All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E7: California's collapse, how SPACs are opening the markets for growth stocks & more

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

Follow the crew: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://bio.fm/theallinpod Bestie recommendations: Chamath: https://www.amazon.com/Americana-400-Year-History-American-Capitalism/dp/0399563792 Sacks: https://taibbi.substack.com/ https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/ Friedberg: https://www.amazon.com/Godfather-Mario-Puzo/dp/0451205766 https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=john+d+rockefeller+titan&qid=1599625893&s=books&sr=1-1 Jason: https://www.amazon.com/Fish-That-Ate-Whale-Americas/dp/1250033314/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+fish+that+ate+the+whale&qid=1599625909&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/I-Love-Capitalism-American-Story/dp/073521624X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=i+love+capitalism&qid=1599626013&sr=8-1   0:00 The gang recap their summers 6:43 Is California collapsing? Why or why not? Has the one-party system failed? 14:05 Understanding the bureaucratic side of California's problem 20:37 AB-5 & the working rights of freelancers 27:11 How would AB-5 passing impact Uber & Lyft's long-term profitability & consumer experience, could franchising fix this? 34:45 California lagging in police reform, what tactical steps could be taken to stop deadly policing 46:13 Chamath on the most important economic event of the last decade & why he is now bullish on the market 50:46 Why technology companies should be going public sooner, how SPACs are allowing retail investors access to growth stocks 1:01:23 Election talk - who is in the lead ahead of the first debate? 1:12:21 Bestie recommendations

Hey everybody welcome back to the all-in-podcast besties have reunited. It's been a bestie summer. Tremoth how are you doing? You're back in America? Yes. I'm back in America. Back in America. Feels great. Good summer. Yes. I had any bread for 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 and Wuhan with COVID-19. How's the psyche there? No, it was incredible because 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 distanced. There's 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, pure on your hands and wear a mask and there was like, you know, 40, 50 cases a day. And then I keep looking at the news when I was there, 60,000 a day here, 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 Sacks? 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 last couple episodes of the podcast. How is San Francisco right now? How has your bestie summer been? It's been great. Yeah, I was, I guess I can now disclose that my close location was Mexico, specifically

Calvo, and that was, it was a great place to be for a couple of months. Well, there are nobody cares. Yeah, exactly. But actually, it was great, it was a great place to be in the early stages of 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, you know, 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 that's, that's, you know, that's where we come from. And is the kids school actually open? Are they going to school? Are they, keep pushing it out two weeks, like my kids are? Yeah, it's, 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 glorified? A little bit, I mean, a little bit. I think it's difficult. Yeah, we gave up on it. And free burger, you're there. I'm here. Bay Area.

How's your bestie summer been during this crazy ton? 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's proposed local tax to the inner layers of extreme heat, smoke, and the absolute central layer of pain more recently, my three-year-old daughter decided 34 nights ago to not sleep anymore. So, yeah, we've been 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 in the California Drain. What my parents immigrated here for, you know, paradise. Well, I guess that's a good place to start and Just if anybody cares I spent

Had a great time I guess nobody cares 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 jcal being sad, but I actually had to talk with my wife and I said I 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 great and doing this podcast is great. But man, I miss people. I just miss. What are the symptoms of your depression just before you were a soft diagnosing. I'm just curious. I was I was feeling like just sad about watching the riots and watch people shoot each other and then watching you know 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 portfolios and investments are doing, 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 and it's like the doom scrolling is crazy. So I had to just stop doom scrolling.

I think that was the key thing, Shemoth was just looking at Twitter is that 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 it was 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

at 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 was doing things. Yeah, you want to know you want to know kept my meetings to a few hours a day and then otherwise I was doing things. Yeah. You want to know my phone call to Jake Al? Yeah. Hey, Jake Al, I saw on Twitter that you're sad and lonely. It's like, yeah, yeah. It's like, are you suicidal? It's like, no.

Okay, goodbye. I'm too much of an argument. I'm too much of an argument. I just never considered that. I'm so excited. But I do want to thank you, Dave, for having me down to Cabo. And we got to have some good times. We got to have some good movies, Gladiator, extended cut

was great. Some other movies that we watched could get us canceled. So we won't admit that we watched history of the world or any other Mel Brooks movies. But we had a good time playing a couple rounds of golf, and that was good times. But let's talk about California, because I, 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? Just going through my mouth. 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 basically have like massive rife and confidence. And it's been compounded.

You never, I mean, you know, if 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, part of it I'm not going to move is I, you know, my taxes I've you know my

Taxes I've set up in such a way were California can't get access to most of my assets anyway, so you know they can pound sent Yeah, David how Sacks how are you feeling about California right now? and Just the craziness in San Francisco, the homelessness problem in San Francisco has become acute during this. It's really an amazing. It's an amazing.

And the wealth task on top of it. And it's a disaster. It's a disaster. I mean, I'm not leaving or anything, but it's certainly a topic of conversation that's come up a lot. And I do know people who have left. I know a couple of people who, you know, prominent people in the venture community

who've recently moved to Austin. And it's a horrible time for the city and state people proposing all these new taxes as just take one example. Because people are already realizing that because of COVID and this new sort of work from home and Zoom business culture, and this new sort of work from home 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 you know in the technology industry and so I precisely the time that people were Re-evaluating where they wanted 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 do have this sort of seemingly chronic issue in San Francisco, particularly with the sort of homeless

problem, it just seems to keep getting worse. And there's sort of this weird hostility to technology and tech workers here that I think is somehow used as 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 term homeless. I think most people looking at the problem as one person can't totally tell me, you know, what we have is not. And I wouldn't say who said this, but it's a prominent person. They said, this, you know, Jason, the issue here is, this isn't a homeless problem, this

is a junky 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 don't know if you guys saw, we're going to hit something like 500 overdose deaths this year, we're like going to double last year, and it's all fentanyl, which is a particularly deadly drug. So, I mean, how much do you think that is the problem, David? Huge.

I mean, you're right that homelessness is not the cause of the issue. The homelessness is the consequence of long-term drug addiction and mental illness. I mean, this is the end state. And you're right, the city is, it's not really tackling the underlying issues. In fact, it's kind of eating and abetting them. I mean, how many millions of needles does

the city give away every year and that it only collects a small fraction of them with the remainder ending up on the streets? It's just, it's, it's, 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 in San Francisco. That's literally cleaning poop off the sidewalks because homeless people are using our sidewalks as like a latrine basically as a bathroom. And what you keep hearing is that we can't do anything about that problem until we solve the homeless problem. And that's it, and certainly we should try to solve that problem, but it's a very long-term, you know, difficult, intractable problem.

In the meantime, we can certainly do things like demand that homeless people not do that. Yeah, and the policing seemed to be a distinct issue with policing right now. I watch the San Francisco Tendor Lloyd Twitter account, David Freiburg, and they've arrested something like 260 meth 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 does the city turned into for you as somebody who's been a long-term investor in the Bay Area?

Well, I moved here after I graduated college in 2001 and I loved San Francisco. It was a quieter city, a quainture city. I honestly, over the years have found the traffic and the congestion and the buildup of the city to be frustrating. I'm a little bit of a anomaly in this sense because I think a lot of people think that the city should continue to grow and progress and build housing and so on.

Those are all fine objectives, but I think the quality of life has degraded for some time in the city. As 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 are the city government employees in 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 a lot 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 was really like, I've just been like everyone, like I call it kind of talk about the Dante and Furnow layers. It's also like, for me growing up, it's like a seven layer burrito. It's 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's just gotten, and the state has gotten more and more difficult to live in.

And I was certainly thinking and talking to my wife, like we got to leave her family here, so we're not gonna to leave the state. But then I did a call last week that I think 18 of us were on with Governor Newsom. And he made a couple of really interesting points that really did honestly reset my perspective. I'm trying to take a step back and think a little bit more

broadly about the long-term opportunity in California. The way the state operates right now, it's a fit largest economy in the world. They ran a surplus, they're refinanced, they're dead, they've done a great job kind of managing kind of the fiscal gap that 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've not been able to find, but I've been looking forward from Time Magazine from 1959

that were like declared this is the year everyone's going to exit us 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. It's a diversified industrial base. It's not just tech. Tech is a lot of the growth, but there's a lot of industry here, largest ag producer, largest, large military aerospace industry, and on and on and on. This is a great diversified economy. It's a great diversified cultural base. It's by the oceans, it's 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.

mountains. It's an incredible place to live and work. I don't think any of us want to give that up. And the media has done a great job kind of magnifying these small stories that aren't really a story. The government used to make the case that this wealth tax proposal was one assembly member. 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.

This is the best. And you can go see some taxes and move to Austin, but I mean, then you got to go live in Austin, you know, whatever. Well, it's, 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 there's a resource curse issue, particularly with San Francisco, where there's this thing and this observable thing with governments that sometimes you get a resource curse, where if there's a lot of oil in the country or something, you end up 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 wealth creation, prosperity, job creation, ecosystem that it had nothing to do with creating. Yeah. I would say two things to build on what you're saying. The first is I think that when the economies 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. Yeah, fast.

And I actually think that that's practically true. We may not want to think it and it may sound a little harsh, but it's true. And the way that you reverse it is what 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 pay these person $250,000, $300,000 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 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. If they are going to do things that are aligned with the moral code of the party that elected them.

Let's just talk, for example, about the 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 gonna get blocked

because Californians have decided 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 than they do to the right of law and to Social justice for minorities and blocks. That's crazy. We should be the most progressive as your point on this, Jamal. 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 we 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 slash progressives. Or, you know, let's just say the majority or at a minimum of 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 and the legislation hits the floor, it basically gets mothballed. To me is inexcusable and disgusting. Yeah.

I mean, look at the housing issue. We just had a bill that was an incredibly simple bill. I think it was 11, yeah, SB 11, 20. I don't 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. So you could have two homes, I'm a single lot.

And they couldn't even pass that in a city where a firefighter, a teacher, et cetera, cannot live within 90 minutes of where they work. And they couldn't even pass that. Well, also, there's also AB five, right? I mean, Jason has Ubers third or fourth investor. I'm sure you guys have something to say about that, right? Okay, we thought we were fourth, but I think third or fourth,

but here we go to the VC, Bragg's got your words. Yeah, can we just pin down exactly which one it is so you could just say you were the fourth investor? It's so much better to say third or fourth, and that was my statement, obviously. But you know, AB-A-B-5 is another one. Look at all the careers in which you can be, David's axe, a freelancer. And 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% of drivers for these services want to be freelancers, and the services themselves 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.

That's right. There's no sense. I mean, and and and you trickled into like journalists too. I mean, there's they said now journalists, if you write write 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 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 white with 30 articles applied to a translator. And obviously, when you have that degree of confusion and complexity, something's off, right? Yeah. And it's such a, it feels like virtue is signaling. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think, well, I mean, the reason why AB5 happened is it was at the behest of the teamsters, right? They're trying to unionize the Uber and Lyft drivers and they can't do it with their employees. And so, you know, the author of the bill, Lorraine against Oles, who's sort of in their back pocket, you know, that's why she put forward the bill. And then the absurdity of it was that, you know, they realized after introducing it, that it would ensnare all these other occupations, like the writers and journalists and photographers and translators. Yeah, even like you like Manicurists and so on. Right, so what they've been doing is they've been now

modifying the legislation to exclude all of these categories. And in the process, they're kind of laying bare what's really happening here, which is this is all about basically shutting down or forcing Uber and lift to comply with the will of the teamsters. And it seems like the legislation blanked when Uber and Lyft said, well, we'll just shut the service down so what are your thoughts on when that happens, Zack?

What do you think will happen? Who will win this AB5 shutdown? Showdown. Well, Uber and look for you. Yeah, they threatened to basically stop service and they got to stay, I think, from a judge. Yes. So AB5 doesn't go into effect until November

when, and there's a ballot initiative that they're sponsoring to get AB5 overturned. So I think, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't start to predict whether it's going to win or not, but that to me is like, whether, if AB5 were I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don, I don't, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I don, I as a result of that whole Dynamics State Supreme Court decision where the Supreme Court basically said, look, here's the criteria that defines an employee versus an independent contractor. They get to decide what work they do, what hours, or whatever. And there's like some set of criteria.

And they said, look, Uber 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 tried 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 a 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 of the state supreme, the Dynamics decision. And that's kind of, you know, something's going to have to get written down.

So, Zach, 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 that's law? I mean, possibly. I mean, Dynamics is not like constitutional. It's on a constitutional decision, so the legislature can do whatever it wants here. 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 could have made their arguments in front of a court, right? Okay, the problem is now, and whatever applies to California applies to every state legislature. How are these people supposed to figure this out? I'm sorry, but like, you know, who are we entrusting here to go in,

then all of a sudden understand the nuances of lift and Uber and really understand the job that they do versus the translators, versus the this person, versus the that 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, frankly, amongst us. And it really did attract a certain level of intellectual person who cared about legislating. But now, basically, you just have like Jerry Falwell Jr.'s running around.

I mean, 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 we're dealing with. And so what was Gavin Newsom's answer to that? It's really what I would. You know, the Jerry Followell Jr. point didn't come up to Mark, but we can follow up. I'm sure. It does seem to me that if they do become full-time, this would be a tragedy for the people who are trying to just do 10 to 20 to 30 hours of gig work.

What happens to those poor people who wanted to fill in between when they dropped their kids off of school and picked them up and just grab a couple hours here there as a second gig? If this actually does pass in their full time. Honestly, guys, honestly, you guys are such your, your, your, your, your, your, honestly, look, it won't affect them. It will affect the long-term profitability and 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 10 hours, Jason, they'll still be able to work 10 hours. So I think the point is that like... On a specific shift. Like they're going to have to come in at a certain shift time. 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 if you were comfortable with a 60% or 70% reduction in the market cap of some of these companies, you'd be okay with AB5. 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 AB5 are the ones that own the stock and are really thinking about the market cap. Well, but the drivers, the drivers don't necessarily own the stock and they're against it. No, the drivers own eight shares, David.

I mean, come on. No, that's what I'm saying. Is there not shareholders 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, AB five prime, which is a modification that's neither this nor what it was. But it seems that the tailwinds 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 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 to. Right, but it doesn't have to be that way. What you're saying is, I think that this law will have very adverse consequences for their business. Okay, I mean, I grant you that. But it's, it's why is the state interfering in the relationship between Uber and its 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 competitors What happens is somebody comes in to take the excess margin? So you think that's the government it wants to take it and the unions want to take it absolutely Yeah So you think that's the government that wants to take it and the unions want to take it. Absolutely. Yeah.

Absolutely. And 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 AB5 have been written, passed, adopted, and my answer to you would be that it would not have been. So Uber and Lyfts and Door Dashes success is what leads to people wanting to get a slice. The all agopolis model of success were not enough other companies are pulled through. Got it. Well, that gives us a good segue into... By the way, sorry, last point on this. And the funny thing is the people who created the problem

were 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 fair. Well, I would just disagree slightly in the sense that just because this has big distributional

consequences, like basically who makes the surplus, doesn't mean it also doesn't have a huge deadweight loss associated with it. Whenever you prohibit people from engaging in the type of economic contracts relationship that they want to engage in, you're reducing surplus. And so I hear what you're saying, and 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 and 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 product is going to go away in certain jurisdictions. I mean, if Freeberg wants to get an uber north of the Golden Gate Bridge or in the e-space somewhere, they're just not going to have the economics or any of some communities to even operate the service. So just like Uber Eats and Postmates stopped delivering to Treasure Island, a lot of the

drivers were in their local communities at home with Uber turned on and when they or a door dash 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, Netflixing or hanging out 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 sought, you know, an Uber ride where it's like, why isn't the car moving? It's because that person's at home. And they were capturing the one ride every hour in their local, you know, suburban area.

But if you force them to be hourly, Uber's gonna say, you know what, it's not worth having an eight hour shift in, you know, whatever, a suburb and the service will go away, and then guess who's gonna not have service and transportation. I think people. For free. Of course. Sorry, I was saying it was like Saks's point, from a consumer perspective, or Chimau's point,

if 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 ride-share service, or I'm less likely likely order food for delivery. I don't want to deal with 50 fucking apps. I don't want to have to go find the one app that has the contract with the one restaurant. Then the natural market dynamics,

the way that the market naturally evolves 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 is 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 abstracting all these services because there's 90 of you. Google says, I'm going to put all of you guys on the map view. Yelp says the same thing. And essentially, what happens is there's some like open way where 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. Now Uber is talking about doing a franchise, exactly what you're saying, Chimoff, is let some franchisee take the East Bay and then provide their inventory to the other network. I think franchising is a really, really smart business idea. And I think that particularly in transportation 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 company that moves to a franchising model and then figures it out, I think it's like a Burger King. It's like a McDonald's. And the company that moves to a franchising model and then figures it out, I think will be a huge winner. And that will be a very asset light, really operationally sophisticated, very well run, highly profitable business, I think. Let's talk about the public markets.

Jason, can we just talk about the police brutality thing in California? I just want to get your glasses. Sure, let's take it. 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 past comprehensive police reform and California will be one of the lagers. What do you think if you couldn't wave a magic wand, Shamoff? What are the one, two, and three things? Take a minute to think it through.

And everybody in the call 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. What are the specific tactical things? Let's get tactical first. The first one that I've always been a big fan of as I've studied it, at least from 10,000 feet, is ending qualified immunity. Explain why and what that is. Qualified immunity is essentially that 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 carplosh to behave in ways that can be

Good in some cases very very bad in other cases gray in other cases yet. There's no adjudication of their behavior And so you have to allow people with solid, dispassionate, detached 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 that's that. That talks specifically about the shooting involving, I want to say murder right want. And I think that's that. Let's talk specifically about the murder, the shooting involving, I would say murder right now, because I think all the facts are not in. But Jacob Blake was shot in the back. He was obviously not listening to the police,

the police then followed him to his car. There is a discussion of if there was a knife on the floor board 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. This person is 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 a legitimate shooting. But that means maybe they have to rethink policing because you could have easily

taken that person down with the even the most modest of a chokehold or a tackle. And when we see that, it feels like that's the raw shock test right there of like how you look at shootings in police when you saw that shooting. I take it, Trimoff of Jacob 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. 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 gonna be considered an allowed shooting or there's not gonna be, the person's not gonna be prosecuted because the person was clearly not listening and there was a knife on the floor

and he was going for it. And it seems to me like we really need to change the actual training, the average is six months of training. So I think that's one of the top things that is to change is that these police officers have to be trained not to fire first, but to use other tactics. 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 they should be deployed in all kinds of situations, where I think that what people want is the words deescalation and police don't really sync up and in most a lot of people's minds They think of escalation. So yeah 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 to folks 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 correlate to how society views it. And then, you know, 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. It's saying, it's kind of really scary,

the idea that we could all be sitting in our houses right now as we are. And literally, the police can just charge in. It's totally unnecessarily. I mean, she was being for some low level drug idea, they're gonna knock the doors in. And of course, the person's gonna try to protect themselves. That's the demand house, SACS, what are you talking about?

Well, they knocked the doors in and they were playing clothes wearing police officers. So people are coming in and they did it like midnight when she was asleep. So yeah, people busing to her house at midnight, screaming, making noise and not dressed as cops. That's crazy to do.

What are we exactly having here? Yeah. And then the last one I would give you is militarization of police. A lot of these ideas, by the way, are Justin Amosha's ideas. I've retweeted and I've followed, but he was the one that put me onto these things. But you have all this excess military equipment in the army that gets basically passed through and now directly sold into police departments.

Yes, especially post 9-11. We basically militarized that. So those are my things. What are your ideas around policing and how we should change it? You've heard Chimoff. I don't have more detailed ideas than Chimoff. I think he's given 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 the body cam idea Jason seeing you you tweet about I think that's pretty interesting too I think you're right that for the body cam idea I had was I asked does anybody know and you know does black live matter or another Organization track

Which police departments because we could get a list of every police department, that exists in some 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 the live streaming and the live video and 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 they're 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 happened. We don't have a video, or they have the video of Rihanna 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 should have a 360- which is every single cop car should have a 360 camera in every cop. It should be a federal mandate, and I don't exactly know how federal mandates were It's acts, but don't you think there should be a federal mandate for just cameras and car cameras? I think it's a good idea. I think the use of cameras is 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 be not recording the police officers when they're sitting in their car. But every time there's like a call. Yeah, they pull somebody over sort of, you know, like fourth amendment type search and seizure type situation. Yeah, I think it would make sense to have that on video. Why not? I mean, I think every police will behave better. Go ahead, Freeberg. There was a case the other day, a young guy, I think it was 19 years old with Shotin' D.C.

named Dion K. I don't know if you guys watched the body cam footage. And so he was a 19 year old black man who shot, he 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 becoming non-story as a result of the fact associated with the body can footage. But I just want to propose something else.

It's a little bit more radical. Maybe my libertarian ideals kind of cross with my socialist ideals and forming this concept, but perhaps you're a socialist? No, I've never been accused of that. and forming this concept, but perhaps you're a socialist. No, I've never been accused of that. But 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 all of what we're 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 the UK, firearms, I have no right to pull a gun. And that's the case in the UK, for example, where there are no police officers shooting civilians, because they're never under threat of being killed by a gun. So there's a simple answer, which is get rid of the guns, but little too controversial, and obviously many layers to that argument, especially from kind of both sides.

But I would say much of what's going to go on now and in the future is 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, there's always this threat against every individual that their life might be taken by another.

Well, let me make a prediction right now. There's not going to be any new gun control legislation for a generation because of the looting and riding that's going on gun sales or an all-time high. I mean, every single gun store that is possibly good to. Ammunition is sold out, right? You can't get guns, you can't get ammo. And there are more first time gun buyers in the United States in the last several months than there's ever been. I mean, the ranks of the NRA must just be swelling right now.

And so this idea that you're going to get gun reform, I don't think it's going to happen. People aren't going to support it. And I think you know, you use user word, I think, idealistic. I mean, I think it's like a little bit naive to assume that you're going to be able to get rid of all the guns in the hands of bad actors. There are a lot of people in this country who

feel the need to have a gun to protect themselves. And the cops can't always get there quickly enough. And a lot of people feel the need 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 to solve our issue of race, which is the original Sidne of America, we're going to really need to start thinking about making police go back to school for 18 months, 12 months, and rethink 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 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, Tremont? 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 Apple, I guess, doing a stock split. And we hit all-time records. Why are we hitting all-time records, Jamal? 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 quite honestly, I mean, quite honestly, it could be a decade, but they're gonna 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, you're taking California back to you in California? Let's just say you're 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. You're long equities. And when everybody is in that situation, you're overwhelmingly long equities. And 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 gonna 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 treasuries, you can't put it into a savings account, obviously. You can't put it, it doesn't seem like commercial real estate is a great bat right now. So your options are private companies or public companies, correct, Jema? I think it really is just public companies and I don't even think it's private companies.

So meaning wherever 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, no offense, but I think that if you were a very good stock picker in the public markets, you're generating better returns.

Then Sequoia Benchmark, name your best venture fund. I see all these people spouting off on Twitter about how good they are in the early stage markets. It's all kind of small dollars and not that meaningful. You know I'm on the call, right? I'm on the call. I mean, you're literally talking to the guys about it and go,

Sacks, what are your thoughts on this? Private markets, obviously, where we operate both David's, Freeberg and Sacks. And you're seeing great deals, I think I've invested in twice as many companies during the pandemic as I did before in the same six month period. What are you seeing in the private markets and what do you think? What is your take on best DCs, public markets?

Sacks and the number of people. 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 US. I mean, just the number of interesting companies doing interesting things. And the infrastructure that makes it so easy for founders to get started and create new companies, it's so much easier now to create a company that was 10 years or 20 years ago.

And of course, it's easy to point to all the ones that don't work or that don't seem like good ideas, but there's so many more experiments that are happening. And I think that's going to, I'm very bullish about that part of the American economy. And Freeberg, what are your thoughts on private markets and obviously your 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

so I wouldn't say that that ever becomes true. I'll tell you the truth. Still selling every day, dialing for dollars, but No, there are certainly more investors, more capital, more risk-taking, more kind of valuation extending than I think has it was the case pre-COVID. I think Chimaz 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 in. It's just extraordinary how much, as I've watched close friends and companies and companies I've 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, it drives up, there's a multiple explanation. Well, and I thought, you're public. There is this flurry of market participation. As a result, it drives up. There's a multiple explanation. When I thought your B's for sorry, can I just say something that's such an important smart thing that Friedberg said. So Jason, for example, like all of us, 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 used to look at a sastiel, you'd price price that SaaS deal 10 times ARR, right? Then there's a little bit of inflation, you know, the rates go up, the prices that people pay go up, now the sudden we're paying 12 times, 15 times, now it's 20 times if you're growing 100% 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 four, five, six years and you think you're gonna get paid. The crazy thing is like once that company transitions

to the public markets, I mean, 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 valuation 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 raise 10 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 that round out. The valuation as a result of the liquidity available in that market is so much higher because everyone's going to be much more participation in bidding. And so, you know, what I think, Chamath has tapped into with the SPAP vehicle and what Robinhood is realizing. 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. Freeberg 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 the Nobel Prize. And the Dober appetite for risk and the Dockham Lume before that. And I think we have to give BEST DC a lot of credit here for leading the SPAC movement. I mean, what's your take on everybody copying you down the SPAC path, Trimop at this point? I had desktop metal metals in early angel investment

that just spacked. I did the price there. I like to play. I like to play. Thank you. Yeah, I didn't know they told me that. Thank you for the markup. And I've been hearing, like,

if I'm getting inbound as an angel investor from, I literally got a cold email from some high profile people and 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 saying can you introduce us to the calm guys, can you choose to rob it? I'm like, I think you can go direct to them, but what is your take on how many SPACs have been created since you

like literally single handedly restarted the SPAC movement? I think because you don't think you'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 want to basically create a new way of doing IPOs. I call that IPO 2.0. I reserved IPO 8 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 year 2000, there were 8,000 public companies in America on the American stock exchanges. 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 10X 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 of people that are dying to own 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 percent, you become very unique all of a sudden. You're sort of a one percent kind of a company. You're an outlier. And so you get treated, you know, incredibly well. So that's the backdrop.

I think a company should be going public around year five, year six. What revenue footprint? About 50 million. At 50 million and what they're doubling, I think that they should be going up. And it allows them to build capital slowly, it allows them to basically contain control, it minimizes delusion. I think it's a really powerful model. And then on the number of SPACs, what I would say is, I think it's really good that the market is getting diversified. I think what's going to happen is like the thing with SPACs is it's going to be no different than in some ways the banks that precede us,

which is that there's going to be a distribution. You can go to Goldman Sachs, and that'll mean some one 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 & Company. It'll mean yet another different set of things. And I'm sure there's going to be an organization that is all about cost. That someone is going to be all about relationships.

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 backs done, what they're going to realize is it's really hard.

And it's hard for a couple of 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 is just a financial arbitrage or if the person has enough operational experience to deeply understand the business. Why? You have to translate it to the public market as well. That's one huge thing that I think that people will start to, we'll start to hone in on. Anyways, there's a bunch of other things, but are you now competing with all of your contracts to disagree with the 50 million dollar?

Yeah, sure. I'm cool with that. You know, I invest well before that. So I'd be, I'd be happy for. You probably have a bigger portfolio, $50 million investment. Yeah, it's great for me and Jason. And I think Jamal deserves a ton of credit on the sole spec thing.

It is, I don't know if all the listeners are aware of this, but the spec things become a huge wave. There's a ton of people creating them. Kevin Hartz has a new one, Reid Hoffman has a new one. They're the Eats Coast hedge fund guys, Pinkas and then the Eats Coast hedge funds like Bill Acman however, they're all creating them. So Tremoth has really started a wave here and I think the appeal of a SPAC to a founder, I'll put it in a plug of why I think it's a good idea for a founder to consider this,

is because you essentially, what founders are used to is doing private rounds. You agree on an amount raise and evaluation, and it's a percent delusion, and you're done. That's it. It's simple. It's simple, right? When you IPO and need to raise money, it's not like that. You have to then work with an investment bank. They'll put together a book.

You do a road show. You do this whole dog and pony thing. You don't know how much money you're going to get at the end of that process or what the valuation is going to be. And then on top of that, we know statistically, Bill Gurley published all the stats, the investment banks are going to rip you off. So what a SPAC does is it prices like a late stage private round, you just agree with a SPAC motor on a evaluation and an amount raised.

And then on top of it, you get kind of a direct listing along with it. Now, all of a sudden, you start trading as a public company. And so, SPAC is 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 and more. It's sacks in a way you're saying saying it's gonna feel more like doing a series D than it does a road show. And I think that comfort level for somebody like Robin Hood

or a calm or data stacks or thumbtack or any of these companies that you and I are investors in. Every company you're portfolio. I'm just, I've got two ideas. I've got two ideas in two years. This is, I think this is gonna be the new thing for early stage investors is we're not going to count unicorns anymore, we're going to count SPACs, we're going to count public listings,

right? And I think that's probably better. By the way, the other thing that I'll say to founders is one is I think 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, well, he has no operational experience, but he's so credible in the public markets then 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 publics, meaning an early stage investor who isn't married to somebody who can basically say, I know how hedge funds work, I've made them money and I'm going to make them more money and mutual funds, et cetera, is troublesome. The second 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'm getting a 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 upfront because I think it'll be fun for them to find out themselves along the way. But these things are hard. The first one took me two and a half years. They're hard. They're 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 of the election? Is it exactly 60? A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little. A little. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little. A little less. A little. A little less. A little less. A little less. A little. A. A little less. A How many days of the election is it exactly 60 and then the first debate in September 29th? Yeah, yeah, so we're at the 55 of the 56 days Mark then taping of this and the first debate I think is September 30th, so we're about three weeks away from Joe Biden and Trump going at it. What's everybody's handi-capping now the mark the market seem to be saying even money or a slight edge to Joe Biden? What are our thoughts? I think that Biden's looked the crispest he's looked. 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 demand, maximizing thing to do. So I think he's relatively well positioned. It's 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, the, what do you think of the VP choice? Kamala. I think safe. So I agree with Tramath that that was kind of 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 that's why the Basement strategy appeared to make sense is that he would say nothing, do nothing, go nowhere, and just trying to run as a protest vote against Trump. And I think that was working a couple of months ago when, A, COVID seemed a lot worse, B, the economy seemed a lot worse. We're now down to about 8% unemployment. We were at 13 or 14%.

And C, Trump had seemed to kind of mishandle the reaction to Floyd. He seemed to be inciting it. But now we have this issue of the looting and violence in probably Democrat-run cities. And I think Trump has sort of found his sales pitch now in opposing the radical left and these mobs and protests that seem to be causing tremendous unrest and looting and violence in our cities. And I think it's a combination with the improving conditions of the economy and 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 would know exactly how to respond.

I think he would, you know, in the other- Just bad instincts. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, he would pull a sister soldier to use a term from 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 to announcing that. I mean, he would find somebody to his left who represents, you know, a fringe of the left

that he presumably doesn't support and find a way to distance himself through to announce them. Like Antifa, like Antifa, like, you know, the, anyone, you know, any of the left who is important. Looting important. Looting important.

I think there's a lot of target. Nobody wants to see, Nobody wants to support that. And so Biden comes out and says, hey, we don't support that. And it gives him that law and order vote. And he hasn't done that. He hasn't really done that. I mean, so two of my favorite

political pundits right now are Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taiibi, who are very, their strong supporters of Biden. They're very anti-Trump. But they think he's failing on sort of these issues because he's not, he's not figuring out the right way 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 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 deaths a day, and then the next debate in October with, you know, call it three or 400 deaths a day,

and basically declare that he did solve COVID, because we've been trending down 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 cyniquid 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 mask so difficult for him, and it seems like he slow played it. He, you know, he set, he's, he's slow played. He hit his set on the turn. And here he is, like, he wore the mask on July 11th. He wore it four months late, but guess what? As Trimoth was saying, everybody wears a mask and every, and these things go down in 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 deaths a day. And then our kids are back in school in October, which 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 deaths are at an all-time low. Well, I mean, yeah, I think that's a big 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 selecting a person as president, we're also electing a party, a movement, a governing philosophy. However, much Trump is disliked by a lot of people. I think a lot of people are looking at, 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, Chimath, Biden, or Trump, Biden, I think Biden's good. Sacks, entire net worth. I would predict Trump at this moment. Wait, you predict, but you wouldn't put your entire net worth on it.

If you had to, I could see your hesitation. You want Trump to win. Oh, sure. But you wouldn't put your entire net worth on it. If you had to, I could see your hesitation. You want Trump to win, but you wouldn't put, you wouldn't put your entire net worth on him. But you, of course not. You would put it on. This is, this is about a 55% sort of thing. So Biden has a 55% chance of winning. So even though you're voting for Trump, you are not going, you would not put your fortune on Biden. You asked me who I predict right right now I'm predicting Trump,

you'll remember on the last part I predicted Biden, so it moves depending on what I see happening. Yeah, and I'm gonna go with Biden. Yeah, but Jason knows. Jason, I think a better way to get a better answer is not to force somebody to put their entire network on the line is just say, who do you think is gonna win? Who do you think is gonna win, sex?

How many times I have to answer this question? You think Trump's gonna win. You actually yes. Yes. I do actually Really? Yeah, it's fascinating. Huh, and I remember the first time I've said I think it's I think it's the same as it was last time for me and Has been most of this process is 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, Freeberg, what happens if Trump is elected again? Some people think this is all institutions are broken forever. America's broken forever. Hyperball.

That's the perception on both sides, right? So the perception and 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 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 Bernie in the seat, but the reaction isn't necessarily let's go back to the middle, let's become a centrist government, let's have good political debate. And a good, by the way, the one show I've been watching a lot of lately, just nostalgia to Chimoff's tweet earlier today, make me feel better about life is West Wing, where, you know, Jed Bartlett is the president, and he walks a great national debate. We all want to have this intellectual exercise.

It's coming to the truth and coming to 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 it is really a crumbling democracy kind of motivation. I would guess if you were to survey people, it's how they're making their choice. If Trump is elected freeberg, do you feel it is an acute existential crisis for America as a democracy? You personally...

I don't think democracies end 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 lasted. Our democracy in the U.S. has lasted longer than many. But democracies, I'll just tell you, my point of view on this, democracies ultimately I'll just tell you my point of view on this, democracies ultimately enable freedom of operation and free markets that result 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 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 in the US is better off than they were 50 years ago in terms of income and healthcare and shelter and access to food and access to all these things, the top 1% of the US is further ahead than the median.

And it is that delta that motivates the end of democracy, and it is that, which has been perceived to be unfair about this governing system. And that ultimately results in fascism or socialism. And then fascism results, socialism ultimately restricts anyone for progression. And that's why fascism and socialism ultimately end up in some sort of democratic outcome. And it is a cycle. And we're kind of 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 is realized in the next presidential term, but it is going to be realized in our lifetime. I think that that's a really good point. I completely agree with that. Go Biden. Go for please. Okay, wrapping up here. Media selections of your Bestie Summer, Bestie Book, Bestie TV show, Bestie Binge. What do you got? You got a Bestie Book recommendation sacs, you got a Bestie.

Yeah, my recommendations give me a little different. Bestie Binge. I've been subscribing to a lot of newsletters on Substack. Yeah. And I found that to be pretty interesting. And like I mentioned two of my favorite writers, especially around politics and election time, Andrew Sullivan and Matt Tai-Ebi. So check that out. So your origin windows open enough to get to those two who are super polarized and they actually kicked Andrew Sullivan 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 Substacks. It is amazing how the Overton Window has closed. Besty C, do you have a Besty Binge, a Besty Book, or a Besty Newsletter, or a Besty Podcast? You want to share with the Besty's? 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 Booz, Rene Vossen. Okay, Bestie Freeberg. What do you got, Bestie Queen of Kenwa? I took a week off and hung out at the beach and I binge watched Godfather 1, 2, and 3 as I've done several times in my past. I also watched one of my favorite top five films of all time. There will be blood by Paul Thompson and that opening scene is just crazy. Every scene is just such a beautiful film. It got me down this research path on the standard oil company I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it.

I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it.

I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. But then I started reading Ron Chernau's biography of a Rockefeller. Yeah, and so I don't know if anyone's made it through that 727 page. I've got about 500 pages in. It is detailed. It's detailed. So 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 eras 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 the outrage and the dissent and the fake news that goes on about these people as they've been

successful. You know, it really is, history teaches us everything and it's so I just, you know, I 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 tale. Besties, I gotta go. I love you guys. Like two, I'll see you on Thursday. And Friedburgers, I'll see you on Thursday. Yes, take it up. Let's go outside. I'll just give them all my clothes, the fish that ate the whale. A book about Sam Summary, who was the banana king.

Another interesting book you might like. I love capitalism by Ken Langeon who you know built He built Home Depot and it's a pretty great story about both stories of capitalism And I think you all like them free burger. If you like the yeah, 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 taping another episode in another 5, 6, 7, or 8 weeks. Hopefully, earlier than that, take our sacks, take our freeberg, take our chimath, and we'll see you all next time on The All in Puckest.