The Exchanges

Q Awesome. Quick, quick question on, you know, in, you wrote the book on entrepreneurial nation, why manufacturing is still key to America's future. A decade later, what's your assessment of U.S. manufacturing? Are we losing ground? Is manufacturing something that's, that's, that's still really important to our future?

A Very important. We're losing ground, and one of my concerns is the rise of China and our vulnerability on things like semiconductor chips on a huge supply chain, so we ought to be bringing some of it back to the United States, or at least to allied countries. One bill I'm very excited that I'm working with Senator Rubio on is to have the Federal Financing Bank, which basically can lend things to, to, to different agencies, lend to companies if they are Building factories that are critical to the United States, and I, and we can set up 50 factories across the United States in advanced manufacturing. Rubio and I are working on it, so it'll be bipartisan, and that's the type of thing that I think people will support.

AI assessment note: “Very important. We're losing ground, and one of my concerns is the rise of China”

Q No, that's, that's good advice for all of us. And, and, and you, you represent most of Silicon Valley, and you become sort of an ambassador for Silicon Valley, working to create tech hubs across, you know, across the country, especially rural America. Can you tell us more about that? How do you think of that effort?

A It's my biggest passion. Look, the valley, as you know, because you've been a driver of it, uh, has created, in my view, more wealth than probably any region in human history. I mean, 11 trillion dollars market cap in the Silicon Valley region, uh, and they're going to be twenty-five million digital jobs by twenty-twenty-five. We cannot have a nation where a few places, Silicon Valley, Austin, Seattle, uh, Boston, are driving the modern wealth generation, are driving the job opportunities. And large spots of the rest of the country are left out. Uh, people should be able to live in their hometown and have jobs of the future, and they should be able to build wealth, uh, where they're living. Uh, I think the pandemic actually provides that opportunity with rethinking remote work, with rethinking whether ever everyone has to move to Palo Alto or Austin.

AI assessment note: “We cannot have a nation where a few places... are driving the modern wealth generation”

Q know, I, I want to come back to progressive capitalism. I like that you call yourself a progressive capitalist, Ro. Uh, what, what is, what does that mean? What does that mean in action for, like, like, so you, you, you disagree a lot with both sides, right? Like, like, like, like, where, where, where are you when you're, when you're passive capitalist? What kind of things you're pushing for?

A It's that I believe that markets fundamentally, uh, have a moral worth, and let me tell you why. Uh, I don't think that, uh, a person's freedom is fully realized if they always have to have their decision subject to the collective will. It could be that the collective will certainly of Congress is wrong and that we want people to depart from that. And so markets, markets have their own, uh, constraints, right? You're still subject to the consumer preference. So it's not like, You can be an eccentric genius and have success, but you have more flexibility, more options to maximize your individual flourishing. So I actually defend markets as part of your, of freedom, as part of human flourishing. But where I call myself progressive is I say there have to be some building blocks for you to be able to do that. You need to have proper healthcare. You need to have proper education. You need to live in a safe neighborhood. Uh, you need to have nutrition, and there I think that the government has a role, uh, in, in, in doing that, and I also believe that the government has a role in investing in long-term research development, uh, and so that, uh, I, I have a stronger view of the role of government than most people who believe just in markets.

AI assessment note: “where I call myself progressive is I say there have to be some building blocks”

Q like that. In the public sphere thing, it sounds like people on both the right and the left agree it's, it's too much power to give any one business to control the public sphere, and what, what are, what are some of the ideas you guys have for that? Are there, is there good legislation being worked on? How do we, How do we address censorship in the public sphere?

A Well, there are one, I guess, here I will say that antitrust does have a role in making sure we have multiplicity of social discursive spaces emerge, and to the extent that we can decentralize things, you know, Dorsey, I think, before we left Twitter, was talking about having individuals have more control over their own algorithms, over their own content. I think those things are, are healthy. But we also need basic regulation, in my view, on consumer safety, and we may disagree. Here, but you know, Facebook has information that Instagram is causing depression and anxiety about teenagers. Well, there ought to be basic consumer safety regulations that doesn't allow that. So, uh, I, I think that that has to be there, but I, I am not for, uh, having either the government or, uh, you know, tech companies ultimately be the arbiter of truth. Uh, I'm for making sure Censorship that, uh, we don't have speech that incites violence, but I'm very wary of censorship. In fact, you know, in the book I write about, uh, how, uh, I, I thought it was a mistake for Twitter to take down some of this stuff about Hunter Biden or, or, uh, or Facebook to do that. And I think that story was total hogwash. I think Joe Biden was unfairly attacked because of his son, but that doesn't mean that it didn't belong in the public sphere.

AI assessment note: “antitrust does have a role in making sure we have multiplicity of social discursive spaces”

Q Why so much focus from him going after billionaires? Aren't there so many problems to attack? Are billionaires really the root of a lot of our problems? Or is that just a populist thing that gets lots of votes? Or how do we think about this?

A Well, Ezra Klein once asked me, uh, he's a columnist now for the New York Times, would you outlaw billionaires? And I said, no. Uh, so, uh, I, I don't think, you know, if Steve Jobs wants to go make, uh, Apple computers and makes billions of dollars doing that, fine. I don't think that there's anything wrong with it. I think we will have a disagreement on how much they should pay in taxes. I don't think, you know, the, I'm for a wealth tax, and I know a lot of your, uh, listeners probably aren't, You know, one of the things they say is, oh, if you have a wealth tax, everyone's going to go and take their capital out of the United States. Give me a break. 93%. 93% of American investment is in America. You know why? Because it's the best place to invest. And if someone is foolish enough to go take their money outside America and not invest in Silicon Valley because of a one or two percent tax, do it. America is going to still, it would be a dumb bet. Like, we still have the largest growth possibility. And so I just don't think there's going to be some mass capital flight. Now, if you're France, you got to worry about it because there could be mass capital.

AI assessment note: “I think we will have a disagreement on how much they should pay in taxes.”

Q smaller, so like, you know, you probably know the history of PayPal, Elon Musk, you know, had X.com and Peter Thiel had Confinity and they merged to become PayPal and both of them were probably going to die otherwise. That was the only way they could survive was to merge. So it's interesting question. Like, when do you allow competitors to merge and work together? When, when do you not?

A Yeah. And, and, and I think the balance, it's always a balance, right? I mean, so we probably, uh, it shouldn't go to the other extreme where we don't allow it at all. And there are times where it's necessary and there are times where it's, it's good, but you know, even if you're conservative, you should be for having a plurality of discursive spaces and not just having, uh, your Facebook make all the decisions of what is good, good speech or bad speech, right? Which they, they have the right to do on their platform. So you should be for a multiplicity of options. Uh, just like we have in television. We don't just have three broadcast networks.

AI assessment note: “it's always a balance, right? ... you should be for having a plurality”