 Twitter. I don't know how many of you are on Twitter. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Twitter a lot. I spend a lot of time on Twitter It's part of how I keep track of the news and what's going on in the world And of course we all know Elon Musk has bought Twitter. It's now week two Or we're going into the third week of is it the third week of the second week anyway Elon Musk owns Twitter and he's in charge and he's the boss and he dictates policies And as I told you from the beginning when this first came up a long time ago two things are going to happen one It's going to be fun to watch and it is absolutely fun to watch and second It's going to be more challenging than he thinks on multiple fronts Both on the content moderation, which is not easy not simple not straightforward as he's discovering and second On the financial fund Twitter does not make money Indeed Twitter bleeds money. It's at some profitable periods, but it's not significantly profitable and right now it's bleeding and You know, it is never Figured out Twitter never figured out how to really make money on the platform Advertising is Inesculable as compared to things like Facebook Google other, you know big tech companies, so Facebook so Twitter is is is right now losing money That was bad enough in the old structure when there's a public company and it had little debt But now it's a private company owned by Elon Musk and maybe a few other investors and it has 13 billion dollars in debt It's just it's it's interest payments on the debt You know interest plus principle that has to pay on the debt annually is going to be about a billion dollars It has to make that money. It of course also has to make money beyond that At least enough money to keep the office open So Elon Musk is challenged with Getting the company profitable Now one of his first moves was you know that blue checker that little checkmark that people get To authenticate themselves Twitter would never give me that I tried a number of times to get that blue checkmark for whatever reason they they refused to authenticate That I am who I claim I am I don't know why it was so difficult but He is not charging people for the blue checkmark Maybe now if I pay the eight bucks a month, I will get a little checkmark next to my name I don't know what advantage that gives me but maybe people will believe that the Iran book Twitter account is actually Iran books and not some other fake. I don't know anyway. Maybe it helps in the algorithm I don't know. I'll try it's worth eight bucks a month. I'll try it and see if it makes any difference but anyway, he's charging eight bucks a month for people to do that, right and It's eight bucks a month It'll be interesting to see How many people pay that but even if everybody pays it and even if he adds some people that's not going to solve his problems So his problem now is marketing. His problem is advertising Now, you know Elon Musk is a genius. You know, he's obviously done an amazing job with rockets A somewhat amazing job. I'm not as excited about the job. He did a Tesla, but it's somewhat You know amazing job at Tesla, though Again, I hate the extent to which he got government subsidies is quite stunning if you actually look at the numbers But okay, the guys are phenomenal engineer and manager, but the real question is The all those skills translate into a business like Twitter, which is very different This is a software business not a hardware business This is a business that has a lot to do with Gaining revenue you you know both all of Elon Musk's other businesses with exception of PayPal all of his other businesses relied on revenue from the government You know Tesla could have never succeeded without subsidies and and primarily Carbon credits massive hundreds of billions of dollars of carbon credits and of course SpaceX could not exist without contracts from NASA and from the federal government so Elon Musk is very good at generating revenue from the government. Is he good at generating revenue from? Advertising agencies is he good at getting people to Engage on a platform That is about ideas or about connecting about communication very different than spaceships and automobiles even very different than Finance and and and payment systems. So I'm not saying you'll fail. I'm saying it's not gonna be easy It's a real challenge and the blue check mark eight bucks a month ain't gonna do it that that doesn't pay The interest on a year's worth of that. I don't think pays the interest on one month worth of the of interest on the debt So he's gonna have to figure out the revenue model. He's gonna have to figure out a revenue model And I don't know how he does it without advertising and I don't know how he keeps the advertisers and grows advertising Given his You know without some kind of content moderation and how that fits in with his commitment to having Very minimal content moderation. So we'll see it's gonna be really really interesting and fun again to watch And I you know, I hope he succeeds. I want Twitter to be successful. I'm on Twitter. I actively engage on Twitter So I have every incentive in the world for Elon Musk to succeed and to grow and to grow the audience and to make it even easier for Content creators like myself or public intellectuals like myself to use Twitter to leverage our access to the world So Twitter is going to be Super interesting to watch on a revenue perspective And a business perspective just from the business dynamics, how do you create? Business out of the shell that is Twitter. The second question is where is of course Oh, and by the way, just go back to the business side of it, which is interesting on Friday supposedly half of the staff 3700 something like that People who worked Twitter were laid off were fired All kind of legal issues is already a lawsuit against Twitter on the firings, but that's stupid California and federal law that restricts the ability of business people to To do what they need to do in order to run a business So you have to let people know if you can have a mass firing you have to give 60 days notice all kinds of Nonsense like that that was meant to protect unions in the days of unions Or really is meant to protect workers now that most workers are not unionized and and again Some really really bad laws relating to employment status, but putting all of that aside A lot of people laid off on Friday. It turns out it looks like again. It's hard to it's hard to figure out It's hard to figure out exactly what's going on But it looks like some people laid off that then Twitter regretted laying them off So over the weekend they were rehiring some people that on Friday. They had laid off. So, you know confusing times But again, I think the press makes too much of that because when somebody comes in and restructures a business and makes big Changes and lays off a lot of people a mistakes are gonna get done. It is messy It's it's it's it's not fun for the people involved I hear some people are sleeping at their desk at Twitter in order to try to keep their job and Get all the work done. I think that that Musk is sending their way. It's gonna be fascinating to watch how the restructuring goes and and most corporate restructuring's Nobody pays attention to nobody cares. They happen. You know somewhere else And and and nobody really pays attention to and corporate restructuring is a is an art. They're very few managers in In history that have been good at corporate restructuring. So I remember there was one in in the 1980s and 90s his name was Al I can't remember his family name, but he they called him chainsaw Al Chainsaw Al because when he came into a business room the chainsaw came out and he and he cut cut cut cut cut cut And he was brilliant at it and he knew exactly what he was doing and he reoriented the company focused them cut out all the waste sold off assets that weren't being When being properly utilized focused everybody's energy around one goal and one mission and one track Al Dunlap Thank you chainsaw Al. I met chainsaw Al once At the end of his after his career when he was already retired and He was he was brilliant at it and then he took over his last company was a company took over and He decided to go soft and he decided that this time He was gonna heed the criticisms and this time he was gonna be nice and this time He was gonna quote build for the long term by the way He would do this cut cut cut focus the energy and then sell the company, which is brilliant, right? brilliant economically valuable you know Productivity adding in every respect from an economic financial perspective Fantastic, this is this is capitalism You know markets working at their best the final company. He said, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna Invest I'm gonna think long term. I'm gonna run this company long term I'm gonna show them that I'm not just one a one-trick pony that I can't just I'm not just chainsaw Al I can also build companies over the long run complete flop He had to quit the company, you know, almost went bust He had to quit the company kind of in disgrace and that was his final job Which is kind of a tragedy for somebody who had been so productive so successful So value adding so wealth creating throughout his career to to to Leave on such a downer But a lot of times that's what happens When Business people who are very good at something try to be something that they're not Try to be something that they're not Frank says, I know a bunch of labor people and w w ba who would hate you on is saying now Yeah, they're wrong. I will take them up on this anytime. I will match they you know the history and the standards of What it takes to run businesses and how to make them successful Particularly in a free market not, you know, not in a market where the Fed is manipulating interest rates to zero But in a really dynamic Competitive free market you sometimes not always sometimes have to be ruthless and you have to do these restructurings. It's called Creative destruction and it's it's crucial. It's a part of what? Business and markets require what competition requires and ultimately Gail is right It's called justice Because keeping an unproductive job is unjust It's it's a form of subsidy. It's a form of welfare and it's unjust Anyway, part of the issue here is that businessman the fact that you're good at something Doesn't mean you're good at everything and I think chainsaw Al learnt that and is Musk good at restructuring. He's never really done it before He he didn't have to do a PayPal. He never did it Tesla. I don't think he's really done it at SpaceX We'll say I hope he's good. I hope he's successful But the fact that the guys are genius in one area does not necessarily make him a genius in every area Business is complicated business is hard figuring these things out is Not easy Okay, second issue so that's kind of the business issue which I find fascinating and and look forward to watching Second issue is The content moderation Now supposedly he's forming a committee to make decisions about content moderation He's already decided that that check mark that people paid bucks to get It's only gonna do after the election because he doesn't want to create any kind of bias that might appear He You know one of his content decisions has been that anybody who changes their name You know so you know how you can have you know the at The at your own book, but you can actually put on top of that you can see you know object You know public intellectual you can put you can put some other Name so people were using was saying a lawn musk You could see it wasn't a lawn musk because the act was some other name But people were putting a lawn musk and making fun of him So he basically banned that practice you can no longer declare yourself to be a lawn musk when you're not a lawn musk Even though it's obvious to the people that you're not a lawn musk. In other words, you can't have any more of these Parity accounts So he has made those Illegal on and he's actually he's actually thrown out a couple of people at least one person from Twitter for having such an account So he's discovering the hard way That it's not that easy to figure out what should be acceptable and what should not be acceptable It's not that easy to be in a position where everybody's making fun of you and you just let it go So it's gonna be really interesting what ultimately they come up with his content moderation Counselor or board of advisors also think the other aspect of this I mentioned earlier is what advertisers want What kind of content moderation did the people who are going to buy big chunks of advertising on Twitter and if Yeah, so you but if you but if you If you change the content moderation will you have to go out and find new advertisers and will you be able to find them? So Taysie Taysie corrects me. She says you can have parody accounts, but it has to say its parody somewhere very Noticable somewhere very obvious rather than you know, whenever I see something I verify. Is this really a lawn musk? Oh, no, it's not because you can see from the at account that it's not him but anyway, you know, so It's interesting that he's gonna have to figure out what the boundaries are what a parody account is or isn't You know, what's acceptable? It's not acceptable. What gets advertising in what? scares advertising out all of that, right? All of that is going to be Not easy and he's discovering that He's discovering that I'm still looking forward to see what happens right I'm still looking forward to seeing what happens and how it works and Again, I super hope that he is successful and I super hope that he comes up with some kind of Content moderation standards that are objective and straightforward and understandable and we can all follow them It's a private company. They can set their standards for moderation any way they want but what hasn't happened in any social media hasn't happened in Facebook, Twitter, any of the places is Kind of objective standards that it's easy to read Understand and then know if you're breaking the rules or not That's what's missing. It's objectivity. So I have no problem with whatever Moderating standards they come up with as long as they're easily understood and they're not Missed to you know, interpreted at the whim of some Twitter employee Objectivity and a way to I would want objective rules and then a way to Challenge them a Way to say wait a minute. I didn't violate the rules look and some kind of Process by which there's a hearing in which you can argue against that would be and again an objective process So that would be cool if they did that We'll see what they come up with in the end I mean they might do what some other platforms do which is just say, okay, if it's legal you can say it But but I worry for them about what happens with advertisers No platform has been economically successful doing that we'll see if if Twitter can be last comments on Twitter and this relates to the election And more comment on Elon Musk rather than Twitter Elon Musk today tweeted that you should vote Republican tomorrow And the reason you should vote Republican is that you won divided government so I Think he's been listening to your own book show and He's come to the conclusion or he's adopted the conclusion that divided government is best The good luck is superior to anyone political party holding all levers of power and And What you know the problem is I don't really believe it Elon Musk I don't believe that If the Republican was in this in the White House right now he would tell people to vote Democratic I don't think that's in him. I think he shifted to the right I think he shifted towards Republicans and I think he is going to advocate for voting Republicans from now on In a significant way, but we'll see where he could change his mind again But I think it's disingenuous of him to say vote Republican tomorrow Because we won divided government You could say vote Republican tomorrow because we want divided government when Biden is in the White House But that's not what he said. He said generally we want divided government But so I do think well, you know, I think I think we'll get divided government one way the other will get divided Come on not because of Elon not because of me, but because I think that's where the country is swaying All right Let's see All right, so let's do a couple of super chat question 20 dollar super chat questions and then we'll jump over to staying positive Again, if you want to ask questions the super chat is available And open you can ask anything. It's better than just asking a question or making a comment on the chat Yeah, I mean, uh, as I said the problem with all these platforms is that the rules the the the standards are Non-objective the problem is arbitrary. How do you create objective rules? and What are those objective rules? How do you communicate them and how do you create a process by which you can? You can adjudicate them properly. I don't think it's as simple as people think To create those rules. I think it's possible and I hope musk can come up with them But I don't think it's as simple as people think it is I don't think musk's I don't think the the political uh arena shifted under musk. I think he shifted to the right I think he Like many others who were of the center and of the left have come under the influence of people like jordan peterson That have shifted them to the right so much of what elon musk says And tweets about a number of different issues sound like coming right out of the mouth of jordan peterson Coming right out of the mouth of certain people on the right That it's not an issue of the political party shifted. He has shifted. He might not want to admit that He might not want to recognize that But he has shifted his views on a lot of issues right word In a not positive not always positive way in a in a mixed way So no, I don't think it's just a democratic party became Moved away from him. He has moved away. Both things happened. The democratic party went left and he went right All right, michael sanders Ask Did you ever consider moving to hong kong when it wasn't under control of chinese or singapore? Or are these regions not dramatically fear to make crossing the language and cultural barriers with it? Yeah, I mean, I would say it's not worth it Hong Kong for me. I completely understand people who do it, but for me, it wasn't worth it The uh the The what do you call it? Hong Kong You know had its challenges. It was it was an amazing place. It was a never place to visit It's a you'd have to be willing and interested to live in a very very intense environment a very crowded place a very high energy place Now my lifestyle not what I would have wanted or some very hot and humid Or you're really all year round very tropical and and a very very different culture so Difference wasn't worth it in singapore while is economically significantly freer than Other countries socially. It's not free at all. There's no real free speech in singapore. There's no Many of the social freedoms don't exist there. There's way too much arbitrary and random power that the government holds now again. I understand why people move there It's it's an easy place to live. It's comfortable again very hot and humid but not quite as intense and crowded and and High energy like hong kong is it's a little bit more laid back um But because of the economic liberty I understand why people want to live there and it is a beautiful place It but it's it it wouldn't be enough for me the economic freedoms particularly given that you're giving up Non-economic liberties by living in singapore, but again, I understand completely people who live there Max if you could completely rewrite one sect of domestic us policy education immigration trade Land us policy, which one would it be and how would you rewrite it? I mean basically I think the most important one if I could do only one It would be education But the problem with education is you would have to do it at every state level So I would basically eliminate public education if I could do that if there was one thing I could do I would eliminate all public education because everything else will flow from that That is the one that is most sustainable That is the one that will have the deepest longest most substantial impact so I would switch the entire us to a What do you call it a? education saving account education saving account, so Um We will you know that that would be the one all the others all good Uh, they were all important. They all would have uh impact But that one would have lasting impact that would have impact on generations not just on the economy in in a little bit And it would have implications on everything else if you just stage immigration It wouldn't change education trade land use if you just change Trade it wouldn't change all the others education Ultimately leads to everything else changing For the better in deep substantial ways Uh Max says what's your opinion on prediction markets specifically political prediction markets? Is there any reason to look at the polls when they seem to be far better at predicting the actual outcomes? Um, I mean, I'm in favor of prediction markets I I think people putting their money where their mouth is is always good, but It doesn't mean I don't think they're necessarily better I haven't looked at any kind of studies that have compared prediction markets to polls So I don't know If they've been consistently better over time. I mean markets are good, but markets are fallible just like polls are Um, you know the the the bond market did not predict inflation It's a market. It's a prediction market. If you think about interest rate, you think about the bond yields They are predicting future inflation um and um The uh the bond market is a prediction market failed when it came to predicting future inflation So markets are not necessarily good predictors, but They're as good as the gats They're as good as the gats, um, particularly for layman who's on the sidelines. So, uh, prediction markets polls I don't know. I'm curious what prediction markets are right now Saying in terms of uh, the elections. I also don't know how deep prediction markets are political prediction markets how much Volume there is how how many people participate? um To you know, so how deep how much trading there is Do they have prediction markets and all the little races that add up to the big rate to the total? Or are they just predicting? You know who wins the senate not particular races, but i'm curious What are the prediction markets saying right now and how do they compare to the polls? My expectation would be that there's very little difference right now between prediction markets and uh 538 You know and and the aggregation of the polls That that would be my expectation, but if you're on the prediction market, you can go and test that out right now um William anthony says here in australia are two biggest exports a coal and iron Does that country have a future when we create very few complex products? How do we get more countries producing electronics entertainment and medical products? I mean You know the way to do it is basically to improve education So you've got to get smart People You got to give them the tools to be able to produce these other things and then you've got to deregulate You've got to deregulate uh finance. You've got to deregulate that location of capital. You've got to deregulate um, you got to get out of the business of Controlling these things you got to get it out of the business of Subsidies my guess is australia subsidizes to some extent natural resources Makes it easy for more and more and more capital to flow in there rather than to flow into other industries so You know if you want You know the best method is free markets the best method method is to get government Out of the business of business completely out out of the business of finance and to protect property rights And then you see what happens that could be that some countries Focus exclusively on natural resources and that's fine that's a possibility but You know, it's not inevitable that that is the outcome My guess is australia would have a pretty diversified economy if it was liberated if it was free and if it had A a a decent a good education system under a free market so But but look One of the beauties of globalization and i'm a huge fan of globalized trade Is specialization is is the idea that uh different people specialize but different countries specialize in the things that are particularly good at Um and and don't have to be diversified but I don't think a country like australia should be so exclusively focused on natural resources It it should be there should be other things that australia has a relative advantage in Gail says, uh, I wonder what you think a policy of speech. I think Amy Pupkoff's chief policy officer Uh has an objective policy on speech within the limits of the law Yeah, I mean, I think they basically allow all speech within the limits of the law. I I don't know um The question is how much money are they making how many people are participating on the platform? How many advertisers do they get so you can create objective standards that nobody wants That is, you know, this is this is the complexity of it. It's not enough to say I want to maximize the ability of people to say whatever the hell they want on my platform And I'm going to let them say whatever the hell they want on my platform as long as they don't violate the law They can say whatever they want on my platform, but then nobody comes And nobody wants to use the platform because there's some things they don't want to hear They don't want to be in a in a on a platform where people are saying certain things So you've got this constant You've got this constant, um challenge up on the one hand Wanting open expression or wanting people to talk although I don't think that's necessary. I think you could set whatever rules You want to set right? I it's a it's a private company. I emphasize these are private companies They should be able to set whatever whatever rules they want um But you have to set the rules in a way that attracts users people who use your platform And you want to set the rules in a way that attracts advertisers So that you can generate revenue or if you have a different revenue model You might you might want to attract journalists to use your platform. You might want to attract Intellectuals to use your platform. I don't know who you want to attract. It depends how you build your social media platform Uh, so it's it's not enough just to say you can come and say whatever you want. They has There's a market here. There's supply and demand Supply and demand for a variety of different things and one of the things they're supplying demand for is for speech You know, they might not be at demand for the kind of speech that some people want to Want to spout and in that case You can ban that speech from your platform in order to Cultivate the demand the kind of demand that you want So I think that I think it's a good thing that there are multiple platforms That have multiple standards and let the market decide which one is best So far with all twitter's problems twitter is winning No platform comes close to twitter And why because that's the platform most people want to use with all the problems that it has with all the horror that it has and I completely understand it. I mean this they are limits to how much Of a certain points of view I want to be exposed to Uh in a social media platform that I'm engaged on So I completely understand limiting What is set on a particular platform if I was running Uh a platform I would have standards the challenge as I've said many many times Is to make those challenge those standards objective And it's not an issue of free speech It's not an issue of the first amendment unless the government gets involved But as long as it's a private decision Then it's a private decision and you get to decide what the standards and your platform are going to be And then the market gets to decide whether they want to use your platform or not It's the beauty of the marketplace All right Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show If you'd like to support the show We make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching Show your appreciation. 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