Going after venture capital culture and the unicorn industrial complex

Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

So, okay, before we get into my favorite topic, me.

So, a beautiful little girl.

Congratulations, Kara Q and Amanda.

That's wonderful.

Yeah.

I have some advice for you.

All right.

Oh, my God.

But first, I

have children, so I have some experience with the children department.

I've had children more recently.

You know, there's an actual

biological fact.

A hormone releases,

it's like starting a business or writing a book and having birth are the same thing and that a chemical hormone is released that gives you amnesia around how awful having babies are.

Otherwise no one would ever do it.

Hold on.

This is drama.

First off, I have advice for new dads.

Who's the dad in the relationship?

And I realize that's probably a hate crime.

Yes, it's incredibly sexist.

Even more sexist.

Who knows the man in a lot of the things?

I have tests for this.

I have two tests.

All right, okay, go ahead.

If If there's a really tight parking spot, who parks the car?

Me.

Okay.

And who gets the big piece of chicken?

The big piece of chicken?

Like, if there's a bigger piece of chicken on the plate, who gets it?

There's an argument over chicken in this relationship.

Anyways, those are my two tests for who the dad is.

That is an insane thing.

Let me help you out here.

I don't know if it's sexist or stupid.

The answer is yes.

Okay, so advice to new fathers.

I do build the things, but I just like building things.

Advice to new fathers.

I've had kids more recently.

The first thing is you need to know.

I'm a cool mom, is what I am.

You need to know.

Babies suck.

No, they do not.

No one.

No.

No one.

Okay.

Total evidence.

Yeah.

No one will hang out with babies except the mom and people who are paid to hang out with them.

Other babies won't even hang out with babies.

Well, I do it every week here on Pivot.

And then there you go.

I'm trained.

Oh, that's a good one.

Burn, burn.

And then they get, but here's the good news.

They get less and less awful.

And then they refuse, they can't put their shoes on and then they refuse to put their shoes on.

But here's the thing.

It gets less and less awful every day.

This is so wonderful.

And also, it's nice that emotionally secure, economically secure, good people are having kids.

I think that is the most hopeful thing.

Indeed.

I also think it's really nice that you're having kids at your age because you're older than me.

You're the Tony Randall of lesbian journalism.

Seriously.

She just referenced Tony Randall.

Does anyone who listens know who that is?

He's like he had kids at 73.

Did he?

Okay, you're the Martin Sorrell of tech journalism.

Let me just explain something.

That is awesome.

I am young at heart and I can have babies anytime.

No, and you look at it, but just keep in mind when the kids, you'll be teaching this cat how to drive when you're waiting.

I only think 15 years, 105.

105.

Approximately, dead.

It's fine.

Yeah.

I am good at this.

I love the children.

I love this.

It is the best baby, too.

And it is not that hard.

I know people want it.

Like, everyone's like, oh, is it going badly?

I'm like, no, it's going great.

People don't want to hear that.

Everything's great.

Good for you guys.

It's really good.

The baby sleeps.

Great delivery.

It's amazing.

My last two pieces of advice.

Okay.

First is night.

Second is nurse.

Over-resource.

I know.

I get that.

She's not so hot on the night nurse thing, but we'll see where it goes.

It's fine.

The baby's great.

Listen, I have no complaints.

Beautiful baby, healthy baby, a little bit early, but I'm very happy with the situation.

And now I have a girl, so it's just making me

absolutely convinced.

My goals on this planet are to make it equitable for women and men to behave correctly in the world.

I now have even more.

I have two sons who are wonderful, and I now have a daughter.

So it means a lot to me that the world's a better place.

But speaking of babies,

you're pissing off a lot of VCs on Twitter that I know in Silicon Valley.

I don't know these guys.

Tell me, give me their biographies.

Well, you have Jason Calikanis and Keith Raboy, both whom are pretty loudmouth venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.

Jason, of course, is well known for Silicon Alley Insider.

He does the launch.

He's done all kinds of, he's kind of a media person.

He had a whole bunch of companies, well-known Tesla owner.

Keith is a long-time entrepreneur and venture capitalist has been around PayPal, a whole bunch of stuff.

And both of them have been on my podcast.

Yes, they have indeed.

And for some reason, did they go after you?

Explain what happened.

Should we do an original reading of what happened?

Yeah, but let me provide some context.

So, first off, I did not know these guys.

So I pulled up Jason's book, and it's something about Angel Vesta.

There's a lot of books, yeah.

But the subtitle is How One Man Turned $100,000 into 100 Million.

Okay.

So if you're friends, I think we scrape together $100,000 and give it to Jason because he can turn it into $100 million.

And I could use the $100.

I'll give you $51 if I can have $49.

And then Keith Rabois, how do you say his last name?

Reboy.

Yeah,

he is

the most successful venture investor in history.

And you know how I know that?

He tells you,

he tells people on Twitter that he's the most successful venture investor.

Anyway, so I wrote.

They're the louder venture capitalists.

So I wrote a piece

last Friday, No Merci no Malis, talking about SoftBank and Masayoshi Sam, where I basically

accused Masa-san of being a money launderer.

I talked about how our democracy was fraying.

But the thing that invoked

them,

the thing that invoked the most

crime against humanity reaction was I actually suggested that some of the portfolio companies of these guys might be overvalued.

And so this is a crime.

This is literally a crime against humanity.

And they wade in and be very aggressive, you know, discrediting me, you know, intimidating others with their money, constantly talking about their success.

And it got, it just struck me.

They called you irrelevant, correct?

No, no, not just me.

There was actually some interesting discourse.

Someone pointed out Tesla's market share, which I thought was interesting.

Someone else was talking about...

I'm a big friend of Elon's and a Tesla investor, also an Uber investor.

She's also an Uber investor.

Yeah, I can't do it.

And then, of course, I said, if you don't stop threatening Professor Gallery, I'm going to, you know what I'm going to do.

I appreciate you weighing in.

And then they're like, big sister.

Yeah, I know, big sister came in and started yelling at them, but I actually will damage their Tesla.

Well, no, but I want to make sure I didn't get this right.

Keith Ribo's exact tweet was,

I said, I didn't have insiroxitis, but I've co-founded nine firms.

And he responded, any of them successful?

Question mark, definition, 10 billion or more, or change the world.

Well, change the world.

So there you go.

We got to change the world here.

Right.

We got to change the world.

They're arrogant.

They're arrogant.

And it's just, it's this idea that they hung the moon and there's nothing they could do that's wrong.

And that's typical.

But speaking of which,

talking about, you know,

the expression is they're born on third base and they think they hit a home run almost all the time.

Scott, for the first time in history, billionaires paid lower tax rate than the working class.

Two,

you know what I'm doing there, Sarah?

I've been listening to podcasts to try and out my game, and the only thing I've taken away is that the most famous podcast, Daily, all that guy really does is occasionally goes, hmm.

Anyways, so.

Two economists at the University of California, Berkeley released a study of the average tax rate paid by the 400 richest families in the country, which I assume includes you, was lower than the rate paid.

401.

I just missed it.

It's lower than the rate paid by the bottom half of American households.

Just so you get some numbers, because I know you need, you like data, Scott.

The wealthiest 400 families had a 23% tax rate, which was down, which was down from 47% in 1980, and in 1960, 56%.

The working-class tax rate remains the same, around 24.2%.

Wow.

I know.

Yeah.

And

if you start doing the kind of the math,

I've been helping my 12-year-old with his math, and it's like solve four.

And if you look at solve four,

bottom 50% have had the same tax rate, and the top, the 400 wealthiest households in America have gone from 60 to 40 to 20.

And yet our government spending is stayed static.

Then that means who's paying for it?

And the answer is debt.

So what we've decided is that our new gross idolatry of the dollar has translated into cutting taxes for the wealthy.

The taxes haven't gone up or down for the rest of us for the most part, but they've gone dramatically down for the wealthiest Americans in America.

And we haven't increased our GDP spending or our government spending hasn't gone down either.

So this all translates to additional debt.

And when you think about debt, at its most simple form is that we're pulling prosperity forward for all of us.

And so what this really means is, this translates, is that we've decided decided to not pay it forward, but borrow it forward and pull the prosperity of our children, our grandchildren forward to lower the taxes for the wealthy.

It's also really stupid for

people in the top 0.1% because there is a very basic dynamic, and that is when nine families are worth more than the southern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere figures out a way to take away their money.

And it's happened across nations everywhere repeatedly, especially in Central America, where a small group of wealthy people make incremental rationalizations to not share their wealth, co-opt the government, and then ultimately someone shows up at the door and says, you need to leave within 24 hours or we're killing you and your family.

And then a new government comes in that's totally fucked up and socialist and fascist, and it all starts over again.

Right.

You know, what's interesting is that it's very similar to what you're arguing about, Jason and Keith.

We know better.

We know we deserve the money we get.

There's no fix in the system.

We didn't get this because of a fix.

We're not trying to pawn off shitty companies onto people and then acting like we're smart.

And when things go wrong we don't take responsibility for them it's a it's really a rationale of wealthy people in which is some people absolutely deserve the money they get and they made it you know Jeff Bezos from nothing Jeff Bezos created that company.

But now he's getting advantages.

You know what I mean?

It doesn't take away from his accomplishment to say he doesn't deserve extra special advantages right now.

Look,

it isn't the fault of these guys.

You'd like to think that they're bigger.

You'd like to think that they'd have more humility and recognize their blessings and kind of, you know, therefore the grace of God go I.

I think the real problem is our government has lost the ability to prevent a tragedy of the commons.

And that is, and I relate to this, if you tell a 30-something-year-old white guy he's Jesus Christ, he's inclined to believe you.

Right.

And then when he gets access to his senator, all of a sudden I'm getting access to senators.

And I'm starting to believe it's because I'm just fucking awesome, not because I'm wealthy and I'm starting to give money to senators, which is the reason I now have dialogue with senators.

And then when I start to get a $10 million, my first $10 million in the company I sold tax-free, I think, well, it's because of my genius.

I will always talk me into believing I'm just a fucking genius.

The problem is we're supposed to think long-term and elect people that would say, you know what?

It really doesn't make any sense to have these incredible tax deductions and lower tax rates on billionaires.

And we have a government that is not preventing a tragedy of the commons, but expecting, you know, we'd like to shame people into calling on their better angels.

It doesn't typically happen.

Yeah, what's interesting, what happens is they get together and say that we're going to give it all away.

We're going to do these

convoluted, also the convoluted charities where they control everything.

Put a big name and then say thank you.

Name on a library.

Thank you so much.

Like, I don't want to thank them.

I'd just like to tax them.

That's all.

That's 100%.

It's the Pablo Escobar effect.

He sponsored soccer teams and built parks.

But there is, I think it's the government's, you know, I think the government or the citizenry has

a responsibility to elect people who will get rid of this nonsense.

It's incredible.

We are now officially a regressive tax system.

We have a lack of discourse around social media where it's not, let's learn from this disagreement, let's shame people, and my money is my virtue.

I show up with more money, so I'm right.

Yeah, it is interesting.

And there are good arguments to be had around over-regulation and everything else.

It just moves off to other things.

And I think all of us, anyone who's ever created a company, knows regulation really can really be a hindrance in a bad way because it's not smart.

But at the same time, certain taxpaying things are not.

Everyone deserves it.

I'm an anti-regulation guy.

Let's have one tax.

Let's do what Reagan did.

Let's get rid of the capital gains tax, which goes tax deduction, which goes to rich people.

Let's get rid of mortgage tax.

Who owns homes?

Rich people.

You could absolutely take.

Well, they've done that in California.

That's right.

They have done that.

You could take a lot of regulation out to try and create.

Complexity favors the wealthy.

Yeah.

Because we can afford accountants and strategists.

And so, yeah, I think

there's a huge opportunity to take regulation out and free up and create

some sort of leveling of the city.

But they also have a lot of lobbyists, so I don't think that's speaking of which, you know, in terms of how these companies behave from an ethical point of view, Scott Apple had taken down its app that was used by Hong Kong protesters to track police.

hkmap.live from the app store uh was approved by apple and then because authorities in hong kong said protesters are using it to attack the police apple took it down because it was facing mounting pressure obviously the nba got into it over the tweets that

one of their coaches put up, and it's the latest tech company to get embroiled, but all these media and tech companies which have business in China are really

going to get ugly, I think, for those businesses that are entwined in China.

Yeah,

it's just so

to a certain extent, all the woke washing that's gone on,

you have companies now are expected to weigh in on this.

And there's something about sports teams where people very closely link them with America and take very seriously what they say.

If a smaller company had said something like this or even a bigger company, I'm not sure they would have gotten the blowback.

But we hold sports teams or sports franchises very dear to kind of a representation of America.

And so the scrutiny there is pretty difficult.

But look, at the end of the day, they chose...

money over principles.

And a lot of companies do that.

The NBA's charge is to grow shareholder value.

I'm not sure it's there to protect American values.

They were trying to roll it back a little bit.

They're trying to walk it back, right?

Look, it's a tremendously difficult position for everyone involved.

And I find the NBA commissioner is a pretty thoughtful guy.

What does Apple do?

What does Apple do?

It's got a huge.

What do you do?

What would you do if you were running one of those companies?

You know, to be blunt, I just don't know.

I think this is why they get paid a lot of money.

I think it's a very difficult position.

And

I think they'd all like to go back to the days where there's no politics involved.

That's not going to happen.

Today, this week, Professor Erdogan, President Erdogan, Professor Erdogan, he's not a professor.

That hurts.

I know.

Of Turkey announced via Twitter he would be invading Kurdish-held section of northern Syria after Trump sort of let him do it, where they want to house Syria's refugees.

So again, where is Chuck Dorsey here?

Like, this is like stuff is happening on his platform that is killing that people are dying of.

Yeah, they don't.

Look, whether it's the Biden,

the Biden Biden kind of conspiracy theory that Facebook's running ads on, again, there's a fairness, there's an honest advertising act that was proposed in 2017 that Mitch McConnell has refused to come up for a vote.

That would be a start.

Jack Dorsey is got the good folks of Twitter have more running on Trump's presidency than anyone else in terms of

their own economic well-being.

It's just strange that people are, world leaders are now announcing invasions via Twitter.

It's also just incredibly

governing via Twitter.

It's just crazy, right?

And then what's also really disappointing is that america who gets it wrong all the time but we pretty good at when you know the american ambassador who has made a lot of the wrong decisions in saigon waited around until all of the allies uh or tried to and i'm sure people are going to correct me on this but we waited around and we tried to get our allies out of saigon recognized they were going to be murdered if they stayed we have taken our alliances and our allies very seriously and when someone via twitter and some sort of half-baked notion comes out and says we're going to turn our back on our allies, it's not only the wrong thing to do, it absolutely diminishes our power and influence moving forward.

Trump is the only one who did it.

He got attacked even by his

bosom buddy, Lindsey Graham, which was interesting.

Of course, who's a revolting person as he shifts back at like a weather vein, you know, supporting him.

Oh, come on.

He's the show's favorite lesbian.

By the way, that's your term, not mine.

That's your term.

Lindsey Graham.

He's no lesbian.

We don't want him in our group, whatever.

I have no idea where that guy comes from in terms of his principles.

I can't figure it out.

But

you've seen a lot of our men and women in uniform just horrified by the notion that we're walking away from people who have risked their lives and stood shoulder to shoulder with us.

And the last thing I want to talk about is

the Matt Lauer thing.

Oh, gosh.

Mr.

Media, tell me.

It's so dangerous for a white male to ever comment on anything of this kind of thing.

Did you impact this book, this Ronan Farrell book, Ketchin?

I just did, I was at the famous Woodward interview with Jodi Cantor.

What did you think of a Woodward interview?

You wrote something on that.

Oh, it was horrifying to be there.

I had my sons there.

I brought my sons because I thought it was important that they hear these two amazing reporters.

What have said you about it?

I saw your article.

His obsession with sex when it was about power

and the two women reporters, and that's because they were women.

The two reporters were like, Do you understand the latest in gender issues around the workplace?

It's a workplace issue.

It's a power issue.

And he kept coming back to sex.

And then he kept asking it as if he was like, Mr.

Watergate, but it wasn't appropriate.

And the crowd went crazy and started attacking him appropriately, by the way.

I don't love a heckler, but boy, were they right.

And it just was like one of the most tone-deaf interviews I've ever seen in my life.

And it was so frustrating.

It was interesting to have my kids there.

And even they're like, what is he doing?

Like,

they even understood the latest in gender issues around the workplace.

So it was really, it was disturbing.

And of course, this is the, it sort of pointed out the issue, but this

Matt Lauer thing, besides his speaking of boneheaded response to it, to the issues of whether he raped someone,

was problematic, but I think it has more repercussions at NBC and all through media.

I think it's going to be

on.

Ronan Faro is a one-man wreck-in-ball in terms of.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's incredible that he's definitely got, I don't know how many Pulitzers has already won, but it seems like anytime you see something explosive, it's by him.

Yeah, exactly.

So

what happens to these companies?

What does Comcast do?

As more revelations come out, that they cooperated with one of the revelations, the book I was reading, they cooperated too much with Harvey Weinstein as opposed to the New York Times, which didn't.

What happens when these I'll give you my PC answer and then what is practically happening?

What I found is the way you solve this, it's pretty straightforward.

You put more women in senior leadership positions.

And again, I'm the virtue signaling on steroids here.

All of my companies, the majority of senior managers have been LGBT or female.

And that hasn't been affirmative action.

It just just kind of happened that way.

The majority of companies I've started have been in San Francisco and New York.

That's kind of the talent pool.

And this shit doesn't happen.

When you have diversity,

it's senior management, but it doesn't happen in nearly the propensity.

Well, in succession this week it did, but go ahead.

In succession it did.

I missed it.

Oh my gosh.

I watched that.

Shiv, shivved a woman, but go ahead, keep going.

Oh, I didn't see that.

That's good stuff.

But in general, I think that solves a lot of the problems.

When you have a monoculture,

you're going to have just more problems.

So, what's really happening?

What's going on?

What's really happening now is you have

an inability, or what's happening, I think, at the board level is what's really difficult is an inability to calibrate.

Whereas I think before the calibration was incorrect, it's like, all right, we're like the fatherhood of corporate white guys, and we're going to reassign people who fucked up to a different parish and just sort of ignored what's gone on here.

And now it's hang everyone.

Now you do

the fear of backlash, the fear of the PR.

You just, I don't want to call you overcorrect, but we're having trouble discerning between a speeding ticket and double murder.

And women have a good point.

They say, well, look, all right, we'll abuse you for the next 1,500 years and we're all even.

You know,

a lot of guys are claiming there's an overcorrection going on, but it's kind of

become, it's like when the, I don't know, the Russians came into Berlin.

They were pretty pissed off, right?

I think there is some anger here.

I think there's some justified anger.

But what I find is happening mostly is if a complaint comes up, there's very little due process and there's very little calibration.

It feels like at some point there's going to need to be some sort of an ability to create nuance around what was the offense here?

What is the appropriate response?

I've heard this from a lot of men.

It's too much.

You don't buy it.

What's your viewpoint?

They got to go.

Well, that's what's happening.

They're all out.

I mean, I'm not talking about Matt Lauer.

I'm talking about

somebody complains that, oh, this person got, you know, handsy in a photo or something.

I think Joey Ito made a bad decision back when.

That one, to me.

This is the MIT guy.

The MIT guy.

He made a bad decision.

Got to go.

Got to go.

Get him out.

Bad decision.

Right.

Sorry.

You know what I mean?

Like, bad decisions.

But okay, lots of people lose their jobs.

I don't know what this is.

I see that.

Does their career ruin?

Should they be toxic?

Should they not be someone you hire?

Someone else can hire them.

I'm just saying, in this case, I suspect there's going to be a lot of departures higher up and stuff.

The reality is,

as a, you know, a 6'2

white guy, I have never felt physically intimidated by work.

I've never felt physically, and I can't imagine how just devastating that must feel.

And then to not be able to report it and to think that you're going to be.

Just even, like, let me tell you something about the baby.

We were in the hospital.

They got the form.

What does it say on it?

Parent, father, mother.

Right.

This was 17 years ago when San Francisco, for example, changed it eventually.

But when I saw that again, 17 frigging years, I got furious and I let loose on the thing.

I'm like, what are you doing?

Why does it say, why don't you change the frigging forms?

What if you're a single mother and you don't have a father?

Do you need to be reminded of that?

There's all this paternity.

I read the whole thing and I thought, I was furious.

And I was brought back to 20 years ago when there was like, and I, and here I am a very privileged person, I have lots of money, lots of power.

And there it was.

Like, I did not have any rights right then.

And it was sort of like, what?

And then I was told I have to be married to be on this.

And it just went on and on.

And it was sort of like, and I called a lot of people.

I know the right people to call, but it's just the way it is.

And And so it just, I remember just, again,

it was 20 years later, and it's still the same form.

And I sort of was like, and I guess the straight people don't understand it, but if you just had a baby and you get a form like that saying you are not a legitimate parent,

it's not only depressing, it's rage-inducing.

And I have to tell you, it just was fast.

It was just, I get it.

But I get why people are.

What I would say current response is, I actually think straight people do understand that.

We just need help.

We just need help.

I do think there's an education process.

And just hearing you say that makes me more empathetic, and I get it.

If I had been in the hospital and filled out that form, I wouldn't have noticed it.

I'm so sorry to the woman I yelled at, but she deserved to be yelled at.

I don't know if someone had to be yelled at.

Anyway, anyway, we're going to go to the break now.

When we get back, we're going to talk about more serious issues.

More serious stuff.

Less serious stuff

when we get back.

We're here with Pivot in a very special episode with Scott Galloway.

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Welcome back to Pivot, Scott.

We brought that, that was a bit of a downer right there.

Let's go wild and get a listener mail.

No, it's not.

It's a more development of

betterness.

Dream about Twitter.

I found out something fun on Twitter this morning.

Let's lighten the mood.

All right,

you know.

Listener male.

The second lady,

Karen Pence, her first husband was one of the inventors of Cialis.

I found that out on Twitter today.

Wow.

Isn't that amazing?

I think I got to like Vice President Pence now.

Oh, my God.

First off, I didn't know she was married before.

Yeah, that's true.

Anyways,

Twitter does add value.

Yes.

Thank you so much, Scott, for that.

Your Your favorite thing.

Trying to lighten the mood.

All right, Scott, we have to get to listener mail.

This comes from Toronto.

We were just

Canada.

We love Canada.

Anyway, it's this

about Google Sidewalks Labs, a division of Alphabet that is designing a district in Toronto's waterfront to, quote, tackle the challenges of urban growth.

The American Dream is Alive Care.

It's just alive in Canada.

So we reached out to Anne Kavukian.

She is a privacy expert and former privacy commissioner of Ontario.

She was working with sidewalk labs in Toronto, but she resigned from that position a year ago, I think it was, because she had concern about how the data they collected would be used.

I don't know why you'd worry about Google collecting data.

Here's what she had to say about that.

The problem arose when they created a model for an urban data trust, where they said, we understand that people want not just sidewalk labs to be controlling this data, but others should be involved, like the municipal government, the provincial government, Waterfront Toronto, of course, and various levels involved in terms of the actual companies themselves, IT companies, et cetera, delivering these technologies.

We'll all form this, what they called, an urban data trust.

And then they said the following, which is what led to my resignation.

They said, and of course we will encourage companies to de-identify data at source, but we can't make them do that.

We have no control over what these companies do.

And that's the minute I knew that everything was going to fall apart.

Because you see, personally identifiable data, it's a treasure trove.

Everybody wants to collect personal information and then use it for our advertising, marketing, etc.

And the minute they said that, I knew there was no way we could preserve this as a smart city of privacy.

I'd be interested in your views.

You know, I had said that, for example, Bill Gates is thinking of creating a smart city and I said to Waterfront Toronto, let's create a great smart city of privacy here, and then we can pitch it to them, and they could use that as a model, and hopefully others all around the world can use it as a model.

So, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Thank you very much.

Oh, my God, Bill Gates, creating a smart city.

All right, Google's statement on this.

Sidewalk Labs is committed to implementing as a company the principles of privacy by design.

Though that question is settled, the question whether other companies involved in the Keyside product would be required to do so is unlikely to be worked out soon and may be out of Sidewalk's hands.

Okay, they're washing the hands of third party for these reasons and others.

Dr.

Kavukian has decided not to make, that does not make sense to continue working as a paid consultant to Sidewalk Labs.

And Sidewalk Labs benefited greatly from her advice, which helped the company formulate the strict policy, privacy policies it has adopted and looks forward to calling on her from time to time for her advice and feedback.

Doesn't sound like she wants to help them because she thinks it's bullshit.

This came up in Toronto.

And my initial thought was that I actually think it's sort of a neat idea and partner.

I like private, public partnerships.

And you basically, I thought you had the right or a response that I learned from and you said, you know what,

I don't want Google building our cities.

I want our governments building our cities.

And it kind of goes back to the original story about billionaires paying less than their quote-unquote fair share.

And that the reason that these cities have to turn to these deep pockets is because they don't have the money to build smart cities themselves anymore.

Right.

So the notion.

They're just giving away public transportation, giving away prisons, giving away.

I'll take you into space.

Right.

You know, because

NASA's not doing it because their budget's been cut.

So it's generally a reallocation of resources that when it comes to civic issues, we need cities to do it.

And even like, talk about data hacks, right?

Think about how many corporations have had data hacks, and everyone makes time to the government.

The most sensitive information in the world is probably on the CDC, who gets information on.

We can't get Trump's taxes.

God, why not?

The IRS hasn't been hacked.

The IRS is the most secure.

It's the most secure organization in the world.

Everybody mocks government employees.

You know what?

There have been some.

Yeah, but in terms of security,

in terms of the names of assets and agents and CDC and health information, the government is

proving itself to be a hell of a lot more competent than the private sector.

So I kind of come around to your thinking.

I really like the guy running Sidewalk Labs.

Have you met Dan Docker off of Dan?

He strikes me as a really thoughtful guy.

I just think the whole premise, first of all, there's third-party

companies involved here.

There is Google, which is the biggest information sucking sound in the universe.

It sounds bad on every level.

It's just

like, pay more taxes and let's build some more stuff or be part of the solution where you're highly monitored by people who are elected.

Like they are not elected.

They just

I just feel like, look, maybe we make bad choices in our elections, but they're elected and nobody picked Google and nobody picked Facebook and nobody picked any of these people.

And so how do you have consent to what just the ways this is like facial recognition?

The ways this can go, I can think of 20 bad outcomes and maybe four good ones.

I'm actually a fan of facial recognition as long as it's controlled by people who are elected at the end of the day.

I'm believing facial recognition.

And so I just, I just, how the data gets used, how it gets de-identified, who will have access, how will it be used?

There's so many questions.

And the fact that this woman and so many others are like quitting and being thoughtful about it, I think her issue was these third party.

And then Google says this,

and may be out of Sidewalk's hands.

Well, if it's out of their hands,

why not have partners who agree to very strict rules of this?

You know, there's lots of ways.

It's, again, pretending they don't have power over this.

Oh, speaking of

private corporations overstepping their boundaries and threatening our health as a nation, what did we predict in June, and the June 20th, I think it was the June 23rd, I'm looking at our producer, Begasanos, about Libra when it was announced?

What did we predict?

That.

It was DOA.

We said it was going nowhere.

And then in this past week, it looks like Massacart and Visa are pulling out.

I mean, this was such an easy one.

It just amazes me.

Success creates a level of arrogance.

It's very dangerous that anyone at Facebook thought, oh, this is a good idea.

This will fly.

This makes sense.

Well, it feels innovative and new.

It was.

And by the way, currency should be.

It's a great idea.

A stable coin is genius.

If you look at the construct, this is genius.

A Walmart, a, I don't know, a JP Morgan, I don't know who's going to fear Amazon because I think they're more trusted.

Somebody is going to do what Facebook has done elegantly to WhatsApp, Snap, and every other innovative firm.

They're going to pick their pocket.

You're going to see another stable coin from someone in six months.

It's just not going to be from the good people at Facebook.

No, that they think they are.

But anyway, this smart city, what does Smart City should look like?

Cities need to get smarter 100%.

I just don't want to.

Is that an IBM ad?

Smart City?

Have they been talking about smart city?

But no one takes IBM seriously, right?

They're not threatened by IBM.

I don't want to stack rank who would be more appalling in terms of running our cities, but definitely Bill Gates.

Nothing.

I think he's wonderful.

You don't like Bill Gates?

I like Bill Gates, but I don't want him making a decision on Smart City.

I'm sorry.

Like, I love the stuff he's doing abroad, and they need it desperately.

And in some cases, it's great when these billionaires put money into places where government doesn't have enough throughput to make it happen.

But in this country, we need our government.

We do have a functional government in a lot of ways.

And so, sort of, but we do, we do, we do.

Let me just tell you, I don't pay bribes every five minutes to do something.

I don't have, like, you know, I think

I would like their expertise.

And at the same time, I don't want them to control it.

That's literally, they don't want to just join in a model of stone stone soup.

They want to control every aspect.

And I get why they want to.

I get it.

They think of government as incompetent.

Well, and they think they're being good, but it all comes back to one thing in terms of Google.

And the reason why Toronto has to go hat in hand to Google for a smart city is that in the United Kingdom, Google reported 7 billion pounds sterling in revenue and for the purposes of taxes reported a profit of £50,000.

That's the kind of thing.

Then pay your taxes, just pay, like, that's the kind of thing.

Just pay your taxes.

Anyways, we're in agreement.

We're in agreement.

We're in agreement here.

We're in violent agreement about smart cities.

I think I should design a smart city.

Anyway, wins and files.

There's so many.

There is so many.

You go for it.

What's your fail and win?

My win is the economists in Berkeley who are pointing out this notion of income inequality.

I think data as a force of moral good is really powerful.

You're a big data man.

Well,

it's powerful, right?

The thing that disappointed me about this Twitter exchanges is there was just an absence of data around, okay, I disagree.

Here's my data.

I disagree.

I'm rich, which means I'm right.

My fail is obvious.

My fail is this,

and I'm a product of it and I've experienced it, this culture in Silicon Valley where people have mistaken their blessings for talent.

And I think this smells like 1999, and everyone says it's different this time.

So this leads right into my prediction.

I thought the biggest news story of the year was going to be WeWork.

By the way, coming here, I got off on floors 16 and 17.

You know what those floors are here?

We work.

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven or hell.

And I'm like, does this mean I'm in heaven or hell?

Anyways.

I know they did.

They like kidnapped you or something.

They're here.

Yeah.

And then

they pulled me out, put me under a drug, and now I no longer have a kidney.

I don't know what that means.

That's their new business.

And it's being rented out.

It's being rented out.

Anyways, I thought it was going to be work.

No, now I think it's going to be SoftBank.

I'm pretty sure, like last night.

When I have four, let me see.

When I go out to dinner, I'll usually have one or two drinks, and then afterwards, I'll have, let me see,

another seven.

And the next day, most of my decisions are bad decisions.

And I think that SoftBank's incredible poor judgment around we perhaps means that they've demonstrated poor judgment around other investments.

So I'm looking at their other real estate investments, specifically Oyo, Compass,

Open Door.

Failed to come.

Well, what I think we're going to have is the new prediction, is that I think this level of- Tetra Boy's a big investor in Open Door, but go ahead.

Is he really?

Yes.

Oh, delicious.

I've interviewed this one.

It's going to be on my podcast.

Anyway, so

the abundance of capital, the abundance of cheap capital, a level of arrogance, all this bullshit rhetoric around genius and magic and this Jesus complex.

I have been here before.

The big story next year, the beginning of the year, we said the unicorn class was going to lose money, which was heresy because the previous year, IPOs were up about 18%.

The year before that, they were up 79%.

This year, year to date, they're only up five, which means they go down a little bit more.

And this year, IPOs and unicorns have been a net loser.

Next year, prediction, take every private company worth over.

This is my prediction, yeah.

Every unicorn worth over a billion dollars now that's a private company, and I think we can add them up, and I'll do this, and I'll publish it on my blog, is going to be cut in half next year.

The amount of

stop, stop, stopping you.

The amount of consensual hallucination between the markets, the unicorn industrial complex, trying to shame people for having a thoughtful conversation around valuation.

I have been to this movie before.

We are going to see the valuation of private company unicorns cut in half in 2008.

You literally just slap Jason Callaghan in the face, and you are saying, we hawk in at dawn, Jason.

I will be your second.

Is he the guy that turned $100,000 to $100 million?

That's right, Jason.

He's coming.

I'm bringing him to the end.

We're going to go for a drink set.

He's a good drinker.

Is he?

Yeah, you'll enjoy.

You'll become best of buddies.

Okay, Okay, just my win is Greta Thunberg is poised to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Do you really think she's going to win?

I don't know.

I think it would be great because it would drive Trump crazy.

That's really pretty much why I want her to win, although she's really quite an interesting,

she's a 16-year-old climate activist who organized the climate strike early this month.

And so I think I just,

I don't know.

She's a win.

And so is, speaking of which, Andrew Yang, presidential campaign made $10 million in Q3.

You're happy about that?

I am.

I feel like I'm the one who started to really.

Oh, it's all about you.

You're definitely the young game.

I'm kidding.

No, but he made fun of me when I interviewed him.

And I was like, no, this guy's got some interesting ideas, and it will resonate with people.

There's 40 points up for Grab.

So who is it going to go to?

Warren?

I've been doing all this hard here.

You're going to have someone is some Democratic.

Bloomberg's coming in.

Oh, my God.

I would love that.

Do you really know that?

Do you think that?

I'm going to make a Karaswisher predict.

I never get that.

Bloomberg's coming in.

You're Mr.

Prediction.

You suck up all the prediction.

Say more.

Bloomberg's coming in.

What do you think he's coming in?

Coming in.

Why wouldn't you?

Well, we need more old people in the race.

Jesus Christ.

A chicken in every pot and depends in every cabinet.

I mean, come on.

Enough already with the old dude.

He's coming in.

I would love it.

Bloomberg's coming in.

He's competent.

He's ran the 11th largest economy in the world.

He choked the last few times.

Bloomberg, you choked.

And he wouldn't need to take any money from anybody.

The conservatives like him.

Appoint Stacey Abrams as his VP.

I'm only going to serve four years.

And then she gets it.

I'm here to

repair and restore.

Yep.

I'm just going to do it.

I like it.

going to go ahead and get it.

The other one, the other long shot.

You know who would have double digits if you got in right now would be if Gavin Newsome announced.

Oh, I love Gavin.

I love that Gavin Newsome.

He's very lovable.

He's my friend.

I like him.

I like him.

I think he's a good person.

Do you think there's going to be a new entrant?

Oh, my God.

I could possibly President Pelosi if this impeachment thing is.

Jesus Christ.

This is literally like...

This is like, I mean, Golden Girls.

Yes.

You don't really have to hang with me.

I will know all the presidents.

I'm just saying.

You keep saying that.

I'm just saying, if any of these people get in, we can go to the the White House.

You and I could stay in the Lincoln bedroom together.

It'll be great.

I like that.

It's platonic, but you know.

I have a lot of mixed emotions when you say that,

but in general, I'm in.

And we don't even have to buy anything.

In general, I'm in.

And then ending on that, Keith Raboy and Jason Galkinis will be wishing they were us because we will be in the Lincoln bedroom.

Yeah, I'm sure they're jealous.

But they're fleet of Teslas.

They're fleet of Teslas.

Okay.

All right, Scott.

I love talking to you about tech and business.

But I've got

babies to raise new copies.

That's so exciting.

I know.

I'm so excited.

She's a wonder.

She's a real wonder.

It makes you happy about the earth.

Anyway, we'll be back together again in New York this week and in San Francisco.

And

I hope that you're glad I'm here.

By the way, I got rejected from Stanford twice.

Undergraduate.

I got rejected from Stanford just once.

Wow.

We know what we're going to go back and say.

I was also rejected from the University of Indiana, University of Texas, Michigan, Duke, Cornell.

And you know who let me in?

The generosity and vision of the University of California California Taxpayers and Regents, UCLA and Berkeley, only two colleges that ever let me in.

Wow, I only got into Georgetown.

I know you're in Georgetown.

No, but it was a backup then.

It was a backup.

That's a Georgetown backup.

It was 190 years ago.

Since you're pointing out the best of the best of the bad things, this is the widest conversation ever.

This is seriously like, oh, my God.

In any case, I'm wider.

No, you're whiter.

You're wider.

No matter how we slice it, Scott Galloway, you're whiter and mailer than I am.

Well, slightly.

Probably not, actually.

Let me restate that.

You're not.

I'm whiter whiter and maler than you are.

I'm hanging out with Karen Pence's first husband.

That's what's happening.

That's what's happening here.

That's what's happening here.

See you live in New York this coming week.

That's awesome.

I'm very excited that our relationship is moving to another level.

Anyway, today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis and Eric Johnson.

Eric Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Rebecca Castro, Drew Burroughs, and Nishad Kirwa.

Make sure you subscribe to the show and Apple podcast.

If you like this week's episode, leave us a review.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media.

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.