苹果的虚伪、美国数学危机、加密监管纠偏、Clubhouse 与 UFO

Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:00): Friedberg Freberg. David Friedberg (00:00:01): What's up? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:02): It seems like you have a piece of shit on the side of your mouth, or is that a birthmark? Speaker 3 (00:00:05): That's all? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:06): No. That's a birthday. Gotcha. David Friedberg (00:00:10): Did you record that? Jason Calacanis (00:00:12): Yeah. Absolutely. Jesus. Look at this guy. He takes his shirt off for one fucking cell and now everybody who's fat and pale on the show, the other three of us is gonna be ridiculed. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:23): I'm having steak tonight, s t e a k Jason Calacanis (00:00:26): at tonight. I am lifting twice a week now. Come on, Saxx. Come get some. Let's fucking go. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:32): 3, 2. Speaker 3 (00:00:33): The weather winner's wide. Rainman, David Saxon. And as said, we open source it to fans and they discover reason. Love you. Jason Calacanis (00:00:49): Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the all in podcast. With me, again, the dictator himself, Tamarav Palihapitiya. Rainman, David Sachs, definitely with us, definitely a great driver. His dad lets him drive in the driveway. And, of course, everybody's favorite The queen of Kinois, the science conductor himself, David Freeman. queen. The queen. Queen. Lot of activity online. It's been a little bit of chaos since we all got together here. I guess we should talk about this Apple story with Antonio Garcia Martinez. You may have heard that he was hired by Apple to, I guess, run their ad efforts. And I have a little bit of information on kinda what he was gonna do there in terms of ads, which is really interesting. But Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:43): -- Tell us. Tell us. Tell us. Tell Jason Calacanis (00:01:44): us. Okay. Well, anyway, you know how we're basically Start Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:48): at the beginning and assume people don't know who Antonio Garcia Jason Calacanis (00:01:51): Martinez was a Facebook developer He is some really smart guy. He uses a lot of big words and wrote a book called Chaos Monkeys, which is a great book where he takes a very Jack Carowac kinda you know, a lot of pros. And he wrote this book about his time at Facebook. The problem is he said some things in the book that would be 5 years later, problematic at the time they were actually considered problematic by some folks And in the full quote, maybe less problematic, but he was essentially ousted because of the following problematic quote. The quote is most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness and generally full of shit. They have their self regarding entitlement feminism and ceaselessly want their independence, but the reality is come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion. They become precisely the sort of useless baggage you trade for a box of shock on shells or a Jerry can of diesel. And they shorten that quote to be that most women are soft and weak. and full of shit. So in contact in context, in this book, he was contrasting the Bay Area women he had dated with the mother of his kids who he describes as strong and tall and tough and amazing. But still, the quote's a little gnarly and the quote out of you know, when it's out of context becomes particularly gnarly, And of course this led to a petition at Apple which then led to him being fired. which now is gonna lead to him probably getting a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:41): $10,000,000 Jason Calacanis (00:03:43): settlement. Of course, there's a lot of hypocrisy being brought up here because Apple has allegedly been using or Apple's supply chain has slave labor in it from the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities. And, obviously, Apple gave Doctor Dre 1,000,000,000 of dollars for beats by Dre and He has a even more misogynistic series of lyrics and was also accused of physically assaulting, I believe his wife and other people he dated. Who? Doctor Dre? Doctor Dre. Yeah. Uh-huh. So anyway, what do you think? Okay. There you go. Next story. David Sacks (00:04:34): No. I'm happy to jump into this. I think Jason, I think you're you're you focus a little bit too much. And I saw your your pod with with Zach Kolias on this. A lot of good takes, but I think you're a little too focused on what AGM has I think it's easier to just call him by his initials. What he did as opposed to what the employees at Apple did. And there's at least four things that Apple did or 5 things that Apple did wrong. I mean, number 1, I think there was a really good reason not to hire this guy, which is that he wrote a best selling tell all book about the last big tech company he worked at. So why if you're a big tech company, why in the world would you hire him? So that was stupid Decision number 1. But they did decide to hire him. And once they hire him, they gotta dream like any other employee and give him a chance to show what he can do. And so that leads to mistake number 2, which is these 2000 employees who signed this petition. Really distorted and took out a context that passage And I know the passage is cringe, okay, and gnarly, and and it could, you know, certainly appear sexist. But you have to put it in its context. And the The larger con this is a work of literature. This is a bestselling book. It's, what, a 150,000 words or taking a 150 words out of context. And the context was, like you said, he's describing the mother of his children, the love of his life in as this sort of Linda Hamilton esque in Terminator type figure or Charlize Theron in Mad Max. And this passage is not in there to describe all women. It's just basically a literary flourish to contrast the the this the woman that he loves being such a badass compared to every other woman. And and you know, when Kara Swisher interviewed AGM 5 years ago, she bought this passage. She explained it, and she said, yeah. Okay. I get it. David Sacks (00:06:18): So, you know, it it certainly the case that people can understand the context if they choose to, and they simply are not choosing to understand the context. which brings me to mistake number 3, which is these 2000 employees lied in their petition by claiming that their safety is threatened by Apple hiring AGM. That is simply untrue. It's physically impossible in the era of Zoom when everyone's working from home, but this guy is not a threat to anyone's safety. But they but they use that claim. They make that claim because they know that if you accuse someone of threatening your safety, it will trigger the machinery of HR to remove that person from the workplace. This is the language of safetyism, and it's a specific tactic to basically get somebody canceled or removed from the workplace. Okay? And then that leads to the the the next mistake. I think mistake number 4, which is the bosses as Apple caved into this pressure. They were total cowards. They never even gave AGM the chance to explain himself. They never asked him, what did you intend by this passage? What were you trying to do? And by the way, they knew about this book Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:07:25): It's either saying it's even worse. They knew about the book. They had vetted, and they talked to many people as when a big when a big tech company hire somebody for a major position like this, they call all the references and all of this uncovered and dealt with. David Sacks (00:07:39): Of course. They knew about it. And then when the mob complains, they fire him summarily without subjecting the decision to proper HR processes. This is HR by a mob rule. It's totally unacceptable. No company should be run this way. And then finally, that brings us to number 5 is that in explaining their decision and trying to justify their cowardice and giving it to the mob, They said that they fired him because of his behavior. AGM never had a chance to engage in any behavior. He barely started at the job. This wasn't because of his behavior. This is because of the book that he wrote 5 years ago. So what they're saying is that if you ever publish a written work at any time in your life, years and years ago that that could somehow constitute present day behavior and that other people in the workplace can have a problem with that be that this is not behavior. And this is why he's gonna have a giant defamation suit and settlement because they are making him unemployable in the tech industry -- Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:34): -- David Sacks (00:08:34): by claiming that he was fired for some some sexist behavior, he was not. David Friedberg (00:08:39): Where do you think he'll get paid in a settlement? I put it at Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:42): 10. 10,000,000? Jason Calacanis (00:08:44): Well, I was just thinking, he's a half $1,000,000 a year employee to a 1,000,000 with his RSUs. So let's just put it at a 1,000,000. unemployed for 10 to 20 years because of this or the damages to his reputation? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:08:55): Impressive value that back. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:08:57): So and yeah. So I think 10,000,000 is the number. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:00): My curiosity in this was just did those 2000 employees feel the same way about Doctor Dre? David Sacks (00:09:07): Of course not. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:08): Or did they do they feel the same way about some of the movies that they sell in the iTunes store? Or do they feel the same way about some of the games that they enable in the App Store? Yeah. or some of the subscriptions that are sold. Right. Do they care do they care that much about what's happening in their Chinese supply chain? I mean, the I think it seems at least on the outside, the answer is no. But it would be interesting to get an explanation of that from the same HR people I don't know whether the guy should have been fired or not, but I do think that you should have a predictable standard. And every company is allowed to do what they want. If The standard at Apple is that we are going to hold you accountable for everything you've done in the past irrespective of whether you've disavowed it or not. So be it, that's their right. And I think that the employees of that company have a right to do that. I think they said if you start to arbitrarily enforce it, You go down this weird place which is like, basically, I think what they're saying is if it's good for business, we're going to ignore it. if it's not obvious that it's good for business, we'll act because it's a low cost way of keeping the masses, you know, the the medicated. And I think that's what's even scarier to the 2000 people. It's not that, you know, maybe they should feel proud that they got their pound of flesh. But they really should figure out how they wanna stand on all these other points because the cherry pick puts puts the whole company in just a weird posture that's that's not scalable. Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:10:43): I'm less interested in the hypocrisy in the values debate, which is obvious. as kind of the first order point with all this stuff. It's like, do the employees have the right values? Is their hypocrisy by management? Is their hypocrisy by the employees? What what strikes me though is a failure of leadership at these organizations. You know, you guys think that to Brian Armstrong's kind of purging of the woke mob and the political discourse that was happening at Coinbase a few months ago, he took a point of strong leadership to a new level. And I think it highlighted when the leader steps up and says, this is how we're gonna operate. These are how we're gonna make decisions and puts his foot down people will leave and you evolve the culture. And I think it indicates to me that certain companies, as they've gotten really big and really successful, like Apple and even Alphabet and various other kind of large tech companies, the leader is no longer lead the employee's lead the narrative on culture and the narrative on values. And, you know, it speaks to 2 things. One is that they're perhaps aren't founder leaders running those organizations anymore that there are managers whose job is critically important. whose job is to keep the wheels on and keep the wheels from falling off. So they have more to lose, and they are constantly trying to protect the downside than they are trying to be aggressive about growing to the upside. And then I think it's just, you know, secondly, this kind of, you know, failure to kind of define what your values are from a leadership perspective, and the void gets filled by the employees. The void gets filled by the mob. And so while it's this one kind of, you know, debatable point today and this one kind of hypocritical point today, it's really interesting to see that this isn't happening at other companies that are founder led. And if it is, the, you know, the culture gets Jason Calacanis (00:12:35): good jobs would have handled this completely differently. David Friedberg (00:12:37): Steve Jobs would not have led his employees tell him who or shouldn't Jason Calacanis (00:12:40): be hired. Let's have a discussion about David Friedberg (00:12:42): a really clear point of view about who we hire, why we hire them, and how we make decisions, and not let the Demak democratic kind of rule or the, you know It's not even democratic. Speaker 3 (00:12:52): It's not Jason Calacanis (00:12:52): like all employees took a vote. How much of this Chamath has to do with the coddling of Silicon Valley employees for 2 decades vis a vis, you know, you get driven to school on your school bus. You sit on, you know, You get your lunch prepared for you. We do your dry cleaning. Every Friday, you get to come and ask challenging questions to the leaders. And this concept of, like, You know, everybody has a voice at work as opposed to this is a company controlled by shareholders and or a founder, and you work for it. And there is a trade of services here. visavis, what Toby had to say at Shopify, which is this is not a family. This is a sports team. You are here to perform. We are here to perform for our customers the end Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:32): So the in fact, if you if you had a chance and maybe, Nick, we can post it in the show notes. But the email that Toby Lutke wrote to Shopify employees was unbelievable. That, to me, is like that's a tour de force that should be basically like that should be minted and sold as an NFT. Jason Calacanis (00:13:50): What's another thing? Brad about those. And it Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:53): was it it was it was just an incredible email, Jason, to your point. And the way that that started if I I I may be getting these facts wrong but there was an emoji of a noose inside of a Slack channel And then and then folks got quite upset with it. And so I think Toby's response was to basically shut down the whole channel and say, hey, guys. we're losing the script about why we're here. And, you know, I think Brian Armstrong's essay was a version of that The question is why are we here? If I had to guess, I think it's because we've pumped so much money into Silicon Valley Companies. They didn't know where to spend it. And so I actually think that what we've really done is overhired far too many people into many of these companies. And so they kind of are very smart people sitting around twiddling their thumbs and so obviously they're just gonna get distracted meaning. I remember like, you know, At Facebook there was barely enough people to keep the lights on for a while. Then I remember by the time I was leaving I was like wow, there's way too many people here A lot of them and most of them were all really really smart, but it wasn't obvious to me what many of them did. And you know, people would look at me and then say oh, you know that's a really arrogant thing to say and that's not true and everybody's valuable, I don't know. You know, if you look at Google, I've always thought like that company could probably run by two thousand people. But, you know, there's 200,000 people. So the 198 other 1000 of them need to find something to do. It's probably the same at Apple. It's probably the same at all these big tech companies. And that's the leverage that you get from technology. It's naturally massively deflationary. So but if you keep pumping 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars into these companies, where the app experience is written by 50 or a100 critical people or managed by 500 or a1000 critical people, this is the natural byproduct, I think, of all of that. Jason Calacanis (00:15:49): By the way, Friedberg says, organizations wanna grow. Right? Like, how many organizations say, you know what? Speaker 3 (00:15:54): We should be small. We don't need this many people. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:56): You know? You're saying something really important. Not enough founders and boards understand the difference between growing a business and growing an org. Those are 2 totally different things. And the reason is because we've lost sight of very simple financial metrics in Silicon Valley. Meaning, if you go to any other industry where there is a cost of capital, People understand what return on invested capital means. They know how to measure it. Yeah. They know what operating leverage means. They know what margin expansion means. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:16:24): We we only have value Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:26): And they seek that out. Here, we think about exactly, as you said, valuation. And so this idea that having a hundred people do the work and see margins lift is antithetical to the Silicon Valley culture. It's, oh, as margins go up, let's just keep running the same profitable business, but instead have 500 people a 1000 people -- Jason Calacanis (00:16:43): What do you think? You're an operations machine. People would say on a COO basis, you're one of the top 3 to 5 in the history of the valley. What do you say COO, man? David Sacks (00:16:54): Yeah. I mean, look, Chamath is right that in a company that's well run and well led where people people don't have time on their hands to engage in these shenanigans. So yeah. I mean, I think I think that's absolutely right. I think companies in startups are increasingly have to choose whether they wanna be Apple or whether they wanna be Coinbase or Shopify for that matter. And just this this week at Apple, there's a new petition circling. Now there's a petition call by thousands of employees calling for Tim Cook to denounce the Israelis and endorse the Palestinian side of the conflict. Jason Calacanis (00:17:30): Yeah. How's that gonna work? Well, a position on abortion. Is there an abortion position app app or not? David Sacks (00:17:36): But now that they've given into the the woke mob, there's no reason for the mob to They're gonna be circulating a petition every week. And that's kind of the point is so and actually, AGM himself had a really good quote about this. He he did a great interview with Matt Taibi. And he he laid out the choice that companies face like this. He said it's interject this is Antonio Garcia, and Martin is saying, is interjecting the whole fucking Twitter cesspool with all the dog piles and all the performative signaling and all that crap into a corporate setting and replicating those dynamics and calling it work. That's basically what happened is what's happening is you you're there these employees are performing Twitter at work. On Slack. On on Slack and they're pretending like it's really work, and it's not. And I think, you know, founders are gonna have to make a decision. Do you stand up and take a a Brian Armstrong live position or Toby position, or do you eventually degenerate into some sort of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:32): -- Jason Calacanis (00:18:32): Or a base camp, by the way. Or -- Even base camp the most woke virtual signaling founders on Twitter decided to take Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:40): -- David Sacks (00:18:40): That's right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:18:41): -- Jason Calacanis (00:18:41): the most libertarian or Spartan approach, you know, stoic approach of Toby to give you Toby's David Sacks (00:18:48): quote. Well, Base Camp just to finish the Base Camp thought. So so Base Camp tried to accommodate this sort of, like, woke mentality. And what they found is that they got pushed so far. It became so distracting. They eventually had to move to the Armstrong position. And that's kind of my point is once you -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:19:05): Everybody's gonna move to that. Yeah. That's David Sacks (00:19:07): my point. Jason Calacanis (00:19:07): I mean and if you don't believe what I what I said was look. Listen. If you believe that a organization that allows political speech and this kind of stuff as a primary function inside the company, we'll then go build a competitor to Basecamp and show that that system works better. Here's Toby's quote. To help you make this more clear to team members, here are some pointers about what Shopify is not. Shopify like any for profit company is not a family. The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can't unfamily you. It should be massively obvious that Shopify is not a family. but I see people, even leaders casually use the term like Shopee fam, which will cause the members of our teams, especially junior ones that have never worked anywhere else to get the wrong impression the dangers of family thinking and quotes are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team italicized, not a family. We literally only want the best people in the world. The reason while you join Shopify is because I hope all other people you met during the interview process were really smart, caring, and committed. This is magic, and it creates a virtuous magnatism on talented people because very few people in the world have this in themselves. People who don't should not be part of this team. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:24): I mean, when I was when I was at Facebook when I was at Facebook, we used to convene the senior team. And you know, I was like, I want I I really want to fire the bottom 5 or 10% of the company for you. And we would force Stack rank, and we did it for about 3 or 4 years and then The excuse was it's too big and there are too many people and the roles are too diverse and you can't rank. I I actually don't believe that even to this day. I think it's pretty obvious who the real 1000 x kind of employee contributors are. And by the way, they exist in every function. There's 1000 x salespeople. There's 1000 x you know, product managers. There's there's the 1000 x people that work in facilities. They exist in every job function. And companies I don't think do a good enough job of figuring out who they are. And so instead, what happens is people that are not even a 100 x or not even a 10 x are really more like a 1 or 1.1 x, can basically hide in all of that noise. And I think that if you could separate HR into 2 things, but there's really 3 things. One is like benefits which is critical. The second is actually like safety and the ability to whistle blow if there's something really nefarious or bad that's happened. And then the 3rd that's really valuable I think is organizational design. Right? How do you put people in good jobs and how do you allow them to have a huge amount of autonomy to run and build a career? But all of this other policing stuff to me just seems like it coddles to the lowest twenty 5%. I don't know if and this is my intuition, to the lowest 25% performers of everything. Of course. Jason Calacanis (00:21:53): Of course, it does. And just to close this story up and wrap to our next, Antone AGM announced that he is going to take a year. Wait for it to write for Substack. So he is gonna get paid $10,000,000 I I would guesstimate in a settlement by Apple. He's gonna get a half Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:12): $1,000,000 advance. -- over. I'll take the Speaker 3 (00:22:14): over. We've only we can bet Jason Calacanis (00:22:16): on this. I set such a good line. Speaker 3 (00:22:18): We can bet on it. Jason Calacanis (00:22:19): We can bet on it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:20): Yeah. We can bet on it. I'll take the over. Speaker 3 (00:22:21): I'll take the over. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:22): -- Jason Calacanis (00:22:22): the line of 10. Anybody want the David Friedberg (00:22:24): I'll take you know, take the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:26): well, go go give it a give a different button out then. I'll take I'll Speaker 3 (00:22:29): take a different line. You could set a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:30): different line. Set a different line. Jason Calacanis (00:22:31): I think ten's a good line. because you gotta think, like, if they offer him summary, Billy? David Sacks (00:22:38): I mean, it's gonna be something like that. I don't know what the big what the number is, but Jason Calacanis (00:22:42): We'll never know. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:42): I'll I'll I'll make I'll make a line. 15.6 -- David Friedberg (00:22:45): I'll take the under. Wow. Jason Calacanis (00:22:48): Really? Take the under. David Friedberg (00:22:49): fifteen's way too much Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:50): way too much. Yeah. Dave is quite set. David Sacks (00:22:51): I'd say under Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:52): 15. Jason Calacanis (00:22:52): Yeah. That's not a good line. David Friedberg (00:22:54): Good thing. 2nd June, 2nd row is Jason Calacanis (00:22:57): a good line. Okay. Let me do the 11.5. What do you take? David Friedberg (00:23:00): Chlamat can afford the book against all three of us. Jason Calacanis (00:23:02): Okay. 11.5. Over. Tramatixy over. 11.5. Friedberg Saxx. David Friedberg (00:23:06): Yeah. I don't know. Under -- Let me just Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:08): tell you why. If you look at the last 4 year compounding of Apple stock, right, and so if you think about reasonable number of grants as his level of seniority plus the imputed compounding -- Mhmm. -- plus whatever he would have gotten. Jason Calacanis (00:23:19): You should be part of his team. Somebody sent this clip because that's the argument is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:24): -- I I I do think you end up getting to probably Sure. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:23:26): You just you gotta include the appreciation Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:28): out. Yeah. You gotta buy it now price at 15 in color. David Sacks (00:23:31): And this may have all also, you could make the argument they've rendered him unemployable in the industry. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:35): So -- And then there's foregone. Speaker 3 (00:23:37): A couple of David Friedberg (00:23:37): other future. -- saw. Then it could do Jason Calacanis (00:23:39): fundamental suffering. What about suffering? He is going to suffer. He's gonna need to be on meds. My client is suffering. He's in therapy twice a week. He can't get out of bed. He's not gonna be able to be in functional relationships, and he's too scared to leave the house. David Sacks (00:23:54): He should wait on the substack because he's gonna make so much money on substack. It's gonna mitigate his damages. Jason Calacanis (00:23:59): Yeah. Don't take Speaker 3 (00:24:00): the substack Jason Calacanis (00:24:00): deal. Don't David Sacks (00:24:01): take it away. Just wait on the subject. David Friedberg (00:24:03): I'll I'll give you another you guys know what Apple's market cap divided by employees is? Apple is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:09): Apple's market -- -- 7,000,000 in employee? Jason Calacanis (00:24:12): Anyone else? Wait a second. There's a 100,000 employees and it's worth Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:16): 2,000,000,000,000? David Friedberg (00:24:18): Okay. There's a 100 50,000 employees, 2,100,000,000,000. So it's 14,000,000 in employee. So the other way to think about it is if Apple's, like, gonna lose Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:26): 1 David Friedberg (00:24:26): or 2 good employees over this, You know, they'd they'd happily pay up to get to get the guy to be quiet. So it's worth one employee to pay Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:35): $14,000,000 David Sacks (00:24:37): Well, no. I mean, the well, you're you're you're not dividing by all the slave labor in China. Speaker 3 (00:24:42): And the I'll I'll I'll recal. I'll recal. Jason Calacanis (00:24:45): Well, no. They cost they actually cost 0. So that was bad. Sorry. David Friedberg (00:24:52): or all the packet there. I mean, it's true. Or I mean, this is Jason Calacanis (00:24:55): the hypocrisy of Apple. They've literally got slave labor in their supply chain. that they wanted in their supply chain. But those employees how do you how David Friedberg (00:25:03): do you know that? How do you know that? Let let's just go through this because, like, this is a common narrative, but has anyone actually, like, gotten to the bottom of -- Well, Jason Calacanis (00:25:10): that's why I said reported. David Friedberg (00:25:12): I mean -- Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:12): -- Jason Calacanis (00:25:12): but it is it is known. David Friedberg (00:25:14): Again, like, I don't like Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:15): -- David Friedberg (00:25:15): I don't like pushing I don't like pushing narratives that are -- Why? David Sacks (00:25:18): I eventually tweeted something that I mean, well, I retweeted something that came from, I think, a pretty valid source, that author from the Atlantic who I think is pretty legit. Jason Calacanis (00:25:29): Also, I just think just in terms of his quote, if he had taken the word woman out of the quote, most people in the Bay Area are soft and weak. Minnesota zombie apocalypse, I don't think you're recruiting from the Bay Area. But related to this story in terms of Chemut's point about you know, 1000 x performers, America is Speaker 3 (00:25:45): really doing a bad job Jason Calacanis (00:25:46): at math and Gary Tan, the venture Capitalist retweeted and and participate in a tweet thread about immigrants who know that standardized test is probably your best shot at getting somewhere. Your money social size can take you. The rules are well standardized, and he tells his story about this. But there is a persuasion article about us failing math and that they're going to be in California getting rid of the gifted programs for math because it's unfair to the kids who are not gifted as a kid who is was not gifted. And to the 3 kids on the program who were in gifted programs or at least 2 of you were. I have no problem with their being a gifted program. But any thoughts on this? I think it's shameful. David Sacks (00:26:36): Yeah. It really is. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:37): I mean, like, we are we are really doing our level best to just completely fuck our population. Why I mean, why is this even how could this even be possible? It's like like just as like, it's it's kind of like the equivalent it's the moral equivalent of actually saying, you know what? We're gonna eliminate welfare for the bottom 5%. Like, our job as a society is to kind of, like, find the broadest set of solutions for the most number of people and solve for both extremes. So when you're dealing with education, you both need to understand that there are folks that need some kind of structural support. Look. When I came to Canada, I had ESL. Right? English as a second language. You take that so that you can learn the native language of a country. it didn't mean that I was stupid. It just meant that I was behind. You know? If I had dyslexia or something else, I would need some kind of support. One of my children had a speech impediment. We had a speech therapist. This is what you do. But on the other side, if you have a kid who's an incredibly high performer who has the potential to just completely crush, hey. Like, you should be able to give that kid a pathway to achieve and give back. So the idea that you would eliminate anything at the extremes is kind of completely uncompassionate and stupid, just totally fucking stupid. Jason Calacanis (00:27:54): Well, it's in the name of having a more equitable Chamath class. Again, I hate that word. Please don't use that word. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:01): Please don't use that word. That is that is the least -- Speaker 3 (00:28:04): By the David Friedberg (00:28:04): way, this this mean, this goes back to the point I made a few episodes ago that, you know, you can have progress or you can have a quality, but it's very difficult to have both. And, you know, if you wanna try and make everyone equal and give no one the opportunity to have more or get more than anyone else because of whatever the circumstance may be, whether it's earned -- No. That's not true. -- read. No. But this Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:23): is my point. Like, you know, you limit the ability for everyone to to progress as a group because we're now limiting the ability for folks to take calculus. I know Equality look. I'll use a video game example. Equality means we all get to play Grand Theft Auto. Not that we have somebody who actually plays for us and gets to the same answer and just gives you a ticket. That's what she is with the results. Right? -- the same score. Speaker 3 (00:28:45): Yeah. so the so the so Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:46): the that's that is what equality means is that we all get to play, and we all get a chance David Friedberg (00:28:51): to -- -- equity, which is leveling everyone. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:53): equity is leveling everybody and saying, here's your result. David Friedberg (00:28:56): And by Chamath Palihapitiya (00:28:56): the way, it's the same as this other person. David Friedberg (00:28:58): Whatever the misnumbers. But the the notion of leveling everyone where no one can be ahead of anyone else by too far obviously limits as a group our ability for the top decile to to increment or the top quartile to increment. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:10): I gotta think, look. Let's let's again use -- Yeah. let's again use our friends because instead of ours. But we know a lot of really smart people who have really, really smart kids. We also know people in general that are in tough circumstances who also probably have really smart kids Just purely selfishly for me, I want those kids doing the best they can to figure out what the hell they can invent for us in the future. Why would you slow those kids down? You know? Jason Calacanis (00:29:40): It's kind of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:41): like saying, you know what? Like, how about a black athlete? Would you would it be preposterous to say, you know what? you don't have a right to go to the NBA and make money for your family. I'm gonna slow you down because there's another white kid gonna go through 4 years of college. So you know what? You're gonna have to go through 4 years of college, and you're gonna have to Speaker 3 (00:29:57): pay for it. Jason Calacanis (00:29:57): Well, actually, what I would propose Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:59): -- Speaker 3 (00:29:59): Does that make David Friedberg (00:29:59): any sense? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:00): -- Jason Calacanis (00:30:00): is when I go up to Dunk that we just the rim automatically lowers 2 feet. David Friedberg (00:30:05): Yeah. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:30:05): Yeah. I like that. Doug, and then Speaker 3 (00:30:07): when you go for, like, Jason Calacanis (00:30:08): we'll just raise his 6 inches. It'd be more equitable for me. Speaker 3 (00:30:11): That's more equitable. Yes. David Sacks (00:30:12): More accurate. Speaker 3 (00:30:13): Let me let me let me David Sacks (00:30:13): add another layer to this. So I I agree with you with you guys that what we should be thinking about is opportunity. We should always be asking what increases opportunity for the most people, and that's how we should measure political programs. And we're not doing that here. We are sort of leveling down. But I would say it's even more nefarious than that. which is I think what's happening is that the education establishment is completely failing our kids and our schools and what they're trying to do is destroy the evidence of that failure. Speaker 3 (00:30:41): Wow. David Sacks (00:30:42): And and so they're hiding they're hiding the results. Now this persuasion piece yes. This persuasion piece lays out the statistics, which are pretty grim. Okay? So according to these, like, global measurements by OECD. Okay? Math proficiency in the US, we rank 37 in the world. Okay? And there's only 37 developed nations in the world according to the developed. So we're last among developed countries. China, which is our main global competitor, is number 1. Okay? And we achieved these horrible results despite ranking 5th in the world in per pupil spending. So it's not a spending problem. Okay? And as we know, to the extent we do have high performing mouse students in the US, a huge majority of them are actually foreign born. And so we're actually kinda cheating our our numbers a little bit. It's even worse than it appears. Now What is the education establishment doing about this? How are they hiding the failure? Well, when school comes back in the fall, they're planning to eliminate accelerated math. Okay? That means that there's no more algebra for 8th graders who are ready to take it on. There's no more calculus for high schoolers who want to, you know, do, like, the AP classes and get a jump on stem, you know, for college. The entire idea of gifted students is now under attack like we talked about in the name of Equity. It's become a catch off every bad idea. And the University of California system has now abandoned the SAT and ACT So they temporarily got rid of those requirements during the pandemic. But now Speaker 3 (00:32:10): they've used the crisis. David Sacks (00:32:11): Let's let's keep in that. -- crisis. And now they say they're not bringing back their requirements until at least 2025, and you can bet it's never gonna return at all. And so here's the thing. They're trying to get rid of measuring how bad we are at mass, so we won't have to think about it. They just wanna give everyone a gold star and a pat on the back and just say how Speaker 3 (00:32:30): You know Jason Calacanis (00:32:30): what this reminds me of saxes when you threw away the the digital scale I got you. David Sacks (00:32:37): Right. I'm not I'm not fat because I'm not measuring it. Great. I'm sorry. Perfect. Speaker 3 (00:32:45): Okay. Oh my god. It's like We really it's Jason Calacanis (00:32:48): it's the movie Idiocracy. It lit literally, we are doing the movie Idi have you guys seen Idiocracy? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:32:54): Why don't we just why don't we just eliminate all admissions programs at every university and just have one global admissions board where every campus is the same. What is the difference between MIT and Stanford and Caltech and the University of Arkansas. In my opinion, there shouldn't be. It's more equitable to just have somebody go close to home because you can save money you know, carbon emissions are lower. Right? You can just take the bus to Jason Calacanis (00:33:18): the local school. -- competition is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:19): one centralized place to teach you -- Why have any -- -- basic course? I mean, If I said this, you you think that I was a crazy person. Yeah. Except that's basically what we're now telling all of our high Jason Calacanis (00:33:29): school and social. -- in stars, and I'd like Yelp to take off their review system because it's not equitable. Like, we should not have Michelin Stars anymore. Every chef Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:38): is here. -- restaurant's the same. Jason Calacanis (00:33:39): Every restaurant should get three quarters of a star. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:41): We should not the health department should not give ranks of letters, and they should not be forced to post it because that's inequitable. Jason Calacanis (00:33:48): Absolutely. You know? Yeah. Also, you can game you can game the health test. You could literally just follow the rules. David Friedberg (00:33:54): Let me just ask the the counterpoint question, which is Standardized testing, for example, benefits people that can afford tutors and special, you know, classes to get ahead And and for -- -- for tutors. Yeah. Therefore -- -- trade. Well, therefore, it's higher income people that can always well, the point is they can always layer on additional tutoring. They can always layer on additional classes, and they're they're forced to always Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:17): -- -- Jason Calacanis (00:34:17): number of math. It's a finite score, Friedberg. You can only get 800 on the math Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:21): based ITs. I'll I'll I'll be somewhat flip flopper here. I don't believe in standardized tests that much. I never did well particularly in standardized tests. I do think that they can be gamed. But that's different from what we're talking about. What we're saying is if kids show aptitude, we are explicitly choosing to not give them a chance to develop at their potential. And the problem is we do this in other areas. We do it in athletics. We do it in music. We do it in the arts. But we're not gonna do it in stem. That's what we're choosing to do. That is what's crazy. So choose to get rid of the SCT or ACT whatever you want. I don't care. But if you are the LeBron James of Physics Jesus Christ. Like, let that kid become the LeBron James Affit. David Friedberg (00:35:07): I say, like, I I I got into UC Berkeley because I had great standardized test scores because I had aptitude Speaker 3 (00:35:14): for -- What was Jason Calacanis (00:35:15): your SAT? Friedberg. Let's do this. I got a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:18): -- Jason Calacanis (00:35:19): Let's do this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:20): -- David Friedberg (00:35:20): an 800 math, and I think it was a 720 verbal. Okay. So you Jason Calacanis (00:35:24): got a 15.20 out of 1600 at the time. I got -- Yeah. -- 11. And David Friedberg (00:35:28): I got an 800 on the math. Yeah. Right. Jason Calacanis (00:35:32): I was asked, obviously. Sachs, go Speaker 3 (00:35:33): ahead. David Sacks (00:35:34): I was 750 math, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:35): 720 David Sacks (00:35:37): verbal. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:40): 14 -- 70. -- David Friedberg (00:35:41): are you writing this down? David Sacks (00:35:42): This is pre this is pre the inflation. There was a big Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:45): -- I -- -- SAP inflation. I was I was 15.10 on the s c 2. Jason Calacanis (00:35:49): Oh, we were okay. So I was Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:50): -- I woke up 500 points. -- 500 points behind each of you. In in Canada, I was just kind of like, we didn't even write it, but I went and I wrote it just for Shits and giggles and Speaker 3 (00:35:59): didn't do well. I didn't do well. David Friedberg (00:36:00): Like -- You David Sacks (00:36:01): just said you work in a standardized test, so what are you talking about? Jason Calacanis (00:36:03): You're in this top 3%. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:06): Yeah. I know. But, generally, like, I was in a good test. I was in probation and college academic probation, but I'm not a good testing. David Sacks (00:36:11): But look. The the the reason why these tests got invented was actually to prevent discrimination. I think it was back in, like, the fifties. Speaker 3 (00:36:18): Right. David Sacks (00:36:19): You know, I think it was, like and at that time, it was Jews being kept out of the Ivy League. And One of the ways that they corrected for that was they made everyone take the same test, and so you could see the scores, and it would shine some light on, you know, making sure that people didn't just get in because there were legacies that they got in because, you know, they they had they had good good scores. And there's been decades of work since then to try and eliminate bias in the test. And so the the the the claims of bias now and the tests really aren't supported. Now Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:47): -- David Friedberg (00:36:48): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:36:48): -- David Sacks (00:36:48): to to Friedberg point, obviously, that if you take some rich kid who lives in the suburbs, who gets a 1400, and you compare that to a kid in the inner city who doesn't have who grew up poor doesn't have the advantages, and that kid gets a 1300. well, which score is better, probably the 1300. And so you can take that into account, in my view, in the admissions process. But eliminating the scores altogether, Why would you wanna have less information to make a decision? Jason Calacanis (00:37:18): There's no reason not to get rid of these. I would just think more holistically about how you accept students. And I mean, isn't more competition and having better teachers what we should be focusing on here as opposed to even standardized testing or god forbid canceling programs? let's just invest in more competition for schools. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:35): Well, so in Canada, we had this thing where when when I was graduating, we had specific different kinds of math contests and computer sign contests and other things that you could write, the Putnam, etcetera. And those things were actually really instructed because they were purely verticalized things that could test your aptitude. And the school that I went to University of Waterloo would look at a lot of those things and adjust for it because my grades were decent But my some of those want this one specific math test I took was pretty good, I remember. And then they would adjust it exactly as David said to what is this kid's background and his circumstances, and they called it a French factor. They would just adjust my marks. And that's how I got into Waterloo, and I didn't think I was going to. So there's all kinds of ways where you can be smart about it. But, again, we're talking about, guys, don't lose sight of what you're saying. We are actually gonna cut all these kids off at the knees starting in grade 8. So forget about all of this stuff. By the time that these kids graduate, they're gonna be I honestly, they're gonna be, like, really dumb. David Sacks (00:38:35): Right. The problem the problem ultimately isn't just measurement it's the denial of opportunity to learn. It's about it's about getting rid of the learning in the classes. That's the biggest problem. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:45): You have to move to a state with a gifted program now If your kid is really smart, you have to give them -- -- Jason Calacanis (00:38:49): out of public education, which doesn't help anybody. I mean, literally, schools don't have to we we put it we've now designed a system to summarize. Schools don't have to compete for students. Teachers don't have to compete for jobs or for their employment. And now we're saying students don't have to compete. So if you remove competition from the human condition, you're just not gonna have any performance. There there's going to be no progress. And as a species, we need progress. We need to solve global warming. We need to solve a lot of issues And don't we wanna live longer and better lives? Like, where is the optimistic nature of the human species? Competition is at the core. of excellence and to just take it out of everything? The whole stat. David Sacks (00:39:36): Jake, how that's the smartest thing you've ever said. Way smarter than 11 20 SAT score. Speaker 3 (00:39:40): Thank you. Thank you. Jason Calacanis (00:39:42): I mean, honestly Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:43): -- -- 11 20. Speaker 3 (00:39:45): How lame David Sacks (00:39:45): is it that we're still talking about our SAT scores? Like, 30 years ago. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:48): -- Jason Calacanis (00:39:48): was the average. So claim, when you're 3 20 points above average, Dave, what SLA is a BFD. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:54): What SLAAM is the 4 of us all remember down to the number of what our score is. Jason Calacanis (00:39:58): That's what SLAIM guys 11 20, 11:50. I gotta I gotta look it up. Alright. Do we wanna go to the crypto meltdown or talk about inflation, or do we should we tell those together or just wanna go straight to UFOs? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:10): Well, Biden just they they just a press release just hit the wire, and they just cut the infrastructure bill from $2,300,000,000,000 to $1,700,000,000,000. Oh, Jason Calacanis (00:40:19): so we're doing our job here at the all Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:21): in podcast. And I I I had heard from somebody that there just is not the broad based support for the capital gains tax, so that's not gonna happen. And it looks like the corporate tax will probably go to 25%, not even up to 28%. And interestingly, I didn't realize this, but one of the biggest features of the bill that has the most popularity is that they're closing this loophole around IP that sits outside the United States. And that more than the corporate taxes will raise almost a $1,000,000,000,000 of revenue. Jason Calacanis (00:40:55): I agree with that one. Why should you put your why Apple. I mean, you wanna talk about hypocrisy. They're putting their IP in Ireland so they don't pay taxes. Google gun for shame. It was a great deal. Why does David Friedberg (00:41:04): that exist? Jason Calacanis (00:41:04): It's so un American. David Friedberg (00:41:07): Well, it's a subsidiary that has different taxation on it than, you know, to kind of that capital and that and that earnings sits outside the US. Jason Calacanis (00:41:16): That that IP was made in California. It was not made in Dublin. No offense to, you know, my home country. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:24): I remember Facebook. We did the we did this exact thing. We signed over all the IP. And then the IRS sued Facebook. And I remember, like, I was called either to I was subpoenaed and we went through like a whole multiyear trial, it may still be going on and it was around this issue, which was the IRS said, Hey, Facebook. How come you, you know, you ported this over there? And I think Facebook's answer was, yeah, we paid the tax. And I think they did. They don't think they did anything wrong because the law has allowed it. but it effectively helped shield then tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars of future taxes. Jason Calacanis (00:41:54): I I mean, I remember reading about this, and I'm like, how does this pass the sniff test? David Friedberg (00:41:59): Well, it's where the revenue is recognized, JKEL, so you basically can produce the IP here and then transfer it to your subsidiary. When you transfer to your subsidiary, you can recognize the earnings in that subsidiary, and that subsidiary pays taxes in its local jurisdiction. The I think the issue Facebook had was that they transferred the IP and they undervalued what the future value would be from that IP transfer why the IRS sued them is this accounting snafu in terms of, like, what did you value it out at the moment you transferred it? Jason Calacanis (00:42:29): Here's another idea. Why doesn't why don't they look at as part of this IP licensing? Where does the consumption of that IP occur? And where do the employees who maintain that IP live? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:42:41): Jake, Al, it's a very smart idea. The problem is that's the slippery slope that then gets to local taxation. You know, the thing is we have all these global tax treaties where these large corporate entities can basically play this game, and they're not subject to local tax. But that's the thing that's going to really start the undoing of the big monopolies. Because if you start to abandon these global tax treaties and you're starting to see it, France is trying to do some stuff. The UK is trying to do some stuff. States individually in the United States are trying to sue these companies or tax them more. That's the that's the first way to chip away at these monopolies is to basically say, fuck your global tax treaty. You need to pay x amount of dollars to be here. And it already exists because of these you know, realist sorry. The retail tax nexus and how ecommerce companies have to pay local tax in the areas. But once it sort of touches a whole bunch of other industries and countries, I think that you're gonna have that. That's why I think Yellen Janet yellen yesterday said that, you know, she's in support of trying to have a global minimum tax of 12%. Basically, trying to get to the end state and tell every country Let's all circle the wagons and agree that we'll all just charge everybody 12%, and then we won't go all our separate ways. The the problem is that if you have a lot of usage in a country, You know, that country doesn't care what the taxation is in Zimbabwe, right, or Canada. They're like, if I'm the UK or France, I'm like, I look at the top 20 in my country and I'm like, wait a minute. These guys would be paying me $50,000,000,000 a year in tax. It's hard to get away from the incentive to to not wanna tax these companies right now. Saks. Jason Calacanis (00:44:17): Any thoughts? David Sacks (00:44:17): Yeah. I I don't have a huge thought on the the IP issue. It it seems like I know the the republican proposed on the structure was 6 to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:25): 800,000,000,000. David Sacks (00:44:28): Biden's proposal initially was 2.3. Chamath is right now. They're down to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:31): 1.7. David Sacks (00:44:32): I think that the markets have been choking on the size of all of this tax and spend. And the either it's been all these reports of inflation, spiking, And so the growth stocks have just been hammered because we're all expecting big interest rate increases to control this future inflation. So Bine's been horrible for growth stocks so far. And it really I guess that what it shows is that, you know, what are growth stocks? Growth stocks are future investment. And it shows the way that the government can crowd out when you have excess government spending. I guess you can call it investment if you want. But when you have excess government spending, it starts to crowd out private investment because it raises interest rates and that you know, decreases the the value of gross stocks, and there's less money that flows into that. Jason Calacanis (00:45:23): Yeah. It does seem like the market reaction to the infrastructure bill and to inflation has made Biden reconsider his approach. and maybe he just came out too hot. Is is I don't I David Sacks (00:45:36): don't think Biden's reconsidering. I think it's people like Joe Manchin. Remember, it's a Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:41): 50 -- David Friedberg (00:45:41): Mark Warner. David Sacks (00:45:41): Mark Warner, Kristen cinema, the the moderate there's a 3 or 4 moderate Democrats in the senate who I think are receiving the message. Jamal put it really well the last pod that the markets are sending a message to Washington. I think some of those centrist Democrats read the message. I don't think Biden's aware of it. I don't know what he's aware of. He doesn't seem too aware of anything to me. But I think the moderate democrats are getting their message, and they're telling they're telling the White House the package is too big and they they're and I think that's the other Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:10): thing that I think people may be getting their heads around, here's what's changed since last week. There's a growing body. If I had to say, like, you know, the beautiful thing about the The markets is that it is an extremely elegant voting mechanism in the short term. Right? I mean, Buffett says it's it's a voting machine in the short term and a weighing machine in the long term. But if you look at sentiment and how things are voted on in the public markets in real time, it's incredibly illustrative. So there's a body of people now that are voting a very different scenario than inflation. What they're voting for now is this idea that by the fall A lot of this short term pent up demand will have worked its way through the system and instead we'll be back to this realization that we've had for the last 20 years which is, hey. Wait a minute. People don't actually wanna buy more of these physical goods. They're gonna go back to consuming the way they did before. It's gonna reflexively push towards technology companies again and we're gonna have this rebirth of growth. And you would say, well, how would you know that that vote is likely? And this one incredible thing happened this last week, which I just wanted to throw out here. One thing that I look at is this thing called 10 year breakevens, which is basically a thing that the federal reserve of Saint Louis publishes. And what it basically shows is like what people think collectively, 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars, what the 10 year breakeven interest rate's gonna be. and it peaked last week at 2.54%. And it's fallen 13 basis points just in the last week down to 241. And I don't know whether it's sustained or whatever but there is a growing idea that the worst may be behind us. And if you layer on top of this now, Biden pulling back, right, on stimulus because he's can't get it done. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:56): Pulling back on cash gains pulling back on corporate taxation and a more measured policy of investment, we we could all be back David Friedberg (00:48:07): So we're Jason Calacanis (00:48:07): basically taking the medicine and getting back to where we were, but we still have massive asset inflation we're seeing in houses, cars, and other things. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:16): Well, we may have just pulled forward demand. Meaning, you know, people are like, okay, I'm flushed with money. The savings rate in the United States has been, you know, going at an incredible clip People may pull forward all that spending and say, I was gonna buy a car 18 months from now or I was gonna buy a house 2 years from now, Fuck it. I'm gonna do it now because prices are going up too fast. I don't wanna miss out. But then they're out of the market now for the next many number of years. And this is what I'm saying where you see this short term spike of demand, and then things get back to normal. If that's what we see, good times are back in growth. stuck. Yeah. Speaker 3 (00:48:52): All in podcast sets you Jason Calacanis (00:48:53): with bubbles. Go lie again. I literally, I did, like, 2 or 3 early stage deals recently, and I had members of my syndicates say, like, how does this valuation make sense? And I said to them, you know, it it actually doesn't make sense if you're looking at it with the traditional metrics, but all valuations are higher at all stages. So I'm going to selectively you know overpay compared to what we were paying a year or 2 ago. you know, if I really love a company, but I will set out a lot of I'm sitting out a lot of rounds right now that I just can't get my head around the valuation. So hopefully, some normal signals. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:29): -- David Sacks (00:49:29): a trickle down. There's always a trickle down from growth stocks in the public markets to to venture. Right? Because the the last private investors like the big funds who do the super late stage stuff, they're just doing an arbitrage on what they pay versus what the company's gonna list for. publicly. So when they see those valuations go down, they adjust. And then it works its way all the way down the stack. So, you know, gross stocks have just been hammered and especially all the recent listings, the IPOs, and specs, and everything. And and that's gonna trickle its way down. I think to venture. It's just a matter Speaker 3 (00:50:02): of fact. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:02): -- Jason Calacanis (00:50:02): we have the yeah. And I think we have the lead indicator on that as clubhouse, right, which will be the canary in the coal mine. I don't know how you guys reconcile. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:10): Explain what's going on with Clubhouse just for those of David Friedberg (00:50:12): us. Explain what it is. Jason Calacanis (00:50:13): Okay. So Clubhouse is a casual audio space. You go into a room And you're immediately taken to a live conversation with people speaking on stage, and an audience audience members can be promoted to the stage and start talking. David Friedberg (00:50:26): In a so you're wait. Wait. Hold on. It's in an app, and it's all audio. So there's Speaker 3 (00:50:29): an app -- -- audio. David Friedberg (00:50:30): There's an app you go in, and it's all audio. Jason Calacanis (00:50:32): Yes. Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:32): So it's like amateur night at a strip club, but for words, Jason Calacanis (00:50:35): or more comedy club whenever you just bring public love state. Yeah. It's kinda like a champagne room, but a little too. So, anyway, that's everywhere. -- more like a validation of the pod. Yeah. 2000 signatures from Apple to remove all in from the podcasting app. We just lost 3 regs in the Apple Podcasting app. So what's very interesting about this app is that it had a massive number of downloads during the pandemic because people were home and people were not doing anything at night because they were sheltering in place. And they had in, you know, $2,000,000 in January, 9,500,000 in February of this year and then came crashing down 2,700,000 in in March and 922 in April. But at the same time, their valuation over 18 months went from a 100,000,000 in their seed when they had, like, 3 or 4000 users to a 1,000,000,000 to 4,000,000,000 in the last round of financing for a company with 0 revenue. And let's call it a couple of million people using the app. And what's really interesting is the same venture firm led all three rounds. Ala, Sequoia's investment in WhatsApp where they did all the private funding. So you have no outside capital marking this valuation, a $4,000,000,000 evaluation, $4,000,000,000. Well, David Sacks (00:51:53): they got a they got an acquisition offer from Twitter 4,000,000,000. And they they turn they Jason Calacanis (00:51:57): did this -- -- ever confirmed? David Sacks (00:51:59): I've heard it was real. Okay. So so but so, basically, the reason why the 4,000,000,000 private round happened was So they would keep going as an independent company. They could basically take some chips off the table through secondary and kinda go for the bigger outcome. But, yeah, they could've just sold to Twitter for 4,000,000,000. So Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:15): -- David Sacks (00:52:15): They may end up regretting that. David Friedberg (00:52:17): But, like, is this really a function of a broader Inflation? Valuation inflation, or is this just a function of there was a company that was a social network with hyper growth? And then it turns out the product had no stickiness, and the hyper growth went away. The souffle collapsed. David Sacks (00:52:33): The souffle collapsed. David Friedberg (00:52:35): Can I can I can I just point out, like and and forgive me if any any of you guys are investors in this company or anyone that's listening cares. But, like, if this thing came out before YouTube, people would say, you know, this is interesting, but it needs an asynchronous killer. It needs a thing where you can, like, record a conversation, post it online, and people can come and watch it and listen to it when they want. It was always so crazy to me that you had to be logged in to the app to listen to what was going on. And if you didn't, you missed the conversation, and there was no way to, like, go watch the recording of the conversation. Like, am I crazy to think that this was just, like, Speaker 3 (00:53:09): so silly? David Sacks (00:53:09): I think you I think you nailed it that they don't have async in there. And, actually, I've got a little disclosure. to make here. David Friedberg (00:53:17): What? What? The Bicca Web, and it's for sure. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:21): -- Jason Calacanis (00:53:21): special. Alright. David Sacks (00:53:23): Breaking news story. Okay. So I think I understand what clubhouse did wrong, Async is a huge part of it. But rather than tell you exactly, I'm gonna show you because I've been incubating a new Speaker 3 (00:53:34): act. What? What? David Sacks (00:53:37): That we're we're we're on test flight right now. And you guys after this pod, I can I can demo it for you. And if you guys if you guys wanna invest, I'm gonna close around this week for Jason Calacanis (00:53:49): getting wet. David Sacks (00:53:49): And so if you guys wanna What's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:51): their evaluation? What's the value? Jason Calacanis (00:53:52): Yeah. What's our insider to all in? What's the bestie vowel? David Friedberg (00:53:55): Yeah. What's the bestie? David Sacks (00:53:55): I'll talk to you guys about it offline. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:57): How much how much money do you wanna raise? David Sacks (00:53:59): We already we're raising 10,000,000 bucks, and we already have commitments and but I'm creating room for you guys. David Friedberg (00:54:04): Yeah. Yeah. 500 k each. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:07): I'll take -- Jason Calacanis (00:54:08): Sounds like 500 k each. Where is it middle each? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:10): -- David Sacks (00:54:10): about it offline. But but the apps on Testfly, I think we'll be ready to launch in a few weeks. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:14): Can I can I say wait. David Friedberg (00:54:15): Wait. What's it called? Jason Calacanis (00:54:17): Can you say where it's at? David Sacks (00:54:18): Yeah. No. I'll say it. It's called call in. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:21): Call in. Colin. Colin. I thought it was I thought it was gonna be called clubhouse. Does this David Friedberg (00:54:29): have a a podcast on it? David Sacks (00:54:34): We absolutely could do the podcast on it, and it would be awesome. Nick would be out of a job, so I don't you would like that Speaker 3 (00:54:38): too much, but -- -- the Jason Calacanis (00:54:39): quality level. But I think it's good for call ins. If we wanted to do a call in show, it would be good for that. David Friedberg (00:54:43): Yes. It'd be David Sacks (00:54:43): great it'd be great to do Exactly. That's why it's called call in is because the ability for you to take callers is obviously a a huge feature. But also, like, we could host after parties for our fans. to, like, you know, chop up the latest episode and talk about it. Jason Calacanis (00:54:58): Yeah. The these fans are getting crazy. Do you guys see the all in stats Twitter handle? I don't know the Twitter handle off top of my head. But somebody's these kids are doing they're using machine learning or something to know what percentage of time we each speak on the pod and how many monologues and they're doing all these statistics. It's crazy. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:19): That's really cool. I was gonna say In defensive Clubhouse for a second, I don't I don't know the app per se. But I think, like, why Andreessen did all of that in my opinion is because they're pressing a hot hand, which makes a ton of sense from their perspective. It's like, you know, I think that they're going for the kill shot because I think they're basically set up they're basically set up to become Sequoia if if they really I mean, I think if you think about like which 2 firms are really crushing on all cylinders right now. Obviously, Sequoia has always been the perennial number 1. But if you think about the the heater that Andresen is on, it's incredible. And so From their perspective, the $4,000,000,000 valuation is less important than what is their real capital at risk. And that's probably a 100 or a 150,000,000, which in the grand scheme of having 40 or $50,000,000,000 of AUM, if you consider the value of all their public positions as well, that's a really reasonable risk to take. So I think if you're using that way, it's kinda like they're taking a shot to try to just, you know, go for it. -- Jason Calacanis (00:56:17): does become worth 10,000,000,000 or 50,000,000,000. Also, if it if it only gets sold for 500,000,000, they get their money out first. So what does it matter? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:26): What does it matter? They're David Sacks (00:56:26): going for the $100,000,000,000 come. I mean, they've seen that Instagram sold too soon. They saw that snap turn down a $3,000,000,000 offer from Facebook and now it's worth 80,000,000,000. they're going for the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:36): $100,000,000,000. Jason Calacanis (00:56:37): YouTube, 1,600,000,000. Yeah. David Sacks (00:56:39): And now it's worth 100 of 1,000,000,000. So they're hoping it's gonna be like that. But Shamat Chamath is right. Look. If they had taken, what, say, 20 percent of a $4,000,000,000 outcome, 800,000,000, that doesn't even pay back their fund. Right? But if it ends up being a $100,000,000,000 outcome, they make 20,000,000,000. Now it's like a coin base for them. Jason Calacanis (00:56:57): And what what do you think they gave to the founders? David Sacks (00:57:00): Well, who knows? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:00): -- Jason Calacanis (00:57:00): to keep in the game because 4,000,000,000 if they owned 80%. Yeah. David Sacks (00:57:05): They took out they took chips off the table. But here's the thing. All those decisions were made before the recent collapse and engagement at Clubhouse. I'm not sure anybody would be paying 4,000,000,000 for it now, given everything that's gone wrong. But, you know, who knows? It's still pretty early. Jason Calacanis (00:57:21): And just for people who are curious, there is a Twitter handle all in underscore stats. And, yeah, it's all in stats.com. I don't know. They were not affiliated with these maniacs, but We we love the stands, and we're gonna do something in person in September. Congratulations to the stands for losing their minds. I think it's a pretty good way for them to capture a bunch of attention on the Twitter. Alright. Crypto is getting absolutely hammered. And I it's the Chinese have once again said that they're basically saber rattling about cryptocurrency. They're obviously gonna do their own Jason, I think you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:00): I think you have to talk about China in a in a slightly broader lens in just what's happening in crypto because, like, this is the same week where They base it they've they forced, you know, Zhang Yemin to resign from ByteDance. I mean, you know, last last week, it was or last month, it was the CEO, Pinduoduo. Jason Calacanis (00:58:18): at Jack Mauss's MIA? They're going Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:20): for the jugular. I mean, it's like -- We're Jason Calacanis (00:58:22): what why are they taking out all their top CEOs? This would be like putting Elon and Jeff Bezos on the bench, what is it they just don't want any heroes? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:31): I don't know. I mean, I I guess maybe the speculative part of me would say, they're showing them who's really in charge of these companies. I mean, it it would be crazy to your point if the government of the United States forced Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk to resign. It's like, hey. Sorry. I'm sorry. You need to leave right now, and put somebody else in it. And do you -- Jason Calacanis (00:58:53): By the way, debate their badges? David Sacks (00:58:55): Yeah. We just we just relentlessly criticize them. Right? But but yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:58:59): Yeah. We just demonize them. just try to cancel them. David Sacks (00:59:02): But look. But they deserve that level of scrutiny because the amount of power they have. But but, yeah, the we don't we don't put them in jail or house arrest or drive them out of their companies. And that is a big advantage for the US economy. Jason Calacanis (00:59:14): The treasury department here in the United States is doing a little saber rattling. They want to know anytime there is a $10,000 transaction in any kind of digital token. And they're talking about a CBDC. to do their own cryptocurrency. So they're putting out a white paper for feedback this summer. And We are now seeing a pullback on Bitcoin from, you know, mid sixties to, you know, now into the Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:41): 36, 37,000 Jason Calacanis (00:59:43): per Bitcoin. Do you think this is the end of the beginning beginning of the end? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:48): It's the beginning of the beginning. David Rubinstein was on CNBC today and David Rubinstein for those you guys don't know is was a cofounder of Carlisle Group. You know, more blue chip and blue blooded you cannot get. and very connected in Washington. And, you know, he said at best where he said, you know, effectively, people want this and the government will have no choice except to support it because you can't take something like this with this much institutional and retail demand away. So we have to go to the place where now crypto needs to be like everything else. And maybe the crypto stands get upset with that because they don't like it that a bunch of their parents are all of a sudden going to be buying tokens and stuff, but they got to get over it. Then this stuff should be transacted in the same way you transact anything else. you buy it, you sell it, you get a tax return, you pay your taxes, and you move on. This reminds me Jason Calacanis (01:00:42): of the transition that we all went through with, I don't know, if you remember, Khazah and and BitTorrent. Like, everybody all the we a lot of our contemporaries in their thirties, you know, whatever, 10, 20 years ago were like, You can't stop it. You can't stop it, and you it got stopped. You know? Like, you made it illegal and you prosecuted people, and then you came up with solutions that were regulated like Spotify or, you know, Netflix, and you gave the consumers what they wanted. So David, do you think this is a similar path right now that we're going through, which is the crypto zealots and the and the and the stands are gonna basically have to get used to as Tremont saying. Their parents buying it and and crypto not being this underground thing but being regulated in a in a major way in the United States. And is that a good or bad thing? David Sacks (01:01:30): I I I think the thing that that's happening quietly behind the scenes is that major Wall Street players, institutions, endowments, and so forth over the past year have decided that Bitcoin and crypto is a legitimate asset class, and they've been allocating to it. Huge, huge pools of capital, balance sheet, capital have been allocating into it. I don't think that's gonna change. This is probably a pretty good buying opportunity. We've seen these crashes in Bitcoin many, many times over the years. It plummets down, and then it goes back up, and it eventually goes back up and reaches a new peak. So this is probably a pretty good entry point for the next rally. We don't know when that's gonna be. But the whole point of Bitcoin is that it's censorship resistant. And China can do its best to try and stamp it out, but I don't think they'll be successful of that. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:17): You don't? Jason Calacanis (01:02:18): But you're so wrong about that. They they -- That is the most naive take, worst take you've ever had. David Sacks (01:02:23): How's China gonna stop Bitcoin? Jason Calacanis (01:02:25): How do they stop VPNs? They put people in jail? How do they stop do they put people in jail? David Sacks (01:02:29): they may make it incredibly hard for Chinese citizens to get a hold of Bitcoin. I agree with that, but they're not gonna be able to stop Bitcoin. Jason Calacanis (01:02:36): they're not gonna stop Bitcoin in the West, but they will stop it in China. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:41): 100% Jason Calacanis (01:02:41): will stop it. And you know how many servers are in China? I mean, go talk to the people who were in Tiananmen Square about what Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:48): -- Speaker 3 (01:02:48): The miners David Sacks (01:02:48): will have to move out. The miners will have Speaker 3 (01:02:50): to move out. Jason Calacanis (01:02:50): Yeah. Miners are done. And then if it'll be an underground thing, it'll be like having a VPN, which is 5 years in jail for selling VPNs. David Friedberg (01:02:57): What do you think about the IRS requirement that you have to report any Bitcoin transaction over $10,000? rights. Do you think that that and and Americans can be prosecuted for not reporting. Right? So I I don't know how much -- That's Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:09): -- David Friedberg (01:03:09): I'm a I don't know how much of it. David Sacks (01:03:10): Fine. So what? Jason Calacanis (01:03:11): Do it. So what? Get over it. But I do think that'll get rid of 20 percent of the transactions that might have David Sacks (01:03:17): been nefarious. This is the road fallacy that, you know, that the only legitimate use for crypto or Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:23): -- Jason Calacanis (01:03:23): Well, I said 20%. I didn't say only. David Sacks (01:03:24): Okay. Fine. But so maybe to make set that small fraction of illegitimate or illicit use cases. Jason Calacanis (01:03:30): What do you think favors? David Friedberg (01:03:32): No, Sax. I think the point is that they're trying to chase down. It's not about illegal use cases. It's about not porting a taxable gain on your Bitcoin before you use that money to buy something. So -- Sure. David Sacks (01:03:43): Of course, about tax evasion. Speaker 3 (01:03:44): But look. But but but that but that's not David Sacks (01:03:46): that's not gonna stop Bitcoin usage. You know, smart people who've been trading Bitcoin, been paying taxes on it for years. That's not I don't think that's really an issue. If you were in China and you would create your wealth in China or many, many other countries all over the world, and there were currency restrictions and controls The government was asserting more and more power, and we're putting business leaders under house arrest and and seeking to put them under their thumb. you'd be trying to convert as much of your net worth into Bitcoin as possible so that all you have to do is if you ever had to flee the country, you wouldn't have to have dollars in your suitcase or gold bricks or diamonds. You'd simply have to have a password in your brain that you could access at any computer terminal when you out of the country. And so that, I think, that sort of digital gold is a phenomenal use case of Bitcoin. And the more oppressive all these countries become, the more they increase the value of that use case. David Friedberg (01:04:41): What do you think is the black swan event in crypto in Bitcoin in particular? Jason Calacanis (01:04:47): Taxation in the United States. A 10% additional taxation like you do on cigarettes. That would be for me. The United States putting a tax on it that makes it less competitive with our our national coming cryptocurrency. The CBC that the United States will launch in the next 2 or 3 years, they're going to say if you wanna use any of these currencies, there's a 10% tax on them. We want you using ours, the legitimate one. David Sacks (01:05:13): There's there's a very negative black swan that obviously has never occurred. But if anyone ever manages to counterfeit a Bitcoin or this is the double spend problem. Right? If you could ever if you could ever double spend or or or figure out a way to create bitcoins or counterfeit them whatever that weren't in the blockchain, if the number of bitcoins ever grew beyond the 21,000,000 that's just built into the way that the whole thing works. If that ever happened, Bitcoin is instantly worthless. That would be the black swan on the negative side. I think the black swan Speaker 3 (01:05:43): on the call. If it Jason Calacanis (01:05:44): didn't happen in the 1st 11 years, what do you think the light is on a percentage basis that it happens in the 20th. David Sacks (01:05:49): Exactly. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:50): It's too expensive now. And it's too it's too visible. Like, the the way that it would have happened, it would have happened in the 2 or 3 years. David Friedberg (01:05:56): Or the argument could be made the opposite that now it's so valuable that it's worth investing to figure out Jason Calacanis (01:06:00): how to -- -- target. Yeah. David Friedberg (01:06:01): Yeah. And and and as and rather than have it be about a diminishing probability, it could be an increasing probability over time, which is that the pathways to get there start to get resolved whereas in the past, you didn't have enough time to resolve those pathways. You you would have to -- -- highly theoretical here, but, like, certainly, there's there's there's Jason Calacanis (01:06:19): a lot of technical -- -- account that it's open source. and that everybody can see it. So you would think that everybody would discover the vulnerability at the same time, right, in an open source project? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:27): Low I think the I think the issue practically speaking in this would be that you would see there's resources getting organized, meaning you'd see silicon being bought in volume by some centralized player. And then you'd have to see water and power come together as well. And this is where I think it's just not realistic, where today that I think the horses left the barn because if you try to basically capture enough hash rate to kind of, like, overpower this network. It's it's it's like the scene in Austin Powers where he's screaming in front of a a steamroller, but the steamroller is moving at, like, one foot a minute. Right. You see a comment. It's just like you just see it coming. Jason Calacanis (01:07:06): Well, would you have a black swanfriedberg? You asked the load of questions. So do you have one? Speaker 3 (01:07:10): I think about it a lot. I don't really David Friedberg (01:07:12): I mean, it's a black swan. It's because it's a black swan. So you don't really see it coming. But, like, you know, the the the thing about Bitcoin which has always given me pause is the fact that the only way it works is if everyone believes that more people are gonna believe in it tomorrow than believing it today. Jason Calacanis (01:07:34): That's the only way it appreciates. David Friedberg (01:07:37): Yeah. But the for for a variety of reasons, it it's also the only way that it works because if it starts to depreciate, it becomes almost like this unwinding circumstance. And there are moments where it unwinds, but then people kind of say, well, you know what? More people are gonna get on this. There's the Chinese argument. There's the Argentinian argument. There's all the reasons why people will try and store wealth in this system, and that becomes a rationale for continuing to bet on it. And my observation is so many people that are active in Bitcoin compare Bitcoin to the price of the dollar, which to me seems like it doesn't make sense relative to the intention of Bitcoin, which is to not be part of the monetary system that uses the dollar. It's kind of the de facto you know, system of value. And so why have the comparison to the dollar as the objective for Bitcoin? Why is the objective not transactions, use cases, number of people that are active on the network, etcetera, etcetera. Jason Calacanis (01:08:34): And nobody buying it is buying it as a substitute for jobs. They're buying it as a lottery ticket. David Friedberg (01:08:38): So, yeah, that's that that's right. And so then it becomes this rationale that it's like it's an investment that you put money in in the form of dollars or your local currency with the intention that you will be able to get more of your local currency out at some point in the future. And the only way that works is if you expect someone else will buy it from you at a higher price in the future, therefore, it's all about propagating the, you know, the marketing around the Bitcoin. Whereas if your objective was really about making this become a replacement currency system or replacement monetary system, you would ultimately care less about, you know, what's the dollar value per coin, and you would care more about how many people are using it you know, how how active Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:14): -- Jason Calacanis (01:09:15): Let me build on that David Friedberg (01:09:15): question then. Jason Calacanis (01:09:16): So Saks or Chamath, if the CBD and Americans currency you know, starts to move towards a Bitcoin blockchain like experience, what would America start to look like if 10 or 20 percent of your dollars instead of being held in a bank, we're on a a blockchain with an American Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:35): -- David Sacks (01:09:36): A government a government backed blockchain doesn't accomplish anything David Friedberg (01:09:40): It's still centralized. David Sacks (01:09:41): People are it's centralized. And not only is it centralized, but also it's still prone to debasement. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:48): Yeah. David Sacks (01:09:48): And so look. Human beings have used everything from gold coins to seashells as money. We can make anything money that's easy to transact. if we all agree on it. That's the sense in which Bitcoin is the bubble that becomes true if everyone believes in it. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:03): That's right. David Sacks (01:10:03): Provided provided the number of bitcoins stay at 21,000,000, and that the technology enforces the scarcity. The problem we have with the US dollars, the government can just print as many of them as they want. Jason Calacanis (01:10:13): Yeah. You change the denominator properties. David Sacks (01:10:15): You change it. Yeah. And so I think there's a positive black swan as well for positive for Bitcoin. which is Stanley Druckenmiller thinks in the next 15 years, the US dollar will no longer be the world's reserve currency. Well, what's gonna replace it? The positive black swan would be that Bitcoin becomes, if not the, a, world reserve currency, an unofficial world reserve currency. Why? because people trust it. They trust the decentralization more than they trust any government. And that would that would be a big split. Jason Calacanis (01:10:46): Is that in Is the United States and China, are they going to let bitcoin become the world's reserve currency? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:53): Well, it's not a choice that they have. You sure? So yeah. There's nothing they can do. Jason Calacanis (01:11:00): What about -- And the law and guns and jail and tax? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:04): I don't I don't know what that means. There's there's nothing that they could there there was nothing that they could do to stop it before. There's nothing that they can do to stop it now. Jason Calacanis (01:11:11): Well, you can't get the New York Times in China and you can't practice religion there. So they have a pretty easy system. They put you in jail. They wanna stop Bitcoin. They could just put you in jail. How? by finding out that you have Bitcoin and just well, because they have a 100% view into the Internet there. They have How? on because they have routers. That's how they capture all the Uighurs is they know their location because they have mobile phones. And when they use signal or any other encrypted technology They catch them. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:38): No. I don't I don't think that's how it works. But -- That's Jason Calacanis (01:11:40): how they catch all the dissidents there is they they have them. And they also have Apple's entire data center is controlled by the Chinese government. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:49): There's no ledger somewhere that says this specific wallet address equals David Saxx, and there's not going to be one anytime soon. And so you'll have these centralized wallet authorities that actually, you know, have a lot of account information. But the reality is the sophisticated actors, you know, use tumblers. They they they watched sort of, like, their their paths in a way where it's very difficult to figure out who these people are. Now If you if you don't if you use a site that doesn't have KYC, that's always gonna be the case. And, you know, people with huge amounts of Bitcoin are sophisticated enough to know how to stay anonymous if they want to. For everybody else who doesn't care because for them it's sort of an investment asset class and an, you know, a hedge, then they're not gonna care either. And the point is when enough people own it, governments aren't in a position to track record of them just waking up one day and pulling the plug on anything is 0. That's not how people do things. You have to have, like, centralized policy and support and I don't see it one way or the other of all the things that China and the United States will face over the next 30 or 40 years. This is like 50th on the list. Jason Calacanis (01:12:57): Sachs, what do you think? Any closing thoughts? David Sacks (01:13:00): I mean, I think we we've said it. So yeah. I mean, look, I think I think if you're gonna stay in a place like the United States, you need to comply with tax law. You're absolutely gonna report your Bitcoin to hold needs if it's required. But if the reason you're buying Bitcoin is because you're fleeing a country or you're worried about fleeing a country, you're obviously not gonna report it. And that's the that's the advantage of it is that it's a portable money supply that, again, you can just you don't have to carry anything with you. You just put a pass worded in your brain wallet. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:30): Tell me about UFOs before we leave. I mean, can you believe this thing? This is the craziest thing. I I -- So there was a Jason Calacanis (01:13:36): yeah. There's a 60 minutes episode that just happened. Deputy assistant secretary of defense for Intelligent literally said, the crafts we're seeing are and then in quotes, far beyond Anything that we're capable of, there's nothing we could build that would be strong enough to endure the amount of force and acceleration. Imagine a technology that can do seven 100 GeForce's flight 13 miles per hour. You've made radar. It has every no obvious signs of propulsion and yet can clearly defy the effects of Earth's gravity. That's precisely what we're seeing from the director of advanced Aerospace threat identification program. I mean, is this real? Like, how is what? What do we do? What? Our government says there are crafts that outstrip our arsenal by at least a 100 years to a 1000 years at the moment, and we're like meh. What do you think, Friedberg, you're the scientist here? David Friedberg (01:14:22): There's a if you read the original treatment written by Arthur Clark, the movie 2001 of Space Odyssey, which was written before the movie and then the book was written after the movie. He makes a really compelling point. And the point he makes is that when civilizations achieve a sophisticated enough level of technology, There's no longer a need to physically transport yourself from star to star and transport yourself around the universe. Think about this for a second. take what we have from virtual reality today and fast forward 200 years, and then take what we have in terms of you know, the ability to print and create anything we want on demand and fast forward 2 or 300 years. Those two conditions alone might give us the ability to strap on something to our brain and literally and remember, our brain is simply sensing what our body is given. if you can control what your brain is sensing through some strap on device or whatever, you don't actually need to physically be in the place where that happens. So if we can remotely sense what's going on somewhere else in the universe or some other part of our planet, and we can remotely pick up those signals and view them or experience them. You just via You don't need to physically be there. And then secondly -- All Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:39): this oh, sorry. All this via strap on? Okay. David Friedberg (01:15:41): Yeah. And then, secondly, Speaker 3 (01:15:42): I shouldn't use the I shouldn't use the term. David Friedberg (01:15:44): And then, secondly, if you could Yeah. But think think about if you guys ever watched the TV show Star Trek next generation, which I would guess maybe one of you did. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:52): -- David Friedberg (01:15:53): replicate Yeah. Or or the replicate or or the holiday, and you could walk in there. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:56): -- Jason Calacanis (01:15:56): get number 3 on my list of Star Trek. David Friedberg (01:15:58): Yeah. Serious. If you if you walk in and you could literally create the physical space that you wanna be in to to accomplish anything to Holitech, and then you could print anything. Why would you use all the energy and all of this work to transport physical matter from one part of the universe to the other when all matter is transmutable, and the only thing that differentiates things is the photons coming off that matter, which is just a sense it. So if you can sense things remotely while you're physically here Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:23): -- Jason Calacanis (01:16:23): Why go through the trouble? David Friedberg (01:16:24): Why go through the trouble? And so the argument Jason Calacanis (01:16:25): is -- -- same reason that we go to Hawaii and not just watch a movie? David Friedberg (01:16:30): No. Because we don't have enough of the sensing capabilities today to to truly recreate being in Hawaii. But imagine if we did and and we are very much on the path to doing that. And in 2, 300 years, we have the ability to physically recreate what it's like for our body to be in Hawaii in every form, smell, taste, color, everything about being there physically, and our body experiences it. Why the hell would you fly to Hawaii? You could meet people, you could socialize, So in a world -- -- short Hawaii. In a world where that technology exists, which could, by the way, be neural link, right, where you can, you know, put these signals directly into the brain, etcetera. moving physical matter from one part of the universe to the other makes zero sense. All matter is transmutable. You can convert one atom to another using a technology locally. you wouldn't do that. And so that's the premise of 2001, is that you've got these local communication pods that just transmit information from different parts of the universe. You don't need to physically transport yourself. So that's the that's the the macro kind of argument against this notion that UFOs or aliens are in a physical spacecraft visiting. It's so old school technology that it makes no sense. It's like saying, you know, oh my gosh. All these people are coming over to the United States on horses from Europe. You know? Like, it it just like, why would they do that? Why would they use a horse? So so I think that's the argument against UFOs being aliens in spacecraft. Now is there a really cool technology that has this advanced capability and there are these crafts that are in our sky and someone has that technology, maybe. But I I'm not sure about this general piece of -- I Jason Calacanis (01:17:54): mean, you blew my mind with that. So Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:56): -- Jason Calacanis (01:17:56): Yeah. Sachs, I you obviously don't care. So we're so I was like, I I have no way for this to increase the IRR of my fund Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:06): -- Speaker 3 (01:18:06): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:06): -- Jason Calacanis (01:18:07): or to get me another home -- peep poo poo poo planet Earth while you die, you want to go. David Sacks (01:18:12): I just somehow feel like if they're really UFOs, it'd be like an even bigger story. Like, we'd all know it. You know? It's not gonna be some, like, weird fringe conspiracy thing. Jason Calacanis (01:18:22): Here's the here's the thing. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:23): I do not care about emotions like humans. David Friedberg (01:18:26): Why wouldn't I care about the emotions of others? Jason Calacanis (01:18:28): Every single photograph that's been taken in the last year is absolutely recognizably better than the one take in 10 years ago. And every single photo or video of these aliens looks like it was shot in a on a camera from 1950 on film that was left in some space. David Friedberg (01:18:48): And meanwhile pic meanwhile, Pixar movies can recreate literally the ocean -- We're recording Jason Calacanis (01:18:53): this on Zoom. Why can't it get get me a clear shot? There's not one clear out of this. David Sacks (01:18:57): Show me the alien and 4 k high def. And then I'll believe it. Speaker 3 (01:19:01): I'll believe it. I mean, Jason Calacanis (01:19:02): if you do ever see Spacex launch where it has a camera the engine, and we could see the engine. Like, why can't we get a shot of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:08): the -- Until then, I will be traveling between my homes with me. -- that's life. Jason Calacanis (01:19:13): I am living right now. So life not in severance. Tisca, we will get Chesa booting recalled. David Friedberg (01:19:17): I will tell you, Saks, I don't think you need to harp on the Chesa point anymore because I don't hear anyone making the case on the other side anymore. David Sacks (01:19:24): Dustin Muscovitz. He did? Dustin Moscovitz. Jason Calacanis (01:19:27): Yes. What? From Asscovitz? David Sacks (01:19:29): Yes. Nick pulled up the tweet. So you know, I've been basically blood because, look, they're David Friedberg (01:19:34): they've been -- We fired him up. Here we go. David Sacks (01:19:35): No. They get sent. They they were gonna take off. So Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:38): -- David Friedberg (01:19:39): Insert core are Speaker 3 (01:19:40): here. Now you have my rage -- Doug David Friedberg (01:19:43): range. -- has Speaker 3 (01:19:43): an answer for David Friedberg (01:19:44): the update, Sean. -- inserted. Yes. Run rage -- Run rage function now. David Sacks (01:19:49): No. look, we we're taking all this heat from these stupid reporters who are talking about our donations, you know, like asking what are we up to. Look. We're very public about what we're up to. Jason Calacanis (01:19:59): But -- This is a terrible tweet from Dustin. David Sacks (01:20:02): There there've been these tech billionaires, Dustin Moskovits, Reed Hastings, and Mike Krueger, And they've been donating money to -- What? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:11): -- David Sacks (01:20:11): to chase a booting and Gasconera away. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:20:14): -- Jason Calacanis (01:20:14): disappointing? David Sacks (01:20:15): Yeah. Horrible. So I asked. I just said, why are you donating money to this insanity? And Dustin's still defending it. Jason Calacanis (01:20:21): I'm And Speaker 3 (01:20:22): then he said and then David Sacks (01:20:23): he said I'm gonna mute you now. because, you know, you didn't wanna you didn't wanna take Speaker 3 (01:20:26): your time. Jason Calacanis (01:20:26): Wait. Just in fairness. Let me pull Speaker 3 (01:20:28): this up. Jason Calacanis (01:20:29): Dustin's quote is I live in the city, and I'm not going anywhere. Crime happens to me too. Trust me. we write extensively about why all of our grants here. You know, here's the thing. I think Dustin Reed Hastings and their spouses are very involved in criminal justice reform. And what we have to do is give somebody like Dustin or Reed Hastings the benefit of the doubt here and say, we understand your donations were meaningful to you and you wanted to maybe lower the incarceration of black people in jail for crimes that were not violent. and we agree. Let's parse this conversation Speaker 3 (01:21:05): to 2 because Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:06): -- -- David Sacks (01:21:06): not giving them the benefit of the doubt. Let me explain why. Okay. So read it. So this is a good example. This read Hastings thing. is a good example. By the way, just today, it was announced that you donated 3,000,000 to Gavin Newsom in any event. So you know, he keep he he look. He's on that side of the spectrum. By the way, there's a little backstory there. I don't know if you guys remember when there was pressure on the Facebook board to kick Peter Teal off back back in 2016. It was Reed Hastings. That was from Reed Hastings. Okay? So the guy is very close minded. Speaker 3 (01:21:33): Well, Jason Calacanis (01:21:34): I think it's his is actually handling this -- Well, Speaker 3 (01:21:36): he David Sacks (01:21:36): he was the board member who pushed to get Peter off because he couldn't handle the fact that there might be another board member who disagree with him politically. So it's a very close minded point of view. But let's take let's take this example of crime in LA. Okay? So we had this election where George Gascon, who is a failure as DA in San Francisco, he goes down to LA and runs against the the veteran DA down there, Jackie Lacey, who happens to be a black woman, a veteran season, DA, Compton. Nobody had a problem with her. I think she's a Democrat. Okay? It's not like this is a right wing person. And so George Gascon basically fails his way out of San Francisco, goes down to LA, and he basically discharges her from that seat with Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:21): $15,000,000, David Sacks (01:22:23): an unprecedented amount spent at DA election. Where did that money come from? 5,000,000 came from source, 5,000,000 came from Reed Hastings, 5000000 came from BLM. Now, you know, in any other context, the idea that you're gonna fire a talented, competent seasoned veteran, black woman, and replace her with an incompetent white male that would be seen as institutional racism. But nobody complained about it at all, but it's outrageous. Jason Calacanis (01:22:53): What there what is the most charitable Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:55): -- David Sacks (01:22:56): What's behind that? Jason Calacanis (01:22:57): What is the most charitable view of why they're supporting Gascone and Chesibu. David Sacks (01:23:03): Well, there there's this decarcerationist agenda. And so, yes, you're you're right that they see mass incarceration as a problem. But the qualms, it is, but the solution is not mass decarceration. That we need something in between. And the problem with Gascone and Chase Abudin, they just wanna let everybody out. They don't wanna put you Jason Calacanis (01:23:23): all that shit. -- wanna add anybody. So I think if their agenda is to lower the number, adding people is against that, there are people who need to go to jail. Murderers need to go to jail. There are David Sacks (01:23:31): people dying every day in San Francisco by at the hands of repeat offenders who Chasaboudin has made the decision to let them out of jail even though they should be in jail. These are dangerous violent felons. Jason Calacanis (01:23:47): The problem with this is, I think, Chamath, I would like to get your feedback on it is, you know, you when a person gives these kind of donations and they make it their public persona, and it doesn't go well. How does one, you know, I don't know, disentangle or reconcile they made a bet that had a bad outcome because this is obviously a bad outcome. You don't want the city to devolve into chaos? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:17): I don't particularly care about San Francisco. And I think I think the 2 the 2 of you guys can talk about it on -- No. Jason Calacanis (01:24:23): I'm done. I'm gonna get rid of my place in Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:25): the city. -- Colin, but I I could I couldn't care less about how that city is going to be. Jason Calacanis (01:24:28): Any closing thoughts? David Friedberg (01:24:30): I I got nothing to say. David Sacks (01:24:32): Okay. I wanna add just one thing. Look. I so I care because I live there, but but this trend this is not just San Francisco. This whole idea of these radical decarcerationists. They are running for DA in in every major city. This is gonna be a national trend, and they're gonna cause a lot of carnage, a lot of death and destruction until the people realize. And there will inevitably be a backlash to this. And hopefully, just not too many Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:58): people involved. Fair enough. I I I don't wanna be too flippant. My point is it's a really important debate. It's gonna happen in in every city. but folks need to get engaged in those cities and do something about it. David Friedberg (01:25:09): If if you wanna hear the argument of why this is happening, you can go watch the TED Talk on YouTube of Adam Foss, f o s s. He was the original, like, proponent of the DA's coming in to drive the decarceration movements And, you know, I just think it's important to be informed of the other perspective in evaluating where folks are coming from that are that are that are proponents for this movement. Jason Calacanis (01:25:34): Yeah. I'm trying to be charitable towards their position, Dustin, and Reed, if you wanna come on the pod and be a bestie guestie, I guess. maybe? David Sacks (01:25:41): Dustin Dustin responded to me and said, listen. We don't know what the counterfactual is if we had a more aggressive DA. That was his argument. We don't know the counterfactual. Jason Calacanis (01:25:48): That's ridiculous. David Sacks (01:25:48): So I of course. So I posted a list of people of innocent victims who've died. Okay? Because directly because of a decision that Cheesah Boudin made. That's your counter factual. Yeah. That's your counter factual. Jason Calacanis (01:26:02): Alright. Listen. It's been an amazing sowed, and no plugs, no ads, no nothing. If you like the show, great. And if you don't like it, how the hell did you make it to the minute Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:14): 75? 4, Jason Calacanis (01:26:15): the queen of Kinois, the dictator himself, Jamali Papatiya. Of having steak tonight. David Friedberg (01:26:20): He's having Jason Calacanis (01:26:21): steak too a kid tonight. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:23): If you're Jason Calacanis (01:26:24): vegan, David Friedberg, you're not invited to steak dinner. David Friedberg (01:26:27): You're having beers tonight. I'm having beers tonight. Jason Calacanis (01:26:30): You're having beers and roasted eggplant tonight. You've never eaten fish in your life. Never had sushi. and Sakses and everybody. Sakses is pretty interesting. We Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:42): -- Jason Calacanis (01:26:42): Saks, you're gonna talk about Sakses' help. David Friedberg (01:26:44): Where's your 1st, second, and third dinner tonight? David Sacks (01:26:46): I'm I'm on a seafood diet. I eat I see the food, and I Speaker 3 (01:26:49): eat it. Good. Good. Sacks. If we take out Jason Calacanis (01:26:52): your postmates slash rates account right now. How long ago is it gonna be? David Friedberg (01:26:57): Feed it out. Feed it out. What's happening? What's happening? Speaker 3 (01:27:01): Oh my god. It's coming Jason Calacanis (01:27:02): up because I'm like, David Sacks (01:27:02): it's between the fact guy on this part. Speaker 3 (01:27:04): I don't know. This is not Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:05): -- Jason Calacanis (01:27:05): I just bought my 3rd machine. David Sacks (01:27:07): This can't be happening. Jason Calacanis (01:27:08): It's happening. This is your twilight zone episode. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:11): I just bought I'm go Jason Calacanis (01:27:12): I just did. I'm going twice a week with the trainer, and I just bought the hydro. So now I have tonal, Peloton Tread, and I got the hydro. I'm going from smart machine to smart machine. Hey, are you spack -- Oh, I gotta Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:25): -- Jason Calacanis (01:27:25): Oh, good question. No. No. No comment. -- comment. Okay. Sorry. I I just saw it from tweet. David Sacks (01:27:32): People have other things to do. Jason Calacanis (01:27:33): Guys, I gotta put you down. Speaker 3 (01:27:34): I gotta go. David Sacks (01:27:34): I gotta go. David Friedberg (01:27:35): I gotta go. Jason Calacanis (01:27:35): Alright, everybody. Let me pass Speaker 3 (01:27:37): the answer. Let me satch you. Jason Calacanis (01:27:38): Yeah. Get a salad. Okay. We love you. My besties. How are you this salad? And, of course, the dictator here -- Jamalu dictates Jamal. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:46): -- Jason Calacanis (01:27:46): the Dickyli. -- South Shamal. He is acting after himself, Paulie. Speaker 3 (01:27:50): The dictator is well. Shut up. Don't worry. I raised a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:55): minimum of a $100,000,000 personal food. Jason Calacanis (01:27:57): Inspector out of you it's Speaker 3 (01:28:03): hard to make good investments. It's hard to build a company. I am complete by product of the social safety. And at some point, you have to figure out whether you actually want your kids to have eyes going to work on before you hear more about the land gross. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:33): People of Tim Bunny is free, Speaker 3 (01:28:35): and it's not. I pick up the slot. Hey. Book Tim Bunny is but it's fun. I get 1000 of 1,000,000,000. I get 1000 of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:45): 1,000,000,000. Speaker 3 (01:28:48): Fireing out also with this. Shut up to all my heroes. Ultra in Jason Calacanis (01:28:51): London Billionaire has brought to French and mortar. That gotta you respect this people. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:55): Just wanna be called king. the little guy getting run over. Speaker 3 (01:29:01): I just can't stay It's hard to make it. It's hard to make good investments. It's hard to build a company because it was everybody would be doing it all the time. Speaker 6 (01:29:20): This one man for yourself, it's Speaker 3 (01:29:21): all about you you can figure it out. Speaker 6 (01:29:24): But the more and individualism. That's just not realistic like Speaker 3 (01:29:27): a little chicken. Anybody who want who's listening to this, who wants to go Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:30): to the French laundry, stay at home pour a bunch of salt on whatever you're gonna eat. Okay. Speaker 3 (01:29:37): Now we'll just take a butter in the microwave. Just take a butter in the microwave. Drink it. David Friedberg (01:29:40): and then basically take $1500. Blight it Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:43): on fire. You've been emotionally. Speaker 3 (01:29:49): of the good tender. It's hard to make it. It's hard to make good investments. It's hard to build a company because if it was easy, everybody would be doing it all the time. Speaker 6 (01:29:59): This one man for yourself, it's Speaker 3 (01:30:00): all about you. You can figure it out. Speaker 6 (01:30:03): The rugged individualism, that's just not real