00:20:03 · Mark Jacobstein, Mark Jacobstein, Andrew Yang, Aditya Agarwal
[00:20:03] S2: And very importantly, you can only have done it for a total of eight years. [00:20:07] S3: Yeah. Yeah. [00:20:09] S2: There's a [00:20:09] S3: third rule. Oh, Yeah. [00:20:12] S0: Yeah. That's true too. [00:20:13] S1: Whenever anybody who is in the arena is being criticized by the peanut gallery, I'm just like, nah, if you haven't been in the arena, then you have no right to comment on what can or should be done. If you've never been an entrepreneur, it's so difficult to criticize people who are going through the journey. How do you know the vicissitudes and the ups and downs of the roller coasters? I mean, you know this, this is probably your third or fourth company. It is super fucking hard to start a company, right? And if you have never started one, you don't actually realize just the magnitude of difficulty of dealing with your own emotions on a day to day basis that you just never have to face. Frankly, your paycheck is guaranteed on a day to day basis. Whereas if an entrepreneur, you have to generate that payroll every two weeks. Coming back to your point, I'm like, it's great that Tom Steyer is maybe running for, I don't know, it sounds like he might [00:21:05] S0: be He's for governor in [00:21:07] S2: running for [00:21:07] S0: governor And in
00:21:07 · Andrew Yang, Aditya Agarwal, Mark Jacobstein, Mark Jacobstein
[00:21:07] S0: governor And in [00:21:08] S1: Tom spoke at SPC a few years ago and I'm like, listen, don't know how far you're going to get, but it's a lot of respect for the fact that you're out there doing something, You're actually doing something. And I wish more people did it. Frankly, I'm looking at myself, I'm like, why I can't run for president because I'm a naturalized citizen, but why can't I think about being a senator or a congressman or something? And the fact that I don't makes me think [00:21:35] S3: that You have I'm about firm to run with this. [00:21:37] S2: We're not ready [00:21:38] S3: to give you... Have a firm to run with this. [00:21:40] S2: Could already give you up to it. [00:21:42] S1: Sorry, Mark. What we have done is that two people in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are actually from SPC. So we are helping, I would say the political change. But Andrew, you're going to say something.
00:21:56 · Andrew Yang
[00:21:56] S0: Oh yeah. So I gave a TED Talk last year. It was the number seven TED Talk of 2024. One of the things I want to put out there is that the highest level of value that can be produced, the highest leverage now, is not even running for office oneself. It's trying to fix the system and the incentives. And there are ways that you can contribute to that without running for US senator or whatnot. So I just want to put that out there because here's the trap. And this is something like I've heard any number of times where people think, okay, I should vote, I should give money, and then I should run for office. And that should be like the hierarchy. But then people are turned off because like, wait a minute, if I run for office, some people are going to hate me and yell at me. It's going to be a lifestyle downgrade. I'm not sure if I'm going be able to do as much good as I want to anyway. And by the way, like rational, totally rational. I even had in my list of life schools when I was first dating Evelyn elevate a national political figure. It was not be one. It was like find one, find another schmuck, and then help them. And so that's totally, again, smart. It's rational stuff. And then a lot of excellent people are turned off by politics of today and reasonable. So there are things you can do though. Like the highest level thing you can do right now is try and cure the system. And the way to cure the system is not to play on one team or another, but to create a new team and fix the incentives. And if that's totally mystifying to anyone listening to this, please just do look up Andrew Yang TED Talk. And then I go through it in like ten, eleven minutes and say like, this is why things are so fucked and here's a real life concrete way we could fix it. And, you know, there are some awesome people that are are working toward that. So there there are things you can do that don't involve running for office.
00:23:48 · Mark Jacobstein, Andrew Yang
[00:23:48] S2: And these are structural things like ranked choice voting and getting rid of gerrymandering and all the things that would having a third party or a fourth party or a fifth party, etcetera. [00:23:56] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Like, non nonpartisan primaries is the single biggest step. The the problem is that everyone's held captive by the 11% that are voting in the base of each party, and then they just run scared of them. And then they rubber stamp everything from that corner. And then the rest of us are like, what the hell is going on? So any techie in particular who digs into these incentive structures would be like, oh, I would expect really weird polarizing bad policy results from this system. And so the only logical thing to do is try and fix the system. It's very much a Silicon Valley approach. The problem is that people are tribal and, like, get dragged into this or that. I will say, I think a lot of people ended up siding with Trump in a way that, in my opinion, just saying, probably not shocking to people, was misplaced because I think Trump's an accelerant to the disintegration of various institutions. And I think it's not great. But I think it's a result of the fact that they didn't like what was going on in the previous administration and that you have this two sided system where you're like, oh, if I don't like these guys, then I guess I like these guys. And then the pendulum keeps swinging. I think most Silicon Valley people are actually somewhere in this in between zone naturally where you want
00:23:56 · Andrew Yang, Mark Jacobstein
[00:23:56] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Like, non nonpartisan primaries is the single biggest step. The the problem is that everyone's held captive by the 11% that are voting in the base of each party, and then they just run scared of them. And then they rubber stamp everything from that corner. And then the rest of us are like, what the hell is going on? So any techie in particular who digs into these incentive structures would be like, oh, I would expect really weird polarizing bad policy results from this system. And so the only logical thing to do is try and fix the system. It's very much a Silicon Valley approach. The problem is that people are tribal and, like, get dragged into this or that. I will say, I think a lot of people ended up siding with Trump in a way that, in my opinion, just saying, probably not shocking to people, was misplaced because I think Trump's an accelerant to the disintegration of various institutions. And I think it's not great. But I think it's a result of the fact that they didn't like what was going on in the previous administration and that you have this two sided system where you're like, oh, if I don't like these guys, then I guess I like these guys. And then the pendulum keeps swinging. I think most Silicon Valley people are actually somewhere in this in between zone naturally where you want [00:25:13] S2: Like, maybe abundance democrats is kind of their...
00:25:13 · Mark Jacobstein, Andrew Yang
[00:25:13] S2: Like, maybe abundance democrats is kind of their... [00:25:16] S0: Oh, yeah. You want good policy. You want results. You want your kids to be able to walk on the street without stepping over a homeless person or human feces or any of that jazz. You're pro data. You'd like to see good results and people make those decisions. You're not super ideological. By the way, this is an appeal I make to Asian Americans, too. I'm just like, guys, we're the pragmatic results crew. We're not the tribal warfare crew. Star Trek instead of Mad Max is the shorthand. But that crew, in my opinion, should be looking at this political system and be like, okay. Like, this is what needs to change.