is taking a dose off the shelf where there's 4,500,000 doses sitting there, and it's increasing by millions every week. And so what we need to do is well, let me make a PSA, actually. Starting on Monday, you anyone in California can get the vaccine with a doctor's note. And they're saying that doctors have total discretion to give the note. So let me just make a PSA to everyone out there. If you're in California, just go get a doctor's note starting on Monday, and go get the vaccine. Yep. You know, stop stop worrying about Newsome stupid rules. David Friedberg (00:09:21): Well, it's also just be remember. So two points on that. Not everyone has the ability to go just get a doctor's note. It's really hard for people that that have to go to public clinics and so on to get a doctor's note. What we are seeing is a lot of people just hacking the website almost like Soviet Union era breadlines where they go to the website, they type in something that's not true to get themselves a slot. and that's how a lot of people are kinda filling the void. The reality is and I just wanna go back to the point I was making at the beginning. I think we're skating out of this thing. And I think that the inventory surplus, which is absolutely being built up at a staggering rate in the United States right now. If you look at the inventory forecast, from J And J, Pfizer, and Moderna relative to the deployment rate of the vaccines right now, you are correct. We are building up a surplus and inventory surplus, and the of build up per day is increasing right now. Jason Calacanis (00:10:08): You said 1,000,000 extra shots a day, 2,000,000 extra shots a day being brown shots. David Friedberg (00:10:12): It has a little brain. Jason Calacanis (00:10:12): -- David Friedberg (00:10:12): to a 1,000,000. And so we're building up an inventory And so what happens Jason Calacanis (00:10:15): -- -- of the 30,000,000 we we have already in inventory. David Friedberg (00:10:19): So so what's happening is there are natural market dynamics where we are all pointing out and saying is starting to play out in terms of people kinda hacking the system. There is so much supply. There are many vaxxites now. You can go to any supermarket, any pharmacy in California to get a shot. and everyone's just clicking the box and saying, yes, I qualify, and they're going in and getting shots. So the market demand is starting to meet the supply even though there are government and regulatory forces that are trying to inhibit that from taking place. And so I do feel pretty good when you look at kind of the inventory forecast and you look at how many shots are being given per day, that in 45 days or so, we're gonna get to a point that we're starting to skate out of this thing and and kinda call it a -- Can I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:10:54): ask you can I ask you a question? David Friedberg (00:10:56): Despite the idiocy of the the process that regulators have gotta put in place. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:10:59): Fredericks, I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:00): just have a quick science question because I I was trying to find the answer to this, but I I would love for you to tell us. What is the real efficacy of the vaccine and what is your transmitability? Like, you're you're carrier status once you've gotten, for example, like, you know, let's just say you take the the Pfizer vaccine. Right? Yeah. If you get the Pfizer vaccine, How many days until this is, like, pretty good? And, you know, like, what is really the risk profile between the first shot and the second shot? David Friedberg (00:11:31): I'll share this link and then we can post it on the Jason Calacanis (00:11:34): -- Show notes. -- David Friedberg (00:11:35): on the on the show notes, and people can take a look at it. But it's an excellent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing basically a population of unvaccinated against Pfizer vaccinated with half a1000000 in each population, half a1000000 people. Jason Calacanis (00:11:48): Yeah. And David Friedberg (00:11:50): yeah. And they showed basically the accumulated infection rate, severe hospitalization rate, and death rate of each of the 2 populations over time. And that really kind of, I think, highlights the efficacy of the vaccines and at what time period they become efficacious on each of those metrics. And by the way, even after the first dose across a population of half a million people, the margin of error on death shows that there may even be complete protection against death after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine within Jason Calacanis (00:12:20): 7 David Friedberg (00:12:21): days of getting that shot. Pretty powerful statistic. Jason Calacanis (00:12:23): What just to describe the chart for those people listening, you have 2 populations and one's in blue, one's in red. and it's the time is, you know, in days on the bottom axis. And when you get to day 8, one line goes sideways and the other one goes keeps going straight up. So it's day 8 after the Pfizer that you're basically protected according to this chart, and that's on the first shot. And, like, I think it adds, like, 1 or 2 cases David Friedberg (00:12:48): Yeah. But that's right. Jason Calacanis (00:12:49): There have been zero deaths. So I think day 8 is the day. And the second dose seems like to me, you know, it's just this unbelievable extra Another amazing chart, which maybe we can dump in the show notes, is what's happening in San Francisco. We hit 10 thousand shots a day at the end of February, March 1st. We're doing now 2000 shots a day. So we literally have dropped 70% or so. We're at 3000 shots a day from the peak. David Friedberg (00:13:14): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:13:14): So this crazy wokeness is resulting in, you know, in this this virtue signaling that, you know, oh, we can't give any shots to anybody unless we get this first or that group first is now leading to everybody hacking the system. The hack that I've heard is since teachers are getting it, childcare people and food service people are getting it, people are now starting to get jobs at DoorDash or saying they're a teacher. And if you check that box according to you know, the back channel that I've heard, you'd go get the shot, and you don't get they don't ask you for anything. Not just on your driver's license. No David Friedberg (00:13:48): one's checking. Jason Calacanis (00:13:50): It's just a drive. Speaker 3 (00:13:50): The David Friedberg (00:13:51): pharmacies, the grocery stores, the mass fax sites, the SFDPH, California DPH administered sites, the federal sites, no one's checking. You sign up, you check a box on the website. It says, I attest that this is true, and then you go and show your ID and get your shot. And so a lot of people have kind of initially started skirting around the rules by going to be a DoorDash driver for a day or what have you and then saying I'm a food and ag worker. And then now, generally, people I think are just clicking on the box and going in and getting a shot. Now the sorry. The just to go back on the previous question, Shamak, I I shared a figure 2, Nick, in this paper I shared particularly box e shows the deaths due to COVID 19 of a vaccinated population, a non vaccinated population, and then it shows documented SARS CoV 2 infection. And you'll see that you basically have almost no incremental infections in the vaccinated population starting around 28 days after your first dose. And so, you know, that's really when you could say you've got, you know, really good kind of protection from the vaccine, and you're already starting to get the benefits early on. antibody studies have also shown that there's this big jump up that happens around that period of time. And so call it 3 weeks after your first shot, and then in particular, 4th week, you're really kind of, like, locked in with a a protective, you know, capacity Now your question around transmissibility is one that's still being studied, which is if I've got a vaccine, am I gonna be able to pick up the virus and transmit it to someone else? Right now, you know, they're saying, well, we don't have evidence one way or the other. But, I mean, generally, the way that the virus is spread is you develop an infection in your body your body then makes lots of copies of the virus, and then you cough and spit them out in the air, and that's how people get it. So, theoretically, you could carry some virus on your mouth or on your nose where those cells don't have immune protectiveness and, you know, the vaccine the virus is still alive, but it's not spreading in your body. You're not creating a lot of superfluous virus to to spread in in the world. David Friedberg (00:15:41): So you know, the the basic science of it is you should not be spreading COVID if you've been vaccinated. Right? I mean, you may have someone in your skin or in your nose or something for a short period of time. but you're not gonna develop a systemic infection that you're then gonna kind of start exerting everywhere. So I think we should we we should we should start to transition to this world of feeling really good and say, and enjoying ourselves. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:16:01): We hit 500,000 shots a day sacks in California, and now we're down to a 150,000. We've literally gone down 2 thirds under the management -- Yeah. -- of governor hair gel. David Sacks (00:16:13): It's unbelievable. Because because, you know and and what was his in his state of this the state speech, which went over like a lead balloon. Hit the the the most notable quote was we're not going back to normal. Normal was never good enough. Normal accepts inequity. So because there might be some inequity in the world around the wrong person in line getting these doses, we're never going back to normal. And he's briefly ensuring that result by taking forever with these vaccines. But let me let me go back to to to this point about efficacy. So I think Friedberg gave the stats on, look, the bottom line here is that vaccines work. That is the message we should be getting out to people is that they work. And the thing I've been really surprised by the reactions that I'm seeing to my own tweets on Twitter about this is how loud the anti vaxx voices are and how loud and sort of Jason Calacanis (00:17:03): When you say anti vaxx, You you don't mean not take the vaccine. You mean the vaccine doesn't work, and we're never getting rid of COVID. The forever COVID people. David Sacks (00:17:12): Yeah. The well, there's a no. It's it there's there's actually a lot of people on Twitter who got really angry. When I when I just tweeted I tweeted something about how over. Biden's it's over. I tweeted it. It's over. You know? Right. Biden says we can all get the vaccine in May. If if you decide not to do it, that's on you, the rest of us are moving on. And I got a lot of and all I was really saying is, look, once the vaccine's available, There's no need for any of these COVID restrictions anymore. But a lot of people interpreted that to as me saying something that you should be forced to get the the the vaccine or something like that. Now look, I don't think you should be forced to get it, but I think it's highly effective it works. And but I'm surprised at how loud these sort of anti vaxx voices are. It's usually like a conspiracy theory around Jason Calacanis (00:17:58): -- David Sacks (00:17:58): Yeah. -- around the vaccine. And and and I think part of the reason why those voices are are so loud is because they're unopposed because all the people who believe in the vaccine are getting it, but they're all afraid of, like like you were saying, Jake Howell, of being canceled. And so there's a conspiracy of silence around this. You know, what we all need to be saying is, look. Go get vaccinated. It works. Jason Calacanis (00:18:18): Take the win. America. Take the win. We screwed this thing up. for 14 months, can we just take the goddamn win and move on? I'll give you a I'll give you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:25): a little thing that that always pops into my mind and all of these things. Whenever I hear some politician or some, like, naval gazing intellectual use the word inequity. I think, like, this is a power grab. because the word equity is really about ownership. Whereas the word equality is about balance. Right? And and power hungry politicians love the word equity and inequity because it's their opportunity to grab power and to tell us how things should be done or to do things differently in a way where you know, they can enforce their mandate, which is typically ill formed and not very smart. And I would just encourage all of us whenever you hear the word equity or inequity, This huge, huge red light should be going up in your head saying whatever this person says next is a crock of horseshit, and it's probably a power grab. Whereas if you hear people really talking about solving inequality, there's really no mechanism to solve inequality through power. David Sacks (00:19:23): Well, I I think that's a great point around the language that gets used. And I have a similar concern about the way that the word privilege gets used. We used to have a term in this country called Success. You know, people were successful or not. And, you know, success had a connotation of being earned. whereas privilege has a connotation of being unearned. Well, I mean, now sometimes privilege is earned success and sometimes it's unearned. And, you know but but when you start using the word privilege to describe all success, it implies that there's something, you know, unjust or unearned about it, and it needs to be reallocated. So, you know, I that that to me is another one of these political words is we shouldn't be confusing success with privilege. Jason Calacanis (00:20:03): Yeah. David Sacks (00:20:04): The 2 very different things. Jason Calacanis (00:20:05): I have an example of this. Oprah Winfrey is successful. Prince Henry is has privilege. Speaker 7 (00:20:12): It's privilege. Jason Calacanis (00:20:13): It's privilege. I sure the Meghan Markle story final encounter. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:18): I I mean, I do wanna talk about the Meghan Markle story, actually, at some point before the end of this podcast. But before let's do Jason Calacanis (00:20:23): it right now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:23): Yeah. Okay. Joe Lonstel actually also had a tweet, a pretty unapologetic set of tweets around, you know, the miscasting of the this concept of privilege. And I thought it was really on point. I really agreed with what he was saying. And it's effectively what you're saying, David. It's like people right now I find are just so Well, not not people. The people that take the time to wallow in Twitter mostly, at least as I interact with them, are just so bitter. And I think that there is no magnanimous happiness for other people's success anymore. It it I think I think, like, we live in a culture now where everybody feels it is so zero sum when it's not in fact zero sum. and people just begrudge other people's success, especially by the way when it's earned. And the reason is because there's an entire generation of people of all different ages and you know, but this this last 5 or 10 years who tapped themselves out. Now some were legitimately prevented from success, but there's a lot of people that bought into this narrative of, wow, it's a whole -- that's set up against me, so I'm not even gonna try. And they are often the loudest and the most embittered. Jason Calacanis (00:21:38): Absolutely. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:39): And the and the reason is because you know, everybody wakes up in their forties and fifties and starts to rationalize their choices and their lives. And what they really feel deep down inside is, oh my god. I just let an entire decade go by of blaming other people. Yeah. And I think there's a surprisingly large amount of that David Sacks (00:21:57): this ideology of victimization doesn't teach people the right things because you start to think that, you know, if you're wallowing in your oppression, then you don't have agency over your own life. You're blaming other people for not being successful, not getting ahead when what you should be doing is focusing on working and improving your own life and getting ahead. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:14): or also just redefining what happiness means. Happiness doesn't mean what that other person has and then saying, because I don't have that, I have nothing. Happiness is really, like, introspectively figuring out, like, what really makes you complete. And, I mean, not to get too syrupy about it, but it's like, that's what we've also lost the script on. So when you when you put all of these things together, there's just a bunch of people that sit on the sidelines. They either are too scared to enter the arena Or they don't want to enter the arena. They don't want the failure that comes from it because they've grown up in a culture where they had the kindergarten soccer ball handed to them. the gold star and everything they've ever done. Participation trophy. And now what we really need are people in the arena more than ever folks trying and failing, and it's okay. And there's just not enough of them. What instead is, there's just a lot of people who just wanna bitch and complain. David Sacks (00:23:05): And I think this is the backlash to the Meghan Markle interview is is the this miscasting that this is an extremely privileged person or, you know, Harry and Megan both are very privileged. And but but I think what they're trying to do by making all these sort of accusations of racism against their own Chamath is they're trying to ground that privilege in victim status. And and and this is the thing about privilege is privilege is a social concept It's got nothing to do with with success, which is either earned or unearned. And so the way that people get to maintain their privilege is is they again, they grounded in some sort of victimization. It's it creates these very perverse incentives. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:44): My reaction to the Meghan Markle Prince Harry interview was the following. I had a lot of sympathy for what she was saying. But on the other side, I also thought you must have known what you were getting into on the way in. And there was it was and now and look. I'll say this as a Canadian and a Sri Lankan. So the queen and the monarchy is an like, it's I can't describe to you guys because you're not part of the Commonwealth. But It is just a a definitional part of who we are as we grow up. And I don't know what the equivalent American construct is. I guess there isn't one, really. And so, you know, the monarchy is an incredibly important thing. But we all know that it's this kind of, like, anachronistic thing that just kind of yeah. I look. For us, it's not bull Like, I mean, like, if you said to me, despite all my bullshit and raging against the machine and society and blah blah blah and stature and whatever, if if I could be invited to meet Queen, I would be there in 8 nanoseconds. Jason Calacanis (00:24:48): Well, I think the equivalent is the presidency. We we actually feel that way about the presidency. Like, going to visit the president Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:54): is a big deal. David Friedberg (00:24:54): The presidency -- -- presidency is not an endowed kind of circumstance. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:58): There's something about there's something about the my point is, though, we all know a, that it's important, it's a great symbol of of the commonwealth. I'm very proud of all of that. But we also know it's anachronistic, and it doesn't make much sense. And so what What do you what do you think you were marrying into? And I think, you know, my perspective was I felt bad for it. I can't believe, you know, it got to the place where like people wouldn't get help for her when she was sick and, you know, and then they were questioning Harry's or the the kids Archie's skin color. I mean, this is insanity. Like, these people are stuck in the 1800. But then you realize they are actually stuck in the 1800 because they're not allowed to have a normal life. They're not allowed to actually interact. So, you know, are they at fault or they or is the system that creates these sort of, like, voyeuristic you know, exotic animals in a zoo that we call the king, the queen, these princes is the system at fault. I don't know. I I was kind of like Jason Calacanis (00:25:54): 5050 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:55): on the interview, but my perspective was the monarchy is in a really tough spot over the next 30 or 40 years because, again, so now let me tell you where my belief is. I'm kind of a little bummed by the whole thing. The monarchy doesn't mean what what what it used to be for me. David, what's what was more enthralling to Jason Calacanis (00:26:11): you this week? Tucker versus Tyler or the Queen versus Oprah? and Fritz Henry. David Sacks (00:26:18): I didn't I didn't spend I didn't spend a tremendous amount of time on on either one. I mean, look, I if I were if I were Harry, I would probably do the same thing, which is to basically leave look. The first thing I did in my career was lead was quit the the the firm. Right? You know, who wants to work for a firm? You know, it's very tracked. So I don't blame him leaving, going to CALA Fornia, you know, that's what we that's what we all did. Right? And he used me it's a very that's a very entrepreneurial American thing to do. What what I what I had a problem with was the way they're attacking their own family because they're being paid $7,000,000 to do this interview. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:54): No. No. No. No. Hold on. They were not there was a first question Oprah asked, and and they were very clear they were not getting paid. Now they did sign David Sacks (00:27:01): a 100 -- Who made the 7,000,000 then? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:03): No. Oprah did. Harper did. David Sacks (00:27:04): Oh, Oh, she's a genius. Jason Calacanis (00:27:06): Yeah. She's a genius. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:08): Let's work on clearing it again. Oprah Oprah is our queen. But it appears she's like a natural queen of America. Right. Oprah is the queen. She gets Oprah figured out Speaker 3 (00:27:16): a way David Friedberg (00:27:16): to get it. David Sacks (00:27:16): It's even worse it's even worse if they did the interview for free and didn't even get a piece of the back end. So all they did was attack and besmirch their family for for none of that. And and look. I I I I guess my my point is so so why would they do it if it's not even about the money? I mean, it's about this idea of defining their privilege, grounding it in victim status. And I think there's something very fake and phony about that. And I think that's why people had this reaction to it where, frankly, they were Speaker 8 (00:27:44): I I don't think they're on the David Sacks (00:27:45): side of the royal family because it's it is outdated, but I think that there was a lot of skepticism. towards what Harry Jason Calacanis (00:27:52): -- Speaker 3 (00:27:52): I had David Friedberg (00:27:52): a little bit Jason Calacanis (00:27:53): of a problem with the, like, lie from our $15,000,000 Montecito mansion -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:58): No. Jason stopped. -- stopped. I mean, that was not Jason Calacanis (00:28:01): -- -- pay for that house. That was their friend's house. They have a $15,000,000 house. I know, but they also have Speaker 4 (00:28:06): a $15,000,000 house next to Oprah. Well, it's Jason Calacanis (00:28:08): easy for that. David Friedberg (00:28:09): They they bought $1,000,000 house. no. It's public. They put 5,000,000 down and they took out a mortgage. It's -- Oh, okay. -- someone listed this whole thing. Jason Calacanis (00:28:15): No. It's an honest question. Does the do the tax payers of the UK fund the princess. That's the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:20): whole point. They went and did a deal with Netflix, and they start end of Spotify. And now they have a salary, and They're making money like everybody else. So, I mean, I'm not I'm not I don't have an issue with any of that. No. Jason Calacanis (00:28:29): I don't have an issue with that. I thought the taxpayers were funded the lifestyle. They do fund the lifestyle of the other princes. Right? Sure. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:36): Yeah. So, Jason Calacanis (00:28:37): I mean, that's the thing I -- Can David Sacks (00:28:38): we talk about something important? Jason Calacanis (00:28:40): Yeah. Okay. So a Beeple NFT sold for 69,000,000 dollars. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:46): I mean, this week this week Jason Calacanis (00:28:47): is crazy. All the dumbest Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:49): shit happened this week. Taylor Lorenz Jason Calacanis (00:28:51): getting -- Welcome to this week in dumb shit. -- David Sacks (00:28:52): slaughtered on well. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:53): yeah, thanks for getting dumb shit. David Sacks (00:28:55): So I miss I I miss Tucker versus Taylor, but, actually, the the real the the person who took on Taylor that did a brilliant job was Glenn Green Wall. Speaker 3 (00:29:03): Oh, yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:03): I don't David Sacks (00:29:03): know I don't know if you guys read his post, but that was brutal. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. And and, basically, what he said is that, look, you've got these class of reporters out there who their job is to go out and they they're like little hall monitors you know, trying to bus people for whatever they might say in a clubhouse room, not just public figures, but private people too. They're in the business of destroying lives and reputations. You know, that that's their basically, their business model. But then the second, anyone has any criticism for them, they claim it's harassment, which is just absolute nonsense. And they Jason Calacanis (00:29:36): wanna be David Sacks (00:29:36): they wanna Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:37): find Eun from criticism. The only person that was inoculated against social justice woke mister write that article is Glenn Greenwald because he he is You know, he's gay. He's got brown kids. He lives in Brazil, you know, with I mean, it's it's it's like you get Jason Calacanis (00:29:50): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:50): Well, it's not irresistible force moving the e movable meeting the e movable object. David Sacks (00:29:55): He he he's not completely immune because he was he was attacked You know? And and people said pretty nasty things about him, but, yeah, he definitely has some Jason Calacanis (00:30:02): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:02): I think Greenwald is an unbelievable writer who calls it like he sees it. I don't agree with everything he says all the time. But, you know, he's right to call this stuff out. There was another bunch of social justice nonsense this week as well. This this poor guy had to, like, give out this crazy apology tweet because he said you'd like to exercise. What hap wait. What is that story? Okay. This is the greatest. Okay. There's a kiss. I've been telling you, Jason, I want you to exercise I love you. I lost £20. Look Jason Calacanis (00:30:27): at me. I'm looking for Saksipoo. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:28): I wanted yeah. I want both of you guys to go David Sacks (00:30:30): in there. -- about it. Jason Calacanis (00:30:31): Oh, oh, by the way, public service announcement COVID vaccine CA is the bot. So at COVIDvaccine COVID. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:36): COVID vaccine COVID. Jason Calacanis (00:30:37): It just tweets every 5 minutes. A 100 different places you can go pretend to be a DoorDash driver and get a shot. Sorry. I mean, Check a box. Check Speaker 3 (00:30:46): a box. David Sacks (00:30:46): Check a box. Speaker 3 (00:30:47): Check a box. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:47): Check a box. Jason Calacanis (00:30:47): Check a box. Let's roll people. David Sacks (00:30:49): Don't let Newsom Take away your health. Jason Calacanis (00:30:52): Yeah. Don't let Newsom put -- Don't Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:54): focus on equity. Yeah. I mean, while he's at, like Jason Calacanis (00:30:57): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:57): Jason, tell us about this. Okay. Tell us tweet thing, what happened? Jason Calacanis (00:31:00): There's a kid named Dom. He's an entrepreneur. He's building a company. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:03): It's a good company. It's funded by Stripe. You know, it's raised Jason Calacanis (00:31:05): 100 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:06): of 1,000,000 of dollars. Like, good for this guy. Jason Calacanis (00:31:08): Yeah. But he likes to, like you know, he's kinda, like, trying to engage on Twitter, and he basically said, I feel so much better and I'm performing at such a higher level since I got my diet and my exercise right. I mean, people who are not getting their physical right are really underperforming at work. It's such an opportunity or whatever. And then, you know, the the large and in charge, you know, fat is beautiful, you know, contingent, basically, tried to cancel him. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:31:35): Sorry. Wait. Wait. But but did he say that you have to be skinny? Jason Calacanis (00:31:38): No. He just said you will perform if you're fat, you're underperforming basically. He didn't use the word fat, but he said if you're not in shape, you're underperforming at work. which I said, is there science behind this? And, yeah, sure. People show me a 100 studies that show, if you lose weight, you have better concentration and focus. I mean, it's pretty obvious. But he he did the cardinal sin as here. Here, I'll read you the tweet. An important lesson I learned well into my career. If you are not physically fit and healthy, then you are underperforming at work. Pretty basic. Probably not a very controversial, but he did what David Sack always advises and the the the advice he gave to Trump, which is never apologized. And he apologized Dom apologized and took the tweet down, which then the mob really went after him. And he said, I screwed up. and I'm extremely sorry. I have recently spent a lot of energy focused on my fitness eating and sleep in my enthusiasm for my new fitness regime I posted a tweet that was meant to celebrate my new healthy lifestyle, but that's not how it came across. And I see now how it kind of was sensitive my my original phone was. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:45): With all the problems that we have that need fixing, I mean, this is what people were focused on this Jason Calacanis (00:32:52): past here's the sad. Here's the kicker of the apology. This is something I really need to improve on, and I will. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:58): Well, no. No. I'm not making fun of him. I just think it's sad that they told you that the hell is going on? Speaker 4 (00:33:03): No. But I mean, don't apologize. If you believe being healthier is, you know, good, then you should say it and, you know, we'll let Jason Calacanis (00:33:11): the chips roll with it. People can debate it. But, I mean, can't we have a debate about that? Because this is in the middle of a COVID crisis when the top 2 vectors are age and obesity. Period. If you're fat, you die from COVID. That's that's how it works. David Sacks (00:33:25): And you got both those problems. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:28): You're old and fat. Oh, you guys Jason Calacanis (00:33:30): didn't say stupid. Alright. I'm doing good today. Alright. Today, in all in nonsense, apparently, there's so much money in the system that an NFT just sold for $69,000,000. after we talked about the previous one bill he bought for $6,000,000. I don't know that he bought it for $6,000,000. But somebody bought 1 last week. And if t seemed like a real thing. It's reasonable to trade stuff, but $69,000,000 Speaker 3 (00:33:55): for me. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:55): I think it's incredible. I mean, like like, the the I saw the breakdown of, like, the number of bidders here. Let me actually just get this data up because I think you guys will find it really incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:34:05): My thesis on this or my theory there is that there are a bunch of people who have stakes in these crypto assets, and then they all premeditate, decide to buy up these NFTs to get the market started. And then once it started, like -- But Jason, that's -- -- other people do with art. Right? Look. Speaker 3 (00:34:25): You know Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:26): this, but I've been buying art. for a decade plus. And this is exactly how it works in the art market. You know, we go in there, certain people will go and buy. And then what the gallerus says is, oh, did you know that Chamath just bought this piece or such and such a person bought this other piece? And then all of a sudden, the price spins up, and then they feed into it. I mean, this is where you know, an enormous amount of money has been made by Gallarists over the last 20 or 30 years. Now it just happens in a different medium. So the the bidding breakdown by the way, of this NFT's incredible 33 active bidders, 91% of the bidders were new to Kristy's Jason Calacanis (00:34:59): 55% Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:00): came from the Americas. 27 percent of bidders were from Europe and 18% were in Asia. The age breakdown is the most interesting. 6% were Gen Z, so 97 to Jason Calacanis (00:35:10): 2012. 58% Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:12): of bidders were millennials. 94 in between 81 and 96. Wow. Jason Calacanis (00:35:17): 33% Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:18): gen xers and 3% baby boomers. So this is really like a transitional change in, you know, basically deciding what's valuable. And I don't think this I don't think this was any different than, you know, when you had this transition from, you know, sort of impressionist in the art world. Like, if you moved from the body of work where, you know, these impressionist paintings were just going for high tens, low hundreds of 1,000,000 of dollars and I think it peaked around Van Gogh And then, you know, basically, it went from there off of a cliff where you can basically give away impressionist paintings, and everything went to contemporary and, you know, sort of like this postmodern stuff. And that was a decisional change by boomers. David Sacks (00:35:55): What does what does giveaway mean to you, Shamalff? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:00): Hey. About tens of 1,000,000. So David Sacks (00:36:04): okay. Look. I I Speaker 8 (00:36:06): so I think on on David Sacks (00:36:07): the NFT stuff, and and and beephole. He he's Beephole is the artist. There's there's 2 things going on. Right? So one is on a technology level, NFTs, non fungible tokens. There there are it's a legitimate technology for creating provenance on a blockchain. You know, if a piece of art basically gets put on a blockchain. You have perfect provenance. But that doesn't mean that all NFTs are valuable. In fact, most of them won't be. It's just a technology. Then you have the other thing that's happening is on an art level, what these sort of these sort of prestige galleries and so on, they're saying that people is now a major artist. And there's and and the reason someone becomes a major artist is because they usher in, like, an or become representative of some new wave of art like Shamatha's saying. You've got impressionism. You've got modernism. I mean, the reason why Jackson Pollock sells for whatever a Jason Calacanis (00:36:56): $100,000,000 -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:57): No. No. No. 3300 to Jason Calacanis (00:36:59): 600. 3 David Sacks (00:36:59): Okay. It's because he represents an important wave in art. And some of those waves fizzle out and they turn into ponzi schemes and some of them become real. And people are speculating that this digital art will be a major wave, and they're saying that people is the most important artist, and they're kinda betting on that. Now do I think it's gonna last. I don't know. I mean, hard hard hard to say Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:21): probably No. You said the key thing, though. The key feature of NFTs, which I think is amazing, is that you can actually have ownership in provenance written into a blockchain. Now you've take that abstraction. You can apply to all kinds of surface areas, and it makes a ton of sense. any kind of other asset would make sense if you own a car, if you own clothes, if you own watches, if you own wine. What happens if you own a house? Now all of a sudden, if you can prove ownership over this stuff, not only can you trade it, but you can also borrow against it. And I think that that is a really interesting idea where once you financialize all of these physical assets that we own, you do eliminate an enormous amount of inequality in the system because you can actually get real transparent pricing. Like, now could you -- Yeah. David Sacks (00:38:06): Block blockchains blockchains are a ledger. Right? They're a perfect ledger system. And so, like, everything every type of possession that relies on title should eventually be blockchained. So art art's a good example. You know, I helped found a company back in 2017 called Harbor, which was a block chaining real estate. and and and I'm getting acquired. So now -- Acquired or acquired? No. It got acquired. Jason Calacanis (00:38:32): We're we're we're gonna David Sacks (00:38:36): Don't don't worry, Speaker 8 (00:38:36): Jamath. We're gonna make money. We're gonna make money. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:38): As an IP, I just wanted a clarification. David Sacks (00:38:40): Yeah. No. We're we're not gonna make, like, type money, but we'll make a little bit of money on that deal. So so don't worry. But but yeah. Look. I think I think we're in the early early stages of this type of technology. you're gonna see eventually block chaining of every of every type of asset where title is important. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:56): David, I think that this is such an amazing idea because, like, if you think of all of the opaque lending markets where people can't get access to reasonable cost of capital, and they own assets. You know, you end up in these crazy worlds where, like, if you look at the the housing crisis or the great financial crisis, you know, there was like so much crazy lending, but behind that lending was like double triple mortgages. It's happening right now in the car market. All of that stuff doesn't necessarily need to exist because if you have clear provenance and the ability to price risk, you just get people can borrow a reasonable amount of money at a reasonable rate and pay it back and, you know, you can trade assets, you could sell assets. It's a really big deal, I think. David Friedberg (00:39:35): I think if you take a zoom out on the, you know, the notion of what an NFT represents, it's it doesn't feel too dissimilar from other what I would argue is like nonproductive assets. Like, if you think about where one's capital goes, where an individual puts their capital, The first thing is kind of essentials. Right? Things you need like food and medicine and housing and clothing and whatnot. And then you kind of enter into these kind of, you know, non extent, you know, kind of discretionary spending for a consumer, you know, nice stuff, nice clothes, luxury goods, things that are basically gonna diminish Then as you think about allocating the leftover capital, you're either gonna allocate your leftover capital into investable assets that are either productive or nonproductive. A productive asset is something you buy that you expect to return. It it produces some value for you as you own it. such as owning a home where you get the value of living in it or owning a a car where you get the utility of driving around in it or owning a bond which issues a, you know, you know, a coupon or or a stock that's gonna, you know, generate cash flows at some point in the future theoretically. The nonproductive assets are these assets that are just not designed to do that, but they're a store of value that you expect at some point to realize some return. You know, because someone else will pay a higher price to you for that nonproductive asset. This is like a piece of art or, you know, some piece of gold or something. You know, something that you kind of hold or, you know, more increasingly you know, digital assets. And it seems like the explosion in digital assets is, you know, as Jason pointed out at the beginning, like, as we've kind of moved to a highly kind of overvalued segment of productive assets as things that market is very frothy. It's very difficult to kind of find productive assets that are worth putting capital into. there's continually more interest in nonproductive assets across the board because there's excess capital in the system, and it turns out when that happens, there's enough of a market dynamic that emerges in nonproductive assets. David Friedberg (00:41:30): It gives people a reason to put their capital in and expect to have a return on them in the future. as soon as the market starts shrinking, as soon as, you know, you start having effects that are deflationary, you know, money will pour out of that market in general. That's always what happens with the art market and for 100 years. And it's a it's a it it's the digital means of of kind of realizing that, say, market transition that -- My Jason Calacanis (00:41:51): my my question is do you get the rights? I guess this is a dependent on the terms that are set in the smart contract. But in the case of the Beeple, if I were to buy it for 69,000,000, Do I have the rights to it so that I can print T shirts and sell $100 T shirts? That's a great question. -- create 10,000 -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:09): That's a more question. Jason Calacanis (00:42:10): Can I monetize it? what I'm asking. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:12): That's a great, great, great question. I I don't know, but that's a fabulous question. David Friedberg (00:42:16): By the way, because the alternative like, as you pointed out, the artist and and other folks have rights to art, even though the original painting is what's sold, you know, the original a master of a Bruce Springsteen song could be sold to a collector, but the rights the rights on that track for reproducing it and making money off it are owned by a publishing house. Jason Calacanis (00:42:37): So you can own a statistical magnetic tape, but not own the rights to exploit it commercially. David Friedberg (00:42:42): Those rights fall away. So if you about what that NFT represents, it represents that particular chain of electrons and, you know, this is this is these buy these bits that represent this image, And it's not necessarily Jason Calacanis (00:42:54): -- -- make a 100 more, and then -- But he could change -- David Friedberg (00:42:56): He could change one pixel theoretically or two pixels, and he could go print a bunch of stuff and go Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:01): Not really because those images were ones that he had he he had this rhythm of creating, like, one a day, I think, for a David Friedberg (00:43:06): very -- Right. And you contributed them all into this master. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:09): Exactly. So there there's a this is a it's a 1 of 1. Another interesting one of one that just happened was these performance artists or I guess like underground digital artists bought a banksy for a 125 or a Jason Calacanis (00:43:22): $125,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:24): I get 1000 and 1,000,000. It's confused. Alright. Everybody will. That's a that's a juice show. Jason Calacanis (00:43:31): -- you wanna use for this episode is Hashtag canceled Shamoff. Go ahead. Give Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:35): me -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:43:35): Good luck. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:36): Actually, have a good luck. Yeah. Anyways, these four guys bought bought this bank seat for a Jason Calacanis (00:43:44): $125,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:46): They brought it to a warehouse in Brooklyn. They took a high res image of it Okay. So they took a picture of it and they created a 1 of 1 n f t. Right? Okay. then they created a YouTube video of them burning the original banksy. So now Speaker 4 (00:44:02): all you had was the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:06): digital manifestation of this physical thing. Wait for it. And then they sold it for 300 and like Jason Calacanis (00:44:14): $50,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:16): So they three x their money. It's the most incredible story. I I can find the link, and I'll put I'll put it in the show notes as well. But it just shows you what's happening. And then I also think last thing on NFTs, I saw that I think it was like Kings of Leon just put out an album and it was like it's like fifty bucks for a song or something like that and it comes with like a bunch of interesting content. So It's the beginning of something, guys. I just think that you need sort of like popular content to get this movement going, but it seems to me like this is what people wanna do. They wanna own digital assets. They wanna have provenance. They wanna have custodial relationships with it. They wanna basically David Friedberg (00:44:52): it's just like -- It's like art art art and posters. Right? Anyone can put the poster up in their room. Anyone can buy a copy for five bucks. But who owns the original And owning the original may be visually identical, may be graphically identical, but it is truly about that notion of that that theoretical human mind construct of ownership that that that creates that distinction. And you just effectively have to count on other human minds believing the same thing in the future for you to be able to reclaim that value, that that monetary value, or you're gonna take a loss on it. I mean, Timoth, have you ever sold art that you bought Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:26): You know, I've I've sold very little. I tend to buy and accumulate with this idea of eventually endowing something with just because it's like, you know, I think there are two ways to buy art. One is speculatively and the other one is to tell a story. I took the second path And so, you know, it's stuff that means a lot to me. So it's hard for me to part with it even though it sits in a free port in Delaware, so it's not exactly, you know, out and about. with this idea that at some points, people will get to really enjoy it once By David Friedberg (00:45:56): the way, I mean, one of the things that happens in the art world and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but you buy this art and you don't ever a lot of art doesn't get resold. So everyone kinda buys it under the notion that it's gonna be worth more in the future and they can sell it for more, but very few people actually do end up selling it. Jason Calacanis (00:46:10): Nothing. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:11): No. This is so here's here's the -- I guess David Friedberg (00:46:13): in in the trading market. Right? But, like, I mean, generally, like, a lot of collectors end up endowing art or or gifting it. And when you gift it, you get an appraisal done and you get a deduction on the appraised value. Right? And so Jason Calacanis (00:46:25): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:25): You can definitely do it that way. So one one interesting story is that 1 of the large auction houses has a financialer. And the most incredible thing is like over like the last Jason Calacanis (00:46:35): 50 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:36): years, their cumulative default rate was 30 basis points on their book, like, cumulatively. Not like a year or a month, but ever. Nobody defaults. But because they borrow money for the purposes of maybe buying other things or whatever, and then they will very, you know, trade out of things and trade up to things and trade across things. But it's a very vibrant market of buying and selling. It just happens to be very informal and a little bit closed and very much for insiders And, you know, another reason that I think that NFTs will will change because it'll will change this is that it just makes it available to everybody. because you put all art on a very level playing field. And, really, at the end of the day, what is art? It's a commentary on society. And I think that having that level of transparency on that kind of stuff I think is gonna be really valuable because you don't want 1 or 2 people who you fundamentally disagree with as being a taste maker for a kind of art that you think is fundamentally flawed. Right? You'd rather it's just it's no different than being able to go to 95 different media sites to read the content you want or, you know, being able to listen to a 1000 different kinds of music. all of it in its totality is a commentary on society. And I think what society says is we want transparency and we want choice and This is where I think like, that's why I think Jason Calacanis (00:47:55): it is 2. -- is a good a good dovetail into what's happening with stimulus bill and where we started which was is this even necessary? We have stimulus checks going out in the amount of $2000 per individual in households with under a 150 k, I believe, is the income level, which means People who were not impacted financially in any way by what's happened under COVID are gonna get in a family of 5, $10,000 Chamath. even if nobody was laid off Speaker 8 (00:48:27): or -- That's David Sacks (00:48:28): only that's only, like, 9% of the bill, Jason. Jason Calacanis (00:48:31): Yeah. I mean, so it's -- It Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:32): was estimated. It was 450,000,000 out of 1,900,000,000. So Jason Calacanis (00:48:36): what do we think the impact we sort of have 2 questions. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:39): theory. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Jason. Jason Calacanis (00:48:40): What are your general thoughts on this? Is it necessary? And then 2, what's the what what are the 2nd order effects that we each predict will happen over the next 18 months when all of this capital gets injected. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:51): So the the latter is what I've been focused on trying to figure out and I saw some really interesting data, which basically I'll ask you guys the question because maybe you guys know the answer. But if you measure wealth inequality, When do you guys think was the most recent period where there was the least wealth inequality, the least. David Friedberg (00:49:12): What? Sorry. How do you define that? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:15): You can measure it like the gini index or you can measure it as, like, you know, the the gap between the top decile and the bottom decile in terms of wealth and accumulated assets? Jason Calacanis (00:49:25): Well, would it be before the robber Barrons? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:27): No. It was the the Jason Calacanis (00:49:28): -- Between the forbearance and now? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:30): But the period of the least in the quality in in recent history was in the late seventies. which is an incredible stat to say where, like, the gap between the top decile and the bottom decile was, like, you know, kind of like on an index, like, 6065. Whereas today, it's sort of like at a 100. Now what happened then? and it's this is really interesting. David Friedberg (00:49:51): Wasn't that an inflationary period? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:52): There you go. So what happened? And as it turns out, Inflation is a phenomenal way to decrease -- Level of the playing field. Absolutely. It decreases people's richness. So it makes rich people poorer. That's really the most effective tool that you have to recalibrate. It's very, very hard to redistribute money. and I think every attempt at doing that has largely failed. But the one consistent way and if you go back periods before that, you know, into the beginning of the David Friedberg (00:50:22): But in an inflationary environment, borrowing costs go up. So, you know, businesses and people that rely on borrow going to grow their net worth or investing assets to grow their net worth kind of suffer more than people that what have a home, have a, you know, weight wages go in an inflationary environment. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:37): Rates go up, which which actually if you think about, like, what you said before, like, you know, as people get wealthier, they they move their money into essentially financial assets and away from sort of, like, working assets. And when, you know, interest rates go up and the the risk free rate goes up, then the attractiveness of those assets go down. Yeah. And so what happens is shares and technology companies go down. But what what actually also happens is that you your cost of capital for a traditional business because it's higher, they have to then charge more, which means that they're paying their employees more. And those folks on a marginal basis tend to then, you know, take those dollars and spend those dollars. So inflation is this very productive mechanism of actually redistributing wealth and actually -- Homeowners benefit. Homeowners benefit as well. But, like, Jason Calacanis (00:51:24): you know, it shrinks it shrinks the the wealth In a moment. David Sacks (00:51:29): Mild inflation. Mild inflation is probably good. It's it's it's better than probably deflation. But If it tips over into hyperinflation, then it destroys everyone's savings. Right? And rich people have the ability to protect their assets against inflation. a lot better than middle class people do. So, you know, you look at like Venezuela, Weimar Germany, hyperassociate. yeah, people just hyperinflation destroy the value of of of Jason Calacanis (00:51:57): -- Where are we seeing inflation, or where do we anticipate we'll see inflation? I saw today Tesla's Tesla raised the price on all their cars except for 2. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:04): Well, they have to because the inputs of, you know, if you think about like if you break down a Tesla and you look at where the money goes, the money really is in the batteries. And if you break down the batteries, it goes into 3 critical inputs, lithium, nickel, and cobalt, and the prices are highly suspect and they're they're very poorly predicted. And so the cost of testers are gonna go up by 20 or 30%. And there's nothing that there's nothing that Tesla could do. David Friedberg (00:52:28): And by the way, you'll see this across all commodity products if inflation takes hold in a in a meaningful way, including, you know, food products, ag products, you know, all commodities, you know, metals. But the businesses that'll benefit the most, and this is really interesting from a technology and I think it played in part. My understanding is speaking to a number of PMs about this portfolio managers at funds, is that you know, technology companies don't have a lot of hard assets. And so they have less kind of, you know, value accretion, and and they don't play in in a commodity supply chain. So it's much more difficult for a technology company to say raise rates by 30%, whereas a food company can raise rates by 30%. One of the ways to look at this is to look at the you know, the book value or the CapEx, you know, property, plant, and equipment of a business. And businesses that have a lot of PP and E are generally gonna do better in an inflationary environment They're gonna have more throughput on that PP and E. They're gonna have higher dollars per unit of PP and E. And so you'll see, you know, this is why there was shift of dollars into what are traditionally called kind of value stocks or, you know, kind of bigger industrial companies away from, you know, softer kind of tech companies, which don't really really benefit from this inflationary trend. And so there there's gonna be, you know, some sort of play out in in in those sorts of products, probably more Jay Calvin Jason Calacanis (00:53:49): I think David do we see it in SaaS? because I've noticed that SaaS prices are going up and that people are just keep adding to the price of these SaaS products. I was pricing out all the virtual conference, you know, stuff like Hopin and all that AirMead and whatever. And I was shocked at how much they wanted to charge, you know, 15, 50, a $100,000 a year. And I was like, but can I use, like, Zoom in this for that? You know, in a chat room, Slack room, and we gonna see it happen in SaaS where people are gonna start raising the prices and just increase their profit margin because their employees are gonna demand more money? because they're part of the cycle? David Sacks (00:54:24): I I think that's a function of pricing power going up for SaaS companies. It's they become more established and entrenched. Those companies are very profitable. I don't think they're experiencing wage pressure in any way. I think that they're just becoming more successful. Their pricing power is going up as they become not initially topilist, but as they have more market share and they dominate their categories, they can increase prices. But I wanna go back to this idea of of the 19 seventies because I I wanna I wanna challenge the idea that the US economy was doing well in the 19 seventies. So Chamath mentioned the the Gini Index there was a a different kind of metric called the misery index that was was was a much more popular index that was used around that time. In the misery index, it was defined by a brookings economist, and it was basically the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. And in Jason Calacanis (00:55:15): 1980, David Sacks (00:55:16): the Misery Index was 19.7%. This is why Ralph Reagan got elected is because you had a CPI, which is the inflation rate of Jason Calacanis (00:55:25): 12.5%. David Sacks (00:55:27): And then you had unemployment of another Jason Calacanis (00:55:30): 7.2% David Sacks (00:55:32): on top of that. And, you know, the the 19 seventies were especially the late seventies were an economic disaster for the country. So maybe things were more nominally equal, but everyone was equally more equally poor. And what you saw in the 19 eighties is that they got, you know, inflation under control, Paul Volcker at the Fed, broke inflation, that lowered interest rates enormously that allowed people to buy homes. The stock market went up. And, you know, it was an economic boom. So I don't know that this idea that we we wanna introduce a lot of inflation into the system is a good idea. I I like I said, I think mild inflation of say 2% is better than 2% deflation the other way. But but I I think we should be very careful here about about in inflation and and making sure it doesn't get out of control. Jason Calacanis (00:56:24): In the other index to look at is the quality of life index, which is typically, you know, health care, and then the property price to your income ratio, commuting, pollution, safety, and those kind of things. And, you know, the United States is 15th on that list with obviously the Nordics and Australia, Germany, New Zealand, just being at the top of those rankings. In America, we've never really thought about that. Right? We don't really even discuss happiness, you know, and that and that quotient, we don't index for that. Happiness and low stress. David Sacks (00:56:58): I think we're talking a lot about quality of life in San Francisco now because that's a community that's very rich. And yet, it's a miserable city to live in because crime is out of control. You know, Jason, you and I have been to focusing on this DA, Chasabooten, who's having an enormous impact on people's quality of life because he's simply not prosecuting theft in the city. There's actually it was it was a crazy tweet where a city council member was inside City Hall calling for a hearing on the rampant rise and theft in the city. And meanwhile, his car was broken into right outside City Hall. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. And then the other thing that came out were a whole series of statistics about crime in San Francisco showing or sorry, trials and convictions. Basically, Chasa has not been has not been conducting any trials. He hasn't been convicting anyone. It turns out that the number of trials and convictions that he's gotten in the 14 months he's been DA is 1 10th of what Gascon got when he was DA. And by the way, Gascon's not the model DA or anything. I mean, Gas Goan is facing a recall in LA for their their election of duty, and he's still ten times more productive than chase a booty. Jason Calacanis (00:58:08): Just a quick update. Many of you, when I mentioned the GoFundMe for to put a journalist on Chesah, If you just type in GoFundMe ChesA, c h e s a into the Google, we had an $8000 since last week, so $58,000. That's going to a journalist and a data journalist to cover this exact issue. So thanks to the folks who donated. I'm not taking any money from it. I'm donating, obviously. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:32): Other than a small other than a small finder's fee. Jason Calacanis (00:58:35): No. $0. I'm donating to it. I I basically said I'll be 1% of it, whatever their final number is. David Sacks (00:58:42): I think the Marina Times has done a great job with this. Yeah. And there there've been a couple other sources as well. But but how dishonest wasn't. I mean, this has been a recurring theme on the pod, so I just wanna touch on it. Chase has sent his little mouthpiece, his little minion, the high school friend. to go out and challenge us, writing that blog post, saying that it was a lie that Chase wasn't prosecuting anybody. And lo and behold, the numbers have come out. He tried to claim that Chasa had the same rate of charging that goes Gascon did. And that was true. But the problem is he's been pleading down all these charges. He's not taking anyone to trial. He's not convicting anyone. He's certainly not locking anybody up. So, I mean, what what a lie that was? Jason Calacanis (00:59:22): Well, and criminals are just so savvy that they actually understand what the chances are of them actually getting convicted, and they shape their grift and their crime to whatever the environment they're in is just like people who deal drugs, just like people who take these hardcore fentanyl drugs. They just pick the market where they're gonna be most welcome. So they're not gonna do it down in Palo Alto or San Mate or in Mill Valley. they're gonna do it on Church Street. Speaker 8 (00:59:49): Yeah. I so so I I think that's how David Sacks (00:59:50): it starts. But I gotta tell you, you know, I'm I'm in LA right now, and There was a an episode, like, last week at Opestayo, but, like Jason Calacanis (00:59:59): Oh, yes. David Sacks (01:00:00): In it's it's on Cannon Street in Downtown Beverly Hills. A lot Jason Calacanis (01:00:04): of -- -- 1 Italian place where all the celebrities go. David Sacks (01:00:07): It's a great Italian place. There's a lot of outdoor seating. There was basically a mugging of someone's just sitting at a table Apparently, they were wearing a really nice watch. And and and they were they were robbed at gunpoint in the middle, you know, in the middle of the of the restaurant. Yeah. lunchtime. And then there was a struggle over the gun. I don't know why the guy just didn't hand over the watch. But, anyway, he struggled over the gun. Four shots went off. One of them bounced off the concrete and hit a woman in the leg. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:34): Oh my god. David Sacks (01:00:35): So this is like it's getting I mean, it's getting out Speaker 3 (01:00:37): of hand. Jason Calacanis (01:00:37): Sounds like Sao Paulo where they chop people's arms off for the I mean, they literally will drive by apparently and just cut your arm off if they can't if you don't give them the watch. David Sacks (01:00:46): Well, I just you know, the the criminals are starting to feel emboldened because Gascon and Boudin are they're not having trials. They're not prosecuting. They're not locking people up. And so they're graduating to more and more serious offenses. I'm sure they probably didn't wanna shoot anybody or maybe that wasn't their intention. They just want to steal the watch, but it resulted in a shooting just like the deaths of Hana Abe and Elizabeth Plaid when you had, you know, Troy McAllister, you know, hit them with the car. So, I mean, the the fact that we're not locking people up is resulting in and and and people dying in a lot of risky very risky behavior. Jason Calacanis (01:01:20): Alright. As we wrap here, a lot of specs going out. We obviously saw another I guess Roblox was a direct listing. I'm just curious. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:29): Only underpriced by Jason Calacanis (01:01:30): 50%. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:32): It's the same same problem as the IPO. So so what basically, what you're Jason Calacanis (01:01:36): saying is Bill Girlies on his headset walking around El Camino Real. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:42): What I'm what I'm saying Jason Calacanis (01:01:43): is -- -- journalist. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:43): What what I'm saying is irrespective of what the the goals of the direct listing were, the result is the same as a traditional IPO. Jason Calacanis (01:01:51): There you go. Well -- Can I can I give a shout Chamath Palihapitiya (01:01:54): out to Marky to a company that David Sacks? Jason Calacanis (01:01:56): Sure. Oh, Pipe? Yes. Speaker 3 (01:02:00): Correct. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:00): Which is an incredible company that basically, like, helps you capitalize your contracts with your customers. And it's just it's just Basically, this incredible thing that I'm seeing and it's and there's a couple of others that do it as well. Clearbank is another one. But you can fund your company non dilutively. And at some point, I think we should actually talk about the state of the union adventure. Maybe we can do that in a couple of next episodes. I have a lot of thoughts on where I think venture capital is going and When I see things like pipe, I'm just, like, completely so happy because I just think it it's it's it's it's gonna change the the the way in which venture investing is done. It's a Jason Calacanis (01:02:37): it's a very brilliant idea. You can go to pipe.com/twist to get 12 months free. pipe.com is a 2 sided marketplace. If you have reoccurring SaaS revenue or any kind of reoccurring revenue, somebody did it with the sub stack So I think pump Liano, the guy who pumps Bitcoin, he has a newsletter that makes whatever, $250,000 a year. He sold for 95¢ on the dollar, his forward looking subscriptions for the year and bought Bitcoin with it when it was at 35. So he's, like, doubling down. But if you're a SaaS company, and we have many of them in our portfolios, you could take all of your monthly contracts sell them on the marketplace to somebody else, not Pipe. Pipe doesn't buy it. It's some other financial person who says, I'll give you 90 cents on the dollar. Give you 92¢ on the dollar. Give you 85¢ on the dollar. And so if you were if you have a $10,000,000 book of business paying monthly, you can get that 10,000,000 now and deploy it. But Jason, I think I think this Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:35): is a good this is a good maybe way to end, but I think let's agree that the next pod let's start let's start with the future venture capital. Jason Calacanis (01:03:42): 100%. I mean, it's changing dramatically. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:44): It's changing dramatically. And I I think these non dilutive ways of growing a company will completely impact price seeing, you know, pre money, post money, the amount of equity that employees can and should own in these businesses, you know, what is the value of brands? Like, you know, it it like, people will know who David Sachs is and who Harry Hurst is. People doesn't really don't even care anymore, like, hey, if I'm calling from Sequoia, what does that mean anymore? They're gonna say, who from Sequoia is calling? So these are all really interesting topics that David Friedberg (01:04:13): I think are worth talking about. another path that just the public markets. You know? Right? I mean, public markets are becoming the new late stage private market, and it's really, you know, both the spat and early stage IPO and direct listing models are are are changing dramatically, and it's and there's more speculative risk seeking in the public markets in a way that I don't think we've ever seen. And it's it's creating an opportunity for companies that are still you know, what in a traditional kind of sense might be called, you know, early stage or still businesses with a lot of risk being able to go public and and, you know, kinda take their companies out and let the public markets wager on on how well they're gonna execute and how well they're gonna be able to develop their product or their market. And it's and by the way, it's something we've seen historically with biotech where there's kind of very binary kind of bets that happen. and binary outcomes because the markets are known and you don't need to kind of productize or build a business around it. But now we're actually taking both business risk, market risk, technology risk, product risk, to the public market. At all stages. And I I think you're gonna see these these scenarios where people will build public portfolios, public this public company portfolios that will perform a lot like venture portfolios. Right? You'll have 1 or 2 businesses. It'll have a 10 bagger and you know, a 0, a a chunk that'll go to 0 and a chunk that'll have some modest return on them. And it's gonna be yeah. And it's gonna be this this tremendous learning because a lot of people will put all their money into one stock that they think has already been made. It's already a it's already a done thing. It's Netflix. It's Netflix. It's you know, their promise of the future is a 100% certain. David Friedberg (01:05:42): And the reality is their promise of the future is 5% certain. And so depending on the price you're entering and how many of these things you buy, you could build a portfolio that could have a good return. but it's it's gonna be a lot of speculative betting and a lot of losses. And if you don't diversify, you're gonna lose a lot of money and you know? So the question is also How does it involve regulatory wise? Jason Calacanis (01:06:00): Shamal, how are you communicating that to the market? because you'll have some specs that go out. I would think Virgin Galactic is in that more, like, their deep tech researching phase, and then you have other ones that are already, you know, churning the the ringing the register. Right? So how do you communicate that to retail investors or the audience? Or that's up to them to do the research? How do you think about that? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:22): I mean, there's Jason Calacanis (01:06:23): As well as the bad Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:24): inventory that's getting added. No. Look. Yeah. I do a tweet storm. I do a one pager. I have a multi hour detailed Speaker 3 (01:06:31): investor presentation that's taped. And then we have a typically a Jason Calacanis (01:06:32): 100 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:37): to 300 page S 4. So you can ingress into finding out the true story of a business at whatever point you want. It really just does come down to doing your work A lot of the folks on Twitter, when you see the market straight down and they complain, my reaction is stop crying and do your own work. And there's an there like, we have complete transparency in this process, so it is up to people to do their job. And the the the thing that I think is happening right now is people think that they don't have to do a job and that money is free. And it's not. It's hard to make it. It's hard to make good investments. It's hard to build a company. Everything is hard. Nothing is really easy. Because if it was easy, everybody would be doing it all the time. And so that's that's what I would love to leave people with. I really gotta go, guys. I love you, guys. Let but let's start with Venture Capital next week. Jason Calacanis (01:07:21): Yeah. Love you boys. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:22): Alright. Fried Davidson. Love you. Love you, Davis. David Sacks (01:07:25): Love you, David. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:26): Oh my god. Okay. Jason Calacanis (01:07:28): Love you guys. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:28): Love you, Jake. Jason Calacanis (01:07:29): Alright. I love you. I love you, Chama. David Friedberg (01:07:31): I love Jason Calacanis (01:07:31): you too. -- love you. I mean, we love each other, and we can say it. And then the guys on this side, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:36): Love you they're working on. Like I David Sacks (01:07:38): said -- Look Speaker 7 (01:07:38): at look David Sacks (01:07:38): at Jake how dragging it out. Speaker 8 (01:07:40): Stop driving everything out. Jason Calacanis (01:07:42): We're dragging it out because we love you, David. We'll see y'all next time. Bye bye. Red, red pill's got me getting lit. Red pill's got me getting lit. Red pill's got me getting lit. Red pill's got me getting lit. Red pill's got me getting lit. Red pills got with you lit. Red pills got with you lit. Red pills got with you lit. Red pills got with you lit. I've been on a bender on these red pills spiles. Speaker 3 (01:08:11): I've been on a bender on this red hills spot. Jason Calacanis (01:08:19): I've been on a bender on this red 1000 poll. Speaker 3 (01:08:26): I mean, I'm gonna take your red hill is fine. I Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:50): on Redding. Gosh. Jason Calacanis (01:08:52): I need more red pills. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:53): What a joke. Jason Calacanis (01:08:54): Get me those red pills from Miami. Speaker 3 (01:08:59): David gave me just a huge bag of Jason Calacanis (01:09:01): red pills while we're off this week, sir. Speaker 3 (01:09:03): I've been on the fender on his red pills, but Speaker 7 (01:09:05): Stocks more. in play the fall. Back back back back up the truck. I see chips outside the mall. Back back back back up the truck. You see me he's seen a dog. And if he's taken me out the phone and if he's set up up a trunk, red pill for a pill crushing. Jason Calacanis (01:09:36): Alright. Anybody give a shit about NFTs?