Making Sense - Sam Harris - #189

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris okay no housekeeping today today i'm

00:00:24.460 speaking with scott galloway scott is the new york times best-selling author of the four the hidden

00:00:30.700 dna of amazon apple facebook and google and a professor at new york university's stern school

00:00:37.020 of business he is a serial entrepreneur and has founded nine companies including l2 red envelope

00:00:45.520 and profit in 2012 he was named one of the world's 50 best business school professors by poets and

00:00:52.740 quants and his weekly youtube series winners and losers has generated tens of millions of views

00:00:58.280 he is the co-host of the pivot podcast with kara swisher and that's where i normally hear him i'm

00:01:05.440 a big fan of that podcast and his latest book is the algebra of happiness notes on the pursuit of

00:01:11.900 success love and meaning and it's a really fun and wise little book i highly recommend it also scott's

00:01:20.180 about to launch a new podcast titled the prof g show that's the letter g with scott galloway

00:01:27.180 and we get into many things here we talk mainly about the connection between wealth and happiness

00:01:33.920 so we cover the problem of wealth inequality the transfer of wealth from the young to the old

00:01:40.200 class warfare and democratic politics deficit spending means testing social security and then

00:01:47.880 we get into politics proper we talk about the bloomberg campaign and stop and frisk the breaking

00:01:54.460 up of big tech privacy absolutism whether you want anyone to ever get into your iphone and then we also

00:02:01.580 cover topics like meditation and mortality atheism etc if we sound a little behind the curve here

00:02:09.260 politically and with respect to the news that's because we are we recorded this podcast a couple of

00:02:15.980 weeks ago i would say about 90 of what we say still stands with respect to the presidential campaign

00:02:21.980 but a few things have changed mayor pete dropped out yesterday for instance and tomorrow is super

00:02:29.040 tuesday so depending on when you're listening to this the candidacy of michael bloomberg may seem more

00:02:35.560 or less plausible also we don't mention coronavirus which will seem a strange omission given that's pretty

00:02:43.580 much all anyone is talking about at the moment i'm sure i'll do a full episode on it before too long

00:02:49.480 i'm definitely paying attention to it anyway i'm a big fan of scott's as you'll hear and it was great

00:02:56.440 to talk to him so now i bring you scott galloway

00:03:00.080 i am here with scott galloway scott thanks for joining me sam there are so few things that impress my

00:03:10.260 colleagues about my professional achievements and this is one of them they practically closed the

00:03:14.820 office when they heard that i was going to be on your podcast you're you're a you're like a royalty

00:03:19.700 around here well uh it's a dubious distinction with your co-host kara swisher on the on the pivot

00:03:25.180 podcast not her not her let's be clear kara not that impressed not as much that's hilarious well well

00:03:31.840 first let me say i'm a huge fan of yours i love your book thanks for saying that the algebra of

00:03:36.060 happiness which we'll certainly talk about much of it and there's a great book of advice you give

00:03:41.200 to all comers and there's a lot of wisdom and a lot of candor in that book and it's a very easy read

00:03:46.480 so i recommend people pick it up and i'm also a huge fan of the podcast you do with kara the pivot

00:03:53.120 podcast despite the fact that she treats me with uh it seems to me a kind of a borderline unethical way

00:03:59.460 i mean i had i was on the other her other podcast recode and yeah recode it was not exactly a meeting of

00:04:04.140 the minds but there's something so likable about her even though she's you know her shtick is to be

00:04:09.540 truly irascible i find her i mean there's a kind of a strange form of charisma coming off her where

00:04:15.640 you know our conversation stayed to my eye totally on the rails even though it had every opportunity

00:04:21.940 to go off so i like her despite the fact that she beats me up i think people sense that the way i

00:04:27.640 describe her is she's an igloo you know kind of hard on the outside chewy and soft on the inside

00:04:32.060 i think sort of her i don't i don't know how to describe it her maternal or i think she's a

00:04:36.340 caring person and surrounds herself in this hard candy shell and i think people sense that or at

00:04:41.280 least that's been my experience i don't really know her well i know her i don't know her well but

00:04:44.820 yeah she's kind of you know tough on the outside but a softy on the inside anyways yeah gara swisher

00:04:50.840 everybody yeah well anyway so i do recommend your podcast you guys just go into tech kind of endlessly

00:04:56.000 and continually find interesting stuff to touch there which will hit a bit here because i as i

00:05:01.840 think you know i'm i share your concerns about what tech is doing to us at every level personally and

00:05:07.400 the level of fragmenting our society so listen there's so many places we could start here i think

00:05:13.020 before we dive in give me your potted bio here in terms of just how you view your place in the world

00:05:19.700 and and you're a professor at nyu business school so that's the i'll give you a proper intro

00:05:24.780 obviously at the top but how do you view what you're doing now because you're not

00:05:28.100 certainly not a normal academic in the way you're showing up yeah so i think of myself as a teacher

00:05:33.880 my identity or what i kind of lean on if you will or what i'm most proud of or hope is the business

00:05:40.860 card i carry the rest of my life is a professor a teacher i i you and i actually have something in

00:05:48.500 common in our background do you know what that is um you didn't do your research growing up in

00:05:54.260 california yeah we're bruins oh yeah so i'm i'm a i always say i'm a product of big government raised

00:06:01.540 by a single mother who lived and died a secretary and the regents of the university of california

00:06:06.000 and california taxpayers their vision and generosity are the reason i'm here speaking to you i went to

00:06:11.240 ucla got in with unremarkable grades and even worse sat and rewarded them with a 2.27 gpa

00:06:18.140 graduated lied about my grades a couple years at morgan stanley uc smiled on me a second time let me

00:06:24.960 into berkeley i went to the hospital business started a business my second year found a company

00:06:29.640 called profit a brand strategy firm grew that to about 400 people sold that i decided i didn't want

00:06:35.540 to be in the services business it was just a lot of planes very you know difficult lifestyle and then

00:06:40.780 in the late 90s decided to hit reset on my life uh got divorced left the bay area resigned from the

00:06:47.320 boards of all the companies i was on resigned from the company i'd started red envelope which had

00:06:51.120 recently gone public and moved to new york and decided you know blessed with a lot of opportunities

00:06:56.520 and options decided i wanted to teach and in 2002 joined the faculty of nyu and i've taught there for

00:07:02.500 the last 18 years and then to get in trouble and such that i can afford to live in manhattan and florida

00:07:09.640 with with uh two kids i do a bunch of other stuff i'm an entrepreneur i've started an analytics

00:07:15.120 company and a bunch of other stuff but that's that's the headline the headline news yeah you're

00:07:20.640 very edgy in the way you uh sound off on various topics you seem to be right up against the line of

00:07:26.940 what i would imagine to be the comfort zone of being inside academia does business school give you

00:07:32.260 a different physics of the university to work with have uh people tried to cancel you as an academic

00:07:38.620 or are you uncancelable on some level so i don't think i would survive i don't think i would have

00:07:45.380 survived at almost any university in any other department other than the business school at stern

00:07:50.440 because i got very fortunate we've had a couple deans who've sort of been my kevlar and and also the

00:07:57.220 trends have been in my favor and that is as schools have become more expensive kids have become more

00:08:03.880 demanding as they should be and they want people with practical domain expertise brought into the

00:08:08.940 classroom so if you will the markets kind of come to me but i've i'm not only you're being generous i

00:08:15.560 on a regular basis say stupid things and it creates headaches for the university sometimes they're right

00:08:22.620 so i'd like to think a lot of times i say right things that are provocative that other people are

00:08:26.460 thinking but sometimes i say stupid things and what you find at universities right now which were

00:08:30.740 initially supposed to be places where we were supposed to be charged with provoking people i

00:08:35.280 mean that was original it was initially the mission the reason they took a piece of land outside the

00:08:40.460 city center was to give people a safe place to be provocative but that's not the case at current

00:08:45.820 at universities right now and that is we are exceptionally tolerant and forgiving and understanding

00:08:51.680 of people who don't look like us but we're not especially tolerant of people who don't think like us

00:08:56.000 and even as someone who considers themselves a progressive i find that on a regular basis my

00:09:02.200 colleagues and students are looking to score virtue points and enter into this cancel culture which

00:09:09.000 you've talked a lot about but having said that i've always had whenever i've gotten in trouble

00:09:13.020 a dean peter henry or rugu sindaram step in and say this is the point we're here to create a dialogue

00:09:20.060 and you can't do that conflict and debate are part of progress so i actually feel really blessed that

00:09:27.660 i'm in an environment that mostly encourages this type of provocative thought but there's no getting

00:09:33.440 around it i know how my career ends i say something stupid facebook twitter grab it a journalist who i

00:09:40.120 pissed off the hundreds of vcs whose portfolios i have insulted circulated and i've got the wrong dean

00:09:47.660 and it's nascar and i'm sweet savage and i spin around in a ball of flames and it's all over

00:09:52.100 well you have at least uh some cover from your uh colleague there jonathan height who's been on the

00:09:57.540 podcast who's a great voice on that my role model yeah but his provocative statements are more data

00:10:02.800 driven and quite frankly more thoughtful but he he is a perfect example of i think a good countermeasure

00:10:08.860 to some of the the pc weirdness that's injected yeah that's been injected into universities yeah he's

00:10:16.060 really been great there are so many places we could launch from here i mean i think there are

00:10:21.680 sort of two lenses through which we come at these shared concerns i mean we have the the individual

00:10:27.160 level and we tend to think of questions like what does it mean to live a good life and then there's

00:10:34.000 a societal level where we're faced with the project of creating institutions and laws and social norms

00:10:40.940 that allow a maximum number of people to arrive at some kind of satisfying answer to that first

00:10:46.180 question let's start with on the topic of wealth and happiness how do you think about the connection

00:10:53.220 between wealth and happiness so there's a post marketing or my personal experience with money and

00:11:00.720 then there's the research around it and my personal experiences and this sounds crass but this is what i tell

00:11:06.300 my kids or my students at a very young age i made the connection between money and options and

00:11:11.920 happiness and it came to me because my mother was very sick and i remember coming home from grad school

00:11:17.020 and feeling uh emasculated and feeling like i wasn't able to take care of her to the extent i wanted

00:11:23.280 to because i didn't have any money and i decided that i was gonna that's when i kind of got my act

00:11:29.100 together and i started you know i spent most of my undergraduate years at ucla smoking pot and playing sports

00:11:34.220 and watching planet of the apes trilogies and i decided when my mom got sick that that was it you know

00:11:41.300 shit's getting real i i gotta get money and i've been very focused on economics and this notion that i just

00:11:48.260 found what i loved is not true i i i moved to where the puck was i've i've placed a lot of value on economic

00:11:55.160 security and so it's been very important for me the research shows that there is a correlation between

00:12:02.460 money and happiness that's the bad news the good news is that is that it tops out and once you get

00:12:07.440 to a point of affording housing good schools for your kids take a vacation absorb an economic shock

00:12:12.980 which you know is 100 grand in ohio and 800 grand a year and in la or or new york it's supposed you

00:12:19.820 know happiness tops out now you don't get any less happier the research shows that the cartoon of a

00:12:24.260 billionaire being really unhappy is not really that they're no less happier but they're no happier than

00:12:28.580 millionaires but money has been an enormous driver for me and i find that when wealthy people tell

00:12:35.080 you to follow their passion it's because they're already rich and that in a capitalist society more

00:12:40.620 money means more opportunity for your children better health care and a greater selection set of mates

00:12:46.000 which are all wonderful things so yeah i've been very focused on economics i'm finally at a point

00:12:52.300 where i can pursue stuff that doesn't impact that and i'm in i'm enjoying economic security but it's

00:13:00.860 always been a it's i've been howling in the money storm for a long time it depends on how you assess

00:13:08.020 happiness actually that seminal paper that many people drew this punchline from that happiness tops

00:13:14.840 out at i think the figure was seventy five thousand dollars a year in that study there's a famous paper by

00:13:20.480 danny kahneman and angus deaton so the moment to moment estimation of one's own well-being is the

00:13:28.960 thing that tops out this in danny's more recent language this is the experiencing self versus the

00:13:36.180 remembered self but the remembered self is the self you're talking to when you ask someone how satisfied

00:13:40.700 they are with their lives and you're asking them to give a global and of necessity retrospective

00:13:47.560 evaluation of just how good it is to be them that global measure of life satisfaction doesn't really

00:13:54.500 top out it keeps going the richer you get and that's something that you know people are kind of

00:14:00.280 reluctant to remember that part of the study but that's just you know that was the unhappy punchline

00:14:06.360 there it's not surprising that that would be so especially if you're living in anything like an

00:14:12.600 ethical way with your wealth you're given opportunities to meet the people you want to

00:14:17.900 meet and support the causes you want to support and so there's philanthropy and there's the biggest

00:14:23.080 thing i think is you know the equation between money and time i mean the fact that you can hire people to

00:14:28.820 do the things you don't want to do anymore or you can hire people who are better at doing the things

00:14:32.860 that you are not great at it's not a surprise that that correlates with satisfaction in many ways

00:14:39.760 yeah it's it's interesting i'm i was just inner thinking you know bezos looks pretty happy right

00:14:44.820 and and one thing i admire about him and there's a lot of things i don't admire about him is that

00:14:49.320 he's living out loud he's buying he's assembling a series of man caves and he's unashamed about it

00:14:54.520 and you know yeah he does not trying to live below the radar and good for him it's his money do what he

00:15:00.000 wants whatever whatever makes him happy you know it's what what i have found as you get older that

00:15:07.660 it's important i think it's important to realize there's a great analogy that money is the ink in

00:15:13.340 your pen you need a certain amount and it can write different chapters it can make certain chapters

00:15:17.400 burn brighter but it's sort of not your story if you will and and also the relationship between

00:15:26.020 money and being rich my father gets 58 000 a year from his royal navy pension social security and he

00:15:33.640 spends about 50 so at the age of 89 he's still saving money and he's very happy and i have a lot

00:15:37.980 of friends who are masters of the universe investment bankers making several million bucks a year but

00:15:43.160 between their ex-wife their kids alimony house in the hamptons helicopters out to you know nantucket

00:15:51.240 they spend all of it and they have a lot of stress in their lives so you know the court depends what

00:15:56.980 you mean by how much money you make how much money you have where you live but yeah i think about i

00:16:04.480 think about that stuff a lot and i still feel money stress and i have a lot more than i ever had in my

00:16:09.180 life and i always want more it's kind of a you know it's definitely a weirdness and i find that

00:16:14.880 wealthy people like to pretend that we don't think about money and the reality is wealthy people i know

00:16:20.800 don't have to think about it from a stress level but one of the reasons they're wealthier is they

00:16:26.480 they are absolutely conscious of it on a variety of dimensions and that's one of the reasons they're

00:16:32.720 wealthy yeah so what do you think about that psychological process of moving the goalpost with

00:16:39.340 respect to what one feels one needs in terms of wealth right and this is a i'm sure a very common

00:16:46.960 phenomenon in the circles you run in and most of us have experienced this personally as you begin to

00:16:53.160 succeed the illusion that you are going to arrive at some place of real emotional serenity around

00:17:00.800 the amount of money you have it tends to be a mirage where you get there and then you have a set of

00:17:08.760 other comparisons you make between yourself and others your tastes grow to fill the shape of the

00:17:15.000 incoming resources and you know it sounds like your father has escaped this dynamic but how often do

00:17:22.280 you see someone get to their number and really feel that they've arrived and they're basically done

00:17:29.440 stressing about money on every level i don't know anybody i know a lot of people including a couple

00:17:35.860 a couple billionaires and i don't know anybody that doesn't stress it's a different type of stress

00:17:42.320 the stress moves from economic to maintaining relevance but the scorecard for their relevance

00:17:47.180 is their ability to increase their wealth i don't i don't know anyone that's there that's truly

00:17:53.560 self-actualized and maybe that's a testament or a lack thereof of the people i'm hanging out with but

00:18:01.520 the majority of the people i hang out with have money stress but it's on a higher level and what you

00:18:06.740 have in capitalism that's in some ways so incredible is that capitalism keeps creating

00:18:12.300 incentives i remember the first time i i backpacked around europe and i went to hungary and i exchanged

00:18:17.880 a hundred dollars and i got this pile of money called you know forints which were the currency was

00:18:23.080 crashing and i remember thinking i'm rich and i went into hungary and you really there was nothing

00:18:26.800 to buy there was no incentive to be rich and in the u.s look at what happens you want to take your

00:18:32.900 kids to harry potter it's a hundred bucks the new harry potter ride that means you're waiting in line

00:18:37.800 for three hours so for 135 dollars you get a fast pass and it's only 20 minutes and then you can go

00:18:42.940 to the vip tour which is 3 500 for five people to have some very high eq attractive person take you

00:18:49.540 around and not only cut the line but take you on the employee entrance and then all you have to do

00:18:53.960 is give the operator a hand signal so you can ride do the ride several times when i was growing up it

00:18:58.920 was coach and first class and they invented business class now there's a certain type of

00:19:05.200 first class on emirates where you get in a car and they take you to the plane so you don't have to

00:19:09.140 associate or make eye contact with the other passengers and then above that there's private

00:19:14.220 aviation now i mean the capitalist economy keeps segmenting offerings such that there's always more

00:19:21.480 and more incentive if you give a certain amount of money to nyu langone and i'm sure ucla has this

00:19:27.680 you get a phone number and when anything comes up with you or in your family and i don't have this

00:19:33.140 you call them and there's just a different level of health care and attention that you get from the

00:19:38.600 from the medical professionals so it's hard a capitalist society is great at constantly creating

00:19:44.240 and incentivizing grit and innovation and the want for more but i don't my appetite's not sated is yours

00:19:51.600 i mean on one level it is i mean in terms of my perception of risk there's definitely a as you say

00:19:58.680 the stress changes its character but the truth is i came to it pretty late i feel like i've done many

00:20:05.880 things backwards in my life and i'm kind of a reluctant entrepreneur that i've just kind of stumbled

00:20:12.300 into digital media and had to figure out how to make it work and i found that process fascinating

00:20:18.500 but yeah it's you know happily it's working and i you know i have all the benefits of it's working

00:20:23.720 but money is something that that i spend a fair amount of time thinking about and it does cause

00:20:29.220 stress but it is a different kind of stress because it's working it's not it not working would be worth

00:20:33.940 stress but i worry a lot about the problem of wealth inequality now and i've been worried about it for

00:20:40.000 you know ever since the financial crisis in 2008 and i published a few essays on it i think in 2009 and

00:20:47.880 2010 but it seems like it's now shaping up to be the big political problem of this election cycle and

00:20:56.880 our time it's a problem obviously for individuals but it's a problem for culture too and for the

00:21:02.880 segmentation of society and the the insulation of wealthy people from everybody else as you just

00:21:08.980 described obviously i want to talk to you about you know your political intuitions here how do you

00:21:13.640 view wealth inequality as the long lever that everyone's going to pull here in the next nine

00:21:19.520 months to determine what happens in our presidential election i mean it seems like the democratic party is

00:21:24.840 at least the warren and sanders wing of it is gearing up for um something like class warfare and

00:21:32.100 you know if bloomberg fails to become the nominee it will be in large measure because the democratic

00:21:39.300 party couldn't stomach having a billionaire appear to buy his way onto the platform there's obviously a

00:21:46.520 lot more here in terms of just what the economic stratification of our society is doing to culture

00:21:51.900 but how are you viewing the collective concern around wealth now yeah well i think you're on to

00:21:57.160 something and the fact that you started writing about it in 2009 2010 means you're ahead of the curve

00:22:01.480 and like it distinct to the moral you know the moral argument around this or the just ethical

00:22:06.320 concerns around having some comity of man and or even remembering your past people credit their

00:22:13.080 character and their grit you know for their success and then they they credit the markets for their

00:22:18.160 failures and you know i have no such delusions getting access to free education coming of age in an

00:22:25.660 era of processing power explosion in the 90s and 90s san francisco being a white heterosexual male born in

00:22:33.100 1964 meant that the majority of the rooms you walked into for the next 50 years you were right

00:22:38.640 so a series of moons lined up to take some talent and some grit i have both of those things i'm not a

00:22:45.580 modest person and fling me into the you know into the stratosphere and when i when i would fail give

00:22:50.840 me another opportunity and opportunity after opportunity so you a look back and think okay it just

00:22:56.860 seems like a nod to future generations to try and ensure some of those dynamics are still alive

00:23:01.420 and when i got out of berkeley my total tuition at the high school of business was a thousand dollars

00:23:06.820 a year and i got a job at a where i decided to start my own business but i don't offer it a hundred

00:23:10.700 k a year so a hundred to one yeah now tuition at berkeley is sixty eight thousand dollars and the average

00:23:16.740 salary is 140 so it's two to one the house my first house in potrero hill was 285 thousand dollars

00:23:23.500 relatively so 2.85 times my freshman or my first year starting salary now our average house is 1.4 million

00:23:29.880 and they're making 100 so it's gone from 2.8 to 10 and i i think that everything we do in our society

00:23:37.300 is largely a transfer of wealth systematic organized transfer of wealth from the young to the old i think

00:23:48.260 the the largest socialist program in the world social security a trillion dollars greater than the

00:23:52.620 european and american defense budgets reallocated from working age people to a cohort that is the

00:23:58.520 wealthiest generation in the history of mankind and people say well it's done its job it's it's

00:24:04.040 pretty much solved poverty among seniors you know they say somewhere between 29 and 39 percent of

00:24:09.160 seniors would be in poverty without social security now it's nine and one but you know one in three kids

00:24:14.020 lives live in food insecure households that doesn't mean that we drop three hundred dollars worth of

00:24:18.160 groceries off at every household per week with kids because we realize that's inefficient and whether

00:24:24.240 it's escalating costs of housing because of artificially suppressed interest rates whether

00:24:31.020 it's the greed or the loss of script among myself and my colleagues at universities thinking we're

00:24:37.600 luxury goods not public servants and not expanding freshman class seats as quickly as population is

00:24:42.440 expanding so we can brag about how hard it is to get into these schools and continue to raise prices

00:24:48.480 everything i see almost everything is nothing but an elegant transfer of wealth from young people to baby

00:24:56.180 boomers who have totally co-opted in my opinion government and are transferring and sucking wealth from

00:25:03.180 from future i mean government's going to take in three and a half trillion dollars in tax revenues they're

00:25:08.260 going to spend four and a half you talk about money and in an eloquent way that money is really just the

00:25:14.620 transfer of time and work from one entity to another and it seems when we're racking up trillion dollar

00:25:20.160 deficits what we've decided is in order to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy such that we can

00:25:25.280 borrow time with loved ones from our children and our grandchildren i think it's a moral issue that that's

00:25:31.800 the bad news we have dramatic wealth inequality the good news is it almost always self-corrects but the

00:25:38.080 further bad news is those mechanisms of self-correction are usually war famine or revolution and i think we're in the

00:25:43.360 midst of a soft revolution it's weird how it's happening but i think we're in the midst of a soft

00:25:47.600 revolution around income inequality it seems to me that the ethics here are really clear i mean you

00:25:53.380 mentioned in your own case you don't have any illusions about how lucky you've been and you know i feel that

00:25:59.300 really clearly myself and it's clear that it extends to everything i mean any talent a person can notice in

00:26:09.120 themselves and they imagine you know correctly that it's the proximate cause of their success i mean

00:26:13.500 so you know intelligence say or grit or a desire to succeed right where is this coming from no one

00:26:20.740 invented themselves right and if you make the best use of your gifts you didn't pick your gifts and

00:26:28.520 you're not responsible for the fact that you were given the opportunities you were given that you were

00:26:33.200 born into a society that wasn't plunged into a civil war on your fourth birthday and your ability

00:26:39.620 to make use of the opportunities you're given again is coming from some set of causes that you didn't

00:26:47.980 author and so what we see everywhere is i mean this is not an argument for not making you know effort

00:26:54.060 it's not an argument against the necessity of effort and working hard but a person's ability to work hard

00:27:00.320 again is something that is the product of genes and environment and even if you're going to smuggle

00:27:06.200 in an immortal soul into the clockwork no one picked their soul right if you believe in souls you certainly

00:27:11.720 don't believe that you created your own so at no point do you see someone truly deeply lay title to the

00:27:20.580 claim that they were self-made and this is a this is a point that on some level obama made a while ago

00:27:28.520 i guess we're at the end of his presidency and was derided for it on the right and he said you know

00:27:33.300 you didn't build that you're talking about infrastructure that you know every technocrat

00:27:37.500 and billionaire has benefited from but it seems to me that the only moral position to have

00:27:44.040 recognizing how the general shape of this thing which is that there's a massive disparity between good

00:27:50.460 and bad luck in this world is that you should want to cancel the worst forms of that disparity and

00:27:57.820 figure out how can we continually make the floor get higher and higher for the least lucky among us

00:28:05.040 so then agreeing with that one wonders what the solutions are here you know the proffered solution

00:28:11.760 from someone like warren or sanders now is a a wealth tax you know i mean they give it the top spin of

00:28:18.960 wealth in excess of you know however many millions of dollars is not only egregiously unfair for anyone to

00:28:25.860 have acquired there was in fact no ethical way for them to acquire it in the first place at least one

00:28:32.160 of them if not both of them i saw recirculate a tweet saying basically there's just no way to become

00:28:37.600 a billionaire without having been a fraud or inheriting it there's no noble way to acquire that

00:28:43.440 much wealth which is clearly untrue right i mean you mentioned harry potter it's like does anyone think

00:28:48.300 that jk rowling really got her wealth by a starkly unethical means she's being rewarded for the the

00:28:55.460 amount of joy people have taken in her creative output so what do you see as a remedy here my wealth

00:29:01.640 tax seems fairly unworkable from my point of view but what should we do here when admitting that at a

00:29:08.260 certain point inequality will become something that even the wealthiest among us won't be able to stomach

00:29:13.920 yeah well you said a lot that i feel like we're going to need a bigger boat yeah so let's start

00:29:19.280 i think a lot of it i think you came you're more self-aware at a younger age than i was i i found

00:29:24.700 that i was constantly reminding people as i did at the outset of your show that i was born and raised

00:29:29.340 by a single immigrant mother and that's my way of trying to impress people by saying that my success

00:29:34.120 was 100 due to me and i deserve everything i have and i think that where we start is with our kids

00:29:42.440 and that is to ensure that and i find that this kind of third base mentality is so rampant in the

00:29:49.880 bay area where i came from where a vc thinks he's a genius in changing the world because he invested

00:29:55.420 in the c round of pinterest and not friendster that this someone just got incredibly lucky and

00:30:00.080 his or her parents managed to get them into stanford and what do you know his or her parents are very

00:30:04.460 wealthy and went to stanford and the thing that kind of the the thing that really brought it home

00:30:11.440 for me was born in 1964 white heterosexual male was like and born in southern california was winning

00:30:19.820 the lottery he came into a great university system that was free he came into a professional environment

00:30:26.400 in the 90s in san francisco where more wealth was created in a seven mile radius of sfo international

00:30:31.400 from 92 to 99 and been created in europe since world war ii you you had you had discrimination

00:30:38.660 you made up 22 of the american populace but 97 of all venture funding went to that profile

00:30:45.900 yeah you know in the 90s i raised a ton of money for my startups and i didn't know a single woman who

00:30:51.240 raised more than a million dollars and what's embarrassing is it seemed normal you didn't question

00:30:56.540 it you didn't say well something's something's all fucked up here you just you didn't it seemed

00:31:01.600 normal that oh they'd made their own choices right it wasn't it wasn't a it wasn't a maybe it wasn't a

00:31:07.700 feature but it wasn't a bug and the thing that really i'd heard about my freshman roommate from the

00:31:13.580 fraternity at ucla was born a white male in 1964 in california but his dna my dna was heterosexual

00:31:22.980 his dna was homosexual and he ended up dying you know alone of aids and so to not you know to not

00:31:31.880 recognize just how much of your success is not your fault yeah i've come to that later in life

00:31:41.200 yeah so let's get out of that solutions so i find we're having a knee-jerk gag reflex when

00:31:47.940 when senator sanders accuses pete budigis of taking money from 42 billionaires as if that's a

00:31:54.720 bad thing i see that as a feature the cartoon of billionaires being mean people or bad people i

00:32:01.880 generally find and i know a lot of billionaires that they're good decent people that in general

00:32:06.980 to be very successful in business it helps to be ethical it helps to be a good person it helps to

00:32:12.960 invest in relationships people want those people to win and the notion that it's bad you know i i buy

00:32:20.020 into the notion that billionaires inherently are no better than the rest of us but i'm almost positive

00:32:25.400 they're no worse so this notion that they've done something wrong and meanwhile these senators have had

00:32:33.160 a lot of opportunity to try and pass laws that create a more equitable tax structure and they have

00:32:37.600 failed to do so so what frustrates me about the current environment in the democratic presidential

00:32:42.360 race is we seem to be bringing purity tests to a to a gunfight i mean what what is the point of that

00:32:51.420 i believe this comedian larry wilford summarized it perfectly and he said why don't we just give all

00:32:58.140 democrats a hall pass on racism for the next nine months and kick the racist out of office yeah and

00:33:05.820 the notion that but for example a wealth tax they've tried that in france and then the wealthiest

00:33:11.780 man in europe moved to moved to belgium so maybe it's a good idea maybe maybe it's a bad idea but first

00:33:18.280 maybe we just start with figuring out a way that amazon that walmart pays 70 billion in corporate income

00:33:23.220 taxes and amazon pays two over the last 10 years meanwhile amazon is out of the value of walmart in a

00:33:28.080 three-month period maybe we just start with kind of more equitable corporate income taxes maybe we start

00:33:34.440 with okay if the wealthiest man in the world effectively doesn't pay taxes because he can

00:33:38.840 borrow wealth borrow money against his stock holdings paying 1.8 percent on margin to jp morgan

00:33:44.640 thereby never really triggering a capital gains event you know maybe we start there maybe we start with

00:33:50.560 this really fucked up notion that money is more noble than sweat why on earth have we decided

00:33:57.240 that the income that muscle and sweat current income should be taxed at a higher rate than the

00:34:04.380 money that money makes capital gains why wouldn't we go back to where reagan was and just have

00:34:09.480 one tax rate on money that you make and if you don't if you're worth over a certain amount of money and

00:34:16.720 accreting it there's an alternative minimum tax if you're a corporation you can't do these crazy

00:34:21.720 inversions or tax avoidance it feels it seems to me that washington has been overrun

00:34:27.240 and corporations tax lawyers are smarter than our ir you know our irs but the notion that we're

00:34:35.140 going to demonize billionaires the notion that we have to have 70 and 80 percent taxes there's a lot

00:34:41.400 of there's a lot of sunlight in between those two places and i worry that the democrats out of you

00:34:47.440 know this this kind of purity or notion of what is the right thing to do are showing up with lanterns

00:34:52.440 pitchforks you know that doesn't work they can't robin hood billion billionaires are the most mobile

00:34:57.900 people in the world if they want to start a wealth tax it sounds crazy like two percent doesn't sound

00:35:02.440 like a lot you tax someone two percent a year that probably means every 15 to 20 years you're cutting

00:35:07.700 their wealth in half right right and one of the reasons these people are wealthy is they think long

00:35:12.320 term they're going to move they're going to leave and a lot of countries want them so i find in

00:35:19.580 i don't know if i'm it sounds like you've been following the political the political content it's

00:35:23.360 no accident that the people the candidates who are getting the most grief and getting the greatest

00:35:28.800 level of accusation and grief about racism are ones with executive level backgrounds the mayor of

00:35:34.920 southbound mayor pete and the mayor of new york mayor bloomberg because they actually had to make

00:35:41.120 decisions on the ground that involve crime and firing people and real-time decisions they weren't just

00:35:45.640 voting and pontificating they had to make difficult decisions and there's no way to run a city for

00:35:51.500 eight years much less 12 years and not make not make decisions that are going to age poorly and the

00:35:57.280 notion that we're in this this this cancel culture where we're calling each other racist on the on the

00:36:02.920 democratic side that's just fucking stupid i mean we're going to disarm unilaterally against

00:36:09.040 republicans right now by by by convincing america that we're racist anyways yeah yeah i want to go

00:36:16.140 into that swamp with you uh full on in a second but um this issue with just how to mitigate the

00:36:22.300 problem of inequality seems to me to be genuinely difficult the solutions proffered i mean something

00:36:27.780 like a wealth tax seems like it first of all it creates all of this this overhead in terms of

00:36:32.940 the work that has to be done to enforce compliance with it and just to you know estimate people's

00:36:39.180 wealth and get them to pay these taxes it would be all these edge cases where you know you'll have

00:36:44.460 people who are wealthy by normal standards because they live in you know an expensive house that

00:36:49.340 they've been in for 20 years but you know if you're trying to claw back their wealth at a certain

00:36:54.680 point you're going to have some 80 year old person who used to be wealthy forced to sell her house

00:36:59.680 because she doesn't have the liquid assets to pay the wealth tax you know and no one who's urging

00:37:05.640 us to have a wealth tax in the first place is going to shed a tear over this but it's just a crazy

00:37:09.440 mechanism to claw it back when you could have something like a value-added tax or just as you say just

00:37:16.880 follow you know warren buffett's admonition and tax him more than his assistant is taxed what do you

00:37:23.660 think about ubi as a solution here to create some tide that is raising all boats

00:37:29.620 you know i think it's a compelling idea it's it's kind of an interesting idea from leveling up

00:37:34.700 sort of say okay everyone's going to level up but i don't at the end of the i think we should be i

00:37:40.620 think there are simpler more effective less expensive solutions senator michael bennett bennett proposed

00:37:47.420 expanding the earned the child's earned income tax credit that most studies show would take 40 to 60

00:37:54.800 percent of kids out of poverty and be 40 billion instead of a trillion or be dramatically less

00:37:59.940 expensive you know i think just truing up and making tax complexity favors the wealthy because

00:38:05.540 we have accountants i'm you know i paid i live in florida i paid 22.8 percent or 23.8 on long-term

00:38:12.680 capital gains if you start companies which is how i have generated the majority of my wealth the first

00:38:18.480 10 million dollars is tax-free if you hold on to the stock for longer it's 1202 passed by obama

00:38:23.600 there's no reason for that and they said well we want to incentivize our innovators i couldn't have

00:38:28.280 told you what tax rates were starting a business people start businesses because they don't have

00:38:32.120 any options there yeah or generally speaking we romanticize it the reality is i don't have the

00:38:36.860 skill set to be successful in the greatest wealth creation engine in history of mankind and that's the

00:38:40.780 u.s corporation they're incredible platforms but i don't i'm not emotionally secure enough to work

00:38:46.020 in a large corporation where other people have power over me i could just never handle that i didn't

00:38:51.820 have the self-awareness so i started companies and because we romanticize entrepreneurship entrepreneurs

00:38:58.080 when they sell their companies pay an effective tax rate usually of 17 or 18 percent whereas people who

00:39:03.940 are just working hard for companies in lower level positions and and trying to put their kids through

00:39:08.460 school pay 30 to 40 and in new york you know i mean we like to demonize all wealthy people if you're

00:39:13.460 making half a million dollars a year as a lawyer partner in a law firm in manhattan and you got two

00:39:18.760 kids you're probably paying an effective tax rate of 48 to 52 percent but if you own the law firm and or

00:39:26.580 if you figured out a way to turn your gains to sell shares in the law firm you pay 22.8 and then maybe

00:39:33.120 with the money you at some point move to texas or florida and avoid state and city taxes and and just you

00:39:40.620 make the jump to light speed so taxes are progressive until you hit a point where you can

00:39:45.720 get the majority of your income from capital gains and then you make the jump to light speed and your

00:39:49.520 tax rate plummets and we just have to decide do we want a progressive tax rate or not the idea of

00:39:54.700 coming in and violating a core tenant of western european and american economic and sociological and

00:40:01.580 political philosophy of private property that's a very powerful draw and even if it means some

00:40:06.920 inequity or but i think look backs where we show up and start robin hooding and saying all right you

00:40:12.040 pay taxes on that wealth at some point it's yours but we're going to show up and start taking it away

00:40:16.200 from you in the form of a wealth tax to me that sort of violates this basic norm of private property

00:40:21.660 that and now even illinois is saying there's a huge fiscal crisis coming with these states that

00:40:28.020 quite frankly aren't worth the taxes what sam where do you live california okay so california

00:40:32.400 particularly like another 11 another 11 or 12 percent a year is that is that about what it

00:40:36.960 costs on current income out there to live in california it'll be a sign of my white privilege

00:40:41.100 that i can't even give you an answer to that question so i think it's somewhere between 11 and

00:40:44.220 13 percent california is worth it i mean you wake up in february and it's 65 in and out burger the you

00:40:51.700 know the the highway pacific coast highway the opportunity to work at snap or or warner brothers or

00:41:00.800 facebook california is worth it manhattan is worth the 13 the the density of creativity culture

00:41:07.660 opportunity here is worth the additional 13 is it worth it in evanston illinois is it worth it in

00:41:13.760 summit new jersey so you're having these fiscal crises in illinois and in jersey and connecticut

00:41:19.140 where people said i'm not going to pay the taxes of california and new york and not get the sunshine

00:41:24.700 and the opportunity and so there's this migration which is essentially driven by two things right low

00:41:29.380 taxes and sunshine so we're facing what will be a really interesting kind of fiscal crisis but

00:41:35.200 illinois is now talking about an exit tax which again is is reaching into people's private property

00:41:41.040 so i think there's a lot of solutions before we have what i'd call this gag reflex over correction

00:41:47.100 where we start demonizing wealthy people and i i worry that the majority of people in the u.s are

00:41:54.000 capitalists who believe in fair tax policy who believe in a progressive tax policy but don't

00:41:59.420 inherently want to demonize wealthy people they want to be them yeah they they aspire to be them

00:42:04.600 and i think that is where the democratic party right now is kind of coming up the tracks a little

00:42:08.200 bit yeah that that's a an interesting point politically i mean whatever the ethics is here

00:42:13.540 and i agree with you on the ethics it just seems like bad politics because so many people who will

00:42:18.700 never be not only will they not be billionaires or even meet billionaires they aspire to be

00:42:26.260 billionaires or at least aspire to achieve wealth such that they feel psychologically implicated in

00:42:34.340 this kind of overreach i forget what the statistic is something like you know 0.2 percent of society ever

00:42:41.220 has to pay an estate tax but a majority of people are against the estate tax or at least you know under

00:42:47.680 some description they're against it and so this aspirational relationship to wealth makes it

00:42:53.460 politically unwise for democrats to be striking a a note of class warfare here what it comes right

00:43:00.640 down to i believe in america that and one of the fundamental attempts of capitalism is you can't have

00:43:05.000 winners without you can't reward the winners without punishing the losers and that sounds harsh but i do

00:43:10.020 believe in america we are comfortable with winners and losers we're just not comfortable with the hunger

00:43:14.460 games yeah where a small group of people go on to live an amazing life and everyone else dies a

00:43:20.240 gruesome death we're we're comfortable with billionaires we're not comfortable barreling towards

00:43:25.300 a society with 350 million serfs serving three million lords you know we want economic opportunity we want

00:43:33.840 luck we want you know oper incentives dramatic incentives for people to get wealthy but we don't want a level

00:43:41.020 of income inequality where if the middle class goes away you can't have you're just going to stop

00:43:45.160 producing billionaires in the same frequency we produce them or millionaires if you don't have a

00:43:49.740 thriving middle class right we've going back to our tax policy four and a half trillion dollars

00:43:54.760 in tax expenditure government expenditures taking in three and a half trillion in revenue so trillion

00:43:59.220 dollar deficit you know deficit spending and debt spending can be a powerful part of growth you know

00:44:04.740 what are you investing in is the question yes they're your ceo if you're if if they're losing money

00:44:09.440 are we investing in technology no are we investing in our young people in subsidized education or trade

00:44:15.060 schools such that we have better human capital that makes our nation more competitive no are we

00:44:19.640 investing in infrastructure that would make a quality of life or opportunity to spend more time with our

00:44:24.820 kids or more efficiency no we've decided that our investment in the future is to invest in wealthy

00:44:30.900 people and and profitable organizations in the form of reduction in corporate income tax from 35 to 21

00:44:36.740 and reduction in income taxes that have largely accrued to the wealthy so there's some there is

00:44:44.400 some trickle down but the reality is middle class people spend most or all of their money and so

00:44:49.640 there's a greater multiplier effect so just surely from it seems like economic growth we'd want to

00:44:55.200 reinvest in middle class and from a corporation standpoint having served on boards we got this tax cut

00:45:00.620 what do we do with the money we bought back shares which took the share price up who owns 80 percent of

00:45:06.460 the shares in the united states the top 10 percent income earnings house household so again it's just

00:45:10.620 this this you know exponential upward spiral of the people who have made the jump to light speed

00:45:17.320 and and people know that the lottery is a bad business is that they may not win but their tickets

00:45:23.380 the winner and it's we were we are really moving towards this hunger games economy and i just think

00:45:29.720 there's a huge amount of daylight between what the senators warren and sanders are proposing and where

00:45:36.000 we are there's there's there's got to be room here for nuance and calibration what about means testing

00:45:42.220 social security you spoke about social security as being this this wealth transfer i mean we want the

00:45:47.800 transfer in the sense that it's taking the tragedy out of living too long and dying abjectly poor

00:45:56.100 i mean that was the genius of social security but if it's just going to people who don't in fact

00:46:01.180 need it this is just going to be viewed as a an unethical clawback of wealth that they assumed was their

00:46:07.500 own i think you and i are probably in violent agreement here i think they call it social security tax not

00:46:12.020 the social security pension fund because it's a tax and people say well it's unfair i've been paying into

00:46:16.620 it people on social security are taking out somewhere between three and six x what they

00:46:21.140 actually put in right and for the majority of people receiving social security it's not to save

00:46:25.500 them from poverty it's a it's the most expensive trillion dollar upgrade from carnival to princess cruises

00:46:30.680 it makes their life nicer nicer but it's not keeping them out of poverty i believe we should have

00:46:36.420 greater assistance through social security or another program for the people for seniors who are in

00:46:42.080 poverty a decent judge of a society is to look at our seniors who are in poverty and say what are we

00:46:48.400 doing to make give them a more dignified life i think that is a decent metric for a society where we

00:46:54.220 have gone as we use that noble cause as a means of transferring more the greatest transfer in the

00:47:00.200 history of mankind goes to the wealthiest cohort in the history of mankind that policy has not kept up

00:47:05.020 with demographics everyone's living into their 80s 90s the fastest growing demographic group in

00:47:10.100 america are centenarians we're all going to know someone over the age of 100 so the notion that we're

00:47:15.260 not massively people are working longer increasing the age means testing it is ridiculous my father's

00:47:21.820 getting social security you and i sam should not be eligible for social security it is a tax we should

00:47:27.500 bring people out of poverty but the reason why we have so many young people embracing socialism

00:47:32.140 socialism is it's sort of a it really is it's a battle of nomenclature you and i are the beneficiaries

00:47:38.000 of socialism we got free education i don't know when when you went to ucla but the notion of canceling

00:47:43.580 one and a half trillion dollars of student debt which seems ridiculous is basically young people just

00:47:47.840 saying you know scott and sam i want the same deal on education you had i i don't have student debt

00:47:53.740 because tuition for me undergrad at ucla and graduate school at berkeley was a total my total tuition

00:48:00.380 undergrad and grad in five years at undergrad see above smoking dope watching planet the apes trilogy

00:48:05.660 my total tuition was seven thousand dollars and then they see this transfer of wealth to seniors so

00:48:12.240 we've had a socialist economy for a long time it's just young people want to call it that we called it

00:48:18.560 something else we called it the university of california we call it social security but if we don't

00:48:25.820 you know it has gotten so in my opinion so systematic i mean even if it's white coaches or

00:48:33.680 or or or or universities or the head of the nc2a making four and a half million dollars a year such

00:48:38.960 that amazing young athletes don't make any money and calling it the purity of the game that again is a

00:48:46.160 transfer of wealth from young people to old people look at millennial home ownership look at artificially

00:48:50.840 depressing interest rates to make ensure that asset prices are inflated you know who needs a

00:48:56.960 correction in stock markets in the in the property market young people the reason i'm financially

00:49:02.280 secure is i got to buy amazon at 60 bucks a share the reason i'm financially secure is after 2008 i

00:49:08.460 looked at apple and i said okay apple at 40 bucks a share you're a good buy i'm going in we have this

00:49:15.160 notion this kind of predetermined gestalt that keeping asset prices high is our number one priority

00:49:21.600 no it's not young people need an opportunity to get into assets at a relatively decent price and

00:49:28.280 markets should fall and rise to kind of the natural levels we shouldn't be issuing a trillion dollars in

00:49:33.780 debt again pulling forward prosperity to artificially inflate the assets that are predominantly owned by

00:49:40.140 guess what old people yeah okay so let's said a lot you know no it's good it's let's look at the

00:49:47.300 political implications of this because politics is on everyone's mind and you know i'm trying to pick

00:49:52.360 my moments between here and november because it just cannot subsume all or even most of my bandwidth

00:49:59.660 it just gets too boring but you know with you i think it's very interesting to consider what this

00:50:04.460 landscape looks like let's start with bloomberg because he's someone who is getting you know

00:50:10.600 there's at least an attempt to defenestrate him based on a few things he said as mayor which may

00:50:18.000 have been politically uh you know imprudent or you know too candid by half but in many respects not

00:50:25.000 obviously wrong and the arguments against him really seem to be pseudo arguments and so i just at the time

00:50:31.660 we're recording this this is a fairly vivid scandal or pseudo scandal in journalism now but the democrats

00:50:38.720 are pilloring him over remarks he made that were just unearthed from the the aspen institute in 2015

00:50:47.140 when he was talking about stop and frisk and i have the quote here so this is bloomberg in 2015 after

00:50:52.580 he was mayor he was i believe mayor for 11 years of new york city and that the policy for those who

00:50:59.060 don't recall it it's been since more or less phased out but the cops were stationed more in

00:51:05.860 minority areas and stopping and frisking people looking for guns mostly and you know crime rates

00:51:13.780 plummeted there's some uncertainty about the causal factor there but it was not irrational at the time

00:51:18.860 to think that stop and frisk was part of the policy that was succeeding and causing crime rates to

00:51:24.560 plummet anyway so bloomberg said 95 of your murders and murder victims fit one mo you can just take the

00:51:32.220 description and xerox it and pass it out to all the cops they are male minorities 15 to 25 that's true

00:51:38.620 in new york that's true in virtually every city in america and that's where the real crime is you've got

00:51:43.840 to get the guns out of the hands of the people who are getting killed so you want to spend the money

00:51:47.900 on a lot of cops in the streets put those cops where the crime is which means minority neighborhoods

00:51:53.400 and then in a subsequent interview he said one newspaper and one news service they just keep

00:51:59.480 saying oh it's a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group that may be but it's not

00:52:04.340 a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the crime

00:52:08.980 in that case incidentally i think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little it's

00:52:15.120 exactly the reverse of what they're saying i don't know where they went to school but they certainly

00:52:18.740 didn't take a math course or a logic course all right so he's clearly making it difficult for

00:52:22.660 himself there you know in hindsight politically but the reality is all the data i've ever read about

00:52:28.560 violent crime support what he's saying here that the disproportionate number of perpetrators and the

00:52:36.040 disproportionate number of victims are coming from minority communities and what these communities

00:52:42.040 suffer from it's not too much policing it's been the wrong type of policing it's there's too much

00:52:47.580 policing around petty crime and not enough policing around you know solving murders and how to get that

00:52:56.020 right is a difficult question but the people who are saying that the only way to have arrived at a stop

00:53:01.660 and frisk policy was born of racism and not caring about the disparities of the way in which crime

00:53:09.520 victimizes communities that's just clearly untrue a completely rational and compassionate attempt to

00:53:16.720 mitigate violent crime could have given you this policy and it seems to me that the thing the democratic

00:53:22.060 party has to be able to admit at this point in order to talk anything like sense on this topic is that

00:53:29.080 it's a difficult social problem that you know the mayor was right in his diagnosis that you could win

00:53:36.000 money all day long in a casino that would allow you to place a bet on the age range and gender and

00:53:43.580 minority identity of a perpetrator of a violent crime in new york city you know it's not the ultra

00:53:50.380 orthodox jews who are mugging people in new york city but that's a politically toxic thing to make salient

00:53:57.060 and the remedy of stop and frisk became politically toxic and probably wasn't worth doing in hindsight

00:54:04.580 and he could have figured that out earlier than he did perhaps but the fact that he's being castigated

00:54:09.160 on the left as a racist monster just seems to be you know emblematic of all of the the miscalibrations

00:54:16.320 in our politics on the left that the wokeness is ensuring and it seems above all a recipe for giving

00:54:23.200 us four more years of trump in the end yeah 100 percent you i thought you spoke

00:54:27.060 eloquently about and you were you showed some i thought some real backbone and i i don't think i

00:54:31.840 had would have had the courage to say this without you saying it first when i go through tsa i want

00:54:37.320 them profiling people yeah and if there's some recent young man from pakistan coming through tsa

00:54:43.740 i want a different set of security standards for him other than some 85 year old latino grandmother

00:54:49.140 i want a different set of standards and that's profiling and i understand the i understand the indignance

00:54:55.620 around it i understand the dangers around it but i uh you know i i think the situation warrants it and

00:55:02.360 i was in new york during stop and frisk and i remember a lot of some national outrage about it

00:55:08.380 but there was i think a feeling and first off is it is a white guy who lives in soho who's never been

00:55:14.820 thrown up against a wall and violated like that i can't fully empathize with what that does to young

00:55:19.480 men who are innocently and there were a lot of people who were stopped and frisked who just shouldn't

00:55:23.840 have been over and over and it creates sort of this victim slash criminal mentality i get it it

00:55:27.700 hasn't aged well it was probably the wrong thing but i remember back in the time reading about it

00:55:32.920 in the new york times and them saying that the communities that had the greatest damage levied

00:55:37.920 upon them from crime were these communities and this was an attempt to to reduce the crime that was

00:55:45.000 holding these communities back and the reason why mayor bloomberg is picking up endorsements

00:55:52.100 from black leaders around the nation the reason why mayor bloomberg has gone up one percent in every

00:56:00.640 national poll every 72 hours since he got in the race versus and everyone says always a billionaire

00:56:07.320 tom steyer's never busted through one percent and you know the guy i was supported michael bennett

00:56:14.820 i love michael bennett he was my man school superintendent understands the economy worked

00:56:20.900 for a private equity firm a senator that was seen as somebody who could work across the aisle went out

00:56:26.400 of his way to never personally attack anybody i just thought he's our man got no traction that's the

00:56:32.720 reality and where i am and the reason i've i'm now supporting mayor bloomberg is that i think we as a

00:56:41.080 democratic party have one moral imperative and that's to get a bigoted dangerous and stupid man

00:56:48.240 out of office that's it those are my top three priorities and the way we're going to get there

00:56:52.800 is with someone with relevant experience someone who has an on the ground you know understanding of

00:56:58.260 politics and how to win elections and somebody who is worth 60 billion dollars that can bring shock

00:57:04.040 and awe to this campaign because the dnc has eight million dollars the republican committee is going

00:57:09.040 to raise you know donald trump is going to is going to put a price on ambassadorships hey i've got the

00:57:14.400 doj in my back pocket would you like them in your back pocket for the next four years that's 25 million

00:57:19.560 you want to be ambassador to spain that's 10 million ambassador to the bahamas that's 3 million

00:57:23.900 he's going to raise a billion dollars overnight there's this illusion that democrats

00:57:27.820 understand online better than than republicans that is a myth they understand it better than us

00:57:33.200 already working on it if we don't bring in somebody with massive resources and quite frankly

00:57:40.260 that a lot of the stuff about stop and frisk i think it helps them with the core constituents we

00:57:45.160 we need and that is moderates you have to turn out two cohorts to win this election you have to turn

00:57:50.880 out your base which hillary wasn't able to do i think donald trump is going to turn out our base for

00:57:55.020 us i think people are genuinely scared that this individual has absolutely no empathy for them and is

00:58:01.700 willing it is willing to ignore their needs and run rough shot over their rights and i think he he is

00:58:08.660 turning them out so the the race i believe is going to be won or lost for democrats and by the way the

00:58:14.380 good money's on trump right now because the number of times we've kicked a president out mid-cycled

00:58:18.720 without a recession is zero so the good money's on him being re-elected the only shot we have

00:58:24.360 is to win over almost every independent independents are moderates moderates their top priorities aren't

00:58:31.460 the black community moderates aren't trying to trying to figure out who's the most swole woke

00:58:37.140 candidate so i think you're going to see a massive pivot to the center as democrats realize okay this is

00:58:44.220 about getting a guy in office and all the people complaining about billionaires buying elections well

00:58:48.640 what the hell were you doing in senate how come you were unable to pass any sort of campaign finance

00:58:54.400 reform this is the world we live in we're going to need someone who's willing to come up do a trace

00:59:00.500 comma investment personally to go toe-to-toe with what you just know that trump's going to raise a ton

00:59:07.180 of money so anyways i'm all in on bloomberg would i like if if if we were if we were if we were at a

00:59:13.520 different point in our society might i'd be with someone else i think bernie's an inspiration

00:59:17.340 he loses 38 states it's socialism versus capitalism capitalism beats socialism in this economy seven

00:59:25.640 days and on sunday in my home state of florida they will position bernie sanders they'll just show

00:59:30.220 videos of him standing next to socialists fascists in southern america he's done in florida he loses a

00:59:35.620 swing state no problem elizabeth warren is i think i got incredible character strength intellectual

00:59:43.980 firepower she's she's declining i think amy klobuchar is an inspiration i like her as a

00:59:49.560 moderate i think mayor pete is fantastic all of them are out of money they're all literally going

00:59:53.800 to be out of breath coming into super tuesday and i was down in new orleans last week and i decided

00:59:59.960 you know this is how old i'm getting i decided to take a self-guided tour of the of the garden

01:00:04.520 district and go see the world war ii museum and there was a bloomberg office there and i walked in and it

01:00:09.000 was thriving and there were people in meetings showing powerpoint they are on the ground moving

01:00:13.940 so at this point if mitt romney ran for the democratic election and was going to have billions

01:00:19.020 of dollars i would i would vote for him and i'm not a fan of senator romney we have one imperative and

01:00:25.140 that's find the guy that will get trump out of office and for me that's mayor bloomberg so these

01:00:29.460 purity tests are just they're just ridiculous we're trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

01:00:34.300 missing it up you know never missing an opportunity miss an opportunity enough already black people i

01:00:40.100 believe in new york after spending 12 years with michael bloomberg would say that if rather than

01:00:45.360 focusing on a specific frame of the movie that is michael bloomberg the movie plays well he is an

01:00:50.920 empathetic decent man the black community will do better the black community communities of color

01:00:57.140 women will do better under a michael bloomberg administration he is a decent man who gets it

01:01:04.060 wrong but is willing to admit his mistakes and is an empathetic guy with an extraordinary

01:01:09.060 extraordinary nose for success and how to get things done i mean can you imagine managing all

01:01:13.480 the constituencies in new york he managed to thread the needle between police unions housing advocates

01:01:19.000 billionaires jp morgan right google wanting to open their campus here and those 12 years

01:01:24.740 were seen as incredibly incredibly robust years that included a crisis that we survived so

01:01:30.540 anyways i as you can tell you know i like mike i'm in and i think this this i'm hoping that this

01:01:37.340 bullshit purity test we've decided to you know stick a gun in our own mouth and then shoot our feet i'm

01:01:44.540 hoping we put the gun away and start aiming it across the aisle yeah but snatching defeat from the jaws

01:01:49.440 of victory have you heard this rumor i think it's now 48 hours old that bloomberg is or was

01:01:56.060 considering picking hillary as his running mate that's a head scratcher oh my god yeah i mean that

01:02:02.540 would that would be the stupidest political decision of our lifetime i think but i can't see him doing

01:02:07.420 that i just can't see him doing that i'm just so kind of freaked out about this i want the i want the

01:02:12.180 clearest blue line path yeah to the white house i'm with you there and everyone was you know there was

01:02:17.900 some there was some nonsense some people exit polls people saying oh i didn't know mayor pete was gay

01:02:23.800 give me my vote and the reality is if you look at the data america is less homophobic than it's ever

01:02:28.960 been we've made huge progress around that where we haven't made progress or as much progress is people

01:02:33.900 still have a problem with imagining a woman as president and we're also quite ageist we you know

01:02:39.820 we're being over the age of 75 is an issue so people have an easier time imagining a gay president

01:02:45.240 than they do imagining a female or a president or an individual going into their decade okay so an

01:02:52.080 adjacent concern here is what is tech doing to all of us and what's tech i've heard a lot of your

01:02:59.560 endlessly entertaining whinging on this topic and i and i have you know my own version of this and

01:03:04.700 i've spoken to people like tristan harris and the concern about the big four but i would probably put

01:03:11.240 i think as you do google and facebook out there as you know a greater concern than than apple and amazon

01:03:18.460 least in terms of what's happening to our um our information ecosphere their calls to break up big

01:03:25.340 tech obviously and well let's draw a narrow focus here let's let's talk about facebook for a second

01:03:30.740 because i i actually have a sure a personal ethical dilemma here so i have a meditation app which i'm very

01:03:38.600 happy with and people seem to be getting a lot of benefit from it and i'm i'm now tasked with how to

01:03:44.260 push that out into the world and um beyond just flogging the captive audience on this podcast

01:03:50.860 really the only way to push it out into the world you know to people who have not yet heard of it is

01:03:55.900 to advertise and i'm told the only reliable way to advertise these days is to buy ads on facebook and

01:04:03.520 instagram in terms of their targeting you know you're basically just burning up money in a in a

01:04:08.640 bonfire if you're advertising some other way but i share your concerns about the ethics of

01:04:15.240 this company and about the cavalier attitude they apparently have in witnessing the ruination of

01:04:22.280 our democracy based on their their use of attention driven economics so if you had a product that you know

01:04:31.120 i'm not spreading divisive political opinions i'm trying to put something out there that that i think is

01:04:36.240 really valuable for people but i have genuine misgivings cutting a check to facebook what do

01:04:44.060 you think what should i do so i believe that facebook's underlying business model is fueled by rage

01:04:50.660 and i also think it's sitting on top of that unbelievable rage machine that creates rage and

01:04:57.080 dissent among a population greater than the southern hemisphere plus india is controlled by a single

01:05:03.560 voter shareholder class owned by one individual who got his start building a website evaluating women

01:05:10.580 on their physical appearance screwed over his friends in college totally fucked over his best friend out

01:05:15.800 of school demonstrates all the characteristics of a sociopath and is the most dangerous person on the

01:05:22.080 planet and can't be removed from office potentially for another 60 or 70 years who's brought in an

01:05:28.200 individual to go on a charm tour and has paid her two billion dollars to wrap herself in a pink blanket

01:05:35.180 that delay and obfuscates the necessary regulation and scrutiny we've provided to other organizations

01:05:40.180 such that this platform can be weaponized by advertisers paying in rubles that suppress the turnout in key swing

01:05:46.460 districts electing an illegitimate president that puts people in the supreme court that every day

01:05:52.140 are chipping away at a woman's rights for you know sovereign domain over her own person and body i think

01:05:59.300 facebook is the most dangerous organization in the world if i were you i would a hundred percent

01:06:04.420 advertise on facebook and the reason why is my guess is you're not you're not a believer in coal but you turn

01:06:10.620 on your lights yeah and this is the issue if facebook is now a monopoly if you have a small business

01:06:16.980 you have no choice but to be on facebook or google who control two-thirds of digital marketing you're not

01:06:22.280 going to use digital marketing to build a business why don't you just say that's it no electricity for us

01:06:27.680 right the world is heating the majority of our too much of our electricity is coming from coal-fired plants

01:06:33.500 that's it no electricity at this business you have to be on facebook sam i own their stocks

01:06:39.160 i actually just sold facebook but i own their stocks because if you look at returns the last 10 years

01:06:45.660 somewhere between 22 and 33 percent i think of the smp's gains have been around six stocks it's the

01:06:53.160 four and then you add in netflix and microsoft and to ignore and to not invest in those companies

01:06:58.960 because of of you know moral issues and i respect people who decide to do that is to say i'm not going

01:07:05.540 to participate in the upside in our economy and i've always said if it's a choice between moral clarity

01:07:10.120 and my range rover i'm picking my range rover and i'm not i'm not proud of that but i think the

01:07:15.280 majority of people think that way people will make incremental rationalizations to make decisions

01:07:20.560 that create economic security for them and their families even if it results in small incremental

01:07:26.900 damage over the medium and the long term to the commonwealth and the reason we pay 23 cents on the

01:07:32.020 dollar to the u.s government is we want them to think long term for us the people at philip morris

01:07:37.800 weren't bad people but they continued to kill 500 000 people a year the people at general motors and

01:07:43.340 forward in the 50s and 60s that were pouring mercury into the rivers weren't bad people

01:07:46.840 but we have an fda we have an epa we have laws for a reason that they recognize these externalities

01:07:54.320 and they step in and for some reason with big tech or not for some reason they don't apply the same

01:07:59.520 scrutiny and level of scrutiny that every other organization has applied if we found out that your

01:08:04.820 podcast could be reverse engineered to an increase in self-harm among young girls we'd shut this shit down

01:08:10.860 right away you'd be out of business but not facebook and it all goes back to steve jobs in a society

01:08:17.520 where there's a as society become wealthier more educated there's the reliance on a super being and

01:08:22.500 church attendance goes down but that need for spiritual clarity and guides and mentors only increases

01:08:29.400 in step the innovators that command this god-like magic called technology to put a man on the moon

01:08:34.960 that arrested the aids virus that turned back hitler and these very charismatic people armed

01:08:40.960 with their 900 person pr teams and their lobbyists overrunning washington where the doj has been

01:08:45.620 emasculated the ftc is now flaccid where journalists have been cut in half but the number of pr executives

01:08:51.640 has gone up threefold creating a six to one ratio of bullshit spin to actual supervision or regulation

01:08:57.480 has resulted in private power co-opting the government as opposed to the government being a

01:09:03.040 countervailing force and the reality is we have a series of small number of companies that are aggregating

01:09:08.180 all the spoils while no one else can compete the categories growing fastest in our economy

01:09:13.560 tech hardware search social media e-commerce get the least seed funding because no one wants to compete

01:09:20.180 with a monopoly and so i don't think you break these guys up because they're necessarily evil i have a lot

01:09:25.120 of friends at these companies amazon is the largest recruiter out of my class i'm economically secure

01:09:29.800 because i invested in these companies but the one thing the government always gets right is antitrust

01:09:34.920 or typically there was huge arguments around not bringing at&t up they are the only ones with the

01:09:40.260 capital to make the requisite investments in hardline phones and sell bullshit we broke them up all of the

01:09:45.540 seven or the nine baby bells ten years later were all worth more than the original at&t we absolutely

01:09:50.520 need to go in there and oxygenate the economy get more venture capital more business startup more

01:09:55.380 taxation more employment the only person that typically loses the only stakeholder that loses

01:10:00.620 in a breakup is typically the ceo who wants to be sit on the iron throne of westeros just versus one of

01:10:07.520 the seven realms so it is time to oxygenate the economy i think regulation is important i think tim

01:10:13.900 wu is a gangster here tristan has done amazing work showing how they have leveraged addiction to move

01:10:19.120 further down our brain stem to get us i mean absolutely wed to these things i'm addicted to twitter

01:10:23.900 and it enrages me and depresses me and i'm 100 addicted to it but i can modulate it when my son

01:10:29.540 comes home and asks me to post his handstand on youtube and then we go to the beach and we're

01:10:35.040 boogie boarding and i see him say can we go home and i'm like why do you want to go home we're having

01:10:39.340 a great time he goes i want to see how many likes i got on youtube if you'd like to continue listening

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01:11:08.300 so

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01:11:21.500 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 02, 2020

#189 — Wealth & Happiness

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