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#FinanceDaily: Affirmative Action & Corporate DEI | PCE LIVE 🚨
Recorded: June 30, 2023 Duration: 2:00:03Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion highlights trends in the crypto and broader financial markets, including the influence of macroeconomic factors on market behavior, the integration of ESG and DEI into corporate strategies, and the potential decline of these initiatives due to economic shifts. Additionally, the conversation touches on the impact of electrification on technology adoption and the evolving narratives around Web3 and AI cycles.
Full Transcription
Man, oh man, oh man.
Today's gonna be a little heated.
I really didn't want to do this topic, but...
But I feel like we can't, like, not talk about it.
You know what I mean?
We're all gonna get cancelled in, like, ten minutes.
But you know what? We can't, like, not talk about it.
That's my actual opinion on this.
And obviously, big...
Data coming out, so I feel like this BCE is going to be incredibly underwhelming.
It's the most important inflation print since the last one.
Alright, well, give us like a minute or two for everybody to show up, and then we're gonna jump into it.
Alright. Slow start this morning.
Yeah, give us a second. It's Friday. Friday before July 4th. Everybody's being slow. We're sending the invites out.
But Mikkel and Cody, they're on it.
How are you guys doing?
Good, man. Long week.
Long week. It's been a great week.
We've had... This week I've changed things up quite a lot.
Interestingly, I've been getting...
I've been getting a lot of interesting comments about the way we're running the shows now.
Where instead of, as you all remember, we used to do five, maybe ten topics every single show.
Kind of running it more like a news show, like CNBC.
And I'm not sure whether I like that, or whether I like having one main topic and then sprinkling in news throughout.
In fact, Romy, who's the producer for this...
She and I had a conversation.
Interestingly, Romy likes it when we do actual segments through multiple topics.
And I like it when we're free-flowing through one main topic and sprinkling in news as it comes,
and allowing that to take us wherever we want.
And I think it's partially because I have ADHD, and I enjoy just having one topic to focus on,
and then just literally getting swept away the way I go.
And I think she has the opposite of whatever ADHD is,
And so she's just like, she needs structure.
And I think it's really interesting.
So the people that are listening,
we got a laugh from Romy, that's funny.
But, you know, for people that are listening,
if you can go to the bottom right
and tell us whether you like our new show format better.
That's a leading question, sorry.
Tell us how you like our new show format
versus old show format.
Do you need...
the structure of multiple topics sort of planned out?
Or do you want one main topic
and then news sprinkled throughout as it comes in?
You can go to the bottom right in the comments and let us know.
Mikkel, what are your thoughts actually?
I would say probably leave it as flexible as possible.
If you have a big night the night before, a big day the day before, and there's multiple topics to cover,
I think we should dive into as much as possible.
But if it's a day with low news and there's just one deep topic that we can get a long conversation going on,
I think that's a good way to fill a day that maybe there's not a lot of breaking news.
Yeah, Cody, what do you think?
Ja, jeg har virkelig gillat i dagens konversasjon. Det er fint å dyka dykt, og få mye av hverandres tanker og opinioner.
Ja, og Matt?
Ja, jeg gillar den muligheten til å dyka dykt.
Interessant. Veldig interessant. Jeg er faktisk veldig bekymret av å høre fra folk som, og med det, jeg ser mange av dere som er regulære lyssninger, vil få dine tankar om det.
Deep dives på en tema, eller møte topics, men vi råder gjennom det veldig snabbt.
I feel like that's what is wrong with CNBC and the other shows,
is that by the time you actually understand the topic, they've moved on.
Exactly.
And by the way, it's really hard to have nuance in a topic.
Like today's topic is a very complex topic.
I'm going to tell you that if you all start talking about the actual politics of it,
I'm gonna stop you, because that's not what I do.
I don't like the politics of it.
I don't want to talk about...
Det er politikk som selvfølgelig er involveret, men det er mer om hva vi tror kommer til å hende.
Det er mindre om hvor man står på det og alt det, men mye mer om hva som kommer til å være effekten av dette regjeringet på korporate DEI-effekter.
Og om du tror at disse DEI-effekter har faktisk oppnått deres mål.
So, you know, I'm actually going to bring up a few people here that I think disagree with me.
I'm trying to see, let me see here.
Just because I invited you doesn't mean you have to disagree with me.
But I'm going to run through and find a few more.
And then if you want to come up, please, oh, there she is.
If you want to come up, please, you know, DM us so we know you're not a bot.
Okay.
Leave a comment so we know what you're thinking, and then we'll have you up.
We do that quite often.
Again, to comment, you can go in the bottom right, there's that little bubble, and you can go through it.
Lily, what do you like? Do you like the deep dive shows?
Or do you like when we hit a bunch of different things?
I like deep dives and nuance.
Like, I think nuance is one of my favorite words.
So, I think the deep dives are worth it.
You know, and there's a lot of interesting things that happened already in Europe this morning.
Right?
Some news out of Europe.
So...
There's lots of interesting things.
Are you talking about the European inflation data?
I'm talking about watching what's happening in France.
I'm talking about the continued coverage of ASML going along with the US about semiconductors in China.
Yeah.
Ja, så vi skal snakke om França snart.
Se, ADHD er kikking inn.
Det er i morgonen, det er sånn det går.
Nå, min ADHD, for å være sann.
For folk som ikke ser,
França går gjennom signifikkele råd.
Vi har vært utsett,
utenfor Macron,
jeg tror det var i morgon,
at han mener at disse er de mest signifikkele rådene
siden de franske rådene i 2005.
and where about 8,000 people were injured,
and cars were burning all over the country.
Lily, do we have any current estimates of the damage that's been done from these riots?
They've been pretty significant, haven't they?
They have, and I didn't look at the latest damage.
I was just actually looking at one of the...
There's a benchmark for the French stock index, which is interesting,
but I can go take a look and see.
Yeah, it'd be interesting.
I'm going to...
I'm trying not to use like a...
Yeah, there you go. This is helpful.
For people that are interested, that's what's happening in France right now.
And, you know, actually, Lily, since you've been reading about it,
can you walk us through what caused this?
Where did this begin?
And for people that don't remember, a few months ago,
well, weeks to months ago, there were additional riots around pensions.
Så det er ikke det første setet av råd i år, men det var for en helt annen grunn.
Men de franske har vært ufånne, troligvis i decennier, men de har vært ufånne mer tidig,
rundt Macron og noen av beslutningene som har vært gjorda av det kommende regjeringet.
Og jeg tenker på, igjen, jeg har å få til den riktige tidslinjen, men tre til seks måneder tidig,
Or maybe a little bit less.
They changed the pension age from 65 to 67, I believe, or 64 to 67.
And there were tons of riots.
This is obviously unrelated, but it doesn't help that there's been so much unrest, right, Lily?
Yeah.
Like, what caused this one? I think this was around Muslims, wasn't it?
Yeah, this one is around, it's a 17-year-old, like it was a police shooting of a 17-year-old,
and it says, what I'm reading right now says North African descent,
but if I remember correctly, he was Algerian and Moroccan,
and, you know, there's the amount of...
rioters and torched buildings. It impacted one of the
buildings that's set for the 2024 Olympics, right?
There were 200, according to the article I'm reading right now from Reuters,
there were more than 200 police injured, 875 people arrested overnight.
There's, you know, a bunch of, they're looking at a ton of different options, right?
And there's going to be kind of like this emergency meeting.
So yeah, this is, you know, this kid, right?
And he was Algerian and Moroccan, according to this, was just shot dead.
And you're right that France is, there's been all sorts of riots, right?
There was a mall that was smashed through some of this.
Supermarkets were looted.
Just a lot of different...
you know kind of anger going on i'm not gonna lie i saw i saw the videos but i didn't realize how
uh large it was i kind of thought they were more isolated videos but that's that's bigger
than i was expecting yeah it's fascinating and you know obviously the damage that's occurring
to the people in france is probably the most important part of this um and i think that
you know we're seeing that across europe right now this sort of anti-immigrant sentiment
I think it's very pervasive, and this is not going to help, right?
They're pitting people against each other, and I think that that's always a problem.
And I will say that this sort of pro-nationalist movement has crazy side effects, right?
Like, anything that appears like a cure often has side effects.
And this one, in my opinion, has pretty crazy side effects, because it's only going to...
put people and pit people against each other.
I don't see this ending well in Europe.
I don't know if you all know,
but Europe has a history of this problem,
these problems.
Sorry, that was sarcasm.
Of course they do.
All right.
So, thank you for sharing that, Lily.
By the way, we're going to be covering the PCE print live for some context.
We saw, I think we're going to see a very similar pattern for PCE that we saw with the Eurozone inflation,
which is essentially we will see top line come down and we're going to see core PCE be sticky.
That's what I'm expecting.
I will say that, you know,
I have been duped before, so there is a world in which that could turn out to not be the case.
Nick Timuraus, he was very, very good.
He's at the Wall Street Journal.
And he has been right about...
by the way, within the last 24 hours before print,
he's been right like, I think, nearly 100% in the 90s, high 90s.
And he has predicted in the last 24 hours
that headline PCE inflation will be somewhere around 3.9% year over year,
versus 4.4% in April and 4.2% in March.
And he believes that core PCE will be somewhere around 4.7%.
So again, the idea here being core being more sticky, whereas headline coming in lower than expected.
Not surprising, that's what's been happening.
But I'm kind of curious to see if Nick can do it again.
Remember...
Headline, according to Nick, is 3.9.
Core, according to Nick, will be 4.7.
Kind of interesting to see whether he's right again.
I feel like this is very uncertain times for PCE.
Do you have the core numbers from the month prior?
Yeah, the core numbers from the month prior were 4.7 as well.
So, essentially, it will be flat.
Flat.
You know what I mean? And so, and I'm happy, I had a tweet before to kind of walk through some of this, but this is sort of the expectation now, which is, we keep seeing the same thing over and over again, which is, core is sticky.
And I don't know how we're going to move core quickly, but it's something to kind of keep in mind.
I'll take the under on the core, if you think he's going to be in line, I think it will come in slightly below that.
Yeah.
You think it's going to be under 4.7?
Yeah, I'll take the under.
I mean, I've been going under on all the inflation reads so far, so I'll keep going under.
Interesting.
Well, I don't know, man.
The data is coming.
Go ahead, Lily.
I know you've been watching this closely.
I mean, so Michael, do you look at like table two when you go through like CPI, for instance?
curiosity okay no not really honestly okay lily can you can you walk you better
oh table two is um basically it's line by line i usually look at the unadjusted
data um but it basically like it it breaks down everything pretty much right like
under coffee you have instant coffee and you know ground coffee like you have uh
You have women's apparel, you have all these different categories.
It breaks meat, for instance, into, you know...
Like, it just breaks everything down in these line items, and it's, for me, it's a very useful thing to see, like, you can understand in more detail, right, what's going on with inflation when you drill down to those categories.
Like, you could see, you can, to me it's interesting, I pay a lot of attention to food and softs, so...
For me it's interesting to see how it is moving through.
That's something you can watch with some of the other measures
and see the lead time on that and see the trends.
Do you think Google will come in above or below Nick's prediction?
Lily, what do you think?
Above or below?
I don't predict it.
I mean, there's parts...
Come on!
Certain parts more than others.
I just don't.
I know.
How often is he right?
You said he's right all the time.
Like, pretty much all the time.
Like, I don't think he's been wrong yet this year.
Which is surprising, because this year's been a little bit surprising.
Yeah.
But he's only right, just to be clear, within 24 hours.
He only does his prediction within 24 to 48 hours of the print.
So I think he has some insider connections.
But yeah, he's predicted...
Okay, yeah, he's predicted something different.
Go ahead, Mikkel.
I was just going to say, I think he has Powell's phone number.
Probably, probably.
Men, all right, vi skal tala om PCE litt mer.
Jeg er fortstående på at det er noen som kommer, men i det innre,
tror jeg det er sant å starte med dette samtalet om
affirmative action og corporate DEI.
For folk som ikke har vært, for folk som er i USA som ikke har vært
Ã¥ se dette samtalet,
It was announced yesterday that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the affirmative action practice within college and university admissions.
That's important.
It was a 6-3 ruling that said that race-based admission policies are unconstitutional.
So, you know, I will say there's a lot of evidence showing that affirmative action programs have increased racial diversity within higher education, but...
there's also claims that affirmative action
leads to what people are calling reverse racism,
and that we will see this actually negatively impact
people of color, especially underrepresented minorities.
And the counter-argument also is
So the argument here is that affirmative action, whether it's constitutional or not, is actually beyond the conversation here.
It's been struck down, right?
So there are downstream impacts of this.
In higher education, the number one impact that likely will happen is that we will see a change in admission.
Harvard has already come out and said, look, we're going to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling.
I'm assuming every higher education institution is going to follow the ruling.
The big, big question is, what is going to be the impact of affirmative action on the education industry at large?
And then how is this going to affect the ability for there to be racial diversity at the top jobs in the country?
Think of jobs that are super competitive out of college.
Are we going to see them revert back to yesteryears?
Or are we going to continue to see that?
Will this policy maybe have a paradoxical effect on what most people are expecting?
And then the last thing that I really wanted to touch on
is what happens to corporate DEI,
diversity and inclusion programs,
you know,
you know, are we going to see
sort of this quote-unquote meritocracy,
you know, situation change,
and then remember that DEI does not,
you know, does not include immigrants
from war-torn countries and all these other things,
and so, like, are we going to see some of those people
rise faster because these DEI programs are not in there?
There's a lot of, like,
There's a lot of what happens at the corporate level.
And this is just the beginning of this line of thought that's occurring.
And so I wanted to talk about that more than anything else,
because there is a lot going on on the corporate side.
But Lily, you have your hand up, so I would love to hear your thoughts.
Well, I was just going to say...
Harvard, right, released in the Harvard magazine
after all of this yesterday,
and they said that, they noted, right,
that the court also ruled
that colleges and universities may consider
in admissions decisions
an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life,
be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.
So, like, it's, there's a nuance
in how it gets addressed, right?
So, yeah.
Yes, but we do know that they also had threshold systems.
So I can tell you, and I can't speak to any specific model,
but having been on the admissions committee before,
I can tell you that there are systems that sort applications based on many different metrics,
and one of those metrics are DEI-related metrics.
That's how they've always been done, at least at most of the IBLE schools.
Og så er det ikke bare å lese diskussjonen om utfordringene du har tatt som en person av farge eller som underrepresenterende minoritet.
Det er at du sitter i en annen pil.
Og så går folk inn med en prekognitiv notis om hva du har vært gjennom.
Og det er interessant fordi, du vet, selv om mange folk av farge som jeg kjenner sier, eh, det er ok.
Right? Like, I've gotten sort of that quite a lot, actually. Now, it might be the people I surround myself with, and I have to be a little bit careful about, you know, that's anecdotal information.
But across the board, you know, there's been this conversation around, hey, are we taking away from high achieving people of color, because people have these underlying notions of how they got there?
right so that's another sort of broader conversation but i i can tell you don't be
surprised if in the next five years we see reductions in admissions at the top colleges
for people of color that and when i'm talking about people of color i'm talking about underrepresented
minorities well meritocracy is a good thing though right so so meritocracy is a good thing
in some senses,
right?
And if everybody had access
to the same opportunity,
meritocracy makes sense.
But I have to put,
and again,
Lily,
you can see my face.
I'm not going to
Affirmative action policies, if anything, have caused challenges in my life, right?
Since I don't meet any of the criteria.
For Asians in the US, you get negative points.
I don't know if you all know this, but you get negative points, right?
And I feel like the policies have had adverse effects on many people I know, personally, that...
had probably some of the best grades, but couldn't get into the colleges that they wanted to get into.
But at the same time, I wanted to go to the underlying challenges,
because you're right, there is this narrative that meritocracy is good,
but meritocracy is a lot more nuanced...
then we give it credit for.
So is it about where you end up
in terms of your outcomes,
and that should be your meritocracy metric?
Or is it about how much you've overcome
Right? And is race the only thing that should be taken into account there?
Or should it be that people with low socioeconomic status also get a hand up?
Like, so if you grew up white, but in a trailer, should you be given a lot of opportunities as well?
And like, we're not talking about socioeconomic status.
If you're not an underrepresented minority, but you grew up in a really bad neighborhood,
your access to education is actually the same.
So, there's a lot more nuance here, but Mikkel, I'll let you jump in.
Yeah, no, and I completely agree with you, and one thing I always, one thing I did notice that was interesting, just based on people I've talked to,
is how many people of color kind of came out and said, oh, like, I kind of felt like people would always look at me as I got here because of this one policy,
so I'm actually perfectly fine with it going away, and that kind of surprised me, because that was something I hadn't heard before, and
it kind of made sense once i heard it but it was just a completely foreign idea to me so i thought
that was pretty interesting i really do agree with you i think it should be more financially based and
based on your opportunities no matter what skin color you are no matter what race you are
just because growing up i knew a lot of people uh the same skin color of my own
who had a very hard upbringing and you know i don't really see why those people shouldn't
also have some benefit in their life but yeah i kind of agree with you i think
if anything, to look at this as a positive rather than a negative.
I hope they just figure out a program that is more beneficial to all people
and make it a little more nuanced so that we can help more people in this country
just get a better start who really need it.
Yeah, it's interesting, because again, my biggest challenge,
so I don't know if you guys know, but when Vivek Ramaswamy and I got into it once,
on stage actually, when he was like,
we need meritocracy in this country again.
No more victim behavior.
Alright, dude.
You know, like, that makes sense.
But you're not, you're kind of glossing over the fact that, you know, having a two-parent home helps.
Having high socioeconomic status, having two doctors as parents helps.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, it does, right?
Like having better socioeconomic status
starting out, going to the best schools, going to private schools
helps. I mean, for us
to think that everybody has equal
opportunity, we don't have equal
opportunity even within our public
education system. Different public
schools have completely different outcomes.
And if you have food insecurity, right?
Like you don't know where your next meal is going to come from.
That kid's not thinking about math.
If there are drugs in your neighborhood, you're not thinking about math and science.
And trying to act like everybody has equal opportunity is not fair.
And I am telling you that, you know, people of color also face additional challenges.
People don't know this, but Resilient Health has a black co-founder.
All right.
So my co-founder went to Duke.
He went on, he has a PhD in neural engineering from WashU.
He's a black man, all right?
And he's incredible.
By the way, he's way more articulate and smart than I am.
Dakota actually knows him, and Cody will tell you he's actually much smarter than me.
It's very obvious in the first five minutes.
Don't agree too hard.
But when we went and were fundraising, VCs didn't even address him.
Han er den chef teknologi-officer, og VCs sier ting som,
vi vet ikke om dere har teknologi än.
De snakker mer om teknisk risiko, mer enn sald eller marktrisiko.
Du vet ikke hvilken softe nivå av rasisme som hender gjennom hele systemet.
By the way, not many founders who are black have raised a ton of money.
In fact, they are incredibly underrepresented in funding.
Why is that?
Is this a pipeline problem, which is what a lot of people will try to say?
No. It's because there are...
Tons of institutional racism that is embedded in our system.
One of the biggest ones is the warm intro system.
I don't know if you guys know how people raise money in America.
But the way you raise money is you usually know somebody that knows the VC.
In fact, VCs, you can't even reach out to them directly.
When you reach out to them directly, they often say,
well, I can't believe you couldn't find somebody that could introduce you to me.
Look it up. It's called warm intros.
The warm intro system.
And warm intro systems are regressive by their core.
Because it depends where you went to college.
I went to Penn, right?
Jeff went to Duke.
We already have access to giant networks of people.
So if you're a black person that comes from a crappy school and...
has food insecurity, is it really
fair to you? Because then you didn't go to Duke
or you didn't go to Washington or you didn't go to Harvard
or you didn't go to Penn
and you don't have that
network anymore. So to try to
you know, in my mind
what people aren't realizing
is the downstream effects
of this is that black people have
less networks.
Assuming, again, the underlying impact of this is that in the short term we're going to have a reduction in admissions for people of color.
When they enter the corporate workforce, if DEI programs continue to dwindle, which they probably will, DEI programs dwindling will...
will lead to less mentorship for people of color.
And it's not just black people, it's just people of color in general,
specifically underrepresented minorities.
Black people, Latinos, we're going to see this across.
Even for women, we're seeing a lot of these issues around mentorship,
because there's not enough of them in leadership.
You know, Mikkel and myself have no problems, right?
I'm assuming you're white, Mikkel, sorry.
But, you know, there's enough of us in senior leadership,
like pretty much every CEO of every big company is brown,
is Desi, is Indian or Pakistani.
It's not hard for me to look up and say,
oh, I can be like that person.
But it's a lot harder for certain people.
It's just, I'm speaking the other side,
because I feel like, on this platform,
too many people have said,
oh, this is institutional racism and reverse racism,
and it's like, well, is it though?
Because about 50 years ago, we had a lot of issues.
And by the way, I was complaining to people yesterday
that I felt like there was not enough voices
on these spaces speaking the other side.
And I feel like somebody needs to stand up for the fact
that these policies did help admissions,
for people of color.
That's the reason why you're seeing more people of color in leadership.
But it also hurt them,
because, interestingly,
You know, it didn't really help Jeff, my co-founder, get into Duke, you know, and I bet you that when people hear about that, they automatically potentially assume that that had something to do with it.
Jeff was one of the smartest kids to come out of high school in the country, actually, and pretty much got a 4.0 at Duke.
But he went to Duke, so we won't hold that against him. Go ahead, Lily.
Okay.
Så, två tanker, eller?
Vem som gjør den nye matriken, eller, du vet,
en slags kjellkast, eller,
for å bli mer komprehensivt om å evaluere kandidater for yngre utbildning,
for å sikre at du, du vet,
selv om du ikke har denne politikken, eller,
at du fortfarande har en bra studentbåde
som har mye å gjøre,
You get a lot from different perspectives, right?
And like, so how is that being addressed?
Lily, I'm so sorry to interrupt, Lily,
but the PCE data just came out.
So let's look at,
do you mind if I just say that really quick?
Lily? Sorry.
Yeah, sorry. And we'll go back to your point.
Because the numbers were exactly what we were expecting.
So, PCE
index, year over year,
actual was 3.8,
just as forecasted,
3.8%. Previous
was 4.4, revision
was 4.3.
PCE, oh my god, Mikkel was right.
Actual was 4.6,
the forecast was 4.7,
So, again...
Once again, slightly underwind.
Just slightly under, like literally
0.1% under.
But, yes. And then...
Essentially, PCE came in 3.8%, forecasted was 3.8%.
Last month, it was 4.4%, so disinflation.
And then PCE year over year for core was 4.6%, forecast was 4.7%.
Kind of interesting early look at it.
I think we do need to look at the different baskets within this, but yeah.
I have to say, disinflation for top line, stickiness for core, another rate hike is coming.
There is no way they do another skip. Another rate hike is coming. That's my initial thought on this.
Lily, I'll let you jump in, and you can complete your thought. I'm sorry, I just had to make sure that we covered the breaking news.
Yeah, of course. It's important to cover.
So I was just asking that question, right,
about the new, maybe more comprehensive way
to make sure you have a diverse, you know, student body, right?
And that that's important, right?
Because it's also important for corporate America, right?
That you have a company that has...
like the understanding of they have more than you know the the variety of customers they have
in different perspectives right like how can you meet your customer if you
don't have like comprehensive viewpoints and variety of thought yeah you're right and
uh and i wonder if it's uh there is this conversation around how how does this improve uh
Product design, how does this improve meeting people where they are?
Trevor, really quickly, going back to PCE,
what are your initial thoughts on the numbers?
Well, I'm just watching initial market reactions,
and it seems positive, but obviously,
volatility during trading on data like this
is going to be pretty interesting to watch.
I think, overall, you talked about whether or not
they're going to skip or not, again, I
I think this is encouraging, but I think to your point, if they want to see more, I think they're going to accelerate rate cuts to try to get this folded over a little bit more quickly.
Yeah, I know that some of you, Mikkel, go ahead. I don't know if you believe in rate hikes, but I want to get your thoughts on it.
Ja, så jeg kommer til å gjøre denne punkten som jeg har gjort.
Jeg tror at Danish er rett.
Jeg tror at du ser noen stikkninger i dette data.
Og derfor, for FEDs egen kredibilitet,
de kommer til å ha å hikake noen merre ganger.
Men jeg tror at det viktigste nå å begynne å se på
er egentlig bare hva dette betyr for markedet i forholdet.
BÃ¥de de rakehikakene er egentlig alldeles bak oss.
I mean, we're talking about fractions of what we've already done.
So for the big question going forward is, what is this going to do to the economy?
Are we going to have a hard landing, soft landing?
Or are we going to escape this with companies still growing really well, kind of surprisingly well like they have?
And yeah, overall, I think Powell is going to have to do maybe two more 25 basis points max.
But overall, inflation has come down. It's a little sticky where it is, but I think we have made pretty good progress.
And yeah, overall, I just think the impact is what I'm really paying attention to now.
I don't like the food rows, just to be clear, Jeff.
Lily, go ahead.
Oh, food rows, right?
So food prices increased month over month,
and the year over year, like, food prices also increased.
And you're seeing this trend also if you look back at some of the other data
and know what's going on agriculturally, etc.
You know, but that's food and energy are the things that the Fed doesn't really,
can't really affect.
So...
Ja, for just to kind of touch on that really quick before we go to Jeff.
So, food and energy, as compared to a lot of the other baskets within the PCE, are globally affected.
So, you know, people always try to blame one person, one regime, one...
We're always trying to find blame for why things are expensive.
But in reality, a lot of energy and food is determined by a million factors that are usually global.
This is not me being an apologist for any specific administration,
or taking anything away from an old administration.
But there's no simple solution to food and energy.
So seeing that food and energy rose probably has way more to do with global factors than they do with local factors.
Go ahead, Jeff.
Jeff, I just wonder, can you hear me okay?
Oh yeah, I can hear you now. Go ahead, Jeff.
Okay, hey. I just wonder, this is just the perception,
inflation is sticky.
We had data points earlier this week.
Obviously, the job claims number came in hot, or too good.
And the housing data, by the way.
And the housing data has gone up.
It seems like, back to your original question of like,
is he going to hike or not in July?
I mean, so far, the data points would say
it would be leaning more in that direction.
I don't know if someone's looked at Fed funds recently.
It's probably 80% or higher.
I haven't looked at it, but it's got to be 80% or higher hike.
Yeah, it seems like it's leaning in that direction right now.
But the question is, from a market's perspective,
is it priced in?
And it feels like it's priced in, but we'll see.
Yeah, I mean...
I don't know if the market has priced it in yet, but it's interest because the market is rising.
And so this is the interesting time that we live in, guys.
We're back to a point in our lives where good news is good news again.
So I'll explain what I mean by that.
So for the past couple of years, and I said this the other day, I'm tired of this new world that we live in.
Where good news is bad news.
The economy is doing great.
Oh my God, oh no, the Fed is going to kill us.
They're going to raise again.
Oh no, oh no, they're going to raise again.
And then suddenly it's like,
I care more about the Fed than I care about the consumer.
That is a crazy world that we've been living in, by the way,
for the last couple of years.
Maybe the last five to ten years.
It's crazy that we're sitting here
in the year of our Lord, 2023,
and all I care about is what Powell's thinking.
I hate what Powell's thinking.
Jay Powell...
Stop living in my head.
He's living rent free in my head.
It's crazy.
And we're all sitting here and we're constantly worrying.
Well, I wonder what this fat person is going to say.
Oh, this person is bullish.
Oh, this one's a bear.
It's like, okay, okay, that's great.
But can we just focus on the economy?
And now we're back to a world in which when good indicators come out, the market rises and bad indicators come out and the market drops.
How much nicer is this world when everything makes way more sense,
and I don't have to think paradoxically every day?
This is a beautiful world that we're living in,
and I think this world is likely going to continue.
I think we're kind of moving in those days
where we don't have to constantly be thinking about Jerome Powell
and how he's feeling that day.
Sometimes he accidentally messes up and uses the word skip,
and the whole market goes up 300 points.
It's like, oh my God, what is going on?
Jeg får messager på bakgrunnen, DM-er fra Amy som sier
Han har brukt ordet skipp, han har brukt ordet skipp.
Jeg er bare en vinn.
Men du vet, poenget er bare at hvilken verden vi lever i.
Det føles dystopisk på så mange måter.
Dan, du er så på.
Jeg er så, jeg hadde å komme på det bare for å berita.
Du er bare på fyr med denne perspektiven.
For jeg mener, jeg tror at mange av oss føler det.
Jeg mener, jeg har vært følende så dum,
som generelt, bare generelt så dum
over de siste fem årene, eller noe,
bare om markene.
and just dumb.
I just don't understand, because
as a business operator guy
in my entire
career,
experience, it's always been about looking at these fundamentals
and looking at what the consumer is doing, particularly in retail,
looking at what the consumer is doing.
I used to think I was pretty good at that, right?
You head up to the Christmas season, you have a good sense of what's going on,
you talk to frontline employees, you get a good sense,
you walk around, you do stuff, you look at some macro data.
None of that mattered shit, right?
I mean, it just...
It just didn't matter, right?
And then on top of that, you had the, you know, just the Web3 cycle.
And now, you know, now you've got another cycle,
but I can navigate the AI cycle much more.
It's just a technology cycle, you know, hype and otherwise, etc.
So kind of, you know, yeah, so thanks.
I'm starting to feel smart again, slightly.
But it's very, very, I'm empathetic to what you said.
I'm sure a lot of your audience is.
Det er galvanisk at Cal, som har kastet en av de større BUs i denna lørdag,
har følt at han ikke kunde vissla hva som skete.
Det er utrolig. Det er ikke sånn som verden bør operere.
Det er mye dårligere.
Det er ingen humilitet.
Det er bare genuint.
A lot of people don't understand, and this is worse, because they pretend to understand.
So you have to navigate who really understands, who doesn't understand, who's saying what they want.
And, you know, thank God, you've got a bit of a balanced stage here, and you kind of call it out, and vested interest and everything.
But it's just really, really hard, and so...
Yeah, I don't know if we've reached that point.
I hope we have, where you can look at more normal stuff,
and smart people can make smart comments,
and you can believe them, or whatever, right?
And you need logic.
You need logic now.
Now you can't just say,
well, I saw him shifting his body weight a little bit to the right,
and whenever he does that,
He usually does a raid hike.
It's like, dude, I don't care about Jay Powell's tells.
This is not poker.
Did the mark on Biden's face...
move the markets yesterday?
I have no freaking clue.
Did it?
Did it suddenly mean that
we have a political problem
and the other parties...
That he's using a CPAP machine?
Do we think that's happened?
Who knows?
That's just BS.
Anyway.
And so now,
we're back in a regime
where good news is good news.
And that's a really interesting place.
So I'll tell you what the good news
with today's print is,
in my opinion.
And I think that
what the good news with rate hikes is going to be.
So everybody gets upset about rate hikes.
But you know, inflation is the greatest tax
on poor people.
I will say this.
You and I, the people that are on this stage,
likely, and many of the people that are listening,
are not affected by a 10 cent increase in gas.
But a single mom that is working two jobs, taking care of their three kids,
who really wants to get them into college and is saving up as much as she can,
she is affected by that 10 cents.
I'm telling you she is.
Because I used to take care of those patients.
And that's the reality, that it's an incredibly regressive tax.
And so we need more rate hikes.
We need to fight inflation.
Go ahead.
Lily, I'm just going to finish real quick and then I'll go to you.
But I was going to say that, you know,
Vi trenger å kjøpe inflation, og det vi ser nå, og det er grunnen til at dette er en bra print,
i min mening, er fordi vi ser en kontrollert og effektivt disinflasjon
utan for mye bekymringer om deflasjon.
Deflasjon er også veldig dårlig.
Så det interessante her er, når du er på landning, du vil ikke være kommet ned for hot.
Right? And so, too fast, sorry.
So what's happening is we're seeing this nice, slow landing.
My only concern is that because shelter,
the shelter basket is so above 2%,
that as we see the rest of the baskets,
we're actually going to have to overshoot past 2%
to bring the overall headline down below 2%.
And I'm just not convinced that's going to happen
without at least some form of a recession.
But, Lily, I'll let you jump in now.
I was just going to say, you know, like I said a few moments ago, that food and energy are outside what the Fed is able to do, right? And you're talking about how inflation, you know, really affects people, right?
Right? And there's also, you get into a whole thing about how there's also like the political component that comes with that, right? And you can see that Powell has discussed that a little bit in the pressers, especially after Congress and the hearings, and they've talked about, you know, what's happening at the kitchen table, right? So,
What happens with the consumer when you have non-discretionary items,
like you're seeing food going, it's turning around in the wrong way, right?
And do you have specific things on the horizon, right,
that don't necessarily make that easier?
So how do you, like, this is like the thing with paying attention
to the rate hikes, you know, and everybody knows
klinging til å vilja vite kva Feds neste behov er, men også förstå kva kapasiteten av konsumenten er,
og det fortsatta, kva denne kvartalbillen er.
Riktig.
Så, jeg tror at vi går næst, er, igjen, gode nyheter er gode nyheter,
We're going to a regime where disinflation will likely continue.
I disagree strongly with,
med Caleb og noen av de andre folk som er i det.
Dette kommer til å bli helt under 2% i 2023.
Det er en galen punkt.
Jeg har å si at det er en galen punkt.
Og selv om Caleb har anvendt det,
det skulle være...
Jeg mener, om du kommer til å putte en kontrarian bett ut der,
det er en kontrarian bett.
Det er ingen måte vi kommer til å bli under 2%,
i min mening, i 2023.
Will we be at 2% in 2024?
Who knows?
But what we do know is to Lily's point,
we need fiscal policy to help people at the pump.
We need to figure out what we're doing
in terms of energy independence.
And maybe we do need to have all hands on deck right now
in terms of all the different energy concepts
that can be used to help
drop the cost of gas.
We need to have all
the different approaches, because right now
in the interim, we're in
a lot of trouble, because the average consumer
who, by the way,
is not on Twitter,
I don't know if you all know, this is a little bit of a bubble,
but that person
is not able
to afford eggs, they're not able
to afford
food, and they're not able to afford gas right now,
and it's kind of becoming, even with unemployment
rate being low, part of that is being
driven by labor participation.
So, wanted to make sure
that we touched on that.
I do want to go back
Nå, nåt jeg har snakket om den enkelte mor som har tatt på hennes barn,
og hennes barn, hun vil at hennes barn skal gå på skolen,
jeg vil vil å vare tilbake til denne bestående aktionen.
Vi skal begynne med den bestående aktionen igjen,
og snakke om faktet at det har vært denne narrativet i vårt land om merite.
SÃ¥, for folk som ikke vet om min bakgrunn,
og jeg snakker ikke så mye om hvor jeg vokste opp og hvordan jeg vokste opp,
men jeg vokste ikke opp rik.
My parents were first-generation immigrants.
My dad had no formal education, which is unusual for first-generation immigrants.
Especially from Pakistan and India and the Middle East.
We were in the factory business.
Dad had access to health insurance, but not good healthcare.
He was so into getting his kids vaccinated.
You know, the best education they could, that he worked himself so hard.
At the age of 53, dad had a heart attack.
By the age of 60, my dad had heart failure.
He couldn't, you know, move on his own until, you know, later on.
And then he passed at 69.
That is like the story of a lot of immigrants, actually.
The parents just worked so hard, and so hard, so the kids could have a great life.
Right? All three kids, by the way, went to the best colleges.
Right?
All of us, my sister was one of the first few employees at Google, right?
Like, my brother has been at Accenture and Perficient.
Everybody, you know, has been incredibly successful because of what my dad did.
And do I feel upset that, when I was younger, did I feel upset that the world was not as, quote unquote, merit-based?
Yes, but I've gotten older now.
And nuance is setting in.
And I'm starting to realize that if it was hard for me,
now imagine adding additional roadblocks along the way.
Right?
And so, trust me, I have, as I was saying,
you know, at the colleges that I attended,
they had negative points for Asians,
which is what they lumped me under.
But I made it.
I worked hard and I made it.
And it's great.
But like to try to claim that merit alone should be used,
Define merit. That's what I'm going to start with.
Can someone define merit for me?
I'll wait. I'm not going to move until somebody does.
How do you look at merit?
Is it your outcomes? Is it your grades?
Is it your, like, how should we be looking at merit?
Or is it that, hey, given your circumstances, you've done X or Y?
Okay, I'll come in there.
I'm not...
Merit, som folk definerer, er en set av examiner som folk gjør.
En set av vanlige examiner, og de får resultat i det.
Og det er det som, i det minste i Storbritannien, og jeg vet Storbritannien og USA ret bra,
og det er generelt det som folk, din utgång i disse utføringene.
Så bare for å få deg inn på det, det er det som det er i dag.
At an absolute level, that's what they look at.
You apply to Oxford here, they look at your A-levels,
they ask you to do an exam, depending on the subject you're doing.
That exam is marked blind, and that would be the merit.
Which, what it implies, and obviously you implied this in your conversation,
the inequality is...
To do well in those exams, you need a bunch of conditions.
Right.
And you just do.
I know that.
By the way, like you, my father was a math teacher in Zambia.
My mother died when I was 14.
I was lucky to get a scholarship to an English private school.
Total 100% scholarship just because it was destabilized.
My life was destabilized.
As a result of that I got some breaks, but my father used to work nights teaching maths, not even as an expat, but in Zambia.
Luckily he taught me some maths, which helped me.
That's an immigrant story. We see that with Asians, South Asians, a number of different people.
But you're right, it gets to a different state where people grow older.
Like me and you and others and you start to look at the system and you go does everybody have to go through this.
But interesting so Merit just answering your question up front if anybody else wants to get Merit today is seen as an outcome in these explicit exams that are given.
I'm assuming.
So I'll and I will say one thing that you didn't mention but I know that you know obviously is that.
A lot of people teach to the exam.
So if you have access to tutors, private tutors,
if you come from wealth,
or you go to the right school,
and your parents live in the right place,
they can get access to private tutors,
they can get access to teachers,
that have smaller classes.
There's a bunch of other aspects of this,
where people can teach you to the exam,
which then allows you to get a better score.
Of course, we want...
a more objective system,
but people that are teaching to the exam
often get better outcomes in their classes
than people that aren't,
and people that have smaller classrooms
or private tutoring access
often get better scores
than people that don't.
Lily, I'll let you jump in.
Well, I mean, besides the testing, right,
which also some people do better
on the ACT versus the SAT,
and there is, you know,
a whole separate thing with the testing,
Merit's about...
being like like i mean if you think about right it's about
the way it's defined right it's about being worthy etc so usually
in american universities part of what you're sold is you're
applying or getting ready to apply right is that you have to be well
rounded they want to see you in a sport they want to see you in school
activities they want to see you volunteering you have to
you know have um
You have to have a bunch of compelling extracurriculars where you're able to package yourself in a way, and you have to have an amazing essay that makes the case for you, right?
Like, there's this...
It's not...
I mean, I'm unsure.
Like, I've never been on an admissions board, right?
But I know that...
I know that when I was going through the process for undergrad anyway, some of the schools that I applied to and got accepted, they remembered, supposedly, right?
They talk about these things, so there's more to that.
And if you think about Silicon Valley itself, that's a place where ideas, right, the merit of your ideas counts for something.
That's actually not true, like, at all.
I have to push back.
Since I've raised money from Silicon Valley,
I have to push back like crazy.
That is not true, like, at all.
I'm not gonna say raising, that's totally different.
I'm saying when you're in...
Well, without raising, Lily, why does it matter?
No, what I'm saying, because I'm saying...
This is why I'm... Let me finish my sentence, right?
All right, go ahead.
So, when you work in, like, Europe,
versus when you work in Silicon Valley in a company,
there is, in some companies, right, in Europe, it's like...
This is just anecdotal. This is my interaction with people, right?
There are some people that believe that in order for your idea to be heard or worth anything,
you have to have had, you know, your butt in a chair and have seniority before leadership listens to you.
There's no way you get in front of leadership or a CEO.
That is not necessarily true when you're working in Silicon Valley, like, and generally,
if you present something
that's worthy of being listened to,
it doesn't, you know, like,
you do have the ability, it doesn't happen
anywhere, everywhere,
but like, you have the ability. It doesn't happen anywhere,
but your point around seniority
is correct. I agree with that, that
seniority does not matter as much.
I agree with that. But
you know what does matter? Actually, more
than seniority, it matters who you know,
who you went to college with,
how, uh,
you've built those relationships,
who you play basketball with,
who do you go golfing with,
you know, there's a lot more there
than people want to admit,
and it's the worst in Silicon Valley.
At least at corporations,
and I'll tell you this,
at least in corporations,
they have been forced to have programs
where they need to interact with people of color.
In Silicon Valley, there's no one in the room.
I'm talking about in a corporation in Silicon Valley versus...
But that's not what builds Silicon Valley.
Once they become big corporations...
I know what you mean, though.
Like, there's basically a checklist.
It's the only way you get in front of certain VCs, right?
It's like a fill in the blanks.
Well, it's not even that.
It's just the system.
I don't think any of them are racist in any way.
It's just the system is built completely to optimize for...
a certain type of person.
And that type of person has an inherent advantage.
I actually don't believe that they have been,
you know, there's some like tinfoil hat,
everybody is doing X, Y, or Z.
It's just, and even though I've actually experienced some of it,
with not me, but my co-founder,
you know, I don't actually think that it was,
you know, this like really messed up approach.
It's just the thing that venture capitalists do is find patterns.
Patterns require historical data, and the historical data, if that's what's driving your future decisions,
well then you're just going to keep investing in the people that people have been investing in.
Amy, I'll let you jump in here. Sorry, Lily, I just want to get other voices.
Amy, I'd love to get your thoughts, and then Eugene.
Sure. On the topic of merit, I kind of just want to take the perspective that I have
and rewind us back even further behind standardized testing level.
Just given, I don't have a ton of experience, but I did teach PE to four and five year olds.
And as a teacher, I saw at the level of four and five years old, there is a distinct difference in...
children's ability based on their backgrounds.
And you can see it already at that extremely young age.
What kids grew up with parents
who had already started putting them in organized sports?
What kids grew up with parents who were more attentive,
more available?
Maybe the mom could afford to stay home.
There's already a distinct difference
at age four or five.
And so if you're going to,
You know look at merit in terms of standardized testing which doesn't even start until kids. I think are in like the second or third grade
By that point
There's already been such a divergence in the experience that kids have had in their childhood just an exposure to books in the home
exposure to caring parents that are still together
exposure to different opportunities and activities
so I
It's hard to just say that there's any possible way for us to just have strict, pure merit, like at its purest form.
Because once you're popped out of the womb, you're already stuck in circumstances that are going to be some sort of determinant in your future.
Ja, Eugene, vil du gi deg ditt tank?
doesn't actually prepare human beings to succeed in the real world today.
Plenty have made that argument, bubble in higher education.
We've had lots of education inflation,
but median wages have stayed flat since the 1970s.
But I think that there is a difference when you, like, establishing the goalposts is important, right?
Like, thousands of years ago in Plato's Academy, right?
It was about, like, rhetoric, and it was about, like, the gymnasium, right?
You know, a totally different society, right?
You know, in ancient China, you had, like, Confucian exams, right?
I mean, that was just, like, the goalposts that they established.
You know, we've at least established goalposts.
And I think the question is around, how do those goalposts work, right?
Like, do those goalposts change your...
like very frequently throughout a student's life have we set the goalposts correctly i think the
most important question and uh you know like are there unfair things in those goalposts right like
is there systematic things and i agree with you danish that i had the same experience you know i
had poor immigrant parents um you know very lucky uh i think to be to be where i am very grateful
um but but i think the issue is around um how those goalposts work right so let's
Let's throw out the debate for a second about whether they're good goalposts. I actually think there's a whole debate about whether the goalposts we've established actually produce productive members of society. I don't think they do, right? Maybe that's the bigger question. But let's just say, okay, fine, you've established these goalposts, but now is there systematic racism, or rather systematic inequalities in those goalposts?
And that's a big question, right? And there's two sides of the debate.
It's actually really hard to argue this.
I've had arguments about this at, you know, with very successful people across all races, across all, you know, diverse programs.
And I, you know, I remember when I was going to grad school, like literally my boss, who has a similar background to me, was like, yeah, you're the most disadvantaged person, right?
I was an investment banker, private equity, had all these really nice grades.
And they were like, yeah, just because of your race, Eugene, you are going to be one of the most disadvantaged demographics going into this.
I remember I made this comment, I'm a great, you know, very successful group of people, very diverse across all countries, and they basically, you know, it sparked off a pretty crazy little debate, right?
And it's actually really hard to talk about this stuff, right, in this country.
So, you know, it was like a group of 60 people, we were talking about this actually at Harvard, and which sparked, Harvard was one that sparked the Supreme Court debate, and folks were talking about,
how you know like people had to like kind of hush and they're like well you know this was happening
in singapore you know we're talking about you know the inequalities in indonesia catholics and
protestants in france right over time and i'm like well why don't we just talk directly about the
issue right so that there's actually that issue as well i think it's just very difficult to talk
about these issues in this country and and and and donna sure your point about the vcs i think
it's an interesting point right and what i'm what i what i really like is that there have been i think
There's been a strong effort, for example, to be more inclusive in Silicon Valley generally.
And I think we're seeing a lot more, for example, female-successed entrepreneurs.
So that's great. I think that's just factual.
But there's still more work to be done.
But I think this is just such a...
It's a complicated topic, right?
And for me, I think if you can just...
Well, I think we have to set the goalposts correctly, number one.
Number two, how do you do it so that they optimize outcomes for individuals?
And how do you do it so it's fair?
It's very complicated.
So the thing around the VCs, actually, what's been really interesting
is that there's been a lot of, let's call it PR and press around VCs.
Funding for black founders, funding for female founders.
But the actual outcomes, merit-based society apparently, right?
Have not been actually good.
So we actually, and by the way, as VC winter has set in, let's call it fall, let's call it VC fall, has set in.
Guess where they pulled back funding first?
Can anybody guess?
I'm happy to share.
It's...
minority, underrepresented minority founders.
In fact, when you see it,
it has significantly affected certain founders more than others
because when shit hits the fan,
people return to their old patterns.
It's just the way things work.
And I'm not trying to say
that there's some underlying racist issue.
Of course there isn't.
But when you have to answer to your investors,
you're...
The last thing you want to do is let your quote-unquote ideologies affect your ability to...
your ideologies to affect your decision making, quote unquote.
And this is the issue.
This is the underlying issue that we're going to see.
I'm telling you, if we do go into a recession,
we're going to see reversion back to the mean.
Mikkel?
Actually, Don, can I respond directly to that?
Yeah, you do. Go ahead.
I got to say, though, I agree that there are issues.
For sure, one of my friends, she runs a fund directly dedicated to this.
So I've been informed a lot on these issues.
You know, like, I have to say, you know, a lot of, you know, my last enterprise, we, I didn't even know this, but I mean, it was a Bay Area company.
And we achieved almost gender parity with people from around the world, not just in America.
And I remember, you know, one of my, like, my head of animation came up and she's from Brazil.
And she was like, hey, you know, like, it's International Women's Day.
Shouldn't we celebrate the fact that we have 50-50 gender parity?
And I was like, right, we have 50-50.
I didn't know that, right?
So that was great.
And we were literally just trying to hire the best people.
So, you know, I think that there is strength in diversity.
I think there's actually some things to say about that.
But I'll say this.
Folk, det er, det er, det er, det er problemer med stereotyper og ting som det, diskriminasjon på hele verden, og det er sant i USA, men jeg må si at Bay Area, jeg føler at det har problemer, men det er en av de fleste akceptabene steder i verden.
It's accepting in some ways
Sorry, I have to push back a little
Yeah, I'd love to hear how
It's accepting in the most superficial ways ever
There's a saying in the Midwest about the Bay Area
Alright?
So they say, it's both about the Bay Area and the East Coast
For people that have known both worlds
I'm gonna say it
Amy, I think, knows what I'm about to say
So, they say that people on the East Coast
are kind, but not nice.
And people on the West Coast
are nice, but not kind.
And people in the Midwest
are both kind and nice.
And this is the truth of the Bay Area.
They'll smile, they'll be nice,
but they won't do anything to help.
This is like a very well-known,
established sort of stereotype
about the West Coast.
They will vote in a certain way,
they will do things in a certain way,
but when it comes to actually...
Kan du minne oss alle, Eugene, hvor myndig var fondet fra A16Z
etter mordet av George Floyd?
Hvor myndig var de puttet inn for der DEI-fondet?
Er du minne?
Nei, jeg vet ikke.
Det var omkring 2 millioner dollar.
They put a big press release out that, you know, the reality is that when you take all of these funds that are focused on black and brown founders and female founders, most of the money has not actually gone to minorities.
It's gone to women, which needs to go to women, but it's not actually trickled down to actual minorities, especially black people, black men, black women.
That is the reality of what's happened.
And there's nothing wrong. White women also needed access.
By the way, women don't get funded that much either.
That's actually a big issue. I think 4% of all funds go to women.
It's not a pipeline problem.
And I do believe that it's good to have talking points.
But these corporate DEI programs actually have just been that.
They've been corporate, and they've been programs.
They've actually not had an actual effect on outcomes.
The issue here is, we want outcomes...
when it comes to people, but we don't want outcomes when it comes to actions.
And that's the issue.
Why aren't we judging whether affirmative action programs actually have been as effective as we wanted them to be?
Maybe we should have been going further.
Is there a better place in the Bay Area for inclusivity? I mean, I don't think it's perfect.
Inclusivity by name, sure, but not by outcomes.
I have to disagree, but I do want to hear from others.
I have a quick comment.
I went out to the Bay Area in the 2000s,
and a consulting company, we found it.
I saw it in that cycle.
Very, very interesting.
All the humility in the system,
I think the Bay Area goes through arrogance and humility, like goes through cycles, right?
Everyone knows that, and it goes through this kind of like, and then when it's the most humble, it's the court tends to be the most humble.
Did we lose Gao, or was that just me?
Oh, have you lost me?
Har du forstått meg?
Cykel, humilitet og arroganse.
Ja, ja, ja, jeg er beklagd.
Det går ut til humilitet og arroganse.
Best Buy gjorde det også, og de samme tjenestene gjør det også.
Når det er på det mest humla punktet, noen forfattelser, noen lektorer, etc., du finner
de kore valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Og jeg tror at Bay Area har noen veldig gode valutene der, i min personlige
syn.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Det er en av de største valutene som er påstående under det hele.
Men jeg har en anledning til at de fleste ganger ikke er i denne humla staden.
Og det andre jeg vil ha en anledning til, og den generelle synet,
er at det finnes en komfortzone, i Selkens Valle,
av kohortar.
Så kohortet kan være hvite mølle investerere.
Det kan være en hel del søndagseiske investerere som ikke hører noen indianske.
Right? That's a big deal, by the way.
Indians don't get hired by the South Asian,
not South Asian,
sorry, I'm in the UK, I get the definitions.
What I mean is the non-Indian Asians, right?
In Silicon Valley.
And so you have these,
and it's really down to what you said,
it's about comfort level and patterns.
So when things get really tough,
people go back to their comfort levels.
So if you've been through a cycle where a lot of
You know, Indians have made it through the system,
were, you know, eating at Madras Cafe,
eating their masala dosas while they're on the H-1B,
and then getting a few breaks,
and then making it all the way to Menlo Park, right?
And then a few of them have made it there.
There's not many.
A few of them have made it there,
and they happen to be there,
and then they happen to create...
en fond, og så har de en gruppe mennesker,
og du ser disse patente,
du ser dem i bord, du ser dem i etc.
De er veldig, veldig svært å breake,
og jeg tror at mange av disse tingene vi
er prøvd å gjøre, er prøvd å breake veldig systematiske
ting, så jeg tror at
vi må se på utgångsføringene veldig,
veldig strikt, som er vi atjøving det,
og så prøver vi å finne mer kreative måter til å
løse det.
Like, you know, why doesn't Harvard give 5 billion a year to schools to, you know, level up the standards?
I don't know, right?
They have got the 5 billion a year to give.
They could raise it if people really cared, if it wasn't superficial, right?
So there's things like that that I think we need to get to.
But, yeah, sorry, yeah.
No, 100%.
I'm going to defend Silicon Valley slightly.
I think they have good values, their actions don't meet their values.
That's my only point.
And I think that that's, you know, again, they'll vote a certain way,
they'll do things a certain way.
And by the way, a lot of that is changing too now,
in the last, I feel like the last five years,
we've seen sort of this change in sentiment in Silicon Valley,
which again, everybody has a right to the approach.
I'm not saying, by the way, that affirmative action is,
is the right approach.
I'm just fighting for the fact that
on this platform,
every single person that I have listened to,
and it might be, and it's not,
I don't live in an echo chamber.
People know that I like seek out.
Across the board,
people are vilifying the intent
You know, we're calling victory, and we're saying that, hey, by the way, everything is fine, and I'm seeing it every day, everything is not fine. We still, you know, we still have a ton of work, and affirmative action, the goal that it's trying to pursue, is still not being met, and just getting rid of it is not enough, we actually need to do the other side. But Mikkel, go ahead.
Ja, jeg ville snart snakke om målpostet, fordi det ble tatt.
Jeg vet at mange mennesker ser på standardisert test som en måte å bestra meret.
Jeg ville bare gi mitt eget personlige anekdote.
For meg personligt er jeg ekstremt dysleksisk, så da det kom til standardisert test,
det var en absolutt mess for meg.
Men da det kom til meg å gjøre kurser utenfor de standardiserte testene,
jeg oppfattet, og jeg måtte gjøre mye mer for å håndter opp med alle andre,
men i slutänden,
It made me way smarter because I was able to work through a lot of what I had going on.
But I just think it's really important to take a really holistic look at every single person.
Because, you know, every single person is not going to test the same.
Every single person is going to add a different element.
expertis to any single workplace.
And, you know, I think a standardized test
really only hits at one specific spot.
So I really do think it's really good
to try to get as a holistic view as possible.
And that's probably going to lead to the best outcome
for really looking at someone's merit.
Så, i min mening, fordi jeg har vært dansing, og Khaleesi gjør fred av meg fordi jeg flippflopper mye,
på en måte, på grunn av henne og mange andre, fordi jeg føler at nuance er kallt flippflopping nå,
men det er ok.
Jeg skulle si at min mening er at vi ikke vil ha retsbasert affirmative aktion mer.
Min opinion is that we need to have affirmative action based on a multitude of different factors.
We actually had the right approach, we just had the wrong execution.
I think, so my wife, I hope she's not upset at me saying this,
she's dyslexic, I don't think she cares, she's very honest about it.
She's dyslexic, and it had a huge impact for her.
She was also a refugee from Afghanistan.
That had a huge impact on her.
She didn't speak English until she was 12.
That had a huge impact on her.
There are all of these other factors that we're missing on.
The intent was right, the expectations,
execution was wrong.
That is my actual belief on this.
And I think that people, another big one,
sorry, that I have to say, low socioeconomic
status, where you went to school,
if you went to a public school that
had real bad teacher ratios,
maybe that should also be taken
into account.
Your parents' income
should be taken into account. These are the
things, I think we need to take everything into
account, not just race.
That is my actual belief
I don't think affirmative action was wrong.
No offense to, you know, rich people,
but, like, y'all have a huge advantage.
Trust me. Trust me.
Go ahead, Khaleesi.
Hei, god aftonund, eller god morgen til dere.
SÃ¥ ja, jeg har tilgjort med dere, Dr. Danish.
Jeg tror det må være på en nivå av ulike paralleller, at hver seleksjon kriterier må fungere.
Jeg har snakket om dette på en sted i ganske tid.
I Storbritannien har vi disse samarbeidsopportuniteter, kvesternerer.
So if you go for a job, an interview, a doctor's surgery, to register, a dentist, anywhere, government, organizations,
when you go there, they will give you, as well as an application form or whatever you have, an equal opportunity form,
where it says, you know, are you disabled? What's your ethnic background?
Is it, I don't know, Asian or Chinese or what is it?
You can tick a box.
What disabilities do you have?
Because there's a quota.
Så du må gjøre, og de kan monitere deg på dette.
Så det er ikke så mye at det er en legal behov, men det er forventet i samfunnet at du vil ha en balans i antallet av jobbere, så du ikke har 98% hvite og 2% etniske minoriteter.
It seems okay, it seems to work. I don't know if you've seen, but recently Buckingham Palace came under fire last week or the week before that they're not fulfilling the equal opportunities quota.
I still feel that we need to go further.
So when I look at America, I think we need to go further,
and it's got to be on merit.
So if you have 100 positions, be it at a university or in an organization,
it's not good enough to say,
okay, so with those 100 positions, we will give whatever number,
let's just say for argument's sake,
50 or 60 to white Americans, and the rest of them are split up.
with equal opportunities for ethnic minorities,
because it's got to be based on, firstly, merit.
So if those 100 candidates are equally qualified,
equally experienced, and equally as good,
then you can do it that way.
But if they're not, then it's just a token gesture.
And I see this in corporate organizations across Europe all the time.
So I'll give you...
Define equally as good.
Ok, så se du har en kriterie av noe, ok, så jeg kommer til å bråkje en fag som et exempel,
se du har en kriterie for en jobb som trengs til å gjøres,
og du har 1000 resumes, og du har filtrer det ned til 100,
og disse er de 100 menneskene du tror har den erfaringen og kvalifikasjonen
til å kunne fulgere rollen av å forbedra på de tål som du har i handen,
som du er høring dem for, det må være en judici-kord.
But then of those 100, you can do it on an equal opportunities basis
because they're all on a par with each other.
What I'm saying is the way this shouldn't work,
and often it does in the UK, especially in government departments,
is they'll just say, OK, we've got 100 positions.
We'll take 50 good people,
and the rest of the 50 will just split between equal opportunities
to tick that quota,
which is why service is slow, service levels aren't met.
Og så myndig de samme mulighetene som de trenger, er det bra nok.
SÃ¥ jeg er i samordning med deg,
som er utrolig overraskende for meg, Dr. Danish,
men jeg er i samordning med deg
at vi må gå utenom den farge av ennes høyre,
og vi må se på ...
Jeg vil gi deg en eksempel,
og dette slipper på hodet.
I min organisasjon,
i ca. 4 år siden,
var det en board-meeting i Europa,
og dette er for den globale firma.
and it was
it's a German company
and the German government gives them a quota
where they have to have X number of women
in VP positions
and board members
so they had this board meeting
and surprisingly enough I was the woman that was saying
this is wrong and you need to push back on it
because you don't have a woman there
simply because she's a woman
because what they were doing, Dr. Danish
and if you apply what I'm telling you now
across the board to ethnic minorities
you'll see what I'm saying
What they were doing in the company was they were picking a woman to put on the board or in a VP position, but making sure she was the woman who was going to give them the least amount of challenges, you know, not really complain about anything, probably not really understand very much, but be there as the token woman, so they meet the quota that they legally, in Germany, they were legally required to meet it.
And I'm saying that's wrong. You need to promote on merit.
And there was obviously some senior HR people who were women in the board meeting,
and they were like, but then it's all going to be men.
And I said, then you need to address the root cause of it.
Then you need to look at, well, why aren't women capable in this organization to be at board level?
Is it a case of training? Is it a case of experience?
Is it a case of exposure to different departments?
Nå, når du tar det parallellt og anbefaler det til det du sa, Dr. Darmisch, er det fair nok å ha det i affirmative aktion, men du ser på grunnen av det, og dette kom opp på en spesie som jeg var på i ganske tid, om de inekvalitetene i samfunnet.
Tone, barn, familie, mor, barn kommer hjem,
spender det deilig deilig,
å finne seg, de får ikke riktig nutrisjon.
Det er en hel veld.
Og jeg tror at den hel veld må se ut
om vi virkelig ønsker uenighet.
Dette er en tokengestur på en bestemmelig aktion.
Ja, det er en superficiell utslipp
for å løse en dypere problem.
Men igjen, i minst, det er å gjøre noe.
That's my only concern, is that what we're going to end up doing is doing nothing and complaining about the little something that we are doing.
That's all I'm trying to say, which is, I feel like we should have gone further, not backwards.
That's the only place where I kind of disagree with folks on all of this.
And the reason why I'm saying going backwards, merit...
The meritocracy crap that people are pushing is essentially saying,
hey, if you score higher on tests, if you do better overall,
you should get better outcomes.
But you know what they didn't get rid of at Harvard?
Legacy admissions.
Why aren't we talking about legacy?
Legacy admissions should, by the way, my kids...
Inshallah, my kids will have the greatest opportunities.
I am gonna make sure they are privileged as hell.
I am gonna work my ass off so my kids are privileged.
I'm telling you the truth.
I am.
And by the way, my kids will have legacy admissions at WashU,
and they'll have legacy admissions at University of Pennsylvania,
which is an Ivy League school.
I am going to work my butt off so they have the best life ever.
Right? That's what...
By the way, that's like a very immigrant mentality.
I think it's every parent mentality,
but it is uniquely immigrant
when it comes to colleges and education in the US.
And so, what I'm gonna say is,
I'm gonna work my butt off
so my kids have the best life ever.
But that does not mean
that I think that legacy admissions are okay.
Why aren't we...
Do you know,
I'm gonna tell you some numbers which are crazy.
Do you know at WashU,
40% of people are legacy.
That means that their parents went to WashU.
And the 40%,
Think about how crazy that number is.
Now the rest of the peasants
are fighting for 60% of the spots.
In America, in most of the top colleges,
we have legacy admissions,
which means that if your dad, your mom,
your sibling, or an aunt or an uncle sometimes,
depending on the legacy admission.
And by the way, I was talking about piles.
I sat on ADCOM, admissions committees.
Legacy admissions go in a separate pile.
They're looked at differently.
You think that people of color, black Americans, have advantages in college admissions?
You don't know how much advantages legacy people have.
Do you think RFK Jr., who had C grades, got into Harvard on his own?
Do you think that George Bush, George W., got into the best college?
I think he went to Yale on his own.
I mean, legacy admissions is the real cancer.
And by the way, when you push back against legacy admissions,
people say, well, there needs to be a place
where all these people can meet.
And, you know, you go to these colleges for the network.
Hold on.
So are we saying it should be a closed network?
And I'm saying this, by the way,
Even though me, I want legacy admissions struck down, even though I worked my butt off so my kids could get into those great colleges, right?
And so the point here is, we actually have other problems here, and the one thing we struck down was the only thing that was giving a little bit of a leg up to poor people of color.
That's the issue, is that we didn't actually say, you know what, we're going to come up with a better policy that looks at socioeconomic status, that looks at the social determinants of education. People talk a lot about social determinants of health. Why don't we look at the social determinants of education?
Which county were you born in?
You know, how much money did your parents make?
Do you have any underlying learning disabilities?
By the way, dyslexics, Mikkel, I'm not going to pick on you,
but dyslexics do incredible in life.
Look at the outcomes of dyslexics.
There's a ton of data on this, by the way.
They work their butts off way harder than everybody else.
And they tend to do better because they also have better thinking patterns.
It's kind of an interesting separate thing.
Oh yeah, no offense taken.
And I completely agree.
It has made me such a harder worker, such a better person,
just because I had to grind for things just to catch up to other people
that, you know, it was just gifted to a lot of people.
people so i i've always been shocked and i've even heard kevin o'leary say whether or not i
have my own gripes with kevin o'leary recently but he's gone out of his way to say if he has
someone going to apply to his fund and they're dyslexic he gets extremely excited because he
claims that dyslexic people just have a different way of looking at the world and that was something
that uh also motivated me to even get into the whole investing space in general
Ja, og så begynner du å tenke på at det er alt, så om du er neurotypisk eller neurodivergent, om du er, du vet, din ras bør bli tatt i forhold, for, av gud, norske mennesker faser fortidig signifikante rasisme i vårt land, overalt.
Noen som disagree med det har ikke satt seg ned og lest data. Det er ikke bare om dispariteter. For eksempel, om du er en norsk kvinne som er syk, du er mer sannsynlig å dø av sykdomen.
Think about how crazy that is.
It's insane that we still have that in this country.
And it's not because they're not taking prenatals or anything.
If you are a rich black woman,
you're more likely to die from maternal mortality.
So, I'm just saying, like, they're facing all, and this is because the healthcare system in America is racist,
but, and I can say that because I actually worked in it, and you should hear the shit that people say, and do.
But the point is, all of these things have come into place that we should be taking every one of these into account.
I'm not saying we should only take race, but the answer isn't saying merit.
The answer isn't saying we need to build a merit-based society.
And that's what I said to Vivek Kuramaswamy when we fought on Spaces.
Go ahead, Cody.
Cody, you were saying something, and then we'll go to Eugene.
Oh, sure, I'll jump in.
Yeah, what I'll say on this, I'm not an attorney.
I'm not a black person, obviously, in America.
But something I think that is really important, first off,
is it sounds like the decision from the SCOTUS
was primarily based around the definition of merit.
You know, the inability to define merit is what pushed them to the decision on that this affirmative action case is based on race more than anything, right?
Now, it's really, really important. I know that, Danis, you just touched on it a little bit.
Khaleesi had touched on it a little bit.
This is a really complex and important topic, which is why it's being debated and being discussed.
You know...
The black communities in this country have disproportionately been impacted by a lot, right?
And it's very unfair to suggest otherwise.
You know, the legacy component of all of this, right?
There's blurred lines in America with regards to socioeconomic status and class,
but they're very aware, and they're very apparent in discussions.
And...
You mentioned earlier that you want to work hard for your kids and to give them the best opportunities.
Those opportunities were stolen for decades, right? Hundreds of years here.
And so to pull this out of the system is definitely unfair.
Can it be redefined in different ways? Certainly.
But, you know, this...
This is something that, you know, in America, we really need to figure out.
I imagine that we'll probably see institutions like Cal had mentioned, you know, maybe...
Redefining how their endowments are refunneled back into the systems.
Hopefully it's in the public systems that are most affected.
Cities like St. Louis are disproportionately affected relative to cities like San Francisco, potentially.
I don't have all the data sitting in front of me, but...
You know, this is a big deal in a lot of communities,
and it's something that definitely needs to be addressed.
Talking about St. Louis, Google, for everybody that's listening,
if you want to learn how bad it is,
Google Delmar, D-E-L-M-A-R, Divide.
D-I-B-I-D-E. Delmar Divide.
There's a 60 Minutes episode from like 10, 15 years ago,
and I'll tell you, nothing has changed.
I'm not going to go into it too deep because I want to hear from Eugene.
But if you look at that and then say there isn't structural racism in America,
then, you know, that's okay.
We can agree to disagree.
But to me, that was the best case of how segregated our cities truly are.
Go ahead, Eugene.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's structural inequalities everywhere.
And I feel like I've been the victim of it,
being an underrepresented minority in this country.
But I have to push back on...
What is the goal?
Right?
So what I want to ask is,
what is the goal of all this?
Right?
Like the idea of trying to achieve historical justice.
And I'm not saying,
by the way,
anything on either side of the equation there.
I'm just asking the question.
And,
and,
You know, the legacy thing, related to that, the legacy thing, I do agree is a problem, but if you, okay, so let's say you take an institution of higher education, right, you work your butt off, you got there, and let's say, you know, undoubtedly the people who had the structural inequalities in their favor, they're going to be overrepresented, whether the legacy or not.
But for the underrepresented people there, if the idea is, well, let's try to give them an opportunity to be ultra successful, right?
I mean, I recognize I was super lucky, even though I had a lot of structural discrimination against me to get there.
Once I did get, you know, for example, to my grad school, like, yeah, there was a legacy.
You know, Jamie Diamond's daughter, Jules, was in my class, right?
I mean, you know, it was cool when he came by for, you know, parent day, etc.
But, like, but it wasn't just cool just for that, but...
The opportunities that people who were of disadvantaged backgrounds got by meeting folks with advantaged backgrounds came by time and time again.
And because this is in the public record, I hesitate to talk about my former classmates, but this is just totally public.
So I'll just, for example, give a few examples. Grab, you know, $12 billion market cap company in Southeast Asia, the biggest Uber of Asia, right?
Two co-founders, they both met in my school.
one of them was from a rich malaysian family the other one was not they co-founded this company
the person who was from a disadvantaged background in malaysia like it benefited enormously from all
her hard work and eventually became you know ceo of a big public company and a co-founder right
another example coupang korean company right similar example rich korean uh you know rich
korean person from a rich conglomerate you know with a poor middle class actually american dude
um and uh you know it worked out well for both of them so i guess
i mean you know maybe these maybe these are these are the exceptions in some ways but it's like well
having this mixture does help people who've never had these opportunities before and you see it time
and time again and it's not like the single incident that proves a rule but it's like well
sure it's hard to get there as a more disadvantaged person once you're there
Like the existence of other people from advantaged backgrounds and be able to connect with them does create opportunities, right?
Undoubtedly. I mean, I give two examples, but there are plenty more.
By the way, I just don't want to go down that frame.
So, I mean, I don't know. Like, do we just get rid of all legacy and like do all of like just destroy it?
Like, what's the, I guess, what's the point, right?
The point that I'm trying to make about legacy is, dude, even without legacy, those rich people would probably make more of the class anyway.
They have all the advantages in the world.
And if you assume that everybody,
you know, that if you were going to make it there anyway,
you're going to make it there anyway,
then what is the issue here?
The problem I have is we fought,
people are fighting against affirmative action,
yet no one's talking about legacy admissions.
Legacy admissions are incredibly regressive.
Affirmative action was at least,
tending towards being more progressive
in terms of helping people
get in that couldn't get
in without it,
så at vi kan ha denne diversiteten som faktisk forbedrar utgången.
Jeg bet at du sa at en av dem var en rik Malaysian,
personen, og den andre var ingen.
Du vet hva som er funnet?
Det rik Malaysian personen
kanskje har mer innsikt i behovet av kustomeren
enn den rik enn.
Jeg vil ikke snakke på en måte eller andre,
men det er noe valut til diversitet av tenkning.
Ja, de har både har bedre.
Ja, absolutt.
De har både bedre.
Du vet at de har to rik Malaysian personer, ikke sant?
Ja, jeg tror at de har.
People are fighting against that poor person making in right now,
but no one's fighting against the rich person getting in
just because they were born in the right family.
You know what I'd say?
I'd say both of you guys have,
Not that I'm trying to find, but both of you are right, because here's what I find from Oxford, which is, like, I guess the number one university, or number one or two or three in the world, right?
And I live here, I've been living here for a number of years now, and I kind of know the system really well.
My kid goes to school here and is about to go to university.
But, you know, here's the thing.
I think rich people get attracted to these universities, right?
They give donations, they do different things.
There's lots of issues there that we need to uncover.
You know, people buy buildings, people wash their reputations.
They've been doing it for centuries, right?
In Oxford, at least, they've been doing it for centuries.
And it's, you know, all that, there's just a lot of murky area there.
But they still end up, like, showing up here, right?
They show up for dinners, even if they didn't go to university here.
Men det som er interessant og ironisk om Storbritannien er at Storbritannien er det ultimete,
om du vil, fra min erfaring,
som kommer her fra Afrika for flere år tidig,
og så kjører man det her, og så går man til Storbritannien.
Storbritannien har vært en slags tålklass-familie.
Folk vil ha den røde familien.
Hvis du snakker om legacy,
den hele systemen har en legacy-system,
en systematisk legacy-system,
en systematisk legacy-system.
Du ser på de OBEs og NBEs som folk får.
There's a system, there's a way to get those, right?
You make donations, you do things, you hang out in the right circles,
and then some people are like, you know, they do really amazing voluntary work,
and then they kind of, you know, a few of them get it like that,
but the majority of people get it through, you know,
very manipulative kind of things that they do.
Everyone knows that.
Maybe they don't talk about it, but everyone knows that in the UK.
So here's the thing that's interesting about Oxford and Cambridge,
which I understand quite well, and Imperial, three top universities in the UK.
Until very recently, until about probably seven, eight years ago,
X-Eton is one of the top schools, feeder schools, like a private school.
Most of the prime ministers in the UK that were conservative
had been to Eton as a school, right?
So this has been a legacy system, if you like.
From Eton, they'd go to Oxford or Cambridge.
And that was built in not by this very explicit system that the US has,
but by people being on the right colleges and different things
and fixing interviews, and that's been very murky over the years.
The last seven, eight years, that's been really getting cleaned out.
And I see it really...
Hands on here in Oxford, really cleaned out.
So when people apply to Oxford now, right?
At least I know Oxford very well.
When people apply to Oxford, they apply to one of the colleges,
they apply to the course.
And when they apply to the course,
there's certain things called, we have A-levels in the UK,
which are the merit-based exams people do.
They could be more standardized.
They're not standardized, but they are
merit-based exams people do.
And then they have their own exam for each course,
each test that they do.
That is much more, it's a
harder test.
They give allowances for
people being dyslexic, they give them more time,
they give them time, and then they do interviews.
They do two interviews, and these interviews have
four or five people in them, totally
independent to that person. They monitor
that, they look at that, and those people
basically, you know, assess if this person
is going to be able to complete the degree
at Oxford, and then they get the place. Well, guess what's
happened?
Det var, jeg tar Eton som et exempel, en privat skole, som jeg beskrev tidig, de var til å få ca 200 mennesker, ca 200 mennesker, til Oxford og Cambridge, ca 6 år siden. Det har gått til 40.
Det er helt og helt nødvendig.
Det de gjør på de summerholiderne her, vi ser dem allerede,
de inviterer folk fra alle de utfordrende skoler i Ukraina
til å komme og ta kurser her med de professorer, fri av behov.
De bor i de oppbyggelsene her, og de lærer, som du sa tidligere,
De blir lært hvordan å gjøre bra i disse utføringene.
SÃ¥ dette er ikke av kvalitet, det er av postkod i Storbritannien.
De finner postkoden i den nordlige enden av London eller noe annet.
Så de kvinnerne må gå gjennom prosessen som alle andre når de går gjennom.
Og over tid har de fått flere personer inn, og vet du hva som skjer?
All the kids in the private schools, or the parents of the kids in the private schools,
because I happen to be a parent of a kid in a private school,
They're all sitting there saying this is totally unfair.
They've been like, the rug's been pulled,
and they're not getting the advantages they had.
It's a very interesting thing going on here,
which could be an interesting experiment if the U.S. universities do that.
By the way, that's what you just currently described,
how people in the Bay Area are feeling.
Sorry, Eugene, but you gotta admit,
that is kind of a general sentiment.
Come on, bro.
Let's just be honest,
that people in the Bay Area are so upset.
The reason why so many people...
Asian brown people
Indians, Pakistani Americans
Asian Americans
We're all upset
Because our advantages
Have been taken away from us
Right? And now we're celebrating
because suddenly
you know, all of our advantages are going to help.
By the way, just so people know,
there's no underlying advantage for being
a brown person
and being good at math, just in case you were wondering.
There's nothing in our DNA
that I know of that makes us good at math
or Asian people. It's actually
just because of the fact that we study it a lot.
And it's encouraging to home.
And this is the hard part
which is, and this is where I kind of struggle
to be honest, which
which is coming from a not so affluent family,
coming from a lower middle class family,
coming from the backgrounds that I did,
and that Cal did, and that Eugene did,
we feel like we've quote-unquote earned our way,
Right? And that other people, that, you know, like, no one took into account our disadvantages.
At least that's how I feel, often.
But at the same time, I've got to say that when I started taking care of patients from East St. Louis, that shit changes you, man.
Like, when you see the stuff that these young kids are going through, I've got to say, like, I had tons of advantages.
Like tons of advantages.
And North St. Louis as well.
And then West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia.
I've got to tell you, it was pretty freaking bad.
Like when you're worried about where you're going to get your next meal,
or you're worried about whether your home is safe,
that's a completely different level.
And I don't know how to take that into account in a college admission essay.
You can put it in there, but by the way, by the time the essay is read,
there's been like a hundred different ways that we've kicked people off the list.
That's the issue, actually, is that the first thing we do is we actually sort people, and then you read.
Then you do the nuance.
Because you can't do nuance with every application.
Do you know how many applications these people have?
So it's in that sorting period where all the craziness happens.
So...
In the last few minutes, I wanted to talk a little bit about corporate DEI.
And we touched on it earlier, but I do want to make sure that we touch on it now.
Over the course of the last 10 years, we have seen the impact of corporate DEI rise faster than any other influence within an organization.
And what I mean by that is, we saw DEI officers, we saw managers,
people in senior leadership.
We saw Nasdaq change its rules.
Nasdaq changes rules
on who can sit on boards
and what percentage of people can be on boards.
And so, you know,
kind of interesting how,
and Khaleesi kind of mentioned it in the UK,
but this happened across the country
and especially in the US.
And I will say that
If we fix the underlying problem, we wouldn't need any of this.
But considering we can't even agree on what merit is...
It's really hard to imagine that the underlying problems will get fixed.
And so, you know, wanting to get people's thoughts on the DEI efforts at these companies,
and not only whether they've been successful,
but do you think that we're going to see a pullback on DEI and a backlash to DEI in the next two to three years,
especially because of this decision?
Lily, go ahead.
I was just going to say like DEI is usually like works hand in hand with ESG, right?
And so that's something to take into consideration.
Like ESG is like a whole separate conversation about the business of ESG
separated maybe from the philosophies and ESG reporting is
There's different things that happen in the EU or in Hong Kong for a publicly traded company.
But, yeah.
You know, there's some companies, like even private ones, I'm thinking of an interview with Mars, right?
Where they're talking about how a lot of these things are really important to recruiting the right talent.
And like I said earlier, you know, if you're, especially, you know, when you're customer facing, right?
You need a variety of perspectives.
You need to be able to meet your customers.
You need viewpoints that reflect,
especially if you're a company
that meets more than...
one persona, right?
Which many, like every company
has more than one type of user.
Like if you know anybody
who has ever gone through
from like a UI perspective, right?
You have all these different personas.
So you just, you need different viewpoints.
It's necessary.
The question though,
is that have the DEI efforts
achieved the outcome
that they were trying to achieve?
Like the different viewpoints is a good point.
My view is they haven't, and I think the whole DEI thing is toast.
I'm going to be really blunt about that, just straightforward.
I really do think that.
And I think they had very little effect in the core of where it mattered.
Like you said with education too.
And very little accountability around what really happened there.
Now at the end of it, we've managed to get out of that whole kind of wave of it.
I don't know, you want to say last five years, ten years?
I don't know how long you want to count that wave.
But at the end of it, yes, we've probably got a few more female leaders in positions.
We've got a few more non-standard people in places.
But as the first kind of brown Minnesotan in a Fortune 50 company based in Minneapolis,
I tell you, it's a systemic change that's required.
It's a massive systemic change.
in the system, and when recessions come, it pulls back.
So a lot of these efforts are going to be basically toast,
as they are right now.
I mean, people will pretend they're doing it,
but I also see the funding, like you said earlier,
going out of the UK, you know, the small funds,
all the LPs are pulling,
because they're just trying to get to the places
where they can be comfortable making the money,
and you're going to have to invest in these places.
So it's kind of sad, but I think it's...
It's kind of toast for a lot of these programs.
And I think in the US it's not going to help with this big,
you know, the Supreme Court's reading here.
And I do wonder whether the impact of these DEIB programs
has been to support specific minorities
and has not actually helped the minorities it was actually supposed to help.
Right?
And that has been a, by the way, if you talk to,
A lot of people that are from underrepresented minorities, they'll say that, hey, they're lumping all of these different DEI programs into one, and so it ultimately ends up helping specific types of minorities way more than others.
And it's a very interesting problem.
You know, for example, is the impact of being LGBTQ
the same as being a black man from an underserved neighborhood?
Can we really lump them together and say,
oh, look, we have good DEI metrics.
Shouldn't we be breaking the alpha down into many different components
and seeing, hey, which ones of these are we actually executing well on
and which ones aren't we?
Right? This is like one of the most, the biggest issues, which is we're trying to lump all of these different components into one,
instead of having a nuanced conversation around, okay, who is really affected by the systemic inequities that exist?
So I wanted to bring a different voice up.
Now, Pancake, you've been, Pancake's bro, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna call you PB.
You can call me Michael. My name is Michael.
Michael, thank you. I know that you were messaging on the back end and on the chat.
Yeah, I was just curious.
So I wanted to get your voice in here, because I know it's likely different than some of the things that we're seeing up here.
And I do want to have all sides at the table. So go ahead. We'd love to get your thoughts.
Yeah, sure. I kind of just wanted to say that Mario's a bitch.
This is why I don't like bringing random people up in general.
That was pretty hilarious.
I'm gonna say that I apologize to Mario for bringing that person up,
and I am so sorry, but you're now blacklisted forever.
So, that's pretty funny.
What just happened?
Well, this is what happens usually,
because, you know, certain people start rising,
and then other people get jealous.
It's okay.
Danish has been tried and tested.
Was that Robert? He was talking?
Yeah.
What did you say?
Was that Robert Kiyosaki?
That was Robert Kiyosaki. Oh my god.
Do you guys know about this story?
I'll remind everybody.
It was his burner account.
Oh my god. So Robert Kiyosaki, the rich dad, poor dad guy, Cal.
He came up here and he was like...
You know, you guys are talking all kinds of mumbo-jumbo economics and finance stuff,
and I'm just a simple man.
And you know what? I don't want to be like you. I hire people like you.
Like, I don't need an MBA. I don't need no stinking MBA.
I'm just, you know, I just keep it simple.
America is in a death spiral.
And I was like, oh my God, dude. Jesus. Jesus, man.
Yeah.
You're a grown ass man. And by the way, a guy that's living off of a book that he wrote 25 years ago can tell you that nothing's really working.
The actual guy said that?
Oh yeah, Robert Kiyosaki said that. Oh, 100%.
He left.
Oh, it got way worse than that. I gotta tell you really quickly. The other things that happened was then he said, you know what I'm investing in? I'm investing in cattle.
I'm sorry.
He pretty much kicked himself off stage.
Ja, ja, han sa, ta av meg, ta av meg uten sted, og det var som om, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, o
Nei, nei. Og det er vint, fordi folk tror at de er så vinte når de gjør ting som dette.
Men, ærlig sagt...
What ends up happening is that we ultimately end up winning.
Because that's usually a good sign.
If nobody's hating on you, that means you're not doing a good job.
If everybody here who's listening is not upset at me for at least one of the comments that I made,
then I'm not being objective enough.
Or one of the comments that somebody made up here.
We don't have a broad enough panel.
The problem with this stupid platform is that there are so many echo chambers.
That is the actual problem
People like going where they
Listen to people that generally agree with them
You will never get that here
And if you do, then I have failed
So I just wanted to bring that up
Alright, we're going to move back on
But I wanted to kind of get a thought
A final thought on
from everybody around, you know,
Cal said that we're probably going to see a pullback
in DEI. I agree 100%.
Do you think that
the private, you know, people say, well,
you know, let the private sector fix things.
If diversity actually
improves outcomes, then we will
have more diversity, right? Free market.
Everything works in the free market.
I don't think that this is a free market type thing.
And Lilly brought up ESG.
ESG is the boogeyman for the right.
ESG has been seen as this boogeyman for the right.
And people keep pushing against ESG.
But in reality, it's again lumping 10 different things together.
Right? Like that's the actual underlying problem. It doesn't mean ESG is bad at its core. It just means it's being executed incredibly poorly. You know, I think most people will agree that an electrified future is actually probably good for society. Right?
Vi liker vårt elektriske bilar nå, og vi tror at,
forstås, bilarne blir kjøpere og kjøpere og kjøpere fordi de er på en elektrisk chassi,
og batteriteknologi blir bedre nå.
Vi kommer sannsynlig å se elektrifikasjonen redusere kostnader.
Ved å gjøre elektrifikasjon, også,
byggen mot bilen,
du kommer også til å ha bedre tilgang til autonome bilar,
og over tid kommer vi til å ha bedre og bedre muligheter til å forbedre.
Elektrifikasjon har ikke vært dårlig.
Overall, thinking about people has not been bad.
We're trying to be empathetic.
Yes, do we have some compassion issues? Sure.
But ESG, the intent was good, the execution was bad.
So I want to hear from people.
Do you think, on the stage,
do you think that DEI is going to get a significant pullback?
Mikkel?
Well, yeah, just based on what you were saying before, I just want to quickly touch on it.
When you put out an ESG requirement and have cigarette companies ranked above Tesla,
I mean, you were making the exact example around electrification.
I mean, it just goes to exactly what you're saying.
It just throws out the credibility instantly.
And this is a new thing.
So to have that right off the rip, I think a lot of people just look at that and say,
okay, well, here's another pointless program where you're just going to pick favorites.
Yeah.
yeah go ahead sorry my mute button was not working go ahead who was that it was me i just
wanted to add real quickly right like the underlying um concepts of something like esg
or dei right there's something there is this just about the way it's been executed
Right? So going forward, and this is also something, this was my original question with the college admissions, right?
What are the new metrics that will be put together?
Will they be more thoughtful?
And some of these, especially like I said before, the business of them, how the rankings get done, things like that,
like the vehicles that have been put together, the greenwashing, right?
Like some of that has to change.
So who's going to come forward? How is it going to come together to better capture these things and also do it in a way that just makes more sense than what we have now?
My contention is no one, and we're going to revert back to the mean.
I think I'm in Cal's boat that no one's going to care anymore if they're not forced to.
People inherently in a capitalist society, which by the way, I'm a big capitalist, right? That's the one thing where I'm like incredibly clear is that I'm a capitalist. In a capitalist society, without regulations, people will always do what maximizes shareholder value.
And not what will actually maximize shareholder value, but what they think will maximize shareholder value.
And they are using patterns from history to determine decisions in the future.
And if historical data shows that these types of people maximize outcome, then they're going to go and get those types of people.
That's my opinion on what I think is going to happen.
But these companies, right, they have to, a lot of companies that report in other markets or participate in them, they have to meet certain requirements, right?
So it doesn't go away completely just because the face of it changes.
Then they'll do the minimum requirements. Sorry, just to be clear. You're right. I misspoke.
Ja, any other final comments on what you think is going to happen in the future with DEIB?
Was this a zero interest rate phenomena?
And as interest rates are higher, are we going to get rid of DEIB?
Come on, don't be scared.
Tell me what you really think.
All right, I'm going to start calling on people.
Amy, what do you think?
You know, gosh, I don't know. I'm still thinking about the guy you pulled up and how frustrating that is to me because the thing I love about this space is that we do pull people up.
And the other day when we were doing the Airbnb one, we pulled up Trish, the realtor in Florida, and she added so much value to the conversation.
And I think it is so important, if we're going to have a form of citizen journalism, to be able to pull up citizens who are, quote, Twitter nobodies, that don't have a following, but have a perspective to add that is really valuable.
So, when you pull somebody up that sort of abuses the system, so to speak, then...
That makes it hard for everybody else who we really do want to hear from, and we really do want to pull up into these spaces.
So, I'm still thinking about that, not about the DEI, I'm sorry.
No, no, I totally understand.
So, you know what, I'll close on this then.
The value we get from people like Trish and Greg yesterday will always be more than what some idiot comes up and says for two seconds.
And what's interesting is that it's a chance for us to figure out our way of picking the right people.
That one is not on that person.
He's always going to be an idiot.
Unless he gets some help, right?
Because we are up here trying to do what we think is important.
And so instead of worrying about that person,
which Amy, you're completely right,
because you care about what we're doing.
I know how much you care about it.
Because what we're trying to do is talk about what is actually going on.
Not what the corporate media wants you to think.
Not what...
people are scared to talk about.
We're coming around the table, and we're having
an honest discussion based on our lived
experiences, and then we're bringing people
up who have different voices
without just thinking about clout.
You know, that's where a lot of these spaces die,
is when they only bring up people with giant
followings. That's actually like where the
problems occur, because then you only hear from
people that know the talking points.
I don't care about talking points. I want
to talk to people. So I will continue
to bring people up that are
different, that don't have giant followings,
but there's something about what they said in the comments,
or maybe they send me a DM,
but usually I look through comments over DMs.
If you put in a comment there and I like what you said,
you'll see me liking it.
I am reading these.
It's part of the advantages of being ADHD,
is that I can do those kinds of crazy things.
And, you know,
we're going to keep bringing them up.
And once in a while,
I will say one out of five times,
it will be a douchebag.
And that's okay.
That's okay. It's just a reminder that there are people out here that want us to fail.
And you know what? That's a sign that we're winning.
So on that wonderful note, I will see you guys Monday, 8 a.m. Eastern.
Everybody have a wonderful weekend. Thank you, everybody, and I appreciate you all.
Have a wonderful weekend. Happy July 4th.
