Hey everybody, welcome back to the all in podcast besties have reunited. It's been a bestie summer chamath. How are you doing your back in America? Yes. I'm back in America back in America feels great. Good summary. Yes. I had an epiphany summer. I had seven weeks in Italy. It was really incredible. What is the vibe in Italy post pandemic? Obviously, they had the roughest of Any Nation. I think except for China Wuhan with all the covid-19 house.
The psyche their nose incredible because they're I mean, they're so resilient. They basically decided that they don't ever want to go through it again. So everybody wore a mask and people socially distance. There's a lots of dinners outside. No restaurants were really seating people indoors you'd walk into a store and you'd have to put some, you know, Purell on your hands and wear masks and there was like, you know, 40 50 cases a day and then I keep looking at the news when I was there are 60,000 a day.
Here I was it's it was just really it was sad and then on top of that to see the riots the fires. I mean, there's a you know, it's been a disturbing summer here. How are you doing? David Sachs, you're back in San Francisco and you got to spend a little bit of time in an undisclosed location as we know from the pot last couple episodes of the podcast. How is San Francisco right? Now? How has your besties some
Urban?
It's been great. Yeah, I was I guess I can now disclose that. My closest location was was Mexico specifically Cabo and that was it was a great place to be for it's
coming around. Nobody cares. Yeah. Yeah
exactly. But actually it was great. It was a great place to be in the early stages the pandemic because everyone was wearing masks, you know, they did take it really seriously and there were very few cases and seemed like it was under control at least in the area I was
And then we came back to San Francisco for school for the kids school, which you know, I'm not sure we have to be here. But but that's that's it was really painful actually open.
Are they going to school or they keep pushing it out two weeks like my kids
are yeah, it's we don't they're not going in person yet, but I think they keep trying to figure out when they're going to start doing that. So it's all Zoom based right now.
Yeah, which means no learning right? I mean, do you do you think these kids are actually learning on Zoom or do you think it's just
Gloria a little bit maybe something a little bit. I think it's difficult.
Yeah, we gave up on it and free Burger you there?
I'm here Bay Area. How's your bestie summer been during this crazy time? I've been in the Bay Area. I've been Crossing all seven layers of Dante's Inferno here in California moving from the outer layer of covid to the middle layer of California has proposed wealth tax to the inner layers of extreme heat smoke and the absolute Central layer of pain more recently my three.
Daughter decided thirty four nights ago to not sleep anymore. So yeah, we've been living living the life. It's been glorious and you know, I wear a mask now for covid and then I wear another mask on top of that mask for the smoke. So we're just living the California Dream what my God he writes immigrated here for you know Paradise. Well, I guess that's a good place to start and just if anybody cares I spend a great time. I guess nobody cares.
See how a my bestie summer was but we forgot Jason and Jessie summer, you know, I've been lonely and I tweeted I'm lonely and I got about 50 phone calls from people who are like I can't imagine Jake. Ow being sad, but I actually had a talk with my wife and I said, what are the symptoms of depression because I think I might have depression and I went through and I was like, I don't have depression. I'm just I have great empathy for all the people suffering and you know, I just being
Isolated you guys know me very well better than anybody like I like to talk to people and it's been really difficult for me to be totally candid to be isolated like this and the podcast is is great and doing this podcast is great. But man I miss people I just miss what are the what are the symptoms of your depression? Just before you were self-diagnosing. I'm just curious. I wish I was feeling like just sad about watching the riots and watch people shoot each other and then watching you know,
The the wildfires watching people die unnecessarily and then watching the madness for the election. It was just all becoming like I wouldn't say overwhelming but it just made me very sad that you know, so many people can't go back to work and then the stock market's ripping and it's a very I don't know how you guys feel but it feels very surreal. Right because in our world and I don't know how your portfolio is Investments are doing you know, a lot of the companies we've invested in as Angel Investors are doing just wonderfully and
We're investing more than ever. But then you turn on the television. It's like the Doom scrolling is crazy. So I had to just stop doing scroll. I think that was the key thing to Martha was just looking at Twitter is but the trending topics is so depressing and just so overwhelming at times that I took three days off this weekend and went camping and I literally didn't pull up Twitter and I felt much better. So I think is really Twitter related like just opening up the trending topics. I don't know if you did that on your holiday in Italy, but it really is a quick way to get depressed.
The best thing is that I was using it in a different time zone. And so I was basically out of the flow and it makes a huge difference because then you're not in the emotional turmoil of people's immediate reaction. And so you can just kind of move on and then also I just had a really fun summer because I really tried to detach and not use my phone. I had a you know, I kept my meetings to a few hours a day and then otherwise I
is doing things.
Yeah, you want to know you want to one of my phone call to Jake. Ow. Well Hey Jake Ally I saw on Twitter that you're sad and lonely it's like yeah, it's like are you suicidal so I know okay. Goodbye.
I'm doing but I do I do want to thank you David for having me down to Cabo and we got to have some good time to watch some good movies Gladiator Extended Cut was great.
Some other movies that we watch could get us canceled. So we admit that we watched history of the world or any other Mel Brooks movies, but we had a good time played a couple rounds of golf and that was good times. Let's talk about California because I think you know, we're all residents currently of California, but let me just put it out there how many people on the call are considering leaving, California?
Anybody is that going through anybody's mind right now? It's going through my own for well, it's not for me.
But I think that California is sort of emblematic of what could happen. If you actually have you know, the legislative bodies plus, you know the top sort of political leader up and down on one ticket. I mean, you know, you basically have like massive Rife incompetence and it's been compounded you never I mean, you know people who are Democrats would have said, oh the best thing that can happen for Democrats is if you have you know,
Local cities plus an assembly plus the state senate plus the governor as a Democrat Republicans would have said the same thing for Republicans, but as it turns out it basically creates the worst outcomes. And so instead what you need is a little diversity of ideas and a little push and pull but California is like a bunch of clowns in a clown car right now. It's a joke.
But I'm not going to move now a part of another one not going to move is I you know my taxes I've set up in such a way where California can't get access to most of my assets anyway, so, you know, they can pounce and yeah David, how are you sax? How are you feeling about California right now and just the craziness in San Francisco. The homelessness problem in San Francisco's become acute during this it's really
well. It certainly is.
There are no wild passed on top of it and it's it's a disaster. It's a disaster. I mean, I'm not I'm not leaving or anything, but it's certainly a topic of conversation that's called a lot. And I do know people who have left. I know a couple of people who you know prominent people and the Venture Community you've recently moved to Austin and it's a horrible time for the city and state be proposing all these new taxes as just take one example because people were ready.
Realizing that because of covid and this new sort of work from home and and zoom business culture where you can kind of work from anywhere that people are realizing they don't need to be in San Francisco or in Silicon Valley more to be in the technology industry. And so at precisely the time that people were re-evaluating where they want it to be realizing that they could be anywhere California is now, you know proposing to massively increase the cost of being here. So it's horrible timing and then
You know, you do have this sort of seemingly chronic issue in San Francisco particularly with with the sort of homeless problem just seems to keep getting worse and there's there's sort of this weird hostility to technology and Tech workers here that I think is somehow uses a scapegoat to prevent the city from dealing with its real problems.
And what do you perceive those real problems to be in the city? I mean use the
ERM homeless, I think most people looking at the problem as one person candidly told me you know, what we have is not and I won't say who said this but it's a prominent person. They said this, you know Jason that the issue here is this isn't a homeless problem. Is that junkie problem and they use specifics that I'm using that term because that's the term to refer to people who are addicted to opioids methamphetamine Fentanyl and that if you were to actually unpack what we're calling a homeless crisis, it's actually a crisis of drug addiction and specifically Fentanyl and I know if you guys saw we're going to hit something
500 overdose deaths this year. We're like going to double a shear and it's all fentanyl, which is a particularly, you know deadly drug so that mean how much you think that is the problem David
huge huge. I mean, it's you're right that homelessness is not the cause of the issue that homelessness is the consequence of long-term drug addiction and mental illness. I mean, this is the It's The End State and you're right the city is it's not really tackling the underlying
Ang issues, in fact it's kind of an eating and abetting them. I mean how many millions of needles does a city give away every year and that only collects a small fraction of them with a remainder ending up on the streets. It's just it's Bonkers and I think part of the problem is that we keep saying that until we is that we can't demand any Improvement in the situation in terms of homeless people, you know, we have this like poop Squad and
In San Francisco, that's literally cleaning poop off the sidewalks because homeless people are using our sidewalks as like a little Trine basically as a bathroom and and you will you keep hearing is that well, we can't do anything about that problem until we solve the homeless problem and that's a and certainly we should try to solve that problem. But it's a very long term difficult intractable problem. In the meantime, we can certainly do things like demand that homeless people not do that.
Yeah, and the
leasing seem to there seems to be a distinct issue with policing right now. I watch the San Francisco tenderloin Twitter account David Freiburg, and they've arrested something like 260 method math and Fentanyl dealers, but we have a DA chesa. I believe his name is who doesn't believe in Prosecuting any of those crimes related to drugs or petty crime Freiburg. What is the city turned into for you as somebody who's been a long-term investor in the Bay Area?
Well, I move here after I graduated college in 2001 and I love San Francisco. It was it was a quieter City and acquaint her City. I honestly over the years have found the traffic and the congestion in the build-up of the city to be frustrating. I'm a little bit of a anomaly in this sense because I think a lot of people, you know think that the city should continue to grow and progress and build housing and so on those are all you know find objectives, but I think the quality of life has degraded for some time in the city.
And says infrastructure hasn't kept up with the changing pace of companies growing here. And as a result, we've kind of got this ballooning inflating budget that's been poorly managed. You've got I forgot the statistic but there's some number of thousand people plus that our city government employees and San Francisco earning over $300,000 a year. And so there's a chronic kind of bureaucratic issue. That is the cancer that has caused, you know a
Of the follow-on crises that I think we're now experiencing acutely here in the city now in terms of leaving to your earlier question. I you know, I was really like, I've just been like everyone, you know, like the I call it kind of talk about the day Dante's Inferno Lair. It's also like for me growing up it's like a seven-layer burrito like one layer of shit after another start with the beans and in the middle, you got the sour cream and you know, this city has just gotten kind of and the state has gotten more and more.
Alt to live in and I and I was certainly thinking and talking to my wife like we got to leave her family's here. So we're not going to leave the state but then I get a call last week that a bat. I think 18 of us who are on with Governor Newsom and you know, he made a couple of really interesting points that really did honestly reset my perspective. You know, I've tried to take a step back and think a little bit more broadly about the long-term opportunity in California the way this state operates right now. It's a fifth largest economy in the world. They ran a surplus their refinance their debt
They've done a great job kind of managing kind of the fiscal Gap that's being created by the covid crisis. And you know Governor Newsom made a point like we have had the California Exodus story that's percolated and cycled really for decades. He pointed out an article, which I have not been able to find but I've been looking forward from Time Magazine from 1959 a bit like declared. This is the ER everyone's going to exit its out of the state and we hear it every couple of years. There's some crisis that precipitates the mass Exodus and it hasn't happened.
Because it is a great place to work is Diversified industrial base. It's not just tech tech is a lot of the growth but there's a lot of Industry here or just add producer largest large military Aerospace industry and on and on and on this is a it's a great Diversified economy. It's a great Diversified cultural base. Its by the oceans its by the mountains. It's an incredible place to live and work and I don't think any of us want to give that up and and the the media has done a great job.
Of magnifying these small stories that aren't really a story Governor Newsom made the case that this wealth tax proposal. You know, what's one assemblymember? It didn't even get into committee. It wasn't even really being considered but it kind of created this press flourish and everyone got involved and everyone. I know kind of freaked out about it and it became this kind of another catalyzing event, but it wasn't really real so if we kind of broaden our perspective a little bit both in terms of space and time, I think we get a little more kind of comfortable with like of all the places to live and all the places to work.
Look, this is the best and you can go see if some taxes and move to Austin, but I mean, then you got to go live in Austin, you know, whatever.
Well, it's the best. It's the best. You're right that it's the best in terms of climate geography natural beauty resources and the industries that have developed here and have you know, strong Network effects, but it's not the best politically. I mean it's among the worst politically and it seems like the politicians are doing everything they can to mess it up. I mean, I almost wonder if
Like a resource curse issue particularly with San Francisco where you know, there's this thing and and this this observable what thing with governments that that's sometimes you get a resource curse where if there's like a lot of oil in the country or something you end up with with a government. That's not very good because people just spend all their time going to war to try and capture it and I kind of wonder if you know San Francisco has been the beneficiary of being proximate to Silicon Valley this enormous like wealth creation Prosperity job creation ecosystem that
it had nothing to do with creating and yeah,
I would say two things to build on what you're saying. The first is I think that when the economy's in an environment are really really good all the really really smart people want to go into those economies and that leaves generally Dumber people to do things like politics. So and that's less true in places that have shittier economies.
And I actually think that that's that's practically to we may not want to think it and it may not it may sound a little harsh but it's true and you know the way that you reverse it is but Singapore does which is you make the civil servants the highest paid people in the economy, right and you treat them like knowledge workers and you say wow. Look I'm going to pave these person 250,000 300,000 dollars a year. You're shocked at the quality of the person you get that's the first comment. I want to make the second one though is is that unlike all these other times where I think people
Have been you know, sort of prognosticating the Doom and Gloom of California. The the thing that's different now is that because it is such a dominant political environment for the Democrats. It's much easier to judge if they actually know what they're doing. And if they are going to do things that are aligned with the sort of like the moral code of the party that elected them and so like let's just talk for example about
Fact that we are not going to have police reform of any kind in California, which is where you think would be the first state where people got their act together and said, okay, if we really believe that we need to reform police we can do it in our own backyards, but that legislation is going to get blocked because Californians have decided that they care more about the alignment to police unions and they do to the right of law into social justice for minorities and blacks.
That's crazy. We should be the most Progressive is your point on this to mop and the point is to say it explicitly is the politicians are in the pocket of the unions and because they're in the pocket of the police unions and the education unions. We cannot make forward progress, even though we're supposed to be the most liberal of all locations. Correct that's in summary.
Yeah, exactly. Did we actually if we believe that we have you know up and down the ticket the ability to implement Justice right at least Justice in the vein of the democratic party and what that platform represents or for example, all of the people that were out protesting. Okay during black lives matter during that entire movement. I suspect the overwhelming majority are Democrats / progresses.
Or you know, let's just say the majority or at a minimum a plurality. Okay, but then the idea that then you have a state the most populous and the richest filled up and down the ticket with people who are theoretically aligned with those political values, but then when push comes to shove in the legislation hits the floor basically gets mothballed to me is inexcusable and disgusting. Yeah. I mean look at the housing issue. We just had a bill that was incredibly simple bill. I think it was
11 yeah SB 1122 know if you follow this one, but I've been following it on the Twitter and it was a very simple piece of legislation any single family home lot could have a duplex on it. You could have two homes on a single lot and they couldn't even pass that in a city where you know a firefighter a teacher Etc cannot live within 90 minutes of where they work and they couldn't even pass that
wall. So there's there's also a be 5 right. I mean Jason as Uber third.
Or fourth investor yesterday or something to say about that, right?
Okay, tell me
first
but
yeah, can we just can we just pin down exactly which one it is? So you can just say you were the fourth investor something
like so much better to say third or fourth and that was my first and obviously but your ABA B 5 is another one look at all the careers in which you can be David Sachs a freelancer and the higher the more money you make the more
You get to dictate your schedule, but if you are poor and if you are in an entry-level job the California government will not let you even though 70 percent of drivers for these Services want to be Freelancers and the services myself said they will put into a fund for Health Care like they literally Uber, you know, Dara's like Hey, we're going to put money into this lift is going to put money into it. They still will not let people decide for themselves what shift they want. It's no sense. I mean and a few sprinkles.
Into like journalists to I mean there's they said now journalist we came right if you if you write 30 articles a year for a single outlet, you're technically considered an employee
even though you're writing the articles on your own time
with your own research and you're getting paid for successful learning for good articles that are accepted and then there is this follow-on controversy about translators. It's like well translators takes five minutes to translate an article. So Whitewood 30 articles apply to a translator and it obviously when you have that degree of confusion and complexity something's off, right?
Yeah, and it's such a it's feels like virtuous signaling. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I think well, I mean the reason why eb-5 happened is it was at the behest of the teamsters right there trying to unionize the Uber and Lyft drivers and they can't do it unless their employees and so, you know the author of the bill look Lorraine again Solace who's sort of in their back pocket, you know that that's why she put forward the bill and then the absurdity of it was that, you know, they realize after introducing it that it would in.
Snare all these other occupations like the writers and journalists and photographers and real estate Artisans. Yeah, even like feel like manager s and so on right and so what they've been doing is they've been now modifying the legislation to exclude all these categories and in the process, they're kind of laying bare. What's really happening here, which is this is all about either basically shutting down or forcing Uber and Lyft to comply with with the will of the teamsters.
And it seems like the legislation blank to a new brand lift said well, we'll just shut the service down. So what were your thoughts on when that happens sax, dude? What do you think will happen who will win this av5 shutdown Showdown?
Well, what even of they yeah, they threatened to basically stop service and they got a stay I think from a judge. Yes. It's so so a b 5 doesn't go into effect until November when and there's a ballot initiative that they're sponsoring to get a B5 overturned so
I think you know I don't I don't try to predict whether it's going to win or not. But that to me is like whether if a B5 were defeated by a ballot initiative in November that be a really positive sign for the State of California.
I'll say there was on this call with Governor Newsom last week. He did point out that a B5 was more of kind of a law of inevitability as a result of that whole Dynamics state supreme court decision where the you know, the Supreme Court basically said,
Look here is the criteria that defines an employee versus an independent contractor, you know, they get to decide what work they do or what hours or whatever and there's like some set of criteria and they said look who Burr drivers and all these other kind of technically independent contractors. Don't meet those criteria fully therefore, they are employees and as a result, California Assembly try to and had to effectively codify what it means to be an employee versus an independent contractor and I'm not arguing for the case. I'm just saying what was conveyed by the governor last week on why this ended up coming to bear?
Now if they strike it down, there's going to be some other law that's going to pop up because this of the state supreme the Dynomax decision and that's kind of you know, something's gonna have to get written down so sax don't you think It ultimately ends up just being some sort of negotiated point between all of these industry leaders and you know the state to kind of figure out. Okay, what's everyone going to compromise on to get something written down its wall?
I mean possibly I mean Dynamics is not like constitutional. It's not a constitutional decision. So the legislature can do whatever it wants.
You know and so if you were going to respond to Dynamics, you don't have to kind of enshrine it so and I guess there was certainly some question whether Dynamics would apply to Uber and Lyft in this way. You know, I think they they could have made their could have made their arguments in front of a court,
right the okay. The problem is now and whatever applies to California applies to every state legislature. How are these people?
Posed to figure this out. I'm sorry, but like you know, who are we entrusting here to go? And then all of a sudden understand the nuances of Lyft and Uber and really understand the job that they do versus the translators versus the this person versus the vat person versus the Dynamics decision again, I think 20 years ago. I kind of would have believed that politicians were generally some of the smartest people, you know, frankly amongst us and it really
Attract a certain level of intellectual person who cared about legislating but you know now basically you just have like, you know, Jerry Falwell Jr. Is running around. I mean these are these are the they're all just running around until they get caught on Instagram and get fired. I mean, they're just they're not the smartest people that were dealing with and so what was what was Gavin Newsome's answer to that is really what I would you know, like the Jerry Falwell Jr. Point didn't come up too much, but we can follow up. Sure. All right.
It does seem to me that if it if they do become full-time. This would be a tragedy for the people who are trying to just do 10 to 2230 hours of gig work. Like what happens to those poor people who wanted to fill in between when they drop their kids off at school and pick them up and just grab a couple hours here there as a second gig like if this actually does pass in their full-time, honestly guys, honestly, you guys are such you your your your honesty.
Look, it won't affect them. It'll affect the long-term profitability in the margins of the companies that have to hire them as full-time employees and they'll have to like, you know, make a bunch of rules and blah blah blah, but it has huge operational implications and it has really terrible op ex implications for a company, but for the person that wants to work ten hours Jason, they'll still be able to work 10 hours. So I think I think the point is that like a specific shift like they're going to have to come in at a certain shift. I think the point is like the entire public markets.
Who all of a sudden think that a business looks one way has to figure out that it's really a Cost Plus business and what it really means is you if you were comfortable with a 60% or 70% reduction in the market cap of some of these companies you'd be okay with a B5 and I think that's where the tension is where the people that made the law don't care about the market cap because they don't own the stock anyways, and the people that are reacting to a B5 are the ones that own the stock and are really thinking about the market
cap.
Well, but the drivers the drivers nervously on the stock and they're against it.
No, it's a driver zone eight chairs David. I mean, come
on. No. No, that's what I'm saying is they're not sure holders for the most part but this really does reduce their flexibility to contract for their labor.
No, but I think what you're saying will happen, which is that they will create a you know, a b 5 Prime which is a modification. That's neither this nor what it was but it seems
seems that the tail winds are pretty clear, which is that we're moving to a place where these companies have to get built in a very clever way and even if they are super clever and capturing consumer demand, the unit economics are going to be pretty shitty and I just think we have to own that and and it probably what it means more than anything else is it's not a real Venture kind of business. And so you may be deficit financing it or building it in a very different way than we used
Ram. It doesn't have to be that way what you're saying is is I think that
This law will have very adverse consequences for their business. Okay. I mean I grant you that but it's what why is the the state interfering in the relationship between Uber and is drivers in this way when everyone's happy with it?
No, but it's not I think what actually is happening is the state is effectively capturing the excess return of uber and Lyft meaning I think if you just take a pure unemotional economic View at this it's like any other Market if there is a huge amount of margin available and there are not many
Predators what happens is somebody comes in to take the excess margin so they that's the government it wants to take it and that unions wanted to you. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. It's a question. Should we should we let them then dictate what hours people work the thought exercise that I would ask guys if there was in a market 90 different competitors for transportation would a be five have been written past adopted and my answer to you would be that it would not
Been so Uber and Lyft sand door - of success is what leads to people wanting. No, but I can get a slice the oligopolist model of success were not enough other companies or pulled through got it. Well that gives us a good segue into by the way. Sorry last point on this. Yeah, and the funny thing is the people who created the problem or the ones that hated the most which are the investors because they Pile in the incremental dollars into the winners trying to King make a winner through capital. And now what's happening is their rate of returns are basically getting taken away.
And I think that in a weird way, that's also kind of
fare.
Well, I thought I would just disagree slightly in the sense that just because this has big distributional consequences like basically who makes the the Surplus doesn't mean it also doesn't have a huge deadweight loss associated with it. And whenever you prohibit people from engaging in the type of economic contracts relationship that they want to engage in your reducing Surplus. And so I so I hear what you're saying, but and I think
There is I think this is all about regulatory capture. Right? This is the teamsters trying to capture a big piece of the value of uber through their politicians in the legislature. So you're right about that. But I also think that we should care about it not just as Uber shareholders, but as consumers of the product because it's going to get worse
well and also the products going to go away in certain jurisdictions. I mean if Freiburg wants to get an Uber north of the Golden Gate Bridge or in the East Bay somewhere, they're just not going to have the economic
Comics or I got some communities to even operate the service. So just like we're buried some post made stop delivering to Treasure Island. A lot of the drivers were in the local communities at home with Uber turned on and when they order - and when they got a call they would leave their house and that was part of the magic of it is you just be sitting there, you know Netflix and you're hanging with your kids and then a good call comes in and then you leave your house. That's why you would have that like one minute pause. If you ever saw it, you know in an Uber ride where it's like why why isn't the car moving it's just that person's at home and they work.
Capturing the one ride every hour in their local, you know suburban area, but if you force them to be hourly we was going to say, you know what it's not worth having an 8-hour shift in you know, whatever suburb and the service will go away and then guess who is going to not have service and try to station. I think Pete Berg. Look, I'm sorry. I was saying it was like sex is point like, you know from a consumer perspective or Tomas point is you end up with 90 of these service providers, and I'm a consumer. I'm less likely
to order.
A cab or order a Rideshare service or I'm
less likely to order food for delivery. I don't want to deal with 50 fucking apps. I don't want to have to like go find the one app that has the contract with the one restaurant. Then the natural market dynamics the the way that the market Maps really involves is I want Simplicity as a consumer I want efficiency. That's what makes me want to use it more and when you take that away because you're interfering from a regulatory perspective and how that market operates. The product sucks for me and the shareholders ultimately suffer.
I think to your point the way that that would probably get solved as you have people that are higher order in the consumer behavior that own these relationships that enforce basically a user experience. For example, Facebook and Google and apple essentially say we're extracting all these Services because there's 90 of you Google says I'm going to put all of you guys on the map view, you know, Yelp says the same thing and essentially what opens what happens is there's some like open way.
Essentially a service provider can turn themselves on and broadcast into a network that says I'm available to do a for B and it all gets fixed. Now that's a future state which was the original idea of uber by the way was to make a Marketplace like that. And now Uber is talking about doing a franchise exactly what you're saying shimoff is let some franchisee take the East Bay and then provide their inventory teacher Network. I think franchising is a really really smart business idea and I think that particularly in transportation
station and a lot of these services that have this natural Dynamic to be local where there are an infinite sum of many local markets. I think it's like a Burger King. It's like a McDonald's and the the company that moves to a franchising model and then figures it out. I think will be a huge winner and that will key and that will be a very asset light really operationally sophisticated very well run highly profitable.
I think let's talk about the public markets. We Jason can we just talk about the police brutality thing in California? Just want to get you dressed. Like it really bought. It really bothers me that California like I bet you there's going to be states that are diverse in its Democratic and Republican composition and some Republican states that passed comprehensive police reform.
And California will be one of the laggards. What do you think if you could wave a magic wand your mouth? What are the one two and three things take a minute to think of through and everybody McCall can what are the one two and three things you would do to change policing in the United States? I have my own list, but I'm curious what you guys think and I actually put a tweet storm out about my number one thing but what are the specific tactical things? Let's get tactical first. I mean the first one that I've always been a big fan of as I've studied it at least from 10,000 feet is
Qualified immunity explain why and what that is, you know qualified immunity is essentially that there there is this immunity that certain individuals have and that they that they're not subject to prosecution. And so, you know, they essentially have a carte blanche to behave in ways that can be good in some cases very very bad in other cases gray and other cases yet. There's no adjudication of their behavior. And so you have to allow people with solid.
Passionate detach judgment to be able to enter and say Hey, listen, you were way out of line here and there are consequences for it and people coming in doing those jobs need to understand those consequences versus you have a carte blanche to basically do whatever you want. And I think let's talk specifically about the mer the shooting involving and what's a murder right now because I think all the facts are not in but Jacob Lake was shot in the back. He was obviously not listening to the police the police.
East and follow him to his car there is a discussion of if there was a knife on the floorboard and point-blank they shot him in the back multiple times and I've heard both sides of this, you know, this person is not listening to the police. It's person's going into the car. They're reaching potentially for a weapon and the cops had no choice. It seemed to me that you know, the training of a police officer might actually be that that was the legitimate shooting but that means maybe they have to rethink policing because you could have easily taken that
I'm down with it. Even the most modest of a Chokehold or a tackle and when we see that it feels like that's the Rorschach test right there of like how you look at shootings in police. When you saw that shooting our ticket trim off of James Blake and I saw it and I just like I can't see these anymore. They send me off the rails for days. But yeah, I did see it at its yeah, and so I mean when you look at something like that that's clearly training has to change because I believe that based on
Police training and qualified immunity. This is going to be considered even though it's shocking to see it. I think it's going to be considered, you know an allowed shooting or yeah, and it's there's not going to be the person is not going to be prosecuted because the person was clearly not listening and there was a knife on the floor and he's going for it. And you know, it seems to me like we really need to change the actual train. The average is six months of training. So I think that's one of the top things that has to change is that these these police officers have to be trained not to fire first.
First but to use other tactics so so for me the first one is that the second one for me, which I'm a really big fan of is that there needs to be a new way to actually intercept 911 calls and instead of deploying police officers. We have a separate branch of people that we you know, massively pay and train that are effectively, you know, social workers plus plus and so shitters. Yeah, and and they should be deployed in all kinds of situations.
Where I think that what people want is a d escalation and I think that sometimes the words D escalation and police don't really think up and then most a lot of people's minds they think of escalation. So people who are trained to deescalate I think and so for example, like, you know, all of the mental health checks, all of the mental health issues could probably be deal domestic like this domestic disturbances would probably go into that category.
The third one is I would very much rationalize drug use just because I think the amount of low-level offenses and arrests around drug use is Antiquated for people's General views on drugs. And I think that it needs to sort of correlate to how Society views it and then you know, the the last two that I would give you is that there's a concept of no-knock warrants. That's how Brianna Taylor was killed in some it's kind of really scary the idea that we could all be sitting in our houses.
Now as we are and literally the police can just charge in it when he's totally unnecessarily. I mean she was being for some like low-level drug idea. They're going to knock the doors in and of course a person is going to try to protect themselves. That's the term. It has sacks. What
do you think? They thought they'd knock the doors in and they were playing clothes wearing police officers. So people are coming and they did at like midnight when she was asleep. So yeah people busting into your house at midnight screaming
Noise and not dressed as cops. That's that's what are we crazy situation? Yeah,
and then the last one I would give you is militarization of police a lot of these ideas. By the way, our Justin Amash has ideas I retweeted and I followed but he was the one that put me on to these things. But you know, like you have all this excess military equipment in the army that gets basically passed through and now directly sold in to police departments, especially post 9/11. We basically militarized. So those are things you what are your ideas around policing and how we should change it you've heard two months.
I don't have more detailed ideas than trim off. I think he's giving some good ones for sure. I mean, I think we definitely need better training and I think better oversight over the use of force the body cam idea Jason seen you tweet about I think that's pretty interesting too. I think you're right
there in that first run at the body cam idea. I had was I ask does anybody know and you know does black lives matter or another organization track which Police Department because we could get a list of every Police Department that existence
I'm database somewhere. Do we actually know what percentage actually have body cams and what model they use and what percentage are working because one of the things that I think has happened this year is you know, the live streaming and the live video in the number of smartphones out. There has resulted in us being able to see what black and brown people have been telling us for decades, which is their murdered by cops. And now we get to see it and you know, when you see George Floyd get murdered it's fairly obvious that that's what happen. We don't have a video or the other.
The video of Brianna Taylor getting murdered. So
that's from a cop webcam. I'm sorry body cam. So I was thinking we should just start with that as a basic which is every single cop car shove-it 360 camera and every cop it should be a federal mandate and I don't exactly know how Federal mandates were attacked. But don't you think there should be a federal mandate for just cameras in car cameras?
I
think I think it's a good idea. I think the use of cameras a good idea. I mean maybe not recording the police officers when they're sitting in their car. But every time there's like a condo like yeah, they pull somebody over sort of, you know, like Fourth Amendment type search and seizure seizure type situation. Yeah. I think it would make sense to have that on video. Why not?
Yeah. Yeah. There was that. I think every police will behave better. Go ahead Freiburg. There was a case the other day young guy.
I was 19 years old was shot and deceive named Dion K. I don't know if any of you guys watch the body cam footage and so he was a 19 year old black man who shot died, but in the body cam footage, you can see that he pulls out this gun and throws it and when he pulls out the gun and flings his hand around he's got the gun in his hand. That's when the cop shot him. And so there was about a hundred protesters that showed up but it's largely become a non-story as a result of the fact associated with the body cam footage, but I just want to propose something else. It's a little bit more radical.
Kuil maybe my libertarian ideals kind of cross with my socialist ideals and forming this this concept, but perhaps your socialist. No, I've never been accused of that. But if we if we Trace back, you know, the systems are really chaotic everything you're talking about is layers and layers of bureaucracy and ideas and shit. We should do to manage the problem, but there is kind of one common, you know Butterfly Effect butterflies at the source of all of a lot of what we're talking.
Talking about which is guns. If there weren't any guns in the United States, I would not feel threatened as a police officer. I would never have any reason to feel threatened and I would never have any reason to pull a gun. The reason I always make to pull a gun as a police officer is my life is threatened and in the absence of firearms. I have no right to pull a gun and that's the case in like the UK for example where there are like no police officer shootings of civilians because there are never under threat of being killed by a gun. So there's a simple answer
Sir, which is get rid of the guns, but you know a little too controversial and obviously many layers to that argument, especially from kind of both sides, but I would say, you know much much of what's going to go on now and in the future, it's just chaos theory. It's going to be building more layers of complexity. It's more entropy. It's more kind of associated complexity to try and resolve the underlying problem of all of this which is that we've got guns on the streets. We've got guns in people's hands and therefore, you know, there's always this
Against every individual that their life might be taken by another.
Well, let me make prediction right now. There's not going to be any new gun control legislation for Generation because of the the Looting and rioting is going on gun sales are at an all-time high and every single gun store that ammunition we go to you can't you can't get guns. You can't get ammo and there are more first time gun buyers in the United States our last several months and there's ever been. I mean the the ranks of the NRA must be swelling right now.
Now and so this idea that you're going to get gun reform. I don't think it's going to happen people are going to support it. And you know, I think you know use the word I think idealistic. I mean II think it's like a little bit naive to assume that you're gonna be able to get rid of all the guns in the hands of Bad actors there. A lot of people in this country who feel the need to have a gun to protect themselves and you know, the cops can't always get there quickly enough.
And a lot of people feel the Nita to have that for self-defense.
I also think the minimum amount of training for a police officer should not be six months. I think they have to re I mean if we really want to have the society move forward and you know to solve our issue of race, which is, you know, like the original Sydney of America. We're going to really need to start thinking about making, you know police go back to school for 18 months 12 months and rethink how we how we address the situation because it's just tragically unfair that
One group of people's children has to worry when they're driving in a car and you know other people on this call don't have to worry, right and you know, that is just crazy. Let's take a hard shift to the economy and then we'll go into the election. What do you think trim off? You've been talking a little bit about the economy and the stock market ripping again, and we seem to have hit a pause but we did have like a massive rip with Tesla and Amazon Tesla and apple I guess doing a stock split.
And we had all-time records. Why are we hitting all-time records to month?
We have the most important thing that's happened. I think in economics in the last 10 years the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell gave this Landmark speech and he basically said we are going to keep rates at zero for the next half decade basically and quiet here is at zero. I mean quite honestly, it's good. It could be a decade but they're going to let inflation run before they basically match it with rates. There's no path to any near-term inflation of any kind whatsoever.
And so Jason my honest perspective is you know, you're basically going to get paid to be long equities because your risk free rate is zero and will soon be negative. And what are you supposed to do? If you're an asset manager, what are you supposed to do with you know your cake California back to using California? Let's just say your Calpers you're the California pension system and you have hundreds of billions of dollars. Then you need to generate
Five or six percent a year to make sure that your pension isn't insolvent and the government is paying you zero. Okay, so that eliminates that option no treasuries for you your long equities.
And when everybody is in that situation you're overwhelmingly long equities and you know the you cannot fight the fed and so you cannot wait them out it's not like you can say, oh don't worry they're going to change their mind they will change their mind but in reaction to market conditions that are out of your control so all of these opportunities in my opinion are generally buying opportunities and I'm generally bullish I'm more bullish now than I was before so you can't put your money into
Treasury's you can put it into a savings account. Obviously. You can't put it you it doesn't seem like real estate or commercial real estate. It's a great bat right now. So your options are private companies or public companies correct drama. I think it really is just public companies and I don't even think it's private companies. So meaning we're ever a capital is constrained the returns again, these excess returns are getting eaten up and so the most
Unimpeded market for gains right now is the public markets. I mean like no offense, but I think that if you were very good stock picker in the public markets, you're generating better returns then Sequoia Benchmark name your best Venture fund. You know, I see all these people spouting off on Twitter about how good they are in the early stage of markets. It's all kind of small dollars and not that meaningful. You know, I'm on the call right like me. You're literally talking to the guy spouting off about hitting home.
Sax, what are your thoughts on this like private markets obviously is the op where we operate both David's Freiburg and sacks and you're seeing great deals. I think I'm I've invested in twice as many companies during the pandemic as they did before in the same six-month period what do you see in the private markets? And where you think what is your take on Bessie sees public markets? Exactly.
Yeah. We saw some of the best deals that we've seen during covid and you know, I'm very bullish about the state of Entrepreneurship in the u.s. I mean just
the the number of interesting companies doing interesting things and the the infrastructure that makes it so easy for Founder's to get started and create new companies. It's so much easier now to create a to create a company that was 10 years or 20 years ago. And of course it's easy to point all the ones that don't work or that don't seem like good ideas. But but there's so many more experiments that are happening and I think it's going to I am very bullish about that part of the American economy
and Freiburg. What are your thoughts on private markets and obviously
You're Building private companies you have unlimited Capital to build them. I take it given your track record. I spend most of my time accepting rejections from my very close investor friends in my various projects. Oh, I wouldn't say that that ever becomes true. I'll tell you the truth still selling everyday Dialing for Dollars, but no there are certainly more investors more Capital more risk-taking more kind of valuation extending than I think as
it was the case pretty covid. I think Tomas point is right though. There is so much more liquidity available through access to retail and International Market participants in a public setting than there is in a private setting and it is because of this liquidity premium and the easy access to putting capital N, it's just extraordinary how much as I've watched close friends and companies and companies have invested in I'm sure you guys have done the same transition from private to public.
The valuation jump is extraordinary like on a metric spaces, right? So whatever the metric might be you get public there is this flurry of Market participation as a result of drives up. There's a multiple but I thought your Beast / sorry. Can I just say something? That's such a such an important smart thing that Friedberg said so Jason, for example, like all of us have we're all still in the private markets and I'm not trying to take away from the private markets. But what David said is so important if you use their look at us a steel you'd price that's a steal.
And times AR are right, then there's a little bit of inflation, you know, the rates go up the prices that people pay go up. Now all of a sudden were paying 12 times 15 times now, it's 20 times if you're growing a hundred percent rate over here. So what's happened? The market has become more efficient and the excess return is getting eaten up. And so you're like, okay. Well that's still really good and you wait for five six years and you think you're going to get paid the crazy thing is like once that company transitions to the public markets, I mean,
In all of a sudden if you actually turn the investor base over and you actually create a float so that public market guys can buy it. They'll pay 30 times. That's right 35 times 40 times. So there's a massive multiple expansion. So companies should be going public sooner if you think about this like if I'm trying to raise money for one of my companies, I'm going to call on my 10-20-30 friends that I know that are investors in private markets and say hey guys, you want to look at this company and maybe I'll get two or three interested parties and maybe we'll kind of agree on what a fair.
Raishin would be if I could take that same company and instantly make it available to a million investors and all I need to do by the way is raised ten million dollars. All I need is some small number of them to write a couple hundred dollar check and I'm able to fill that at that round out the valuation as a result of the liquidity available in that market is so much higher because everyone's going to there's gonna be much more participation and bidding and so you know what I think Tomas has tapped into with the space vehicle and what Robin Hood is realizing and and I don't
Think that we all talk about this enough, but there's this massive massive massive Market of international investors of small of international retail investors who are now rushing into US equities Freiburg, didn't we see that in the Ico craze as well where you I think if we took anything from the Ico craze it was and the double appetite for risk and the.com boom before that. And I think we have to give bestie see a lot of credit here for leading this pack movement. I mean, what's your take on everybody copying you down the SPAC path trim off at this?
I had desktop metal as an early Angel investment that just fact and that I think I look cool at the play. Thank you. Yeah, and they told me that thank you for the markup and I've been hearing like I'm getting if I'm getting inbound as an angel investor from I literally got a cold email from some high-profile people. They're like, hey, can you do you have anything for us to SPAC? I mean, this is like the third or fourth time people are coming down to my dipshit level of Angel Investing say can you introduce us to the calm guys? Can you choose to Robin and I'm like, I think you can go direct to them. But what is
your take on how many specs have been created since you like literally single-handedly restarted the smack movement, you know, I think there's you don't think I've ever gone and record about this. I'm really proud of what we did when we created this thing two years ago. I said I wanted to basically create a new way of doing IPOs. I called it IPO 2.0. I reserved IP o-- A through Z on the NYSE. I hope to fulfill that and I think I will but taking a step back for a second in the
Mm. There were 8,000 public companies in America on the American Stock exchange's and in the year 2020 there are 4,000. So we've shrunk in half the number of public companies while at the same time. We've you know 10x the amount of come the amount of capital and the number of people so we don't have a large enough surface area in the public markets. That's why companies are better off going public because they're going to have a much more receptive audience.
Since of people that are dying to own kind of growth of any kind, what's the earliest and the median that people should go public well, so here's the thing. So like if you're like one of 30 companies in adventure portfolio that's growing at 50 plus percent. You're one of 30, but when you go public you're one of one, you know, when you're growing 50 60 % your you become very unique all of a sudden you're a sort of a 1% kind of a company you're an outlier and so you get treated you knowing
Probably well, so that's the backdrop. I think a company should be going public around year five years six what Revenue footprint about 50 million, you know at 50 million and what they're doubling. I think that they should be going up and you know, it allows them to build Capital slowly. It allows them to basically contain control. It minimizes dilution. I think it's a really powerful model and then on on the number of spax. What I would say is I think it's really good that the market is getting Diversified. I think what's going to
and it's like the thing with spax is it's going to be no different than in some ways the banks that preceded us, which is that there's going to be a distribution. You can go to Goldman Sachs and that'll mean someone thing. You can go to Merrill Lynch or B of A or UBS or Jeffries. It'll mean other things you can go to Allen and Company it'll mean yet another different set of things and I'm sure there's going to be a you know, an organization that is all about cost. Some is going to be all about relationships some
So I just think that's going to be the distribution my personal perspective. It's probably us and maybe one or two other people who really dominate the space and I'll tell you the only reason why I say that I think it's going to be really important when these people try to get these facts done. What they're going to realize is it's really hard and it's hard for a couple reasons. Number one is you have to marry operational insight and public market sophistication and the founder will get really smart about being able to figure out whether this person
in is just a financial arbitrageur or if the person has enough operational experience to deeply understand the business why you have to translate it to the public markets. Well, that's one huge thing that I think that people will will start to will start to hone in on anyways, there's a bunch of other things. But are you now competing with I want for these taxes tax agree with the 50 million? Yeah.
Sure. I'm cool with that. You know, I invest well before that, so I'd be I'd be happy for
you, bro.
Have a bigger portfolio of 50 million dollars.
Yeah, it is it's great for for me and Jason and I you know, I think Tomas deserves a ton of credit on this whole SPAC thing it is I don't know if all the listeners are aware of this but this pack Things become a huge wave. There's a ton of people creating them. Kevin Hart says a new one Reid Hoffman as a new one. They're your the East Coast had fun guys Pincus and and then the East Coast hedge funds like Bill Ackman over there all creating them. So it's a moth has really started a wave here and I
Think the appeal of aspect to a Founder. I'll put in a plug of why I think it's a good idea for a founder of consider. This is because you essentially what Founders are used to is doing, you know private rounds, right you agree on a on an amount raised and evaluation and it's a percent dilution and you're done. That's it and that it's simple right and when you IPO and need to raise money, it's not like that. You have to then work with an investment Bank to put together a book. You do like a road show you do this whole dog and pony.
You don't know how much money you're going to get at the end of that process or with evaluations going to be and then on top of that we know statistically Bill girly published all the stats. The investment banks are going to rip you off. So, you know, so that what aspect does is it prices like a late-stage private round you just agree with a spec motor on a valuation an amount raised and then on top of it you get kind of a direct listing along with it and all of a sudden you start trading as a public company and so this pack is like
Like a combination direct listing plus private round and I think that's going to be appealing to a lot of Founders as they start to discover this
more Saxon way you're saying it's going to feel more like doing a series D that it doesn't Roadshow and you know, I think that Comfort level for somebody like Robin Hood or calm or data stack sore thumb tack or any of these companies that you had company your portfolio. I'm Jesse. Listen, I got to IPOs. Did I
You think for an early stage investors is we're not going to count unicorns anymore. We're going to counts backs. We're going to count public listings, right? And and I think that doesn't matter either way the other the other thing that I'll say two Founders is one is I think you need to you need to think about do these people have the combination of operational and financial Acumen in the public markets and investing experience in the public markets and the operational credibility to describe the business and I
think you can trade off one for the other if one is so deep meaning if Warren Buffett was doing his back you'd say while he has no operational experience, but he's so credible in the public markets than you know, that's all that matters. But you need to be super super deep in one or have a really brilliant and thoughtful level of credibility in the Public's meaning an early stage investor who isn't married to somebody who can basically say, I know how hedge funds work. I'd made them money and I'm going to make them more money and mutual funds Etc is troublesome the
Thing is for Founders. You have to really make sure you understand what is in it for the person that's doing this back. I mean in every deal I write a minimum of a hundred million dollars personally and that's a lot and so I skin in the game I feel very much at risk. And so I take a lot of time to make sure these things go well and then the third is that for the SPAC person what I'll tell them is they are going to find that there's a bunch of landmines and I'm not going to you know, say it up front because I think it
it'd be fun for them to find out themselves along the way but there but these things are hard the first one took me two and a half years. They're hard. They're hard too hard. Hey, let's swing to the election now and talk a little bit about the flip-flopping. We're all doing because we've gone from Trump's a lock to Trump's not a lock, you know, and we've had many different theories. But here we are. Are we 60 days out. Now? How many days till the election is it? Exactly 60 and it'll first debate number three.
29th. Yeah. Yeah. So we're at the 55 or 56 days more to the taping of this and the first to be anything is September 30th. So we're but three weeks away from Joe Biden and Trump going at it. What's everybody's handicapping now the mark the market seemed to be saying even money or a slight Edge to Joe Biden. What are our thoughts? I think that I think Biden's looked the crispest he's looked.
T' and so is that actually encouraging or not encouraging? I think it really is because I think he's a really good. Like I said, he doesn't have to be better than Donald Trump. He just has to not be Donald Trump for a lot of people and so, you know, he becomes a very good Do no harm alternative because you know to support Donald Trump, you have to have a view to support Joe Biden you can have no View and I think that that in general that's a that's a demand.
And maximizing thing to do. So I think he's relatively well positioned its the crispest I've ever seen him on television. There's less stuttering. There's less not stuttering but like less like mental gaps, you know, the the VP Choice Kamala
make
safe. So I agree with trauma that that was kind of the the take or theory on Biden like a month or two ago is that he could just run as a protest vote against Trump and and and that's why the basement strategy appeared to make sense is that he would say nothing do nothing go nowhere and just and just try to run as a protest vote against Trump and I think that was working a couple of months ago when you know a covid seemed a lot worse be the economy seemed a lot.
We're now down to about 8% unemployment. We were at 13 or 14 percent and see you know, Trump had seemed to kind of Miss handle the the reaction to Floyd. He seemed to be inciting it but now we have this this issue of the Looting and violence and predominately Democrat runs cities and I think you know Trump has sort of found his sales pitch now in opposing the basically the the radical left.
And these these mobs and protests that seem to be, you know, causing tremendous unrest and looting and violence in our cities. And I think it's I think it's a in combination with the improving conditions the economy at covid. I think it's a winning pitch for him. Unless Biden finds a more compelling way of responding which he has not to date. I think you know somebody like Bill Clinton know exactly how to respond. I think he would
No in the just better instincts. Yeah. Well, I think he would pull a Sister Souljah to use a term from the the you know political dictionary where you know, maybe he would take this crazy new book in defense of looting and figure out, you know, and give a speech denouncing that I mean, he would find somebody to his left who represents, you know, a fringe of the left. They presumably doesn't support and find a way to distance himself or denounce them. Like it doesn't maybe like antifa like, you know, the anyone any of the leftover eating important
And looting in Portland. I think there's a lot of
Target buddy words. Nobody wants to support that and so Biden comes out and says, hey, we don't support that and it gives them that Law and Order vote but and he hasn't
doesn't really done that. I mean so two of my favorite political pundits right now or Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taibbi who are you know, very their strong support of the Biden. They're very anti Trump, but they think he's failing on sort of this these issues because he's not he's not figuring out the right way to
To denounce what's happening?
I think a lot of this has to do with when kids go back to school and the death rate of covid and as I was tweeting and I got I've got a lot of people angry at me about tweeting this but I said, I think this is a setup for Trump to go into the first debate with, you know, well under, you know, six 700 that gets a day and then the next debate in October with, you know, call it three or four hundred that's a day and basically declare that he did solve covid because we've been trending down
On for five weeks now and he started wearing a mask six weeks ago seven weeks ago, July 11th was the first day he wore a mask a cynic would say he almost timed mask wearing which is obviously what we talked about in the first episode or two of all in podcast was our discussion about why is wearing a mess so difficult for him and it seems like he's slow plated. He's you know, he set he slow-played he hit his set on the turn and here he is like he wore the mask on July 11th. He wore it for months late, but guess what as
Martha saying everybody wears a mask and every and these things go down and Italy we're going to come into the first debate. What if it's 400 deaths a day and then the second debate it's 200 that's a day and then our kids are back in school in October which is seems to be the case. Right? All the schools are saying, you know be ready for October to open and what if he actually does have a vaccine that has somewhat of credibility or any of these high-speed testing machines. Come on. I mean this could be a setup of all setups for him to just you know, drop the microphone. Hey, look the economy is at an all-time high and covid
for an
all-time low
Well, I mean, yeah, I think the fire that to me seems like the trajectory. I mean we spent a long time on this pod talking about what a disaster San Francisco and California are those are one party states and cities and I think you know, we're not just electing a person as president. We're all selecting a party and movement and a governing philosophy and however much Trump is disliked by a lot of people. I think a lot of people are
looking at you know, I think they may like Joe Biden personally and think that he personally is safe but they don't like the movement and the party and the governing philosophy that is now associated with Biden.
So if you had to put your entire net worth on it shh moth Biden or Trump, but I think Layton's good sacks entire net worth
I would predict from at
this moment you predict but you but you wouldn't put your entire net worth on it.
I had to I could see your hesitation. You want Trump trump to well sure, but you would you wouldn't put you wouldn't put your entire net worth on him. Oh, yeah, of course not you would put it on this
is this is about a 55% sort of thing.
So Biden has a 55 percent chance of winning. So even though you're voting for Trump, you are not going you would not put your fortune on by
the you ask me who I predict right now. I'm predicting Trump you'll remember on the last pot. I predicted by 10. So it moves depending on what I see ya.
Yeah, and I
I'm going to go with by there, but it just knows Jason. I think I think a better way to get a better answer is not to force somebody to put their entire net worth on the line. It's just okay, who do you think is going to win? Who do you think's going to win sex?
How many homes have to answer this
question using traps gonna win you actually yes.
Yes. I do actually really fascinating huh? And it's very remember there is the first time I've
say sire. I think it's I think it's the same as it was last time for me and it has been most of this processes. It's a coin flip and it still is a coin flip and there's a lot of noise between here and 60 days from here. All right. Well then if we do think it's a coin flip Freiburg what happens if Trump is elected again, some people think this is
All institutions are broken forever America's broken forever hyperbolic that that or the perception on both sides, right? So the perception of the motivation on both sides is democracy is crumbling and the resultant action is to elect the person you think will restore democracy. The reality is both candidates to some degree might move us a little bit further away from democracy and some might argue that Trump makes us feel a little bit more like an autocratic dictatorial regime and some might say that
Biden makes us feel a little bit more like an AOC socialist regime. It's not all the way as if we had burning in the seat. But you know, the reaction isn't necessarily let's go back to the middle. It's become a Centrist government. Let's let's have good political debate and and a good by the way, the one show I've been watching a lot of lately just to Nostalgia to Tomas tweet earlier today and make me feel better about life is West Wing where you know Jed Bartlet is the president and he wants a great National debate. We all want to have this intellectual exercise of coming.
To the truth and come into the best decision for the nation and I don't think anyone feels like that's the case today nor will that be the case tomorrow with either of these guys in the seat and I think the point then becomes well who's going to better align with my values and you know, it is really a crumbling democracy kind of motivation. I would guess if you were to survey people and so how they're making their choice if Trump is elected Freiburg. Do you feel it is an acute, you know existential crisis for America as a democracy you personally I don't think democracies and
With a bang, I think they end with a whimper and I think that's been the case historically and you know, no democracy has has lasted our democracy in the US has lasted longer than many but democracies I'll just tell you my point is you on this democracy is ultimately enable freedom of operation and free markets that that resulted in greater progress than any other governing system the problem with progress. Is that progress
Is asymmetric you have some people who progress at a much greater rate than most and and it is that Delta that motivates the end of that system ultimately while everyone in the United States or the average and even the bottom quartile of the population of the u.s. Is better off than they were 50 years ago in terms of income and health care and shelter and access to food and access to all these things. They're the top one percent of the u.s. Is further ahead than the media and it is that Delta that motivates the end of democracy and it is that is which is
Perceived to be unfair about this governing system and that ultimately results in fascism or socialism and then fascism results socialism, ultimately restricts anyone from progression and that's why Fascism and socialism ultimately end up in some sort of, you know Democratic outcome and it is a cycle and you know, we're kind of in this all you know awkward phase of trying to figure out what the hell we're going to be next and I don't think that awkward phase. It's realized in the next presidential term but it is going to be realized in our lifetimes. I think that that's a really good point. I
lately agree with that
Joe Biden please wind. Okay wrapping up here media selections of your bestie summer best eBook bestie TV show. Bestie binge. What do you got? You got a bestie book recommendation. Sax, you got a bestie
my recommendation to be a little different Steven. I've been subscribing to a lot of newsletters on sub stack. Yeah, and I found that to be pretty interesting and like I mentioned two of my favorite writers, especially around politics election time and
Solvent and Matt Taibbi, so check
them out over 10 windows open enough to get to those two
who have our super polarize and they
actually kicked and yourself and out of New York Magazine for making other writers at New York Magazine feel unsafe with his
words all my favorite writers seem to have been canceled at some previous publication and now they've set themselves up on sub stack. So
it is amazing how the Overton window has closed. Bestie seed you have a bestie binge a best e-book or a best e-newsletter or bestie.
- you want to share with the besties, I would give a shout out to a book called Americana which is about it's a history of American capitalism told in chapters for every call it like, you know, five to seven or ten year decade period it's really interesting for people into business. It's written by a guy named Boost we Nev Asin.
Okay, bestie Freiburg. What do you got? Bisti queen of quinoa. I took a week off and hung out at the beach and I've been to watch The Godfather one two, and three as I've done several times in my past. I also watched one of my favorite top five songs of all time There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson such a good thing that opening scene animal cells crazy every opening scene. It's just such a beautiful film. Hi cheering Alton got me doubt. Ya got me down this research path on the Standard Oil.
Benny and I ended up first off I ended up reading or Mario puzo's Godfather, which is very graphic and interesting. But if you've seen the movie, I don't think you get much more from the book, but then I started reading Ron chernow is biography of oh, yes Rockefeller. Yeah. It's not out of anyone's made it through that 727 pigs to get about 500 pages in it is detailed is detailed. So it's not you know, it's not probably you won't gain as much from it as perhaps reading a Wikipedia article.
But the Standard Oil the era if you think about what technology is what we call technology in the u.s. Today in our world and it's mostly software and now increasingly biotech, you know, there have been different eras of technology and different areas of Monopoly and just hearing the story of the railroads and standard oil and what took place in this country. It's incredible and it's so analogous to what's gone on and and the outrage and The Descent and the fake news that goes on
These people as they've been successful, you know, it really is history teaches us everything and it's so I've just you know, just in the era of Standard Oil just learning about the stories of that time and the people of that time this is one book that's been you know, an interesting part of the tail besties. I gotta go. I love you guys like to see Jason and free burgers. I'll see you on Thursday. Yes, take it up. Let's go because I said, I'll just give them on my closing the fish that ate the well a book about Sam summer.
Marie who was the banana king and another interesting book you might like I love capitalism by Ken langone who you know belt he built a Home Depot and it's a pretty great story about both stories of capitalism. And I think you'll like them Freiburg if you like the the books you were talking about. Yeah. All right, everybody. We'll see you next time and don't forget to rate and subscribe and we'll be taking another episode in another five six seven or eight weeks hopefully earlier than that.
At take our sacks take care of Freiburg take our trim off and we'll see you all next time on the Olin.
