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Well dot org slash stoic select podcast at checkout. Hey, it's Ryan holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily stoic podcast. My guest today is Joe Lonsdale, one of the great investors and Technology entrepreneurs of our time. I've gotten to know Joe over the last couple of years at some events. We both spoke at some mutual friends.
is that we both have but most of all we connected over our mutual love of the classics the four Virtues Of course courage Justice wisdom Temperance as it happens Joe in addition to being one of the cofounders of palantir founder of 8 VC a tech VC fund an investor in a bunch of really interesting cool companies Joe is a philanthropist a
Activists involved in a lot of interesting different Ventures, but Joe is a lover of the classics as I was saying and he's the founder of the Cicero Institute of public policy research Think Tank. And of course, I love the name, but I'm as you'll hear in the interview sort of talk about you know, why is Cicero is here at a Joe. What's the cautionary elements of Cicero's character? What's also inspiring about Cicero?
What we can learn from about Cicero bunch of cool stuff like that. Joe is also has the honor of being one of the only human beings who I'm not married to or living with that. I have seen in the last several months. He stopped by the daily stoic offices couple weeks ago when he was in town kicking around a move to Austin and we had a socially distance breakfast and then a walk around town.
Welcome to Texas Joe. And of course Welcome to The Daily Show podcast. I think you guys will really like this and Joe's thinking is I think provocative I wouldn't say contrarian Peter teal who Lonsdale is obviously worked with for a long time says, you know sort of contrarian is to be opposite of someone it's reactionary and I don't think there's really anything that could my herbal about being contrarian but it is important to be an independent thinker to figure out what
You think about something independent of what other people think about it Joe is an independent thinker that means that he and I don't agree on everything. We may not agree on much even as you'll see we disagree on Cicero was Cicero hero was his hero tragically flawed figure. I'm more in the latter Camp. He's more in the former, but I always think it's important that we talk to and discuss with people who we think differently than because this is how we learn in the cell we get better is also how we change minds and
Is also how we clarify what we think so anyways, here's my interview to Joe Lonsdale. Enjoy. I thought we should start with our mutual friend Cicero. That's obviously what you named your your foundation or your policy Institute after but I'm curious like why and what what does he mean to you? Like? Where did he come into your
life? I probably haven't studied the classics as much as you all the classes or something. I'm very passionate about
about but the either partially disassembled in general of ancient of the ancient values and of are so Nation philosophy. And so I think I think we were talking about this earlier. There's a lot of Cato in me and I think my instincts as a young man was the guy was supposed to be a kado but I actually want to get things done in the world and be a realist and Cicero to me represents, you know, somebody whose values tripped off the Renaissance and who's who who is just a really extraordinary person who had got a lot done.
And was willing to do things even though they were unpopular least claimed anyway, you know, you know because they're the right thing to do and so just bring that Ancient Ancient wisdom and acknowledgement of the history and the history of our society and applying it to the things working on today. That was very important to me.
Well, I think the dichotomy of Cato and Cicero is really interesting and then it because it almost sets up kind of the perfect Aristotelian mean if you then put sort of Caesar on the other end of the spectrum because they're they're all brilliant.
They're all successful. They're all ambitious. They're all motivated by a certain sort of personal philosophy.
Definitely and the reason I would choose and I was a boy. I've been very inspired by all three of those men. Of course. I think I think a little boys grew up in the 19th century reading about Caesar and Alexander the Great and in a way we don't anymore right now and right as you learn more, you know similar, how as a Jewish young boy. You learn about King David and then as you learn more you realize actually there's a lot of flaws with Cain gave.
Even their a lot of flaws, but Caesar and right, that's the NASA nature of these the reason Cicero more represented for my Institute. Anyway is to throw really believe in the power of Commerce in a way that the other guys didn't as much uh, very young G&K though as well. We're very fans for attacking special interests, which Caesar probably was not quite as much of course this Rose more of a pragmatist and then you know, he's supposedly by the Integrity. I'm more I'm more skeptical this now after reading your recent work, but I do and go wrong General see what he would keep.
Did have a lot of integrity and his legacy and what he did and how he approached the world.
Well, I think I think your point about commerce's well-made because you know, when you look at ocado or when you look at a Marcus Aurelius your look at a Seneca they have this sort of virtue about them in this sort of commitment to philosophy. But sort of what goes unsaid is that, you know, almost like the southern planting class in the United States like it's disembodied from actually having to work for a living.
Because total everybody else is doing it for me. It was a new man and that's something that's something that was really but you know new man the Roman sense where he came from the act the equites if I'm pronouncing that right, which is the landholder and Commercial class, right which is which is very different than coming from this like agent are Socratic class.
Yeah. It's like the Spartans. It's sure it's impressive. They were this, you know, fantastic Warrior culture who, you know sort of embraced every hardship and you know shared everything in common, but that's also because they had a race of slaves.
Is doing all of the work for them which created the privilege to be able to you know, sort of live in this fantasy world
and these days these days instead of having instead of having that we have this race of Technology that's doing everything for us for some people who are quite wealthy, but even even so I think being tied to Value creation being tied to building is I think it's a much healthier thing. You see a lot of people who are born into wealth. We've never created wealth themselves tend to have very silly ideas of the world. They tend to be a lot more so,
Socialist for example because they actually don't understand how the world Works which then leads these very dangerous lack of virtue. So if you're not careful,
I get that criticism, you know people go like what would Seneca think or what would Marcus really think that you're selling? You know philosophy to which I would say, I actually think the income earned from writing a book selling it in the open market is actually a much more honest dollar earned than the then these sort of deeply stratified.
Call in a sort of slave based economy of ancient Rome. So I think you know Commerce is actually The Equalizer in the most honest way to make a living
totally agree. And this is this is one of those things where I think America and the classics are related where people you know, the values of the founding of America can be built upon it be greater than the founders themselves and the values of ancient run device the stoics for example of what is Justice and what is wisdom. Can you?
Can you can take their insights? You can build upon them to have an even greater, you know society and even greater choices you're making them they made themselves
and you're right like you sort of you. Look at the The Germ of the idea originally and then we build on it like Zeno is a merchant. I mean he made his living trading tyrian purple. Dye. I do love the idea of philosophy and business not being at odds with each other Eric Weinstein was telling me once that hit his description of
Peter till you know is that he was the world's richest applied philosopher which I thought was kind of a value the
way of looking at it. I think a hundred years ago. Peter would be Peter would be a professor who was not very wealthy. And then I think these days you're able to take that kind of intellectual leverage and apply it in ways. You were definitely not in the past.
Why do people think that they're at odds with each other? I've never quite understood that
this seems to grow out of this very kind of leftist.
Kind of view of the academy for the last fifty to a hundred years where they're they're kind of saw themselves as being above the merchant class right as a gold aristocratic view of the world and and they assumed if you're busy making money you're scrambling for yourself and therefore your you know, there's somehow against the higher values and as opposed to realizing especially today, especially the last few decades. You can have these values you can apply them with intellectual leverage, but, you know, even in the past, of course you could do that as well.
In one of my favorite books I've recommended before I think it's actually fictional but it's called letters from A self-made Merchant to his son and it was written in the 20s. I think and the premise is that it's this sort of self-made sort of pork Baron or something from Chicago made his money in the Stockyards sort of a grimy, you know, blue-collar trade makes millions of dollars and now his sons at Harvard and he's trying this sort of pass along the virtues that made
Him who he was but are almost completely alien to his now upper-class from Cradle to grave
son. Wow, the that that I haven't read that one. Yeah, I love this game.
But I think that's that. You know, that would have been that's even the struggle in Cicero's life. Right? Like Cicero's the new man. Although he does come from a wealthy family. Like he makes it to the top of Roman society and then he writes his book on duties to his son Marcus.
because he you know, like his son didn't have to struggle the same way that he did
and that's that's something that you know, you and I have some mutual friends from very successful families here and I think the ones who have been brought up right where I really admire their father did have them working on the farm and did have him working and you have doing hard work as a young as a young man, and I hope I can find the same same way to do that with my kids because I it does seem to there are these values and virtues of that hard work and understanding what it
What it is to build value in the world understanding the businesses are very hard to build and you know, there were this Society is not naturally prosperous. You need people with the right virtues and the right hard work.
Well in that discipline of moderation or self-discipline is tricky like my parents and I forget who I'm taking this from but you know, my parents were in a position often to say we can't like we can't go to Disneyland just because you want to you know, we can't buy you the car that you want, you know, just because you turn 16 whereas
You know my position and certainly your position is much has to actually come from a more virtuous place in some degree, which is it's not that we can't it's that we won't yeah, this is because it's not a good idea.
This was all like really clear to me in theory before having kids. And now I have three daughters a three and a half and a two-year-old and they're very cute and I am I am guilty of any not always say no we can't do certain things and it's actually it's quite difficult to put this into practice times.
So learning how to take notes. My parents did a great job on this and I'm not as good at it. But yes, if the theory I agree
with you what Know It's tricky because you the stoics were fascinated with the idea of wealth that sort of saying that it's not good or bad but that it just provides its own sets of tests. So in some ways like like I was thinking about during the pandemic it's easy to say no to meetings when they're illegal, you know, but then once life just go back to
Too normal to some degree now. It's difficult even though you don't want to but because you can it's hard to say no, right and so I think what money does is create the challenge of actually so it's having to decide whether something is a good idea or not. If not, whether it's possible or not.
It's a whole set of challenges, which is like no one wants to hear about the challenges money creates. Of course, that's something for us to talk about but it's actually very true what I've I've seen this with a lot of friends who are successful. There's just a whole set of
New types of challenges one of them of course is that is if you're already successful, there's just like infinite interesting things you're invited to and all these things are supposed to spend time doing being a successful person and showing others you're a successful person. And so if you're not if you're not careful, you could just basically not do anything useful anymore because like being a successful person is very different than the activities you do to actually build actually create and actually work and it did and it just it's hugely challenging to basically like push off that back and then it keeps your core original
values.
When I bet like I certainly I experienced. This is a writer because like most of what I do requires just like sort of thinking time like it's it and you can't be doing something else while you're doing it, but I've got to imagine a view as you transition from like founder like actually building the business day in and day out to investors, / you know applied philosopher as we were talking about when you actually need is like time to think time to have ideas time to understand what's happening in the world and you can't
That if your exam yes to everything that comes out of the
reasons. I'm excited to move to Texas and to be a little bit outside of the Silicon Valley because the Silicon Valley there's literally every day like list of 50 people who want to want to connect a need to connect and interesting heads of state and billionaires in town and you know, ironically it turns out there's a lot of people here in Austin to who want to meet but it's but I am trying to create more open space for myself because that's that you have to have time to think and you have to have time to make your own plans versus just reacting.
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Yeah, I was curious about thinking about moving here when I was thinking about Texas. What I wanted was, you know, you could move to Bozeman Montana or something and you'd see nobody so you don't want that. It's like I was thinking of the idea of people flow like I want people coming in and out of town so I can see them when I want to see them but I don't want to be surrounded by so many people and so many events and so many opportunities that I never have time to do what I need to do
things. Exactly and you know, Austin is heating up, but it's exciting.
It's becoming a big Center but you know, I think you're smart to live a little bit outside the city to maybe one of my fantasies maybe next year. We'll buy a bunch of land and build something more and more outside of the city. Just so you know, I like the whole Warren Buffett from Omaha being out of the way sort of. Yeah, it's time
now, there's also a little bit of a sort of power move to it to where it's like if you people will come to you if it's worthwhile and then if not, then you don't have to do it. You know, like I think when everyone lives in a small
Small block radius. It's more egalitarian one sense. But then also you're much more accessible.
Yep. And it yeah and some point if you're too accessible, you're not actually getting your job done as an as an investor. It's important. You're obviously seeing and networking with people but you actually have other people who are senior do that for you as well. The most important question are the macro questions are the philosophical questions of where the world's going the next 10 years and what's possible now that wasn't possible before and these are things you give more about
I'm thinking
well, that's how I was going to ask. What is your process for that? Is it reading? Is it long dinner conversations? Like how do you shape your you know macro world view so you can do what you do,
you know, you're constantly iterating on these Theses and giving your ideas to smart people. And so, you know, you know Elon Musk is spending more time in this part of the world when it comes through. I'll see him soon. I saw Peter TLS week, you know who I work a lot with over the years.
You know Drew Houston. He probably knows Dropbox CEOs now actually based in Austin my see him tonight probably and you just you're constantly meeting people who are running things who know what they're doing and you're giving them. Here's my ideas. Here's what I think's going on in the world. And what do you think and you're in you're iterating with them? I think I think it for me it is people you have to get feedback. You have to iterate you have to be challenged. So I'm being challenged by my team by this other people in terms of coming up with it. It's really based on seeing great company, seeing what they're doing seeing, you know people, you know, I'll give you one example.
I was pissed like 50 times in the last maybe about five times the last year or two on these new Gene therapies. People are trying to do where they need to raise, you know over a hundred million dollars to do phase one of their gene therapy and I realized wow, there's just a lack of infrastructure for building these because not every one of them should raise hundred million dollars. So, you know, how can we take the very top people in the Pharma world and Builds an ability to too many factors in one place and still put several hundred million dollars in one thing that they could all use and that was you know,
so but it's like this is obviously a trend where these all this gene therapy is for sure be a big deal. How do you then capitalize on the infrastructure for that? And so being being in the flow being in the flow of the team that obviously helps a lot of these?
Yeah. I was thinking about the idea of dinner parties as a sort of way to learn about the world. Like I remember I went to a thing at Peter's house when I was writing conspiracy and it was this huge party and I said like did you just pay for this like as a favor to you? And he said no, this is just part of his entertaining budget yet. I
Is that inner the entertaining budget was part was essentially the research budget, right? Like he would have these dinner conversations and then learn things which would then, you know, if that infects effects of one investment could have a massive return on
investment are our fund our funds puts on this year is obviously an exception but our fun puts on about a hundred eighty hundred 90 of these events per year of which I'm at about a third of them, but they're mostly by events. I mean, they're mostly dinner parties or their, you know, get together some cigars and Cocktails.
Or will bring some philosopher somebody interesting to speak, you know to get to know ya.
Yeah, and I was reading about Cato once and Cato sort of he works so much. He didn't have time to just like take philosophy classes or attend philosophy lecturer. So it was sort of long dinners that go late into the night which isn't doesn't make me feel stoic. But in fact if that's where you're learning, I guess it doesn't really matter what it
is. Why doesn't it feel stoic? I'm
curious what feels more Epicurean is what I mean like a Lon
You're going to dinner here in here. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, like a long dinner with wine and food and I mean you can sell these very temporary
temporary if you drink too much. I try I'm learning how to be more stoic on my Temperance with with that when these dinners go a long time.
No, I mean I certainly find it to be more educational than going to a nightclub or even flying to a conference right like, you know over dinner you I think political correctness Falls away performance Falls away and people just sort of
Say what they think
yeah, that's right. They these are important to do
so, I'm curious to go back to the the conversation about money. Is this something I've been curious about like so obviously palantir went public recently. You've been you have big investments in other companies. They're sort of their sort of upper middle class. There's upper class and then there's like really hitting it big right like, you know, one of these like thousand X Investments or what changes for a person when
Like true kind of generational wealth is created. Does it change how you see things is it change how you see yourself? Like when that first happened for you? Like did it take a while to sink in? Like how did you integrate that into your understanding of the world when you're like suddenly this is probably an amount of money that it would be difficult to spend in a lifetime. If one is remotely temperate.
Yeah, and of course that that's the important caveat when it
first made money in my early 20s. I was probably not as temperate as I could have been Solomon path to wisdom I guess is the excuse to write but yeah, but but but the you know it so I was doing quite well this hedge fund that I was top Trader at Peter's fun for quite a while and I was also doing some early Angel Investing and whatnot that starting to work out very well in my 20s. And you know, the very first thing I did is I got at a few different houses have the coolest place in New York City living under a rod, you know the baseball player.
In my Prime by mistake and they're really giant I'm like wow. Anyway, it's like silly side. Then I had a place in Palo Alto San Francisco because I was working hard, you know both between the fund and BC company were starting pounds here and Sarah and Paul also and and it was actually very inconvenient and like I always have my favorite stuff for the wrong place and it just be a lot to manage and it was wasting my time. And I finally after a few years just like just gave it just said this is ridiculous and you'd have one place and I need to have like not all this, you know, you know basically tired of going to think like
Expensive nightclubs, you know tired of a few of these silly big giant, you know, intemperate trips and whatnot. Right and kind of got past that stage. But you know, if obviously very lucky to have gone through that stage I can see some people getting to the money later in life having to go through that stage later if they haven't done it before which is probably a lot more disruptive if you can if you for me being already single anyway going through that stage is probably a lot healthier and then you know, the real thing you learn is that money is just leverage to get done things you care about and so you have to stop and think it what do we actually
Really care about what we actually want to spend resources and energy on and you've for me a lot of that is is working on there's a certain plants be around the world where you can help people very cheaply and then there's also certain things about helping to fix our society and in my in my mind one of the biggest problems that businesses cannot fix is we have to teach our society to be a free society and to use his resources really well to solve whether or not we're talking about, you know, prison prison is criminal. Justice Works how Education Works how Healthcare work?
There's these policy problems. I really want to solve and how people saw the makers Society work better. So so hiring smart people working on those has been a lot more meaningful to me now with the resources than it was obviously in the past I think and yeah, I found most people with money are not very good at creating leverage and bring another smart people and and applying to things that are meaningful. So it's a skill. I've been trying to build out.
I heard this expression once it was like we don't work to make money we make money to make more work like and that was that a creative.
And we're saying this that the point being you know, you're not just doing crappy work so you can have money the point is you're trying to make money be successful. So then you can have sort of more artistic or creative or in your case sort of policy freedom to do what you really
care about only and you know any other work I do myself is also a big motivator the sense that one of the one of the key lessons I learned is every success you have is a platform for that a much bigger success there certain things. You can't can't do until you've done something else. Okay.
Get you into the kitchen to the club you now go to this bigger thing, right? So it's like multiple layers you're climbing where every success, you know, do something bigger than you can just a bigger with a so like I'm able to get access to resources and two people and and and two things that I just never could have before thanks this and you can use that to build stuff in it. And I really do believe like there's this whole a lot of people say, oh I'm making money and I'm gonna go give back separately as if you took some money away when you made that money most times I'm making money on are not things. I have to get back for their things that frankly are really good for the world they exist.
Most of the problems of world you can solve with entrepreneurship you can solve with new innovation and that's a positive thing. But then there are some things you can also often entrepreneurship that you then have to do philanthropic lie, that's my view.
So when you look at someone like Cicero, what's interesting is he has that ambition which I admire to but then it seems like so as I was saying in lives he gets this sort of Prophecy that says, you know, like you will be great if your actions are Guided by your conscience, not the crowd I think maybe that I've always
Read it as a sort of the Trap that Cicero falls into is he sort of is chasing ambition or success for its own sake a lot of the time we're advancement for its own sake which is tempting and seductive and I empathize with it because I've done it myself but it seemed like, you know, unlike a Cato who had that sort of moral certainty. It wasn't always clear what Cicero was doing it all for it.
There's two and there's I think there's two different interpretations of that quote you gave
The other interpretation just so another another another quote Cicero sister is famous for is I've always been of the opinion that I'm popularity earned by doing what is right is not a popularity at all. But Glory individual there is a certain take to it that very often. The right thing to do is the unpopular thing and it's so it's so so not being Guided by the crowd could also mean that like that like this. This is this is the even though not everyone else is doing this like this is clearly a right and so it's a certain type of Courage. It's certain type of there's cars.
As there's Justice there's wisdom kind of all built into that to go after the thing. You know when you see as right which for me there's a lot of things like this right now and Healthcare. We're like, it's just like very obvious what the right thing for the world isn't how to stop cronyism and all these areas and like no one else is doing it. They're paying off both parties, but that but I'd be like I said for so for me that's a very cesarean type of thing to do is just go after this when no one else is and take this orthogonal approach of just just saying this is actually the right thing even though none of you guys were talking about it.
I think that's a baffling fin for a lot of people.
Look at these like and be curious because you know them you look at these sort of extremely successful people people who have you know, fuck you money in the act that true sense of that word like billions of dollars. Nothing could take it away from them. They have they should be the freest of all people and yet they seem to be the most conservative and I don't mean politically I mean like as far as like preserving the status quo not challenging things. Why is it that these people who have who could
Be attacking those things that you're talking about seem to be so reluctant to shake things up or take risks. There's a lot is there's a lot of
Courage. There's really is a lack of cards. A lot of people just say my life is easy and good and it's almost as if they've been trained that their job is to not have to have stress in their life like that is like the highest virtue for people as I don't want to create stress for my wife or my husband or my kids and I'm just going to do
Ever or people who work with me because it's not that I don't want to be that person who's transgender people who work with me. And therefore I'm always is going to go along with whatever is not going to create any one cause anyone to attack me and said no one stands out for these against these special interests and for these things that are you know, once you if you really dig into it, they're obviously correct. It's like you obviously don't want you know Health Systems being able to pass laws to stop competitors. You obviously don't want insurance companies be able to force doctors have to work with him versus work directly with people you obviously don't want doctors not
Studio to pass laws and certain states to stop nurses are doing things in order to help the doctor Lobby. It's just there's just tons of this cronyism and just focusing on health care for now is example and it's just like it's just it's just too much of a headache for people to for people to fight back against the special interests. And so and it you know, I think courage is not taught in our society.
I totally agree. I mean to so if I'm understanding it correctly because I think from the outside particularly on the left there seems to be this sense that what it is is sort of self-interest its corruption. It's you know, you can't get
When understand something their salary depends on that not understanding it this kind of that it's incentive-based. But are you saying that a lot of this is actually sort of more a cultural and social like it's just not wanting to get involved as opposed to it being financially Plum for them to get
involved. Is it mean the left line entirely wrong? Right? Is it in there? But there's a lot of tragedy of the commons here where it's very clear something. The government is do is doing things the fact is captured.
By some industry is bad for everyone but good for that industry. And and so there's a huge tragedy the commons and then there's an acquire cars effort and courage to stand up for it. And then much easier thing to do is just not fight you just go along.
So how do you cultivate courage both? Personally? I'm curious how you think about it. But then also how has this Society or how amongst your peers do try to get people to go down that path.
It's tough for the first thing you need is you need to help.
People be more clear thinking about what's going on. It's very easy to muddy these Waters and these interests are very good at doing it. So I think I think I think first helping a approaching things in the clear-thinking way where it's really clear like what is cronyism and what is competition and how should a free Society work and just agree and just like we tried just we try to teach people these and teach people and you know, the best way I found is just is painting the optimistic picture of how well off everyone would be in this area if it was actually fixed and really showing that vision and sharing that
Vision I think there's a lack of optimism in our society right now. So rather than focusing, which I'm guilty of as well on okay, this is this is bad the wrong way to do things a better way to do it would be to say listen, we could be spending, you know, a third as much here for better results and you wouldn't have all these people probably protesting in the streets and etcetera didn't going bankrupt on this type of stuff and integer, I think trying to show the optimistic possibilities in our society and then and then a lying around that
Terms of getting people to be courageous. It's that's hard. I think the best you could do is just give you example yourself and step up yourself and and try to try to be a good role model and it more we are role models to do this. Maybe we can get a positive effect going but it's not not easy thing right now.
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Get your first two weeks for just one dollar go to Trends dotco / stoic to start your one dollar two week trial that's Tre and DS dot KO / stoic your one dollar two week. Trial Trends dot c-- o-- / stoic if there's a General Mattis quote. I love if you read it recently, but he's saying cynicism is cowardice and I think I think that's the other way to do. It is like obviously current you can
And I scourging that's important. But I think also we have to do a better job painting the decision to not get involved as not a morally neutral statement. Yeah, if you know what I mean, like that's where the problem makes you complicit
know that that there are most people are part of the problem because most people are just ignoring it and being cowardly and going on and you know, what a lot of people have really tough lives and they have to work really hard to get by and they're and they're really busy and this is not what they want to be doing but a lot of people
people especially a lot of people who are maybe 20 30 40 years older than me on my late 30s. I have a lot of these mentors and great people 60s 70s 80s, they made so much money and they're basically like, oh, there's no need to be involved in government. That's what weird people do who have problems in our Strange and that's not what I do and it's those I lay at the feet of every billionaire who's in a 60s 70s and 80s who has not been actively involved in fixing our country. It is their cowardice that is why it's broken because that generation did not have a duty to go solve these
Homes,
or maybe they thought that the extent of one's involvement in politics was putting money like that and money is you know, a corrupting force in politics or at least it's sort of it's a created all these giant proxy wars about this issue or that issue when really if smart capable competent individuals had just gotten involved in government. It could solve the problems and then those people could go home and back to their lives. Well,
there's different ways of getting involved.
The question most money in politics is pushing something that's your own interests. Right? So these are actually I get a lot of the done these state legislators. So I know I've learned a lot about this and the vast majority of the time but there's money involved because this is your industry. This is your interest this is your thing that you're focused on for a living
taxicabs fighting Uber or
something. Exactly exactly right. Now. I happen to agree and prop prop 22 in California is trying to fix the a B5 thing. It's we're trying to make it so drivers, you know don't have to don't have to be employees because this is going to
Allow people to drive flexibly. It creates more jobs is good for the economy. It's a big battle between the unions and these companies and so there's like 200 million dollars going in from door - and from, you know instacart noubar on this thing and then that's the classic thing where all the money goes and you know, I think they're right in this case and their rights you spending money on it, but that's it's a thing for themselves. It's very rare to do what I'm doing and to do what only a few other groups I know are doing where you go get involved these issues because it's basically fighting special interest as the General Public.
Eric and turning the in saying that this workers were not I'm not doing this because I'm going to make a bunch of money on Healthcare this area because of this happens. I'm not doing this because I gotta make a bunch of money because of Criminal Justice Reform because I fix probation and parole suddenly. I'm richer than I am or something I'm doing this because it because it's a right way to fight for our free society and to help people in our society and you get that that's the type of Duty I didn't money is great way to do that if fighting for the common good but you haven't seen the billionaires do this. You haven't seen successful people in the 1980s 90s 2000s get involved.
Of all these issues very much at all. There's exceptions, but it's but it's the exception, you know
right know and it seems like it's often the most pressing issues of our time. Unfortunately our issues in which there's sort of very little financial interest. So they tend to get neglected I was you know, I was driving to my office yesterday and you know, there's enormous lines to go vote and I was thinking of this sort of the NBA thing where they opened up all the Arenas to be voting centers and it's like it's like an obvious idea.
That only came about because like basketball players pressured their billionaire owners to get involved but it does it does seem like yeah a lot of people sort of throw up their hands. Whereas a society with a little bit more agency particularly and ironically with the people who have you know, created something from nothing we could
solve the pressing issues of our time. I'm lucky. I'm an entrepreneur I built a lot of companies and so I have a little bit of idea how to organize people and how to put things together, you know on the voting one. It also reminds me of the DMV.
These are obviously problematic it take too much of your time. They have bad feet out like the way government should work as an entrepreneur who thinks about these things is like every interaction with government should have some kind of NPS score which is basically that promoter which is basically saying like the feedback of citizens on happy. Yeah, they just waited for four hours online. They should be unhappy and they need to get their feedback and then there should be some kind of competition where every service government providing whether it's voting whether it's DMV should have even if it has to be provided by government have two or three different departments each doing their own.
Way of serving people and whichever one gets the worst NPS score is out and someone else is in charge of it. Everyone's getting the best one gets more budget next time and just have them keep competing each time. And guess what the competition of ideas you did. That's how free societies work as you compete. You could be can get better you have accountability. I mean the fact that we don't have competition of ideas done and accountability for things like DMV where things like voting. It's just that it's ridiculous. It's obviously wrong. And so this is like this is basically der ship and and you know, the government unions try to put in rules to stop this stuff. We just have to as a society
Say no, I'm sorry government unions. You can't stop this. We've got to have accountability. We're going to make it better every time and we're you know, we're going to competition and so this is the kind of stuff. We just need leaders to do this and frankly the leaders right now in charge are pretty poor. And so I think we could just pretty obviously do a lot better.
It is funny. I was polluted and I was talking to Nick Denton two days ago the founder of Gawker who I got to really know writing the same book about Peter teal and they're sort of battle with each other and I was saying to him I was like, what is it?
During the pandemic what's an institution that you feel like has done a good job as I feel like what this is really done is shown us just how weak and fragile and Antiquated a lot of our institutions where I think the military is done. Okay, not amazing, but he was like like apps he was like nah, he's like apps have done a great job like which was a category and institution in really think of because it's non-governmental. Yep, but it's true like, you know, I can get my groceries easily. I could pick up an Uber if I wanted.
You don't like that. Those things have done really well. Meanwhile, the things that we actually rely on the most that are the most essential have sort of really struggled to hold up under the
pressure percent the thing the parts of our society their parts of a free society that are accountable that have to compete I've done extremely well during this and you know, there were some mess-ups and Logistics but we adapted I'm involved in a lot of things and Logistics space a lot of things supporting companies, like wish you know, which I'm a big investor in the number-three e-commerce.
Panini us which is obviously grown a lot during this and there were there were new challenges, but they adapted and they worked and that force of competition David, you know worked on it. And so you need to bring that in government as well.
Yeah. I was reading about an app that Brown University came up with which I guess you could say, it's semi-governmental and then it's a you know an institution of Higher Learning but it was like a because I was thinking like, you know, I'm starting to get you know opportunities to talk again like to give talks and and they were like what this app does.
This is you go like okay, here's where I am. Here's how many people are going to be. There. Here are the conditions that were meeting, you know, here's the ages. Here's the help you like you put in all these factors and it gives you out sort of like a risk profile of whether you should have Thanksgiving in Cleveland with your two parents who are 60 and your brother who's a you know of a worker in a meat factory and you have to fly there, you know, like you put in all the inputs and it gives you information and I was like,
Man, that is like a great idea the exact kind of thing that you would expect to be bubbling up in a system like this. But unfortunately, we've lost both the technical competence and the policy Acumen to be able to execute on something like that aside from just like one person making it and hoping that it takes off. Well, that's
a great thing about these is one person can make it that's why these platforms are so cool, but they won't person can make it and it can bubble up like it's funny. I have a dinner two weeks was a very prominent people and
A whole big email chamber, they're all fighting now because some of them say this is bullshit and I don't want to take a test. What's everyone's like I have to have someone take a test to I can't go and everyone take a test. Anyway. Yes, it's it would be good to have some out helping with this.
So I've to two last questions. So one we talked about courage. I think one of the interesting things about Cicero and I put this in the book or actually I don't think is in the book. I found it later, but the quip against Cicero Cicero said invites this guy who's sort of over he's just challenged Caesar to his face.
And Cicero says, oh you should come sit with us and the guy says oh, I'm surprised there's room given that you Cicero typically occupy two stools right is point being that Cicero in the in this sort of breakdown of Rome kind of fails to choose a side and I'm curious too. Like what do you feel like but you know what, I mean, there's a sort of a wishy-washy anus in our society obviously have some people are very polarized.
But then it seems like there is a lot of smart people who are just kind of like standing on the sidelines waiting for things to figure themselves out which was sadly Cicero stance in the Civil
War. If you if you I mean to bring in a little bit of German philosophy into this, you know, my view the world tends to be true test be broken down and dialectics rice you tend to have extreme truth on both sides of most issues. This is a really important part of reality and so therefore
Order to get things done. You actually do need in a sense to to partially occupy both sides because you need to acknowledge the Deep truth of what each side is saying but then of course you need to propose a policy. So what we do at the Cicero Institute is you do we try to be nonpartisan. We try to say there is a deep truth those deep truth here, but then you put then you have to you have to compromise you have say, okay. Well, we want to move this towards how it should work. And here's the better policy that would help hundreds of thousands of people would save money everywhere. Everyone wins, except maybe a special lunch.
Forest and you push it forward but you have to push it Forward. Wow being allies when you side is it's very dangerous especially to this in our society today. You can't you just push things forward something that only one side is going to work with your not really contributing to the conversation because we're all going to move forward with positive optimistic positive. Some compromises is my view.
Yeah Keats had that idea of negative capability the capability of holding two semi contradictory ideas in your same in the same mind at the same time, maybe.
Maybe that's sort of the
yeah doesn't highlight this room was the point of the dialectic and almost everything. We see I've written about this a bunch online myself, but it both in business and policy. There's these really important dialectics and you need to you need to constantly be understanding them and then using them to move forward to craft craft the
answer so as dark and divisive and you know, Dad is things are right now. I mean, you know two hundred plus thousand dead Americans, you know, economic shutdown all the stuff that's happened in the world as a biotech.
Investors someone who sort of seeing what people actually are doing in the medical space. Are you optimistic pessimistic you have anything that we should be optimistic
about? Oh, yes. Well I am I'm a die-hard Optimist and so I'm I'm obviously somewhat distraught at a lot of tough things going on in the world right now, but there's there's there's we invest across the board and technology and the Renaissance. There's a Renaissance in biology going on is about a third of what 8 VC does these days?
You know one of the one of the ways to think about it, maybe the be really excited. I'll give you two things really quick one is you know, the cell has become a unit of Therapeutics. And so if you think it used to be all the best Chemists in the world would be in a Pharma, you know, 1940s 50s 60s on and there's molecules they were creating drugs with and then you had something called biologics where rather than use a cell you're using parts of cells and peptides are antibodies in the 1980's the Genentech and Etc and that became the unit and now in the 2010s you're actually taking cells a cell is
like, you know million times the size of a you know, a billion times the size of a molecule of course is a much bigger a bigger thing. It's like a skyscraper. Where's the peptides like a pencil? Right? And so suddenly you're programming these giant skyscrapers inside the body to be these machines to go around and perform things and this is not just science fiction you've already saved and you know, there's two companies sold for ten billion dollars each like four years ago khitans, you know, there were savings, you know late stage cancer patients were supposed to be dead. They take out the white blood cells and reprogram them. It send them back in and the sudden you're gay but like Target the
Answering keep people alive and live for years and years longer even cure them. And so there's all these really cool new cell therapies coming that are very exciting. And then on top of that what there's there's Nobel Prize in biology 1 by yamanaka, I believe or I don't know if you got the prize yet, but he's be will he hasn't for for figuring out 15 years ago how you can trip up a good trip a certain part of a cell's genome and it turns it back into a pluripotent stem cell age zero, it's your suddenly basically like learning how to take cells and put them back to be very very young again with the
nation and them and we're using this right now in the lab to reprogram white blood cells the all of a sudden be back to stem cells and be really young white blood cells and they kill the cancer and there's all sorts of other lands longevity things coming. We're learning how to take the epigenetic information and cells and turn it back 280. So they're just they're just these are just two examples but there's so many things happening right now with with the systems in biology there were turning in information systems and using to help cure diseases. So very very bullish on curing disease and next.
There's is long as we allow us to keep putting billions of dollars into this space allow the market forces to work along with the scientific research forces, as long as we don't break capitalism and we keep things going we're going to we're going to save so many lives.
So do you feel like like what's happening right now is sort of is a cloud over what should be a sort of a medium to long-term positive outlook like like we should be excited. But instead we're too blinded by the real, you know,
the well that's happened.
The tough thing is happening right now. Is that the least well-off or not doing nearly as well as they should because there's all sorts of cost disease and health care and education are criminal justice system's broken housing costs way too much. So there's all these reasons why you have these people coming out and being you know for for the Socialist candidate because they're frustrated and they probably don't understand how all capitals and works but they do understand that they're being screwed. And so I think the number one job we have a society is how we help the working class like not want socialism.
We
help them participate in the market economy, and how can it be very easy with good policy to cut the cost of their lives in half. Like these people could be with living way better lives for the for the value. They're already creating. So so I think there's a lot of reasons people are frustrated. A lot of reason the cost of their lives are tough. So I think we have to help them because if we if we don't help them, they're not going to want to keep keep capitalism art and markets. If we don't seek Capital markets, we're not going to be able to achieve all these amazing things with Biology and a bunch of other areas going on right now that are very exciting for everyone the next decades.
I
think the stoics and sister would have certainly like the cemetery of just how very similar the pressing problems of our time were to roam around the turn of the Millennium
agreed agreed and even cards in cars and Leadership requires some
yes and encourage. Most of
all courage. Most of all
Joe. Thank you so much. This is
awesome. Thanks Ryan. Appreciate it. See you soon.
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