Moon Should Be A State & California Doom Loop | PIRATE WIRES EP#12 🏴‍☠️
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The motives, a state that's our moon. Get off our moon. Why are our mood? What I think? We invented the mood.

That's our mood.

That's us. That's no one else .

gets IT proposition m. We need these people on the moon.

We should have taken the moon. It's that's our territory and there's no reason it's so crazy. That's our moon.

Get off our moon that's mon orientation the true north welcome back to the pod would should be a state. Let's get into IT. So this has been a topic. This is this week we're going to talk a little bit about the moon um something i've wanted to do for maybe a about a maybe a month now i've been just really captured by by the moon. Uh, I wanted sag away from that into and Frances o talk a bit about proposition cy, which I considered to be the turning point in the relationship between the technology industry and safran cisco.

And I think it's a very important policy to revisit in terms of I mean, when worth looking forward and talking about how the technology industry is or is not going to move forward in local politics or politics generally, I think is really important to look back at that moment and um assess what we accomplish in what we didn't uh revisit that and think about of a new way for IT perhaps. Apparently I just learnt john loves mark penny off and everything he's done for the city. So we will talk about that and then I want to talk about this um this new city in the bay area a bit because this really does just these these series of topics, I think really are going to help us get at the different ways that tech industry leaders think about engagement with the reality.

And um and i'm a huge fan of really I think there's something exciting about each one of these directions, but they are in different ways in conflict and so write off the bad I think we start with the moon. What IT means to me we got to be a little bit last week with a justice， this idea that I think that we all internalize, this idea that america, the world history, IT has ended like there is no more growth. AmErica has grown as big as IT is going to grow.

You know, alexa, hawaii, that was IT. I think some people wanted give hawaii back. We should maybe shrinking, if anything else, but, but certainly not growth.

The idea of an american Greenland door, an american cuba. I think the reaction to this on mine, when I talk about these things, tends to be you're going to invade these countries. I don't think we have to invite these countries. I think, I think there are lots of places in the world that would be happy to enter the american empire.

But why are we so resistant to to this, to the idea of growth, to the idea of expansion? When did we internalize that idea? And and I think back, I think once I started, once I started thinking about this idea, I saw that everywhere in an everything that we do, this somewhere along the line, were taught that we're done, and we're supposed to be done.

And the idea to sue to, to suggest that perhaps we should grow is, is actually extremely controversial. IT is polarizing. IT infuriates people. And I think that a lot of the times they don't even know why they're mad, but the mood is just there's really great example of that. And there are so many where policies we can give me to.

I saw cog and you ve been talking about IT a lot online and you're raising very interesting point point of a pole that I want to talk to talk you about the second. But just like my steel man, for I want to steel man is not a steel man. I am not thinking deep, but I my the reason I want the moon is just, it's r.

If we got there first to be planted, the flag we we should have taken the mood IT starts our territory even there's no reason it's so crazy that we actually, for the first time in history, I actually can't think of another country in history at the scene of its power that would have gone to the moon and said, this belongs to everybody actually who would have done that. That's such an american thing to do. Which also goes back to just one of the things, I mean, I say I want to grow, but one of things I do love, amErica is just a weird of of america.

There has never been A A country this powerful that has done so little with its power and is expected so little from the rest of the world. But um yeah emotion be a state. I think we need to be growing.

I think it's it's obviously already ours. We need to put up a base there. We need to take a novel ways to start terraforming. And um we need to start expanding as a as a population in the world, but also as americans. I think we need a bigger american population and I want to see americans all over the galaxy.

Maybe we should use the word moon base more frequently because, I mean, when I grew up, like the idea of what you put on the moon was colony and and I mean, the way I grew up was like we were talking about space colonization. But now colorization has this like to kind of dirty word to IT and so people don't really want to use that.

And I I use IT around my wife and he was like, oh yeah, like, you can't say colonization anymore and I was like, even in the even in the context of like putting people on mars, empty is empty. It's kind of a different thing. I get, I get there's a for a site.

But you would get pushed back, though, increasingly or so, to go to mars, whether might be life is considered among a certain kind of environmentalists, extremely, extremely bad. You should not be contaminating mars with with human life or with any kind of life for earth.

And that is just, I think that's even at a more extreme level, the internalization of whatever is this thing is that we keep hitting at this barrier between us and growth and progress. That's the worst version of IT. That's the fano s version of IT.

The life is bad version of IT, that a sterile planet on a barren rock in space with no atmosphere is Better, as IT is then populated with life, with a new atmosphere, with you, trees for now, whatever. When I did enemy of next season to new world, that this came up a lot, this weird psychological resistance to bring life to to iraq. I was considered, I think, sort of an arrogant.

And I think to myself, if that's arrogant, then whatever. Sure, i'll be arrogant. I'll be arrogant if if IT means bringing life to mars, that's what I want. That's my america.

yeah. I mean, I mean, NASA, you know, they have these rules for non contain no contamination when they go invisible. You know, a new body in our solar system, and this is probably generally good just to be safe if there are no other reason.

Then when we do show up, we want to have you know all of the data and capture as much as possible so that if we're looking for a life, we don't accidently contaminate IT with human DNA. We found on the rover because we didn't clean IT off before we went there. And I think that stuff generally good.

But yes, I mean, we need to be thinking a long term here. We need to be thinking about how we build a very, very large mars colony. And and the moon, I see what actually on, ironically excite me the most about the moon, is that I see IT as a staging point for mars.

Yeah, I see. Ah yeah. And there are so many different things.

So let's do the helium three. Let's get the ice. Let's do space tourism. I don't care about any of that really. I think a lot of that kind of far away.

I think the much bigger thing that we should be investing in today is just let's let's go put people on the moon regularly, do risk this, figure out how we actually live in space, in harsh environments. We've done the IOS, the next things, clearly the moon, and then that prepares us for mars. And so like elon, he's he's right to focus on mars because that's the real goal and that's the exciting one. But I think he's notorious for not really thinking incrementally. But the incrementally list in me wants to be doing move missions constantly right now and then set us up for for mars.

What tell me about .

your poll so I wrote right on on x that just broke down basically. I love i've been laughing to myself for the entire week about moon should be a state. I think it's hoyas.

That's not the moon. It's moon because of course, we don't all alaska or hawaii. We just call alaska waited. So if moon was a state, IT would just be moon h, which is hilarious.

So I just asking myself, but then I I started asking myself the question, like why isn't moon a state? Like we we won the space race. We were the first ones there.

The prize for the space race should have obviously to the moon and is so weird. And and you can see a bunch of other ways that plays out like you could see a world where, okay, so maybe the united states and the U. S.

S. R. Don't want to, you know, give the form on away, but the person the winter gets sixty percent or or the winner or they split fifty fifty.

But no, that that would happen. They gave IT to all. If you just completely .

violate this narration, I would say in defensive us, then at that time, you can take anything that you can't defend. So we got there first. We have to go back.

The russians were going to go up. We were going to stop them. IT would have gone back and forth like that for a while.

But when you start to look forward, you know and and you you asked the question of all technologies improving um the cost of the cost of a launch to the moon has lowered significantly in an age of you on mosk e the future looks musk entire belief with mars is if you just lower the cost of launch to enough that martian colonization actually just is emergent. There's no way to stop IT once. It's really, really, really inexpensive.

I think that you could see some version of that with the moon in terms of staging or experimenting. Certainly get to a base who builds that base first. So to get away from sort of the fun framing of this, what is china's move?

You know, I mean, I don't really have much faith in china as I might as I talk a lot about the dangerous of channel. I'm not that nervous about channel. Maybe I should be.

more. But let's say they go out there, they want to build a moon base. What is to stop them that doesn't belong to anybody.

But they're going to think about IT the way the way that we have thought about IT. They going to follow these of international treaty. What what is the piece of legislation? There's a ece of legislation is the .

treaty says is also the moon treaty, moon treat, which didn't get ratified by all the spacecraft countries. That's a little bit different. But basically, yes, no one can clam the moon right now. But this is going to become a problem when people started building infrastructure on the moon, because you won't. Technically, on the land under IT.

there will be a lot of the entire framing of the outer space treaty, which says all non terrestrial bodies belong to everybody, right? That's just not the way the world, the universe, reality works. It's a crazy piece of legislation that no one ever could possibly have taken seriously.

And the only way you would draft IT is if you never really believe we would be expLoring space, or if maybe you thought we would put some day like one hundred years in the future. And so you just try avoid that problem. But we're getting to a point now where we're onna have to start seriously talking about what happens when you go tomorrow. That doesn't obviously belonged everybody that belongs to whoever is there. And that is that's not that's not we're not going to be voting on what we do in accordance with whatever the fuck the U N wce nobody y's onna care on mars.

I mean, there are also like different ways to allocate the moon. Like you you say we're allocating a based on current GDP or current population or current let land control of the of the earth. Like at least at least that point, you know everyone gets a peace or something. I got what not but it's weird.

It's or not what's absolute by population. I try media get more of the moon. We invented the moon. That's our ours that no one else get in the end but your poll.

So 所以 but so so so .

at the end of the .

end of the thread where I kind of investigate why the moon did not become a state， I ask the question I basically conclude by saying, you know, the moon is is currently under treated, is for everyone. But should amErica make moon a state? And it's and the current results, like fifty, fifty IT, was very.

which blows my mind in this way because so the internalization of that, paul, you see that you think that's a joke and who is in a joke? You're gona vote, you're onna vote the jokey answer which should moon should be a state um instead you had fifty percent of the people who were so animated by this that they were actually they were sufficiently angered by the problem they felt they needed to vote. No, they had.

They had to snuff this out in the do you dare think that we're going to make modest state? That's actually now very I understand the first wall. It's what's what's always been difficult for me.

I understand wall between us and growth. I don't understand the next thing that seems to happen among a certain kind of person, which is an actual anger about IT. To the point in a motivation by this, I need not only not only a resistance to the idea of growth, but I need to stop growth. That's weird to me. It's weird that that many people felt the need to answer no that question.

There's also like A A flavor in the conversation of um stopping the capital alist from extracting resources, even more resources somewhere else. When I posted this tweet thread about um how to extract rocket propellant from luter regulate like half the comments. We're like great.

Like capitalists start going into the moon. You know like we got to stop that. We can. We must stop by capitalism.

The solar system is not even the universe. The solar system is so huge. Imagine being mad about someone going to the s belt in doing something that I do.

How do you even begin to get into that? That mindset? Who cares? Who cares what's going on on the moon? Also it's people who are .

who are scared of change, like people who are worried about change. And so all of this represents just change in their life, changed and uncertainty. And I mean that that's my philosopher. Like the growth is generally is that they're not really the growth. They're often times yeah, they are often times just afraid of answering to.

I think they are they're also afraid. I mean, if they're on on team, I guess it's socialism and a degroof. If if if if the advocate or if if the people that are complaining about capitalism going to the moon um are are on if we assume they're on team team socialist um they just don't want to take another. They're like fuck like capitalism. It's working and it's starting and we have to stop IT IT must not .

they must not continue. You I I also think though.

like some portion of these people just genuinely hate humanity and these are the same. These are like anti natalist and people who think that we know shouldn't be having kids, we should be facing humanity out um why would we go to the moon when that represents you know a potential solution for a bunch of problems like overpopulated cities, whatever in the long term? Um they just don't they don't think that human beings uh do anything good for the world. And so when they hear about human beings potentially going to other worlds, they're like, no, that's that idea.

The virus is spreading. In fact, I used to get that common a lot on the mars that humans are a virus. They'll always quote the matrix in this regard.

And they they forget that the person who said that was the villain, the genocide maniac, said that this is the fano s thing as well. The anos is a hero. Um is just a really old mind.

I think you're totally right. I think I think they don't think humanity is good. I think in fact, IT seems to be this very obvious form of self hatred.

And I I always come back to that when I there are a lot of political points where you can just simply disagree. And you know, everyone wants, let's say, really great education for their kids. And then there are many different ways potentially that you can get there.

And I understand kind of fighting along the way, but often in disagreements with a certain kind of person, you come to the sense that you actually don't want the same things that there is in a version on in their mind, to the sort of existence not just you but us themselves included it's this crazy suicide switch in western culture that we have got to figure out because IT is not just manifest in um you know fifty percent of people in a fun poll saying no to the question of should move a state IT is more pernicious ous when IT comes to how we govern our cities you know you look at sanford cisco for example and let's get into prop sea you you look at the the state, the absolute state of human misery you know the illegalities ation of the effective legalization of dealing fence which is a mass murder every year um that's in the anti human set of policies that have let us there. There is no way to look at that in any there is no way to look at that and to do anything else. This is just like there is something immmediately and it's as human about IT.

And I think it's it's hard to really move forward with people who are are thinking about things that way, especially because they don't often name IT themselves and they don't frame IT. They're like we ate humans. But if you just look at the preferences that are revealed in their policy choices consistently over time, that is the only commonality between all of these things.

Environmentally ism is another really easy one when you you start talking about global warming versus environmentally ism. And IT becomes very clear that the goal of envionmental alist right now is not to end global warming. It's to produce the number of people on the planet. And this is why you have a aversions to things like nuclear, and you have a resistance to the concept of potentially releasing silver back into the atmosphere to cool down the oceans and things like this. It's because they don't want to solve that problem, because they don't care about that problem.

We should actually explain properly because I was actually I I didn't know that was before .

hearing about a few days ago. sure. Yeah uh so proxy was introduced um IT IT was they came up with IT in twenty eighteen and then I was voted on late that year.

Um and it's basically the largest increase in sentence to go, largest tax increase in sefra ces go history IT increase the growth receipts tax on businesses um by fifty percent and IT reMarks all of that money for homelessness related services and sentences ces go. Um and so IT generates around two hundred and fifty to three hundred million dollars a year. IT used to generate more but a lot of the big revenue generators and conferences go left as a result of of the passage proxy. Um and IT is IT was a piece of legislation that was really controversial when I was introduced by mainly far leftists in several osc pe people like the impressed in championed and notably mark bin off the C E O of self force, which is I think the largest imployed .

N N yeah so yeah that's prop seen in a chill .

and didn't didn't that effectively .

double the the budget for the for the homeless services in the scale overnight yeah I mean just for people who are not familiar .

with the inferences o homelessness panorama like this was a major piece of legislation to double the budget for the the ha reaches the department homelessness and support of housing um and IT continues to generate an enormous amount of revenue for them every year that they can even spend. Um that's how much IT is.

I've been taking a lot about proxy this week because i'll get IT to why in in a moment it'll had to do with mark any off. Um and IT IT is I think we we think about the sort of tech culture war, which I would describe as the conflict between the tech industry and activists in in the press as really kind of blowing up in twenty twenty three covered I think about ology versus tell of the rents and things like that as as the first big, big explosion of that.

But if you want to if you want to look back, I really feel the turning point was proposition c and IT was because this was the first moment that people in the technology industry, which was still seated in san Francesco, as the kind of defect to capital of the entire industry. It's know the barry, but but sanford sco was the short hand for that at this point. This is where most technology employees.

Either they they had lived or they were living. They were there a lot the the CEO of the major companies were forced to face the problem of holly lessen ss and expected to come up with a solution, which already I have some strange thoughts about, its where paying a lot of taxes that our job is not to solve the problem of homelessness, our job is to elect people who solve the problem of homelessness. But regardless, this is when IT really began, you had mark benioff, who, for a series of strange reasons, which sounds in a MIT you can get two in a second, ends up supporting proposition cy, which is going to be, like some to said, the largest tax increase in the school history.

IT is specifically going to be a tax on huge businesses in the city and among those big businesses. So all tech companies and a few others, um IT is proportionally had financial companies, but a lot that two times is much um or more for companies like square and strike which naturally came out immediately against and they said I listen and there were a combination of disagreements at this point. Back then was no patrolling of strike.

Jack dorsey of square are the two most famous people who come out and talk about this issue. Jack is, I believe, at the first and he breaks IT down. One, the mayor suppose of this tax.

Two, this not a fair tacks. We're paying a lot more than mark benioff going to be paying. And that's fucking suspicious. First of all, like why else would he be so enthusiastic about this patch calls in him out and said something similar.

But I want to focus maybe now a little bit on just it's like the mayor's response to to all of this was weirdly grounded and reasonable. And IT was echoed by tech leaders the time who were opposed. But IT was, we are pulling in three hundred million dollars a year already for the homeless problem.

There were seven thousand people living on the street. Use a rough math, that's like forty two thousand dollars of homeless person every year that we're blowing. Now if you really look into the homes problem did in the piece of hers, uh, called sapa cisco's homeless sticking time bomb, you understand that most of the money that we raised for the homeless is going to permanent supportive housing.

So three, one Better apartments for people who move to the city. It's not going to the people who are living on the story. But at that time, you know people are kind of thinking of the math that way.

Nobody really knows where the moneys going. There's no planning place to solve the problem and a lot of the money is being funded to these useless nonprofits, uh, in the city that are all fit. Now there's something eighty, something I think get money from the city.

They're all sure of taking a sensibly one piece of the homeless problem. And breed is just saying, no, we can do this anymore. We cannot just be blowing money on nothing.

We need to audit the spending and then decide exactly what we need to accomplish. The problem that didn't happen, the bill passed. And five years later, mark, by any off, is now talking about leaving the city. He's talking about taking dream force out of the city. Is huge salesforce conference every year, specifically because of the homelessness problem.

And I find that be absolutely incredible because concurrently, he has just donated a million doors of his of sales forces money to the salvation army to help with the homeless problem and everybody celebrating him, including many leaders in tech. And it's like the short memory here, is unbelievable. This man, because of this piece of legislation, raise the countless dollars.

The homeless problem has increased. Tech companies have left the city that has affected tax revenue. And now I think we are very much in I think the city is very much in a sort of dome loop cycle. I don't think he started with COVID. I think I started in twenty eighteen and um and I think that he has not got nearly enough credit for the disaster that he is responsible for.

Okay, i've allow for this. So there were three main buckets that mere breed oppose property, as I see IT. One was lack of accountability, not, you know, knowing where the money goes to or economic concerns.

People leave the city and GDP goes down. Receipts will go down, city will lose money. And the third was legal risks.

Like there was a question about whether props I could legally collect these taxes and SHE was right about a lot of that like, uh, the accountability. We know there's tons of questions about where the money is going. There were some there were some companies that laugh, although GDP is up in safran, cisco.

And so overall tax revenue over the next few years should be up. And the legal risks were the really were the big one that I want to dig into because the money was held in escrow while the while the proxy was chAllenged in the courts and he was only released like somewhat recently, maybe like twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty one. And i'm just wondering, like are we calling the game too early? Like is there an optimistic scenario here? Where where yeah yeah. So how how would you find out? How would you how would you .

expect was released a long time ago?

What I would say, how long how many years should I take to deploy if you have unlimited money?

How many years mark, any off in his Victory lap, which he declined, ran five years ago on twitter when he said he solved the problem of homelessness in the city, solved.

He also said in the same breath, there is no finish line, okay? He is voicing the the actual belief of the far left in 3Francisco， which is, this is a problem that was persist forever, and we must always be funding more and more money and doing more and more and more, and I will never be enough. They do not conceive IT as a problem that can be solved.

Even the city itself, when they talked about, and we're talking about doubling the budget from three hundred million to six hundred million. So even if you have people in support of housing that's eating at all of that money, presumably you how you you now have three hundred million dollars a year, you can spend on the few thousand there. In terms of on shelter, it's half of the seven thousand, you know between three and four five sons.

And I think mean, it's it's it's bounced around in there, but it's it's less than the seven. You have three hundred a million dollars. You should be able to solve IT in.

Here's how you would do IT. You would build an immediate emergency shelter on the outskirts of the city. You staff IT with uh, supportive medical uh medical staff who are trained with addiction type stuff.

You have good, you have heating, you have care, you have clothing, your bathroom room facilities, you need probably a couple thousand beds, and then you make IT illegal to sleep outside. You move everybody from the drug markets to the outskirts where this is taking place. You force them to either accept this housing or to leave.

You will give him a homer bound ticket. You bring back the program and emphatic go that basically, uh, gives people a free bus ticket to go back to where they came from because most of these people, almost all of these people are not from same Frances go despite what the far left says. And you've solved the problem.

And you do IT with probably a fraction of that three hundred million. It's been years. There's no we're not anywhere near that because the the problem IT doesn't matter how much money they have there.

They don't agree that we need to provide shelter for people who are homeless. They believe that first, these people have a right to sleep outside. They have a right to do drugs. That we do should not do anything about the drug markets.

And also that they what they really have a right to is a real house forever in the most expensive city in the world, that they don't have to pay for, and they can just do drugs in until they die, which is what we saw in no sagest peace. That's what we see now that that is their belief. So they don't think of homes.

This is a problem to be solved, one into the way that they're chipping away at the problem. Is this really impossible thing, which is building. I think there are thirty three thousand people on a weight less right now for for permanent supportive housing.

You know, that's you can't we cannot spend that kind of money to build, let alone actually do IT. I actually build all those units for free forever in a city that doesn't even allow us to to build market rate housing. So I don't it's just on IT doesn't matter that the money was never grow for a couple of years and IT has been out for a couple of years, by the way, they're never going to solve the problem because .

they don't want to yeah and just to echo that, I mean, I think first of all, london breed wasn't the only politician to oppose proxy, only experienced politician to oppose proxy. Gavin newsom, who know was former mayor. Inferences go.

And before that was a supervisor, also came out and know, I give give them a lot of shit on other things. But on this, I think he was right. And he said, you know, something like three inter million dollars is not more is not going to solve something just because homeless ness problems.

It's going to make IT worse um and I think he's right and sona are right as well as that you know IT comes down to this philosophical problem which is that california has qualified housing first into state law and housing first says that you know you should be prioritising permits part of housing over temporary shelter and that you can't premise that support of housing on sub ety. So essentially what they are doing is they're providing housing to a lot of mentally ill, severely drug addicted individuals who end up overdosing in this housing. I mean, it's a really horrible diffunce, tional ecosystem.

And of course, all of the nonprofits that participate in IT have a financial incentive for the problem to continue because this is a billion dollar industry. I mean, literally twenty, the year that the prop sea funds were released, the department of homelessness in port of housing had an eight hundred and fifty two million dollar budget to solve, you know, this supposedly seven thousand person homeless ness problems. And franco, I mean, almost a billion dollars in one city amErica to solve this problem um and yeah you can say that part of IT is because the department is chronically understood. Um I think they're also chronically incompetent competence.

right? When you talk about that number that they have in a budget for one year, you have a few thousand people sleeping outside. You can literally pay their rent in its in my britain saver, cisco was two thousand dollars a month.

I think by the time I maybe maybe nonce, you know, somewhere between two twenty five hundred and three thousand, that in the most expensive city now maybe not the most expensive in the country, but it's up there. You can you can be, you can be moving them anywhere with that kind of money. You can actually just, you can help people with that kind of money. You have enough money to do IT. The fact that they can with all of that IT IT says to me that they have to just not really want to do IT, which is the the real problem.

So the follow question there is like, why don't they want to do IT?

Well, I think some point is, is the first really important correct when that nobody wants to grapple with? Because that sounds too evil, which is that they have an incentive not to solve the problem. These people, their whole life is fighting the homeless.

This issue, it's there's no finnish line in sight. You know. We have to fight the good fight. We need more resources. They have there's an entire class of people who are non profits and san Francisco choo work on this problem. It's it's all like these small a chipping.

It's we're going to provide shower, a mobile shower home and we're going to provide meal kits and we're going to provide counselling services or whatever. Everyone's taking some very small piece of the puzzle, but that's their livelihood, that's their job and it's their identity. And so they're sort of clang to IT in this fight.

And they don't want they don't want to solve IT. They don't want to pull all of the research. What I would do tomorrow, I would strip all of the funding from the non profits I would give IT all to the mayor SHE would elect, uh, or a point, a director in charge of just actually solving this problem.

They have five months to do so and uh and we we will be done. We we would do IT. We would do IT in that time um and if they didn't yd be fire, we get a new one and we would make sure that IT happened.

SHE is not right now able to do that because he needs legislative support from the board of supervisors. But um there is no appetite for that because I think on some level, they they want this to persist. There's a more insidious version of that, which is the entire human stuff we were talking about.

I think I think some people really like to see reflected in the strates their own take on life in the world. They really may be feel that things are that bad and they want to see something there. I don't believe they think about IT that.

I don't wanna believe they think about IT that you know, in that straight forward of away, but I think that on some left that dos motivate them, but mostly is their identity. It's we need to be fighting this fight forever and and uh and no, we shouldn't be you know breaking down camps and people should be able to people ever they want and it's always it's a victim first they consider drug out victims. And so it's um it's if they don't want to leave, they don't want the housing.

There's got to be some reason it's got to be our fault somehow and just the other. There's no path. There's no path to success there.

What are you slander? What do you make of like pressed in coming out against supporting um final dealers.

But I think IT is unbelievable. I don't even know. I mean, it's I feel stupid even talking about IT because it's so obviously evil and it's, I mean, how do we who could possibly I don't know how you survive as a society when you don't want to support an actual mass murderer, right? Like I just don't understand that .

we don't see them as mass murderers and I thought IT would be it's offensive to say that, right I think to a certain .

group of people but it's also they also I decide the impressed in this is by the way of super. He's the socialist uh, member of the board of supervisors and safran ces ago um I just saw him doing a day of awareness for drug overdose so he's always out there are talking about what he's not always out there are talking about that but but he pay is paying lip service to the sort of plight of the drug dealer which is really at the a heart of a lot of the homeless policy and not wanting to move people and what not it's like, oh no, we can't trample the rights of these people but then when you're like, well, should be put their murderer in jail or just get them out of the city that is suddenly, you know, a bridge too far and it's again, I feel silly talking about IT because I can imagine that there are people out there who could have any argument in defensive this other than um there shouldn't be borders at all if if you're conceptually, if you're opposed to the concept of a border, then I guess maybe that's your quiver and certainly he's seeing that maybe the preservation of the sanctuary ary city as more important than um you know a few dead drug admins in his mind I reverse that dead to me is reverse to the the rug the american drug added is more important to me .

then the nicker .

og win fall dealer. sorry. So we were talking yesterday sex and you made up a really good point. Um you you're basically saying that some may be perhaps pressed in a stuck in the mindset of of like the ninety eighties where um like crack dealers were were some crack dealers assembly ly were actually dealing crack as a means of livelihood and to actually afford food and today that situation is changed a little bit with you know cartel's especially find their dealers up to to temperature go in and making bank off a fat nell but maybe that part of the reason is the Price and president company are kind of stuck in this idea like the poor people have have to turn to drug dealing to feed their families so right, which is obviously untrue. But I found that A A A sort of gradualist exception of their .

minds too. When you're saying that was true, that wasn't true there is there poor people have always existed in. My mom was poor.

SHE wasn't a drug dealer like you. You can it's possible to be poor and not be a drug guar america. Food stamps have existed for decades and decades and decades.

So that that one problem alone, that just take that off the day, this is it's create. We shouldn't this is the problem is, is we should not be there is not a there's there's not a two sides to this issue. okay? We're trying to rationalize IT and engaged with IT in in an honest way.

And it's like, no, if you're dealing fence at all and people are dying because of that, you're fucking evil and that is wrong and we cannot tolerate that as a society. I think maybe i'd had actually be more open i'd actually be more open to the libertarian just anarch argument at the sort of philosophical level well, okay, where is dealing with one of these? It's a libertarian and we're onna have this kind of a conversation but but it's even a libertarian would not say that defense in all dealers is potentially just doing what they have to do.

They are to saying, you know that should be legal because that you know our right to to self for whatever I think we can do that. I think that's the path to do. M, I think we have to take up a heart stancy and nobody wants to do, because we're all, you know, freedom to americans and nobody wants to selling fathers.

But it's, pray, bad out there now. And I think that our philosophy governance is the problem, the idea that uh, that we're going to be both lazy, fair and then involving ourselves into the muncie of business in such a way that is actually drives taxpayers out of the city. H it's it's that sort of on the holy combination that is tell us where we are and.

And I would like to see the tech industry get more involved because I do think that while benny off was certainly not the way IT does seem that you know in business and in technology, everything is go oriented. There is there is an end, you you have to have a clarity of purpose to do anything to succeed in anyway what so ever. So the very first thing that a business person does when they come back to the cities, they set goals.

You know, what are we trying? What are we trying to accomplish here? And then from there, the strategy is formed.

And um and I think that that's what we need right now is if you're going to get involved now, there are uh there are a handful of different approaches and technology to what we should be doing locally, right? You have the exit people. We should just keep leaving.

Every time something's bad, we should go somewhere else. Um we should go to miami and then after miami, we should go to some island in the mediterranean. And after that, I don't know you, you just keep going is is the rock tends and you run and you around and you run.

Two is commitment to local politics, and that's what we're seeing a lot more of right now. Garita is a big banner waver of this in sanford. Cisco um mark a bending is an example of someone who has engaged, but in a disastrous way.

And then and I think that's because he seated control, right? He's like we're going to give funds to you guys, but we're gonna actually be responsible for we would never dare suggest that we should be telling you what to do with the money. You should just take all of IT, take what we have and do what you want.

Um but then three, it's like you start over, you just build in your city. That's that's mn orientation, the true north. I don't know what do you guys think.

I mean, I completely agree with you about the like the homeless situation. Same, this looks very, very bad for rechecked people because tech people are their whole brand is being smart and rich. And if you and if you can figure something out when you're smart and rich, I don't believe that you're smart or I believe that you're heartless.

And so which is IT, are we our tech people in service to go dumb? Or are they heartless because they have the money and they should be able to solve this problem? And and with benioff, I mean, I think, I mean, I want to read one of ben off most recent tweet.

So I think valuable here. He's a sales dorce growth, twenty fourteen, four point one billion dollars, twenty fifteen, five billion, six billion, eight billion, ten billion, thirteen billion, seventeen billion, twenty one, twenty six, thirty one, thirty four. He is crushing IT like he is.

He is the Michael Jordan of enterprise sas. And I don't think this homelessness thing is going to be remembered as you know, a baseball career for him. It's very minor. He is a master ful Operator, and I think he just definitely deserves credit for growing an incredible company in the in the city. But I think what you know joke aside, what we're probably missing is that is that the reason he is able to deliver those great results is because he's actually in the weeds running bit and he probably be fine if he was in the heart solving the problem. But he's not he's writing a check is like a small fraction of what's going on there.

I I guess I have a have a question about this. You know .

like we we in general .

we view politics as um as sort of influenced by funding sources. We look at George sort, so we blame him for a lot of far life policies because he's apparently brick. He's like allegedly or we think he's bank rolling um politicians. It's got this program um our tech leaders in sepsis co. Not doing this for local politics.

There will they have is is one of the .

problems is that like aside from setting .

off to on the face mask of and there are I said in the piece that I wrote this morning, uh doom loop. When I take apart of the body of staff and revisit prop sea, I wrote a peace in twenty called extract or die, where I kind of related on teg. I said, you know, we haven't.

The industry has not gotta involved in local politics at all. And that's the real problem. Not that we did, not that we rule into the city, but that we didn't save IT know there a lot of smart people, john mentioned a lot of smart people with a lot of money who could have got involved and really could have made an impact and just chose not to.

I think that has more to do with distraction and weakness. Generally speaking, you know, you people who are both distracted by their job and also they are sufficiently weak. K, enough to, when a strange activist is on a phone call with you, like, is what happened with mark benning off and tells you are a bad person if you don't do something you think, oh my god, that must be right.

Let me give you some money and support this thing that destroyed the city. Um you had a combination of that in in tech. IT was a smaller contingent, but IT existed. So they were investing money. They were doing IT in the wrong things and and they were hoping, I think that they could just and I see this actually throughout the tech politics thing outside of differences go at the national level um I see this at the activist level, I see this.

I see a lot of at the media level, I see does where a lot of people in tech really just want to write a check to somebody who does a thing for them and solves a problem. And I just don't think that, that is how IT works at all. I think you really have to roll your sleeves up and threw yourselves into IT and marry yourself to the problem and and really determine that you're going to fix IT.

And money is not enough. You need to be providing strategic assistance. You need to be connecting people. You need to be you to be .

like another Price sas Operator. You need to be a killer. You need to be looking at your meeting in the .

you to arena. You dog.

this guy is going to be the guy who deliver goal here. I mean, honestly think you know you can be supercell about any of I think if you made him like the homelessness ss are and give and he was worked for the government, you know, full time, no sales force work whatsoever. I think you'd be able to do a good job. I think he's capable in smart.

Now I think that that's probably true .

of almost every successful.

And and and that is just a broader problem that we have nationally, which is this weird, is that weird? It's a completely understandable the following of incentives, you know, all of bar incentives are in business and non or in in government. You can. We are A A nation that is having baked into our DNA to be suspicious of government and do not respect government.

So why is IT surprising to us that when the most talented, smarter, wealthier people don't want to get involved in politics, except at the level of president, right, except if i'm going to run, i'm going to do a vanity run for president, then is when, or even governor california, which is insane. It's a huge, huge, huge thing, right? Nobodies trying to run for the board of supervisors, right? That's not what's happening.

I heard this described recently is like a wicked problem in the sense that it's like an union. As you peel back layers, you learn more and more about the problem. There's more and more problems to solve their need.

It's kind of the opposite of enterprise. Enterprise service is complete Greenfield. You're on the internet, it's just a subscription. You people just pay you is so simple and there's so little regulation there. So there's so few counterparties that you can see why just complete success and enterprise house and then and then just complete struggle in.

When I was was switching from a anatomy of next new world, which was building a new world, mars, to a asylum, which was, how do we fix sanfords is go just even thinking through the problem, I realized pretty quickly how totally, fundamentally different IT was, and why probably tech people are so animated by things like moon should be a state because it's a black slate. There's no one there. There is no regulation.

You get to started over and design a perfect system from scratch. You know, you to run things the way they should be run. But the reality of politics, so you I want to believe it's more simple maybe than IT, is because the reality politics is is just chaos.

You have a bunch of personalities, all conflicting interests. They all want different things. In the case of the homeless crisis, it's really that right. What you need is somebody to come in in a line.

People, uh, however, the the needs to happen, I don't know what the charge you would be there, but but until there's alignment, you're not going to solve IT and one person's not enough mark by any off mayor would never be enough, right? Mark by any off is dictator, who knows? I mean, I don't know that I like the guy. Maybe he would be able to do with as dictator.

But even then, IT is a this is very complex problem, which is why you have to push to actually not just exit to a different place and not to just, you know, get in the arena and and get messy in separate politics, but to start from scratch, which is the new the new bogeyman of the press is the city that the billionaire tech rows are building. Um just outside of san Francisco in sono county. This is the most I feel like the last five years.

This name is really blown up, right? Never hearing in my life do I hear IT everywhere and IT feels to me the idea of of building a new city rites like disney world status epco was originally the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. Diseased ambition was to build the city of the future in florida that I think the ambition here that we're seeing now from a from a handful of folks tech in northern california IT feels like a fun middle ground between moon should be a state and mark bin off destroyed san Francisco with a single piece of legislation in that a you need that.

And this is me too, right? This is our content by rewires. I think a lot is we do both.

We do the big aspirational, exciting why pal, science, technology and then its analysis and criticism of of Operations and the things that are going wrong. And we had to be serious about about this. I I think people there tend to be two camps.

People focus on one of the other. I. I think you have to you have to have a true north that is incredibly ambitious. And you have to never be so blinded by IT that you can see the problems that are right in front of you in the complications you come in. I think you need both and and this city feels like maybe an interesting middle and sounds not why you just can you give us a little bit of context for people who arent aren't familiar with the tech to paradise?

Yeah, well, they just drop their website yesterday and probably potentially in response to the cryptic new york times articles that have recently been published that sort of frame this is some deferred ous land grab by tech billionaires to isolate themselves in the coming apocalypse but it's called california forever um and the website is california rever dot com um and they've basically bought up a ton of land in in sono county, california and they are planning on so part of the land is owned by a collective of investors um and then part of the land is still owned by local residents.

But they're not gonna the zoning. So a lot of land is stolen to be um allocated for agriculture um but they're planning on building schools and they are hoping to basically have a kind of planned city there um where people will come and you know want to raise their families um and that will revitalize salon account. If you look at pictures of santo county right now, it's basically just like this empty sort of praise land like there's not stuff there um know some of the articles have kind of framed this is like over the community .

that's being invaded by the evil rich people right?

Are like these investors but farmers.

they always that's all the hander's improve clutching about these poor farmers that exists only in the imagination of new york times columnist you've never left brookland .

yeah I mean also also with the farmers like I was talking to, somebody was like, oh like assuming that they were paying like what like thirty percent over market for this land. Like they probably got a pretty good deal and sometimes like, no, no, no, they were paying like three x over Marks. So like actually get to sell your three times no deal.

No one was harmed in the making of this city. That still is not made IT. Just in fact, I think now they're .

suing because of like Price fixing, because a lot of people, if they figured out they were like like let's i'll check up the Prices because we know that they really want this land, just like no game is back.

And one one interesting dimension of the story is apparently like the project is being managed by this guy named yang. What's his name? Yeah, it's a checked me yang over or something. I shrum, yeah. And so there's all these articles now about how, like this guy is some evil mastermind to, like tech people hired in order to engineer this project. And because he, you know, I got great grades on his aid levels and then went to cambridge and then did really well in his finance jobs um before he sort of like fell off the grid and started doing this project. Um and all indications just point to the fact that this is like an .

extraordinary ily competent wondering mark IT must be evil. He turned to .

the dark side. Yg.

yeah, also just the idea that this guy got, like, hired is ridiculous. If you know anything about silicone. Ley, like he definitely came up with this idea. And when pitch IT one hundred percent.

I don't enough about, yeah, I gotten hit up and dress and and and unlock the details, maybe get them on the pod. I invite them today. But I think that is amazing.

I think that we need to be thinking about stuff like this. I want to see big, huge experiments. I want to be inspired.

I can, I think if I were to steal in the sad to beg wearing began in new york, who's md about this, I would think that they see this as an escape. You know, rich people are going to be able to escape and live in utopia. And um that's really bad because the rest of us are going to you know be fox.

And that kind of implies a couple of really wild and I think true things that we need to sit with. And the first is that this is going to work that if these people put their minds to something and it's to build the city, I mean, they were allowed to do IT in, that city would be perfect. They could do IT know they're going to a be living in this really great place, one, two, without them, the rest of the cities can't function.

They're going to lose. They are tax base and they're gona lose their ability to lead. They're losing their smart people. They need these people to help them make the rest of the cities Better. And I agree with that. I think the is a certain kind of person who's more competent than the rest and that we need them in our cities. I think that we need their money, I think that we need their intelligence, I think that we need their commitment.

Um but if you believe both of those two things, then shouldn't you be actually much more excited about this kind of person like the existence of this kind of person in general? Shouldn't you be wanting to be a little more positive to them, a little more inviting to them? Shouldn't want them in your city.

Shouldn't you be courting them in instead you're constantly attacking them. why? What is that you're admitting right now that you believe their component intelligent, useful um and yet you also wanted both drive them out of the city and somehow forced them to states they want both. They just want whatever the other people don't want. And um good I see .

I disagree with this. I I think you know your point is that you want these confident people in your city and you want all this money building a new californian city. I think all of that is a distraction.

I think we don't need to be thinking about proposition c. We need to be thinking about proposition m. We need these people on the moon.

We need all that money going towards building moon colonies. And you know, just lets just forget, and that's the ultimate exit. I don't want to hear about people talking about, see studying or going to some island or leaving america. If you're leaving america, leave the earth .

and go to the mood. I think the moon's .

got to to be your true north mars has got .

to be your true eth. exactly. It's also mars speaking is, I would say, one of the more prominent tech brows who was obsess with mars. I mean, that was the whole fuck. And founders from podcast a IT was a huge distraction for me. IT was a way for me to simplify the problems of the entire world into this blank page, where I could say, you know, if only we went there and cared, we could build a Better place.

And and when you believe that, when you have that in your mind, you're like, this is how should be then you don't worry about the rest of IT, and I didn't worry about the rest of IT and IT routed in santiago when I was living there working on the mars thing, santa csc was all around me. And that LED to cove, twenty, twenty and erratically zed me. That was the moment when I realized he was not some Randy m.

Thing I had ideas about, he was I had a response. We all have a responsibility to to the places where we live and and I think that we got to have boat. I think we we have .

and more pragmatically, like like jokes aside very clearly, like you need any extremely healthy. And from cisco, you need extremely healthy cape. And also obviously, you all of these american cities need to be flourishing in order to build all the different technology. And and maybe the real White pill is that we like we also need enterprise house to get us to the moon and get us beyond, and we need all of this stuff.

I don't think we need enterprise. I'm really bought this is a whole other conversation, but i'm i'm bored of people solving lucrative but not important for I get IT, I don't oppose IT go and do SaaS, but what I really don't want you to do after you work on a make bigger lions of dollars and are not really contributing anything massively impact for to to the the world. I don't think you have to do that.

I don't think you have to contribute anything massively impacted to the world to be a good person. I think that you could to be A A good person and and you can just make money. And that's fine. I don't want you to come and look for some kind of trophy for me for that.

That's what I don't want and i'm not going to say here and celebrate IT, but I am going to celebrate i'm going to celebrate rockets that land and i'm going to celebrate um you know space ship, uh space factory and i'm going to celebrate genetic engineering and i'm going to celebrate the person who builds a city that is utopian because I want to live in that city and I I want to live in this is all the legacy of what disney, and this was his dream. I think a disney live forever. He'd already be on mars.

That would be a lush planet by now, and that's where disney world IT would be disy literal world, be the literal disney world. What mars would be IT was the ultimate angle, for sure. And um the world is working in this tradition, this idea that you can change the world around you started animation and IT extended to the actual physical world.

He's the O G. He's the one that we should all look to. And this city is, I know nothing about IT.

There been attempts before. Who knows what happens with IT, but I just the idea alone, the ambition. I don't know how you look at that and get mad because IT just makes me excited for the future .

yeah and just to ecotec, I think the White pill for me with california forever is like this is an actually good way for billionaires to be allocating their money. Like the bad way is mark benioff writing a check for millions of dollars to incompetent, corrupt, non profit organizations that are basically doubling down on a paradise that even if you think about IT for, but the time is housing first, if you think about IT for, five seconds doesn't make much sense um and again he just just wants to write a check and then go wave a poster and get you know quoters from people on twitter perhaps um and then you know the other approach is to say we're going to invest in a project run by a competent person um that you know might be successful, maybe IT won't be successful.

Um a lot of plan cities though have worked and that could meaningfully improve the lives of of thousands of people and revitalize a specific region right like this is a project with very specific goals. Um so that to me is like what i'm excited about with california forever. Yeah.

imagine if every billionaire itch IT like this. That would be awesome. I want to live in the world where people get really rich and then build awesome shit everywhere that benefits all of us.

You know, get back to the days of, uh, I mean, they billion's. You should be spending money on giant libraries and museums, s and things. And I want that, I want the cities.

I want status, a giant statue in the same Frances cobey. I want IT, I want we, the wise. And there are colosse.

That's crazy to me that we don't have. There should be a giant fifty story towering iranian soldier, maybe not a soldier, maybe a soldier's last scholar. A little bit of both.

You know, one of me chain, a speer and a book or something just like there welcoming you to the golden city. Why do we have that? We should have that with this. Because we got, we had to be celebrating our billion's when they do shit like this like a sin to say, weve got a, we got a, positively reinforce the the positive pro social behavior.

Feel like we also kind of like forgot about this concept of industry cities like L, A. Is is basically, basically industry city for hollywood. S, F, I think what cut was a taxi, but nobody people don't want IT to be like it's opponent. You all wanted to be the tech industry city, I feel like, which we need to like bring back this idea of like city should be industry cities. There should be uh, for every industry, like multiple cities that are like dedicated that industry and an industry city that's like such a sick idea.

Your right to introduce that idea, such a good it's I don't think we may need to bring IT back. I mean, IT exist. I think that in L A, nobody thinks twice about the idea that the city's going to be working in in in uh align nant with with hollywood because IT IT serves IT serves the city, just like in new york, finance serves the city and in boston, education serves the city. No one in boston is going to be like no more college housing or something crazy like that they know that that is part of what the city is and um and it's safe is go is this very unnatural, strange, interesting, weird place that has these edges like this where um IT should be the industrial city IT sort of was defect the industry city for for a while and I think actually remains that way to a certain extent um but yeah the city doesn't want .

IT and it's is yeah you're right that the hollywood L A thing is absolutely acceptable to everybody. Nobody questions IT but in time for cco, everybody hates IT apparently and wants IT not to be attack industry city IT seems like, yeah.

maybe because searches go, meaning something in a way, l has been hollywell forever in 3Francisco has been other things before tech。 You know, the spirit of 3Francisco has been longer than L A。 Uh represented the west then IT represented the counter culture. Um it's it's meant a lot of things to a lot of different people and IT and IT holds maybe a quasi spiral place in the hearts of many, many people. And so it's a little more precious or maybe they just honestly attracted to a lot of crazy people who are fucking with the city right now.

Yeah, I mean, I guess you go to L A, but is common to hear Younger people going to L A to make IT. You go, you you go. Got in york to make IT.

I think you have to start in a process business, baby.

yes, yeah.

Or to do something.

unfortunately. yes. Which way, western man?

The perfect circle of this is going to be a final dealer using cells for crm to manage their clients that well. I mean onic outcome.

I am an open minded person and who knows maybe there's maybe there's a winning there for someone. Um guys thanks for john john, thanks for johna sy in the pod brain in soudan that was been swell will catch you all back here. Ah next week, let's build that moon colony. When should be state?