The legacy and future of CES, Dwarkesh’s “Capital in the 22nd Century,” Ben Thompson’s “AI and the Human Condition” | Diet TBPN

Summary

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TBPN Podcast Summary

Episode: The legacy and future of CES, Dwarkesh’s “Capital in the 22nd Century,” Ben Thompson’s “AI and the Human Condition”
Date: January 7, 2026
Hosts/Guests: Ben Thompson, Tyler Cowen

Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Ben Thompson and Tyler Cowen dive into the cultural and technological significance of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the shifting dynamics of tech product launches, and broader implications for society. They explore how iconic moments from CES shaped the tech industry, examine Dwarkesh Patel’s “Capital in the 22nd Century” through an economic lens, and discuss the evolving relationship between AI, inequality, and human happiness. The conversation weaves humor, insightful analysis, and pop culture references, providing a lively journey through recent tech history and speculative futures.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Legacy and Decline of CES and Traditional Tech Conferences

• CES as a Powerhouse: Ben and Tyler agree CES remains a leading tech event, highlighting its historic role in product launches.
  • “CES refers to itself as the most powerful tech event in the world.” – Ben Thompson [00:02]
  • “It might be. It might be.” – Tyler Cowen [00:08]
• Notable CES Launches: The hosts recall milestones—VCRs, CD players, the Commodore 64, DVD, Xbox, and more ([01:12]).
  • Emphasis on showmanship, referencing the iconic Xbox launch with Bill Gates and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson ([01:54]).
    • “Get on stage with Dwayne the Rock Johnson. That’s the bar.” – Ben Thompson [01:23]
    • Notable Quote: “The celebrity cameo launch is completely forgotten art. We don’t know how to do this anymore.” – Ben Thompson [03:41]
• Changing Launch Strategy: They discuss the shift toward highly produced, company-hosted launch events (Apple, Meta, etc.) and why the independent conference model faded in importance ([06:24]).
  • Steve Jobs choosing Macworld over CES for the iPhone as a turning point:
    • “Jobs wanted more control...so he chose to debut the iPhone at Macworld.” – Ben Thompson [06:28]
    • “Best marketer of all time, clearly.” – Tyler Cowen [08:41]
• *Modern CES Coverage: Less about consumer electronics, more about AI, automotive tech, and partnerships (Nvidia, Mercedes, LEGO, Boston Dynamics) ([09:22]).

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2. Notable 2026 CES Product Highlights

• Nvidia’s Vera Rubin: A CPU-GPU combo, presented by Jensen Huang.
  • “So just to today at CES or yesterday, Jensen was there and Nvidia unveiled Vera Rubin which looks incredible.” – Ben Thompson [09:19]
• AMD’s AI Chips: New Instinct chips as serious Nvidia competitors ([10:01]).
• Uber and Lucid’s Robotaxis: Successful on-road tests in San Francisco, stocks jump ([10:22]).
• LEGO Smart Brick: A programmable computer brick making sets interactive.
  • “Lego’s launching the most ambitious brick it’s ever made. A tiny computer that fits entirely inside a classic two by four LEGO Brick.” – Ben Thompson [11:14]
• Boston Dynamics Innovations: Humanoid robots, technical details, and their uncanny movement fascinate the hosts ([11:38–12:35]).

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3. Reflections on Wealth, Technology, and Inequality

Discussion of Dwarkesh’s “Capital in the 22nd Century” and Ben Thompson’s “AI and the Human Condition”

• AI’s Impact on Inequality: Analyzing Dwarkesh’s thesis—AI-driven automation could concentrate wealth, making capital ownership more important than labor ([16:41–17:08]).
  • “The thesis is basically like inequality is going to get worse because of AI. That’s core thesis.” – Tyler Cowen [17:08]
• Barriers to Sharing in AI Returns: Most people’s wealth is in home equity, which doesn’t appreciate like tech companies or AI ventures ([17:14]).
  • “Home equity is not a good way to benefit from increasing returns to capital that come from automation… you’re not going to get some massive incremental return from that.” – Tyler Cowen [17:18]
• Historical and Global Context: They discuss the “end of international catch up” (cheap labor no longer sufficient for developing countries) and potential wealth transfers ([17:57]).
• The Fragility of Economic Institutions in the Face of AI: Speculating about institutions breaking down in fast-changing scenarios ([19:15]).
• Louis C.K.’s Take on Human Contentment: A clip is played emphasizing that technological progress doesn’t automatically bring happiness, as people adapt quickly and take advances for granted ([20:40–22:46]).
  • “Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy.” – Louis C.K. [20:57]
  • “I'm sitting on the plane and they go, open up your laptop. You can go on the Internet... And then it breaks down and they apologize. The guy next to me goes, this is bull.” – Louis C.K. [22:46–22:52]
• Ben’s Real World AI Parenting Anecdote: Replacing a costly sleep consultant with LLM advice for a child—in 24 hours, the problem was fixed ([23:11–24:37]).
  • “With my 1.5 year old, my wife just goes to an LLM… and within 24 hours, the problem was totally solved.” – Ben Thompson [23:11]
• Comparison, Status, and Human Happiness: Discussing how absolute wealth rises but comparative mindset breeds dissatisfaction—projected even onto hypothetical alien trillionaires ([24:37–25:20]).

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4. News Tangents and Pop Culture Memos

• Bankers Back On Top: Jamie Dimon’s $770 million haul and deregulation create a “bonanza” for finance ([13:20–15:32]).
• Jocko Willink, Origin Apparel, and Maduro: Light banter about Maduro’s arrest and the surprising presence of Jocko’s branded gear ([25:22–27:47]).
  • “It’s called Origin Built by Freedom Hoodie on Maduro.” – Ben Thompson [25:48]
  • “Got captured by U.S. delta Force. Good, good. Wearing his origin. Arrested on drug trafficking charges. Good. More inspiration to grind harder.” — Ben Thompson, parodying the ethos of “grind culture” [27:41–27:48]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• On CES’s golden age:
  • “Get on stage with Dwayne the Rock Johnson. That's the bar.” – Ben Thompson [01:23]
  • “The celebrity cameo launch is completely forgotten art. We don’t know how to do this anymore.” – Ben Thompson [03:41]
• On the rise of company-specific launches:
  • “Jobs wanted more control...So he chose to debut the iPhone at Macworld.” – Ben Thompson [06:28]
  • “Best marketer of all time, clearly.” – Tyler Cowen [08:41]
• On technological progress and human happiness:
  • “Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy.” – Louis C.K. [20:57]
  • “We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it’s wasted on the, on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care.” – Louis C.K. [22:01]
• On AI’s everyday impact:
  • “With my 1.5 year old, my wife just goes to an LLM… and within 24 hours, the problem was totally solved.” – Ben Thompson [23:11]
• On comparative status and wealth:
  • “If we discover the trillionaire quadrillionaire aliens, we’re all dumb.” – Ben Thompson [25:20]

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Key Timestamps for Reference

• [00:02–04:24] History and cultural importance of CES
• [06:24–09:22] Shift away from independent tech conferences; iPhone’s Macworld launch
• [09:22–12:35] CES 2026 product highlights (Nvidia, AMD, Uber, LEGO, Boston Dynamics)
• [16:41–19:36] Key themes from “Capital in the 22nd Century” and AI-driven inequality
• [20:40–22:52] Louis C.K. on technology’s effect on happiness
• [23:11–25:20] LLMs in family life; comparison and status
• [25:22–27:47] Pop culture—Jocko, Maduro, Origin brand

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Tone and Takeaways

Engaging, irreverent, occasionally nostalgic, and rich in pop culture and tech references. The hosts make complex topics accessible while preserving a sense of humor, poking fun at the past, present, and future of technology.

Key Takeaway:
CES helped define tech’s golden age of public spectacle, but the future belongs to tightly controlled, company-driven rollouts and possibly, ever-widening gaps in opportunity and satisfaction—driven not by tech’s limits, but by human nature itself.

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Transcript

[Ben Thompson]

CES refers to itself as the most powerful tech event in the world. Really bringing the superlatives.

[Tyler Cowen]

It might be. It might be.

[Ben Thompson]

I think it still is.

[Tyler Cowen]

It probably still is. Okay, why don't we go into your op ed?

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. So I call it the death of the Tech Conference, because I noticed something which we'll get into. But what's interesting is, like, CES launched so long ago. 1967.

[Tyler Cowen]

What were the consumer electronics at the first event?

[Ben Thompson]

The number of things that launched at CES is actually crazy. So the VCR launched at ces, like the thing that you put the tape into. I know. You don't watch movies and you never had a vcr. I had a vcr.

[Tyler Cowen]

I actually did.

[Ben Thompson]

You have a vcr.

[Tyler Cowen]

I actually did. You had a vcr like a personal little.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, you put the tape in. You have to rewind it when you're done watching the movie. That launched at CES. CES started in 1967. It was a sleepy affair until 1970 when Phillips unveiled its N1500 video cassette recorder. Till that point, VCRs cost upwards of $50,000. Imagine dropping 50 GS.

[Tyler Cowen]

Okay, at the first one in 1967, they had transistor radios, early color televisions, phonographs and tape recorders.

[Ben Thompson]

The lineup of stuff that launched at CES. The Atari Pong console 1975. The CD player launched in 1981 at CES. The Commodore 64, 1982. The DVD at 1996. The Xbox in 2001. And we really gotta play this video of how The Xbox launched 2001. Bill Gates gets on stage at CES. You know, today we think we're so cool. Oh, tech companies, they have vibreals and they have cinematic videos and they go on podcasts, and they do podcast circuits when they launch things. Get on stage with Dwayne the Rock Johnson. That's the bar. Because that's exactly what Bill Gates did in 2001 when he launched the Xbox. We gotta play this video with Dwayne unveiling the Xbox. Look at this.

[Bill Gates (voice in Xbox launch video)]

This is the product that will be out later this year. And there's an amazing amount going on. Working with partners who help build the hardware, working with the software developers, working with the retailers. The program around this thing is really quite phenomenal. But the box itself is another thing that we put a lot of energy into. It's a box. So you may have been wondering what this great device was here.

[Ben Thompson]

This is showmanship.

[Bill Gates (voice in Xbox launch video)]

This is the Xbox. This is the Xbox for the first Time. Let me now unveil Xbox.

[Tyler Cowen]

Do you ever have one of these with the controller? Yeah, in the plexiglass. Very cool.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah. Dangling down there. This was iconic. Play Call of Duty. The original Modern Warfare was on there.

[Bill Gates (voice in Xbox launch video)]

Driven by spending time with gamers and actually putting the control in their hands.

[Ben Thompson]

The controller was huge. The first controller was so big, they had to make a smaller one because they just went, like, way too big for some reason. I guess they were testing on the wrong type of people or something.

[Tyler Cowen]

Were they testing on you? No.

[Ben Thompson]

There's this whole meme that it was, like, really good for Shaq, but that was it, and Shaq loved it or something like that. I seem to remember this. I don't know.

[Bill Gates (voice in Xbox launch video)]

Loaded as you move from level to level. Now what you're seeing on the front, the eject, the on off button, and four game ports. That was one of the big pieces of feedback was people didn't want to be limited to two.

[Ben Thompson]

The PlayStation, I think, just had two at the time. And maybe the N64 had four.

[Louis C.K.]

Here we go.

[Ben Thompson]

Look at this. Getting a celebrity like that, like, OpenAI had so many announcements this.

[Tyler Cowen]

Look at the fit there was.

[Ben Thompson]

The whole Scarlett Johansson thing. They didn't bring out the Rock. Yeah, I might want to use that sometime, Bill.

[Bill Gates (voice in Xbox launch video)]

Well, thanks, Rock. And it really.

[Ben Thompson]

The celebrity cameo launch is completely forgotten art. We don't know how to do this anymore.

[Tyler Cowen]

I think people would be shocked at how inexpensive it could be to work with a. I don't know about a list, but maybe like an aging out. Like somebody that was iconic.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes, yes.

[Tyler Cowen]

Actor, an athlete, et cetera. And just instead of spending $30,000 on some insane launch video, just get a camera and hire some celebrity and have them explain your product. There was that drink company that did this. Do you remember? They had some celebrity, like, read every single.

[Ben Thompson]

I do remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tyler Cowen]

Orca.

[Ben Thompson]

Orca, yeah, orca. Yeah, we remember it. Founders have figured out how to marshal the right resources for really cinematic footage. Good editing, a bunch of things to introduce their product. But some of them just aren't charismatic on camera, unfortunately, and they just don't have the reps. So if you bring in a celebrity, it can just also. It's just way more thumb stopping. Like, you're just gonna be scrolling and be like, oh, what is the Rock doing there? Promoting your product anyway, CES, when it launched, I thought this was impressive. 1967, no precedent. There's not really a tech community. It's sort of new. 17,000 people show up. 200 companies put on exhibitions. That seems like a lot. It's grown not even 10x. I mean this was this year or in 2024. They had 130,000 attendees. Like it's grown a lot, but it's not, you know, it started out pretty big. I think this year should be more interesting because the Bluetooth, Wi, Fi, IoT, all that stuff was like sort of annoying. Maybe the AI stuff gets annoying, but I still feel like there's more opportunity for, for actually cool integrations with AI in all sorts of different hardware things at the same time. I was at Best Buy over the break and I saw a TV that said it was powered by AI. And I was just shuddering thinking about how bad of an experience that probably was because like, what is it gonna be trying to do? It's probably not integrating like a frontier model. It's probably some really, really sloppy thing.

[Tyler Cowen]

Samsung had a big announcement last year.

[Ben Thompson]

Perplexity integration.

[Tyler Cowen]

Yeah, I don't know. And again, I just think anytime you're in a situation where you could ask your TV for information, probably easier to ask your phone.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, usually I think you need to be a little bit more first principles. When you think about these integrations thing. We'll get into some of the stuff that actually launched that sounded interesting. I wanted to go into the history of like how the tech conference, like the tech conference that's not linked to a single company sort of died. And a lot of it goes back to the iPhone. Actually the iPhone, probably the biggest consumer electronics product in history. It should have been launched at the Consumer Electronics show like it is the consumer electronics juggernaut.

[Tyler Cowen]

It should have been most important consumer product ever of the 21st century.

[Ben Thompson]

Totally. And they got scooped by Macworld because Jobs wanted more control over how the presentation would go. So he chose to debut the iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco on January 9, 2007. Macworld was technically independent from Apple, so the conference was created by idg, this international data group. Eventually Macworld was technically independent from, from Apple, but Apple was like obviously the cornerstone draw to the event. So they give them the keynote, great floor space, and then all the other independent third party Mac developers. So if you were developing a piece of software or even just like, you know, a phone case, didn't make sense at that time. But like you could imagine all sorts of different peripherals, a printer, you'd go there and figure out partnerships and do deals. Launching the iPhone at Mac World, which happened at the exact same time as ces, it allowed Jobs to control everything about the big reveal, the lighting, the pacing. He was famously like fanatical about. He rehearsed for weeks and weeks and weeks. He wanted things exactly. He wanted certain demos to happen after. And he just got way more control at Macworld than he would have gotten at ces. And the big thing is that at ces journalists go around from booth to booth and they compare spec sheets. So they create these like charts and they keep everything in a category. And he wanted to be category defining and he wanted to break the category. And he also did not want to be compared to the Nokia N95. No, the Nokia N95 was actually the best weird name.

[Tyler Cowen]

It was more performant. He didn't want to go spec to spec.

[Ben Thompson]

He didn't. So The Nokia had 3G already. It had GPS, it allowed for copy pasting of text. It had a front facing camera, it.

[Tyler Cowen]

Had 5 megapixel rear camera. Until we can copy and paste, we don't have that power.

[Ben Thompson]

No, no. The number of features that the Nokia N95 is crazy. It could record videos. The iPhone couldn't record videos. It had a 5 megapixel camera instead of a 2 megapixel camera. It even had an FM radio. The Nokia beat it on like, you know, 10 different specs. The only thing that the iPhone really had going for it was that it had a touchscreen. But people didn't think they wanted a touchscreen at that point because most touchscreens were terrible. And then also it had some other unique Apple innovations like a full featured Safari web browser. But it didn't even have third party apps. The Nokia did. Steve Jobs was able to sort of reframe the whole iPhone discussion as like it's just this own thing. Don't comp us to Nokia. Why are we talking about Nokia? We're not going to talk about Nokia. They're not at Macworld. They're not allowed to be here.

[Tyler Cowen]

Best marketer of all time, clearly.

[Ben Thompson]

And everyone copped. Apple actually pulled out of Macworld two years later, started doing WWDC and their own self hosted events, self distributed events. Obviously technology itself makes a lot of that easier. Cameras are cheaper. You can livestream. So you have Google I O, Microsoft Build, Meta Connect, Samsung Unpack. When Zuck introduced the latest Meta Ray Ban displays, he didn't do it at ces. He didn't wait for ces. He was just like, I'm going to have my own event. Everyone's followed Jobs playbook. The older trade show format still works for lots of Companies and big tech companies do still have presences. So just to today at CES or yesterday, Jensen was there and Nvidia unveiled.

[Tyler Cowen]

Vera Rubin which looks incredible.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, but also it's not a consumer electronics product. It's kind of an odd place to do it, but it's like a fun event. But even Nvidia has their own conferences now. So my main takeaway is like, just like in terms of key moments in tech history, I don't expect them to happen at independent trade shows anymore. Although the Rock alongside Bill Gates is an iconic moment. The first thing that I wanted to go through was the Wall Street Journal's write up of CES coverage is interesting because it's almost no consumer electron. Of course they highlighted Nvidia, the faster artificial intelligence chips. Vera Rubin the CPU GPU combination. Mercedes Benz Nvidia has a partnership to make the first autonomous car.

[Tyler Cowen]

The tire of my Mercedes Benz exploded autonomously this morning on the way to work. The Journal says AMD also unveiled its latest AI chips known as the Instinct, which will launch later this year. They're expected to be AMD strongest competition to Nvidia yet. Shares fell more than 2%. Uber ride hailing company plus EV maker Lucid and Neuro have begun on road testing for their planned Robotaxi service. Uber expects to offer the service in San Francisco later this year. Stock jumped five and a half percent.

[Ben Thompson]

LEGO launched a smart brick.

[Tyler Cowen]

And there we go.

[Ben Thompson]

High tech Star wars toys.

[Tyler Cowen]

This was, this was the launch, launch of the year contender. And it's already, it's the first week of January. So let's pull up and you'll see.

[Bill Gates (voice in Xbox launch video)]

From the sound and the color when it detects it. But it's not just looking for the minifigure. It knows who that minifigure is and actually it knows where that minifigure is. So as I move the minifigure around, you'll see different lights and colors depending on where the minifigure is compared to the brick.

[Ben Thompson]

What does this allow us to do?

[Tyler Cowen]

Well, you. More dopamine for children.

[Ben Thompson]

Let's go, let's go. I think this is good.

[Tyler Cowen]

I. I remember we turned every LEGO brick into a mini iPad.

[Ben Thompson]

There was some sort of LEGO programmable computer, but it was much larger. It was about this big when I was a kid. And yeah, Lego Mindstorm, Mindstorms. That was it. That was amazing. But yeah. So Lego's launching the most ambitious brick it's ever made. A tiny computer that fits entirely inside a classic two by four LEGO Brick. It will make entire Lego sets come to life.

[Tyler Cowen]

Love it.

[Ben Thompson]

Coverage. Very cool.

[Tyler Cowen]

And of course, Boston Dynamics, demo champions of the world. Boston Dynamics is starting the year strong. They seem to be upset. That figure is valued at roughly one Ford Motor Company and they're not happy about it. They had a new video of various Boston Dynamics.

[Ben Thompson]

They should be in de facto Hyundai here. They've been doing this for so long, but I don't know. It looks good. How tall is it? 2.3 meters. Oh, that's how long it can reach. That's pretty big. I feel like a lot of the humanoids have been really, really small. Just kind of like smaller. Is this. Is this not cgi? I can't even tell at this point.

[Tyler Cowen]

This looks like.

[Ben Thompson]

Wow. Oh, that was a cool move.

[Tyler Cowen]

The way that it can move.

[Ben Thompson]

That was a cool move.

[Tyler Cowen]

The way that it stands up is wild, too. There's standing up. It looks like a spider and then.

[Ben Thompson]

It just kind of. Yeah, very disconcerting.

[Tyler Cowen]

Do you think that this, maybe one of their first use cases, could be gloving?

[Ben Thompson]

Oh, yeah, that's really trendy. I've been seeing that. Gloving. I saw some video of somebody gloving on an airplane or something. You see that one? Yeah. You saw that?

[Tyler Cowen]

Tyler, you need to start gloving.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[Tyler Cowen]

Anytime a founder raises more than $100 million, you got to say, can I glove for you?

[Ben Thompson]

Hello.

[Tyler Cowen]

For you?

[Ben Thompson]

What is that from like, EDM culture or something? I don't know.

[Tyler Cowen]

Funny. Sorry. Yeah. So apparently Hyundai is preparing to deploy tens of thousands of their robots into their manufacturing facilities.

[Ben Thompson]

66 pounds sustained. You know, weight capacity. Most. Most people can lift more than that. Come on, we gotta get those numbers up.

[Tyler Cowen]

In the New York Times Today, Jamie Dimon's 770 million haul shows how bankers are on top again. Let's give it up for the bankers.

[Ben Thompson]

Is this gong worthy?

[Tyler Cowen]

This is gong worthy.

[Ben Thompson]

First gong.

[Tyler Cowen]

The Trump admin is lifting regulations and deal making is heating up. For Jamie Dimon, being JPMorgan Chase's chief executive was more lucrative in 2025 than ever. For nearly 15 years, Jamie Dimon, the bank chieftain, has carried around what might as well be a talisman when he sees regulators, elected officials and journalists at just the right time in meetings, he breaks out a single page printout that he calls a spaghetti chart. On it, Mr. Diamond's under underlings have crammed in tiny type a comically complicated flowchart meant to represent the various laws and regulations to which his company, JP Morgan Chase, is subject. The theatrics have finally worked. The Trump Admin is not just taking apart regulations, but attacking the whole regulatory agencies that date back to the 20082009 financial crisis and were meant to keep banks from giving in to their worst impulses. Regulators have also made it easier for banks to peddle in risky assets again like cryptocurrency. And President Trump paused enforcement of foreign anti bribery rules. Interesting. The deregulatory bonanza alone makes it the best time in a generation to be a banker. But there's more. Falling interest rates and a permissive set of antitrust overseers are helping reverse a lull in the lucrative business of arranging M and a. As the $100 billion bidding war between Netflix and Paramount for Warner Brothers Discovery shows once imperiled real estate loans look steadier. Thanks to the rebound in in office work, stocks are near record levels. The bond market had its best year since 2020 and gold and silver have soared. All of which feeds the trading businesses that keep Wall Street's profit machine humming. A combination of salary, bonuses, dividends, stock grants and appreciation in his allotment of the bank shares yielded roughly 770 million for Jamie Dimon. For the chief executives of Citi, whose shares rose more than 65% in 2025 after the bank slashed tens of thousands of jobs in a years long restructuring and Goldman Sachs shares. Tyler displacement. You're gonna be.

[Ben Thompson]

No.

[Tyler Cowen]

Because they were up 60.

[Ben Thompson]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Tyler Cowen]

Yeah. Cause the way that you reacted there looked a little suspicious. Your soul is out of balance because you have fallen out of touch with your consumer demographic. Pay more attention to your personalized ads. Let them flow through you. Yeah, pay attention. They do really tell you something about where your energy is.

[Ben Thompson]

I've been getting. I mean speaking of the CES consumer products, I've been getting personalized ads for the board. The smart game board. But we had the founder on the show and I bought one.

[Tyler Cowen]

I bought one too. Did you want to talk about capital in the 22nd century?

[Ben Thompson]

Yes. Let's read Philip Trammell's post. He says a week ago, Dwarkesh and his him Phil posted a fun essay using Thomas Piketty's capital in the 21st century as a lens through which to explore the possible impacts of AI on inequality. As the Financial Times kindly put it. That was all it was meant to be. The discussion has definitely become more intense than I'd expected. This is my first time on X in any serious way. Welcome to the arena, brother.

[Tyler Cowen]

Get in.

[Ben Thompson]

Buckle up. I don't Think they wrote it knowing that there was going to be this whole like Ro Khanna, Peter Thiel, Teddy Schleffer, like the whole like wealth tax thing that was going on in California and they just happened to drop something that read like a critique or a commentary. It was in the Zeitgeist at the same time. But I don't think that was intentional. I think they were working on this piece for like probably months. It's like a very. It's like a paper he's responding to the economists that put him in the truth zone or at least tried to.

[Tyler Cowen]

Maybe. Maybe it'd be helpful to kind of summarize. People haven't read it. Kind of key fact. So that thesis is basically like inequality is going to get worse because of AI. That's core thesis. And maybe you need to figure out a way to different methods of taxation to redistribute the wealth that is ultimately created if people cannot effectively increase their own capital via their labor. So key factors. They talk about privatization of returns. So like very, very hard to get exposure to xai. Yeah. Right now if you're just a normal person to. Most people have their wealth in their home. Right. And the issue is like home equity is not a good way to benefit from increasing returns to capital that come from automation. Right. If you have a home in Ohio and you have like $300,000 locked up in that, you're not going to get like, you're not going to get some massive incremental return from that. Maybe somebody that is pursuing AI automation or building factories or something, they could buy your home at a premium, but they could also just buy acres and acres and acres of just land somewhere else in the US at far, far less. They talk about the end of international sort of catch up which is basically that poor countries historically had a lot of cheap labor. They'd bring in capital, they would turn that and they would cheaply work. Yeah. They'd create value and retain some of that value even though a lot of the investment was foreign. They talk about wealth transfer as a lot of more developed economies are sort of like aging, aging out effectively. I guess pushback here generally, like hey, even in the scenario that you lay out, things could get so crazy that the institutions just break. The way that the world currently works breaks. If you own a bunch of OpenAI shares in, in this sort of fast takeoff scenario is this, you know, to. To maybe there's a world where you could pay for things with OpenAI shares. Right. But is a super intelligence going to say oh, oh, yes. I would like to buy some OpenAI shares. Right.

[Ben Thompson]

Or would they just corners the market.

[Tyler Cowen]

Buys them all, or just rebuild, you know, effectively just rebuild, you know, So I love, you know, reading. I love reading this essay. I'd like to see more of them, but it's so difficult to. Any scenario you can imagine there are 50. There's an infinite number of parallel realities where none of the same ground rules apply.

[Ben Thompson]

It would be funny if we. If we discovered aliens that were just extremely rich. Like, would that make us all worse off? Like, would Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos go to bed sadder a million light years away?

[Tyler Cowen]

Like, your size is not size.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, we're just like, yeah, we're actually sitting on an entire planet of diamond. And we're worth quadrillions of dollars. Everyone here is worth quadrillions of dollars. You guys are nowhere near us in terms of wealth. Like, how much is it? How much is wealth inequality? A direct focus on keeping up with the Joneses, like the neighbor effect, the direct mimetics of the person that you see is your equal. Ben Thompson kind of returns to this idea that you have to assume that something about the human condition holds where humans are upset by wealth inequality, but they don't value other humans or the work of other humans or the creativity of other humans, and they don't see any value in that. He quotes Louis C.K. in an October 2008 appearance of late Night with Conan. Let's watch this Louis CK Clip.

[Louis C.K.]

We may be going back to that, by the way, but in a way, good, because when I read things like the foundations of capitalism are shattering, I'm like, maybe we need that. Maybe we need some time where we're walking around with a donkey with pots clanging on the side.

[Tyler Cowen]

You think that would just bring us back to reality?

[Louis C.K.]

Yeah, because everything is amazing right now and nobody's happy. Like, in my lifetime, the changes in the world have been incredible. When I was a kid, we had a rotary phone. We had a phone that you had to stand next to and you had to dial it.

[Tyler Cowen]

Yes.

[Louis C.K.]

You don't realize how primitive you're making sparks in a phone. And you actually would hate people with zeros in their numbers because it was more like, oh, this guy's got two zeros. Screw that guy.

[Tyler Cowen]

Why don't.

[Louis C.K.]

And then if they called and you weren't home, the phone would just ring lonely by itself. And then if you wanted money, you had to go in the bank for when it was open for, like, three hours. It is stand in line, write yourself a check like an idiot.

[Ben Thompson]

And then when you run out of.

[Louis C.K.]

Money, you just go, well, I can't do any more things now.

[Tyler Cowen]

Right?

[Louis C.K.]

I can't do any more things now.

[Tyler Cowen]

That's it.

[Louis C.K.]

Yeah, that was it. And even if you had a credit card, the guy would go, ugh. And he'd bring out this whole shunk, shunk. And he'd write credit. You'd have to call the president to see if you have any money.

[Ben Thompson]

It's all true, kids.

[Louis C.K.]

You had to call the president. Yeah. It was ridiculous.

[Ben Thompson]

Yes.

[Louis C.K.]

Do you feel that we now in the 21st century, we take technology for granted? Well, yeah, because now we live in an amazing, amazing world. And it's wasted on the, on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don't care. Because this is what people are like now. They got their phone and they're like, ugh. It won't give it a second, it's going to space. Can you give it a second to get back from space is the speed of light. I was on a, I was on an airplane and there was Internet, high speed Internet on the airplane. That's the newest thing that I know exists. And I'm sitting on the plane and they go, open up your laptop. You can go on the Internet.

[Tyler Cowen]

And it's fast.

[Louis C.K.]

And I'm watching YouTube clips.

[Ben Thompson]

I'm in an airplane, 2008. And then it breaks down and they apologize.

[Louis C.K.]

The Internet's not working. The guy next to me goes, this is bull. Like how quickly the world owes him something. Yes, he Knew existed only 10 seconds ago. Right. And on planes.

[Tyler Cowen]

Couple days ago, my 1 1/2 year old has not been sleeping super well. You know, toddlers, they go through periods where they sleep well and then they stop sleeping well. And with my 3 year old, we hired a, when he was going through a similar phase, we hired a sleep consultant. These are people that just help your baby. It's like a sleep coach for your baby and the parents or whatever. And with my 3 year old, we hired somebody and they effectively, the effective rate is like hundreds of dollars an hour, right? Because there's some retainer, blah, blah, blah. And it works really well. It's a lifesaver. But with one and a half year old, a few days ago, my wife just goes to an LLM and just breaks down exactly what's happening, gets the answer. And it is effectively running calculations based on the child's age and their sleep patterns now and how to get them back on a better sleep pattern. And within 24 hours, the problem was totally solved. Like back to sleeping on the right schedule, napping on the right schedule, like, basically one shot at it. OpenAI has gotten so much. Specifically, Sam has gotten so much pushback because he'll go out and say, we're going to solve this. You're going to have a personal tutor in your pocket and all this stuff. And then people hammer him because it's like, well, then we're doing sora and we're doing adult entertainment and things like that. AI is actually already delivering on this.

[Ben Thompson]

Do you remember the Fallon clip that. Where that went viral, where Fallon asks him like, do you use ChatGPT to parent your kid? And he was like, honestly, it feels weird to say it, but yes. What Louis CK identified in this clip was the extent to which human happiness is a relative versus an absolute phenomenon. What we care about is how much we have is not how much we have, but how we compare. That, by extension, is what drives the technological paradox I noted above. More capabilities, more broadly distributed, has tremendously enriched the world on an absolute basis. But the end result, however, has been the dramatic expansion of our comparison set, making us feel more immiserated than ever. If we discover the trillionaire quadrillionaire aliens, we're all dumb.

[Tyler Cowen]

We're all gonna be miserable. Should we take it over to Jocko?

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah, Jocko.

[Tyler Cowen]

Jocko, one of the greatest podcast capitalists, maybe, right? Apparently. I didn't even know he had this brand Origin. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

[Ben Thompson]

Yeah.

[Tyler Cowen]

So many products made gear. Apparently somebody is a. Somebody in the government is a Jocko supporter because they threw Maduro in some Origin looking sharp. Got him out of the Nike tech.

[Ben Thompson]

It's called Origin Built by Freedom Hoodie on Maduro. We gotta get Maduro in some TVPN merch, I think. We absolutely do not have to do that. That's ridiculous.

[Tyler Cowen]

Silence in turn, Marco Rubio was talking about how they don't have to pay out the reward now because they just got them themselves. We, of course, I feel like we.

[Ben Thompson]

Deserve a small slice for promoting the reward.

[Tyler Cowen]

We did, we did do a promoted post for the capture Maduro back in Q1 of last year. Delta gets all the credit. Maybe.

[Ben Thompson]

The dea ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges during his arraignment in U.S. federal court in New York City on Monday, defiantly telling a judge that he was still the head of his nation despite being whisked away by US forces over the weekend. I am innocent, he said. I am not guilty I am a decent man. I am still the president of my country, he said through a Spanish interpreter, adding that he was a prisoner of war and had been captured from his home in Caracas. Maduro's top lieutenant, Delsey Rodriguez, was sworn in as Venezuela's acting president Monday, and Delsey Rodriguez is picked by Maduro. So should be a Maduro ally. But there's been back and forth on how much he'll be cooperating with the United States. Security officers were out in force in caucus, running checkpoints and patrolling neighborhoods to prevent protests in Manhattan. Monday's hearing kicked off a nearly unprecedented legal battle over a foreign leader in a US Court. The arrest of a head of state presents challenges for both prosecutors and the defense. The two sides could spend years sparring over the legality of Maduro's arrest and charges before he goes to trial.

[Tyler Cowen]

So chat says Maduro uses perplexity because of Ronaldo. I wonder. The chat is going off saying good. You know the jocko?

[Ben Thompson]

Oh yeah.

[Tyler Cowen]

Do you think Maduro is looking in the mirror from the clink?

[Ben Thompson]

Got captured by U.S. delta Force. Good, good.

[Tyler Cowen]

Wearing his origin.

[Ben Thompson]

Arrested. Arrested on drug trafficking charges.

[Tyler Cowen]

Good.

[Ben Thompson]

More inspiration to grind harder. It's an opportunity to learn about the US legal system. Thank you everyone for listening to TVPN today. We will be back at 11am Pacific tomorrow.

[Tyler Cowen]

Tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in. Cheers.

[Ben Thompson]

Goodbye.