Congress weighs liability for businesses, Amazon will put its $4billion profit into its supply chain, and Anand Giridharadas on "Rich Corona; Poor Corona"

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hi everyone this is pivot from the vox media podcast network i'm kara swisher and i'm scott gallow and kara i'm actually feeling pretty good you know why why tell me because over the weekend alex jones ate my ass and it wasn't that bad it was actually pretty good florida he's down in florida right where does he live did you see this video where he's threatening to yes i tweeted it Of course, I tweeted.

I don't think Alex fully knows what he's talking about.

I don't think he understands the double entendre there.

You know what?

He is unwell.

He is unwell.

Yeah, there's someone.

It was just more than meets the eye.

It's ridiculous.

I mean, you know what?

The thing is, I bet a lot of people who follow him are like, yeah, that's what I'm going to do.

You know, the Donner Party is for me, that kind of thing.

I just, it's like literally, the Donner Party was not a good story in American history, people of the United States of America, no matter what Alex Jones says.

It's crazy.

I know how he's feeling, though.

One of the nicer things are this actually been actually been quite a few nice things about this sheltering in place.

I'm an introvert, so I like it, but there are these two ducks that have been showing up and they eat the bugs in the pool, and they're just lovely.

And every morning I get my coffee and I go see the ducks.

And the last few days, just one duck has been showing up.

So I think this is really taking a toll on people's relationships.

I'm like, where's the other duck?

Yeah.

No, now it's just one duck.

Clearly, the ducks aren't getting along.

They're sick of whatever's going going on here.

By the way, by the way, I know where you are.

It is literally the most beautiful.

I'm in Delray.

It's the most beautiful.

And I'm like, okay, all the environmentalists, I'm like, this is all it took?

Just sheltering in place for like four weeks and the earth is back to beautiful.

That's all we took.

Well, it really is.

It's spectacular.

It was.

It was.

It is spectacular.

It was raining all last night and it was stunning.

It was absolutely stunning.

Speaking of non-so-stunning, let's talk about Elon Musk.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Well, you just warned me off mic not to say what I was saying.

I know.

I wish you wouldn't.

It's nothing illegal.

Okay.

But

he shouldn't be doing that.

He should not be doing this.

He did a Twitter.

He's not supposed to tweet the way he tweets.

And he tweeted Free America Now, which I think he's allowed to do.

But it's been several days of all kinds of different coronavirus stuff.

And I'm sure his business is suffering.

Everyone's business.

He can't take off his jets and his rockets and stuff like that.

But one of the ones was

that Tesla was overpriced, which he shouldn't have done that one.

Let's discuss that.

Shouldn't have done.

Should not have done that.

Shouldn't have done.

Okay, so

some backstory here, some people, somebody kind of connected the dots and said, all right.

This guy is accusing America of being fascist because they refused to open his factory where potentially people would stand shoulder to shoulder and perhaps

be a hot zone and take the

R row or whatever the hell it's called from one to four in his in his factory.

And he says, okay, they're fascists.

And then someone did the math and said, okay, if Musk's or Tesla's stock price stays as ridiculously inflated as he is, he's due for a several hundred million, maybe even several billion dollar payday.

And someone said, okay, is this guy all of a sudden being reckless with other people's health for his own enrichment?

And so, of course, he sees that.

And then in a moment of it or whatever these moments are, he says, I believe the stock is overvalued.

And then the stock, the stock, lost the value of the U.S.

auto industry based on his comments.

Kara, I've seen you.

Let me just tell you before we start, I don't think money is his motivation, but move along.

Go ahead.

Yeah, look, at this point, probably not.

Although, you know what I find is whenever people say, oh, they have so much money, money isn't their motivation.

I find the billionaires, and one of the reasons they are billionaires, while they claim in front of business school classes that they never cared about money, they care about money much more than anybody else.

I've never seen him for since he didn't have any.

And it never was his motivation.

His motivation was other stuff.

Like there's, you can, you can pick people's motivation and know it.

So my nine-year-old, my nine-year-old is really acting out.

And occasionally we're like, okay, stop playing the recorder during the day.

It's just driving us off.

I want to play the recorder.

I'll bring in my recorder to play for you, but go ahead.

Now, now that we've asked him not to do that, like he's found his new passion as the recorder and he literally will come up to me and just like play it in my ear.

It's like, it's like that cowboy.

I want to do a joint thing with him.

I can play green sleeves, but go ahead, move along.

He does the Star Spangled Banner using his nose and two recorders.

Anyways, the talented child.

He has literally decided, okay, I am going to test the limits of the SEC.

But when you commit blatant market manipulation, and he was already doing that.

Why do that?

Why do that?

I want an explanation.

We all know he's violated his terms.

It's so ridiculous.

He's totally jaywalking all over the place.

Well, it reflects so poorly on the board that they have no control over him.

But also there's something, this has gotten to the point, and I'm not a psychologist, but I'm interested to get your viewpoint here.

It's as if he wants to get in his own way of making the kind of progress he could make.

He's clearly a brilliant guy.

He clearly has the ability to bring together a team that somehow produces these cars at a velocity that no one ever expects him to produce.

He is, I mean, he's a remarkable individual, but it's almost as if he's this Greek tragedy playing out that he is taunting the SEC to say, okay, ban me from being an officer of a public company, which, by the way, they should have done on the last tweet.

And now he's done it again.

He's like, I dare you.

I'm more important than the government.

I am more important than the government.

Same thing with the other people.

Yeah, I think he's sort of the tragic version of Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban's funny, and Elon sort of goes for stuff.

I don't know.

I think he should stop doing it.

What do you think is going on there?

I just don't get it.

He goes through these phases.

He goes through these phases.

You know, remember, and then he sort of gets it together and then makes it happen.

And I think maybe that's exciting.

I don't know.

I'm not a psychologist, but this happens a lot and everyone forgets that it happens a lot, but it happened before and it will happen again.

And I think that it's very hard for these people who are so wealthy and so powerful to be told no by people.

And I don't think people tell them no, right?

Nobody says, what the hell are you doing?

And so they ever get a no and they never get any

consequence for what they're doing except for fighting.

And they like the fight.

So it sort of plays into what he likes.

So which is but when a stock goes down, when you lose the value of the U.S.

auto industry on behalf of shareholders because of an illegal tweet, it's literally as if

several dozen class action shareholder lawyers are in a room going, how can he be this dumb?

Dumb people are always self-defeating.

Oh, Scott Galloway, you know all about this trend.

Come on, being self-defeating.

Yes, come on.

You wrote a whole book about it.

This is a new level.

You wrote a book about it.

This is a new level.

I'm just telling you you wrote a book in which you talked about the negative things you do and then the positive things you need to.

Everybody does this.

All right.

We're going to move on from Elon Musk.

Just briefly, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden wrote an op-ed in the McClatchy Papers.

Oh, my God.

What did you think when you saw that?

They're dating.

They're dating.

What did you think?

Sort of heavy dating.

They're just, I don't know.

I don't know.

We don't know.

Nobody knows.

That was such a meet the parents mode.

All right.

Come meet my parents.

I don't know.

She really, the more I think about it, she is probably the pick.

She'd be the smart pick.

She consulted.

I'm hearing Val Demings.

I'm hearing Val Demings.

That's all I'm going to say.

I don't know.

Represent.

I'm just telling you, that's who I'm hearing.

All right.

We'll see.

I would like her to be the pick.

A lot of people would love that.

Love to see her on a tear.

I think she's a lot.

You know what I mean?

Remember how much she was.

She's a lot.

And I think we'll see it if, you know, if she's not.

Would you say that about a man?

I feel triggered.

She's a lot.

They never say that about men.

No, but she's very active.

Like, so are we ready to go into like the big fight?

So is it the right time to go into the big fight?

She's a powerhouse.

She's, you know what I mean?

And so

I love her.

I wish she would, she was my presidential choice.

But I think

America's tired and she's going to be like very, not just energetic, but full of ideas and full of like concepts.

And I think it's just people,

it would be a very strong indication of Biden having having

willing to go to the mat.

You know, there's a lot of easier choices for him.

That's, you know, in terms of

people who like lots of stuff.

So I think that it would be great if he chose.

It would show a lot of energy on his part to do so.

She only has one downside, and that is a little bit she plays into the narrative that they will run against him, that it's capitalism versus socialism.

They'll play over and over again.

She's got a bit of the Hillary thing, which I think Joe does not have at all.

I hope they pick her.

I think she'd be a real shot in the arm.

But again, he has a lot of choices, and he has easier choices for sure, who are more palatable to the general public.

But I love her.

I think she's great.

I love the I'm a lot, Scott.

So there you have it.

Oh, you're a tall drink of lemonade when you stand on the bottom.

No, I'm sour lemonade, my friend.

All right, many of the big stories.

All salsa, no chip, the jungle cat.

Really hot salsa.

As states attempt to reopen Congress ways, how much liability business owners should have.

This is a big deal, I think, and it's a big deal for tech companies.

Everybody should have for their employees get sick with COVID-19.

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are once again at opposing ends of the COVID-19 debate.

GOP senators are drafting legal protections that would give businesses immunity.

This is unprecedented from lawsuits as they reopen businesses.

Democrats are opposing those measures.

Senator Mitch McConnell, a friend to anyone who's not a poor person,

says that he would help employers reopen businesses without fear of major class action suits.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, says

this will take responsibility away from corporations and make working conditions less safe for vulnerable workers.

The Washington Post reports that business lobbies in the insurance industries are lobbying in support of the liability shields, of course.

Meanwhile, a lot of people like unions are urging Democrats to stop Republicans from doing this.

By the way, as Congress debates how to reopen the nation, the World Health Organization reported the United States had its most deadly COVID-19 day on May 1st.

This is good for big business, and tech is big business.

I wrote about this issue in the Times on Friday.

What do you think about this?

It, of course, will help companies like Amazon.

It will help a lot of these companies.

Uber?

It perfectly embodies the tragedy of America and why we have lost the script.

And that is our government, our elected officials who people elect to office have decided their job is to protect companies, not people.

And I believe that there are people who should wake up every morning and consciously decide to put themselves in harm's way and go into warehouses and potentially expose themselves.

Hopefully their company has taken precautionary measures.

But I think they should do it out of greed.

I think that people should get danger pay.

I think younger people

should decide.

But all they're saying is, and that's where this is headed, we're headed towards an environment where essential workers, we will actually have to pay them as if they're essential, not just call them essential in

Bud Light or, or I shouldn't have said that, I don't know if Bud Light has said that, but all these commercials thanking our essential workers, but meantime, we're paying them $8.75 an hour.

All that it's saying is we want to reduce the compensation of generally middle and lower income wage workers who have to put themselves in harm's way or choose to.

But I don't, I don't think there's anything wrong with putting yourself in harm's way as long as you know the risk.

Not this one.

This one, if you get sick, like all those people at the rallies, I think that

many people have been talking about this issue.

Dr.

Burks talked about it this weekend going against what Trump was saying at the Lincoln, whatever the hell he was doing at the Lincoln Memorial.

It was

where she was saying, like, you're not going to just put you in harm's way, you're putting your grandmother.

You're putting people around you.

That's a fair point.

That's a fair point.

This is not a choice.

Like, I decide to get a kid, sell my kidney or not.

It's, you know, it's your kidney, even though that's illegal, right?

You can't do that.

You shouldn't be able to infect people.

It's literally, this is the whole point of society.

You're not supposed to drive without the stoplights.

You're not supposed to, you know, people do it, but it's not like, look, if everyone did it, we got the purge going.

And I'm sorry, I just...

But we do need a supply chain.

I think there is a protocol or there should be protocols where there are.

Look, there are going to be jobs where you have a greater likelihood of being exposed to this.

And I don't think we can just call on people who have take this Hippocratic oath or see themselves as courageous and expose themselves on the front lines of health care.

I think it's unfair to just call on people's better angels.

You're going to get some sickness.

It's just that they're not talking about putting safety measures in place.

That's, you know, like they should require it.

It should be on a case.

That's right.

Why can't they have more

legislations that's more complicated, which it has to be here?

Well, liability laws.

I mean, do you remember in high school, did you read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle?

Yes.

If people weren't liable for ensuring that there were guards around meat grinders, we'd still have people falling into meat grinders.

But instead, the firm can be sued.

And so they said, okay,

let's put some protocols in place so people don't end up in our meat.

And the notion that we're going to relieve companies from any sort of liability around this is just saying, okay, let's reduce the currency.

Let's reduce the earnings power of our most vulnerable population.

And let's give corporations a hall pass around not making the requisite investments for a post-COVID world.

It really does indicate where our country is.

We've decided that shareholder value is much more important than people or their health.

It's just, it's kind of, you know what it is?

It's just, it's not only disappointing, it's a little bit gross.

It is gross, of course, but it's like, it comes over and over again in our history.

And again, this does protect, like, there's a difference between a mom-and-pop shop and Amazon.

Amazon should be held to account for having safety measures in place and very discernible and clear and transparent safety measures.

This is what we're going to do.

Same thing with Uber drivers.

Same thing with, I'm just using tech as an example, but you could use it for the meat packing plants.

These people should show that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Now, a mom-and-pop restaurant, like, here's the guidelines.

You got to follow, like, some of these, like, they have to sit apart.

Like, there was an interesting story about a hairdresser, and she doesn't want to wear a mask while doing hairdressing.

Well, too friggin' bad.

Wear your mask.

That's it.

Like, sorry.

Sanitize the hands, wear your mask.

It's the lowest bar people have to do if they want to be open.

And they should have a lowest bar and then they should have higher bars for different companies.

I just, the fact that they want to just give them,

I don't think it'll pass.

I don't think there's too many lawyers actually in this country.

Thank goodness we have lawyers pushing against insurance companies, which will be great.

So they can battle it out.

But it's just on a sensibility basis.

You have to be liable for your actions to an extent.

And of course it has to be subtle and complex and everything like that.

But complexity is lost on these Republicans trying to jam, just the way like this story about Stephen Miller trying to jam through immigration legislation at a crisis.

What a shameful person he is.

Really shameful.

Yeah, I think we assign too much blame to the Republicans and I don't enough to the Democrats.

I think that a lot of these rescue and bailout packages

are, you know, so we know the Republican Party is there to protect corporations, but I feel as if the Democratic Party also posing for November elections has not put in place the requisite oversight around what is the disbursement of the GDP of the United Kingdom without any oversight to flatten the curve for rich people vis-a-vis small businesses, whose owners happen to be the wealthiest cohort.

Yeah, but who's playing them?

The Republicans.

Like, they have to.

Yeah, but we're being played.

What's worse?

I think the player, I think the person is a player.

They're shameful.

It's shameful.

The stuff they're doing.

Okay, they're shame.

We're idiots.

Boom, America.

I just, it's like you're spending the whole time playing defense against whatever horrible push they'll push till the, you know what I mean?

Like doing an event at the Lincoln Memorial.

Like there was one tweet.

It's like Lincoln, the second worst night that Lincoln ever had.

There was a tweet.

It was very funny with Trump there.

It was a desecration of that man's,

what he gave and saying he suffered more than Lincoln.

Aye, yeah, yeah.

Like, aye, yeah, yeah.

That's what I say today.

Is aye, yeah.

We're gonna, I literally, every time we do this show, I get these thoughtful emails from my friends down in Florida, like, hey, Scott, how are you?

Don't talk politics on your show.

All right, we won't.

We won't.

But anyway, it helps businesses and it will help tech companies very much, so especially companies like Amazon and Uber and others.

I'll talk business.

Businesses have, just the way I wrote about how tech companies need to have more responsibility, all businesses need to have more responsibility.

Yeah, but you know who's going to benefit from this.

And I don't know if this is, I think I'm preempting us or if we want to wait till we come back from a break.

Have you seen what Amazon announced in their earnings?

Did you?

Well, we're going to talk about that next.

We're going to go to a quick break and we're going to come back.

All right, we're going to come back.

Thank you and talk about Amazon.

I'm Rachel Maddow.

Next, who killed Kennedy?

Come back.

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off.

Welcome back.

We're not going to discuss who killed Kennedy.

There's been enough of that.

Second spitter.

There was a second spitter.

Oh, my God.

Remember the Seinfeld show?

There's a second spitter.

Oh, my God.

No.

Anyway, quick update on Amazon.

They reported earnings last Thursday after we taped the show.

A few notes.

They reported $75.5 billion in sales in the last quarter, up 26% from the previous year.

Profits fell 29% because it costs more to meet increased demand.

Also notable, Amazon Web Services topped $10 billion, as you say.

This is one of the biggest companies around, Scott.

Customers include Slack and Zoom with a big 3M deal coming.

Bezos told shareholders they would spend $4 billion toward COVID.

This was interesting COVID-19 response.

Sounds like a large chunk of this will be for tests for workers and increased delivery capabilities.

So

$4 billion, he's going to just pull ahead of everybody.

So many laps

around the track on this one.

Tell me what you think.

So this is the most underreported business story of last week.

And that is, I mean, he had such a great line.

He said, he said, shareholders, you may want to take a seat.

Yeah.

And he said,

we're taking all of our...

profits and we're piling it back into growth or specifically an initiative.

An initiative is protective gear, testing, protocols, additional compensation.

I'll be curious how that actually translates to additional compensation to respond to a post-COVID world.

And I just sat there and it sunk in on me what is going on here and it is so mind-blowing.

And there's just no doubt about it.

This guy is the visionary of our age when it comes to business.

You know what Amazon is doing?

Amazon is going to build and construct through an investment and expertise that no one else can match.

They're going to build the first vaccinated supply chain globally.

And that is if you're a vendor, if you're a worker, if you're a customer, anything that goes through their supply chain is not only not interrupted, but is virus-free.

He's going to be able to say, okay, there's every other supply chain globally, which is technically the largest business in the world.

And then there's the Amazon supply chain.

And also making a serious investment in testing what is about to become the biggest consumer product category in the world, testing for the novel coronavirus.

And Amazon may be the best at it and have the supply chain to deliver it.

I mean, it's just, I just think about this and the stock.

Do you know my moat theory?

He keeps building moats.

Oh, yeah.

So many of alligators.

And no one can beat him on delivery now.

No one can beat him on convenience.

Price, he keeps up.

He doesn't like win necessarily, but he keeps up on price.

He keeps up on what you want, anticipation, more and more technology.

Gangster.

This is the virus quote.

This is the virus mode.

Well, and so he says this, and of course, shareholders, it's literally like history repeating itself.

Shareholders are like, oh, shit, they're not going to be profitable again.

And they took the stock down 7%.

And this is how, this is the scale of Amazon.

And whenever I speak to elected officials, I don't make new arguments.

All I really do is show them the scale of what we're talking about.

So Amazon, because they said they're reinvesting their profits, what happens is until the marketplace absorbs the fact that they're about to just, as you say, lap the competition again, they get angry and they whack the stock for about 24 or 48 hours.

You watch the stock's going to recover and more than that.

If I could buy stock, I'd have bought Amazon stock.

100%.

And then what do they do?

This is the scale of Amazon.

Their stock goes down 7%.

So they lost the value of Boeing.

That's where Amazon is right now.

It gains or loses the value of Boeing in a single trading day.

So when you're talking about a company that's quote unquote too big, just remember it can shed or gain Boeing in a trading day.

And that's what happened.

But this is, he is unafraid to lose the value of Boeing.

This is how most CEOs think.

Well, people are used to that from him, though.

He did it for years, remember?

So, you know, interestingly,

Apple doesn't care.

Yeah, but also Wall Street don't care.

They just trust him now because they let him do it for so long before.

So they're uses.

Like, Apple cannot do this.

Like, nobody else can do this.

Like, they go out together.

This is the only other one.

Yep.

Netflix.

I'm just saying people are like, we trust this guy.

He's going to deliver.

And he really is.

He's going to have the best supply chain ever.

It's crazy.

And then, well, everybody else.

It's crazy.

It's going to be so exciting.

It's going to be so exciting when we break their ass up.

Well, speaking of which, he's going to be able to.

Amazon fulfillment.

Amazon fulfillment.

Oh, that's right.

He's been called before Congress.

You're in D.C.

What do you think is going to happen there?

I don't know.

Has he agreed to go?

I don't think he has.

I think he should.

I'd show up if I were him.

Why wouldn't he?

About half, about 48 to 51% of the people are just going to talk about what a leader he is and basically glom all over him.

It's not going to be that bad for him.

Yeah, I mean, it's about these misleading, remember, intentionally misleading statements about

using data to help themselves versus sellers on the platform.

It's a little bit dicey.

Maybe he shouldn't come.

I don't know.

There's a whole bunch of people who advise people on that.

I never understand their arguments.

But I guess it's probably not good.

You could end up with a Jerry Yang situation when you show up at Congress.

I don't know.

I think it'll be more reminiscent of Howard Hughes in front of Congress.

I think Jeff Bezos is.

I think it's a good ending.

What?

What do you mean?

Yeah,

having long nails and saving your own urine.

What are you talking about?

Those are my hobbies.

Oh, man.

That story was.

Anyway, go ahead.

But when Howard Hughes went in front of Congress, right, he basically was, he was very strong.

He was one of the most famous, interesting business people of the age.

He was.

I think Bezos would owe him a debt of gratitude.

I think Bezos would do just fine in front of Congress.

And I also think he'd have a lot of supporters there.

I think a lot of people would basically just tee him up with softballs.

I don't see the future.

Well, you know, it's interesting because some of this legislation is helping him, like the one we previously just talked about, liability legislation, will help him.

At the same time, you know, you've got Trump after him.

I disagree there.

Let's push a pause there.

I think actually

it would hurt him because I think he will be able to avoid that liability.

I see.

Everybody gets it off.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right.

I think it helps him.

He'll be one of the few companies that will actually be able to avoid that liability.

And

he has the money to support it and say to every worker, I'm insuring you.

I'm giving you additional compensation.

Come work with me.

I used to go on weekends, so my dad would come pick me up after after him and my mom's, but we used to go to race go-karts, which was wildly dangerous.

And we would sign this thing saying, okay, if you die in a fiery ball, it's your fault.

And

he's basically going to say to the entire supply chain.

We have, you're taking a risk.

Here's some additional compensation, but there's less risk here than anywhere else in the world.

It's going to get people their sausage and their espresso pods.

I'm just like, I'm literally, I'm blown away by this.

I'm totally blown away by Amazon's like crazy vision and march towards $2 trillion.

And it's more important than ever that

we break them up.

He's one of those people who just leans into the fight.

It's interesting.

Now look at, contrast it with Elon Musk.

He's so calculated.

Congress didn't make him do this, of course, but he, you know, it'll be interesting to see what he does.

He's got a lot of advisors around him.

And I, you know, I bet they're debating the topic quite handily.

But one of the things that he also wants is this Jedi contract.

Now, he's going to get other contracts with the U.S., but he certainly would like to.

He's still in court on this one.

And they're going to just keep, you know, hammering it out.

He's going to grind it out

until whenever.

But nobody can start.

Now, that's the thing that could flip back on him.

The Trump administration could say he's hurting U.S.

intelligence capabilities or defense capabilities.

And we'll see about that.

I don't think anyone's paying attention.

Do you know what I mean?

I think no one's paying attention, so it's fine that he keeps grinding it out and slowing everybody else down and possibly winning a piece of it.

And you're referring to the case where they basically said the selection process was biased and that Microsoft was unfairly awarded the cloud contract for the CIA, which is, I think, about a $10 billion.

Yeah, that Trump put his finger on the scale.

And, you know, there's so much evidence that he publicly tried to do that.

The question is, is he allowed to?

And the defense is the president allowed to?

The defense secretary

is going to have to come in and testify.

There's all kinds of funny, funny business.

There definitely doesn't look great.

It looks like this COVID thing where the president says something insane and the bureaucrats scramble.

So it's not, and there's a history here.

So it'll be interesting to see.

But I got to say,

he is the gangster.

He is the original gangster.

Oh, gee, he really is.

This is exactly what he should have done is lean in with this $4 billion.

damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

I think he's, you know, and at the same time, he's got to deliver on the safety of workers.

I think it's unconscionable that someone of that wealth doesn't have,

that isn't the most concerned.

And they've had a history of this.

They've had a history of stories about their treatment of workers.

And he needs to fix this one most of all.

But they do have, okay, but they raised, they kind of up the ante.

They raised their minimum wage to 15 bucks, which I think the federal government should.

I mean, here's what you have.

You have companies now that the scale of them, when they have a trillion-dollar market cap, which almost all the big tech firms do, and if they want to double their market capitalization in the next five years, which they have to implicitly guarantee to their shareholders, otherwise they'll go by Cloudflare or Salesforce, that means that a company like Amazon needs to increase its top-line revenue, assuming they get some scale and some synergy and operational leverage.

That means they need to increase their top-line revenue by about $100 billion over the next five years, which is

effectively adding $1.5 billion in top-line revenue every 30 days or $50 million in incremental revenue every 24 hours or 75 million every business day.

I mean, the scale here is staggering.

And if you have to do that, if you have to do that, it limits the sectors you can go after.

And so what you're going to have is the following.

Amazon is about to go into government.

Amazon is about to go into defense.

Apple is about to go into education.

Amazon is about to go into healthcare because there's only a handful of industries that are big enough

to save the appetite of what is the world's largest vampires.

They can't eat rats.

They have to go after elephants.

What's so genius about this is that Jeff Bezos has said, okay, we have to get into government.

We have to get into health care because there's just very few, very few corpuses big enough for us to drain enough blood to feed our insatiable appetite here.

And they're effectively said, okay, the next biggest consumer category in the world is going to be testing for COVID-19.

It's so odd on it.

It would have worked.

It would have worked.

We would all have been a lot better off if they had gotten it.

But what if they'd said to you, okay, if you're...

I would have done it.

If you're in an Amazon now, if you're in an Amazon now uh location and my kids when i say my kids the people i work with were now ordering their lunch from amazon now which they get in 48 minutes what if they said in 48 minutes we can get you a test for either antibodies or the virus yeah of course i would say available to prime members the marvelous mrs myzell and covet 19 antibody tests

blow my mind literally literally i mean seriously you know Alex Jones eats my ass and Bezos blows my mind.

It's a good weekend.

Well, it's a good weekend.

Okay, Scott, this is perfect timing because we have your Vice News nemesis on the line.

He also has better hair, Anand Irgadas.

He has great hair.

He's the new host of Vice TV's seat at the table.

Our publisher, New York Magazine, just did an entire issue dedicated to wealth, class, and racial disparity on display during the pandemic.

It was called Rich Corona, Poor Corona.

Anand is the perfect person to talk through these issues with us.

Hello, Anand.

How are you doing?

Thank you so much for having me.

Welcome, Anand.

I just want to say,

when you say,

I have better hair than Scott, I feel like the audio implies

already with the inside.

I know this is for an audio.

I know this is for an audio thing, but I just want to fact-check that before.

Okay, I'm sorry.

You know what?

Your hair looks magnificent, and Scott's looks non-existent right now.

Yes, as per usual.

Now, listen, away from the fact that you have very wealthy-looking hair,

we were talking about this idea of rich corona pork runa.

We have talked about this issue.

Previous to you coming on, Scott was singing the praises of Jeff Bezos in terms of the $4 billion and et cetera, et cetera.

I was a little more

not so as impressed as he was, but nonetheless, explain, first talk about COVID-19 and how it discriminates and some of these relief packages and how it's turned out.

You know, what's so interesting is

Particularly as journalists, our training is to always focus on what is new in any situation and whether that's a war or that's something like coronavirus.

And coronavirus seems like so new, right?

And it is really new, maybe more new than anything in any of our lifetimes.

Novel coronavirus.

Novel.

Exactly.

It's even in the name.

And

as all of us have adjusted and lived these totally different lives than we were living before, it again feels new, new, new.

And I think after a few weeks, what you actually realize is this is, yeah,

some of the basic facts and how we're living are new, but this is actually a doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on what have been the mega trends of the age.

Yeah, right?

An acceleration.

We talk about that.

An acceleration.

So dramatic that it feels new, but is in fact just like the old cubed.

And it is, so it's, you know, quickly, it's the war on government for 30, 40 years.

Turns out you wage a war on government, the idea of government, the thing itself, you defund it, you defang it at every turn.

Turns out when something like this happens, the free market is actually not able to solve a global pandemic.

Second, the notion of wealth concentration, which you're talking about in the New York magazine feature, this idea that so many people are unable, as we've heard many times, to weather a $400 emergency expense that weathering something like this, which may end up being a multi-thousand or tens of thousand dollar emergency expense for many, many, many millions of people, is unfathomable.

And third, this notion of billionaires like Jeff Bezos or others being able to use this crisis to redeem themselves,

which is not to say that they are not doing good works in this crisis.

They may be, they may not be.

Some are.

I think Bill Gates is obviously doing very sincere work.

Others, it's more of a show.

But it risks absolving them in the public imagination of what we should be very focused on, which is the ways in which that billionaire class is responsible for America's weakness in this pandemic and why we have not had South Korea outcomes or Germany outcomes or any outcomes of any number of countries.

You know, tax avoidance as a class of people fighting for things like the Trump tax cut, avoiding whatever taxes are actually on the books over years, decades, not paying corporate income taxes.

Secondly, lobbying,

lobbying, it's not working people who don't want universal health care.

Someone stops these things that are 50, 60, 70% popular.

Someone blocks them right at the end.

And it's big corporations and the very wealthy and powerful.

And finally, specifically on the pandemic, manufacturing.

At every turn in the last 30, 40 years, when there's been an opportunity to save a nickel by outsourcing, i.e., having another company instead of your company produce or offshoring, moving it to another country,

the corporate class, CEO class in America has

taken that decision.

And we now end up being a kind of pansy country that literally can't make anything for ourselves, cannot make masks.

I mean, I'm not a mask expert.

I look at those things.

Like, how hard could it be?

We got to wait.

We got to send airplanes to China to beg for masks.

And so the very people who are stepping up to help are in many ways members of a class of people who put the country in the position it is right now during this pandemic.

So

there's,

I mean, to your point, it's as if we can't,

there's no nuance or we're not able to think as a species in any sort of nuanced, complex way that

we might be able to recognize and respect and applaud their efforts

during a period of crisis, but at the same time break their ass up and restore some oxygen to the marketplace.

It's as if it's one or the other, when the reality is you can do both.

My question to you is, is there an opportunity here, and this is kind of the glass half-full

scenario where whenever we reach this level of income inequality, there's war, famine, or revolution, and it looks like we're having some format or form of that, and that we might come out of this recognizing that government is important, that delegitimizing and defunding government, as you referenced, it does have consequences.

And we might be producing a new generation of younger people who will want a global CDC, who will want cooperation, that we might, in fact, decide that

the world taking a break from emissions does make a difference.

I mean, Kara and I were saying it's just so beautiful out today, and we can't think that that's accidental.

Do you think there's anything that we might come out of this with that might,

in fact, we might take away some lessons and lessons and and emerge from this a better a better society

i i will i will take that and raise you and say i actually think this may be the only opportunity for i mean i'm i'm 38 years old given my lifetime and possible future lifespan i think this may be the biggest and only opportunity to truly transform the country in my lifetime.

You know, when I was, an interesting thing happened when I was on Book Tour the last couple of years.

Some older people would often come up to me in the signing line and almost whisper this thing like they were embarrassed to say it.

They're like, this is all great.

We agree with you on changing the system, but you know, we're older, like this stuff only happens after awful stuff, right?

No World War I, women don't get suffrage.

No World War II, you don't have the civil rights movement in the same way.

Like it takes these reset moments in history that create space for change.

And over the last couple of years, I was kind of depressed.

It seemed true, but I was kind of depressed by that, right?

Because that, you know, well, the good news is we now have our thing that is of a magnitude.

The entire world on lockdown right now.

All of our systems tested, many of them failing.

But what I think it's going to take is, it doesn't happen on its own.

It takes leadership, political leadership out of that.

And so the question is, if you're Joe Biden,

you have the opportunity right now to say,

I'm not a Medicare for all person, haven't been.

I thought

that in America with the vigorous private enterprise the way it is, we're we're not France, that healthcare tied to jobs was a good way to go.

And then we'll fix a bunch of other people on the back end.

But I see now

that I was wrong.

The coronavirus is a big enough thing that you can say that without being embarrassed.

Yeah, he's not going to.

He's not going to.

And so

to Scott's question, the question of whether this actually does become a pivot is going to...

is going to turn on whether people like Joe Biden and others leaders in our society and leaders of movements are really able to get in there and change people's minds.

Because what the crisis is also revealing is even in something as awful as this, we are just so locked in our silos of assumption that it's not clear that any of us are persuadable to each other anymore.

Well, look at the opening up.

You know, the people, there were stories this weekend of people in other states like Oklahoma where they wouldn't wear masks.

Someone got shot and they got angry over it.

And the governor of Ohio, who's doing a a relatively good job about that comparatively, is the Republican governor, is doing very good.

He's been quite a leader around this stuff and safety.

He just was like, I can't make them wear masks.

There's a point where I can't make them.

And so people were unconcerned with other people's health.

And you get the feeling, everybody wants to go out.

Everybody wants to, you know, you sort of, you have like a wish to do that.

But it does, it does create this sort of difference, different, like you said, rich corona, poor corona.

Can you talk about that?

Because a lot of the rich people are these tech billionaires who you've written about many times well but i think what you're getting at is something a little different which is you know i remember when um hurricane sandy happened um we had these very very close friends in new york who are from argentina and they lived in you know there were certain zones on the water that they said you got to get out you have mandatory evacuation and so we had these friends who were told you got to get out of your house and so we called them we said come over We got a lot of food, live with us for a few days, like weather it here.

And they were like, no, it's not necessary and we're like no no no it's a mandatory like i know you're from argentina you just got here a couple years ago but like yeah the government says you can't be there and they were like oh like where we come from if the government tells you you got to get out of there it's because it's some trick it's like they're gonna like steal your stuff or they're gonna they're gonna like confiscate your apartment like It's just like when the government tells you something, you do the opposite because, you know, and if you're Argentinian, that may be fair based on the record of that country's government.

I think what is happening in this country after 30 or 40 years of everybody besmirching the government

is that we're getting to that kind of mentality in many people when when people here put on a mask or people here stay home, their mind goes to what's the con here?

What's the game here?

Right?

And you can't treat the symptom.

The root, the disease here is if you make everybody

or 60 or 70% of the public have this, you know, either outright hostility or just kind of passive sense of the futility of government,

you're going to start to reap very dire consequences.

No, I think we've always been an unpleasant group of people.

I don't know.

Whiskey was that.

I don't know.

I think we've always been an unpleasant bunch of assistants.

Isn't it some of it that we've become expectant and soft through all this relative peace and prosperity?

We outsource war to certain demographic groups.

And even when I was a kid, we used to do duck and cover drills.

And there weren't two or three of us saying this is propaganda.

And let's be honest, it's all over in a flash.

This is just an illusion to make us feel more secure.

There was a comedy of, man, we pull over when there's an ambulance.

You're not going to get arrested if you don't move to the side of the road when there's an ambulance.

But now it seems as if everybody has decided the enemy is within.

We're tribal.

We don't trust each other.

There's a lack of comedy.

People don't want to say I'm an American first, and there's just a certain level of handholding that should take place here.

And instead, we show up with guns and masks at the Michigan State House to protest, you know, someone saying, I need to wear a mask.

It feels as if America has lost a common enemy, and we become soft, we become indulgent, we become expectant.

And there needs to be, and to your point, this might be the thing that says, all right, at some point we have to put America first and start cooperating and saying, okay, if they tell us to wear masks, we're going to wear masks.

I mean, it's just like, buck up, right?

We're Americans.

So if it's not the political leaders, is it the corporate ones?

Because, you know, you do have like,

you know, Bezos just doing this $4 billion, I'm going to protect workers thing.

We just talked about how

it's possibly a business advantage for him because he's going to have the virus-proof delivery business, essentially.

How do you look at these sort of,

I want to focus in on the tech billionaires cover because you've written about them, and they are the richest people in the world.

How do you think they come out of this?

And you gave Bill Gates the exception.

Well, I mean,

I don't give him the exception in the sense that he is still very much only has that level of wealth because of a terrible system that made that wealth possible.

I think he's more sincere about a lot of the efforts he makes and actually applies his mind to them in a way that some of these people are just literally throwing, you know, reputational dollars marketing.

Yeah, the PR, but press release.

But, you know, I think as a whole, the tech group

is very culpable for this society being as weak as it is.

You know,

so you think about Uber and Lyft, for example, and just those kind of more distributed.

Are you ever going to go on a ride-hailing rant?

Yeah, exactly.

At every turn

the delivery the delivery ones also right yeah um the wag you know all these all these kinds of distributed workforce tech companies at every opportunity they have had faced a a fork in the road between do you kind of make people employees you give them some security or do you

leave them to themselves they have always taken this turn of precario and they've created through those choices a precariat who a group of very large group of people growing group of people, who have no security.

Well, when something like this happens, you know, you can step up and say, I'm going to help this person, I'm going to help this person, I'm going to donate to this relief fund.

But you have fought tooth and nail to achieve the kind of economy in which there is no security.

Yeah, Pablo Escarval built

soccer stadiums.

That doesn't forgive what he was doing.

I'm curious,

I think so many people, including the people you're talking to me, buy into this notion that this inequality is out of control, that tech billionaires deserve to be wealthy, but they shouldn't have the GDP of Norway.

Give us two or three things.

If you were king and

had a magic wand, what would you like to see Congress pass in terms of?

He is king.

Go ahead.

Look at that here.

In terms of legislation, tax policy, gestalt in our society, what two or three things correct, course correct?

It's a great question.

I think number one,

as a policy matter, we would,

the time for the wealth tax is overdue.

I think the way I've seen the conversation pushed for the last couple years.

Let's push, pause right there, because I understand the notion of it.

But France tried it, and then the wealthiest man in France moves to Brussels.

How do you take the most mobile capital in the world, and that is rich people, and then decide you're going to tax what they believe is already theirs, so you're violating their private property rights, and not have a bunch of billionaires move to Singapore and end up with a lower tax base than we have right now.

So, this is where I'm going to offend your listeners in Europe

and

appeal to patriotism, which is one of the advantages we have in this country is this is kind of a place you can't not be.

Come along, America.

New York.

You can't get food anywhere like you can get in the East Village.

Is that what you're saying?

It's worth it.

It's worth it.

Take a look at the business.

Well, first of all, it's just the size of the market, right?

I mean, it's 25% of global demand on a bunch of different things, right?

So.

Like, if you're a bank who just doesn't want to be in the United States, like, you can afford to not be in France.

A lot of companies are not in France.

I just don't know.

I don't know a lot of ambitious global companies that are not, don't need revenue from America.

So that's one.

Second, everybody wants to get into our universe.

Like a lot of people want a lot of stuff from us, right?

And we are very bad at actually having any leverage for that.

So I would say if, you know, if Michael Bloomberg would really leave America,

if we took a 10% wealth tax every year, which would still be probably about half.

I'm sorry, he was saying about half of his increase.

You said 10%, 10 right which is like higher than the bernie thing right but just think about this for a second most of these people earn let's say 20

irr every year right return on rate of return on capital right so even something higher than the bernie tax right would actually see them all getting maybe 10 richer a year instead of 20 richer a year right that that scares them warren's was two or three percent right so Warren would have slowed them from getting richer at 20% a year to getting richer at 17% a year.

And that was horrifying to them.

So I think we have the leverage as a country to do that and not see them all run away.

And if they all run away, maybe it would be better.

And if it wasn't better, we can shift it.

So

that's a great argument.

I love, and I love that you said it, and I felt some real American pride there because on a smaller level, if you live in Manhattan, you pay 11% to 13% incremental taxes or

11% to 13% additional tax rate versus living in Florida.

But quite frankly, living in Manhattan is worth it.

Living in Shorthales, New Jersey or Granny, Connecticut, maybe not worth it.

So you're saying America is worth it.

20%, you couldn't get a wealth tax over 50 bips because if you started charging billionaires 10%, one down market, you cut their wealth in half, they will move to Singapore.

Even America isn't worth it.

I think what you're saying is America is the New York of Florida.

There you go.

There you go.

Perfect.

Perfect.

And I think a second thing, which is not a policy thing, although there are policy fixes that would help it, I would say,

particularly in this moment,

we need a wave of young people going to public service, going into public service.

Scott discussed that last week.

Scott discussed the amazing thing.

And now is a good time because you know what?

Those jobs are secure.

Yep.

That's right.

They're hard to be fired from.

Millennials have no security.

This is going to be...

Corona core is what Scott is calling corona core.

Right.

I would say we need a massive shift in young people going to public service as the place they go to change the world.

All right, speaking of change the world, last question, because we've got to get going.

Bezos was called before Congress.

He wasn't compelled to do so.

What do you think the legislation that was moving towards controlling some of these tech companies, antitrust, all these other things, controlling their, in the end, controlling their wealth,

will go from now on?

You know, I had this idea a couple years ago, which has not

caught on, which was, you know, creating something called the Commission on American Reform, which would have been to identify four or five big things we could do.

And the rule for any idea was it has to have like 80% public support, right?

We're not even going to look at things that are part of...

We're going to look at things that are just much loved on both sides.

I think you can get there on a wealth tax, by the way.

I think a big area where you could get there is antitrust.

I don't think anybody has, you know, carries water for Facebook being a monopoly or Amazon being except people who work there.

Who else cares?

For whom is that an important issue of principle to defend their right to be a a monopoly?

And so that's an example where I actually think if you had creative politicians and you had a sensible Republican Party instead of a white nationalist cult, you actually might be able to say

there's a

30 to 40% of people in this party and 100% of people in this party who might be able to make real headway on that.

And by the way, that's not socialism, right?

That's capitalism.

Having massive areas of American life where there's only one company able to operate is the most Soviet thing you can possibly do.

They're better than the Soviets.

They deliver on time and you get what you're saying.

Yeah, but so let's just review them.

So we have a wealth tax, we have national service, and we have antitrust.

That seems all like a reasonable way to oxygenate the marketplace.

And if you will, recalibrate.

I mean, a step towards tyranny is when private power co-ops government, instead of being a countervailing force, the economy would boom, I think, under a lot of what you're talking about, Anand.

Before Anon goes, Kara, we should point out that Anand has a new show, and it plays on Vice Thursday nights at 10 p.m.

Oh, wait,

that's when my show plays, by the way.

I will crush you.

I will crush you.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God, Scott.

Wow.

Anyway, it's called

the history.

I will do a good one, Anand.

Anyone, check out Anand's show.

Vice TV seat at the table.

It airs on Wednesdays at 10 p.m.

on Eastern, and maybe check out Scott.

You don't have to if you don't want to.

Anyway, Anand, Anand, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you for having me.

Appreciate it.

All right.

All right.

Bye.

Thanks.

Bye.

Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back with wins and fails.

That was bracing from Anon.

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All right scott we're gonna do a quick round of wins and fails just go for your wins and fails move along move along uh well to to anon's point in terms of covet 19 being an accelerant more than a change agent uh jay crew is supposed to file for bankruptcy this morning actually probably is we're going to see uh just a raft of retail bankruptcy who else which is sort of this who else oh a senna you know you know what could really surprise people kara could really surprise people the gap the gap the gap could um probably go out of business which is staggering to feel.

You're going to see Neiman Marcus filed last week.

It's probably only a matter of time.

I don't want to be a grave dancer and send stocks down, but most of the department stores, especially retail apparel.

And there'll be a few surprises in there, too, that we just aren't expecting.

Who else?

The gap?

Who else?

These are all mainstays of malls.

Man Taylor, remember that?

Man Taylor, Loft.

You could see, I mean, there just could be anything,

almost anything in the department store.

Is there anyone immune?

Is like an HM m or a uniqlo immune or not oh the the the elephants that survive this will have more foliage your sephoras your restoration hardwares uh are gonna are gonna be stronger coming out of this there will be some big winners there'll be some and what makes you a winner versus a loser

Well, oh gosh,

we're going to need a bigger boat.

But the way you could almost do an initial proxy is the percentage of sales you get from e-commerce, how differentiated your product is.

I mean, at high, low, either incredible value or incredible luxury.

Anything in the middle is kind of going to get crushed.

So it's going to be, it's going to be just fascinating.

Speaking of losses, and I kept quiet post their launch because I predicted that this just made no sense and it was a terrible strategy.

And it was tech.

It was tech people playing media.

Quibby.

The lawsuit.

Yeah, Quibi.

Awesome.

Quibi's already.

I said, look, I predicted Quibi was dead on arrival.

And then a media analyst clapped back at me and said that he had seen Quibi content.

I underestimated him.

Anyways, their projection was they were hoping to get 7 million sign-ups.

They've signed up a million.

I think Quibi probably gets sold in the next six months, and it'll be a mercy killing.

It'll get sold for a dollar to somebody.

And also, there's a lawsuit, Paul Singer,

around this use of the market.

Yeah, around their key technology around landscaping or the way you pivot the

dealership Zuckerberg, and he, I mean, sorry, Jeff Katzenberg.

I'm sorry, Jeff Zuckerberg, um around it and he was he was dismissing it as out of hand uh publicly well they none of them what's a ceo uh is going to say it has real merit and we're in trouble yeah but he went out of his way to say they're idiots essentially um yeah but have you but you started watching a little bit of quibi are you still watching it i went the minute billions came you know i was watching homeland i i stick with the netflix is the one i really really watching a lot uh in terms of long form and i know i don't see that i think quibby i would watch quibby if i was commuting or somewhere for 10 minutes.

I'm nowhere for 10 minutes anymore.

I'm either sitting down and watching or I'm working.

And so I don't, there's no, there's not that downtime, that commuting time, that waiting time that you have when you're in your normal life, essentially.

And so I suspect I would use it.

I don't, I don't sit down with it.

And I do sit down with Netflix and I do sit down with Comcast and things like that.

But Quibi, and I'll,

my first class, and I'll go professorial here or professor light.

Quibi violates some basic tenets of strategy right out of the gates.

And that is there's only kind of three things you need to remember and I call it the hurdles test.

One, is it differentiated?

Two, does anyone care about that differentiation?

Is it relevant?

And finally, if you're fortunate enough to have a product that's differentiated and relevant, do you have assets, culture, IP, capital that makes it sustainable and you can own it?

And what they had here is potentially something was relevant, people, short attention span, short form video.

But it's not differentiated.

YouTube has all kinds of short-form video and it's also absolutely not sustainable.

What could they do to own short, quick bites?

This was a strategic era.

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman in a billion and a half dollars is our real assets.

And instead, they found something, a value proposition that strategically was just flaccid.

This just thing made no sense strategically from the outset.

All right, okay.

So, a dollar.

That's your, that's a good one.

That's a, that's also a good win.

What's your win?

Did you have a win?

What's your win?

A win.

I cleaned my house this week.

I moved into a house and all the boxes are gone.

That's my win.

There you go.

Congratulations on that.

Well done.

A win.

I like the Joe Biden-Elizabeth Warren thing.

I thought that was interesting.

I do feel a little the weather has turned, and I know it sounds crazy, but it makes me more hopeful.

That's nice.

So, and

our win,

I think what Bezos has done here, a vaccinated supply chain, is just overwhelming from a business and a strategic perspective.

And it's just so exciting.

And it's going to make it only that much more interesting when we break up that company and Amazon fulfillment becomes its own entity.

That company can end up being on its own.

One of the 10 most.

I make your argument all the time to people.

It's a better company for everybody because there's lots of companies you can invest in.

Broken up.

Broken up.

And he'll be richer than ever.

He'll be a trillionaire.

He'll be a trillionaire.

The world's first trillionaire.

Anyway, Scott, it's time to get out of here.

It's a very long show.

Don't forget if there's a story in the news that you're curious about and want to hear our opinion on, email us at pivot at voxmedia.com to be featured on the show.

We've gotten a lot of great stuff via mail.

We also be happy to respond to you on Twitter.

We love Twitter.

So let us know what you want us to talk about.

Someone just said they wanted us to talk about education and we shall do so.

And vote for Pivot for the Webby Awards Best Business Podcast.

If you don't, we won't like you.

Is that a good way?

Yes, and Kara Swisher needs more awards.

You need one.

You need one.

I'm doing it for you, Scott.

Zero to one.

There was a book on that.

Zero to one.

All right, Scott.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Our executive producer is Erica Anderson.

Special thanks to Drew Burroughs and Rebecca Castro.

If you like what you heard, please hit subscribe.

Have a wonderful week.

Enjoy.

Enjoy just how beautiful it is.

Beautiful day.

It's a wonderful time to be alive, emerging into a new tomorrow, a hopeful new tomorrow.

Kara, I am thinking about you only because you're appearing on my TV show this week.

I've got to go shower.

If it doesn't work, it's your fault.

I've got to go shower right now.

So I've got to go shower.

Yo, Macchiaga, baby.

Bring Brain on the old Macchiage.

Alright, Scott, see it soon.

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