The Most Fortunate are the Least Patriotic (with Scott Galloway)

Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark next level Sunday interview. I’m your host Tim Miller. I have the great Scott Galloway prop G with me. Been wanting to do this one for a long time. He’s the only guy that on podcasts.

I listened to him at one point o speed because he talks so fast, because he so much in that brain. And we just covered the gamut. This could have been three hours. Talk about higher education, AI, technology, TikTok, Little Politics, You’re really gonna enjoy it. He’s the host.

If you don’t know him, he’s the host of the pivot podcast with Cara Swisher. He has his own podcast, a ProG Pod. It’s more about tech and kind of business world. Stuff. He’s an author investor.

One of his big things right now is advocacy for, young men that are being left behind on, like, a range of issues, whether it’s test scores or employability, has super interesting thoughts on that. Stick around for prof g. We will be back on Wednesday. I think JBL will be back. I think we’ll have the whole gang back for you on Wednesday.

And, you know, you’re gonna like that one. So up next, Scott Gallay. First, our friends at acetongue. And that’s acid tongue, not acetone. To the gentleman on threads, and I’d question about that.

They have a new EP out. Check them out. We’ll see you soon.

Hello, and

welcome to the Bulwark level Sunday interview. I’m your host, Tim Miller. I’m here with great prof g. Scott Galloway. He’s the host of the pivot pod with Cara Swisher and the prof g pod.

Author of Adrift America. He’s not a bunch of boards. He’s an investor. He is a public thought leader on tech and business and parenting and politics and whatever care swisher’s interested in talking about each week. First question is for you is how many hours are there in a day on your planet?

Did you seem to have a lot happening?

Oh, at first, I’m good to be with you, Tim. I I’m boasting it. I get invited on a Secret Podcast, and I was like, oh, Bulwark. I like, I like those guys. So thanks for having me on.

You know what? People think I work a lot harder than I do. Greatness is in the agency of others. People think when they see my no mercy, no malice, newsletter or they hear my pods. I think it’s me in my basement just working around the clock.

Propti Media is twelve people. I’ve been fortunate enough where I started enough companies where I have sort of a go to group of people, where we can kind of finish each other sentences. But I work forty to fifty hours a week. Maybe. Maybe.

And I used to Bulwark. My guess is Tim, you’re at that age. We’re trying to, you know, kill it. And established economic security, which probably means you’re working a lot more than that. I don’t work that hard.

I used to work very, very hard, but no, I don’t I don’t work nearly as hard as as you would believe.

Well, that’s impressive. And I like how you got the newsletter drop in there too. You know, I guess I still forgot something. Okay. Well, I wanna start I’m sure there’s somebody like me.

Our producer Jonathan is just talking about, yeah, you know, I think he’s a stalker of yours and knows your whole life story, but I don’t think that’ll be true for everybody that, listens to the Bulwark. And so I just wanna start with that. Like for me, I had no idea who you were or anything about you. And then all of a sudden you were like ubiquitous in my life. I’m not really sure how that happened.

That kind of is a, I think, is a trade of our modern internet culture in some ways. So Why don’t you give folks just like a little backstory before we kinda can run through a bunch of topics?

Sure. So raised by a single mother who lived and died of secretary, the generosity and vision of California taxpayers in the Reinterest University of California saved my ass. I got to go to UCLA when it was four hundred dollars a quarter and had a seventy six percent admissions rate. I got a two point two seven GPA. And with that, Berkeley decided to let me in for graduate school.

I started a strategy firm in my second year business school called profit. That’s not It’d be

nice to be a boomer. You know,

boss, what you just said is so true and I’m I’m very aware of it. I really am. It’s easy to credit your grit and your character for your success. I had Gail force fucking winds in my back, and I’m very cognizant of that. To be born, a wide heterosexual male in California in the mid sixties was to literally hit the fucking lottery.

And until the age of forty, my narrative was, look at me. I overcame all these obstacles, you know, check my shit out. And then as I got older, I realized I really did. Maybe I wasn’t a ninety nine point ninth percentile of luck, but I wasn’t a ninety ninth. And I and so I I do recognize that.

Started a strategy firm, sold that, then started an e commerce company called Red Envelope. That went public in two thousand and two. And then, at a young age, was blessed with, like, what do you wanna do with the rest of your life? What I thought was from economic security, although I lost it and then made it back and then lost it again. But, and I decided I wanted to teach.

So I joined the faculty at NYU, where I’ve been for a good twenty years now. And started a company called L2, a business intelligence firm, started coaching or counseling or advising hedge funds and VCs to co invest. That’s where I’ve kind of made real money. And now I’m kind of trying to think about what I wanna do the next twenty years and I wanna, you know, I’m very focused on issues around teen depression and struggling young men and just, you know, lead a really rewarding life. Have a wonderful family.

Get to do wonderful things, make good money. And I’m focused on things I’m really, really interested in.

So why the why the media pivot, pun was unintended there? I’d be like, you could do. You could not do this.

Mhmm.

Right? I mean, that, you know, it seems like you you could going more vacations or, you know, some more, but like there are other things that you could be doing. Like, is it, is it the passion? Is it that you like the feedback? Is it that you feel you can make a difference?

Like, what what is it? What was the motivation for the the, you know, going all in on doing media stuff?

Some of it’s narcissism. I get a huge amount of reward hearing my own voice and seeing my face on TV. It’s it’s very rewarding to

me. Same, hard, same.

It’s it’s the truth. It’s rewarding for me. I I’m desperate for other people’s affirmation. People seem especially impressed. When you’re in the media, I’m good at it.

I make a lot of money doing it. I’d like to think that I can have real reach and influence if I can write something to move somebody and then they hear a podcast, you really can. I don’t know if you found this, Tim, but The medium really is the message. If if a bike messenger mid biking, you know, out in the street high fives me. I know that he or she has seen a video.

If someone writes me this intense long email about the struggles with their kids, I know they’ve read a book or one of my newsletters. If someone comes up to me at a restaurant and just starts talking to me, and I think, do I know this person? Cause they are so familiar and so friendly. It’s from the podcast. Because there’s something about the intimacy you establish with someone when when they not only hear your voice and you’re talking to them, but when you’re physically in their ears while they’re doing something intimate.

They’re walking they’re walking their dog. They’re working out. They’re listening to it with their son. In that, quite frankly, other than the the ego and the money is the most rewarding thing because I feel as if people are so nice to me. People come up to me.

They’re friendly. They wanna know me. They’re complimentary. And it’s for someone like me who never had that type of reward, It’s just I gotta be honest. It’s just hugely rewarding.

And I’d like, you know, yeah, I’d like to think I’m making a difference or staying relevant, but yeah, it’s the the media is a ton of fun. I don’t do I spent a lot of time trying to do TV. I’m zero for five on TV shows. I’ve had five TV shows. They’ve all either gotten canceled four or soon after they started.

So I finally figured out I had a face for podcasting, but I love writing, love podcasting, and love speaking. I make the majority of my living now actually are my current income from speaking gigs.

I do, feel that way about folks coming up to me and I also love it and find it rewarding. I think that when people come up and want to talk to me, I’m generally like, this is great. Yeah. You know, because especially the podcast because you feel you can feel that if you’re you’re providing them something, whether it’s entertainment or perspective or comfort, whatever it is, And, you know, a lot of times people are shy and are like, oh, I don’t wanna bother you. And I’m like, I am not famous enough for you.

Oh, no. Oh, bother me.

Really bother me. Yeah. Okay. I’m sure Timothy Shelby doesn’t want you to bother him at a restaurant, but bother me.

No problem.

No problem. Alright. Let’s Alright. Now that we’ve discussed our egomaniac. Let’s look and talk about some other egomaniacs and go through some topics.

I

had to start for you with the Andresen techno Optimist manifesto.

Mhmm. And for

people that aren’t familiar, I just wanna read one section

of it.

But, Mark andresen is a VC, big VC guy among many other things at a weird breakfast with him once. Amazing smart guy in maybe a elevator pitch of techno optimism. I probably would be a techno optimist. Mhmm. I would agree that, but the manifesto includes some very deep, weird tech bro kind of resentments about the world, including this one passage I wanna read you.

Under the title enemies. Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades against technology. And against life under varying names like existential risks, sustainability, ESG, sustainable development goals, social responsibility, stakeholder capitalism, precautionary principle, trust and safety, tech ethics, risk management, degrowth on the limits of growth, I just I kinda wanted to just put a quarter in the machine and get your reaction to the the manifesto in that section in particular.

Well, when he goes on to talk about the kind of the elite who suppress us and call on their credentials to to who think they’re superior to us. I thought, is he describing himself? Look.

I can show you quick. I’ve also pulled that section. So I’m glad you pointed to it. Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know it all credentialed expert world view. Luxury beliefs, social engineering.

It’s like, who does it? Who’s this describing

a ton? I can’t

reason and his friends.

It’s like, a technology I think that Mark Hendresen deserves to be a billionaire. I think that every year the technology massively improves their product and they lower the price I think it’s just been amazing. You wouldn’t press a button and want big tech to go away. Maybe maybe meta, but the rest of it we’d keep The the thing that I would push back on, Mark, I don’t know the guy. And he could arguably say I did invent the internet.

He he he did what Al Gore says he did. The the thing that bothers me about the kind of tech pro culture, and I was part of it, kind of coming a professional age in ninety San Francisco, is that if you look at who are the most loyal Americans, it’s veterans. The people who have invested the most in America, I would argue the most fortunate in our society are the least patriotic. And that is none of these guys want to acknowledge that if you look at a map And you look at companies worth more than ten billion dollars, they’re littered up and down the west coast of North America and start in San Diego you know, you have you have biotech firms Qualcomm. You head up towards LA, you get SpaceX, you get Snap, you keep going north, you get Salesforce, meta, Google, keep going north, Amazon, Microsoft.

I mean, they’re just literally littered up and down the western seaboard. And then you get to the Canadian border and it stops until you get to Lululemon in Vancouver. You get to San Diego and it stops until you go another five thousand kilometers until you get to Mercado Libre. And what I find this so upsetting is that these individuals don’t they shit post America. They find that our institutions and these educational, you know, the government and these educational institutions are the problem.

When the reality is Every large company in technology was built off the backs of the greatest VC in history that’s the US government and the limited partners the invest who are the American middle class. I don’t care if you’re getting four fifty million in subsidies for EVs, Tesla, and charging subsidies, Tesla again, or GPS or DARPA. All of these companies have built a thick remarkable layer of innovation on top of huge infrastructure investments that have not been made anywhere else, a tax policy, an economic policy, massive amounts of graduates from Carnegie Mellon to Berkeley, to Stanford, to Udub, that that just absolutely are the coal in the furnace of their innovation. And yet the moment they get their billions, they want out. And they start shitposting America.

I find it techno narcissism where they somehow decide after being the most fortunate people in history that somehow they’re victims and they want out, it strikes me as just so tone deaf. You know, it’s like take Megan and Harry times a million that don’t recognize their blessings and wanna start shitposting their family. It’s just fucking obnoxious. And this this notion that somehow they’re victims. Other than thank you, I I don’t understand what on earth or thank you, and I feel grateful, and I’m focused on how to get back now.

I don’t think there is any appropriate response. I just and there are some people like that. I think Mark Benny office demonstrates a lot of grace. I think a guy like Satya Nadello who’s constantly trying to keep the drawbridge down for immigrants. You know, there are some people in tech who I think are do demonstrate some humility and grace, but the techno weird, neil libertarian shit is just fucking obnoxious, and it’s really disappointing.

Yeah. Those people, by the way, because I agree with you on Andreson, he deserves his billions and the people that started these companies deserve it. I I’m a capitalist, but I really hate the obnoxious complainers who are, like, the fifth employee at PayPal? Like, congrats, man.

I had a bad debt that’s worth seven hundred million now.

Yeah. Congrats. You were friends with Elon at Stanford or Peter Teel or whoever, and now you’re gonna kinda complain about everything. Like that This is what turns me into Bernie San. Like, I my biggest tax policy shift was meeting these people asking them for money for anti trump stuff.

And I was like, you people are turning me into Bernie Sanders. Just listening to your rants. I will say this about injuries and, like, one area where I do agree is I don’t mind if these guys are saying, okay, hey, because of our experience and because I have my hands in all these different companies and and I just this view of what’s happening in the economy, Like, I have thoughts about how the government could make things more efficient or, you know, or how we could streamline things or fix things or or rate lift more boats or, you know, there are a lot of people in in Silicon Valley to their credit that are trying to how do we innovate in other parts of the country? So it’s not just the West Coast. Right?

Like all of that is it makes sense with to me. But it feels like we’ve tipped over from, like, you know, we’re trying to be technocrats and make government more efficient, which was kind of in vogue in the Obama years to now this like libertarian anti woke weirdness.

Yeah. I just want out. And the thing that really bothers me, it’s sort of the same flavor of a, you know, of a different confection is all of these people who leave California for Texas in Florida and then start ship posting San Francisco. Show me a VC who is ship posting San Francisco, and I’ll show you someone who’s about to recognize a big capital gain and has decided he can no longer tolerate the unbearable living of a high tax state and now loves Austin or Miami where he or she is about to sell billions and billions worth of stock. I mean, it’s like boss, we’re not stupid.

It’s your right to move to a low tax state and recognize capital gain. But do you need to stick the middle finger up on the way out the door? It I I just find the whole thing very, kind of distasteful.

A little bit of a subtext to the manifesto that’s that’s more substantive I’m interested in your view on is, you know, the a kind of coming AI. Mhmm. And I think Andresen and others are wanting obviously the regulators and government to keep their hands off this and, you know, of let creative destruction happen. Maybe in a apocalyptic sense here, when it comes to AI. So I’m just, I’m wondering what you see from AI as opportunities and what you see from, you know, regulators as folks is the places where we really do need intervention to, you know, protect us from some of these dreamers and optimists.

I’m an AI optimist. I find all of the catastrophe surprising as a function of the same techno narcissism, where people like to think that their technology is the singular point of leverage to save or destroy humanity. And I don’t find it a productive conversation to say I’m the father of AI, and now that my options have vested and I’m worth millions, I’m worried about it. It’s like, well, okay. That’s that’s not helpful.

And Right. I’m generally think it’s gonna be a positive. And my sense is if we figured out a way to handle bio weapons and nuclear weapons, we should be able to figure out a way to find this. And the notion that it’s gonna become entient, I’m not a philosopher, but I’ve never seen any evidence that any machine has intention or emotion. That it’ll create income inequality.

I think that’s true, but I think we’ve we have that same problem across all the technology that’ll become a super weapon. I think there’s probably some things there, but there are now weapons available where they can blind and everyone on the field. There’s lasers now that they shoot out one beam of light and would blind everyone field, and everyone including our adversaries have said, this is probably not a good idea. None of us are gonna manufacture this. We have largely put a lid on bio weapons.

You know, we’ve taken nuclear weapons from zero to fifty thousand back to ten thousand. So I do think we’ve handled similar threats. Think it’s gonna create more jobs than it destroys the arc of every technology as there’s job destruction in the short run. Automation did destroy some jobs on the factory floor, but we didn’t envision heated seats car stereo, the automobile industry now employs more people. I think the same thing will happen with AI.

I think there’s gonna be a ton of new applications for people with different skills. Hopefully, this time, we’ll take some of those gains in productivity and shareholder value and use it for retraining and to help the people who are displaced, which done a really bad job with in terms of globalization or new tech formats, but I’m an AI optimist. I think the most exciting parts of AI are first and foremost healthcare. In the United States, we spent thirteen thousand dollars per person for, lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality. The way you would describe health care in America is the way a lot of people subscribe to San Francisco right now.

Expensive but bad. And so I think that pushing out using a series of smart cameras and smartphones, preventive health care using AI give them your grocery receipts, give them your sleep monitor, give them your credit card charges, your cable bill, and they’re gonna say, Okay. When you need to text us about the mole, I I think a good third of America is intimidated, underinsured, doesn’t have a lot of confidence, and fills a lump in her breasts and doesn’t know what to do, and then it becomes metastatic breast cancer, or has a kid with diabetes and the mother managing that kid’s diabetes, and let’s be honest, So as a mother, spends five months of her year, managing that kid’s diabetes because of all the insurance, the breakage, the specialization, the pharmacies, the needs for preapproval to get to a specialist. If we can give her two months back for self care, care for others, make money, I think there’s just an enormous unlock around taking healthcare from a defensive disease driven industry to an offensive healthcare related industry using AI. There’s gonna be niche applications everywhere for AI.

I think it’s very exciting. I don’t think AI is gonna take your job. I think someone understands AI is gonna take your job. So no matter what job you’re in, start experimenting with AI. And, you know, just as I’m sure I, I would guess, like, like me, you’re experimenting with, alright, let’s do this podcast in Korean using an AI and see if there’s a market for property or the bulwark in Korean, whatever it might be.

The biggest fear I have about AI, and it’s something I’m focused on is loneliness. And that is I see a lot of men sequestering from society and having a reasonable facsimile of relationships. They think I’m learning when I’m on Reddit, or I am investing when I’m on Robinhood, or I don’t want to take the risk of approaching a strange woman potential, romantic or sexual relationship. So I’m gonna have a reasonable facsimile of sex on you porn. There’s now talk, the searches for AI girlfriend have exploded.

They think the sex spot industry essentially sex dolls is gonna be bigger than the motion picture box office domestic receipts in about five or seven years. And I’m worried we’re just creating a generation of men for a lot of reasons will not wanna engage in the risks, in the rejection, and the effort of establishing real relationships. There’s a reason romantic comedies are two hours, not twenty minutes because there’s obstacles. They’re hard. I’ve been an entrepreneur and single most of my life, so I’ve endured a lot of rejection.

And that rejection and learning from it and overcoming it is key to my success. And I worry that a lot of young men are being tempted with algorithmically driven substitutes, whether it’s porn or invest, you know, or or you think you have friends, but you’re not really experiencing friendship on discord. You get some sort of dopa hit either from vaping in your basement or playing video games instead of actual real player, real sports. And I worry that we’re raising a generation of men who are just gonna become totally unviable. And that is they fall out of practice.

They never develop the skills, the mojo, the economic viability to be attractive mates. They become resentful. They become misogynist. They become more prone to nationalistic behavior. They become suicidal.

Men are now committing suicide at a four to one rate. Men to women. It used to be three to one. Now it’s up to four to one. And I worry that we’re leaving an entire generation of men behind because these algorithms and these companies wanna convince you that, oh, you you don’t need to actually Bulwark.

You can trade, you know, come rocket or you can trade Salana. That’s actual learning. I would not have gone on campus and graduated from UCLA had the prospect of potentially meeting someone and having sex with them and establishing a romantic relationship. If that wasn’t part of the reason to engage in college. I would not have endured the humiliation of approaching a strange person in a bar.

I would not have reached out to mentors. I would have not have I would have not have sent cold emails to potential funders, potential business partners had I had some of the reasonable facsimiles of those things that are available now? And I think it’s very tempting for men. And women do a much better job of maintaining relationships and social norms when they don’t have a romantic relationship. They generally have a broader selection set of friends.

They’re more social. They get out more And without the prospect of a romantic or a sexual relationship, men sequester from the majority of the relationships, they don’t develop professional skills, they don’t take care of themselves. And then some, they become really shitty citizens. And I’m worried that AI is gonna take that and just put it on steroids where we’re gonna have a bunch of men having relationships with algorithms and sex dolls, and they’re just literally gonna fall off the face of the planet, and we’re we’re gonna lose them.

Yeah. I think that overlaps with a lot of the topics that I write about and think about in the political sphere and and a lot of potential threats and fears. You know, I mean, when you look at the rise of the radicalization of, you know, it’s mostly young men. It’s not even just young white men anymore, but mostly young white men, you know, who are who are being attracted to, you know, these far right politicians like Trump, but even like the social media figures, like sneaker and, right, like, things like this. I like being attracted to these very toxic guys because they’re not getting any gratification in their own life and they’re they’re turning politically to, oh, I want a strong man.

I want to see the elites get punished. I didn’t I’m not getting I’m not accomplishing anything, that gives me satisfaction. So I wanna tear other people down. I I do think there’s a direct overlap there. And I I wonder what your view is on this because I’m I’m very unsympathetic to the most of, like, ninety percent of the woke criticisms of culture, but I I do worry about the message white men, young white men in particular are getting sometimes, from from broader culture, and I think that a lot of times they’re grievances are unfounded and and, like, I kind of want to play the tiniest violin for them, a little at times, but also, I just think as a culture man.

Like, we’re not gonna be in a good place if if if these young white guys feel like their second class citizens aren’t having sexual partners aren’t, you know, aren’t having fulfilling Bulwark, we’re gonna end up getting Donald Trump on steroids coming around the corner.

Yeah. The problems you mentioned though are especially acute not only for for a young man of color, actually. The the bottom line is, we have a big problem, and that is the sense of our father and our grandfather are being paid, the price is being paid by young men. And that is if you look at young men, three times likely be addicted, four times likely to kill themselves twelve times likely to be incarcerated. More single women now on homes than men.

In the next five years, we’re gonna graduate two, women from college for every one man. You think, well, fine. They deserve it. Okay. The problem is women aren’t interested in mating with men who are socioeconomically horizontally or down.

They’re only interested in horizontally or up. So the pool of available viable mates for men is shrinking. And that is you how many times we heard I have this great women in my life. They’re smart attractive and they can’t find a man to date. No, they can.

They just they can’t find a man they wanna date. And in no way should we be arresting the amazing progress in the hard earned progress that women have made. But at the same time, compassion is not a zero sum game. When you see manufacturing jobs outsource, when you see men, our biological just have a more difficult time, demonstrating the behaviors that the industrial education complex wants them to demonstrate. When you see that they are having trouble finding, literally the odds are so stacked against them.

If they’re one of the ninety percent of people that’s not over five eleven and doesn’t make over a hundred thousand dollars by the time they’re thirty, they get shut out in the online dating market. And because they’re not going into work, they’re not going to church, they’re not going to mall, they’re not going to the movies. There’s no environments for them to meet a potential mate. So you have and you have skyrocketing suicidal ideation, and loneliness and despair. And just because, I mean, compassion’s not a zero sum game.

Gay marriage didn’t hurt heteronormative marriage. Civil rights didn’t hurt white people. So if there was any other group that was registering the kind of real hardship. This group is registering right now. I think that there would be a social and economic investments.

And and a lot of people say to me, Scott, when I talk about this, where were you for women? I’m like, we were there for you. We had affirmative action. We had Title nine. I’m on boards of directors where we spend a lot of time trying to find and recruit and put women on our boards because we realize it’s important.

That women have the same shot that we did and were vastly underrepresented. We were there for non whites. So we need to be there for this group of people. And I think it’s important we get away from the race based identity politics because what really comes down to is income And that is young men who from wealthy households are fine. They’re fine.

Young men from middle class and lower income households are just fucked right now. The the the gap in education, educational attainment used to be the the primary differentiator was black versus white. It was twice as big for between black and white boys as it was between rich and poor. It’s flipped now. It’s twice as big between poor and rich boys as it is between black and white boys.

Fifty one percent of Harvard’s freshman class is non white. But the problem is seventy percent of those parents are dual parent households that make more than the average income. So all we’ve done is reshuffle the elites to wealthy people. So if you identify a young man who comes from a middle class or a low income household, I challenge you to find a group of people that are facing more dire circumstances right now. And you could and and then even look at trans

folks would maybe be it.

Oh, fair enough. You win. Fair enough. Fair enough. That’s, I think, point five percent of the population.

Right. Exactly.

This is, but anyways, but So the question is, what are we gonna do about it? And what you hear is a different nomenclature. When we talk about the issues facing non whites and women that We say we talk about investment. We talk about empathy. When you hear about young men and the challenges they’re facing, you hear terms like accountability.

Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And and you have a group of men, young men who are essentially paying for the price of my privilege. They they they get resentment because people look at my generation and see you had such a head start that someone who looks alike you, even though they don’t have the same access to inexpensive ed education. They don’t have the same access to mating opportunities. They don’t have the same professional opportunity.

They don’t have the same bias for you that you you had. They don’t have the same incredible advantages, but we’re gonna take it out on them. We just don’t feel we don’t feel any empathy for them. And the the group of people who has been most receptive to my conversation around this, or when I talk about this, and I’ve been talking about it for thirty six the narrative and the tone has changed dramatically. I was called a sexist, a misogynist, you know, Andrew Tate, at NYU.

Paul joining Peterson.

Yeah. It just people coming after me. It is flipped. It is a much more productive conversation now. People have a lot more empathy.

And the one group of people hands down that are most supportive of this dialogue hands down, mothers.

I was gonna

And it goes something like this. I have three kids. My daughter’s a pen. My other daughter’s in Chicago and PR and my sons in the basement vaping and playing video games and has no relationship prospects, few friends, isn’t even getting out of the house, isn’t working out, and I just can feel him circling the sink here. And so, uh-uh, the the the woke narrative, if you will, or the far left, I find is, way too focused on identity politics, and I think that we should be talking about to have a productive conversation.

I believe in affirmative action. I should be I don’t think it should be gender based. I think it should be income based. And I think that would get to the same people without this conversation of men versus women non whites versus whites. But, on any objective standard, income, house ownership, mating opportunities, likelihood of killing themselves, obesity, Whatever you wanna look at, depression, young men from middle and lower income homes are doing worse than almost any group.

And the question is The whole point of a society is we make investments to help groups that are struggling. It’s time we moved in and started helping this group.

Yeah. This is right. So as far as I think hard for people to hold things you’re ahead of the same time. Like, it is true that white men, in particular, men are still overrepresented dramatically at the elite in the elite environments. Right?

CEOs. And I’d like these sorts of things. Right? That doesn’t do anything for the lower middle class white kid that didn’t do or black kid or whatever that didn’t do well in his SAT. Right?

Like, that’s not that’s not like doing anything for them. The fact that that, you know, middle aged white people that white men were better off. Agree. Right? And I and sometimes that’s like a a concept that I think someone someone in the left struggle to to navigate the book that this can be true.

I wanna get do one other thing on AI. We agreed Hoffman on he made the same pitch on health care, and I’m totally sold on that. Absolutely. And I’ve talked to a couple. I got a lot of doctor buddies, from college and and and they’re very excited about it.

But here’s my area of expertise is much narrower and much less important to society, but kind of important, which is the news and information environment that people are getting. And here is where I’m I’m really concerned about AI and you and you kind of didn’t cover that as a very high information consumer, like obsessive my iPhone report on how much time I spend on it every week is is increasingly depressing, every time I look at it. And so I I’m consuming everything newspapers, magazine, social media. And, like, I’m getting tricked sometimes already. And, like, the AI is not that good.

Yes. And so, like, how are we gonna get into a place where people get information that they know is true? It it seems like we are exponentially, you know, that that is already a a problem. It was already a problem in twenty sixteen. And and it feels like we’re going the wrong direction exponentially.

And I just am wondering what your concerns are about that and if you think there’s anything we can do to arrest that.

Yeah. You press on the soft tissue what was like, a visible gap in what I was talking about in terms of what we should be worried about. And I my bad The first major externality, I think, of AI is gonna happen in Q1 and Q2 of twenty twenty four. And that is If I’m Putin and I’m spending a hundred billion and a hundred thousand lives in what so far has been kind of a failed venture fail war in Ukraine. The fastest blue line path to victory for me is the following.

I use my incredibly brilliant scientists. They have great scientists. I get a Albania troll farm with thousands of people. I take five billion dollars. And then I couple that with an amoral management team at social media firms that are there just to cash checks and then worry about what happened after the election.

And I AB test defakes and AI to deposition whoever is Trump’s opponent and I get Trump reelected because the cheapest way for Putin to win the war in Ukraine is to get Trump reelected. Trump’s reelected. He’s won the war. So what would you do? He’d be stupid not to.

I’m China. And I have my adversary, my only competitor for the biggest economy in the world is the US. I can’t beat them kinetically. I don’t have the military power. I can’t send a carrier squadron into the gulf, off, you know, in the Middle East.

I have two bases offshore. They have a hundred and twelve. I can’t beat them economically. Something about the water and the West Coast. They just keep coming up with the best shit.

They have better universities to mock seems to be mostly working for them.

Free market capitalism is also kind of a plus.

There you go. You know, I’m gonna turn them into a horror movie with a calls coming from inside of the house. How do you defeat an enemy, you atomize them? I’m gonna get them hating each other. So I’m gonna have I’m gonna create this social media platform that I have influence or control over And I’m going to AI test, all sorts of content, and I’m just gonna divide them.

And I I recognize the sounds port, paranoid, but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Think we’re gonna find in the fullness of time that the CCP very elegantly insidiously put its thumb on the scale of pro Hamas content for younger people knowing it would divide them from an older generation. People my age are seventy percent pro Israel, people under the age of twenty five or twenty percent. And by the way, I think if we were pro Hamas my age. They would be promoting pro Israel content.

I think their issue is to just sow division because Why wouldn’t they raise a generation of American Civic nonprofit business and government leaders that just feel a little bit shittier about America every That’s what I would do. That and by the way, that’s what we did through the twentieth century. We used all sorts of propaganda radio for Europe. We have an entire division of the army who stated mission has developed psychological influence across using media channels. They now have a neural jack implanted into every youth who spend more time on TikTok than every other streaming media combined.

They would be stupid not to create division. I mean, we can’t get bills passed because we can’t get speaker of the house that controls his party. We are fighting each other internally. We’re putting up posters of missing people and then other people are tearing them down. We’re putting up flags for Veterans Day, and then people are climbing the post and taking the flags down.

That younger generation is really like the the fifty percent gap in pro Israel sentiment is much greater than the generational gap on Vietnam. Or nine eleven name it. Name it. It’s never been fifty points. So I think that AI at deep fakes.

I mean, I’ll give you just a tiny example. If I were Putin and I wanted Trump elected, I would just use AI to make Biden just very incrementally seem a little bit older. You know, he shuffles now. We’ll make him shuffle a little bit more. He picks the wrong word or pauses a little bit.

We’ll use AI just to dial it up a little bit. A little bit. And with his vice president, she has a tendency to sound a little bit awkward sometimes or just tone deaf. Let’s figure out a million different iterations of that that just make her sound a little bit worse every day. They would be, in my opinion, they’d be stupid not to be doing this.

That’s what we would do. That’s what we would do. So AI generated content, the depositions, whoever the Democratic nominee is, is, in my opinion, gonna be the first. It’s gonna be an AI driven misinformation or disinformation, lalapalooza starting q one and q two of next year.

What are we gonna do? I mean, is there anything to to be done about it? Where are you on the TikTok question? Like, should we be banning TikTok? I I it goes against all of my old free market principles to be like, we should ban this social media site.

But on the other hand, I don’t know if what you’re saying is true. You know, we don’t know if if the CCP is is actually, you know, putting their thumb on the scale, but that doesn’t seem like a crazy conspiracy theory to think that that’s possible. I mean, anybody who is you know, any that’s on any analysis looking at the TikTok for you page and just like creating a blank account and starting to look for Israel stuff like quickly get sent down a path. And maybe that’s just because there’s more engagement on anti Israel stuff. And I I don’t, you know, I mean, it is nothing nefarious, but what can be done about it?

Well, first off, something’s going on. If you’re on reals for ten minutes and you’re on TikTok for ten minutes, I’m the same person. I would challenge anyone to do this. On Reels, I get a lot of pro Israel content. And on TikTok, I get a lot of pro Hamas content.

Now, you might say, well, maybe maybe it’s meta that’s manipulating the argument. But some there is a huge difference between the two, and I would ask anybody to nullify or validate that thesis. For yourself. In terms of what can be done, the question I would present to you is a free speech person. I think of myself as being a pretty much, you know, an endorser.

I think a democratic society is mostly measured by one of the key measures is pretty much anyone can say pretty much anything about pretty much anybody. Right. And even when I see, I’m just my turn stomach turns when I see these NYU students pulling posters down. I’m like, well, okay. But if someone put them up and it’s not public property and they were expressing free speech and they take them down, I, you know, I I really struggle with this.

What I would ask you is, and it’s effectively the same thing. If the CCP had influence And it was in the Chinese owned Apple TV plus Netflix, Hulu. Amazon Prime Video, ABC, CBS, and NBC. If they owned all of those networks, would you be down with that? Would you think that’s a problem?

We should be careful that it’s owned by the Chinese and the CCP, because that’s effectively what you have with TikTok. People, my generation, don’t realize how dominant is among when asked if they’d rather have TikTok or every other streaming video media platform, two thirds of people on in the age of twenty five chose TikTok. And when I see my thirteen year old, if I were to give him anything for his birthday, he would say, let me put on diapers, go upstairs, So I don’t have to take bathroom breaks, sit on my side and watch TikTok until I pass out and maybe hook up an IV to me so I get some nutrients and a catheter so I don’t need to pee. And just let me watch TikTok until I come to near death and then come up and bring me some food. This thing is the opium of whatever it was, the seventeenth century or, you know, the

mass system.

And I I what I’d like to see is we threatened to ban it We get serious about it, and then they spin it to non Chinese interests. I mean, the asymmetry here is dramatic. Do you think they would let us get anywhere near an American media platform that controlled two percent of the population, much less ninety percent had penetration across ninety percent of our youth. There’s no way they would let us do this. So I’d like to see it spawn.

And by the way, I think the people, the Chinese, people who, investors, and I’d like to them all magnificently rich. I think they’ve created an incredible platform. But it is, in my opinion, when we don’t control the data and the data is not the algorithm is not protected in ring fenced by US interests. I just think it’s too big of security threat. And, so, yeah, I would say ban it and hopefully the day before we actually ban it because they think we’re a cat chasing a red dot and we’ll get distracted and they’re mostly right.

Yeah.

I think they would spin it and say we’re not gonna give up a half a trillion dollars. So I think we do have to ban it unless they spin it.

I appreciate your view there on free speech. Like, actually grappling with it. I hate the the the far right. The free speech folks on the right that are now, like, they’re trying to

Not anymore. Until

the Columbia kids, like, I literally, like, I saw as a multi I saw somebody who’s book who literally wrote a book called end of discussion about the problem of free speech on campus tweeting approvingly today about banning the Columbia.

Well, look at Ron DeSantis. You want FSCO to to expel kids who show up at, pro palestinian rallies. Take

take visas away from kids and hope that the thing I am very authoritarian. Do what on the kid, on the thirteen year old? I’ve got a five year olds. I don’t have to address this yet. What is your TikTok policy?

Oh, I I wanna be clear. I don’t think we’ve got it figured out. Our policies around this stuff are. I we’re not smart enough to police there. The apps they have.

What we do is we demand access to their account so we can see what’s going on. We don’t let them go into their room with their phone alone. Especially at night, because I think that’s where they can go down a rabbit hole that’s very upsetting. I think it’s worse for girls than it is for boys. My boys, they tend to be more into video games.

We try and limit their time. We’re trying to put them all on the same. We’re trying to all get on the same telco plans such that we can limit their time. But we haven’t got it figured out. My son struggled with device addiction during COVID, crept up on us.

You’d think I would recognize this crept up on us. And all of a sudden, it was like, he literally was addicted to this thing and became a mess. So anyone who thinks they have their screen stuff figured out with their kid, That means they don’t have kids. If we look back on this era, and I think in ten or twenty years when we look back on this era of big tech, Tim, I think we’re gonna regret the monopolization or the monopoly abuse, the webinization of elections, the the making our discourse more course. But I think by far our biggest regret, think we’re gonna look back on this here and think, how the fuck did we let this happen to our kids?

It’s just all the data around teen suicide, self esteem, young girls, eating disorders, radicalization of young men, and it’s not just it’s not just meta, it’s Google, it’s YouTube, Christ, it’s even Pinterest sending out emails to fourteen year old British girl saying, who have expressed an interest in suicide saying, here are some images we thought you might find and they send them images of nooses, razor blades, and pills. It’s just we’re gonna look back and go, how on earth? Why on earth are we not age gating social media? We age gates cigarettes porn the military alcohol, but we’ve decided to let a thirteen year old on snap or on Instagram. It just makes no sense.

Yeah. Hard to argue with that. You did mention one topic that we have a disagreement on in there. And so I wanna give you a chance to win me over. Sure.

I’m not sold on the on the antitrust monopoly power. And I think that the last year of of Elon’s taking over of Twitter has kind of proven my side given some ammunition to my side. I mean, we have an unbelievable amount new social media outlet proliferation, now they’re not all as big as other ones, but Donald Trump is a social media outlet now. There’s blue skies. Just I could spun off another one.

You know, Snap actually persistently doing okay. Right? I mean, it’s not it hasn’t become one of the big ones, but there’s still daily active users. I have a Snap show that gets six figure views a week, so a few kids are still on there. I just don’t see it.

To me, it doesn’t feel like we do have a monopoly issue. I think there are other issues with those companies, but I don’t think it’s an antitrust issue.

Sure. So let’s and by the way, a lot of smart people have the exact same view you do. But let’s talk about social media. What is the market share of meta and social media?

Like an ad, you mean, or in traffic or

No. Total usage, total time. The percentage of time spent on a meta property as a as a percentage of all social media time.

I don’t know. Sixty percent.

Yeah. That’s exactly yeah. You’re it’s like it’s somewhere between sixty three and sixty seven.

Isn’t that Coke?

Coke? Well, I describe that. I describe that as a monopoly. And and people, the the test for whether something is monopoly and should have antitrust enforcement is the borg test. And that is are is are they using their monopoly power to raise prices?

And it’s difficult to apply that test because it’s a free product. But what I would argue is that we’re paying all sorts of non economic costs. And that is as is your five year old a boy or a girl?

Girl.

So I would argue she’s very ripe for this type of bullshit abuse lack of concern for her well-being at the hands of Meta, and that if there were four companies each with somewhere between ten and thirty percent share, One of them would raise their hand and say, Hey, PNG, we’re gonna agegate this. We’re gonna spend a shit ton of money trying to figure out what content should be not allowed on the platform. And right now advertisers have no choice. If you’re a small business, you have to be on meta. I’m on Meta.

I can’t stand the company. I’m on it. If I want to build a podcast or a business or an ed tech firm, I have to be on Meta. So I believe we’re increasingly I don’t think YouTube has a real desire or a real urgent need to stop content that radicalizes young men because they pretty much dominate online social video. Now the question is, well, alright, Scott, aren’t you just tasking them with an impossible Bulwark, because they’ll say this is just a representation of the internet.

We can’t control this stuff. When we remove sex trafficking from two thirty protection, All sex trafficking, pretty much all sex trafficking content went away the next day. When we kicked one guy off of Twitter, Donald Trump, something like forty to sixty percent of election misinformation went away the next day. Yeah. If we were to remove two thirty protection this is anti this is antitrust’s regulation, but if we were to remove two thirty protection from these guys around, say, AI elevated content, health related content, anything regarding teens, anything regarding suicidal ideation.

I think we would be shocked how fast they would clean this shit up. And then just as a capitalist, I love any trust. My largest holdings are Amazon and Apple. I believe if those companies get broken up, I’m gonna make more money. And if you look at the history of antitrust, the biggest one being AT and T or the most recent one, when AT and T was divided into seven bells.

Each of those seven companies was worth more than the original AT and T within ten years. Because we found that fiber optics cell data were all hidden within Bell Labs who didn’t wanna ruin this monopoly they had on long distance lines. I used to go into my dad’s office to call my mom because he had something called a a WAP line. And what do you know? AI open AI shows up and it ends up all of this AI was that was actually invented at Google has kind of been lying fowlow because they’re like, before you go too hard at the AI, make sure it doesn’t fuck with our core business called search.

Right.

So, one, who benefits from antitrust? I think consumers benefit. I don’t think that we’re gonna have a lack of innovation. I think investors benefit. I think employees benefit because there’s more people trying to rent their time.

I think shareholders benefit. The only people that don’t benefit from antitrust throughout history from breakups are the person sitting iron throne with dual class super voting majority shares to decide, you know what? I like running a much bigger company. I mean, what would WhatsApp be worth if they spun What would Instagram be worth? Do any sort of bottoms up analysis of these companies broken up and you end up, in my opinion, with more innovation, more competition, and more money.

And so I’m a fan of antitrust. I also think we need regulation. I think these companies have gone way too powerful. Also, the ecosystem has become unhealthy. If you look at, you know, everyone’s like, oh Nasdaq had its best first half in forty years.

No, it didn’t. Seven companies had their best first half. If you didn’t own one of seven companies, you actually vastly underperform the market. If you look if you divide the market, stocks into deciles from the most valuable ten companies with the largest ten percent of companies that have the largest market cap. All the gains are going to the top ten percent.

That makes for my opinion an unhealthy ecosystem. There’s just it’s harder and harder to get out of the crib. So we have a proud legacy of antitrust It’s not right in every situation, but, oh, my gosh. A break I own these stocks, break them up so we can make some real money.

Decently compelling. I’m gonna I’m gonna keep marinating on that. You’ve you’ve moved you’ve moved me an inch. Two other things is light disagreements on that I can let you go.

I’d

be using a big Airbnb evangelist too. Is that that’s right?

I did. It’s one of my biggest holdings. I like I like the CEO a lot, and I bought it purely as kind of what I call a capitalist in the sense that it dominates the sector. I think it’s a great company. It’s a strong brand.

I think it’s the strongest brand. I think I would argue in the history of hospitality. It’s the only one that’s a verb. No one says I got a four seasons in Detroit. I know where you’re going with this, though, and I think you’re probably right.

Yeah. Okay. So now the website. I was like, because now I want government intervention because I live in New Orleans. And I I feel like the housing crisis on everybody in New Orleans is probably.

I don’t you know, I’m not a real estate specialist, but five percent, eight percent. I don’t know because of the proliferation of Airbnbs. And their entire neighborhoods with houses that that that are that are second homes, Airbnb homes, people that have three, four, five of these things. Like, Shouldn’t there be some limits on these guys?

The when I look at the prices of it when I look at the cost of education, the cost of housing, on people your age, we gotta do something. I mean, the the reality is incomes in the last fifty years have gone a six fold Housing education, health care have all gone up like ten to twenty fold. I mean, it says we gotta do something. The the the for the first time in history, a thirty year old isn’t as well as his or her parents at thirty. And housing’s a big part of that.

And I don’t think that I I just don’t think you can argue with a straight face that Airbnb doesn’t take rental costs up. You just take stuff out of the ecosystem. There’s less supply. Costs are gonna go up. Now the only argument you can make is that it’s a transfer of wealth from people looking for from renters to travelers.

Because now if you’re a nomad, and you wanna live in different areas and you wanna work remotely, you have more options. It’s you have more liquidity, more fluidity, and kind of it’s more economically doable. If you say, alright, I’m gonna take my family on the road, and I’m gonna live in Pittsburgh for six months, then I wanna live in Colorado for three months. You could make the argument that it’s a transfer of wealth and economic power from renters to quote, unquote, a nomadic or travelers. Having said that, Tim, I think you’re right on this one.

I I don’t I get it when New York says we gotta limit the number of Airbnb’s or you just can’t We gotta we gotta get these people out of the business of finding the six best apartments on the lower east side and renting them all and then airbnb ing them out. I get it. I get it.

Podcasting is always more fun when you have some disagreements and agreements. So I do wanna say, I was, as I was listening to some of your other pods, we don’t have time to get into this now. But one of your most compelling ideas that I hadn’t even considered on the supply and demand side was what you just kind of referenced oncologists and how these guys should have like, you know, I think your line was that Harvard is letting in fifteen hundred people. They should be letting in fifteen thousand and that hadn’t even occurred to me that that be something we should be pushing for on change, and that’s absolutely one hundred percent right. So I I

appreciate that. And just for the RAM, we have a misdirect. We argue about who should get in? I can solve all these problems. It’s not who, it’s how many.

And when you sit on the GDP of Costa Rica and you’re only letting in five percent of your applicants, And the director of admission says we could have led in three times as many with no sacrifice and quality, then the answer is, well, why wouldn’t you boss? And if they don’t grow their freshman seats faster than population, they should lose a non profit status. It is morally corrupt. When I applied to UCLA, the admissions rate was seventy six percent. Now it’s nine percent.

And and let me just flex here. I gave fifteen million dollars to UCLA last year. So guess what? Them taking a chance on a really mediocre kid, and I’m I’m not humble bragging. I was I was distinctly mediocre.

It pays off everyone, because here’s the thing. No organization, especially a college can predict greatness at the age of eighteen. I was a total fuck up at eighteen, and I got my shit together. And because I got my shit together with the benefit of modification of a degree from UCLA and Berkeley. It’s paid off for everyone.

So this isn’t about who gets in. It’s about more. We need more blacks. We need more whites. We need more trans kids.

We need more white kids. We need more Republicans. We need a massive increase in freshman seats. Instead of that seven billion dollar giveaway to student loan borrows, which I empathize with, but quite frankly, two thirds of America shouldn’t have to pay for the one third that went to school. You could have said to our hundred biggest public institutions, we’re gonna give you up to seven or eight billion dollars over the next ten years.

You can use technology and infrastructure to expand your fresh class by six percent a year while lowering prices, two to three percent a year through deaf use of technology. Where does that get us in ten years double the freshman seats at half the price? We’ve done this before. Let’s go back. College should be a place for the lower ninety.

You know who doesn’t need college? The top ten percent. They have the connections. The academic excellence already. It’s the bottom ninety that needs that needs, college.

We need to fall back in love with the unremarkable colleges of lofts to trip. Me and Mike, colleagues have decided we’re no longer public servants, but a fucking Chanel bag that needs to stop.

Major snaps on that rant. We could have done another hour. You you did interview with team Phillips, so I want I want one sentence on this and I have a one sentence investment advice I have no hope for Dean Phillips, and I think it’s kind of preposterous, but I saw you send a nice thread about it. So give us one sentence or two on on the Dean Phillips interview.

I just think we need more candidates for the Democratic nomination. And I hope he inspires that. I I don’t

Just based on age, the age issue on.

Any d under the age of eighty right now, I think deserves a hard look. I I’m just praying. I think we’re playing not to lose on the democratic side, which means we’re gonna lose. I I think it’s insane that we’re gonna nominate somebody who’s gonna be eighty six the last time Marine one lee leaves the West lawn. People accuse me of being an ageist.

I am. You know, who else is ageist? Biology. It’s fucking ridiculous. We’re gonna nominate someone who’s gonna be eighty six.

I I don’t necessarily disagree with that principle, but I I think it might be the best of bad options. We can do another full podcast on that. Yeah. I agree. Okay.

My final thing is, you know, I have you here, and this is your expertise. So I’m staring at Impossible Foods options next year in my family. Do do we have any hope in the fake meat business or the beyond beyond meat has gone from like a hundred and twenty down to like two cents. So I don’t really have much hope in the fake meat industry, but I was hoping you could give me some hope.

Oh, no. It’s it’s gonna be an industry, a viable industry. It’s just not gonna be worth nearly what we thought it was gonna be worth. I mean crypto’s gonna survive. It’s just gonna be a small market.

And that’s the same thing with alternative. These companies got so far out over their skis. It’s like what you said holding two thought. Is alternative beef or whatever you wanna call this sustainable and important. Yes.

With these companies massively overvalued. Yes.

Okay. Well, good. Maybe I’ll get a couple months mortgage out of that then, you know, not not not what my dreams were, but, you know, maybe something’s better than nothing. Profji, dude, this has been awesome. We, I literally could have done three hours.

Thank you so much. People should go check out Secret Podcast and newsletters and everything else if you haven’t, and and thanks for checking us out at the Bulwark work. And hopefully, you can do this again a good time.

Tim, congrats on your success, and I I really, enjoy your voice, your reasonable, and Us raging moderates have to stick together. So keep on keeping on, brother.

We do. Congrats. That gotcha, brother. I say hi to Kara for us. We’ll talk to you later.