Social media bans for under-16s, as enacted in Canada, the UK, and Australia, could reduce political radicalization of youth by preventing early addiction to information channels that DSA figures like Mamdani use to build their following.

(00:00:00) All right, everybody, welcome back. (00:00:02) Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the All In Podcast, episode 278. (00:00:09) And Freeberg, he took a mental health day today after the socialist sweep in New York City. (00:00:14) So we invited 2 guests. (00:00:16) They both said yes. (00:00:17) Travis Kalendick is here from Adams. (00:00:19) How you doing, brother? (00:00:20) I'm good. (00:00:21) I'm good. (00:00:21) to see you. (00:00:22) Good to see you. (00:00:23) Good to see you. (00:00:24) And after a triumphant week at Starbase, (00:00:28) The one, the only, everybody's favorite, Gavin Baker of Atreides Management. (00:00:34) How are you doing, Gavin? (00:00:36) Great, man. (00:00:36) Thanks for having me. (00:00:38) You're still floating on Cloud 9 after the SpaceX IPO? (00:00:41) Yeah. (00:00:41) That was a very special moment, and it was a culmination of, you know, decades of hard work. (00:00:48) But man, to quote Bill Belichick on to Cincinnati. (00:00:52) Yeah. (00:00:53) exactly right. (00:00:54) Yeah. (00:00:55) Zero-zero is how the Knicks talked about the next game in every series. (00:01:00) They're like, it's zero-zero. (00:01:01) We come into this as if it's like the first game of the series, even if we're up two games or three games. (00:01:05) The socialists have swept New York in the congressional Democratic primaries. (00:01:10) On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Mandami went three for three in the candidates, which he endorsed, and they all won their primaries. (00:01:21) Tenth District Leader Brad Lander defeated two-term incumbent Dan Goldman. (00:01:25) Tenth is one of New York's richest districts, includes the West Village, all those townhouses, Wall Street, Dumbo, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope. (00:01:34) That's some weird geography put together there. (00:01:36) In New York's 13th, Chevalier beat a five-term incumbent who was backed by House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. (00:01:46) And apparently the socialists are coming for him. (00:01:48) 13 is one of the poorest districts, Harlem and the West Bronx, the Boogie Down Bronx. (00:01:53) She's A 32-year-old Democrat socialist with a history of spicy remarks. (00:01:59) New York's 7th district, Claire Valdez, won the open seat over the hand-picked successor, the incumbent. (00:02:06) 7 is a DSA stronghold, Bushwick, Williamsburg, Long Island City, Greenpoint, known as the Commie Corridor. (00:02:14) A lot of hipsters and baristas with suspenders in that neighborhood. (00:02:18) According to our partners, Poly Market, this was a pretty big upset. (00:02:23) The Mondami sweep, chances were just 26 before election day. (00:02:28) Yeah, that would be like the trifecta there if you were gambling. (00:02:31) These candidates, just like Mondami, did a lot better with younger college-educated and high-income folks, folks who can afford to be socialists. (00:02:40) And these are all safe democratic seats. (00:02:41) The DSA will very likely win. (00:02:43) So the DSA caucus. (00:02:44) That's the best way you just said, people who can afford to be socialists. (00:02:48) It's always the rich poor, you know, they're rich, but they pretend to be poor. (00:02:52) It's perfect. (00:02:52) I mean, this is the history of our country from the 30s, the 50s, Red Scare, Black Panthers. (00:02:58) I mean, we'll get into it, Chamath. (00:03:00) But basically, if you're intelligent and you get into business, you become a capitalist. (00:03:04) If you're super intelligent and you go into academia, eventually you have the luxury of belief that socialism is off. (00:03:09) Awesome. (00:03:10) What's your take here, Chamath, and then I'll go to you, sexy poo, because I know I can see you're chomping on something over there. (00:03:16) You're just ready to go. (00:03:17) Honestly, I think that we are losing the script, and part of it is because we've been our own worst enemy. (00:03:24) I'll just keep saying this, that I think AI is a very good prism into this problem. (00:03:31) I think AI is the greatest economic leveler. (00:03:36) we'll ever find in our lifetime. (00:03:38) I think it's the thing that can create the greatest amount of equality. (00:03:41) I think that it can even the starting line for every single person on earth. (00:03:46) But we've done such a poor job in representing it, in bringing it to market, in talking about it. (00:03:52) We've let all of our own personal trials and tribulations and insecurities and fights spill out into the open. (00:03:58) As a result, Silicon Valley has lost even more credibility with the people at large. (00:04:02) And in that vacuum, (00:04:05) What other people can paint is a picture of how anything other than what capitalism looks like today is a better version of what they see. (00:04:13) And this is why you're seeing, I think, a lot of these people get a lot of momentum. (00:04:18) I think if you look at some of the key congressional races, they were a referendum on AI. (00:04:23) And the good news is we were able to hold the line in some of these key places, but just barely. (00:04:29) In Utah and in New York, there was a couple of very important races. (00:04:33) where it was essentially anthropic-funded anti-AI groups, which is, again, insane, against, in some ways, OpenAI-funded pro-AI groups and the pro-AI groups won. (00:04:48) You did explain that it's a great leveler. (00:04:51) Can you give a couple of examples and just expand on that briefly? (00:04:54) How is it a great leveler? (00:04:56) I mean, I know, but for the audience's sake, you've said this a couple of weeks now, so I think unpack it a bit. (00:05:02) The best way to explain it is, I think that the first real major unlock of economic productivity was when the internet, and specifically Google, went and harvested and collected all the world's knowledge and all the world's information, and they made it available via search. (00:05:20) What we figure out, though, 25 years later, despite the fact that they built a great business, is (00:05:26) What was missing was then being able to take that knowledge and information and transform it into expertise and intelligence. (00:05:34) And that's effectively what AI does. (00:05:36) It takes that world's knowledge and it allows you to act upon it so that every single man, woman, and child has an equivalent Travis Kalanick as his co-founder, a super founder, this brilliant person that can think through all your problems, can out-engineer people, can out-think people, and they sit beside you and you have that. (00:05:57) And there is no gatekeeping that can prevent you from having that. (00:06:01) And so now you're only as good as your ability to direct that energy into something productive that you value. (00:06:08) That is an incredibly powerful thing. (00:06:10) And instead we've gotten caught up in doomerism and jobs being lost and water being consumed, all of which are lies, all of which are complete fabrications and misinformation. (00:06:22) And these have been created in order to specifically help one small set of actors inside the AI race. (00:06:30) And it's been fed and funded by those folks. (00:06:33) So in this vacuum, Jason, we've allowed all these other people to paint the other version. (00:06:39) And right now, the other version looks way more compelling than the current version because the current version has very poor brand ambassadors. (00:06:48) Sacks. (00:06:49) What's your take on this? (00:06:50) I guess some people are looking at this as the left's version of the populist takeover that Trump did over the last 10 plus years. (00:07:00) What's your take on what we're seeing here with socialism and its amazing appeal and it's winning at the election box? (00:07:09) I think there is some truth to that. (00:07:11) I mean, I think the choices of the future are going to be communism, or if you want to call it socialism in the Democrat Party, or nationalism in the Republican Party. (00:07:19) I mean, that is where we're headed. (00:07:20) Those are the two populist directions. (00:07:23) But let's look at what these DSA candidates stand for. (00:07:28) So let's look at what their platform is. (00:07:31) They actually say they want to abolish the Senate. (00:07:34) They want to abolish the carceral state. (00:07:38) That means basically police forces and prisons. (00:07:41) They want to abolish ICE and grant amnesty for all. (00:07:45) They do not support any deportations whatsoever. (00:07:48) They want to replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary that is chosen by and subordinate to Congress, which basically now, I guess this means this House. (00:08:00) And with respect to House elections, they want to abolish the Electoral College. (00:08:03) They want to replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. (00:08:07) And they want to expand the House of Representatives, implement proportionate representation and ranked choice voting in all elections. (00:08:13) So this is going to be a total makeover of our constitutional system. (00:08:18) They want a free Palestine. (00:08:20) They want public ownership of major corporations. (00:08:22) They want to defund the Department of War. (00:08:25) This is a very radical organization. (00:08:27) And you would laugh at a lot of these types of proposals, but you can't really laugh at it anymore because these guys are taking over the Democratic Party. (00:08:36) And you can see the Democratic establishment is in complete panic right now because they have lost control of the party to Zoran, Mamdani and his allies. (00:08:48) So Jason, like you said, I mean, let's take this one race here. (00:08:51) New York 13, you've got this ally of Hakeem Jeffries, longtime incumbent congressman. (00:08:57) Espalad, I guess, is his name. (00:09:00) He is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and he was defeated by an unemployed 32-year-old PhD candidate. (00:09:07) She's never had a job. (00:09:08) She's been in college for 10 years, I guess, writing this PhD thesis. (00:09:14) And I think even by DSA standards, she might be kind of a lunatic. (00:09:18) So she (00:09:19) has declared that she wants to end Western civilization. (00:09:23) She wants to eradicate Western civilization. (00:09:25) Wait a second, what? (00:09:27) We're soaking in it. (00:09:29) Yeah, she actually said she used the American flag as a napkin to clean her hands. (00:09:34) Oh. (00:09:37) attended a rally one day after October 7th celebrating the slaughter of Israeli civilians. (00:09:42) I mean, she's very pro-Palestine, but even to the point of celebrating Israeli civilian deaths. (00:09:48) She calls white women ugly colonizers. (00:09:51) She's called for the complete defunding of the police and abolishing all prisons and borders. (00:09:55) Doesn't want a single deportation. (00:09:57) Hates the police, openly calls them pigs or has on social media before. (00:10:02) calls US service members war criminals and says the US is a disgrace of a country. (00:10:07) She's written favorably about communism and seizing the means of production and on and on and on. (00:10:14) So this is basically the new Democratic Party. (00:10:17) It's going to be, even if the Democrats do take the House in November and Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker, this is going to prove to be a huge headache for him managing all these new DSA members because they do not actually see the traditional establishment (00:10:32) wing of the Democratic Party as an ally. (00:10:34) They see it as an obstacle. (00:10:35) This is the DSA co-chair Josh Block said, we're using the Democratic Party as a ballot access vehicle. (00:10:43) Oh my god. (00:10:43) Not because we share its goals. (00:10:45) We build our own organization, get elected under the Democratic label, caucus with Democrats when it's useful, and push our own agenda from the inside. (00:10:54) We see the Democratic establishment as an obstacle, not a home. (00:10:57) So the DSA is coming from the Democratic Party. (00:11:00) It controls the base now. (00:11:01) It's where all the energy (00:11:02) is. (00:11:03) I think this takeover will continue. (00:11:05) I think the DSA will gradually take over more and more of the Democratic Party. (00:11:09) And all I can say to these establishment Democrats is play stupid games, win stupid prizes. (00:11:16) You supported this open border policy that brought in this wave of mass migration. (00:11:21) That is a huge part of the base. (00:11:23) of this new DSA wing. (00:11:25) Mamdani would not have won the mayoral election in New York if it had just been native-born New Yorkers voting. (00:11:31) It was the mass migrant vote in New York that swung it to Mamdani. (00:11:36) It's not exclusively the DSA base. (00:11:39) It's the migrants plus these over-educated (00:11:43) white progressives who I say overeducated because they're more downwardly mobile. (00:11:49) They end up going to work in academia or NGOs, that kind of thing. (00:11:53) They're hard left wing. (00:11:56) They're kind of the vanguard. (00:11:57) And it's this combination of these recent college graduates who are kind of the organizers. (00:12:04) and this migrant movement who are really taking over the Democratic Party. (00:12:08) But again, this all goes back to Democratic Party policies. (00:12:11) They may not have intended for the staff and they may not have intended for them to lose control, but it was their open border policy. (00:12:16) It was also the fact that they have cracked the melting pot and the policy we had for many years in America of assimilating migrants, right, immigrants. (00:12:26) Yep. (00:12:27) That all got cracked by multiculturalism and wokeism. (00:12:30) We don't really do that anymore. (00:12:32) So now you've got these candidates like Chevalier openly declaring, they're not just anti-American, they're post-American. (00:12:39) They don't have any respect for the American system, our constitutional order, our free enterprise system. (00:12:45) They want to introduce something in much different. (00:12:48) And it's going to look a lot like the countries where these migrants are coming from. (00:12:52) So again, if you import massive numbers of migrants, don't assimilate them into our system, and then you have these Marxist leaders, you're going to end up with the American system coming to resemble the countries from which. (00:13:06) It's really interesting. (00:13:07) I think you mentioned like how she wants to get rid of all of these, you know, delete all of these units. (00:13:13) It's very similar to Trump's (00:13:15) he wanted to delete a separate set of things like the IRS and USAID, Department of Education, EPA. (00:13:21) They each use that playbook as well. (00:13:23) Like, hey, we're going to delete some of this stuff. (00:13:25) Travis, you famously had the fountain head. (00:13:29) Trump didn't want to delete the US Constitution. (00:13:31) No, definitely not. (00:13:34) Slight difference. (00:13:35) Slight difference. (00:13:35) I agree. (00:13:35) He didn't want to delete Western culture. (00:13:37) I don't think he wants to delete Western culture. (00:13:40) No. (00:13:42) You might want to delete USAID because it was a festering, it was basically a front for all these NCIOs. (00:13:48) NCIA. (00:13:50) Yeah. (00:13:50) By the way, you may have noticed that in South America, we've had seven elections where the countries have swung to the right. (00:13:57) And I think a big part of the reason why might be you don't have (00:14:01) The USAID there conducting all these left-wing regime change operations. (00:14:06) Paola's Paola disappeared. (00:14:08) Paola disappeared. (00:14:10) And the incentives disappeared with it. (00:14:12) Travis, you famously had the Fountainhead, An Rand's novel, as your Twitter avatar for a decade or two. (00:14:21) No, they've been writing about it for a decade or two. (00:14:24) This is like a six-month thing where I would read a book and then rotate it my avatar. (00:14:29) Yeah, I had Hamilton for a while. (00:14:31) I had Ender's Game for a while, but yeah, it became a thing. (00:14:38) I think, believe in the individual and their exceptionalism and trying to have a little ruggedness there. (00:14:46) This is obviously the exact opposite. (00:14:48) What's your take on what's happening in these pockets? (00:14:52) Because it's not national yet, but it's definitely notable. (00:14:55) All right, I've got sort of two aphorisms for us, okay? (00:15:02) First is (00:15:05) Truth and justice is the immune system for society. (00:15:10) When the immune system is suppressed, all the social ills flare up. (00:15:15) Okay? (00:15:16) So if you're seeing us losing truth, like social media, mainstream media, whatever you call it, like that's an early indicator for bad things happening in society. (00:15:30) Okay? (00:15:30) And it's not just like social media, mainstream media, it's just everything around us. (00:15:35) And the same on the justice side too. (00:15:36) If people commit crimes and there's no consequences, it's a nice early indicator. (00:15:42) So you can kind of watch, you can watch these things and say, is truth winning today or is it losing? (00:15:50) Is justice winning today or is it losing? (00:15:53) And what is the trajectory will tell you, are we going to get worse or are we going to get better? (00:15:58) Right. (00:15:58) COVID makes, and the Fauci case, now we're seeing a lot more information come out. (00:16:03) We have a really hard time getting the truth, and maybe we'll get justice eventually. (00:16:08) It seems like we're getting a little more truth five years later, but it's like a perfect example of what we're discussing. (00:16:12) There's a lot packed into that, but you can unpack it. (00:16:15) If we had a lot of time, we could unpack it. (00:16:17) But those become the sort of atomic things that you look at. (00:16:20) And then the other thing I'd say, and some people get a little surprised when I say this, which is communism isn't (00:16:28) is in all of us. (00:16:30) Communism is in our blood as humans. (00:16:34) And people go, what the hell are you talking about? (00:16:35) You're crazy. (00:16:36) What do you mean? (00:16:37) Well, I'm like, well, have you have you ever in your life been lazy? (00:16:43) And everybody's like, yes, I've been lazy in my life before. (00:16:47) I said, have you ever in your life wanted something for nothing? (00:16:52) Yeah. (00:16:53) The difference is, do you make that a way of life? (00:16:57) And (00:16:58) When you have ecosystems that essentially allow you to do both of those things without consequence, those ecosystems get a critical mass and start taking hold. (00:17:09) And I think that's what we're seeing. (00:17:10) Well said. (00:17:11) Yeah, I think it's well said. (00:17:12) Gavin, I know you, I don't know you to talk too much about politics, but talk about markets, but these two things do relate. (00:17:20) I think. (00:17:20) So give us the economic perspective here on why this is happening. (00:17:26) Because obviously, different generations have had different economic experiences. (00:17:30) So I don't want to lead the witness here, but I have had conversations with you about this before. (00:17:34) Yeah, well, so I do think, obviously AI is, I think, going to be the defining political issue of the midterms and for sure the next presidential election. (00:17:47) But I feel like what is going on with the DSA is really a fusion of two things. (00:17:51) So the Democratic Party, I was a Democrat for most of my life. (00:17:56) And it was the party of the working class people that was trying to create opportunities, you know, maybe level out equality, you know, help black Americans, help Hispanic Americans. (00:18:11) And, you know, you can agree or disagree. (00:18:15) with their methods, but I think those are all noble goals. (00:18:19) And to a large extent, none of those are really present in the DSA. (00:18:26) None of them. (00:18:27) If you look at who voted for which candidate, the voting base of the DSA are relatively wealthy, white liberals who are downwardly mobile. (00:18:40) They're losing votes with working class people. (00:18:43) They're losing votes with poor people. (00:18:45) They're losing votes with black Americans. (00:18:47) They're losing votes with Hispanic Americans. (00:18:51) And those, you know, the people that the Democratic Party, I think, for a long time tried, and whether they failed or succeeded is up to try to represent and give a voice to. (00:19:04) They are not of interest to the DSA. (00:19:07) And I think the DSA is dangerous. (00:19:10) It's tragic that we are electing profoundly anti-American candidates who in some cases have called for violence to eradicate America. (00:19:23) And I just think there's a whole class of people who went to an elite school. (00:19:29) They grew up in really nice circumstances. (00:19:33) And instead of going into industry, (00:19:36) They went into this kind of giant NGO, non-profit machine, and their outcomes have been very different from people who did productive things for the world. (00:19:51) You know, I've said on the show many times, Elon has done more to decarbonize the planet than every activist combined. (00:19:58) Yeah, time sent. (00:20:00) Times 10. (00:20:01) And I think these NGOs and the fact that the government is increasingly outsourcing a lot of funding to them is a really big part of this problem. (00:20:13) And they are pursuing policies, you know, I think we maybe talked about it last time, but the Curley effect, a mayor of Boston, you pursue policies that you know are going to be disastrous for this (00:20:27) your constituents, but they drive out your rivals. (00:20:31) And then you can give jobs, $600,000 a year jobs, run in an NGO that does nothing productive to your friends and allies. (00:20:42) And it's really organized corruption happening at a massive scale. (00:20:47) You know, the one thing, whatever you want to say about the Trump administration, a lot of people are up in arms about this, you know, new plane he's getting from the Qataris. (00:20:56) Well, (00:20:57) one, sounds like we needed a new plane, but two, it's right there for you to see. (00:21:02) I think there are 10s of billions, maybe hundreds of billions of these payments flowing to these NGOs. (00:21:10) And if you look in California and New York, it's like I think the per capita spending on homelessness has more than doubled and it's all gone to NGOs and outcomes have gotten worse. (00:21:23) In California, it's like quadrupled. (00:21:25) and outcomes have gotten worse. (00:21:28) So I think this is dangerous. (00:21:33) And I hope that the mainstream Democrats can find a compelling candidate, because I think the reason that the DSA is increasingly ascendant is not because of their ideas. (00:21:45) I think their ideas appear to this, appeal to this very narrow subset (00:21:49) downwardly mobile, rich white people who increasingly maybe live in quasi-genteel poverty, because they're not doing productive things. (00:21:58) They may be well-intentioned, but they're not doing productive things, and can find a compelling candidate, because I think the reason their ascendant is Zoram Mamdani. (00:22:09) I think he is one of the most talented politicians I've ever seen. (00:22:13) in my lifetime. (00:22:15) He can give a great speech. (00:22:16) He's good in an interview. (00:22:18) He can tap into all of this. (00:22:20) He's kind of a chameleon who can shift. (00:22:22) But I think he is a singularly talented politician, and he is the reason that the DSA is ascendant. (00:22:31) Not their ideas or not dissatisfaction with AI, but (00:22:37) It's him. (00:22:38) And there is no one else in the Democratic Party. (00:22:41) I used to think AOC was by far the most talented Democratic politician. (00:22:44) That was the warm up. (00:22:45) Yeah. (00:22:46) She was talented. (00:22:47) She's like Zoran. (00:22:49) Zoran is clearly talented. (00:22:51) And if you combine his charisma and ability to communicate with generations, like we're now like have two of these lost generations that feel like they're going to do worse than their parents. (00:23:02) And if you look at housing and college debt, (00:23:07) healthcare, they don't believe that they can participate in the system. (00:23:11) They feel the system's rigged. (00:23:12) And if somebody comes along who speaks to them and they have no conception of socialism and what happened, you know, in Germany or during the Red Scare, they have no idea what socialism or communism is. (00:23:24) They have this incredible wrapper they've put around this, which is, you know, they're democratic socialists. (00:23:29) It's like, it's the Coke Lite. (00:23:31) It's A Coke Zero of socialism. (00:23:33) It's actually just communism. (00:23:34) They want to literally (00:23:36) seize people's assets. (00:23:38) They want to seize half of these company stock. (00:23:40) They want to seize their wealth. (00:23:42) They just want to take from the people who have made stuff as we talked about last week. (00:23:46) And we've done nothing to change their mind. (00:23:50) We haven't made more houses. (00:23:52) We haven't made college more affordable. (00:23:54) Healthcare is a disaster. (00:23:55) Inflation's a disaster. (00:23:57) And starting pointless wars. (00:23:59) Obviously, the support of Israel is somewhere in here as part of all this. (00:24:02) Can I say something? (00:24:03) Yeah, sure, of course. (00:24:04) Yeah. (00:24:05) I was on megyn kelly yesterday, and I had this theory that I've been kind of working through, and I'll just share it with you guys because I'd love your reaction. (00:24:15) If you look at the scourge of socialism, if you take the rhetoric away and you actually look at the outcomes, there are three countries that I think have veered far towards socialism well before the United States, Canada, the UK, and Australia. (00:24:33) And I think when you look at any sort of (00:24:36) reasonable measure of their progress, it's been an unmitigated disaster. (00:24:41) So all of the virtue signaling on social issues, all of the virtue signaling on immigration and open borders, all of the virtue signaling on climate change has left each of those three countries in some state of disrepair with enormous amounts of infighting, tremendous political instability. (00:25:00) They are all sort of powder kings. (00:25:02) And (00:25:03) There's an interesting thing that happened in each of those three countries that I think has the potential to turn the tide, and it speaks to what Gavin said. (00:25:13) Each of those three countries now have banned social media when you're 16 and under. (00:25:18) And I think it's sort of like making sure the kid doesn't get addicted to the drug too early. (00:25:25) And when you look at somebody like Zoran Mamdani, I think Gavin is right. (00:25:29) I'll go even further. (00:25:30) He (00:25:32) AOC, the lady that just won. (00:25:36) Chevalier. (00:25:37) Chevalier. (00:25:37) Let's just break it down. (00:25:39) They're all good looking. (00:25:41) They're all charismatic. (00:25:42) They have their pulse on the gestalt of the moment. (00:25:46) They know how to use social media and they are essentially curating an army. (00:25:52) Now, if you cut the legs off by saying young people should actually age into social media, I suspect that the most important channel of information consumption being taken away from them actually starts to give them the opportunity and the rest of us, quite honestly, because we have to deal with kids who are just really stupid, constantly asking for this stuff. (00:26:15) The chance to actually show you how a balanced diet actually allows you to be much healthier in your later life. (00:26:20) And I think as it relates to information consumption, I think you are going to see, I suspect, a far less radicalized youth aging into the voting rolls in those three countries. (00:26:33) And I suspect if you start to see political stability and predictability in Canada, the UK, and Australia, you can put your finger right on this ban as the reason why. (00:26:44) And Florida's already done it in the United States. (00:26:46) And I think we need to deeply consider it across the rest of the United States. (00:26:50) So social media ban is now starting at 16 and Canada has it. (00:26:55) may come to the US. (00:26:56) Go ahead, Travis. (00:26:57) I'm a full counter to Chamath on this one. (00:26:59) I think we all agree social media is (00:27:02) bad for the kids and for the adults. (00:27:05) Too much of that stuff is very bad. (00:27:06) It's brain rot for real. (00:27:08) And it's going to be worse than cigarettes. (00:27:09) It's all the things. (00:27:11) But the real point of banning under 16 is so that you can force adults to identify themselves and de-anonymize themselves so you can set up a full-scale censorship regime, which they're sort of contemplating in the UK. (00:27:28) And what censorship is really about is not about harmful content. (00:27:32) It's about content that the people in power don't want you to see that disagrees with them. (00:27:39) If it agreed with them, it's not harmful. (00:27:41) It's the stuff that doesn't agree with them. (00:27:44) And so what they're doing is they're criminalizing, disagreeing with them. (00:27:48) And so there's a derivative of this age-based stuff. (00:27:54) Age-gating. (00:27:55) Which is really about the adults, not the kids. (00:27:59) That is the downside to it. (00:28:00) Gavin, you wanted to add? (00:28:01) No, I super agree that I think that a social media ban under 16 would be great, but I think it comes at a really high cost outlined by Travis. (00:28:12) And that's what's really going on is they want to restrict anonymous accounts on X who say things that particularly the powers that be in the EU do not like. (00:28:21) And if there's a way to do that while preserving anonymity and free speech, I'm all for it. (00:28:27) But I think (00:28:29) If it were not for free speech and acts, like I think we'd be living in a very different world today that would be a lot worse. (00:28:38) And just to riff on a few things that all of you have said, on communism, it is communism and the great tragedy of human experiences. (00:28:47) We can't learn from the experiences of others. (00:28:49) And it may not matter that communism has failed (00:28:53) utterly and ended in death and misery wherever it has been tried in a variety of different cultures with a variety of different mechanisms, and every generation may need to experiment with it. (00:29:07) I think the saving grace and the importance of preserving free speech is that the DSA's policies, and I would say in particular super progressive democratic policies, are measurably (00:29:21) bad. (00:29:22) They lead to bad outcomes. (00:29:23) If you care about black lives, there's a study that is uncontested that when you elect a Republican DA, all-cause mortality for young black men in that city drops by 7%. (00:29:35) That's all it takes. (00:29:37) You care about the environment? (00:29:39) Well, progressives, there's so many regulations that you can't build solar, which is really the only thing that matters. (00:29:45) And the world is going to run on sunlight. (00:29:48) You care about education? (00:29:50) Their approach to education, of getting rid of these elite schools that allows low-income people to have a real chance, getting rid of math in California, it is profoundly disadvantageous to people. (00:30:04) It leads to terrible outcomes. (00:30:08) And we all know what happens with crime. (00:30:10) It turns out that there's a certain percentage of people who (00:30:15) our, I think it's like 60, over 60% of the violence or 75% of the violence comes from people who have like 10 or more convictions. (00:30:25) Yeah, I think the specific stat is like 0.1% commits 70% of the crimes. (00:30:30) And if you just dealt with the 0.1%, you have effectively no crime. (00:30:34) And so I just think the scary thing is, and I do worry for the first time, like as a student of history, (00:30:42) The United States has been like a very stable political, economic entity, geographically stable for a long time. (00:30:49) And that's to its credit because we could have literally taken over the world after World War II. (00:30:55) But man, if they get total control of some of these cities and drive out everyone who is productive, I don't know how you come back. (00:31:05) And so that is a little worrisome to me in terms of the future of the United States. (00:31:12) and by the way, I don't think it's just New York. (00:31:15) I mean, that race for mayor in LA, where was it Rahman somehow beat Spencer Pratt thanks to ballot harvesting after voting day, or I should say votes that were found and counted after election day? (00:31:29) I mean, that will be a test of the DSA because they are highly organized and they have learned how to take advantage of all these rules, these ballot harvesting rules and all these types of things. (00:31:39) The DSA, I think they've got something like half the city council seats now in LA and they're growing. (00:31:46) So especially in these low turnout elections, and look, this was a Democratic primary in New York, which is a strongly blue state. (00:31:53) So I think maybe 17% turned out. (00:31:56) So it's very low. (00:31:57) But this is where the DSA really (00:31:59) lives and excels because they care passionately and they're highly organized and they know how to take advantage. (00:32:05) This is why they want all these like ranked choice voting and all these types of things. (00:32:09) They know how to manipulate, take advantage of those kinds of systems. (00:32:12) So I think that you're going to see this in lots of other jurisdictions. (00:32:17) Wherever they're organized, I think LA will be a really interesting test. (00:32:20) So I don't think we can just chalk this up to Zoran's popularity. (00:32:24) You know, this is a national movement and we're going to see it in a lot of places, but there's no question (00:32:29) that Mamdani is now kind of the spiritual leader. (00:32:32) I mean, all of these people don't, they think AOC is a sellout, or Bernie is a sellout. (00:32:37) they are way more radical than even those types. (00:32:41) To add to that, Sax, they did learn something from Trump, which is builds a big tent. (00:32:45) So you're seeing Bernie, Mandami, Ro Khanna, they're all kind of like, yeah, we're different, but there's enough room in this tent. (00:32:53) what's happening is that these sort of more established progressive leaders, they want to tap into this energy. (00:32:59) And even the establishment wing of the Democratic Party is now bending the knee. (00:33:03) And so what you're going to see is, regardless, (00:33:06) of how many DSA candidates actually get elected, the rest of the party is now responding to this and they're going to bend, they're going to blow in this direction because they don't want to get challenged in a primary. (00:33:18) I mean, think about this. (00:33:18) You had three major congressional races where the Mamdani candidate won, two of them unseated, you know, really strong incumbents. (00:33:27) These were big upsets. (00:33:29) So you got to think now that every congressional race and (00:33:33) pretty blue district, those members are now going to have to take into account that they could get primaried. (00:33:39) And they're going to have to tilt their voting and their views and their rhetoric in this DSA direction because they don't want to have happen to them what just happened to Dan Goldman in the New York 10th district. (00:33:51) And just to make one last point on that, so J. (00:33:53) Kyle, you mentioned the Israel issue. (00:33:56) And I actually think that is a hugely important and salient issue now in the Democratic Party, in Democratic primaries, (00:34:03) Obviously you saw that as part of the DSA platform, one of the legs is Free Palestine. (00:34:08) This defeat of Dan Goldman, two-time congressman, he led the impeachment effort against Trump. (00:34:13) He had all the right progressive credentials. (00:34:16) He checked the box in all the left-wing policies. (00:34:18) He was on the right cable news channels all the time. (00:34:21) No one expected him to lose. (00:34:23) He lost to Brad Lander really just over this issue of Israel. (00:34:28) Dan Goldman is very pro-Israel. (00:34:30) He (00:34:31) basically defended Israel's actions over the past few years, whereas Lander, who, like Goldman, is also Jewish. (00:34:38) So this was, again, white Jewish congressman against white Jewish longtime New York politician. (00:34:45) So on paper, they're very similar. (00:34:47) It was just in this issue of Israel where they disagreed. (00:34:50) And Lander went to a mosque in order to denounce what he called the genocide in Gaza. (00:34:55) So this was really as close as you can get to a straight up vote on that one (00:35:01) issue in this primary and Lander won pretty handily. (00:35:05) Now, the reason for this is if you look at polling, 80% of Democrats now say they disapprove of Israel. (00:35:12) So, you know, the approval disapproval rating, Israel used to have high approval ratings pretty much across the board. (00:35:18) I mean, it was sort of a consensus, both Democrats and Republicans. (00:35:21) Now, 80% of Democrats say they disapprove. (00:35:25) You really can't underestimate how much of A motivator this is for young Democrats. (00:35:30) They believe that (00:35:31) they were all over campuses. (00:35:33) We see it. (00:35:34) I mean, it draws people out. (00:35:35) And it has been quite polarizing just to call balls and strikes here inside the Republican Party as well. (00:35:40) You have Tucker leaving the party over this. (00:35:42) You have Megyn Kelly going mental over this. (00:35:44) And you have a lot of civil war inside this administration, according to the report. (00:35:49) So this is the. (00:35:50) Well, let me look. (00:35:52) I mean, I'm not taking a side in this. (00:35:53) I'm just trying to describe what's going on. (00:35:55) Absolutely, same as me. (00:35:56) I think the Republican Party is a little bit more mixed on this issue, and it really (00:36:01) comes down to age. (00:36:02) So if you're part of the older, more establishment Republicans, let's say you're a Fox News viewer, you still have high approval ratings for Israel. (00:36:11) But if you're under 50, which means you're probably not watching Fox that much anymore, you're probably onto the podcast. (00:36:17) I think the disapproval rating for Israel is now 57%. (00:36:19) Interesting. (00:36:20) So it really comes down to age. (00:36:22) Young people across the board have serious problems with what Israel is doing. (00:36:26) And then, you know, as you get into older age groups, that's where you see a big difference. (00:36:31) And to be clear, I think Tramath, you did a wonderful job of explaining this on megyn kelly. (00:36:35) There's Jewish people, there's the state of Israel, there's Israelis who live in the state of Israel who are also Jewish, and then there's Bibi Netanyahu. (00:36:43) And I think there's a lot of concern on Bibi Netanyahu is just absolutely out of control is the consensus, I think, amongst many people, across many religions and (00:36:56) Not to re-ash this whole thing, but there are a lot of parallels from what happened in 10-7 and what happened in 9-11 in the following ways. (00:37:03) When you invade a country and you slaughter their people, it creates an enormous injury, an enormous emotional, physical, psychological injury. (00:37:18) And what that country typically does is respond by giving the authority to the leader at that time (00:37:25) to set the table right. (00:37:28) And you have to remember, there's a lot of things that happened post-9-11 that under any other circumstance would never have happened. (00:37:33) At the top of the list would have been the Patriot Act, which in any other world would never have gotten past and would have seen the light of day, but not for 9-11. (00:37:41) So there are moments where leaders are put in a position and they essentially act on behalf of their country and their people to right a wrong. (00:37:50) I understand that. (00:37:50) I think everybody understands that. (00:37:52) What's happened now, though, is that people cannot logically disambiguate Jews, Israelis, and Bibi. (00:38:01) And I think that's very unfortunate because we're at a point in time where everything gets conflated and this thing has become this third rail issue. (00:38:10) And I find it absolutely shocking. (00:38:13) It's completely reasonable for people to have a point of view on Bibi and say, hey, you know what? (00:38:19) It's enough or it's gotten too far or whatever it is. (00:38:23) And I think that there's a very reasonable claim to make that it's time to find different leadership, new leadership inside of Israel and have an opportunity to reset their standing on the global stage. (00:38:33) They deserve that. (00:38:34) The Israeli people are incredible. (00:38:36) Jews are incredible. (00:38:38) But the idea that you fold it all together and you look at one person and then you apply it (00:38:43) to an entire country and an entire religion is insane. (00:38:48) May I add one thing? (00:38:49) May I add one thing? (00:38:50) Please, Gavin. (00:38:50) I think there's two things, really, and I'll be quick. (00:38:53) One, Israel has a giant PR problem. (00:38:56) They need a young, sub-35-year-old American-Israeli who's super fluent in English, conversant in social media, (00:39:06) and is their kind of spokesperson to America. (00:39:08) And they need that in France, in Germany, in every country. (00:39:11) And they do not have that. (00:39:12) There was a young, I think his name, I forget his name, but there was a young Israeli who was doing a really good job, Israeli-American, representing Israel after October 7th. (00:39:21) And evidently Bibi Netanyahu's wife didn't like him, so they canned him. (00:39:26) And they've never really found a replacement. (00:39:29) And I do think this is an urgent issue for Israel, because it's like they are taking (00:39:36) body blows every second, and they're not even responding. (00:39:42) And what I think they do, what they tend to do is they'll sometimes roll out someone who's a great man or woman in Israel and is in their 60s and a hero of a war, but isn't that fluent in social media? (00:39:56) Maybe the command of English is, you know, technically precise,