The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:35:33 · Fareed Zakaria
[00:35:33] S4: Yeah. I think that's a great idea. And I think I agree with both your points. First, Ukraine is the most important struggle. If you believe in this international order we've been talking about, that The US largely built after 1945 with Europe's help, the biggest norm that was that was enshrined in it was you cannot conquer territory by force and just an exit. Something that was routine in the hundred years before 1945. I mean, Alsace Lorraine change... Changed his hands four times between the French and Germans in the hundred years before 1945. Since 1945, there have been virtually no brutal annexations of that kind. It's a it's a norm that has largely held up. And so the Russian violation of it and and and against a liberal democracy struggling to be not just to survive, but to be part of the West is the big political moral struggle of our age. And Trump has basically abandoned the Ukrainians. So to to to push back against that, I think you're exactly right. Secondly, it would be very militarily smart because what... Trump is right. We need peace there. Elon Musk is right. We need peace there. People are are dying on both sides. But the path to peace is to pressure the Ukrainians rather than the Russians, to to pressure the victim rather than the aggressor. It's it's politically stupid. It's morally obtuse. So this would get us back on that track. Now the second thing you said, I think, is also important, which is some of this isn't gonna happen. But the Democrats have to start laying out what is the world we believe in, what is the world we... You know, our... What is our vision for the world? And if they can do that through a series of big votes, they should make clear these are the things we would like to see. You know, a big thing on health care, a big thing on Ukraine, you know, a big thing on... The tariffs, I think there's an easy way to to do it because the treasury is at this point addicted to the tariffs, so you can't really get back to... You can't go back to where you were. But what Trump has done is I I think I read somewhere that there are actually 7,000 tariffs... Tariff rates when you add them all up. Because Trump never... You know, it's never actually a 18% rate for some country. There are huge numbers of exemptions and exceptions. Some of them for legitimate reasons. Some of them, frankly, seem to me all about corruption.
00:38:02 · Fareed Zakaria
You know, you're kind of various industries and and and firms are buying exemptions. So you you regularize that. Say, we're gonna have a 5% tariff, you know, toward all imported goods, a kind of consumption tax on imports of about 5%, 7%. It's not particularly high. You know, the economy can handle it fine. The markets will handle it fine. But you've got it... And and the... And you say to the American people, you're doing this because we wanna lower the tariffs substantially so that you get relief so that, you know, price... The the prices that you are dealing with are lower. Dem... The... It's hard for the... Let's be honest. It's hard for the party out of power that doesn't have the White House to to be represented and to have a coherent vision. Because the reality is you're going to have a wild entrepreneurial free for all with probably 15 to 20 candidates running to replace Donald Trump, particularly if his approval rate... Ratings remain as low as they are. Remember, Scott, he is now basically the most unpopular president in American history. I mean, his only competition is Richard Nixon in the six month period around his resignation. But to be in the 36, 37%, you're pretty much as low as it gets. That is going to invite a huge number of Democrats to run. So the danger is you end up with cacophony, and Hakeem Jeffries and Schumer can provide that coherent message by coming up with four or five totemic things. You pass big bills. You make it you make it a big deal. And as you say, let Trump veto it.
00:39:39 · Scott Galloway
[00:39:39] S3: I wanna propose a scenario and have you respond to it. It's it's the thirties. We're contemplating reentering Europe, paid a huge price from World War one. It's a very unpopular idea to go back where it feels like we just left. And this innovator, Charles Lindbergh, is saying, no, we should partner with the Germans. Imagine if you will, that Charles Lindbergh was able to raise a ton of money and buy McDonnell Douglas, an aircraft manufacturer, and put in place this unbelievably innovative guidance system. And FDR decided to loan to the RAF B-17s, an amazing bomber in defense of Europe as this fascist begins to invade Europe. And then the CEO of McDonnell Douglas decides mid flight to turn off the guidance systems. And as a result, the blitzkrieg increases in fury and UK citizens are killed. I believe that has almost exactly played out in the last few weeks with Elon Musk throttling back Starlink. And my question is, or my thesis is, we took the Rosenbergs and put them up against a wall and executed them for being traitors. And I realize this is an incendiary statement, but I'll make it and I believe it. I think Elon Musk is a traitor to the West. And I think what is even more dangerous is this zeitgeist within America that the idolatry of innovators and money has created a cloud cover such that traders to the West are not seen as traders to the West. That if it... This had happened in any other age where we were not obsessed with innovators and money, a much different reaction would be playing out to Elon Musk. Your thoughts on Elon Musk's actions, America's response, and if you're willing to speculate what might happen if the Democrats take control of Congress. A lot there. I apologize for the word salad.
00:41:46 · Fareed Zakaria
[00:41:46] S4: There is a lot there. Look, I think you are, first of all, a 100% right on this really sad spectacle in America where people who manage to get very rich are then idolized as geniuses about everything. I think Elon Musk is one of the world's great engineers, one of the world's great technologists, one maybe one of history's great technologists, but he does not have the depth of understanding on complicated issues of politics like identity, you know, Islam, Europe. And you can see that when he when he talks about them. He's often wrong with... In terms of the statistics he uses. He's often wrong with the... About the history he uses. Give me one example. He retweeted on a tweet of these before and after photographs of a few African countries. You know? Johannesburg before the end of apartheid and after. And the before picture is this beautiful, manicured picture of a lovely, stately, British, you know, colonial sort of set of buildings and then, you know, ugly, dirty modern South Africa today. You know? So you get the point. What he doesn't seem to understand is the nature of societies like South Africa and Rhodesia and Kenya was that you had a small... I'm talking 5% of the of the population that was white, privileged, had first class citizenship status, was allowed to own as much of the land of the country as they were able to, And the other 95% of blacks were were literally slaves and servants to these to these people and were supporting that lifestyle. You can have a very good photograph when you have those dynamics. You know? The Pyramids look fantastic, but, you know, it was it was built for one person by hundreds of thousands of workers. Is that the society you're really advocating? Or take a look at his Doge nonsense, right? He comes to... Comes in and says, I'm gonna cut $2,000,000,000,000 out of the federal treasury. Only somebody who knows nothing about the the budget of The United States could could imagine that. And he thought he was gonna find it by reducing admin costs, you you know, not understanding that the the the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. If you're going to reduce costs in the in the federal government, it's not by taking out people at the Social Security Administration. It's by cutting people's Social Security checks. The the the money is not in the people writing the checks.
00:44:26 · Fareed Zakaria
The money... The the money is on the... Those checks that, you know, the people... The benefits people are getting. He understood none of this. And so the idea that he, as a private citizen, should have these kind of powers to decide what is a life and death struggle for an ally of The United States, you know, one of the most important allies of Europe, is totally tragic. I completely agree with you that that it has been, you know, a a huge body blow to the Ukrainians, but it's also been terrible for The United States. I tell you a story about India. Again, the India... Musk tried to do one of his very Musk like efforts to rattle the Indians. He applied for... He thinks that Starlink biggest market outside of America would be India. And he's correct on that because, you know, China won't let him. So India, 1,400,000,000 people, it would be a gold mine for Starlink. So they applied for it. They followed all the rules that the Indians wanted them to, which is to set up a separate company for digital privacy reasons and such. And it was stuck in the application process. And meanwhile, a big Indian company, the biggest Indian company, Reliance, decided it was going to launch. It's a... It has a telecom brand... A a wing called Jio. They were gonna launch low low orbit satellites. And so then Musk's tweets out saying the owner of the of the Indian company is called... Is Mukesh Ambani. Dear prime minister Ambani, because I know that's where the real power of of India lies, Please allow Starlink in. It would be so good for the, you know, the many peasants and farmers of India to get connected. He thought he was doing this genius, you know, hail Mary, getting around... The ordinary Indians to rally for him. It totally backfired. Everybody rallied around Ambani and Jio, this... You know, India's richest man, Asia's richest man, Musk. Why? Because it became a point of nationalism, and they look at how Trump and Musk wield Starlink, and they say, do we Indians wanna be vulnerable the way the Ukrainians are? If we got into another skirmish with Pakistan, do we want the Indian army to be dependent on a... On... For its communications on a satellite system that con... That Trump and Musk control?
00:46:56 · Fareed Zakaria, Scott Galloway
And so it completely backfired in a predictable way for anyone who understood nationalism and the history and the India Pakistan thing, which of course Musk doesn't understand at all. [00:47:09] S3: Curious, Fareed, as someone who's an immigrant and has been successful, on a deeper level, you look at stuff and you have to be pretty PG 13 and reasonable. But how does what is going on resonate with you personally? You have seen, you're obviously you have this incredible sort of intellectual perspective on the world and the role America plays in it. [00:47:38] S4: But what does this [00:47:40] S3: all mean for you as someone who's come here and has been successful and has seen where we are? I know you used to my understanding is your mom passed away during COVID, but she was still in India. Is that correct? [00:47:52] S4: Correct. Yep. [00:47:53] S3: Like, how does this hit you personally?