E64: Antitrust standards & enforcement, tech repricing, lab leak obfuscation, E63 reactions & more
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Is tim in a room with his P. R. Crew right now, like rehearsal and practising and.

man.

We fans and .

this. Hi everybody. So I just wanted to make sure based on last week, spot IT was absolutely clear. I care about human rights. Many of you know my origin story.

But for those of you that don't, I was born in a country that's no stranger to civil war and religious and political persecution. Growing up my family, I felt bills effects IT affected our safety. It's in part with LED my family to foul for refugee status and stay in canada.

So this is real part of my lived experience. That said, you know, I realized that what I said last week lacked empathy, particularly towards others who are dealing with persecution, in this case, the weaker. And based on what I read this week, I think what's happening to them in western china's a terrible situation um I also want to talk about this idea about nobody caring.

Look, if we take a step back and replace vigor with other really important issues like the conflict in yemen, the potential warn the ukraine, gun control, school shootings, health care quality. We're faced with horrible events every day. However, the unfortunate state of the world today is that we've also Normalize this routine of being confronted with something tragic or horrible or unjust, and being allowed to react with thoughts and prayers.

And this was the real intent of what I was trying to get across. So when I talk about my line, it's not about whether something matters or not. It's about which issues of all the important issues we face every day, where I have the expertise and I believe I have the ability to have a real impact, even if just buy a little for me, those areas happen to be climate changed life sciences in deep tech.

But just because this is where I spend my time is not to take away from any of the real work any of you are doing in other areas. And in last year, I just wanted to explain to people who may be new to the pod because of last week, that this is a place where four of us, four friends, talk about a whole wide range of things. We explore our curiosities, we try to learn from each other, we chAllenge each other. But we've always done IT in a really supportive space, and I hope you keep that in mind as you listen and watch going forward. And hopefully can you can bring some of that to your own conversations that I have to say.

well so uh, sex I mean, I I know you have something to say, but i'll say um I got a lot of messages this past week after the show where um which which I felt a little bit hurt by and miss characterize and maybe IT was simply I said the wrong thing at the wrong time um and so I I want to just be very clear about a couple of point if I can take a minute that's ready, guys.

Yes, I said um I I just wanted I was going actually send this out on twitter and I decided was Better just to address IT on the pot. So to be clear, I strongly believe and support absolute freedom of all people, and this means the factor. I strongly disagree with the suppression of free speech, denial of religious freedom, imprisonment, harm, capital punishment, slavery and genocide.

I thought this was obvious when we were having our conversation. I did not know, not in favor of genocide. I'm not in favor of genocide.

I'm not in favor of slavery or capital punishment or suppression of religious freedom. I thought this was obvious. The conversation I tried to have was the wrong conversation at the wrong time, which was to trying to talk about the broader china V U.

S. Narrative that is swelling and will continue to swell this decade. I think that the primary function of civilized society, or any advanced social system, is to take care of and protect those that cannot take care of or protect themselves.

And this is usually done by government. But when government fails in government is in fact the oppressor. I think this is the responsibility of other governments and other people, people to step in and have a voice and to take action and so that is um that is kind of my moral framework.

I think it's important. I don't deny any of the harm being done to the weaker population in china. I don't agree with IT on the principle basis and I don't think that what the chinese government is doing is right.

Um and the point that I was trying to make during our conversation was a very different one that I think got completely lost in the moment, which was really just about what's going on with the china U. S. Narrative right now.

I'm not pro china. I'm also not entire china. I am particularly interested in understanding the broader china U. S. Dynamic and what that means for the world over the coming decades and decades.

I think it's really important for us when we evaluate these things and to understand them do not just take sides, but to understand the context in the broader way possible and that's why I am trying to get both sides and understand the mindset of the schools that are involved in running these governments and the way that this of this world is gone to evolve as this economic tension to amount. Um and so that's where I was trying to go. Um and I was just trying to highlight where I think everything is headed over the next decade or two independent of what are obvious human rights issues going on. So let me just stop there and say thanks for you. Let me say that, but that was important for me to just be really clear on because clearly, I wasn't .

clear last week. So well, dog is add to what you said that I also thought I was implied that you care about these things and that you're not in favor of them. I I don't think that need to be spoken ah, so I think it's it's nice that you're clarifying IT, but I think any reasonable person would understand that if you care deeply as a vegan about factory farming, that you also care about humans and you know genocide and and torture or whatever issue. So I think it's like going your statement is so obvious that I I wonder if you even had to have made IT but I graduated sex okay.

So I guess first I should say that um you know what's happening to the vigers in china's indefensible. You've got reports of upwards of a million of these people being held in detention camps or reports of mass socialization and rape. It's like ethnic clothing over there.

So that's absolutely wrong. And it's one of a growing list of issues that we have serious problems with china on IT, which include vector intellectual property, cybersex pianos, the building of their neighbors, they are cracked down on dissidents. The list goes on and on. I mean, I think we have to be clearly about the chAllenge and the threat that china represents, and we've discussed that on the spot many times.

That being said, you know what I think we saw this week, uh, was really about cancel culture, right? You had in response to last week's pod, you have this online mob form, and they want to take, watch mos said, and interpret in the worst possible light so they can turn the outrage meter up to eleven and everyone gets that basically go on twitter and virtue signals say what great people they are because drama is a bad person um and I just want to speak to that issue. I mean, there is a huge amount of apocryphally on in that because, honey, the people who are twining their outrage and their denunciation to moh are doing IT from a device made by forced labor in china, wearing their nike's made by force labor in china, on their way to target to buy cheap goods made in china.

How mean those people have actually lifted a finger in the real world to help the wagers? How many of them have sacrifice and economic benefit, uh, in any way? And so when you said nobody cares, I thought IT was a really startling statement by him.

But if you define caring as doing something more than just virtue signals and expressing your feelings as actually making a sacrifice or taking a risk in the real world, I thought he was Frankly telling us a very uncomfortable truth. We haven't really, most of us done anything. And in that sense, I think the reason why his comments hit such a nerve, I don't think you get the kind of pillon that we got unless he's saying something that's sitting a nerve.

And I think the nerve, the thing that he exposed is that we're not really doing more than virtually signals on this issue. And then came all the, you know, all the hipcroft. You've got the MBA denouncing him, issuing a statement when, what if they done? I mean, when demi spoke up on behalf of the protesters in hong kong in the N. B, A, shut down and sanctioned him and um you know lebron James said he was uneducated actually I think you have more is pretty educate bellers going on so you've got those hiper quits you you've got the White house issuing a statement disavowing to moth but hundred fifty went over to china to manage believes dollars for them and profited by his business dealings over there. So there are a bunch of hypocrite and the list goes on and on.

And so, you know, I think that if in order for the mob to summon the outrage that IT summons IT requires them to, I would say, first, put the worst possible light on much math is saying and to ignore, I say, the fundamental truth of IT and second, to engage in this massive hint cracking and that is the way that cancel culture Operates and I don't think we should buy into IT. Um so I appreciate what which also said. I think he's clarifying his reMarks racy showing that he does care and he does have empathy as we all should. But I think there was a fundamental truth in watch mode last week and that is what .

people are so uncomfortable with.

Okay, well said, I have feelings. And most of all, I am thankful we had the discussion. The goal of this part, I think what makes you special and why you all who are listening come here every week is because, you know, we're going to be honest with you and we're going to tackle these hard discussions.

And I think freeburg, uh, comments and sex is comments, uh, really explain that and and what our intent here is and is human rights is one of the hardest issues to discuss. That's why you don't hear a being discussed and there are not easy answers. And I think, you know, I was chAllenged a by my best ties on the episode and their questions and their chAllenges. We're absolutely critical, yes.

How can we care about one group of people when the people in our back you are we're not Carrying about, are we going to invade countries? These are very new on difficult questions, but we must have this discussion. And if we try to cancel people with a twenty second clip, that looks completely different, if you look at the two minute clip or you.

Take the time to have a forty minute listen of the the whole segment. You get a totally different picture. And I think it's very important to raise awareness about human rights. And IT is an issue that I have been passionate about my whole life.

And i'm not trying to virtue signal or score any points here, but I know first hand that raising awareness and having the discussions reduces the violations, because dictators, despots and people doing this kind of stuff do not want the heat of what happened this past week and what happened this past week is that more awareness was raised about the wagers and the situation that they're going through. I think then, you know, as somebody who's model this situation that i've seen in the last couple of years, perhaps this was a tipping point and that is something good that can come out of that discussion. Now on a personal basis I have uh had some feelings of guilt um because I was very hard for me to watch what happened to him off this week and to watch people dunking on him um and then let's face IT.

I brought the topic up and I duggin with my feelings and I got a little heated and and I am suddenly being portrayed as you know like a hero in the discussion. That is not the intent and there's there's no hero or value in this. There is a hard discussion in this, and I am extremely proud of my friendship with each of you, especially you to math. I am extremely proud of your candidates and tackling these issues and making people think about that. And you know, I am just so proud to be friends with each of you and i'm so proud of the work we here we do here every week and I think it's important work um and I feel like I get smarter every week and and I hope the audience does too and I hope we can keep having these discussions so we don't make .

fun of each other yeah.

now let's yeah make fun of each other. I mean, I don't know for allowed to laugh. This is like so serious and heavy.

But so what you're saying is thank you to moh.

But access point about I mean that we talked about cancel culture a lot on the show know we've always been, I think, generally able to be third party observers. So what's happened and IT was really interesting to go through the cycle this week where um you know there was just kind of a echoing narrative on one thing that was said with one direction. There were a few pieces though tomato right? I mean, IT wasn't. There were pieces from the atlantic and some other pieces that kind of highlighted that things that you said were things that a lot of people won't say. And that's what was really so shocking for so many people.

What's the Peter T. O comment on this whole on all of this time?

Yeah he said if no one saying that is probably true .

or if you're not allowed to say IT probably true yes.

if you're not allowed .

to say that but yeah.

think based on the mob that formed and it's already kind of blow over in this way, this kind of cancer culture starts but for that sort of that White, hot, really intense, dare to you would think that like to maths had practice genocide himself, you know, because everybody comes out in the way that they make themselves feel Better by virtues on this issue.

And again, I would just say that, well, I think we should be thinking about what do we do um you know how do we actually make a difference because I don't think this virtual ly on the issues is going na do IT um and you know at the same time that this mob was forming against a maths, we had a two hour by impressed conference in which by to never mention the vigers ones the press core never mention the vigers ones so does that mean the vigers are below their line? Um you know why wasn't I mentioned, you know shouldn't be getting up on biden. Why is why is the press ganging up on your math when they're ganging up on bind for that? So there is a fair amount of hypocras y here.

I actually think, Jason, I think you make an excEllent point that by discussing these issues and raising these issues, IT creates a little bit of check on the people propagating these atrocities because they don't like to be exposed that way. And maybe we should be boycott the beijing olympics. I mean, maybe that should be on the table. Maybe we should be boycotted the MBA. I mean, let's have that conversation yeah.

or maybe everybody who goes, I won't want to see the athletes miss the olympics, but maybe they can even just raise their hand and and doing you a or some sort of a signal to show they support the situation or they aware of IT uh with the wagers there could be some you know modest protest or statement they could make without ruling you know, their lives work.

I I always hate when the olympics get cancelled for some political reason because I think those people work so hard for IT. But raising awareness, you know, is a noble goal in all of this. And then also doing things is a noble goal.

Um and um yeah I mean, I IT was very weird to watch the the mob form and anticipate and and just who was, you know taking the time to actually listen to the full episode was clear from the atlantic article. And some of the new one takes that they listen to the full discussion because there are bullet points here. Like who like there was somebody asked me a very chAllenging question. I think I might have a new freeburg. Like are we going to start invading countries over human rights and then there's more suffering in death and pain from the wars and and when do you decide as the the democracies of the world to invade the dictatorships of the world to promote human rights like this is a very difficult issue ah that the world has had to deal with sale before and there is no easy answer there you know you're right.

This a point that I also tried to make on the last episode like freeburg did which is um I think I think it's actually great to have these ideals and we should have moral clarity about what's happening and I think what's happening is wrong. It's outrageous as an atrocity. Y um but but the question is what we do about IT and um and the reality is even though it's important to speak out about human rights, these types of formations about human rights when they become this sort of you, when people, when we gin to the like frenzy, it's been the praille t in pretext for every misguided foreign intervention that we've had over the last twenty years and the example the iraq war, I mean ddb, who's saying was suddenly hitler, the goals of nation building, afghani for twenty years, our invasion of, uh, libya, we ve got read a good offer and we replaced IT with chaos .

for years we were talking about how evil the taliban and their social system was .

and we just hand to them a few weeks ago exactly so you know and so these types of um when you know you whip people up over human rights, I mean, I agree with the sentiment and I agree with the moral clarity.

But I also can't help but recognize that neocons and the military industrial complex and the washington blob have used this type of rhetoric for decades to coral us and stamp, eat us into wars and foreign interventions that don't make any sense. And we all recognize, after the whole project has gone wrong, like afghanistan, we become suddenly more realistic about the whole thing. And suddenly, you know, we're not talking about you, the the sort of the moral atrocities the taliban ety more.

But the discipline is to so there, the discipline though, is to be able to check ourselves before we get into these interventions. And I don't think we do a good job of that or ripping ourselves up into these mobs. And we're in a frenzy.

And the the raising awareness is something that has been lacking, you know, certain organizations. And if this is very important that we don't take organizations that have engaged with the country, let's say china or saudi ia, they may have engaged in good faith with the goal of you know engagement is a positive for humanity in the world.

Okay, if we engage with china and we are co dependent on each other um that will lead to a Better arc for human rights and for humanity and less worse because our our economies are entangled. The new business gather. Okay, this is A A fine.

What the dictor and death spots want you to do is to fight each other and not look at the human rights atrocities. So it's easier for us to say, oh the N B A O apple you know pick the the the the company or corporate interest or organization that has engaged um but by raising awareness um consistently IT IT gives other people the ability to talk about this. Some organizations weren't willing to even talk about this or say the name wagers. And if we keep talking about the wagers, the chances that that situation improves, I think there is a chance that doesn't prove.

But I do think this like notion that the four of us can get together on a podcast and not get cancelled because if we don't collect money from advertisers, and we started having these conversations amongst friends and we just put IT on the internet. Um first of all, it's a great kind of reflection of what you can do in the united states. So the freedom of speech that we have, and we can just put this on the international. Anyone can watch IT around the world. I don't know how many people are watching in.

but mostly freedom of speech.

mostly freedom of speech. But I do think that it's it's prety valuable and I do think that that you an important point for us is know as much as tim got completely destroyed this week, um you know I got .

I got to say other than cove IT and I feel pretty good.

you feel Better. You're pretty bomb for there to I mean.

I think the the coffee thing was Carry because four of my five kids got IT. So I was to say, oh my god, does everyone doing by the way, i'll i'll be very honestly so between both houses you know, mine in my x wives, four of five kids got IT. Our nani got IT.

Nat did not. In the Youngest baby did not. There's a real difference between, in a my house, how the boy's experienced of IT and how the girl's experience of IT quite onesta IT.

Like we in a we've expressed certain system, specifically, a really bad through, throw in a cough that the girls in her house did not. The girls had more in testino issues, the boys roughly did not. So IT all manifested, kind of in advice, but got, my god, I mean, what a pain in the ass.

Well, to be going through that. And then also like monitoring twitter and inbound, your phone must been blowing up.

And I think I wasn't doing any of that.

Okay, Jason sets upon, let's go. All right. Well, okay, everybody, welcome to in parkas with us. Uh, the sult of science, who's got a new startup launched, hear about that later in the show, the rain man himself and they are, I say, the dictor. I was like.

it's in, warn you.

we got a six, three episodes we called the addicted. This is bound to happen.

Every do guys were like after twenty years of friendship it's like, I know that this is like nine thousand. Nine of long was like.

you have been cancel. We got a log.

So first step, I think we .

should start with a dual of stories that relate to each other. Microsoft announced spying division blizzard for sixty eight billion dollars of cash. Microbes got a lot of cash.

And I think we all understand like why this is a great idea for microsoft with x box. And obviously, activision owns call of duty, which has one hundred and twenty million or so monthly active users. They also own a bunch of nerd stuff, a from blizz, like the abl world, world craft, my favorite starcraft.

And those have Operators of forty million. They also had blocking, if you remember, that they make Candy crush in those kind of casual games to have accord a billion users. But even with all these, is a highly fragmented market.

But in related news, alien con, the, I believe thirty two year old ahead of the ftc, who has written a bunch pieces, we talked about this on all in episode thirty six SAT down with Carry swisher and Andrew ross sorkin for an interview. And uh, basically we're moving or he intends to move the goal post on anti trust. I want to play three clipsed and have you react to them? Here's the first first one.

Uh, and this is her take on changing the anti trust from consumer harm to uh, now shift to does this deal and will take the activision deal here as a but one example. But you could take the instagram and the youtube deal as well. Do these deals substantially reduce competition in the future? Let's watch the first lip.

In certain cases, maybe too much success. And so the question is, when is the regulars posed to say this could work? And if IT works, it's actually worked too well.

It's an interesting question. And I think of foreign ces, the real question is, is this the deal that could less in competition and in hind.

all deals to some deals to some degree, less than competition.

ally lesson competition or tend to create monopoly. And there is also indication that congress wanted enforcers not just to act when you the third and fourth companies emerging on the first and second, but actually in the incipiency when you said see trends towards that. Those can also be important moments for enforcers to jump in.

So uh, what do we think, uh, freeway, about this sort of new rubrics, not consumer harm because obviously, if microsoft buys activision and makes those part of game pass and you get call a duty for free with your game pass and the Candy crush games and blizz games that's good for consumers. They get a whole bunch of more games that would be like disney buying star wars. They get all the star wars stuff in disney plus but the same low Price yeah look.

sexes are legal legal here. But but but i'll just say um before uh you know he probably speaks Better information than me. Um if it's not about consumer harm and it's about decreasing competition in this broadly, I would argue subjective sense then um what's scary is that there are going to be decisions made by preter of what isn't isn't competitive.

And ultimately, if they're not trying to keep in mind the best interest of the consumer, then IT is, in fact, going to cause consumer harm at some point, deals that they block. But there will be deals that they may block that may have benefit consumers, meaning Prices go down. Imagine having all of your products integrated in one streaming service instead of having to pay for three streaming services.

So instead of paying seven dollars across hb max and disney plus and netflix, you get everything in one. But today, the regulators would not let those business emerge because that would be and I competitive under this context. And so this is going to be a touchy debate, and it's going to be difficult, I think, ultimately, to rationalize this if there is going to be a point in the future where we can actually show that consumer harm would be caused by decrease in competition in the marketplace. And so I would be nervous about that. Subjectivity in the slippery slope enables.

I think it's a great point. Think about IT. If you had to pay instead of for disney plus, you paid for pixar plus, disney plus, marvel plus and star wars plus to be cast in your household to manage all those accounts are much Better offering.

Better experience.

much Better, considerate, cheaper.

And this is why, by the way, I said, sorry, I said this is why I said in the past, it's we use the terminology as if it's the evil and bad. But not all monopolies or businesses that have very big motes is another way to kind of to describe them are necessarily bad for the customer. You get cheaper product. You get Better product, you get more of an advantage they may ultimately be yielded to be anti competitive.

No harm.

Let me explain .

to where she's coming from. Like there's a fundamental pillar of capitalism that says that access returns must get competed away. So if a capital, a system is to be efficient, if our company has profit margins of ninety nine percent, competitors emerge, pushing those profit margins down to something reasonable.

Where you get to some sort of equal liberum. And the whole principle of what he is saying is in in the absence of competition, we don't really know what the equal liberum return really looks like. And she's not saying that, but that is the implicit ess of what he is saying.

And so and if you allow all of the stuff to aggregate, maybe google shouldn't have forty five percent ebata margins. Maybe in a really competitive society, they would only have eighteen percent. And that's actually Better net debt for the system. The problem is that, counterfactual to your point, free breakfast is impossible to measure. How do you know and how much value do you need to take away of the panoply of things that google does to figure that out and that I think we're the problem with that.

But you know, let's be clear, uh, I in two and nineteen I wrote in my annual letter there is a section called the the tightening of the regular ory news and meaning IT was a framework for how to basically dismantle big tech. And element number one of that was a changing regulatory landscape. And it's really incredible to see in front of our eyes we ve got a build that just left judiciary right, that was effectively voted across the that's not gonna to the floor of the senate, which is going to rewrite some of these anti can and seventy five.

twenty five and fifty fifty committee democrats, republicans so clearly across the .

clearly across the al uh and I mean, the funny thing about that was spindle and pedia, the two democratic senators from california where most of these companies are in, in the walsh journal article that I had railed against that, but still voted for IT to go to the floor. So it's I think some version of that is gonna ass. She's gna go and scrutinize these companies. I still think this microsoft activision deal, on baLance, gets done because if you take the abode values away from IT, the reality is that it's an adjacent part of microsoft core business, and there's nothing fundamentally monopolistic about what would happen if you'd let microsoft activision come together.

Could IT reduce competition in the future, I think would be her new lands. And if xbox has call of duty and SONY police station does IT or the next council doesn't, maybe IT does. Uh, you could make the argument, sex, what your takes on this very hard to apply standard of reducing future competition. Because, as air rocca said very clearly, one of these reduced competition is now we got to get into what is the word substantially mean in this context.

Yeah so my take on on lead icon is that she's got some worthwhile observations on the problems posed by these big tech ment openly, but I don't think she's got the right remedies. So on the observations, I think she's correct, broadly speaking, that these big tech companies, the fans, they have way too much power in the marketplace. There are now gatekeepers over the internet to control these powerful platforms.

And broadly speaking, IT is time, I think, to to basic have some limits on those powers, make sure they don't abuse IT. I think she's also right that the traditional standard of consumer harm doesn't really capture that sort of concept of market power for these free at base services, right? Because there is no pricing. Um and furthermore, I think he's got a point when he says that you know a deal no pricing.

You mean facebook and google, the consumer doesn't pay.

So how can there be consumer harm, right? So clearly, that standard of consumer harm doesn't really capture the market power dynamic. And then I think the last observation he makes, which I thinks it's pretty, pretty valid, is this idea that, you know, when facebook bought instagram at that time, IT didn't seem to be a problem, but IT definitely allowed them to extend the monopoly from the deaf top into mobile.

And the ability should be scrutinized harder. My problem is with her remedy. I mean, what she's basically saying is, first of all, like you said, any deal that could decrease competition in the future is a problem.

Well, the whole goal of business and making business moves like an acquisition is to build your mote is to is to when credit more competitive offering. So there's no limiting factor. There's no bright line test there, at least with consumer harm.

There's a bright line test, which is about pricing, right? Is mathematically measurable. You could create a model around IT here.

There's absolutely nothing. And so what's gonna is completely politicize the process of getting a an ideal approved. And you can see this when she's talking about the impact on labor. I mean, this is a total site .

to the this is a .

total shop to the labor constituency in the democratic party because look, facebook and google, no matter how powerful and up please they may be, they don't have a dominant position in the labor market. This is not true. They're competing for the same engineers at every tech companies competing for.

So she's bringing a purely political consideration in now. And so again, there is no bright line rule that s can be heavily political companies trying to get a merger approval. Never know whether they're good or not. And even after they get approved, we'll never know they're good. And I have a big problem with her saying that any deal that they approve can be reopened and reevaluated a decade into .

the future and reverse companies that.

yes.

companies need. That s the real issue is the the rules of capitalism has been that the smarter, slashed, more strategic in entity, if they can run their place more efficiently, has the right to win. Um this is almost trying to say actually not really and that is very problem.

But you never know good, you know you're good.

And in the problem that I will create in the equity market specifically is how do you actually drive shareholder returns? And then what do all these shareholders then do if these companies are rendered to basically stay where they are? You take a sp shot and you take a snapshot of the economy, and you say, this was what IT will be from now on.

The point is really interesting. It's GTA require M A to become kind of a political maneuver ring process similar you know create sort of uh you know um obfuscate gates where you don't really know what it's going to take to get through there. And then you've gotta do what you do when you try and convince foreign ments to work with you will allow you to do a transaction in a foreign government in a foregone country. When you ve got to go and you got to go figure the politicians who they want, who they are, what they want, and then put together a political construction that's going to approve the deal. Given that there is now going to be subjective, uh, you know, validation, where is before I think, uh, uh, a criteria more objective?

Let me play this other clip. This is the clip that the sax is referencing. Linkin also talks about how labor, uh, unions are trying to get in on the action slash griff, see them.

On the side of this research has showed that labour markets are significantly concentrated and it's LED to additional thinking at the policy level of how this should be affecting what entry and question forces are doing. So the justice department, including in the last administration, started looking at no poach agreements more closely incenses in which employers may be colluding to suppress wages.

Both agencies have been looking at the ways in which merges, in particular may less in competition for labor and have downed am effects on workers in ways that are harmful, and that also needs to be on our radar. so. I think this is an ongoing conversation. But increasingly, the question is you know how we implement some of these priorities and not you know whether they're important.

That is the first time you included labor. This is something labors .

wanted for a long time. The idea of looking at, and I trust through the lens of unemployment essentially.

you know there's an interesting history here. I mean, there were cases in which unions were supportive of transactions because they thought they would be to more downstream benefits. But I think we started to see uh, through retrospect, cof studies and in which murres actually ended up having a harmful effect. And so I think that is what's significantly contributed.

This is also part of what I said, twenty, twenty. And the third element of that plan was you have to change the rules on stockpile compensation. So instead of her talking about IT as labor, I think the the more accurate way to say IT is like there is a very valuable human capital in technology business.

A few people have, you know, discontinuous impact on these businesses. And he has been a stated strategy of all of big tech to use their baLance cheese to buy small companies in their incipiency, to use her words, not because IT helps advantage their monopoly, but IT prevents the leakage of human capital into other ideas, and IT prevents those other ideas from early flushing. That's really what's been happening for years.

And silk valley, and we all know that you know all the access hiring we see is about hoarding talent. And you'd rather pay these people millions of dollars a year if you're big tech to basically work on next to nothing, then take the risk of them going across the street to a competitor and then having to build something that the 抒情， and this was such a, this is such a not the only way, but the only just finished. The one of the ways that you can change IT is you have to change the way that stock base compensation works, how it's accounted for, you know, how you can actually deal with IT on a gap basis, how uh capitalist then treat that in terms of their earnings.

If you don't do that, none of the models change that. People look past IT, people look through IT. They don't think it's a real cost which IT is and then you are allowed to continue to do IT.

That's really the underlying is so much so tramadol, the human the morning of human capital was a in theme on the sock valley HBO show where people in holly we're getting ten millions of dollars and hanging out on the roof. Uh freeburg when you look at this uh human capital labor bring brought into IT isn't the point of a lot of M N A to um eliminate jobs and eliminate redundancy.

So if you brought in youtube by google a mature if you were there at that time period, the distinct concept was that we already have an advanced ad network. We already have accounting and we already have servers around the world and storage. You don't need to hire those people. We can get rid of them or whatever, and we get rid of that .

redone to scale large scale consolidation that certainly grow most eminent technology is the opposite where an acquisition kes place and the gets fuelled by further investment after the acquisition is made. When youtube was acquired, there was a few dozen employees there and then very quickly google scale that team, the engineering team, infrastructure team, they even had their own independent at sales team um to thousands of employees.

And without that, I would have been very difficult for youtube to achieve that scale, both from a product success perspective and fragility perspective, but also an employee base e perspective. With the amount of capital would have taken to go to raise that from venture capital is maybe nowadays with the billion of dollar floating around IT would be different. But back then, I would have been very hard.

And so what same for what's up instagram? exactly? What's up with one thousand nine hundred people when I was acquired? And now it's thousands of certain and instagram the same.

And so what we've seen traditionally, not traditionally, but over the last ten and fifteen years with internet based acquisition is not about consolidation and reduction and cost, but about taking an enabling technology and accelerating IT on an existing platform. Now number one, IT makes that new technology of product far more successful, far more far reaching and more consumers benefit from IT. Number two is IT now makes that platform harder to compete with.

So as a platform, it's gonna a lot harder to catch up with the cash flows being generated at google in a facebook, given how quickly they reinvest their capital new technology to further their advanced ment. Two point. But but I would say been so significant over the past fifteen years of people are lifting their head up is that IT has been both beneficial to consumers and anti competitive.

So that was exactly what I want to get to hear. Your youtube examples is the perfect one because if you look at youtube, think about all the joy education communication IT has created on a global basis as a jogger. Not free ah and it's free that helps humanity so much in this new lens.

But no one else can make a video outside like this.

Exactly the now looking at all the benefit that youtube has created for humanity versus the fact that it's going to be impossible to the display youtube. Now, to your point, sacks, how do you get past the bright line? You have a suggestion for a way.

And would you now look at something like youtube and say we shouldn't have allow that to happen? Youtube was on dead store because of the lawsuits and the server bells. We all know that right?

Well, this is the uncertainties can be created. And I think this administration creating tremendous y business uncertainty. I think the reaction of a lot of big tech companies, this is going to be to stop doing ma until the situation has clarified because they just don't know um you targets target companies are going to want to have huge break up fees.

And it's kind of a chilling effect on the market for m na. I mean, business needs certainty and they're not giving IT in this business environment to about four. We get to you just make can make one point about that last clip on the labor point.

Listen, this feels to me just like when the administration talked about clean tech and clean energy and electric vehicles, but then they only gave the subsidy to the a car companies that were, that were basic union shops. And so excited, a test from the E. V.

summer. They try to pretend that ford and gm were the ones driving the evy revolution in the us. IT was very laughter ble what they were trying to do there.

Is there a shoe horning a union agenda into clean tech? And I think that's what learn is doing in that clips. SHE was shoe horning a union agenda into anti trust law. And it's a bit of sorry because facebook and google, even though they are very powerful companies when IT comes to talent, they are in a war for talent just like everybody else.

They compete with each other that are .

not mistreated employees, are very well paid employees, and more over the market is highly competitive. And we don't need them trying to insert this union agenda into anti trust law.

You gotta think that, for example, going back to microsoft, activision, obviously the bankers would have called apple and facebook and google as well.

I mean, it's subserve that they went, have had to be at the minute that you think that you have a boniface off for one of the things you have to do, especially get an opinion letter and also to make sure that as a public crack chiller, you can justify that you have evaluated all the other options, right? sure. Um but it's really quite telling to David's point. I don't think that if you are facebook or google or apple you could have credibly made an offer because the calculus in the back of your head was not whether IT had business logic, but whether you could actually get IT through the ftc.

But microsoft did, because microsoft is no longer .

seen as a threat. And if we said this, we said this in our words, show two or three episodes ago, you know, they have really been the most untouched, uh, in the last decade by anti trust scrutiny, whether in domestically or internationally. We've largely skated under the radar after paying the Price. Foreign tire decade.

I did a lot that to do with the fact that mark sops effective ly pivoted, with exception, this gaming into being an enterprise software company. And the politicians just care a lot less about enter Price software. IT doesn't capture the public imagination, is the big consumer, you know, companies that get all of that attention .

to facilitating point, like literally, the consumer. And the bread and circuses of this was driving IT like people hate big tech and trump up band for a yaari a but .

I ve got to say, you know these um increasing restrictions on big tech and the these prohibitions and the chilling effect the uncertainty is one thing to do IT when the market is just completely ripping and we can sort of afford to run these experiments and tinker with these these rules. But I got ta say, I am starting to get pretty worried here that you know we had germy grand thin is sort of a old school yeah old school kind of barish type market commentator. He had this expression that the yeah, I mean, one of these stop clock right twice as the day thinks.

But a jeremy grantham has never found the market.

He, yeah exactly. But the stop clock can be right twice a day. And the line today is that was in the of a super bubble. And now we've been talking about bubble.

Yeah exactly. It's basically true. I mean.

well, the sense of which is IT might be true is that, I mean, when you talk about this last few months is that you had the fed and the the federal government pump a tendering of liquidity into the mark over the past years because I cove IT. Now they're starting to pull that back. And there was, I think, a general as inflation across asset classes, certain types of assets clearly got more inflated than others.

We've seen a huge correction and grow stocks. We've seen a huge correction in uh in crypto, basically anything long dated as the fear of interests increasing gone up. You've massive corrected.

But so the concern is that you know what the losses were seeing, and I mean, day that just keeps I keep seeing more red, that this could turn into a recession. You know, popping of bubbles is usually followed by by a recessions or so. I think you know the fortunes of the economy could turn really quickly here.

and that is the marginal rise. The marginal risk is actually for a recession. We we talked about this before, by the way, just to your point. You're right that we pumped in ten million dollars, but over the last three weeks and really over the last two and a half months, we have actually eviscerated ten trillion dollars of value as well. So if you want to measure IT, we put ten trillion of access capital in.

but we've now destroy ten .

trillion dollars of equity of a been. So, uh, growth stocks have been shot. Uh, biotech talks have been just absolutely spoke me.

Everything is getting crushed coffee. Cx, but David is saying something really important. The risk, in my opinion, is not of runaway inflation anymore. And the reason was what happened this weekend was incredibly important, and we have seen this happen just a few years ago. So this weekend, uh, china cut interest rates.

Now as we know, we are dealing in the united states with this issue of whether we should raise rates and by how much, because worried about inflation. Well, if you're cutting rates, it's because you're worried about the other problem, which is that the economy is basically turned over and you need to become more accommodating, right? You need to incentivize .

businesses to spend. By light turned over, you mean IT slow down. People are not building companies, not your new project. So you want to inside, you want to give them an incentive or or maybe some catalysts to start some new company or start some new project because all the reality projects have wound down in twenty eighteen.

Here's exactly what happened. The set up was the fed. We were everybody was worried about what the fed was going to do on interest rates. The ed was looking at china as the canary in the coming the leading indicator of what we should do in the end of twenty eighteen.

Uh drone power decided to raise rates and we raise rates and then enter twenty nineteen and uh the chinese economy turned over and um we realized that the economy was not nearly as strong as we thought that would be. And so our reaction was disproportionate to what the actual date on the ground said. We entered E A recession in twenty twenty.

And that's when you guys probably saw trump going crazy blaming power. I mean, most of us signore IT because, you know, we were all dealing with, you know, trump arrangement sydney. But the underlying thing of what he was saying was, hey, hold on a second.

Uh, you just causes recession in amErica by raising too quickly. The fed is now in this really delicate situation where china cut rates. Last week, we have an F, O, M, C meeting the open markets committee that sets rates on wednesday.

I think of this coming week. What is he supposed to do? Your bill act two weeks ago was advocating for a fifty basis point raise in this meeting. So that way beyond what people even thought is supposed.

that we should just remember that bill action has bets, maceo ic bets in the market. If he's calling for a fifty point race, I guarantee you make a lot of like no interest.

My only point is the set up is a very complicated one for the fed coming into this week, and the risk is to a recession. Because if we overcorrect yes, and the leading indicators all around the world tells that their economies are weak, then inflation may have actually been much more transitory than we thought. And right now, we have to decide because if we overcorrect, we're gonna plunge the united states economy into a recession.

This is why, uh, I think freedman g, when you look at this, when you have so many different things happening at once and you're trying to pilot plane or a car, you know, in rain on ice going really fast, maybe there's something wrong with the brakes and you can be very delicate with, you know how you steer into this.

What is the right strategy here on a policy basis coming out of omicron? Um should we just take a pause on raising rates? What what what do you think the right situation you are obviously putting up on your regulation on top of big merges and acquisitions, and that's going to create headwinds. I don't know how many different variables we want to add to the mix of an economy that fears like we're a perfect storm.

I like a lot of us kind of talk about the valuation of things in markets as being the economy, but it's not the economy is the productivity of businesses that are valued in the market. And as long as the productivity of the businesses in the market continues to improve, that businesses continue to grow, that the stability to pricing that's not run away or or declining, neither inflationary or two deflationary.

Um you know I think those are the the indicators that matter most. Now the reality is over the last couple of years, we've had trillions of dollars that have flowed into these markets for free. And those trillions of dollars have created lots of mini asset bubbles. Lots of little new markets have emerged. Nf, random crypto currencies that don't actually do anything.

The collectibles market, the art market, there are lots of I mean, there are a lots of examples of these speculative early stage businesses that have gone public and uh, people back up and they they said, look, when there's this much money around, i'm going to start making more risky bets. I am going to make more speculative bets. And uh regardless, the money is coming out of the markets, the mony's going to come out one way or another.

And as he starts to come out, these little bubbles are the first that are going to pop. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the economy is at risk. IT means that their evaluation bubbles that are gna burst, they're gonna decline and no interest rate policy is gone to change that because the inevitable growth in the underlying economy, the inevitable end to the pandemic, is what's ultimately going to drive capital out of these markets and back into ultimately more productive assets and less speculative assets.

And so this is a transition, and i'm not sure you can really kind of manage, I think, underlying businesses and the growth of the economy and the ability for people to get jobs. There's an incredible number of open jobs in the U. S. Right now. Have three million open jobs tics, go fly for a job .

and million whatever is go.

There are not a lot of people. There are not a lot of people in the us. That don't have an option to go out right now and go improve there.

They're working condition. There are a lot of open jobs in the U. S.

Sales have gone up. yes. So I mean, you're working condition, you can go make more money. And um and so you know the economy underlying there are lots of great businesses that are growing and doing well and there's stability that's emerging. And then there's a bunch that aren't and there are a bunch that we're always speculative and that they were hyped and overvalued. And you know as those assets get evaluate, a lot of us that have most of our worth and income coming from capital are are going to feel the burn.

Have two questions that we I want to go around the horn on a first to math if we could do, if each of you could do one thing, two, one or two things, uh, to manage this economic policy in the next year, what would IT be like? What two things do you think we should do, David, one or two things with the top of this that regulators should do in terms of managing this seemingly k situation.

just feels IT just feels to me like we're pinball ling from one overreaction to another. So we overreacted in terms of flooding the zone with liquidity because of covet. I mean, remember, like drug Miller, he was like the one of the only voices about a year ago when they did that, that last two trillion dollar simula bill that covered relief bill.

And he said, look, retail already fifteen percent above trend. Meaning if you looked at demand, that the demand side of the economy IT had fully recovered and IT was actually above trying. People were spending more money, and then we flood the zone with another two trillion. And then low behold, six months later we have this inflation. And then in response to that inflation, we're now jacking up rates so quickly that I think we're risking to to mos point a recession.

So we're pinball ling from one over reaction to another artist, the big metal thought I had this week, which is how many of our problems are just self inflicted right now, I mean, even uncovered, right? We could live with the savage ant of covet omron, you know, to mos and all of our friends. We've everyone I know in the last few weeks specially has had IT, and it's been very mild, basically a cold, but in large loss of the country we're not using to live with that.

We're at each other throats about these vaccine Mandates, these other and similarly and and the same thing to bring make even more local. We've got a crime wave in amErica going on right now. why? Because we actually the jails last year and start prosecuting, totally self inflicted. Okay.

so what things do we need to do just if we had one or two things you think we should do, what you said about pink ponging? So if you think work at system, policy.

community, and I think that you want some neat little answer that's credible and there is no.

no. I I let me explain.

There was a good idea there. There is no one or two things anybody can do. I think there's a collective set of things that we have to do organize. So look just to set up, right? Um we have had more activity and hedging then in any other period in recent memory except the great financial crisis, just to set the tone of where we are in terms of volatility in the capital markets.

Mutual funds who don't short stocks, right? The multitrillion dollar mutual fund complex, whose only job is to buy has been a net seller, hasn't even started buying a single thing that we have an F O M C meeting that's gonna happen next week where drone power and the you know the fed has to decide what to do in the face of incomplete data. It's not as if we've even stopped all of the purchasing uh of assets that we've been doing.

We're still putting money in the system. I just want to be clear, we were debating when we stopped the bigger. We're not even debating when we shrink our baLanced as a country.

So we are in a really complicated moment. And I think the risk is that there is, uh, an overreaction to incomplete data. And we plunged the U.

S. Economy into a recession. And I just think that that that has to be really thought fully measured. And we guise, we've seen this in two thousand and nine.

a favorite any dust. No, i'm not an economic and i'm not a central banker and so I have no clue.

okay. Um the next thing the to .

most point I mean we're E R dealing with balancing the risk of inflation against a supercede sion. I think that is fundamental. And right now, all the statements have been so hawkish that you know the markets have been is flowing right now for months. And it's start I think I think the baLance of race is starting to make recession possible in a way that didn't impossible to three months. Doesn't the repricing .

of assets though, like we look at palon, you know it's down whatever eighty percent. You look at the zoom is down seventy, eighty percent. When you see those things that were misPriced river in which we talked about.

I will use the term this Price. They were .

say they repressed the， they were missed.

They're not something yesterday. They pay .

twenty five percent more, and they are twenty five percent what to make.

whether it's yesterday, an hour ago, a year ago.

every day.

pricing changes though.

Here's to think about the Prices. The pricing was based on people with a lot of money placing a lot of bets. Uh, maybe who is point the market condition change? Well, I think maybe we had enthusiastic people betting things up without looking at fundamentals is my point.

I think sex agrees with me here on this. So I yeah yeah. So now you have market participants who were gambling on like momentum. Now we're repricing of do we think where we had in this repricing or correct pricing .

or that we're in the eight in my opinion, I think we're in the eight in of of the tech drawed down. So if you're a high growth tech company, you've been smashed with three months in a row. As you said, Jason were off. Some stocks were off eighty, you know, fifty and eighty percent of their highs .

as I got some error corrections.

That's that's crash .

that's not .

come a crash .

cause if you if you're a if you're in other areas like value, you've had a pretty good rally. If you're encrypt, you're just starting to get smoke. Now if you're in um why .

is a crypto this? I want your thought on this. Why is encysted getting smoke like palon and sum is because those people are holding lers or something.

while cypher, I think, has slide different dynamics and the individual talks like a palatal. But I think that .

you're going to see release for one because .

I want to understand what all.

all the market is, is who's bidding and who's coming into the market. I mean, there's still thousands of millions of people from around the world stepping into the crypto markets each day that are putting more money into these markets that baLances out of with roles. And that's all the crypt to is there's no problem underlying business that you're valuing.

The pallet on released was really bad. OK, I mean, was very strong and I was strange IT was just like, uh, we're just gonna basically stop producing anything because all of our inventory will meet our demand for the foreseeable future. That's a that's not a good statement.

If you heard growth supposed to be a high growth. okay. I so for seeing fifty, eighty percent sax Baker had a tweet that capital allocators yeah the bottom of the market.

He and he was afraid something like when we shoot the generals. And his comment was the generals are big tech. When those things strayed down twenty five percent, the bottom is in.

And I think that collectively, most people think that, uh, were a little bit oversold in all areas except big tech. I think big tech is down ten, eleven, twelve percent when you see this thing really get cracked is when those folks, you know trade down another ten or fifteen percent. And then I think .

we're kind through most the or always in a big tech, but are not small either. Me tech gets their asses cake, fifty eight percent. Big tech, fifteen percent. But if big tech was down thirty percent, then we start releasing a bottom. And we consider next .

next part you that because I think big tech after remembers basically the index and in the last ten or twenty years, you've never seen drawdowns more than fifteen to twenty five percent. You've never seen IT.

And and when you've ever had a fifteen to twenty five percent draw out, meaning the market goes off fifty or twenty five percent, you have remember the thing that we have also done over the last twenty years has created so much money on the sidelines, always looking for a cheap buying opportunity. And so the minute that these things, so even, you know, march of twenty twenty, remember when we started to do this, pod and IT literally looked like the world is ending. Yeah, the bottom existed for a week.

yes.

And then within a week, the entire twenty five percent loss in the stock market was wiped out and we were back to Normal.

So that I sold take, okay. Well.

talk specifically that I think IT was .

good that we talked about. I remember selling, I remember selling slack going, this is the best thing. But I have no choice because .

I how about what we goes to fifteen? How about ruber goes to fifty from forty?

That's why I was saying, Jason, like any comment you made earlier, I think you made a comment about um you know what do you do right now to drive or make change in these markets? And i'm not sure that at the end of the day, the drive or the change is being made as much as the change that being made is being driven by the market itself.

There is just so many dynamics at play that is very difficult to kind of ascertained where things are headed next. What's going on? We are going to sit here.

We're going to speculate. We're going to flip a coin. It's going to come up heads.

It's onna come up tails. We're going to be right. We're going to be wrong. It's really difficult to kind of put our foot down and for any of us to put our fut down and say, this is what I think needs to happen and this is what I think just en or could happen or will happen half of be wrong.

Let's take another stock. And I think is interesting to talk with this. Netflix was at seven hundred dollars 3 ninety today。

The going on to the business itself. Well, they think they're .

not gonna grow uh twenty thirty percent a year. They think I grow eight, nine, ten percent a year. But a fabulous business, right like great business IT is possible now that is .

is growing much. Netflix is so saturated. IT is IT has achieved such incredible market chair by growing so quickly every year for years and years and end at some point, the growth was going to a slow down.

They hit their natural audience network. Network is going to be the best example of consumer surplus at scale. And what I mean by that is they have given so much value away for an incredibly small amount of money.

Like if you think about the value you get from netflix as compared to what you would get from home cast, and you buy ten box, ten dollars or fifteen dollars for next, next, first as a hundred box for concatenation. Such a huge gap in you. But networks had to spend so much money to keep people entertain.

The real question is at what point do they start to sort of like run out of the things that they can do to keep people um engaged and otherwise they Jason do what you did, which is you have a substitution H B O max, you have a substitution to disney plus. And everybody gets in the game. The only real winner is the consumer yeah uh and any individual company I think gets gets into a real tough spot.

And I think what you saw was their earnings release basically said just that disney is doing a great job competing against us. HBO max is doing a great job competing against. So we're not sure with the incremental dollar that we can give you the growth that we've given you before when we had no competition. That's, by the way, lean as linux comment, which is the other side of the coin, which is when you have more competition, the consumer does when IT contains Prices. IT just doesn't contain asset inflation, which does impact the shareholders .

of these companies. Uh yeah and still even at this level, one hundred and seventy two billion dollars over thirty five one .

way that to look at this here, I I think your point is an interesting one, tomato, where you talk about how much value they have been away over the years and what they have today. You can always look at the baLance sheet of a business of public company. And in the baLance sheet there's this um this line.

Goodwill um no will not even goodwill, just the um uh the accumulated laws um uh the accumulated deficit. And if you look at that um on netflix, i'd basically run the business right now IT as of their last earning statement, which is the december thirty first negative forty million dollars. So in terms of the total net cash that they've generated as a business since they're founding as a business, they've lost forty million dollars.

So you know and meanwhile, the question is, okay, what's the so so they're not necessarily uh, at a stage where they've been generated and catch. But for many, many years, amazon had a similar strategy where they were reinvesting all their capital. You and that capital was going into building the business and growing the platform and adding the next layer of growth.

The question is, has netflix from fundamental business perspective of evaluation perspective, have they added enough growth platforms into the business? Have they growth found enough? Other products, services.

video, they don't have gaming, they don't have anything else, did start doing what they comedy. They are dying. They doubled with doing a couple of podcast. They doubled doing a couple of games. And there's rumors that they might try to get the other twenty thirty percent people who don't pay by creating a lighter version that was yet supported. In other words, you're gonna get the new season of ozark, but maybe you can get the first two or three, uh, your year behind the production schedule, but you can watch IT all with ads.

So why is the networks in video games and sports?

It's such an obvious one. And that's why I think they released a series of games based on their IP. So as their I P grows, and I think that's what you see disney plus, think about an APP store inside of disney plus, a merge store inside of disney plus. I think there's so many XM.

Why don't why do they on spotify or have a spotify competitor? Well, I think .

spotify is themselves. That's a really good point.

You know, when you look at the palatine, I was looking at the palatine um earnings when you know this IT was down twenty five percent yesterday or the day before and I was like, this is an incredible business because they have two point one million subscribers that pay box a month. It's incredible. I mean, I money printing machine, I actually have a substitution.

I don't even have a palon palatine. I don't have just pay five hundred year to use the classes. I have the APP.

It's I in the p box from the point I was trying to make. When you look at IT. You know there's about thirty percent of that revenue that goes right back to the music labels for the music.

So you know to your point, like uh, there's just an enormous value in actually music. So is great flicks built library values in content. They could be they could point IT to music as well. There's all these things they could do to reignite growth.

A lot of people discount the the value of having a subscription consumer. When you have a consumers credit card on file and they're paying every month for something, it's an incredible point because you don't have the friction of getting the sale done. You have already done the sale. yes.

Now the question is, can you up sell them some new service or some new addition that they're not paying for today? Yeah, it's so obvious, right? And so like by the way, i'll say it's like for years, google struggled with this question, which is what is google consumer subscription business because google did not have consumer credit cards across its platform despite a billion daily users. And so google for years was strategically trying to figure out what business can, or should we be in to have a subscription model with consumers. Ers, because once you have that, then you can charge for all sorts of stuff.

You can charge for storing photos. You can charge for charge OK.

Here we go. Yeah, go head. Peter, well.

I know I look I I N B to b description businesses. I hate B2C scr iption bus inesses. And the reason is, is the turn rates.

Well, we see when we look at B, C description businesses is five percent months return is not uncommon. It's pretty much the standard. So call that fifty, sixty percent turn in the scription base every year. So effectively, you rebuilding the company from scratch every two years. I don't see like how you can build .

a simple business doing.

Contrast that to B2B, with B2B sug gestion bus inesses, you do lose some customers, but the ones you stick with, you keep adding seats for more employees usually. And so actually your cords, your land expanse, your cords, actually your cords are growing twenty percent every year and a shrinking fifty percent now. Obviously, there are some of these B2C des cription bus inesses lik e net flix and pel ton.

They are obviously viable. They they have defy gravity. Well, netflix has done IT because they spend billions dollars on content and pitons got IT because they pop expensive machine in your house.

You can't forget about IT. And that keeps you a little bit more recurring ing than like all of these descriptions, which is very easy to cancel. But so look, theyve been able to make IT work. But i'm most specious.

I think if IT turns out if these are so low Priced, these subscriptions that you get a lot of consumers trAiling them. So because it's only five or ten bux a month to use something like a spotify or a disney um because there are so low Price, you do get a little bit of uh sampling. And that's why the rates higher wherein business there is a massive on boarding of people have to take their time to set up software, learn how to use IT. So if you're going to commit to IT, IT does reduce IT and you have lend, expand. But what we're talking about with product expansion is the equivalent and SaaS of land and expand. So imagine if disney plus or spotify, after you listen to an album, or in your interpretation, they showed you the merch for that band, or after you completed the season of man delora or book a bob fat, they showed you the merchandise, said, here's at a limited edition of gogo baby OTA when that we try to get baby OTA stuff last Christmas, that disney drop the ball that didn't have any, and they can found all that made, and they would have so millions of buying stuff on eti.

The reason baby yoda works is to this leverage off a platform that this massive disney platform, of which the B, S, C. Description services, just one piece. I mean, look, obviously there are valuable consumers description businesses.

So the lam approaching IT can be right in all cases. However, I think people will really get themselves in trouble when they start to value these b to C S scrim businesses the same as the B2B one s. In one case, you in the B2C cas e, turn is the predominant characteristic. And IT means that you're going going to spend more on marketing or cogs or content or would have you to keep rebuilding the user based where in the B2B con text, the user base is compounding on its own. And that, that just makes for, I think, a more easily attract a bit stop.

yes, but IT grows slower again, just at the end of the day. These are all variables, just the wait, just change. I agree with David that consumer turn businesses or consumer businesses have much higher turn.

The enterprise and enterprises have negative turn, which means that they just naturally grow. But the reality is consumers just have an unbound term that enterprises do not. And the way that the way that the ltv work uh, just tend to be different and the cash full cycle of these companies tend to be very different. And that's why you see networks at these enormous valuations that enterprise subscribe .

businesses do not what some people are now doing. When they look at consumer businesses, they look at turn is they take out the ones that are based on credit card to look at like people who actually unsubscribe because they don't want IT.

but not because they credit change. So basically, if you think about like netflix is business, if is turning to half percent per months, that's called that thirty percent of the user basis of treating every year, they've got ta rebuild their user base from scratch every three or four years. Now they can do that.

Um I guess at some point though, they may run out of you know Greenfield opportunity to grow their customer base. Um but you know it's gna precise ed. Our margins because we're going to have to constantly spend on content, original content to retain you. The going to spend on marketing to keep going after the portion market.

Every part you your living at the archives archives are going to be super valuable. And I don't think we have know how to value these archive yet because if you look at the marvel archive of the star wars archive, these things just keep printing money a year after year, and then you'll see netflix in H B O max will keep being able to go back to the H B O max being the clinical example now because you didn't think that, that business would have you know a lot of I P to build on but suddenly you have the many sense of new ork um and the sex in the city reboot.

I mean, they're going right down the value .

when you that has value this nef lix is content they even .

own are they lay no.

now is one hundred percent. Netflix is one hundred percent. They stopped. And that's why disney started taking IT off their whole spend that I think they're spending twenty billion or something. It's all on a original al content. So that's why they made that movies because they knew they were gonna the disney content. The more content .

polled where we to go next, guys, because they have covered um I want to I I want sex to talk to me about this. What's going on with fouche?

Oh my gosh, this is quite a story.

This really is i'm trying to get my head on the story. I'd be totally .

on the down and okay so .

um a series of .

emails have come out that were know the freeman of information act and what they show is that at the N I H faulchion and Francis Collins, who was ahead of bit, they had a series of conversations with scientists around a january, sorry, a january three first of february first there are emails on february first summarizing those conversations and basically what they say is that a group of scientists advice, foul chy and Collins that covet likely came from a lab, how they know, because I had, you know, halle mark signatures like the fear and sites, the same reasons we now believe, uh, the virus came from a lab.

Okay, but by february fourth of officials at, so three days later, officials at the nih, including foul chi, had come to the conclusion that the virus must have been passed zeote ally from an animal like a pAngelinan IT didn't come from the lab and furthermore, they were starting to use language like concurs y theory to discrete the the label the label idea um so that within a few days they were all in on this sort of so called zoonotic theory. And they really begin in a campaign, in the words of Collins, that a devastating take down of scientists who were trying to discuss the labor theory that became the official position. So sure why? Well okay, so this is where IT gets really interesting.

Um obviously I can't speculate to motives, but here's what you know the age vouches division. Years ago, there was a debate, the scientific unity about how we study viruses, pouches and epidemiologist. He wants to study them, make sense.

The debate is over whether you should enhance the viruses as a way to study them, so called gain a functional research. Their fouche is on the side of a engaging in that kind of research. There are other scientists who think it's crazy. They lose the nh that makes grants to a group called the ecole alth alliance is run by A A british scientist named Peter dai. Okay.

by the way, who doesn't doesn't support eco health .

animal lize branding? yeah. Love puppies.

Puppy love? Yes, exactly. So so eco health alliance, which is has neither been good for the ecology, for our health or .

lies everywhere.

yes. So they then provide funding to the wu and institute biology to study bad viruses, where getting a functional research that occurs. This lab in wuhan is known to have had leaks in the past so this may security choice, not the best recipes of a grant, but that is what happens.

okay. And then we know the history from there. It's almost .

certain that what what's the element of the story that has to deal with the lander and the that work for fauci and then um and then that person got a grant afterwards.

Well well just one of the thing I want to point out here. Um so we're clear this has become a very partisan issue. But the original forest were done by buzzed and the washington, sorry, the foe releases were done by buzbee and washington post. And now you have ran poll on the other side of IT, who seems like really wake and obviously conspiracy right wing. So you have this like really weird partisanship .

that's now been embedded in IT. Okay, yes.

So sex, can you explain the partisan nature? And the time is a question.

I almost want to take a jasa question first about who is this as a guy? What is this last of letter? Let me come back to part anything.

I'm just trying to stop us the facts before, again, to the partition. Massive this thing. So Peter desk is the guy who made these grants to the wound of biology.

okay? There is one other instinct fact. When the west wanted to come and investigate what happened in this lab, china approved one person from the west to come in and conducting investigation.

Guess you, that was Peter desk kay. He was the only guy the ccp. LED in to go look at the slab. He then comes out of this, whatever he did, and says he has to be the zoonotic theory. He endorsed the web market idea, IT cannot be lb leak, that is a conspiracy theory. And then he rounds up a group of scientist to write a letter to the, which is a respective scientific publication, which incredibly respected, yes, which he signs, in which he basically advocate tes, the zoo tic theory, but he goes further and says, there is no way that IT could be lab league and anyone who says as a conservative theory. And that has an incredible chilling effect on the science fc community, because no scientists want to be labelled a coup or .

conspiracy there or herrera to the land.

exactly. And this is a tightened ecosystem of a of of the insiders and institutions and grants. No scientists wants to lose their funding, right? And then furthermore, big tag started censoring as disinformation, the labor theory, because they say, all these officials look at all the scientists.

We have to follow the science, right? So the science, according this letter from the, is basically on the side of the zoonotic theory. So you then have downtime, censorship of this. So that is who Peter dac is.

And in this letter in the landed, he never disclosed his conflict of interest, which is the fact that he funded this woon instruct biology to conduct the type of research that might have LED to the leak of the virus. So this guy is hopefully ly conflicted and has a reason to want to suppress and cover up a lab lecan. I never disclosed IT.

And look, so does fouche. I mean, because fouche funded dac. So imagine what in february of twenty twenty, when the lability is coming across the desk of fouche, does he told the president, mr.

President, he's at the right hand of the mr. president. We might have funded this thing.

We funded as that. Who funded that mohn lab. We collectively that I says government might have some responsibility in this.

Do you think that conversation ever took place? When he was making his recommendations, he was hopelessly conflicted. And if the truth about this I come out and look, i'm not saying he had any intention al role.

I'm not saying he wanted this to happen. I'm not even saying that he knew for sure that basic was funding the wun lab. Okay, let us give felch I that benefit the doubt, but we all know how politics works.

If IT had come out in february of two thousand and twenty, that foul chi had funded the guy who funded the wall lab and for the virus likely came from his career would have been finished. Okay, finished. We know that as a political reality.

And so within days of scientists advising fault, I, hey, this thing probably came from the lab. The nih is consulted around the idea that this is a conspiracy theory, and they work to suppress IT, and they wage a public campaign. I gotta tell you, when I have learned all these facts, I got tell you what I compared to, it's almost like we learnt all those revelations about bill cosby, that here's this guy on TV for years pretending to be amErica as dead.

And then we find out his a monster pouch has been on TV for years, lecturing us, not cove IT. He's been like america's dad, america's doctor. And long behold, we find out that he he's a all in this whole thing. And look.

well, his intent was not to the tent .

has been people.

So a little bit, I to give him the .

benefit of every debt here. I going to give benefit of every doubt OK.

He called them business cosme.

I'm going to given the benefit, the doubt in the sense that he didn't want this to happen. He didn't have any. He didn't cause that, but we know for a fact that he funded as that.

Who funded the slab is where the virus came from. Come on, we know that. And he covered IT up. He engaged a campaign to suppress the liability theory. That is a conflict of interest.

Let's get this, get free. Begin on the science. What do you think as some a man of science freeburg assault of science, in fact, about, uh, these emails and the chances that fouche essentially was funding gain of research and then attempting to cover IT up.

which is the accusation of of science I like I mentioned this in the past Jamie media pocket interview with like free man is listening a couple hours long if he got some time to kill um but he does a good job contextualized these matters and what may have gone on that would ultimately you um the labor can also the lability cover up ah I don't know what happened with fatch e mails. I have not read this up.

Um so I I you know I I have no reason to believe that that tchi is now intention in the sense that he has some reason to harm or heard um I I could see that uh there is a certain degree of nervousness to accuse the biggest organ government and potential U S. Adversary of causing on a global pandemic and not wanting that sort of conflict to arise at a period of time when you really need to take care of your people. And we really need to focus internally as a country on how do we get through this pandemic.

I can respond to that. I respond to that. I respond to that.

No, no, I have respond to that. I'm not saying that fault. I or anyone involved my process should have accused china.

But that's not what was their decision that what was not was debate. They decided to stop the debate altogether. They decided to suppress the debate.

What that t sex you're sitting in that tea and the country is potentially facing a pandemic, could wipe out millions of americans. You priorities. What if I was .

sitting at the N I H, and I wasn't hopeless, conflicted? I would probably have to said, listen, I don't know what the origin of the virus is. Let that debate continue.

I would not have tried to wage a public campaign against the people, against the scientists who are honestly pursuing in good faith, where this virus might to come from, so we can learn things, maybe how to avoid something like this, from happy again, the people, the ni should not have engaged in that type of politically minded P. R. Campaign that didn't.

That's not their job of scientists. And then to find out that they have have a conflict of interest on top of that, that might be motivating that desire. That is not, that is not appropriate.

I think it's really important freeburg. You can degree with this that at some point, some journalists should really simplify this for all of us because it's it's a it's an incredibly important topic that we need to look at, at the end of all of this, assuming that omicron is the end of this chapter because it's been a horrible chapter for the world. Um but we do need an accounting of the truth, right? I think that that's .

really an epsom many ago when I said, I don't know what I don't care about whether or not the virus came out of china and um again, I was somewhat kind of misstated as the intention of I said that the reason I said that and what I really meant was that what happened even if IT was a lability, what happened was really the tip of the iceberg. The ability the bioengineer pathogenic c organisms is becoming ubiquitous.

The tool kit to do gain functions research, as is being called in the press, is a very simple tool kit. The ability to engineer organisms that can cause catastrophic harm to the human species is becoming available on the internet and with tools that any of us can buy and use in our garage. And so what i'm more questioning and what i'm more concerned about and what I care more about is what is our global biodefense strategy? How are we getting ahead of the next way of this happening? And it's not about that. He said, he said, he said it's really important to understand defense when they are saying .

IT came zoonotic cally there saying IT came from in the animal when I actually was creating the lab. If you want to have biodefense, we're got to first say that did or did.

Yeah you're right. Whether IT did. Separate question to me, whether I did or did in the tooling to do this is absolutely possible in the ability for these sorts of viruses to leak out and be made and turned into a weapon is significant. It's a real risk.

And so I think you guys I think both .

of you guys holding this problem.

guys, but of you guys are saying no, once versions of David is saying we have to have an honest accounting of what happened if we can if we're supposed to actually have an eco health alliance.

yes. And you're saying .

we need to actually formalize gain of function research because everybody has IT. And so it's going to be inappropriate for to ignore .

sume game function research leads to danger pathogen ic biological isms and then we need to and then we need to, formula doesn't. And then we need to formulate a biodefense ratee. The implication.

the reason why sexus thing is important to me is the implications. We have to have an honest accounting of these implications. We saw another implication just this week in flint, michigan, they shut down indefinitely the public school system in flint, michigan. Okay, this is a society. Just to give you a sense of the facts here, ninety percent are minority shut .

IT down because cent because of covered.

because of the fear uh of of catching covered and spreading cove IT uh but and and ninety percent of minority, eighty percent in poverty. I don't know how know eighty percent of kids who are in poverty or are expected to have a laptop and internet access on a consistent basis. This is the same place that screwed up the water system. So, uh I don't I saw I think like we have to have an honest accounting of um of all of these things because the implications are real.

This is the biggest story of our lifetimes cove IT. I mean IT might be the biggest international incident since war war two. And the fact that the major was called IT prestige publications have not really fully .

investigating what .

conundrum .

to me because they started with um a massive amount of coverage from buzzed washington post new york times in june of last year twenty twenty one. They were covering this like crazy. Vanity fair did a major investigation, and then IT seems to have gone silent.

And then rand paul has been going after this, and IT all the time became partisan. So the only coverage i'm seeing of IT that's independent is the intercept. But then everything else is the hill, and you know, really weird, far right stuff that want to like, you know, how he needs to be, whatever.

And how did IT become so partisan if IT started with left leaning publications getting this information sax? Like, how did this become partly because the president changed in the middle of all this? You have an honest handy capping of why we can get, you know, like a consensus on what's actually happening here from the press is IT rain .

polls to polar ized. Well, I think what happened is if you go back to february of twenty twenty, if you look, I just had this conversation with actually rensburg on my collar show, and he's .

available.

can I he literally wrote the .

book on the new york times, and I ask him about their coverage of.

you can trade that a Robert. So fine.

Can I? Can I finish, sorry, this is the guy the guy litter wrote the book, uh, the new york times and I asked him out of the new york times coverage of of covet and coveted origins.

He says that on february seventeen s so basically two weeks after these officials at the age settled on the conspiracy three narrative, that that narrative is then published in almost word for word for beam, using the same language, not just in your times, in the washington ton, across all these major publications. So what you see there is A P. R.

campaign. It's a concerted effort. You don't get the same words and language being used across all major publications at the same time unless somebody's pushing that narrative. We all know this.

This is corporations do this, right? They run P, R. campaigns. That is what basically happened. And so the prestige media got on board this zoo tic theory.

And this idea look like we've done so many times they're got on board wmd in iraq before realizing was a total force and a hoax OK. They got themselves on record behind this conspiracy theory idea. And similarly, I think the democrats got themselves on record as being profiled in everything because of, you know, T, D, S, right?

Anyone whose standing up to trump must be correct and defended. And so all of this happened in two thousand and twenty. And so by the time we now fast for to less call IT an honest investigation, the origins, the virus, which should be by partisan.

This should not be partisan. We should all want to know what happened. We should all want to take the politics out of IT.

Because what's out knowing what happened? How do we prepare for IT in the future? Everyone's already like hopeless ly committed to positions they took in twenty twenty. And I think that was driving the partisanship.

Yeah, I think you right.

Well, I mean, that's something i'm trying to get you as I when I saw you wanted to put on the dark, i'm like trying to grab this and I can find I am finding all the letters in coverage from june of twenty, twenty one, none since then. And then it's all right coverage now. And I think it's something we need to get some independent coverage. So take .

credit for saying that chi is the biggest political podcast recap. Thank you.

I'll take my ball now. Well, I mean and .

the other thing that's too ready and .

are so correct on these things um the thing that I think just infuriating right now is that everybody is trying to manipulate the public and they have not understood that in this media environment the truth comes out. I have not only eventually but pretty quickly. So stop trying to game the public either way that the fascines don't work.

They're they've the public reckoning on this by what like two years.

Well, here's saying there's so I agree with you on that. There's also a full release that happened in the U. K.

Where and it's a little too much get into right now. But this four release now is looking at all the people who died in the U. K.

Of covered uh and IT turns out like maybe more people are dying because they didn't get their cancer or a large member people died because they didn't go into get tested for cancer. And all of this is gonna come out eventually, not hooding out every day. The ages um and the commodity ties of people who died of cover just LED to this feeling that we're getting game in.

Turning on CNN and seeing the case counts in accumulation. Art is like a startup giving me like the cumulative number of people register for them company for for their product. We don't care about that.

We won to know your daily activities. What about the catastrophic impact of school closures .

that we've been talking repeatedly.

no public look, you you have to realize there is huge political motivations here because huge cy a going on because the heads of the teachers union said there is no learning last day. Are the ones who lobbies to shut the schools down. They sure us.

How are gonna MIT their mistake? Now they're covering IT up. And so any politician who takes their money is basically they are get to muffle their criticism. There's only one really like left wing guy i've seen acknowledge the school closure issue, which was Johnson shape had a great article in new york magazine saying that progressives must acknowledge the mistake of school closures because otherwise we can learn from IT. He has been a voiced in the modern .

on that side of the IO we a rap up now that sax is cracked open the plugs. Uh, what are we all working on? Because I I want to give a plug to freeburg who I did a great interview uh, on a tech podcast called this week start up where he announced cana. So it's a dual plug here uh friday's episode of this week sort of uh, maybe you could tell us a little bit about the launch of of cannot your new uh ah we're just to we're just .

announcing the business um which I talk about a lot of Jason's pod. So definitely we're hearing. But as you guys know, I talked a lot about this concept of decentralized manufacturing where we can kind of move old school industrial production systems, which are super inefficient. We leave lots of resources, move stuff into factories, process them and then shift the products out.

And um your technology now allows us to have more distributed to decentralized manufacturing um um potentially so you what we've been working on for three years at this point, as the company called cana, which is really that you know uh uh a printing beverages in your homes, you can use a single device to print the ice coffee or ice t cocktail juice, wine, soa, eeta um all using a single flavoring system and water from from your sink. We talk more about on the pod, but I think this is a big team you know forget about can for a second but generally like the systems of old in the industrial revolution created all these old school systems that are big contributors to carbon emissions and are super resource inefficient. Uh, and I do think that everything from three d printing to bio manufacturing to the system that we kind of introduce today with cana um can completely reinvent our global industries in different ways um and ultimately lead to cheaper products.

Better products and products is much less natural resources and put less carbon out. Um and so it's been a big thing that we've been working on and excited to kind of open IT up a little bit and talk more about what we're doing. And so um thanks .

for having me on. Are the did you hire the youth um as a spokesperson?

You may or may not have his brand on here. We'll see. So right now the business is uh is signing up uh lots of different folks that can create digital beverage breath. And so if any of you guys want to have jack calls you outsider outsider um be .

launching that but but actually told me his his new um his new soda that is gonna bringing it's called IT youth cola IT has five times the sugar of coca cola either than that. It's just .

like any other colder but .

you get five times .

the I want to say again in jane's y county in michigan, flint indefinitely shut down their public schools this week .

you have thousands .

of kids um who at best will have to learn via zone and internet access that most of these kids mayor may not have because again, uh you know there they're in poverty uh and so I just wanted make sure that everybody just understands .

that everybody tweet .

that self inflicted wounds .

well here's the thing the these kids um this is one of eric .

Adams nineteen ninety percent minority, eighty percent in poverty. All virtual until further notice here IT goes. IT goes right against the cdc guidelines.

okay. And uh, this is really the accounting of the cost. And we are, as we said before, learning loss in our kids is gonna. The single biggest thing we look back in twenty years coming out of this pandemic and realized was the the, the, the biggest Price we paid for the soap.

And here is the stupid event, the what the and eric atoms, and in the new york city, uh, you know, sort of. Leadership were talking about this when these kids are in school OK there's a chance to get to get omicron like everybody got omicron like everybody has IT now like it's crazy how many people in our circle have and the only person doesn't have filled me now um what's going to happen when they go home or they're not in school and they are hugging out with their friends or are looking for sub too, they are gonna get IT anyway.

What arcanum said is that schools to save his place for them to be.

And just so insane to me right now.

IT made the units have had an article which i'll dig up, where they said that the cost in future earnings by this generation of students who suffered learning loss is going to be seventeen trillion worldwide. That give me the economic impact from this thing, not to mention the stone social emotional .

development by anxiety impression in kids. We need to solve this.

We got, we got to get the schools in flint open.

Aren't everybody for the dictator to map pyapon? Tia gave vid freeburg the sult of science and the rain man himself gave in sacks and jack, how i'll see you next time.

Your winners, right.

man?

We open sources to the fans and .

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