The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - No Mercy / No Malice: Text-ure

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

As read by George Hahn. Follow George on Twitter, @georgehahn. https://www.profgalloway.com/text-ure/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. This week, we learned that the wealthiest man in the world and his acolytes are just as unsophisticated, obtuse, and petty as the rest of us. Texture, as read by George Hahn. Every medium has its own behavioral norms and nuances. Few are more casual and authentic than texting. There's a feeling of intimacy and immediacy as a smaller circle has access. Most people read all their texts, while few read all their email,

and almost nobody opens all their physical mail. Many of us no longer even bother to listen to our voicemail messages, and you out yourself as old when you gasp, call your kids. One of the reasons we relish the live interview and testimony under oath is that they inspire real moments, scarce in a world where communications departments preview, starch, and sanitize anything people of power say. So when some of Elon's text messages became public during the discovery process in Twitter vs. Musk, it offered us a glimpse into the bowels of tech power. Bowels is the correct metaphor. Some observations regarding these texts and what they illuminate about the texture of the tech community's upper caste. The texts are between Elon and some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world, including Larry Ellison, Joe Rogan, Sam Bankman-Fried,

Satya Nadella, and Jack Dorsey. The logic, prose, and general discourse they reveal are astoundingly unastounding. The wealthiest man in the world and his acolytes are, like the rest of us, unsophisticated, obtuse, and petty. Maybe more so. We thought billionaires were playing 3D chess while we played checkers. Turns out, they're playing the same game, but on a more expensive board.

They fumble with their computers. Jack Dorsey. We're on hangout whenever you're ready. No rush. Just working on refining dock. Elon reacts with a heart, then writes, It's asking me for a Google account login. They lean on others to get jobs for their kids.

No surprise. From Elon, Please send me anyone who actually writes good software. Steve Jurvetson. Okay. No management. Good coders. From Elon. Please send me anyone who actually writes good software. Steve Jurvetson. Okay. No management. Good coders. Got it.

Elon. Yes. Twitter is a software company. Or should be. Steve. Yes, my son at Reddit and some other young people come to mind. No matter how rich, they always could use more. Money. how rich, they always could use more money.

Will McCaskill. Hey, I saw your poll on Twitter about Twitter and free speech. I'm not sure if this is what's on your mind, but my collaborator, Sam Bankman-Fried, has for a while been potentially interested in purchasing it and then making it better for the world. If you want to talk with him about a possible joint effort in that direction, his number is blank. And he's on signal. Elon. Does he have huge amounts of money? Where they differ, there's clearly a pecking order, a social hierarchy. And as far as I can tell, among this circle, the currency of deference

is currency. Specifically, the more money you have, the greater the degree of sycophantry. The oculus and text to Elon from his, quote, friends, invite the same sensation, nausea. Text from Mark Merrill. You are the hero Gotham needs. Hell effing yes. Elon hearts the message. From Antonio Gracias. I am 100% with you, Elon. To the fucking mattresses no matter what.

This is a principle we need to fucking defend with our lives or we are lost to the darkness. From Joe Lonsdale. I love your Twitter algorithm should be open source tweet. I'm actually speaking to 100 members of Congress tomorrow at the GOP policy retreat, and this is one of the ideas I'm pushing for reigning in crazy big tech. How can I cite you so I'll sound less crazy myself? Smile emoji. Our public squares need to not have arbitrary sketchy censorship. And everyone struggles with autocorrect. From Jason Calacanis. And you know I'm ride or die, brother.

I'd jump on a grande for you. Elon hearts the message. What I find most remarkable about these texts isn't Elon. He comes off mostly okay, in my view. It's the people around him. It appears our idolatry of innovators has seeped into the minds of the uber-wealthy, sickening them with an uncontrollable tendency to fillet the cool kid for a chance to sit at his table in the cafeteria. Quote, I would jump on a grenade for you, end quote.

If anyone ever tells you this, and they're not literally in battle with you, it means they're a fan, not a friend. The undoing of many powerful people is that they enter a hermetically sealed bubble of fake friends. Enablers, not people concerned with their well-being. When the Elon Twitter debacle started this spring, I wrote a post about power. My thesis, power, unchecked, is a psychological intoxicant. Okay, this isn't so much a thesis as it's scientifically proven.

Research shows power causes us to downplay potential risk, magnify potential rewards, and act more precipitously on our instincts. In other words, you lose your ability to self-regulate. You need others to do it for you. You'd hope the richest person in the world would assemble a circle of advisors who push back when appropriate, i.e. not yes-men. But Elon's history of reckless, childish behavior and these texts prove there is no group or individual who is a truth-teller. In the whole 151-page document,

I found, no joke, just one instance of pushback. It came from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who, in response to Elon's unhelpful is Twitter dying tweet, let Elon know what he thought. It was unhelpful. Elon's response? A childish, terse insult. From Parag.

You are free to tweet is Twitter dying or anything else about Twitter. A childish, terse insult. From Parag. on the level of internal distraction right now and how it's hurting our ability to do work. I hope the AMA will help people get people to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you. And I'd like the company to get to a place where we are resilient and don't get distracted. But we aren't there right now. Elon. What did you get done this week? Elon again.

I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Elon again. We'll make an offer to take Twitter private. The texts are mostly unremarkable. There are some, however, that do remind us the super rich are different. Specifically, the discussions of possible equity investments from crypto billionaire Sam Bankman Freed, quote, does he have huge amounts of money, end quote, and this exchange with Larry Ellison. From Elon, any interest in participating in the Twitter deal? Larry Ellison, yes, of course, thumbs up emoji. Elon, cool,ly what dollar size?

Not holding you to anything, but the deal is oversubscribed, so I have to reduce or kick out some participants. Larry. A billion, or whatever you recommend. It's common knowledge that Ellison, who co-founded Oracle, a company worth more than $175 billion is rich. Less clear is that he has enough money to offer a billion dollars over a text. I mean, who hasn't had a friend offer them $1 billion in a text?

Ellison offered 8,000 times the median net worth of an average American, enough to buy more than 3,000 Ferraris or the Chicago Blackhawks, as if he was picking up a latte. I believe it's important to have incredibly successful people who are exponentially wealthier than the rest of us. It's a bedrock principle of capitalism, creating an incentive structure that inspires productivity and prosperity. However, when people are offering billions over text to help out with another billionaire's vanity project in the same nation where one in five children live in food-insecure homes, then isn't America a bit fucked up?

Later on, Elon's Morgan Stanley banker, Michael Grimes, tells him that Bankman Freed, a major investor in Web3 Ventures, can invest $5 billion in the deal. Quote, could do $5 billion if everything VisionLock believes in your mission. End quote. In response, Elon dislikes the message. $5 billion is on the line, and in Elon's world, it doesn't merit a worded response. For context, five billion dollars is more than the GDP of many small nations, twice the budget of the SEC, and more than five times the budget of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

If, after hearing this, you're increasingly concerned about income inequality, well, trust your instincts. As an entrepreneur, academic, and investor, I've had the opportunity to develop professional and personal relationships with people who make a modest living, rich people, and several billionaires. My observation is that the rich are different. On average, they're more intelligent and harder working than your average citizen. There is a cartoon of rich people, like Monty Burns from The Simpsons, and it's just that, a cartoon. Wealthy people usually demonstrate character and know how to foster allies. Having people who want you to win is key to success. But I have never registered a difference in talent or intellect between the

wealthy and the uber-wealthy. Yet this is the virus that infects the tech elite, conflating talent with luck. Going from millions to hundreds of millions or billions is less a function of incremental intelligence and more a function of timing. Proof? Elon's text record. Any man who can inspire the electrification of the auto industry and land two rockets on barges concurrently deserves the label genius. Your genius is showing. But his mega-billions flow from a well-regulated capital market, a web of enforceable contracts, the diligent labor of thousands of workers,

and, not least, the billions of dollars in government subsidies, including a timely $465 million Department of Energy loan that enabled Tesla to produce the Model S. So, is Mr. Musk a genius or an impressive man whose skills were set against a unique moment and place in time? The answer is likely yes. Something else we learned from Elon's texts? He has no clue how to fix Twitter. For two weeks in April, he was all in on blockchain Twitter, brainstorming about Dogecoin payments for tweets with his brother, i.e. the opposite of free speech, paid speech. Literally, as he was telling Twitter's board he was going to make a hostile tender offer. Spoiler alert, Kimball loved it.

By May, he was over crypto and not interested in a, quote, laborious blockchain debate, end quote. Mood. At one point, Elon asked the Twitter CEO for, quote, an update from the Twitter engineering team so that my suggestions are less dumb, end quote. The record does not reflect whether he got that meeting. Neither does it reflect any actual plan for fixing Twitter. And this is the problem with the entire Elon misadventure. He's a child grown old, given all the toys but no boundaries, nobody to tell him no. His army of yes-men encourages his most facile thoughts, and the genius he and we have

been blessed with is diminished by shitposts and errant behavior. I will give the titans of the universe credit for one thing, a sense of humor. This text from Brett Taylor. Sounds good. I'm going to be a bit early because my plane is landing earlier, but free all evening so we can start whenever you get there and Parag and I can catch up in the meantime. Further from Brett Taylor. This wins for the weirdest place I've had a meeting recently. I think they were looking for an Airbnb near the airport and there are tractors and donkeys. Shrug emoji. From Elon. Awesome. Maybe Airbnb's algorithm thinks you love tractors and donkeys. Who doesn't? On my way. There in about 15 minutes. Brett. And abandoned trucks, in case we want to start catering business after we meet. Elon. Sounds like a post-apocalyptic movie set.

Brett. Basically, yes. Psychosis sets in when people lose touch with reality. Elon's atmosphere is so thick with people reinforcing that his every move is laudable or genius, he's become a pathological liar who believes we believe him. The latest batch of lies? He's canceled his deposition earlier this week on 24 hours notice. His reason? Risk of COVID exposure. A guy who refused to close his Alameda plant as the pandemic was raging under a closure order from the health department couldn't sit for a deposition because of his fear of the virus. His psychosis is fed by the media, which this week ran millions of versions of, quote, Musk to close Twitter deal, end quote. No, he said he intends to close the Twitter deal, which means nothing.

In the same letter, he asks for, in exchange, a suspension of the trial and that Twitter agrees to a financing contingency. In sum, he's lying, engaging in further delay and obfuscation and attempting to set a pretext to, again, walk away from the deal. One group that appears to get Elon? Wachtell Lipton, Twitter's counsel. They've said no. Every day, every one of us needs to ask ourselves an important question. Who keeps it real for me?

Who will push back? Who will tell me I'm wrong? Who will save me from myself and the psychosis that's led to so many successful people's fall from grace? Elon Musk doesn't need anybody to jump on a grenade for him, but to tell him to stop throwing grenades, as it's only a matter of time before one detonates in his hand. Life is so rich. 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.