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reSee.it AI Summary
I'll give $1,000 to a random person who reposts Vivek and my interview! We discuss helping others, advice on giving, wealth before giving, government's role, corruption, retail investors, SEC, short selling, Ryan Cohen, executive compensation, potential project, BBBY, and Bitcoin. Follow me to enter!
@pulte - Pulte
I’m gonna to give $1,000 to someone random who reposts this interview of Vivek and me! Follow me so I can DM you if you win! 00:04- Why help other people? 01:56- Advice on Giving 04:07-Getting Wealthy Before Giving to Others 09:15- Governments Role in Helping People 10:55- Corruption in Private Sector 12:07- Corrupt Executives 13:27- Retail Investors 19:15- SEC 20:55- Short Selling 22:53- Ryan Cohen 24:15- Executive Compensation 25:28- Potential Future Project 28:52- BBBY 30:35- Bitcoin
Video Transcript AI Summary
The speakers discuss various topics including philanthropy, the role of government, corruption in the private sector, short selling, and the potential of Bitcoin. They express the need for individuals to follow their impulses to be generous and help others. They also criticize the committee class and the lack of transparency in executive compensation. The speakers suggest that the government should focus on protecting borders and enforcing clear rules, while the private sector should be allowed to thrive without excessive regulation. They mention the potential of Bitcoin as an opt-out option and a check and balance on the system.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: So great to finally meet you.
Speaker 1: Good to meet you in person, man. Yeah. You too.
Speaker 0: So, you made a lot of money. You've done very well for yourself. Why why do this? Why why service? Why help other people?
Speaker 1: Look. I think that it's about your own sense of purpose. I think god puts each of us here for a purpose, and it's our moral duty to use the gifts that god has given us to do what is right in the short time that we're given. It's so in many ways, it's my faith that guides me to want to make sure that we're doing our part and not just by passively writing checks. Right?
And I've, you know, had the opportunity to be philanthropic. I know you have as well. Yes. But I think there's something to be said for not just from on high, you know, versus sprinkling some money upon dis charging your moral duty. But I think there's something to be said for putting your own blood and sweat and effort Mhmm.
And actual real sacrifice, not just financial sacrifice to go along with it. So I think about that as part of just a way to live and discharge your moral duty as somebody who God has given gifts to, including your talents, not just your wealth as a gift, but your own innate God given gifts, I think it's our moral duty to use those gifts to do what's actually right. And so that's what guides me.
Speaker 0: And do you love giving? Because, you know, we always say, especially with Twitter philanthropy, when you give, you receive. Yeah. And how has it affected you to now enter into this? Right?
You were accumulating resources for your family. Of course, your bio company was helping other people. But how is that different? And is it very rewarding? Like, do you wake up every morning and you're like, I just love doing this because I feel like I'm helping people?
Speaker 1: I do, actually, on most mornings. Some you know, we're we're human beings. We have different kinds of days. We wake up on given mornings, and especially when you take up an endeavor like a presidential race, it's, you know, certain things do feel like a sharp poke in the eye, but that's just the cost of actually doing what's right. My advice on on giving is this, at least from my own experience, is there's 2 things actually.
1 is whenever you have the impulse to be generous, don't think twice and just follow it. Yeah. And I can tell you even some stories over the last year, if you're interested. Even people you meet in the campaign trail and have opportunities to just help people. And and that was probably one of the most fulfilling parts of this campaign was outside of the actual campaign, people who are in need, and you have the ability to, in even a small way, help them along the way.
That was probably one of the most rewarding things for me. When you have an impulse to be generous, be generous. But the flip side of it is, if you're somebody who actually has a lot of money, you're gonna have a lot of other people trying to go to you into being generous, and you do it to sort of, like, check a box. I've never felt good about that element of it. It.
And so I think those two things actually go together, where somebody else is trying to pitch you on something that is your responsibility to write a check to this, that, or the other thing. For a while, like, in an earlier phase of my life, I probably after having achieved success, but before the phase I'm in now, would probably feel like, okay. Well, let's let's pump myself up about that and do that. In many of those instances, I've actually found that that hasn't really gone to advance worthy goals anyway. It's just wasted by some bureaucrat somewhere.
Speaker 0: We do on Twitter philanthropy micro donations. In other words, if somebody's dying of cancer, we'll buy them groceries. If somebody has an insulin problem Tangible. And we're doing a boom right there on Twitter. Yeah.
So I see a need, boom. And I
Speaker 1: put up
Speaker 0: a campaign, I
Speaker 1: put a link more satisfying.
Speaker 0: Thing. Oh, and people can know that they bought that, you know, 1 5th of the diabetes pump for somebody or they bought groceries for some diet.
Speaker 1: That speaks to the first piece of what I'm saying is when you have that impulse to be generous in some ways doing it on on Twitter or social media, just to get that impulse, just
Speaker 0: do it. Yeah. Just cash out.
Speaker 1: And a $100. And you never regret I I I have never met a person I never have, and I've never met another person who has regretted acting on an impulsive generosity. I don't think I don't think it's ever happened in human history, actually.
Speaker 0: So if somebody says, hey. I wanna be generous. I'd love that you guys have money. You guys care about people. What would your advice be to somebody?
You've started a big company. You're very successful. Obviously, you're successful in the presidential campaign. We have people from all sides of the aisle watching this. Cool.
What would your advice be to somebody who says, yeah. That's nice, but I wanna get wealthy myself first before I help other people?
Speaker 1: I'd say totally I'd say that's a totally legitimate thing to say. I mean, I think back when I was 22, I was graduating from college in 2007. I remember at Harvard's commencement where Bill Gates came back and spoke. He was the commencement speaker, and I was he was back then, he was the wealthiest person in the world. I'm I'm growing up as a kid of Indian immigrants who came to this country with no money.
My dad faced down layoffs at the GE plant in Evendale, Ohio when Jack Welch slashed 2 thirds of the people of his plant. That was defining for our own family when I went through middle school and he had to go to night school and everything to have job security. I'm now graduating from college. I'm like, alright. I wanna be a capitalist, and I'm excited to hear what this wealthiest man in the world has to say.
And the entire speech, the I kid you not, was about giving back. But I remembered on my years, it was like, okay. That sounds great. But how does one get the things that one wants to give back? And so my advice would be, don't feel guilt about that.
Mhmm.
Speaker 0: I think
Speaker 1: if you wanna get ahead through free market capitalism in an honest way, part of that is going to be by serving people in some way, providing something of value that's greater value to somebody else than it costs you to provide it.
Speaker 0: Yes.
Speaker 1: So don't apologize for that. But one of the things I would say is there's an ability to be it's it's the act of being generous doesn't have to be large scale. Mhmm. Right? Whether it's volunteering a unit of your time or, you know, the amount of money you might spend on buying lunch on a given day that isn't gonna make a difference to you along the way.
Absolutely. You're gonna have those impulses
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: And times along the way that you feel like you should be generous. And every time I haven't acted on it, I regret it. And there hasn't been one time that I acted on it, not once in my life that I did regret. And so that's what I would say along the way is if you feel like, okay. I wanna get ahead.
Don't feel guilty for that. There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 0: Go achieve the maximum of what you possibly can and make that
Speaker 1: your main focus. Yeah. But you'll tendencies or those impulses along the way to be generous. Just follow them along the way.
Speaker 0: I think that's what's interesting because, like, most of our audience, we get you know, for instance, we raised 2 and a half $1,000,000 just on my Twitter feed alone for the Uvalde school shooting victims. It wasn't people donating a $100. It was people donating $3, $1, $5. So it's like people don't need to be wealthy in order to do it. Sure.
But I think that it's very psychologically helpful when people help other people. And that's what we hear all the time because it takes the focus off of oneself and puts it onto somebody else.
Speaker 1: Exactly. And and and I think the hardest thing is you can't force people into it. I think it has to come from within, but I think most of us have that wired within us. There's something about our human nature. It's God.
I think it's God. Yeah. And I think that this I think it's something that's different about us relative to animals is that nonhuman animals is I don't think nonhuman animals have the instinct that's wired towards generosity. It's all about long run self interest. I think that there's something fundamental about our humanity that allows us to believe in something bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: That's what makes us more than a 2 legged higher mammal
Speaker 0: I agree. With a
Speaker 1: cup couple pounds of flesh sitting here. I think the essence of our humanity is we believe in something bigger than ourselves. And I think that's where that impulse towards generosity comes from, is you believe in something bigger than yourself, that there's more to this life than this aimless passage of time. It's not just about this life, but about our eternal life. That's part and parcel of where that impulse towards generosity comes from.
Yeah. And so there's a self interested part of us too, and that's okay. I think that sometimes what happens is it's like a form of psychology where you try to it's like think of it as your superego, which says, don't be selfish. Don't be capitalist. You don't have to engage in that self whipping.
Mhmm. But just note that there's many impulses inside each of us. Right? There's the impulse that does want to get ahead for myself or for yourself or whatever. That's hardwired in each of us.
We shouldn't reject that. But I think that that's not intention with. It's just part of our identity. There's also part of our identity that says, okay, there's I'm still part of something bigger than myself in the universe, in this world, in this nation, in my community. And that I'm gonna have instincts that push me towards doing what's right for that broader good as well.
And that's okay too. Yes. Just act on it. And I think that allowing both of those things to coexist instead of trying to whip the self interested side if you had a submission, that's fake. Right?
That's also why I hate to ask
Speaker 0: When people say, oh, well, why do you give away money on Twitter? Why do you give away all your money and stuff? And they say, you're just, you know, you're trying to just do this for whatever. It's like, look. I am doing it for selfish purposes.
I'm doing it to help myself. And by helping myself, I and if I take care of myself, then I can help other people. It's like on a it's like if you're on a plane and you run out of oxygen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You need to put
Speaker 0: the oxygen mask on yourself first before you assist others.
Speaker 1: Totally. You know
Speaker 0: what I'm saying? And I think that There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's the best way to maximize help to other people. So one of the things I wanna talk to you about, and I've talked a little bit about this with the former president, that, you know, government should exist to help the needs in many ways that, you know, people can't achieve on their own.
In other words, people can't help themselves. Sometimes they do need whether people wanna call it a social net safety net or what have you, Social Security, whether you have different medical issues, you know, a lot about insurance and stuff like that. How do you think about when you look at and you haven't seen Twitter philanthropy too much, but, you know, we're helping people who when they are going through chemotherapy and they're dying of cancer and they can't afford rent. We're putting up GoFundMe's. We're raising $700 and with with one of my tweets in 5 seconds, that $700 is raised.
When people are dying of cancer and they can't afford grocery money, we're doing that. That. How do you see do you see that that, you know, if you're president one day, when you're president one day, do you see that government would fill some of those needs or do you think that that's gonna be largely filled by somebody like me who has large Twitter account who can go out and just, you know, rapid fire these things? Where where's government's role in all of this? And where's the private
Speaker 1: sector's role? Mostly getting out of the way k. Is is I think the government's role in this. I think the government has certain roles of things that the government's not doing today that the government has to be the one doing, like protecting our border. Yeah.
Right? I mean, I think the the infiltration of our own border, I think, is actually denigrating the dignity of the American citizens who already live here. So that is a government role. That's not gonna be done by the private sector. It can't.
Mhmm. But outside of those basics that are sort of creating a nation that's able to thrive, for example, even having borders of that nation, there are scarce few things that fit that description. Outside of that, it's up to the government to shut down the 3 letter agencies and the regulations that come from that. I agree. Take the wet blanket off, and then let the private sector work its magic, which is actually what it's always done.
Speaker 0: So how do you make sure that there's not corruption in the private sector? Because I agree with you. It should be solved by the private sector, and that's the beast that's gonna really solve the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, 1st, there's a downturn in
Speaker 0: the in the private sector.
Speaker 1: Well, first, yes. But I'm mostly concerned about it even in the entanglement with government. Right? The way the way corruption actually plays out in the first instance is actors in the private sector use the government or public policy makers as a shield to insulate themselves from competition.
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: So one way or another, in the act of pretending to do good are really just currying favor with government actors that have their bread buttered by those same private sector actors that then create a kind of mutual corruption there. That's what the ESG movement really is all about, actually, is private companies taking on the role of government to be able to push certain agendas through the back door, but get government favors in response that makes it harder for competitors to then unseat those incumbents, whether that's tech, whether it's pharma, whether it's large financial institutions. Yes. I think that there's massive amounts of corruption that the people who are sitting at the top of those food chains end up getting the rake for themselves. Mhmm.
But doesn't actually flow down to benefit people overall.
Speaker 0: So is it fair to say we talk about corruption in government, and we know president Trump has called politicians corrupt. Is it fair to say that there are corrupt executives?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I I think I think absolutely. The swamp doesn't just live in DC or even in government. It lives in many other spheres of our lives. And I think many areas where you see this is when you have the owners of businesses that then have to start to hire what became professional management and then generations of that Mhmm.
You start to have this private sector swamp as well. Yes. What I call the managerial class.
Speaker 0: Yes. They become, you know, paid stewards. And then Yes. And then they're just rent The bureaucrats. They're just rent collectors.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a new class of bureaucrat. They don't give a
Speaker 0: shit about growing the company. Exactly. They just, in our case, just wanna collect $15,000,000 a year and call it a day.
Speaker 1: That that's exactly that that pervades the entire private sector. And so that is a form of corruption, actually, in the private sector. And And then when those companies go public, the shareholders of those companies aren't even not even the owner operators. They're not even the people who are investing their own money. They're intermediary institutions like BlackRock or State Street or Vanguard that are using massive amounts of somebody else's money
Speaker 0: Yes.
Speaker 1: To advance their own agendas using other people's money to do it. So the more disintermediated capitalism has become Mhmm. They call it industrialized, but it's not really industrialized. It's swamp has really grown to fester even within the private sector.
Speaker 0: So Does
Speaker 1: that make sense?
Speaker 0: It does. So as I mentioned, we have 5,000,000 people who engage in philanthropy, helping people. Those people simultaneously also invest in the stock market in stocks and believe that there is this pervasive swamp like corrupt nature to the private sector like you're talking about. If you're an average retail investor, again, we we we host in person meetups. We have communities with, you know, tens of thousands of retail shareholders just on Twitter.
I don't know if you know the community segment inside of Twitter with different stocks and stuff. The retail investor, at least with my I mean, this is a movement that we've created. How do we, as retail shareholders, disrupt that environment? Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think there's there's a few things. I mean, one is let me just tell you. Just people have my background. They know what my background is because it actually relates to the answer to your question some. So my first business I started was a biotech company to develop medicines, and I can tell you about that.
My second major business that I started was a business that was founded on, hopefully, restoring integrity to private capital markets. And so I'm not involved in management of it. I stepped down for running the US presidential campaign. But it's a business called Strive that competes directly against BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard. Those 3 firms offer index funds where they use your money to vote for policies in corporate America's boardrooms that advance environmental and social goals that aren't aligned with the best interests of most everyday
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: Citizens whose money is actually being used to do it. And so I started Strive as a business that was designed to offer similar kinds of investment products
Speaker 0: Yes.
Speaker 1: But with a different goal of voting for what actually allows businesses to vote for.
Speaker 0: And I followed you when you did that.
Speaker 1: Oh, you did. You know about this.
Speaker 0: I did. No. No. I did. But but it's great for my audience too because I think that my audience and my my team as we call it in many ways is these, you know, 1,000 or 100 of 1,000 or millions of retail investors.
And it's kind of how can we help you weaponize that to the point where
Speaker 1: Positive positivized is the way I think
Speaker 0: it is.
Speaker 1: De weaponize the weaponization of capital markets. I love it. And and so Positivize it is how you call it? Yeah. We just made it up.
But but and so I was thinking about how I thought about the mission. But, you know, Strive, actually, a year after we launched the first fund crossed over $1,000,000,000 in assets under management. It took JPMorgan twice as fast to get to the same place Wow. When they entered the same line of business, which shows, I think, how much interest there is for depoliticized
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: Exposure to markets where your own proxy votes as shareholders, etcetera, aren't taking into account political principles. And so I'm incredibly proud of that. The person who's the CEO of Strive now is, a gentleman by the name of Matt Cole, who was actually one of the largest larger portfolio managers. He managed a $70,000,000,000 portfolio at CalPERS. Yes.
So you had seen what that looked like inside California's pension fund system, but moved to Ohio to become the CEO of Strive. And I'm incredibly proud of how he's leading Strive today to actually offer that type of alternative through the market to BlackRock or State Street or Vanguard versus say that if they're the way of the past, that he's leading it such that strive becomes the way of the future.
Speaker 0: That's amazing. Yeah. I'll have to connect with them. I will connect with them. Yeah.
It's amazing because the executives, they have such contempt. And I'm only talking about the certain executives who I think are guilty in this regard. They have such contempt for people who are not the BlackRocks, not the vanguards of the world, like the average retail shareholders. They look at, like, the proxy. And, yes, the average retail shareholder can can vote a proxy.
But without being able to move a large percent of those votes, the the executives feel even more empowered to engage in the swamp like Mhmm. Corrupt behavior if you follow me.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's once people realize the swamp is a feature of modernity in America and not limited to just the government, then you kinda see it everywhere, Right? From corporate boardrooms of public companies to HR bureaucracy. So how would
Speaker 0: you phrase that? When in one simple sense of sense or two, is it corruption or is it the swamp or what how do you in your head? Because you've been through all of this. You've been through the ESG stuff, you've been through the government, you've been through the politics.
Speaker 1: It's complicated, but I would decide I have a whole chapter in my first book, Woke Inc, about this. It's called the rise of the managerial class Yeah. Is what I would call it. Professional management, middle professional middle management.
Speaker 0: That's what
Speaker 1: I would call it. The rise of the bureaucrat. Mhmm. And so you've got and some people see this as the elites versus the non elites. I don't phrase it that way because certain people could be elite or not.
You've kind of got the creator class over here, entrepreneurs, or even there's authors or people with original ideas, many professors? In the university, you have a managerial class too, right, of the associate deans of God knows what. But you got the creator class over here. Then you've got the the everyday citizen, the hard worker to whom these institutions are supposed to actually advance their interests. The institution could be the government, could be a company, could be a university, could be a nonprofit.
And then you've got the middle management who tries to act as a bridge between those 2. So in a company, you'd have the founder who creates the company, right, and then the owner, the proprietor, but then hires the professional CEO and the CFO who then create a board and then a middle management structure around them. That's what I call the rise of the bureaucrat. At university, you might have the committee class. The committee class.
Exact that's actually probably the best way of saying it. At university, you might have the professor who's the original thinker, zany thinker, inventing things, but then you get the associate dean of god knows what. Right? That becomes the middle manager. In the government, you have the duly elected president of the United States, the people who the people actually elect to run the country.
But then you've got the people at the 3 letter agencies or the undersecretary of god knows what in some you know, 3rd rate administrative agency, that's the rise of the bureaucrat. And so that's and it's the funny thing is it's the same kind of people who become the associate dean that sit on some corporate board, that then become the undersecretary of something or the ambassador or somewhere else that horizontally make their way across what I call this pan private sector, public sector swamp.
Speaker 0: So what would you do with the SEC?
Speaker 1: Shave it down significantly. Now if we're starting from scratch, I I I don't think we need a lot of these agencies at all, but some of these agencies can't be shut down without congress. Some can. The Department of Education, we can shut it down. The SEC is created by Congress.
You can't shut it down, but I think it needs to be drastically narrowly focused in its scope to go after actual people who are harming those who have been lied to. Right? So so Scams, frauds. Scams, frauds. Yeah.
Limited to that. Yeah. As opposed to generalizing certain classes of, you know, code or whatever to say that that's a general category that we're nebulously defining it. They also have to have clear rules. If you don't have clear rules, you shouldn't be able to enforce the rules.
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: You can't play the game of musical chairs, where you didn't know what the rules were, but you're last last person left standing, which is what they call the regulation by enforcement paradigm. You you shouldn't regulate by enforcement. You should have clear rules that are tied to the laws that congress has passed, and your job is to enforce them. Yep. But you can't be rule maker, law enforcer, judge, and jury at the same time.
And I do think that some discipline there would go a long way. And I think there have been good, at least, people among the commissioners amongst the 5 who have brought some of those views to the table. So these are not foreign viewpoints, but I think that some of those views that have may have been minority views in the past need to become the majority views of how these agencies are run. And I think all of them need to be shaved down drastically, not just the SEC. I think 75% of federal bureaucrats should be fired.
Speaker 0: Yeah. The committee class.
Speaker 1: And yeah.
Speaker 0: The committee class.
Speaker 1: Put it nicely. Just just get rid of the committee class. That's exactly what I would say.
Speaker 0: So Elon's been very vocal about short selling. What do you think about short selling?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know what Elon's views are have been on short selling.
Speaker 0: Well, they're just people just, you know, people just sell Tesla.
Speaker 1: Yep. My my my view is my view is as long as the markets are actually able to function transparently, then I think that that's actually a step in the right direction. But right now, if you're an institutional investor and you own certain stock, you have to file 13 f's as you'll know and Yes. 13 g's or d's. Yeah.
You know, d's if you're active. I think we should just apply that same paradigm to short selling as well. Like, if you're gonna have the paradigm
Speaker 0: A 100% transparency.
Speaker 1: Exactly. So so if you're short, you shouldn't be able to hide behind the veil.
Speaker 0: Do you like short selling? Do you not have any preference over it? You just
Speaker 1: I I think that it's I think that they're playing according to different set of
Speaker 0: rules
Speaker 1: right now. Yes. Just apply the same rules of the road. Right? So if you have to say that you publicly own a stock, you have to also say that you are short a stock.
So that's when you're uttering certain things or publishing fake reports or real reports or whatever, people at least know what your vested interest is. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0: And it can be a one way street in
Speaker 1: the stock. Exactly. And and so the one way street part is what bothers me about it. How about
Speaker 0: the naked short selling? Have you heard about this where
Speaker 1: Well, you know what? You could sell without actually having borrowed the shares. Yeah. I mean, that's basically against the rules now already, though. Right?
Speaker 0: Essentially. So if it's against
Speaker 1: the rules, just enforce the rules.
Speaker 0: Just enforce them. Yeah. Yeah. Just enforce
Speaker 1: the rules.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Enforce the hell out of it. Yeah. That's great.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically is against the rules already. Right? And that that goes back to what I think the agencies need to
Speaker 0: do. Right? You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah. But but that that's what with these agencies can't just be enforcing rules willy nilly, and then they make them up. There's clear pre specified set of rules, enforce the rules, and that's it. Versus today, you have congress not really even passing the laws, but the agencies sort of making up the rules as they go along, enforcing them as they see fit sometimes versus not. It's that game of musical chairs
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: Where the last person who's left standing when the music turns off on a given tune. Mhmm. That's not the way they should work. Clear rules, clearly defined, pre specify them, and force them even handedly. That's it.
Stop the crap. Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 0: Have you ever heard of a guy named Ryan Cohen?
Speaker 1: Refresh me.
Speaker 0: He's the chairman of GameStop. He's a good guy. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: I know who he is.
Speaker 0: Yeah. He's a good guy. He's, you know, not our age.
Speaker 1: But he he actually has Chewy. Chewy. Chewy. Yeah. Chewy.
Speaker 0: He he's a good guy. He and I interact quite a bit on Twitter. I've heard good things about him. He's a he's a very bright guy. He's about our age, frankly.
I think he's part of the next generation. He's a little bit more, quiet than you and me, so to
Speaker 1: speak. Okay.
Speaker 0: But he's the current chairman of it. He's a billionaire. They've got a billion about a 1,000,000,000, 1,000,000,002. We don't need to talk about specific stocks. No.
And cash on the balance sheet. I think the, you know, the market cap is significantly higher. But my
Speaker 1: point is GameStop now then?
Speaker 0: I'd have to look at it today, but it's at least, you know, 4 or 5 times that. It's probably
Speaker 1: a few 100,000,000 when you took over. Right?
Speaker 0: Yes. And then and and and and, frankly, to be frank, you know, a lot of our retail investors are, you know, the bread and butter of what has made him and GameStop successful. Many of our people, that's why I'm asking, but I won't ask you about the specific stock. But about Cohen, what's interesting is, you know, and I'm trying to kinda triangulate in my head is you have obviously, you know, the strive stuff, the woking stuff, the presidential stuff. Cohen has what he perceives to be, he calls, you know, overpaid executives and short sellers, which is kind of along the Elon locks line of things.
And I think what's what's really interesting to me is, you know, where where with guys like Cohen, he doesn't take you know, he's not taking really any compensation. He's not selling any of the stock. He's an owner. He's an owner in the company. Yeah.
What do you think about, compensation for executives and and your kind of viewpoint on that now having
Speaker 1: I think it should be I think it should be more, directly set by shareholders
Speaker 0: Mhmm.
Speaker 1: Rather than the intermediating function of the boards. I think that Radford I don't know if you know much about Radford. No.
Speaker 0: That's great.
Speaker 1: Totally. Radford is basically, like,
Speaker 0: the
Speaker 1: one of these agencies, and there's a few of them, that effectively are these expensive consulting services that work with boards, and they give boards cover
Speaker 0: Yeah.
Speaker 1: To be able to say that this is the 50th percentile and 70th percentile, and you're
Speaker 0: like Last Lewis and others.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of peer groups, and they get paid good money to do it. Yeah.
It's And so the boards say
Speaker 0: they use the quid pro quo.
Speaker 1: It really is. And so they have a business model of giving the boards air cover. But the people who select those compensation consultants and set the parameters are none other than the management that's actually being paid. So it ends up being Yeah.
Speaker 0: So it's
Speaker 1: one giant kinda circle jerk
Speaker 0: in the world. So is that still the committee class or is that more incentives or what?
Speaker 1: It's it's it's the committee class. It's it's the committee class at its worst. Worst.
Speaker 0: Do you have, like, a playbook of all the things that the committee class does? Is this in your book where it's
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 0: Someone has to come up with, like, a checklist or something.
Speaker 1: This this is I mean, the checklist would be too long to be a checklist.
Speaker 0: Okay. Because it's ever And we gotta educate these retail shareholders on what you've done, what Ryan Cohen's done Yeah. Triangulate all of this because there's a great ethos that's developing around this. And You're
Speaker 1: giving me some interesting ideas as we're having this conversation right now. I gotta admit this. I'm thinking about things what's next for me. And I'm still 6 days out of having been a candidate, but I'm thinking about how to drive positive change. And I understand capital markets well.
And driving change through capital markets is interesting. You've kind of awakened a little instinct in me right now, actually.
Speaker 0: Well, we've got quite a we have a very aggressive audience out there. These people are pissed off. Yeah. And they should be pissed off. I mean, we held like a rally.
It was like a Trump rally, but it was a rally for shareholder change. And these are these
Speaker 1: are I I have a lot of views on this.
Speaker 0: I have a
Speaker 1: lot of views
Speaker 0: on this. Pissed off. We're having a
Speaker 1: Maybe we should find Atlanta.
Speaker 0: You're welcome to come to it in May. Really?
Speaker 1: Well, maybe we should find a a future GameStop like target. Maybe I should do what, yeah, I could I could do a little bit of what Ryan did, is actually bring some discipline to a company that has uncapped potential. It's a wrong vision going in the in the wrong direction because of the management.
Speaker 0: Account asset.
Speaker 1: It's actually collecting. I mean, you see that all the time. And you'd you'd see them hiring their own compensation consultants so they can have high 6 figure take homes just to sit there cruising while the shareholders are the ones paying it flat line. He's got all the money. He's not making any money.
Yeah. No. That's exactly what I should do. I would do the same way.
Speaker 0: It's even like me with Pulte Homes. We have a managerial class in there right now. We've affected some change from the outside. I do it the same way. Yep.
I was on the board. I don't get paid a nickel. I own, I don't know, last a check, $17 or $18,000,000 in stock myself. Yeah. In the company that I bought with my own money.
Mhmm. This is the type of incentives we need leading these companies. Yeah. And we work for the shareholders.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
Speaker 0: You know what I mean? That's exactly right. Shareholders, you know.
Speaker 1: But but but it's gotta be the actual shareholders too. Because a lot of times, the the shareholders are giving cover to the managerial class because they are the managerial class. The Blackrocks and the State Streets and the Vanguards, they're the ones who are actually voting the shares, but it's not their money. And so they're effectively representing other people's interests, but not doing a good job because they're part of the same what do you call what was the word you used? Not the not not the bureaucrat class, but but my word for what was the bureaucrat class.
The they're a faculty class? The committee class. Yeah. Perfect. They're part of the committee class, actually.
And so the father
Speaker 0: who you know is very successful, he says, never run anything by committee. The second you run something by committee
Speaker 1: It's done. You're fucked. It's game over. Yeah. It's game over.
Yeah. Right? It's game stop. Game over.
Speaker 0: So what kind of company would you do if you did something?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I gotta think about it. I mean, I'm still 6 days out and haven't made my plans yet. As, you know, I mean, you think about doing things philanthropically. You think about Would it
Speaker 0: be politically stop, or would it be a for profit company when you say, like, you're thinking about a company?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that one of the things you could actually do is reform an existing one, and the other is to sort of take an existing opportunity where an entrepreneur has built a great product, but doesn't have the ability to really scale that, to sort of take that to people in a way that allows that entrepreneur to take their business to the next level. I've done that as a mentor and with some success in the last few years. And so maybe getting involved in that capacity is something be
Speaker 0: like an activist or a takeover or something like that? Could be. You know, we did that with our business. You know,
Speaker 1: that'd be a full takeover takeover. You could buy, you know, 15, 20% of a company and Yes. Drive change that way.
Speaker 0: Especially if you had shareholders who were vocal, who said Totally. We're not gonna put up with this shit
Speaker 1: anymore. Exactly.
Speaker 0: And Black Rock and Vanguard, you need to do a better job of That's right. Holding these people accountable.
Speaker 1: And if there's a retail base that comes along with that to hold them accountable, you know, I mean, people, especially, you know, take take a few hundred take many companies with a few $100,000,000 market cap, doesn't take a ton of money. You know, 40, $50,000,000 position in such company can make a
Speaker 0: big difference. What happened with Bed Bath and Beyond? A little bit. Basically, the company basically went into the Trash. Yep.
Yeah. The committee class destroyed the company in my opinion. That's my sense. Yeah. In my opinion.
And now you have all these retail shareholders. They're pissed off, and they want answers. Mhmm. And a
Speaker 1: lot of these people,
Speaker 0: it's not even about money. Mhmm. And that's what you have to understand. Hasn't recovered? It has not.
It's it's not trading anymore. Oh, it's not? No. It's not. They're going through a bankruptcy process right now.
Really? There's the bonds are still trading. I actually own a bunch of the bonds. I'm helping now, you know, hire leads.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a business there on the other side from a consumer demand perspective?
Speaker 0: Sold some of the business. They've sold some of the assets to what's called Beyond Now and Marcus Lemonis, who I'm friendly with. He, you know, he's now running Beyond because it's now overstock. And, you know, I'm excited to see what Marcus will do with it. But then there's also what will come out of the bankruptcy plan.
But my point being is this gets back to the naked short selling and the short selling is people just wanna know what the hell has gone on. Mhmm. Where has their money gone on?
Speaker 1: Mhmm.
Speaker 0: And, this is why they just don't trust the committee class because, you know, they drive these companies in bankruptcy. They put all this money in their pocket, and they walk away unscathed. The guy who was running these companies, his name is Mark Triton. You know, he made all this money, and now he's on the board in Nordstrom's. And, again, I have nothing against this guy.
I'm just saying the average investor they've invested in, and we don't need to talk about specific stocks. And I'm not. I'm just saying, you know, there's all these case studies of these different things and people are pissed and they
Speaker 1: want they
Speaker 0: want transparency. They want transparency. Okay. So we only got a couple more minutes. Let's talk about this is a fascinating conversation.
Philanthropy, helping people, the retail shareholder, the committee class. I happen to think that math is god.
Speaker 1: Math is god. I like that. Yeah. Math is real.
Speaker 0: And and and god is And god is real. And and and so math is god, and Bitcoin is math too. At its very core, it's what it
Speaker 1: is. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So what are your thoughts on, the Federal Reserve buying Bitcoin?
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I think that I think that it's it's it's gonna be just a question of when, not if. Mhmm. I mean, that's that's just the reality. It's just a question of when, not if.
Speaker 0: If you were in charge of the Federal Reserve, would you buy, like, 25% of the float?
Speaker 1: I'd start with actual just so people can get behind it hard commodities. Gold, silver, nickel. It's actually peg the dollar to commodities. Yes.
Speaker 0: I've seen how you said that.
Speaker 1: So I wanna peg the dollar to a basket of commodities without showing a bias to 1 or the other, but hard commodities that have intrinsic value Yes. And that are limited and finite in supply.
Speaker 0: If you do
Speaker 1: And so if Bitcoin fits that list if you do fits that list. Right?
Speaker 0: Do that because I do believe Bitcoin is a commodity.
Speaker 1: It it really is. I mean, it it should be it should be treated as such. If I think it's just a matter of it's just a matter of time.
Speaker 0: If you pegged it properly to the right commodities, the US dollar like you're talking about, would you need Bitcoin?
Speaker 1: So I think I think what what what I would say is I would then give Bitcoin the my answer would be yes because the government can always change that. So the government can never be trusted. But what I would say is it is the existence of Bitcoin as a competitor and an opt out that forces a government led by, hopefully, a a sane leader, that's what I was running to be, to acknowledge we gotta level up and actually make sure the dollar does have inherent worth, which it hasn't for a long time. And so the existence of Bitcoin is part of what catalyzed the government to level up and say that we're gonna hold ourselves to a higher standard because of the existence of an opt out that people have, which is a good thing. But that then in turn puts keeps Bitcoin almost as a check and balance on the system.
Mhmm. That's what I that's what I viewed as. And that's where some of my reluctance comes from in terms of then co opting Bitcoin into that system. I think that that actually is part of where I at least have some not against it, but some pause to say that actually the role in the system is to have a stable equilibrium where Bitcoin is the opt out, you know, and a code is law kind of sense of the word. You understand in that expression?
So the code is law original vision of Bitcoin. It was the opt out that doing its job well already forces the government to actually have to peg the dollar to its hard commodities.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Because you can't trust the government like Exactly. Let me ask you. Can you trust the managerial class? No.
Yeah. Never. So therefore, you can't trust the committee class.
Speaker 1: The committee class is not
Speaker 0: to be trusted. Therefore, you can't trust by transit property, you know, the committee class of these different companies. Absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely right. We cannot be a nation of sheep that just trusts the committee class and does what they want us to do. And that's what that's what the committee class wants the people to become, and it's up to us as people not to just blame them, but to ask ourselves what the hell are we doing about it. Right?
In some ways, Thomas Jefferson had an old quote, and I think it applies to this private sector swamp too. The people, deserve the government that they vote for. Yes. The government that the people vote for is the government they deserve. Well, the same goes for committee classes and every one of those institutions too.
Speaker 0: It's been a pleasure. We'll help you out however we can. Likewise. I was gonna do some kind of fundraiser or something. It's a bunch of people asking me with you with your political campaign.
I was looking at doing that. But anything that you need our help with both Appreciate it. Fundraising wise or or or through, you know, our retail investor. You know, you seem to be on the right side of things, so we wanna help you.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, we're gonna make it, whatever it is, we'll make it hopefully with the best of the country. Well, keep us posted. Yep.
Speaker 0: This is a excellent Oh, love it. Ex philanthropy jacket. So Thank
Speaker 1: you, man.
Speaker 0: It's a it used to be called Twitter philanthropy. It used to be called Twitter Philanthropy, and now it's x philanthropy. So
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 0: And we're just, you know, we're just helping people day in and day out. And, we're on right now. There we go. See that?
@pulte - Pulte
@itswooch I just finished completing my stock purchases of $GME for this morning. May do more later.
@pulte - Pulte
I will be joining Chad's space to discuss GameStop after the bell today! $GME
@pulte - Pulte
@pulte - Pulte
I feel pretty good about GameStop earnings today. I don't know why, but I do. Perhaps it is because our man RC is fully in charge, even more so than he's ever been. I don't know what you think, but I trust Ryan Cohen. We shall see. $GME
