Addressing the US economy (a note from Andrew Yang), data privacy in a public health emergency, and a listener question on the "great WFH-experiment”

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

How are you, Kara?

I am sheltering in place.

No, I'm not.

I'm going.

I'm a little bit frazzled today.

I'm moving down to D.C.

from New York.

It's like a, you remember that Kurt Russell movie, Escape from New York?

That's what I'm doing.

Yeah.

So packing is really hard right now, and it's weird.

But anyway, it's just, I'm just a little frazzled.

I've been packing all the time and putting everything in a box is sort of gives you a weird feeling, I have to say.

How are you getting down to DC?

We have a moving truck.

We have these Russian guys who just don't mind doing anything.

Everybody, everyone's wearing gloves and staying away from each other.

But it's still,

you know, you think about every move you make right now and the stuff that you were doing before, like everything, every single thing, cleaning people, people who you work with, friends, like in D.C., I can't see many of my friends.

You know, Amanda's parents can't see the baby anymore for who knows how long and stuff like that.

And so it's weird.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

And in what is either going to turn out to be a very good or a very bad idea, I am distancing in the Maya Coba.

I'm in the Riviera Maya with my family.

I had a unusual situation and that is

where

We sold our house, renovating a new house, but there was a gap in between.

And as luck would have it, we found ourselves living with my wife's 70-year-old parents.

So I had 70-year-old,

a 70-year-old couple with a bunch of potentially asymptomatic carriers in their home.

So I had to get them out of there.

Right.

And so I did a kind of a series of being the strange person I am.

I wrote down, I created sort of a matrix last week around heat, low density.

very low virus penetration or cases within an hour of a world-class teaching hospital should shit get real.

You know, all the crazy things that old weird people such as myself do.

And I came up with the Riviera Maya Coba.

Was he in Mexico?

Is that where?

Is that correct?

C.

I'm in Mexico.

Okay.

Yes.

Escaped to Mexico.

I'm going to DC.

I'm going to like ground zero.

You and I could not be more different.

You're in.

You are literally, you are in the least Mexico place in the world and I'm in the least DC place in the world.

Oh, God.

I don't even know what it's going to be like, but there I am.

I'm living in D.C.

now.

Anyway, let's speaking of DC, let's talk about the the big stories.

And don't forget, it's Friday, so we'll save some time at the end to talk about predictions.

The Trump administration and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are proposing emergency checks to households as part of a $1 trillion stimulus package.

It's still unclear exactly what that would look like, but NBC News is reporting that the Treasury Department will ask Congress for $500 billion in direct payouts to taxpayers.

It would consist of two rounds of direct payments, each totaling $250 billion, sent out on April 6th and May 18th.

It would be a tiered payment with the amounts based on income level and family size.

The proposal says both payments would be the same amount.

This is unprecedented, absolutely unprecedented.

I had Andrew Yang on my podcast yesterday.

Yeah, calling Andrew Yang.

Yeah, calling Andrew Yang.

I did.

I got him on this.

I got him.

He's sheltering up in upstate New York.

And we were talking about this idea during the, he was talking about it during the presidential primaries.

I spoke to him about universal basic income, which was his thing.

He called it something else.

It was freedom dividend on Rico Decode and why he thinks suddenly Republicans like the idea.

Here's the tape.

Someone said to me, Oh, you're a socialist.

I said, Look, this is capitalism where income doesn't start at zero.

It's actually excellent for the consumer market, for businesses, for entrepreneurship, that people have money to spend.

And having a robust middle class actually

helps create economic opportunity up and down the chain in a way that squeezing more and more people out of the ability to buy things that are not essentials, it doesn't help you create businesses.

And so this is actually the future of capitalism.

And to me, we've always had to harness the power of markets to improve our lives and start broadening what the market rewards.

Wow, Scott, what do you think?

Well, so look, I think this makes a lot of sense.

And if you think about, this really isn't that strange or novel a concept.

If you think about Social Security,

we give a trillion dollars a a year to take seniors,

39% of seniors who would be in poverty down to 9%.

And why wouldn't we spend $500 billion to ensure kind of or the livelihood or to ensure that a lot of Americans, but perhaps even more, don't devolve into some sort of poverty or panic.

So we have done this.

We do this every month for our senior population.

It seems in exceptional times.

It makes a lot of sense to do this across

individuals in America.

The thing I do like about this is in 2008, it was all about

credit and saving companies.

And I don't think in this instance, we should be thinking about protecting companies.

We should be thinking about protecting people.

And so the idea of a direct payment to individuals

in their hands.

And Andrew was talking about sort of treating people like adults, like that they can spend the money the right way.

They're not going to waste it.

This idea among Republicans that they're going to sit around and drink champagne and like, you know, that old ridiculous welfare moms bullshit that they had for so long.

But it's really interesting, the Republicans are pushing this and including the word they don't want to use, which is bailout.

They had a meeting among Republicans with Steve Mnuchin saying, please don't use the word bailout,

which is what it's astonishing the people that sort of rail against, they really don't have the socialism thing because Bernie's not running, but now, you know, this looks a little like that for them.

And so they're sort of pushing it as

what it is, which I think I agree with Andrew Yang on this, is that income doesn't have to start at zero.

And one of the things he said that's not, we didn't have the quote here, but he said, you have to think of it, you know, you think of a company as shareholders.

Well, we're shareholders in the United States.

It's our money.

It's our company.

And so we should benefit from it when we need to.

And I thought that was kind of an interesting concept.

I think the biggest risk to the program is that the term Stephen Mnuchin and stimulus are just oxymorons.

It's just hard to imagine anything will stimulate anything that Stephen Mnuchin's involved in.

My theory, Kara, is that Mr.

Mnuchin or Secretary Mnuchin or whatever he is, has had Corona for about 20 years and it's just not quite over it yet.

You don't think it's too early to do.

Some corona, some COVID-19 humor.

Is it too soon?

Is it too soon?

Yes, it is.

It's always too soon.

But it's interesting, you know, and now Trump, of course, is saying that he's a wartime president now.

And suddenly we'll get into him embracing the fact that he really thought this was difficult all along.

But it means, I think really, it's sort of the indication that we're going to be in a, we are in a global recession.

They were talking about a depression.

So there was a 2008 stimulus package.

How do you, I mean, nobody has a lot of data because nobody, of course, has been testing.

So nobody knows where this is going.

Talk a little bit about that, because that was another issue, Andrew, and I talked about.

We don't have data for any of this to understand where it's going.

Yeah, well,

you're absolutely right.

When we go into an economic crisis, we have metrics up the yin-ying.

And you can't, we keep saying this, you can't manage what you can't measure.

And we're able to measure all kinds of things when it comes to the economy.

I think what you're going to see here is we're going to start spending a lot of time trying to figure out

contact rates.

I mean, already in China, for example,

traffic to malls is at 90% of where it was pre-crisis.

And this data sets, these data sets and how we figure out what are the right metrics,

we're in new territory because when the economy goes into recession, we measure that.

We're like, okay, two quarters of negative GDP growth equals a recession.

And we have somewhat of a playbook for what to do there.

Here, we don't even know what inputs we should be registering and what the subsequent action should be.

So

is this enough to get the economy moving?

With these infusion, people will be less worried, presumably, but they certainly aren't going to be buying.

Like there's no economic activity going on.

I'm not doing any, you know, I'm not like, for example, Apple Apple announced its MacBook Bear.

I probably would have bought it.

I have a really old MacBook.

I'm not going to buy it.

I'm not like I'm not doing a lot of things that I was doing economically.

So, and it iterates all over the system.

How do you, how do you, if there isn't a when this is going to be over issue, people just naturally just stop.

Like the idea of stopping is really, it never, it was so non-conceptual, I couldn't even conceive of the idea of it, but here we are.

Well, I spoke with Professor aswat the motor in yesterday about the markets just trying to take my mind off this stuff i i'm fascinated by the markets i'm curious if and when or how far they'll go down and if and when they'll come back and you can kind of go sector by sector and the first sector that obviously is getting hit the hardest is anything travel related that's done it's hard to imagine how anything from at this point carnival to american airlines survives without some sort of bailout well you had thought about investing in it but didn't think it would get this bad if you remember well and also three weeks three weeks ago three weeks ago i'm the guy that said this was more hype than horror so let's be clear i've made a lot of things i've said a lot of things now it's just elon musk is doing that i

keep the factories rolling keep the cars rolling he also was like is there a crisis should i build the undulators is there a hospital that has doesn't have enough of them he literally tweeted that yeah no he's he's a unique he's a unique person but you

you have a fact you have so with our economy you have okay first the guys that have gotten hit hardest are obviously the travel guys and the second are discretionary and and that is no one is spending any discretionary.

No one is making, no one is out going out and buying that cute top right now or the little black dress, or thinking, you know, I'd really, I got my eyes on that new Lexus.

No one is just thinking about computers or phones, things like that.

I think some technology people will keep spending because there's some more utility, but discretionary spending has all but come to a stop.

But in terms of how to get the economy going, I mean, I think, I don't even think we should be thinking that way.

I think it's more how do we ensure people are protected?

And when there are, you know, supposedly 40% of America are 400 bucks only at $400.

So the first thing you got to do is say, okay, there's a group of Americans that just need to be protected economically, that gig workers, part-time workers, people who aren't economically robust, that just need some cash to be protected such that they're not in a state of sheer panic.

And then they can actually buy the necessities.

And then the economy all comes down to one thing.

It all comes down to one thing, and that is how fast can we get past this?

How fast can we show that the curve is flattening?

Because until then, the economy is just going to be, is just literally going to come to a grinding halt.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And speak, you know, and related to this is getting this, speaking of getting data and knowing things, the U.S.

government is in talks with Facebook, Google, and other tech companies and health experts about how we could use location data from Americans' phones to combat COVID-19.

This can include tracking whether people are keeping one another at a safe distance to stem the outbreak.

You can also figure out who has it and follow them, which is astonishing to think about.

Public health experts are interested in the possibility that private sector companies could compile the data in an anonymous aggregated form, which they could then use to map how the infection spreads.

According to the Wall Street Journal, tech executives spent a call Sunday discussing the ways to track hospital bed availability across the country using geolocation data.

Also, how data could be aggregated that personal information of cell phone usually wouldn't be shared, which I...

that makes you nervous.

In Israel, they passed an emergency law to use phone data for tracking people infected with COVID-19, used to identify and quarantine others that have come into contact with anyone they have affected.

And in a statement posted to Facebook Prime Minister Benjamin Nganya, who's on his way out, today we are starting to use digital technology to locate people who have been in contact with those stricken by the corona, who inform those people they must go into quarantine for 14 days.

You know, in China, they helped government track and contact people who had traveled through the province during the early days of the virus.

And it was sent to the National Health Commission, allowing them to recreate.

So on one side, there's great.

This is great.

You're able to really, never has been more people been more tracked.

So, you can really follow a public health emergency.

At the same time, yikes.

What do you think?

Well, this kind of comes down to what I think will probably be the key issue, or when we look back on this, what will be the tension or the conflicting ideologies that really defined

this outbreak.

And that is personal freedoms and capitalism versus sort of a collective, more compliant violation of your freedoms to ensure that you flatten the curve.

And that is, you know, it'll be very interesting because in Asia, and I realize I'm talking about an entire region, but in Singapore, they're just more compliant than they are in Sarasota, Florida.

Yeah.

And at what point do you personal rights and privacy and personal freedoms, are those rights superseded by the need, you know, health concerns?

And then you look at at a nation like Italy, and you can imagine they're about, it's a, it's a wonderful culture that is about hugging and kissing and living for, I don't want to say living for today, but enjoying life.

And the virus loves that.

And unfortunately, we're trying to figure out in the U.S., are we more like Italy?

Are we more like South Korea?

And what is to what extent can we justify a temporary, hopefully a temporary violation of peace?

That's the question.

Does that ensure these measures only last as long as the COVID-19?

That's the thing.

Once you start down doing these things, you could do it for a lot of things, like certain behaviors.

You know, there's always been this debate of how fast you're driving and sensors in your car, which part of me, I'm like, I have a teen, that's not a bad idea.

You know, at the same time, it's really, you could, you could make an excuse during anything.

We, you know, people are eating too much.

They're, they've gone to whatever too much.

And then which companies do you trust with the data?

I mean, uh, Google and Facebook getting more data about people, including their health stuff.

It just, I mean, look look who's going to benefit.

It's going to be Facebook, Google, Apple, which I trust more,

but, and Amazon.

You know, it's all the, it's all, it just solidifies the strength of these companies coming out of this.

And a lot of tech people have been talking to me about this is that everyone else is going to get wiped out.

And the big companies with money, you know, this is what their giant tranches of money are for is they're going to, you know, look, Apple's got, you know, hundreds of billions.

Facebook has got hundreds of billions.

So they'll be able to last everyone out and the others will not not be able to make it, which I think is probably true.

Well, there's two different issues.

One is the staying power and the balance sheet power of a company to survive what could be three, six or nine months of just substantially impaired revenues.

The other statement, though, and you and I have talked a lot about, and I think it's come to kind of a recurring theme in our show, and that is privacy versus utility, or in this case, privacy versus or personal rights versus versus public safety.

And, you know, my sense is, Kara, is that shit is just getting so real here that if we can justify or somehow rationalize the Patriot Act to try and figure out a way to screen out, you know, a domestic threat of terrorism, which I was quite frankly thought was overblown and inflated.

To me, I do think there is real justification here to figure out.

how we could use GPS data, cell phone towers, and the devices that we all carry around to figure out, all right, have you have individuals clustered around what is potentially a hotspot and to notify them and get them tested such that we can use artificial intelligence, GPS, tracking data, and figure out a way to really go after this.

And

I think the privacy argument here, I understand the concern.

A lot of people say that if you violate people's privacy, you end up doing more damage because people end up not wanting to disclose data.

But it seems to me that

this is about as real a reason as we could have.

to justify what might be seen as,

you know, I don't want to call it dangerous, but concerns.

To me, this, if I can't think of a better excuse, or a better time, or a better reason to put some of these concerns on hold.

And I know that'll have privacy advocates up in arms.

But I don't think these people are inherently evil people.

I think our lawmakers need to ensure your idea.

This might be exploding.

Anonymize the data.

I mean, Google knows your sexual fetishes and your HIV status, for God's sakes, but they anonymize it or they claim to anonymize it.

And then they claim to scrub the data.

And so far, the data hasn't been hacked.

I don't see why we couldn't make that type of guarantee or even pass a law that says we are going to do this.

We're going to track these people.

We're going to give it to CDC officials.

We're going to notify them.

And then once we get to a certain level of non-infection or infections drop to a certain level, we are stopping this program and we are scrubbing all data.

Gosh, Scott, that would be nice.

I just think it's just once they get these.

Is that a naive?

Do you think that's naive?

Yeah, I think it's naive.

I think these companies, first of all, I just don't, I think this stuff leaks.

I think it, I just don't think.

And by the way, the way they're handling this, the government, I don't think they're very good at anything.

Like they can't do testing.

They can't do, you know what I mean?

Is there someone there really paying attention to data protection at the government right now?

They can't hardly, you know,

they can't clap their hands.

Like, you know, that's, that's my thing.

And I think the question is, you know, especially with Trump pulling these wartime powers act, I mean, like, never has more power been in the hands of someone so incompetent to the task.

And that's worrisome.

And, you know,

it's just, it's just worrisome on lots of things.

And so in normal times, sure,

you know, the Patriot was

looking back on it.

What a, what an error in lots of ways.

And some, and who knows what was saved, right?

Who knows?

But I think probably way overreaction to a very emotional and disturbing time.

And it's the same thing we do is we overextend during these times.

And

I'm sure nobody's going to win the privacy fight here.

And the question is, how do we, how do we not get these companies in more of a position of power?

They're going to come out of this stronger than ever.

I just, you know, 100%.

And so that's really, I think, the issue.

Let me finish.

I don't know what to, what to do.

It's one of these things, like, of course, it makes sense to track people who are using it.

And, you know, you look at these stories, like, there was a devastating story in the New York Times today or yesterday about this one family who was, you know, it reminded me of my grandmother.

It was a big Italian family.

She had 11 kids

and they had parties all the time.

They just got together.

We were like that when my grandmother was living.

And she just died of it.

And two of, she didn't know two of her kids had died of it.

Two of her 11 kids and a half a dozen other relatives in that group are very sick in critical condition.

And so, because they were at their Sunday dinner, like they were just all together all the time.

And they just passed the,

apparently one event got them all sick.

And so, you know, this was their family.

It just happened to be a big family meeting.

And it was just like devastating

over

this illness.

So I think, and then those cases, you're like, yeah, like track them, figure it out.

You know, there's sort of a case because we can see they were together.

But it's, it's really, it does, it does, you do sort of give up some of your principles when you're in an emergency.

I think people do.

There's just, just, though, if you think about what's happened so far, and I've been on, in the last five days, I've been on 11 board calls.

And my general viewpoint is as a father, as a son, as a director on boards, as a, as a manager, an entrepreneur, a friend.

And what I would also say as a citizen and as government officials, our errors here have largely been a function of our underreaction, not our overreaction.

And it seems to me that it is time for us to be the, you know, the daughter and the coworker and the CEO who's accused of overreacting.

Yeah, true.

And I feel like the same thing is true, even of our government.

And I'm willing to take that risk right now.

And if there, there are some actions that are seen as an overreaction, I think the downside there is probably less than what has been the mother of all underreactions by the government to date.

Yeah, well, let's hope.

I still, you know, the fact that Trump is running this, it's just disturbing on every aspect of it.

Like it's, it's, it's incredible.

It's like the nightmare scenario.

What's interesting, you were talking about, are we Italy or China or Korea?

Italy to extend lockdown as death toll mounts, and China reports no new locally transmitted diseases today.

I mean, like, look at that, very much different.

So this is very,

this is very able to be handled properly.

It just depends on how far you're willing willing to go.

Speaking of which, Amazon is now accepting essential items from third-party sellers, only essential items through third-party sellers at the beginning of April.

Amazon says it will, quote, temporarily be prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products coming to our fulfillment centers so that we can move quickly to receive, restock, and deliver those products to customers.

Most of the products it is still accepting from third-party sellers and wholesale vendors fall into six categories: baby products, health and household, beauty and personal care, grocery, industrial, and scientific, and pet supplies.

So people who are selling on this platform or don't offer products are in a major bind.

Many small retailers rely on Amazon to sell their products and the hit to sales has caused some deferler or layoff employees to soften the blow.

This shows how strong and how important this, again, Amazon will emerge from this stronger than ever as a retailer, I think.

But it puts a lot of smaller businesses at stakes, just wipes out the small businesses.

Yeah,

I think a lot of small businesses, I mean, granted, a lot of them can't handle them, but

I think the biggest toll, if you will, or the greatest mortality in terms of impact will be bigger businesses that have a lot of employees that had weak balance sheets.

So this is

Asenna, Ann Taylor, Loft, Chico's.

Those companies are going to go away.

And it's not even a chapter 11 where someone comes in with a stocking horse bid, wipes out the equity, injects cash, and keeps the wheels turning.

These companies will be chapter seven, and that is someone will show up and put a padlock on the doors and they just will go away and those jobs will be gone potentially with

no severance.

And I think it's what I'd call the weaker, medium, and kind of large companies that had very weak balance sheets that are going to probably create the most damage from an economic standpoint.

I think a lot of smaller businesses are more agile and more nimble and can variables their cost structure and take it down.

I mean, it's really two things here.

It's your balance sheet, how much capital do you have to just survive this?

And then two, your ability to variabilize down your cost structure.

So in the case of an Uber or a Lyft, they have been just destroyed, right?

Stocks off 70, 80%, because it's another category of vulnerable companies is one where face-to-face interaction or service is really the core component.

Like a restaurant is face-to-face interaction.

Uber and Lyft are face-to-face interaction.

But what the advantage

they do have, and I never like to be supportive of these companies, but I will be, is they can variabilize their cost structure.

And that is, if Uber revenues go to zero, they can take their costs down probably 60 or 80%.

Whereas if the costs, if the revenue for Boeing goes down uh 80%,

they can take their costs down 5%, but that's about it unless they stop paying people.

I mean,

there are just certain businesses that have fixed costs that just don't go away.

So it's cash position and your ability to variabilize your costs down.

But I don't think, I think small businesses, I don't want to say

individuals need to be protected, but I think we're going to find out a lot of small businesses are pretty agile, are scrappy, and a lot of them will survive.

It's the medium and large-sized companies that were in a weak position.

I mean, this virus is going to do economically what it's doing biologically.

It's going to clear out the weak and the old.

And unfortunately, to your point,

we are going to see an increased,

absolutely extrapolation in the cadence or the velocity around a concentration of power among the two or three strongest companies in every category.

How on earth does Amazon not come out of this with another two or three points of market share in our consumer economy, in our $12 trillion consumer economy?

How do they not come out of the stronger?

Yeah, I think all of them do come out better, which is

Walmart's going to come out of the stronger.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean,

absolutely.

I think that's the issue.

And then the question is, will there be any, if they have helped, and they will have helped, by the way, you know,

I think where they're vulnerable, which there's been a lot of stories lately on Amazon, and I think this iterates throughout this, and they just happen to be the biggest, is

people getting sick in these warehouses and not, you know, and this sort of pushes the thing of robotic warehouses, which is, you know, they've been working on in so many.

They have the technology, the sophistication, the capital.

They can send their employees home.

They can find new ones.

You know who, I mean, we always talk about Amazon and Walmart because they're in the news every day.

And we're doing what CNBC does.

And that is we've decided that we're just going to talk about these companies morning, noon, and night.

You know who also gets stronger?

Exxon.

Oil fossil fuels aren't going anywhere.

And Exxon has the balance sheet to survive this.

A bunch of shale companies, a bunch of small oil producers, a bunch of small energy producers, a bunch of small alternative energy companies are all going to get swept off the face of the planet.

And there's going to be Exxon.

with its multi-billion dollar balance sheet and staying power and infrastructure, and they'll come back.

They'll come back stronger.

Now, oil is way down, but you are going to need energy to rebuild and start fire up the economy again.

It's just every company, if you take the two or three strongest balance sheets in every category, there is going to be, again, there's going to be an aggregation or more concentration of power.

The DOJ and the FTC are going to be more important coming out of this.

And I did an interview yesterday with the New York Times and I said, well, if Amazon comes out of this stronger, is that a bad thing?

And it was an interesting point because, because they're delivering me toilet paper right now and nobody else is.

Yeah, that's right.

And he said, well, why shouldn't they be stronger?

And the answer is, well, you know what?

Part of the problem of any species or any sector is if you're not robust, if you don't have a robust ecosystem, when you face, when you face scenarios where you have one or two companies, viruses can hit them.

You can have something bad happen to Amazon.

You can have a hack and it puts the economy at risk because that one company you became too dependent upon is now your point of vulnerability.

So a robust ecosystem is absolutely something we need to be thinking about once we come out the other end here.

And we will come out the other end.

We're just going to come out the other end with fewer players.

Yep, 100%.

Well, we are a friggin bummer, Scott Galloway.

This is a bummer for today.

Well, you're back and you're moving.

You know what?

It's not an RNA virus that's got you down.

It's moving, which will depress anybody.

Anybody wants to kill themselves when they're moving.

I'm feeling very Marie Kondo right now.

So I got to get rid of all these things and run.

Like you do realize how much stuff you have.

Anyway, I don't like, I move a lot, Scott, and I'm done moving.

But why I'm curious not to, I'm probing a little bit here.

Why are you moving?

Why aren't you, aren't you just going?

You're actually moving?

Well, I have children in DC and I have a baby here and you, you need a babysitter, although we may not have a baby, you know, that's another issue.

But we have to be in one place.

I've got to be with my kids.

So that's really it.

I can't have three different places I'm going to.

And now I don't know when I'm going to get back to San Francisco.

A lot of people have been stuck wherever they are, where they happen to be.

But

I have to limit where I was going.

So that's why.

That's why I can't have this many places.

Actually, I feel better because the finances are better.

Anyway, Scott, time for a quick break.

We'll be right back with listener mail.

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Okay, Scott, we're back.

Let's answer a listener question.

Let's go to the tape.

All right.

You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman.

You've got mail.

Hi, Scott.

hi Kara.

This is Mike Eshelman in Los Angeles.

What if this forced work-from-home experiment works so well for companies that many abandon the traditional office setup for a remote workforce permanently?

It could change the business landscape dramatically.

Aside from what has already been said regarding Peloton and Zoom doing so well and winning, who is most at risk of losing big?

And big thought here.

What if those vacant office spaces were converted into residential space?

Could this potentially solve our housing shortage issue?

Thanks.

Wow.

That's that's

wow.

That guy sounds dreamy.

I think he should.

I want to move to DC with him.

Mike Etchelman in Los Angeles.

Mike, I agree with you.

I think, you know, it's interesting because I've worked from home and so have you really.

Both of us have sort of had businesses where we sort of go in and sort of we don't.

It's been a very easy thing.

But I think you do

people, businesses, this is this if they can get it working.

Like I've had like a dozen really useful meetings this week using Zoom or other things.

And I think that a lot of the people who are typically at work kind of like it a little bit,

which is interesting.

I don't know.

What do you think?

Who's going to win and lose?

One of my role models, business role models, is Peter Drucker.

And Peter Drucker wrote in the 70s that office buildings would be like the pyramids.

And that is we would come marvel at them, but they would serve no functional purpose.

i'm serious he said that these

well his but his whole point was they would they would they would um lack all utility that the idea of going to a square building that goes 2500 feet into the sky with separate floors and elevator shafts with recirculated air and windows that didn't open that people wouldn't want to work there that technology would ultimately get work distributed i actually as an entrepreneur and someone who's been in charge of small companies, I don't like work from home cultures.

I've always demanded that people come into the office.

I've always thought that ideas need to have sex and people need to be around each other and they need to hold each other accountable.

And there's a certain electricity and chemistry that happens in person.

Now, I wonder if the technology has caught up to the point where we could, in fact, take a lot more of our workforce and

put it at home.

But what I always immediately go to, well, who wins and who loses economically?

I can't imagine the office REITs are doing very well right now.

I know that Simon, the real estate or the high-end mall REIT, has is off 70 or 80%, literally just in the last 10 trading days.

But you can also see the winners here.

You know, if they survive, a restoration hardware, people are going to think more about how they make their homes nicer.

They're going to say, you're probably going to decide, well, if I'm going to spend another 10, 20% of my waking hours at home, I'm going to get that cashmere throw and that really nice Cheneil pillow and that great couch.

You know, I'm going to invest in Sonos.

And I think you're going to see a transition of capital, if you will.

And it just makes sense, both human and financial capital, from traditional office spaces to work at home spaces.

And it just makes sense that people are going to become more comfortable and more agile, even if it's not just totally switching to home.

There's just going to be a lot more people that decide to work at home on Fridays.

And what might be nice about this is that if you really think about the cohort that is...

in my viewpoint, the cohort that is more discriminated against than any cohort in the U.S., I don't think it's people of color.

I don't think it's ageism.

I think it's women and specifically women who have children.

Women under the age of 30 who don't have kids have closed the pay gap.

Once they have kids, they go to 77 cents on the dollar relative to their male counterparts.

And part of our ability to create the same sort of career trajectory for women who have kids is to create more options for and more flexibility around where they work from.

So this could be,

to Mike's point, to Dreamy Mike's point, this could be a really wonderful thing in terms of liberating people who are more space constrained.

Also, it's expensive to live near work.

Almost all companies, including Google, are moving into urban centers because that's where young millennials want to hang out.

And there's just a lot of people, once they start collecting dogs and kids, that can't live in Chelsea.

And so the ability to come in maybe once or twice a week or three times a week instead of five times a week and work from their home.

There are people at NYU, Kara, that commute from Princeton, New Jersey.

They commute an hour and a half, an hour and 45 minutes on a train every day.

Do you know I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey?

I did not know that.

You grew up in Princeton, New Jersey.

Yes.

Wow.

That's a fun fact.

Anyways, this is, there's just, you can go so many layers deep around this.

Is a no doubt about it.

This is a seminal tectonic shift.

And

I always think about we are distributing so much here.

We're going to start distributing health care away from doctors' offices and hospitals.

A key component of flattening the curve here is distributing health care away from the hospital where we only have the most serious cases, right?

We need to keep people away from the hospital, telemedicine.

So we're distributing health care.

We're going to start distributing education away from these space-constrained places called campuses that have been these terrible excuses for people like myself and administrators to position themselves as luxury brands and prey on the hopes and dreams of adults and charge them ridiculously onerous, userous fees.

We're going to distribute education away from these campuses.

It doesn't mean campuses will go away, but they'll just be less crowded.

And then we're going to do the same thing with work in general i think it's it's i i think it's actually quite exciting i i think about the campuses like a friend of mine was calling her daughter is you know this is her first year at nyu they went up to get her stuff and they're thinking of turning the nyu dorms into hospital beds you know to treat people or put sick people um or quarantine people and then um i think of my son going to college this year i i wonder if he'll have a college you know what i mean like i mean eventually he will oh sure he will but i do think there is a benefit to gathering i do i as someone who doesn't gather and who's really, I'm sort of the original social distancer around work stuff.

Agreed.

There is some element of getting together that does matter.

And I think it's just a question of, I think a lot of people will rethink a lot of things, especially if this lasts for more than a few months, because

they'll cope with things and then they'll suddenly be very comfortable with certain things and want to get back to other things.

But it'll be interesting to see what sticks of all these things.

Like, will people, like a lot of people, will people use online delivery services more?

That was trending in that direction.

Will it just be the thing now?

Will everybody work from home?

Will everybody

spend more time with your family?

Like, you know what I mean?

I think, look, one of the things

a Los Angeles Times reporter was reporting on them, the air levels in Los Angeles are like fantastic.

Well, the water's clean in Venice.

Did you see that?

I know.

It's like strange.

It's like, so, you know, human activity causes a lot of problems.

And at the same time, it's a huge opportunity to rethink to as yoda said to forget everything you know and start with a clean sheet of paper i was so fat that the the moment i've had i thought wow i wouldn't have had that moment had this not happened was we're in you know we're we're in the myacoba and my kids are doing uh are doing their classes remotely now and one is in third grade and one is in sixth grade And I always had this impression of them kind of sitting at a desk upright, straight spine with someone who's like a nun who would come and hit their knuckles with a ruler if they ever said anything out of line.

And they're in this class of 15 other 12-year-olds talking about math and history, and it is a food fight.

I mean, they're talking over each other.

They're interrupting Mr.

Smith.

And I'm like, is that what school is like now in the sixth grade?

But they're all really polite to each other.

They were helping the teacher get his camera working right because the 12-year-olds understand technology better than their teacher.

It's more chaotic.

The way I thought about it versus when I was in sixth grade, it's more chaotic, but it's more respectful and it's more kind of benign.

Yeah.

You know, we were quiet, but then we were like passing around, you know, notes saying what an idiot he was or whatever.

These guys are much, they're just much nicer, but maybe.

I'll be interested.

I haven't seen my kids doing the school thing yet, but

I'll be interested to watch because they're coming to stay with me.

And so it'll be, I'd be, I'll be interested to see how the homeschooling thing goes.

I mean, I have.

one kid I think will be really good at it, the other one.

You know what?

Speaking of kids, you know what?

I like to find a thought that makes me feel much better.

And in terms of behavior modification, constantly repeat that thought in my mind.

And it's a what-if thought.

And that is, this disease is very ageist and it goes after the elderly and the weak.

What if this was a similar pathogen or pandemic that, and we've had them in the past, flus that have preyed on the young?

If the age, if the age toxicity or the age aggression here had been flipped, if you will, I think we'd have chaos.

I would not, I mean, can you imagine?

Can you imagine

the the the real point of solace if you have kids a real point of comfort is so far kids under the age of 21 and there's been some articles that have come out although there was a video that went viral of these kids from spring break in florida acting that's a different issue i'm talking about kids yeah but young kids i agree with you i i agree with you although let me just be clear let's make sure if you get this you will get this there was a lot of statistics showing a lot of young people get it including there's a child that just got it a really young child it will damage your lungs for the rest of of your life.

And so this is not something, you know, if you get it in a bad way.

So it's not like, oh, I'm fine, I'm young.

You will not, it will not be a good thing to get for anybody, including young people.

And they may survive it, but they certainly will, there'll be damage done if it goes badly.

Anyway, but I agree with you.

I agree.

People would go crazy if that was the case.

In any case, we'll see how we do live with this.

As

the after part will be the most interesting part.

One more break, Scott.

We're going to take one more break today.

We'll be back for predictions and some moments of optimism because we're gonna

end this on a high note.

There we go.

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Okay, Scott, clearly everything is in flux and that makes predictions much harder now.

But what are you looking at and expecting in the days a month to come?

Is there any predictions you'd like to take back, like Carnival?

Or what do you would give me a good prediction for yourself?

Well, there's if we're going to, if we're going to, if I have the opportunity to take predictions back, we're going to need a longer show.

But no, but

I wouldn't say it's a prediction, but something I'm watching very closely is that there's a lot of good news coming out of Asia.

And that is Singapore was able to basically cauterize this thing right away.

South Korea demonstrated real competence and what I would call a comity of men.

There was real cooperation there.

China, I think China, the Chinese brand, I mean, to a certain extent, despite the fact that Trump is calling it the China virus, I think China's brand, if you will, actually comes out of the stronger because I think they have dealt with the situation in a very aggressive,

effective means.

And it looks like China is kind of almost returning to a certain level of normalcy.

The data I'm tracking, and I think is going to have

real implications on the marketplace, especially the Dow, if you will, is I'm tracking the curve in new infections in Italy.

Because Italy is right now, I would almost argue kind of ground zero of the things that are wonderful about Western society but are dangerous as it relates to the spread.

And that is

personal freedoms, personal rights, a lack of willingness to unwillingness, a refusal to socially distance.

And I think if and when that curve begins to of new infections begins to flatten in Italy, we're going to have a tremendous surge of optimism and relief.

Or if it doesn't and it continues to get worse, it's also going to really take a toll on our psyche.

So the data I'm watching right now that to a certain extent kind of leads the, is the, the, the frontier of what might happen in Western nations that value personal freedoms over, you know, are just more, just have a different approach.

Capitalist personal freedoms, a little bit more expectant, a little bit more narcissistic, quite frankly.

When you see those kids you were referencing in Fort Lauderdale, they seem to be quite expectant and narcissistic, thinking about, okay, it's not going to happen to me and it only, it only affects older people.

There's a certain lack of empathy.

So

I'm watching the data in Italy.

I think that's going to be

very important.

If you want a great visualization, the New York Times has one called, you know, it's all which countries flatten the curve for coronavirus.

And it shows, you know, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan doing that.

And then they have a long thing at the end, what countries are on the curve.

And it is insane

that the ones that go up and the ones that go down.

Denmark has gone down.

Certain countries have, but Japan is up and down.

But

all those countries you're talking about are going up

that have much looser

behavior patterns, I guess.

Italy being the worst of them right now.

But it's really interesting how they're going up and down and up and down.

And of course, there's going to be a second range.

And from what my brother tells me,

there is always a second thing, but it's different.

And that as more of the country becomes more immune to it or develops immunities.

Yeah, the herd mentality.

The herd immunity.

The herd

Anyway, it's really, it's true.

You're right.

Optimism

will come back if these numbers improve, but that all, of course, depends on us.

So, before we go, we asked listeners to send in some of the ways they are staying positive during this time.

We got this from Bruce Angeli.

His daughter Izzy is at home from school in Washington, D.C.

right now.

Oh, good.

He plays the guitar and she sings.

Texas is hot.

I can be cold.

Grandma cried in a fierce one.

Wow.

Okay, Okay, Kara, I just have one question.

Yeah.

What the fuck was that?

Have we gone totally PBS?

What's next?

A woman who macromails for blind people?

I mean, for God's sakes, what the fuck?

We got to get back to the ugly world.

We can better be ugly.

We have to keep playing guitar.

We're literally, we've turned it, all of a sudden we've turned into public television.

What's going on here?

That's not how we roll.

Let's talk about Sheryl Samberg being the worst thing to happen in the world.

What's going on here?

Where are we?

We've been infected by, we've been infected by melancholy magic we are going to bring people up sensitivity do you have a story of optimism i have a story about can i just tell you when this is over we are going to lay waste to people don't worry we'll get back to our normal way daddy's going to lay waste daddy's going to daddy's laying waste to a lot of tequila right now um oh which by the way makes me feel a lot better makes me feel a lot better oh my gosh starting drinking hello magic firewater i never drinklioteca wherever the fucking tequila is says the big dog.

Oh my gosh.

I'm thinking of starting a drink in Rage Tweet.

I think that's my goal for this week.

Rage tweet?

I would enjoy that.

I will retweet every rage tweet you put out.

I love to rage tweet.

I'll tell you one last thing of this thing is

how people respond to it.

Jennifer Sr.

from the New York Times did a really good column about her.

She and her husband, and she reads everything and is like worried about everything.

And her husband is like, I don't want to hear any more of it.

I'm going to just like drink and just stare at the wall, but I don't want to hear anymore.

And they have this relationship where, like, why are you telling me this about what's happening in Singapore or wherever in Italy?

And this and that, and terrible deaths.

And literally, that's Amanda.

Is like, so like, let me just tell you the latest statistics from the CDC.

And I'm like, no, no, I'm going to go over here and like rage tweet with George Conway, Mike.

Oh, my God, Carol.

I have a group of fraternity brothers, eight guys that all think of themselves as alpha males.

And we started a group text, and they are such a bunch of little bitches.

They just cannot stop sending each other more and more horrific stories and panicking and i'm like jesus christ man the fuck up i mean it just

it is just i've stopped listening to it anyways do you have a i have a moment of optimism do you have one all right go ahead yeah go ahead and then you have to you have to say what we want people to do because we do want moments go ahead what's your moment of optimism go ahead so i was i i'm i'm i've gotten i've had the opportunity and this i'm i can't wait for the tweets around my white privilege here but where i'm staying i've met two of my heroes The first is Brian Cranston, who won Best Actor three years in a row for what is arguably the greatest original scripted television in history, Breaking Bad.

But I also got to meet one of my heroes,

a guy named Troy Aikman, who played football

at UCLA.

Dallas Cowboys, right?

That's right.

And he and I graduated from UCLA the same year, and he was literally the best athlete at UCLA.

And I was the literally the worst varsity athlete.

I was the worst person on the crew team, which is kind of the least prestigious sport.

So he was the best athlete at UCLA.

I was the worst athlete.

And you know what, Kara?

We both ended up at the same place and it made me feel good.

And I was thinking, I was thinking, I was thinking,

by the way, this guy, I saw this guy.

He's exactly my age.

He looks like he's a different species.

He has all this beautiful blonde hair and he's in amazing shape.

I'm like, how can we be the same species?

Anyways, but I was thinking that if you are right now, wherever you are, if you're not dependent upon a government check coming to you, if you're surrounded by people who love you and who you are able to take care of and make feel better,

if you're in a place where you feel somewhat safe and you're unlike your grandparents, you're not being called to war, you're being called to sit on your couch.

And again, most importantly, if you're in a position to express affection, whether it's digitally, you're on the same beach as Troy Aikman.

I mean, we are, all of us are

fortunate, even if you're healthy, if you don't have underlying health conditions, and if you're surrounded by your family, you're on the same beach as Troy Aikman.

Yeah.

Okay.

You're not Troy Aikman.

You're still not Troy.

I could have been.

I could have been.

No.

No, you couldn't have been.

Oh, my God.

This guy,

he's a specimen.

The guy's my age.

He's 55.

He looks like he's 28.

He is everyone is your moment of optimism.

We're drinking the same tequila.

We're drinking the same tequila, Carol.

Okay, Okay, you go ahead and play your fucking guitar then.

That's my moment of

the music.

Let me just,

I rage tweet for pleasure.

That's what I do.

You really?

I had the best one.

Let me give you the last.

There's a moment of optimism.

So you saw Kellyanne Conway was saying, you know, that

calling it,

I'm going to repeat it because it was so awful, kung flu, which one of the White House people said that, like, which is awful.

Already they're doing the Chinese virus thing because they're jackasses and then pretending it's not not racist or they don't mean it to be race.

Of course they do.

And they're trying to say, well, it's the Spanish flu, whatever.

They're doing it to cause racial resentment.

And she was saying,

why would you think Guemory says I'm married to someone who's Asian?

And then proceeded to say her husband, George Conway, clearly just wrote a piece, devastating piece about how Trump's still the same giant asshole.

And clearly there's something awry in their marriage.

She was saying, because

she can't hate Asians because she's married to them, which is kind of George Conway is Asian?

Well, he's Filipino.

He's half Filipino.

And

so

she said this, which I thought was just, so I tweeted something that said, some of my best husbands are Asian.

And I enjoyed that.

You like that, right?

You like that?

I was so happy and laughed and laughed and laughed.

And I think George Conway liked it too.

George, yeah, we got to get George on the show.

We got to get anyway.

We got to get Jorge on the show.

I will try.

Jorge, yes, our friend Jorge.

Anyway, we're going to keep collecting moments of optimism in the next few weeks to share on the show, making you more hopeful and happy right now.

Write us an email with the subject line, moments of optimism, not including Troy Aiken.

It's a few lines of what you're doing, a happy anecdote, a song, a poem, your family, home hobbies, your pets, advice for anyone feeling anxious, something to spread the love.

Four Super Bowl rings.

In his first year in the NFL, he was the lowest-rated quarterback in the NFL.

Anyway, email of us.

If you want to write us something mean, go right ahead too, by the way.

We're welcome.

Bring it.

Bring it.

Email us at pivot at Voxmedia.com to be featured on the show.

Scott, can you read us out, please?

No, I just first want to say that I want to, a big thank you to you, Kara, because I feel more optimistic knowing that I'm not moving today.

That makes me more optimistic.

I feel better.

I have to say, I can't believe this.

Yeah, I know.

You complete me, Scott.

You

complete me.

Don't I?

It's good to know that you are finally in touch with your emotions.

Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Senanis.

Our executive producer was Erica Anderson.

Special thanks to Drew Burroughs and Rebecca Castro, who have done Herculean efforts or made Herculean efforts to get the jungle cat and the dog in front of some sort of technology that works.

If you like what you heard, please subscribe.

You know what?

Who gives a fuck?

Just stay safe.

Stay safe and tune in next week for a breakdown of all things tech and business.

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This month on Explain It To Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well.

Collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.