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E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more

January 19, 2024 / 01:38:29

This episode covers the 54th annual World Economic Forum in Davos, featuring discussions on elite culture, notable speeches, and the evolving perception of the event. Guests include Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Sacks.

The hosts discuss their experiences at the World Economic Forum, highlighting the contrast between the event's elite status and the growing criticism it faces. They mention the musical performances and the absurdity of some events, like a witch doctor performance.

Key speeches by Javier Milei, the new president of Argentina, and Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, are discussed. Milei's remarks on collectivism and the dangers of socialism resonate strongly, while Dimon acknowledges the validity of some of Trump's policies.

The conversation shifts to the irony of elites discussing trust while flying in on private jets, with the hosts reflecting on the changing narrative around Davos from a status symbol to a source of embarrassment.

Finally, the hosts touch on the implications of regulatory capture in industries like aviation, using Boeing as a case study, and discuss the challenges of the streaming industry, particularly the impact of content churn and subscription fatigue.

TL;DR

The episode discusses the World Economic Forum, elite culture, key speeches, and the challenges in industries like aviation and streaming.

Video

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all right everybody Welcome to the 54th
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annual World economic Forum here in
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Davos you guys didn't know this but as
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Elites ourselves we were invited to kick
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off the festivities Surplus elit yeah
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you know the all-in podcast very popular
00:00:15
and so they wanted us to come and
00:00:17
represent the Pod and our audience there
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and uh it's been amazing if you haven't
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seen some of the great musical
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performances this year I mean they're so
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notable let's just start off here I mean
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guys we were here for this
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live soak it in I mean on the better on
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the replay soak it there's the air
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flute
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so wait wait there's a great moment
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where she really starts vibing wait for
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the head
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shake the eyebrows are grit but the head
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shake comes in and about there there it
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is I like I like your moomo I like her
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mumo have you ever played the air flute
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or just a skin flute Jam skin
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flute went there it's like it's like a
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high school but guys guys this isn't it
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there there were other uh there was a
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witch doctor or something I'm not sure
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exactly what's going on here I'm going
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to just apologize in advance for mocking
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this or for sax mocking it I should
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say this was incredible I don't know
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exactly what's going on here with the
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blowing of the hair but from that's for
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sure so they're blowing the co on each
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person's forehead here to spread the co
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they've all taken the MRNA vaccine but
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you know uh we each have a speaking gig
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each of us is speaking and so I thought
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to kick us off here gentlemen instead of
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us just telling everybody our schedule I
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would sing our schedule and so let me
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just grab a let me see if I got my
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guitar here hold on have a guitar here
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let me grab it here oh here it is okay
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hold on I happened to have the guitar
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here is that air guitar or a real guitar
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guar actually real guitar here so but I
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thought you know everybody is really
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excited about each of our speaking gigs
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so I thought we would just kick it off
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here let me just see if it's in tune you
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guys hear
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that oh
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okay all right was I think we got it
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kumay my Lord
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K sax is interviewing Putin my Lord
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AUM in the dictator Lounge at noon a
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kumay conquering Europe
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kumbai and now I'm going to there a
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little audience participation in here
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besties I need you each to sing with me
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okay it's uh we're going to start here
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it's going to be just listen one time
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and then you're going to repeat okay
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here we
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go it's hard to keep it together oh
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Davos
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kumay so just o Davos Kumbaya ready 3 2
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oos
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K okay very good very good okay now we
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go to the next verse
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hereo hosting Steve Bannon at 1 p.m.
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AUM free bgs at 2
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p.m. bill ion Aire bunker panel
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Lum teal just bought
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one
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goombay Hunter Biden after party at a 1
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a.m. eight balls and escorts for
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everyone brought to you by
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barisa that's for you sex and now you
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all
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sing
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ohos
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Kum wow fabulous you really are the
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world's greatest
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moderator let your winners
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[Music]
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ride and instead we open sourc it to the
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fans and they've just gone crazy with it
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love queen
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of all right everybody yes the uh World
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economic forum is wrapping up in Davos
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uh if you don't know what the wef is
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I'll just give you the brief overview
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3,000 people 5 days tons of parties
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happens in Davos Switzerland it's run by
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a foundation uh they call these
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non-government organizations NOS uh you
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can think of it kind of like the Ted
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conference topic this year was
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rebuilding trust it's politicians
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Business Leaders economists journalists
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all the elites the mission statement of
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the WF improving the state of the World
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by engaging business political academic
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and other leaders
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of society to shape Global Regional and
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Industry agendas it's money printing
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machine I'll give you a funny backstory
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later if you care to know but basically
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they try to shake it down for about 40
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Grand a year to go to this thing tons of
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notable moments that we can get to on
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the docket here free break any
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highlights for you watching this you
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know get mocked on social media this
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year it's it's been a slow unraveling
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from this being something that people
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used to flex about going to Davos
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now people are literally
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apologizing on social media X Twitter
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Etc explaining why they're going because
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they're kind of feeling shame in going
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to this event so what are your thoughts
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on the sort of whole flipping of this
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from being a flex to requiring an
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apology in advance you guys know Andrew
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Ross sorin the journalist for
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CNBC I think he posted on Twitter you
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know I know I know forgive me I got to
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go to Davos it's almost like
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embarrassing now that you are
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associating yourself with the elite
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cabal in the Swiss Alps during a time of
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rising Global populism and all the
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criticism that's been raining down on
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Davos in the last couple of years and
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then Davos is trying to adapt by trying
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to be more cool and appeal to the the
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populist Notions uh that have criticized
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them thus the fluke playing thus the
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Shamanism you know and and thus I think
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a lot of what Javier mle has called a
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general economic support for what he
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defines as collectivism which I'd love
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to talk about but why don't we just say
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that so I think there's generally been
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like a response from the community that
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attends to AOS but there there's a lot
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of conflict here with the fact that
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folks are flying in on private jets and
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telling everyone to stop producing
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carbon the F the fact that they're all
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dining and spending lots of money and
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telling everyone that we should move to
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more towards socialist conditions and
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higher taxation it's all a lot of irony
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wound up in this whole thing it's almost
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like a like a like a Simpsons show it's
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what it's become well and the theme
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rebuilding trust is kind
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of insulting at its face at least to me
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like we we don't trust you you don't
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need to rebuild trust with us we're not
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going to trust you there's no way for
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you to do that especially after what
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happened with covid sax did you have any
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sort of reaction to this year's Davos
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and just how people are reacting to it
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you heard freberg sort of thoughts on it
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well doas has become a of itself and
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that's why you saw these clips go viral
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of these ridiculous antics of the
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Priestess doing I don't know what she
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was doing but the only two sets of
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remarks that actually were taken
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seriously on their own terms was the
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speech by Malay from Argentina and then
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also comments by Jamie Diamond and the
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reason why they went viral is because
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they were actually saying sensible
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things that
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contradicted the sort of established
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wisdom or consensus at Davos I mean they
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were effectively subtweeting the other
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Elites at Davos I mean M gets up there
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and I think he was introduced by CLA
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Schwab and he immediately starts
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denouncing collectivist experiments and
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says that the West is in danger because
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its Elites have been co-opted by a
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vision of the world which leads
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inexorably to socialism and thereby to
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Poverty so melee basically says this
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right in front of CLA Schwab I mean he
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describing the the people at Davos
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that's why that took off and went viral
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it was incredible I mean yeah yeah in a
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similar way and he flew their
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commercial I didn't know that yeah yeah
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kudos to
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him Jamie diaman gave this interview I
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think it was on
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CNBC where he basically went full chth
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you know he basically admitted that
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Trump had been right and that you know a
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lot of the criticism of trump and all
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the derogatory comments for years were
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were basically just lazy and he said
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that you know Trump was largely right on
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NATO on immigration on tax reform he
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grew the economy immigration immigration
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he was mostly right on China he said
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Diamond said he didn't always like how
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Trump said things or talked about people
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but he said his policies were largely
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sound and only look better in time since
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we've abandoned them and and he's
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basically saying that you know look at
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where we are right now now and he
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questioned the kind of everything is
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hunky dory narrative that the Biden
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campaign is pushing out so he really
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went off script there and like I said I
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think Chamas said it first here on this
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pod three months ago and now jimie
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diamond is accepting that so that was a
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huge sub tweet you could say of all the
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elites of Davos and the accepted wisdom
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and you know the narrative that they're
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all pushing out so you know that was the
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other big interview that went viral and
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I think that's really saying something
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that you know that the elites now have
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parody themselves to the point where
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Davos has become a joke and the only
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talks or remarks out of Davos that
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people pay attention to are the ones
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talking sense to the people at Davos
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because they're not
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listening chath your thoughts look
00:10:23
everything has a season and I think that
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when there was a much more singular
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hierarchy of status Davos played a very
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important role to signal to other people
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that you had made
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it but you know these things come and go
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and I think that this is sort of in the
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the back half of its usefulness and
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halflife what is it probably more than
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anything else now a glorified enterprise
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software sales conference where the
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reason to go to these conferences for a
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lot of these companies I suspect ECT is
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that it allows you to close very big
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deals multi-million dollar licenses of
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this that and the other thing where you
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can get the leaders of that counterparty
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across a table from you and hammer out a
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deal and I think you pay 40 Grand a
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ticket for the right to get everybody
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together to do that so I think they want
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to pretend that it's a lot more than
00:11:19
what it is and I think what it is is
00:11:21
that and I think whenever you have the
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ability to convene people to close
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business that's valuable beyond that I
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think it's sort of in the eye of the
00:11:31
beholder and it used to be that the
00:11:33
beholder thought that this was important
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and now I think we realize it's much of
00:11:37
nothing it's shame in and air flutes and
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all kinds of stupidity which is why
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people have the courage to go and mock
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it and I think that malle's comments and
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Jamie Diamond's comments exemplify that
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the only other thing I would say is that
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I had heard although I haven't seen it
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so I don't know is that Alex karp
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apparently did a very thoughtful speech
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about
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anti-Semitism and which was also which
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was also very countercultural to the
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established logic that the the Surplus
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Elites at Davos want to believe which is
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the anti-israel pro Palestine line I
00:12:12
haven't heard it though so I don't know
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yeah how impactful that was but those
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are the three things that I that I've
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Just Seen on Twitter just kind of the M
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speech I think is the one that everybody
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is keying on and correctly so you know
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obviously he's the he's the new
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president of Argentina and this speech
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was amazing people might not people
00:12:32
might not also know that he was uh an
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economics teacher and so this talk about
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collectivism leading to suffering and
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Regulatory capture and bloat which we'll
00:12:43
talk a little bit about when we talk
00:12:45
about Boeing
00:12:46
today was incredibly powerful it's super
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basic you know listen free markets work
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there are people opting into either side
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of it he went over essentially without
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saying it the rule of 72 and like 200
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years of GDP growth and how GDP growth
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under capitalism Rises everybody up and
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then collectivism AKA
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socialism is a bit of a
00:13:07
disaster but it's well worth watching it
00:13:09
there was a really cool thing that a
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company called hen did Hy genen with
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their AI tool they just immediately took
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his speech put it in his own words and
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um published it and translated it as if
00:13:23
he was speaking English cuz he was he
00:13:25
was speaking his native tongue so really
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worth checking it out
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and yeah it was super notable it's very
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basic but I think it's everybody wants
00:13:35
to hear this right now which is if
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you're picking collectivism and
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socialism and redistribution of wealth
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Argentina has like a really good history
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of watching this faou and now they're in
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the process of dismantling and I'll say
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something else before freeberg says
00:13:52
something here which I think is going to
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be very thoughtful Jason the other
00:13:55
reason why Argentina is a really good
00:13:57
example to use is that
00:14:00
what does Davos
00:14:02
represent at a different level well what
00:14:05
it is is Old Europe getting together in
00:14:09
a way that allows them to continue to
00:14:11
coales power and what's interesting is
00:14:13
if you had presented the case of any
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other country trying collectivism and
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failing it wouldn't get nearly the same
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attention as Argentina and the reason is
00:14:23
that Argentina has so many ethnic
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Europeans and I think that's another
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reason which is like when present people
00:14:29
that are telling you it didn't work that
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frankly look like you speak the same
00:14:33
language as you I think it actually goes
00:14:35
further in making the point than if you
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found somebody in South Asia or Africa
00:14:40
that said the same thing to these folks
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which they have which they've not
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listened to and so this is why I think
00:14:45
Malay is so interesting and important
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because he looks the part of a western
00:14:50
leader and I think that that
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unfortunately is what it's going to take
00:14:54
for some of these folks to listen yeah
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and everyone's acutely aware I mean I'll
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say three things on this one is just
00:14:59
talking to your point Jam about the
00:15:00
history of Argentina and how it relates
00:15:02
to this position that mle holds in being
00:15:05
able to speak credibly to this second is
00:15:07
what he said which I think is really
00:15:08
important and third is how it relates to
00:15:10
the United States but this was clearly
00:15:12
to my for my view one of the most
00:15:13
important media events of the year I do
00:15:15
think that anyone that's listening to us
00:15:16
right now should go watch it and go
00:15:18
listen to the entirety of the speech it
00:15:20
is so important I hope everyone really
00:15:23
takes in what he said just briefly on
00:15:25
Argentina in the mid 19th century
00:15:27
Argentina was a Col
00:15:29
nation very agricultural but a lot of
00:15:33
free market Pioneer going on businesses
00:15:36
were built and an economy flourished in
00:15:39
Argentina um this photo I put up here is
00:15:42
from
00:15:43
19113 buos arees which at the time was
00:15:46
called Paris of the West I was about to
00:15:49
say it looks like Paris right the
00:15:50
architecture and everything it's
00:15:51
beautiful stunning but here's here's
00:15:52
some statistics a lot of people don't
00:15:54
know Argentina at this time was
00:15:56
wealthier than France or Germany twice
00:15:58
as wealthy as Spain and had one of the
00:16:01
top 10 highest GDP per Capas of Any
00:16:04
Nation on Earth in 1913 and so it was
00:16:07
this flourishing vibrant
00:16:10
economy with a lot of innovation a lot
00:16:12
of Arts a lot of building a lot of um
00:16:15
employment a lot of immigration and then
00:16:19
the series of military coups began I
00:16:21
don't know if you guys are aware but
00:16:23
there was a military coup in 1930 1943
00:16:26
1955 1962 1966
00:16:30
1976 and in every one of these cases the
00:16:33
essence of the coup was one of
00:16:34
relativism which is some people have
00:16:36
benefited more than others as a result
00:16:38
we need to change the way that the
00:16:39
government and the social structure is
00:16:41
functioning and it had to be taken by
00:16:43
force and I think this is the big story
00:16:46
of Argentina that says so much more than
00:16:49
any other nation of the past Century
00:16:51
Century and a half which is that these
00:16:54
Cycles happen based on not absolutism
00:16:57
but on relativism
00:16:59
and I'll just give you what I mean by
00:17:00
that mle made this point which is so
00:17:02
important from the year 1800 to the year
00:17:05
2020 in the year 1800 we saw 95% of the
00:17:09
world's population in extreme poverty by
00:17:11
2020 it was less than
00:17:14
5% and this was driven by free market
00:17:17
capitalism democracies that allowed
00:17:20
people individuals to pursue their own
00:17:22
self-interest and as a result deliver
00:17:25
products into a Marketplace that people
00:17:26
wanted and were willing to pay for
00:17:28
and that incentive that market-based
00:17:30
system allowed the entire world to move
00:17:33
forward the relativism problem is that
00:17:35
some people mooved forward faster than
00:17:37
others and that causes this great cycle
00:17:39
of what some people might call Envy or
00:17:41
jealousy and Malay said it best the West
00:17:43
is in Jeopardy which is the key
00:17:45
statement he was trying to make in his
00:17:47
point that countries are no longer
00:17:49
defending free markets this is a quote
00:17:51
private property and other institutions
00:17:54
of Liber libertarianism due to errors in
00:17:56
their theoretical framework and ambition
00:17:58
for power opening doors to socialism and
00:18:01
condemning us to Poverty misery and
00:18:04
stagnation socialism has failed in all
00:18:06
countries where it was attempted and
00:18:08
then he started to harp on about
00:18:09
neoclassical economic theory and the
00:18:11
issues with that but I want to show you
00:18:13
one last image which speaks so clearly
00:18:15
to the point that he's making which is
00:18:17
as these governments that are
00:18:18
well-intentioned and the people that
00:18:20
elect the governments and put them in
00:18:21
power are well-intentioned then try to
00:18:23
redistribute wealth by getting the
00:18:25
governments to step in and play a market
00:18:27
role
00:18:29
the market role that they play causes
00:18:31
inflation causes degradation and
00:18:33
Economic Opportunity economic mobility
00:18:36
and prosperity for most people and you
00:18:38
can see this in this chart which we've
00:18:40
looked at many times but everything on
00:18:42
the top of this chart this is a chart
00:18:43
that shows the 20 years of price changes
00:18:46
of various goods and services in the
00:18:47
United States everything that's gone up
00:18:49
in price is something that the US
00:18:52
government has a role in buying or
00:18:55
paying for yeah controlling yeah and
00:18:58
everything that's gone down in price is
00:18:59
where there is a free market that has
00:19:01
allowed people to access goods and
00:19:03
services at a lower price over time as
00:19:05
opposed to a higher price over time and
00:19:07
while the intention is that the
00:19:09
government is doing good for people by
00:19:11
making Education Health Care and other
00:19:14
uh goods and services available to them
00:19:17
the government stepping in and
00:19:18
intervening in the free market causes
00:19:20
the price to go up and ultimately you
00:19:22
end up in a really negative cycle that
00:19:24
reses in this collectivism approach that
00:19:26
he's talking about and that's why just
00:19:28
wanted to tie back what he said to
00:19:29
what's going on in the US today and the
00:19:31
and I've harped on this a lot but the
00:19:33
growing role that the federal government
00:19:34
is playing and the intention is good but
00:19:37
the impact is bad over time and that's
00:19:40
really I think why it was such an
00:19:41
important speech he was so clear it was
00:19:43
so important for me to hear it I'm sorry
00:19:45
I harped on but I just really thought
00:19:47
that was the highlight the key of his
00:19:48
speech is hey good intentions can lead
00:19:50
to to a bad outcome here yeah you want
00:19:52
everybody to have Healthcare you want
00:19:53
everybody to have education the
00:19:55
government is providing it and there's
00:19:57
no customer and there's no Market
00:19:58
there's no competition and the products
00:20:00
and services that you are referring to
00:20:03
they include medicine they include
00:20:04
College they include tutoring they they
00:20:06
don't just incl and they include air
00:20:08
conditioning they include refrigerators
00:20:10
and televisions smartphones all of that
00:20:12
and um picking which system and which
00:20:14
set of problems you want to have I guess
00:20:17
is what societies need to do and and
00:20:19
free markets it's a weird reflexive Loop
00:20:21
though for governments because these
00:20:23
people what he also said was these
00:20:24
aren't just well-intentioned people
00:20:26
they're also a small class of Elites
00:20:28
that wanted to feel like they were
00:20:30
better than everybody else by
00:20:31
implementing things at worked and so
00:20:33
there is a dark part of this as well
00:20:35
which is their desire for power and I
00:20:37
think it's important to not gloss that
00:20:38
over so this wasn't just a bunch of
00:20:41
bumbling do gooders that screwed things
00:20:43
up this was also a bunch of folks that
00:20:45
that irrespective of the data had an
00:20:48
opportunity to gain influence and power
00:20:50
and I think that that's that's an
00:20:52
important thing to acknowledge because
00:20:54
it created a very negative reflexive
00:20:56
Loop that government used meaning if you
00:20:59
look at freeberg
00:21:01
charts why did that happen well part of
00:21:04
what happened was the administrative
00:21:07
state became more and more powerful they
00:21:10
were able to pass laws they were there
00:21:12
to decide who the winners and losers
00:21:14
were that is a drug and that drug is
00:21:16
very addictive and so what happened as
00:21:19
this happened was the laws went and
00:21:21
reinforce those dynamics of those people
00:21:24
being able to decide winners and losers
00:21:26
the thing that it has that has not
00:21:28
happened yet though and maybe we're
00:21:30
beginning to see it in some of these
00:21:32
markets that the government is too
00:21:34
involved in is that it is bred a level
00:21:36
of incompetence and
00:21:38
incapability that we now have to unwind
00:21:41
because the average everyday Citizen's
00:21:44
lives are either at risk or these
00:21:47
services are just so expensive that it's
00:21:49
just untenable and I think that's where
00:21:52
we are now it's a great segue I think
00:21:53
into this Boeing issue that we've seen
00:21:56
because here's an issue of Regulation
00:21:58
and safety where you want the government
00:22:00
and you want safe planes and you want
00:22:02
some level of Regulation but then you
00:22:03
get regulatory capture so maybe but the
00:22:05
government the government has not been
00:22:06
the supporter of the safety agenda that
00:22:09
citizens think yes meaning when you look
00:22:12
at what has happened in the US airline
00:22:15
industry there are a handful of enduser
00:22:19
providers but those are all using OEM
00:22:23
equipment from one of two vendors Boeing
00:22:25
or Airbus so it's a duop but in many
00:22:28
ways it's a monopoly the way that these
00:22:31
folks fight with respect to tariffs and
00:22:33
imports and incentives so the United
00:22:36
States airline industry is a monopoly of
00:22:38
one company now if you look at what's
00:22:41
happened what they would say is well
00:22:42
planes have become safer and safer and
00:22:44
safer yes but they've become safer in
00:22:48
some ways in in the most simple and
00:22:51
obvious ways but they've become unsafe
00:22:53
in that you have these fleets of planes
00:22:55
that are now behaving very unpredictably
00:22:57
and if you look under the hood what
00:23:00
happens is Boeing as an example in like
00:23:04
the last four years how much money do
00:23:06
you think they've spent on lobbyists and
00:23:07
packs I'll tell you $65 million how much
00:23:11
have they spent just in the last year
00:23:13
almost $1 million they're like the 15th
00:23:16
most active spender in in politics in
00:23:19
Washington now what did they use that
00:23:21
money for while that's also documented
00:23:23
see the crazy thing is this stuff
00:23:24
happens in plain in plain sight so they
00:23:28
able to water down the safety
00:23:29
regulations what does that allow you to
00:23:31
do it allows you to have a situation
00:23:33
like this unfold and then on the other
00:23:35
side the pilots unions can Lobby those
00:23:38
same politicians who are taking money
00:23:40
from
00:23:41
Boeing and prevent
00:23:44
systems that would actually make these
00:23:46
planes safer you can have more
00:23:49
improvements in the guide by wire
00:23:51
technology you can have more
00:23:52
improvements in GPS you can have more
00:23:54
improvements in a computer's ability to
00:23:58
help improve and augment the capability
00:23:59
of the pilot unfortunately that would
00:24:02
result either in fewer Pilots or less
00:24:04
pay and so that doesn't happen nearly as
00:24:07
fast and obviously as it should it's the
00:24:09
same for air traffic control and all of
00:24:11
these issues build up because we've
00:24:13
allowed monopolies to build up so as
00:24:15
much as we think we are a capitalist
00:24:18
Society we have veered into this
00:24:20
collectivism in certain markets and
00:24:22
where it's measurable and obvious we
00:24:24
need to point at it and say let's go fix
00:24:26
it yeah and this be let me just tea up a
00:24:29
little bit of what you're referring to
00:24:30
in case people don't know but everybody
00:24:32
probably saw the news that on January
00:24:34
5th the door blew off of a one of these
00:24:36
Boeing 737 Max Jets if you've heard that
00:24:39
name before it's because this isn't the
00:24:41
first time that the max Jets have had
00:24:43
problems this plane safely landed thank
00:24:46
God and there was nobody sitting in the
00:24:47
row with the door blew off and this has
00:24:50
to do with some bolts on the doors but
00:24:53
this is just the start of problems with
00:24:55
the 737 Max there's an incredible doc
00:24:57
mentary if you haven't seen it we'll
00:24:59
we'll put it in the show notes Boeing's
00:25:00
fatal flaw and the version before this
00:25:03
the 737 Max 9 is the one that had the
00:25:05
the bolts come off jth the max 8 if you
00:25:08
remember there were two really harrowing
00:25:10
uh instances where tragically 346 people
00:25:13
died in these two instances because the
00:25:16
plane literally the software on the
00:25:18
plane which is called Max maneuvering
00:25:20
characteristics augmentation system
00:25:22
which was designed because they were
00:25:24
trying to get
00:25:25
more fuel efficiency and they had
00:25:28
positioned the engines in a weird way on
00:25:31
on the wings so they had to kind of help
00:25:33
Pilots level the stuff into your point
00:25:35
about regulatory capture there was all
00:25:37
this behind the
00:25:39
scenes manipulation of the market to try
00:25:42
to get these planes built to try to get
00:25:44
them out the door because there was so
00:25:45
much money at stake well on these two
00:25:47
terrible accidents the plane the nose
00:25:50
literally Dove and the pilots were
00:25:52
fighting it in both cases right they
00:25:55
they just crashed and everybody on board
00:25:56
died and for 20 months the the 737 Max
00:26:00
models were grounded and that cost the
00:26:03
company over $21 billion so there is no
00:26:07
competition to your point and then in a
00:26:08
free market if there were 10 providers
00:26:10
would this be much different tooth and
00:26:12
absolutely yeah so I think that's what
00:26:14
you have to realize here is that these
00:26:15
duopolies you think there's competition
00:26:17
in a doopy there isn't competition no I
00:26:19
mean like for example like if you look
00:26:20
at the car market how many instances I
00:26:23
think the last big incidence that I
00:26:24
remember was I think Ford had an issue
00:26:27
with the fuel tanks of some cars that
00:26:29
were exploding right yeah but the
00:26:31
reality is when that happens there are
00:26:34
alternatives one is that there's a legal
00:26:37
requirement for Ford to just fix these
00:26:38
things quickly there were lawsuits that
00:26:41
happened there was class actions there
00:26:43
was settlements but there's also the
00:26:45
ability for folks that can afford it is
00:26:46
just to switch vendor and of which there
00:26:48
are 50 other vendors to choose from that
00:26:51
is a healthy Dynamic so today when you
00:26:53
look at the auto market what do you see
00:26:55
a plethora of choice and when you see
00:26:58
fatalities or safety issues they are
00:27:01
overwhelmingly driver error yes and we
00:27:04
assume that and we get insurance to deal
00:27:05
with
00:27:06
that when you look at airplanes you have
00:27:09
these three sections of risk that each
00:27:11
are compounding because there is no
00:27:13
competition number one is that the
00:27:15
Monopoly vendor has zero pressure to
00:27:19
actually test these things adequately
00:27:21
because on the other side of building
00:27:23
something well is shareholder pressure
00:27:26
to deliver something sooner and faster
00:27:28
so that they can reap more profits then
00:27:31
second is you have a regulatory
00:27:33
infrastructure that puts rules on top of
00:27:35
rules but then will bend the rules if
00:27:36
you donate to them right and that's
00:27:39
measured and known and then the third
00:27:41
are the folks that actually operate the
00:27:42
planes who have this actual incentive to
00:27:45
not see technical improvements because
00:27:47
it defends their job for
00:27:49
longer and in all of these cases there
00:27:52
isn't enough competition to shine a
00:27:54
light on this to say how does society
00:27:56
actually want this Market to operate
00:27:59
this is collectivism it's not working
00:28:01
freeberg you have thoughts on this
00:28:03
Boeing regulatory capture and the issue
00:28:05
of only having two vendors
00:28:07
there and the complexity of these
00:28:10
machines now in relation to that Nick
00:28:13
you can pull this up this is an audit of
00:28:16
the business model for a company called
00:28:18
trans group trans group is a aircraft
00:28:23
Aerospace parts manufacturer they sell
00:28:26
certified
00:28:28
regulated uh aircraft parts to Aviation
00:28:32
companies as well as to Airlines private
00:28:35
pilots and also the government and they
00:28:38
do about 7 billion in Revenue three and
00:28:41
a half billion in IB so off TI point a
00:28:44
couple weeks ago about what's the
00:28:47
appropriate competitive IAH margin that
00:28:49
a company can ultimately achieve they
00:28:51
eiton margins 53% this company insane
00:28:54
better than Facebook insane on 7 billion
00:28:56
of Revenue growing Nick if you want to
00:28:58
pull up their stock chart and you guys
00:29:00
can see how the business has performed
00:29:01
over the years and their business model
00:29:03
has been relatively simple they've
00:29:06
acquired aerospace companies got that
00:29:08
have certified Parts they drop the cost
00:29:10
and raise the price and they do that
00:29:12
over and over again and here's the
00:29:13
business over the last 10 years this
00:29:15
thing is um you know a roughly 10 bagger
00:29:19
8 to 10 bagger in the last 10
00:29:21
years the market cap is 60 billion today
00:29:25
no end in sight and so there was a
00:29:28
government audit done of the business by
00:29:30
using uncertified cost data which is one
00:29:32
of the most reliable sources of
00:29:34
information to perform cost analysis we
00:29:35
found that trans earned excess profit
00:29:38
profit of at least $21 million on 105
00:29:41
spare parts on 150 contracts so they're
00:29:44
selling spare parts into the government
00:29:46
the government auditor came in audited
00:29:48
them and identified because there's no
00:29:51
real audit there's no real
00:29:52
accountability in government as
00:29:54
purchasers but there is regulatory
00:29:56
Authority UND deciding who are the
00:29:57
winners and who are the losers in the
00:29:59
market trans time has been elected a
00:30:01
winner because they have regulatory
00:30:03
approval to make and sell these parts
00:30:05
the cost to get approval to make and
00:30:07
sell these parts is so high that it
00:30:09
makes it prohibitive for startups to
00:30:11
come in and compete in this Marketplace
00:30:13
and now that they're a preferred
00:30:14
supplier and they get these single
00:30:16
contracts where there's no competition
00:30:19
to be a supplier they can raise the
00:30:21
price every year multiple audit reports
00:30:23
over the last 23 years have highlighted
00:30:24
the problem of the Department of Defense
00:30:26
paying exess profits on Soul Source
00:30:28
contracts where cost analysis was not
00:30:30
used to determine fair and reasonable
00:30:32
prices and this problem continues to
00:30:34
occur now I'm not necessarily saying
00:30:36
that this is a negative on trans time
00:30:38
it's a fantastic business it's well-run
00:30:40
it's one of the best-run public
00:30:41
companies with a multi10 billion dollar
00:30:43
market cap in the world but the
00:30:45
condition is that the US government
00:30:47
comes in and picks and chooses through
00:30:48
its regulatory Authority which companies
00:30:50
can make products the cost to enter and
00:30:53
compete becomes prohibitively high and
00:30:55
then the company has complete pricing
00:30:57
power and there's very little
00:30:58
accountability in the overall system and
00:31:00
I think that this plays out not just
00:31:01
with this company but obviously also
00:31:03
with Boeing and the fact that we've
00:31:04
narrowed down the competitive market
00:31:06
space to just a few Soul Source
00:31:08
providers that have very little
00:31:10
accountability and eventually these
00:31:11
sorts of conditions arise either prices
00:31:13
get too high quality degrades all the
00:31:15
other things that Natural Market forces
00:31:17
would keep a check on yeah and in in
00:31:19
terms of competition chamath the I guess
00:31:23
the only thing you could say is
00:31:24
consumers could potentially Maybe try to
00:31:27
avoid the 737 Max I know I did when all
00:31:30
these accidents happen I just told you
00:31:33
know my my person who books the flights
00:31:34
hey do not put me on a 737 Max period
00:31:37
full stop and you know what you're going
00:31:39
to wind up paying a lot more you're
00:31:41
going to have a hard time getting
00:31:42
certain routes you're going to reduce it
00:31:43
because you know most Airlines I think
00:31:46
have these 737 Maxes in there so you
00:31:49
when you have such a few number of
00:31:50
providers to your point about it's not
00:31:52
like cars it's not fragmented like that
00:31:53
you can't avoid a certain car type a
00:31:56
plane type the way you can avoid a car
00:31:58
type so just wrapping up here chth what
00:32:00
changes should we see in terms of late
00:32:04
stage capitalism something in the
00:32:06
example like air travel and and
00:32:08
manufacturers is there any way to unwind
00:32:10
this
00:32:11
reasonably or is it too late because
00:32:14
we're at thisy I I I go back to some of
00:32:18
the examples that we've made fun of
00:32:20
before you have to rely on the
00:32:23
government to actually be competent in
00:32:26
key moments in time I think this is one
00:32:28
of them the organization that could do
00:32:31
something about it for example take the
00:32:33
FTC or even take the
00:32:36
doj we are
00:32:38
investigating
00:32:40
Amazon's purchase of the portable vacuum
00:32:44
cleaner Roomba right critically
00:32:47
important issue and that is apparently
00:32:50
for the American people higher than the
00:32:54
sclerosis that the government has
00:32:56
enabled enabled in the airline industry
00:32:59
which affects
00:33:00
everybody so could the right government
00:33:03
agencies choose to actually focus on
00:33:05
something important here and actually
00:33:07
figure out H why is this
00:33:12
happening because I think the door plugs
00:33:14
issue is endemic of a much bigger
00:33:16
problem this is a company that's rotting
00:33:18
because there is no accountability and
00:33:20
the reason there's no accountability is
00:33:21
there's no real functional competition
00:33:24
and I have not seen any good answer
00:33:27
to accountability other than competition
00:33:30
yeah I mean the the good news uh is the
00:33:33
FAA really took quick action to ground
00:33:37
these 171 Boeing 7379 Max a planes but
00:33:41
they don't they do not understand the
00:33:43
scope of the problem if they let them
00:33:44
back in the fleet and this is happening
00:33:46
the bigger picture problem of lack of
00:33:48
competition yeah they they're no no Noy
00:33:51
of these my point is like you had to
00:33:54
adjudicate the interaction of very
00:33:57
complicated hardware and software in
00:33:59
that first go around here is just a pure
00:34:03
systemic Hardware
00:34:05
failure so the point is that whether
00:34:08
it's them or their
00:34:10
suppliers there's just a some
00:34:13
complacency that sets in when you know
00:34:15
you will always have the business to
00:34:16
Freed Burke's point it is a very
00:34:19
corrosive thing in running a business
00:34:22
trying to
00:34:24
have motivated employees
00:34:27
when they know on the back end of it
00:34:30
that they could make anything in the
00:34:31
world and they'll just be able to sell
00:34:33
it to somebody and they'll have to take
00:34:35
it that's that example that freeberg
00:34:37
just cited 20 odd million dollars for
00:34:40
just random stuff for what is it 15
00:34:42
pieces that's crazy that's just straight
00:34:46
up theft and so when you have that how
00:34:48
do you expect the employees of that
00:34:50
organization to give
00:34:52
a I don't see how I don't see how you
00:34:55
could expect that and so my point point
00:34:57
is the FAA has a much bigger problem so
00:34:59
for example like the doe has a loan
00:35:01
program to try to create a diverse
00:35:03
energy infrastructure in the United
00:35:05
States maybe we need to look at some of
00:35:07
these sectors and instead of building
00:35:08
the administrative State take some of
00:35:11
that money instead and just create
00:35:12
programs to get more competition all
00:35:15
right in other news Adam Newman you
00:35:17
remember from wew work infamy Fame has a
00:35:21
new startup you may have heard of it Flo
00:35:23
they've raised a ton of money he started
00:35:25
buying a bunch of apartment builds bus
00:35:27
the idea people can rent nice apartments
00:35:29
and cool cities that focus more on
00:35:31
social interaction and hanging out
00:35:34
comment spaces all that great stuff and
00:35:36
there's also allegedly or reportedly
00:35:39
some sort of rent to own where renters
00:35:41
can receive equity in the company over
00:35:44
time and I don't think this has ever
00:35:45
been released but the idea would be
00:35:48
maybe you own shares in flow flow
00:35:50
manages around 3,000 units most of which
00:35:52
were purchased by Newman after he left
00:35:54
wework and you know he took down a
00:35:56
windfall as an exit package and so
00:35:59
according to the real deal this a real
00:36:00
estate publication Newman had a 60
00:36:02
million variable rate mortgage on one of
00:36:04
these properties in June sax maybe you
00:36:06
could explain to us what's going on here
00:36:08
since you have a lot of experience in
00:36:10
real estate well it's pretty simple he
00:36:12
can't make his interest
00:36:14
payments Okay the reason is is because
00:36:17
he had floating rate debt so if he had
00:36:19
locked in his debt over say 10 years
00:36:22
back in when he bought this building in
00:36:24
2021 or whenever it was when interest
00:36:27
rates were extremely low you know that
00:36:29
was during the the Zer period probably
00:36:32
could have locked in long-term debt at
00:36:35
maybe even 3% three or 4% and instead he
00:36:38
got floating rate debt and if you look
00:36:40
at where commercial debt is now I mean
00:36:42
it's 78
00:36:43
9% if you can get it which is pretty
00:36:46
hard so he maxed out on debt when he
00:36:48
bought these buildings he bought them
00:36:50
top of
00:36:51
Market it sounds like in 2021 because
00:36:55
real estate like a lot of things moves
00:36:56
inversely to interest rates so when
00:36:58
interest rates spiked over the last year
00:37:01
or so then real estate valuations went
00:37:04
down so he bought a bunch of buildings
00:37:07
top of Market using a lot of debt that
00:37:08
was floating rate interest rates spiked
00:37:11
Perfect Storm now he can't make his
00:37:13
interest payments the crazy part about
00:37:15
this when I was watching it happen jth
00:37:17
and we talked about it I think on the
00:37:18
program at the time was in recent
00:37:20
harowitz put in like over 300 million at
00:37:23
a billion dollar valuation but they
00:37:24
didn't do that in Peak Zer they did that
00:37:26
in 2022 when the writing was on the wall
00:37:29
what what are your thoughts on why they
00:37:31
would make a bet like that and uh yeah
00:37:34
just Tech VC's betting on real estate
00:37:38
for a second time how does that
00:37:40
occur well I don't think it occurs
00:37:42
because they cared about real estate I
00:37:44
think it allows them
00:37:45
to take $300 million of committed
00:37:49
capital and put it out there so that
00:37:51
they're $300 million less available
00:37:54
which means that they're $300 million
00:37:56
closer to raising a new fund which means
00:37:58
that they can raise they can charge 2%
00:38:00
on more money that's why they did it got
00:38:03
it yeah so just keep the money train
00:38:06
deploying Capital it's a place where you
00:38:08
can put a big huge check and you can
00:38:10
raise your next fund and yeah yeah why
00:38:12
not yeah okay well there you have let
00:38:15
let me let me offer I mean I don't
00:38:17
disagree I think that candidly what
00:38:18
you've said is exactly how Mega funds
00:38:20
are thinking about we have to deploy
00:38:22
Capital to raise our next fund and if we
00:38:23
still have capital in our last fund then
00:38:25
we can't deploy
00:38:27
if you're going to have to deploy large
00:38:29
amounts of
00:38:30
capital wouldn't you feel better
00:38:33
deploying that Capital with an
00:38:34
entrepreneur who's actually run a big
00:38:37
business before even though the business
00:38:38
failed no no no if you if you if you if
00:38:41
you were not optimized for fees you
00:38:42
would do what Peter teal did and just
00:38:43
have the fund and return the
00:38:45
money right he and for for for does that
00:38:49
because he's already won but for
00:38:50
everybody else that's trying to win the
00:38:52
only way to win in a world where your
00:38:55
your exits are not that great rate is to
00:38:57
actually generate money via fees even
00:39:00
though that fees are tax at current
00:39:01
income that's the way to win inventure
00:39:03
it's not carry it's by fees and so it's
00:39:07
and and I don't blame andreon I think
00:39:09
like that's that's smart for them to do
00:39:11
and if they have folks that are willing
00:39:13
to enable that by giving them money they
00:39:15
should do it but are they going to
00:39:17
generate huge rates of return probably
00:39:20
not because that's not what real estate
00:39:22
is known for Real Estate is known for
00:39:23
long steady tax arbs that's slowly
00:39:27
compound for the for the owner of the
00:39:28
company over 20 or or the owner of the
00:39:30
business over 25 to 35 years that's not
00:39:33
what a venture fund is supposed to be
00:39:35
doing for a 10 year 12E return cycle so
00:39:38
obviously they're doing it for fees
00:39:39
that's okay I think that's
00:39:41
capitalism what are the LPS then think
00:39:43
Sachs if we look at this you know you're
00:39:45
an LP and a technology firm I'll take
00:39:46
andreon out of it for a second but let's
00:39:48
just say some giant LP gives giant
00:39:50
amounts of money to a venture capital
00:39:53
firm and then they're deployed in real
00:39:55
estate
00:39:57
what happens you know in their minds and
00:39:59
is there any kind of tension that would
00:40:00
occur well handicapping the situation
00:40:04
you can never judge a VC based on one
00:40:06
investment if we were to do that every
00:40:08
VC would have a lot of egg on their face
00:40:10
because we're supposed to take big
00:40:12
swings and swing for the fences and
00:40:14
trying to hit home runs and grand slams
00:40:15
and a lot of them are going to make you
00:40:17
look foolish you have to look at an
00:40:19
Investment Portfolio and track returns
00:40:21
over time so I wouldn't judge any
00:40:24
particular investor based on one
00:40:26
investment so I don't think that's fair
00:40:29
now in the case of this investment if
00:40:31
you want me to explain what I think went
00:40:34
wrong I think Adam Newman had a
00:40:36
compelling Vision his vision was to
00:40:39
create a new experience in in I guess
00:40:41
you call it apartment living and that
00:40:44
people would be willing to pay more for
00:40:46
that because he would create this
00:40:48
National brand in apartments and right
00:40:50
now apartments are super local and
00:40:52
there's there is no brand in you know
00:40:54
apartment living so I think as a
00:40:57
entrepreneur as an operator he had a a
00:40:59
great vision and I think he actually
00:41:02
achieved his vision if you read these
00:41:03
articles carefully what they say is that
00:41:06
his occupancy was high and people were
00:41:08
willing to pay at least a little bit
00:41:10
more for the experience of being in a
00:41:12
flow apartment the problem for Adam
00:41:15
Newman is that at the end of the day his
00:41:18
plan to raise rents by creating
00:41:21
experience even though it worked it just
00:41:23
didn't raise rents that much and what
00:41:25
ended being much more important were the
00:41:28
moves and interest rates and how he
00:41:31
capitalized these Acquisitions and the
00:41:33
price he paid on the Acquisitions so
00:41:36
there's an old saying in real estate
00:41:38
that you make money based on the buy not
00:41:40
on the sell meaning that you know when
00:41:42
you go and sell your apartment building
00:41:45
office building or whatever you're
00:41:47
monetizing an acquisition that you did
00:41:49
correctly and if you don't buy at the
00:41:51
right price you're never going to be
00:41:52
able to make money on the sale and I
00:41:54
think this is a really good example of
00:41:55
this where where he bought at top of
00:41:59
Market his Capital stack was over
00:42:01
reliant on debt and he had floating rate
00:42:04
debt I mean those are just Financial
00:42:06
mistakes and timing mistakes that you
00:42:09
can't make up for no matter how good an
00:42:11
operator you are in real estate and in a
00:42:14
way I mean this is the same thing that
00:42:15
happened with we work which is he
00:42:18
delivered an excellent product I mean
00:42:20
people love we work offices absolutely
00:42:22
yeah they they pick them over other
00:42:25
offices because The Vibes because of the
00:42:27
culture because of the community so he
00:42:29
he is a ma he has some Mastery of that
00:42:32
but to your point entry price matters
00:42:34
and the economics matter if you look at
00:42:36
wework it didn't fail because the
00:42:38
product wasn't good it was because he
00:42:39
didn't pay enough attention to the
00:42:41
financial aspects of the business with
00:42:43
Wei work he leased a bunch of offices at
00:42:45
the absolute top of the market and then
00:42:48
overinvestment with Flo he bought a
00:42:51
bunch of real estate at the top of the
00:42:53
market and sort of did it with the wrong
00:42:55
Capital stack so this is the problem is
00:42:57
that when you get into a real estate
00:42:59
business it doesn't really matter how
00:43:02
great you are as an entrepreneur
00:43:05
operator if you're not good at like sort
00:43:07
of the Legacy old school real estate
00:43:11
part of it and the the old school real
00:43:13
estate guys were were saying during Wei
00:43:15
work this is not going to work you know
00:43:17
this is this is regious but with a bad
00:43:20
capital structure and the old school
00:43:22
real estate guys were saying something
00:43:24
similar about this and you know it just
00:43:26
goes to show that if you are going to
00:43:28
try and disrupt a legacy industry you do
00:43:31
have to kind of understand the ins and
00:43:32
outs of of that Legacy industry and the
00:43:34
great Paradox of this Sachs was when he
00:43:37
did Green desk which was the precursor
00:43:39
to Wei work when he did the first Wei
00:43:41
Works in San Francisco and other places
00:43:43
his Playbook was find a building that's
00:43:45
empty that cannot be leased so he got 25
00:43:48
Taylor Street like six then Market the
00:43:51
worst area by the tenderloin and we had
00:43:53
an office there for a little bit and I
00:43:54
had my podcasting Studio there for a
00:43:55
little bit this was a terrible off this
00:43:57
was a terrible area but he made it hip
00:43:59
and cool and it was really cheap and man
00:44:02
it sold out and it was packed and The
00:44:04
Vibes were great but then as you're
00:44:06
saying then he moved all of a sudden to
00:44:08
Soma and he started opening up these
00:44:10
glass filled ones and you know the he
00:44:12
was renting them for Less with all their
00:44:15
giveaways and six months free and all
00:44:17
the stuff than they could ever afford so
00:44:18
right he he kind of had Mission drift
00:44:20
right the Playbook they just they
00:44:22
changed the Playbook and it economically
00:44:24
was not viable well the timing the
00:44:26
timing got really bad and again they
00:44:28
didn't pay attention to the financial
00:44:30
aspects as much as they should in this
00:44:33
case I think that if he was trying to
00:44:35
execute this play today and doing his
00:44:38
Acquisitions today he could actually
00:44:40
make it he would he would need a lot
00:44:41
more Equity because he wouldn't be able
00:44:43
to get as much debt financing but if he
00:44:45
had the equity and could do more of an
00:44:47
acquisition based on Equity the prices
00:44:48
he'd pay right now would be much lower
00:44:51
and then his interest rates come down he
00:44:53
could ride that wave he could refi pull
00:44:55
his Equity out and put debt on it that
00:44:59
is cheaper as the price goes down so
00:45:02
there was a way to maybe make this work
00:45:04
but you know with real estate the timing
00:45:06
is just so important again your cost
00:45:08
basis of when you get in the investment
00:45:11
is probably the most important thing in
00:45:14
terms of whether you make money or not
00:45:15
did you see this by Chance the real
00:45:17
estate piece in 60 minutes the package
00:45:19
they did last week sax it was basically
00:45:21
what we were talking about here a year
00:45:23
ago super compelling uh if you haven't
00:45:24
seen it it's basically the all in
00:45:26
podcast from 12 or 18 months ago has
00:45:28
anything changed on the field in terms
00:45:30
of commercial real estate or is it just
00:45:32
continuing to I mean nothing's changed I
00:45:35
think that the all the commercial real
00:45:37
estate guys the the sponsors and the
00:45:40
dealmakers and so forth they're all kind
00:45:42
of hanging on by their fingernails
00:45:44
waiting for interest rates to come down
00:45:46
and all the leases are still coming off
00:45:48
right like people are still who had six
00:45:50
seven eight year leases that were signed
00:45:51
preo before depends on the market I mean
00:45:54
some of the some of the markets are are
00:45:56
coming back but again what this flow
00:46:00
news show this Adam Newman news shows is
00:46:03
that you could be fully occupied and you
00:46:06
could still default and the reason is
00:46:09
because of your capital structure the
00:46:10
interest rates have spiked up you're now
00:46:12
paying you know all of your operating
00:46:15
income is being eaten up by your debt
00:46:18
service the only way to to make it
00:46:20
through that is you you go to your bank
00:46:22
who is one of these Regional Banks and
00:46:25
you work out a to extend you know they
00:46:27
call it pretend and extend and they let
00:46:30
you hang on there you'll like you know
00:46:32
extend the term of your Kick the Can
00:46:34
down the road yeah yeah they'll they'll
00:46:36
lower your debt payments and exchange
00:46:37
for more term and you just try to get to
00:46:39
the other side of these high interest
00:46:41
rates and then once you get to the other
00:46:43
side again you're hanging on you're not
00:46:45
defaulting that's what everyone's doing
00:46:47
so if rates don't come down as expected
00:46:50
this year you know I think the Market's
00:46:52
expecting 150 basis points of of rate
00:46:54
Cuts if that doesn't actually happen
00:46:57
there's a lot of real estate sponsors
00:46:59
who are in trouble and in turn there's a
00:47:01
lot of regional Banks who are in trouble
00:47:03
because they're the ones who made all
00:47:05
these loans to these sponsors so
00:47:07
everyone's trying to like you said Kick
00:47:08
the Can down the road yeah and I the the
00:47:11
60 Minutes piece also talked about how
00:47:14
there's some emergency resoning going on
00:47:16
in New York specifically where they take
00:47:18
the floor plate in the middle which I
00:47:20
think you talked about sa you you have
00:47:21
to have Windows if you want to convert
00:47:23
to residential and they just make an
00:47:26
space the void they call it in the
00:47:28
middle of the building that you know
00:47:30
they'll deal with in the future but they
00:47:31
just have this empty space in the middle
00:47:33
of the building that's not going to get
00:47:35
used and then the rest that has Windows
00:47:37
gets used to be converted into Lofts Etc
00:47:39
in New York so people are starting to
00:47:41
think creatively uh if people don't come
00:47:43
back to office okay let me ask you a
00:47:45
question just based on that com the set
00:47:47
of comments given Adam Newman's
00:47:49
experience as an investor in this space
00:47:52
and this General opportunity wouldn't
00:47:53
you rather back a known some someone who
00:47:56
knows and has been through the market
00:47:57
and has experience versus some founder
00:47:59
who shows up and has never run a
00:48:01
business in this space I mean this guy
00:48:02
has more experience it's such a great
00:48:05
don't know that well here's the thing
00:48:06
freeberg the great point about that is
00:48:09
you don't see a lot of Founders who
00:48:10
explicitly come out and say I want to
00:48:12
build a hundred billion dollar business
00:48:13
I want to build a giant business they're
00:48:15
so rare that VCS who have a lot of chips
00:48:19
they would like to back those you know
00:48:20
swing for the fences folks and so I do
00:48:24
understand why people would back him
00:48:25
again and they've run at it before
00:48:26
they've done it to some degree failed
00:48:29
learned from mistakes and this time
00:48:30
around he he learned from exact same
00:48:33
mistake so therefore they made the Bad
00:48:35
Bet I'm not advocating by the way I'm
00:48:37
just asking no I understand to your
00:48:39
point freeberg I can understand people
00:48:40
want to bet on somebody who is crazy and
00:48:42
swings for the fences this entrepreneur
00:48:45
clearly does not learn from their
00:48:47
mistakes I think both of those things
00:48:48
could be true right shouth what I would
00:48:50
say is that I think that where I've made
00:48:53
the biggest mistakes in my investing
00:48:54
career is when I confused what I was
00:48:57
investing in for one thing when it was
00:49:00
the other and so when I look back and I
00:49:04
had a small doans in biotech because I
00:49:07
thought oh this is going to be more
00:49:09
computational biology and I understand
00:49:11
computation so this gives me an edge
00:49:13
turned out I was wrong there was another
00:49:16
time where I've invested in certain
00:49:18
sectors of the economy because I thought
00:49:19
they were technology businesses and at
00:49:21
best they were Tech enabled versions of
00:49:23
an existing industry and when I look at
00:49:26
those Investments the thing that I got
00:49:28
wrong was not listening
00:49:31
to the very experienced investors in
00:49:35
those sectors and why they
00:49:37
passed and that has caused me no
00:49:40
shortage of headache and grief and so if
00:49:43
I had to learn anything from all of this
00:49:46
it would be that if it looks like a duck
00:49:48
and it quacks like a duck it's a duck
00:49:50
it's not a tech company and so if that
00:49:53
duck means it's a real estate business
00:49:56
I would talk to a real estate investor
00:49:57
and and wonder to myself why they
00:49:59
wouldn't have done this deal similarly
00:50:02
you know when it's a biotech business I
00:50:04
have to ask myself why wouldn't they
00:50:06
have done it they know more than I ever
00:50:08
will in this space and so similarly I
00:50:10
kind of look at this as an example of
00:50:13
that which is could be a very talented
00:50:15
person in an industry I think just it's
00:50:17
important for us to be very clear and
00:50:20
lucid and intellectually honest about
00:50:22
what industry that is I think it's a
00:50:24
great point I mean look I whenever
00:50:25
you're dealing with a tech enabled
00:50:27
business which I would Define as a more
00:50:30
traditional business model with some
00:50:33
sort of software layer you know on top
00:50:36
of it you have to kind of assess like
00:50:40
how much of a difference does that
00:50:42
software really make at the end of the
00:50:44
day in this case this is a real estate
00:50:47
business with a very thin kind of
00:50:50
software slash operating technology of
00:50:54
yeah the experience layer
00:50:56
is a very small part of the overall
00:50:59
let's call it p&l of this business such
00:51:02
a great Point sax I mean the Perfect
00:51:04
Analogy would be like if you have if
00:51:06
you're taking a flight on United the
00:51:08
United app is delightful now it's a
00:51:10
really good app I you this is a
00:51:11
commercial airline it's called United
00:51:12
Airlines sex you pay for one ticket
00:51:14
instead of the whole plan but have you
00:51:15
been to McDonald's recently I actually
00:51:17
went to McDonald's yeah you order
00:51:18
through an app now and there's a big
00:51:20
screen the point is you walk in there
00:51:21
and it's probably not the McDonald's you
00:51:23
knew 15 or 20 years ago it's not about
00:51:26
waiting in line and ordering and it
00:51:29
that's not how it works anymore there so
00:51:31
the point is is that a tech enabled
00:51:32
business or is that still a restaurant
00:51:34
well if you spend a lot of your time
00:51:36
intellectually contorting yourself to
00:51:38
try to justify why the next version of
00:51:40
McDonald's is a tech enabled business
00:51:42
you're just going to lose a lot of money
00:51:44
it's a restaurant now all restaurants
00:51:46
need technology and what you see by
00:51:48
McDonald's is even the oldest and most
00:51:50
established are running forward very
00:51:53
quickly to implement technology ology
00:51:55
because they know that it creates
00:51:57
efficiency which then flows to the
00:51:58
bottom line for them yeah so the reality
00:52:01
is that we have lived in this
00:52:03
Wonderland where we've looked at these
00:52:05
software businesses that have 80 and 90%
00:52:07
gross margins and imposed that
00:52:09
expectation on other markets and then
00:52:11
made investment Decisions by trying to
00:52:12
justify how that it's a tech enabled
00:52:15
real estate business a tech enabled
00:52:17
Healthcare business a tech enabled
00:52:19
energy business without being honest
00:52:21
with ourselves that those
00:52:23
businesses have over decades because of
00:52:25
lots of competition found a consistent
00:52:29
and
00:52:30
reliable resting place in terms of gross
00:52:32
margins far below 80 and 90% And so
00:52:36
instead of willing Tech enabled
00:52:39
businesses to be at 80 and 90 and
00:52:40
tricking on I think it's more realistic
00:52:43
to ask yourself why aren't 80 and 90%
00:52:45
gross margin businesses decaying to 30
00:52:48
and 40% gross margins like every other
00:52:49
part of the economy when everything will
00:52:51
be technology enabled I think that
00:52:53
that's a very reasonable question and
00:52:55
and I think the answer is there is no
00:52:57
safe SP I don't think that you can
00:52:58
justify 80 and 90% gross margins in
00:53:00
software when you can use a model and
00:53:03
whip up a competitor I just think that
00:53:05
we are all going to a place where
00:53:07
everything is a tech enabled version of
00:53:09
something yeah marketplaces would be a
00:53:11
notable exception there with network
00:53:12
effects so door Dash versus the tech
00:53:15
enabled restaurant asset light
00:53:17
marketplaces you and N Soxs have been
00:53:18
involved in a bunch of different
00:53:19
marketplaces together sometimes they're
00:53:22
asset heavy sometimes they're asset
00:53:23
light when they're asset heavy man it's
00:53:25
really hard to make those businesses for
00:53:26
our
00:53:27
cax yeah I mean I think we should
00:53:30
differentiate between gross margin and
00:53:32
then the net operating margin or or or
00:53:36
profit right and so you know gross
00:53:38
margin is what is the cost on the margin
00:53:42
of providing one incremental unit and
00:53:45
the thing about pure software businesses
00:53:47
is that on the margin you can provision
00:53:49
another instance of the product almost
00:53:51
for free I mean there's a little bit of
00:53:52
Hosting cost at AWS or whatever so so on
00:53:55
the margins it's you know it's like the
00:53:57
perfect gross margin business as opposed
00:53:59
to a hamburger as opposed to a yeah a
00:54:02
restaurant is going to have very large
00:54:05
cost of goods sold or cogs the simple
00:54:08
heris that I use is just does this
00:54:12
company have large cogs cost of good
00:54:15
sold and are they physical world
00:54:17
cogs if they are it's not a software
00:54:21
business it's at best a tech enabled
00:54:23
business so just look for
00:54:26
that you know does this business have
00:54:29
large physical world cogs now what I
00:54:31
would say is if the cogs are virtual
00:54:34
like you know it could be hosting cost
00:54:36
or it could be paying twilio
00:54:39
for telefony or something like that then
00:54:42
at least it's still not like as good a
00:54:44
business because the the margins aren't
00:54:45
as good but it's very scalable right
00:54:48
because you're you're not you don't have
00:54:50
that like huge friction of needing to
00:54:51
scale up physical world infrastructure
00:54:53
physical world Supply chains that kind
00:54:56
of stuff so I like virtual cogs a lot
00:54:59
better or digital cogs a lot better than
00:55:01
physical cogs I I love it when
00:55:03
marketplaces though I mean we could
00:55:04
speak to that too you know when I had
00:55:06
Dar on the Pod the other week and when
00:55:08
he launches an adjacency hey we're going
00:55:10
to sell alcohol hey we're going to sell
00:55:12
groceries hey we're going to add this
00:55:14
thing that's right next to the already
00:55:16
you know portfolio of of uber offerings
00:55:18
doesn't cost them much right they just
00:55:20
have to get the supply side up and
00:55:21
running but they already have the demand
00:55:23
side and I think that's where like these
00:55:24
super apps are do really well or Airbnb
00:55:26
adding you know some inventory in a new
00:55:28
city that they unlock right well true
00:55:31
true marketplaces are perfect gross
00:55:33
margin businesses as well because they
00:55:35
don't have fiscal inventory that they
00:55:36
themselves own what you'll see is with a
00:55:39
lot of marketplaces they'll cheat by
00:55:42
buying the inventory themselves at least
00:55:45
to jump start the market and then
00:55:47
selling it yeah and so when you see that
00:55:49
line item on the p&l the you know that
00:55:52
they have real cost of goods sold you
00:55:54
know oh wait a second this isn't a true
00:55:56
Marketplace they're providing the
00:55:58
service yeah and so again it's just a
00:56:01
way to like catch whether the business
00:56:03
is truly one of these great high gross
00:56:07
margin businesses or whether it's more
00:56:09
of a tech enabled business that's
00:56:10
pretending to be a pure software
00:56:12
business yeah direct consumer got people
00:56:14
in a lot of trouble during the last
00:56:16
cycle in Venture Capital if you look at
00:56:20
a lot of these
00:56:22
companies even the best SAS businesses
00:56:25
have
00:56:26
seen their gross margins erode by about
00:56:28
15 to 20% it used to be that
00:56:32
best-in-class software business can
00:56:33
generate 90 90 1% 80 high 80s to low 90s
00:56:38
gross margins now that's not true you
00:56:39
see a lot of these best-in-class
00:56:40
companies that are in the high 60s low
00:56:42
70s so it already just shows you that
00:56:44
that pressure has has come upon the
00:56:46
market and so is it that the software
00:56:49
enabled business goes towards 85 or is
00:56:51
that the 85% gross margin business goes
00:56:53
towards 30 it looks like it's the ladder
00:56:55
that's just what the data says well
00:56:57
maybe I'm just categorizing certain
00:56:58
costs differently than you are but I
00:57:00
don't know why a software business would
00:57:01
go all the way to 30 right because again
00:57:03
sales and marketing don't count in the
00:57:05
gross margin GNA doesn't count even R&D
00:57:08
doesn't count in the gross margin it has
00:57:10
to be you know a unit cost that you can
00:57:13
attribute on the margin to that
00:57:15
incremental instance of the product so
00:57:18
things like again paying twio for meter
00:57:22
telefony or paying open AI for like
00:57:24
metered API access all of that is
00:57:27
definitely in cogs and I think some
00:57:29
customer support costs that can be
00:57:31
attributed on kind of a per instance
00:57:34
basis that goes in there but if if sales
00:57:37
and marketing and R&D and GNA aren't
00:57:39
going in there I mean I just I don't
00:57:41
know why it go all the way to 30 I guess
00:57:43
I'm just saying that I still think
00:57:45
software businesses and marketplaces for
00:57:47
that matter are still the best kinds of
00:57:49
businesses on a margin profile basis the
00:57:52
problem is that there's a lot of fake
00:57:56
software businesses or fake marketplaces
00:57:57
out there that are pretending to be pure
00:58:00
Tech businesses when actually they're
00:58:03
they're more like old school businesses
00:58:04
that have the veneer of technology and I
00:58:07
think to your point there like the trick
00:58:10
of saying I'm an 80% gross margin
00:58:12
business but having no profitability is
00:58:14
then who cares so you true when you look
00:58:19
at the profitability of these businesses
00:58:20
again you'll be in the the 20 to 30%
00:58:23
that's why when you see companies that
00:58:24
are in the high 30s to low 50s they're a
00:58:29
very unique and B you should expect that
00:58:34
there is something fundamentally
00:58:36
monopolistic about them and that is a
00:58:39
simplest way to filter out these
00:58:41
companies because in a highly
00:58:42
competitive market you cannot extract
00:58:44
those kinds of profit dollars cap
00:58:46
capitalism says you can't do that so you
00:58:48
can only do it when when you have an N
00:58:50
of one or n of two kind of competitive
00:58:53
Dynamic where there's essent a mutual
00:58:55
toon with your biggest
00:58:57
competitor yeah it is it is a good point
00:58:59
that just because you have good union
00:59:01
economics or good gross margins doesn't
00:59:03
mean that the business is profitable at
00:59:05
the end of the day good yeah could be
00:59:07
mean you could have 80% gross margins
00:59:08
and still be losing a ton of money
00:59:10
because you've got too much overhead
00:59:11
you've got too much sales and marketing
00:59:13
you've got too much R&D yes so you're
00:59:15
selling to customers who don't really
00:59:17
need it and then they eventually cancel
00:59:18
right like we see that a lot look at the
00:59:20
streamers look at the streamers that's
00:59:23
just a big recycling it's just like
00:59:25
people come to the top of the funnel
00:59:26
they use the product and then they leave
00:59:28
and then you have to reacquire them over
00:59:30
and over again and it and it could be
00:59:31
the case that SAS actually looks a
00:59:33
little bit like that too at the bottom
00:59:34
line level well when you hit your
00:59:35
natural audience it it does get
00:59:37
challenging yeah well this is why in in
00:59:39
SAS there's a herisa called the rule of
00:59:42
40 which is for public market SAS
00:59:44
companies you want to see that their
00:59:47
operating margin plus their growth rate
00:59:50
equals 40 or is greater than 40 ideally
00:59:53
so in other words you could have a SAS
00:59:55
business with a 20% operating margin and
00:59:59
a 20% growth rate and that would hit
01:00:01
rule of 40 and that would be a very
01:00:02
attractive business or you could have I
01:00:05
don't know it could be growing 50%
01:00:07
year-over-year and its operating margin
01:00:09
could be negative 10% and that'd be okay
01:00:12
too because they're losing money but at
01:00:14
least the investment is leading to AB
01:00:17
well above average growth you know or
01:00:20
you could be growing you could you know
01:00:22
be growing slower you could have a 10%
01:00:24
growth rate and have a 30% operating
01:00:26
margin and that would also be hitting
01:00:27
the rule of 40 so it's just a simple way
01:00:31
of like tracking whether this is a a
01:00:33
good business at scale I don't think
01:00:35
stups have to worry about this until
01:00:37
they get to kind of the later growth
01:00:38
stage yeah when you're in your BC round
01:00:40
you're making 50 100 million yeah you
01:00:42
got to be really thoughtful about this
01:00:43
in the beginning you're trying to get
01:00:44
product Market fit triangulate on
01:00:46
something so shth just mentioned
01:00:48
streaming NBC Universal if you didn't
01:00:51
know it paid the NFL $100 million for
01:00:54
for the exclusive streaming rights to
01:00:56
one that's right one first round playoff
01:00:58
game for the NFL that happened last
01:01:00
weekend between the Chiefs and the
01:01:02
Dolphins that was on their service
01:01:04
peacock NBC's app basically their
01:01:07
version of Netflix or Disney plus it
01:01:09
guarded 23 million viewers which makes
01:01:11
it uh the most streamed live event in US
01:01:14
history even so that's almost half of
01:01:18
what you the Packers and Cowboys had
01:01:21
about 40 million Lions versus Rams same
01:01:24
weekend 36 million and so this has
01:01:27
brought into question what's going on
01:01:29
with streaming have these businesses
01:01:31
gotten ahead of their skis just give you
01:01:32
a couple of charts Disney plus took off
01:01:35
like a massive rocket peaked in Q4 of
01:01:37
2022 at 164 million subscribers they're
01:01:41
now at 150 million here's a chart I mean
01:01:43
just amazing how uh quickly they got to
01:01:46
Netflix is numbers here's Netflix's
01:01:49
chart again this is quarterly they're up
01:01:52
to now an all-time high 24 47 million
01:01:56
subscribers and the annual growth rate
01:01:58
all the way back to 2001 still pretty
01:02:00
spectacular and their revenue also uh
01:02:02
very respectable for Netflix however
01:02:06
they overspent massively during the peak
01:02:09
streaming era 2019 to 2022 and that's
01:02:12
when subscriber growth started to slow
01:02:15
obviously they were spending way too
01:02:16
much and other entrance came in like
01:02:18
apple plus and Amazon Prime where they
01:02:21
really didn't even think that they had
01:02:22
to make a profit they were using
01:02:25
streaming maybe to sell more iPhones or
01:02:27
to get more Amazon Prime subscribers so
01:02:30
here is the major problem here's the
01:02:33
churn chart basically churn means people
01:02:35
cancel right and so as these Services
01:02:38
have cut what they're offering the
01:02:40
number of Marvel shows or Disney you
01:02:43
know having Star Wars shows the churn
01:02:45
goes way up people are also having
01:02:48
subscription overload I don't know how
01:02:50
many of these I subscrib to but I think
01:02:51
it's all of them or maybe out of these 1
01:02:54
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n on the chart I think I'm
01:02:58
I have seven of these so there is
01:03:00
definitely some unbelievable
01:03:02
subscription burnout and the streamers
01:03:06
in order to get these businesses above
01:03:08
water have raised their prices we all
01:03:09
know that you've probably seen your
01:03:10
streaming bills you know have three four
01:03:12
five bucks added to them every month and
01:03:14
at the same time they're cutting how
01:03:15
much they're spending so you're paying
01:03:17
more for last chth your thoughts on this
01:03:20
Dynamic if you bring the chart back up
01:03:21
here's the most important thing that's
01:03:24
worth noting let's take stars as an
01:03:26
example it turns 12% of their users
01:03:29
every month which means that over a year
01:03:30
they've ched 144% of their user base
01:03:34
that means that they have to basically
01:03:36
turn their
01:03:38
entire membership base one and a half
01:03:41
times in order just to tread water right
01:03:43
so if you start with
01:03:45
100 it's a lot of money that you have to
01:03:48
spend to make sure you end the year at
01:03:49
100 forget about
01:03:51
growing if you look at peacock they're
01:03:54
going to lose 100% of their subscribers
01:03:56
in a year if you look at Discovery
01:03:59
they're going to lose 75% if you look at
01:04:03
max they're going to lose 50 odd percent
01:04:06
Apple TV same Hulu and Disney plus will
01:04:09
lose 60% Netflix will lose almost
01:04:14
40% so the only winner in all of this is
01:04:17
Facebook and Google The Only Winners are
01:04:20
Facebook and Google because that's where
01:04:22
the ads will appear to try to reacquire
01:04:25
these folks right so I guess that's a
01:04:27
positive
01:04:28
indication but the reality is that money
01:04:30
isn't infinite and so what happens in a
01:04:32
dynamic where you have a category where
01:04:35
there's just a lot of consumer churn I
01:04:37
think what happens is it evolves in
01:04:39
phases and in phase one which is sort of
01:04:41
where we are now where there's a bunch
01:04:43
of relatively wellestablished folks is
01:04:46
that they are going to initially
01:04:48
overspend on content because they are
01:04:50
going to try to differentiate the cost
01:04:52
of acquisition based on on content right
01:04:55
which makes sense I have a tent pole
01:04:57
come and watch it here you can't watch
01:04:58
it anywhere else and I think that was
01:05:00
the peacock example where they had this
01:05:03
football game and all these people
01:05:04
showed up and they thought this is
01:05:06
exactly why we're paying so much money
01:05:09
for these rights because people will
01:05:10
show up I think the problem is that when
01:05:13
everybody is doing it everybody's doing
01:05:16
it and so you don't know how to
01:05:18
differentiate Even in our group chat
01:05:21
look at the number of times when
01:05:22
somebody randomly says is there
01:05:23
something to watch and everybody's got
01:05:25
50 recommendations guess what I do I
01:05:27
tune it all out because I'm like 50
01:05:29
across six different Services I have no
01:05:32
way to track it and then I lose interest
01:05:34
and I'm like you know I'll just stick to
01:05:36
YouTube so I think what happens is in
01:05:39
Phase One folks spend a lot of content
01:05:41
in phase two they
01:05:44
realize that actually what you need to
01:05:46
do is spend on a long taale of content
01:05:48
in a much more disciplined way so
01:05:50
there's a company that that I know about
01:05:52
for example they just signed a
01:05:55
pretty big deal with
01:05:58
Amazon hundreds of millions of
01:06:01
dollars and I was trying to figure out
01:06:04
is that a lot or a little and it turns
01:06:06
out that Amazon's trying to get three or
01:06:09
four or five versions of these
01:06:11
going which means that before we
01:06:13
probably could have gotten five or 600
01:06:15
million and instead you get two or 300
01:06:17
million it's still an incredible thing
01:06:18
but it just goes to show you that
01:06:19
there's a lot of competition and so
01:06:21
instead of
01:06:23
having a single mode right if you were
01:06:25
to graph something where there's a few
01:06:27
pieces that just get all the money now
01:06:29
you're smearing this content across all
01:06:32
kinds of stuff and I think that that
01:06:35
makes it very difficult to keep folks so
01:06:38
I suspect that you're just going to see
01:06:39
a lot of turn I don't I don't like this
01:06:41
category at all as an investor so
01:06:44
clearly there's been an overspend here
01:06:45
but consolidation is coming freeberg any
01:06:47
thoughts on the streaming space I just
01:06:49
think this is the opposite of what we
01:06:51
were talking about earlier where there's
01:06:53
a free market Market competing and it's
01:06:55
benefiting consumers I mean the point
01:06:57
that you made is a really good one that
01:06:58
there's a lot of great content to watch
01:07:01
folks that raise prices people cancel so
01:07:03
you got to drop prices you got to offer
01:07:05
good content and I actually think this
01:07:07
is a really good and healthy thing to
01:07:09
see happen is competition that benefits
01:07:12
consumers and there'll be some set of
01:07:14
winners here and some set of losers but
01:07:16
I think ultimately it's just really good
01:07:18
to see this how it all shakes out who's
01:07:20
willing to put up the big bucks who's
01:07:21
got the smarter algorithm that predicts
01:07:24
how fresh your content has to be and how
01:07:26
unique it has to be relative to other
01:07:28
platforms to keep the audience attention
01:07:31
I would argue if you look at those
01:07:32
numbers and you look at the performance
01:07:33
over time Netflix absolutely rules the
01:07:35
roof in this sense they're an incredible
01:07:37
operating team they have an incredible
01:07:39
capability of predicting what content
01:07:41
will work how how quickly they have to
01:07:43
refresh content how much they should be
01:07:45
investing in content per quarter per
01:07:46
month and they're clearly retaining
01:07:48
users and making money and others maybe
01:07:50
that are newer to the game haven't
01:07:52
figured that out yet but it's just very
01:07:53
good to to see the competition so I
01:07:55
don't know how to predict what's going
01:07:56
to happen here but it's good to see it's
01:07:57
clearly going to be massive
01:07:58
consolidation also these folks are
01:08:00
launching Advertising based version so
01:08:02
you probably saw Netflix has an
01:08:03
advertising tier and so a lot of these
01:08:06
folks uh didn't have those Disney plus I
01:08:08
think is going to have one as well you
01:08:10
know what no one's paying attention to
01:08:11
is YouTube TV I don't know you guys
01:08:14
subscribe to YouTube TV I'm a Hulu
01:08:16
person yeah I think it's fantastic if
01:08:18
you look at some third party data on
01:08:20
YouTube TV the subscriptions are going
01:08:22
through the fraking roof and it's really
01:08:24
interesting to see because with YouTube
01:08:25
TV you're basically rebundling the
01:08:28
unbundling that happened in cable except
01:08:30
you're doing it over the internet you
01:08:31
can access it anywhere so they've
01:08:33
basically converted the pipe as the
01:08:35
value to the service itself as the value
01:08:37
which you can access anywhere you want
01:08:38
on any TV and any room without boxes
01:08:41
while you're on the road on your phone
01:08:42
on your laptop and it seems to be kind
01:08:45
of highlighting that maybe it wasn't
01:08:47
necessarily the bundling that was the
01:08:49
problem but the way that the service was
01:08:51
being offered so who knows maybe
01:08:54
bundling versus all of this part and
01:08:55
parcel you got to pick five different
01:08:57
providers and buy content on the Fly
01:09:00
maybe that's not what consumers want
01:09:01
young people don't care about the live
01:09:03
channels old people do but yeah Hulu and
01:09:06
YouTube TV are really wonderful products
01:09:09
because they work really well on Apple
01:09:11
TV the apps work great but they also
01:09:12
work great on your iPhone your iPad so
01:09:14
yeah you know they're really spectacular
01:09:17
in that way sax well just tie this
01:09:20
conversation back to what we were
01:09:22
talking about with margins s and Tech
01:09:24
enabled versus real software businesses
01:09:27
I personally have never seen a BTO C
01:09:30
subscription business that works the
01:09:32
churn is just too high I mean what I've
01:09:34
seen is that the monthly churn rates on
01:09:37
a software subscription for consumers is
01:09:40
somewhere in the 5 to 10% range so on a
01:09:43
full year basis you're retaining maybe
01:09:44
50% of your customer base you're
01:09:46
effectively rebuilding your business
01:09:48
from scratch every two years it's a very
01:09:50
tough place to be this is why I
01:09:51
basically skewed towards B2B SAS is
01:09:54
because a good B2B SAS business will
01:09:58
have net expansion instead of 50% churn
01:10:00
you'll do 120% expansion and so you're
01:10:03
actually building a subscriber base with
01:10:05
long-term value now how did Netflix do
01:10:08
it I mean Netflix avoided that
01:10:10
prohibitive level of churn by spending
01:10:12
literally billions of dollars on content
01:10:15
and original programming and again it
01:10:17
goes back to the point this is not a
01:10:19
pure software pure Tech business it
01:10:22
includes an old school
01:10:25
Studio which is very Capital intensive
01:10:29
and they financed a lot of the content
01:10:32
acquisition with billions and billions
01:10:34
of dollars raised during that Zer period
01:10:37
from I think both equity and debt and
01:10:40
you have to wonder if that could be done
01:10:42
again in this post Zer period where
01:10:45
capital is just a lot scarcer I think
01:10:47
this is going to work really well though
01:10:48
for Netflix and Disney man these huge
01:10:50
archives that they own these libraries
01:10:52
are going to get them to
01:10:54
3 four 500 million Global subs and this
01:10:57
become money printing machines that I
01:10:58
don't think they're going to need a ton
01:11:00
of new content the question is whether
01:11:02
you could recreate an archive of that
01:11:03
level today given how much more
01:11:06
expensive capital is my point is that
01:11:08
Zer help Netflix catch up to these
01:11:10
Studios and create this huge library but
01:11:13
still I think that what the streaming
01:11:15
services have shown in their churn is
01:11:18
that if you don't provide original
01:11:19
content and original programming then
01:11:22
users will turn off that so you have to
01:11:25
kind of have both you kind of have like
01:11:27
the library as filler but if you don't
01:11:29
have a hot show come along every so
01:11:32
often the subscribers will turn off that
01:11:34
yeah you need to have some new content
01:11:36
depending on how deep the library is
01:11:38
feels like Netflix and Disney Plus have
01:11:39
done a great job with their libraries
01:11:40
just to give you an idea revenue for
01:11:43
Netflix for 2023 33.5 billion 247
01:11:48
million Subs that's a arpo yearly
01:11:50
revenue for those folks 136 bucks
01:11:54
a year now the reason you're seeing that
01:11:56
uh number not Mak sense if you're paying
01:11:58
15 bucks a month is because
01:11:59
internationally Netflix is a lot a lot
01:12:02
cheaper but I I love those two
01:12:04
businesses I think they're going to be
01:12:05
extraordinary over time Netflix has to
01:12:07
acquire a 100 million people a year just
01:12:11
to stay even what's their turn rate 4% a
01:12:14
month I think it's fine right so they're
01:12:16
turning half their customer base every
01:12:18
year that's my point 100 million people
01:12:22
they're rebuilding their customer base
01:12:24
from scratch every two years how does
01:12:25
that make sense it's totally fine
01:12:27
because what happens is you have people
01:12:29
coming off their parents plan getting
01:12:31
their own people go through a bad beat
01:12:33
they don't like it you know whatever
01:12:34
they unsubscribe but they all come back
01:12:36
back and forth back and forth and then
01:12:38
it just keeps growing over time I think
01:12:41
you're describing something that's true
01:12:43
I think David is describing why it's a
01:12:45
business I mean if they if they
01:12:48
make more money than they spend and I
01:12:49
don't think they need to do a ton of
01:12:51
advertising eventually you turn through
01:12:53
so much of the market that actually you
01:12:55
can't maintain that growth rate I mean
01:12:57
if you reactivate maybe you can do it
01:13:00
but I I think that's what's happening
01:13:02
from a business perspective the only
01:13:03
logical thing that I would do if I was
01:13:06
running one of these businesses is
01:13:08
attach it to another business where you
01:13:11
can think about it in terms of LTV so
01:13:13
the only obvious example of that I think
01:13:16
is Amazon video because you can stick it
01:13:18
beside Prime and a bunch of other things
01:13:21
and now you have a very different way of
01:13:22
justifying
01:13:24
LTV and minimizing churn and that seems
01:13:27
like a I buy that argument Jason I don't
01:13:29
buy like a standalone business like this
01:13:31
trying to do it yucky I I no sorry real
01:13:34
quick have you guys dug into Netflix's
01:13:36
business I mean they're still growing
01:13:38
Top Line the eiton margin continues to
01:13:41
expand I mean all those facts might be
01:13:43
true but that churn engine and that
01:13:45
recapture engine seems to be working in
01:13:47
a way that they're printing cash and
01:13:48
growing it's pretty impressive I don't
01:13:51
know if there's a limit there but I mean
01:13:52
I I haven't looked at
01:13:53
I think that is the key question yeah to
01:13:56
the bundling Point apple plus which is
01:13:59
the TV component not the hardware
01:14:01
product is bundled as part of this apple
01:14:04
one program which is kind of like Amazon
01:14:06
Prime and so I think you're seeing a
01:14:07
little bundling there Netflix also added
01:14:10
video games to make it even more sticky
01:14:12
so I think there's like a subscription
01:14:14
super app coming which the New York
01:14:16
Times has kind of done right with Wordle
01:14:17
crosswords the athletic wire cutter and
01:14:20
the New York Times so I think you're
01:14:21
going to start to see
01:14:23
honestly you just had a jumble of names
01:14:25
that went in one year and out the other
01:14:26
I don't remember a single one you said
01:14:28
this is my point for most people Jason
01:14:29
not a media fish AO New York Times is
01:14:32
doing fantastic doing this bundling some
01:14:34
people come for the crosswords and
01:14:35
Wordle and that's why they subscribe and
01:14:37
they like the news other people come for
01:14:38
the news they discover crosswords and
01:14:40
wire cutter and the athletic and they
01:14:41
stay for that so I I do think there's
01:14:43
going to be an incredible business here
01:14:45
I'll take the other side of it yeah they
01:14:47
spent a lot on content though during
01:14:49
that period where Disney plus came in
01:14:51
and I think everybody's now has a little
01:14:53
more discipline and the budgets came way
01:14:55
down if you didn't know the Hulk cost
01:14:57
250 million or something the She-Hulk
01:14:59
rather that cost 225 million for Nine
01:15:02
episodes what the first Avengers 225
01:15:04
million wait sorry 225 250 million for
01:15:06
for Nine episodes of the shek and people
01:15:10
criticize it for having bad CGI so it's
01:15:12
I think there's like new discipline
01:15:13
coming to was this a Netflix show a
01:15:15
Disney Plus show a Disney Plus show yeah
01:15:17
I I don't know about you guys I've been
01:15:19
rewatching The Sopranos I find some of
01:15:20
the content on HBO Max to be the best
01:15:22
content out there oh my god I've there's
01:15:24
so much rewatchability on it Disney
01:15:26
doesn't have that much rewatchability I
01:15:28
don't know the only reason I keep my Max
01:15:30
subcription is cuz I'm waiting for House
01:15:31
of the Dragon season two yeah I mean if
01:15:34
they didn't have that one show I'd be
01:15:35
like yeah cut it you know yeah I do
01:15:37
think this could help Netflix because a
01:15:39
lot of these streaming services came
01:15:41
along we had way too many right we got
01:15:43
saturated with streaming services and
01:15:46
most of them you subscribe to you may
01:15:47
not even remember subscribing you may
01:15:50
just subscribe to a free trial to get an
01:15:51
NFL game and then you get build because
01:15:54
you forgot to cancel it by the way yeah
01:15:56
have you guys ever gone into
01:15:59
Apple iCloud settings and looked at your
01:16:02
subscriptions oh boy yeah get in there
01:16:05
and guys just RI go go if you have like
01:16:08
an extra five minutes you will save so
01:16:11
much money by going into subscriptions
01:16:13
in your settings and just turning them
01:16:15
all off I was shocked I was shocked I
01:16:18
mean this is part of your austerity
01:16:19
measure absolutely you know how many
01:16:21
subscriptions to Disney plus I had how
01:16:23
many well this is what's so gross is why
01:16:25
they even let me do this I had
01:16:27
three
01:16:29
what
01:16:31
three how's it even possible one for the
01:16:34
plane one for kids I had three I had
01:16:37
three I had two hpos I had two Netflix
01:16:42
Oh no Netflix keeps sending me message
01:16:43
saying hey you need to update your
01:16:45
payment information but then I'm
01:16:47
watching Netflix on my Apple TV so I'm
01:16:49
like I'm clearly playing for paying for
01:16:51
it somehow so confusing and I have the
01:16:56
perfect solution for you there are
01:16:57
credit cards now where you can set a
01:16:59
spending limit and so what I do is every
01:17:02
year I just turn off the limit on that
01:17:05
credit card I just take it from
01:17:06
unlimited or uncapped down to zero and I
01:17:08
do this for business as well and then
01:17:10
all the subcriptions time out you know
01:17:12
what I call that what Jeff Jeff does
01:17:15
that for me Jeff does it yeah but I mean
01:17:17
having somebody go in there I have a
01:17:19
Jeff I have a Jeff know but it's very
01:17:21
simple you only use one card for
01:17:23
subscriptions and then you turn it off
01:17:24
every year to see which ones you want to
01:17:25
keep going it works really well and then
01:17:27
you move the other ones to a new I don't
01:17:28
even want to say how many thousands of
01:17:30
dollars I was wasting on like dual lingo
01:17:32
I was like I'm paying for dual lingo and
01:17:35
then I was paying for your Italian it's
01:17:36
still terrible yeah terrible and then I
01:17:38
I had I had have a Cas against them no
01:17:40
then I had dual lingo and I had Babble
01:17:43
and I had Rosetta Stone so I'm like my
01:17:45
Italian is not improving because of any
01:17:47
of these three apps but I was paying
01:17:48
them collectively like $400 I had a
01:17:50
whoop subscription I don't even have a
01:17:52
whoop
01:17:54
when Rick Thompson started manscaped I
01:17:56
was I signed up for manscaped I get all
01:17:59
this ball deodorant I've never used it
01:18:01
once we know we know we sit next to in
01:18:03
poker we know it's not working bro just
01:18:06
a message to manscaped I have tried to
01:18:09
cancel I have called I have emailed I
01:18:11
took it upon myself to try it's
01:18:14
impossible to cancel they won't even let
01:18:15
you reset your account so you can get a
01:18:17
link to cancel it's so hard and still
01:18:21
your balls are terrible yeah my balls
01:18:24
are phenomenal no I've sat next to you
01:18:26
in poker man not real okay let's get
01:18:28
into Plastics and get off chamat
01:18:31
balls I mean how did we get here uh
01:18:35
subscription Services subscription
01:18:36
Services yes streaming is at a cross
01:18:39
wordss AC Crossroads apparently so
01:18:42
they're really trying to make that ball
01:18:43
deodorant happen aren't they they're
01:18:45
trying to make it happen well they're
01:18:46
trying to make fetch happen ball
01:18:47
deodorant is not happening I'm sorry I
01:18:49
mean what are you supposed to do Squat
01:18:51
and swipe how does this work
01:18:53
is it a spray are you lifting and
01:18:55
spraying is it you got to give him
01:18:57
points for creativity trying to create
01:18:59
like a new thing but yeah I was trying
01:19:01
to support my friend in signing up for a
01:19:03
subscription service and now I can't
01:19:05
cancel that's my problem that's my
01:19:07
predicament could you also take a shower
01:19:09
and your soap I don't know just putting
01:19:11
it out there I I'm I it's what's there
01:19:15
does it have to do with the product I
01:19:16
signed up because Rick was the Venture
01:19:18
investor that seated it and started I
01:19:21
supported my friend yes
01:19:23
and now I want out and I cannot get out
01:19:25
you can't get out every every time I try
01:19:27
to get out they pull me back in I'm just
01:19:29
going to say when it comes to manscape
01:19:31
no no testimonials please no
01:19:32
testimonials the worst part is like you
01:19:35
you know it comes to the house and oh
01:19:37
somebody opens your ball deodorant and
01:19:39
puts it on your desk they do no they put
01:19:41
it staff knows you have saky balls well
01:19:44
that's what's so funny they put it right
01:19:45
on the kitchen counter so as I walk
01:19:47
through the
01:19:49
everybody I grab it and I'm like who's
01:19:51
seen this bottle ah there it is what is
01:19:53
it there bottle going shaving
01:19:58
[Music]
01:20:02
Bal oh my God so how do you apply it is
01:20:06
it just a little dabble do you no I mean
01:20:08
you know it's not a spray it's
01:20:10
apparently an ointment sax it's an
01:20:12
ointment this is far too much
01:20:14
information yeah I'll try it don't I'll
01:20:18
try
01:20:18
it it'sing you know what I'm going to
01:20:21
give you my my
01:20:24
subscription it's got
01:20:29
a why not oh man use the promo code shth
01:20:33
for 10% off your use the promo code
01:20:35
dictator you get
01:20:38
10% you can never cancel but it's d i k
01:20:43
Tater dick Tater yeah use S promo
01:20:47
dictator get 10% off your ball deodorant
01:20:49
at manscape all right freeberg it's your
01:20:52
turn to to shine no not ball deodorant
01:20:54
we wanted to talk about micro Plastics a
01:20:57
study came out it's terrifying we've
01:20:59
known Plastics have been terrible for
01:21:00
years obvious turned into some sort of
01:21:03
political discourse with straws and
01:21:04
everything but Plastics are horrible we
01:21:06
shouldn't be using them but this study
01:21:08
confirms a bunch about drinking
01:21:10
microplastics educate us on this study
01:21:13
that everybody's talking about right now
01:21:16
Dr freedberg I I wouldn't start with the
01:21:18
statement that Plastics are
01:21:20
awful Plastics are
01:21:23
polymers which are long chains of what
01:21:25
are called monomers this is hydrogen
01:21:27
carbon and oxygen that comes together to
01:21:29
form these specific molecules and then
01:21:32
we can kind of bake them into crystall
01:21:34
likee structures and the reason the
01:21:36
Plastic industry took off is because it
01:21:38
ended up being very cheap to create
01:21:40
materials that we could turn into chairs
01:21:42
that we could turn into bottles to move
01:21:43
stuff around a lot of applications
01:21:45
everything from solar photovoltaics to
01:21:48
our computers to our laptops to our
01:21:50
phones everything has some form of these
01:21:53
polymers in it the polymers that are
01:21:56
commonly used for making uh bottles that
01:21:59
we consume beverages out of are a pet uh
01:22:02
Plastics these pet Plastics are made
01:22:04
from a combination of natural gas and
01:22:07
crude oil so we kind of have a
01:22:09
production process where we get the
01:22:11
carbon hydrogen and oxygen that's
01:22:13
naturally found in natural gas and crude
01:22:15
oil convert it into these molecules that
01:22:18
we turn into long chains and we turn
01:22:19
them into bottles and fill those bottles
01:22:21
and they end up being
01:22:23
a lower carbon footprint than using
01:22:26
glass about 5x the carbon footprint to
01:22:30
use glass instead of plastic in in um in
01:22:33
making a bottle to store stuff and move
01:22:35
liquids around 40% cheaper and a lot of
01:22:39
other kind of reasons why the industry
01:22:41
and the world adopted Plastics not just
01:22:43
for bottle beverages but for other
01:22:45
applications so in Bottle beverages
01:22:47
because these are polymers there're
01:22:49
these long chains of little molecules
01:22:50
that are stuck together some of those
01:22:53
chains break and then some of those
01:22:55
little chunks of those molecules end up
01:22:56
floating around in the liquid that we're
01:22:59
consuming and what this study did that
01:23:02
kind of highlighted a a set of data that
01:23:04
hadn't really been studied well before
01:23:06
is they used a form of spectroscopy so
01:23:09
kind of a multispectral light system
01:23:11
Shining Light at different wavelengths
01:23:13
on the liquid in a bottle in a plastic
01:23:15
bottle to figure out how many of these
01:23:17
little plastic particles there were in
01:23:19
the liquid and in doing that they found
01:23:21
that there was on the
01:23:23
order of
01:23:24
10,000 little plastic particles per
01:23:27
liter of water or per liter of soda or
01:23:29
drink or Gatorade or whatever the
01:23:31
beverage is that you're drinking the
01:23:33
real question then is well how risky is
01:23:34
that so if you look at a lot of the the
01:23:37
health agency studies the kind of well
01:23:41
adopted and and well researched efforts
01:23:43
on is there toxicity associated with pet
01:23:46
Plastics on its own they find that
01:23:48
there's very little genotoxicity or no
01:23:50
genotoxicity meaning it do doesn't
01:23:51
change your DNA there's no
01:23:53
carcinogenicity so it doesn't cause
01:23:55
cancer but there are other studies
01:23:57
recently that have shown different
01:23:59
mechanisms by which these little tiny
01:24:01
microplastics might end up in your cells
01:24:04
because they absorb into your body and
01:24:06
they're small enough that they can cross
01:24:07
into barriers they can get into your
01:24:09
brain they can get into your cells when
01:24:11
they're in your cells there are other
01:24:12
mechanistic studies that are done in a
01:24:14
Petri dish as opposed to being studied
01:24:16
in the body where they've demonstrated
01:24:18
that they could actually disrupt the
01:24:19
function of organel like mitochondria
01:24:21
endo plasmic reticulum so all these
01:24:23
little things that operate in your cell
01:24:25
they can cause irritation they can
01:24:26
trigger chemicals to be produced that
01:24:28
might cause allergies that might cause
01:24:30
inflammation and so on and so forth so
01:24:33
while the general molecule of pet itself
01:24:36
isn't known or shown in any way to cause
01:24:38
cancer or to cause changes in your DNA
01:24:41
there are other mechanisms by which
01:24:42
these little tiny Plastics might be
01:24:44
disrupting cellular function might be
01:24:46
causing other health issues and that's
01:24:48
now going to open up a big area of
01:24:50
research that that's going to be
01:24:52
predicated I think on the fact that this
01:24:54
study now shows that there are thousands
01:24:56
hundreds of thousands of little pieces
01:24:58
of tiny plastic in these plastic bottles
01:25:00
that we're drinking water and soda and
01:25:02
juice from that are getting into our
01:25:03
body and into ourselves
01:25:05
240,000 little pieces in in the average
01:25:08
one liter plastic bottle it's a pretty
01:25:11
scary statistic when you hear that small
01:25:13
enough to cross the blood brain barrier
01:25:16
right and in rats and mice they've shown
01:25:20
that these little microplastics can
01:25:21
actually accumulate in the brain if they
01:25:23
consume enough of them now the reason
01:25:25
this hasn't been well understood or
01:25:26
studied in the past is we kind of look
01:25:28
at the aggregate amount of plastic
01:25:30
that's in a liquid and it's like oh the
01:25:31
amount is so small it doesn't matter but
01:25:33
when you start to look at how small
01:25:35
these little pieces of plastic are and
01:25:38
add them up the cumulative effect over
01:25:40
time that they can actually cross into
01:25:42
cells cross the blood B brain barrier
01:25:44
maybe are not getting removed from the
01:25:45
body that's opening up a whole lot of
01:25:47
research because there's no easy way to
01:25:49
just scan a body and say is there
01:25:50
plastic in it how much plastic is there
01:25:52
because there isn't a good chemical
01:25:53
signature for it and what these guys did
01:25:55
is they used light to look in the liquid
01:25:58
to find the Plastics which we can't
01:26:00
easily do in the body today so freberg
01:26:01
are you going to drink plastic bottle
01:26:02
water anymore I'm not okay Jamal I've
01:26:06
already stopped this started for me
01:26:08
about four months ago my wife basically
01:26:10
said we're getting rid of all plastic
01:26:12
and at first I really pushed back and
01:26:14
I'm like this is crazy and she just kept
01:26:17
talking to me about it and showing me
01:26:18
all this data and yeah about a month ago
01:26:21
I would say I switch so now I use glass
01:26:24
and a cff like this yeah much better we
01:26:27
got rid of all of the plastic in our in
01:26:29
our house in the gym no more bottles
01:26:32
it's wasteful anyway like why not if you
01:26:33
have beautiful filtered water at home
01:26:35
put it in a craft sure but the the scary
01:26:37
thing I mean it's a little bit more
01:26:40
inconvenient I'll be honest with you but
01:26:41
it is very scary and I think that it
01:26:44
does alter the
01:26:45
phenotype of the human body over time
01:26:48
and I think you would have to be insane
01:26:51
to bet against against that and I
01:26:53
suspect when you look at the rates of
01:26:55
depression and autism and Alzheimer's
01:26:57
and Dementia and autoimmune diseases
01:26:59
Crohn's rheumatoid arthritis to think
01:27:02
that all of these environmental factors
01:27:05
have no impact I think is is taking a
01:27:07
very scary bet here's what I do I buy
01:27:10
these glass bottles on Amazon you know
01:27:13
two or three cases of them I have the
01:27:14
best water filter system at home we fill
01:27:17
them we put them in the refrigerator and
01:27:19
we haven't bought plastic in years uh
01:27:22
sacks wow in years in years only because
01:27:25
I care about the environment because I'm
01:27:27
a good person good for you good for you
01:27:30
Jason I'll also say like that that
01:27:31
application is a pretty small like I
01:27:34
think on the order if I'm right 80% of
01:27:36
bottled beverages are drunk outside the
01:27:38
home so people are buying stuff at
01:27:41
convenience stores at gas stations at
01:27:43
markets taking them with them to work
01:27:45
and that's how a lot of plastic bottles
01:27:47
are consumed by way remember the US is
01:27:50
such a small percentage of the global
01:27:52
population you go to Africa you go to
01:27:53
Brazil you go to China there isn't a
01:27:56
great like people don't have these
01:27:57
amenities that we have in our upper and
01:27:59
middle class America that plastic
01:28:01
bottles have provided access to products
01:28:04
that consumers around the world
01:28:05
otherwise wouldn't be able to afford so
01:28:07
there's a reason they exist but by the
01:28:09
way I I also want to just be really
01:28:10
clear there isn't conclusive evidence or
01:28:12
science that shows these plastic micro
01:28:15
particles or nanoparticles are causing
01:28:17
these health effects there's certainly a
01:28:19
lot of questions that it brings on well
01:28:21
what is the cumulative effect of these
01:28:22
little things getting into sales do they
01:28:24
get into sales what they do when they're
01:28:26
why would anybody bet that it's zero
01:28:28
right so that's theide right well the
01:28:30
upside is that people get to access
01:28:32
cheap beverages on the street that
01:28:33
otherwise people that are living on
01:28:34
$113,000 a year that can buy a you know
01:28:37
a plastic soda for 25 cents you can also
01:28:41
buy can though yeah so that's that's
01:28:44
definitely an alternative they're a
01:28:45
little more expensive generally plastic
01:28:46
just became the cheapest container Sachs
01:28:48
your
01:28:50
thoughts sorry all right guys I stepped
01:28:52
out to get a a drink here did I miss
01:28:55
anything it would be better if you had
01:28:57
put a straw in your water bottle that we
01:29:01
drinking now I understand your level of
01:29:05
depression was causing it sax just
01:29:08
killing those Arrow water bottles yeah
01:29:10
did I miss something that was a science
01:29:12
cor I stepped
01:29:13
out also I I use uh these beautiful
01:29:16
contigos I think some people use yetis
01:29:18
or other kind of things and uh I
01:29:20
actually carry them with me only because
01:29:22
I try to like think about the
01:29:24
environment just the amount of plastic
01:29:26
being created I don't know if you've
01:29:28
seen this but like you go to Whole Foods
01:29:29
now or you go to any supermarket and you
01:29:32
see this wall of salads freberg like
01:29:35
this is unconscionable like the we're
01:29:38
literally giving people salad in a giant
01:29:41
plastic box first yeah let me just say a
01:29:45
couple things about this because there's
01:29:46
this conception that this is just awful
01:29:48
awful awful but Plastics there there is
01:29:51
a degradation of these pets when they're
01:29:53
exposed to
01:29:54
sunlight there's a recycling system that
01:29:57
many of much of this material ends up in
01:29:59
much of it yeah I I think that's
01:30:02
actually correct not a lot but what
01:30:03
would the alternative be right so the
01:30:04
alternative is you put in a glass thing
01:30:06
and you charge people $15 for a couple
01:30:08
pieces of lettuce the reason the reason
01:30:10
plast the Plastic industry emerged is
01:30:12
because it provided a lowcost way to
01:30:14
transport materials and that we're we're
01:30:16
all very wealthy so we have to just step
01:30:18
outside of our bubble for a second and
01:30:20
recognize that most people you know the
01:30:22
the dollar difference is a huge
01:30:24
difference for most consumers they're
01:30:25
not going to make that dollar leap so
01:30:27
you know the fact that Plastics emerged
01:30:29
is to support a consumer Market that's
01:30:31
grown up all over the world yeah but how
01:30:33
how does this make sense look at these
01:30:34
bananas just as an example to give
01:30:36
people an idea bananas already come with
01:30:38
a case called czy and they're literally
01:30:42
wrapping bananas in plastic now and you
01:30:45
know this is where regulation makes
01:30:47
sense there must be a there must be a
01:30:49
gas in here or something cuz they're
01:30:50
trying to keep the bananas from going
01:30:52
bad that's why put in I want to shout
01:30:53
out like this is where I think
01:30:55
regulations actually do work France
01:30:58
Spain a lot of countries now are just
01:31:00
saying you know what for fruits and
01:31:01
vegetables like yeah don't put them in
01:31:03
plastic please we're not going to allow
01:31:04
you to do that and and I think I'm not
01:31:07
pro plastic by the way I'm not drinking
01:31:08
plastic from plastic bottles but we have
01:31:10
to be cognizant of where this industry
01:31:12
emerged from what the science says about
01:31:14
it like I I don't want to just be
01:31:16
flipping plastic what doing in the
01:31:19
oceans freeberg is unconscionable like
01:31:22
this is not like a do good or thing it's
01:31:23
just there's no reason that we need to
01:31:26
have Plastics as a should be I'll give
01:31:29
you some good optimism around this
01:31:32
there's a lot of efforts right now to
01:31:34
develop microbes that can actually
01:31:35
biodegrade these pet Plastics so there's
01:31:39
so we're engineering these microbes that
01:31:41
will produce enzymes these are little
01:31:43
bacteria that'll produce enzymes those
01:31:45
enzymes can then be made in the plastic
01:31:48
itself so then the plastic will
01:31:50
biodegrade within a year or after you
01:31:52
use it so there's a lot of this kind of
01:31:54
effort on how do you make naturally
01:31:55
biodegrading Plastics using biosources
01:31:57
and biological molecules as part of the
01:31:59
production process and a lot of big
01:32:01
plastic um packaging companies and
01:32:04
Industrial biotech companies are
01:32:05
investing in this area this is where
01:32:07
collectivism can do good you know like
01:32:09
if we actually as a society say we want
01:32:12
to do sustainable packaging like because
01:32:14
of the tragedy of the commons like
01:32:15
you're saying freeberg because it's
01:32:17
cheaper capitalism like there's no floor
01:32:19
here you know to stop people from doing
01:32:22
this uh and stop from using Plastics
01:32:24
unnecessarily like wrapping bananas Etc
01:32:27
all right listen this been an amazing
01:32:28
episode of the Allin
01:32:30
podcast for the dictator wish me luck
01:32:33
today boys wish me luck use the promo
01:32:35
code dick we'll be following the live
01:32:37
stream on the chat following the live
01:32:39
stream use promo code dick to get 20%
01:32:41
off your ball deodorant hey what do you
01:32:43
guys think about actually like running
01:32:45
some poker tournaments through the year
01:32:47
called Allin 100% that would be super
01:32:50
fun no 100% I think we could replace the
01:32:53
WSOP pretty quick I mean it' be pretty
01:32:57
rep the WSOP I'm not kidding we we have
01:32:59
Phil helmuth on our Squad I think
01:33:01
Jason's right and but not just helth I
01:33:03
think you could get all the pros because
01:33:04
I think the problem is like those
01:33:06
championships have been so watered down
01:33:08
right there's 52 of them just in Vegas
01:33:12
in June and July and then now you have
01:33:14
like these circuit rings so that there's
01:33:16
bracelets and rings and then there's the
01:33:18
European one then there's this one
01:33:20
there's the Bahamas
01:33:22
you you can't have I think in order to
01:33:25
be a world champion can you really have
01:33:27
like 150 winners a year sax are you
01:33:30
bored with hold him well I'll I'll play
01:33:32
with you guys but yeah I'm kind of bored
01:33:34
with it yeah I played a tournament
01:33:36
yesterday Big O 37 players I came in
01:33:39
first I don't know if you play B where
01:33:41
did you play I had a speaking gig
01:33:43
yesterday in La after the speaking gig I
01:33:45
was going to the airport I had a little
01:33:46
time and I just stopped by Hollywood
01:33:48
Park where stop you did
01:33:52
I wanted to see the new one you're the
01:33:54
best I don't know there's nothing more
01:33:57
boring playing a tournament with people
01:33:59
you don't know oh it was great it was
01:34:01
great there was like a fight tourament
01:34:03
last forever I mean I did the WSOP a
01:34:05
couple of times and you know I think I
01:34:06
lasted like three days it's a long time
01:34:09
to be playing poker table people I got
01:34:11
to the final table and they wanted to
01:34:14
chop and I was the short stack I was
01:34:15
like well you know my flights in for in
01:34:17
a couple hours I'd rather not Chop and
01:34:19
this woman like I got in a fight at the
01:34:21
casino almost this woman was wearing a
01:34:23
mask and she goes this mother effer
01:34:27
won't chop and I said ma'am I it's my
01:34:33
option to not shop Madam Madam I said
01:34:36
ma'am Madam whatever they them and she
01:34:39
went crazy and the floor came over said
01:34:41
ma'am you have to sit down she called me
01:34:43
a mother fer twice to my
01:34:45
face you went on to win and I was the
01:34:47
short stack and I went on to win the
01:34:49
tournament I kid you not how much did
01:34:51
you win 1 1400 bucks
01:34:54
so the hourly rate on that you make like
01:34:56
$14 an hour it was $100 buying so yeah
01:34:59
it was uh 200 bucks an hour but here's
01:35:01
what happened so I had this guy
01:35:02
massively you play for seven hours six
01:35:04
hours maybe it was awesome it was great
01:35:06
I was I had the time of my life it was
01:35:08
the first time I played in a tournament
01:35:10
for like since we played the one drop
01:35:12
that time I haven't played in a
01:35:13
tournament since then it was so much fun
01:35:17
Jason goes from playing the 100K buy to
01:35:19
the $100 buer I had a time of my life
01:35:22
because I've never played Big O before
01:35:24
it's where you have five cards and it
01:35:26
was high low it was so Dynamic and fun
01:35:28
oh yeah yeah big oh yeah yeah big is so
01:35:30
fun pole cards and it's high low so I I
01:35:33
was like I'll learn Big O I've never
01:35:35
I've literally not played one orbit of
01:35:36
Big O I won the tournament it was
01:35:38
awesome and so then it's me and this one
01:35:41
guy and you know I've got like I've got
01:35:43
him like three to one or whatever and uh
01:35:46
he's like listen I got to go please I
01:35:48
got my kids I was like no problem I'll
01:35:49
chop it with you if we take 400 off the
01:35:52
top for the dealers the dealer cries she
01:35:54
was like what and I was like yeah just
01:35:56
I'll chop it with you evenly and so I
01:35:58
won and I I just chopped it up and gave
01:36:00
a big tip what what did you did you get
01:36:02
like a a certificate or like I think
01:36:04
they put you on the website or something
01:36:05
like that like for let's it up yeah it's
01:36:07
on the poker Classic website that I I uh
01:36:09
or I don't know if it's called the poker
01:36:10
Classic whatever it is but my point is
01:36:12
we would have a great tournament we do
01:36:14
each of the games each of us gets a free
01:36:16
roll into the game and then everybody
01:36:18
else Buys in I like it saak do you like
01:36:19
PLO or you just like chestn
01:36:22
no I like hold them but I'm just saying
01:36:24
I wouldn't play with a bunch of
01:36:26
strangers you know I like playing with
01:36:27
friends you know but to goof off and
01:36:30
have fun yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
01:36:32
like sitting the problem with
01:36:33
tournaments you RSVP to my game to show
01:36:36
up at six show at 8:30 yeah and then
01:36:39
listen to yourself on the Pod and then
01:36:41
leave yeah he's editing the Pod at the
01:36:43
table there's a lot of things you can do
01:36:44
while at a poker game U you can watch
01:36:47
your podcast you can edit your podcast
01:36:49
for the Sultan of science the king of
01:36:52
beep David freeberg and yeah definitely
01:36:55
the Rainman himself we're live from
01:36:57
Davos we'll see you next year byebye
01:36:59
wait did you give me the shout out am I
01:37:01
I did for the dictator himself use the
01:37:03
promoe chairman dict no chairman dict
01:37:05
dictator chairman dictator use the promo
01:37:08
code chair man or dick to get 10 20 or
01:37:12
30% off can somebody from manscape
01:37:15
please let me cancel please
01:37:18
please it's like 10 bucks a month it's
01:37:20
just bucks a month I'll give you the
01:37:22
money I just don't want to get I want to
01:37:25
be able to C I'll pay you 10 bucks a
01:37:26
month to not send
01:37:30
deodorant let your winners
01:37:32
ride Rainman
01:37:37
David and instead we open source it to
01:37:39
the fans and they've just gone crazy
01:37:41
with it love you queen
01:37:44
[Music]
01:37:49
of best these
01:37:52
are that's my dog taking
01:37:57
driveways oh man my will meet me at we
01:38:01
should all just get a room and just have
01:38:03
one big huge orgy cuz they're all this
01:38:04
useless it's like this like sexual
01:38:06
tension that they just need to
01:38:08
release
01:38:13
your we need to get merch
01:38:20
our
01:38:21
[Music]
01:38:24
I'm going all
01:38:26
[Music]
01:38:27
in

Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 60
    Most shocking
  • 60
    Best overall

Episode Highlights

  • Davos: A Shift in Perception
    The World Economic Forum has shifted from a status symbol to a source of embarrassment.
    “It's almost like embarrassing now that you are associating yourself with the elite cabal.”
    @ 06m 01s
    January 19, 2024
  • Milei's Powerful Speech
    Javier Milei's speech at Davos challenges collectivism and advocates for free markets.
    “The West is in Jeopardy.”
    @ 17m 43s
    January 19, 2024
  • Lack of Competition in Aviation
    The airline industry is dominated by a duopoly, leading to safety and accountability issues.
    “In the US airline industry, it's a monopoly of one company.”
    @ 22m 36s
    January 19, 2024
  • 737 Max Safety Issues
    The Boeing 737 Max has faced serious safety concerns, including a recent door incident.
    “On January 5th, the door blew off of a Boeing 737 Max.”
    @ 24m 34s
    January 19, 2024
  • The Importance of Entry Price
    Entry price is crucial in real estate investments; it determines profitability.
    “Entry price matters.”
    @ 42m 32s
    January 19, 2024
  • Understanding Investment Mistakes
    Investors often confuse tech-enabled businesses with pure tech companies, leading to mistakes.
    “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.”
    @ 49m 46s
    January 19, 2024
  • The Rule of 40 in SaaS
    For SaaS companies, a combination of operating margin and growth rate should ideally equal 40.
    “You could have a SaaS business with a 20% operating margin and a 20% growth rate and that would hit the rule of 40.”
    @ 59m 42s
    January 19, 2024
  • Streaming Service Subscriber Trends
    Disney+ peaked at 164 million subscribers but has since dropped to 150 million, raising questions about sustainability.
    “Disney+ took off like a massive rocket but has seen a significant drop in subscribers.”
    @ 01h 01m 35s
    January 19, 2024
  • Streaming Wars: The Churn Dilemma
    Streaming services face significant churn rates, forcing them to constantly reacquire subscribers.
    “They have to basically turn their entire membership base one and a half times to tread water.”
    @ 01h 03m 41s
    January 19, 2024
  • Subscription Services Frustration
    Navigating subscription services can be a nightmare, especially when trying to cancel.
    “You can't get out every time I try to get out they pull me back in.”
    @ 01h 19m 29s
    January 19, 2024
  • Microplastics in Beverages
    A study reveals alarming amounts of microplastics in our drinks, raising health concerns.
    “It's a pretty scary statistic when you hear that small enough to cross the blood brain barrier.”
    @ 01h 25m 11s
    January 19, 2024
  • First Tournament in Years
    After a long break, I played in a tournament and had a blast!
    “I had the time of my life!”
    @ 01h 35m 06s
    January 19, 2024

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

  • Live Performance00:08
  • Government Intervention19:34
  • Experience Matters47:53
  • Rule of 4059:42
  • Streaming Overload1:02:51
  • Microplastics Awareness1:25:11
  • Big O Adventure1:35:22
  • Let Winners Ride1:37:32

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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