Balaji: The Fed Does Invisibly What Lenin Did With Guns — And You're Not Supposed to Notice | Impact Theory W/ Tom Bilyeu & Balaji

Summary

Podcast Summary

Impact Theory (Host: Tom Bilyeu) – "Balaji: The Fed Does Invisibly What Lenin Did With Guns — And You're Not Supposed to Notice"
Guest: Balaji Srinivasan
Date: March 26, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode features entrepreneur, investor, and tech thinker Balaji Srinivasan discussing the sweeping, invisible transformations in the U.S. economy, politics, and society, with a focus on late-stage empire, the impacts of debt and money printing, technological disruption, and America's unraveling. Through a lens blending economic theory, historical analysis, tech foresight, and cultural commentary, Balaji unpacks why the old American order is fracturing and new power centers—driven by the internet, AI, global competition, and the consequences of endless inflation—are arising.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. America as a Fractured Entity (01:00–02:12)

• Multiple Americas: Balaji opens by noting that America doesn't exist as a united entity anymore; rather, there are "blue America," "red America," and "tech America," among other tribes.
  • Quote: “America doesn’t exist. There’s blue America and red America and tech America and all these different sub-tribes within it. The word American is like the word Korean.” —Balaji ([01:00])
• Cultural Friction: He connects this fragmentation to both political (left vs right) and occupational (tech vs everyone else) lines.

---

2. Forces of Disruption: Internet, AI, China, and Debt (02:12–09:05)

• AI as a Fork in the Road: Balaji explains that AI's productivity boost can either let organizations shrink (do more with less) or expand output (do more with more).
• "Singularities are here": Multiple radical disruptions ("singularities") are underway, not just in AI:
  • Examples:
    • Solar power in Africa ("solar singularity")
    • Internet dating replacing traditional matchmaking
    • Gold's surge in value post-2024
    • The rise of robots ("robot singularity")
    • Social and ideological shifts (gender divergence, declining religiosity)
  • The internet is identified as the "upstream" causal driver of these parallel disruptions.
• Force Diagram Analogy: Balaji urges analysis that goes beyond single explanations, comparing the interplay of economic and technological forces to a physics problem where outcomes depend on balancing multiple, shifting vectors.

Notable moment:

• Quote: “Yes. I think the Internet is upstream of everything.” —Balaji ([07:35])

---

3. Political Economy: How Tech & AI Disrupt Different Factions (09:05–11:39)

• Jobs Disrupted by Tech:
  • Digital AI disrupts "Democrat jobs" (journalists, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, artists)
  • Physical AI (robots) threatens "Republican jobs" (manufacturing, military)
• Different Reactions by Party:
  • Blue states (Democrat-led) are more aggressively anti-AI because their occupational base feels immediate impact (e.g., New York legislating against legal AI); red states lag, as the disruption to "Republican jobs" is still nascent.
  • Quote: "Democrats will be and are as mad about the disruption of the Internet as Republicans are mad about the disruption of China.” —Balaji ([11:33])

---

4. Global Context: America’s Exceptional Disruption & "Late Stage Empire" (15:21–18:05)

• Comparison to Other Nations: Western prosperity led to complacency for the US and Western Europe, unlike nations that experienced hardship (communism, inflation) and developed civilizational "antibodies."
• America is Over, Internet is Beginning: Balaji’s provocative claim—America as a coherent project is ending, but the internet (as a new locus of organization/power) is just starting.
  • Quote: “Unfortunately America is over, but the Internet is just beginning.” —Balaji ([17:42])

---

5. Debt, Money Printing, and the Evolution of "Gentler" Tyranny (18:05–26:40)

• Debt vs Internet: Debt is the inflationary force, Internet and China are deflationary (via price-lowering productivity/competition).
• Keynesianism as "Communism for Wimps":
  • Balaji compares Soviet collectivization (violent, visible asset seizure) with the Federal Reserve’s money printing ("button-pressing theft"), which dilutes existing wealth invisibly.
  • Quote: “Keynesianism is like communism, but for wimps.” —Balaji ([18:50])
  • Quote: "When the Fed wants to steal 10% of all property... they just hit a button and they inflate the money supply and nobody feels it." —Balaji ([19:02])
• Camouflage and Stealth: Money printing is an evolved, abstracted, and "camouflaged" form of wealth transfer — unlike overt violence, its theft passes unnoticed by its victims.

---

6. Inflation, Deflation, and Popular Misconceptions (23:07–26:51)

• Keynesian (Establishment) View: Inflation must be gradual; deflation is bad (causes ‘hoarding’).
• Counterargument: Technological progress-driven deflation—everything getting cheaper—is a net benefit, and people still consume (e.g., computers improve rapidly but are bought eagerly).
• Digital Age Loophole: Digital money can always subdivide, so claims about lack of liquidity in deflation are obsolete.

---

7. The Internationalization of Inflation: Dollar Empire and Global Taxation (29:50–35:37)

• China’s Money-Printing: The CCP taxes its own citizens via inflation, but does so with strategic purpose, incentivizing economic growth among local leaders (albeit through corrupt means).
• Dollar as World's Reserve: US dollar inflation acts as a global tax, benefiting Americans as a whole through seigniorage, though blue Americans get first access via the Cantillon effect.
  • Quote: "Dollar inflation is global taxation." —Balaji ([32:49])
• MAGA Misunderstanding: The populist right feels squeezing (resources sent abroad), but doesn’t see the fuller picture: America taxes the world via dollar inflation, even if the benefits accrue unevenly internally.
  • Quote: "It's not that the person in Thailand or Uruguay is oppressing the red American. They're also getting taxed by the dollar empire." —Balaji ([35:58])

---

8. The Mechanism of Collapse: Feedback Loops, Techlash, and Factional Self-Defense (37:37–49:29)

• Sequence of Events:
  • Post-2000, newspaper/media (Democrat-aligned) ad revenue collapses (due to internet/tech giants).
  • Simultaneously, China disrupts Republican-aligned manufacturing.
  • Both major factions see their slices of the pie shrink; both retaliate by attacking each other and the newer disruptive forces.
• Democrat Responses:
  • Weaponize wokeness ("morally good, others evil") and techlash (attacks on Silicon Valley, censorship pressure, etc.)
  • Attempt to regulate/disrupt AI/crypto/speech (2024 Biden bills, Gary Gensler's crypto crackdown)
  • Despite efforts, ultimately lose control over money (crypto), media (internet), and speech (social media/AI).
• Republican Responses:
  • Protectionist turn: trade war, tariffs, Trump
  • Late "reactionary" opposition to the internet/tech disruption
  • But ultimately also lose to China, which now dominates key strategic sectors.
• Quote: “Democrats lost control over media to AI, over money to crypto, and over speech to social media... They tried to go all out against [...] tech disruptors and lost.” —Balaji ([45:53])

---

9. The Splintering of Tech America & The World (49:29–end)

• Globalization of Innovation:
  • 420 cities—worldwide—now have unicorn startups; Silicon Valley is no longer the sole locus.
  • The internet is organizing itself above the level of nation-states.
• Fragility of Tech America: Silicon Valley, by disrupting Democrat constituencies while residing inside blue cities, created a paradox—leading to punitive wealth taxes and regulatory pushback, prompting the exodus of major tech founders from California.
  • Quote: "Being publicly a billionaire in San Francisco and talking about how they're taking all the Democrat jobs while in a city... ruled by Democrats is the most strategically insane kind of thing." —Balaji ([49:31])

---

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

| Time | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|--------------|-------| | 01:00 | Balaji | “America doesn’t exist. There’s blue America and red America and tech America and all these different sub-tribes within it...” | | 07:35 | Balaji | “Yes. I think the Internet is upstream of everything.” | | 18:50 | Balaji | “Keynesianism is like communism, but for wimps.” | | 19:02 | Balaji | “When the Fed wants to steal 10% of all property, they just hit a button and they inflate the money supply and nobody feels it.” | | 23:07 | Balaji | “Keynesianism is even more abstract, where it surrounds itself with all kinds of nonsense mathematical symbols…” | | 26:51 | Balaji | "It is a good thing. Thank God it exists." [on technological deflation] | | 32:49 | Balaji | “Dollar inflation is global taxation.” | | 35:58 | Balaji | "It's not that the person in Thailand or Uruguay is oppressing the red American. They're also getting taxed by the dollar empire.” | | 45:53 | Balaji | “Democrats lost control over media to AI, over money to crypto, and over speech to social media... They tried to go all out against [...] tech disruptors and lost.” | | 49:31 | Balaji | "Being publicly a billionaire in San Francisco and talking about how they're taking all the Democrat jobs while in a city... ruled by Democrats is the most strategically insane kind of thing." |

---

Important Timestamps & Segments

• Framing divisions in America (01:00–02:12)
• The "multipolar singularities" curve: solar, AI, culture (03:17–07:35)
• "Force diagram" theory of disruption (07:35–09:05)
• AI's impact on political jobs (09:05–11:39)
• America’s global comparison & civilizational decline (15:21–18:05)
• Keynesianism vs Communism; inflation as theft (18:50–23:07)
• Deflation, innovation, and economic fallacies (23:07–26:40)
• China’s inflationary policy vs the US Dollar Empire (29:50–35:58)
• The American collapse mechanism – media, tech, politics (37:37–49:29)

---

Summary Takeaways

• Balaji forecasts the fragmentation and irreversibility of "old America" due to converging forces—technology, economics, culture, and global competition—each disrupting a foundational pillar.
• He draws sharp analogies between past forms of tyranny (violent expropriation) and current "abstract" ones (stealthy money dilution).
• Economic and technological change is not distributed evenly—different political/occupational factions suffer at different times, triggering reciprocal attacks.
• The "internet" is the new, organizing, post-national force. The locus of real innovation, capital, and control is leaving US borders.
• Ultimately, neither left nor right in America has successfully defended its old slice of the pie; new winners will be globally distributed tech tribes, internet natives, and those able to escape the inflationary grasp of the dollar.

---

Final Thought:
Balaji’s thesis is that we are living through the end of one empire—and the birth of something new, decentralized, and digital, with the stakes and consequences rippling through every aspect of daily life, economics, and geopolitics.

---

Transcript

[Carvana Customer]

Reggie, I just sold my car online.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did?

[Carvana Customer]

Yep, On Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

You don't say.

[Carvana Customer]

Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Wow. Way to go.

[Carvana Customer]

So, about that picture frame. Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

[Timberland Narrator]

It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose, Proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously. And we do too. Which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours with purpose, in every detail, and crafted with intention. Timberland built on craft. Visit timberland.com to shop.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

America doesn't exist. There's blue America and red America and tech America and all these different sub tribes within it. The word American is like the word Korean.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yo, you're saying something here, Balaji.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Digital AI disrupts Democrat jobs, and physical AI disrupts Republican jobs. Democrats destroyed democracy in California, and the reason is California is a one party state. The Magunda understanding of the world is that the world is exploiting Americans. A few hundred bucks going to people in Maui, for example, when their houses burned down, but billions going to Ukraine.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Walk me through how America breaks apart if this continues. Balaji, Shereena Vas and welcome back, man.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Good to be here. Good to have you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I have obviously been all over your X feed, paying attention to everything that you've been talking about, and I think you are uniquely qualified to address what's going on right now. AI is taking a crazy amount of jobs. The entire world order is changing in violent fashion. And what I want to know is what is causing all of the disruption? And how are the smartest people in the world responding to it?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

AI is highly productivity increasing. And with that productivity increase, you can do one of two things. You can, A, cut cost, slim down, flatten the hierarchy, and so on and so forth, right? By essentially AI fi ing your operation. Or B, you can keep your operation the same size and then increase what it does, right? So you can get basically more. So it's like a productivity bump where you can do more with less or you can do more with more. Let me give some specifics. Right, so if you just take a look at the link that I just Shared with you. Right. One way I think about it is, you know, Ray Kurzweil's thing of the singularity is here. Yep. Right. So what if you had the plural aversion? The singularities are here. Right. Meaning there's actually many curves that are going woof, like this, you know, up and up and to the right or down into the right very fast. Right. And let me show you some of them. Okay. So this is like the solar singularity, which is showing that in Africa, solar power is just absolutely mooning.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's wild. Anybody not looking at their phone right now? These are straight lines up.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yes. And this is kind of like when smartphones just started working. When smartphones started working, they just went like, you know, when the economics work, it gets taken to its logical conclusion and just suddenly they started getting stamped up. In Africa, solar panels have gotten so robust, so cheap, they're resistant to like rocks hitting them and so on. You know, the glass doesn't shatter. They can just work anywhere. You know, I'm a big nuclear guy. I love nuclear, but it's really nuclear and solar not. Or. And the reason is solar is just so easy to set up relative to nuclear. You can just roll it off the truck or whatever, set it up. You know, it's much, much easier, permit wise, everything wise. It takes up way more horizontal space. It's not as scalable. It doesn't provide like, you know, reliable power. In the same way the batteries are improving that. Anyway, point is though, solar is real. It's no longer like it can work in Africa without subsidies. Okay, so that's the solar singularity. Okay, here's another one. The Internet dating singularity. You see this one?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yep.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Right. Essentially all previous modes of how humans meet have been replaced. Right. By just the Internet in like 10, 20 years. Right. Okay, then here is the gold singularity. Just this. I'm sure you've talked about this on your show. Right? Just gold going like this since, you know, the 2024 election. Right. Basically more than doubling. Here is the robot singularity. Not quite like as up and to the right as that, but it's pretty up and still aggressive. Right. It's impressive. That's right. This is like the tariff singularity, so to speak. Right. Just what I'm talking about are these radical changes like this. Like this, you know. Right. And then this is like the agent. Now this one, by the way, is. There's a very, very interesting comment. You've seen this one, which is like the time for tasks an agent can do, probably Right. It basically says, oh, agents are getting more and more capable, they can do more and longer, but a human can do. And so and so forth. After I posted this, somebody actually, in a useful way on X gave me feedback and there's a whole post that I'm going to put up which says this is actually a flawed chart. That basically these, this is not actually, it's not actually a good measure of how long those things can take. Right. It's not a true benchmark. And it's. It's something where it's like what a human can do, this thing can do in some amount of time, a 50% accuracy rate and so on and so forth. But it's, it's a. They, they think, they argue. It's a very tortured benchmark. So I'll give that CIT after it. So this one big grain of salt and it may actually write a post detailing that critique and giving it more distribution. Nevertheless, a lot of people think this is happening. Right. And I think it's happening to some extent, maybe not quite as much as this. Why is it happening to some extent? Well, clearly you and I have used Claude. Cowork. We use Claude code. Clearly it can do more tasks for longer than it could in 2022. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I always aghast at anybody who tries to downplay the rate at which AI is changing things. And I'm like, you clearly don't own a business. Like, there's no. The on the ground reality of using AI is startling.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yes, that's right. So there's the argument of this graph. There's a counterargument that critiques the numbers in this graph and the benchmarks. There's a counterargument which is it definitely has been increasing. Right. So how much is tbd? So let's at least say there's something there. Fine. Then this is kind of what you were talking about. Not quite a singularity, but certainly a downward slump right over here. Right. And you can see something like this for religiosity is also, you know, collapsed. Right. This a big one, which is the gender divergence in many countries, ideology gap between like, you know, women and men.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Crazy.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Whoa.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

And this is something where in many ways the parties are basically women versus men is left versus right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Are you. Do you see, like, okay, this is a lot. We're going to start losing people just because it's so many. So many. Is there one driving mechanism that's creating all of this?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yes. I think the Internet is upstream of everything. And why I think the so the reason I gave all those graphs is to show that it's not like many people just focus on one disruption. But in physics, for example, you have to have a force diagram. For example, you can, if you throw a ball like, or let's say there's a rocket, right? Gravity is acting downward on it, but the rocket engine is acting upward on it. And you have to take the balance of this upward force and this downward force, and then you get the trajectory of the thing. And if the rocket engine is changing, it's, you know, like the. The. If the force that it is applying is itself changing, you have to calculate all the stuff out, right? So it's not simply enough to look at one force in isolation. You have to look at what's called the force diagram. Okay. So what I do is I enumerate as many of these things as I can on individuals, on businesses, on. On countries, on sectors, and I try to say where is, like the net state of this going to be? Okay, so let me give the upstream and then let me give it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You're probably gonna have to explain what you mean by the net state of it.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Sure, sure, sure. So let me give a concrete example. Let's say. Let's take AI. Okay? So AI is something that actually goes after. What kinds of jobs does it disrupt? Basically, digital AI disrupts Democrat jobs and physical AI disrupts Republican jobs.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That is such an interesting way to look at it. Yeah, I get it.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Okay, so, so digital AI goes after journalists, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, artists, right? Everybody who is like, you know, a university educated, creative, how Democrats like to think of themselves, right? It disrupts media, it disrupts Hollywood. Right, okay. And conversely, physical AI disrupts manufacturing and disrupts the military, everything Republicans pride themselves on. Right? What is physical AI? Physical AI is robots, right? Digital AI's agents, to first order. Okay? And so with physical AI, that's Chinese robots. Digital AI is Internet agents. Okay? And so when you, when you see that this is causing this disruption on Democrats and Republicans, on blue Americans and red Americans, they're both going to counterattack it, Democrats more aggressively. Because the physical AI hasn't. I mean, it's partially hit the Republicans, but it's not really all the way there yet. Right. They perceive it through the mechanism of China.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You think they will fight as hard when it hits them as hard, or is there a difference in strength of reaction based on party?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

For now, there's a difference in strength of reaction based on party because it is a total L for Democrats, and it's only. It's a partial W for Republicans because it's certainly hurting Democrats more than it's hurting Republicans right now. So blue states are going to be more aggressively anti AI than red states. For example, New York is passing laws that like restrict the use of AI. Like you have to consult with a lawyer or something like that before using AI for legal docs or it's not privileged. There's various rulings like this that are sort of legal guild type rulings, you know. Right. And there'll probably be workarounds for that. Like you know, an inexpensive lawyer for whatever, five bucks an hour. Now it's under. Now they're your lawyer and it's underprivileged and then you can use privileged AI. There'll be various workarounds. I think you'll see for that. Nevertheless, blue states are very much anti AI. It disrupts their sense of self. Right. Like what they take pride in. You know, basically, roughly speaking, Democrats will be and are as mad about the disruption of the Internet as Republicans are mad about the disruption of China.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Taking a short break. But there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.

[Sponsor Voice]

The people who win, they're not smarter. They just absorb more ideas faster. There are thousands of books right now on business psychology, leadership books that have already changed how the best operators think. And everyone you haven't read is a gap between you and the people who have. This is a bandwidth problem, not a discipline problem. And that's exactly what Blinkist was built to solve. It takes the world's best nonfiction books and distills them into 15 minute summaries you can read or listen to. It's got over 9,000 titles. We're talking atomic habits. Thinking fast and slow. The hard thing about hard things, books, you know, you, you should have read by now. Done in the time it takes to drink your coffee. And because it's built for mobile, your commute becomes a classroom. Blinkist also sends you personalized recommendations so you actually build a daily learning practice instead of just planning to do one. Start your free trial at blinkist.com/ that's B L I N K I-S T.com blinkist impact start learning aggressively today.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It will change your life.

[Sponsor Voice]

Let's talk about the most expensive mistake

[Tom Bilyeu]

crypto traders are making right now.

[Sponsor Voice]

70% of US crypto traders think tax obligations only apply to centralized exchanges. If that's you, you are wrong. Unfortunately, most people do not realize every crypto to crypto trade is taxable. And for the first time ever, exchanges are now required to report your digital Asset sales directly to the irs. If your records don't match theirs, you've got a problem. Some formerly crypto tax calculator was built specifically to solve this problem. It supports TurboTax along with over 3500 exchange, wallet and crypto integrations. It handles DeFi, NFTs, staking and airdrops with full support for US specific tax rules. And it strips out spam tokens so junk that doesn't corrupt your actual gains and losses. SUM generates IRS ready reports that maximize your deductions and minimize what you owe. If you're ready to turn crypto chaos into confidence, click the link in the show notes and use code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at sum. Let's talk about one thing your business cannot afford to get wrong. It's not your product. It's not even your marketing. It's not payroll. It's your decisions. Every wrong call starts the same way. Someone did not have the numbers. They looked at incomplete data from different systems and went with their gut. And it cost them. NetSuite by Oracle fixes all of this. It's the number one AI, Cloud, ERP trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM all, all into one source of truth. That connected data makes your AI smarter so it doesn't guess. It knows if your revenues are at least in the seven figures. Get NetSuite's free business guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com theory the guide is free to you at netsuite.com theory Again, that's netsuite.com theory theory.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thanks for staying tuned.

[Sponsor Voice]

Now, let's get back to it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, is this a uniquely American thing or the correlates in other Western countries hold true?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

It's particularly true for America. It's to a lesser extent true because the thing is, a lot of other western countries were disrupted by America already. And so this is like the disruption of the disruptor. And so they're like two cycles behind in a sense. Right. Which means some of them could leapfrog. But I think many in Western Europe are just kind of going to have a bad century. But

[Tom Bilyeu]

okay, aggressive. I like it.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yeah. Well, just very, very briefly on that is I think many countries, not all, but many countries had a terrible 20th century. They were under communism, they're under socialism. You know, that's Eastern Europe, Russia, India, China, Southeast Asia with Vietnam and so on. Vietnam War. Right. All these, all these places that had a terrible 20th century, actually, including big chunks of Latin America, which were, you know, a place like El Salvador and so on, that had drugs, inflation, crime. Right. They developed civilizational antibodies to communism, socialism, inflation, drugs. Right. And thus arose, for example, you know, the basically capitalist regimes in. Or regimes, governments, what have you in Eastern Europe, in India. Right. That reversed decades of decline. And similarly, you know, Bukele or Milei or now Hernando de Soto in Latin America. That's three. You know, three is a trend. Right. Three basically capitalist leaders who are against what, you know, basically tore down Latin America last century. Right. For the most part. So. But on the other side of things, you had Western Europe and the US and Canada that have been so prosperous for so long that they ended up thinking prosperity was their birthright and essentially degenerated.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right, I agree. So aggressively I'm getting a cramp.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yes. So now here's the good news. The good news is I do think that unfortunately America is over, but the Internet is just beginning.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay. Bold statement. So before we just blow past that,

[Balaji Srinivasan]

let me go back to the previous. Yeah, okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you need to touch on that first? Because I want to understand the mechanism because I have a hypothesis about that.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is a debt question and any answer that does not include debt in terms of America's ails, I would be very aggressive in my rebuttal. I'll say that.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Totally agree with you. But it is like a force diagram where there's multiple forces acting at the same time. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you think debt is bigger or Internet?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Debt is the inflationary force and China and the Internet are the deflationary forces.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Deflationary from a crisis led position. Because deflation from innovation is wonderful. Deflation from crisis, bad.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Deflation from innovation. So basically the existing system, the US and Western European system, is essentially at the end of the line where you have decades of Keynesianism. Keynesianism and can you just sentence on

[Tom Bilyeu]

what you mean by that?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Sure, yes. Keynesianism is like communism, but for wimps. Okay. Communism goes like when the communists want to take 10%. Is that good? Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's fantastic.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Okay, so let me explain what I mean with that Soviet communism, when Lenin wanted to go and steal all the property, he actually, you know, Lenin's hanging order, for example, like kill the kulags and so on. They basically had lists of all the farms and so on in the country. And they would send guys with guns to kick in the door, they'd rape the wife, they'd kill the father, they'd take the son to a gulag. Brutal. Brutal. This is what collectivization meant. Right. For the people. Right. It meant the party would basically steal all this property. And a farm, by the way, is like a factory in the sense of how do you actually grow the beets or the radishes? It's like a whole process of how you aerate them and irrigate them. And all that knowledge went away when you killed the farmer, stole the farm, which is why all these famines resulted. It's like a machine that you don't know how to operate. Anyway, point is, in order to do that, they had to actually go physically house to house and shoot people and take their stuff. Okay. To steal 10% of the property, they actually had to have physically guys with guns. American Keynesianism has innovated on that. Why? Because they don't have to. When the Fed wants to steal 10% of, of all property, right, they just hit a button and they inflate the money supply and nobody feels it. In fact, some people even think that they've gotten richer because their asset prices have gone up, right? Because their house price or, or their, you know, S and P or whatever has gone up in nominal terms. But it's like, you know, let's say there were 10 units of stock and you had one and you had 10%. Okay? Now another 90 units are issued and you get one, right? So you went up nominally from one unit of stock to two units of stock, but you went down percentage wise from 1 out of 10 to 2 out of 100. Right? So your nominal went up from 1 to 2, but your percentage went down from 10% to 2%. That's exactly what's happening with inflation. People can understand it when it's dilution on a cap table, Right?

[Tom Bilyeu]

The average person doesn't even know what a cap table is.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Fine, okay, you're right. But I know what you mean. You know what I mean. So the thing is, it's just abstract enough that when, for example, when people are at Chipotle, okay, I don't know if you've seen this phenomenon of people videotaping the guy at Chipotle because they're not giving them enough guacamole.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I have not.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Okay, well, the common man just sees all of these corporations trying to nickel and dime them and give them less guacamole for the same amount of money, hitting them with shrinkflation in terms of packaging. The quality of food is going down, the quality of service is going down. They're seeing all that and they're thinking these corporations are getting greedier. What they're not seeing is that both the individual and, and the company, which is of course also run by individuals, have both been robbed by the Fed, so they're both having to do more with less. And so every economic relationship, the Fed has stolen 10% from the economy with that print, and it's left everybody else to fight over the scraps. And it does it again and it shrinks the amount of wealth, but it does so invisibly because it's stealing it for itself. That's why I say Keynesianism is communism, but for REMs, because, like in evolution, you know, camouflage evolves all the time, right? Like, you know, a mosquito anesthetizes before drinking the blood, right? Versus a saber tooth tiger that you can see coming, you know, or you have. What do people in the military wear? They wear camouflage, Right? What's a stealth bomber? It's. That's camouflage. It's both engineered and evolved in nature. Like a snake has camouflage. Right? So Keynesianism is communism that's evolved even more. Camouflage. Communism already had camouflage because it portrayed itself as sharing and caring, but it was actually, you know, stealing and whatnot. Keynesianism. Go ahead.

[Tom Bilyeu]

No, I was just agreeing.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Right, so Keynesianism is even more abstract where it surrounds itself with all kinds of nonsense mathematical symbols. By the way, the Soviets did that as well. They had all these schools of Marxist economics and, and you know, there was some real math that came out of it, but for the most part their premises were wrong, so their conclusions were wrong. Okay? And Keynesianism, the fundamental premise of Keynesianism is wrong, which says that, and it gets inflation. Deflation point. Basically, Keynesianism says rapid inflation is bad, but deflation is also bad. Why? It would cause hoarding. Okay? So therefore a gradual amount of inflation, what they call the New Zealand 2% target every year, is, is good, right? Because that allows the money supply to inflate to accommodate for growth and so on and so forth. And what they mean by hoarding, by the way, is if your unit of account, let's say, let's say your dollar became more and more valuable every year, okay? Eventually you get to the point that to buy a house, you would have to. It'd be one whole dollar, okay? And you'd have to, you wouldn't be able to break it up into pieces or it'd be one cent per house, okay? And then they'd say, oh, that cent is too valuable, therefore, you know, we need to actually devalue it. So now it's liquid enough that you can Trade, Right. This may have been an argument in the past, but it's not actually an argument in the present. Because in the digital era you can just add a decimal place, right? So you can get around liquidity traps. So this is the whole argument for why they inflate or whatever by simply adding a decimal place in the digital realm. So anyway, that's a whole separate point coming back. The premise of Keynesianism is that lots of inflation is bad, but deflation is also bad. And deflation, by the way, for the average person, under normal circumstances, they would think of deflation as good. Why? Things get cheaper every year because of technological improvements. Like, you know, for example, there's a new process, the Haber process. It makes, like ammonia, you know, cheaper to produce. Right. That should bring down your costs. That's a great example of technological innovation reducing costs. Right. All the stuff that we have on the Internet is reducing costs. In the digital realm, it's so much cheaper to search for flights. You don't have to go to a travel agent to look up medical advice or something like that. With an AI agent, all those things are deflationary. The, the alternative to Keynesianism, essentially the idea of technological hyper deflation, that actually we should accelerate, that actually everything should get cheaper every year. Houses should get cheaper, everything should get cheaper. And the Keynesian would say, no, no, no, that if everything gets cheaper every year, this is the other reason they say not to do it. They say everyone would hoard their money. They wouldn't. If something got cheaper next year, why would you buy it ever? You just wait for it to get cheaper. You would hoard your money, There'd be no economic activity. That's their theory. But there's a counterargument to that as well, which is Moore's Law. In practice, computers actually have gotten cheaper. Like, you know, that a Mac, for example, is going to be better in a year or two years. You know, whether it's literally transistor density doubling every 18 months. That's the technical definition of Moore's Law. You know, broadly, computers get better pretty quickly. Nevertheless, people buy computers. Really, really, really. I mean, they spend a lot of money on computers. They're not waiting partially because that deflation itself creates economic opportunities. So the value of waiting for that productivity instrument versus getting it today and then building on it is, you know, there's a time value anyway, coming back.

[Tom Bilyeu]

People buy things when they want them. So it is what it is. But what we were trying to address is you were saying that you have a deflationary. Effect from China and the Internet. And I'm trying to figure out if you're saying that's a good thing or a bad thing.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

It is a good thing. Thank God it exists.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, help us understand because from an American context, China eating our lunch does not feel like a good thing. China taking jobs does not feel like a good thing. Like I, I think most people here are pretty keenly aware that we're now in a cold war with China.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Let me take it out of the American perspective for a second to make it a little less emotional. Okay? For the average Russian in the 80s, their quality of life dropped dramatically when communism ended. And their main geopolitical rival were the Americans. And they lost territory, they lost life expectancy, they had drug overdoses, they had mafias running their things. All kinds of bad things happened to them after the end of communism. Still, in the medium to long run, few Russians would want to go back to communism like it was like net. Even if they didn't like, they still don't like the Americans. They're still in fact fighting the Americans. Right. Nevertheless, it was good that there was an alternative to communism. Right? That is a complex thing that doesn't just. It's not a Hollywood thing of good versus bad. Right. It was short term bad in many ways. It was arguably long term good in some ways. Though of course it's not a Hollywood ending because obviously like the Russians, while they may be capitalists in some way, they're also mad about losing their empire. You know, they have very conflicted. Everybody has a very conflict relationship to the whole Soviet Union because Russians were big and strong then. They had bases in Vietnam and Angola. They were big and strong around the world and didn't they help beat the Nazis? Right. And then conversely, all the people in like Eastern Europe would say, well, yeah, but you, the Russians occupied us and they forced Russian on us. And you know, and communism was imposed on, blah, blah, blah. Everybody has like all kinds of recriminations when an empire breaks down. So in the same way Keynesianism is bad for Americans, just like communism is bad for Russians. And a lot of people in cryptocurrency understand that. They understand that it's unhealthy and they also understand that they need to kick the habit at some point. And in fact they are being forced to kick the habit because in the absence of a counter forced Keynesianism, what happens is they don't just take 10% of the wealth, they take 30% and 80% and then 99% because they can print infinitely. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I'm going to give you that. The Internet is like that. The Internet's a big win for that. And for no other reason than we can have cryptographic currency that acts as a lifeboat. Hard money. I can exit out of the Keynesian madness. I'm not tracking on China. China is also printing their own money. Maybe one day they'll back it with gold. But what I'm, I get from a, they make cheap widgets, yay. But they also cratered the jobs. So from a US perspective, that argument feels a little bit muddy. So I'm gonna, I'll pull out of that. Unless you think there's really a way to land that plane. Otherwise we're gonna end up debating that endlessly.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yeah, I wanna land the plane. I wanna land the plane. And so the thing is, it is hard to have binocular vision because if one is on, let's say center right in, in America, you're basically just going to see China as bad because it is bad for the center right American on balance. And if you're center left or left, you're going to see the Internet as bad because it is bad for Democrats on balance, from a jobs and stature standpoint and so on. Right. However, I would say that when just to address two quick points, let's come back up the stack. When China prints money, it is also doing an asset seizure, right? Because just like Keynesianism, the difference is they don't have a global reserve currency. So it's basically just like a tax on their own people, number one. So that's a big difference. They're not exporting it to others. And number two is with that tax, they've actually allocated it intelligently because they have better central planners than America does. Why do they have better central planners? It's because at every level, the way the Communist Party works is you run a thousand person town and then you can run a 10,000 person city, small city, then 100,000 person and so on and so on. It's like a giant corporation where you get promotions based on both patronage and your numbers. And essentially the deal that Deng Xiaoping made after taking over China and making it capitalist in 1978 is that the, the guy who ran a million person city could take 10% off the top and become a billionaire if he increased the productivity of that city by 10 billion. So it's as if they had an informal equity stake via corruption right now.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's so wild.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

It's wild, right? And there's a book called How China works on this. Now, the thing is, like corruption is bad. What you prefer is the Singapore style where public officials are just incorruptible and they're paid well and so on and so forth because they're managing these giant budgets. So you get highly competent people running them. Right. However, while corruption is bad, communism is more corrupt and worse. So moving towards that corrupt kind of intermediate state meant that these guys who are running these cities had some incentive, a significant incentive to allow for economic growth within their cities. And all these Chinese cities competed with each other. And as a consequence, that's why China rose. There's more I can say about it, but basically the point being that when China prints money, they actually use the tax A, it's mainly a domestic tax B, they use it more intelligently because they have better central planners. Why do they have better central planners? Because they're actually naturally selected for kind of an entrepreneurial type within China in part, and a quantitative type, which they're not in America because they can get a cut of it in China, which they can't really in America as they'll get to. And then finally they get another benefit from it, which is the one that people talk about, which is from the perspective of exports. Their currency being low in value means that their exports are cheaper abroad. So essentially they get multiple benefits out of it if they can allocate the money correctly. The problem is for America is that the global reserve currency is the greatest business model of all time. The difference with the American Keynesianism is that when a dollar is printed, dollar inflation is global taxation. So it is not being imposed on 300 million Americans. It's being imposed on the billions of dollar holders worldwide who hold dollars directly or indirectly. For example, they hold stocks which can only be bought in dollars, or they have Delaware companies or something like that. Basically, they're part of the US financial legal system, directly or indirectly. To give you some sense, Even in the 2000 and tens, Alibaba, China's most valuable company, went public on the nice. That was how ridiculously dominant the US financial legal system was. So dollar inflation is. Global taxation actually inverts a traditional MAGA understanding or the MAGA understanding of the world. The MAGA understanding of the world is that the world is exploiting Americans. And there's some truth to this where you have a few hundred bucks going to people in Maui, for example, when their houses burned down, but billions going to Ukraine. And the MAGA person does see that, and there is truth to that. They're saying, we are citizens of America and we're getting no money. But these foreign wars are getting money, what's going on and so and so forth. That's true. What they're not seeing, however, is the more subtle and invisible thing, which is the global taxation where billions of people are being taxed by dollar inflation and Americans as a set are benefiting from that. Even if the red American gets it last. Why did it say Americans as a set when the money is printed? Blues got it first because blue banks would get it first. That's another key part of it, which is the cantalin effect. You take these simple principles and you combine them and you get a fairly complicated dynamic. The cantalin effect says basically whoever's closer to the money printer gets it first. Okay, so for example, visualize them rolling off a bunch of new hundreds. They don't actually do it like that. They hit a button digitally. But if they roll off a bunch of new hundreds, a bunch of new counterfeit one hundreds, the first guys who get those hundreds, like the banks, can use them to buy assets and so on. And then eventually, eventually it filters down so that some cashier in Kansas gets that counterfeited new $100 bill, but its purchasing powers crash by the time it gets to them.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yep.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Okay, so the red American is correct in a sense. They feel that something bad is happening to them and their intuition is correct. But the mechanism is important. It's not that the person in Thailand or Uruguay is oppressing the red American. They're also getting taxed by the dollar empire.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned.

[Home Depot Announcer]

Spring starts at the Home Depot and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under $300. Like the next grill 4 burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go to spot the patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Exclusions applies to homedepot.com Pricematch for details.

[Credit Karma Announcer]

Not sure how to tackle your taxes? Are you sweating the small print? You may be experiencing FOMO. The fear of messing up the answer using TurboTax on Intuit credit Karma. They help you get your biggest refund and then we help you do more with it with a personalized plan designed to help you hit your money goal. It's time to take your taxes to the max. Start filing today in the credit karma app.

[Carvana Customer]

Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go get ready for a new case.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

We're the greatest partners of all time. New friends Gary the Snake and your last name the Snake Dream Team. New habitats Zootopia has a secret reptile population.

[Carvana Customer]

You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2 now available on Disney. Rated PG. And right now you can get Disney and hulu for just $4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer. Ends March 24. After three months, Plan Auto renews at $12.99 a month. Terms apply.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thanks for staying tuned.

[Sponsor Voice]

Now let's get back to it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

The Dollar Empire Just to get back to the initial question, which is what is it about this moment that's causing all of this change?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Ah, yes, right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So it feels to me like what you're saying is we are in late stage empire. Keynesian economics has run its course. We are in a post World War II era where there's been stability for so long that people begin to think this is a birthright. And you layer on top of that the Internet changing the world, globalizing things more, and you get this convergence of factors where you have entitled people who are expecting a whole bunch of stuff for free, they're getting that stuff for free by printing, not recognizing that that printing is generating massive amounts of debt, which is generating massive amounts of inflation. And you have a rising China which is completely disrupting the world order in terms of you've got a rising superpower now to challenge the declining superpower. And so you put all that together, it's just inevitably going to be this moment of tremendous change. And now on top of that, let's layer on what is the most transformational technology certainly since the Internet. I would say it's going to be even more transformational than that. But regardless, you've got this one two punch of Internet follow Internet chased by multiple economic crises brought to you by debt and money printing, followed by the next radical transformation technologically when we haven't even finished dealing with the Internet.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yep, that's right. Here's my story. In 1991, right at the end of the Cold War, okay, the US was the hyper power, the most dominant power ever in history, and Democrats and Republicans were dominant. And the Internet was tiny and China was tiny, okay, basically commerce on the Internet, there's something called the NSF acceptable use policy. It was only actually legalized in 1991. And China was only 10 years into going capitalist. Okay. By 2010, this is the first really important graph. Do you see this graph? You see it says newspaper advertising revenue adjusted for inflation.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yep.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

So let's call the newspapers a proxy for Democrats, okay? Because they're 90% Democrats or what have you in terms of journalists. Right. Their peak was 2,000. Right. People, I think, in retrospect, will say peak America was 2000, 2001, right before 9, 11. Okay? So their peak was here, and then they kind of flattened and then crash after the financial crisis. And look at how Google's revenue and Facebook's revenue, the green chart, just go

[Tom Bilyeu]

whoosh like this for anybody not looking at their phone. It's basically a straight line up again.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Yes, that's right. So Google and Facebook start going vertical in the late 2000s, early 2010s, okay? And that's because the financial crisis in 2008 caused a shock which forced people to do more with less. And they forced them to look at what could do that and say the one big part was looking at digital deflation, which was the Internet. Okay. And ads are one piece, classifieds are another. There's many other pieces of this. This is just one very quantitative chart that shows the scale of the disruption to a very important Democrat stronghold. Okay. Then in 2010, the same thing was happening to the Republicans because the same financial stress after the financial crisis pushed people to do more with less. And they looked overseas to China, and. And that was the moment at which Chinese manufacturing flipped Republican manufacturing. Okay? So right at the same time, the Internet was disrupting Democrats, China's disrupting Republicans in manufacturing. Okay? So this meant that literally the pie was shrinking for both Democrats and Republicans. So how'd they react with Democrats? They reacted by attacking their two competing factions, which were Republicans, in the Internet. So first they attacked Republicans. And this is a chart. New York Times word usage frequency 1970 to 2018. Small over here. You can Google that and put that on screen. But it basically shows like, toxic masculinity, white privilege, all those things went vertical in the year 2013. Not before, not after. I mean, they went after. But the thing is, they went totally vertical then because the New York Times made an editorial decision post 2013 to basically go woke. Why that boosted traffic, why they need traffic because Internet disrupted them. And. And this was also an ideological weapon against the Republicans. So they used wokeness against Republicans to argue, we're morally good, you're evil and racist, therefore we should tax you and give it to our Clients. Okay, so wokeness was the Democrat weapon against Republicans. And then the tech lash was the Democrat weapon against the Internet. As you may remember, during this time in the 2010s, all kinds of tech guys were canceled for all kinds of things from the GitHub CEO, obviously Uber. Travis Kalanick was a very prominent example of this. But. But tech guys large and small were forced to hire di Democrats at their companies. They were essentially, basically surveilled on the Internet like you. Like one thing you hit like on one button and Democrats would try to basically destroy you, take your company and so on and so forth. Because they were in wartime mode.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You know, you've heard the same really fast. I want to abstract this out to a principle. This is really interesting, Balaji. So you're saying, all right, we have conditions where things are declining. You've got, as a proxy, you've got newspaper publication going down, but it's forced by the fact that we're having this economic crisis. But it's facilitated in a way by the Internet. So the Internet makes things cheaper that otherwise may have just gone away or whatever. And so you're getting this cross effect where both the Democrats and Republicans are. They realize they're pious shrinking for different reasons, but they're pious shrinking and they begin fighting. So I'm the outsider here, looking at this sudden moment of rapid disruption and change. I'm trying to find what the mechanism is. I come sort of squarely to debt, which is responsible for the economic crises. But what you're really driving home, which is very interesting, is that there's an Internet thing that you have to take into consideration going to your force graph. There's an Internet thing that's happening that I'm not giving enough credit to. And then there's that knock on sort of populist battle that's happening with the Democrats and Republicans that begins to play out very aggressively within the U.S. but the U.S. being the world's dominant superpower, the world's leading economy, that begins to have ripple effects out to the rest of the world. Am I mapping the mechanism here?

[Balaji Srinivasan]

That's right. And let me give a little bit more and let me go and add to your points. Okay, so let me show a little and then add to the debt. Okay, so this is the Democrat side. Basically, their pie is shrinking. So they retaliate against their bordering factions. Wokeness versus the Republicans and tech lash versus the Internet. Okay, Republicans, meanwhile, they had been disrupted by Chinese manufacturing. So their pie is shrinking. So that's why, because people talked about how all these Rust Belt guys had lost their jobs. And Trump started saying, he was one who said China, China, China. Remember in 2015.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh yes, right.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

So China had not yet disrupted the Democrats, so they didn't care about it. The Internet was not yet on Republican radars. They didn't care about it. So in the mid 2010s, if you look at their rhetoric, Republicans cared about China because it had been taking their jobs, and Democrats cared about the Internet because they'd been taking their jobs. Okay, so Trump was a reaction of Republicans versus Democrats. And you know, people call the right reactionary because it goes second. So wokeness really booted up in 2013 and Trump booted up also as a reaction, reaction in by 2015. Right. Okay, so then Republicans also elected Trump to do what? The trade war versus China. Okay, so this was a four faction battle where Democrats tried wokeness versus Republicans and the tech lash versus Internet. Republicans tried Trump versus Democrats and the trade war versus China, except they lost basically, essentially. Here's the Magnificent Seven, for example. There's a bunch of graphs I can show you, but see how this just rips up into the right. And the remaining 493 stocks are flat.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yep.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

So Democrats lost to the Internet basically. They lost control over media, they lost control over money and they lost control over speech. Democrats lost control over media to AI because Hollywood is being disrupted. Now, clearly where that's going to end up is Hollywood loses control. They've lost control over money because they lost control with crypto and they lost control over speech because social media got uncensored. Right. So and, and this is a huge battle. 2024 can be conceptualized as the Democrats going all out against, among other things, their tech disruptors because they tried to regulate AI with the Biden bills to stop AI. They tried to stop crypto with an all out attack by Gary Gensler against crypto and they tried to control speech with all the censorship and saying it's disinformation and whatnot. And they lost. A massive pitch battle, but they lost. Okay. Now in 2025 I would argue basically the Republicans have also unfortunately lost to China. I'm more sympathetic to Republicans in some ways on this, but the Chinese basically one, in my view, the trade war, the proxy war and the Cold war, why they have the world's largest navy, they have this gigantic manufacturing build out. The US national security strategy basically says that they're withdrawing from East Asia and that's a 2025 strategy. It says it in a way of a fighting retreat. Where it says, oh, Japan needs to take on more security responsibilities and so on. But, but fundamentally it's very different from the jfk. Bear any burden, pay any price, defeat communism. And so the net of it is basically that Republicans have been disrupted in manufacturing military by China, Democrats have lost on the Internet and we're in kind of the mop up phase right now where for example the last ditch efforts by Republicans to tariff China at best will protect the home American market. But if you look abroad you're seeing BYD out competing even Tesla in neutral markets like Hungary or Uruguay or something like that. Right. Even our best guy Elon can't beat the Chinese in neutral markets where America can impose tariffs. Conversely, what Democrats are doing is they're trying to have their unions block the use of AI at the Atlantic and the New York Times. So they're trying to wall themselves off within those domains that they still have formal power over to stop that disruption from hitting them rather than leaning into it and disrupting themselves. So now the debt, that's the background force here. But this factional thing, by the way, there's one more edit that I can add to that, which is the Internet is splitting apart into tech America and the global Internet. And I think unfortunately tech America is cruising for a bruising tech America like Silicon Valley, basically the big vulnerability. I think one way of thinking about the last few years. So I talked about disruption outside from the Internet in China. Right? Let's say the Internet is. Now there's a global Internet because there's Portuguese tech Entrepreneurs and Singapore VCs and so on and so forth. Right. There's Chinese open source models and there's cryptocurrency which is global. And all this kind of stuff is global, Right. I can show a graph which shows that there's now 420 cities that have unicorns. Only one of those is Silicon Valley. Have you seen that one?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I have, yeah.

[Balaji Srinivasan]

Okay, fine. So you can put that one on screen. Right? So 420 cities with unicorns, which means you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to build a unicorn. Okay? So that means Silicon Valley is less essential. Okay? And Silicon Valley is actually under attack now. That's why basically, you know the entire concept of disrupting all these blue jobs while being in the blue city in the blues state in the union. Right. Being publicly a billionaire in San Francisco and having your face everywhere and talking about how they're taking all the Democrat jobs while in a city and a state that's ruled by Democrats is the most strategically insane kind of thing. And as a consequence, I think like the wealth tax against the tech billionaires In California, the 5% wealth tax forced Zuck out, Larry Page out, Sergey Brin out.

[Sponsor Voice]

That's it for part one. Make sure you are subscribed so you do not miss part two.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Coming up soon,

[Sponsor Voice]

let's talk about a

[Tom Bilyeu]

pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do.

[Sponsor Voice]

You need consistent nutrition.

[Tom Bilyeu]

We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be

[Balaji Srinivasan]

doing more of it.

[Sponsor Voice]

When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem.

[Tom Bilyeu]

One scoop 8 ounces of water and you're done.

[Sponsor Voice]

You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts. With your first subscription, you get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2 and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.comimpact to claim this offer.

[Alex Canceroitz]

Hi, this is Alex Canceroitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building, AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.