Jason Calacanis: Anarcho Capitalism

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All right, guys.

Real fast here, it's Wednesday, so a reminder.

I'm over on the next level.

We got the crew back together.

Sarah and JVL, everybody's off vacation.

We're going to be punchy.

That comes out for you guys on Wednesday evening.

So make sure you're subscribed on your podcast app of choice.

If you haven't, this podcast, well,

buckle in.

I have been promising, and

I don't know that I've fully lived up to I promise, but I'm working on it.

I want to make sure we are mixing it up in the show on Wednesdays, bringing in experts some weeks, bringing in people that disagree with me from my left on a topic, hashing that out.

We've done that a few times on foreign policy stuff, bringing in people that disagree with me on the other side.

And when Jason Calakanis of the All-In podcast tweeted last week that he thought that Trump's first six months has been solid, I was like, well,

that's a topic that we should hash out together.

And so we do over the course of the next hour, talk a little bit about AI and crypto at the end.

And

I think that you're in for an interesting show.

So stick around.

Up next, J Cal, as they call him, from the All-In Podcast.

And we'll see you over on the next level and back here tomorrow with one of our faves, Michael Weiss.

Hello, and welcome to the Bullard Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back a journalist, turned entrepreneur, and angel investor, turned podcaster.

He co-hosts the podcast this week in startups, as well as all in with Chamaath Palhapatia, Boo, David Sachs, Boo, and David Friedberg.

It's Jason Calicanis.

What's up, J.

Cal?

It's good to be here.

Good to be here.

I was just listening to our last conversation, which was October 15th before the election.

And

we were going at it a bit.

How did it hold up?

I didn't re-listen.

Yeah, it's worth a re-listen.

I think, you know,

you had a lot of questions at that time of, you know, how does Silicon Valley think about Trump?

Because remember, that was when the preference cascade kind of had just started.

They had done, Shamatha and Sachs had done their fundraiser.

Elon came out in support of Trump.

And I guess many people, I hear back channels that even the administration or people in and around the administration think that that was key to winning the election for Trump.

Certainly didn't hurt.

Certainly didn't hurt.

All the Elon Money, et cetera.

And I'll be interested in your take on how everybody looks at it now.

Like, what's that, nine months later?

But just really quick first, for people that don't know Alin, don't know you,

and who maybe weren't listening to this last October, just

give us a real quick reader's digest on what's your story.

Okay, so it's a podcast.

It's four dudes started during COVID.

They're all venture capitalists/slash business builders for the past 30, 40 years, 30 years each.

So,

four incredibly successful in-business guys who would talk about business, technology, media.

One of them, David Sachs, is really into politics.

He's part of the PayPal mafia, and he went all in for Trump.

He originally started with DeSantis, I guess was, as he said, it his preferred candidate.

And then when DeSantis,

you know, flamed out.

Yeah, flamed out, I guess would be a good way to say it.

He went all in on Trump, so to speak.

The podcast is regularly in the top 10 episodes.

And what about you?

How do you fit in?

What's your, like, you know, give people a little Jason.

Independent, moderate.

Yeah, independent, moderate.

I hate politics.

Don't care for politicians.

You talk about it a lot now, though.

I've been forced to.

And so I've been giving it a lot of thought.

And

yeah, I bought some domain names, Mayor Jason, Governor Jason, and presidentjason.com.

So I have the three domain names.

I'm the only American-born member of the quartet.

So if they need a Manchurian candidate from the all-in podcast, it's going to be by default me.

And I've been offered a couple times to, like, they wanted me to run for mayor.

Not just them, but other folks.

And they put up $2 million for me to run for mayor.

Mayor of what?

San Francisco when I live there.

Lurie, you got to feel good about Lurie.

I mean, he's a Democrat.

Yeah, I met with him.

I met with him before he was joining, and he was such a wet noodle.

And like, I was like, you have to go right at London Breed and right at security.

All people care about now is safety in that city.

Everything else is great.

Just go 100% at safety.

And that's what he's done.

And,

you know, it's still dangerous there, but I think he's trying.

He's trying at least.

Yeah.

You can give him credit.

You can just give him credit just because he's a Democrat now, you know.

And I mean, like he's doing that.

No, I voted like we talked about last time.

I think, you know, having been a New Yorker my whole life and lived in L.A.

and San Francisco, now I live in the great state of Texas and Austin on a horse ranch.

Like you, I fled the Bay Area for better pastures, quite literally, in my case.

You know, I vote for the best candidate.

I think most people would call me like fiscally conservative, socially liberal, I guess, which is how you would describe the entire Trump administration.

In order to win the second term, this is how I tweak everybody.

I'm like, in order to win the second term, a Clinton Democrat, Trump, had to hire like five or six and get the support of another two or three incredibly high-profile Democrats.

Elon, Joe Rogan, Luttnick, Besant,

Chamoth.

Nutlick was a Democrat?

I didn't know that.

Howard was a New York Democrat, yeah.

All of them are.

I mean, I grew up in New York in the 90s, 80s, 90s, and into the 2000s, and they're all the same exact globalist, pro-economy, socially liberal, gay rights, legalized weed, you know, kind of cohort.

And Trump just took over the Republican Party and then gave them those Clinton kind of, I think, vibes, which is why they all joined it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So this is what we're going to explore a little bit because I pick up different vibes and that's fine.

And so I want, just for a little context for people, I'm going to do a big wind up here.

Sure.

In November when we started this, I was like, I have a couple of pledges for this podcast of the next year.

Not when we started this podcast, when we started the journey of having to deal with Trump 2.0.

I was was like,

I want you to talk about that term.

Yeah, I was like, I want to, I'm only going to talk about things I actually care about.

I'm not going to do pretend outrage.

I have to just, I'm going to care about what I care about.

There'll be plenty to be actually outraged about.

I'm going to focus on that.

And I'm going to want to have people on to challenge me.

I've done pretty good about that on finding people from the left.

I would like to do even more, kind of more in the Zorun, kind of lefty camp.

Socialist.

Natural home.

Yeah, socialist, or even whatever, a populist left, whatever you want to call it.

Like different, you know, sometimes I guess Zoran's actually explicitly socialist, but or folks that just have more lefty populist views than me on foreign policy in particular.

But I've struggled to live up to my pledge of trying to get on people to hash out

like a more positive, if you will, view of what the administration is doing.

And the reason for that is that like I refuse to have anybody on that is that is going to be full of shit.

Like I do not want to argue with somebody that will not say the same thing to me on the pod that they would say if we were just hanging out at the bar, right?

And I just, I think that there are a lot of Trump supporters who they're genuine things they like about him, but like they're hesitant to say the bad things

because of like the culture of intimidation around him or because of whatever.

They don't want to have

exiled, right?

All right.

So that isn't you, in my experience.

You're willing to critique him.

And so when I saw you sent this tweet a couple of days ago and I DM'd you, it was, it said, first six months has been solid, still work to do.

And I was like, that's actually a good premise to have a podcast on.

Okay.

Because Jason thinks the first six months has been solid, which implies it's not perfect.

He has complaints.

I think it's been like close, like not the worst case scenario, but pretty disastrous.

I think it's been pretty bad across almost all the metrics.

And so I figured, let's just hash it out.

So I'm sure we have some agreements on the negative.

So we'll get to that later.

What about the positive?

Like, what do you think has been solid?

What have you liked about it?

So from a business perspective, and I spend my, you know, every year I invest in 100 companies.

I have a 21-person venture capital firm.

You know, some of the companies, I was the third or fourth investor in Uber, one of the first investors in Robinhood, Calm.

And one of the really difficult things of the past four years was the anti-business, anti-capitalism sentiment of the Biden-Kamala sort of administration.

And they hired somebody named Lina Kahn, as you know, and she basically froze our entire industry.

No M ⁇ A.

And she was going to magically, through

being able to predict the future, like a precog in minority report, predict future competition.

I invest for a living.

You know, the probably 10 companies I've invested in, when they were under $10 million that became unicorns, I would never have been able to predict.

I knew they were, you know, great founders, but you can't really predict these things.

And I've done 500 investments.

So the fact that she could do this was crazy.

Since she's been removed and the Wrath of Khan has ended, we've seen a flurry of M ⁇ A.

We've seen a bunch of IPOs.

The stock market has ripped.

And you've seen regulation around, and there's many reasons for it, so we'll get into that.

But you've seen regulation from my friend David Sachs, who actually joined the administration, as you know, which didn't see that company.

I know.

I saw that.

I don't know.

We knew that was happening.

I'm just happy he doesn't have the Ukraine portfolio, but okay, let's continue.

Yeah, you and I, actually.

It's so great.

I troll him on that one all the time, as you see publicly, but we'll get into that in a moment.

So I think that that's been fantastic because entrepreneurs create jobs in this country.

Innovation has got us where we are.

And you need to have a very fluid M ⁇ A market.

You need to have fluid capital markets.

And, you know, the last administration had contempt for innovators, for entrepreneurs, and for business in general.

And they threw up tons of roadblocks and they wouldn't meet with us.

So something like crypto is the perfect example.

You know, there's very simple rules of the road you could create for crypto.

And instead, what they did, Gensler in the last administration, they said, oh, come meet with us, tell us what you're doing.

And then you'd meet with them and then they would file an action against you.

So, you know, those two things alone, from a business perspective, now we have some rules of the road for crypto.

And you have things like, if you know what stable coins are, I won't explain them here.

This is going to be fantastic for America.

And then just having a framework for crypto means the amount of people who are going to lose their money in crypto because they're going to be doing stuff offshore.

And there's no repercussions to that.

There's no legal system, there's no way for you to try to get your money back.

Onshoring that now is going to be net net a huge benefit.

In those cases, I think those are all solid wins.

When I look at foreign policy, let's just stick around economic for a second, then we'll go to foreign.

Just like really quick, and we'll table

crypto.

So, you look at the solid part of economic policy, you're saying, all right, it's the changes of the regulatory.

You know, Lena Conf, people don't pay attention that much was really, really, you know, kind of dialed in on this antitrust issue, preventing big mergers, going after big tech on antitrust issues.

And frankly, my cards on the table, I'm probably more sympathetic to you than Lena on that issue in particular.

Like the idea that, for example, it's kind of funny, right?

Like Google is, let's just use an example, Google's company that people are going at is like a big antitrust massive case now.

Seemed like a monopoly at the time, makes a lot of sense.

It's that, you know, I understand why it seems that way.

Like AI, Chat GBT comes out of nowhere and just like totally disrupts it.

All of a sudden, Google, it's kind of like silly to think that Google's a monopoly.

And now everybody's like, this happens every single time.

By the time a regulator can regulate what is thought to be a monopoly, and in Google's case, they do have a social monopoly, something in the free market's going to make it happen.

In almost every case,

these MA transactions result in lower prices, more choice for customers, because big companies tend to not be great at innovating.

Some are good, most are not.

They're slower.

So she wanted to block things like Roombas and you know, being bought by Amazon, just ticky tacky tiny things.

When she did actually do a good job, I'll give her credit, is she went after things like dark patterns, which is when you try to unsubscribe, they don't let you, or bundling of software, which Microsoft has a really great ability to do.

They can just add something to the Microsoft Office bundle and kill.

And that would be under the category of price dumping, which is illegal.

So, she wanted to change the law to be we want to prevent future competition, as opposed to just here's a rule set for this game of basketball.

And, you know, here's how it's played.

And we're just going to evenly, you know, administer those rules.

And so that's been a huge win.

And I think you're going to see that pay off, you know, over the next couple of years.

Yeah.

We'll just say that.

That's a Lena Khan agreement.

I should have Lena on, by the way, actually.

Katie, remind me, we should invite Lena to come on to give the other perspective.

I would love to talk to her.

Yeah, we should give her the other perspective on that if she wants to chat it out.

So I understand if you're a single-issue Lena Khan voter, if you're an antitrust voter, maybe you see some good things happening.

We're perhaps some better administration.

Like Like I said, we're gonna table crypto to the end.

I thought we had aligned on crypto, so we'll have to fight about that on the end.

The thing that is really confusing to me, and that I asked Cuban about this when I had him on a couple of months ago, is like the business environment was booming under Biden.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, the market was flying.

Unemployment at a 50-year low.

The big tech guys, like all these big names we're talking about, people that ended up getting red pills

or whatever, started pivoting more towards the MAGA side.

Yeah.

Elon, Andreessen, and all of these guys were

making billions.

I'm making more money than anybody has had in the history, like unimaginable gilded age type levels of money was happening.

These companies were succeeding.

SP, the biggest companies, are succeeding.

It's like the idea that people looked at that and thought, oh, man, the environment was so hostile before.

I just don't see it.

Again, in a specific, if like I had an M ⁇ A I was trying to do that got blocked by Lena Kahn.

Okay.

But just broader in the economy, things were going very well.

And then you look at Trump and now, and which we'll get into, and there you have all these risks with tariffs, with instability.

Explain that to me.

It doesn't feel like things are better.

So the contempt issue is partially the outward contempt and what they would say and their actions.

So we talked on the last episode when you and I talked on October 15th about not inviting Elon to the EV summit.

I know.

People's feelings get hurt.

It's super disrespectful, and it matters, I think, to the business community because we take them at their word.

When they say we should ban billionaires or we should look into that guy, which was Biden's big thing, when you see the Delaware courts take that word.

I mean, Trump was just shitting on the Intel CEO yesterday, calling him like a Chinese crypto

Chinese asset.

So it's not, it's not a one-way story.

You know, if we're talking about people being a little mean to business guys,

like Trump hasn't, it does.

But the perception is, you know, if you wanted to talk to them, they weren't available to talk to you.

And no amount of donations, lobbying, or even just, hey, I want to have a goodwill discussion were allowed.

And that socialist Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, now

Mondami, that whole group, I think, is how the business community, finance community, tech community started to look at the Democratic Party.

This was their biggest mistake because Clinton didn't feel this way.

Obama didn't feel this way.

This was like a kind of a new thing.

And all the people I mentioned earlier, they all supported Obama.

They all supported Clinton.

So we were essentially as a business community

told, you know, need not apply, need not to be involved, and we're just going to

make things difficult for you.

And there's no conversation.

And so, yes, we will get into Trump's mercurial, you know, shaking of the snow globe of business.

is the way I look at it and the impact that has.

But NetNet, any business person you talk to, any CEO behind closed doors doors will say this is a much better situation for business.

Right now, you think August 12th, 2025 is better for business than August 12th, 2024?

100%.

No way.

100%.

No, come on.

Even with the uncertainty because of the tariffs.

Absolutely.

And the way you can know that, too,

is the stock market is the backstop.

Stock market's basically even since he's done.

I mean,

it went up and then down.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's up a little bit.

It's bouncing along the ceiling.

And here's the good news.

Trump wants to be loved.

You know, I've been studying Trump now.

I met him for the first time two weeks ago.

You know, and I've been studying my friends and my associates who cozied up to him or have gotten close to him.

And, you know, I think he has a unique way of doing negotiations.

But at the end of the day, he wants to be loved.

I think he wants to be respected.

I think we all know this, right?

Yeah, I've always said the thing that's going to save us from Trump killing the whole democracy is the fact that his dad didn't hug him enough, Fred Trump.

Like he does.

Yeah, whatever the trauma is.

He's got like a hole inside of his heart somewhere.

And

fingers crossed on that one, I guess.

I think actually, you know, we're kind of goofing here.

I'm

serious.

His biggest peak was being a reality star.

I mean, you only become a reality star or a podcaster, no offense to the two of us, if you

want to be heard, right?

Yeah, no, I see it.

I'm just saying, like, he's got it at the megalomaniacal level, you know, like we've got it at the podcaster level.

Exactly, exactly.

We want to have good conversations.

He truly wants wants to be loved and he truly wants to be respected.

And the stock market is his scorecard.

And so when he did his,

you know, I call it shock and bore.

I don't like the taco thing.

I think that's like trying to provoke him.

And it's stupid to do that because then maybe he won't back down.

I think he does shock and bore.

I'm going to say something crazy outrageous.

I fill the void.

I, you know, I flood the zone, whatever term you want to use.

It shakes everything up.

And then Howard Luttnick comes in and does a reciprocal tariff.

You know, hey, you're charging us 15%.

We'll charge you 15%.

And they try to negotiate something in between.

And I think it's a way for them to consolidate power.

It's a way for them to get themselves involved in everything.

So they get to be involved in everything with this tariff tool.

And

they brought in $125 billion in the last three months.

It is completely possible, and this is their plan, that they could bring in an incremental $500 billion a year.

So,

you know, we could all say it's crazy and it's going to cause massive inflation.

If they do the the tariffs at about 15%, that's the just noticeable difference in psychology and perception.

And it also applies to pricing.

And so if you were to buy a million dollars worth of sneakers and the person selling it to you has a 20% margin and you have a 20% margin, if you find 15% in there to split, it doesn't get passed on to consumers, which is what's happened to date.

If it's around 50%, then obviously the tariff is greater than the profit margin.

It's busto, right?

You can't solve that.

So that's where they'll wind up.

They will have hundreds of billions of dollars, and they're on track to do that.

And their belief is growth plus this tariff revenue, plus less regulations, which drives growth, plus MA, will at the end of the day balance the budget slash not add to the deficit.

That's crazy.

I don't buy it.

That's insane.

Not exactly my best strategy, but that's what they believe.

That's insane.

Check out.

We can just say it.

That's insane.

They're not going to balance the budget.

I mean, they just, they passed a

bad bad.

They're going to add to the deficit.

I mean, the tax bill, you guys talked about this.

You got Friedberg, you guys are very good on this on your podcast.

Like, look, between the tax cut for the extension of the trunks, tax cuts, whatever you think about them as a policy, the tax on tips, the fact that we have a shrinking base, really, tax base, because we're going to have net migration.

We're going to get into that later.

And just the numbers of the numbers, like there's no way that he's going to tariff our way to a balanced budget when they're adding trillions to the deficit.

However, if it went from $2 trillion a year, which is what it's averaged over the last eight years across both, if you just look at 16 to 34, 35, 36, 37, which is kind of where we've been bouncing around, I do think they could get it down to a trillion, add it to the deficit each year, and they can cut it in half.

That would be on the road to success.

I have been pushing friends who might want to create third-party third parties or other things that America party, maybe.

I call it the responsible party.

I got the domain name.

I like to buy domain names.

I think there needs to be a responsible party, but even more importantly, a pledge.

So like the Grover Norquist, you know, I'm not going to add to taxes pledge and how effective that's been.

I think there should be a pledge that we lobby candidates through donations to agree to not add to the deficit and to, you know, unless it's a war and Congress approves it.

So I think that there's a possibility.

that individuals who care and have their primary concern being the deficit, which is actually my number one concern, because I think the whole experiment stops.

If we do $2 trillion a year for somewhere between two and six more years, it'll be busto.

Like we'll, we'll flip the, the country will be broke.

So I think we should, that's the best attack vector here to get people back to the middle.

Okay, well, let me just give a different than breakdown of what I, how I see it, because we're looking at the same, I mean, this is not on the top of my concern list.

I have some other concerns that are higher than this, but it's, it's a legit concern about just the substance of the policies he's put forth.

You put together huge cuts in investment coming from government into key industries, into green industries, into batteries, into industries like Elon's was one of the things he was concerned about, about the one big beautiful bill.

So you have huge cuts in that, cuts in just public sector generally, like which, okay, that is not creating jobs, that's contributing to the economy.

And we're just adding all these things together.

So you've got, that is.

you know, putting limits on the growth of the economy, both of those things.

On top of that, you got tariffs, which is also stifling the economy.

On top of that, we're going to have negative, I think, population growth this year.

The tariff thing you're saying is not true yet.

So you might think it a little true.

It's just a little.

I was saying it a little bit.

Like they're slowing the GDP.

And

the last report that came out, I mean, like the only areas that are growing jobs are like AI, data centers, and healthcare.

Yeah, but GDP was on a tear in the second quarter.

If you average it out with the first,

it's kind of a lot

of

myths.

i think most economists say that'll slow the economy migration we don't we're going to have net negative migration this year uh we're going to talk about that in a second so if you put all of that together like how are you growing in such a way to attack the deficit problem when simultaneously you're you're you're not you're uh extending the tax cuts two trillion dollars added to the deficit minus this is in their mind 500 billion in tariff income puts you at 1.5 trillion they think the economy will grow There'll be more efficiency in the economy through unleashing AI and unleashing more MA, and that that will make us create more Apples, more Ubers, more Airbnbs, more Coinbases, et cetera, and that that will ultimately create more jobs.

And that tends to be true.

So the good news, Tim, is that we can sit here and debate the finer points of it, but they have to live with their track record.

And their track record is going to land at the midterms.

We're going to know in six months what reality is.

Right now, we have three months of tariff data to look at.

We'll have nine months soon.

And we will also have the inflation numbers, unemployment numbers.

That's fair.

Totally fair.

And they're going to have to sleep in that bed.

And if you want Trump out of office or if you want MAGA out of office and they get this wrong, and they know that if they get this wrong, it's going to be cataclysmic for that party.

So I think they're acutely attuned into it.

That's fair.

We'll see how that conversation turns out.

I'm not autistic, but fair enough.

What about just the management style stuff, though?

Like, I just, just, I mean, this is not really an apples to apples analogy, but like, you look at what we saw with the job situation last month.

BLS comes out.

They fire the guy.

They're bringing in some hack now.

I mean, I think it was a woman.

You're investors.

They fired the woman.

They're bringing in the hack guy.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That was my internal misogyny show.

I get corrected by Jason Calicanis.

Happy to take it.

They fire the woman who is the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, replace him with this guy who.

by all accounts is not exactly the most accomplished in the field, to say the least.

You know, you look at at these companies, if you look at the companies with a founder, and this founder is so erratic that like numbers come out at the quarter.

He shows numbers aren't looking good for the PL.

And then they say, well, I'm just going to fire the CFO.

We're going to bring in somebody that's going to put out better numbers next month.

You'd be like, this is insane.

And then they're tweeting all caps tweets at night about how the person is about how the person is crazy.

You'd be like, this is not.

Yeah.

So stylistically, and the timing is obviously ridiculous.

But the intent, there has been a long dialogue about how terrible the government is at forecasting stuff and how we need to sort of innovate there.

They should have just done this at the top of the administration and just said, hey, we need to get new people in there, new technology in there.

The fact that they can't get these numbers correct and that they're lollygagging around getting them, they need to have a better system.

So two things can be true at the same time.

I don't like the way he did it either.

I don't think any reasonable person thinks it's the right way to do it.

I would say the majority of the people who support Trump don't like his style, but they do like the action, right?

And you've said this before on the pod.

I listen to you once in a while.

It comes up in my YouTube feed.

It's erratic, though.

I mean, I just think it's errat.

Just like Tara.

Shock and bore.

I just, I, and I keep thinking, like, look, if this was the print, look, my daughter's going back to school today, first day of school.

Me too.

It's like, I went in and I met the teacher, and then it's like, I started looking at their Twitter feed, and

they go home at the end of the day, and they start tweeting all camps about how stupid one of the students is.

I'd be like, okay, I don't.

Anyway, it's just, it's a judgment thing.

One other thing, stylistically, though, the Tim Cook stuff that you mentioned, the kind of the suck up stuff we're going in there.

This is also a thing that I just, that I really, it's hard for me to wrap my head around, which is like, you're like, we're mad at Biden that he doesn't invite Elon to the party.

It's like, okay, all right, I get it.

But, like,

on the other side of the coin, the Democrats are not making, you know, they're not making CEOs come in and bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh in order to get stuff.

Yeah, can you imagine?

Why does Tim Hotch come in?

And also the identity politics stuff, like you guys all, like all of the MAGA stuff, and I don't know your show, but also MAGA was to get mad at identity politics stuff.

Tim Cook comes in and just does MAGA identity politics.

He's just like, sir, we have this Maureen who made this for you.

And I was like, you know, if Tim Cook had gone into the Biden Harris White House and said, you know, Kamala,

I had this Indigenous woman of color make you a 24 carat gold plaque.

And in exchange, I hope that you'll give me a break on the taxes.

You guys would have lost your minds about that.

Tim Cook's playing the game on the field.

So as

to?

Isn't it crazy that he has to do that?

That's insane.

That's not a free capitalist country.

It's a anarcho-capitalism.

Oligarchy.

Anarcho-capitalism.

Yeah.

So I think we're between a socialist kleptocracy and anarcho-capitalism.

Neither of those.

That's bad.

Both of those are bad things.

You don't want Mondami and you don't want the anarcho-capitalism.

We need to find, you know, somewhere in between this too hot, too cold temperature switch.

I 100% concur.

So you didn't like it.

It made you uncomfortable, the Tim Cook thing.

It was a little weird.

I mean, I was fine with him going there, and I don't mind the president.

It feels un-American, I guess.

It feels a little bit more like it should be happening in like some banana republic.

Okay, here's what I'll say.

Getting invited to the White House as a business leader, fantastic.

The president encouraging you to invest in America,

fantastic.

Bringing a gold bar?

Super weird.

If they did, in fact, if Qatar actually gave him that plane, no banana, right?

So I think we have the emoluments clause.

I think what we'll probably see with this warfare stuff is

if the Dems win again, if any of this stuff is not tight, it's all going to be another wave of lawfare, just like we're seeing the wave of lawfare now from Trump to the Biden administration.

And you're going to see a whole bunch of global pardons like Biden did for Fauci and his son.

And then you're going to see Trump do that on his side.

And so, yeah, neither of these two trends are good.

And we have to really rethink when we have new leadership in the pardon power, because it does seem like we're now using that as a way to get out of jail before anybody has a chance to even look at what you're doing.

Look, I agree with that.

I was against Hunter Biden pardon and went after it.

But I just, just on the business side of this, because

I'm sorry, this is why I'm just obsessed with this, right?

Because it's like, if the complaint was that Biden was being too hostile to them,

Trump is bullying them.

Trump is bullying them.

He's bullying them into doing stuff in exchange for better treatment from the government.

Like, that is not a free market system.

That's how you

can do.

You're seeing the term bullying.

I think.

What else would it be?

I think people would say negotiating and horse trading.

That's how people look at it.

And so for somebody like Tim Cook, you want $100 billion in investment over the next 10 years?

Sure, we'll do it.

You want us to make something here?

Fine, we'll make some chips here.

Is that a bad precedent?

Like, can't we see this starting to go wrong?

Of course.

It's like, I'm going to attack Intel because they won't genuflect and tim cook brings me the gold bar and then some other competitor can't do you know doesn't have the resources to pay out the payoff to trump right like

i guess my point is it's not capital it's not the free market it's and it's and it's anti and it's hostile to business it's anarcho-capitalism it's it's a it's an it's an anarchist version of capitalism certainly yeah well i don't like that all right one more this will pivot us into the uh to the foreign policy i would dial it back 20 i like the idea of being in inviting tim cook I don't like the idea of the gold bar.

20%?

Yeah, I'd dial it back 80%.

I think Tim Cook got invited to the Biden windows, didn't he?

I'm pretty sure Tim Cook was there.

I mean,

maybe for some DEI celebration.

It certainly wasn't to

increase investment in America, you know.

Definitely not.

Well, I mean, Tim Cook, Apple did quite well during the Obama and Biden years, I think.

Yeah, buying back $700 billion in stock.

Certainly not releasing cutting-edge products.

They did fine.

Anyway, okay.

The risk is he never had to bend the need.

All right.

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The Doge stuff, I want to do a quick Doge reflection.

So we've talked about the spending side.

You can talk about it more if you want.

The foreign aid side is really bad.

It just is.

Like the USAAD stuff is really bad, right?

Like it's just that corruption part of it or

not sending food to people who are starving.

Not sending the food to the people who are starving part of it.

It's like this is such a tiny budget item.

Sure, we could ref.

I'm for reforms and just going in there and just cutting it.

And you've seen the stories.

You're a well-read person.

You've seen what's happening in some of these countries.

Like the most vulnerable people in the world, we can't feed them.

That is not Clinton Democrat policy.

Like this is like very harsh policies and that is causing real damage.

I think there is a bit of

a sadistic red meat trait of this administration, which is their Achilles heel.

And we saw it blow back on them when they started doing these raids at Home Depots, et cetera.

And even

the Joe Rogans of the world were like, yeah, no, didn't vote for that.

Shut the border, yes.

Drag somebody out of the country with no due process who's been here for 20 years and send them to a sadistic prison that Amnesty International can list 17 different torture violations there.

That's their absolute Achilles heel, and it's blowing back against them.

And

that's why you see Trump, you know, I think, dialing that back.

And he even went to the point of saying, yeah, maybe we should do something for these farmers here and give them a work visa, which is like,

that's something we had 20 or 30 years ago.

Why do we have to go send a bunch of masked men?

I mean, how could they possibly be allowed to wear masks into Los Angeles to take people who've been here 20 years, you know,

putting people's ADUs in or cleaning their gardens or, you know, cooking and whatever, taking care of people's kids.

It's abhorrent.

They know it's abhorrent.

And I think that Stephen Miller sort of part of the camp and the Bannon part of the camp, I think they're being contained.

But the USAD cuts were you because we're just creating a little mental ledger here about everything because you were saying pretty good.

And I'm like, that's a pretty big one on my bad list.

I would say the Doge stuff, overall, I think Doge was necessary.

I think probably Elon stayed a month or two too long there.

He should have been back at his companies.

But I don't think the, I think what we learned from that is the system.

There's so many people in on the take from both parties that the idea of cutting significantly is really hard.

It's really hard.

And to do it in a shock and awe kind of way, which is what we do in the capitalistic world, is going to face massive antibodies in politics and in that sector.

Private sector, you can come into Twitter and be like, yeah, nobody's showing up for work.

Great.

If you don't show up for work, you don't get paid.

And then,

you know, at Doge, I think they were like, can you come to the office at least?

And people were like, no, I'm not coming to the office.

I was for the coming to the office.

I'm talking about

the plumpy nut for the poorest people in the world, the children.

Like, that feels like a bad mistake.

What I'll say is, I think how you treat the weakest people speaks volumes, I think, to character.

And so I think, you know, while there was a lot of abuse in that system, I would have liked to see it be more thoughtful.

You know, my view of Doge was cut 10% a year for four years and we're going to be at 50%

or, you know, whatever it is.

And that would be success.

I think they went in and tried to do the shock and awe campaign.

And I think they probably learned some good lessons, but we shouldn't

throw out the concept of Doge.

The things the government's responsible for, where they over-regulate, tend to be the least efficient in our society and cause the most problems.

If you look at housing, education, and healthcare, the less the government could be involved in those three things, the better off everybody in America would be because you would actually have competition to lower the prices of college, to lower the price of housing, and to make healthcare more efficient.

And you're seeing it, entrepreneurs are doing it anyway.

You know, Amazon doing telemedicine, HIMS, you know, selling people, whatever directly, all of that is,

all of that's a reaction to trying to get around the regulation.

The regulators and the government fight that, just like they fight ADUs.

We've had

California fighting what they call in-law units, but accessory dwelling units like crazy.

Just building here in Austin, like putting in

a four-unit townhome, they fight that.

Same in the Bay Area.

You know what tickles my pickle?

You know how to pivot a convo into a topic that I'm going to agree with you on.

All right.

We can just do red tape cutting all day long.

We could do one hour of agreeing on red tape.

Well, on the healthcare, I think it's more complicated, but on housing and education, totally agree.

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See if that takes.

He did have a problem, though.

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The immigration thing, which you mentioned, you sort of said something interesting.

We think maybe the Stephen Miller wing is losing a little power.

You did a very interesting interview with the vice president.

I encourage people to listen to that.

I just want to play one clip from it.

It really jumped out to me.

Is this when he calls me an asshole?

It's not when he called you an asshole, actually.

It's just, I thought it was very revealing about how he sees himself.

Let's listen.

Where the Trump administration, where we've been most wildly successful, is that we have, I think in 2025, we will have the first net negative immigration number in about 50 or 60 years in the United States.

And so there has been a major, a major, major shift in immigration policy.

Now, again, I'm like, you know, me and Stephen Miller are probably the two most hardlined people in the entire administration when it comes to immigration.

So there's always more that we can do.

And like I said, I think that there is more that we can do.

It's a strange brag for me on both fronts.

I don't, you know, I don't think you want to be a country that has negative net migration.

If you look at the list of those countries in the world, they're like the worst places in the world because nobody wants to go there and people want to leave.

And so that's, I don't understand why that's an applause line.

And I don't understand why you'd want to call yourself the Stephen Miller of the administration.

But what did you make of the immigration stuff?

So, you know,

what I've learned watching the last, this administration, the last one, and, you know, being up close and personal to friends joining it is

they really get you to speak with one voice and dissent is not

encouraged.

They might say it is, but, you know, we saw that with the cover-up of Biden's health.

And we see it now with

you know i i don't believe jd or anybody in that administration with the exception of maybe stephen miller actually wants to deport 20 or 30 million people what everybody agrees on is nobody wants an open border nobody wants the suffering happening on the southern border so i always try to break immigration into like those three pieces close the border path to citizenship for people who are illegally they pay a fine whatever but there's just some so they don't want that though they

trump actually said he thinks there should be a well no no actually i think i mean i think we gotta look at their actions now what i trump says everything trump lab loud trump says a lot of things look at what they're doing i think look at what they're doing you see trump come out and say hey we're gonna look at you know uh farm workers and restaurant workers i think that's actually his true position and i think the maga position to deport 20 million people is to get to win the primary and get elected and to get people he's already elected he's not running again right he's not running again right no and i think that's why he's willing to say that i don't think he would have said that in the first place why don't they just do do it then?

Well,

they're just adding 10,000 more ICE members, and all their plans are to harass more people.

They're turning it up.

I guess I just disagree your assessment that you think they're backing off.

I think they're turning it up.

I think they're playing both sides, and that's why it is unclear and there's ambiguity.

Right now, they're on a pace to deport less people than the last couple of administrations.

So, well, but the total, because JD corrected you on, or not corrected you, but corrected the record on this point, excuse me, on that same interview where he's explaining why that was

the boomerang stuff, right?

So that's why I played that could be specific.

Like the stated goal of the administration is to have net negative migration in the country.

That's insane.

Like, as you said, the three very successful people.

You guys should be the most pro-immigration people in the world.

We are.

And you remember when I interviewed Trump, I got him to do that whole thing about stapling the blue card.

And I followed up that a couple of times.

That's actually how they all believe.

They're scared to death of the MAGA base.

They basically unleash that MAGA base.

They let that genie out out of the bottle and it helped them get elected.

But I do think they have a hard time containing it.

So I think they throw them red meat.

They do this ice actions.

It's performative.

But at the end of the day, I doubt they're going to actually deport that many people because it's too expensive.

And we need those people here.

And we need the economy to grow per our last discussion.

So they know the reality in the game on the field is they need more people working and they need more productivity because they need more GDP.

And if they want to, you know, know, build more fabs here and factories and they're not completely automated, which they can't be all automated.

We actually need to have more people.

When I run for president, my position is going to be our stated goal should be to build five new high-functioning tech cities in the United States and become the most populous country in the world.

We should try to become as big as a billion Americans, great.

A billion Americans was my idea.

Yeah.

And we should try to

make recruiting our number one pursuit.

And we should never let people call it immigration when we choose to recruit somebody to our team.

Just like if you want to recruit Dirk Nowitzki or Yao Ming, that's for the benefit of the league.

We should be recruiting more Elon Musks, more David Sachs's, more Dave Friedbergs, more Tamath Paliopatias, and straight on down the line because they create lots of jobs.

And so.

Okay, so here's my question for you.

So, and then I want to get to tech stuff after this, but like this is like my main disagreement.

Between you and I, our disagreement?

Well, no, well, between, as it's, I I guess between you and I, we agree on the policy.

I guess my main disagreement is about how you could assess the first six months as solid.

Because for me, and I guess I get a little bit confused about why, and I promise I wouldn't make you speak for your colleagues, so I'm not going to, but why people that are actually immigrants are less upset about this than me and people that

are, I guess, pretending that they have a different position on this to appease the mega base.

Because like everything else being equal, if Trump gave me exactly the tax policy I wanted, exactly the regulation policy I wanted, everything about Ukraine that I wanted, which he hasn't, you know, whatever, everything on social issues that I wanted, and he put in place the immigration policy they've put in place for the first nine months where they disappeared people to a foreign gulag.

Pabbort.

Where they're

harassing people outside Home Depot.

But I guess my point is that like, that is a red line.

To me, it is so un-American and it is so wrong and unacceptable that there's no other policy that really could rationalize it.

And I guess I'm just confused by like why, and you have J.D.

Vance coming on to y'all's podcast being like, I want negative net migration.

And then for them to be like, well, you know, that's not really what, that's not really the policy.

I just explained to me why Silicon Valley of all places isn't more up in arms.

Oh, they don't agree.

They don't agree.

Well, but there's no, but last time there were protests at Google and the offices, there were protests in San Francisco.

If you're asking why business people are not going to touch that issue is they're probably just going to quietly say, hey, we need more of this immigration and they'll get it.

Why?

Why?

Whatever.

It's the top priority of the most powerful two people in the White House, J.D.

Vance and Stephen Miller.

Well, you're looking at what they're saying, not at what they're doing.

I am looking at what they're doing.

They're harassing people outside Home Depots.

They were harassing the people.

I have to call the Terranian lady in New Orleans.

I think it's

as abhorrent as you and I agree it is, I think it's performative.

I think we're going to be sitting here in three, four years.

They just added a budget to make ICE the biggest funded ICE is going to have a bigger budget than the Israeli military this year.

They know that if they

just sit around, watch old Superman episodes?

I think they're going to just try to find as many criminals as they can that they don't have anybody complaining about a violent criminal being deported, you know, gang member.

I really do think it's performative.

That's my belief.

I think it's crazy.

I wonder if the next administration deported, I don't know, I don't know, let's say like a prominent supporter of Donald Trump decided to deport, take away their green cards, decided that they wrote some op-eds or said some podcasts that were wrong and then deported them.

I don't know.

I guess in the Democrat administration did that, I think that a lot of folks would be pretty up in arms.

But that's what's happening in this administration.

I mean, if your expectation is business people are going to put their personal beliefs and morality above their balance sheets, I think you haven't been paying attention.

Fair enough.

I guess I would just expect immigrant business people to want to make sure that they're safe, their families are safe.

Because I don't know.

I got to tell you, it's a pretty interesting prospect.

The idea that writing a bad op-ed could get you to port it.

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All right.

I want to pick your brain on stuff you're smart about that I'm not at really quick.

I'm pretty worried about the AI stuff.

I want to be an optimist.

I know that listeners of the show find that hard to believe because I have a lot of things I'm negative about these days, but I was kind of a tech dorky optimist for a while, not at like your level, but you know, I was into all that and I'm not a Luddite.

I'm always trying the new stuff that's coming out.

The LLMs have me freaked.

And I guess that this does kind of relate to policy because a big Trump policy that you're touting and others are touting is that like they're not getting the government really too involved in regulation of this stuff.

But man, you see this story just out this week, the one example of the Chat GPT going from four to five and people like thinking they lost their lover, they lost their

AI psychosis.

That's

people not being able to understand what's real and fake is concerning to me.

I understand there's going to be a lot of cool AI advancements in some other areas that maybe are in some of the portfolio companies of yours, but like in the public discourse stuff, I'm pretty worried about AI making things worse, not better.

What do you think?

Yeah,

you're not wrong to have concerns, and there will be massive job displacement.

For the audience who's not like super tuned into this, there's a really easy framing with two terms that people use interoperably, but are in fact very different, AGI and super intelligence.

AGI,

which is artificial general intelligence, that means the ability to write the docket, you know, or summarize a news story or do some basic legal work or make an image, jobs that humans do, drive a car, work in a factory and sort boxes at Amazon factories or deliver those to you.

That we're in the middle of, and that is absolutely in the end game.

All of those jobs will be replaced with technology.

Question is when and how quickly.

And then, how quickly do people ride in the streets, whether it's in Wuhan, where people are literally

starting to protest over self-driving cars?

And that's sort of their capital of it, paradoxically, of all cities to do it in.

Maybe they're trying to recover the brand name of Wuhan.

So you have to ask yourself about that job displacement.

Now we go to super intelligence.

The bets that are being made now are not on AGI.

That's kind of the table stakes.

AGI for people who don't listen is just.

Artificial general intelligence.

It just means your ability to play chess, be a lawyer, an accountant.

It's a good Turing test kind of, like an updated version of that.

Yeah, it's not even being able to trick somebody or human.

It's being able to do the human chores is how I look at it.

Do things that are chores.

Do things that are not uniquely human, like have a conversation or make jokes or do art.

That's going to happen.

And what that means is the number of jobs needed to accomplish a task is going to go down.

One person as an attorney using this or a developer using these technologies and what's called a co-pilot to kind of assist them, they're going to be 10%

better

probably every two or three months, which if you compound that, you know, it means basically every two years, people will be twice as good as their jobs.

That means you just need less lawyers at your company.

You need less accountants, you need, et cetera, or you find more projects to do and more problems to solve.

And that's the tension everybody's trying to figure out.

How quickly do those jobs get displaced?

How more ambitious do founders and entrepreneurs, which is 0.1% of the country, the people who actually do these things, certainly less than 1%,

how motivated will they be to create more and more businesses and products and services?

And that's what we've seen.

We've seen an explosion of startups that are trying to address every possible problem.

Now, when you go to superintelligence, which is like, that's the grand prize, right?

That's the mega prize.

That is an existential prize because super intelligence, the idea is it will be able to answer questions we couldn't even think of answering.

They could figure out the secrets of the universe, figure out things in our chemistry or biology to solve aging.

I was listening to the all-in a couple months ago, and David Sachs said that superintelligence was going to solve climate change, so we don't have to worry about it.

I mean, solar is going to, despite this administration with their clean coal, and you may have seen me get into a little bit with the energy secretary about solar, solar is by far and away the best solution

along with nuclear.

Nuclear gives you great baseload, solar, and batteries.

Anyway, I'm sorry, I made a gag and got you distracted.

But the superintelligence will take us to you.

So, the super intelligence is where things could get really nutty, and that's where, like, the doomsday scenarios, Terminator ones, kind of come out of that group.

So, what happens if you know all drivers go away?

Well, every self-driving car is four full-time jobs, and every humanoid robot in a factory is five jobs, maybe six, because those jobs you can only work for maybe seven hours as a just physical limitation as humans who are driving, you can work a 12-hour shift.

And those are, those are going to be here, folks.

And before 2030, you're going to see Amazon, which has massively invested in this, replace all factory workers and all drivers.

The idea that when you order something from Amazon, a human would touch it at any point in that supply chain is insane.

It will be 100%

robotic, which means all of those workers are going away.

Every Amazon worker, all those jobs, UPS, gone.

FedEx, gone.

All of those are going to be gone.

And those companies will be more profitable.

And when you order something, it's going to come faster and cheaper and better.

And your Uber will be half as much.

But somebody needs to retrain these people.

And that's actually a very valid fear that technologists will tell somebody like you, don't worry about it.

There'll just be more jobs created.

The question is.

What happens to those people who get caught in the gap, right?

And we had this happen in the Industrial Revolution.

That happened over 40 years, 50 years.

And, you know, the agricultural revolution, you know, again, that was was multi-decades.

This one will happen in a decade.

And so it would be very different.

And yeah, you should be concerned.

I wouldn't worry about the psychosis stuff.

People always take new technologies too far.

What about people not knowing what is true and what is fake?

I'm pretty worried about that.

That's already kind of a problem.

That was a problem with social media and media.

And AI is not going to solve that problem.

And there'll be bias in all of these systems.

And in fact, you're going to be able to pick.

or program in the bias.

So you and I could say, hey, we're fiscally conservative, socially liberal.

Give me my answers based on this.

And these things are such sycophants that they will know what your preference is and they're going to literally target to you because I don't know if you've re-watched the movie her, but I'm watching some clips from it.

Like they want to appease you.

And I think actually Sam Altman is making this technology to be addictive.

and to be sycophantic so that he wins the race.

And so you have he's a pleaser.

So it kind of matches him in a weird, creepy way.

I think that's like a profound insight.

I was at a dinner the other day and somebody was saying this exact same thing, which was, you know, you always kind of put your stamp on it.

Whenever you see a great movie, you know, it's got some of Scorsese's childhood in it or Kurosawa's childhood in it, whatever it is.

You know, they bring, you know, to their songs what they lived or whatever.

And

yeah,

he's a negotiator and a pleaser.

You are more of an optimistic person than me on this stuff generally.

Like, do you have, is there anything cool out there in AI world you saw, like some neat technology I might not know of?

Cause I'm not.

Here's the thing.

yeah yeah the thing that's going to be amazing and you and I are dads our kids are going to be able to learn things with adaptive tutors that will be absolutely mind-blowing so I was in the car and I did a thing with my nine-year-old I have twins and a 15 year old where I said give us a slang keep it PG of uh like gen x slang Gen alpha slang, millennial slang, and quiz us.

And then here are the four people in the car and then go around in a circle and give questions to people, and then we'll answer them and keep score.

And it did it perfectly.

And then I was like, wow, you know,

I want to benchmark my vocabulary.

And so I started doing a vocabulary quiz when I was, you know, driving here in the hill country.

And my vocabulary is going up because it knows where I'm at.

It gives me new words.

It knows the words I got wrong.

It retests me on that.

Which one are you using?

I was using Grok is now in the dashboard of every Tesla.

So you just press a button, it's in there, or you can use ChatGPT for it.

Claude is also exceptional at at this if you haven't used Claude.

But all these language models are starting to hit parity, so they're becoming like cars.

You might have stylistic differences or aesthetic differences of why you want a BMW or a Mercedes or an Audi or a Ford, but they're all going to take you from point A to point B.

And the ability to learn anything quickly in an adaptive way is going to change education forever in a very good way if the tools are used well.

And that's going to make it continuous lifelong education.

And all of these pockets of education that are

siloed or behind paywalls, they're all going to be free.

And so you're going to be able to, as a person in India, get a PhD in physics or the law from an equivalent of Harvard or NYU or Yale and do it at your own pace and be as smart as any other person.

And so I think you could see people having two or three careers in their lives.

I think you'll see our health spans.

You and I will be skiing at 100.

You know, if you're under 100.

Do you think I'm going to be skiing at 100?

100%.

Yeah.

There's no doubt.

I mean, unless something tragic happens to you, like random, you die in a plane crash.

The health span will get you easily to 100 skiing because all the degenerative diseases are going to be slowed down and reversed.

A lot of the issues we have is we just don't have enough humans to work on these projects.

I'm a little worried I'm on the wrong side of this age, of this age because I'm going to deteriorate a little bit a little bit too much.

Yeah, no, okay.

You can get the peptides now.

Get the Wolverine protocol, BPC 157.

You're good.

I don't know.

I don't know about that.

Don't take health advice from a pocket.

You're going to have to DM me offline.

Jake.

Okay, I'm sorry.

We're out of time, but I promised you we get back to crypto.

Just so just as

we could, my two favorites.

Well, we have an agreement on Ukraine, and neither of us are really Ukrainian experts.

So we'll tell you.

I got Michael Weiss on Thursday.

He can handle Ukraine.

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On crypto.

Yeah, just on one particular point.

We also agree on the Trump coin being a total scam and that's outrageous.

So that's just table stakes.

I'm concerned about the stable coin.

What I'm concerned about is that during this administration, crypto is going to get so entwined into the rest of the banking system that if there is ever a crypto crash, because the value of it is inflated, let's say, which is something I believe

at least some of them are inflated.

Yeah, sure, it could be a bubble.

Yeah.

Bitcoin could be a bubble, sure.

That's a worry.

And I think that, you know, yeah, we created some rules around stable coins.

It didn't create a lot of rules on the other stuff.

And I think that the rest of the financial system is just kind of accepting it.

You've been kind of skeptical of crypto at times.

So I was surprised to hear you kind of felt good about that.

Do you not share my worries about crypto getting intermingled?

I would be worried if we didn't create regulations for it and have people be responsible in American corporations with boards of directors and proper insurance and regulation in place.

So the reason an FTX can happen is because it was offshore and they weren't playing by the rules.

And when you start onshoring the stuff, then the board of directors is an American board of directors, as opposed to, I was pitched on doing like a Panama foundation board and nobody would know who was on the board because of safety concerns.

I mean, this stuff was seriously, seriously dark money scams, and who knows whose money is in tether, for example, an offshore stablecoin.

They gave a lot of money to Donald Trump, by the way.

Yeah, well, I mean, if you were trying to get onshored,

you would want to clean up your act.

And according to, if you look at their history of all the different actions that were taken, they've been banned in a lot of markets.

There was a lot of accusations of human trafficking and know your customer KYC, knowing whose money's in there.

And that organization now is going to face stiff competition from people like Circle, which I happen to know the founder of, but I'm not an investor in, because this is all onshore.

And what this will do for the American dollar dominance is you're going to be able to move dollars so quickly and easily at such low cost or no cost that this idea that the BRICS, remember this whole dialogue, oh, the BRICS are going to create an alternative currency.

It'll be like the EU or whatever.

And then people aren't going to use dollars anymore.

They'll get off the dollar standard.

This, the reason they're doing this is to ensure the dollar standard.

And it will actually do that.

So then the rest of crypto regulation is going to happen soon.

When that happens, You're going to have to be either an accredited investor or take a test to be an accredited investor in order to participate in these things.

And, you know, their approach is no crying in the casino, which is like, if you choose to go into this, you're choosing to go into a casino, you're choosing to, you know, use

a sports book.

Sure.

Okay.

You should know that if you're buying something that has no inherent value,

then you could lose all of your money.

I always tell people, only invest what you can afford to lose in this sector and keep it to low single digits.

And in that case, you can't really get harmed.

The people who are going to get harmed are the greedy, right?

The pigs will get slaughtered kind of thing applies here.

So for anybody listening, it will slowly become more regulated and there will be a ramification for doing illegal things, which there hasn't been.

A lot of people have gotten away with a lot.

I'm skeptical of what you said.

I'm open to it.

We'll see how the Genius Act and whether future regulation happens.

I'm open to your argument on that.

But like, objectively speaking, they've stopped enforcement.

So if something bad was happening and is already endemic in one of these companies, if there's another FCX out there, and the Trump administration has dropped all white,

DOJ is not anymore looking into Coinbase on several potential issues that were they look into before Mega Strong.

They're not looking into Justin's son, right?

Like there are a number of folks that have that have bought into Trump's coin that are now off the hook.

And that's not good.

I think what you'll see is massive investigations of this when Trump's out of the way.

Here's the problem with being the Democrats.

This is why it sucks to be a Democrat right now, Jake.

I look at this.

It's like, they got to be the responsible ones.

It's like, oh, great.

We come back in.

We investigate the fucking Chinese crypto scammers that are screwing people over.

And what's going to happen?

All-in podcast guys are going to be like, look at the Democrats coming after crypto.

I mean, coming after the innovators.

Nothing can stop.

That's what's going to happen.

We all have.

The federal government, you know, not cracking down on stuff doesn't stop local attorney generals or any civil actions.

And I think what you're seeing now is the crypto,

I have an inside line to this because I invest in startup companies.

They're all very conservative now in the U.S.

because they know the stakes.

And if you were to, even now, if you were to promote like as a celebrity your coin or this, that, and the other thing, you could still get people suing you on a civil basis.

So, you know, there's still ways this will be regulated.

But overall, more regulation and more onshoring is better for crypto, much better for everybody.

That doesn't mean I don't share the same concerns with you of don't put more than like 2% of your money in Bitcoin.

Even if you're like a cab driver or whatever, like if you work at McDonald's and you want to put 5% of your net worth in it or 5% of your paycheck in it, I don't suppose

working an extra 5% a week is going to change your life.

So you can catch up, but don't mortgage your house to buy crypto.

Last question.

Yeah.

Trump came to the all-in podcast summit.

We have the audio.

We don't play his voice on here, though, because that triggers some of our people.

So we're not going to do it.

We'll trigger that.

Okay, fine.

We'll put it in post.

I don't have it already.

We'll put it in in post.

I want to also

say hello and thank to Jamath and his wonderful wife, Nat.

Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you very much.

It was great seeing you again.

Great couple.

David Friedberg and

even, as we know, Jason Calakanis.

I say even.

Thank you, Jason.

Thank you, Jason.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, he's a good person.

As you heard, he says, JKL, a good person.

Even Jason Calis.

He's needling you.

He says you're a good person.

Yeah, he trolled me pretty hard.

Even Jason Calicanis, you know, so it shows you that he knows you are the troublemaker, which we appreciate.

I guess my question for you is: is Donald Trump a good person?

Is Donald Trump?

Is the president of our country a good person?

Wow.

And I can't see into the man's heart.

Yeah.

I think if you looked at his behavior, you would find a lot of behaviors that would be suboptimal.

Is there something that you got, the three kids we talked about?

Is there something you would look at the three kids and say, you know, I wish

you could really model yourself after Donald Trump on this.

I mean, he's quite charming.

I will give him that.

He is.

That guy is a charmer.

I mean, I have seen him take very, very

strong men and just

oh, he's going to like this too much.

All right, that's the end of the show.

He's going to like that compliment too much.

We're done with this.

Jason Calcanis, thank you, man.

I appreciate you doing this.

I genuinely do.

Some of your other guys.

And I love your pod.

You do a great job.

I'm welcome anytime.

Let's just do it like a regular check in every six to nine months.

We'll see if any of our predictions or hand-wringing turns out to be true or false.

It's going to be exciting.

I look forward to it.

We'll see you in January.

Maybe we'll do it.

Maybe we'll go skiing.

Maybe we'll do it in a mountain town in person in January.

We'll talk about that.

We'll figure it out.

All right, that's Jake.

Everybody, I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Bruises on both my knees.

For you, don't say thank you.

Oh, please, please, I do what I want.

When I'm wanting to my soul, so cynical.

So you're a tough guy, like you're really rough, guy.

Just can't get enough guy, just always so buff guy.

I'm that bad type, make your mama sad type.

Make your girlfriend mad type, might seduce you that type.

I'm the bad guy.

Duh.

I like it when you take control.

Even

if you know that you don't want me,

I'll let you play the role.

I'll be your animal.

My mommy likes to sing along with me.

But she won't sing this song if she leads all the leave She'll pity the men I know So you're a tough guy like you're really a rough guy Just can't get enough guy Just always so puff guy

I'm that bad type Make your mom a sad type Make your girlfriend mad type Might seduce your dad type

I'm the bad guy

The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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