Pivot - Tech Stocks, Covid Sick Leave, The Winners of The Chip Shortage, and Guest Jonathan Greenblatt

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Kara and Scott discuss The New York Times' plans to buy The Athletic, how Tesla adapted to the 2021 chip shortage, and the latest tech stock slide. Also, Amazon cuts paid leave time for Covid. Our Friend of Pivot is Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. He'll discuss his new book, “It Could Happen Here: Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable―And How We Can Stop It.” You can find Jonathan on Twitter at @JGreenblattADL. Send us your Listener Mail questions, via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi, hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. delicious dining and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast.

Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. So what's going on, Scott? I'm in Las Vegas, Kara. Why are you in Vegas? Are you at CES? Mostly for the prostitutes. No, I'm speaking here today, or I'm speaking at a gig that I committed to six months ago,

thinking, oh, Vegas, that'll be fun. The pandemic will be over. Wait, is CES still going on? You didn't go to CES, correct? No, I think CES was cut down to two days. I think CES is over. Oh, I think so too. It was over for a while before the pandemic. But what are you speaking of in Vegas? I'm doing my prediction stack for a cast of 1,100 people. I can't imagine 1,100 people coming to a conference in Vegas,

much less to hear me talk about predictions. But here we are. Here we are. Here we are. What did you do for fun in Vegas? Oh, what did I do? I double masked, did remote check-in, came to my room and watched the morning show.

I like the morning show. Do you? It's all about pandemic, though, at the end. I mean, it's really fun. It ends up being. I got to admit it. I didn't like it. I was angry at how much money they spent and how marginal it was.

And it's totally sucked me in. Yeah. It's totally sucked me in. Yeah. But you watched it. Yeah. I've watched both seasons now. Let me just tell you.

Watch Yellowstone. Get onto the Yellowstone train. Yeah. People. Get on the Yellowstone train. I'm going to interview the creator I want to interview. Yeah. He's very good.

You know what? It's not like this whole thing about it being the Midwest. It's not the Midwest. I'm going to interview the creator I want to interview. Yeah, he's very good. You know what? It's not like this whole thing about it being the Midwest. It's not the Midwest. It's so dynasty. It's dynasty over and over again, essentially. And he's terrific, I have to say. You like Kevin Costner?

Yeah, the woman who plays his daughter, Beth, who is really a hot, hot, hot mess. She's fantastic. She's fantastic. Everybody is. It's really good. You'll like it. Watch it. You'll's fantastic. She's fantastic. Everybody is. It's really good. You'll like it. Watch it. You'll enjoy it.

You will not regret my recommendation. But today, we're going to talk about the New York Times bet on sports and Tesla coding its way out of the chip shortage. We'll speak to Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League about authoritarianism. He has a new book out and why it may be here to stay. I don't think it ever left. But first, 2022 is off to a rocky start for tech shareholders. Prices are down Monday morning following a week of sinking numbers. This comes after CES, as you just mentioned,

where the industry tries to impress with big announcements. It really is pointless at this point, actually. Both GameStop and Samsung say they'll launch NFT marketplaces. GameStop's stock briefly rose on the news, but it fell with other tech stocks on money. It doesn't even deserve to go up. Anyway, meanwhile, PayPal says it's exporting its own stable coin backed by the US dollar. There's a lot going on, but talk about the stock market. It's not my area of expertise. It is yours, comparatively. Yeah, I wouldn't describe it as my area of

expertise. It's just something, you know, I play a stock expert on TV. But anyways, I play a stock expert on TV. But anyways, what people miss is that stock market, people always look for some sort of underlying cause. I think it's two things. And the thing they miss is that the bond market has a huge impact on stocks. And bonds have had such terrible risk-adjusted returns. I mean, you're basically getting negative rates if you factor in inflation. And bond yields have been surging, which just makes them more attractive relative to stocks. So, people have been reallocating out of stocks into bonds. And then they think, well, what do I reallocate out of? And I'm like, I know. I'll pick stocks whose valuations, let me think,

make absolutely no fucking sense. And also have been all-time highs, right? That's right. And they just got so out in front of their skis, whether it was Virgin Galactic. I mean, just in my proxy for whether the stock could go down 80% or 90% is stocks, again, trade on fundamentals. The earnings are the growth accelerator decelerate. Technical, sometimes a stock is oversold, overbought, or there's a short squeeze or a mob squeeze. And then the third and the newer one is the notion that it represents some sort of movement or new orthodoxy. And the movement trade is unwinding like crazy. The Robinhood traders are done or what? And so you're just seeing these guys. And not only that, I mean, GameStop, 120, but it's still up.

GameStop could still go down another 80%. There's still a lot of air that could be let out of this balloon. Right. And so that's what people are just like taking a moment. Now, it's interesting because you talked about TechSox being still the best investment going forward. So is that an opportunity to buy, as they say? going forward. So is that an opportunity to buy, as they say? I mean, what I said was, when we were talking about last week, I think if you're a venture capitalist or an investor, I think a diversified portfolio of tech investments at the seed stage

and venture and growth stage, those vintage funds are just likely going to perform better because you can have a snowflake that might go up 80x. The tech trade, I mean, the other, if you're like me and you're old and you're a boomer, you have certain truisms of the market. And one of them is fundamentals that at some point companies, you are, a stock is meant to be an underlying ownership in an asset that is supposed to return cash flows. And ultimately it returns to that type of valuation of fundamentals. The other truism is cyclicality. And the US tech trade has been on fire for 12 or 13 years. And I realize it's the future. And there is tremendous innovation there. But I, you know, and again,

instead of giving recommendations, I'll just say what I'm doing. I'm slowly but surely taking money off the table out of the tech trade, which has been the gift that keeps on giving for the last 13 years. I'm putting money in real estate because I think it's a more enduring trade. And just psychologically, it's less taxing because you don't get a scorecard every day. And two, I'm investing in European and Latin American stocks because the thing we have learned through the markets is at some point, flows do return to other sectors and flow out of even the hottest sectors. And the U.S. tech trade at some point will run out of breath. Does that mean they aren't great companies and won't do really well? No.

What it means is they just might be overvalued at this point. Yeah. What do you think about all these coins? Like Facebook coin, do you think PayPal coin, these moves, speaking of assets people are moving into? Everywhere I go, like PayPal right now, I just was paying someone, a vendor, and a cleaning lady actually on PayPal. And all of a sudden, I was presented with, please buy these coins. And I was like, oh, hi. Nice to see you.

It was interesting. Say more. This is PayPal. PayPal. It was offering me. There's a whole section now to buy and trade. And they have, I think Ethereum was on there, Bitcoin. I forget what else was on there.

I didn't really look. I was like, huh, okay, sure. But I didn't. But then I thought about it. I sure did think about it. I mean, I know a lot of people have little bits and pieces of Bitcoin, et cetera. Yeah, look, I think there's just so much human capital and financial capital going into crypto that there's going to be a lot of enduring innovation. And I like the fact that for the first time, the same proportion

of people of color are investing. They've been drawn into that market. They like it. Young people like it. I think I made the mistake of infantilizing people who are investing in crypto early on. But the boomer in me just emerges and says that, you know, Bitcoin has established itself in terms of scarcity credibility. It might be sort of a new, if you will, store of value. Ethereum is mentioned whenever you're talking about NFTs or smart contracts. It kind of reverse engineers to Ethereum or Ethereum as a protocol of the coin or the technology for a lot of these new innovations. I think the vast majority of these coins are going to zero. And the nightmare scenario here, Cara, is that the communities that were incorporated into crypto and that everyone's advertising is this is a great egalitarian democratization of assets. You know, my fear is a lot of this shit goes down 90%.

And exactly the wrong people at exactly the wrong moment get hurt the hardest. And my colleague Aswath Damodaran would say, well, Scott, life lessons are the best regulators. And I'm like, I get it. But I just think that you're going to have a lot of young people and a lot of communities that are under the impression that you use leverage in these. One thing I'm comfortable saying, never use leverage or margin to buy cryptocurrency. Also, don't be drunk. There's a study out that 59% of Gen Z investors trade well.

Tell us about that article. I know. That sounds like me. It was, yeah. 59% of Gen Z investors say they've traded well. It's one of these. I don't know if it's true. And it widened out to all investors.

The number only drops to 32%. So people trade well drunk. I don't know. I'm not sure. Well, it's the same reason that people mate while they're drunk. And that is, alcohol is a social lubricant, and it lowers your inhibitions. So you'll go up and talk to that guy or gal you're attracted to. And there's some benefit to that. But should you be lowering your inhibitions when you're trading stocks? I don't know if that goes anywhere good. Speaking of which, nowhere good. Amazon workers now only get seven days of paid leave down from 10 days of policy change follows new guidance from the CDC. Obviously, Amazon's been hiring

so many people. This comes as the U.S.'s average around 650,000 new known cases per day and 5 million U.S. workers were forced to stay homeless. It was crazy. Like, my kid's school, my Clara's school, is three kids were there. And like, they're sort of, it's really interesting. Everywhere you go, whether it's garbage pickup or whatever this week, it's people are out kind of thing.

You know, and you know, we had it in our family. Now it's done, I guess. We'll see. But they say they have additional leave options in place for those who remain symptomatic, but they're sort of cutting the time to keep people working. So this is a really interesting challenge. Like Walmart, all the restaurants are suffering. Every city, you'll see a story about restaurant workers or whatever. So what do you think about this? It probably will learn itself out in a short amount of time.

Well, we all fall into a narrative that makes us feel better. And, you know, kind of the first narrative was, oh, it was going to take the summer off, small surge and fall and then be gone. And here we are two years later. and then be gone. And here we are two years later. And the narrative, and I've adopted it, and I'm really hoping, is that when you see infections up three and a half fold, but you see deaths flatter down, and true, there is a lag, you're hoping that the virus does what a lot of viruses do towards the, quote, burnout phase, and that is they're becoming more contagious but less lethal. And we're, in a certain way, we're giving, I don't want to say we're giving people a lot of immunities, but I'm just very hopeful that we'll look back.

You know, it's interesting. I said the same thing to my brother. I said, oh, I'm so sick. I'm just going to like, what the hell? It's just, deaths are down. If you're vaccinated, you're safe, et cetera. And he goes, Kara, you're not thinking of, you know, young children, but they are certainly going in the hospital, not at rates compared to adults. Record hospitalizations.

But still record. And then he said, immunocompromised people. He made me feel bad. Dr. Swisher made me feel bad. Oh, there's no doubt about it. I really thought about it. And I wasn't a good citizen. I went out this for the first time in a while. I went out this weekend. And I remember just being in certain situations thinking, I'm just not being a good citizen being here. I do think that there's something around. I think when something becomes so contagious that the kind of Chinese lockdown doesn't work, and at the same time, it doesn't appear as lethal, I do think that there is some credence to the notion that we need to rethink the calculus around lockdowns. Yeah. And we even had a doctor, we have a really talented doctor who's on the board of our school where my kids go, And she said, I don't think we should be testing.

And I said, gosh, tell me more about why you think that. And she said that the lockdowns and the hysteria around kids is doing more damage than having kids infect each other. And I'm like, wow, walk me through that math. And this is not, this is a thoughtful. Sounds very DeSantis to me, but go ahead. Yeah. Well, but I don't, I'm not a fan of DeSantis, but it is true that when the data changes, you need to change your calculus around what it means to have a lockdown.

Anyways, like Ian Bremmer, the geopolitical kind of rock star, he's basically said that the Chinese extreme lockdown was the right way to go, and now it's absolutely the wrong way to go. Anyways, but record, I mean, there's just no getting around it. It's just so kind of like... I think you're seeing more of this with what Amazon is doing. Like, look, just get back to work. It doesn't matter. I think there's very little

patience now for... Because there's a vaccination. Let me just tell you, everyone that was doing this before there's a vaccination let me just tell you everyone that was doing this before there was a vaccination i'm still saying fuck you you know saying this get back to work but now there's a vaccination people who can take it can take it um so i think that it's a really interesting moment like because teachers aren't getting the same amount of like gratitude from people at this moment over if they don't go to school there's a big fight in chicago um some people who i did not expect to tweet about i think it's nicole hannah

jones was like just because we're saying you need to go back to something like that with school or not this and that it was really interesting like people are coming down especially people with kids are like wait a minute we're vaccinated we did everything right. I recommend Dr. Wachter. There's several articles about it. He's from San Francisco. I think it's UCSF. He did a whole thing on his own son getting sick and what he did. It was really interesting. He's been a prominent tweeter on this topic. Anyway, we'll see. I think most people will follow Amazon. I think people are like, look, if you're vaccinated, I think the Jared Paulus thing is with people who are vaccinated. If you're unvaccinated, you are in very

do not do that. Do not do that to yourself and do not do that to other people. How is your family? Most importantly, how is your family? Oh, they're good. They're good. They're out of prison. They're out of COVID prison. And Clara and I and Louis continue to, we did test, she has to test for school negative.

So, you know, we'll see. We're pretty careful, but, you know, not like demented. Like there's definitely a strain of too far on the careful side, I think, that is problematic, but not as bad as the crazy unvaccinated people. Anyway, time for our first big story. 2022's already looking like a big year for media. This is an interesting buy, which was long rumored. The New York Times will buy The Athletic for $550 million. The Athletic had 1.2 million subscribers as of November. Still, The Athletic is not profitable. I have some inside information on this, not from The Times, actually, from other buyers. I talked to a bunch of other buyers. It previously pegged 2023 as the year that would change.

In other news, Reddit may go public by March. It's seeking a $15 billion valuation. I've always liked that site. I thought it was fascinating. And Parler, who I just interviewed, this new CEO, George Farmer, has raised $20 million in new funding in that competitive space of sort of free speech slash conservative. It's conservative. It is. He was trying to pretend it wasn't, but it's all conservatives that are attached to it. So what do you think about this athletic purchase? You were on the board of the New York Times. They're trying to, what they want to do is this is a subscription

service in sports. They want to get the local sports. The question is whether these subscribers are very sticky is a good question and how much they came in on these discount rates and what the Times can do for that. And then also what's going to happen to the company because there's a lot of people there that are sort of, they have two sets of marketing people, two sets of this, two sets of that. What do you think about this? Well, there's a lot here and I think both of us know too much. It's hard to read the label from inside of the bottle, but the New York Times are terrible acquirers. They acquired the Boston Globe for $1.1 billion.

Ended up selling it for $70 million. We acquired About.com for $400 million. Well, that was terrible. Sold it for a lot less than that. We acquired under the auspices of this makes no fucking sense. This is when you were on the board. Well, it was before. I mean, the reason I went on the board was these things made no sense.

Divest them. We essentially bought the seventh tallest building in America. What the hell was the New York Times doing owning the seventh largest tallest building in America? So anyways, it's a very strong culture. And the thing about sports. Wire cutter. We did well. That was a good purchase.

Did it? Yeah. I think it's doing well. Yeah. I just don't know. I i mean there's probably some examples um the thing that just that that triggered a memory for me was when you go on the board the first thing to do they send you down to something called a page one meeting that doesn't exist any longer and all the editors of the sections go around the table and pitch their idea for top of the fold page one. And they're like, Hillary Clinton in Africa.

And then someone else saying, you know, new legislation. And then I remember the sports guy trying to pitch this thing and everyone just rolling their eyes like they were going to laugh at him. Like, finally, like, I mean, it's just sports. Sports did not get a lot of love at the New York Times. Yeah, but it does now. It does. They've got great sports.

But you know what? I kind of like this one because it's interesting. Newspapers used to – they were the bundlers. Now they're unbundling because what they recognize is that news and politics or current events can't get that much money. But finance can, crypto can, sports can. And a move to subscription, again, is the way to go with niche deep offerings. So you were just doing a backhanded compliment there. You like this deal.

I do because one, I'm just sort of shocking, but that's almost a lot of their cash. Well, you know what they have, the New York times, which came dangerously close to bankruptcy in 2008 has a billion dollars in cash on their balance sheet. So they would either have to increase the dividend, give, do a stock buyback, but buy something. But they get on their toes, and they buy it for like, I don't know, whatever it is, like $500 a subscriber. Yeah. But I mean, there's some scary stuff here. It's 50 or 60 million in revenue,

50 million in losses, which is real. Yeah. They're gonna have to increase it. I always thought my big idea, or one of my ideas when I was on the board was I'm like, take DealBook, put some more heft behind it, and make it charge $1,000 a year to basically be kind of a thinking man's Bloomberg. But the idea of unbundling, niche offerings, subscription, value-added services, events, and charge people more. I just, the New York Times and sports, we'll see.

I wonder what the podcasting they've made some very significant purchases cereal and some others cereal but we don't know well box is buying one new york times is buying other it's interesting i know box was interested had i know box looked at this one um but uh but it's uh we couldn't afford it uh or didn't want to afford it right maybe there's other things to afford. That would have been a big, big bet the ranch bite for us. Yeah, yeah. In any case, you like this one. Now, just because you made bad purchases later doesn't mean you can't make good purchases now.

So you like this one overall. I think I heard that in this great show called Yellowstone. We're going to buy those cattle. We're going to buy those steer. The steer moves around a lot in that show. There's a lot of steel. Yellowstone. That's about like this resort in Montana where the biggest douchebags in the world go for Christmas.

Well, you know what? There is a whole douchebag rich people making resorts. There's a whole stream of that. There's a character who does that. But get back to this. You think this could be a good deal. What would have to happen to make it a good deal? If the New York Times can become the premier place that gets large margin subscriptions based on unbundled, focused niche offerings,

whether it's deal books, would they do it with their crossword puzzle? They do it with, I think, their cooking. And if they can establish credibility around sports. And I like this. I think the founders of The Athletic were really bold. They went out. They hired a ton of sports journalists. They spent a ton of money thinking there's a market in this. And you know what? They were playing chicken with the market.

Because when you're losing $50 million a year, that's pretty scary. And so, good for them. I love it when entrepreneurs get taken out that are journalists and went out and said, we're going to get the three best journalists covering the Green Bay Packers and we're going to pay them well and people are willing to pay for this. company in the world of aspirational, thoughtful, fact-checked, non-conspiratorial content. I think that's a good wrap. Yeah. Whether or not they're able to, there'll be two things. It's an executional thing. It's an executional thing.

It'll be retention, the percentage of members that renew, and dollar renewal. Are they able to increase rates or layer on more services, tickets, whatever additional I think we're going to see the purchase of a lot more of these kind of things. I think it's a great idea. I think it's an interesting move. It's the first big move by Meredith Levian, who is the CEO. Maybe we'll be talking to her somewhere live with warm weather at some point soon. Hello.

Hello. You know, it's a big move by her, and I'd love to hear more of their thinking about this. Execution is really the big deal here and changing a culture like The New York Times. It is a much slower-moving culture. It has been in the past, as you know and I know. But it's an interesting move. It certainly is. And I think they kind of had to do it. I think they have to do stuff like this. I think they got to. What about Reddit going public? I'm just an enormous fan of Reddit. And I can't wait to read that S1 because any company, any content company that's able to exit the stranglehold of Google or Facebook is exciting.

And Reddit has gotten so much attention over the last year, whether it's meme stocks. I love to know that people call it the front page of the internet. I would just love to see the numbers in terms of their revenue and their advertising. But for me, my first thought was when I heard Reddit, 15 billion, I immediately thought, that sounds cheap. Yeah, I buy into that. I like that CEO, Steve Huffman. I think he's terrific. I mean, some people don't, but I do.

I think he's really – he's always been a really interesting thinker there. I've always enjoyed interviewing him. I've interviewed him several times. And then Parler raising the money. I know nothing about that. What do you think of Parler? I think they had to raise the money. It's fine.

It's just there's not enough people there. Like I said, you've got to get everybody. Everyone's got to be at this messy party. It's got to be a hot mess, and none of them are. But we'll see. We'll see if they can offer something to their constituency. I just think young people aren't going to jump on these things, including Trump's True Social, which is expected to launch on President's Day. It's going to be a lot of Marjorie Taylor Greene screaming at each other,

and that's no fun, right? So, we'll see. I mean, what's going to happen is there's going to be a lot more of these, like, fundings and acquisitions in the media. This is the media space, no matter how you slice it, right? Parler is the media space. So is Reddit, right? So, I think there'll be cuts, you know, cuts in staff. I think they're going to lay off people. I think they're going to have to, like, you don't know if you're bringing these things together if they work, but you're going to see a lot more equity strengths in this. We'll see. We'll see if people will use it. I don't think young people are using, conservatives are using these things. I think they're using Twitter, if they're using it at all. So we'll see. There's a

lot of them. There's a whole lot of them. There's Parler, there's Getter, there's Trump Social, there's Rumble, there's others. I forget. There's Signal. I can't remember all of them. It's a lot. It's the tension in the, these are networks. And how do you get to that kind of network tipping a point? So it'll be interesting to see what they're, I'm really interested to see what happens like day one of the Trump thing. Yeah. And just what kind of attention. We're going on there.

You and I are going to do it. We're going to wade right in there. We're doing it? Yeah, we're doing it. We're going behind enemy lines. What's your name going to be? I'm Grandmaster Flash. No, come on.

Something dirty. Something dirty? Yes. To see if they knock us off. No. You know what they do? First off, they'd be really nice to us. It's like, I don't know.

They'll be really cool to us, would be my guess. We should go on. Okay, we're signing up. Full names. We're going to go on. I'm on Parler and Getter, and I'm not on Rumble because it's super noisy. There's a secret dirty part of you that likes ultra-conservatives. You kind of, occasionally, I can sense it with you.

There's like a weird... No, I don't. Oh, yeah, 100%. I speak to them as opposed to other people because I want to hear what they're saying. You know, I used to like always read, when Focus on Family was attacking gay people, I read everything they did.

I want to know what they're up to. All right, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll discuss Tesla and the chip shortage. And then we'll talk to a friend of Pivot about authoritarianism. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.

These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better.

One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash

Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. In business, disruption brings not only challenges, but opportunities. As artificial intelligence powers pivotal moments of change, Alex Partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on. Alex Partners is dedicated to making sure your company knows what really matters when it comes to AI. As part of their 2024 tech sector report, Alex Partners spoke with nearly 350 tech executives from across North America and Europe to dig deeper into how tech companies are responding to these changing headwinds. And in their 2024 digital disruption report, Alex Partners found that 88% of executives report seeing potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or even

extremely high positive impact on revenue growth. You can read both reports and learn how to convert digital disruption into revenue growth at www.alexpartners.com slash box. That's www.alexpartners.com slash V-O-X. In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. Scott, we're back with our second big story. 2021's chip shortage made some surprising winners and losers. Toyota was America's top-selling automaker in 2021, taking the title from GM.

selling automaker in 2021, taking the title from GM. Toyota's success is credited to a large stockpile of semiconductors, which helped it weather supply chain issues that hit the automotive industry last year. Meanwhile, Tesla adapted to the chip shortage by rewriting its software so it could run on different chips. Elon Musk has done a soup to nuts kind of supply chain at Tesla, which a lot of people thought was terrible. And it turned out to be a good thing during this supply chain shortage. It manufactures its own chips, writes its own software, something that people used to make fun of. And the idea of having vendors was another thing. People made fun that they didn't have enough vendors. So what do you think about all this?

It's not like it's perfectly good news for Musk. There was actually a complimentary story in the New York Times, but he also had to recall half a million vehicles and some other stuff that was happening. A showcase tunnel beneath Vegas was clogged with traffic during CES, for example. But this was a win by him. So what do you think, Scott? Yeah, as much as I'd like to criticize someone who criticizes me, I just don't think you can get around it. I think what they've pulled off here is remarkable and visionary. And I just always go back to this, what was supposed to be an absolute of business strategy. And that was the notion promoted by C.K. Perhala, University of Michigan. And that was core competence. And that is you do one thing really well and you outsource everything else. its core competence, and that is you do one thing really well and you outsource everything else. And the last 20 or 30 years, the most impressive companies in the world have been in a lesson in why that is absolutely not true. And even Apple kicking out Intel, everyone totally

questioned that. And they started producing their own microprocessors, and they're like, our point of differentiation and our user interface and the way we interact with software is so unique that we need to process the brain here. And to outsource the brain means our differentiation will be commoditized. And if you look at the Wintel environment in terms of the margins they get versus the company that made the quote-unquote business crazy strategy of going total vertical, it's just increased verticalization. total vertical, it's just increased verticalization. And the notion that they weren't a subject to this chip shortage because they were able to go into other chips and reprogram them to supplant or basically to plug holes in other chip shortages, I mean, there's just no going around it.

It's fucking genius. Yeah, this story in The Times is really interesting. And this is a key line. I thought just a few years ago, analysts saw Elon Musk's insistence on having Tesla do more things on its own as one of the main reasons the company was struggling to increase production. And Musk did talk about that. He talked about it in an interview lots of places. Now his strategy appears to have been vindicated. And then one quote, Tesla controlled its destiny, I think, on critical things it did. And he's a perfectionist in a lot of the ways that Steve Jobs was. It's interesting. Like, they have to do it this way, and this is the way we do it.

It's a common trait, which can be much pilloried. And, you know, the whole idea of this whole vendor, they sell the cars themselves. There's not, like, they don't have to deal with, you know, franchises and this and that. And it's Just everything they do is we're making the entire biscuit right here. And I think it's an interesting – and it may switch. A lot of people in my comments said, and then it's going to switch back where vendors will be better. But one of the person who was responding said he's been playing chess while most of us were playing checkers. I commend Elon Musk for having a boatload of foresight. There's no getting around. If you look at the automobile manufacturers,

they're really not manufacturers, they're assemblers. And that has really come to haunt them in a supply chain crisis. And if you look at the most successful retailers, they've also gone fully vertical, whether it's Lululemon, which makes its own materials and has its own stores, its own distribution. If you look at Amazon, they've gone vertical in what's appeared to be crazy, and that is they've forward integrated into the actual fulfillment and delivery and last mile. If you look at the other side of retail that's just done exceptionally well, high in the luxury end. So, Gucci acquired or purchased a Python form so they could control the quality of their bags. But that's where it's going. The firms that want to maintain differentiation and margin are going vertical.

And then the ability to control your destiny and not be subject to the whims of supply chain interruption. I'm blown away, Kara. I'm blown away. I'm a reticulated python of IQ right now. Regardless of how we feel about him personally, one has to admit the guy thinks and solves problems differently. Oh, no doubt. No doubt.

So what other thought, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, Clayton Christensen argued in one of his earlier papers that when performance was not yet good enough, the integrated manufacturer had the advantage. And it's true. This was the early times of these cars. So I think it's just interesting. I think it was – I got a lot of really interesting responses. Someone called the New York Times piece a grudging vindication. Is this a grudging vindication from you?

I think it was your phrasing. No, it's not a grudging vindication. I just don't get it. Look, the definition of intelligence is your ability to hold two contrary thoughts in your mind at the same time. Brilliant man, amazing company, fucking wildly overvalued stock, and at some point his inner child will develop an outer man. I can hold all of those thoughts in my head at the same time, and so can you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last thing I'm going to read. These comments were so good. Vertical integration is very hard and bloody expensive to set up, but once it's there, you have full control and can adjust to changes very quickly. It's complex, but comparable version of having feature teams in Agile. So anyway, interesting time. And then Toyota, let's not

leave out Toyota. They were also, it's an agile company. It's an agile company, and it's still top selling. I mean, compared to Tesla, it's so much bigger. So both companies, and actually, I almost bought a Toyota because they were available, too, because everyone was trying to buy cars. And at the same time, their cars were great, both at the same time. You have very strange taste in cars. I do. I'm not down with your taste same time. You have very strange-tasting cars. I do. I'm not down with your tasting cars.

You have very strange-tasting cars. I'm going to get to drive the Kia down to your house in Florida and just park it out front and embarrass you. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to park it right out front, the Kia. You know what I did? I'm so angry. I am so angry that Elon Musk got to my 11-year-old who asked me what a numbskull meant. I have a Tesla, and I banged up the front fender in a small

parking mishap, and I'm not going to fix it. I'm going to put duct tape on it like teenagers do with no money. When I had no money and I'd bang up my car, I'd just put a sticker over it or something. I've ordered one of those roof signs from Hooters, and I'm going to put it on my Tesla. I'm going to take that brand down single-handedly, Kara. I'm going to take it down. Actually, one thing a friend of mine who has a Tesla, who loves Tesla, said the service stuff is harder, found it harder at the time. Maybe this is because it was Silicon Valley and everybody's got one, but she was having issues around that. Anyway, interesting times. And again, they're going to have problems.

They did have to recall things. There's a couple little things that were problematic. And obviously, you're still going to struggle with accidents that happen as people move into autonomous. But I have to say, impressive, impressive, impressive, as I say. No getting around it. It says I'm too nice to him. Well done. Stalks the wildly overbearing.

Sorry, can't help it. Can't help it. You numbskull. Can't help it. Insufferable. Insufferable. You insufferable numbskull. Okay, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. He previously served as special assistant to President Obama and the director of the Office of Social Innovation, whatever that is. He can explain that. His new book, It Could Happen Here, Why America is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable and How We Can Stop It is out now. Tell us what you're thinking about with this terrible title. And I don't mean terrible, bad. I mean, ooh. No. I mean, I think, look, I think we have reached a perilous moment in our country's history. You know, the ADL has been fighting hate for over 100 years, and yet I don't think we've ever seen a time quite like this. I think oftentimes we talk about anti-Semitism as the canary in the coal mine for society,

and it's a sign of decay. And indeed, in the last few years, there have been multiple symptoms of a kind of social decay that I think have reached an alarming crescendo. And to be speaking now kind of in the shadow of the one-year anniversary of January 6th is just no accident. So explain what unthinkable is. Explain what is unthinkable, because hate is bad enough, right? And that's something we've spent a lot of time, and you and I have talked about it in the past. We have.

So what's the difference from hate to the unthinkable? I think the unthinkable for me speaks to the total breach of our social fabric. It is the unraveling of what we know today. And, you know, there's been talk and by the experts, like we interviewed Greg Stanton for the book. I spoke to him. He's an expert in genocide who says that all the indicators are telling us that this country is at a place where it never has been vis-a-vis the risk to marginalized communities. I spoke to Barbara Walter, a professor out on the West Coast, who talks about the fact that all the indicators

suggest that we might be closer to a kind of civil war than we've seen in the past. And it doesn't need to look like the North versus the South, and I don't think it would. It might look a lot more like the Troubles in Northern Ireland. And I talked to folks in St. Louis from the Bosnian American community who talk about what happened to them. I mean, keep in mind that before Yugoslavia dissolved, it was a very successful, you know, pluralistic society where you had different ethnicities and different religions living side by side for hundreds and hundreds of years. But, you know, Kara, for me personally, these issues hit home much closer to that.

So I'm the grandson of a Holocaust survivor from Germany who spoke to me before he passed my grandfather, who I dedicated the book to, about the fact that when he was a young man growing up in Germany, it was the only country he had ever known. His family traced their lineage back generations. My great-grandfather fought in the First World War, and he never could have imagined that, again, that his homeland would turn on him, destroy everything that he ever loved, slaughter almost all of his family and friends, and send him fleeing to this country. And I am the husband of a political refugee from Iran, also Jewish, whose family traced their lineage back hundreds, they would say thousands of years, to the Babylonian exile. His family traced their lineage back hundreds, they would say thousands of years, to the Babylonian exile. And they never would have imagined before the Islamic Revolution that the only country they ever knew would turn on them, regard them as enemies of the state, and force my wife to flee and her grandfather's experience tells me that all this, the only thing we have ever known, there is no natural law that tells us it will last forever.

So the American experiment is breaking down. The American experiment. And look, I will be honest, like I am someone who believes in American exceptionalism. I think this country for its first 250 some years, has been a light unto the world. And we haven't gotten everything right, but the ability to iterate and evolve is unique in human history. But, you know, again, all the indicators that I see from ADL, doubling of anti-Semitic incidents, steady increase in hate across the board, Doubling of anti-Semitic incidents, steady increase in hate across the board, the coursing of the public conversation, deepening gridlock in D.C., which I've seen up close and personal, all suggest to me that, again, we've reached a really perilous moment. It's so nice to meet you. I really do appreciate all your work, Jonathan.

I think it's such important work. And we have this cold comfort that it couldn't happen here. And if you look at, which is absolutely not true, if you look at Germany pre-World War II, it was this incredibly advanced, cosmopolitan, science-driven, educated, there was this formidable gay rights movement in Germany pre-World War II. And then it digresses fast. And there's always a playbook, right? It's a strong man propped up by conservatives who usually think they're going to be able to control this person. And then it gets out of hand and we go to very dark places. The thing I don't think gets enough attention, and this really is a question and a comment, is that the incendiary here is income inequality and specifically

young men who aren't doing well, not attaching to relationships, not attaching to school, not attaching to work, that are prone to conspiracy theory. And then a strong man comes along and says, this isn't your fault, rise up. Have you thought about in America, relatively speaking, that young men are just doing so poorly relative to past cohorts, that that is a huge existential crisis, that that could lead us to a very dark place? that is a huge existential crisis, that that could lead us to a very dark place? Well, I think it's certainly true that persistent economic inequities and the kind of inability to fulfill this long-held notion of the American dream, at least in the conventional way in which it's been thought about and sort of mythologized, contribute to a kind of animus that is growing, Scott, and that's building.

I would actually say, though, I don't think it's unique to young men. I mean, the reality is if you look at, for example, the people who, and by the way, neither, not young men, nor necessarily like the unemployed. If you look at the people who were marauding through the Capitol a year ago, there were a large number of small businessmen and kind of people with no criminal records, middle class and married. We found at ADL that 21% of them had known white supremacist ties of the people who were arrested, which is kind of galling, by the way. You'd see such a critical mass of them show up in public. But the more frightening thing is the 80% who had no extremist ties whatsoever. I mean, so there's a radicalization that I think is happening

and it's not delimited to one subset of the population. I think it's a working class issue. I think it is a geographically distributed issue. But I think a lot of the people who watch Fox and a lot of the people who believe this baloney don't necessarily fit to the stereotypical way that we've thought about those who are prone to radicalization. So you mentioned Fox and the perception is it's Fox and then Trump that's just arrived. Is that accurate or where do you see the sources? And obviously, you and I have talked a lot about social media, which has been a problem. That's been the recent thing that's sort of set people off to the edge. So can you, where do you imagine it comes from?

Also, we have been authoritarian in the past. It just has been more effective for the people in power than anything else. So, yeah, I think there are a couple things on that. I mean, number one, vis-a-vis what's driving this, again, the economic inequities. But I do think our media culture, all right, it can fuel the fire. And we certainly see that here. We've talked about Fox before. I've been very public in my back and forth with Lachlan Murdoch. I mean, freedom of speech, you know, as our mutual friend, Sasha Baron Cohen talks about, never equated in American history to freedom of reach.

And so, you know, iHeartRadio and Bob Pittman have a lot of podcasts. But when they choose to privilege Steve Bannon, you know, with their platform, they're making an editorial decision. Steve Bannon can say whatever he wants. The question is, where does he find sustenance? Same with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the ilk. I think Fox, we will look back in history and see Fox as our Pravda. But the problem is that it is indeed Facebook, which is a kind of accelerant for all of this anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry.

And it has done more to fuel the fire than I think anything else. And, you know, that's not uniquely an American phenomenon. We know what their platform and their products have done in places like India, Myanmar, other parts of Europe have been well-documented. But here in particular, Facebook, again, today, we could literally share a screen and we could find examples of armed militia groups who they're continuing to algorithmically amplify in ways that boggle the mind. And I think the lack of any government oversight. And I say this as somebody who, as we've talked about, like,

look, I come from the industry. I worked in this space and I'm someone who believes in self-regulation almost reflexively. But Mark Zuckerberg has proven to me again and again and again and again that that no longer works when you have a company that puts, in his own words, you know, company over country. And you guys, but you guys tried, right? You tried with your effort with other groups, with Color Change. We tried and we tried. Well, look, there's a couple of things with our interaction with Facebook. We initially tried to be very embracing and inclusive because, again, I think you've got

to work with industry. If we're relying on these senators with their hotmail email addresses to regulate quantum computing and crypto, God help us. And yet, although we tried to be inclusive in the conversation with Facebook, they failed again and again and again and just seemed to be. When Mark made his comments about the fact that he thinks there's a legitimate perspective that maybe the Holocaust didn't happen. That was a bit of a sort of that was a bit of a tell. He was on with some hack journalist when he said that. I know he was talking about hack. John called me almost immediate.

And he's like, what? Look at Kara smiling. Look at Kara smiling. I'm not smiling. And she gave him, Kara, you gave Kara smiling. Look at Kara smiling. That was a moment. I'm not smiling. And she gave him, Kara, you gave him the chance to walk it back. Oh, I did.

You're like, oh, is that really what you meant to say? Yeah. But all that being said, that's why we launched Stop Hate for Profit with the NAACP and Color of Change. Did you consider that successful in any way? I did consider that successful

because what we did there, look, we never thought we were going to get businesses to pull off the most sophisticated targeting platform in the history of advertising. What we wanted to do was bring to bear reputational pressure. And that worked. And I think that sort of for the first time set them back on their heels. And they did classify Holocaust denialism as hate speech after that. They did take down a lot of white supremacist groups. They did agree to work with the World Federation of Advertisers on a bit of an audit for the first time. So they made some concessions, but they're, you know, trillions of dollars later. You know, I mean, their last quarter was, I think, $29 billion and counting.

So they are so big. They are such a behemoth that we've got to do more if we really want to put a dent in the issue. I would argue, and I say this collectively, like I use the term we as a collective that see the problem here or are threatened by it. I don't think it's working. I think these advertiser boycotts, the Facebook advertiser base of three or five million is the most elastic, resilient business advertising base in history. And while some will signal stuff and say they're getting off for 30 days, it's a monopoly. They don't have a choice.

My sense is Facebook will do just enough to get you to complement them and other organizations short term. But I don't see anything resembling long term intention to change. I think it's actually getting worse. And so what I'll ask is, what will be required to have sustained change, not stuff that feels like window dressing? Is it identity like LinkedIn? My sense is there's not nearly as much of this hateful speech on LinkedIn because it enforces identity. And by the way, it's not just Facebook. Twitter's pretty bad around this

stuff, too. Is it reconnecting as we do with every other media company, liability that if there's a hate crime, the media platform that inspired it bears some responsibility? What are the solutions? Because so far, I would argue what we're doing isn't working. So I think there are a few things I would suggest. So I'll give you three kind of tactical things, and then a big strategic thing. Tactically, number one, I do think anonymity, while it provides so much good in so many ways to that young person questioning their sexual identity and afraid to be open about it, right? Or to that domestic abuse person who needs an outlet. On the other hand, anonymity has allowed the worst elements in society, and not even just people, trolls and,

I mean, the software bots that drive it, a kind of shield they never had before. And I do think, Scott, that has coarsened the conversation dramatically and contributed to the situation. So number one, if you were smart about how you removed anonymity, it could help dramatically. I think number two, I am a big proponent of reforming Section 230. I think the lack of liability is part of the reason why the companies behave the way they do. And I think the lack of liability is part of the reason why the companies behave the way they do. And I think I've used the example with you before, Cara. Look, if you look at the way J&J handled the aspirin crisis, right? That was the Tylenol crisis, right? Like we know

what they did after a few bottles were tampered with because they were liable. And we know, I mean, I often use the Odwalla example. Odwalla was a small juice company in the Bay Area, right? They had a situation where a young toddler died because their product was not flash pasteurized. They took every bottle off every shelf in America and reformulated their production process because they were liable. Like, I don't want to say that Greg Stelton, Paul, and I don't want to say that the J&J leadership didn't have some moral compass, but they were liable.

James Burke was a fantastic CEO too, like who had a lot of moral background. So, you know- Well, let me give you, if I might, let me give you, the third thing I think we really need to do, and this runs counter to what we've been believed. Again, we think this is some natural law of the internet.

I think we need to slow it down. Like, why is it that when I hit post, the post immediately goes up? Like, there's a six-second delay or seven-second delay on broadcast television for a reason. And I think even delaying it, you know, we had the person who rampaged through the mosques in Christchurch was live streaming it. You know, we had the person who rampaged through the mosques in Christchurch was live streaming it. This is crazy, and I don't think there's any need for that. So I think if you slowed it down, if you made them liable, if you remove the shield of anonymity, but ultimately, I also think a lot about what my friend Roger McNamee talks about,

which I think you got to break them up. I mean, I think they are so big and I worry deeply about Mark's vision of an encrypted backend across WhatsApp and Oculus, let alone Messenger. I think you got to break it up because if they were smaller, they didn't have so much dominance, it'd be much harder for them to do what they do. Yeah. But hey, don't you want to get in the metaverse or try supernatural? Right. Come on. What's wrong with you? They'd like to change the subject. So talk about the bigger thing. Obviously, you and I and Scott are in violent agreement about this idea of what social media does. But what are some of the, give me the worst case scenario if, say, Trump gets back in

office or he doesn't even have to at this point, I think, in a lot of ways. I think he's just a sort of, not a figurehead precisely, but what's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario from your perspective? And then Scott might have a final question. I think the best case scenario would be the Democrats are able to sway some kind of Republicans with a moral conscience to pass some voter, to pass some legislation that would stop the voter suppression and would enable a more open democratic system to persist and prevail, because that's not where we are right now. I think you would reform big tech. I think you would literally make it easier for people to vote. And I think that would avert what could be a catastrophic situation. I also think a lot

about Supreme Court justice reform, whether it's term limits or expanding the court. What's the worst case situation? Kara, I think it's pretty bad. I don't think it's crazy to imagine that whether it's Trump or one of his kind of acolytes, I always worry about Tucker Carlson and some of the others who are far more sophisticated and just smart than former President Trump. But I think they win. I think certain kind of speech like this kind of speech could suddenly become too dangerous. It could become illegal. I think you could have martial law light imposed, make it difficult for people to assemble if they're deemed to be doing something dangerous to the public good. Like in Kazakhstan right now.

It's like, this is not so crazy. And I also think you could make it, the gerrymandering that we've seen. You could institute some of that more permanently. So you could make it difficult, as we've seen Viktor Orban do very effectively in Hungary. Hungary is still ostensibly a democracy, but he shut down certain press outlets saying they're dangerous to the public interest. He's made it difficult for people to assemble and exercise freedom of expression. And he has also kind of hardened the electoral laws to make it difficult for the opposition to mount any kind of challenge to him. By the way, that's also Erdogan's playbook in Turkey. I think those are very reasonable outcomes. And then the third thing

I also think is real is what used to happen in Israel under Bibi Netanyahu, impugning and intimidating the judiciary, making it impossible for judges to do their job. So I think all that's very real. On that happy note, Scott gets the last question. Yeah, well, I'm not going any happier. the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, and the thing that struck me was that there are just few things that we as a society or we as a species are better at than genocide. You know, we talk about the middle of the 20th century, but it just, it happens every 10 or 20 years. No matter how evolved we think we are, we talk about, you know, coming together and not letting stuff happen again. It just happens over and over. And the

question I would have for you as someone who's very knowledgeable on the topic, is there a prophylactic? Is there a way to vaccinate against genocide, against this? It just keeps happening. It's a hard question. Yeah. Because I don't think there's any silver bullet. Yeah. That may be the most difficult realization of all. I think many of us would like to entertain the fantasy that democracy is a silver bullet. It's not. Yeah, agreed. And democracy is not a spectator sport that you can watch from the bleacher seats.

And just from the bleachers and the cheap seats, everything will work out fine. Democracy requires all of us to get engaged and get involved. It's not education either. There's these tropes that it is. Yeah. So I think we have to be involved, Scott, whether you're, whether you're voting or volunteering or running for dog catcher. I mean, I think you got like that old lotto commercial, you got to be in it to win it. And I think some, I think our civic muscles have atrophied, right? You know, Tip O'Neill used to say all politics are local.

Now it's like as if all politics were national. And I watch what Jesse Waters is saying, and I somehow believe it to be true. I mean, as crazy as that sounds, right? So the reality is local matters, rolling up your sleeves and engaging matters. And I think if people don't get, don't play that, don't realize that it's a contact sport democracy, and it happens around the corner from where you live, then I think that's the only way we can. You forget because you're safe where you are. It's absolutely true. And then the comfortable stay comfortable and the less comfortable become extraordinarily less comfortable.

But I will say, that's really why I wrote the the book because, I mean, we've seen this happen, to your point, in Africa, in Europe, in the Middle East in the last 50, 60, 70 years. It's not a history lesson. It's present day. Look at, again, what happened to the Rohingya and the Yazidi in the last five years. So I think it's incumbent upon us to engage in their strategies and their tactics that we can use to stop hate when it happens here at home. Last thing I'll say, dehumanization, which we see happening now, this is one of the things that Trump has really imported into the public conversation. We all can stop that. into the public conversation. That can, we all can stop that.

We, you, me can push back on that when it happens at the water cooler, in the locker room, at the dinner table. And I think that's the first step. It is. To kind of, you know, reverse. That was one of the key steps of Nazism. It was. Dehumanization was right up at the top

in lots of ways, in cartoons and public, the way you call people. People said, ah, it doesn't really matter. Have a sense of humor, you know, that kind of, and then it makes you feel bad. Some things people could have a sense of humor on, but not stuff like that. Anyway, Jonathan, you're a depressing man. But everybody should read. Doing important work.

The ADL is doing important work. One of the first groups that really had contacted me about these issues around Facebook was the ADL. And in fact, I went to, I used the ADL as an example when I went to YouTube to complain about the anti-Semitic videos on there. You know, how it was just rising and you could see it happening. In any case, you're doing great work. Keep at it. Keep at it, Jonathan. And again, his book is called It Could Happen Here, Why America is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable and How We Can Stop It.

So let's stop it. All right, Scott, one more quick break. Boy, what do you think of that interview, huh? I'm bummed again. He's exactly right, though. Just this notion that it couldn't happen here. You know, we kind of did – genocide's a terrible word, but we locked up, we imprisoned behind barbed wire thoughtful law-abiding citizens that were Japanese only 75 years

ago. We put them in camps. What if the Japanese had split the atom first and they started drawing atom bombs? Wouldn't we have moved to genocide pretty quickly? So the notion that it can't happen here, if you look at the worst genocides in history, they tend to have a lot in common with what America looks like now. Exceptional, exceptional nationalism, income inequality, propping up strongmen, a dissatisfied underclass from income inequality or economic underclass, a consolidation of media.

I mean, there's just a lot of conservatives believing that they can control a strongman for economic interests. There's a lot of things lining up that just feel very uncomfortable. And we should remove any notion, and Jonathan, I think, does this really effectively, of thinking that it can't happen here. Oh, yeah, it can.

And it's happened in very similar societies. Yeah, yep, agreed, agreed. That's quite the fucking speech. And I'm in Vegas. Yeah, in Vegas. Did I mention I'm in Vegas? As long as we have Vegas, hey, what do we care?

Like, that's what I feel like. I'm here with Jerry Lewis and seven prostitutes. Hello, Vegas. Jerry Lewis. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out.

Indecision. Overthinking. Second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Beige on beige on beige. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month.

At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. All right, Scott, let's go to wins and fails. Scott, I'm going to go first. Bob Saget. Oh, my God. I love Bob Saget. You like? Tell me about it. I was really

shocked at the outpouring of affection for Bob. Because he's fun. I love when he was like, I watched that show secretly. I didn't fun. I love when he was like, I watched that show secretly. I didn't secretly. I love the Olsen twins. I like everything about them. And I also like the other Olsen, Elizabeth Olsen, who's so manifestly talented.

I always liked him. I always liked him. And then I liked when he went dirty. I liked he had a whole thing with the aristocrats or whatever. And I just liked his whole vibe. And let me just tell you, I've never seen such an outpouring of so many different people who do not agree on anything. Agreeing on the kindness of him from Jon Stewart to Kathy Griffin. Like, it was dozens and dozens of comics that all were very different people and don't get along, I would say.

All like Bob Saget. And, you know, the suddenness and, of course, the fucking ghouls of anti-vaxxers are coming out saying he said he got a booster. He was joking about it on one of his podcast things or whatever, blaming it on the booster and then linking it to Betty White getting a booster. I just literally like, get away from Bob Saget, you people. I literally like, get your diseased mitts off of Bob Saget. Anyway. People are dropping dead in CVS after the boosters.

They're like, coincidence? He got a booster three weeks ago. I was like, coincidence? He had water. Like, what is wrong with you to take this guy's lovely comic legacy and do that? I really like Bob Sagetet i have to say and very funny when he when he went blue oh man was he funny was he funny anyway bob saget rest in peace uh when uh oh i watched cobra kai it was fantastic so good the guy who plays johnny is

i am so pleased with theobra Kai, this new season. I can't even tell you. It's wonderful. They're all wonderful. Every one of them. Thank you. That's great. Who do you watch Cobra Kai with?

Amanda. Amanda loves it. Amanda, who is like real fancy on her literature, fancy person. Don't. Amanda hates that you've said that. I know, but she is fancy. But she likes this a lot. She loves Cobra.

There was one line they did, and she's like, that was brilliant. How come we didn't get it? You come down to my place. I want to watch Cobra Kai. Instead, you queue up the great Boston art heist. And I'm like, really? That's what we're in for here? We'll find something good.

That's what we're in for here? Yeah, we'll come. Anyway, Cobra Kai. I love Cobra Kai. Please watch the next season. It's really good. I thought they might falter, but they have not. Because you run out of hijinks

for these kids. But they've introduced this adorable young kid who's getting beaten up by Daniel's son, actually, at school. So, it's very ironic. And this kid is just so winning and fantastic. Anyway- Is Elizabeth Shoe back? She was. I don't know if she's coming back. I'm doing them slowly, like fine wine. Like fine wine, I'm doing them once a night. I'm not binging it. Anyway, go ahead, Scott. I'm not sure fine wine and Cobra Kai have been used in the same sentence. I believe Amanda was drinking fine wine when we were watching it. Anyway.

Well, there we go. My win is someone I've made or been critical of, but I just can't help it. one I've made or been critical of, but I just can't help it. I just love Jack Dorsey's tweets. Oh, yeah. And I think they're really insightful about on Web3, he wrote, the VCs and their LPs will never escape their incentives. It's ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you're getting into. And I've been thinking a lot about this. Whenever you have overvalued companies or these great new orthodoxies, whether it's democratization, which is nothing but I'm going to figure out a way to depress young men. The new one is decentralization. And it's such bullshit.

It plays into this idea of like you have your own fate. It plays into this sort of crazy nationalism in a weird way. Well, and that's a weird form of a libertarian. When VCs are talking about decentralization, what they want to say is we want to shift the shareholder value from J.P. Morgan to us, and we want regulatory arbitrage, and we don people whom 40% have come from two universities, Stanford and Harvard. I could not agree with you more. 70% of their capital allocation is from people with the same mentality and the same reason why concierge medical services are overfunded, but we can't get prenatal care funded. And this notion that it's somehow libertarian. No, it's not.

It's a bunch of guys. Elon Musk moves markets. That's centralization. When the majority of stable coins have a disproportionate amount of insiders who still are not stable coins. The majority of crypto has a disproportionate amount of insiders controlling these coins. This is the opposite of decentralization. It's centralization to a bunch of people who want to create this myth that somehow they're giving power to the people.

They love to do that. You know what? Honestly, let me just say, I know all these people. You're better off with Jamie Dimon. I can't, you know, or like. And Jamie Dimon is regulated. It's all, whenever you hear the term decentralization, it's a bunch of white guys that look, smell, and feel more like any organizations in the world, more centralization of thought, who are looking to become billionaires by creating shit that is not regulated and want to centralize power. This is the opposite of decentralization. Let me just say, though, there is a really good essay that people should read by

Moxie Marlinspike, who is the founder of the Signal app, who wrote a really good, really, it's very technical, and again, I got lost several times. It's called My First Impressions of Web 3, and I thought it was really interesting. And he

just, we'll talk about it next week maybe because i think it was really interesting he he's sort of in the jack uh door jack i look i found it via jack actually uh which i thought was interesting um so yes you're right i think jack is really he's really become untethered now that he can do what he wants. He was always like that when you encountered him before. He was always very thoughtful. I love his stuff. I think it's really insightful. It's catalyzed a lot of my thinking around, this isn't

decentralization. It's centralization of a bunch of white guys that want more power and more money under the fake myth of decentralization. Anyways, that's my win. Jack's tweets. My fail is I've been thinking a lot about unlocks and opposition as a fail, but I do think it's a huge opportunity, is just our fetishization, our continued fetishization

of incarceration. The U.S. spends about $90 billion a year on prisons, more than we spend on the DOJ, the IRS, the EPA, and NASA combined. In most G7 nations, they average between 50 and 200 people per 100,000 incarcerated. We're at 700. We're up there with the worst autocracies in the world. About half of the people incarcerated in state prisons in 2015 were convicted of nonviolent drug, property, or other public order crimes. And there's just a huge opportunity when states reduce their prison populations, crime rates actually fall faster than the national average. Between 1999 and 2012, New York and New Jersey downsized their prison populations by 26%,

and violent crime dropped 31% and 30%, respectively. COVID spread four times faster in prisons than it did in cruise ships, so we released 20% of 30% respectively. COVID spread four times faster in prisons than it did in cruise ships. So we released 20% of our federal prisoners. And when I think I've been thinking a lot about young men feeling, I think we need to put more nonviolent men back in low-income households. When I look at the money we spend, when I look at what a poor reflection is on our society, it's the for-profit motive that we put into prisons has resulted in incredible damage to certain communities. And I think it's a huge opportunity to take- You know who agrees with you?

The Koch brothers. Gigantor. Oh, White LeBron, Vanilla Bron? Vanilla Bron. This is an issue he talks about with me all the time. Well, it's an exciting opportunity. And I want to be clear, you can't just let these guys out in the society. But if you want to talk about what you would do with those savings, put it into vocational programming.

We need more trained workers. We need, you know, what John McMorris had got me thinking, you need to, in my view, discourage but decriminalize drugs so you reduce the economic incentive for people who don't have great opportunities to get into these industries. And also, you know, we just need more men back in these communities. And I'm not suggesting we put violent men back into households, but the level of incarceration in our household means that either Americans are just born criminal or something's come off the tracks here. And I think a huge unlock, and if you look at what they did with releasing these prisoners

because of COVID at the federal level, and when you've had mass, when you've had programs to let out nonviolent criminals, a lot of good things happen. And I hope that this is something that we take as an opportunity coming out of COVID that we need to rethink incarceration, decriminalize the reason so many of them are in prison. But I think it could be a huge unlock for low-income communities, a reduction in federal spending, and just quite frankly, a righteous movement. And we keep talking about it, but it doesn't happen on a major level. Anyways, my fail is America's continued fetishization with incarceration, but I think it could be a huge opportunity for us coming out of COVID. I like that, Scott Galloway. That's a very serious one.

Well, you and Gigantor can discuss it when we come down and stay with you. Let's go to something lighter like genocide. Genocide. Well, you know what? Soon we'll be down in Miami, and then I'm bringing the whole family down there. So we'll have a whole show down there with them. Anyway. You always bring your whole family.

We're coming. This weather here, I did it this morning. I was like, that's frigging enough with this freezing cold weather in our house. These aren't conferences. They're Swisher vacations where you bring in interesting speakers. We're going to come another time, too. You don't understand. We're coming down for the month. We're ready. We're already planning it. Okay. We're Swisher vacations where you bring in interesting speakers. We're going to come another time, too. You don't understand. We're coming down for the month.

We're ready. We're already planning it. Okay. We're ready. All right, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. There's so much news going on. Can you please read us out?

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Injertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. Make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. It could never happen here as lazy thinking.

It could absolutely happen here. We need empathy. We need understanding. We need an intolerance of intolerance. Have a good rest of the week here.