Hey, everybody, Welcome back to the all in podcast. Besties have reunited. It's been a bestie summer. Chamot, How are you doing? You're back in America. Yes. I'm back in America. Back in America. Feels great. Good summer, Yes. Had any summer summer? I had seven weeks in Italy. It was really incredible. What is the vibe in Italy? Post pandemic. Obviously they had the roughest off any nation, I think, except for China and Wuhan with well, with cover 19. How how is the psyche there? No, it's incredible because they're I mean, they're so resilient. They basically decided that they don't ever want to go through it again. So everybody wore a mask and people socially distance. There's a lots of dinners outside. No, restaurants were really seating people indoors. You'd walk into a store and you have tow puts. Um, you know, Purell on your hands and wear a mask. And, uh, there was like, you know, 40 50 cases a day, and then I I keep looking at the news. When I was there, 60,000 day here I was

. It was just really It was sad. And then on top of that, to see the riots, the fires. I mean, there's a you know, it's been a disturbing summer here. Uh, how are you doing, David Sacks. You're back in San Francisco, and you've got to spend a little bit of time in an undisclosed location, as we know from the last couple episodes of the podcast. How is San Francisco right now? How has your bestie summer been? It's been great. Um, yeah, I was. I guess I can now disclose that my undisclosed location was Was Mexico specifically Kabo? And that was a great place to be for a couple of months. Yeah, exactly. But actually, um, it was great. It was a great place to be in the early stage of the pandemic because everyone was wearing masks, you know, they did take it really seriously. And there were very few cases and seemed like it was under control, at least in the area. I was. And then, um, you know, we came back toe San Francisco for school for

for the kids school, which, um, you know, I'm not sure we have to be here, but But that zero kids school actually open. Are they going to school or they keep pushing it out two weeks like my kids are. Yeah, well, they're not going in person yet, but I think they keep trying to figure out when they're going to start doing that. So it's all zoom based right now. Yeah. Which means no learning, right? I mean, do you think these kids were actually learning on Zoom? Or do you think it's just a little bit? I mean, a little bit? I think it zits difficult. Yeah, we gave up on it. And Free burger, you're there. I'm here. The area. How's your bestie summer Been during this crazy time? I've been in the Bay Area. I've been, um, crossing all all seven layers of Dante's Inferno here in California, moving from the outer layer of cove it to the middle layer of California's proposed wealth tax to the inner layers of extreme heat smoke and the absolute

central layer of pain. More recently, my three year old daughter decided 34 nights ago to not sleep anymore. So yeah, we've been living living the life. It's been glorious. And, you know, I wear a mask now for cove it, and then I wear another mask on top of that mask for the smoke. So we're just living the California dream. What my parents immigrated here for, you know, paradise. Well, I guess that's a good place to start. And just if anybody cares, I spent a great time. I guess nobody cares. E My best summer was with Jason was a You know, I've been lonely and I tweeted I'm lonely and I got about 50 phone calls from people who are like, I can't imagine Jake Al being sad. But I actually had to talk with my wife and I said, What are the symptoms of depression? Because I think I might have depression and I went through and I was like, I don't have depression. I'm just I have great empathy for all the people suffering

and, you know, just being isolated. You guys know me very well better than anybody. Like I like to talk to people, and it's been really difficult for me to I'll be totally candid to be isolated like this, and the podcast is great. And doing this podcast is great. But, man, I missed people. I just missed the What are the symptoms of your depression just before yourself? e. I was I was feeling like, just sad about watching the riots and watch people shoot each other and then watching you know, the wildfires, watching people die unnecessarily and then watching the madness for the election. It was just all becoming like I wouldn't say overwhelming, but it just made me very sad that, you know, so many people can't go back to work and then the stock markets ripping. And it's it's a very I don't know how you guys feel, but it feels very surreal, right, because in our world, and I don't know how your portfolios and investments are doing, you know a lot of the company's we've invested in as angel. Investors

are doing just wonderfully, and we're investing more than ever. But then you turn on the television. It's like the doom scrolling is crazy. So I had to just stop doom scrolling. I think that was the key thing to Meth was just looking at Twitter is that the trending topics is so depressing and and just so overwhelming at times that I took three days off this weekend and went camping and I literally didn't pull up Twitter and I felt much better. So I think it's really Twitter related, like just opening up the trending topics. I don't know if you did that on your holiday in Italy, but it really is a quick way to get depressed. The best thing is that I was using it in a different time zone, and so I was basically out of the flow. And it makes a huge difference because then you're not in the emotional turmoil of people's immediate reaction, and so you can just kind of move on. And then also, I just had a really fun summer because I really tried to detach and not use my phone. I had, you know, I kept my

meetings to a few hours a day and then otherwise I was doing things you want to know. You wanna wanna know my phone call to Jakle. It's like, Hey, Jake, ally I saw on Twitter that you're sad and lonely. It's like, yeah, yeah, it's like, Are you suicidal like No. Okay, goodbye. I'm too much of an e judgment. Narcisse has never considered that I but I do. I do want to thank you, David, for having me down to Cabo and We got to have some good time to watch some good movies. Gladiator extended cut was great. Uh, some other movies that we watch could get us canceled so we won't admit that we watched history of the world or any other Mel Brooks movies. But we had a good time, played a couple of rounds of golf, and that was good times. But let's talk about California because I think, you know, we're all residents currently of California. But let me just put it out there. How many people on the call are considering leaving California? Anybody? Is that going through anybody's mind right now is just going through my, um for

Well, it's not for me. Um, but I think that California is sort of emblematic of what could happen if you actually have, um, you know, the legislative bodies. Plus, you know, the the top sort of political leader up and down on one ticket. I mean, you know, you you basically have, like, massive, rife incompetence, and it's been compound. Did you never. I mean, you know, people who are Democrats would have said, Oh, the best thing that can happen for Democrats is if you have, you know, local cities plus an assembly plus the state Senate plus the governor. As a Democrat, Republicans would have said the same thing for Republicans. But as it turns out, uh, it basically creates the worst outcomes. And so instead, what you need is a little diversity of ideas and a little push and pull. But California is like a bunch of clowns in a clown car right now. It's a joke, but I'm not gonna move now. Part

of it. I was not gonna move, is I? You know, my taxes I've set up in such a way. We're California can't get access to most of my assets anyway, So, you know, they compound sent? Yeah, David, Huh? Sacks. How are you feeling about California right now? And just the craziness in San Francisco? The homelessness problem in San Francisco has become acute during this. It's it's really a well task on top of it, and it za disaster. It's a disaster. I mean, I'm not I'm not leaving or anything, but it's certainly a topic of conversation has come up a lot, and I do know people who have left. Um I know a couple of people who you know, prominent people and the venture community who have recently moved to Austin. And it's a horrible time for the city and state. Be proposing all these new taxes as just take one example, because people already realizing that because of Cove it and

this new sort of work from home and on zoom business culture, where you can kind of work from anywhere that people are realizing they don't need to be in San Francisco or in Silicon Valley, um, or to be, you know, in the technology industry. And so at precisely the time that people were reevaluating where they wanted to be, realizing that that could be anywhere California is now, you know, proposing to massively increase the cost of being here. Eso ItT's horrible timing. And then, you know, you do have this, uh, sort of seemingly chronic issue in San Francisco, particularly with with the sort of homeless problem. Just seems to keep getting worse on dares. There's sort of this weird hostility to technology and tech workers, um, here that I think it's somehow use a scapegoat to prevent the city from dealing with Israel problems, and what do you perceive those real problems to be in in the city. E you use the term homeless e think most people looking at the problem

. As one person candidly told me, You know, what we have is not, and I won't say who said this, but it's a prominent person. They said this. You know, Jason, the issue here is this isn't a homeless problem is a junkie problem, and they use specific that I'm using that term because that's the term to refer to people who are addicted to opioids, methamphetamine, fentanyl and that if you were to actually unpack what we're calling a homeless crisis, it's actually a crisis of drug addiction on specifically fentanyl. And if you guys saw we're gonna hit something like 500 overdose deaths this year were like going to double last year. And it's all fentanyl, which is a particularly, you know, deadly drug. So, I mean, how much do you think that is? The problem, David? Huge, huge. I mean, it's it's your right that homelessness is not the cause of the issue, that homelessness is the consequence of long term drug addiction and mental illness. I mean, this is the end state and you're right. The city is. It's not really tackling the underlying issues. In fact, it's kind of eating and abetting them. I mean, how many

million's of needles does the city giveaway every year? And that it only collects a small fraction of them, with the remainder ending up on the streets? Um, it's just it's bonkers. And I think part of the problem is that we keep saying that until we is that we can't demand any improvement in the situation. In terms of homeless people, you know, we have this like Poop Squad and in San Francisco that's literally cleaning poop off the sidewalks because homeless people are using our sidewalks as like a latrine basically as a bathroom and and what you keep hearing Is that what we can't do anything about that problem until we solve the homeless problem and that that Z Certainly we should try to solve that problem, but it's a very long term, you know, difficult, intractable problem. In the meantime, we could certainly do things like demand that homeless people not do that. Yeah, and the policing seemed to There seems to be a distinct issue with policing right now

. I watched the San Francisco Tenderloin Twitter account David Freedberg and they have arrested something like 260 method meth and fentanyl dealers. But we have a D a chess. I believe his name is who doesn't believe in prosecuting any of those crimes related to drugs or petty crime. Freeburg, what does the city turned into for you as somebody who has been a long term investor in the Bay Area? Um, well, I moved here after I graduated college in 2000 and one, and I loved San Francisco, was it was, ah, quieter city in a quaint er city. I honestly, um, over the years have found the traffic and the congestion and the build up of the city to be frustrating. I'm a little bit of ah anomaly in this sense because I think a lot of people, you know think that the city should continue to grow in progress and build housing and so on. Those were all, you know, find objectives. But I think the quality of life has degraded for some time in the city, as infrastructure hasn't kept up with the changing pace of

companies growing here on day as a result. We've kind of got this ballooning, inflating budget that's been poorly managed. You've got. I forgot the statistic, but there's, um, some number of 1000 people. Plus that our city government employees in San Francisco earning over $300,000 a year on DSO there, there's a There's a chronic kind of bureaucratic issue. Um, that is the cancer that has caused, you know, a lot of the follow on crises that I think we're now experiencing acutely here in the city Now, in terms of leaving to your earlier question, you know, um, I was really like, I've just been like everyone you know, like that. I call it kind of talk about the Dante Inferno layers. It's also like for me growing up, it's like a seven layer burrito. It's like one layer of shit after another. Um, start with the beings and in the middle you got the sour cream. And, um, you know, this city has just gotten kind of and the state has gotten more and more difficult to live in, and I and I was certainly thinking and talking to my wife like we gotta leave her family's here. So we're not gonna leave the state

. But then I get a call last week that about I think 18 of us were on with Governor Newsome. And, you know, he made a couple of really interesting points that really did honestly reset my perspective. You know, I've tried to take a step back and think a little bit more broadly about the long term opportunity. California. The way the state operates right now, it's 1/5 largest economy in the world. They ran a surplus there, refinance their debt. They've done a great job, kind of managing kind of the fiscal gap that that's that's being created by the Covic crisis. Andi, you know, Governor Houston made a point like we have had the California Exodus story that's percolated and cycled, really for decades. Hey, pointed out an article, which I have not been able to find, but I've been looking forward from Time magazine from 1959 that were like declared, This is the year everyone's gonna exodus out of the state and we hear it every couple of years. There's some crisis that precipitates the mass exodus, and it hasn't happened because it is a great place to work is diversified industrial base. It's not just tech. Tech is a lot of the growth, but there's Ah lot

of industry. Here are just ag producer, largest large military aerospace industry and on and on and on thistles. It's a great diversified economy. It's a great diversified cultural base. It sits by the oceans. It's by the mountains. It's an incredible place to live and work. And e don't think any of us want to give that up. And the media has done a great job, kind of magnifying these things, small stories that aren't really a story government. Houston made the case that this wealth tax proposal, you know, was one assembly member. It didn't even get into committee. It wasn't even really being considered, but it kind of created this. This press flourish and everyone got involved and everyone I know kind of freaked out about it, and it became this kind of another catalyzing event. But it wasn't really, really so. If we kind of broaden our perspective a little bit both in terms of space and time, I think we get a little more kind of comfortable with, like of all the places to live in all the places toe work. This is the best. And you don't negotiate some taxes and moved to Austin. But, I mean, then you gotta go live in Austin, you know, whatever. Well

, it zits the best. You're right that it's the best in terms of climate, geography, natural beauty resource is and the industries that have developed here and have, you know, strong network effects. But it's not the best, politically. I mean, it's among the worst politically, and it seems like the politicians are doing everything they can to mess it up. I mean, I almost wonder if there's like, a resource curse issue, particularly in San Francisco, where you know that there's this thing and and I mean this this observable thing with governments that, um that sometimes you get a resource curse where if there's like a lot of oil in the country or something, you end up with with a government that's not very good, because people just spend all their time going, award a try and capture it, and I kind of wonder if you know San Francisco has been the beneficiary of being proximate to Silicon Valley. This enormous, like wealth creation, prosperity job creation, um, ecosystem that it had nothing to do with creating. And, uh, I would say two things to build on what you're saying. Um, the

first is I think that when the economy's in an environment are really, really good, all the really, really smart people want to go into those economies, and that leaves generally dumber people to do things like politics. So on that's less true in places that have shittier economies. Uh, and I actually think that that's that's practically true. We may not want to think it, and it may not may sound a little harsh, but it's true. And, you know, the way that you reverse it is what Singapore does, which is you make the civil servants the highest paid people in the economy, right? And you treat them like knowledge workers, and you say, Wow, look, I'm gonna pay these person $550,000 a year. You're shocked at the quality of the person you get. That's the first comment I wanna make. The second one, though, is is that unlike all these other times where I think people have been, um, you know, sort of prognosticating the doom and gloom of California. The The thing that's different now is that because it is such a dominant

political environment for the Democrats, it's much easier to judge if they actually know what they're doing and if they are going to do things that are aligned with the sort of like the moral code of the party that elected them. And so, like, let's just talk, for example, about the fact that we're not going to have police reform of any kind in California, which is where you think would be the first state where people got their act together and said, Okay, if we really believe that we need to reform police, we could do it in our own backyards. But that legislation is gonna get blocked because Californians have decided that they care more about the alignment to police unions than they do to the right of law in tow, Social justice for minorities and blocks. That's crazy. We should be the most progressive is your point on this Jamaat? And the point is to say it explicitly is the politicians are in the pocket of the unions and because they're in the pocket of police unions

in the education unions. We cannot make forward progress even though we're supposed to be the most liberal of all locations. Correct? That's in summary. Yeah, exactly the way we actually, if we believe that we have, you know, up and down the ticket, the ability to implement justice, right? At least justice in the vein of the Democratic Party and what that platform represents, or, for example, all of the people that were out protesting okay, during black lives matter during that entire movement, I suspect the overwhelming majority are Democrats slash progressives or, you know, let's just say the majority or at a minimum, plurality. Okay, but then the idea that then you have a state the most populous and the richest filled up and down the ticket with people who are theoretically aligned with those political values. But then when push comes to shove and the legislation hits the floor, it basically gets mothballed to me is inexcusable and disgusting. E mean, look at the housing issue

. We just had a bill that was an incredibly simple bell. I think it was 11. Yeah, SB 11. 20. And if you follow this one, but I've been following it on the Twitter, and it was a very simple piece of legislation. Any single family home lot could have a duplex on it, so you could have two homes on a single lot. And they couldn't even pass that in a city where, you know, ah, firefighter, a teacher, etcetera cannot live within 90 minutes of where they work, and they couldn't even pass that. Also, there's there's also a B five, right? I mean, Jason as Uber's third or fourth investor. Yeah, something to say about that, right? E tell me. 34 e, I think Third or fourth. But here we go to the V C. Rags. Controversial. Yeah. Could we just We just pin down exactly which one it is. So you could just say you're the fourth investors. It's so much better to say, third or fourth. And that was obviously but you know, a B a B five is another one. Look at all the careers in which you can be David

Sacks. Ah, freelancer And the high, the more money you make, the more you get to dictate your schedule. But if you are poor on, if you are in an entry level job. The California government will not let you, even though 70% of drivers for these services want to be freelancers and the services themselves said they will put into a fund for health care like they literally uber you know, Dar is like, Hey, we're gonna put money into this lift is gonna put money into it. They still will not let people decide for themselves what shift they want. It makes no sense. I mean and trickled into like journalists to I mean, there's they said now, journalists, you right? If you if you write 30 articles a year for a single outlet, you're technically considered employees, even though you're writing the articles on your own time with your own research and you're getting paid for successful Arctic for good articles that were accepted. And then there was just follow on controversy about translators. It's like, Well, translators takes five minutes to translate articles. The white, with 30 articles, apply to a translator. And obviously

, when you have that degree of confusion and complexity, something's off, right? Yeah, it feels like virtue. Signaling Yeah. Yeah, well, I think well, I mean the reason why 85 happened is it was at the behest of the Teamsters right there trying to unionize the uber and Lyft drivers. And they can't do it with their employees. And so you know, the the author of the Bill. Look, Lorena Gonzalez, who is sort of in their back pocket, Um, you know that that's why she put forward the bill. And then the absurdity of it was that, you know, they realized after introducing it, that it would ensnare all these other occupations like the writers and journalists and photographers and really later. Yeah, even like people like manicures and so on. Right? And so what they've been doing is they've been now modifying the legislation to exclude all of these categories. And in the process, they're kind of laying bare what's really happening here, which is this is all about either basically shutting down or forcing uber and lyft to comply

with, um with the will of the Teamsters. And it seems like the legislation blinked when uber and Lyft said, Well, we'll just shut the service down. So what your thoughts on when that happens, Sacks. Do you? What do you think will happen? Who will win this 85 shutdown showdown. Well, that whatever. Yeah, they threatened to basically stop service. And they got to stay, I think, from a judge. Eso so 85 doesn't go into effect until November when and there's a ballot initiative that they're sponsoring to get 85 overturned. So I think you know, I don't I don't start to predict whether it's gonna win or not. But that, to me, is like whether if a B five were defeated by a ballot initiative in November, there'll be a really positive sign for the state of California. I'll say there was on this call with Governor Newsome last week. He did point out that 85 was mawr of kind of a law of inevitability. As a result of that Whole dynamics state Supreme Court decision where the, you know, the Supreme Court basically said

, Look, here's the criteria that defines an employee versus an independent contractor. You know, they get to decide what work they do or what hours or whatever, and there's like some set of criteria. And they said, Look, uber drivers and all these other kind of technically independent contractors don't meet those criteria fully. Therefore their employees. And as a result, California Assembly tried to and had to effectively codify what it means to be an employee versus independent contractor. And I'm not arguing for the case. I'm just saying what was conveyed by the governor last week on why this ended up coming to bear. Now, if they strike it down, there's gonna be some other law that's gonna pop up because of the State Supreme, the dynamics decision. And that's kind of you know, something is gonna have to get written down. So sex, Don't you think it ultimately ends up just being some sort of negotiated point between all of these industry leaders and, you know, the state to kind of figure out Okay, what's everyone gonna compromise on toe to get something written down? That's law. I mean, possibly, I mean, dynamics is not like constitutional. It's not a constitutional decision. So the Legislature can do whatever it wants here

, you know? And so if you were going to respond to dynamics, you don't have to kind of enshrine it. Um, so and I guess there was certainly some question whether dynamics would apply to uber and lyft in in in this way, You know, they could have made. They could have made their arguments in front of the court. Right, The Okay, Look, the problem is now, and whatever applies to California applies to every state legislature. How are these people supposed to figure this out? I'm sorry, but like, you know, who are we entrusting here to go and then all of a sudden, understand the nuances of lyft and uber and really understand the job that they do versus the translators versus that this person versus the that person versus the dynamics decision again? I think 20 years ago I kind of would have believed that politicians were generally some of the smartest people, Um, you know, frankly, amongst us, Um, and it really did attract a certain

level of intellectual person who cared about legislating. But, you know, now, basically, you just have, like, you know, Jerry Falwell juniors running around. I mean, these are these air. They're all just running around until they get caught on instagram and get fired. I mean, they're just they're not the smartest people that we're dealing with. And so what was what was Gavin Newsom's answer to that? That's really what I would, you know. The Jerry Falwell Jr Point didn't come up too much, but way could follow up. Sure, it does seem to me that if they do become full time, this would be a tragedy for the people who are trying to just do 10 to 20 to 30 hours of gig work like what happens to those poor people who wanted toe fill in between when they drop their kids off of school and pick them up and just grab a couple hours here, there as a second gig, like if this actually does, passing their full time. You guys, honestly, you guys are such your your your honesty. Look

, it won't affect them. It will affect the long term profitability in the margins of the companies that have to hire them as full time employees. And the left, like, you know, make a bunch of rules and blah, blah blah. But it has huge operational implications, and it has really terrible optics implications for a company. But for the person that wants to work 10 hours Jason, they'll still be able to work 10 hours. So I think I think the point is that like a specific shift like they're gonna have to come in at a certain shift. I think the point is like the entire public markets who all of a sudden think that a business looks one way, has to figure out that it's really a cost plus business. And what it really means is you. If you are comfortable with, ah, 60% or 70% reduction in the market cap of some of these companies, you'd be OK with a B five. And I think that's where the tension is, where the people that made the law don't care about the market cap because they don't own the stock anyways. And the people that are reacting to 85 are the ones that owned the stock and are really thinking about the market count Well, but the drivers, the drivers, honestly on the stock and they're against it. The

drivers on eight shares David. I mean, come on. No, no, no. That's what I'm saying is they're not shareholders for the most part, but this really does reduce their flexibility. Thio contract for their labor? No, but I think what you're saying will happen, which is that they will create a you know, a B five prime, which is a modification that's neither this nor what it was. But it seems that the tail winds were pretty clear, which is that we're moving to a place where the's companies have to get built in a very clever way. And even if they are super clever and capturing consumer demand, the unit economics are going to be pretty shitty. And I just think we have to own that. And and probably what it means more than anything else is it's not a real venture kind of business. And so you may be deficit financing it or building it in a very different way than we used to, right? It doesn't have to be that way. What you're saying is is I think that this law will have very adverse consequences for their business. Okay, I mean, I grant you that, um

, but it's it's what? Why is the state interfering in the relationship between uber and its drivers in this way, when everyone's happy with it? No, but it's not. I think what actually is happening is the state is effectively capturing the excess return off uber and lyft, meaning I think if you just take a pure un emotional economic view at this, it's like any other market. If there is a huge amount of margin available and there are not many competitors, what happens if somebody comes in to take the excess margin? So you think that's the government wants to take it and the unions want to take it? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. No question. Should we should we let them then dictate what hours people work? The thought exercise that I would ask guys if there was in a market 90 different competitors for transportation would a be five have been written past adopted, and my answer to you would be that it would not have been so uber and lifts and door dashes. Success is what leads to people wanting toe get a slice

. The oligopoly ist model of success were not enough. Other companies air pulled through Well, that gives us a good Segway into, by the way, sorry last point on this. And the funny thing is, the people who created the problem are the ones that hated the most, which are the investors because they pile in the incremental dollars into the winner's trying to King make a winner through capital. And now what's happening is they're rate of returns are basically getting taken away. And I think that in in in A in a weird way, that's also kind of fair. Well, I would just disagree slightly in the sense that just because this has big distributional consequences like, basically, who makes the surplus, it doesn't mean it also doesn't have a huge deadweight loss associated with it. And whenever you prohibit people from engaging in the type of economic contracts relationship that they want to engage in your reducing, um, surplus And so I s o I hear what you're saying, but and I think there is, I think this is all about regulatory capture

, right? This is the Teamsters trying to capture a big piece of the value of uber through their politicians, the Legislature. So you're right about that. But I also think that we should care about it not just a zoo uber shareholders, but as consumers of the product, because it's gonna get worse. Well, and also the product's gonna go away in certain jurisdictions. I mean, if Freeburg wants to get a new uber north of the Golden Gate Bridge or in the East Bay somewhere, they're just not gonna have the economics or some communities thio even operate the service. So just like uber eats and Postmates, stop delivering to Treasure Island. Ah, lot of the drivers were in their local communities at home with uber turned on. And when they are a door dash and when they got a call, they would leave their house. And that was part of the magic of it is you need to be sitting there, you know Netflix ing or hang out with your kids, and then a good call comes in and then you leave your house. That's why you would have that, like, one minute pause if you ever saw it, you know, in an uber ride where it's like, Why, why isn't the car moving? Because that person's at home and they were capturing the one ride every hour

in their local you know, suburban area. But if you force them to be hourly, we're going to say, You know what? It's not worth having an eight hour shift in, you know, whatever suburb and and the service will go away and then guess who's gonna not have service and transportation for you. So I was saying it was like Saxes point, like, you know, from a consumer perspective with Hamas Point. If you end up with 90 of these service providers and I'm a consumer, I'm less likely to order a cab or order a ride share service, or I'm less likely order food for delivery. I don't want to deal with 50 fucking APS. I don't wanna have to, like, go find the one app that has the contract with one restaurant, then the natural market dynamics. The way that the market naturally evolved is I want simplicity. As a consumer, I want efficiency. That's what makes me want to use it MAWR. And when you take that away because you're interfering from a regulatory perspective and how that market operates, the product sucks for me, and the shareholders ultimately suffer. I think to your point. The way that that would probably get solved

is you have people that are higher order in the consumer behavior that own these relationships that enforce basically ah, user experience. For example, Facebook and Google and Apple essentially say we're abstracting all these services because there's 90 of you, Google says. I'm gonna put all of you guys on the map view. Um, you know, Yelp says the same thing. And essentially, what opens what happens is there's some, like, opened way where essentially a service provider can turn themselves on and broadcast into a network that says, I'm available to do A for B and it all gets fixed. Now that's a future state, which was the original idea of uber, by the way, was to make a marketplace like that. And now Uber is talking about doing a franchise. Exactly what you're saying Come off is let some franchisees take the East Bay and then provide their inventory. Angel Network. I think Franchising is a really, really smart business idea, and I think that particularly in transportation, um, and a lot of these services that

have this natural dynamic to be local, where there there are an infinite sum of many local markets. I think it's it's like a Burger King. It's like a McDonald's and the company that moves to a Franchising model and then figures it out. I think will be a huge winner. Onda that Wilkie and that will be a very asset light really operationally sophisticated, very well run, highly profitable business, I think. Let's talk about the public markets. Were Jason, can we just talk about the police brutality thing in California? Just want to get your take like it really bought. It really bothers me that California like, I bet you there's going to be states that are, um, diverse in its Democratic and Republican composition and some Republican states. Uh, that passed comprehensive police reform and California will be one of the laggards. What do you think if you could wave a magic wand? Mammoth? What are the 12 and three things

? Take a minute to think it through and everybody call can What are the 12 and three things you would do to change policing in the United States? I have my own list, but I'm curious what you guys think. And I actually put a tweet storm out about my number. One thing. Um, what are the specific tactical things? Let's get tactical first. I mean, the first one that I've always been a big fan of, as I've studied it, at least from 10,000 ft, is ending qualified immunity. Explain why and what that is, You know, qualified immunity is essentially that There, there, there is this immunity that certain individuals have and that they that they're not subject to prosecution. And so, you know, they essentially have a cart blanche to behave in ways that could be good in some cases, very, very bad in other cases, gray in other cases, yet there's no adjudication of their behavior. And so you have to allow people with solid, dispassionate, detached judgment to be able to enter and say, Hey, listen, you are way out of line here, and there are consequences for it

. And people coming in doing those jobs need to understand those consequences versus you have a carte blanche to basically do whatever you want. And I think that talks specifically about the shooting involving I would say murder right now because I think all the facts are not in. But Jacob Blake was shot in the back. Hey was obviously not listening to the police. The police then follow him to his car. There is a discussion of if there was a knife on the floor board, um, and point blank. They shot him in the back multiple times and I've heard both sides of this. You know, this person is not listening to the police. This person's going into the car. They're reaching potentially for a weapon. And the cops had no choice. It seemed to me that, you know, the training of a police officer might actually be that that was a legitimate shooting. But that means maybe they have to rethink policing because you could have easily taken that person down with the even the most modest of a chokehold or a tackle on. When we see that, it feels like that's the Russia test right there of like how you look at shootings

. Um, in police. When you saw that shooting, I take it for a month. I'm Jacob like, and I saw it, and I just like I can't see these anymore. They sent me off the rails for days, but yeah, I did see, it s I mean, when you when you look at something like that, that's clearly training has to change, because I believe that based on police training and qualified immunity, this is going to be considered, Even though it's shocking to see it, I think it's going to be considered um, you know, and allowed shooting. Or if there's not gonna, the person is not gonna be prosecuted because the person was clearly not listening. And there was a knife on the floor and he's going for it. And, you know, it seems to me like we really need to change the actual train. The average is six months of training, so I think that's one of the top things. That is the changes that these these police officers to be trained not to fire first, but Thio use other tactics. So So for me, the first one is that the second one for me, which I'm a really big fan of, is that there needs to

be a new way to actually intercept 911 calls. And instead of, um, deploying police officers, we have a separate branch of people that we, you know, massively pay and train that are effectively, you know, social workers plus plus and and and they should be deployed in all kinds of situations. Um, where I think that what what people want is a de escalation. And I think that sometimes the words de escalation and police don't really sink up and in most a lot of people's minds, they think of escalation. So, yeah, people who are trained to de escalate, I think, uh And so, for example, like, you know, all of the mental health checks, all of the mental health issues, um, could probably be deal like this. Domestic disturbances would probably go into that. The third one is I would very much rationalize drug use. Um, just because I think the amount of low level offenses and arrests around drug use

is antiquated for people's general views on drugs. Andi, I think that it needs to sort of correlate the how society views it. And then, um, you know, the last two that I would give you is that there is a concept of no knock warrants. That's how Briana Taylor was killed. It's kind of really scary the idea that we could all be sitting in our houses right now as we are. And literally the police can just charge in e mean totally unnecessarily. I mean, she was being for some, like, low level drug idea. They're gonna knock the doors in, And of course, the person is going to try to protect themselves that Zimmerman has sacks. What? They locked the doors and and they were playing close wearing police officers. So people are coming. And they did it like midnight when she was asleep. So yeah, people busting into her house at midnight, screaming, making noise and not dressed as cops that z Yeah, And then the last one I would give you is militarization of police. A lot of these ideas, by the way, are just the name Russia's

ideas. I have retweeted and I followed, but he was the one that put me onto these things. But, you know, like you have all this excess military equipment in the army that gets basically passed through and now directly sold into police department, especially post 9 11, we basically militarized. So those are you? What are your ideas around policing and how we should change that. You've heard two months. I I don't have more detailed ideas than than Chamakh. I think he's given some good ones for sure. I mean, I think we definitely need better training, and I think better oversight over the use of force. The body cam idea J. Simpson you tweet about. I think that's pretty interesting, too I think you're playing that for the body cam idea I had was I asked, Does anybody know? And, you know, does black lives matter or another organization Track? Which police Department? Because we could get a list of every police department that exists in some database somewhere. Do we actually know what percentage actually have body cams and what model they use and what percentage are working? Because one of the things that I think has happened this year

is you know, the live streaming and the live video in the number of smartphones out there has resulted in us being able to see what black and Brown people have been telling us for decades, which is their murdered by cops. And now we get to see it. And you know, when you see George Floyd get murdered, it's It's fairly obviously, that's what happened. We don't have a video or that they have the video of Rianna Taylor getting murdered. So that's from a cop Webcam. I'm sorry, Body cam. So I was thinking we should just start with that is a basic which is, every single cop car should have a 360 Cameron, Every cop it should be a federal mandate. And I don't exactly know how federal mandates word sacks, but don't you think it should be a federal mandate for just cameras and car cameras? E, I think it's a good idea. I think the use of cameras is a good idea. I mean, maybe not recording the police officers when they're sitting in their car, But every time there's like, you know, like, yeah, they pull somebody over, sort of, you know, like fourth Amendment type search and seizure, seizure type situation. Yeah, I think it would make sense to have that on video. Why not? Yeah

. I mean, they gotta think every police will behave better. Go ahead. Freeburg. Um, there was a case the other day. Uh, young, um God, I think it was 19 years old. Was shot in D. C. Named Dion K. I don't know if any of you guys watch the body cam footage on dso. He was ah, 19 year old black man who was shot, died, but in the body cam footage, you can see that he pulls out this gun and throws it. And when he pulls out the gun and flings his hand around. He got the gun in his hand. That's when the cop shot him. And so there was about 100 protesters that showed up. But it's largely become a non story as a result of the fact associated with the body cam footage. But I just want to propose something else. It's a little bit more radical. Maybe my libertarian ideals kind of cross with my socialist ideals informing this this concept, but perhaps your socialist? No, I've never been accused of that. But if we, uh if we trace back, you know the systems are really counting everything you're talking about his layers and layers

of bureaucracy and ideas and shit we should do to manage the problem. But there is kind of one common, you know, butterfly effect, butterflies at the source of all of ah, lot of what we're talking about, which is guns. If there weren't any guns in the United States, I would not feel threatened. As a police officer, I would never have any reason to feel threatened. And I would never have any reason to pull a gun. The reason I always make to pull a gun as a police officer is my life is threatened, and in the absence of firearms, I have no right to pull a gun. And that's the case in, like the U K. For example, where there are, like no police officer shootings of civilians because they're never under threat of being killed by a gun. So there's a simple answer, which is Get rid of the guns, but you know, a little too controversial. And obviously many layers t to that argument, especially from kind of both sides. But I would say, Um, you know much much of what's going to go on now and in the future it's just chaos theory. It's gonna be building more layers of complexity. It's more entropy. It's more kind of associate ID

complexity to try and resolve the underlying problem of all of this, which is that we've got guns on the streets. We've got guns in people's hands, and therefore, you know there's always this threat against every individual that their life might be taken by another. Well, let me make a prediction right now that there's not gonna be any new gun control legislation for a generation because of the looting and writing that's going on gun sales or an all time high. I mean, every single gun store that probably Oh, you can't. You can't get guns, you can't get ammo. And there are more first time gun buyers in the United States for the last several months than there's ever been. I mean, the ranks of the N r a must just be swelling right now on DSO So this idea that you're gonna get gun reform, I don't think it's gonna happen. People are gonna support it. And, you know, I think, you know, use the word I think idealistic. I mean, I I think it's like a little bit naive to assume that you're gonna be able to get rid of all the guns in the hands of bad actors. Um, there's a lot of people

in this country who feel the need toe have a gun to protect themselves. Um, and you know, the cops can't always get there quickly enough. Onda. A lot of people feel the need toe have that for self defense. I also think the minimum amount of training for a police officer should not be six months. I think they have to re I mean If we really want to have the society move forward and you know, to solve our issue of race, which is, you know, like the original sin of America, we're gonna really need to start thinking about making, you know, police go back to school for 18 months, 12 months and rethink how we how we address the situation. Because it's just tragically unfair that one group of people's Children has to worry when they're driving in a car. And, you know, other people on this call don't have to worry, right, And you know, that is just crazy. Let's let's zoom, take a hard shift to the economy and then we'll go into three election. What do you think? Trauma. You've been talking a little bit about the economy and the stock market

ripping again, and we seem to have hit a pause. But we did have, like a massive rip with Tesla and Amazon, Tesla and Apple. I guess doing a stock split on, we hit all time records. Why are we hitting all time records? Jim off. We have the most important thing that's happened, I think, in economics. In the last 10 years, the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell gave this landmark speech and he basically said, We're going to keep rates at zero for the next half decade, basically. And e. I mean, quite honestly, it could It could be a decade, but they're gonna let inflation run before they basically match it with rates. There's no path to any near term inflation of any kind whatsoever. On DSO Jason, my, my honest perspective is, you know, uh, you're basically going to get paid to be long equities because your risk free rate is zero and will soon be negative. And what are you supposed to

do if you're an asset manager? What are you supposed to do with you know, your California back to Houston, California? Let's just say your CalPERS you're the California pension system and you have hundreds of billions of dollars. Then you need to generate five or 6% a year to make sure that your pension isn't insolvent and the government is paying you zero. Okay, so that eliminates that option. No Treasuries for you, your long equities. Andi, when everybody is in that situation, you're overwhelmingly long equities and you know, the you cannot fight the Fed, and so you cannot wait them out. It's not like you could say Oh, don't worry. They're going to change your mind. Uh, they will change their mind, but in reaction to market conditions that are out of your control. So all of these opportunities, in my opinion, are generally buying opportunities. And, uh, I'm generally bullish. I'm more bullish now than I was before. So you can put your money into Treasuries. You can put into a savings account. Obviously, you can't

put it you. It doesn't seem like real estate or commercial real estate. It's a great bat right now. Uh, so your options are private companies or public companies? Correct drama. I think it really is just public companies. And I don't even think it's private companies. So meaning wherever capital is constrained, the returns again thes access returns. They're getting eaten up on DSO. The most unimpeded market for gains right now is the public markets. I mean, like, no offense, but I think that if you were very good stock picker in the public markets, you're generating better returns than Sequoia benchmark Name your best venture fund. You know, I see all these people spouting off on Twitter about how good they are in the early stage markets. It's all kind of small dollars and not that meaningful. You know, I'm on the call, right, Booth? E mean, you're literally talking to the guy spouting off about hitting over sacks. What are your thoughts on this like private

markets, Obviously, is the op where we operate both David's Freeburg and Sacks. Andi, you're seeing great deals. I think I've invested in twice as many companies during the pandemic as I did before it in the same six month period. What you see in the private markets and what do you think? What is your take on the S. E. C s Public Markets way? Saw some of the best deals that we've seen during co vid. And you know, I'm I'm very bullish about the state of entrepreneurship in the US I mean, just the number of interesting companies doing interesting things, um, and the infrastructure that makes it so easy for founders to get started and create new cos it's so much easier now to create a to create a company that it was 10 years or 20 years ago. And of course, it's easy to point all the ones that don't work or that don't seem like good ideas. But But there's so many more experiments that are happening, and I think it's gonna I'm you know, I'm very bullish about that part of the the American economy on Freeburg, where do your thoughts on private markets and obviously you're building private companies. You have unlimited capital to

build them. I take it, given your track record, I spend most of my time accepting rejections from my very close investor friends in my various projects, so I wouldn't say that that ever becomes true. I'll tell you the truth. Um, still selling everyday dialing for dollars. But no, there are certainly more investors, more capital, more risk taking, um, Mork kind of valuation extending than I think, as was the case pre co vid. I think Jamaat's Point is right, though there is S O much mawr liquidity available through access to retail and international market participants, um, in a public setting than there is in a private setting. And it is because of this liquidity premium and the easy access to to put in capital in um, it's just extraordinary how much as I've watched close friends and companies and companies have invested in. I'm sure you guys have done the same transition from private to public. The valuation jump is extraordinary, like on

a metric spaces, right? So whatever the metric might be, you get public. There is this flurry of market participation. As a result, it drives up. There's multiple your beast. Sorry, can I just say something that's such a such an important smart thing that Friedberg said. So Jason, for example, Like all of us, we're all still in the private markets, and I'm not trying to take away from the private markets. But what David said is so important. If you used to look at a SAS deal, you price that's a steal. 10 times they are are right. Then there's a little bit of inflation. You know, the the rates go up, the prices that people pay go up now, all of a sudden we're paying 12 times 15 times. Now it's 20 times if you're growing 100% rate of year. So what's happened? The market has become more efficient and the excess return is getting eaten up. And so you're like, Okay, well, that's still really good. And you wait 456 years and you think you're going to get paid. The crazy thing is like once that company transitions to the public markets, I mean, all of a sudden, if you actually turn the investor base over and you actually

create afloat so that public market guys could buy it, they'll pay 30 times, 35 times 40 times. So there's a massive multiple expansion, so companies should be going public sooner. If you think about this. Like if I'm trying to raise money for one of my companies, I'm going to call on my 10 2030 friends that I know that our investors in private markets and say, Hey, guys, you wanna look at this company and maybe I'll get two or three interested party. Then maybe we'll kind of agree on what a fair evaluation would be if I could take that same company and instantly make it available to a million investors, and all I need to do, by the way, is raised $10 million. All I need is some small number of them to write a couple $100 check, and I'm able to fill that that round out. The valuation as a result of the liquidity available in that market is so much higher because everyone's gonna there's gonna be much more participation in bidding. And so you know what I think Jamaat has tapped into with the SPAC vehicle and what Robin Hood is realizing. And I don't think that we all talk about this enough. But there's this massive, massive

, massive market of international investors of small of international retail investors who are now rushing into U. S equities. Freeburg, Didn't we see that in the I c o craze as well? Where? E think if we took anything from the i c o craze? It was global appetite for risk and the dot com boom before that. And I think we have to give best. You see a lot of credit here for leading this pack movement. I mean, what's your take on everybody copping you down the SPAC path to mop. At this point, I had desktop metal is an early angel investment that just packed. Um, I'm thank you. Yeah, they told me that Thank you for the markup. And I've been hearing like I'm getting if I'm getting inbound as an angel investor from I literally got a cold email from some high profile people. They're like, Hey, can you Do you have anything for us to SPAC? I mean, this is like the third or fourth time people are coming down to my dipshit level of angel investing, saying, can you introduce us to the com guys can introduce into Robin and I'm like, I think you could go direct to them. But what is your take on how many stacks have been created since you, like, literally

single handedly restarted the smack movement because you don't think you've ever gone a record about this? I'm really proud of what we did when we created this thing two years ago. I said, I want to basically create a new way of doing. I pose. I called it I po 2.0, I reserved I p o a through Z on the n y s e. I hope, uh, to fulfill that, Andi, I think I will. But taking a step back for a second. In the year 2000, there were 8000 public companies in America on the American stock exchanges and in the year 2020 there are 4000, So we've shrunk in half the number of public companies, while at the same time we've, you know, 10 x, the amount of three amount of capital and the number of people. So we don't have a large enough surface area in the public markets. That's why companies air better off going public because they're going to have a much more receptive audience off people that are dying toe own growth of any kind. What's the

earliest and the media and that people should go public? Well, so So here's the thing. So like, if you're like one of 30 companies in adventure portfolio that's growing at 50 plus percent, you're one of 30. But when you go public, you're one of one. You know, when you're growing 50 60% you you become very unique. All of a sudden, you're sort of a 1% kind of a company uran outlier. And so you get treated, you know incredibly well. So that's the backdrop. I think a company should be going public around year. Five years. Six. What revenue footprint? About 50 million, you know, at 50 million when they're doubling. I think that they should be going up and, you know it allows them to build capital slowly. It allows them to basically contained control. It minimizes delusion. I think it's a really powerful model and then on on the number of spats. What I would say is, I think it's really good that the market is getting diversified. I think what's gonna happen is like the thing with faxes. It's It's gonna be no different than in some

ways the banks that preceded us, which is that there's going to be a distribution. You could go to Goldman Sachs, and that will mean someone thing. You can go to Merrill Lynch or be of A or U. B s or Jefferies. It'll mean other things you can goto Allen and company. It'll mean yet another different set of things, and I'm sure there's gonna be a, you know, a new organization that eyes all about cost, that something is going to be all about relationships. Um, so I just think that's gonna be the distribution, my personal perspective. It's probably us and maybe one or two other people who really dominate the space, and I'll tell you the only reason why I say that I think it's going to be really important when these people try to get these backs done. What they're going to realize is it's really hard, and it's hard for a couple of reasons. Number one is you have to marry operational insight and public market sophistication. And the founder will get really smart about being able to figure out whether this person is just a financial arbitrage, er or if the person has enough operational experience too deeply

understand the business, why you have to translate it to the public markets, will. That's one huge thing that I think that people will. Um, we'll start toe, we'll start to hone in on. Anyways, there's a bunch of other things. But are you now competing with You agree with that? Yeah, I'm cool with that. You know, I investable before that, so I'd be happy for you. Probably have a bigger portfolio. $50 million? Yeah, it is. It's great for for for me and Jason and I. You know, I think Jamaat deserves a ton of credit on the sole SPAC thing. It is. I don't know if all the listeners are aware of this, but this back things become a huge wave. Um, there's a ton of people creating them, Kevin Hart says. The new one, Reid Hoffman, has a new one there, you know, the East Coast hedge fund guys Pincus and then the East Coast hedge funds like Bill Ackman, whoever they're all creating them. So trauma has really started a wave here, and I think the appeal of a SPAC to a founder. I'll put in a plug of why I think it's a good idea

for a founder to consider. This is because you essentially what Founders Air used to is doing, you know, private rounds, right? You agree on a on a Mount race and evaluation, and it's a percent dilution and you're done. That's it. And that's that simple, right? And when you aipo and need to raise money, it's not like that. You have to then work with investment bank. They put together a book. You do like a road show. You do this whole dog and pony thing. You don't know how much money you're gonna get at the end of that process or what evaluations gonna be. And then on top of that, we know statistically. Bill Gurley published all the stats, the investment banks going to rip you off. So you know, so that what a SPAC does is it prices like a late stage private round? You disagree with the SPAC promoter on evaluation and amount raised, and then on top of it, you get kind of a direct listing along with it. All of a sudden you start trading as a public company, and so it's back is like a combination direct listing plus private round. And I think that's going to be appealing

to a lot of founders as they start to discover this more and more sacks. In a way, you're saying it's gonna feel more like doing a Siri's D than it does Roadshow and E think that comfort level for somebody like Robin Hood or calm or data stacks or thumbtack or any of these companies that you and I are best company. Your portfolio E two years? This is I think this is gonna be the new thing for early stage investors is we're not gonna count unicorns anymore. We're gonna counts packs. We're gonna count public listings, right? And and I think that the other thing, by the way, the other. The other thing that I'll say two founders is one is I think you need to you need to think about do these people have the combination of operational and financial acumen in the public markets? Um, and investing experience in the public markets and the operational credibility to describe the business. And I think you can trade off one for the other. If one is so deep meaning, If Warren Buffett was doing

this back, you'd say, Well, he has no operational experience, but he's so credible in the public markets, then you know that's all that matters. But you need to be super super deep in one or have a really brilliant and thoughtful level of credibility in the public's meaning. An early stage investor who isn't married to somebody who could basically say, I know how hedge funds work. I've made them money, and I'm going to make them more money and mutual funds. Etcetera is troublesome. The second thing is for founders. You have to really make sure you understand what is in it for the person that's doing this back. I mean, in every deal I write a minimum of $100 million personally, and that's a lot. And so I skin in the game. I feel very much at risk. And so I take a lot of time to make sure these things go well. And then the third is that for the SPAC person. What I'll tell them is they're gonna find that there's a bunch of landmines. Um, and I'm not gonna, you know, say it up front because I think it'll be fun for them to find out themselves along the way. But But these things are hard

. The first one took me 2.5 years. They're hard, they're hard, They're hard. Hey, let's swing to the election Now on Bond. Talk a little bit about the flip flopping we're all doing because we've gone from Trump's. A lock to Trump's not a lock, you know, and we've had many different theories, but here we are. Are we 60 days out now? How many days of the election is exactly 60 and the first debate in September 29th? Eso were at the 55 or 56 days marks the taping of this and the first debate, the biggest September 30th. So we're but three weeks away from Joe Biden and Trump going at it. What's everybody's handicapping now? The mark, the markets seem to be saying, even money or a slight edge to Joe Biden. What are our thoughts? I think that, uh, I think Biden's look the Crispus he's looked eso. Is that actually encouraging or not encouraging? I think I think

it really is because I think he's a really good. Like I said, he doesn't have to be better than Donald Trump. He just has to not be Donald Trump for a lot of people. And so you know, he becomes a very good do no harm alternative because, you know, to support Donald Trump, you have tow, have a view to support Joe Biden. You can have no view. Andi. I think that that in general that's a that's a demand maximizing thing to do. So I think he's relatively well positioned. It's the Christmas I've ever seen him on television, there's less stuttering. There's less, not stuttering but like less like mental gaps. You know the meaning of the VP choice. Carmela, think safe. So I I agree with trauma that that was kind of the take or theory on Biden like a month or two ago is that he could just run as a protest vote against Trump. Andi. That's why the basement strategy appeared to make sense is that he would say nothing. Do nothing

, go nowhere and just and just try to run as a protest vote against Trump. And I think that was working a couple of months ago when you know a cove. It seemed a lot worse. Be the economy seemed a lot worse. We're now down to about 8% unemployment. We were at 13 or 14% on bond. See, you know, Trump had seemed to kind of mishandle the reaction toe. Floyd. He seemed to be inciting it. But now we have this this issue of the looting and violence and Romney, Democrat run cities. And I think you know, Trump has sort of found his sales pitch Now, um, in opposing, um the basically the radical left on these thes mobs and protests that seem to be, uh, you know, causing tremendous unrest and, uh, looting and violence in our cities. And I think it's I think it's ah in combination with the improving conditions, the economy and Cove it. I think it's a winning

pitch for him. Unless Biden finds a more compelling way of responding, which he has not to date, Um, I think you know somebody like Bill Clinton know exactly how to respond. I think he would, you know, in the better. Well, I think you know, he would pull a sister soldier to use a term from the the, you know, political dictionary where, you know, maybe he would take this crazy new book in defense of looting and figure out, you know, and give a speech denouncing that. I mean, he would find somebody to his left who represents, you know, a fringe of the left. They presumably doesn't support and find a way toe distance himself to denounce them. Like Antifa. Like, you know, the anyone you know. Any of the left leaning in Portland looting in Portland? I think there's a lot of nobody wants. Nobody wants to support that. And so Biden comes out and says, Hey, we don't support that, and it gives him that law and order vote. But he hasn't He hasn't really done that. I mean, so two of my favorite political pundits right now are Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taibbi, who are

, you know, very uh, they're strong supporters of Biden. They're very anti Trump, but they think he's failing on sort of this these issues because he's not. He's not figure out the right way Thio to denounce what's happening. I think a lot of this has to do with when kids go back to school and the death rate of co vid. And as I was tweeting and I got, I got a lot of people angry at me about tweeting this. But I said, I think this is a set up for Trump to go into the first debate with, you know well under, you know, 6, 700 deaths a day and then the next debate in October with, you know, call it three or 400. That's a day and basically declared that he did solve co vid because we've been trending down for five weeks now, and he started wearing a mask six weeks ago. Seven weeks ago, July 11th was the first day who wore a mask. A cynic would say he almost timed mask wearing, which is obviously what we talked about the first episode or two of all in podcast was our discussion about why is wearing a mask so difficult for him? And

it seems like he slow played it. He you know, he said, he's slow played. He hit a set on the turn And here he is, like he wore the mask on July 11th. He wore it four months late. But guess what? As Thomas was saying, Everybody wears a mask, and every and and these things go down in Italy, we're gonna come into the first debate. What if it's 400 deaths a day and then the second debate? It's 200. That's a day and then our kids are back in school in October, which it seems to be the case, right? All the schools are saying, you know, be ready for October open. And what if he actually does have a vaccine that has somewhat of credibility or any of these high speed testing machines? Come on. I mean, this could be a set up of all setups for him to just, you know, dropped the microphone. Hey, look, the economy has had an all time high and cova debts or an all time low. Well, I mean Yeah, I think that to mean that to me seems like the trajectory. I mean, we spent a long time on this pod talking about what a disaster. Uh, San Francisco and California are Those are one party, states and cities. And I think, you know, we're not

just electing a person is president were also electing a party and a movement and a governing philosophy. And however much Trump is, um, you know, disliked by a lot of people I think a lot of people are looking at, you know, e think they may like Joe Biden personally, and I think that he personally is safe, But they don't like the movement and the party in the governing philosophy that is now associate with Biden. So if you had to put your entire net worth on it, she math Biden or Trump Biden. I think it's good sax. Entire net worth. I would. I predict. Trump, Wait. You predict, but you But you wouldn't put your entire net worth on if you had to. I could see your hesitation. You want Trump trumped away. But you would. You wouldn't put you wouldn't put your entire net worth on him a you would put it. This is This is about a 55% sort of thing. So Biden has a 55% chance of winning. So even though you're voting for Trump, you are not

going. You would not put your fortune on you asked me who I predict right now. I'm predicting Trump. You remember on the last product, predicted Biden. So it moves depending on what I see. Yeah, and I'm gonna go with Jason. Jason, I think I think a better way to get a better answer is not to force somebody to put their entire net worth on the line is just who do you think is gonna win? Who do you think's gonna win sex? How many times I have to answer this question? You think Trump's gonna win you? Actually, Yes. Yes, I do, actually. Really? It's a fascinating e Think it's I think it's the same as it was last time for me and has been most of this process is it's a coin flip, and it still is a coin flip. And there's a lot of noise between here and 60 days from here. All right, well, then, if we do think it's a coin flip Freeburg. What happens if Trump is elected again? Some people think this is All institutions are broken forever. America's broken forever. Hyperbolic that that's what's the perception

on both sides, right? So the perception and the motivation on both sides is democracy is crumbling, and the resultant action is to elect the person you think will restore democracy. The reality is, both candidates, to some degree, might move us a little bit further away from democracy. And some might argue that Trump makes us feel a little bit more like an autocratic, dictatorial regime. And some might say that Biden makes us feel a little bit more like a NAOC socialist regime. It's not all the way as if we have burning in the seat, but, um, you know, the reaction isn't necessarily let's go back to the middle. Let's become a centrist government. Let's let's have good political debate in a and a good, by the way, the one show I've been watching a lot of lately just toe nostalgia Thio, Hamas tweet earlier today and make me feel better about life is West Wing, where you know Jed Bartlet is the president and he wants a great national debate. We all wanna have this intellectual exercise of coming to the truth and coming to the best decision for the nation. And I don't think anyone feels like that's the case today. Nor will that be the case

tomorrow with either of these guys in the seat. And I think the point then becomes, well, who's gonna better align with my values? And, you know, it is really a crumbling democracy. Kind of motivation, I would guess if you were to survey people how they're making their choice. If Trump is elected Freeburg, do you feel it is an acute, you know, existentially crisis for America as a democracy, You personally, I don't I don't think democracies and with a bang I think they end with a whimper. And I think that's been the case historically. And, you know, no democracy has has lasted. Our democracy in the US has has lasted longer than many. But democracies, I'll just tell you, my point of view on this democracy is ultimately enable freedom of operation and free markets that that resulted in greater progress than any other governing system. The problem with progresses that progress is asymmetric. You have some people who progress at a much greater rate than most. And

and it is that Delta that motivates the end of that system. Ultimately, um, while everyone in the United States or the average and even the bottom quartile of the population in the U. S. Is better off than they were 50 years ago. In terms of income and health care and shelter and access to food and access to all these things, they're the top 1% of the U. S. Is further ahead than the media. And it is that delta that motivates the end of democracy. And it is, that is, which is then perceived to be unfair about this governing system and that ultimately results in fascism or socialism. And then fascism results. Socialism ultimately restrict anyone from progression. And that's why fascism and socialism ultimately end up in in some sort of, you know, democratic outcome. And it is a cycle. And, you know, we're kind of in this, you know, awkward phase of trying to figure out what the hell we're gonna be next. And I don't think that awkward phase it's realized in the next presidential term, but it is gonna be realized in our lifetimes. I think that that's a really good point. I completely agree with that. Go, Biden, go. Police win. Okay

. Wrapping up here. Media selections of your bestie summer bestie book Bestie TV show Bestie Binge. What do you got? You got a best book recommendations. You gotta bestie. Yeah, my my recommendation to be a little different. I've been I've been subscribing to a lot of newsletters on sub stack, and I found that to be pretty interesting. And I mentioned to my favorite writer, especially around, um, you know, politics and election time. Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taibbi. So you're over engine windows open enough to get to those two who are super polarizing. They actually kicked Andrew Sullivan out of New York magazine for making other writers at New York magazine feel unsafe with his words. All all of my favorite writers seem to have been canceled at some previous publication, and now they've set themselves up on sub stack. So it is amazing how the Overton window has closed. Bestie seed. You have a bestie binge, a bestie book or a bestie newsletter or bestie podcast. You want to share with the besties. I would give a shout out to a book

called Americana, which is about It's a history off American capitalism told in chapters For every call it like, you know, 5 to 7 or 10 year decade, period. It's really interesting for people into business. It's written by a guy named Boo Srinivasan. Okay, bestie Freeburg, What do you got best? A queen of Kin Wah. I took a week off and hung out at the beach, and I've been to watch The Godfather 12 and three, as I've done several times in my past. I also watched one of my favorite top five films of all time. There will be blood by it every day. It's just such a beautiful film. It got me down. Yeah, I got me down this research path on the standard oil company, and I ended up first off. I ended up reading. Mario puts those Godfather, which is very graphic and interesting, But if you've seen the movie, I don't think you get much more from the book. Um, but then I started reading Ron Chernow's

biography of Rockefeller s. I don't have any ones made it through that 727 page about 500. It is detailed, this detailed. So it's not, you know it's not. Probably you won't gain as much from it as perhaps reading, Ah, Wikipedia article. But the standard oil, the era If you think about what technology is what we call technology in the US today in our world, and and it's mostly software now, increasingly biotech. Um, you know, there have been different eras of technology and different areas of monopoly on God. And just hearing the story of the railroads and standard oil and what took place in this country, it's incredible. And it's so analogous to what's going on and and the outrage and the descent and the fake news that goes on about these people as they've been successful. Um, you know, it really is. History teaches us everything. And eso I'm just, you know, just in the era of standard oil, just learning about the stories of that time and the people of that time. This is

one book that's that's been, you know, an interesting part of the tail besties. I gotta go. I love you guys like Jason and Freed burgers. I'll see you on Thursday, taking up the oh, I'll just give him all my closing. The Fish That Ate the Whale, A book about Sam's Murray who was the Banana King. Yeah, and another interesting book You Might Like I Love Capitalism by Ken Langone. Who you know, belt. He built Home Depot, and it's a pretty great story about both stories of capitalism. And I think you'll like them. Freeburg, if you like the Yeah, the books you were talking about. All right, everybody, We'll see you next time. And don't forget to rate and subscribe and we'll be taking another episode in another 567 or eight weeks hopefully earlier. The mat Take your sax. Take your Freeburg, take your name off and we'll see you all next time on the all in podcast.