The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Antitrust in the Age of Monopolies — with Tim Wu

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Tim Wu, a professor of law at Columbia University and a former leading member of President Biden’s antitrust committee, joins Scott to discuss the state of antitrust regulation as well as his decision to leave his position at the White House. Follow Tim on Twitter, @superwuster.  Scott opens with his thoughts on the recent lawsuits against popular AI art generators. He then shares his opinion on CO-CEOS. Algebra of Happiness: give yourself license to be down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Episode 230. 230 is the area code of Mauritius, a country located off the eastern coast of africa in 1930 a 3m employee invented what is known today as scotch tape true story my wife can't use a measuring tape i think it's because for the last 20 years she's been told that two inches is actually six inches go go go inches. Welcome to the 230th episode of the Prop G-Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and the former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy on the National Economic Council.

We discussed with Tim his decision to leave his position on the antitrust committee as well as where he sees regulation heading. I was really excited to speak with, I guess it's Professor Wu again. I haven't known Tim, but I've had a professional relationship with him, had him on the podcast, and have been a big fan of his. His book, The Curse of Bigness, sort of became my Yoda for antitrust. And I think he's incredibly thoughtful. And I was just so excited when he got the tap on the shoulder to go to the White House. It's exciting when you're an academic and you see other academics of that integrity, expertise, commitment, get to go to what is the highest level and have that kind of impact.

Anyways, we'll speak to Tim as he makes his triumphant return to the great college just north of NYU. Fordham! Just kidding, Columbia. Anyways, what's happening? Artificial intelligence continues to rip through the headlines,

this time with some legal implications. Three artists have filed a class action lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and without the consent of the artist or compensating the artist. This is super interesting. The lawsuit goes on to say that these companies, open quote, benefit commercially and profit richly from the use of copyrighted images, close quote. Getty Images also filed a similar lawsuit against Stability AI. Everyone's talking about how Google's in a world of hurt with chat GPT, you know, who's probably out of business is going to be getting, and I forget the other one, but those kind of image banks that charge you 1200 bucks for a great image of Aretha Franklin. I got to think that they are shaking in their design boots, their designer boots. What's that cool boot called? Oh, my gosh, that cool rain boot that all the hot

women wear. What's it called? Oh, shit. Where's my fucking producer? What's the hot boot? The boot that the hot women wear that looks like a rain boot? What am I talking about? What's it called? Hot and rain boot is an oxymoron. Oh, God. Come on. What are they called? You think of like hunter boots? Hunter. Thank you. For God's sakes. Finally adding some value. Okay.

Hunter boots. Those are hot. Hunter. Yeah. Ooh. I mean, when you're not wearing anything. Okay.

Those are. Okay. Back to the prop G pod. Anyways. In a statement provided to Bloomberg Law, Stability AI said, anyone that believes this isn't fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law. This is fascinating. And any technology, whether it's cloning or social media, requires a certain level of you need to slow down and think about through the implications of the externalities here. The analogy I would use is that anytime you, what's the term, convert any resource into another for economic benefit, anytime you take oil out of the ground and convert it into petroleum,

anytime you take content and convert it to ads at scale to monetize it, anytime there's a transition or refining of one resource to another for economic benefit, you're going to have emissions. Whether it's carbon, whether it's polarization, you're going to have some sort of emissions or some sort of externality. And in this instance, I think chat GBT, when I think about AI, I think of it, okay, very simply speaking, and I haven't wrapped my head around this shit yet, but I think kind of loosely or roughly speaking, what manufacturing technology or assembly line technology or robotics did to manufacturing, this could do to information age economy jobs. for Stephanie Ruhle on her evening program, might soon mind themselves out of a job as pretty soon you're going to be able to say, in the style of a late night news program, please summarize today's top stories in politics and business. And the chat GBT will slowly but surely consume all the data sets and look at every talking point or every script for every news host, learn from it, and be able to

spit back a reasonable facsimile. Now, the question is, with these artists or on specifically the design or the image AI generators, should the people that this thing is learning from, should the data sets that are being input, should there be some sort of compensation for them? And to me, that sounds logical. But on my other podcast, Pivot, we had Cory Doctorow, and he basically said that he was troubled by the notion of, okay, every time a great author reads something and they go on to write something, do they owe some compensation back to the previous works that inspired them? Which got me thinking about a wonderful book. I think it's called On Riding by Stephen King.

That book kind of changed my life. I think Stephen King is arguably one of the great creatives, at least of my lifetime. I just can't get over this guy. I can't get over how prolific he is, how incredibly, how he captures humanity in these horror stories. The Shining, fantastic.

Dead Zone is one of my favorite films. Christopher Walken, deeply underrated film. Stand By Me, that was a short story from Stephen King. How did I get on Stephen King? I'm not entirely sure, but other than he's a genius and he wrote a book about writing. I read that book and it was one of my inspirations to begin writing. And the rest is not history. The rest is not history. Anyways, where are we? Come back to us, Scott. Come back to us. Fly fishing.

Oh, I got something on the line. It's what Scott was talking about. That's right. Design. Should creators get some sort of compensation? Because essentially what ChatGPT does at the end of the day is it absorbs or you have to give it data sets that it then devours and it learns from. And it looks at the relationship between words and it says, okay, if every time a sportscaster describes a touchdown this way, we can begin describing touchdowns. If every time somebody is highlighting or trying to explain what happens in cardiothoracic transplant surgery.

The relationship between the words and the way they describe it is this, and then someone says, describe what happens in a heart transplant. They can spit out some reasonable facsimile of it and do it in the style of an academic journal or as JAMA would write it. They're absorbing and climbing through or crawling through these data sets and developing just sort of this historic memory and ability to regurgitate and neuroplasticity to assemble things. Anyways, if it sounds like I don't know what I'm talking about, trust your instincts. But should they be compensated? Hmm. Hmm. I don't know. And then how do you manage that or how do you keep track of it?

It's going to be very interesting. It probably doesn't happen. I don't think that they're going to be able to win that case because the algorithm that is observing something, I'm trying to think what's the analogy here, every time an artist hears something, there has to be a line. When you are inspired by, when you have music that sounds like another song, at what point does it cross the threshold of being copyright theft?

Okay, what else is going on? We're seeing quite a few leadership shakeups play out, but let's focus on the one in the streaming space. Netflix founder Reed Hastings has resigned from his position as co-CEO after 25 years. Netflix's chief product and chief operating officer, Greg Peters, has filled the role and Hastings will remain involved with the company as executive chairman. This move comes as Netflix is making serious changes to its business model. The firm's CFO believes a new ad-supported tier could eventually represent 10% of revenues. Okay, so there's a few things to unpack here. Let's open the suitcase. We're not going to burn all our clothes. We're going to put them in

the laundry, and we're going to take them out. We're going to learn from them. I think I'm going to have a spot of tea right now. Anyway, so the whole co-CEO thing, I generally find most co-CEOs, I'm on the board of a few companies that have co-CEOs, there's generally just one CEO, but it's two founders that like each other, that have affection-CEOs. There's generally just one CEO, but it's two founders that like each other, that have affection for each other. So they pretend to have a shared CEO role. And that's usually just not the case. And eventually the kind of the co-co-CEO

ends up sort of floating away or doing something else. And there's really just one CEO. However, however, there are really interesting constructs, specifically, I think at Goldman Sachss that has co-heads of departments. And the idea is that no one individual has too much leverage, that if the head of M&A is a baller and these are very smart people, the tough thing about managing a services firm is that in order to have a great services firm, you have to have really talented people. And here's the thing that sucks about really talented, smart people. They're really talented and smart. And they will do the math, and they will try and capture all the excess gross margin for themselves and demand more and more compensation.

And as their power grows, they will continually be in your office demanding more and more, or they're going to walk across the street to Credit Suisse or another consulting firm or what have you. And so the idea of having co-heads of departments makes it such that no individual really ever has that much leverage. Because if they leave, that's okay, we're fine for the next few months because we have another head of the financial sponsors group at Goldman or whatever. So the idea of co-whatever and redundancy kind of makes sense. And it feels like in Netflix, it worked pretty well. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of that. Where it doesn't work and it breaks down is when it's just a name only. They really don't share. They obviously have to get along pretty well, the complementary strengths.

And when no one is accountable, when people just point at the other guy when things go wrong or the other gal. But anyways, to wrap up on this, I don't think Reid is getting the credit and the call-out he deserves. I mean, this guy, nothing short of visionary. I mean, arguably, arguably the most visionary CEO of the last 30 years. 1998 says, I know, I'm going to take advantage of the ultimate broadband. The ultimate broadband delivery system is the U.S. Post Service. Think about how fucking genius that was. A million people delivering content to 100 million households called the United States Postal Service. And he said, distinctive broadband and dial-up, this is the best way to get content to people. And Walmart and Blockbuster both tried copycats. What did Netflix do? They opened 10 different fulfillment warehouses and stacked them with a bunch of DVDs, which was expensive, thinking if we have 10

different facilities around the nation, I can get anyone a DVD within 48 hours, sort of prime before there was prime. And then when he correctly anticipated the massive explosion in broadband and bandwidth, he said, okay, now it's time to deliver, actually deliver it via broadband, to deliver it digitally. And then was able to create such a vision for the company that he was able to get incredibly cheap capital or access cheap capital and pull the future forward and make unprecedented investments in content that no one else could keep up with, right? No matter what anyone was spending on original programming, they were spending more. And then what else did he do that was visionary? He said, well, rather than just playing Disney movies or Marvel films or the latest movie,

we're going to go vertical and do a great job. And they launched House of Cards, which again, other than HBO, no one else was doing that. Now, where are they now? I would argue they're sort of on a hamster wheel and they're going to move towards more of an artisanal positioning. And rather than green lighting, whatever it is, 600 original scripted programs or movies every year, they're going to try and go to 300 or 400 because I think the whole space has become unsustainable. It's so overinvested. But their stock's back up,

and Reed has never been afraid to make just enormous bets. And international programming, Squid Games, Money Heist, building a 10,000-person content creation facility in Madrid. I mean, fucking vision. Vision with a side of vision and give me a twist of vision. This is just, this guy has been incredible. Also, one of the stupidest moves the dog has ever made. In about 2011, I bought $400,000, which is a lot of money for me, with a Netflix stock because I love Netflix. The stock was at 90. It went to 80. It was the end of December. So I sold to take the tax loss. I never bought back. And on a risk

adjusted or a split adjusted basis, I think it's up like 70 fold. So 70 times 400,000, 28 million. The dog is in his Gulfstream, except he's not. He's in fucking jet blue because I sold the stock to capture the tax loss. So anyways, but I'm not bitter. Anyway, don't know how we got here. This guy, this guy, as in Reed Hastings, has been nothing short of visionary. The co-CEO thing, we'll see if it endures. They brought in another co-CEO, but redundancy is incredibly important in management and reflects well on both of them that they got along so well.

Take a victory lap, my friend. First ballot Hall of Famer for business executives that have changed the world. First word, Reed. Second word, Hastings. We'll be right back for our conversation with Tim Wu. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. I just don't get it. Just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out? Hey, y'all. I'm John Flynn Hill, and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox called Explain It To Me. Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own.

We'll investigate and call you back to tell you what we found. We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It To Me, presented by Klaviyo. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Professor Tim Wu from Columbia Law School, who previously served as a leading member of President Biden's Antitrust Committee. Scott, it's good to see you again. It's good to see you. So we'll bust right into it here. Where does this podcast find you? Back at Columbia University. You recently left your position on Biden's Antitrust Committee. Upon your departure, you tweeted, we did more than I thought possible over the last two years to set a new course in antitrust and economic policies. So let's start there. Walk us through where the U.S. stands in terms of antitrust regulation.

You know, that's a great question. You know, we came in to office facing basically a 40-year trajectory where we'd seen antitrust law retreat to a very sidelined role, I'd say. And it was our ambition from the beginning to try to reboot, rejuvenate American antitrust. As listeners probably know, we appointed Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, Jonathan Cantor to the Justice Department, and got the president himself involved in antitrust policy by creating something called the White House Competition Council. So, you know, it takes a long time to move things in government. I wouldn't say this is a two-year project, but I think we set the foundation and started doing the work to restore antitrust to the place it played in the American economy historically

and where it was in a constant role in the American economic picture. It feels as if the complexion has changed or the vibe or the gestalt, and there's a general accepted view that kind of the big guys are going to have a much tougher time acquiring companies. But I have a difficult time pointing to specific instances where it feels like we've gone on offense, like there hasn't been any breakups. What examples would you point to of how other than, you know, the mood that things have changed tangibly across our business ecosystem? Well, first, I'd say, first of all, the mood does matter in the sense that if the criminal law is working, people don't try to rob banks, just a big example. But in terms of more tangible stuff, this surprisingly sometimes goes under the radar, but we have two major cases ongoing against big tech companies, Facebook and Google cases, especially the Facebook case.

The most obvious remedy would happenTC brought a case against Facebook trying to acquire within Unlimited, which is a metaverse kind of case. And one of the ideas of that case was to set a sort of rule, which is, unlike in mobile, we're not going to let the dominant company begin to buy up all its competitors in the space before things get started. You can't just buy yourself into dominance. Now, that case hasn't gotten to trial yet, but I think it sends an important signal. Outside of tech, and I know this is maybe more focused on tech, but we had big victories in areas like insurance. We had a big missile at the edge of tech. We had an effort to buy the last independent missile rocket company that was blocked.

So there's been, frankly, a winning streak of block mergers. There was the big NVIDIA merger that was blocked, which was, I think, a $40 billion merger. So we actually, with one exception, haven't lost any merger cases and have challenged and seen abandoned, I don't know, half a dozen big mergers and challenged half a dozen more. So I think if you get into the details, you'll see that there's a changed landscape. And I think you talk to people in this area, you know, the idea of Facebook buying TikTok right now just seems like, well, that's not going to work. So that seems like a lot of eyes are on Microsoft and Activision.

Give us your view of that proposed tie-up and why you think it's good or a bad idea and how you would handicap it being the case, being successful successful trying to block the acquisition? That puts me in a slightly tough position only because in the White House, we kept a distance from all those specific merger decisions. And so I just want to make it clear that the White House did not tell the FTC to block the merger or not block the merger. So I just want to make it clear that the White House did not tell the FTC to block the merger or not block the merger. So I just want to make that entirely understood.

I think the challenge is consistent with an aggressive take on mergers. I want to suggest in particular, this is a little inside baseball, but Microsoft is, in many ways, a friendly and helpful partner to government. They spend a lot of time building their relationships with the executive branch and the enforcement agencies. And so I think one of the things that's significant about the case is it suggests that there's no nice guy exception to the antitrust laws. It's tempting. You know, everybody likes Brad Smith, for example. He helps the government, particularly with overseas work. But there is no nice guy exception. And the Federal Trade Commission, you know, sent that signal with that case. And there's a general, or I'll put forward a number of theses

and you tell me where I've got it right or wrong, given that you've sort of had a front row, not even a front row seat, you've been on the, you've been kind of on the hardwood playing this game. My sense is that Washington is outgunned. Senator Klobuchar proposes antitrust regulation, and a group of senators who take money from big tech or lobbyists are presented with almost an irresistible proposition. We'll give you a lot of money, and generally speaking, the candidate that raises the most money gets reelected. And all you have to do is nothing. Just ask thoughtful questions, concerns, and water down this bill until it's almost toothless. It's almost meaningless. Is Washington outgunned? I think it's a serious concern. You know, we're never in the federal government literally outgunned because we have the guns. That's right. We have tanks.

But the weaknesses of Congress can be and are well exploited. I think your diagnosis is essentially correct. The public obviously supported some kind of greater legislative answers to the power of big tech. Senator Klobuchar, who's no wild-eyed radical, proposed a bill that set basic ground rules for how you treat competitors. That Grassley, Republican, supporting it. All the stuff that you think in a democracy would make a law pass was there. It's different even than I would say the carrot, which you suggested. There was also a stick. One of the things that lobbyists for the tech industry made clear was that people who supported the bill and were in contested districts would see paid advertisements appearing against them

on behalf of their opponent without regard to content, they would just be there. Not only would the money be there, but there would be, they would just, and in fact, they ran some of these ads. And so you would just have ads not saying anything about tech, but being like, you know, you're soft on crime, whatever, whatever they want. They would just give money, people to run ads against you. And, you know, to some degree, this worked. You know, we didn't see action, as you suggested. I'll also add, there was a moment where, in fact, it could have happened the very end of the year in the omnibus legislation. The Republican Party can say whatever they want about their hostility to big tech or concerns, but they had the opportunity to make the Klobuchar

Grassley bill law. Mitch McConnell individually rejected it. I don't think this has been fully discussed, but we watched this happen in leadership conference. So in a sense, it is not an even playing field in Congress. Executive branch is a different story. I think that's part of why we appointed aggressive officials. It's part of why we bring all these cases. But the legislative picture is pretty skewed, as you suggested. So what we had hoped, or those of us who are kind of pro-antitrust, what we had hoped we'd achieve here in the U.S., is it possible that that will happen but in the EU who register a lot of the downside but a fraction of the upside of big tech? Is that, will they be out in front of us and perhaps start doing what we had hoped we would do? I think the answer is yes. I think that they have already enacted legislation

similar to what Klobuchar and Grassley were trying to do. You know, how that pans out, one of the big questions I think to watch over the next year is what the tech companies do in reaction to European legislation. And do they adopt the same stuff for the United States? You know, for example, Apple, under European law, needs to open itself up to other app stores. You know, do they make that broadly available?

Is it only going to be in Europe? So forth. Those are, I think, the big questions, whether in some sense we end up with Europe's laws being complied with in the United States. And when I heard about you going, I was just so excited because I feel as if an academic who does great work, which you've done, who gets kind of plucked and asked to go advise the president. It's sort of, you're throwing a football through a tire and the jets show up and say, hey, how'd you like to come start? It's just, I mean, I was really excited when you got this appointment. I'm curious, you know, there the last couple years, what were the biggest surprises to the upside and to the downside around your role? So here's what I suggest. The biggest upside, I think, or positive surprise, was that the president was into this stuff.

You know, President Biden is not, you know, interested in how we're going to modify the standards under Section 7, the Clayton Act or whatever. But he does have a sense that something is really wrong and is willing to think bigger, not incrementally, not like, can we just tinker at the margins? So that was, I think, the biggest upside. He personally sees the importance of antitrust as something that's going to help out workers as well as consumers. And I think that's important as well as small tech and competitors. And so that was a big positive upside. Biggest downside, we already got to it. I came in already quite cynical about Congress and left like twice as cynical. The way the framework is, the way the constitution is designed,

Congress has a major role in government, supposed to do all this stuff, but we're kind of like a person who's had a stroke. Part of the brain isn't working and you have to figure out what we can do about that because Congress constantly fails to meet even the most basic challenges. I mean, just an example, like we had legislation design, you know, give children more privacy protections, let's say, that probably supported by 90% of the American public. Every senator could not get it to a vote because of the various random problems that Congress creates for itself. Child protection stuff, privacy, tech antitrust. They just are not able to do what the American people want.

In addition to big tech, what industries do you think have kind of under the radar managed to develop so much concentration that it's been bad for the economy, bad for consumers? Yeah, that's a great question. Some of them are in plain sight. A lot of time, people think the White House, maybe I spent all my time thinking about tech industry, but I would say on a day-to-day basis, I was thinking about the railroads. We have a huge problem in railroads. We've managed to allow the railroad industry to become monopolized for most of the country. And they are delivering abysmal performance that isn't just moving consumer prices up. It's killing a lot of bigger, medium-sized businesses, chemical industry, fertilizer industry. Other industries are hurt by the fact that the railroads don't feel the need to skip any kind of schedule.

But, you know, if they find it profitable to cut a route, they just cut it. So we have problems in rail. We have problems in ocean shipping. This all dovetails with supply chain problems that you've seen. Problems in meat processing. We even had problems with baby formula. It turned out there was just a tiny number of companies making that stuff, and then one production plant went under.

Suddenly, the shelves were barren. So I think one thing we learned, particularly during the supply chain crisis, is that if you depend on one or two companies to make everything in an industry, they're very vulnerable. You see, it's the same thing in software. If you have just one huge platform, like remember when it was only Windows and one virus would take down everything. You have the same thing in every industry. It's one of the reasons, actually, National Defense, one of the reasons we wanted to block some of these missile mergers. It's a little risky,

particularly in a time when Russia's invading other countries and China is spending more on its military to say, okay, we're going to have like one company that makes all of the missiles in the United States. And, you know, what if they blow it? What if they make a mistake? So, yeah, I think diversification of supply chain, resilience, that's the thing that kind of occurred to us, really has to happen.

And like big tech is something probably your listeners and a lot of people think of as the big industry, but actually things are much worse in areas like the defense industrial base. Seeds is another area, rail and ocean shipping. And those things are not necessarily the sexiest of industries. Some people like railroads, but they're not the sexiest like recent industries. But in terms of their overall economic significance, they're greater. So when I think of an industry, from a consumer standpoint, generally speaking, people love Amazon. They love Netflix. They feel, generally speaking, most people might say they're worried about Instagram, but they're on it all day. The industry that just continues to raise prices faster than inflation and yet has terrible outcomes or one in five consumers are happy with it is U.S. healthcare.

What role, if any, does the concentration of power and monopoly abuse play in what could be best described as an industry that is expensive but bad? job was starting the task of trying to rethink and revitalize the healthcare industry, including drug prices, which get the most press. But the entire U.S. healthcare system is extraordinarily uncompetitive, underproductive, in many cases, insulated with the help of government. One area we tried to make progress on is hospital mergers. I cannot tell you the studies of hospital consolidation are completely damning. The usual consequences is prices go up and the care measured by mortality rates goes down in other words more people die and it costs more after hospitals merge and we uh we stop stop one or two i can't remember um and we're trying to reverse the clock but a huge amount of damage has been done and that is the, like one of the greatest challenges facing the U.S. economy.

You know, and the absurdities are up and down the chain. This is another example. You're talking about what's the problem when Congress is unable to do things. You know, people in the 90s were like, we need to start working on health care reform or we're never going to get anywhere. Of course, we have the Affordable Care Act. But, you know, kind of cleaning up this business, it's it's I hate to say this. It's a depressing prospect.

But there is hope. We did put HHS in our competition council. And, you know, it's a long range project to try and improve performance of healthcare in this country. We'll be right back. Hello, I'm Esther Perel, psychotherapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin, which delves into the multiple layers of relationships, mostly romantic. But in this special series, I focus on our relationships with our colleagues, business partners, and managers. Listen in as I talk to co-workers facing their own challenges

with one another and get the real work done. Tune into How's Work, a special series from Where Should We Begin, sponsored by Klaviyo. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts.

When you left your White House position, you told the New York Times that there's a time when the burden on family is too much. And I hear in your voice, Tim, and tell me if I'm, I don't know, misinterpreting, but like a lot of people I know who go to Washington who aren't professional politicians, they come out, they come away, just the word I would use is just exhausted, just exhausted by not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. Your thoughts, why are you deciding to step down now? What impact to the extent you're willing to talk about it? Has it had on your family and your own kind of well-being, if you will? I would think so.

Now I'm nervous to think what my voice sounds like. That's all right. I think you're right. It is, particularly in the White House, an unsustainable lifestyle for many people. And I feel just personally, I noticed that I've been sleeping since I've been out about 10 hours every night and not waking up in the middle of the night worrying about something I forgot to write to the defense department or whatever it is. And I don't know if it could be better. It's a privilege to be

in that position. There's people who have obviously jobs that are even more demanding, but there's just something about the pace, the intensity, the potential for errors, the struggle, the hierarchy. It's a very hierarchical place. Most hierarchical place I've ever worked. And, you know, stupid things happen that I feel very strongly about, and I think that's stressful. So, you know, I think it's had a...

I hope to get my... I feel like my health did suffer during it. I used to play a lot of hockey and surf and race sailboats, and I look forward to actually being an active person again. In 2014, you ran for lieutenant governor of New York. Does this experience, these last two years in the White House, make you less or more likely to run for office in the future? I ran against Kathy Hochul, in fact, as I recall, who's our current governor. As they always say, no current plans. I mean, one thing I'll say, especially in near term, was that the toll on family, especially young children, was very clear to me. And I don't think anything to me is more important than my family. And so I would be very wary of any undertaking that would damage our family.

So maybe I'll just leave it there. Other than to say that we do need good people in elected offices. I mean, that's obvious. And the ones who have deeper policy expertise make a major difference because of what they know, what they do. I mean, Amy Klobuchar is a good example, or Elizabeth Warren. They know stuff deeply. They're not just transactional. And they therefore have a sort of titanic influence, at least when Congress decides to do stuff.

What advice would you give, so a husband and a father, what advice would you give to other husbands and fathers around how to manage those relationships as best you can when you're in such an intense hand-to-hand combat environment? That is a good question. And I don't always think I did the exact best job. I think if I would think it over again, that I would try to set some hard lines on things like vacation or major... that was tough to not take any family vacations for such a long time. And I retrospect think the world could have gone without me for X period of time. You know what I mean? People become obsessed with the idea that they're essential to this process and that, but you know, actually government doesn't go that quickly and

you come back and people can tell you what happened. So I wish I'd in some way set some harder lines or took vacations. Technically, my job had no vacation time allocated to it. So that was a problem, but I should have done that. I think it is, I mean, this is a challenge in our times that transcends my job. I wonder sometimes if we set up jobs to be compatible with family at all. And, you know, it's not limited to White House jobs. And academia is more reasonable, I think. And I think this was me seeing what a lot of Americans are seeing, which is we've created a situation which is slightly insane. Not to mention the fact that 50 years ago, only half the population was working or less. And now we have the whole, obviously, I'm not trying to suggest that women shouldn't be in the workforce, but the fact we have everyone in the workforce is its own kind of insanity. And what's on the horizon for you?

One, three, five years out, what are you hoping to do? Just back into teaching and writing? I feel like I need to write another book. I feel a book needs to be a manual or a distillation of, uh, of, of the vision, uh, that I have. I think others have for an American economy that is, as I said earlier, both that land of opportunity, uh, but also at some fundamental level fair and feels, uh, right to people and has a structure that works. I think it's easy right now to find a reference work for pure laissez-faire capitalism,

pick up Milton Friedman or whatever you want, or even before then. I also think it's easy to find a manual for communism or socialism, and even plausible to find something for like sort of slightly managed uh capitalism but something that has a vision of a endlessly uh vibrant economy but that is more of a human scale and that leads to a widespread broad prosperity i don't know what the manual is for that. The works of Louis Brandeis are part of it, but I feel like I want to write that book. I promise this is the last question.

Advice to your 25-year-old self? I would advise that 20- or 5-year-old self to have children a little bit earlier. I think I waited a little too long, honestly. And that's a little strange, but it's hard to fully understand the fact that your preferences may change by things that you do in your life. And so the preferences you have then may not be the preferences for your whole life. And trying to think that through is very hard because we sort of assume, well, who I am now is who I will be. It's hard to think about what my future self will want and have. Still, my 25-year-old self would have said, get lost, man. Boring. I got stuff I got to do. I need to

see the whole world. So that's what I'd say. Yeah, that's what our kids tell us, right? Yep. Tim Wu is the Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science, and Technology at Columbia University. He's also the author of several books, including his latest, The Curse of Bigness, Antitrust, and the New Gilded Age.

Professor Wu most recently completed his tenure as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy on the National Economic Council. He joins us from Columbia University. Professor Wu, I find it heartening that the U.S. government continues to identify, attract, and utilize smart people and good people such as yourself. Really appreciate your service. Thank you. That's kind. Algebra of Happiness Algebra of Happiness

I've had a bad week, and it's okay to have bad weeks. It's okay to be down. It's okay to give yourself license to be a little down. And I think what's important when you are down is to, one, try and understand what's affecting you. And sometimes you can't identify. And what that usually means is it's probably something chemical or hormonal and it'll pass. And that's kind of the second thing is that it almost always passes. And recognizing that you

will feel better again. I've been down actually the last few weeks for a few reasons. One, I'm living in London and, spoiler alert, the weather fucking sucks here. It is cold and damp and it's had a real impact on my mood. I think specifically it starts to get dark at about 3.30 here. I'm living in a home that we're renovating and I just don't like my living situation. But more than anything, my son, my oldest son is at boarding school. And it's just very sad and very hard for me. I come home and my oldest is not there. And I wasn't ready for it. This was kind of sold to me as he would leave, he'd be home on Fridays and stay till Monday morning. And the reality is because of the logistics of the school, he's kind of home Saturday

noon or afternoon, and then he leaves Sunday afternoon. So he's home for 24 hours, and then because of work and some things, I've gone for a couple weeks at a time without seeing my son. And I thought, okay, here I am, you know, in a dark place in a home I don't like, and kind of the thing that gives me the most joy, my sons, one of them is gone. And then I get depressed and down and think about that's it, he's gone, college, and I just wasn't ready for it. And there is no, you know, I'd say the lesson here is one, when I do get down, I give myself license to be down. Being down helps inform what is really important to you. It's important to me, the weather's important, being in a nice

home is important, and I'm blessed that I'm usually in a nice home. And also just the proximity to my sons is hugely important to me. And it's not like these are things I didn't know, but it helps me appreciate them when I have them. And also the recognition that this too shall pass. That I'm being more deliberate about figuring, looking at my calendar and figuring out ways that I can spend more time with my sons and ensuring that when they have breaks, that we're going to do really awesome stuff together. I'm planning Premier League football games with them. I'm trying to do a better job of staying in touch with my oldest over his mediums, specifically WhatsApp, and sending them memes and back and forth to try and engage them,

which makes me feel a little bit better. But these are all a function of my blessings, and these are things that I can fix. Things will get better. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin, Claire Miller, and Drew Burrows. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to The Property Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.

I'm not bitter. Blue tarot chips and those Kate Spade uniforms kind of compensate and leather seats. Leather seats. Oh Oh yeah. That's better than having my own Gulfstream. Can you imagine how drop dead sexy I would be with a Gulfstream? Oh, he's angry, kind of weird looking, but he has a Gulfstream. Hello ladies. But no, I'm just weird and angry and flying. But I am mosaic. I'm mosaic on JetBlue. That's a good opener on a bar. Hey, I'm Mosaic. How about you? What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers

to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. Did you know that almost 90% of executives see potential for growth from digital disruption? With 37% seeing significant or extremely high positive impact on revenue growth. In Alex Partners' 2024 Digital Disruption Report, you can learn the best path to turning that disruption into growth for your business. With a focus on clarity, direction, and effective implementation, Alex Partners provides essential support when decisive leadership is crucial. You can discover insights like these by reading Alex Partners' latest technology industry insights, available at www.alexpartners.com slash Vox. That's www.alexpartners.com slash V-O-X. In the face

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