Facebook FTC antitrust case thrown out and Amazon vs. Lina Khan

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway: And Kara, I'm at the age now where if I don't sleep with the right pillow, I feel as if I've been pushed out of an 11th floor window.

Kara Swisher: Have you thought about the MyPillow? By the way, the reason I bring that up is that is the incredible Simon Holland, who's this funny dad jokes guy on Twitter, and I'm constantly stealing his humor, I feel like on a regular basis.

Scott Galloway: Why are you doing that? Why are you stealing other people's dad humor? You've got so much of your own.

Kara Swisher: I want to be loved and I want to make a coin and drive a Bentley. I don't know.

Scott Galloway: Do you really want to drive a Bentley? You're in Los Angeles right now. Is that correct, Scott?

Kara Swisher: I am. I'm in LA. How's it going? How is LA?

Scott Galloway: You know, they have new mask guidelines back because of the Delta variant. Did you see any indications of that?

Kara Swisher: The service staff was wearing masks, but it felt pretty... I mean, I love LA. I don't know how much time you spend here. I grew up here, but I don't spend a lot of time here. But whenever I come in, your plane comes over Malibu and the Pacific Ocean. And then I go to In-N-Out Burger. And then I see the Bougainvillea up and down San Vicente where I used to run around the perimeter at UCLA. And I'm like, why did I leave LA again?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah. Well, California is burning, but I love California. I think people really like to dump on California, but I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Kara Swisher: Wonderful. It is really good. Well, good. Are you enjoying yourself there?

Scott Galloway: I miss California. I haven't been back in almost two years, which I've got to get back. I've got to get back. Very soon.

Kara Swisher: Very soon, because we'll be having code there. Come on out. We'll go to Mr. Chow's. I went to Mr. Chow's last night. We are going to spend some time there in September, you and I, and we're going to have a very good time. I have so many surprises for you for code. Scott Galloway surprises. It's going to be so good. It's going to be so good. All right. But let's get to the news right now. Let's get to the news. So Robinhood is paying $70 million fine to settle allegations of, quote, widespread and significant harm to customers over the past few years. It's the highest fine by FINRA, which is the agency that oversees this. But I feel like it's a slap on the wrist. Scott, what do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, so just let's pull some key words from the decision. They use the word reckless. They use the word negligent. And damage across millions of customers. And this is where they got it wrong. Their customer is the brokerage buying their order flow. The people who sign up for Robinhood are its product and its mineral or its input. Like swine to a slaughter. And that is not who they are focused on. And they were fined. They brought up really two things. One, they failed to communicate with people or in any way screen them for their compatibility or eligibility or if they were appropriate investors for options. I mean, think about this. When you buy a stock, you are buying an asset. It's something that has rights to cash flows and ownership in a corporation. It is an asset. An option is essentially a synthetic that was originally invented to try and hedge people's assets such that if the stock went down, you weren't hurt as badly. Now, if you and I just took a dart and threw it at the S&P 500 and bought one of those stocks, there's less than a 1% chance that'll go to zero. When you buy options, there's an 80% chance within 12 months that that instrument will go to zero. I mean, these are weapons of mass destruction. And I don't mean to infantilize new investors, but the markets have decided that it makes sense for financial services institutions to do some preliminary checking on the eligibility and appropriateness of people to trade options. And the way you become appropriate or the way you get qualified or eligible on Robinhood is instead of saying my risk tolerance is low, you just click medium and you can be trading options three minutes later.

Kara Swisher: Indeed, you can.

Scott Galloway: And they decided they weren't providing disclosures, communications, and then they said they had not made the requisite investments in technology such that when trading days scaled, people were prohibited from, in this instance, from buying certain stocks. So what do you have? You have a company that doesn't make disclosures, a company that obviously doesn't give a good goddamn about the financial well-being of its customer set. And you have a company that hasn't made the investments in technology such that in key moments in the market when you could be vulnerable, you can't trade. And here's the problem again and you just highlighted it, you teed me up here this was perfect except it was missing a zero. Robinhood is about to go public at a market capitalization they save around 40 billion so they'll probably raise three or four billion dollars right so this would be like if on this podcast you and I could spread misinformation that resulted in financial harm and economic damage to people's livelihoods but it massively scaled our ability to attract advertisers and say, you and I just had no morals and didn't care about the damage to our listeners. And then the FTC or the FCC, better yet, the regulatory body for communications came back and said, Kara and Scott, you have damaged your consumers. So we're going to find you, and this would be the exact equivalent. We're going to find you $4.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. Would that discourage us from doing this? No, this is the thing. They raised $3.4 billion in February. They announced that already. And they already, this is including the $1 billion funding announced previously. You know, their investors are all sort of the typical ones of Silicon Valley. Iconic Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Index Ventures, NEA. And so I think, you know, this reminds me, I'm working on my book about growing up in Silicon Valley and covering it. And one of the things that reminds me of, although the damage is so much less, was when AOL decided to go all you can eat and then didn't provide the technology and was charging people. If you remember, and then they had that outage. If you recall, they had that 20-some hour outage, which was people were just relying on it to talk to each other in this way. But they completely dropped the ball in terms of having – they opened their store and then didn't have the requisite things in place to be able to deliver the goods they promised. And in this case, the kind of responsibilities they have and they're pretending it's a game and then anybody who doesn't agree with them and thinks they should be more careful is a bummer or doesn't understand the democratization of investors and this and that. It's literally like – you remember on Saturday Night Live they had Bag O' Glass? Do you remember Dan Aykroyd years ago?

Scott Galloway: I don't remember that.

Kara Swisher: They had all these Ronco games and one of them was called Bag O' Glass. That's what it reminds me of. It's like, sure, go ahead, do this if you want to.

Scott Galloway: What's the message that sends to the market? So I work with Goldman Sachs. And if I write options or I write calls, someone will call me and walk me through a variety of scenarios. And sometimes they won't let me do it. Sometimes they say, we've decided it's too risky for us and it's too risky for you. And they want to make sure that A, they aren't subjecting their own shareholders to a lot of risk, and B, they want to make sure that I'm thoughtful about the risks I take. They look at this decision, as does Charles Schwab, as does Interactive Brokers, as does Merrill Lynch, and go, we're the fucking idiots. Don't show any regard for your consumers. So $70 million was a green light. We're going to have to move on this, but it's a green light. It's just not enough money, and it's not going to stop them. They are not at all chastened by anything. And so, you know, they don't care. They're emboldened. This is saying, right on, keep going. And they missed it by a zero. If they'd found them $700 million, that would have slowed down the IPO. This is a theme. And would have sent a message to the entire financial services industry that those of you who actually give a good goddamn about the financial well-being of your consumers, right on. And for those of you that don't, we're going to hurt you. That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to regulate you, not embolden you.

Kara Swisher: We're going to move on. But it's a theme, this horror, let's do whatever you want. And of course, earlier this week in horrible men news, Bill Cosby is being released from prison because his Fifth Amendment right was... he didn't have his Fifth Amendment right. And so he was released from prison, even though he admitted to doing the things that he was convicted for the second time. And it was a technicality because the prosecutor who happened to actually work for Donald Trump during the most recent impeachment hearings let him off, essentially gave him carte blanche, very similar to what one of the prosecutors did to Jeffrey Epstein and stuff like that. So, you know, it emboldens people when this happens, when things fall, when regulatory scrutiny is not done correctly or prosecutors don't do their job in the right way. Technicalities get people off. It's really quite disturbing on many levels.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it strikes me that Britney Spears needs to be a ward of the state, but we let Bill Cosby out.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know, I know. That also came back to it, right? Britney needs government supervision. She's crazy. It's ridiculous. What a menace he is. What a menace to society. But, you know, correctly, his lawyers did a very good job, and they got him off on a technicality.

Scott Galloway: It's not a technicality. It's a constitutional error.

Kara Swisher: Well, my understanding was, and I'm not defending Bill Cosby, I'm defending the law here, is that the statements that got him put in prison were offered under the offer of immunity. So, the courts, as I understand it, correctly went back and said, whether he's guilty or not, the evidence that was used to put him in prison was extracted under the notion of immunity.

Scott Galloway: No, it's like bad searches. It's bad searches, even if people are guilty.

Kara Swisher: By the way, if he did it once, he did it lots and lots of times. So we'll see if this is over for him yet. Just as if Harvey Weinstein's going to California to face the music there. We'll see what happens. It was disappointing, but we agree completely. But let's get to the big story, speaking of which. Earlier this week, a federal judge threw out antitrust cases brought on by the Federal Trade Commission and 40 state attorneys general against Facebook. The judge said the case hinges on deals made by Facebook in 2012 and 2014. And this is Instagram and WhatsApp. And the lawsuit was brought too late. As a reminder, the lawsuit asserted Facebook had social media monopoly power with their acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. The judge said the FTC could try again within 30 days, but they'd have to bring more detail. Facebook stock was not surprisingly up 4.2%. The company passed the $1 trillion market cap for the first time. It had been hovering below that for a very long time. Meanwhile, Facebook announced its Substack competitor. It allows writers to publish free and paid newsletters. It can be posted on the web, sent to subscribers' inboxes, shared across Facebook. It's not taking a fee at sign-up. It's trying to put things like Substack out of business. And for context, Substack charges 10% cut of the subscription. So it's pulling a little Microsoft here. Celebrities like Malcolm Gladwell and Tan France, Mitch Albom, are among the first people to sign up for the service. I don't think they signed up and they were paid in some way, the way Substack does it. So let's take this apart. First of all, Scott, you had talked about judges being the issues in these antitrust cases and other cases against tech.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, the ruling was that it took you too long, but it just highlights the need that with the current system, with current antitrust and current interpretation by this current set of judges, we need new laws. That is correct. Antitrust law is loosely based on consumer harm, and the primary metric for evaluating consumer harm is whether prices rose. And we're talking about free products. So we're trying to regulate coal in an alternative energy universe. We just don't, our laws need updating. And I think Lina Khan's first job, is our big test is she's going to have to rewrite the complaint. But it just shows current antitrust law, current bench or current judges, we're not going to get there. And there's just no getting around it. It's a setback.

Kara Swisher: It's clear that this is going to be a multi-year thing. Although the thing I found encouraging was that the two people who came out and said clearly, we need new laws, were Representative Buck, a Democrat out of Colorado, and Josh Hawley, a Republican senator.

Scott Galloway: Along with Democrats.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. They know they need to rewrite these antitrust laws. But more importantly, people from both sides agree that the laws need to be written. So I think we're going to make progress. It's just going to be a slow grind here. They're going to have to update the antitrust laws, which they have done before. But as it currently stands, it's going to be, and it's happening all over. Stuff's getting thrown out in Europe. There just isn't, these companies aren't set up to be evaluated in an appropriate way. They should be evaluated, we should go back to using where they're evaluated on market power, not on consumer harm, so to speak. It'll be tough. Legally, this is gonna be very tough for all these companies. And so I think one for all these for regulators and they took too long and they waited too long. And you should see the list. There is a tweet about the list of how many openings all these companies have in public policy like hundreds of people which is going to be used to impact both regulators and judges. And these people are, you know, they're loaded for bear. These tech companies are loaded for bear and they're going to use their money and power and influence to do this. So legislators really do need to move quickly to get some of these laws passed. Eventually, I suspect some of them are going to go to the Supreme Court. Some of them are going all over the place. But it's going to be a really interesting couple of years if government can stay together and do something about this. But, you know, again, not a surprise. And, Scott, you did talk about this. And I don't think this is going to be the first time that judges are going to overturn things that regulators are attempting to do. What do you think about Facebook becoming a $1 trillion valued company?

Scott Galloway: I think it's the fifth now. I mean, these companies, they're just such incredible business models. And they've demonstrated their ability to kind of, at this point, overrun government. And even if government is able to push back, it's going to be years, not months. And so, and they're just, look, there's a great investment strategy is to invest in unregulated monopolies. It's just a good, in terms of risk.

Kara Swisher: Yes, it is.

Scott Galloway: In terms of, it's just, what do I do with my money? Well, I don't know. I'll just find a monopoly that's unregulated. That's a pretty good investment strategy, and it continues to be. I don't see anything slowing these companies down right now.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Time, time, time, time, time. That's what I say. So what about Bulletin? Are we going to sign up for Bulletin?

Scott Galloway: No. They didn't call us, did they?

Kara Swisher: Can we role play? Are we at a point in our relationship where we can role play?

Scott Galloway: Yes, we can role play.

Kara Swisher: I want you to be Facebook and call me. I have a quarter of a million strong newsletter called No More Sue, Malice. Okay. I want you to call me and say, hi, I'm from Facebook. Scott, we'd like you to be on Bulletin.

Scott Galloway: [In a phone voice] Okay. Hi. Hi, Scott. This is Facebook. We'd love you to be on Bulletin.

Kara Swisher: Hmm. Let me think. Fuck you. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Continue now.

Scott Galloway: [In a phone voice] Scott, we're going to give you a million-dollar guarantee to do so.

Kara Swisher: Hmm. Hmm. Go on.

Scott Galloway: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. They're trying to put these – speaking of Congress, pay attention. They're doing what Microsoft did with Explorer and Netscape. It's the same thing. The low, low price of zero to use our things. So just a shocker, Kara, they didn't call me.

Kara Swisher: They didn't call me either. They did not call me either. They did not call me either. What do you think of this? I have mixed emotions on this. I would never in a million years use their tools to do this. There's so many other choices, first of all, which thank goodness, until they put them out of business. They have no interest in media. They have no interest in media at all. Like, this is a company that I think hates media in a way that I've never seen a tech company do. It misjudges it, is wrong about it, only sees opportunity, and then they lecture you about media. And it's just, I just, I would not do it in a million years. That's me being on my moral high ground thing.

Scott Galloway: Threatens newspapers with libel lawsuits if they continue to report on them.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, I have issues with Substack, but I still find them fascinating. They hit a really interesting part of the market. I think they are going to struggle, just like Clubhouse is going to struggle. It's the same thing with these things. They can hopefully get bought, I guess. That's what they would do. You know, you have Twitter doing Revue. I don't see them lighting the world on fire. You're probably going to see others, the big companies, get into this, right? You could see Google doing something. They have. Google had Blogger for a while. They've all dipped in here and then they've dipped right out, essentially. This sort of happened a couple of years ago around blogging platforms. And we'll see. We'll see where it goes. I think they're going to try to featurize it. And, you know, I suppose if you want to do a Substack for your local lacrosse team or Cub Scouts, I don't know, I guess. Fine. Whatever. I was sort of fascinated with who they tried to get to go over there. And I'm curious how much money I would love for someone like Casey Newton to find out how much money they paid Malcolm Gladwell or some of the others to be on there. But, you know, whatever. I don't think celebrity writers are going to be the thing that pushes this thing over the top, though.

Scott Galloway: There's a couple of interesting trends here. The first is there is something around the creator economy where the traditional gatekeepers, whether it's – I'm meeting with my agent today. They're gatekeepers. Hollywood executives, some young guy with cool glasses gets to decide what movies go into production or don't. And there is a reshaping of the supply chain where these platforms are letting creators, if you will, go direct to consumer. And this notion of dispersion where you get more margin to the initial creator, whether it's self-publishing or putting your videos on TikTok, and then the end user gets the product at a lower cost and with less friction. That is an enormous trend and this is part of that. And that's a good thing. It'll probably take the same path that Facebook always takes. Facebook said to brands, build your brand page and you will own your customer set and you'll be able to communicate directly with them. And they're saying to great writers like Malcolm Gladwell, come on our new product. We'll promote it. We'll sign up a bunch of people for your newsletter. And that creates a healthier ecosystem, more reason to stay on the platform. But over time, the bottom line is you can't trust Facebook. Facebook at any moment might say, you know what? We've decided you need to give us X percent or we're going to monetize this by doing X, Y, and Z. And you either love it or leave it. And if you leave it, you leave the entire ecosystem because we're the dominant player. I do think it probably puts the other guys out of business.

Kara Swisher: I don't know if they'll become the dominant player. They've been in this space before. They've been in the media space before. They've had so many rounds with publishers in so many different ways. I can't even remember. As I'm researching this book, I can't even remember some of the things they did, right? They had Randi Zuckerberg, Mark's sister, in a closet at Facebook making videos with famous people who showed up. I mean, they've done 20 different things, including all these deals with the New York Times and other places. You remember, and they all tend to just go nowhere. And so I think this is just like their dating service.

Scott Galloway: Let's use your tenant, Casey Newton. Very talented guy. He has his Substack, right? Facebook comes to him and says, all right, you're paying 20% to Substack, pay zero to us, and we'll double or we'll increase your user base by 50% because we have this fire hose of 2 billion active users that we can, if we decide we think you're important, we can spray at you. And Casey's going to wring his hands for a minute and go, well, I hate Facebook. They're awful and terribly disappointed in me. But Facebook has the ability because of their quote unquote monopoly power to put these small innovative companies out of business.

Kara Swisher: So I don't agree. I don't think they do. I think they have much less power here. I don't think they do. I think I've seen them do it before. In case he stays at Substack. I think when I don't know about that, I think he'll do it on his own. That's what I think. I think at some point when he gets to the level where he's giving them too much money, either will strike a deal with them to give them less money or he will just do what Ben Thompson does and put together tools on his own and that's going to get more easy. There's no reason to go to Facebook. It's like getting a website from, remember all those website companies that would put up a website for you in seconds, whatever. There were a million of them. And then there was My, not MySpace, but there were versions of that. I can't remember their names. There were so many that were going to do this. I just don't think creators, I think the creator, all these creator economies, including, I was talking to someone, talking about sports stars. They don't want to go with these big companies anymore. They want to do things on their own and they know what they're valued at. You know what I mean? And more and more, they'll have tools to do so and reach customers directly, reach fans directly. And so I don't know. I don't think you need Facebook in this case. I don't think they own the media space in quite the way you think they do. That's my feeling. I think Casey will probably leave Substack, but I don't. This is me just saying this off the top of my head. But I think the stink of Facebook, no, he wouldn't do it. It's the stink of Facebook. I don't know how else to put it. The stink of Facebook. The stank.

Scott Galloway: I interviewed Ron Klain, who's the Biden's chief of staff here today. And one of the things he did tell me when he said something that was off his talking points was I asked him about social media and vaccinations. We were talking about the Delta variant. And this is what he said directly. I've told Mark Zuckerberg directly that we ask unvaccinated people, why aren't you vaccinated? And they tell us things that are just completely wrong. And we ask them where they heard that. The most common answer is always Facebook. This is the chief of staff. I don't know. I still think. The stink of Facebook. I still think they just have such command, they have such custody of so many people, they can make or break, I think, almost any content, idea, conspiracy theory if their algorithm decides to.

Kara Swisher: I don't think so. I think Amazon and commerce much more so. I think we'll disagree on this. I think I've seen them try this before, and they suck at it because they just suck at it. They suck at media, and they will always suck at media, and they don't care. Google did the same thing.

Scott Galloway: Or given the court's recent setbacks around antitrust, maybe this emboldens them to just go buy these companies.

Kara Swisher: Maybe so. I mean, if there was an antitrust scrutiny right now, wouldn't one of them already have bought Substack? No, because they think this is a lot of trouble. Media is a lot of trouble for them. They don't want to get near this. They should stay away and make their little money, you know, sucking up people's personal data and vomiting it back up to them. I just don't know why they would want to move into this space that much.

Scott Galloway: It's just it's because they can't stand being insulted just the way Andreessen is going to make future. Like, go for it. Go for it. All of you. So you think they're trying to influence me?

Kara Swisher: I don't see it as quite as malicious as that. I don't think it's malicious. I just think it's a big it's not much money for a lot of noise. I don't know. I just wouldn't get into the media space. Media space takes a lot. You got to have a certain amount. And there's all these really cool ways.

Scott Galloway: I think you just described our show. I think that's the tagline for our show. Not much. A lot of noise for not a lot of money. We're like Sizzler. We're like the ad for Sizzler.

Kara Swisher: I don't have a lot of money. I don't have a lot of class.

Scott Galloway: Sizzler! We will be watching. We will be watching. But just so you know, Facebook, Scott Galloway can be sold for a million dollars. I just proved it to you.

Kara Swisher: Oh, a lot less than that. A lot less than that. Shh, shh, shh. What is your number?

Scott Galloway: Okay, 500,000? I'm Facebook, 500,000. I don't know. Do I get to hang out? I don't know. Will they invite me to cool parties? I'm in.

Kara Swisher: No, they do not have cool parties. Trust me, I've been to them. They're not cool. They're uncool. They're actually awkward.

Scott Galloway: I've come, like, I came to grips with the fact a long time ago that I'm a whore. And now I'm finally down with the fact that I'm a cheap whore.

Kara Swisher: Yes, you are indeed. Anyway, once again.

Scott Galloway: I'm the information economy sex worker.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you are not. You are not. There's nothing wrong with sex work. Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break. Big fan. And come back to talk about Amazon coming for Lina Khan and a listener mail question.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, welcome back. Amazon has petitioned for new FTC chair, Lina Khan, to recuse herself from antitrust investigations into the company. Lina was sworn in as a chair of the FTC in June. When she was a law student at Yale, she wrote a blockbuster paper that got her all kinds of attention called "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox." Now, Amazon has filed a 25-page motion saying, given her long track record of detailed pronouncements about Amazon and her repeated proclamations that Amazon has violated antitrust laws, the reasonable observer would conclude that she can no longer consider the company's antitrust defenses with an open mind. Oh, dear. Honestly, honestly, I don't know what to say here. Scott, what do you think? This is a hard no, Amazon. How dare you? But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: This is the same virus that infects Robinhood and all of big tech. And that is they're under the impression that they can totally overrun government, that they can overrun our elected officials, they can overrun, make any argument, regardless of how moronic, disingenuous, and dangerous. This is an attempt to intimidate people to say, we can slander you and you won't be able to go into government. Because this is similar to saying, all right, if you're in law school and you write a paper on the risk of derivatives, and then you end up as chair of the SEC that might obviously diminish your ability to be the SEC chair because you have shown a bias in domain expertise. So Amazon's basic argument is if you show any of the domain expertise that we're supposed to have in government, it diminishes your ability. This is so ridiculous.

Kara Swisher: It is.

Scott Galloway: And the fact that they even wrote this and have the stones to say it, or as Stephanie Ruhle would say, would have the vagina to say this, shows that we have totally decided big tech can overrun government. This is the notion that because you've demonstrated domain expertise, it inhibits or restricts your ability to be a neutral arbiter. That's the point. You're supposed to have domain expertise around these issues. Conflict of interest is if Lina Kahn— By the way, these are political appointees eventually. You know, three Democrats, two Republicans. In this case, it used to be three Republicans, two Democrats. This is like, of course they have a point of view, Amazon. Hello. That's the point. That's how they got there. I mean, if she was the largest shareholder in Overstock, that's a conflict of interest. I was trying to think of a competitor at Amazon. There isn't one. This is domain expertise. So now big tech is so emboldened. It feels like government is such a weak competitor. And the media is so, I don't know, such a sycophant to anything they say that they're going to claim that, oh, now domain expertise conflicts you.

Kara Swisher: It's interesting because it does go into, when they have hearings for Supreme Court, what's your stance on—they try not to say, but they have jurisprudence or whatever behind them. So you've seen their cases. And so it's a really interesting, it's just infected everything that you can't have a point of view and then also be changed. Look at the Supreme Court this session. And they've done some things where you're like, whoa, I thought that was that. And now it's that. I think it brings into the idea that people can have their minds changed, for one, with good arguments. And instead of good arguments, they're saying she has a point of view. They should spend their time trying to convince her why she's wrong versus trying to impugn her in this way. It's just ridiculous. They never do it to a man, I don't think. I have to say that.

Scott Galloway: I don't think this has anything to do with the gender. Never happened. There's scuttlebutt and whisper campaigns and things like that. But this is a full-on assault, I think, in some ways.

Kara Swisher: I think you want it both ways here. I think one of the reasons Lina is the FTC chair is because she's a woman.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I'm going to get shit for that.

Kara Swisher: No, no, no, no. I'm going to push back. She was a very popular pick for President Biden who was trying to show the world I am not some white guy from the 50s and 60s.

Scott Galloway: No, he just looked a little further. They had a little effort to look around a little wider beyond his group of people. I think it was a great choice. But I think that—I'm not sure she'd be FTC chair at 34 if she were a man. I think this president is committed to having appointed officials that look, feel, and smell like America, which is the right thing. But I don't think—Amazon would have gone out—if a dude was the FTC chair, they would have gone after him as well. I don't think this is a male-female thing. We'll see if he goes after Tim Wu. We'll see what happens here.

Kara Swisher: But in any case, they should spend their time convincing her she's wrong and changing her mind, which is what you do. Just look at Supreme Court justices who definitely change their mind, who shift, become more liberal, mostly become more liberal when they join the Supreme Court, interestingly enough. Look at John Roberts. No one thought he would have decisions he's been having. He's just been convinced or persuaded or argued at or debated to. And that's how this should work. They should have a point of view. And she does. And she said a lot. I did a long interview with her. I'm sure they'll use parts of that. I was thinking, I went back and looked at it. I'm like, oh, they'll use this. They'll use that. They'll use this. And so, it's just, this takes a set to do that. I'd love to be in the room with the Amazon lawyers that do like, hey, let's try to—you know what I mean? In the old days, they'd be like, no, we're not doing that. We're just going to make our case, right? In this case, they said they pulled the trigger on this one. And I just find this appalling.

Scott Galloway: I don't think it's their lawyers. I think it's their communications team that says, how do we create doubt and distraction? And, well, let's immediately start attacking just the idea and the FTC chair. And it'll create a sideshow. And if you say something long enough, and Fox News will run, like, is Lina Khan, should she be recused? Well, they might not because they don't love Jeff Bezos. This is a hard one for them. Like, they don't like Jeff Bezos.

Kara Swisher: No, they won't. With tech, it's very hard for the right wing to get all hot and bothered about it, except that they're suppressing your speech. And in this case, Jeff Bezos is a—Trump had a weird obsession. By the way, that was weird on top of that. I thought that was unfair to Jeff Bezos in that case. But in any case, this is a hard no. And by the way, we'll get a call from Amazon. I'll get a call from Amazon after this appears. They are so on it.

Scott Galloway: Really?

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah. I was on CNBC once. I think I got off and they called five minutes later or something. It was like within a very short time period. And I said something about their headquarters in New York. I don't even remember. I think it was you that was—I was saying something you said. I wasn't even saying what I thought. Anyway, it was interesting.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's interesting that they call you. The only—I always get so-and-so is going to be in town, the CEO, and they—do you want to join them for an intimate dinner as they outline their vision or technology? They'd like to have breakfast with you. And I'm like, I don't want to—the last thing I want to do is hang with these people. And they always come back like, you have an obligation. You're out there saying that. I'm like, I have an obligation. I'm not a journalist. Kara Swisher has an obligation to be term balanced. I always get that. I call it the "hey girl" call. Hey girl. Hey. Hey, I heard you said this. And, we have a different point of view. Like, anyway. Stay open with "hey girl."

Kara Swisher: Hey girl. It's like that. It has that tone. Like, hey girl. Let me just tell you something bad about yourself.

Scott Galloway: They always start mine. They always start with, we love your work over here.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That comes in. And I'm like, yeah, I bet you just adore it. I bet you just think it's the bomb. They must have a thing that goes off like an alarm in PR. Anyway, we'll see. I don't have problems. Every time you say anything. Some of the PR people are great. I will just say all of the tech. There's so many good PR people in tech. I miss John Pannett. He and I used to be friends.

Scott Galloway: Awful people.

Kara Swisher: There's both. There's both. There's a lot of great ones. And the ones that are great are the ones that are really like, okay, I didn't like that, Kara, and here's why.

Scott Galloway: No, it'll be nice. We'll get to catch up with all of them in hell.

Kara Swisher: In hell, Kara.

Scott Galloway: Listen, you're for sale for Facebook for a million dollars. I'm going for different reasons, but I'll be there.

Kara Swisher: You would take a million. I wouldn't take. They put $10 million in front of me. I wouldn't take it. How do you like them apples? How do you like that? Not at all.

Scott Galloway: Well, there's a reason the dog is at the Beverly Hills Hotel doing edibles and eating Mr. Chow's. I'm a whore. There's some upside to being a whore.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Oh, my God. You should see the bougainvillea here. It's beautiful. This is going on. We have lots to get to. Okay, let's pivot to a listener question. Roll tape. You've got mail.

[Listener Question Recording]

Listener Tati: Hey, Kara, Scott. It is Tati. I am coming to you live from New York City. I love the podcast, love the tweets, and love the gratuitous selfies. But I wanted to ask you a question about the labor shortage and the mass exodus from the corporate workforce. We're seeing a lot of people after COVID not going back to their hospitality and manufacturing jobs. But we're also seeing people leave their cushy corporate jobs. Why do you think that is? Where do you think they're going? What do you think companies need to do to keep them there or get them back? And if you were 27 and feeling that itch, what would you do? Thank you so much. I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I like Tati. Tati, Tati. Tati's great. Listen, let me just explain to you, Tati. This is what I would say is one of the things that came out this week was that innovation and company creation has peaked for the first time in 10 years during the pandemic. I think people are looking at their lives. They're sitting there wherever they are at home. They've been away from the office. It's caused them to think about not just jobs, but how they conduct their jobs, how they conduct their relationships, about their children, about education. Everybody is refiguring everything. And why would you go back to shitty jobs, as I said. And I don't think—I think people who work in retail are really great, but they get treated not as well and they don't get paid as well. They should have the same thing with teachers or in manufacturing. And if you have better choices, you start to make them. So I think this is not a surprise. Why would you want to do that if you realize life is short, which this pandemic has shown all of us, even if you weren't at risk? Thank you, Scott. Now say something that's not highly offensive to Tati.

Scott Galloway: I think you summarized it well. COVID is an opportunity for all of us to kind of slow down and rethink and reevaluate our priorities. And there's two questions here. So if you look at one of the things that's really exciting about this crisis or coming out of this crisis is that unions have been totally ineffective at helping the middle class maintain wage strength. But what has helped, and for the first time, I'm sort of a fan of, I don't want to call it universal basic income, but basic income and the latest bailout package has put enough money in people's wallets that they're like, well, if I don't go to work for eight bucks an hour, I won't starve. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I think we need to create—I think the best union in the world right now is some sort of payment system or transfer system that lets people decide, I don't want to be a frontline worker and put myself in harm's way for eight bucks an hour. And it's bringing up wages, and I think that's a good thing. I think it's discouraging that CEOs and companies and shareholders and media act so shocked and kind of dismayed that people don't want to work 40 hours a week so they can live in their car. So I think it's time that wages come up dramatically.

Scott Galloway: And then the question around being 27, though, I'm much more boomer kind of dad here. And that is, I think America becomes more like itself every day. And it's capitalist. And your ability to provide opportunities for your children, your ability to get good health care, wrongly or rightly, is based on your economic security here. And there are trade-offs. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't calibrate those trade-offs. But my advice to people in their 20s is to buck up and work very hard and try and put yourself on a path to some level of economic security.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Not just that, though. Although I think people, when they reevaluate—look, my son, who was at NYU this year, his freshman year, and he didn't like it. I mean, he liked it. New York, he liked the classes. But it made him think about whether he wanted to go to college right now. And he's working at a job. He's an assistant butcher, essentially, and loving it. Learning about business. He's learning about negotiations with vendors. He's learning about customer service. And he loves it. And let me just say, he's a great employee and he's making pretty good money because D.C. has a $15 minimum wage. And he's like, can I maybe take a year off? I'm like, absolutely. Think about how you want to conduct your life. And I think a lot of people are doing that.

Scott Galloway: I think your son has a safety net.

Kara Swisher: The safety net drives a Kia Sorento for some reason. No, he will not take my money. It's interesting. He's like, I don't want to take your—

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but—

Kara Swisher: All right. Yes, he does.

Scott Galloway: He's a young white male with wealthy parents. Agreed. He has a different set.

Kara Swisher: Yes, true, true. He has a different—his downside, if you're a lower middle class person of color and you're at NYU, get the degree. Get the degree.

Scott Galloway: Agreed, agreed. And then decide you want to be a butcher or a chef.

Kara Swisher: Right, right, right. It is, America is a terrible place to not have money.

Scott Galloway: A hundred percent. And when you're young and you don't have kids and you don't have spouses, that's when you burn the jet fuel. That's when you set yourself, you learn stoicism. Focus, work your ass off, and make more money than you spend. Start saving money and put yourself in a position to have a healthy household such that you are not radically stressed in a society that says to you, if you don't make good money, we are going to make your life really, really stressful.

Kara Swisher: So you would advise, what would you advise if you were not just 27, if you were in your 20s, like early 20s to mid-20s, late 20s? What would you suggest right now? Because this boom in entrepreneurship has been fascinating.

Scott Galloway: Oh, fantastic. This is, and this goes to my prediction, this is the great age of entrepreneurship. I don't think, on a risk-adjusted basis, as someone who started nine companies, I don't think you want to be the founder. That is incredibly risky, incredibly stressful. I think joining a small company that has shown some traction, like what I'll call letter D, they've raised their first round of capital. I think on a risk-adjusted basis, that is the sweet spot. Because a lot of the risk has been starched out, but it's still small enough you can enjoy being part of building something and you can get good equity. But more broadly speaking, your job as a young person is not to find your passion. Don't believe that bullshit. If someone's telling you to follow their passion, it means they're already rich. Your job is to find something you are really good at and then become great at it. And about the moment you're about to give up and think, God, this is so awful and so harsh and so full of bullshit politics, that means you're making progress. Persevere through those things. Start building economic security. And once you start getting the economic accoutrements of being great at something, the prestige, the camaraderie, the respect, you will become passionate about whatever that thing is. That is your job in your 20s. Play soccer on the weekends. Be a DJ. Invest when you're rich in that great cannabis dispensary.

Kara Swisher: I agree with that. But let me just say, I think the first part we said is much more important, is that companies have to realize—I've had lots of friends whose reservations have been canceled because they don't have enough staff. They've got to make these workplaces better for the people because they've been taking advantage of them for far too long. And Uber's going to cost more. Everything's going to cost more. And that's why the inflation worries. But people are reevaluating. And so people should also reevaluate their business plans in terms of how they're going to misuse people's sweat equity, essentially.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but this is a wonderful thing. We have said and I think the Biden administration deserves credit for this most recent bailout which is more than 50% is going to individuals whereas the previous CARES package where more than 50% was going to corporations and organizations. And finally, there's an effective union in America, and it's called the US government. And it said that we're going to give people enough money so they don't starve. And it's going to force—but you summarize this perfectly. If you're a cool little restaurant, right, doing a great job offering consumers great tapas, well, good for you. But if the only way that business can run is by finding people who need flexible work and because they have no other options, they will take seven, eight bucks an hour, then that tapas place should go away. That's fine. And there's certain businesses that just shouldn't be around if they need to be driven on software that circumvents minimum wage laws. Lyft and Uber should be much smaller businesses. Millennials don't need to take SUVs to the airport. We need to reinvest in public infrastructure. So I think this is wonderful what's going on and bringing up finally the wages of lower income workers. And it was the government that finally stepped in and said, you know what, we're the union. Unions are totally ineffective and have been ineffective and have been a fantastic foe for corporate America because they're so weak and stupid and poorly managed and corrupt. Hello, unions. And finally, wages are rising. Finally, the economy is starting to recognize that if you're going to be the wealthiest nation in the world, you've got to start acting like it.

Kara Swisher: What I find interesting is Republicans always say people don't want to work and they'd rather just take the handout. You know what? Rich people do this, reevaluate their life. People who have degrees reevaluate. I'm going to make a pivot. Everybody gets—great idea, good idea, fine, do something fresh and new and entrepreneurial. When other people say this is not what we're being paid is shitty and we want better terms, they call them lazy. Like, oh, and we're not going to work because we're getting money over here. The ability to make choices is the sign of a real society on all levels. It's very American, too.

Scott Galloway: It is. One of our core competences in America is we leave. And that is we're not afraid to leave a country and come for something better. My dad's core competence is leaving. Whenever he was in a company or a state where things weren't going well for him, he packed his bags and he moved to Phoenix. He just said, I'm out. And Americans, if you look at European or even other cultures like in Japan, they tend to stay with the same employer. They tend to stay in the same geography. In America, the fluidity of capital, your ability to allocate capital to where it'll be most productive, is an unbelievable component of an innovative society. And our human capital here is not afraid to get on a plane or in a car and just drive west.

Kara Swisher: This is true. Although I don't think we take as good care as we can over the things like health care. We really leave them—you know if you mess up or you get injured. We're slowing down the fluidity of human capital because people can't leave because of the lack of portability of health care. That's what I'm saying. We should protect them more to be able to use this thing. It's an interesting talent. I have a similar talent. I go. I go. In fact, recently I was working on something. You get in your career. You don't look back. I don't look back. Someone was like saying that do this. And I just, I literally wrote back a one word answer to a negotiate. I went, no. I just was like, no. Thanks.

Scott Galloway: Occasionally, like after a long weekend with my kids, I sometimes just want to get in my car and drive. I said that to Amanda. I was like, I would like to be in Hawaii in a shack. We were getting some oysters at this really wonderful oyster bar called the Matunuck Oyster bar here and there was a little house across the way and this guy was getting his little rowboat in his little house and I'm like, I would like to be that person.

Kara Swisher: I just want to say, having kids is hugely overrated on a day-to-day basis.

Scott Galloway: Enough more advice to 27 year olds.

Kara Swisher: It's not condoms. No, wrong, wrong. Tati, don't have kids at a young age. Do not have kids. They're great. They're great. We're gonna—when you're older.

Scott Galloway: No, when you're older and you can lubricate it with a lot of help.

Kara Swisher: No, no, no, this is not true. I don't have help much of the time. Anyway, I do have a lot of help. Daddy needs to sleep in.

Scott Galloway: All right. Okay. Daddy needs to sleep in. Have someone you can hand them to. You want to love your kids and love yourself?

Kara Swisher: Listen, you've gotten canceled 12 times during the show and I'd like to limit it to 12 if you don't mind. We're going to go through, we have one more quick break.

Scott Galloway: Well, Facebook is going to call me.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay. Yeah, they're not. Okay, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. And my prediction is they're not going to call you.

[Ad Break]

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Kara Swisher: Hey, Scott, we're going to go through a lot of predictions next week, including the fact that you're not going to be chair of the FTC, which I'll tell you more about in a minute. But give us one for this week, a very short one, because we've got a very important close this week.

Scott Galloway: Record year for new business startups. Just to every point we've been talking about, people are reevaluating their lives. There's more venture capital available than ever. When people come out of a crisis in an organization, they're much more open to doing things differently. We have between commercial office space, healthcare, education, you have $5 or $6 trillion being thrown up in the air, and it's going to land in different places. This is really exciting. This is a new era of entrepreneurship. We're going to see new business formation go back to where it was in the Carter administration. It has been in a huge slump where only people of a certain gender, ethnicity, certification could start companies or really successful companies. Venture capital is recognizing they want to evaluate CEOs based on their skills and their grit, not necessarily—there was sort of a profile. Drop out of Harvard, go to work for a hedge fund, then you can raise money. And now they're saying, well, it's more than that. So I think this is very exciting. This is one of the wonderful things about America and the reason we always seem to get through things. We're like that Terminator guy that can remorph when an arm gets cut off. We adapt faster to economic changes than any country in the world. This is a great era of entrepreneurship. We're going to see more new businesses started in the second half of 2021 than any six-month period in the last 30 or 40 years.

Kara Swisher: Well, we are going to hold you to that, and I'll explain that later. But before we go, today is Rebecca's last day producing Pivot. We love Rebecca. Rebecca, come on and tell us where you're going because this is quite a doozy. This is exciting.

Rebecca: Yeah. It's bittersweet, but I'm going to be the head of audio for Archewell, overseeing the creative partnership between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Spotify.

Kara Swisher: So Meghan and Harry, you want to just say—

Scott Galloway: More than that. Don't be—oh, aren't you a little—oh, you're so coy. Come on. Don't be so coy. This is Meghan and Harry.

Kara Swisher: What? I will never be royals. Royals. Like, this is so cool. Can we meet them? That's the first tip. Can they come on our show?

Scott Galloway: Talk about the mother of all upgrades. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway to Meghan and Harry.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that must have been a tough decision, whether to leave or not. That took her all of a quarter of a second. I'm in.

Scott Galloway: Yes, we haven't made the offer yet. I'm in. I'm in.

Kara Swisher: They're doing it with Spotify. Fascinating. Spotify and Netflix and all those are hiring all the fancy people like the Obamas, etc. So what are they doing? Meghan and Harry.

Rebecca: We haven't, we're still working on it. I'm going to start in August and I'm going to be moving to LA. The New York girl is going to LA.

Scott Galloway: Wow.

Rebecca: And, I don't really have anything specific to share.

Kara Swisher: Oh, okay.

Rebecca: And I think I should take this time to talk about how handsome Scott is.

Scott Galloway: No, but wait.

Rebecca: I really don't think we spend nearly enough time talking about how handsome Scott is.

Kara Swisher: All right. All right. Rebecca, what would you like? I can't believe. Let's hear Rebecca. Let's stop talking.

Scott Galloway: I can't believe someone in our universe is going to work for Meghan and Harry. How did that happen?

Kara Swisher: I don't know. We don't know. How did that happen?

Kara Swisher: But it did happen. And we feel great about it. Now, Rebecca, let's give Rebecca the stage for 14 seconds, essentially.

Rebecca: Well done. I know you're going to call me sappy, but I really, really do want to go on a mini rant about just, like, watching the two of you as leaders over the past couple years. Because, like, I started this show and it was, like, just the two of you. And I just—so Kara, you are just like an absolute emblem of breaking the glass ceiling for all of us. And like, I want to thank you for personally believing in me because that meant so much in my life. And like all women in media are just following in your footsteps. Thank you. And we all owe you a debt of gratitude. And your place in the world has given me permission to be my fullest, most ambitious self in a world that like consistently asks me to shrink.

Kara Swisher: Oh, excellent.

Rebecca: To which I say, hell no. Don't shrink. Scott, what I want to say to you is I had no financial education. I was like a waitress stuffing dollar bills into my pockets until pretty recently. And you have given me the tools to really understand how money works in my personal life. And then also how money works like on a macro level and how it transfers power and really what it means. And with that knowledge, it's made me better at understanding sort of like what our responsibility is to one another and to the government. And I just, you know, by watching you guys do these things that you just do because you're just you, I've gained so much that maybe you couldn't know on a day-to-day basis.

And then one final thing, which is that I listen to all the listener mail questions. I really do, genuinely. All the listeners and they come from New Zealand. They come from Germany. They come from Hawaii. They come from all over the world. And we only get to pick one, but they're so good. Our listeners are so smart. And I believe that smart questions are better than smart answers. So go to newyorkmag.com slash pivot to submit your questions to the show. And that's it. Rant over. Boom.

Scott Galloway: Thank you. Wait, so just let me get this. Kara helps you be a more courageous woman and I've helped you balance your checkbook?

Rebecca: I was looking for something.

Scott Galloway: I don't get anything more than that?

Rebecca: No. Literally? Well, so this is what I was actually going to say.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God.

Rebecca: This is the truth. I can't believe you're fishing for compliments. Go ahead. The first day of the pandemic, when the pandemic shut down, Scott called me. And I was like, oh, crap. Like, what did I do? What did the show miss? Like, what happened? And Scott called me. And he said, hey, Rebecca, I just want to see how you're doing. And if anything, if your family needs anything, if you need anything, I want you to call me. And that was it. And I didn't need anything because I had this job. But he's a softie and he's a good one. And for anybody out there who's like, you know, like Scott's more of a feminist than you'd think he is. I'm going to say it.

Kara Swisher: Not much of a feminist.

Rebecca: But he is indeed. In any case, Rebecca, you've been a wonderful, not just employee.

Kara Swisher: Listen, no more compliments for Scott. Rebecca, you've been a wonderful employee and you've been a wonderful producer and you've saved Scott's ass numerous times. Let's just be clear.

Scott Galloway: Yes.

Kara Swisher: Thank you for saving me from myself, Rebecca. And thank you for building this. We're in big trouble now. And putting up with us. I don't think you're going to have the same problems with Harry and Meghan. In any case, we can't wait to hear these shows that you make. We think we—one of the things that Scott and I like to do and Scott can finish up talking about is we love when people leave us. I know it sounds crazy, but I've had a lot of employees over time and I love seeing them be successful. I love seeing them move on. We never, I never get mad when people move on. I think people should always pursue what the next thing is. And you've had your learnings here and you've improved drastically and now you're ready for your next challenge. And so we think that's great. And anyone who employs, especially young people, be generous when they're going off. That's one thing I have to say is be happy for people leaving you and moving on and doing better things. We feel good about that situation. But anyway, Rebecca, you're a treasure and they are lucky to have you. You may say the final words.

Scott Galloway: Plus one on everything Kara said. Thank you for everything, guys.

Rebecca: Thank you. Thank you.

Kara Swisher: All right. So Pivot March is on, as we say. We'll actually be off this Tuesday enjoying the long weekend. But next week, we're going to kick off something a little different. Our quarterly review series.

Scott Galloway: Ooh, fun.

Kara Swisher: Like any good business, it's good to take stock of how well you've done so far and forecast what the future might look like. So going forward, every quarter, we're going to round up our biggest wins and fails and see how well we did with our predictions. We are accountable to you. That's how we feel. Unlike some other companies, we are accountable to the mistakes we made and the good things we made. We don't just want to tout ourselves. We want to also reflect. And we'll also make some new ones. Catch that episode next Friday. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie Entretot, engineer in this episode. Thanks also to Drew Bros. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify. Frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like this show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you for your support, your expertise, and your grace, Rebecca Sinanis. We will miss you. We will—part of that compensation for our disappointment—we'll be watching you progress. Make us proud.

Rebecca: Thank you so much, guys. Thank you.