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- [00:01]
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Scott Galloway
Are you.
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- [02:00]
Scott Galloway
If you want to protest, more power to you. If you want to register people to vote, I salute you. But the easiest way to maybe save some money and have a really big impact and send a message to the markets to Trump is to resist and unsubscribe. This is a coin operator president and these individuals have decided that they're one and only job is shareholder value. There's a ton of pressure. Nobody wants to go first, but there needs to be collective action from 1050100 of the Fortune 500 to say this has just gone too far.
- [02:34]
Hugh Docherty
Welcome to Daily Beast Podcast. I'm Hugh Docherty. I'm executive editor of the Daily Beast. I'm filling in for Joanna Coles and I am delighted to be here, especially because we have an amazing guest, Scott Galloway. He is of course host of the profgee podcast. He's co host of Pivot. He is an expert in business, and now he is moving in a very big way to directly take on Donald Trump. He has come up with a call to resist and unsubscribe. And we are going to talk about what he says are the ways we can all make Trump give up his worst policies. If it is so simple, you'll be surprised nobody has thought of it first. It is already spreading shockwaves among the powerful. And Professor Galloway is also going to tell us the secrets of what all Those emotional support CEOs who are constantly hanging around Trump are really texting him in private. So let's get right into it. Welcome, Professor Scott Galloway. You are asking people to resist a and unsubscribe. And I just want to take the opportunity to just give us a very basic explanation because there are so many questions that this raises. But what is resist and unsubscribe?
- [03:54]
Scott Galloway
Well, thanks for having me, Hugh. And first and foremost, if I could give my sons anything, it would be a Scottish accent.
- [03:59]
Hugh Docherty
That is very kind. I'm happy to pass it on.
- [04:03]
Scott Galloway
Is it Glaswegian? Do I hear some Glasgow?
- [04:05]
Hugh Docherty
Yes, I am Glaswegian. I'm very proud of that. I'm sorry. Sitting live and direct in Manhattan. And I am very proud of my home city. So thank you. I appreciate that.
- [04:14]
Scott Galloway
Resistant unsub. Essentially, I got very frustrated about ice activity in Minneapolis and wanted to do more than just share my outrage with a ring light and on a podcast. So I think I've zeroed in on what is the soft tissue of the Trump administration. And that is the only time the Trump administration walks back his actions is when the markets fall. Either the S and P or the bond market. That's when he walked back his plants annexed Greenland, when he walked back some of the tariffs. The soft tissue of the market right now, where you can have the biggest impact is in big tech that represent 10 companies, represent 40% of the S and P, and they're highly sensitive to subscription growth or lack thereof. So I've built a site, resist and unsubscribe. And essentially I have what's called ground zero, which are the 10 big tech companies and links to where it's easy to unsubscribe and then the blast zone, and that is companies directly enabling ISIS activities where it's at and T or Hilton or the likes. And the basic notion is the following. If you unsubscribe from ChatGPT, that's $240. It's trading at 40 times revenues. That's a $10,000 hit to their market cap. And these companies are highly sensitive to growth rates and projected growth rates. So if you want to protest, more power to you. If you want to register people to vote, I salute you. But the easiest way to maybe save some money and have a really big impact and send a message to the markets, to Trump and to other citizens that they can have an impact is to resist and unsubscribe. And we started with 6,000 uniques a day. We're up to 60 or 80,000. And according to AI, we're going to catalyze somewhere between 150 and 200,000 unsubs across big tech.
- [05:52]
Hugh Docherty
I just wanted to ask you now, on day 12, I believe, of this, what was the moment that came to you? Because I know you were in Davos almost a month ago, and that was a big event for Trump. He went there claiming he was going to annex Greenland, and he chickened out. Was that one of the things that got you thinking about how to do this?
- [06:17]
Scott Galloway
No. I can tell you the exact moment. I'm usually able to disassociate myself from what's going on in politics. And there was one moment. I don't know how you've felt about this view, but I've increasingly found my blood pressure and anxiety going up, especially over the course of the last few months, especially around ice. And the moment where I thought I need to do more than just articulate my outrage on my podcast was when Secretary Noem, after Alex Preddy was murdered, described him as a domestic terrorist and said that he was brandishing a weapon with intent to massacre federal agents. I thought that that was the equivalent of showing up and urinating on the grave of a recently buried man who was a nurse for veterans. I just thought, at some point, depravity has to need some resistance. That was the moment where I said, okay, I need to do something, quote, unquote, for me. And Dan Harris, who talks about, has this great book inside called 110% Happier. He says action absorbs anxiety. And I thought, I just want to do something. And so I came up with this idea. I think I've discovered, if you will, the soft tissue of the markets that he appears to respond to. And I thought, this is an interesting idea. I have a footprint. I have some reach, some awareness. And I thought, I want to put it to use more than just selling more ZipRecruiter or, you know, athletic greens. And so I launched it 11 days ago. And every day we get more and more. More and more site traffic, more and more media covering it. So so far it's going pretty well.
- [07:54]
Hugh Docherty
So just practically, how difficult is it to unsubscribe? Because we all, we are all signed up to so many things and we all know that they're kind of complicated. But how, how easy or difficult is it to. Let's take Amazon, which is the top of your ground zero list.
- [08:12]
Scott Galloway
Well, it's situational and I'm a fairly economically secure person who, you know, living in London. Quite frankly, I don't think it's fair of me to tell people not to buy groceries or not to show up to work. I'm trying to lead by example and I try to be transparent. I still have an iPhone. I'm not giving it up. But I unsubscribe from Apple TV plus and I don't miss it. I unsubscribe from Apple Music and I don't miss it. My family, we've gone from six streaming media platforms to one. And if I'd gone to zero, it would have been. I would have been smothered in my sleep by my boys. But it wasn't that hard to go from six to one. And you're going to find I unsubscribe from Amazon Prime. Some people depend on Amazon prime for a lot of things, but what you might also find, as I did, is that I was also a member of Amazon One, their healthcare service, which I was paying $199 for for the last six years that I don't use. When I unsubscribed from AT&T and I switched to Noble Mobile, you know what I found? I had four AT&T contracts. One for my phone and three.
- [09:12]
Hugh Docherty
Two.
- [09:12]
Scott Galloway
For iPads, which are in a landfill somewhere four years ago, and one for a BlackBerry I haven't used since 2014. I had spent over the last 14 years, probably four or five thousand dollars on AT&T contracts. And they're very good at renewing and charging you. And if you're like me and your. Your bills are pretty complicated. You don't realize how much money you're spending on this. I. I canceled my Uber account and I found out I was taking 350 Ubers a year. And this is a story of privilege because I have money, but I was spending somewhere between 30 and $35,000 a year on Uber because what big tech does is they consolidate the market and then they start raising prices faster than inflation. The Price of an Uber Lux has basically doubled in the last five or six years. So for some people, I. I'm not going to judge. I'm not saying everyone should move to a cabin in the woods and not turn on their lights. This is situational. It's up to you. The decisions you make are yours. What I'm saying is this is a fairly frictionless way to send a real message. And you're gonna find if you go to resistantunsub.com and you click on these links that you are spending money on a lot of places you didn't realize where you can save some money.
- [10:28]
Hugh Docherty
Now, is it breaking through? Because I know that you have had people talking to you from the world of tech who have begun to be aware of this. What are you hearing?
- [10:41]
Scott Galloway
I've heard from approximately 20% of the CEOs of these companies. And to be blunt, they're always incredibly charming. I know a lot of them, Scott, really respect what you're doing. I'm not happy with what's going on. We have a fiduciary obligation to our shareholders. It's difficult for any one person to go first. I get it. I had a conversation with Jeffrey Sonnenveld from Yale, who convenes all these CEOs, and I think there needs to be. I'm empathetic to the fact that it's hard for any one person to go first. But my message back to them is, what's the point of having all this money? All these guys are in their 50s and 60s. They're billionaires. I mean, what's the point of having all this money? You're going to be dead soon. You want to be seen as someone who said something or someone who got your share price up so you could be worth 3 billion instead of 2.8. So I'm not sympathetic to it. But they're all exceptionally charming, exceptionally nice. Where I've seen real pickup is in traditional media. In the last five days, I think I've been on every major cable news network, and I think I'm going to go on Fox this weekend. And what's interesting, if you look at the history, all of a sudden I've become sort of a minor student of protests. The most recent was the Kimmel protest. Kimmel, Disney and unsubs to Disney were actually plummeting when they backed down and put Kimmel back on the air, but media coverage had increased. It's actually the shame of media and the impact it has on the internal culture and the fear of more economic impact that stops or results in action. So I've been doing a lot of social. No, paid, absolutely no, paid to drive traffic. But I've been going on traditional media and I've been using AI like crazy. I'm a very analytics driven person. I look at the site visits times, the conversion rate times the number of platforms people are on average unsubscribing from. And I do pretty tight predictions. And we've gone from a prediction of 30,000 unsub subscribes in February to now we're predicting somewhere between 150 and 200,000 unsubs. So traditional media and new media such as this show have played a really important role and it's cumulative, it's starting to gain traction. And other people are using their platforms to encourage people to resist and unsubscribe. And the thing I'm trying to convince you of is maybe you just want to unsubscribe from one of your ride hailing programs. Maybe you want to unsubscribe from 20 things. That's your business, it's your life, but it's something you can do with other people and it's fairly frictionless. I would argue it's fairly easy.
- [13:10]
Hugh Docherty
You were talking about it's like the social pressure inside a company that brought back Jimmy Kimmel, for example. What do you want to see? I'm just going to use Amazon again. What do you want to see Amazon do differently?
- [13:26]
Scott Galloway
What I would like to see, Just being realistic. The objective is to send a signal to consumers that the most radical act of activism in a capitalist society is not participation. The greatest political or government action probably in recent history was in Q1 of 2020, when the government immediately put trillions of dollars of stimulus into the economy, passed new guidelines, new laws almost overnight. And I don't think it was because 10,000 or 20,000 people had died in the previous month from COVID It's because GDP had crashed 32%. So I think if you can just take GDP down one or two points or if Sam Altman or Andy Jassy or Tim Cook says this unsubscribe thing is getting a little bit uncomfortable for us and our shareholders, I think they're going to find their backbone and maybe not show up for as many Melania premieres or decide that maybe we shouldn't be as supportive of ICE as we have been, or maybe we're going to be a little bit more courageous with our views. What they're we're going to say out loud what they've Been texting privately to people like me about their views on this, but I don't. I think to wait on their better angels showing up is just fool's. Aaron. I think you have to hit them where they feel it, and that's in terms of shareholder value and a decline in subscriber growth. So what do I want from them? I want them to show some fidelity to the American values that made them so wealthy and built such great companies. And to speak up and say that demonizing immigrants, sending them to black sites at their equivalent of concentration camps, which is the definition of a concentration camp, is a camp outside of the domestic territory where you're not subject to the same legal protection. A mass secret police loyal to one person, not to an institution, that this is just not going to be good for the economy, not good for my company, and not good for America. That's what I want them to. I want them to say out loud what they text me in private when.
- [15:22]
Hugh Docherty
You talk to them. Why have they become this sort of emotional support CEO group? I mean, Trump goes everywhere and takes with him people like Tim Cook very prominently. Sometimes Jamie Dimon is there, sometimes he's not. But why do they all flock to Trump? What is it that's in their minds that makes them think that it's a good idea? Because they weren't around Biden like that. They weren't visibly around Obama like that. What's Trump got for them?
- [15:55]
Scott Galloway
And it's simple. It's one word. It's money. Come to the Melania premiere and there's a chance when I, if I increase the tariffs on China, I'll do a carve out for Apple. Oh, you need your Nvidia. You're Nvidia and you want to sell chips into China. Well, maybe I'll let you. If you let me prostitute you around and treat you like an emotional support dog, giving me credibility. And if you give two or three million dollars to my new West Wing renovation or East Wing renovation, maybe I'll approve. I'll put pressure on the FTC to approve the acquisition by you versus someone else. This is a coin operator president. And these individuals have decided that their one and only job is shareholder value. And I empathize with that. I get it. There's a ton of pressure. Nobody wants to go first, but there needs to be collective action from 1050, 100 to the Fortune 500 to say this has just gone too far. So. But what is it about? It's about one thing. It's about shareholder value. Full stop. I Think if I don't think. I like to think of myself as someone who understands the markets of math. I don't think there's any way these companies can live up, these AI companies can live up to their obligations around the infrastructure investments they have projected or that they'll need around inference and data centers. So what are they going to do? They're going to have the President most likely back some sort of, I won't call it a bailout, but some sort of investment that backs debt to build these data centers or these massive capex investments. And I think that's why they all fly to Washington, put on a suit and sit around a table and say shit like thanks to your leadership. And they basically see this guy is very intelligent, he connects the dots. He says kiss my ass publicly. Hundreds of billions of dollars in it for you and your shareholders. You don't kiss my ass publicly, I'm going to come for you. This is the definition of an autocracy, cronyism or even, let me use a word the right hates more than any of those things. It's total socialism. What on earth is the President doing meeting with Ted Sarandos and the Ellisons, talking about the acquisition of Time Warner? That has nothing to do with the President. It should be who has the biggest check and then who survives regulatory review around concentration of power or a CFIUS National Security Review. So we have all of a sudden decided that the President can get in the way, can be a social, you know, practice socialism, cronyism. But they are responding to these incentives. They are saying let's wait this guy out, let's kiss his ass, let's give a million dollars to the east wing, let's go to the premier and let's stay out of his crosshairs and make sure the good times keep going for us and our shareholders. I'd see it as pretty straightforward.
- [18:38]
Hugh Docherty
Can I just, I'm just going to go through the list and just give me some, give us some ideas. So Amazon, we know what your views on that are. Meta, what do you think Meta can do to change Trump?
- [18:51]
Scott Galloway
Well, Meta's not, I mean, you're talking about a CEO here who's comfortable ignoring data showing that teenage girls are more likely to engage in self harm because of his content. So it's not what they can do, it's what we can do. And that is we can communicate to these companies that if they don't push back on this type of slow burn into fascism, we're not going to use their platforms. We're not going to subscribe to their services, we're not going to advertise. Meta's a little bit harder because it's advertising driven and it's such a robust business that I don't think anyone advertiser has more than 1%. And people, including myself, I've been understandably criticized. I've gotten over, I think 20 million likes and way more views than that on social media. And my primary means of communicating has been Instagram. And people say, well, that's hypocritical. You have Meta on the list. I'm like, well, I don't like coal fire plants, but I turn on my lights in Florida. The bottom line is Meta has a monopoly on communication right now. So I would love an alternative. I would love a DOJ or an FTC that actually did their damn job in broke up these companies such that we have more alternatives and they couldn't charge the rents they charge, including forcing me, who can't stand these people to use their platforms. So Meta is a tough one because they have such monopoly power over the distribution of information right now. You know, I'd like to think there are other. Can you use Signal instead of WhatsApp? There are some substitutes, but I want to be clear. These companies, generally speaking, have monopoly power and it's not easy, it's not easy to unsubscribe from some of them. Others it's easier. There's a lot of options, you know. Can you use Lyft instead of Uber? Yeah. Can you go to Noble Mobile or Verizon or whoever it is instead of att? Absolutely. Can you unsubscribe from Amazon prime for a month? Maybe you don't need Amazon prime video. Yeah, you're going to find, you might find. Also you might have multiple accounts. Do you.
- [20:51]
Hugh Docherty
Can you use the free version? I think that's very relatable to everybody, isn't it? The you suddenly find, as you said, you're paying for a whole load of things you didn't know about. As I found when I looked in.
- [21:01]
Scott Galloway
This morning, I'm saving $170 a month on things I don't even use.
- [21:06]
Hugh Docherty
Hold that thought, Professor. We have to hear from the people who pay the bills.
- [21:13]
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- [23:09]
Scott Galloway
What do you have to lose?
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- [23:23]
Scott Galloway
Terms.
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Hugh Docherty
And we are back talking Boycotting Big tech with Prof. G. One of the things that I imagine when you go on Fox or as you put it yourself, when you have a food fight with somebody from the right the charge of hypocrisy that you've used AI to come to these to help analyze this, that you're using Instagram to spread the word about it. Is that something that you're obviously not really concerned about being accused of hypocrisy here maybe. Does that take the sting out of it?
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Scott Galloway
Yeah, I'm trying to lead by example. I'll give you an example. I own Apple shares. I've owned them since 2009. I have decided I'm going to sell my Apple shares. It's going and it hurts because I think it's a great company. So I don't want to, I don't want to claim to have moral clarity around all of this, but unless you want to move to a cabin and have AM radio, you're going to have to, you know, you're going to, you. And I'm not, I'm not going to lecture people. I'm not going to tell them. I, I, I would never tell people to stop buying groceries. What I would say is the following is that Kroger trades at.03 times revenues. So if you wanted to have a $10,000 impact on Kroger stock, hoping that the Kroger CEO would reach out to the president or that the markets would indicate something, you would have to stop or buy $30,000 less in groceries. You'd have to get five American households to not buy groceries for a year. If you unsubscribe from the paid version of ChatGPT, which is $240 a year, and the company is raising money at 40 times revenues, that is a $10,000 hit. So what I'm trying to do is raise awareness that the free version of ChatGPT is pretty damn good. I use it now because I canceled the paid version. And you are having the same economic impact in sending the same signal than if you convince five American families to not buy groceries for a year. But I'm not gonna tell people what to subscribe. Unsubscribe how long to what I'm saying. This is what I am doing. And I think we have a weapon that's been hiding in plain sight. This is what the President listens to. And we can have more of an impact than we think. And it needs to be sustained. It needs to be over probably longer than a month. The protest everyone points to in history is a Montgomery bus strike. And there was a very cinematic moment where a woman refused to give up her seat. Huge leadership, very important. But actually what moved the needle was Dr. King organized carpools for a year. And ultimately the municipal bus service in Montgomery was losing 2 to $3 million a year. And then they said, okay, enough. We're no longer going to have segregated seating on our buses. So this isn't going to happen overnight. But I know for a fact that, that Most of these CEOs are cognizant of this movement, that it's beginning to register in some of their subscription analytics. And then more people are joining in. And this becomes another point of light, including protests, including good media coverage by people such as Yourself, that all adds up to one thing. Backbone and pushback. That's two things. So I don't. Am I perfect on this? I'm not giving up my iPhone. Let me be clear. I didn't want to sell my Apple stock, but I am. I'm still subscribing to one of the streaming media platforms because I have a family, but I'm going to take a lot. I'm going to speak loudly with my spend here.
- [26:49]
Hugh Docherty
You acknowledge this yourself. Obviously you've got incredible economic resources compared to other people. But one of the things that strikes me about this is that these are relatively small amounts of money. And I don't think people would begin to appreciate quite how valuable an individual customer is to these big tech companies. One of the things it seems that big tech we all think of as ultra powerful, it's been really good at projecting itself as ultra powerful. Do you think this is a kind of moment for it that people begin to realize they've got a lot more power than they realized?
- [27:26]
Scott Galloway
What you want is, you want your X Wing fighter, whatever it's called that Luke Skywalker is in, is to find the vulnerability in the Death Star that the shaft, where if a photon torpedo hits it perfectly, it blows up the whole Death Star. That shaft, or exhaust shaft, if you will, is subscriptions to big tech. Microsoft missed its cloud growth by 1 percentage point and it lost 10% of its value. And then other companies trading down in sympathy, The NASDAQ lost 100, was down one and a half percent. Everybody notices that. So if you wanted, if you wanted to have that one kill shot, it's taking the subscriptions to Amazon prime or ChatGPT or Anthropic, it's taking them down just a little bit because right now ChatGPT, OpenAI is raising money at $850 billion. And you can bet at that kind of valuation, the investors are are pouring over their subscription growth. And if their subscription growth one month this month decreases from 8% month on month to 7% month on month, the investors, the CEO all notice that. So this is the string you can pull on that unwinds a pyramid, if you will. What I'm trying to figure out, or what I think I've come up with, is what is the maximum impact relative to the disruption in your life.
- [28:54]
Hugh Docherty
One of the other things is there's an analogy to shareholder activism here as well, isn't there? You, by selling Apple yourself, a lot of people follow you for, I'm not going to say specific advice, but for a sense of how to do better financially. That's obviously not going to go down well with Apple. Should people begin to think about their stock holdings and their 401s.
- [29:22]
Scott Galloway
I don't, I don't want to recommend that. I, I think everyone has an obligation to develop and maintain economic security for them and their families. And from a shareholder standpoint, these companies are just juggernauts. What I'm trying to do is lead by example. And quite frankly, if I can take an economic hit, so I'm not recommending that people sell their stock. I just don't, I don't want to take that kind of, I, I, I think it's, I don't want to take risks with other people's well being. I am comfortable saying to them, you probably have too many big tech subscriptions that you can do without. But I don't want to tell people to not go into work or not to buy groceries or to sell their stocks. I just think that's easy for me to say so, but I am trying to lead by example. So I've owned Apple since 2009. I'm selling all of my Apple stock and I'm even Goldman Sachs is my money manager. I'm going to transfer my assets to either Royal bank of Canada or a regional bank. And by the way, I love David Solomon and I know him. Goldman's done an amazing job for me. I'm disappointed that more financial leaders like David and Jamie Dimon, who I think are leaders, have not spoken out more forcefully. Doesn't mean I won't go back to Goldman at some point. Doesn't mean I, I'm not in good relations with them. Doesn't mean they're not fantastic firms. No, I think they're all of that. But I want to send a signal with my pocketbook that what's going on here is wrong and that corporate leaders, many of whom every morning wake up and look in the mirror and say, hello, Mr. President, a lot of these people see themselves as future political leaders. But leadership is doing the right thing when it's really hard. And I don't think enough CEOs are doing, doing the hard thing right now.
- [31:10]
Hugh Docherty
Are there any specifically that you want to get to? Well, obviously you just mentioned David Solomon. You mentioned Jamie Dimon, who has got the ability to move Trump. Do you think, or is it, it takes all of them.
- [31:27]
Scott Galloway
I think it's the markets and I do think he listens. I think he takes Jamie Dimon and Jensen Huang's call right away. I think if, if if the AI platforms and Apple and Jamie Dimon within the week of each other called and said these actions by ICE are beginning to hit our company. We're beginning to notice it. I think he, he, I think he takes that call and he hears that because 70%, 77% of the earnings growth has come from these companies and the markets were up 17% basically on the back of the massive investment in the market's reaction to the acceleration of these companies. If the markets go down, the President is going to have way less cloud cover to do the kind of things he's done. Unfortunately, in America, I think the S and P and the NASDAQ are some of the most damaging metrics ever invented because as long as the NASDAQ and the S and P go up, unfortunately, America thinks that everything's all right, that the President must be doing a good job. And actually if you look at we've underperformed relative to other markets, especially when you're taking the decline in the dollar. But yeah, I think he takes those calls. I think he turns off and on the protests in Minneapolis, which isn't to say they're not powerful. I think he ignores podcasters and what they say on Ms. Now or even on Fox. I don't think he cares what the courts think. He certainly doesn't care what Congress thinks. They've become the Duma. He doesn't even care what Republicans think. He does care what the market and these tech leaders think.
- [32:57]
Hugh Docherty
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Scott Galloway
What do you have to lose?
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Scott Galloway
Can we sleep cooler?
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- [35:17]
Hugh Docherty
And we are back with Scott Galloway. Just to go more broadly on the market and so on. Amazingly, he came into office claiming he was going to be the crypto president. And crypto, broadly, has been a disaster for some people. I don't know. I didn't buy any Melania coins, perhaps wisely, but there seems to be some something of the touch of disaster about it to the crypto industry. And yet are they going to Trump? Are they saying anything?
- [35:48]
Scott Galloway
Well, he's the crypto president and he was a genius in the sense that he flew right into the manosphere. The Democratic Party basically said billionaires are evil, white people are racist, and young men are violent. And all three of those groups said, fine, we're out. Fine. You want to demonize us? Fine, we're out. And you saw a decline in all those parties in terms of their contribution and their votes. For Blue. Trump's genius was he flew right into the manosphere. Rockets, Crypto, Joe Rogan podcasts, World Wrestling Federation. He just said, I'm going full testosterone. And one of those things we said to the crypto community, I'm all behind you. I'm going to get rid of the part of the SEC investigating fraud. I'm going to pardon the guy who is convicted of fraud and is in prison right now at Binance. And while I'm at it, the Friday before my inauguration on the COVID of Dark, I'm going to create my own shitcoin and Pocket. I think it's $1.4 billion to date because people will be distracted with the inauguration. And Democrats were corrupt with small caps. You know, Nancy Pelosi is, I think leaving Congress worth $350 million. She's outperformed Warren Buffett in the NASDAQ. He's like, well, that's small ball. If we're going to be corrupt, let's be corrupt for billions, not for millions. So the level of the crypto has been the ultimate vessel for his corruption. And also tactically, it was super smart to go after something that just reeked of testosterone and be very supportive of it. And the Biden administration was seen as not only non supportive, but somewhat indecisive around it. I think a lot of people in the crypto community correctly said, look, we'll play by whatever rule book you give us, but we need a rule book. We need to understand what's going on. So part of his campaign genius was flying into crypto and what he found was an empty vessel that he could kind of pull off what is probably the greatest grift by any elected official in history.
- [37:55]
Hugh Docherty
1.4 billion and counting. I think we're just watching it go up and up. And to his children as well, of course. You mentioned the manosphere. Don Jr. Has inserted himself in that Eric Trump out there making grift out of that. I just want to ask you, finally, there were some interesting jobs numbers that have come this week. And one of the things you mentioned rightly about going into the manosphere was big things, rockets, crypto. And we've discovered that Trump basically didn't add any jobs last year. He maybe added 50,000. And the economy that he had promised doesn't seem to be roaring. At what point does that manosphere begin to peel off?
- [38:43]
Scott Galloway
Oh, it's already happening. You're already seeing kind of the titans of the manosphere, the Theo Vaughn's and the Rogans and the Andrew Schultzes. They're already sort of saying, well maybe, maybe we made a mistake here. And the labor market, to be fair, the economy I think has been more resilient than people expected, including myself. The American economy just is amazing. It continues to grind on some of the capex being financed by the incredible run up in stocks by these companies is staggering. There's going to be $670 billion in capex just from three companies. Amazon, Microsoft and I think it's Meta. That's three times the amount of R and D in the pharmaceutical industry this year. That's, that's more money spent on AI CapEx this year than was spent on the Apollo and space station programs combined. That creates a lot of underlying economic growth. We're starting to see productivity gains. Not a lot, but some productivity gains. The labor picture is a bit mixed because Youth unemployment's at 10%. That's not good. It's not bad. What you have I would describe in the labor market as a no higher, no fire economy where we haven't created any jobs. But the wobbliness in the labor market is indicated by one metric, and that is the. I forget what it's called. It's basically an index that looks at if people are looking around for another job and very few people are looking for another job because they're not confident they can do better. And you've also, you have seen some pretty dramatic layoffs. Whether it's 16,000 people. And at Amazon and corporate, I think it's 20,000 ups. The kind of the early adopters of AI appear to be reducing their labor roles. I had David Solomon on my podcast and I imagine he's projecting an increase in earnings or top line revenue of 30 to 50% over the next three years. But he described their employment profile is flat for the next three years. Now there's some, I think, overhyping of the impact that AI is having on employment because it makes your company seem sexy that you're leveraging AI. What I think happened is post Covid people held onto their employees and are now deciding they can do more with less. But the employment picture I would describe as a little bit confusing right now and a little bit tenuous. But it's not the great destruction in human capital that I think the catastrophists were predicting. It's still early in the game, but at the same time, people aren't leaving their job because they're worried they're not getting calls from recruiters. What I would say is more worrisome about the economy is we have 10 companies responsible for 40% of the market cap. And if any one of those companies sneezes, the global economy is going to catch pneumonia.
- [41:35]
Hugh Docherty
That is exactly the power that you've identified in those 10 companies. It's like an Achilles heel that you can, you can grab onto with this appeal to people's individual power over them. Professor Galoby, I want to give you the chance. Just remind our viewers and listeners where should they go to learn how to do this?
- [42:02]
Scott Galloway
Www. Resistandunsub or resist and Unsubscribe bunch of links that make it easy to unsubscribe, to share it on social. And I can just tell you it feels good to save money and it feels good to do something with other people.
- [42:15]
Hugh Docherty
I'll just say, like, tens of thousands of people have been tagging you and giving their own story, and in fact there are. You'll probably know better than me, but there appears to be thousands of people on Reddit who are talking about how they did it. So it's an incredibly powerful moment that's begun already. Professor Galway, thank you for joining us and look forward to getting an update on how this is going in the near future.
- [42:40]
Scott Galloway
And most importantly, go team Skyland. Despite that terrible draw, we're in the same flight as Brazil and Morocco. How did that happen?
- [42:49]
Hugh Docherty
I think it's just a privilege to be there, is what you have to say.
- [42:52]
Scott Galloway
Fair enough. Class is half full.
- [42:54]
Hugh Docherty
Yeah. I might see you at a game then.
- [42:56]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, I'll be there.
- [42:57]
Hugh Docherty
Look forward to it.
- [42:58]
Scott Galloway
Thanks.
- [42:58]
Hugh Docherty
Good time, not losing. Thank you, Professor Scott Galloway. Thank you, Prof. G. Wow, that is quite a declaration of what people can do to resist Trump. It's an amazing manifesto. As I said before, it's amazing. It really is that simple. We all subscribe to so many things and the power, apparently is literally sitting in our hands and our keyboards. And just as a side note, Professor Profji did totally nail my Glaswegian accent. We are going to be monitoring Resist and Unsubscribe. There's one subscription. I'll just say you do need to keep it to the Daily Beast, on YouTube and on the web where we are across every development in the crazy news cycle. Please get in the comments, tell us what you think. Tell us whether you'll join the movement. Tell us whether you have joined the movement and have both unsubscribed, resisted and saved money. Thank you to to all of our bbeasteer members. There are now so many of you, we can't read out all the names. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please everybody, remember, as Joanna would say, be beast. And a special shout out to our production crew, Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, and Neil Rosenhaus.
- [44:15]
Scott Galloway
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Commercial Announcer
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Scott Galloway
Wait, we're going on tour?
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Commercial Announcer
Not a tour. We're delivering and setting up customers phones so it's easy to easier to upgrade.
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Scott Galloway
Let's get in the tour bus and hit the road.
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Commercial Announcer
No, not a tour bus. It's a regular car we use to deliver and set up customers phones at home or work.
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Sleep Number Voice
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Commercial Announcer
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Scott Galloway
Oh you're definitely a groupie.
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Scott Galloway
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Hugh Docherty
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Scott Galloway
Do not mistake a wasp nest for a pinata. Stay alive and switch now at boost mobile. After 30 gigs, customers may experience experience slower speeds. Customers will pay 25amonth as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast the Last Laugh and our Star Studded the Daily Beast podcast@thedailybeast.com podcasts if you enjoyed this.
- [45:42]
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