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E3: Modern Cold War, politicizing the pandemic & more with David Sacks & David Friedberg

May 21, 2020 / 01:06:37

This episode features a discussion with David Sacks and David Friedberg about life during the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health, and economic recovery.

The hosts, Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya, check in on their mental health and experiences during quarantine. Sacks shares his observations from a deserted tourist city in Mexico, while Friedberg discusses the importance of maintaining a daily rhythm for mental well-being.

The conversation shifts to the economic impact of the pandemic, with Sacks and Friedberg analyzing the stock market's response and the disparity between tech and traditional industries. They express concerns about the long-term effects of lockdowns and the need for a balanced approach to reopening.

They also address the politicization of the pandemic response, highlighting the differences in state approaches and the implications for future governance. The discussion touches on the potential for a second wave of infections and the importance of mask-wearing.

Finally, they reflect on the future of cities like San Francisco and the shift towards remote work, considering how these changes may reshape the economy and society.

TL;DR

David Sacks and David Friedberg discuss COVID-19's impact on mental health, economy, and the future of work in this episode.

Video

00:00:00
hey everybody welcome to the all-in podcast with  Jason Calacanis and shimoff poly Hypatia we record  
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this podcast well on on a really unique schedule  to mouth what's our schedule right now whenever  
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we feel like it basically it is whatever our  significant others get so sick of us they kick  
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us off and say don't come back yeah we get  throw to the pool house we decide to pop up  
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the podcast you're in Atherton I'm in the city  in San Francisco Thank You Duke of discretion  
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is there anything else you'd like to tell them  why gate code you know we had two guests on that  
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people just went absolutely crazy for the two they  weren't available so we have two amazing David's  
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in our lives David Freiburg and David sacks and  they are super smart super effective at their  
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work everything we're not come off and so with all  we bring them back on the podcast and we'll do a  
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little round table here and talk about life in the  age of corona so welcome back to the podcast David  
00:01:03
sacks yeah good to good to be back with you and  also David Friedberg thank you guys happy to be  
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here all right fantastic so I just want to start  off with our check how is everybody doing in this  
00:01:17
quarantine has everybody's mental health let's  start with you sacks well as we might be able to  
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see we've moved our bunker to undisclosed Mexican  location you know and it's been great you know we  
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you know I think it's really kind of sad because  where we're at is is a tourist City that would  
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normally be at peak season and it's just deserted  right now all the construction stopped normally  
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you see lots of you know hotels and houses being  built and that's all stopped and there's no  
00:01:55
tourists so it's all just kind of cleared out but  I think it's quite safe you know every worker that  
00:02:02
I've seen here since we landed at the airport  - you know got transported to to this community  
00:02:08
where at I mean has been wearing a mask much  more consistent than I think in the US and um  
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you know I think it's been it's been fine now  of course you founded the craft venture capital  
00:02:22
firm and people know before that you obviously  did Yammer and sold that Microsoft for a billion  
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dollars plus and before that you are the CEO of  PayPal what's going on with your business are you  
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actively investing and how is your firm running  remote it's it's it's worked very well I mean  
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we've always been super collaborative as a firm we  were always we were already on zoom' and we were  
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you know we share everything on the amur and so  for us just moving to zoom wasn't that difficult  
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we've done four or five deals I think since the  whole kind of quarantine started I'm sorry sorry  
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sorry did you did you say that you actually use  Yammer now 2020 we're still using it oh my god is  
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Yammer still hook available that's insane I mean  it's kind of got a little bit buried inside of  
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Microsoft but you can certainly still get it and  no we love it I mean the whole firm kind of works  
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works in the amur and it works very well for us  and now what's gonna happen with this incredible  
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office that you have this beautiful office you  have in San Francisco and commercial real estate  
00:03:28
now that are you going to come back to work we  saw Twitter and square the jack collection of  
00:03:35
companies they're not going to come back to their  offices or work from home primarily going forward  
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what are you gonna do well it'll be a great asset  for us in the year 2025 or something like that no  
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I mean we will eventually go back to work there I  think that the team still likes having an office  
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I think you know the idea that everyone wants to  work out of like a small room and you know extra  
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room in their house I think probably getting is  probably a little overrated I think people would  
00:04:01
like to get back to the office but do we have to  have one no I mean I think we've proven that we  
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can do our jobs via zoom and you know we've done  a lot of we've done like I said we've done four  
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or five deals since the started where we haven't  met with the entrepreneur in person you know it's  
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all been done by a zoom nanus it's worked great  all right trim off how are you doing what house  
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which are a mental health like you know I get to  see you once in a while on CNBC throwing bombs  
00:04:30
but how are you doing I was really excited for  phase 2 of the shelter in place to start here  
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in San Mateo County so that's been really good  a new poker table that I had built arrived today  
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which I'll be installing after this and what I  mean by I'll be installing you'll be supervising  
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I'll be supervising watching as people do real  work watching and it's a beautiful table I saw  
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the pictures have a digital infinity edge is it  an infinity edge table no no no no but I'll send  
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you a picture when it's all done but it just looks  stunning and I really want to try to organize the  
00:05:14
game soon so that I can get you guys back into  the into my little cave here yeah I am ready for  
00:05:22
this shelter in place to end I'll just be honest  and I think that my sentiments are the sentiments  
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of a lot of people it's it's really tough really  really tough I I'm losing all my motivation to be  
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quite honest it is weird to not see people even  and you're an extrovert David you're an introvert  
00:05:40
and then David Freiberg also on the line David how  are you handling all of this I'm fine I think one  
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of the things that made a huge difference for  me is the creating a rhythm in the day because  
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there isn't one when you kind of normally get  up and you go to work and then you come home at  
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the end of the day from work that's a rhythm and  you're you kind of get kind of adjusted to it so  
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not having that a lot of people I've been hearing  at struggling with that I was certainly struggling  
00:06:07
with it having sleep issues and I sit on about a  dozen boards some of which have small companies  
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some of which have a couple hundred employees  and I've been hearing pretty consistently mental  
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health issues across all the companies and I  think it's just been really grating on people  
00:06:22
I think it number one kind of says we probably do  need to be together and have social space as David  
00:06:28
said like being in the same office people really  miss that and you get a lot of value from that
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and I've been getting up everyday in the last  couple of weeks and going off-site going out of  
00:06:39
my house to go work we're actually working on  another place and I have like a little office  
00:06:43
there and I go kind of work there and so that's  made a huge impact honestly on my mental health  
00:06:47
being able to do that every day so just doing  that's been been helpful I not everyone has  
00:06:52
that privilege but I think it speaks a lot to  why we're gonna need to go back to offices when  
00:06:56
this is all done and what do you think about but  what's happening with your businesses obviously  
00:06:59
you're running a startup studio I guess would be  one way to describe it where you create companies  
00:07:04
and then spin them out what's been the business  interruption if any we have a couple of hardware  
00:07:10
and lab companies that's most of what we've  done and so those operations are paused so  
00:07:15
that's been really frustrating the teams have  all found ways to adjust and work from home so  
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our companies are not predominantly software  based there's a lot of software but it's not  
00:07:23
predominantly software so it's been difficult on  those scientists and engineers that work in a lab  
00:07:28
or in a physical environment that they have to go  to to do their work the larger companies we have  
00:07:33
a number of food businesses that happen to be in  the food supply chain one way or another frankly  
00:07:38
those businesses are doing fantastically well and  there's been just this incredible success in the  
00:07:44
era of kovat on kind of a focus on fundamentals  like food supply chain efficiency availability of  
00:07:49
things that people need and we were doing a lot in  human health and we've kind of benefited from that  
00:07:54
so yeah I think there's kind of a mix for us but  I think every business is bifurcated one way or  
00:08:00
another during this kind of moment of punctuated  equilibrium yeah I think one thing I'd like to  
00:08:06
sort of talk about is we've had you both on the  podcast early on at the start of the pandemic  
00:08:11
and I'm curious chum off now that we're here over  two months in quarantine sheltering in place and a  
00:08:18
lot of information a lot of cards have turned over  here right we've seen the flop I think we haven't  
00:08:23
seen the the turn and the river so to speak what  is your assessment of what we were talking about  
00:08:29
you know a month or two ago and what we thought  about this and what's become reality and what  
00:08:34
hasn't what are you more optimistic about what  are you more pessimistic about your month let's  
00:08:37
start with you I think that we will have this  pandemic or this disease within two years and  
00:08:50
so whether it's a combination of a therapeutic  and a vaccine or just a therapeutic I just think  
00:08:57
that we're gonna kick its ass and so that's made  me more optimistic I think that the thing that's  
00:09:05
made me more pessimistic though is the return to  normalcy has been sort of cut on political lines  
00:09:11
and it's been so massively politicized I mean when  David talks about the fact that you know you can  
00:09:18
go to a developing country like Mexico and all  of a sudden you know everybody can get around the  
00:09:23
idea of masks it's because that there's a level of  common sense there that trumps politics and in the  
00:09:30
United States that just isn't the case and so what  you're seeing in in this crazy way I think is sort  
00:09:37
of the center left and the left probably sticking  very firmly to the ideology of sheltering in place  
00:09:45
and a lockdown probably on the sort of hope that  it gets Trump out of office and on the other side  
00:09:53
sort of the red states I think have basically said  hey I would rather get sick from coronavirus and  
00:10:00
take my chances than the hundred percent chance of  failure that I have in my professional life if you  
00:10:05
leave me at home for another week or month or what  have you so that's been a huge disappointment of  
00:10:11
how political this whole thing is got and sacks  you've been talking about like common sense  
00:10:16
procedures sort of same question to you what you  first thought and you had been talking about you  
00:10:22
thought an l-shape recovery so we'll get into also  the economy here but in terms of the disease what  
00:10:28
did you think two months ago that you don't think  now and what do you think yeah well in preparation  
00:10:35
for this I kind of went through my Twitter feed to  see what I was saying the last time I was on the  
00:10:40
pod and how well it was holding up and two months  ago today I tweeted that pandemic but that under  
00:10:48
reaction caused the pandemic and overreaction  will cause the depression and I think that's  
00:10:54
kind of where we are right now we still have this  pandemic with us but now we're also potentially  
00:10:59
facing I think a potential because of the way were  we're overreacting we're still in lockdowns in you  
00:11:07
know huge swathes of the country and no one can  quite understand why I mean the original reason  
00:11:15
for the lockdowns was tobias time so that the  hospitals wouldn't become overwhelmed like Italy  
00:11:20
well nowhere in the country did the hospitals get  overwhelmed and we're still in these lock downs  
00:11:25
and and so you know I I think that it's long  overdue for it to end now at the same time you  
00:11:34
know where I agree with Gemma that this whole  thing's become politicized where you know the  
00:11:39
the people who generally want to get us out of  lock downs don't believe in doing anything you  
00:11:45
know they're not even a lot of them already been  willing to wear masks which i think is just kind  
00:11:49
of insane so you know where I come out on this  thing is that I think we should end lock downs  
00:11:56
but wear masks and it's very hard to find anybody  you know in the in the political spectrum who who  
00:12:02
agrees with that because you know one side wants  to keep the lockdowns going indefinitely and the  
00:12:07
other doesn't want to store mass and it makes no  logical sense obviously and if you think about  
00:12:12
our political system the left is so far left  that the moderates on the left side don't have  
00:12:17
a place to live anymore and then on the right  the Conservatives which I would put you in the  
00:12:22
group of who were you know looking for fiscal  conservatives conservatives they don't have a  
00:12:29
home anymore either and so the most reasonable  approach is clearly to start going back to work  
00:12:36
for people who are not at risk and who wear a  mask yeah I think I think there's been since the  
00:12:42
last pod that we did together I think there's been  three kind of major discoveries or sets of facts  
00:12:49
that have come out about the virus number one  the official fatality rate has been over which  
00:12:56
is about six percent you know it's a very high  fatality rate it's very scary but we now know  
00:13:02
that that's overstated by probably at least 10  acts because it doesn't take into account all the  
00:13:09
asymptomatic cases or mild cases that just never  got tested and this is the fatality rate of people  
00:13:16
who contracted the virus right as exactly as  opposed to people whose case the the the problem  
00:13:23
with the it's kind of a debate between the the IFR  versus the CFR the infection fatality rate versus  
00:13:29
a case fatality rate the the problem with kind of  the official CFR numbers is that only the people  
00:13:35
who got really sick or you never got tested and  you know freiburg was the earliest person I know  
00:13:42
to start talking about the need for wide scale  population testing and these plots are all G  
00:13:47
tests and other kinds of tests to establish what  the real baseline is but regardless of like and  
00:13:53
there's been a whole bunch of different tests with  different results I you know we don't know exactly  
00:13:59
what the truth is far is to this day but we do  know it's probably closer to half a percent than  
00:14:05
to 5% so that's sort of discovery number one I  think discovery number two is and we knew a little  
00:14:12
bit saw a little bit of this from the wuhan data  but now it's really clear that witch populations  
00:14:18
are at risk and it's you know the data seems  to suggest that people under 60 who are healthy  
00:14:26
don't have sort of pre-existing conditions or 50  times less likely to develop or there's there's  
00:14:34
a 50 X greater chance for those over 60 in terms  of a of the you know having a really bad outcome  
00:14:39
and so for people under 60 you don't have these  pre-existing conditions it's you know it's just  
00:14:45
not yes there's always you know examples to the  contrary but it's not this this sort of gigantic  
00:14:52
risks and so for two-thirds of the population they  don't have a huge risk and we're still locking  
00:14:57
them down I think the third thing the third  study and not just study there's there's been  
00:15:03
studies and there's been models and then we've  also seen practice is that wide scale use of  
00:15:10
mass or ubiquitous mass wearing is sufficient to  control the virus meaning to stop the exponential  
00:15:17
'ti of the virus we've seen you know in the Asian  countries or Czechoslovakia other places even able  
00:15:24
to get the you know the so-called are not that  the the viral coefficient to go below one with  
00:15:32
you know why skill use of mass and so we have a  way to prevent the virus from going exponential  
00:15:37
that doesn't require lock downs and so the thing  you know I I blogged about but the last time I  
00:15:44
was on your show was why would you do this to most  severe thing these lock downs and not do this easy  
00:15:50
thing that's just merely inconvenient which is a  mess Freiburg when you look at it and you're the  
00:15:55
I think have the deepest science clearly of the  deepest science background of all of us what what  
00:16:00
how do you look at this pandemic now that we're  75 days into it here in the Bay Area and obviously  
00:16:08
you know they started in December it looks like  in China what's your take on it now what did you  
00:16:14
get right early and what have you changed your  mind about recently I'm actually fine when you  
00:16:21
say that I just pulled up the original w-h-o joint  mission on Kovac final report and the date of this  
00:16:28
report by the way is February 20th so there was  this big thing they published 40 pages long from  
00:16:34
the whu-oh and in it they highlighted you know the  this fatality rate estimate inside of who Bay you  
00:16:41
know Wuhan and outside of who Bay they you know  we knew from this data very early on that we were  
00:16:46
at about a half percent fatality rate and then  you know we saw all of this other stuff happen  
00:16:51
with Korea and the princess cruise ship and the  NBA players very early on we saw all these people  
00:16:56
that were roughly asymptomatic and we're starting  to get to kind of explanations for why that is but  
00:17:02
from the beginning I felt really like you know  this is gonna be a largely asymptomatic kind of  
00:17:09
spreading infectious vector what what I got wrong  was when we went into lockdown I don't know CH  
00:17:15
amok if you remember this when we talked the first  time on Jason's on your guys's podcast I asked you  
00:17:20
guys or you guys asked me when I thought we'd be  back and I was like Oh April 7th we'll be back to  
00:17:24
work and I also had a bet going with you guys and  I said we're gonna have less than 20,000 deaths  
00:17:28
in the u.s. I so overestimated the effectiveness  of the lockdown and I think that was kind of you  
00:17:35
know one of the the more kind of like striking  things to me is the quote unquote lockdown and I  
00:17:41
just sent the video to Nick you have it can you  tear it up so basically I this is what I think  
00:17:46
has happened in the United States like pull this  thing up I was in Berkeley on Saturday and I went  
00:17:51
to play to meet some buddies and we played frisbee  golf on campus and had a beer some college buddies  
00:17:55
of mine and so I'm walking around in Berkeley  and there is frat party after frat party going  
00:18:00
on no mast everyone's on top of each other you  can see the video right here I took a video beer  
00:18:06
pong yeah they're all paying beer pong there's  like girls and drinking and people are passing  
00:18:10
around bottles of vodka and there's no mask and  this was the entire campus of Berkeley like and  
00:18:14
I think this is what's gone on like around the  country so the belief that you could just kind  
00:18:19
of like lock away the virus I believe like oh  my god there's it's so extreme it's so draconian  
00:18:23
we're gonna shut down the world and this thing  is gonna get stopped in 30 days like happened in  
00:18:28
China that is not what happened in the United  States of America like people want to be free  
00:18:32
people want to party people want to live their  life they want to go to work they want to see  
00:18:36
their friends and family and they they're not used  to being told no by the government and so I think  
00:18:41
that's been to me the biggest surprise is just  like how ineffective the quote-unquote lockdown  
00:18:45
has been and I think it really speaks to the need  that David mentioned which is this lockdown isn't  
00:18:50
binary you can't just say lock everyone down  or let them all out you've got a nuanced your  
00:18:54
way to a solution which means like masks which  means watching out for nursing homes which means  
00:18:59
temperature checking before letting people in the  buildings of over 100 people like all the stuff  
00:19:03
that I think needs to be done for this to be kind  of effective at you know tracking and tracing and  
00:19:08
we can't just assume that you know a quote-unquote  lockdown is gonna keep people inside and keep this  
00:19:14
thing from spreading because the frat party  as you'll see is the perfect representation  
00:19:17
of what what's really going on out there all right  circling back around to you trim off what what do  
00:19:23
you think of what the two David's sort of outlined  there in terms of the path forward and how we all  
00:19:30
handicapped what was going on well I think the  reality is that by hook or crook we're gonna  
00:19:39
basically exit this lockdown sooner than we think  because I think people just can't take it anymore  
00:19:44
so there's no point in having a shelter in place  order if everybody's running around playing beer  
00:19:49
pong and so it's not doing anything and so you  might as well get the productive value of the  
00:19:57
economy going again by letting people go back to  work you know we we and just finding some simple  
00:20:05
ways that people can look past the politics and  just do the right thing we're a goddamn mask and  
00:20:13
shut the [ __ ] up and go back to work it's it's  really like I mean when you think about it it's  
00:20:18
like why is this such a big deal get everything  you want and just put a little bit of cloth over  
00:20:25
your face I mean a lot of the folks that push back  on this you know they're better off wearing the  
00:20:30
mask yeah I mean it is pretty striking when you  watch the protest and you see a bunch of people  
00:20:37
who are you know obviously older and obviously  zerbies so those are not the best looking knives  
00:20:42
in the drawer let's just put it that way if not  definitely not and pickled dull and rusty I would  
00:20:47
say well I'm you know they're carrying guns and  they've never served a day in the army I mean it's  
00:20:51
they're literally cosplaying that way this whole  mass thing is not such a big deal just if you can  
00:21:01
wear a mask and get back to being productive and  get back to a job I think you should be allowed  
00:21:04
all right so we had a big debate v-shape w-shaped  you shaved a low shaved recovery I was in the I'm  
00:21:11
aspirationally v-shaped but I'm expecting a you  sacks you were the AL and I think shimoff you  
00:21:18
were the the W the U or the L we've had a V how do  you explain shimoff what is going on in the stock  
00:21:24
market because you said it was the end of days you  said this is gonna be a disaster is it going to  
00:21:30
be disaster is this the end of the days and we've  got some false rebound and this v-shaped recovery  
00:21:35
is not sustainable what how do you explain this  inexplainable v-shape responsibility response  
00:21:42
there's two things to keep in mind first of all  the economy is completely [ __ ] so don't don't  
00:21:48
question you know don't look at Facebook Apple  Amazon Microsoft Google and a handful of you know  
00:21:54
internet SAS companies and kid yourself we have  30 million American men and women out of work  
00:22:00
that is every fifth person you see walking down  the street does not have a job what happens when  
00:22:06
lockdown ends if we if with the lockdown ends in  June as expected for mobility but how many people  
00:22:11
are hammers in the foundry pound yeah yeah no so  so look here here's the thing that we've had we've  
00:22:16
had trillions of dollars of money printed into  the system and when you print that money into the  
00:22:23
system which the Federal Reserve has done it hits  the asset markets and it is basically stabilized  
00:22:29
the bond market and the incremental dollar sits in  the hands of an individual who must put the money  
00:22:36
to work because when you look back on this this is  not you know a random person managing their 401k  
00:22:43
the overwhelming majority money sits and that sits  in the hands of hedge funds or pension funds or  
00:22:48
sovereign wealth funds or mutual funds they have  a job to do and so you have to think about what is  
00:22:54
their incremental decisions so even if the stock  market made no sense on any valuation metric the  
00:23:01
incremental dollar that they have which they're  paid to put to work will get put to work and so  
00:23:05
what you've actually seen is a dispersion and  what I mean by that is if you graph the S&P 500  
00:23:12
index versus the unweighted S&P 500 index which  basically means the first one ranks companies  
00:23:21
by market cap and gives the biggest companies  more weight the other one ranks every company  
00:23:25
equally there's been a massive split a dispersion  and what it really shows is that companies that  
00:23:32
traffic in bits so software businesses have a  bid and companies that trafficking atoms have  
00:23:38
gotten completely decimated and they are literally  worthless and so when you put all these things  
00:23:45
together the real economy is in the toilet there  are tens of millions of you know men and women  
00:23:50
out of work the earnings power of real companies  that do physical things in the world are cheaper  
00:23:57
and lower than they've ever been meanwhile the  companies that have high velocity high margin  
00:24:04
software driven businesses have gone to the moon  so it's unfair to look at 30 or 40 businesses and  
00:24:11
paint that as a as a v-shaped recovery it is a  equity market that is buoyed by fed dollars that  
00:24:17
is not mapping to the reality of what's happening  on the ground okay so Sachs you're you're pretty  
00:24:23
plugged-in to the you think about this a lot what  do you think the recovery looks like is this going  
00:24:28
to be two three four five quarter recession is it  going to be depression era like some people are  
00:24:35
apt to say what keeps you up at night thinking  about the economy and what gives you hope well  
00:24:42
I it kind of depends if there are other shoes  to drop so I agree with drum-off that you know  
00:24:48
the state economy right now is terrible and it's  divorced from the financial markets because of you  
00:24:54
know all the money printing and interventions that  the Fed and Treasury or you know have been doing  
00:25:01
you know one way to think about it is well the the  stock markets denominated in u.s. dollars and if  
00:25:07
you know they just printed a whole bunch more of  them those dollars are worth less and so you know  
00:25:13
the the price of the stocks are gonna rise but  but yeah I think looking forward you know I it's  
00:25:21
probably going to be a two to three year process  to get out of this unless some other shoe drops  
00:25:25
which could make it much worse Europe you're  betting on two to three years to get back to  
00:25:31
let's call it single digit unemployment um we'll  see we're at like what fifteen percent right now  
00:25:38
or something like that so you know thirty five  million people get down to you know ten million  
00:25:46
again twenty million it's it's hard to say it's  gonna take a long time to create all those jobs  
00:25:51
you know a lot of these businesses are not just  gonna come you know racing right back so yeah I  
00:25:58
think it's probably like a two three or process  to get back to some sort of you know and by the  
00:26:02
way the thing you have to remember is like look  the unemployment numbers that we have had in  
00:26:06
the last probably seven or eight years so during  Obama and Trump have been completely manipulated  
00:26:12
because the number of people that are entirely  leaving the workforce is quite high and so you  
00:26:18
know it's not just a numerator problem we have a  denominator problem too there are fewer and fewer  
00:26:22
workers that you know are willing to work because  some of them just give up right or it's just not  
00:26:29
worth it for the pay that's available is another  states open so the thing that we're gonna have  
00:26:33
to figure out is like how many of the people that  are leaving the workforce may never come back and  
00:26:38
has a societal toll and weight that we all have  to bear yeah there's gonna be a lot of people  
00:26:44
who maybe are in their 60s or maybe even late  50s they got 10 20 years left that they could  
00:26:50
be working in management sales whatever it is  and they just say you know what it's not worth  
00:26:55
it I'm gonna go try to find a place to stay and  maybe not rejoin the workforce early retirement  
00:27:02
or just capitulation yeah well and but you know  remember I said about other shoes dropping I mean  
00:27:10
we we're still in the early I think we're still  in the early stages seeing the repercussions of  
00:27:15
what you know but to three-month shutdown the  economy you know what what that's gonna look  
00:27:21
like and so the you know the wave of defaults  is just beginning and you know who knows what  
00:27:27
happens with cities and states and so on down the  line I mean who knows you know does do the debt  
00:27:34
markets have kind of an inexhaustible you know  desire for you know to buy US debt or could we  
00:27:42
reach some sort of saturation point and then that  triggers the next you know set of crises so we  
00:27:49
just don't you know I would say like that the two  to three our outlook is is the one that's kind of  
00:27:54
like what it looks like today but if there are  these other big shoes to drop it could turn in  
00:28:00
something much worse I think Friedberg we're all  in agreement that there will be a second wave of  
00:28:05
some type just depends on how big the spike is do  you think there'll be another new york city level  
00:28:10
outbreak where we'll see you know 2,000 people  1,500 people dying in a certain region every day  
00:28:16
for some sustained period of time what are the  chance of that happening Freiburg I don't know  
00:28:22
I mean I think going forward the you know the  New York situation people's behaviors have been  
00:28:27
shocked so you know to the points earlier the most  effective thing you can do is stop coughing on  
00:28:32
your hand touching a railing someone else touches  the railing and touches their mouth I mean that's  
00:28:35
kind of how this goes you know there's been early  on some weird like arrows stylized aerosolized a  
00:28:45
study that kind of said hey this thing spreads in  the air and so on it's really you know you got to  
00:28:49
be in a closed kind of confined space if people  are wearing asks now so the likelihood of the  
00:28:54
transmission happening at the rate that we saw in  New York great paper out of MIT by the way that  
00:28:59
shows how this happened on the subway oh really  identified I did identify the subway as kind of  
00:29:04
the primary vector that droves transmission in New  York City that was always my thesis and I remember  
00:29:10
talking about it and saying how is this not  obvious to everybody that 8 million people ride  
00:29:14
that thing every day or something like it's so I  didn't make they did an incredible job proving it  
00:29:18
so it's not like people running in Central Park  or spreading crota virus to each other's everyone  
00:29:21
in these confined spaces coughing in the air and  then you kind of get this stuff and 20 people get  
00:29:26
on and off at every stop that's the other thing  people don't realize is that it's not just a bunch  
00:29:30
of people it's not an aeroplane we have X number  of people going in one direction for three four  
00:29:35
five hours this is 20 people getting on and off  every five minutes it's almost like you couldn't  
00:29:40
design a better incubator for it and I don't think  a city in the United States approaches the density  
00:29:45
that you have in New York so remember these are  not deterministic factors these there's like a  
00:29:49
spectrum of a probabilistic spectrum here so you  have a lot of people they have a certain type of  
00:29:54
behavior they're not wearing masks you kind of add  these up and you end up with this really high kind  
00:29:58
of vector that drives this this rapid spread as  we saw in New York City you know you're not gonna  
00:30:03
see that in Dallas you're not gonna see that in  Houston you're not gonna see that in San Diego  
00:30:07
you're gonna have more of the slow steady burn as  some risk is taken in the environment some risk  
00:30:12
is taken by frat parties and people not wearing  masks and people touching their mouths but it's  
00:30:17
not gonna have the same sort of massive effect you  saw in New York so I wouldn't expect us to have a  
00:30:21
New York style second wave I do expect there to  continue to be this like slow burn going forward  
00:30:27
of new cases and it's certainly going to be more  obvious now that we're testing a lot more and so  
00:30:32
Tremont at this point we're basically putting  a price on life and saying hey some amount of  
00:30:37
deaths is worth taking the risk and as Americans a  unique group of people in the world in how we look  
00:30:44
at personal freedom Americans are just making the  choice hey listen if you don't want to take the  
00:30:49
risk stay home but the rest of us if we want to  take the risk we're gonna go take the risk that's  
00:30:53
what this has come down to in your mind yeah I  think that it's very difficult for Americans to
00:31:03
envision a world where like you know their  personal freedoms are infringed upon I mean  
00:31:07
it's sort of like kind of one of the founding  principles of the entire country this is why I  
00:31:12
think that the the tragedy of this thing is that  the the way to get everybody what they want is  
00:31:17
so simple as David said it's like you know above  sixty five you stay home you work remotely under  
00:31:23
sixty five you temperature check and wear a mask  and you know you're ninety five percent of the way  
00:31:27
there but it's become a left versus right decision  to do it you know the mask wearers are still in  
00:31:32
a lockdown and the non mask wearers want to get  back to work and basically like there's there's  
00:31:37
it's just it's just another kind of culture war  between the left and the right it's it's really  
00:31:45
just shocking I mean I might for what it's worth  you know if I was I am a betting man so I'll just  
00:31:50
tell you you know my line now is that I think  that Donald Trump is overwhelmingly likely to  
00:31:58
win as a function of people's frustration  and about the lock downs and I think that  
00:32:03
the Democrats best hope of winning in November  is ending these things sooner rather than later  
00:32:08
it's amazing we're talking about a pandemic a  once in a hundred year pandemic it looks like  
00:32:14
and we're literally looking at our reaction to it  through the lens of this president being reelected  
00:32:21
or not like literally that's the determining  factor on the advice we're giving to people  
00:32:25
we're telling people they can't go to the beach  but they can be on an airplane they can't go to  
00:32:30
the Tesla factory but they can ride the subway  I mean on a communication basis because they're  
00:32:34
any worse way we could have communicated this to  the populace well the communication was bad but  
00:32:41
the I think the bigger problem quite honestly  is that the Republican Democratic governors  
00:32:46
in the United States can't get on the same page  and at the same time there's just a tendency to  
00:32:53
support Donald Trump or not support him in a very  reflexive instinctive way that isn't helpful right  
00:32:59
now and and there just doesn't seem to be enough  political wherewithal and courage to just stand up  
00:33:05
and do the right thing independent of what your  what your political persuasion is so but but I  
00:33:12
think on the margin now I think you have different  but very similar boundary additions to 2016 where  
00:33:20
there all these people that kind of like told you  one thing and did another there all these people  
00:33:24
right now that probably are you know preference  falsifying as we speak and you know they'll show  
00:33:28
up into the voting booth and they'll be angry  if they're not back in their jobs especially  
00:33:32
if they've been laid off by his as a result of  not being able to get back and they would blame  
00:33:38
that on the Democrats not the Republicans and  therefore Trump gets his next term well because  
00:33:43
the the it's it's the democratic states that are  pushing the hardest basically like you know you  
00:33:47
saw the craziness in Los Angeles but like you know  Eric Garcetti was basically like we will enter the  
00:33:52
shelter in place and you know December of 2022 and  it's like this is it's Los Angeles yeah it's not  
00:33:59
gonna happen you know players got a play I mean  like this is just as unbelievable yeah well the  
00:34:05
that III do I agree the lockdowns the or the the  unwillingness to end the lockdowns gives Trump an  
00:34:14
issue for November assuming this continues that  supersedes the incompetence of the kovat response  
00:34:22
which is that you know our lives and livelihoods  are not owned by politicians to you know meter out  
00:34:31
and give back to us in drips and drabs and as they  see fit that is the issue that the lockdown crowd  
00:34:38
is is giving to Trump and I do think it will if  it's still the issue in November it will supersede  
00:34:43
the the you know the initial unconference of  the kovat response and what did you think of  
00:34:50
this whole what's the drug that Trump said he  was taking David sacks I draw hydroxyl : yeah  
00:34:56
so what or Friedberg maybe you take it we talked  about that early on and that I think you properly  
00:35:03
said like if you took it earlier this could be  you know could has potential taking it later  
00:35:08
it's probably too late I think you nailed that  on the pod last time why is this become such a  
00:35:12
political issue in what are your thoughts on that  drug specifically and its potential efficacy look  
00:35:19
I'm not a doctor but it from what I understand is  there is a so just so you know there's like side  
00:35:28
effects to this drug for a small percentage of  the population and this drug can actually inhibit  
00:35:33
energy production in certain cells which can cause  organs to dysfunction and it particularly shows up  
00:35:40
in the heart so people end up with what's called a  long QT interval and potentially some heart issues  
00:35:45
that can be pretty dangerous and deadly depending  on your body so it's really a little bit of an  
00:35:51
unknown there's also issues longer-term with  with vision impairment can damage your retinal  
00:35:55
cells and cause vision loss so there's risk  to this drug it's not like taking you know an  
00:36:01
Advil it is a it is a measured risk it's a low  probability but the severity can be high and so  
00:36:08
typically with a scenario like that doctors and  scientists like to see you know phased clinical  
00:36:14
trials and you kind of do you know randomized  and you have placebo and testing and so that  
00:36:20
hasn't necessarily been done for this particular  virus this particular condition and often the the  
00:36:25
design of those studies matters a lot so you could  give it to a bunch of quote unquote Ovid patients  
00:36:31
but if it's not being given to Kovach patients  either before or right as they're getting sick  
00:36:34
maybe it doesn't show the results that you would  expect from a prophylactic treatment meaning  
00:36:39
you're getting it before you're really sick and  that's where it may be the most efficacious and  
00:36:44
so some people are saying wait we don't know  enough don't do it it's not worth the risk  
00:36:47
because of that small percentage high severity  problem while others are saying oh my gosh it's  
00:36:52
totally worth the risk is the downside if you get  coronavirus can be really bad and you know and so  
00:36:57
so there's a lot of room for debate here and when  there's a lot of room for debate you usually kind  
00:37:02
of revert to some sort of base belief or some base  kind of political point of view or something and  
00:37:06
I think that's what's going on here this isn't a  clear-cut the Sun is yellow on this guy's balloon  
00:37:11
kind of conversation this is like I can interpret  this a lot of different ways it does seem that  
00:37:17
like look this drug you know like a lot of has an  effect in the same way that a lot of other that  
00:37:23
this drug might have on a lot of other viruses  and this especially plus zinc you know and this  
00:37:28
z-pak this as if from icing which is an antibiotic  together may be really effective and so yeah if  
00:37:35
you weigh the downside and the probability of that  downside for a patient against what the potential  
00:37:39
upside would be depending on their risk factors  now that we know those better for kovat you can  
00:37:43
make an educated decision and maybe just be left  in the hands of doctors versus like have some  
00:37:48
national statement about it I don't know but yeah  it's certainly a lot of room for debate and thus  
00:37:52
a lot of kind of you know political engagement  on this Sax's there's a lot of talk about what  
00:38:00
the bay area looks like after this whether it's  commercial real estate with Twitter and square  
00:38:05
going full work from home and people not wanting  to work in cities what are your general thoughts  
00:38:11
on what the world looks like a year from now  and maybe five years from now if there is going  
00:38:16
to be some permanent change what do you think it  would be well there could be a big resource that  
00:38:25
I rescind emic it's something we kind of end up  living with but you know so so look if it does I  
00:38:34
mean if you're like over 70 are you really gonna  want to stay in a place like New York City or you  
00:38:38
don't want to go somewhere else and so I could  imagine if this does become this long-term thing  
00:38:43
that's just endemic yeah we don't know if we don't  have a vaccine I could see cities resorting where  
00:38:49
you know New York is people who are come full  with ghovat risk and you know it's I think San  
00:38:56
Francisco's the the big issue with San Francisco  is that there were always a bunch of reasons not  
00:39:03
to want to live there I mean that the city too  seems like chronically mismanaged so he sees  
00:39:09
lots of poop the huge homeless problem you know  public health issues with that there's there's  
00:39:15
a lot of crime there's and we were responded to  properly so there's all these like reasons not to  
00:39:19
live there but the reason why people chose to  live there is because the tech industry had a  
00:39:24
very strong network effect and you needed to be in  Silicon Valley or San Francisco in order to have  
00:39:30
access to these these jobs and opportunities and  if those jobs opportunities are now available via  
00:39:35
zoom and you can be doing them from anywhere are  people still gonna choose to live in San Francisco  
00:39:40
you know with you know with the the the cost of  living and housing and apartments and all the  
00:39:47
rest of it that that goes that goes along with it  so yeah I mean I think there is some chance that  
00:39:53
this whole remote work thing could break Silicon  Valley's Network effect and that would be really  
00:39:59
bad for places like San Francisco which you know  otherwise might not be the greatest places to live  
00:40:05
yeah I might thesis on this in terms of getting  out of the recession I think remote work could  
00:40:13
lead to a level of efficiency and profitability  in the companies that we have never seen before  
00:40:19
if you think just about every manager now knows  how to manage remote workers right you learned  
00:40:25
that in like three four weeks you figure out how  to manage people remote even people who hated  
00:40:31
managing people remote all these Gen Xers and  boomers who are managing you know Millennials  
00:40:36
and earlier Gen Xers they now know how to do it  and what they quickly learn is these three or  
00:40:42
four people in my team are crushing it these two  or three people don't need to be here they're not  
00:40:47
actually adding any value so I think what's  gonna happen is they're gonna cut the bottom  
00:40:51
people then they're gonna cut their office space  now you've removed I don't know call it 30% of  
00:40:58
the cost basis of a business forty percent in its  operating better and people are happier and then  
00:41:03
when you do hire somebody there's gonna be more  talent available and you've just opened it up  
00:41:07
that you can hire somebody anywhere in the world  without an office and you don't have to relocate  
00:41:13
them and you don't have to pay I don't know what  you guys think the average additional cost is to  
00:41:19
be in San Francisco but I'm gonna say $30,000 so  a $40,000 a year job or a $50,000 your job becomes  
00:41:25
a 70 or 80 something like that and if all that  happens these companies are gonna be so profitable  
00:41:32
that they're gonna start growing and that leads us  out of the economic downturn any thoughts on my my  
00:41:38
thesis that's not a thesis that's a hope yeah  hopes not a [ __ ] strategy Jason yeah well I  
00:41:45
just think it's a potential way out I think it  I mean what do you think in general about this  
00:41:50
trend of remote then drama I think it's great  and I think that we're realizing that you know  
00:41:56
there's no monopoly on innovation and companies  can be really productive remotely that most of  
00:42:03
the work in an office is busy work and politics  and you can cut it all out and you can do the  
00:42:10
same amount of work much less time which gives you  more time to frankly be with your family or take  
00:42:15
up a hobby or learn a second language or a third  language I mean I just think it's so much better  
00:42:20
for people to realize like we got a you know it's  it's not like you you know it's not it's not 1820  
00:42:26
or 1920 it's 2020 so we're gonna live to a hundred  years old like we have a long time to be in the  
00:42:33
grind and so you know working and accomplishing  what you used to in half the time and not having  
00:42:40
to commute and being able to live where you want  your people you like man that has a huge positive  
00:42:46
impact to your kids you your community it's just  way better I just think offices are just complete  
00:42:57
kind of like it's all Shakespearean theatre  at the end and cutting it all out is great and  
00:43:01
specifically San Francisco's just a complete  cesspool dump of [ __ ] and so you know being  
00:43:07
able to just get out of that city all right  everybody welcome to the you're listening to  
00:43:12
the Oliver I read on stats yesterday that were  just so unbelievably shocking like the number of  
00:43:18
break-ins the number of number one in the country  they're number one in the country did the the  
00:43:24
amount of disease that like communicable disease  like typhoid and I'm like typhoid I was born in a  
00:43:32
country and scratched and clawed to emigrate as a  refugee to leave a country that had typhoid as a  
00:43:39
disease welcome o to survive nothing to end up  back in that in San Francisco thats brought it  
00:43:45
with you that's an absolute joke so yeah yeah I  mean the idea that I'd never have to go to San  
00:43:51
Francisco ever again is oh my god it brings joy to  me it is a it's an unmitigated disaster this and  
00:43:58
I think this will be part of the boom-bust cycle  that you know David you were part of when you here  
00:44:02
at Stanford you know getting an office in San  Francisco or having an apartment it was cheaper  
00:44:07
I think in the city than it was down in Palo Alto  wasn't not well back in yeah when we move the amur  
00:44:12
to San Francisco which was 2009 I think we were  able to get space for $20 a foot per year crazy  
00:44:19
that's what I paid 2007 I read it I read it I read  a crazy article it was about the Kushner's and  
00:44:29
this building that they own that Brookfield Asset  Management was gonna buy and and it said that they  
00:44:36
bought this building and so the Kushner's moved  to like Park Avenue the General Motors building  
00:44:40
overlooking Central Park or something right it's  a beautiful building and it actually quoted in  
00:44:46
there the price that they were paying and it was  incredible because it was like a hundred bucks  
00:44:50
a square foot per year and I realized oh my god  they're paying less for Central Park views in New  
00:44:57
York than I'm paying for a warehouse in Palo Alto  not as a [ __ ] is going on this makes no sense  
00:45:03
whatsoever gotta be supply and demand right there  and I thought to myself like this is this is crazy  
00:45:09
like California is so expensive the taxes are so  high it's I think people are gonna leave in droves  
00:45:16
honestly what do we think of Elon selling all his  homes and then actually saying he's gonna leaving  
00:45:23
you know move tests out I mean I don't think it's  a practical reality to move Tesla out of out of  
00:45:30
California I think that the incremental facilities  can be built wherever he wants him to be built  
00:45:35
based on where he gets a tax incentives well but I  think the Tesla Freemont was a really good example  
00:45:41
of this sort of like cultural war that's going  on this this political battle over lock downs  
00:45:46
and you know you had kind of a mid-level health  the department bureaucrat in Fremont had locking  
00:45:54
their factory and saying they couldn't go back to  work whereas if he was in Texas he could and then  
00:46:00
you know around the same time yet this whole like  Chile Luthor thing in Texas where she was a small  
00:46:05
business owner you know owns a like a haircut  place and she was basically put in jail for a week  
00:46:13
for giving somebody a haircut and there was like  a you know dust-up over that so you know I I think  
00:46:20
that like you know the the country is certainly  ready to get back to work and and if this is the  
00:46:25
political debate you know in November I'm not sure  we'll be because six months is a really long time  
00:46:30
from now but there was it four or five months but  if this is a political debate I you know this this  
00:46:36
will be the way that the Trump gets re-elected  mm-hmm yeah I think there's gonna be some pretty  
00:46:43
significant benefits because the reaction you guys  are speaking to it's not just about people moving  
00:46:48
but it's a reaction to a regulation and that could  have some pretty profound effect that to benefit  
00:46:57
certain sectors and businesses and accelerate new  outcomes one of the things that you know I have a  
00:47:04
strong belief in it's like I think in 20 years we  could kind of eradicate all infectious disease the  
00:47:10
only thing holding that up is regulation because  the science is known the engineering is basically  
00:47:15
there and it's simply a function of getting these  things approved in getting across the finish line  
00:47:19
doing gene editing and humans for genetic  mutations that cause harm to humans this is  
00:47:25
a technique that we've known for twenty years and  there was a guy a patient that died in 1999 from  
00:47:32
one of the first AAV treatments that viral vector  gene-editing treatments after that there was this  
00:47:37
clamp down and suddenly everything stopped and  there was like no longer any progress in this  
00:47:42
space and they're just now starting to come back  and there's a lot of you know really interesting  
00:47:48
technology that has been kind of hindered I mean  you know not being able to put Tesla's out I  
00:47:53
think is the tip of the iceberg of what people  are seeing regulation can do to business and  
00:47:58
look I'm I'm by no stretch you know a libertarian  party card carrier but I do think and I see it in  
00:48:06
businesses that I'm involved in all the time that  this you know incredibly onerous like overreaching  
00:48:12
regulatory burden and bureaucrats really hinder  great new things from happening in the world and  
00:48:19
it's just become so friggin apparent how inept  the people are that are making the decisions that  
00:48:23
are doing this to us are during this crisis and I  think it could have a profound benefit on kind of  
00:48:29
deregulation and accelerating the adoption of new  tools and new technologies that could really help  
00:48:35
us all so I view the positive side of this it's  not just like everyone's gonna leave California  
00:48:40
like this inept bureaucrats and over-regulation  everywhere let's talk to you politics for a moment  
00:48:45
shamatha you know you heard the president called  the wuhan virus obviously there's no doubt that  
00:48:51
it came from there there is a debate was this  something that was not created in a lab but that  
00:48:56
was being studied in the lab and accidentally got  out and that's how the jump happened and there's  
00:49:01
some tension there between China and the US what  do you think the global reaction is going to be  
00:49:06
and the fallout will be for China if any Japan is  paying factories I read and help me subsidize them  
00:49:14
to move factories out of China so they can move  that dependency we always saw the dependency on  
00:49:18
PPE and drugs being made actually in Wuhan in that  area and how we don't have a supply chain that we  
00:49:25
can rely on for really mission-critical stuff  how will we look at this Chinese relationship  
00:49:29
in the United States and globally post pandemic  this is the beginning of the modern Cold War and  
00:49:37
so it's America versus China except that China is  a much more worthy adversary for us than the USSR  
00:49:49
SSR was at their peak and the reason is because  China has been making strategic investments for  
00:49:57
the last thirty years you know the biggest thing  that prevents China from really going guns blazing  
00:50:03
broadside attack on the US is that the u.s.  dollar is still the reserve currency of the  
00:50:07
world but even there China you know is trying to  do a digital currency and a stable coin and these  
00:50:14
are all these state-sponsored initiatives that  come from frankly just strategic decision-making  
00:50:19
to try to usurp the United States as the most  powerful country in the world and so again it  
00:50:26
goes back to is this a political issue or is this  an ideological issue or is this an exceptionalism  
00:50:31
issue or is just as the practical reality that we  do not want another country being number one and  
00:50:36
can we all agree and if we can all agree then  I don't think they'll win where do you where  
00:50:43
do you sit on it for you is it practical as an  ideological completely practical I have zero  
00:50:48
like yeah you know I've been thinking about this  a lot because I have not done any investments and  
00:50:54
I just did by first oh so it's been three months  and I did it was a credit deal so it's not even  
00:51:00
equity and you know I was and I was reflecting on  what what am I trying to do because I felt myself  
00:51:09
frenetically you know spending and working too  much and you know looking at all these different  
00:51:15
opportunities and I realized wait a minute like my  job here is not to win some finite game like this  
00:51:21
is not ending like a basketball game or a soccer  match this is like I'm trying to be in this thing  
00:51:25
for 50 years so my goal is to survive and the  reason why I say that is my ideology is very fluid  
00:51:33
I have to be able to adapt to market conditions  as they change because if I want to be irrelevant  
00:51:37
you know person in the world and 50 years from  now first rule of business is don't go out of  
00:51:43
business second rule of businesses don't forget  rule number one run you know so in that context  
00:51:49
I think it's a very practical thing that we just  have to deal with China and make sure that they do  
00:51:54
not use syrup America's standing in the world as  the most important country of the world just for  
00:52:01
me it's ideological I just don't want a communist  country I don't care but that is torturing their  
00:52:06
citizens as the number one how do you in the world  I think it's really dangerous I have a real issue  
00:52:10
with this like I don't think you have the right  to judge just like Californians can't judge Texans  
00:52:15
and Texans can't judge Floridians oh no it's that  you're wrong you absolutely should judge people  
00:52:20
know are torturing people and not allowing people  that freedom of speech yeah you should judge them  
00:52:25
actually actually to human rights violations I  think you should judge people I I think that we  
00:52:30
there's there's a lot of that stuff in America  that you stay silent no that's not true I am  
00:52:34
absolutely for cannabis anybody who's arrested for  cannabis violations and low-level drug things I  
00:52:39
think we they should be let out of Freight out  of jail just like JB Pritzker did in Chicago  
00:52:44
I mean and I think the death penalty should be  repealed too because we don't apply it properly  
00:52:47
those are the number one and two things probably  the United States that go against the human rights  
00:52:52
the Declaration of Human Rights and I'm actually  very Pro fixing those things I was totally against  
00:52:58
waterboarding and I think that was the worst  moment in my in American history hiya I honestly  
00:53:02
I honestly think that like China's gonna do China  you know India is gonna be India and instead of  
00:53:08
getting caught up in our own ideology you should  change it in your own country and then make sure  
00:53:16
that the other country doesn't win well and  that's my point is do do you believe engagement  
00:53:21
with China leads them towards democracy and better  human rights conditions for their citizens or not  
00:53:25
and I think the fool's errand that is an absolute  it worked for East Berlin and it did work and  
00:53:31
saving Europe from the Nazis so that the boundary  conditions are entirely different and China has  
00:53:35
proven that it works Europeans were genetically  bred to be lazy oligarchs okay everybody I think  
00:53:44
we just got kicked out of the iTunes Store saxy  poo yeah China hawk-dove engagement isolation  
00:53:52
where do you stand you heard Sharma say his  position where do you stand yeah decoupling from  
00:53:58
China is gonna be a bipartisan issue now I think  but both can it's now will be well Trump is gonna  
00:54:05
is gonna run blaming China for for what happened  and I don't think Y is gonna be defending China in  
00:54:14
fact they're gonna try and pecking with the whole  Beijing Biden label and he's Paul Guinea to try  
00:54:19
and out Trump Trump on on China so decoupling is  gonna happen it doesn't really make sense for us  
00:54:25
to be dependent on China for our antibiotics  for our medicines for our PPE for it you know  
00:54:31
any of these you know any of these products that  are important for national survival I think all  
00:54:39
that stuff is gonna come back home I think you  know trading with them for other things might  
00:54:44
be poison all things had to start fundamentally  strategic the same way I think that can continue  
00:54:51
but you know the thing about trade is it creates  interdependence and I don't think that this  
00:54:58
country's going to want to be dependent on China  for anything strategic anymore two questions for  
00:55:02
you David what is China's liability if any at this  point with this pandemic obviously if they you  
00:55:11
know didn't they withheld information or silenced  whistleblowers that's a whole different level and  
00:55:16
then tick tock should we allowed to talk in this  country should we if we're not allowed to have  
00:55:24
Facebook or Twitter in China take those questions  either what do you want well the on liability I  
00:55:30
mean I think yeah the reliability is is huge I  mean there's still a bunch of questions we got  
00:55:37
a answer around where exactly the virus came from  but the the really fateful decision that I think  
00:55:44
China made is when they shut down travel to Wuhan  to and from Wuhan you know with respect to other  
00:55:53
parts of China but they let people from Wuhan just  kind of you know leave to go all over the world  
00:55:59
and so you know they weren't letting people from  Wuhan go to other parts of China but they were  
00:56:06
able to come to the US and so I think they do have  a huge liability but are we gonna hold them to it  
00:56:13
no I mean as a practical matter you know we're not  gonna you know it'd be it'd be a mistake to to try  
00:56:21
and change the principal sovereign immunity and  the courts but I think in terms of popular opinion  
00:56:26
they do have they're not there ways to there are  other ways to quote-unquote punish them like I  
00:56:32
mean and the US is already doing it so you know  for example the u.s. is limiting and constraining  
00:56:36
kua ways ability to get access to 5g and so you  know it really forces China to either by European  
00:56:43
and American equipment which is essentially  to say that you know the the five eyes will be  
00:56:47
able to basically spy into China or they have to  basically you know storm into Taiwan and take over  
00:56:54
TSMC I mean so there are there are all these other  gambits and strategies that one can take without  
00:57:00
getting ideology ideologically caught up and you  know Chinese human rights because they're not  
00:57:05
going to change yeah I mean look all wealth comes  from trade you know whether it's at the level of  
00:57:12
individuals or nations wealth comes from trade  and so it'd be silly for us to say that we're  
00:57:17
just never gonna have trade with China but I think  that you know trade also creates interdependence  
00:57:23
and so we're not gonna I don't think continue to  engage in to depend on them for thing as an idol  
00:57:28
to our national survival and so you know that  that's gonna be the change and the other thing  
00:57:33
is you know we're gonna demand that the trade be  more reciprocal take the tic-tock example well you  
00:57:40
know what we're probably gonna happen is that the  the tic-tock will probably be caught up in some  
00:57:44
larger negotiation and you know is the quid pro  quo well test like SS all cars in China and tick  
00:57:51
tock has to operate in the u.s. maybe but you  know III don't think tick tock it sort of falls  
00:57:58
into the you know necessary for national survival  category so it really falls into the reciprocity  
00:58:05
you know principle and the question I guess will  be are we getting enough in return to allow them  
00:58:11
to operate here and I think that's the way that  all this commerce is gonna is gonna start working  
00:58:15
and that's the thing at least we can like confront  our hypocrisy so Jason I don't disagree with you  
00:58:20
about how you know gross the human rights record  is I just think it's a joke that we all sort of  
00:58:26
like cry foul like it's like the biggest thing  in the world when we can't even clean up our own  
00:58:31
yard and then meanwhile we continue to trade  with them that's just utterly utterly yeah so  
00:58:34
that's why I think we have to continue to work  on cleaning our backyard while continuing to  
00:58:40
innovate and find our own backyard meanwhile win  the game against China and winning the game is not  
00:58:45
basically pushing for human rights reforms it's  making sure as David said we have a better trade  
00:58:50
balance and making and making sure that like you  know that the critical parts of the supply chain  
00:58:54
and infrastructure that America needs for national  security isn't dependent on a third party who have  
00:58:59
completely different incentives than we do and  then there's also like soft things like why is  
00:59:04
the you know why are we taking American movies  and changing the ends in order to have them sold  
00:59:11
in China like they're literally corrupting our  art and that incremental dollar that Hollywood's  
00:59:17
getting or whichever you know person trading with  China is getting I think it's not worth giving up  
00:59:21
what makes America unique and a leader in the  world Freiberg you thoughts on China there's  
00:59:25
about a hundred and twelve million people in  China that work in factories factories in China  
00:59:31
are purpose-built so they're built to make a thing  and then they got to get retooled if you want to  
00:59:36
make another thing you take those two facts it's  very hard to kind of replace China that's a source  
00:59:43
of production for a lot of what we consume in this  country that's the reality so there's two ways you  
00:59:50
could go and then there's two kind of necessities  and you end up with a matrix of like two by two  
00:59:55
you could be couple from China and basically  recreate that same production system here in  
01:00:02
the United States and that just wouldn't [ __ ] be  possible like we don't have enough people to work  
01:00:06
we don't have the ability to do that the cost of  everything would go up by 5x we could invent new  
01:00:12
systems of production which we have the ability  to 3d printing bio manufacturing all these other  
01:00:18
kind of really interesting ways of making stuff  that could replace the old factories that are run  
01:00:22
in China similar to kind of what maybe Elon has  tried to do with his automated you know factory  
01:00:28
with Tesla and so through automation through 3d  printing through bio manufacturing you can kind  
01:00:33
of change the methods of doing this stuff if we  could do that then we could be couple from China  
01:00:37
so the reality is like I don't know like how we  continue to consume things at the you know it's  
01:00:44
a percentage of wallet chair for that come from  China without rebuilding how you make stuff no  
01:00:49
but that's the whole point by the way I think the  reason why that's valuable is that that's the best  
01:00:53
way for us to actually get back to an inflationary  psycho as well so I completely agree with you it  
01:00:59
is incredibly inefficient it'll be incredibly  costly but that's where I think you shift the  
01:01:03
balance of power so that instead of all the powers  sitting on the side of Capitol you shifted to the  
01:01:10
side of labor labor demands for wages and then all  of a sudden cost go up input cost go up prices go  
01:01:17
up inflation exists and that fixes a lot of our  debt problems it fixes our deflationary supercycle  
01:01:23
it fixes a lot of things and so so if things got  more expensive it would be good for vehicle yeah  
01:01:29
even but even look even with maximal like looked  at replaced 112 million workers in China with some  
01:01:36
number of Americans you know I'm not sure you  could make all the stuff you need to make here  
01:01:41
yeah I mean there's other countries too I mean  I think people are moving factor Japanese or  
01:01:47
moving factories to Taiwan and Vietnam yeah yeah  but if we create new methods of production which  
01:01:51
were uniquely positioned to do we can completely  reinvent the wheel at a lot of industries and  
01:01:56
actually produce for the world yeah right now you  know China exports physical goods the US exports  
01:02:02
of virtual goods and if we want to get into the  business of making physical goods we have to just  
01:02:07
do it 10x better we have the ability to do that  we just got to get the [ __ ] will so if I were  
01:02:11
to take three trillion dollars of federal money  and you know Treasury bonds and hope that they  
01:02:16
don't turn into junk bonds I would basically turn  that money into reinventing the systems of like  
01:02:21
how do we made stuff using these new technologies  that the u.s. is uniquely positioned to capitalize  
01:02:25
on and you know I love this one read Burghley  one u.s. we're having to make a could make the  
01:02:30
same thing that a hundred Chinese workers right  there you go I love it that's and I think that's  
01:02:34
where we got to an hour into this Freiberg  you win you got the best and the hottest tag  
01:02:39
you know a group is if we are gonna bring back  manufacturing let's leapfrog it let's just go  
01:02:44
let's just you don't have to keep letting a make  you know socks or iPhones but you know let's make  
01:02:51
the next automated factories and the 3d printing  factories here and by a manufacturer anybody have  
01:02:56
anybody have anything they need to promote or  plug at the end of the podcast anything they're  
01:02:59
working on that people should know about no but  I love you guys I [ __ ] miss you I wanted to  
01:03:04
kiss all of you on the belt Wow just exactly what  I was thinking sure Martha I was about to so back  
01:03:10
at you I've been I've been locked down for three  months I'm lost my mind I mean this is May 12th  
01:03:16
for me and I think we all got to go to Mexico  and see Sachs for a yeah let's add some friends  
01:03:22
come down and we play golf and no one wore masks  within our little circle and nobody got sick and  
01:03:28
you know and you're all be tested we haven't been  tested but we don't know any symptoms I got tested  
01:03:35
twice negative both times and it was a very weird  thing because I'm think I'm Freiburg correct me if  
01:03:41
I'm wrong I would I should be rooting that I had  it and it didn't do anything to me right totally  
01:03:46
by the way let me just say one more thing that's  a really interesting finding this paper came out  
01:03:52
a few days ago that shows that 40 to 60% of the  population that has never been exposed to SARS  
01:03:58
coronavirus to the current corn virus already have  activated t-cells to the virus and the reason is  
01:04:04
that they've had other coronaviruses there  were common cold and they've developed this  
01:04:10
immune response so this may explain why a large  percentage of people are just so asymptomatic and  
01:04:14
totally fine it's a pretty astounding finding  and so you could get checked for those other  
01:04:20
antibodies or you know B's B's activated t-cells  and know if you're in a good position to kind  
01:04:25
of ward off the microRNA Larson that's another  thing we should probably do that's 60% of people  
01:04:29
that already have this by the way that won't stop  the spreading that person will still get infected  
01:04:34
and spread but they're you know immune response  is such that they'll shut the thing down pretty  
01:04:39
quickly so would you call this like some parallel  or shadow herd immunity or individual immunity  
01:04:46
its individual immunity and it's related to just  process reactivity with other coronaviruses and  
01:04:52
so we've already developed it immune response  to other Crona viruses that gives us seem like  
01:04:55
seemingly a pretty good response to this corona  virus for you know more than half ok veedu  
01:05:00
population on a percentage basis how how much do  we know about this virus just as we wrap up here  
01:05:07
if you had to state a percentage of like in two  years we're gonna know a hundred percent or ninety  
01:05:12
percent about the virus whatever it is what do we  know now we know everything about the virus itself  
01:05:19
we are very like like with any virus we know very  little about how it effects a specific human based  
01:05:26
on their genotype meaning based on your health and  your your genes here's what this virus is gonna do  
01:05:32
to your body and we're not going to know that  in two years and we're not gonna know that we  
01:05:35
don't know that for most viruses for humans today  the matching of genotype to genotype of viral but  
01:05:40
I've if we understand X amount about the HIV virus  or Ebola what do we know now if you Jimmy maybe a  
01:05:48
bola would be the best one like we have pretty  good knowledge of that after X number of years  
01:05:52
what do we know now and a percentage basis of  course we had to guess I get we we know everything  
01:05:56
about the virus itself like 100 percent or okay  about this yeah the human response to the virus  
01:06:01
and why it's called yeah these weird symptoms  with different people and so on yeah I'd say  
01:06:05
we're probably I don't know forty percent thirty  percent we've kind of mapped the outcome but we  
01:06:10
haven't mapped the progress to the outcome in the  human body all right listen great job mouth great  
01:06:15
job David Sachs great job David Freiburg if you  want to subscribe to the podcast type in all in  
01:06:20
with trim off and love you guys besties yeah all  right shuffle up and deal can't wait to see that  
01:06:28
new table and let's get back to where you goddamn  masks people wear a mask wear a mask okay be safe

Episode Highlights

  • Life in Quarantine
    The hosts discuss their mental health and experiences during quarantine.
    “It's really tough, really, really tough.”
    @ 05m 27s
    May 21, 2020
  • Pandemic Optimism
    Chamath expresses optimism about overcoming the pandemic with therapeutics and vaccines.
    “We're gonna kick its ass!”
    @ 08m 57s
    May 21, 2020
  • The Mask Debate
    Chamath argues for the simplicity of wearing masks to return to normalcy.
    “Why is this such a big deal? Just wear a mask!”
    @ 20m 13s
    May 21, 2020
  • Economic Disparity
    The economy is struggling while tech companies thrive, creating a false sense of recovery.
    “The real economy is in the toilet.”
    @ 23m 45s
    May 21, 2020
  • Risk and Freedom
    Americans are weighing personal freedoms against the risks of COVID-19.
    “We're basically putting a price on life.”
    @ 30m 37s
    May 21, 2020
  • Future of Work
    The shift to remote work could lead to unprecedented efficiency and profitability for companies.
    “Offices are just complete Shakespearean theatre.”
    @ 42m 57s
    May 21, 2020
  • The Cost of Living in California
    The speaker reflects on the exorbitant costs of living and working in California, comparing it to other states.
    “California is so expensive, the taxes are so high!”
    @ 45m 09s
    May 21, 2020
  • Potential Eradication of Infectious Diseases
    A bold prediction about the future of medicine and the eradication of diseases through regulation and technology.
    “I think in 20 years we could eradicate all infectious disease!”
    @ 47m 04s
    May 21, 2020
  • China's Global Position Post-Pandemic
    Discussion on the geopolitical implications of China's actions during the pandemic and its future relationship with the U.S.
    “This is the beginning of the modern Cold War.”
    @ 49m 37s
    May 21, 2020
  • Understanding Virus Knowledge
    We know very little about how viruses affect individuals based on their genotype.
    “We're probably thirty to forty percent mapped out.”
    @ 01h 06m 05s
    May 21, 2020

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

  • Mask Debate20:13
  • Economic Disparity23:45
  • San Francisco Disaster43:51
  • High Costs of Living45:09
  • Modern Cold War49:37
  • Virus Knowledge1:05:12
  • Human Response1:06:01
  • Safety Reminder1:06:28

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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