Andrew Yang - H3 Podcast #132

to welcome everybody to the first presidential h3 podcast sponsored by honey and quip today our guest is Andrew yang who is running as the Democratic presidential candidate did I say that right yeah yeah yeah good because I don't want to you know you're running for to be the candidate it's a whole thing if you get my intro wrong then by Presidential Decree I will not kidding guys if you hear anything you like here today with Andrew head on over the yang 2020 dot-com to donate and help support the campaign I know that you're short on time we have like an hour hour and a half something like that so I'm gonna keep it flowing I'm gonna keep it going and I want to get this out of the way I have one thing that I really want to ask you first is what makes you think you can be President if you don't even wear a tie well I didn't wear a tie in the debate I don't wear a tie in the trail very much I think America is ready for a different kind of president who's more about substance than form mm-hmm and you know we're not wearing a tie sort of an emblem of the fact that I'm not a politician I'm not someone who's been rattling around Washington for years or decades and unfortunately most Americans don't think that career politicians are going to solve our problems it's one reason I'm running for president mmm so what make that's a great answer by the way it is a conscious choice not to wear the tie yeah I mean I've worn a tie in the past yeah you know I don't enjoy it I actually went to a snooty awful I hate the tie it's not great I went to uh yeah prep school as a kid that had you wear a tie all the time too so that does not let's say engender positive you have no experience in holding political office you went straight from being a CEO right to running for president does it make sense that you went straight like it makes sense maybe to become a mayor or governor or senator first why did you decide to go straight to the presidency the main reason is that I'm running to try and solve the biggest problems of our time and I think those problems are accelerating and getting more and more serious so I genuinely didn't think I had five to ten years of climbing the ladder to wait to address some of these problems to me the reason why Donald Trump's our president is that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan Ohio Pennsylvania Wisconsin Missouri and those automation trends are just picking up steam as we close thirty percent of America stores and malls because of Amazon self-driving cars and trucks are around the corner and driving and trucks the most common job in 29 states so if i bided my time and was like oh i'm gonna run for mayor and then maybe eventually i'll start trying to make this case it's like we just don't have time for that truthfully I didn't have time for that the country doesn't have time for that and so decided to run for president out of the gate and one of the things I say to people is look I'm not some asshole who says like I'm gonna run the government like a business because they're very very different things you need very different leadership skills and it's a different operating model I've been the CEO of a business and when you're the CEO if you tell someone to do something they kind of have to do it because you're their boss and you're paying them and if they don't do it then you'll probably end up making a change but it government you can't pull that off you can't be like hey you know Mitch McConnell I'll do what I say or you know like he doesn't care it's like you know they've got a different set of motivations so you have to do something that's much closer to what I did as the head of a non-profit for the last 7 years but you have a vision and then you try and galvanize energy and consensus around that vision and that's something I can do and I'll be very glad to do it as our president mmm so you see you see us running out of time and in certain things and you felt compelled from urgency to to run for president is there something it was there a specific moment where I mean that seems like a quite a change in career path where you were like I'm a CEO now I know you made an exit from that company is that right when it's sold yeah and I I was the CEO of a private company that was acquired a while ago and I started a non-profit in 2011 I was actually just talking to some people last night about the fact that the real divergence for me was starting this nonprofit called venture for America helped train hundreds of entrepreneurs to create thousands of jobs in Detroit Cleveland New Orleans Birmingham place I'd never been honestly like I'd been operating mostly on the East Coast and so when I made that decision I found my excuse me I found myself in all of these environments I'd never been in before and I realized just how fundamental the economic changes were and then when you do that work for a number of years and you realize that you're pouring water into a bathtub it has a giant hole ripped in the bottom and the hole in the bathtub threatens to destroy our political system our way of life over time that's the urgency you're talking about right I'm also a parent I know congratulations to you both ah yes thank you joining the parent club and when you have kids you also have a different perspective where you think okay how am I going to leave the country or the world in a condition that I'd be proud to leave to my kids and right now I'm not excited about the world we're leaving to our kids and you have to yeah I have two boys six and three one of whom is autistic and so looking up and being honest about what I see coming down the pike I knew that someone needed to do something and as an entrepreneur and you know this if you say oh someone else will take care of this that almost never works because no one ill take care of it so I decided I could make a contribution interesting you say and I and I agree with you that the reason Trump was elected is is is mainly due to the fact that we're actually losing jobs leaking out to automation but I think the people that voted for him are not necessarily aware of that they see there they are talking about immigration and they're talking about China and stuff like this how do you how do you convince these people who have been kind of being fed propaganda for so long that that the issue isn't immigrants or China or whatever else it's that are their jobs are being automated away because an another issue I see is you know conservatives are tend to be or contend to be the party of like anti give outs right anti-welfare so how do we convince conservatives that the problem is not what they think and and also how do we convince them to be okay taking these handouts when that it seems like this is kind of like a naughty word and in conservative circles well I'm happy to say that when I presented this case to literally thousands of Americans around the country a light bulb goes off were you saying look it's technology and automation I'll describe my conversations with truck drivers two years ago if you said hey trucks are gonna start driving themselves in a number of years they would look at you and say there is no way a robot could ever do my job and then that turned this past year and now the conversation is we have to make robot trucks illegal very very different convert that huh and when you go to people and say look it's not immigrants it's technology I have never had any group of people stand up and say it's not robots it's immigrants as soon as you say it's not immigrants it's almost like oh yeah that's right this kind of waiting for you to say it but I wanted true I feel like I've experienced it myself when I heard you talk when you were on the Rogan podcast it's all of a sudden click to me like oh thank you it's oh it's right here it's already happening oh it's out and then too like all they do is look up like they see the grocery stores with the self-checkout they see the fast-food with like the screens to touch they see the airports that used to have clerks and now they don't so they can see it all and someone you pointed out to them they say oh yeah that's right to the second point you say look conservatives don't like quantum quote handouts there's one state that's had a dividend for almost 40 years and it's Alaska it's a deep red Republican state is a Republican governor it's one reason why we named this the freedom dividend is because it tested better with conservatives with the word freedom in it but it's also a dividend on our shared progress as a country and I had someone in the Midwest say like as soon as you made me think wait a minute companies do this for their shareholders at the time we can do this so this is not really left or right thing it's bipartisan what conservatives hate is they hate giant bureaucracies making people's decisions for them but they don't mind the idea of people getting economic independence and autonomy to do what they want particularly if it seems fair like it doesn't Alaska so I I'm very curious actually about if we have case studies about such a thing of a universal basic income being enacted I know of her of her Alaska mention are there other places that you know of that that have such a thing yeah there are a number of incident incidences around the world there are middle eastern countries that are just distributing an oil dividend it's like Alaska revved up some of the Scandinavian countries have almost the equivalent in terms of how robust their social safety nets are Indian tribes have something similar where they end up because with casino wealth they start giving it out to everyone so what is the effect on the society in which these happen I think Arab countries is a little bit of an outlier so strange situation there but like in Alaska for example how much how much money do they get for example and what is the rationale for giving it out there just to get people to want to live in Alaska so it was almost 40 years ago and we're public in government I realized they had tons of oil in the ground they're gonna make some money and so he went to the Alaskan people and said who would you rather get the money the government or you the people of Alaska said us like oh I thought you'd say that so then that has grown over time to the point where now everyone in Alaska gets between one and two thousand dollars a year no questions asked and this is a man woman or child so if you're a family of four you're gonna get let's call it $8,000 mhm and that's significant yeah absolutely so this program in Alaska has created thousands of jobs has improved children's health and nutrition it's wildly popular it's decreased income inequality and it stood the test of time through all of these years and now decades so this is an example of something and if you ask someone in Alaska whether they like it they love it it's like the favorite thing that our governments a majority of Alaskans who absolutely hate taxes said they would accept higher taxes if it meant keeping the dividend and they liked the dividend so so Alaska's got the oil what is mainland America have they can pay first of all more they you say they get a thousand dollars a year so you're proposing the universal basic income the freedom dividend $1,000 a month for everyone 18 and older right they have oil we have marijuana now I'm kidding we have technology yeah technology is the oil of the 21st century and we have a lung musk we have you on monster of Jeff Bezos for aniline right still even post-divorce I think is richest man alive still yeah so ever the best of luck by the way I was so fascinated by just by the fact of the divorce his his ex-wife became like the third richest woman in the world god bless that's amazing anyway sorry so Amazon's this trillion-dollar tech company closing 30% of our stores and malls and paying zero in taxes and that's not unusual they regularly pay zero in taxes that's this I always hear that I mean I've been hearing that stat for so long I feel like we became pretty successful and the more we made we pay more you pay we go we go oh my god am i counting I'm like hey what's going on I'm paying 50% taxes I thought I was supposed to be paying like zero and he laughs at me and says oh well that's just four billion that's like God all companies that have fleets of accountants lawyers yup so I've I've been in the same boat I ran a private company and we also paid forty to fifty percent in taxes quite regularly and so then you look up and you say how the heck is Amazon paying zero in taxes yeah I can explain it most of these tech companies are multinationals so what they do is they move their profits and often their revenue to markets that have lower tax rates you know one high haven that everyone uses Ireland somehow all the money is going through Ireland so what does that mean practically okay how do you operate a business chiefly in America and then somehow what does Ireland have to do with you not paying tax or the Amazon not paying taxes yeah so Amazon so amazon has businesses all over the world and so they can shift revenue and expenses through different divisions the other thing is that but they can say our company in Ireland made a trillion dollars or whatever or less people are and and you know our government is so dark it's just like all good yeah go to the IRS and be like yeah I ducted uh all of my mommy I didn't make any money this year they're like cool another trick they use which doesn't work for companies like ours but it works my Amazon you can expense stock compensation of various types so what they do is they look alright the other thing they can expense is they can expense various future regarding investments so Amazon will look up and they'll literally look up and say oh it looks like we're gonna we're gonna make some money this year that's unacceptable let's take that extra a couple hundred million or billion or whatnot and plow it into this new division so they bite which yeah they can write or they can just say let's pay our executives a ton in stock options and guess what that's something that's an expense oh my god and so and it makes us rich to like score so they look at it and there are different ways they can get the tax down is located you know because it just seems so stupidly simple and I've been hearing this for what seems like my whole life yet how is it possible that nobody has been able to to get taxes from these huge companies well that's what we need to change and so when people look around and it's a DP because I've been hearing that like my whole life I mean what's different about you a lot of it is that I'm not owned by any corporate masters we have a hundred sixty thousand plus donors and the average donation our campaigns only $26 so I joke our fans in the yang gang Thank You yang Yang are even cheaper than Bernie's fan so I don't owe any lobbyists any you know backroom favor is that it it's just lobbying a lot of its lobbying and then the other thing you have Congress people who are being lobbied corporate money has completely overrun our politics you know there are a few in the pending legislators but in this legislative body of hundreds of bond sold by just later is like you know you have a few people Washington DC choose up and spits out idealists it does it's a total mess have you spending time there it's a disaster so there's a pretty obvious fix to this and the fix is what other countries around the world figured out decades ago which is to have a system that doesn't revolve around Amazon paying out a share of profits but instead that hasn't pay a value-added tax so you take a tiny toll and we've all experienced this when we go abroad there's a vet and it's like oxygen it all works right and so Amazon Amazon said hey we didn't make any money this year we'd be like we don't care like you pay a whole lot everything same every Google server saying the MacBook ad well that's one reason why what my plan is to take that money and then some and just return it to American consumers immediately in the form of a dividend increases the purchasing power of 94% of Americans is a game-changer for families and children and women minorities so in a vacuum if you just passed a VAT we would successfully get the money from the Amazon's of the world but our prices would go up this much then if you take that money and say look just put it back into consumers hands and then some then you increase our buying power and then it creates a virtuous cycle because right now if we got that money and we know Jeff and Amazon would get some of it back because we'd buy some extra stuff on Amazon but that's fine after we get that money and it ends up I'm confused about I guess what the VAT is because in Europe when I see of that aren't I as the consumer it's like a sales tax that I pay right yeah or is it the Amazon payment because I I'm in a depression that it would be me that would be paying it and not costing Amazon anything so the VAT goes through every business interaction and so it is technically Amazon paying in and in some businesses you've seen passing along to consumers in various ways but if it's a business to business transaction it's still getting paid I see so it's not something that shows up on my receipt when I buy something from Amazon theoretically speaking you know it would depend upon the choice Amazon makes they want to show it to you or not is the main thing yeah but it out but if you look at these future trends you have artificial intelligence coming online that's going to end up replacing hundreds of thousands of drivers and call center workers and right now the American public is going to get essentially zero of this value because again the beneficiaries of the biggest tech companies they pay zero or next to zero in taxes so as they soak up more and more value we're looking around being like what's going on where the money go where the jobs so this is why you need a mechanism so that we all share in that progress or else things are just gonna get darker and darker yeah so how much money do we need to suck is there enough money in Amazon and Microsoft and Google is there enough money there just to to suck up to pay this freedom dividend I mean how much money do we need first of all to to tackle this there is enough money especially over time the cost savings around automating truck driving as one example are estimated to be a hundred sixty eight billion dollars a year just from that one industry so if you extrapolate it over multiple industries and then you project over time what artificial intelligence is going to be able to do that's really the trap we're in that right now as that value takes off if we're in position to see zero of it then we're just left behind yes but if we get a sliver of it a sliver of a very very large number is also a very very large number so even with the freedom dividend let's say because you're saying it's a small even just a small slice are we moving more and more to a world where we have five companies that own everything that are almost as equal to in terms of its power and and resources as the federal government as they soak up more and more more and more money automate less costs less paying out do you see a world where these corporate entities are almost an equal footing as the federal government and and is that is that just inevitable that's certainly the way things are going right now and if you were to ask Jeff Bezos uh in private whether he thinks he's more powerful than president United States he probably sure got a bigger house than he does I'm making spaceships to Mars and my side job I mean that is what he's doing yes it's his side hustle no Mars so we're already there in essence right I mean the top companies are running around our government like our government is a bunch of clumsy children and if you look at the recent hearings you see most government legislators have very limited notions of what technology is or can do right and so currently our most powerful CEOs just see government of something to walk around and just a voice mm-hmm now that that's the world we live in now it's one reason why people have this sense of foreboding because they're like oh man like DC doesn't have its act together there's something wrong I think a lot of people sense oh there's something wrong what is it but the politics to me and I think to most people is like how do you even understand what's going on like people who say they understand I don't even believe because there's so much moving parts there's so much backroom deals you know so much corruption so much how do you even know what is actually going I don't even know I don't even bother to try that's a very rational decision that one of the stats I saw was that 25 percent of Americans are quote unquote politically disengaged right yeah I think it's a waste of time I think it's that because what do you get your information from I mean the newspaper what's the best source I mean okay you're gonna read the newspaper you're gonna watch the news and if they'll so filtered and removed and even the debates like you pointed out it just feel like you're watching a reality and not actual and not even a good one I mean they ask you call questions and expect you to answer in like 30 seconds and then they cut you off and they focus so much on the drama it's like they want it they want you to get into an argument with Joe Budden yeah and you know one thing I'll share with you all is that some of the campaigns are in touch with the TV network ahead of time to talk about what sort of attack they want to the stage they like an attack on by and around yes this question would be would play really well oh yes the campaign says hey we're gonna make this attack against Biden and in the network I was okay like we get it and then they help create that opportunity what a nightmare I mean what a farce yeah it's it's quite a disaster and I want to share with you the perspectives like I'm I think like a lay person who happens to find himself on the presidential debate stage being like what the hell about this conference call what are you what are you what's your message to people like me and most most and a growing number of people who just feel disengaged because it feels just impossible to actually understand what's going on even when you invest your time you still don't understand what's going on so what do we do first whatever sense of unease you have is probably the least of it like things are worse and shittier than even most people believe in my experience like the the institutions are just so corrupt and weak and the people involved are just so checked out and jaded Washington DC is not a great place I have friends who've worked on Capitol Hill and they went in with the best of intentions and then 10 years later they're just totally defeated Wow like it's it's not a good look so first I just want to verify everyone's sense of despair like this bear is well-founded now as to what we can do about it it's going to take a campaign like mine that's an outsider campaign a non-politician completely funded by the people 26 bucks a pop actually shaking things up and saying look we can do things differ and after I become president we can transform the right now like the polarization and the gridlock because everyone senses that I'm non-ideological I'm just trying to solve the problems I'm just trying to do it for the people and then hopefully we can change the culture now it's a very tall order it's gonna be very very difficult but I think we can do it if enough of us get together and say look we're sick and tired of politics as usual and we're willing to take a chance on the Asian man who wants to give everyone money mm-hmm I feel like also with the way that you are running it's pointing out at least to me the feeling that I get is how most of us really can agree on a lot of things no matter on which side you are and I think that's what what its gonna take because you need to be able to convince people voted for Trump and pointing out that there's so much wrong that we can we all need for all of us is the way for me to do it and I see it with the way you were running you know I'm happy to say I'm one of only two candidates along with Bernie Sanders that over ten percent of Trump voters said they would vote for and so with that that's enough to win I have I become the nominee I win this election I think so actually I can't vote but I would vote you might be able to by the time the president maybe yeah that's the way it happens I really I love America and I feel like it's such a shame what's going on here and someone needs to fix it urgently plus you have a child now an American and all this rage all the gun the gun violence I can't take it anymore I really I cannot hear about it like lately there were kids that died babies mm-hmm I can't even imagine if I was the parent how do you even handled that yeah it's it's disastrous I mean I as a parent too I see the images and it's like you know I mean thankfully my kids are too young to understand right we have to protect them from and then change the reality on the ground or you know my kids and yours we become old enough to show up to schools where they're having shooter drills which a lot of schools have now let's touch on that when we come back from a break we'll be back right after this short break we've got Andrew yang yang 2020 calm yang hashtag Aang we'll be right back a few short minutes Eva I would like to tell you about honey it's a plug-in for your browser that is gonna save you money all the time it's free it's easy to install two clicks and you will not want to spend any time on the internet without it let me give you an example here we were looking on Amazon for a video card look at this the one that Amazon shows you is 250 the one that 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these these other big boy that's right I mean what did this cost $500,000 $100 dollars and they're bulky they are that's just one vibrating tube so you could go to get quick comm /h 3 you get your first refill pack for free which is this cute little thing it's the head and a little toothpaste that's your first refill pack free at GE tqu IP comm / H Street Wow give it up for you everybody again get your ass over to get quip comm / h3 wonderful yang gang mount up we're back I want to talk about gun control and then circle back to the ubi because I feel like I want I want to talk about that a lot more but you guys were touching on before the break the amount of shootings were having it's at 250 just this year and you know when I was a kid prepping for for an active shooter on campus was not even something that we ever considered or thought about and now kids are it seems like mo I mean seems like all schools how are having drills having consideration for if there's an active shooter on their campus and that's just that's just so beyond wrong it's just so beyond reasonable I want to ask you first of all why why do you think all these mass shootings are happening to begin with to me it's such a multi-faceted problem from top to bottom and so the things that we're focused on right now are in some ways that most immediate problems which is our political rhetoric and climate has demonized and vilified people on the other side then makes it seem like somehow violence might be appropriate in some circumstance certainly the fact that we have so many guns in this country where at almost 400 million firearms almost one for every man woman and child now that gun ownership is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of Americans one of the stats I saw was that three percent of Americans owned 50 percent of the guns so that's like a lot of guns per person and that 3 percent but 3 percent in a country our size is still 10 million Americans you have the fact that the NRA is making it impossible to pass any reasonable gun safety laws even though the vast majority of Americans support background checks and red flag laws and and obvious safety measures and then the deeper problems are around this real this loss of any kind of sense of purpose or like the direction where unfortunately it makes people more subject to hateful ideologies that can spread much more virulent ly on the internet now than they could have even 12 15 years ago finding they're finding communities that reinforce their beliefs yeah this internet pioneer named Jaron Lanier pointed out that negative ideas and sentiments spread much more powerfully on the internet than positive ones if you think about your own experience in social media it's kind of true it's like the toxic things like to sort of take on a life of their own and so that's helping fuel this set of problems so that there are problems up and down and we have to try and attack each one and turn but unfortunately going to be with us for a long time because again we're talking about a country with 300 million plus firearms mm-hmm yeah it's it's dark I mean even if we passed some of these gun safety laws which we 100% should and will we need to have a perpetual buyback in effect in my opinion where we just say look I'm gonna sell your gun like we'll buy it off you like that because we need to try and get the supply down over time you Stan why are people feeling so purpose purposeless so nihilistic I mean really that's what these people are is just such a dark nihilistic I mean it always ends with them killing themselves they want to kill themselves they want to kill other people what is that a symptom of in terms of like mentally where that comes from I think unfortunately we're in like a period of just vast disillusionment in our society where if you keep of age in another era they would say hey you're the things that are porn and if you do this then it's gonna work out for you in this way in that way and then now we just don't believe any of it right you know now you say hey you go to college part of you is like well just gonna load me up with debt I'm gonna graduate and I'm gonna have the job no delts it'd be like oh you should still do this you know like whereas before maybe that promise actually was real maybe you went to college that things would work out in very positive ways so I hope people look around and say I don't believe in our institutions I don't believe in what my future holds and then you become subject all sorts of very terrible and sinister ideas and ideologies I mean I could speak for myself as a college graduate that without I mean the very unlikely chance of me succeeding as an entertainer before that I was really I was a waiter I had no prospect of finding a serious job I lived in Israel for five years with ela and I was able to find a job there because I was qualified as a English speaker but I think that the prospects are bleak for a lot of people there's just not opportunities out there yeah the numbers bear it out too I mean our economy has stopped producing quality jobs and benefits for years and years when 94 percent of the new jobs that are getting created are temp gig or contractor jobs that often don't have secure benefits and so if that's what you're producing in your economy then people rightfully feel like their futures often quite bleak so let's say we get the freedom dividend going and we're giving everyone a thousand dollars a month yeah I should I should get into that but I'll finish this thought and we'll get into it but like if we're giving people $1,000 a month is that gonna solve that issue even you know I'm like and if we keep going into the future 50 years there 100 years yep I mean how many jobs are left right well this is the fundamental reinvention that's in many ways at the heart of my campaign so right now our economy revolves around these ideas of capital efficiency where the market says you know if you're an accountant you're worth 75 thousand driver you're worth 46,000 mm-hmm and when I'm saying right now is look technologies and they come that's going to do the job of the account and the truck driver and then what is there a new market worth going to be not what it was you know like it's sort of unclear what the new value is so we're in the midst of the greatest economic transformation in human history and we need to start finding new pursuits and jobs and ways to value our own and one of the examples I use that my wife is at home with our two boys one of whom has autism and the market values her work at zero and their millions of women around the country in the same boat where we're like your your times were zero and we all hope we all know that the work she's doing is some of the hardest and most important worth anyone yeah you know you have a two-month-old you're like holy crap is the hard that's dead that's a hard with capitalism though right because they don't produce met like tangible I guess tanda but they don't they don't write produce to the to the economy in a touchable way right it's a variable asset and so in a way we have to transform what we think of as tangible value so if you make another human being stronger and healthier that's good immensely valuable yeah it's just right now our economic statistics don't value that appropriately or investing in your and having a happy healthy family is good for society yes and so this is the great opportunity in an age where technology is going to end up assuming more and more work is that we have to rethink and broaden what we think of as work and then we have to come up with different and better and more human ways of valuing our own time because if we play out the capital efficiency race we lose an epic level you know I I joke but it's true I was an unhappy corporate attorney for five whole months and I can guarantee you can automate that job away like this is it just like the warehouse shelter like this is the lawyers the accountants the radiologists like it just goes on the list so that so we have to take this chance to evolve and start thinking more deeply about ok what is the work we want to do what is valuable in our lives how do we reward and incentivize the work that we need more of for ourselves and so I have some big ideas on this the thousand dollars a month is not the solution it's a foundation it's like the floor on which you can start building but it gives us a chance it gets the boot off of people's throats and it gives us a chance to start measuring our economic progress in things that would actually matter to us like our health and being our mental health and freedom from substance abuse how our kids are doing how clean our air and water is like whether we enjoy the work we're doing the things that might actually get us excited one of the days currently seem like a privilege you know to someone who's just busy surviving yes but one of the jokes I tell us how many people get excited about GDP when they wake up in the morning oh my god I'm gonna make a big contribution so if you were to say how many of you get excited if you were to make your community stronger mentally healthier people would be like oh that would be tremendous it's just most people don't have the opportunity to do that kind of work so this is the big chance we have and we have to take it because if we stay on this road too long GDP and capital efficients are going to send us flying off a cliff and one of the things I say to people's like look self-driving trucks will be great for GDP you're gonna save tens of billions of dollars it's gonna be terrible for the three and a half million truck drivers and the seven million Americans who work in truck stops and hotels and diners around the country waiting for the truckers to get out and have a meal so you guys run a business and so you have measurements you look at all the time it's around like how engaged the viewers are like huh like how many people are clicking on things we need the right measurements for our society we made up GDP almost 100 years ago and even the inventor said this is a terrible measurement of national well-being and we should never use it as that a hundred years ago and so here we are just still following it a hundred years later being like Oh GDP is gonna tell us how we're doing we need to evolve mm-hmm do you have an idea for what that new metric might look like I mean what what what is it yes I do so I call it the American scorecard and it keeps GDP as one data point but it integrates health and life expectancy mental health and freedom from substance abuse childhood education and success rates environmental equality and we have numbers for these things and so we can integrate them into our economic measurements and then at the State of the Union every year as president I will actually present the scorecard and say as an example eight Americans are dying of drug overdoses every hour that's terrible and unconscionable so we're going to get that down by 50 over the next few years and here's how we're gonna do it and then if individuals or companies or organizations put resources to work to move society in that direction then they actually get rewarded economically because right now the problem is that all the economic rewards cut in this direction and then all the helping people rewards cut the other direction right so what went in it sense of look like for let's say Amazon - how could Amazon contribute for example to an issue like that well the first thing we do is we take our fair share of every Amazon sound distribute it to people and that's not something Amazon has a choice about yes like hey guess what this is the new way right and then the and I will say I'm supported by hundreds of techies who are down with this plan because they're not all bad they're just like look I'm doing my job and like I get that there are these problems so I wanna quit the VAT that you put on Amazon theoretically what percentage are we talking about of their revenue well I my proposal is a 10% VAT which is half the European level oh wow sorry go ahead I never got that that stat I'm just curious so essentially 10% of all the sales Amazon's making goes is becomes a tax to the government yeah no pretty low in this game if you're looking at 10% 10% yes so so that's the first movies you say look guess what American people now get a slice it'll help you to everyone's happy and I have hundreds of techies who are behind me and think that this is the best path forward I think Jeff Bezos will be down with that or they'll lobby against it well I know that Jeff Bezos knows that his number one obstacle now is the US government and so he has to figure out how to manage that it is no mystery he bought the Washington Post he moved Amazon's HQ to mostly to the DC area he bought this giant home there he gets it he's like okay the number one thing that could stand in my way of getting to do whatever I want is the is the federal government waking up and so let me try and keep at it back to sleep it's almost unimaginable that one human being could not could be so powerful but also so hell-bent on unsynced early affecting the economy for for his own benefit for I mean how could you as one human it's almost inconceivable isn't it to get inside his head and to think I mean just to just to keep gathering and gaining for for oneself at the benefit of an entire country does he must not see it that way surely oh he doesn't see it that way I mean he's spending billions on rockets to Mars and for him he thinks the wealth is much better in my hands than the government's hand because I'm going to advance the species I'm gonna get us to Mars what the hell would the government do with this money the government would just do something stupid with it so that's one perspective it's his perspective you know we can't take that perspective way to the back if we're the American people and then it's not just Jeff it's like you know the Jeff of Industry why's he like there's a lot of Jeff's yeah there are a lot of Jeff's yeah yeah so so the number one big move is we say look we get a slice and that's going to make society stronger and healthier but number two if they do something cuz right now big companies they do something for good PR and then they say to people look it was good PR so what we say to them is hey Amazon if you can demonstrate then you're making children in this community strong or improving the mental health of this group of people or helping these ex-convicts reintegrate into society or cleaning up the environment and we can document that then we can give you a tax credit for that and so my tax credits zero well I know in this case so obviously we'd get them off the zero tax right you know and they could carry over the tax credit I mean there are different ways to create carrots and sticks for these companies the trick right now though is to try and align their well-being with ours because right now their bottom line is like goal one two and three and then they're paying zero taxes also part of their job one of the things I say is look it's Amazon's job to try and pay as little in taxes as possible it's our job to make it it make it impossible for them to pay zero in taxes I went over the game is rigged right now they don't a strong competitor they don't have a certain competitor yeah we were talking about gun control we got we got off that really really quickly somehow but I did want to ask you this to circle back to that it's it's a complicated issue you say that most Americans want common-sense gun laws it does seem like a party issue where most conservatives there's kind of this echo chamber of people who are saying don't restrict us the government wants to take all of our guns I mean there's propaganda but but how do you how do you get around the Second Amendment like the wording of it specifically says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed do you intended that the authors of that meant for there to be no restrictions on it at all because it does say shall not be infringed so how do you interpret that line well to me you have to think of the intent at the time and at that moment they could not foresee automatic weapons that could kill dozens of Americans and very very short periods of time for them bear arms meant you know a single-shot musket or rifle to make sure that you know that like you you can't be completely marginalized in you know own town or in your own country so I'm for adhering to the Second Amendment the sense that there are many many law-abiding gun owning Americans and they have that right and their rights going to continue mm-hmm yeah they're they're strong propaganda because what you always see is people basically saying they want to take all of our guns away yeah that that is the argument and that to me is because if you look at the numbers eighty to ninety percent of Americans on both sides the I'll agree that we should have a background checks for gun owners they agree that we should not have people who are criminally violent or have some other red flag associated with their record be allowed to buy guns the vast majority of Americans on both sides al but you're right that there's a passion in subgroup and it goes back to what I said before 3% of Americans own 50% of guns right I have a feeling that's a very passionate 3% what I wonder too is when this was written we're citizens allowed to out cannons or other you know weaponry of more massive destruction do you know what I'm saying I do know what you're saying and I don't know the answer to that uh and and today ii mean this is morphed in a particular way because of the purpose is to defend yourself against government incursion i mean at this point like our government owns thing is bigger in cannons you're and any ak-47 or whatever you've got me the government if they want your that's not gonna make a difference yeah and and so that this is like a to me something that has strayed from the original of the framework yeah okay and one joke that joe rogan said is that if the writers the constitution woke up today they'd be shocked that we didn't write any new right you know like the constitution actually had ways to be sort of uh you know like modified i mean the whole point was that it was I mean it was meant to be a living document it's meant to be yeah yeah and and that's one of the dangers right now in the u.s. is that we have lost confidence our government we've also lost confidence in our government to update its own operating system right where one of the things I point out is how the heck are we still hyperventilating about Supreme Court justices who are 80 something years old like oh my gosh they get sick like it's gonna be terrible it's like why do we all why do we have lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices like you know because when they started that back in the day one people do not live as long as they did now so you didn't have six year old yeah yeah and number two Supreme Court justices just stepped down for any of a number of reasons they didn't just stay there until they died it wasn't like some some political like long game no and they gracefully step down step down yeah and and so we just need to try and solve the problems of this time with the tools we have in this time and the tools we have are much more advanced in some ways like around our economic measurements like we actually have measurements that we can utilize that are much more nuanced and powerful than GDP as an example do you think that video games make people violent I should say that I was a gamer growing up so I think I understand gaming would you play Warcraft Starcraft that generation that's my shed brood war yes Starcraft the first expansion set yeah aircraft I was a Protoss guy yeah you would be yeah so you so I think that gaming culture speaks to some very natural and important instincts among men in particular think men are the majority of gamers I think that there's a lot of community involved I remember making friends online and everything no there are certainly some games that probably make you a little more numb to certain forms of interactions than others but the majority of gaming cultures in my experience is quite benign so you're saying there are certain pockets where you think could desensitize people to for example violence yeah I think if someone were just to play first-person shooters like all day every day for a while you know they might become like you know like a little bit checked out as to what it means to be holding like a firearm in real life and like well you know the actual impact in the real world of what that would mean but that to me would be like an edge case that would apply to like virtually none of the gamers that I actually know in real life when I see your point about like if you're playing a first-person shooter and you go to a gun range to shoot a rifle obviously you're going to find out that what you're experiencing the video game is not very realistic when you see how heavy it is and the amount of kickback it has and out loud it is but what giucose would you would you support the claim that a lot of these people who have been doing these mass shootings who have played first-person shooters all day or is is that actual and observable because I well that this is something that you see in the media Fox News for example and the president recently said that violent video games are part of the issue contributing to this amount of mass shooters so that's what I'm getting at specifically to me that would be very very very low on any list below many of the more concrete elements like how they get their hands on an actual gun would be like at the top of the list and we really you know like rhetoric that villainized other people or NRA taking our freaking legislature hostage like those to me would be the top of the list and then somewhere after you get through dozens and dozens of other things like what would be like some impact of video games mm-hmm that's fair enough that's fair answer and very true I mean I was quite shocked to see the president come out in his speech addressing these these back-to-back shootings we had and and and and specifically saying violent video games are part part to blame or one of the issues that we need to address to prevent this from happening in the future well that that's in many ways a political answer because it's trying to say look the things that are up here on the list I don't want to talk about watch it so let me pick out something that's lower on the list and elevated it kind of speaks to people that don't really understand to because I saw it on Fox News the day before and it speaks to people like my parents who have never held a controller in their life and can easily digest that oh yeah kids are playing violent video games so they're shooting up schools but at any rate speaking of Trump if you're on the debate stage one on one verse Trump he has a very specific debating style as everyone knows of almost the you know the cadence of a high school bully the name-calling the degrading but he's very fierce debater and and very successful debate or two and think the creates quite a spectacle do you have a strategy going one-on-one if you were to get the Democratic nominee how would you confront Trump on a one in one debate a trump voter in the Midwest said to me that he can't wait for me to debate Donald Trump because he thinks that I would crush him and the reason why he said this is that whereas Donald Trump's all bluster and spectacle you're all facts and logic I'm like ice to his fire right and so one of the the jokes I was trying to imitate Trump and I was like you know comrade yang go back to China or something like that and then yeah that's what we came up with as his nickname for me because it's like a little racist and the socialist thing right and why I say you know in other context is like it's not socialism it's capitalism where income doesn't start at zero but in a debate with Trump it would just seem so ridiculous because I would just be there talking the facts saying look here the real problems and some of the problems he called out and you got a lot of credit for that but I have real solutions and people can pick up on that very very quickly where he's like we're gonna bring the jobs back we're gonna build a wall it's like I'm gonna distribute bounty yeah and give you $1,000 yeah month and I agree the problems are real the Democrats response in the last cycle he was like we're gonna bring the jobs going to build a wall trying to make America great again and then the Democratic response was America is already great right and that is not what I'm saying I'm saying we have we have real problems and we need to solve them as fast as possible and one way to do it is by giving people a dividend of a thousand bucks a month to be a game changer for millions of families so people can see through the bluster and even a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump are tired of it mm-hmm absolutely what do you what do you think the Democrats big problem was against Trump I know you you touched on one issue of them kind of saying hey the status quo is actually is what they're saying and as for the words that you're most people know that's just it's like well why do I feel this way then but what what why how is it possible that Hilary lost Donald Trump I mean it seems unimaginable it seemed unimaginable at the time what were the fatal flaws of her campaign that you that you saw it was a relatively low number of swing voters in the swing states Michigan Ohio Wisconsin Pennsylvania you had only 65 thousand people in those states vote the other way and then Donald Trump is not our president there was almost certainly some degree of interference and it's been documented that the Russian government has been trying to push our elections in particular ways and I have a lot of bots that are you know elevating certain types of online discussion so there are a bunch of factors but to me the one thing the Democratic Party should be examining is why does so many Americans also not have much faith in the Democratic solutions mm-hmm no and that's something that we can fix we can say look if the American people aren't buying this set of solutions and proposals like maybe we need to translate into something that'll actually touch people day to day that trusts people because one danger that Democrats get into is that they trust institutions more than people yeah you know it's like how are we gonna fix things we're gonna you know fix this institution or we're gonna send everyone to college we're gonna do these things and and then it's like well some of that will help some people but more Americans would be excited about it if you put your confidence in them and you acted like we are all owners and shareholders of this democracy like small D Democrat okay let's let's get to the heart of your campaign the universal basic income the freedom dividend as you call it you say it tested better with Republicans with the word for you did you do I don't know what is that you did actual like test like focus groups yeah well it was market sampling and online so we tested a bunch of names Social Security for all universe basic income obviously opportunity dividend prosperity dividend freedom dividend was the clear winner it's a beautiful American phrase I could see like the flag waving in the wind and the bald eagle screaming the freedom dividend can you explain what universal basic income is for those people who don't know yeah universal basic income is a policy where everyone in a society in this case every US citizen gets a certain amount of money to meet your basic needs no questions asked so my proposal of freedom dividend would be a thousand dollars a month in the hands of every American adult starting at age eighteen until the day you die twelve thousand dollars a year and this seems dramatic but there's actually been proposed and almost passed in America any number of times over the years Thomas Paine was forward at the founding of the country Martin Luther King was fighting for it 1967 when he was assassinated in 1968 Milton Friedman and a thousand economists endorsed it in the 70s it passed the US House of Representatives in the Congress twice in 71 so it came this close you know what was the amount they were they were prepared to give out then it was about twelve thousand dollars a head well yeah and they even ran studies if you can imagine a government that was so functional that they actually just started giving money to Americans just to see what would happen the US government did that the successor giving people money betting on what's going on and the data was very very promising they did that there they did that what they do they picked random groups of Americans in New Jersey and Colorado and other parts of country to start giving them cash and then following around to see what happened really yeah I mean this was like a lottery this was all the rage in the sense that everyone thought this was a good idea again a thousand economists signed a study saying this would be great for America if we just guaranteed a certain amount of money for every American we just passed Social Security we just passed Medicare and so the American people were looking around being like hey like maybe we can do some other great stuff and Martin Luther King was saying like we should do this and then it was endorsed by a lot of people and then it passed US House of Representatives so during that time Congress when they were looking to pass it they said what we should just give people money to see what happens and you said the results were good the results were really good you know what happened so it passed the US House of Representatives twice and then it got stalled in the Senate because Democrats in the Senate wanted an even higher income threshold I should you not and someone who worked in democratic politics at that time said it was the biggest mistake we ever made which is and then and then the moment was lost and Nixon gets impeached and then you know like err like the pendulum swings we wind up with Reagan and then the whole moment was lost but it just gives you a sense of how mainstream this idea was how the like it came this close to being law it became a law in Alaska and you know like not that long afterwards in the early 80s and so it's it's not like a far-out idea and that's one of the things that frustrates me is that now you know I'm like the quote/unquote futurist president okay being like Oh crazy thousand bucks a month like this was mainstream American political wisdom in the 60s and 70s what the hell happened to us we're now we think it's nuts like it's like well now when you didn't even more than we did that yes now we actually know and and when you start thinking about it for a minute like it becomes common sense but like he gets caricatured in various ways even though it actually again it's like a deeply American and mainstream idea and now like Barack Obama came out and said we should talk about it you know Elon Musk and like Zuckerberg and others are like we should totally do it like it's it's actually in many ways this conversation is definitely overdue in my opinion this should have been passed years ago certainly an exciting time or were where your campaign is growing your people are it's resonating I mean what an exciting thing it would be for the United States well yeah anyone watching this are listening to it you can become part of the yangyang to join yeah it's very people you gave $27 you'd be an above-average member of the gang think of it as an investment yeah get $1,000 oh my life yeah you know what's the return on 27 bucks that I can it's very high how would you get you just get a wire transfer every months engine you sign in you know you you give them the way you want the money you know direct deposit account is positive well what about someone who's making a lot of money is it a tax reduction or you you it's money that you put in the account so it comes in your account and you don't pay tax on it but you pay money on your other income just don't be okay how'd you get interested in UVI when was there a moment where you're like this this is the solution I mean so I ran this nonprofit that I had started venture for America that our job was to create American jobs we helped create about 3,000 American jobs over seven years and I got a bunch of medals and awards and like it wouldn't be like oh yeah well done so during that time I was obviously very interested in jobs and the future of work so I would read various books about the future of work and some of the books about the future of work were like hey guess what robots are coming and we should really start looking in and what that's gonna meet you of work is there's no work yeah and so a lot of them were saying we should do a universal basic income and then I when I read these books I said oh yeah that makes sense we should totally do that bed and then in 2015 I read another book called raising the floor by a guy named Andy sterner used to run the biggest labor union in the US and he said the future of Labor as no labor were screwed and we should move to a dividend and so I read that it was like wow it's not just the tech guys it's the labor leader saying we need to do this so I became convinced at that point and became very passionate about it during that period so I think this is a misconception that a lot of people have or at least an opinion the intention of universal basic income is not to enable people not to work yeah right I mean because $1,000 a month first of all not enough money for most people and and second of all I think that a lot of people derive purpose in their life from their work so within like in 50 years when there's no jobs and and or let's say let's say ten years someone can't find a job they're getting $1,000 a month what do you do when you wouldn't that's not enough so first could not agree more that one of the biggest misconceptions is that universal basic income where the freedom dividend is somehow going to reduce work because number one it recognizes a lot of the work that we're already doing that does not get recognized and it would be an enormous catalyst to entrepreneurship arts creativity nurturing care giving all these things we kind of want to do that the market says it's not worth enough for you to make a living at it so don't do it so it would create and recognize and reward a lot of the work that we're trying to do is number one number two if you imagine what twelve thousand dollars a year would mean in a town of let's call it a hundred thousand adults you're talking about another twelve million dollars like a month yeah that that's coming through that town and so that doesn't just help the individuals that supercharges the local businesses it supercharges the local nonprofits it's supercharges the volunteer organizations and and so when you say what are the jobs of the future look like it could be that twenty years from now it's very normal to work in and a job that just helps make other people stronger healthier mentally healthier helps clean our environment things that right now there's no market demand for there could actually be massive opportunities in the problem right now is that again we're following capital efficiency and it says these things are worth zero right so the big change we have to make is if we change the measurements and say these things are actually worth like a lot then that's the heaven those are good jobs right it's just right now those are not good jobs to have because because there's no money yeah they pay shitty and like you know no one respects you and it's like if you do that just about you know so that's like the the evolution we have to make and it's it's more achievable than people think I mean the first steps just get some money into people's hands and the great thing is you put money into people's hands that's going to supercharge the kind of work that people want to do because people would choose to then start a new organization start businesses donate to their local local Lord such an interesting idea too and I mean there's such a disparity of wealth not just with the jeff's of the world but between you know Kansas and Los Angeles thousand dollars is gonna help lift them up a lot more than it is people in Los Angeles and I think among citizens of the United States would make a big difference in equality of wealth as well it really would the disparities between different parts of the country are so vast yeah you travel around at a different world yeah we're a lot of little countries or a lot of different countries in one country yeah and that was one of my experiences with venture for America going to many of these regions I not been to you drive you know an hour out of Birmingham or something like that like you find yourself in like a different sort of environment right yeah I've seen that too but I'm wondering we've talked about the VAT tax does that pay for the whole thing with this increased taxes on middle or lower class people it increases the purchasing power of 94% of Americans you know you're like one of the jokes is like why did the bank robber rob the bank because that's where the money is we got to go to where the money is is not it like the heads of like the average workaday American so but the the the great thing is here the other ways we get the money so number one get a slice of every Amazon sale every Google your Facebook ad does that cover the whole thing no but here's the magic number two money in our hands ends up growing our economy by ten to twelve percent and we get 400 billion in new tax revenue because of all the additional money's getting spent number three if you get the boot off of Americans throats you end up making us healthier better educated mentally healthier and one study said that just alleviating gross poverty would increase our GDP by 700 billion dollars just based on better education to health outcomes and that's it like not more businesses started none of that is just health and education mm-hmm and then number four we'd save hundreds of billions on things like incarceration homelessness services emergency room health care we're spending over a trillion on that stuff now it's true and there was a corrections officer in New Hampshire who said to me flat out he said we should pay people to stay out of jail because he sees that when they're in jail we spend so much money this is a prison guard making this case to me so if he sees it we try and say with like oh we're saving money by not spending money on ourselves we just end up spending the money and more expensive in dark and punitive ways anyway yeah so you invested in ourselves and the trickle-up economy then you end up saving yourself tons of money so in short you are not raising taxes on middle and lower classmen oh no the goal is to get more purchasing power into our hands because right now the middle class is getting eroded very very quickly mm-hmm and that's not where the money is you know then we gotta go where the money is yeah okay so who would be eligible I know you say anyone over 818 until the day they die for example would a legal residents like my wife be eligible what undocumented residents be eligible illegal immigrants guest workers so it is only citizens but it's one reason why having you become a citizen and be awesome become a citizen yang gang yeah I'm for a path to citizenship or people who are here and undocumented I'm certainly for a path make it easier for people who want to live and work here to stay here I'm the son of immigrants myself right no like I know that immigrants are very positive for this country socially economically but the dividend would kick in after you become a citizen okay so it's a very powerful incentive to go through all the rigmarole and then you're probably dealing with right now what about citizens of that is such an interesting question so the reality is that the economic benefits become exponentially higher if the money gets spent within the country itself rather than having a large number of citizens who let's say moves to another part of the world and then spend the money there so you're a citizen you get the dividend forever but there's like a certain time frame after which like if you live abroad for a certain number of months then the dividend gets like held for you for when you come back to the interesting so you don't lose it it's just a cruise yeah interesting is there any prevention let's say I want to go live in Thailand cuz it's cheap I go come back in three years I get all my dividends and then I bounce back to Thailand that's like the thing we're trying to avoid is that then but then if you bounce back to Thailand then you know the dividend would start accruing again so the goal is to make it so that the vast vast majority of money gets spent here mm-hmm yeah whether it be disqualifying factors felons for example people in prison if we're spending the money on your incarceration then you don't receive the dividend the benefit if you're in jail yeah I don't get the money but the great thing then is you come out it's a very powerful incentive for you to stay out so felons who have served their time get the dividend when they come out they start them out and also does not accrue during that time does not accrue right so but then if you come out then everyone's excited to see you mm-hmm it's like a thousand bucks you know imagine like coming out of prison and everyone's like psyched to have you because you're coming with a dividend whereas right now you come back and you have very unclear prospects yeah yeah how would a homeless person received this money you know I just had a conversation with people about this obviously the homeless persons not in position to have a bank account and sign up and get the money but it creates an enormous incentive for us to help that person get on their feet is right now what's the economic incentive to help that homeless person zero in many cases so imagine if you were a city agency or a non-profit and you said hey every person I help there's a thousand bucks a month in it for them and then I'm going to get some of that and then all of a sudden you have much more in the way of resources to help you poor homeless because Los Angeles isn't in the midst of a homeless crisis I wonder if something like this what would make such a big difference and homelessness because it's and incentivize them to to get off the streets and it gives them an option to live with dignity yes cuz right now the problem is that again if you you fall through the cracks near homeless like our incentives to help you are very low it's just if you become a nuisance and even then it falls to our public agencies and nonprofits and we know those are vastly under-resourced and so this would be a game-changer for the level of incentives necessary to help get these homeless people off the street and then maybe even have low-cost housing available for people over time because if you have a thousand bucks a month we're able to get a roof over your head in many many cases yeah I mean this is the evolution of our economy to actually work for us and when I say us I don't mean like people who are just you know doing well I mean the people who are struggling our substance abuse have problems that are putting them out in the street yeah I wonder if there's any unforeseen consequences of the freedom dividend for example if you're putting a thousand dollars in everyone's hands how for example does that affect the house the housing market you know is there a situation where the inflation land ends up moving that money back into the hands yeah I mean all the sudden when when when the people who motivation is to make as much money as possible know that everyone's walking around with an extra thousand dollars in their hand what are the things that we need the most in this world medicine health care housing food and and if you look at it those are three of the biggest sources of inflation in our economy is housing education health care because those markets don't actually function competitively or dynamically right so so well how do we prevent these people from sucking up all that extra money and just becoming richer so I have separate plans to address inflation in health care and education because those are their own animals housing is the stickiest because a lot of it is based upon local zoning regs and NIMBYism and so even if the president I can't be like hey guess what we're gonna like wipe out your zoning regs like that's not cool but I will say that if you have a thousand bucks a month in your hands it makes it so that if a landlord tries to really gouge you or stick it to you that you're going to be able to be much more portable and then if there are three of you or four of you'd be like hey instead of living this landlord stick it to us the four of us are getting four thousand bucks a month let's buy that piece of crap over there turn it around and because the income is portable it doesn't necessarily mean you have to stay within whatever thirty miles of a particular place of employment or anything like that so it actually makes it much more fluid and dynamic again now to the extent that we can control it we should try and curb the ability of one municipalities to not have affordable housing because again everything is following up following the dollar and the society so if I have a choice between building a fancy high-rise for yuppies or affordable housing I'm gonna do the former it's the extent that we can push incentives towards creating more diverse affordable housing options that's the direction we have to go but it is gonna be harder to stick it to people if they have portable income I go everywhere I want to we're coming towards the end you're busy busy but it's good I'm glad you're busy I'm looking forward to everything else you're doing but I want I have some kind of abstract futurism question for you as you are kind of you know the candidate of the future you know I call myself a present test it's just the other politicians are behind that's a great so we talked about AI taking jobs but we we're now when we talk about AI I think we're talking about automated systems but what I'm talking about is self actualized AI art of actual artificial on television general intelligence yes it's called whether with a you know a self of so with a sense of self-awareness and self-preservation this is something that a lot of people think is not in the you know on the far horizon so we did with an AI become you have this great potential and and a great risk I think for example hey I can crunch the numbers over in one year can question numbers over thousands of years to find unsolvable problems or incurable diseases yeah but at the same time do you think that an AI of that magnitude is proposes any kind of threat to humanity and civilization I believe that we should not be overly concerned about artificial general intelligence just yet because when I talk to the foremost researchers in the space they do not see a path from where we are now to artificial general intelligence they don't see that on the horizon no they don't see the path it would have to be like a whole series of breakthroughs and learnings that right now we have machine learning algorithms that can solve an incredibly complex problem beyond any human intelligence but they're essentially complete idiots and like two-year-olds at anything that's not that problem they're dumb like that you can give them this enormous data set and they come up with brilliant correlations and insights but they're not going to plug in to Skynet and like threaten us any time soon what I'm more more concerned about is dumb artificial intelligence getting rid of a lot of our jobs which is going to happen much much faster than the artificial general intelligence to me that's a backburner concern I know there are some very very smart people who disagree with me on this they're concerned and they're right that these trends this development can sometimes happen in explosively nonlinear ways you know if I could be even while I having this conversation there's some I think the problem is that by the nature of it that once you do have one breakthrough then the machine itself it's evolved it immediately yeah the the folks I talked to believe we're still a ways away from a GI but theoretically I mean theoretically after you get a rate of self-improvement then it can go to infinity and then you can get there very very fast yeah and are you afraid of that or you are you is that something that is certainly a tool for human advancement that's unparalleled but a risk do you think it is a risk I mean that there are real hazards associated with dumb AI I mean you can use it to cure cancer but you could also use it to hack someone's infrastructure and make it inoperable there are different things that are possible so one of the things that I say to the folks and I'm friendly with a lot of the techies is that I want to be their partner as president but I also want to have a technologist who's representing the public interest who's in the vicinity who's like hey guys maybe we should unplug this we have to think about what a regulation on a and and this is one of the most fundamental issues is like if you are a technology you look up and be like am I really gonna let this dumb backwards government try and like regulate let you know that that seems like a disaster having some bureaucrat in the room being like don't do this like like most techies would like you know want to throw themselves out a window if that was the situation it's what is it why you need an actual technologist that the other technologists like actually respect right and like who's just there being like guys like this is not a good idea right now like we should actually like pull back it's a tough balance but it's one we have to achieve as fast as possible and the thing I'm excited about is a lot of the smartest techies in this space actually are open to it and in some cases even welcomed it particularly if the government is willing to put resources to work to help us stay competitive with let's call it China whose plowing billions and billions into the computing infrastructure necessary to make their algorithms smarter and even our richest companies are looking up saying like I don't know if we have those kind of resources so that's the partnership that I'm looking to forge and I'm friendly with some of the people that are already at the cutting edge of that do you think space is a worthwhile investment I do think space is a worthwhile investment kind of sad that we're past the days of NASA being like you know mission you know mission to Mars like all the the 60s movies now now all that talents working for you know SpaceX what's your argument in favor of exploring space colonizing Mars or the moon in the face of such great challenges here on earth so let me be clear if I had a choice between fixing our problems here on earth making it so that we could get get out of here oh yeah like I would obviously choose song problems on earth and just much much higher return there are many more of us here where it's our natural habitat I think that space exploration is a worthy endeavor because it tends to push the frontier of human not just knowledge but also capacities there are many innovations that stem from us having to try and solve such advanced technical problems I was trying to get our people to let's call it Mars and and being able to live there so to me most real innovations happen at the frontier level and so if we can try and push ourselves in that direction that's positive but if you look at the order magnitude of both the problems and the value generated would be if you have a choice and you obviously have to try and let's say fix climate change here on our earth or keep it so that we're actually able to feed ourselves in healthier ways mm-hmm so you know I'm very much like I can do both so yeah it's like we should be able to do both but you know it's like I'm kind of geeky I mean you can't be like yeah I mean we got a there's there's some intangible value to the dream of of us as an exploring species you know yeah completely yeah but it's it's interesting that that's moving now to private companies maybe Elon Musk is more likely to get to Mars before the United States government yes and when I I said before in the sixties the government was giving out money to see what happened now it's private individuals it Sam Altman it's Chris Hughes his people giving away money being like what's going just goes to show that what the government used to do now is in private hands and that to me is something that is not ideal honestly because we should be able to help ourselves as a society without relying upon a handful of private individuals right well I'm getting red flags backs back in the back after I'm president we'll do a special that will not happen interview but I'll own the White House no no no not you if you become president you're gonna be way too busy to talk to my dumb ass I disagree I want you to be cover and I actually think you've got a shot I really do like you you're you're you're on a trajectory the last debate you cut through the masterfully eloquently and I and I very much look forward to seeing on that stage again and I think you really do have a shot because because uh like AI we're not gonna be saying linear growth here that's right guys if you want to support the campaign yank 2020 calm you can donate and think of it as an investment guys huge returns good luck on everything and looking forward to it and pushing you all the best thank you congratulations thank you guys for watching appreciate you god bless we will be back on Friday yeah for our regular scheduled episode so have a great week everybody we'll see you that that's uh my [Music] you [Music]

Channel: H3 Podcast

Views: 1,545,562

Rating: 4.7992229 out of 5

Keywords: h3 podcast, h3h3 podcast, the h3 podcast, h3h3, h3, h3h3productions, ethan klein, hila klein, ethan & hila, ethan and hila, Andrew Yang, yang

Id: otEbT0l_Hbg

Length: 88min 24sec (5304 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 07 2019

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[u/mcnabbbb]

So anyone else see Yang talking about how campaigns reach out to the networks that host the debates telling them who they are going to attack and using what information? The hosts then ask specific questions to set up the opportunity for an attack. That's some huge insider information. Can listen yourself at 22:30.

[u/fmxian]

If you can find the time to provide meaningful and polite responses to H3s latest post on Instagram it would really help. A lot of misinformed people on there.

[u/omgjojo]

TIL Andrew was a Protoss player.

I'm down with a former Starcraft player leading this country.

[u/Eklektik]

Just finished the podcast and I loved it. I'm glad that Ethan stepped back and gave Andrew a chance to give digestible answers to what policies he's running with, and why they're necessary. I did my thesis on UBI two years ago, so my friends have already heard the UBI spiel from me; it will be easier to convince them to give Yang a consideration. This interview is getting shared, for sure.

I also like that Ethan pushed a little deeper in regards to things such as UBI for citizens abroad (as I've thought before about working abroad), as well as his views on space travel and gun control. The only thing I was worried on was some hesitation, or time to get careful phrasing, when pushed on the correlation between gaming and mass shooters.

[u/alyssamonetmason]

Guys I'm freakin out! This is huge for #YouthForYang #YoutubersForYang #ArtistsForYang and everyone else in between. Get ready to welcome a whole slew of need peeps :)

[u/IamnotFaust]

This was a great interview. A lot of little things answered that he hasn't been asked to cover before.

[u/ayekay1]

Andrew is slaughtering this shit. They love him and you can definitely tell

[u/spencefunk]

Probably not the most organized Podcast Yang has done so far, but I really enjoyed it. Lots of great talking points, especially about the history of UBI in Congress and how it almost passed - I found that to be incredibly interesting.