TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #341: The death of Capitalism via three-letter acronyms with Vivek Ramaswamy

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Join Marty as he sits down with Vivek Ramaswamy, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Strive Asset Management, to discuss the death of modern day capitalism. Follow Vivek Ramaswamy on Twitter Learn more about Vivek Ramaswamy Shoutout to our sponsors: Unchained Capital Braiins HodlHodl CrowdHealth Upstream Data TFTC Merch is Available: Shop Now Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel Clips YT Channel Website Twitter Instagram Follow Marty Bent: Twitter Newsletter Podcast

What is up, freaks? It's your boy Marty Bent here to introduce RIP 341 of TFTC. Quick RIP, but a very dense one. I sat down with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is the co-founder and executive chairman of Strive Asset Management, the author of Woke Inc., and somebody who is becoming a very strong voice in the fight against ESG and the death of modern-day capitalism in a world driven by people who do not care. about you they care about control this report was brought to you by good friends at unchained capital unchained capital is here to help you eliminate single points of failure in your custody model among other things the way they do this is with their vault product which is a two or three multi-sig you hold two keys unchained holds one you always have control of your bitcoin as long as you have those two keys if you're ever in a pinch they need unchained to be the second in the two or three multi-sig quorum they are there for you they have a white glove concierge service that is going to take you from zero to having one of these vaults set up.

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everything they have going on and if you buy a hash hut tell them that tftc sent you enjoy this rip with vivek ramaswamy it was a great dense rip you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

What is up, freaks? Welcome back to TFTC. Very excited for this conversation. Sitting down with Vivek Ramaswamy, co-founder and executive chairman of Strive Asset Management and author of Woke Inc., which I've been reading through the last couple of days, and I'm very excited for this conversation. Thank you for joining us, Vivek. Yeah, my pleasure. Looking forward to this. I am as well. I mean, I think, like I was saying before we hit record, the message that you're getting out there is extremely important. I think the tweet that you pinned to your profile four days ago is very indicative of what's going on right now. We're watching the death of modern day capitalism via three letter acronyms, ESG being one of them.

We've been on a pretty big crusade against ESG here at TFTC, and I think to push that conversation forward, having you on is incredible for that. And I guess having Woke Inc. on top of mind here, I think it would be a bit interesting to get a bit of your background, particularly the fact that you were compelled to leave a company that you were the CEO of early last year to really go out and start Shrive Asset Management and start beating the drum against the death of modern day capitalism. yeah i mean i'll give you a i'll give you a brief nutshell of why i did what i did but my background was actually in science i studied molecular biology in undergrad i thought i was going to be a scientist i thought that uh you know my calling was to discover medicines one at a time i actually found a first career in biotech investing though after i graduated the time in the lab the portion that you had to spend of your life working on one project before you figured out whether or not it worked. At best, you were going to do that three or four times

over your entire life. And so I said that, you know what, I'll take the bet on multiple different companies doing it at the same time instead. Ended up becoming a biotech investor from 2007 to 2014, co-managed a biotech portfolio, had some success in that domain. So good luck along the way, never hurts. I spent three of those years in law school. So that's when I started to turned the wheels on some of these legal and political philosophical issues that informed the mission I'm on today. But anyway, yeah, I graduated in 2013. In 2014, I left my job as an investor to founder of a biotech company that I built, led as CEO for seven years. And, you know, look, I really found it thrilling to develop medicines for patients who needed them. We

worked on a number of drugs, five of them are FDA approved products today. That's probably some of my career accomplishments that I'm most proud of. But I did step down a year and a half ago because I grew concerned about this, not a biological cancer, let's say, but a cultural cancer that threatened to kill the dream that allowed me to achieve everything I ever had in my life. My parents came to this country with almost no money in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They came with an education, but they didn't come with money. And I, one generation later, was the founder of a multi-billion dollar company, had had success achieving the greatest education that I had been able to enjoy that they were able to give me. And to watch this new culture emerge

in the very system, American capitalism that allowed that dream to be achieved by me and so many others like me, that was something that started to bother me, but it especially started to bother me because I found the threats to that dream presenting themselves in a context where you couldn't talk about that threat in the open. It was a new apologist cultural philosophy that demanded companies take a monolithic perspective that did not represent the true diversity of perspectives in the American population. And to me, that was a mismatch that needed to be addressed. And so for me, the first step was just to start talking openly about it again. I couldn't do that as a CEO, certainly not of a CEO of a biotech company, a multi-billion

dollar venture-backed biotech company that had expectations of what was supposed to come from a company like that. I decided that as much as I loved that work and respected the people I worked with, part of speaking openly was to not filter what you had to say through the filter of corporate self-interest. I stepped aside as CEO and spent the last year and a half really unconstrained in expressing my own perspectives, hopefully to start the kinds of conversations that I felt like we weren't having in our marketplace of ideas. And so anyway, that's what got me started on the journey. And then I'm happy to tell you more about where it took me, but that's the background. Yeah, no, again, I think it's extremely important that you stepped away from your position at

Roivant to speak up because I think it's imperative that more and more individuals speak up because the changes that are being driven by the stakeholder capitalism, which you talk about in the first few chapters of Woke Inc. is really driving a material degradation in the quality of life here in the United States and across Western developed economies. And I think now more than ever, it's important to identify this problem, call it out for what it is. And that's what I like most about Woke Inc. so far, as much as I've read, is that you do a really good job of distilling exactly what's going on around the concept of stakeholder capitalism and how crony capitalism is still here. It's just changed its facade a bit. Yeah. And I think it's

worth talking about that trend a little more specifically, you know, a little bit of background out of the way. I mean, stakeholder capitalism is on its face an appealing philosophy. It says that companies have to work together with government actors and with each other to achieve a social good that goes beyond just selling products and services to people who need them for the pursuit of profit. On its face, that sounds like it's a pretty appealing way to make the world a better place. What's the problem with that philosophy? There's two problems with it, actually. One of them was pointed out by Milton Friedman 50 years ago. It's as true today as it was when he pointed it out. There was a second problem with it that no

one had pointed out. That's why I actually jumped into the void. The Milton Friedman version of the problem was that he thought that when companies focused on these other social objectives that had nothing to do with their core business of providing a product or service, that they would do a worse job of providing that product or service, which in turn would make the companies less profitable, which in turn would shrink the size of the economic benefit delivered by those companies, which in turn prevents capitalism from doing what it's supposed to do, which is lifting all people, including people at every level of the socioeconomic ladder, lift people up. Capitalism cannot deliver on its economic promise if it's also distracted by or diluted

by solving for other societal objectives that our politics should deal with instead. I agree with most of what he had to say, to be clear. But my problem with stakeholder capitalism and the reason that I felt so compelled to speak out about it, I started writing on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, eventually an agent approached me, that morphed into the book. Eventually, that morphed into the activism across the country over the last year. And then eventually, that's morphed into Strive Asset Management, which I'm running today. But the thing that motivated me to do all that wasn't just to rehash the Milton Friedman arguments, because God bless the man. He said what he had

to say, and there was a lot of truth in his message. My problem was the reverse problem, actually. Not my concern just for American capitalism, but my concern for American democracy. What do I mean by that? Well, stakeholder capitalism also says that the right answers to questions ranging from how or whether to address climate change to how or whether to address systemic racism or racial injustice or misogyny or whatever the core social issues of the day may be, that the people who decide the answers to those questions aren't the citizens in the public square who, in a democracy, are supposed to decide those issues through free speech and open debate where every person's voice and vote counts equally. No,

that's not the model. What stakeholder capitalism says is a small group of capitalist elites decide the answers to those questions behind closed doors, kind of like they used to do in old world monarchical Europe, where a small group of labor elites and church elites and business elites used to get together behind closed doors and decide what the right answer is to these questions for the rest of society at large, the American Revolution was fought on the idea that we reject that monarchical model for better or for worse. The people decide where everyone's voice and vote counts equally what the right answers are to political questions that we don't want capitalist interference in. And the thing is, that's not a left-wing argument or a right-wing

argument. It's a pro-democracy argument. And it was the inverse of Milton Friedman's concern. and nobody, as best I could tell, had taken that concern up back in 2020 when I started writing about this stuff. And I'm motivated by both saving the integrity of capitalism and saving the integrity of democracy. I think the right way to do that is to keep them apart from one another, to get like, we have a separation of church and state in this country. I think we should have a separation of commercialism and a separation of politics. But I think that nobody had really put their finger on the pulse of what I see as the biggest threat to democracy today, which is the rise of this new managerial corporatocracy, the managerial class within the

private sector, the Larry Finks of the world becoming the bureaucratic technocratic emperors that tell the rest of the country how to live their lives by using market force to do it. To me, that was a betrayal of what democracy was supposed to be all about. And it's a little bit different than the friedmanite version of the problem 40 years ago yeah and i'm probably more partial toward like the free market vision of this right like you have larry fink and blackrock using their insane amounts of capital that is acquired by individuals who are putting their their savings and passive funds that that blackrock is then able to use to to vote at the shareholder level on behalf of their customers and to me just from a free market

perspective it is the opposite of a free market because it's not an emergent uh thing you have a top-down attempt to centrally plan these industries and i think blackrock and its pushing of esg specifically is the the perfect example that they're using their their immense amounts of capital to attempt to pursue or force corporate boardrooms to to act in a one way and it's not really the market determining outcomes it's it's blackrock and all their capital Yeah, I mean, and look, let's just make the best argument for the other side. They will say that this is the free market working, right? There's no government telling these companies to behave that way.

BlackRock just says, hey, it's us, the shareholder, right? And isn't that what the free marketeers wanted? Shareholder primacy. The idea that the CEOs who run these companies, they work for and report to the shareholder. Isn't that the vision of post-20th century capitalism, shareholder primacy-driven capitalism? Isn't that what Milton Friedman wanted? Well, here's the thing. It's a problem of language. They claim to be the shareholder, but they're not the actual shareholder. The actual shareholders are the owners of capital, the firefighters, the nurses, the teachers, the doctors, the small business owners, the big business owners. I don't care who they are. They're the owners of capital who are unknowing to them having their money managed by a large

institution like BlackRock that is using their money to advance an agenda that they themselves disagree with if they actually knew what was going on. And to me, what I've discovered is people didn't realize this. What's happening with their 401k account? What's happening with their pension fund? What's happening with their union funds money? What's happening with their taxpayer money that's wielded by a state treasurer? what's happening with the money in their brokerage account. They have no idea that the people who are

managing that money are not just solving for their financial interests, but are also solving for these other social objectives, some of which they don't even agree with. And even if they did agree with them, they might say, hell, I would rather donate to a philanthropy or to a political cause after you give me the maximal return, because that's my business. That's not your business. So even if I agree with what you're doing, I don't want you to be the one doing it. I want to be doing that in my own time on my own account. And for a lot of people, it's even worse than that because they don't agree with it. And they're donating their philanthropic dollars and their political dollars and their civic dollars to advance one agenda, thinking they're

making the world a better place the way they think they're making the world a better place, only to have that erased because BlackRock is pushing a different agenda. And so my principal problem with this actually isn't the content of the agenda that BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard are pushing. I disagree with some of those agendas. I just put my cards on the table, but that's not the heart of my criticism. It's that we do not have a class of modern monarchs in the system of American capitalism that get to use other people's money to decide the answers to those questions. And the scale of the problem is so dang large that it actually demands a solution before these entities wield state-like power that's every bit as oppressive as an

overreaching government itself. I'll give you one example of this is what's happening in the oil and gas sector right now. If you had the thought experiment, I think I said this on CNBC a few weeks ago. If you do that, just as a thought experiment, you got the CEOs of Exxon, Conoco Phillips and Chevron and BP and Shell get together in a room and they coordinate to decide to cut gas production and then gas prices spike at the pump as a result of that, we have a word for that in this country. It's called price fixing. It's an antitrust violation. Cut and dry, that's a problem. But somehow or another, the largest asset managers in the world force those companies through shareholder mandates, I use shareholder in air quotes, but shareholder mandates

to do the same thing. And somehow we celebrate that as ESG instead. This is something that's duping the everyday citizen. And you know, it gets even worse. You just go layer after layer, you peel this onion, it gets more and more rotten the closer you get to the core. So let's say, let's take that example further. They had them cut oil production, right? How do they do it? Well, BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard, they voted in favor of three dissident directors that made it onto the board of Exxon last year as part of an activist campaign for a revised climate change strategy at Exxon. So before this activist campaign, Exxon's business plan was to increase oil production by 25% over the next five years, 2020 to 2025. Afterwards,

they seat the new directors, Exxon changes its business plan. They change Exxon's business plan to reduce oil production 20% from those prior forecasts in that same period. Now, you would think that that's bad enough. And it is bad enough. I mean, look, Exxon's a less successful company, in my opinion, as a result. There's a gas shortage. There's an oil shortage in the country. Gas prices are spiking. Coordinated action against America's largest oil company, the world's largest oil company, to be able to cut oil production at that inopportune time, that's bad enough, right? Now, you would think that maybe the climate change activists would be happy if those projects are no longer proceeding. But guess what? Those projects

are absolutely proceeding. They're just spun off and sold to other parties who are pursuing them. Let's take an example of one of the parties who's at the front of the line to pick up some of those profitable projects that Exxon is dropping. None other than PetroChina. Now, you want the cherry on top. Look up who is one of the largest shareholders of PetroChina. None other than BlackRock. I could make this stuff up if I tried. One of the largest shareholders of Exxon say they need a revised climate change strategy. They need to drop oil production as a US company over here when the same projects in the name of fighting climate change are still happening on God's green same earth in China, but the companies that are able to pick it up like PetroChina are owned by

the same firms that gave one shareholder mandate to Exxon and a different shareholder mandate to a Chinese company, leaving the American investors holding the bag. You cannot represent diverse client interests, conflicting client interests, if you're going to be a vocal activist and still be a good fiduciary for both of them. It's like being a lawyer representing the plaintiff and the defendant in the same case. You can't give the vocal argument for both and still be a good legal fiduciary for both. The same thing applies to being a financial fiduciary. So I think the whole thing is a scam at every level. They have covered it in the veneer of virtue. We live in this apologist moment for American capitalism after the 2008 financial crisis that allowed

BlackRock to swoop in and fill the void, douse its self-interested game in the in the veneer of virtue. And unfortunately, our culture bought it for the last decade. But now I think people are hungry for something different. They're starting to see through the act. It's a big part of what my book is all about is describing the magic act at the heart of this fake form of modern American capitalism to revive the real thing, to say that, you know what, we will pursue excellence in our products and services and in pursuing profitability too unapologetically. We have nothing to apologize for to pursue the very best we can in whatever we're doing. Maybe it's an oil company. Maybe it's a solar company. I don't care. Be the best version of who you're going to be.

You don't have to apologize for it. That's what true free market capitalism is all about. That is the best system known to mankind to lift people up from poverty. And guess what? It is also an apolitical space in a politically divided time where we can all come together and innovate together, build together, do whatever it is, trade together, do whatever it is we do together in an apolitical private sector that can bring us together, whether we are black, white, red, or blue, I don't care. That's the promise of free market capitalism in a democratic society. And we have these toxic actors to the tune of $20 trillion with the top three asset managers in the United States that are wrecking the whole thing. And that's why I'm on a mission

to wreck the edifice that they have built to create a new one that says, you know what, let's distribute choice and take a jackhammer to that and take that concentration of capital and recreate competition in the marketplace of ideas by first allowing the everyday citizens whose money is being abused today to be able to at least have some alternative to have their voice represented to corporate America as it is their right to have, because in the end, it's their money in the first place. Yeah. I mean, you said people are hungering for change figuratively and literally right now. I think once the lower substrate of Maslow's hierarchy of needs begins to erode away and people can't fill their gas tanks, they can't get to work, their grocery

bills is increasing to such a point that they can't buy enough food to feed their family. That's when people are like, okay, there's a problem here. What is it? And I think what you're doing is identifying it and in the book you talk about the solutions to begin fixing this problem and one of them is uh changing the liability of of corporate corporations correct i talk about a number of legal solutions in the book i know you're you're uh it sounds like you're in the first half but you get to some of those in the second half i can talk about those i don't know how legally interested your audience is uh we can geek out on that all you want i will tell you you though, I spoke to half of Congress earlier this year, a lot of policymakers have reached out

across the states at the federal level. And I've really enjoyed going on an educational campaign nationally, speaking to grassroots audiences, to policymakers, to business leaders. I will tell you something that I don't think many of the legal solutions that I offered in the book are going to actually get passed in the form that they need to get passed. And even part of it was an admission on my own part that every law is going to have an unintended consequence. And that's kind of what got me to, even after I wrote the book, to evolve my own thinking a little further to say, all right, the point of those legal solutions I present in the book is to start a conversation. Okay. It's to provoke a conversation that we weren't otherwise having by conservatives telling

them the myth that this is free market capitalism without recognizing that the free market they idealized does not exist today. And liberals who used to be skeptical of corporate power looking the other way because they happen to love the values that these corporations are pushing today, you have this new force of these corporatocratic monarchs that are wielding state-like power in bed with the state in many cases to do it, the likes of Larry Fink, that have duped both sides, Republicans, Democrats, and the submission. What I wanted to do in the book is to say that, all right, let's take a look at the legal architecture that a lot of these big asset managers like Larry Fink and the people who lead them like Larry Fink have exploited.

Let's make some changes to that edifice to actually level the playing field. And I've been an advocate for some of those legal policies, and I think some of them could make a difference. But what I learned in the upshot of it is the political system is pretty captured. It's very difficult to drive clean legislative change all the way through. And even if you did, I think with libertarian instincts of my own, I don't call myself libertarian anymore for reasons we could talk about, but, you know, classically libertarian instincts. I worry about even the best intention law is always going to have some unintended

consequence, which is why I decided to throw my lot, actually, after I published the book, but thinking about this traveling the country, evolving my own thoughts, to do it the old fashion way through competition, right? Nobody was going after competing with this cartel. If you have an anti-competitive problem, I do think it's an anti-competitive problem of sorts, solve it the old fashioned way through competition. So as I stepped up to the plate, started Strive going head on after BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard and anyone else who behaves like them with other people's money to say that, you know what, for the few people who might want that done with their money, great, go with BlackRock. For everybody else, you need an

alternative. And that was why I decided to create Strive, which I thought was far more promising than either the litigation or the legal theories I present in the book or the policy changes I propose, though, I think they're really fun to talk about. And I'm happy to talk about them. But my mindset, even since publishing the book has shifted more towards market solutions. And you know, I think that legislative solutions could play a role along the way. And I hope some thoughtful policymakers, you know, pick up on some of those strands, but but I'm not going to wait for that to happen. I considered running for office to to be one of those policymakers. I can tell you all the reasons why I decided that terrible idea as well, but decided to actually focus on the market

as the way to do this yeah i think your efforts are better served in the private sector and no so we're doing we'll see how successful we are i i think we'll be successful but but we'll see but i but that's where i've definitely that's where i've definitely you know cast my guy no and so i mean i became passionate about this trend because this is a bitcoin podcast i'm in the bitcoin mining industry and what we've what we've seen really i just you know cryptocurrency related okay yeah bitcoin specifically and so in the mining industry bitcoin mining gets picked on for using too much energy and the whole concept of moralizing energy use is has always seemed asinine on its face to me and despite the fact let me let me just let me

just comment on that for a second it is asinine i mean i it is it is a war on human flourishing okay there's a great book by alex epstein um he's a friend of mine i like his book fossil future but Anyway, this is not a war. It's not about protecting the environment. Oh, amazing. I read a preprint copy before it came out. This is a war on human flourishing. Bitcoin mining, the people who do it are in part moving the ball forward to a form of human flourishing. But that's not the only thing they're attacking. They're attacking fossil fuel usage of every kind, which contributes to human flourishing of other forms, including human flourishing that allows you to adapt to the consequences of climate change, to master the consequences of climate change. One of the things I love learning from that read of Alex's book was that if you look at

the climate disaster death rate from 100 years ago to today, down by 98%, one out of 50 people that would have died in 1920 die today as a consequence of climate-related disasters. Why is that? Because of more effective use of fossil fuels. But then let's say that, okay, somebody's just wrong about that, but they're well-intentioned and say that, okay, I think the thing that I should be caring about is carbon emissions rather than actually the impact on human life of a changing environment. Let's say this is an intellectual mix-up, right? This is what's going on is people think they're supposed to care about the human impact on the environment when, in fact, they claim that the thing that matters is the impact of environmental change

on human beings. Those are two different things. The impact of environmental change on human beings is a totally different phenomenon than the change in the environment exerted by human beings. Those are two different things. If you care about the latter, you measure carbon emissions. If you care about the former, as I do, the thing you might measure is the climate disaster-related death rate. But let's say this is an earnest mistake and someone just hates fossil fuels because they think they're making the planet worse for human beings. I think that that's an incorrect view. But let's say that that's the view. The thing that's really puzzling is that the same people who are opposed to Bitcoin mining, the same people who are in the same

movement that's opposed to the use of fossil fuels is also puzzlingly against the use of nuclear energy and hydroelectric energy through the building of dams that have zero carbon impact on the environment. In fact, if carbon is dirty, and I don't like that conflation, but let's temporarily adopt it. If that's dirty energy, the cleanest forms of energy on planet Earth to produce energy are the enemies number three and four after oil and natural gas and maybe coal up there as well. Why is that? This is a war not on carbon. This is a war on human flourishing. And ultimately, the people who care about advancing the human condition and the different ways we do it through our markets, through the spread of free market

capitalism, that's one camp. And then the other camp is a camp that not only wants to apologize for it, but apologize for it by destroying that foundation. And in so doing, they destroy not just the foundations of capitalism, but as I talked about earlier, also the foundations of democracy. That is, to me, the defining struggle of our time. It is not red versus blue. It is not Republican versus Democrat. It is the managerial class versus the free, everyday citizen. It is the great reset, this new vision invented in Davos, Switzerland, that says that leaders in the private sector and public sector have to dissolve the boundaries between the two to work together towards the common good, which, by the way, includes regulating Bitcoin, which, by the

way, implementing global regulatory changes to create alternatives to the central banking fiat and central banking monopoly around the world. But that's just one small part of the story. The private sector leaders and public sector leaders dissolving boundaries to work together towards their monolithic vision of the common good, that is the great reset versus what I see on the other side, which is the great uprising of citizens in democracies around the world saying that, no, we don't want you working together with monarchical power telling us how we are supposed to live our lives. We determine that in a free society together where everyone's voice and vote counts equally, even if we disagree, messy as that might be. That's how capitalism works in the

marketplace of ideas. That's how democracy works through a one person, one voice system of political governance. And to me, that's the defining struggle of our time. Managerial class versus everyday citizen. The great reset versus the great uprising. And I will tell you, this is not a partisan issue. It is a transpartisan issue. It is not even an American issue. It is a transnational issue. It is a transnational, transpartisan issue that echoes the war that was fought. It was a Transnational battle in 1776 and 1789 between the American Revolution, the French Revolution, between the citizen and an old monarchy. That is one of those moments we live in today in the year 2022 is a different kind of struggle between the everyday citizen and a new type of monarchy that has emerged not only in the United States, but in Canada, in Western Europe, in Australia, in Western democracies as we know it. And I hope this story ends not with, I don't mean to be dramatic about this, but I think if there's a third world war, I think this will have played an important role in spawning it.

I don't want to see this end with those forces coming to a collision course head, but rather to taking the energy of the great uprising and channeling it in a positive and constructive direction that creates real alternative institutions that respect the will of that everyday citizen. And that's a big part of what led me to found STRIVE. And I hope that we are successful in doing it because the world needs it. And I hope other people step up to create similar institutions challenging the existing incumbents with that vision in hand. I completely agree. I think it's undeniable at this point that the energy policies specifically that were spawned from this attempt by the Davos class to granularly control the global economy has shifted leverage into Russia's favor where they felt comfortable enough to invade Ukraine. Yeah, think about it. Put yourself in Putin's shoes. It's a cost-benefit analysis, right? All right, they're going to sanction me. But if those sanctions hurt them more, if they're shooting themselves in the foot, that's going to make them incrementally less likely to impose the full level of sanctioning. And so that affects my cost-benefit calculus. There's cost and there's benefits to Putin of invading Ukraine. Well, I know one of those costs is a little bit less because I know that the imposition of that cost is going to hurt the other side more. It's not super complicated stuff here. It's cost-benefit analysis. You tip the balance in favor of encouraging him to go. And I think

that's just one example among many. I mean, I think in the next couple of years, we're going to see China go for Taiwan, you know, after Xi Jinping takes his third term, an unprecedented third term coming this October. I think that starts the clock between October of this year and January of 2025, when the next U.S. president could take office. That's his window. Put yourself in his shoes. It's a cost benefit analysis. It's a risk benefit analysis. He's not going to take the risk before October, in my opinion, because he wants to introduce no risk to his chain of succession. But he's not going to take the risk of a new U.S. president taking office either. that's going to be his window. I think the things we've done to Western self-reliance of what the

market could have provided by apologizing for the success that we had otherwise created erodes the foundation of our ability to stand up to those geopolitical threats. I'm concerned about it, but very few other people are willing to talk about it in the open. No better way to do it than to actually start talking openly, but not just talking about it. I think using the market to deliver some of those solutions, hopefully more quickly than the political process ever will. Yeah, I think the market

is certainly going to be quicker than the political process, which is pretty constrained here in the US. And I do want to be respectful of your time. I know we had 30 minutes here. We're coming up on that. But I will say as a Bitcoin podcaster, but I think Bitcoin as a mechanism

to sort of defund the fiat monetary system that forces people to allocate money to people like BlackRock could aid in shifting force back towards a free market free democracy society uh yeah i've only i gotta admit i mean i've only in the last year begun to become more educated on on cryptocurrency i mean biotech guy with a legal background and writing books on stakeholder capitalism and now in asset management but you know maybe we should stay in touch and i can learn more about it i i agree with you i tend to

agree with you um you know i do think that that's that's a part of the story i think that you know the only thing this is an observation from afar i think there is no such thing as a silver bullet anywhere. There's no silver bullet legal solution. There's no silver bullet market solution. I think it's highly unlikely that there's a silver bullet Bitcoin solution. But it's about moving the ball forward in the different frontiers towards the devolution of power, the devolving of power back to the citizen, back to the owner of capital. That's what it takes for the free market to actually deliver on its promise. And the more concentration of centralized decision-making power you have, be that in the hands of BlackRock or be that in the hands of countries that print

fiat currency, the less likely you believe that free market capitalism can be to deliver on its promise. And so, you know, first principles, I agree. The only thing I would say to all of us is there's no silver bullet, end all, be all answer. It's all part of a cultural evolution that hopefully restores the essence of both capitalism and democracy. yeah completely there's no silver silver bullet but one of the uh the phrases we say often on this show is fix the money fix the world money is the base tool is the base tool of humanity and if you fix that base then you can go and find other bullets to to begin pushing the tides back in our favor um it reminds me first chapter of my book actually i'll just close on this one is that

it called it the goldman rule um and you know i went to goldman sachs and and it was a it was a funny story for those interested in the story they can read the book but at the end of the story there's a there's a guy who's in the group who says you know you ever heard of the golden rule and you know both of us were we were just talking about this before educated jesuit schools you know i i obviously know the golden rule you treat other people like you want to be right and uh and he says no no the golden rule is he who has the gold makes the rules i call that goldman rule and you know what it's true of the black rocks and the larry thinks of the world today. He who has the gold makes the rules. I mean, that's the problem.

Go for it. You go for the gold. You solve the problem. I think that you give that back to the people who actually own it. That's halfway, that's halfway towards a solution and a better place. So anyway, fix the money, fix the world. You've got to go. You've got another book coming out this fall, correct? A nation of victims, a nation of victims coming out in, uh, in mid September. Uh, you know, think of it as sort of sequel to Woking. So appreciate that, man. Awesome. Vivek, thank you for your time. Thank you for what you're doing. It's extremely important. Hopefully we can do this again in the future. Thanks a lot. Talk to you. Have a great day.