The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 13,205 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 498 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Musk: Democratic Party is overly controlled by unions and trial lawyers
“The Democrat party is overly, overly controlled by the unions and by the trial lawyers, particularly the class action lawyers.”
Musk refuses to pay agreed Twitter price if public filings are inaccurate
“So, in, in making the Twitter offer, I was obviously reliant upon the truth and accuracy of their public filings, and if those filings are not accurate. It's simply not, that's, that it's not, you can't pay the same price for something that is much worse than …”
Musk calls Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard his worst colleague ever
“There's still this guy, Mark Eberhard, who's the worst guy I've ever worked with, who tries to claim like sold credit essentially for creating a Tesla.”
Elon Musk: Declining birth rates are the single biggest threat to civilization
“This, by the way, is I think the biggest single threat to civilization right now is the.”
Chamath: Only 22 of 1,276 billion-dollar funds returned over 2.3x capital
“Okay, so now of those 1276 private equity funds, or growth funds, or crossover funds, how many do you think have actually managed to return more than 2.3 times the money? 22 of them.”
Goldstein: Supreme Court conservative majority will likely vote 5-4 to overturn Roe
“Till June of this year, where they will likely win five to four.”
Sacks: Big Tech committed massive 2020 election interference censoring Hunter Biden
“The scale interference in the election was committed by big tech. I mean, they censored the Hunter Biden story two weeks before the election.”
Sacks: Biden FTC would allow Big Tech to buy Twitter over Musk
“I think this administration does not want to see Twitter become a free speech company again. And so the political winds will blow towards letting, I think, Twitter be acquired by a big tech company, even if it means big tech gets bigger. Wait a second. So I th…”
Sacks predicts elites and media will stop Musk from acquiring Twitter
“Elon is gonna be thwarted by these folks. He's not gonna get control of this company. They're, the vested interest in stopping him by the board, by the new CEO, and by the corporate media and the political elites is too great. They will find a way to stop him.”
Calacanis: Musk will buy Twitter at a lower price by year-end
“My prediction is the Board tries to fight it. Stock collapses. Nobody thinks it's going to get done. Elon lowers his offer, and he wins it by the end of the year, and gives him a lower offer.”
Sacks: US State Department could have easily avoided Ukraine war
“This war was easily avoidable. I mean, the State Department could have avoided this war very easily.”
Sacks: A deal could have been negotiated to prevent the war in Ukraine
“I strongly believe we could have cut a deal on Ukraine a year ago to diffuse this whole situation before it turned into a war.”
Friedberg: Reduced global crop production will lead to famine in a year
“That means there's going to be less production over the next year. That means famine hits us in a year.”
Friedberg: Russian export controls will almost certainly cause widespread famine in 2022
“That are not just about sanctions, but also about export controls by Russia that are creating swings in food markets like we've never seen, and will almost certainly lead to widespread famine by the end of this year at this point.”
Sacks: 2014 removal of Yanukovych was a US-backed coup
“They had this basically pro-Russian democratically elected Prime Minister, President Yukinovich who was deposed in a coup in 2014, a coup that was supported by our State Department and probably the CIA, ok?”
Chamath: Dangerous authoritarianism tends to come from the political left
“The scary authoritarianism, as we talked about in previous pods, tends to come from the left.”
Sacks: Chesa Boudin has done nothing except release perpetrators of anti-Asian violence
“Chase Boudin has done nothing except release the perpetrators.”
Sachs: Fauci participated in suppressing COVID-19 origin investigation
“Fauci, with respect to COVID, we talked about it before, 100% participated in a suppression of the investigation into the origins of COVID. There was an active attempt to suppress that.”
Sacks claims a Democratic super PAC astroturfed the viral Rogan video
“If you kind of look at you know, who's behind this clip, it's pretty clear that it was a democratic super PAC, put this together, and sort of astroturfed it as a viral video.”
Friedberg: Putin's behavior is rational and he seeks to avoid conflict
“His behavior is very rational in response to what's gone on for 30 years. And his requests are that he is feeling threatened and he is trying to avoid military conflict as much as he can.”
Palihapitiya: Advocating foreign human rights while ignoring domestic issues is deplorable
“I think it's a luxury belief. And the reason I think it's a luxury belief is we don't do enough domestically to actually express that view in real tangible ways. So until we actually clean up our own house, The idea that we step outside of our borders with, yo…”
Chamath predicts Big Tech will hit peak market cap by 2023
“I think that this is sort of peak big tech market cap is probably within the next year or two.”
Sacks: EcoHealth's Peter Daszak helped unleash COVID-19 and is 2021's worst human
“So this, you know, this guy not only helped unleash a plague upon the world. He then lied about it to cover his ass and protect his millions. That makes him the worst in my view.”
Friedberg predicts humanity will ultimately view animal agriculture as worse than slavery
“I think one day the human race will look back and identify animal agriculture as worse than human slavery. I do think that that will be a profound realization over the next century for our species”
Chamath: Elizabeth Warren is an authoritarian who lacks economic knowledge
“I think Senator Karen is the obvious choice for me. Kind of proved that she doesn't really know much about economics is, you know, kind of mean and just basically wants to, you know, is a moral absolutist authoritarian just on the left.”
Sacks: Twitter censorship principles exist solely to suppress opposing political views
“These censorship principles only exist so the employees of the company can censor one side of the debate that they don't agree with.”
Sacks: The public school system is the primary cause of structural racism
“Look, I mean, if you're going to define structural racism as conditions that, that trap people of color in poverty across generations, which seems like a pretty fair definition, then you have to say the number one cause of structural racism is the school syste…”
Sacks: Facebook whistleblower leaks were an orchestrated political hit
“Because I think like all this, these leaks from the so-called whistleblower, I think this is a completely orchestrated political hit, and they should just fight back and push back on it.”
Balaji: China is modern Nazi Germany, woke US is Soviet Russia
“China is like the new Nazi Germany woke America is like the new Soviet Russia and the decentralized center is going to be the new America.”
Friedberg argues monopolies are lazy and easier to defeat than cronyism
“I think monopolies are good because monopolies are just like lazy, and it's easier to innovate and compete against a monopoly, to be honest, than it is to compete against cronyism.”
Chamath: The Chinese Communist Party is highly competent at execution
“I think the CCP is actually pretty good at what they do. We may not agree with them, but I think they're pretty competent.”
Sacks: Gavin Newsom is one of the most corrupt governors ever
“He is one of the most corrupt governors we've ever had.”
Chamath: Larry Page is absent and irrelevant to Google's future
“If I had to just categorize them, I would say Larry is absent and is sitting on a hundred billion dollar fortune with no idea what to do. I think. Yeah. I mean, he's just absent. So, he's irrelevant. I don't think anybody knows what the fuck he looks like. I m…”
Chamath: China's central planners are much smarter than American politicians
“China's central planners are frankly just much, much smarter than ours.”
Chamath: The four major tech monopolies will be broken up by 2030
“And if I was a betting man, end of decade, these four monopolies will not exist.”
Sacks calls wearing masks after vaccination the blue equivalent of MAGA hats
“Wearing a mask after you're vaccinated is now, it's like the blue equivalent of the red MAGA hat, where it's completely performative to say, hey, I'm on team blue. You know, even though, like, scientifically, it's meaningless.”
Tenev: Robinhood restricted buying in 13 stocks to meet deposit requirements
“We just had to do what we did to meet our deposit requirements, because if we didn't do that, we would be in violation. And the consequences of that could have been much, much worse than simply halting buying in the 13 stocks.”
Tenev: Robinhood's $3.4B raise provided liquidity, not a deposit bailout
“We met all of our deposit requirements. The new capital that we raised, the 3.4 billion, wasn't to meet our ongoing deposit requirements. We had met them and in order to relax them and eventually unrestrict them, we needed to raise some more capital and eventu…”
Chamath: Robinhood is the Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns of 2021
“This is the, they are the Lehman brothers or Bear Stearns of 2008 to me.”
Chamath: Arbitrary tech platform bans are as dangerous as the Capitol attack
“I know that you may think banning him from Twitter is so much lower than this attack on the capital, and I'm telling you it's not, because the slippery slope of event, event number one is so obvious. The prosecution of that is so obvious. The law is so complet…”
Sacks says Capitol riot death toll would be identical for Black protestors
“Honestly, I think it would have been the same.”
Sacks: Trump has disqualified himself from running for national office again
“I think he's disqualified himself from being a candidate, you know, at a national level again.”
Chamath: Core Trump supporters live in 10 economically irrelevant states
“And those twenty million people are You know, sad to say concentrated in about 10 states that don't functionally matter economically or otherwise.”
Calacanis calls the fatal Capitol shooting of Ashli Babbitt a clean shooting
“Coming from a law enforcement family, I can tell you that's a clean shooting.”
Chamath says Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are stupid candidates
“Kelly Loftner's a moron. She's an idiot. David Perdue's a good old boy. He's an idiot. They're just stupid. This actually speaks to a bigger problem, which is the Republicans could do so much better if they could actually find younger, more vibrant, intelligen…”
Friedberg: US West Coast will reopen for business around April 7th or 8th
“New York is going to be fucked for a little while, but I do think that the west coast and with some travel restrictions is going to be able to reopen for business probably around April seventh or eighth, because we're going to see a dramatic decline at that po…”