Free speech is the bedrock of democracy, and free speech is what allows atrocities
to be called out and for people to be aware of them. That's why
the Germans wanted to shut down the price immediately. So you know, anyway,
I think we should do everything we can to preserve free speech, and
when we lose free speech, I think we lose democracy. One of the
other things we were talking about earlier to touch back on it was the DEI
of it, and one of the things that you know, you and I
had been discussing a little bit offline is the fact that di I effectively is
a conspiracy theory in which there is a cadre of powerful people who are at
the top and they control everything else that's happening. And because those powerful people
are at the top, they are exploiting everybody else and they have to be
taken down more than one peg. And you know that conspiracy theory matches very
aligns very closely with anti Semitic conspiracy theory. I think the CI is very
extremely anti Semitic. It's cool, so yeah, absolutely, uh, And
it's just it's just generally anti meritocratic, so which I think is very dangerous.
You want to have a I think society where you succeed based on your
skills and hard work. That's it. And it doesn't matter about your race,
gender, creed, religion, nothing, you know, just are you
good at your job, do you work hard? Are you do you have
high integrity? Nothing will that's it stops there. And it seems it seems
as though, you know, in our society right now, there's an objection
to that. But that objection, it seems to me, can only be
this crazy. Yeah, it can only be sustained if you are tastically acknowledging
that you will not succeed in the meritocracy. The people who are pushing this
the hardest yet frankly, yeah, I mean it's it's it's essentially making the
argument I'm not succeeding. The reason I'm not succeeding is because no one can
succeed. And so it's an argument to a certain extent of the unsuccessful or
people who feel as though they are they deserve more. And you know,
one of the one of the things that occurs to me is that I'm not
sure that anybody quote unquote deserves anything other than what your hard work and innovation
bring you in life. Right. I think the EI also for those who
were promoted based on these skills and merit and hard work, it undermines the
credibility of their promotion or their status. Was it real or was it the
EI? You know, and it's it takes away the respect that they deserve.
One of the things about meritocracy that I think people forget is that it's
the only system ever devised that has positive externalities. Any other sort of system
that you create is going to have negative externalities because you're literally just cronying with
X group and whatever that group is, that group is going to get the
benefits, and if you're not part of that group, then you get screwed.
And meritocracy is the idea that the people who are going to succeed are
people who innately are capable of creating for everyone else. I mean, you
mentioned earlier how many employees you have, and people will talk about your level
of personal wealth, but that level of personal wealth is largely stockholding, and
that stock is it was almost entirely stock. Yeah, exactly. I mean
it's like you're sitting on like a giant It's I mean, you are,
but not like that. Yeah, it's just it's just when I created the
companies, I felt that it was important. Now, in my first company,
I didn't have any money. My first Internet company, I just had
one hundred thousand, all the student debt. But for that was a company
the very early days of the Internet called zip too, but for old companies.
Subsequently, I basically doubled down. I took the money that from from
Zip to invested it in x dot com PayPal, and then I took the
PayPal money invested that in in creating Teslin SpaceX. Because I didn't feel like
I didn't feel right that I should ask investors to invest if I wasn't prepared
to invest my own money. I think the whole other people's money thing is
not right. You know, you want to you want to have you want
to have skin the and put your capital where you're off the capital of the
company you're creating therewith investors capital. And as a result of that, I
own a lot of shares in the company, and the company as the better
the company does, the more valuable the shares are. But that's because the
pie has grown, and so you have to say, like, what's that.
The root of a lot of the the negativity is an axiomatic flaw that
the pie is static, that it's a zero sum game, that if someone
else succeeds, it's because they took more than their fair share of this fixed
pie. But it's not a fixed pie. Obviously, the there's a lot
of that wants a pie pie. But obviously the economic pie has grown considerably
from from what it was in the past. The output of goodness of so
as the productivity per person is dramatically greater than it has been in the past.
So when you when you create a new company and you and you both
create new products and services, you are you are growing the groups, You're
growing the you know, the bundle as they say pie again, of you're
growing the amount of goods and services available to two people. So it's not
you've not taken anything away from anyone. You've created something new and you've you've
given people new products and services they didn't have before. You know, like
we didn't used to have an iPhone, We didn't used to have computers,
when you used to have cars or be able to fly in our planes,
wouldn't used to have many of the life saving medicines that we have today.
These are all new things. I'm sure you realized how good I look,
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and spice. This is one of the I think there's the fundamental distinction between
innovators and business people and people in the free market and the political class.
The political class operates almost solely on the basis that the pie is fixed,
because if the pie is fixed, then the way that you get elected is
by promising more of that pie to such and such a person, or you
promise that by seizing money from the private sector, you're personally going to grow
the pie. And it seems to me if the first mark of a politician
you shouldn't listen to is I can fix all of your problems, and that
basically rolls out nearly everybody, because it seems like everyone in the political classes
into the I can fix all of your problems when it seems like what I
actually need is people who are entrepreneurial and innovative to solve this problem in front
of um. Means that we can then move on to the next problem that's
in front of them. Yeah, basically, the reality is that when that
is that the government is really just a corporation in the limit, government is
the ultimate corporation. It's not different from a corporation. It's just the ultimate
corporation. And it's a corporation that is monopoly. And and also it can't
go bankrupt unless the country goes bankrupt, and it has a monopoly on violence.
So how much do you want to how much more do you want to
give to the world's biggest corporations that it has a monopoly in violence? Probably
not, probably less. And I mean I feel like it's said countries like
East and West Germany or North and South Korea, cases where there's just an
oboritrary line that's been drawn. They could to be one country arbitrary line is
drawn because of a war. What is the productivity difference from one to the
other. You know, West Germany had a productivity five times greater than the
East Germany. Uh that that's just because and it's not like West Germany was
just the sort of bastion of capitalism. They're like half socialist. So even
with if you're so, what that means is if they have socialists on the
other side is one hundredent socialist communist, then you really have something like a
ten to one difference in productivity if something is done by the government or done
by the private sector. That's why you But I'm not someone who says abolish
the government. I just say let's have the government do the least amount,
because the less the government does, the more the economy will prosper, because
anything done by the government is going to be five timetime five to ten times
less efficient. But like think of the d MB, I'm trying not to
Yes, if we're going to get out of DEI, what's the best way
to get out of DEI? Well, I think DI is starting to fade.
First of all, d I is actually illegal because it discriminates on the
basis of race, sex, sexual preference and all other things that is actually
illegal. So somehow you know it's gone. They've managed to get this illegal
thing in place. But now we're starting you see a large number of lawsuits
saying no, actually, the law says you cannot discriminate on the basis of
sex as you know, sexual identity and race. You know. So I
think, well, I think the I is on this last legs is gonna
it's gonna be a roup because it's illegal. Actually,