00:00:00
this is the most important learning from
this experience forget about the fiduciary
00:00:03
and the governance responsibility of
these companies whether they were good
00:00:06
or bad will be resolved over the next
couple of weeks and months i'm sure
00:00:09
as more information comes to light but what's
super interesting about what happened this week
00:00:14
and i think is the most impactful societally
over time um is that we're seeing this phenomena
00:00:20
where um individuals in aggregate can believe
something to be true and make it true and um
00:00:27
we saw this with tesla and i i don't think tesla
got this level of notoriety because it was such a
00:00:33
a longer playout cycle but elon you know was not
hitting numbers that people thought he was going
00:00:39
to hit margins production volume etc people were
shorting the stock but enough people believed in
00:00:45
the story that elon told about what he wanted the
future to look like that they bought the stock and
00:00:50
that gave him the ability to do shelf offerings
raise additional capital and ultimately build the
00:00:55
business and make it manifest in reality that he
said would happen and the same is true of bitcoin
00:01:01
and the same is true of trump and the same is
true of storming the capital in all of these cases
00:01:08
there was a belief in something and there was an
aggregation of individuals using social media as
00:01:13
a mechanism for sharing and talking and engaging
and creating a collective outcome that wouldn't
00:01:19
have happened through a centralized system or
centralized process and wouldn't have happened
00:01:24
in the traditional way where history defines the
future and i think that is what's so powerful
00:01:29
about what's happening right now um and we're
seeing it in financial markets but we're also
00:01:33
seeing it play out in politics and we're seeing it
play out in the real world um in a remarkable way
00:01:40
and it goes back to this notion that like a stock
is worth the underlying value of the company and
00:01:45
that that's not true people can dream a stock to
be anything as they did with tesla at the time
00:01:50
that people were buying tesla stock the historical
performance of that business was not what hedge
00:01:56
funds considered to be a you know a profitable
good business it shouldn't be worth anything
00:02:02
but the belief in what it could be is what drove
the value of that stock and ultimately that value
00:02:06
enabled that business to become true um and it's
just it's amazing to see it happening and i think
00:02:12
the counter which is really what makes this
so striking is the centralized institutions
00:02:17
that are trying to block this from happening and
um the shutting down of parlor and the shutting
00:02:22
down of robin hood trading are are equivalent
from my point of view um or at least equivalent
00:02:28
i think will be perceived to be equivalent broadly
which is if a group of people get together and try
00:02:33
and use an online service to make a change in the
world by sharing and talking with one another and
00:02:38
communicating a belief a collective belief and
that gets yanked away from them the institution
00:02:43
that has the ability to yank it away from them
is evil and it will force people to decentralize
00:02:48
and it will enable new ways of trading new
ways of communicating new ways of building
00:02:53
um and and that's the profound change that
i think this decade is going to realize and
00:02:56
we're just seeing it start now we talked about
decentralization and you know we all feel the
00:03:01
emotional response to the little guy getting
screwed by the big guy that controls the system
00:03:06
and we want to fight the system that's the basis
of every great movie it's worth highlighting
00:03:10
though that decentralization and what i would
kind of characterize as swarming behavior
00:03:15
uncontrolled swarming behavior can actually have
negative consequences and there's a reason systems
00:03:22
exist you know um when you put a bunch of people
in a room let's say you put 100 people in a room
00:03:26
and every time and someone says the word door and
every time you hear the word door you're supposed
00:03:30
to repeat it within 30 seconds the entire
room will be like deafening with everyone's
00:03:35
screaming door door and suddenly everyone will be
screaming it that's a feedback loop that occurs
00:03:39
in an uncontrolled social system and that's what's
occurred with gamestop and it's what occurred with
00:03:44
with bitcoin so there are as we've seen remarkable
outcomes when you allow systems to operate without
00:03:51
centralized control and without centralized brake
pads that that kind of slow them down or put in
00:03:56
place some rules and some obligations to how that
system operates the problem with decentralization
00:04:01
and this swarming approach uh to to resolution
where lots of people basically work together
00:04:07
individually is you end up with things like
cancel culture where um before a judge and jury
00:04:14
determines whether or not someone did something
wrong the community decides that person should be
00:04:18
punished and shuts them down in the real world and
their career and their life is ended and ruined
00:04:23
and we saw the same and we saw the same with
the capital riots you know people basically died
00:04:30
because of the swarm that occurred where this idea
that the there was fraud in the election became an
00:04:35
echoing deafening noise for these people and they
swarmed and killed people and the system by which
00:04:42
you can actually have vigorous debate and the
system by which you can actually have controls
00:04:47
and processes and judges and juries and trials
is what needs to be improved for this to work
00:04:53
otherwise people will go to decentralization and
you will have a lord of the flies moment that
00:04:58
engulfs civil society because the tools are there
today and so centralized systems can work but they
00:05:06
have to adapt and adapt quickly to be fair and
to enable and to not um discriminate uh otherwise
00:05:12
we're gonna see lord of the flies and we're gonna
see decentralization being the solution to getting
00:05:16
out of the system that's inhibiting us and we're
gonna end up having really [ __ ] ugly outcomes
