 You've talked a lot, you're on record talking about the quite rapid process through which innovative tech startups become kind of grumpy and meshed incumbents, both just with the state and more generally in their business practices. That topic has come up a lot recently with the Twitter files and you know the sort of revelations of the ways that companies collaborated willingly I think in many cases but maybe with a looming threat as well with government agencies around misinformation and other questions. It seems to be like we're going to be in for more of that, that this sort of blurring of the lines between public and private is our fate. Is that what it looks like to you and if so you know is that ultimately a thing that threatens innovation or are there ways in which it could potentially speed things along? Yeah so look the textbook view of the American economy is that it's a free market competition and companies are fighting it out and different toothpaste companies are trying to sell you different toothpaste and it's a largely competitive market and then every once in a while there's an externality that requires government intervention and then you get these weird things like the too big to fail banks or whatever but those are the exceptions to the general working in the free market system. I can tell you my experience having been now in startups for 30 years is that the opposite is true specifically that James Burnham was right that we passed from you know the original model of capitalism which he called bourgeois capitalism which is what we still think capitalism is we passed into a different model which he called managerial capitalism you know some some decades back and the the the actual correct model of how the US economy works is it is mostly a process of oligopolies cartels and monopolies and they most it's mostly them you know for it's basically big companies forming up into oligopolies cartels and monopolies and doing all the things that you expect oligopolies cartels and monopolies to do and then they jointly basically corrupt and capture the regulatory and government process and so they they end up controlling their regulators and so most sectors of the economy are a conspiracy between the big incumbents and their putative regulators and the purpose of the conspiracy is to perpetuate the long-term existence of those monopolies and cartels and to block new competition like so so that's where that's where I've come out on to me that completely explains the education system both k through 12 and the college university system it completely explains the healthcare system it completely explains the housing crisis it completely explains 2008 the financial crisis and the bailouts it completely explains the twitter files like I think that's precisely what what has been happening in tech and so if you're if you're if you're if you're if you're open to that interpretation of how the world works and how the country works and how the economy works then like a lot of things start to make a tremendous amount of sense and then I you know I think that what the twitter files is is it's basically an x-ray of a specific instance of that happening which and this is just factional what we now know from the twitter files is that a very large number of people in government by the way some of them political and you know some of them like politicians but also some of them bureaucrats right and so some of the members of the right deep state right which either you know as we know the deep state either does not exist or if it does exist it's good right one or the other I think most people that's what I've heard yeah that's what I've heard there's a recent book on that that apparently makes that case very very clearly so let's just say like the permanent bureaucracy or again what James Burnham would say is like the managerial class in government right the sort of permanent cadre of professionals in government who basically manage everything and you know those people and then also people on the outside who they fund as their proxies right with government money with taxpayer money right have been exerting enormous pressure on twitter to block sensor dot dot dot dot dot you know and and you know what looks to me like a straightforward constitutional case for deprivation of constitutional rights you know first fourth and fifth amendments in a way that is clearly illegal both under the constitution and under is it title 18 whatever 242 you know there's a specific federal law that says there it's a felon it's a felony for a government official to use the power of being in government to deny citizens of constitutional rights there's actually by the way another law there's 241 that actually applies that same principle to private citizens including private companies and so I think it's possible that there has there I think it's possible that there's actually been criminal activity both on the government side and on the company side um and yeah and it's just like yeah that's been happening and you know the twitter every new drop of the twitter files shows that that's what's what's been happening you know in a in a in a non-political world where we all just like read the constitution um you know this would be a constitutional crisis you know this would be the biggest story in the in the country there would be hearings you know there would be you know among other you know immediate impeachment proceedings like you know this this would be a five alarm fire very because obviously the government can't be allowed to do this um you know in our in our in the real world of course that's not what's happening um and you know and we're back to either either denial or or or embrace under the theory that this is good and proper right um are there sectors that are less subject to that dynamic that you just described in which the startup quickly become the incumbent semester of the state I mean look so I think it's so my my theory basically is the question is always the same question like is there actual competition right like so so so actually I think there's like a deeper my my deeper idea here is basically the process of evolution like so the idea of capitalism is basically an economic form of the idea of evolution right a natural selection and the you know survival of the fittest and the idea that basically it's a superior product ought to win in the market um and that markets ought to ought to be open to competition and a better you know a new company can come along with a better widget and take out the incumbents because it's widget is superior and customers like it better and so like for for evolution to proper to to function properly you need survival of the fittest which means you need things to die when they're not the best thing for capitalism to work properly you need the same thing to happen you need companies to die when they are inferior to other companies that are doing things better right that you know that's that that's sort of inherent to the to the thing and so the the the question always is like is there actual competition happening or not right is is and you know in part it's like do consumers actually have the ability to freely select among the existing alternatives and then the other question is like can can new can new products actually come to market right you know can you can you actually bring a new widget to market or do you get blocked out because the regulatory wall that's been established is you know basically makes that prohibitive I mean look the the great example of this is is is banking right where you know the the big thing in 2008 was we need to bail out these banks because they're quote-unquote too big to fail and so then there were screams of the need to reform the too big to fail banks that led to Dodd Frank the result of Dodd Frank I call it the big bank protection act of 2011 uh right the the result of that is that the too big to fail banks are now much larger than before and the number of new banks being created in the US has dropped to zero right because it's it's now effectively impossible to launch a new bank in the US because you know JP Morgan Chase has 10,000 lawyers right working on their regulatory issues and you have one like it's it's not possible like you can't start new banks anymore and so anyway sorry so I'm I'm repeating the I'm repeating the case against so but the question is like where is that not happening like you know where where in the where in the market is that actually not happening um you know where is there free and open competition you know look the the the cynical answer is this it's not that doesn't happen in the spaces that don't matter right like so toys like anybody can bring a new toy to market like it's fine sure great right anybody can you know I don't know like anybody can open a restaurant right it's I mean I would say don't matter being like you know these are fine and good like you know consumer categories that people really enjoy and so forth but as contrasted to the healthcare system or the education system right or the housing system right or your business better if you want freedom your business better be frivolous I mean that would be the that would be the cynical way of looking at it like if it if it doesn't matter from a societal structure right in terms of like determining the power structure of society and basically the power of the government and society um then yeah go crazy do whatever you want but like if it actually matters to like major issues of policy right where the government is intertwined with them then of course it doesn't happen there and again it doesn't happen there not just because the government it doesn't happen there because of an intertwining of the incumbents in the government you know look I I think this stuff is getting look this is one of these things where I almost have trouble debating it I'm not debating it with you but like debating it with people who argue with me on this because I think it's so self-evident it's like well why aren't there you know it's like why are all these universities like identical like why are all of the major universities implementing the exact same like crazy like why do they all have like identical ideologies right why isn't there like a why isn't there a marketplace of ideas at the university level right and it's like well that becomes a question of like why aren't there more universities okay well why and I can tell you why there aren't more universities there aren't more universities because to be a new university you have to get accredited the accreditation bureau is is run by the existing universities like it it's sitting there in plain sight I'll give you the other another example why do health care prices do what they do right why why do health care prices work the way that they work a major reason for that is because they because basically they're paid for by insurance there's private insurance and public insurance the private insurance price is just key off the public prices because medicare basically drives the whole thing because medicare is the big buyer so however medicare price is set they're set by a unit inside hhs called cms and and cms runs literal soviet style price fixing boards for medical goods and services and so once a year there are doctors who get together in a conference room at like a high at chicago somewhere and they sit down and they establish they fix they do the exact same thing that what was the unit of the the communist party in the in Russia that used to do this in the soviet union there's a term for it there was the central price fixing bureau right so the soviets had a central price fixing bureau it didn't work we don't have that for the entire economy but we have that for the entire health care system right and it doesn't work for the same reason that the soviet system didn't work right and so we've exactly replicated the soviet system we're expecting better results it operates in plain sight you can go on the medic cms cms as a website they'll explain this all to you it's operating in plain sight everybody thinks it's a great idea and then you know lots of people are calling for you know increased government you know centralized you know control and purchasing of health care which would make that system stronger and so it's like we we know that this is not going to work we know that it's going to only result in restrictions of supply and and rising prices we know precisely what the outcome is going to be we seem perfectly happy with it and then we complain about it so