PBD Podcast - Why Elon Musk Was Left Out Of The Environmental List | PART 1 | PBD Podcast | Ep. 226

Episode Date: January 14, 2023

In this episode, Patrick Bet-David and Vivek Ramaswamy discuss: Is ESG Bad Or Good For Society? Charles Schaub's Involvement With ESG Reaction to Elon Musk dropping out of environmental list  FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/ Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/ Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pbdpodcast/support

I know this life meant for me. Yeah, why would you plan on Goliath when we got bad David? Value payment, giving values, contagiousness, world, or entrepreneurs. We can't no value that hate it. I'd be running home, you look what I've become. What I become. I'm the I'm the one. Okay, our guest today is Vivek Ramaswamy. Our topic today will be around ESG,

which is a topic that a lot of people are talking about. Mosk is concerned about it. There's this man who, just when you see his picture, how he speaks, just seems like a total sweetheart. The kind of a person you want telling bedtime stories to your kids his name is Klaus Schwab which you think very highly of him But our guest today has written two books New York time bestseller

He's written woke ink as well as nation of victims An expert on this topic. I've been looking forward to this conversation because I think it is something that a lot of people don't know a lot about and they need to be Educated on this topic so appreciate you for coming out. Thanks for having me guys. Yes, so tell the audience if they don't know who you are your background Yes, so my background in a nutshell actually began in science I was a molecular biology undergrad at Harvard at group and Cincinnati before that Thought I was gonna be a scientist ended up getting into the world of hedge funds instead. I did biotech investing, starting in the fall of 2007. That was right before the 2008 financial crisis, by the way.

So the hedge fund I worked for was in like Michael Lewis's book, the big short, all this stuff. So I saw I had a front row seat to the whole 08 crisis, influenced my views of capital markets immensely. I actually think 2008 was where the origin story of a lot of this ESG stuff began, but we'll come to that later. Right. So anyway, I, I three years in.

I had this itch to steady law and political philosophy because I'd been such a science guy that I told my bosses at the hedge fund. I was just going to go to law school. I had a seat at Yale. I thought I was going to do that for three years. There's a keeper job, manage a portfolio, do it from wherever you want in New Haven. That's not a pretty good. So I kept my job and went to law school those three years.

Met my wife, she was my next door neighbor in med school, came back as probably the most productive thing that came out of it, but I enjoyed the three years of thinking about some of the problems that informed my views in these books. Anyway, came back to New York, I left my hedge fund job. Short stint and stand-up comedy did not work well. That was, how short was it?

What was it? About six months, 10 shows. That's good amount of time. Yeah, that was on the side while I was in the tail end of my hedge fund job. And then that's when I woke up and said, all right, clearly I wanted to do something different here.

Got my hands dirty by starting a biotech company. So I started a company called Reuven. It's a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company today. I had the privilege of leading it for seven years as CEO, I worked on a number of drugs, five of them, or FDA-approved products today. I found another healthcare company along the way called Chapter.

It's a private company doing well now. So that was my background as a healthcare entrepreneur. I ended up stepping down as CEO and it's a long story that I tell in this book, but the long story short as I became a critic of this new trend of businesses having to take social stances that had nothing to do with their business. It actually landed at my doorstep even at the biotech company I was running. There was demands to sign some sort of industry-wide statement condemning President Trump's policy on immigration.

It reached a fever pitch, even within my company, and like so many other companies across the country, after George Floyd's death, I became a greater and greater critic of companies taking these social stands. But I realized that I wasn't actually going to be able to speak my mind as a citizen without that having a negative impact on the company. In fact, it is a longer story, but I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal in January of 2021, I want to say. Yeah, January 2021.

When, you know, I made a case that big tech companies ought to be bound by the first amendment if they were taking instructions from the government. It was a technical legal argument. But three advisors to my company stepped down. That was a wake up call for me to say that, you know what, if I even want to speak freely as a citizen, I can do that. I can speak as a CEO, but filter it

through the lens of corporate self-interest. And I was at a stage in my career, and the company was at a good enough place, et cetera, where I was able to make the decision to say, I'm stepping aside. That's what led me to write that first book, Woke Inc. Enjoyed that enough that I wrote a second one. So that one came out about a year later.

That was Nation of Victims. Traveled the country down a ton of media. It was a totally different world from biotech. It's a totally different world. It had been on cable television more times than I cared to admit over the last couple of years. But then I started to get, started to get weary about just complaining about this problem without doing something to address it.

And so that's what led me actually to start about a year ago, this new company that I'm leading now called strive, which is competing with these large financial institutions by telling companies as a shareholder, they got to knock it off with the politics, focus on your products, focus on your services, get out of these environmental and social agendas that you're pushing with other people's money and do it in a way that restores the heart of both capitalism, but actually the part that's even near or dear to my heart, nearer and dearer to my heart is not just the fact that I hope it revives American capitalism, but I hope it's actually revival of American democracy because it gets corporate elites

and financial institutions out of the business of what voters ought to be deciding in a democratic society. So for somebody that doesn't know, can you break down how ESG was sold, meaning why did some people think this was a good idea and why do you think it's not a good idea? So, the origin story of the modern version of it starts with the 2008 financial crisis. Okay, what happened in the 08 crisis? Actually, there's two things that happened in 08 that were really interesting.

In the back of the 2008 financial crisis, one was a mistake made by the Republican party, which was to bail out the big banks. That was, I remind you, Hank Paulson, an alumnus of Goldman Sachs, who used taxpayer money to bail out Goldman Sachs under President Bush. That happened. And what happened in response to that was you had a left wing backlash. By the way, I think that was crony capitalism all the way down. I was a critic of it at the time. I remain a critic of it today. There was a left wing backlash that said, you know what,

if that's the way you're going to behave, then we occupy Wall Street want to take money from all of those wealthy corporate fat cats and bankers and redistribute it to poor people, to help poor people agree or not. That is what they had to say. It was a coherent response, if you ask me. Now, right around that time, a second trend was happening in sort of the political, socio-political life of our country, Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. There was the birth of a new strand of the left.

So not the Occupy Wall Street left, but a new strand of the left that said, you know what, it's not quite economic injustice or poverty that we care about, not just that. There's the real problem that has to do with racism and misogyny and bigotry and climate change. That's a become a big one. The biggest one. Yeah, the biggest, biggest, biggest one of all, right?

I think wokeism is one religion, climateism is a religion that dwarfs wokeism by comparison. But anyway, they said this is this is the sort of the new theory of the case. And what happened was that this was the opportunity of a generation for big business in this country for Wall Street in particular, because if you're Wall Street, occupy Wall Street, it's a pretty tough pill to swallow, bitter medicine. Okay. Right. The new woke stuff is pretty easy.

You applaud diversity and inclusion, put some token minorities on your executive ranks or your boards or whatever, muse about the racially disparate impact of climate change after you fly on that private jet novice. It's good work if you can get it, but they didn't do it for free. And that's what this whole ESG stakeholder capitalism thing is about. They made a new demand to the new left that says, you look the other way when it comes to leaving our corporate power intact. And so it's the sort of arranged marriage actually. My parents are from India, they had an arranged marriage. That was the good kind. You're like, I know it all too familiar.

I get it. I mean, I didn't mean to use that term in a negative sense. They had a good kind of arranged marriage. But this is not an arranged marriage of love. Okay, this is this mutual prostitution. Each side gets something out of the trade, and the net result of that, the bastard child was the birth of this ESG movement,

the ESG Industrial Complex, this apologist model of capitalism that says you have to advance these progressive agendas as a way of atoning for your sin in the 2008 financial crisis, but even more as a way of, if you can't beat them, buy them. And that's effectively the mutual,

co-dependent relationship between a progressive movement that used to hate big business, but instead got in bed with them. And together, big banks, woke millennials, getting in bed, they birth, woke capitalism, and they use that to sacrifice Occupy Wall Street, which they put up for adoption. So anyway, that's a little bit of the history of this game.

What, why am I upset about it? Yes, Milton Friedman correctly said that this would make businesses less efficient and they would be less good at making widgets and then that shrinks the size of the economic pie and we're all worse off and we all know that old school conservative, classical conservative,

neo-libertarian argument. I actually agree with most of it, by the way. But that's not what gets me going on this issue, okay? My concern was not that politics would infect capitalism, not just that, but that capitalism would infect democracy. Because what this worldview says is that the way you settle questions like climate change or systemic racism or whatever it might be is not the way we settle questions like climate change or systemic racism or whatever it might

be, is not the way we do it here in America, which is through free speech and open debate in the public square where every person's voice and vote counts equally. That was the bargain we struck in 1776 for better awards. That's how we do it over here. But that we got to go back to doing it the way they used to do in the old world. Back in old world, aristocratic Europe, where a small group of business elites and labor elites and church elites got together behind closed doors and decided what was right for the rest of society at large.

And that's why I sort of try to educate people. This is not a Republican versus Democrat 2022 or 2023 issue. This is a 1776 issue. And it's a question of how you settled disagreements in a society. Is it as citizens with an equal voice through a democratic process? Or is it through some type of aristocratic monarchical structure where some guy named Larry thinks saying on park Avenue gets to use your money to tell you what kind of society he will create,

even if it's one you didn't vote for. So I was watching this documentary. It's like a 19 minute documentary Bloomberg did. I don't know if you've seen it or not, where they're telling a love story. It's a different story than the one you're talking about. And they're telling a story about Robert Schwartz. If you can pull up Robert Schwartz and Robert Zeven, just type in Robert Schwartz and Robert Zeven to just do the name.

Don't even worry about the document or just do Robert Schwartz right there. Let's see what comes up. Underneath Robert Schwartz, just write ESG, right next to Robert Schwartz, right ESG. Let's see what pulls up. So there's, what was the second name, Zeeven? It's that one right there. He died in 2006. That Wikipedia right there. Go down, that one right there. Yeah, zoom in. Zoom in.

So this is, he was a US foreign economist and a stock broker. He was an early advocate of socially responsible investing. He was also actively campaigned for civil rights against the Vietnam War, use of nuclear weapons. He actively participated in an organization such as American Veterans Committee, Americans for Democratic action, Sainte, in 1989, he founded a economist against the arms race, now called economists for peace and security.

So the story says how these guys originally felt capitalism was a problem and the right way of doing it is to force businesses to be socially conscious of what they're doing, to give money back. Obviously, they're very left on what they're doing. So the story was, this is $30 trillion of money being invested back into people, $35 trillion being invested back into the world that we live in. And again, it sounds very convincing, okay?

Where a lot of people are falling for it. I remember when we were selling our insurance company and we were going with folks at Hula-Hanloca and we're sitting with buyers, okay? You know the process you've gone through this before. And so we're sitting down and it's like, oh, so tell us your, I'm like, so what does your company look like?

Our hardest, biggest challenge we have is we have a thousand investment bankers that work with us, but only 5% are African Americans, 6% are Hispanics, and we really have it a hard time with that. I said, oh really? I said, you know, our DI score is this and this, this, that, and they're asking about the DI score, right? I said, okay, yeah, you know, we're 54% Hispanic, you know, we're 51% women, and the average agent is 34 years of God.

You see their faces, their faces is like, oh, this could, so you guys have a very, so, and then they started talking, how this could impact their DI score, the look on their face, they were more interested on what this is going to do, They're the ice scorn marketplace. That's right. Then the investment, of course, which was completely supplied. Yeah, it's a different kind of scoring system. Right. It's like ESG scores go into your credit rating. That affects whether or not you can borrow more expense or not, right?

So a couple of things going on here. Okay, so first there was this socially responsible investing movement and you described it perfectly. That exactly was the goal. Use capital as a lever to drive positive social change or what someone would determine is positive social change. The question they skip is who gets to decide what is positive or not? If these are contested public policy issues, right, that means they're contested because people human beings citizens disagree about it and we have to decide what's the way we work

at our differences. Is it through force, including economic force, or is it through a process of debate in a democratic body politic? I thought we lived in the latter. Old world Europe and actually in fairness, by the way, as one is in the end to be fair about this, for most of human history, that's not how it's been settled. Okay. There's relatively new idea, I mean, existed in ancient Greece in some sense, but in modern history, there's relatively new idea. You actually have most questions that were settled through force, either physical force or through other elite interventions. So this American thing we got going on here, this is a departure from history, but that's the experiment that I signed up for. Oh, or at least my parents signed up for, I signed up for by being born

here. My parents signed up for by coming here. That was the American way. And so to me, that's the first question is who gets to decide what the right answers are. But the second thing is what's going on with ESG right now is different. That is to say it goes beyond what was going on with the sustainable or the socially responsible investing

SRI movement. So there, what they were doing was saying, and by the way, when I was a student at Harvard, the endowment at Harvard, you know, 70 billion dollars. Yeah, some people joke around that Harvard is a giant hedge fund with a college attached to it. Correct.

So what they would do is they would kind of use their capital to divest from Sudan or divest from conflict areas and then take a lot of credit for it and issue nice press releases. That was what socially responsible investing was about mostly as divestment. Okay, take the bad sectors, pick whatever you think is bad, tobacco, coal, oil, Sudan, cigarettes, whatever, gaming, firearms is a big one, divest. And then hopefully if you divest, that will then cause those companies to change their behavior.

What ended up really happening was that we have deep liquid, global capital markets. So if those stock prices go down, for example, or asset prices go down, the inherent worth of the activity, the commercial value of it hasn't changed, that just created an opportunity for somebody else to buy it up instead. And so what ended up happening is the guys who want to issue the press releases end up giving up return. The guys who don't care about the press releases would rather stay anonymous end up being the other side of that trade. They just get to buy it at a lower price. And that's why UT's University of Texas

system has outperformed Harvard's endowment because Harvard got out of fossil fuels while the University of Texas didn't over the course of 2022. So with the ESG movement does is one step, goes one step further than that, and this is where I'm focused, okay? BlackRock, State, Street, Vanguard, these are three of the largest financial institutions.

They manage about $20 trillion, almost as much capital as the US GDP and the hands of three institutions. But what they're mostly doing isn't just the socially responsible investing thing through their ESG funds. It's a common misconception.

That's a tiny, tiny, tiny part of what they do, like less than 2% or something, okay? Most of what they do is they're actually just providing index funds to the general population, people who think they own the S&P 500, who think they own Apple and Nike and, you know, whatever, you name the company, Exxon Chevron, et cetera. But the key is they're not divesting through those funds.

They're invested in the whole market. In fact, who are the top shareholders of Disney and Paramount Pictures, of Apple and Microsoft, of Exxon and Chevron? It's the same companies. Actually, the same large shareholders are the institutions that hold these firms. They're using the money of everyday citizens to do it, but they're changing the behaviors of those underlying companies by voting their shares and by advocating for policies in the boardroom that change the companies themselves. So here, it's not divesting from Apple because they didn't do a racial

equity audit. It's being invested in Apple and making Apple do a racial equity audit at their company last year. That Apple itself did not want to do. Apple's board said, absolutely not. Black rock and state street said, I'm actually, you're going to do it because we're your shareholders and we're the ones that demand it. Now, the funny part is it's not like Larry Fink or Black Rock is the actual shareholder. It's probably most listeners to this program whose money is invested in their funds, but don't know that their money is being voted in this direction. So that's the key with the main where the main action is on the ESG debate isn't the divestment game.

It's the voting game. So here's what I want to do. I want to go into a couple different things. One, how has Klaus Schwab, one loyalty of people around the world, to believe he knows what's the right thing to do for the future of the world, and why are smart people buying into his philosophy? He's a founder of European management forum now being whatever, you know, the world economic forum. I want to play video, which is very disturbing. I also want to talk to you about what you said regarding Elon Musk when you said that in your view, Musk will still have to play by the rules if he wants Twitter to survive.

And there's one master he will always have to appease that master is known as the CCP that both Tim Cook and Elon Musk probably have to bow down to on any given day. So in a certain sense, if you bow down to the same master, maybe your brothers in arms. Now, before we get into this, let me go a quick shout out to our sponsors, Goldco. So a couple of things you need to know about Goldco is we've been approached by Gold companies for the last couple of years by several of them. And I have a very, very close friend of mine who worked for Goldco for many years. I called a bunch of people around us. And so what can you tell me about this company? This is Patrick.

If you're going to buy gold or if you're going to have anybody be the sponsor, this is the company. This has got the most credibility. So let me call another guy. We did research after research after research. We've seen there's a six, there's a six time, Inc. 5,000 winner, 2022 company of the year. Billions of people have trusted them to buy the go through them

Ray Dahlia recently bought a bunch of gold I own a bunch of gold myself and I've been buying gold for Quite some time very small percentage. It's a one to two percent of Assets it's not something that's 50% or 20% very small part But with all the strange things that's going on right now if you are considering Heaging against a weird 2023 and 2024 nobody knows what what's going to happen with the economy. A lot of people are predicting a recession, but we don't know how bad it's going to get. If you do want a hedge against it, you may want to call goal code. I mean, viewers could get up to $10,000 in free silver and a free ounce of silver, Ronald Reagan coin would qualified order. Call

them today 85559598-2758, once again 855-598-2758, or you can go to goldcode.com-forward-slash-pbd, once again, goldcode-co.com-forward-slash-pbd. Rob, let's put the link below. So let's get back to my question. So can you pull up the video about Cloud Schwab, if you could, if you can make that big route,

I just kind of want the audience to see this, make it bigger everybody can see it so here's a thing before we played when you think about the spokesperson for Christianity the last 70 years you would think Billy Graham okay I've heard him speak multiple times God bless the soul he passed away a couple years ago great spokesperson okay when you think about a spokesperson who's going around selling, you know, why we should buy EVs, okay? I would say Elon's probably the voice for that, right? We can have a lot of different spokesperson people. This is either their C-amon needs to be fired, or he just needs to be quiet

and kind of have the power behind closed doors. He may be the worst spokesperson for, when you watch this, honestly, you think this is from a movie like that they literally hired this guy to and he's like, no, this is not a movie. This is how they market. So if some of you guys were afraid about COVID, look how he injects the fear of cyber attack and other things in his method of marketing. So press play.

Pay in sufficient attention to their frightening scenario of a comprehensive side. in his method of marketing, so press play. Society as a whole So co-bibe 19 houses would be seen in this respect as a small disturb In comparison to a major I don't understand can I ask you yeah sure is not my show. Yeah, it's out of your respectful Can you put up the apple 1984 ad identical? So same music. It's like it's like just identically. It's the first thing I thought about. So first thing I thought about it straight up is like you wouldn't that's the face. Don't play it. Just show the face that looks like the this and use the audio. The guy who is like that's class Schwab on the screen. Yeah. Tell me that is not the exact

safe version. But think about that. German. Tell me that is not the exact same person. But think about that. Germany. You think about Adolf. You think about the first thing. Even the first thing. It's the message. How is he convincing people like a Joe Biden to say,

let me announce my candidacy campaign to be built back better, which he's to build back better guy. So why are people buying into this guy? Why is he so much influence over people? So the answer comes down to money. So it comes down to money, but he doesn't have money. He doesn't have money. No, no, no, no, it's not even, it's not even this man. I mean, as I, I gotta, I gotta tell you something, I was asked by the Wall Street Journal to review

a book that he wrote, what in like early 2020 or 2021, a couple years ago. And through reading that book, I get the sense that he's just a sincere individual who has had this passion for 50 years and in his own heart is just one man who has his views. Their views that I deeply disagree with. But he happens to have exercised influence because everyone else with money, 360 degrees surrounding him had a use for that.

Okay. Larry Fink is on the board of the world economic four of the Davos. Cloud Shrubbed, didn't that money? Or not, you know, seriously, large-scale way. Larry Fink controls $8 to $10 trillion under the purview of one man. That's probably the largest.

He was. He was. Larry, being who, you saw him a black rock, Larry Fink. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is probably the largest aggregation of capital under one man's authority. No question. In human history, more than the Dutch East India company, okay? And he's in the board of the World Economic Forum of Davas. So what is this accomplished? It is a front. That is what this is a front. And you know what, these things always come in

three letter acronyms, right? ESG, DI, SRI, socially responsible, investing CSR. My favorite three letter acronym is the CCP. You look at Klaus Schwab, he elevates the CCP. He talks about the Chinese model of dealing with COVID-19, not in a way not to do it, but in a way to do it. Right. So here's the way this game works. Okay.

The black rocks of the world apply constraints to the west emissions caps what kinds of energy you can and cannot use what kinds of diversity you must have. They apply that to the west without applying those same constraints in places like China. I'll give you a very specific example. Okay. They're pressuring companies like Exxon to adopt scope three emissions caps. That causes companies like Exxon to drop oil projects. Now, a couple years ago, there's an oil project in the Sichuan province of China. Chevron drops it. You might wonder, hey, maybe this is part of the fight against global climate change. Maybe that project isn't proceeding. You'd be wrong.

That same project is proceeding just under new ownership, who's the new ownership, it is Petro China. Now you take a look at who's one of the larger shareholders of Petro China. It is none other than BlackRock, the same party who's pressuring firms like ex-Hunt and Chevron. So the interesting thing here is that take it from the left hand and give it to the right.

That's, last time I checked, we were supposed to be fighting global climate change. I'm just saying a three-card Montegoan on follow the money. And in the world economic forum is this front that creates this veneer of legitimacy. When, in fact, because this is nonprofit global allegiance and organization conceived by this elderly Swiss gentleman, Cloud Schwab, when, in fact, it is just a vehicle for advancing in a gender that impedes the objectives of the West without laying a finger on China or the Chinese economy. And so the CCP is the most relevant three-letter acronym China or the Chinese economy.

And so the CCP is the most relevant three-letter acronym I'm looking by. I'll give you another little mystery here. Why is it part of the global ESG agenda to be hostile towards nuclear energy? So the first paradox is, why do they shift production to China and they're okay with it?

Oh, and by the way, if any climate activists listening to this, I mean, just to give you a fact to think about tonight when you go to bed, methane leakage, a unit of methane is 80 times worse for global warming, then carbon dioxide. Okay, people talking about carbon emissions. Well, if you don't actually have a database debate, you can't just talk about carbon.

If you talk about the carbon dioxide, methane and other forms of carbon, turns out methane leakage is 80 times worse for global warming, then carbon dioxide gets where methane leakage is worse in places like Russia and China. So when you shift production from the US to other parts of the world, it's not just that it's net neutral with woke washing. It's worse than that because you're actually contributing to more methane leakage into the atmosphere than you were even in the US. You've done even more harm on your own terms, even if you subscribe to this crazy religious zealotry, even if you subscribe to that, you have failed on

your own terms. So that's the first mystery. Now, I'll give you a second mystery and then you see the conclusion. The second mystery is why they hostile to nuclear energy because you would think if you were opposed to all this carbon emission stuff, you would be embracing the greatest form of carbon-free, large scale, reliable energy production known to mankind that is nuclear energy. And yet ESG funds, like Vanguard's ESG fund, systematically by rule, exclude nuclear energy. And scratch your head for a second and ask what's going on there. The answer is

this whole agenda, the anti nuclear disposition included, is really not about climate change at all. It is about making the West apologize for its sins of the past to achieve a paradigm of global equity. The problem with nuclear energy is not that it is not good enough. It is that it is too good at solving the supposed energy crisis or clean energy crisis, which means you lose the e, the environmental prong as e s g as a Trojan horse for the s, the social agenda. And that's really what's going on here is the whole climateism and the

world economic form. This is a, each of these is just a front. It's a Trojan horse. It's a vehicle these is just a front. It's a Trojan horse. It's a vehicle for advancing an equity driven agenda that the citizenry of most democracies in the West, including the United States, would have never tolerated. If you didn't disguise it in the religious veneer of COVID-ism or climateism or whatever other secular religion ends up being the vehicle for advancing that. That is what's going on here. Well, why should the average person, so forget about the guys like the startup, the entrepreneur. Hey, if you don't have this, you're not gonna get the funding

because you need the money. Hey, here's the top 10. Can you put up the top 10 highest ESU score companies? Exxon, I think is number 10 or number nine on the list. And you got all these four out of 10, I wanna say is oil companies. If you click on that one right there and zoom in to see who the list and you got all these four out of 10, I want to say is oil companies. If you click on that one right there and zoom in to see who the list is.

So these are the top 10 ESG number 12 is Exon. Can you zoom in a little bit so I can see? It was an excellent, it doesn't even, it doesn't even match. It's not garbage. But the reason I'm showing you this is for the audience. Okay, so Exon is number 12. Number 11 is PepsiCo, tennis is go.

Keep going, number nine is Verizon, eight is N the audience. Okay, so Xalana's number 12. Number 11 is Pepsi Co. Tennis Cisco. Keep going. Number 9 is Verizon. Eight is Neville. Okay, go to seven Apple PayPal. Keep going. Five is click on that right there. Number five is a bank of America. Four is keep going. Do we lose it? Oh, you got to do that. Number four is sales fours. Let's see who three is Three is Microsoft who just put 10 billion in chat GBT To his intel can we get a drumroll before number one? Number one is alphabet Google interesting so their number one. So here's the thing

So to the average person, you know, that's watching this to the business people number one is alphabet Tesla who has done more To the business people number one is alphabet Tesla who has done more than a lot of these guys can argue because he's actually tried to make an impact and they're not even at the top 12 okay and even on the smp i think the score wasn't sufficient enough where he was removed from it he got criticized for it can you pull up the tweet that Elon Musk has on what he said about it i think Elon has a tweet about ESG Can you pull up the tweet that Elon Musk has on what he said about it? I think Elon has a tweet about ESG. I sent you as well just so right there. Yeah, Exxon is rated top 10 best in the world for environment, social and governance by SMP 500.

While Tesla didn't even make the list, ESG is a scam. It has weaponized by phony social justice warriors. Okay, guys like him. This doesn't help him. Startup guys coming up. They want to raise capital. No, your scores are good. We're help him. Startup guys coming up, they want to raise capital. No, your scores are good. We're not going to give you $100 million or $200 million. $300 million. The average guy that's got a job making 82 grandiers, like, come

on, Vivek, I already have so many different issues. I'm trying to worry about who's going to run for office. I want to know whether, you know, the Joe Burrell from Cincinnati is going to win the Super Bowl or not. I'm still celebrating Messi won the World Cup while he's the greatest of all time. You want me to add another acronym to my list of worrying about ESG? Why should I care? What would you say to that? So it's a good question. Maybe you shouldn't care. And here's, here's a good case for not caring. If you are fine with your own money being used to advance a climate agenda or racial equity agenda, If you are fine with

using your dollars to tell Apple that they have to adopt a racial equity hiring system that they don't want to adopt, or that that oil companies should produce less oil, even if that means higher prices at the pump, there's no problem with this because that's what a good number of people would want to do with their own money. Turns out though, most Americans don't want to advance that agenda with their own money. Their hard earned life savings. Their 401K accounts, their retirement accounts, their brokerage accounts. They don't want that. Well it turns out the rude surprises.

Guess what your money is being used to advance those agendas anyway. So you think you go to the ballot box and vote every November. That's what you said people are concerned about. Guess what? I got news for you. You're already voting every day without your knowledge with your own hard earned dollars to do it for policies that undermine the very objectives that you think you're voting for

when you pull that lever at the ballot box. And so they're making a farce out of your vote. That's just the first thing. So now you go to the gas pump and you're paying $5 gas in the last summer. On one hand, you are using your 401K account to cause oil companies to produce less oil, which causes gas prices to go up.

Yet with the other hand, you're also paying $5 gas. So you're left holding the bag both ways. Well, some client in China gets to invest in a Chinese black rock fund that gets to own petro China, which is buying up some of the projects on the other side. So the question is, if you are willing to sacrifice investment, returning your dollars and your hard earned savings to advance a one dimensional vision of how to solve climate change or address systemic racism through quota systems or whatever, then there's no problem for you.

You need not worry about this. In fact, I have good news for you. That's exactly what's happening with your money. If you did not want to advance those agendas with your own hard earned dollars, I have bad news for you. Your money is probably being used to advance those agendas anyway. And so on one hand, you didn't get that promotion at work because we don't have meritocratic hiring systems

at many companies anymore because of the S-prong of the ESG movement. On the other hand, the 5% that you put away into your 401K account, your money was actually used to create that very situation. So if that bothers you, then be bothered. And if not, it's a little bit alone. Can I just follow up with that?

I like what you said initially, when you said, listen, you know, rather than just kind of harping about the problem, I actually developed something more of a solution. The name of your company will strive. Strive, respect. We'll get to that. But I want to kind of touch on the average person

because I have conversations with the average person, you know, average people about saving money and investing money. And it is a heavy task to ask them to start a 401, I have conversations with the average person, you know, average people about saving money and investing money. And it is a heavy task to ask them to start a 401K, and to even know what the S&P 500 is, and take out an index fund, and take out 10% of your paycheck. So like, it's what half of Americans don't even invest, period, right?

And then when we can have a whole number of conversations of how many Americans fill up their gas tank, but When you get into S&P 500 you're investing these 500 companies and the you know the large cap companies five You're you see people's mind be like all right What the hell's an S&P 500? What's this what's this? And now we're getting so far down the rabbit hole of investing and the nuance what's actually blackrock that actually owns the fond of Managing the money that's who you're investing your 401k with. And by the way, the shareholders are doing this

and that and they're, you know, they're social credits and like you go down and it's like, I'm just as an investor, I'm like, dude, I just wanna have a 401k and make a return. So for the Pat's question, it's such a nuanced conversation because I'm really hearing this for the first time like because you were in the interplumbing the mechanics of this, you're seeing this.

So it's like, on one hand, to his question, why should the average investor care, I get it, but what can they even do about it? They're not at shareholder meetings. They're not in the, you know, and they're so it's like, even if someone hears this and reads the book, it's like, all right, I'm with you, Vivek, what's up? It's like, no, just keep investing in a 401k,

but it's like, well, I mean, that's what I found it's drive. Right, so I mean, it's, it's funny. Now I've got this company, it sounds like, Vivek, what's up? It's like, no, just keep investing in 401k, but that's what I found to strive. Right, so I mean, it's funny. Now I've got this company, it sounds like, I'm saying all this because that could mean that you could, do business with all of the company. It's actually that way, right? No, no, actually, the whole heartily think that you actually have a point here.

You've got to fill that void because people didn't have a choice. I'll just tell you a story though. Actually, so on my flight down here today, I was writing a chapter in my next book is gonna be coming out, it's gonna be about a lot of the same stuff. You're really writing these books, buddy.

I like writing. Actually, clearly. It turns out I discovered I was doing biotech for, you know, seven years as a CEO and seven years investor before that. I didn't know I was gonna be this, I was gonna love writing books as much. Now I'm kind of wearing this hat as an author.

But anyway, the story I was writing in the chapter I was working on today was actually about Frederick Douglass in this country. So you know, Frederick Douglass obviously. Of course. Abolitionist. So one of my favorite stories about Frederick Douglass was that he actually, so he was lent out as a slave. So not only did he work the family that owned him, they loaned him out to be able to get

extra income or curry favor with neighbors. And so one day he was learning, he was, he was doing work for the neighbor, but the actually, the neighbors took quite a liking to him. So the mother figure of that family decided she wanted to teach him how to read. She did that while her husband was at work. One day he came home from work early, he found her teaching how to read. He was livid because he said, a man with knowledge is not fit to be a slave. So the funny part is Fred Douglas may not have actually probably did not want to be learning

how to read. He was just a kid. Most kids don't like to be sat down and taught how to read either. He's no different than other kids, but he heard that. He knew how much they did not want him to know how to read. He thought, okay, look, that's probably pretty important for me to figure out that changed his life. He then started asking other kids as they were coming home, the white boys who were actually allowed to go to school. He would pick up little bits and pieces of knowledge, pieced enough together how to read. Once he knew how to read, he became an auto-died act, a self-taught guy, one of the great figures

in American history. So why did I bring that up? There was actually a rule changed this year. The Biden administration tries to weave ESG into retirement plans. So they changed the rules this year, the federal rule governing retirement plans. It's a boring law called ARISA. Okay. What they said was actually now these fund managers can take social benefits,

what they call collateral benefits other than investment return into account before they weren't allowed to. Now, in the initial rule, what they said was you had to disclose that prominently, that you had to tell the investor the mom, the pop, the doctor, the nurse, that, hey, I'm not just investing for maximizing your financial return,

but I'm also advancing these other objectives. But in the final rule that they actually passed, that disappeared because they said that if you do disclose it, that's going to have a chilling effect. It's going to stop people from using these ESG factors. Same thing as Frederick Douglass, right? Don't tell them because if you do tell them, then they're going to be empowered to make decisions. So even if these issues bore you before, let me tell you, they are purposefully trying

to keep you from seeing it. Just like that father figure in that family wanted to purposely make sure that Frederick Douglas did not know how to read because a man with knowledge is not fit to be a slave. Well, you know, they told slaves back then they said, you know, it's sit down, shut up and do as you're told. I think we live in a moment in American history where that's what many Americans are told. Sit down, shut up and do as you're told. I think we live in a moment in American history where that's what many Americans are told. Sit down, shut up and do what you're told. And you know what? At a certain point in time, you might even get used to it. That then becomes the new norm to sit down, shut up and do as you're

told without recognizing that your own dollars that you put your hard working days into are sacrificed to advance somebody else's social agenda that would make your blood boil if you actually knew what was going on. And so maybe closing your eyes makes yourself feel better. But once you open your eyes, that's when you're actually empowered to act with your own dollars. And so I hope there are tons of other competitors offering other options that allow people to invest in the market and derive a financial return without having to subsidize these progressive one-sided causes. I mean, today they're progressive. Tomorrow, they could be conservative for all I know, but subsidize causes that they disagree

with. But it's not going to happen either if there are no market alternatives, which is why I started one. But it's also not going to happen if all individuals are just simply apathetic, okay? You would have never had emancipation in this country for a bunch of people who were just apathetic about it. Well, and I'm not using an analogy, I'm not saying that this is the same thing, of course,

as slavery in the United States, but I'm doing it to address your question of why should people care? If you've been lulled into submission and you're okay with that, in a certain sense, you are just a psychological, in a psychological sense, a slave of the people who enforce those agendas onto you, using your labor, in this case, the dollar you earn from your labor, as the weapon to enforce that agenda on you.

There's a question for you. So, what is, so, you know, hey, we have to make America equal to everybody else, and this is kind of why they're doing what they're doing to pay for the sins of the past, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, fine. Let's say they succeed. Okay. Say they succeed and America falls as a great empire and it's no longer what it is. And too many politicians come in that are bought on the back end, whether it's from China or whoever else. They keep saying, yeah, it's okay. Let it go. Yeah, it's good.

It's okay. And every single term, two to four years, the folks who support ESG, World Economic Forum, China makes a little bit more progress, a little bit more progress, a little bit more progress. And then also, one day you wake up and he says, too late. Let's say we get to the phase of it is too late. So if Klaus Schwab just sold the nightmare, right? He sold the nightmare of you think COVID is bad. Let me tell you what's gonna happen next with cyber attack.

More climate change or feeling the gap. You know, it's a catastrophe. He's predicting a cyber attack. And a lot of times, if you remember when many of these billionaires predicted a pandemic, they knew, hey, pandemic is coming. Like, when, how did you know that a pandemic was coming? Such perfect time.

I think, Jeb Bush was one. I think Gates was one. A lot of people predicted the pandemic. Some of their money was coming up. You know, Kat taxpayer money being funded the virus that became the backbone of that pandemic. So what if these guys succeed? What happens to America?

What if these guys succeed? What happens to America 10, 20, 30 years from now? Yes. So to me, America is more than just a place. It is an idea. It's an idea that brought together a divided polyglot group of people 250 years ago in this country. By definition, that idea is gone in the scenario you just described. Okay, you no longer live in a world where you can achieve what you want with your own

hard work and commitment and dedication. That is part of the American idea. By definition, in that world, in that world view, that's gone because you are now an agent on the tectonic plates of group identity, on achieving a social goal that goes beyond you as an individual, that vision's gone. Now, you can say, so what?

What if America's gone? No, I think that sometimes we debate whether the fall of the American experiment is like the phase that we were in with the fall of Rome. Actually, one of the things I say in this book is, we got to first ask the question, we'd be so lucky to be Rome. Maybe we're Carthage because so far we've been around for less time than either Rome or

Carthage. So we, to call ourselves Rome. But to me, I think it's, it's the less of a loss of a particular geographic space and the idea that animates that geographic space. Okay. We celebrate our diversity, you and you, you know, and me, we look different from each other. We're in the same room and great.

We could say we have a little a diverse conversation going on today. Oh, we need as a woman and someone with, you know, one of the four of us being of some different sexual orientation. We have to get our trans person. Exactly. And then make sure it's a different shade of melanin. And we can all celebrate our diversity. Well, the problem is our diversity stops being a beautiful thing.

It starts becoming meaningless. If there's nothing greater that binds us together across that diversity. With that, we're literally nothing more than a group of higher mammals with different skin tones babbling on in a given room. It's not beautiful, it's a nothing. If there's no commonality across that diversity.

You're saying it's being diverse for the sake of being diverse. It's meaningless. It's meaningless. There's no common lineage red. There's nothing binding us together. But against the backdrop of something common that binds you together, that is what makes diversity beautiful. Right. The beauty you see comes against the backdrop

of an intuition, a human thought that against the backdrop of having so much in common, imagine how different we can all look and how different we can all feel and how different we can all personally we can all pursue our dreams against the backdrop of that commonality. But over the last 10 years, we've gotten to a place where we're celebrating all the colors on the rainbow and everywhere in between,

forgetting that this was only beautiful if there was some commonality. Yes, most people today, as most people are age or younger. What does it mean to be American in the year 2023? I think most people don't have a good answer to that question I think that we have an opportunity. It's not long enough right we called the American dream for a reason Yeah, I kind of like the analogy of when you wake up from a dream you still remember it a little bit You remember how it felt. But long

enough, you wait, you forget the whole thing. Okay, that's the phase we're in right now. And I think, you know, we woke up, you could call it woke culture, whatever it is. We woke up from the dream. But I don't, I still think we remember how it felt. And so that's the zone we're in. I think if we keep going the way we are, we've forgotten it. Once you forget the dream, the country's gone. I think this is what I think you still go back to it. I think this is, I think you always held the story about when you were in the army and you're an Iranian guy and there's a white guy,

there's a black guy and there's a Latino guy and you were busing each other's balls and it was all, it was, you know, hey, this black guy, so many stories, busing balls, locker room talk, but there was a common goal. We're Americans. We're serving in the army.

Common purpose, yeah. There was a common purpose. I per I mean you can I'll let you tell your story but that's kind of what this is making me think of is because it wasn't just like all right we got the black eye we got the Asian guy we got the gay guy we got it's like no the purpose was we're serving our country you know what is happening though here's what's happening so think about uh uh uh Vivek's story okay builds a, multi-billion dollar company. He's done well for himself. 36 years old, you're 37 now, but at 36, 35 and a half years old, he says, I'm gonna go write a book,

and I'm gonna go speak on this, and I'm gonna step away from this. I remember one time I'm in a chat's worth, and there was this one lady's face that was on all the buses. Bus, what do you call it bus stops bus stops and All of a sudden it all disappeared. She was there for 20 years one day this appears I said how come that's so one day I run into her at wood ranch restaurant. I said We haven't seen your face for months. What happened?

She says one day my husband and I she said and what her husband or took his my husband I sat down and said I'm making two hundred thousand dollars per year Taxes right now in California are this. We're keeping around 90 of it at the end of the day, 100 of it. It just not worked me working anymore. I decided to stay home. My husband, Salary's plenty.

We downsize. We're just living a regular life. Meaning she decided to dramatically change her life and step down because the incentive of working hard no longer made sense. Now flip that. He's the opposite. The opposite is where guys who are worth $300 billion,

are willing to put their $300 billion net worth on pause to lose $200 billion, become the first person to do it, just to buy a company called Twitter that you pay too much money for so you can fight for freedom of speech. What the hell are you doing? Economically it doesn't make sense.

Economically he's still in his prime, you can still go 20 more years and build a few more businesses do what? Why is he stepping away to write a book, right? So what is happening today, my opinion, and I wanna go to see your perspective on Elon, cause you have a different perspective on Elon, is I think this manipulation, this gaslighting, this bullion is giving birth to certain people that are saying, you know what, I'm done.

I got plenty of money, I'm getting in the game, you guys are doing too much, I'm gonna come and expose the living shit out of you, and it's not gonna be pretty. and those guys are now finding each other Okay, just like complainers always find each other crap magnets always find each other in a company environment You always know the seven people go to lunch together if three them are complainers the other four are also complainers They just found each other if you see five people two them are studs go to lunch the other three are also studs because they find each other These fighters are now finding each other saying,

hey, what do you got going on? Let me get your message out. Let me get your message out. What do you got? And then, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Now there's some power. So network equals net worth. Yep, that's how I process.