Tony Hsieh, Jeff Bezos's Twitter fingers, and Big Tech in Congress (again)

Kara Swisher: This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway. What's up?

Kara Swisher: We have a lot to talk about. Not happened over the weekend. I mean, first of all, let's clear up. Last Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Sundar Pichai all appeared virtually before the House Energy Commerce and Subcommittee to talk about misinformation. The lawmakers seem pissed off, but I feel like they, again, a whole lot of nothing. Pennsylvania Democrat Mike Doyle opened asking if they bore responsibility. Of course, they didn't answer. Republicans' new talking points are about protecting children. "Big tech is essentially giving our kids a lit cigarette and hoping they stay addicted for life," said Bill Johnson from Ohio. Now the Pew study, though, is showing that three quarters, two thirds of Americans think social media have a negative effect on the country. CEOs were evasive, with Zuckerberg saying it was America's problem, not a Facebook problem. Lawmakers are increasingly getting nervous. But what was interesting was that the tone was not positive and yet nothing is going to happen. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, they call them lawmakers and not righteous speech makers for a reason. At some point these elected representatives need to command the space they occupy and stop. It's almost like now in criminal trials, the victims have an opportunity to put the criminal on the stand and just basically, you know, elocute.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, elocute. That's a great word.

Scott Galloway: That's the word. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but this feels like that. It's like, okay, enough already. Do your fucking job and make some laws.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, enough with the elocution. We get it. They're wrong. You're right. You've posed for the cameras. Now do your job. You're called lawmakers. So make some laws. I think we've just had enough. We're past the investigation, hearing, righteous speech stage. We should be moving into the lawmaking phase of this, which is more difficult.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's interesting.

Kara Swisher: I interviewed Amy Klobuchar today for Sway, as you know, but you may not have listened to it. She was talking about that. She's much more, you know, sort of "let's get these bills done." She did talk about the difficulties of passing them in these environments, how hard it is to get any legislation through. A lot of it had been bottled up by Mitch McConnell in the Senate. That woman writes bills like she writes more bills than anybody and is a very aggressive lawmaker. And that's even difficult. So I think what will be interesting to hear, because there's another hearing coming up and another hearing, but it does feel as if enough is enough. Let's just make some laws. Let's just get down to it. Let's get out of that. I think I'm even getting bored of it. You know how much I like to see them under stress. So we'll see what happens. There's some things definitely moving through and some of these bills are attached to HR1. They're attached all over the place, but what they do have to do is get the funding to the FTC and the Justice Department, more funding, get some of these privacy bills going, and then move on to where their liability is, or else they're just going to be doing everything by executive order, which is not what they're there for.

Scott Galloway: Agreed. We'll see.

Kara Swisher: So one of the other stories that I thought was quite depressing was the Wall Street Journal did a deep dive on the death of Tony Hsieh. The problem was his entourage, his core team, friends, employees, musicians. He bankrolled them. They moved to Park City and became enablers. He and they were high on nitrous oxide. Some of the pictures were disturbing. Psychedelic mushrooms. Nothing wrong with a lot of things, but in this case, they seemed to have really enabled him to the point of death, essentially. He had stuff all over his house. There were a lot of details about Post-its and how he'd become increasingly isolated by people he paid. One of the things that was interesting is he insisted he was fine and considered it a betrayal to anyone to help him, including many people. Jewel came in and others. It was just tragic and I wasn't surprised by even a bit of it because even in earlier days, he had liked to have a group of entourage around him. He was always with an entourage when I saw him, whether it was in Las Vegas or he came to Code or stuff like that, or in his bus. And it took on this sort of malevolent feeling, and that story kind of underscored it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but look, I don't think Tony Hsieh is dead because of a group of people who are enablers. I think Tony Hsieh is dead because of Tony Hsieh.

Kara Swisher: Yes, that's fair.

Scott Galloway: And the reality is maybe they were enablers, but he was in charge because he has money. He was able to surround himself with people who would do what he asked. I remember watching, it just brought up, I remember like 20, 30 years ago, watching a Behind the Music on Glen Campbell. Remember Glen Campbell?

Kara Swisher: Yes. I love, are you kidding? Hello?

Scott Galloway: And he had a cocaine habit and they asked him about his cocaine habit. He said that he had been surrounded by bad actors who convinced him to do cocaine. It's like, boss, no one held a gun to your head and told you to do cocaine. I think Tony Hsieh is a very likable guy. And again, I think we afford innovators a certain level of idolatry and excuses. He's responsible for his own addiction. It's tragic. And we want to find other actors and turn the innovator into the victim. I don't know. I think that's fair. It's a tragic story. He did this to himself.

Kara Swisher: You know, it's interesting. I like your tough love there, Scott. I do. One of the things that I think does happen is that when you look around and everyone is on your payroll, you've got a problem. It is certainly your fault. There is some level of "who would do this?" That was the part I couldn't get. There are these people who would just let this happen over and over again. Like, I'm friends with people.

Scott Galloway: Yes, exactly.

Kara Swisher: No, I know that. But if you're a friend, I have been very tough on friends who have been in tough situations. That's what's the saddest part of this, that there was no ability to intervene on his family's behalf, on his friend's behalf. And therefore these people, it's a story over and over again. And I think the thing that you put your finger on is this idolatry of the innovator is absolutely true. When I think about it, everybody, I didn't like his whole "smile bust" or whatever "happiness bust." I would say you were just silly. This is ridiculous silliness. And one of the things was, everyone was like, "Oh, it's fine that he does this." And I was like, "It's juvenile. It's weird." It was sad because he was a lovely man of all things. He was quite a lovely man. So I just thought it's worth reading.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but it takes a certain level. Let's go back to this notion. I really enjoy coaching young people and especially young men. What I've found is it's really important to keep people around you who don't buy your rep. People who occasionally say, "No, Scott, you're being a narcissist," or "Scott, you're kind of falling in love with your own press." I actually have a group of older men in my life that call me out of the blue and say, "That was a shitty take. You're wrong." And it upsets me and I don't like them for about 24 hours. And then I realize how important they are to have in my life.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And you always want to maintain a group of people around you who will tell you that you're all wet. Because it's very easy to start screening those people out of your life, especially when you have hundreds of millions of dollars and can surround yourself with a full-time party of people who, like you said, I don't want to call them your enablers, but you have consciously decided to have no guardrails around you.

Kara Swisher: So you're essentially trying to tell me you love me, right? Is that what's happening here? Because I do that.

Scott Galloway: Is that what's happening?

Kara Swisher: I complete you? Is that what's going on?

Scott Galloway: 100%. Your friends who tell you this. It all comes back to the cat. You just crumble like a cake in the rain. "Someone left a cake in the rain." House of cards. When I send you a text that is even slightly angry, you get very upset.

Kara Swisher: I get very upset. I sometimes am like, "Should I do this?" And I go, "Send." You're my Jenga, but I keep pulling out the box. I cry when it crashes. And then I'm like, and then another 24 hours, I'm like, "Let's play some more Jenga."

Scott Galloway: I don't like, I won't play Jenga. I won't play it. I don't like games like that.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, Tony Hsieh and enablers. When you have this kind of money, you choose to enable yourself.

Scott Galloway: All right. Moving on to the big story, which is about the fight to unionize an Alabama Amazon warehouse.

Kara Swisher: All last week, Twitter, Amazon execs went after Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in quite ridiculous terms, I thought, because they both support workers at the Amazon warehouse who are trying to unionize. So they had a Twitter war. It was amazing. Dave Clark, who's a big executive at Amazon, says, "I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that's not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace." And then when House Representative Mark Pocan called BS on that, said that workplace was so demanding that workers had to pee in bottles, the Amazon News account responded: "You really don't believe that peeing in bottles is a thing, do you? If it were true, nobody would work for us, of course." Then there was a story that actually people do pee in bottles and actually defecate in bags, which is even more repulsive. And then Senator Warren jumped in about tax loopholes and the company's snotty tweets. And then Amazon News, again, whoever this is, and who is the Dan Scavino of this, this is extraordinary and revealing: "One of the most powerful politicians in the United States said she's going to break up an American company so that they can't criticize her anymore." And then it turns out, as Jason Del Rey from Recode and others have reported, that this was from the top. This was Bezos going for it. What did you think of this?

Scott Galloway: I kept thinking of you all weekend. I think this is really interesting on a number of levels. The first is, and you went on a Twitter storm that I thought cut to the quick of the issue. And the first thing I thought was, this is Bezos. Nobody goes after a senator without clearing it through Jeff. And first off, some immediate questions pop up that are uncomfortable for Amazon. Communications and public relations is all about communication with the listener. And they really, I'm trying to think of an academic term here, they fucked up. Quite frankly, they're right. Senators Sanders and Warren are the butcher who shows up and complains about how bad the meat is. But here's the thing. They absolutely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Kara Swisher: Agreed. Because that's what I said. I don't like when she does this, but who cares? They're a big company. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: There's some real rookie moves. And it's amazing that this is a company that's typically very disciplined. This was a rare lack of discipline. And it comes from individuals. This goes back to the notion of enablement. When you're the wealthiest, smartest businessman in the world, you surround yourself with people who tend to not check you. And he gets angry. There wasn't anybody there to say, "You know what? When we tweet back at an individual as a corporation..." Some of those tweets against or in response to Senator Sanders were from Amazon News. News, yeah. First off, this is the biggest rookie move in communications. When you communicate from a corporation to an individual, the corporation has lost before the dialogue starts.

Kara Swisher: Yep, agreed.

Scott Galloway: Because Amazon is a big trillion-dollar corporation. And when they start getting into it with an individual, no one's going to side with the faceless corporation.

Kara Swisher: No, no, exactly.

Scott Galloway: And two, they could have torn them both apart. The response should have been, "Senator Warren, as the largest consumer company or the fastest growing consumer company in history, we have a vested interest in the success of a society's ballast, which is the middle class. As a function of that, we have raised minimum wage to more than double what it is in that state. Two, we have hired more people than any corporation in history within 12 months. In Q4 of 2019, we affected what is effectively the biggest pay raise in the history of mankind when we took all of our employees..." They could have just gone data point, data point, data point. Why didn't they? What was the audience for these tweets? I said this this morning on CNBC, "Just make the case for yourself in a polite way." I'll tell you what the audience was. The audience was a 57-year-old man who's on testosterone who hadn't had lunch and got angry. And there was no one around him to go, "Boss, this is a bad idea. We need to rethink this." People inside said they'd push back, but there was no pushing back.

Kara Swisher: Well, they weaponized Dave Clark. He looks like a jerk now.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Because the reality is they're right. It's very Trumpy.

Kara Swisher: I thought it was very Trumpy.

Scott Galloway: Well, but that's another great point. In contrast, Trump is 10 times the asshole of Warren or Sanders. And yet you never went after him personally? Never. Not once. And you know what the next shoe to fall is? She gets under their skin. She does. People are going to start going, "Is this a little scary that we have an individual, Jeff Bezos, who's prone to these anti-union missives?" And by the way, what's he in charge of? The Washington Post. People are going to start making that connection.

Kara Swisher: What's the scary part, Scott?

Scott Galloway: The next shoe to drop will be, people will start going, "Is this the individual who's anti-union, who also happens to be in charge of what is probably one of the most powerful media companies in the world?" And they'll start to wonder, does he get angry? He weaponized David Clark. He said, "David, go get him." Is that what he potentially does with his editors at the Washington Post?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I guess I won't be the editor of the Washington Post. I have gotten calls from two media reporters saying you're on the list. And I was like, "You've got to fucking be kidding." Let me see if I can take care of it this weekend with these tweets, which is funny.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here. A, I think you'd be wonderful. B, I think you're qualified. I think they put you on the list so they can say a lesbian journalist is on the list. And it makes them feel like they're somewhat woke.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, well, he wouldn't be able to push me around, I'll tell you that.

Scott Galloway: I think it's a head fake.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I agree. I'm kidding. I'm totally unqualified. I'd drive that newspaper right into a wall.

Scott Galloway: No, actually, I do think you are qualified. I don't know. You did start off there in the mailroom.

Kara Swisher: Nonetheless, let's go to the implications for unionizing. The union fight was started by Daryl Richardson, a 51-year-old black entry-level picker in the Bessemer warehouse. Who could be better? An irresistible David versus Goliath showdown. The fight is not over money. They make $15.30 an hour, high for the area. It's about control of the workers' time and efficiency demands, like trips to the restroom. And Alabama, just so you know, is a right to work state. What's going to happen? The voting is happening right now. This is a big deal because it's not a small group of people like at Google or other Amazon things. This is 6,000 people. It could have wider implications or set off a chain reaction across Amazon warehouses. This is probably the biggest moment for unions in the last decade because it's so high profile.

Scott Galloway: And Amazon is the largest employer or the fastest growing employer in the world right now. But at the same time, there are real issues and there are also huge issues around the middle class. If you look at minimum wage and union membership, those are the two strongest signals in terms of the decimation of the middle class. The fact that we have an increased minimum wage and the fact that union membership has literally been cut in half in the last 30 years. I think if the union loses here, this is probably the last nail in the coffin because the reality is unions have done a shitty job. Their image is bad. Even coming out of the pandemic, I think unions are a big loser because I think the teachers unions across America came across, fairly or unfairly, as putting the compensation of teachers ahead of kids' well-being. I think that's the impression that parents had, that teachers unions were using the pandemic as an excuse to get additional compensation, which quite frankly, they need to catch up. Teachers are underpaid. Even that's a general statement because there are so many different school districts. I just think unions as a brand have done a terrible job. So they have to win here. They just get weaker. I wonder if there's another construct for better representing the middle class. I wonder if unions' time has just come and gone, quite frankly.

Kara Swisher: Well, it's going to be interesting because if unions lose here, it'll look like Jeff being an asshole worked. But it didn't work, Jeff. You were an asshole. You just were an asshole.

Scott Galloway: Okay, but here's the thing. In Bessemer, if a husband and a wife work at that plant, $30 an hour or $60,000 in household income in Bessemer, that's a solid middle class life. And they have access to health insurance. So what's really scary is what if the union wins and Amazon says we're leaving Bessemer?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's right. They might do that. We're out. They play hardball. What was interesting is a lot of the reaction was how many people were defending Bezos in the group. They wanted to focus on Warren and everything else. It was fascinating how many people, very much like Elon, not quite the same level, were like, "Hey, he's the best. So whatever he says goes." It was really interesting. Like angry, mostly men, I have to say. They sort of have this aspirational quality of "I'd like to kick some ass like that Bezos guy does." So it was interesting. He still was an asshole.

Scott Galloway: What I don't understand with Bezos, though, is why they don't pull a Chesky. Chesky took a big amount of stock. Bezos is not afraid to reinvest in his company. And the $15 an hour was a bold move. They could have put out a tweet saying, "Senator Warren, we look forward to working with you as we worked with Senator Sanders around minimum wage issues." They absolutely could have kneecapped her with data in a forceful yet dignified manner. She gets to them.

Kara Swisher: Same thing with Zuckerberg. She tweaked him.

Scott Galloway: But the thing about Bezos, a guy's worth $160 billion. Why wouldn't you go to a shareholder and say, you're all going to incur a 5% dilution and I'm going to set up a $50 billion fund for workers around healthcare, around working moms? I just don't get it.

Kara Swisher: He just doesn't want to. If MacKenzie Bezos were running it, that's what would happen. MacKenzie Scott was running it. That's what would happen. He just doesn't want to. Same thing with Elon. "Go back to work. I don't care if you get COVID." The statistics bear it out at that factory. They don't care. I don't know what else to say. They just don't mind being assholes. And if he wins here, he's going to be insufferable in that they think this worked. I was behind him on the sexting. I'm like, "Go for it, Jeff." But in this one, you're just an asshole.

Scott Galloway: I was pro sexting and pro him pushing back in that really loud and obnoxious way. I loved it. I thought it was great. But in this case, Jeff, you're an asshole. Someone should tell you. This is an asshole move. Even if you win, you're an asshole.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but I think this says more about unions than it says about Bezos.

Scott Galloway: All right. We're going to go on a quick break and we'll be back to talk about our favorite assholes at WeWork.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, we're back with our second big story. We were announced last week, they're merging with a SPAC, BowX Acquisition. Okay. All right. WeWork. Tell me, Scott, what do you think? We're more bullish on WeWork now, aren't we? Are we correct?

Scott Galloway: Well, here's the thing. Anytime you do an analysis of a company through the lens of shareholder value, it has to be set against the context of the valuation. And as you know, occasionally you have a moment. One of my quote unquote moments is when I wrote a piece saying that two weeks before WeWork was supposed to be public at a $50 to $70 billion valuation, I said, "This company is not going public. Bullshit. This company is not worth this." And then it just literally unwound. But here's the thing. I'm actually, I don't want to say I'm bullish on WeWork, but I don't think it's any shittier than most of the SPACs going out right now, because instead of being valued at $47 billion, it's valued at $9. A real estate company, it says what it is. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. They've laid off 8,000 people. They've cut costs dramatically. They have a manager versus a messiah running the company now. Sandeep Mathrani is a real manager and a disciplined operator versus the 30-year-old faux Jesus they had. And also, the market is coming to them because coming out of the pandemic, I think you're going to have thousands of companies that say, "We want office space, but we want less, but we want it to be cooler and more social and more flexible," which plays to their strengths. In addition, the commercial real estate business is a $12 trillion asset class. And right now, WeWork is the strongest brand in a $12 trillion asset class. Can you name another office building brand?

Kara Swisher: There could be one, but no.

Scott Galloway: There isn't. The largest office owners are Vornado or Equity Office. No one types in "Vornado Atlanta," but they type in "WeWork Atlanta."

Kara Swisher: I like that name. That might be my new name, Vornado.

Scott Galloway: Vito. No one types in Vornado Atlanta, but they type in WeWork Atlanta. So what do you have? Valuation is now 80% less, costs are way down. Sandeep is saying they'll be profitable by 2021. So in sum, this has gone from a ridiculously stupid consensual hallucination concept, losing $150 million a week, to a company where I think it's actually probably a decent buy. I've gone from bear to, I don't want to call myself a bull, but like a cow. I've gone from bear to cow on this.

Kara Swisher: You're a cow. What do you think? I'm a cow. I think you're right. I think you're completely right. I had no problem with it. Some of the WeWork branding stuff gets a little tired quickly. They have to keep it fresh. I hope they freshen up because it had a little bit of that weirdness. I got sick of them after a while. It's sort of like pedal pushers are in and then they're out, and then it's culottes, and then it's long pants. It felt like possibly dated. So I don't know if going into one right now, I could do it and be like, "What is this? 10 years, 5 years ago is calling and it wants to come back." But the first thing, if we said, "All right, Vox is setting up a Dallas office and we want it to be small and flexible," what would we do? We would know what to do. We'd go WeWork.

Scott Galloway: That's what I mean. That's what's great about it. That's a huge advantage. Convenience. It's sort of like, whether it's a Four Seasons or a Burger King, you know what you're getting.

Kara Swisher: Yep, exactly. It's global. So I think it's smart.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they can do it. So SPAC is the best way to do this, too. It's actually kind of perfect on some level.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the whole SPAC thing is just incredible. There's already been more SPACs, more capital raised from SPACs in 2021 than there was in all of 2020.

Scott Galloway: Yes. 295 SPACs have gone public in 2021. $93 billion. When is this going to end? Why don't we have a SPAC? That's the right question.

Kara Swisher: Why don't we SPAC? We SPAC ourselves. We have to NFT ourselves. We have to SPAC ourselves. SPAC me, baby. SPAC me. We got an NFT. We got a SPAC. We got a lot to do. Vornado NFT SPAC.

Scott Galloway: So you are in an upcoming documentary about this WeWork situation. You look quite comely in it, I have to say.

Kara Swisher: Quite comely? Really?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yes.

Kara Swisher: You a little hot for the dog?

Scott Galloway: No, not even slightly.

Kara Swisher: You can admit it.

Scott Galloway: Not even slightly.

Kara Swisher: So, Scott, I think this is good. We're now positive on WeWork, correct? Even though you take them apart in this documentary. You're now positive. We're cows on it.

Scott Galloway: I'm cowish. Can you moo for us, Randy? I need to understand the numbers. But here's the thing. WeWork will be seen as an innovator. They will be judged by a different set of metrics if Sandeep can deliver profitability in the last quarter of this year. Gosh, who knows? They enter into a market where everyone else is retreating. There's no commercial office player playing offense right now. And I also think people underestimate how difficult it is. I think what they do, the whole community stuff, the cool architecture, I think that's harder than people think. That vibe doesn't just happen. All the commercial real estate owners saying, "Well, we can do flexible space." These are the least aspirational, cool people in the world. I'm not sure they know how to create a hip millennial vibe.

Kara Swisher: Nope. Why not let them do it?

Scott Galloway: I agree.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I think it's a good thing. All right. Can you moo right now?

Scott Galloway: I'm not going to moo.

Kara Swisher: Please moo.

Scott Galloway: Is this the kinky part of you?

Scott Galloway: I'm not going to play. I'm not going to play your games. Do not objectify me as an animal.

Kara Swisher: You complete me. All right, let's bring on our friend of Pivot. Someone is going to make you talk right now. Friend of Pivot, tough, tough person who we have great admiration for. Zephyr Teachout is a law professor at Fordham and author of *Break 'Em Up* and a candidate for New York governor.

Zephyr Teachout: That's correct, Zephyr? I was a candidate for New York governor in 2014.

Kara Swisher: Not right now. Are you?

Zephyr Teachout: No, I'm not. I have some thoughts about the governor, but.

Kara Swisher: Oh, excellent. Excellent. We're going to get to the governor, Cuomo. And so you're not a Cuomosexual, in other words, correct?

Zephyr Teachout: That's gone. That's all done.

Kara Swisher: OK, but let's talk about the big tech CEOs. They testified in Congress last week. Do you see any movement in their testimonies?

Zephyr Teachout: Oh, it's such a hard hearing after the spectacular hearing last year with David Cicilline. You see what a great hearing can be when lawmakers come with documents asking about particular deals, really getting into the nitty gritty. I think there was some value in this hearing. I think it is part of a move that shows that Congress is going to act. It's very clear to me that Congress is going to act. Where and how is unclear. It was great to see lawmakers talking about the business model. It didn't get much more granular than that. There was the one moment where Zuckerberg was asked how much money he makes from kids under 13. Good question. And he didn't answer. He repeatedly didn't answer anything. But getting more questions like that, figuring out conspiracy theories and saying, "How much did this affect your bottom line?" Getting more into the financial model is what I would like to see in these hearings. But at least you're seeing them talking about the business model. And that is a shift. So yes, there was plenty of the "why aren't you moderating better?" kind of question and plenty of grandstanding. But we're starting to talk about the business model. And then you saw Congressman Rogers talking about suicide and the devastating effects on teenagers and depression. Those were a few moments that really stood out. The one other thing, there wasn't a lot about breakups, which I think we could use more of along with talking about the business model. But there was a moment where Armstrong from North Dakota did get Zuckerberg to admit something that we all know, which is that if we're looking at market structure, we should be looking at non-price factors. I don't know that we need Zuckerberg's admission there, but I still think that's important.

Kara Swisher: Okay. All right, Scott?

Scott Galloway: Well, most importantly, the really key question here is Professor T-Chat, have you appeared on any other podcasts recently? Go ahead. Say it. Say it. What show were you on? What podcast were you on? Kara doesn't know this. You're on Prof G.

Zephyr Teachout: That's right.

Scott Galloway: Because I invest in our relationship. Don't tell her. I invest in our relationship. Ask her an actual question, please.

Zephyr Teachout: It was a highlight of 2020.

Scott Galloway: Go on. That's right. That's right. Yeah, except until now. Go ahead. Ask the actual questions. So, Professor, what do you think of Representative Cicilline's notion that they should go after a variety of legislation instead of trying one big omnibus bill, that the strategy is going to be to try and go after them from a variety of angles?

Zephyr Teachout: I am not the Hill strategist here. But I think there is a value in getting a series of strong pieces out there so we can really talk about the impacts. What I'll be looking for is one thing that sounds pretty technical, but it's really essential. Are we taking power away from judges? Right now we have judges that, starting with Reagan, but for the last 40 years, have been so deeply embedded with a Robert Bork mentality, a consumer welfare mentality, that if you give a lot of play in the legislation, if you still allow judges to decide whether something is anti-competitive or not, you're not going to see the kind of substantial breakup regime that I think we need to see. So that's one thing I'll be looking for in the legislation, both in the House and in the Senate. I'm a big fan of Klobuchar's leadership in this area. Her current bill is still a bill that was drafted a few years ago, and I hope it gets updated to have more of this kind of bright line legislation, because that can make a big difference. A second thing to be looking for in legislation is whether, when you're looking at mergers, whether mergers can be waved through with conditions or whether there's a default presumption that you actually block the merger if it's anti-competitive.

Kara Swisher: Right, so they have to prove themselves. So one of the things you call monopolies are private systems of government. And you've also said monopoly power is white power. Can you roll that out for us?

Zephyr Teachout: Yeah, I mean, it's basically the private systems of government, everybody would have understood before 1980. I think a lot of people increasingly understand now that at a certain point of both size and control, it's governing. That particular line isn't easy to tell. But when you look at something like Amazon and the way it treats the sellers on this platform, I see the cost that it gives to those sellers as a kind of private taxation, because it just has the power to whimsically set the rates. It's not governed by a back and forth within a seriously competitive market. Justice Douglas said this in the 1950s, all forms of private power tend to form into a government in and of itself. Historically, in this country, we used to be a real leader on this. As we know now, it's harder to start up here than in Europe. But we understood that anti-monopoly law, a core reason for anti-monopoly law, was to protect democracy, to not allow rival forms of private government to coexist with public government.

Kara Swisher: All right. But what about white power specifically? And then in your book, you starkly talk about the human drive for power that leads to tyranny. So talk a little bit more detail about that.

Zephyr Teachout: Yeah. I think it's one of the areas that's gotten the least attention, the ways in which the merger wave has really wiped out—and by merger wave, I mean 40-year merger wave—has really wiped out extraordinary locuses of black power. When you look at black economic power, black community power, for instance, when you look at insurance companies, funeral homes, pharmaceutical companies, there are...

Kara Swisher: Is that because people of color over-index to small businesses and small businesses just lose in concentration of power?

Zephyr Teachout: Yeah. And so the impact...

Kara Swisher: I'm going to interrupt you. I just want to interrupt you for a second. Isn't it worse than that? Isn't it basically monopolies are about white patriarchal older power? There just aren't that many monopolies that have young female people of color at the top.

Zephyr Teachout: Yeah. No, that's exactly right. I come from election law. I come from studying systems of power in the electoral field. This is the oldest trick in the book. If you merge three congressional districts—one of this is the old Southern trick—you've heard three congressional districts, one of which would have had a black representative, with two white districts and then say everybody's at large, then you have three white representatives. So this system of merging has been a driver. And then you see where the money has gone. Until there's protests, and it's always sort of like protest, and then we change our policy. It was Google and all the big tech companies, along with AT&T and Big Pharma, who were funding the voter suppression bills through ALEC through 2010. So you have a double mechanism of both the way in which mergers wipe out key centers of power and then fund greater destruction of that power.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely. So I'm just curious, today they're voting in Alabama about Amazon. Do you have any thoughts on where that's going to go? I'm speaking with powerful white guys. I mean, I'll be, we'll all be looking closely. I do think it's a beginning.

Scott Galloway: Do you think it's a beginning or an end? I apologize for keeping—

Zephyr Teachout: No, no. He just mentioned this. That's why, because he just mentioned the idea that if unions don't win here. If the unions lose here, I kind of see this as where all of a sudden in the bottom of the ninth for unions is a construct for representing the middle class. I think this has got big implications on the future of unions that they lose here.

Scott Galloway: Well, I think what it does, Scott, is it turns, which has already been happening with unions, is it turns more and more to antitrust and anti-monopoly.

Zephyr Teachout: I think that's right. Because if you are going to have relative power, it's effectively, even with all this attention, it's so hard to organize in Bessemer. But to be able to organize, you need to have somewhere else to go. You need to be able to say, "We actually have good jobs elsewhere that we can go to and not have the market controlled by one or two companies." So you're seeing this with the Teamsters, for instance. They're talking more and more about anti-monopoly. If you want to have unions, you also need to break up these companies.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, the best union is competition. So these individuals can force higher rents on their labor from other companies bidding on their labor. It feels like the best union in the world would be a less feeble government that breaks up these companies, no?

Zephyr Teachout: Well, I mean, I believe in union power itself. So I don't want to say the best union in the world. I don't want to overuse the term union. But let me—

Scott Galloway: I apologize. Good. I have tremendous, by the way, I love Professor Teachout. I could listen to her all day. So this is, I'm asking you these questions because I want to learn from you. But quite frankly, I think unions are a perfect example of being right and ineffective. Everything they say, I think makes sense. They're a ballast within the middle class and they have gotten the shit kicked out of them for 30 years. They have been ineffective. Don't we need something else? I mean, aren't we just always waiting for unions to reassert their power and it never happens? Do we need a new construct here?

Zephyr Teachout: Well, I think we need unions. And then the new construct is far more—and we're starting to see it in the last couple of years—far more aggressive unions, unions who are not willing to compromise as easily. And we need antitrust. I know I'm just going back to this, but when you have this massive concentration of power—and in my book, I'm pretty tough on unions because they haven't used the merger moment as a leverage point in the way they could, because they have a moment where they can access more information. But they tend to use it. And I'm sympathetic, but they tend to use it to say, "Can we just get a decent contract for five more years, even if in five more years we are where we are? We'll support your merger with this massive hospital chain in exchange for just giving us a decent contract for five more years." Five more years, they have no leverage. So using those merger moments is key. But we as a society also need to support unionization by having Biden be out there more front as a, using his platform as—which he has. It's been great. That matters. That mattered in the 40s when we had a pro-union president and decentralizing. Antitrust is how you make capital harder to organize, and unionization is how you make it easier for people to organize. And we need both.

Kara Swisher: You know, it would be interesting here is if Trump was president, he might be for the union here because he sort of supported—he was sort of playing into the white working class, but he hates Bezos. It would be interesting to see what his take would have been at this point. He's just so bad faith. It's just, you know, it's.

Scott Galloway: All right. Speaking of bad faith, Cuomo, you called on him to resign and said that he's been abusing his power for decades. So give us your take on this. I don't even want to ask any questions. Just love your take. What's going to happen too?

Zephyr Teachout: I mean, Cuomo is not going to resign unless he feels like he has no source of power left. He does not care about being loved. He doesn't really have anywhere else to go. But he is in the toughest situation in his career because for the first time it's gone national. People who've been in New York reading the paper for the last 10 years have seen the ways in which he really uses his office to protect his own power. The guy who's at the center of New York's vaccines right now is a guy named Larry Schwartz. Ten days ago, he was caught calling county executives, checking in on two things. One, what's your vaccine need? And two, are you going to support the governor? You don't need to be—sometimes those were separate calls, but it's from the same guy, the same day. This is the same guy who quashed subpoenas way back in 2014 when an anti-corruption commission was getting too close to Andrew Cuomo's friends. He has no public health background. He's been living in the governor's mansion. The weirdness and clubbiness and just self-protection of Andrew Cuomo gets weirder the closer you get. These are the kinds of stories that have been Cuomo all along and they're only now getting out. And you have not just the very serious sexual harassment claims, but how he's responded by leaking personnel files. So what happens, I think right now has to do with pressure on other lawmakers. Most lawmakers have called on him to resign, which is a big deal. But the next move is whether they move forward with an impeachment, whether they do it publicly, or whether they sort of call on him to resign and then just move on. And then there's a big moment with Tish James. What do you think happened? So Tish James' report should come out probably in June, maybe in July. She's hired some really amazing investigators who are looking into not just the sexual harassment, but also the retaliation in the nursing homes. So I think that's the big moment coming up. I just think New York needs somebody who other lawmakers trust. To me, one of the more damning moments is when the head of the budget committee, New York's budget committee—they're negotiating the budget right now—she says, "I can't work with the governor's office because he lies, because of the lies around the nursing homes." These aren't just public lies, which are problematic enough. These aren't just like a politician puffing their military experience. This is giving wrong numbers to committees that needed those numbers last summer and lying to them. So she's like, "How do I? Who do I talk to?"

Kara Swisher: So are you—we got to go soon—but are you going to run?

Zephyr Teachout: I'm not planning on it. No.

Kara Swisher: So that's a no. I don't want to sound like a politician. No, I'm not ready for governor.

Kara Swisher: Okay, who would you think would be running?

Zephyr Teachout: I mean, Tish James is the—this is the New York Attorney General—and I ran against her and I gotta say, she's done a great job. So I've really been impressed. She has shown her independence. And she's got a hell of an antitrust team. Amazing.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Speaking of which, getting back to that, that's another area of antitrust that's being looked at by state attorneys general, which cannot be ignored either, who have been much more aggressive than the federal government in lots of ways.

Zephyr Teachout: Yeah. No, I mean, look at the states. There's a lot of state legislation that's happening. And you see the lobbying going on like crazy in the states just to not get the bills to go to the floor. And then the state AGs. And they got to play off each other because the state AGs are doing amazing work. But as you guys know, those individual cases can't be all that we do. We need the legislation.

Kara Swisher: Well, Zephyr, thank you so much. We recommend your book, I Will Call You Professor, to Law Professor at Fordham and author of *Break 'Em Up*. Please buy it. Zephyr, thank you so much.

Scott Galloway: Thank you, Professor.

Zephyr Teachout: Oh, thanks for having me.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott. She's a star.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, very smart. Very impressive. Professor Teachout. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott. Wins and fails. I have a fail myself. I'm going to go first. You go first.

Scott Galloway: Arkansas. The laws against doctors not treating gay people. They don't want to.

Kara Swisher: What? What? What do you mean what? I'm shocked. I'm horrified. What is going on?

Scott Galloway: They passed a law. Asa Hutchinson, who just did another terrible abortion one this week, decided that doctors, because of religious reasons, should not have to treat gays and lesbians. They don't want to.

Kara Swisher: Hmm. Which is amazing.

Scott Galloway: So he signed the bill allowing medical workers to refuse treatment, all medical workers, not just doctors, to LGBTQ people. So it's the same thing of the cake baking, the whole thing. It's another version of that. But in this case, the physicians do no harm. It's the opposite is doing harm. The measure says healthcare workers and institutions have a right not to participate in non-emergency treatments that violate their conscience. The new law won't take effect until later this summer. So it allows doctors to refuse to treat someone because of religious or moral objections. It's just astonishing. And he's already—Asa Hutchinson, who pretends he's moderate, is in no way moderate. So I will not be going to Arkansas anytime soon.

Kara Swisher: Hmm. Well, we can't go to Georgia any longer if we want to vote. Yeah. I don't know if you got a little winner or fail. I guess it's a fail. I love—someone tweeted that I think it was Zach Bornsino, I think is a genius from Crooked Media. Anyways, he said that he was looking forward to no longer avoiding grocery stores because of COVID, but because of the fear of mass shootings.

Scott Galloway: And I think that—I think it's hopeful that hopefully we not only see a light at the end of the tunnel, the end of COVID potentially. And again, it's dangerous to say that because we have seen a bit of a spike. But it's nice to see that we're starting again to focus on other issues and gun violence. Mass shootings rear their ugly head. I also think that it's going to bring up—I just think everything comes back to income inequality and availability of guns, of weapons of war, is obviously the biggest problem here. But I think you have a group of young men. I think the two cohorts we would be best served by investing in would be moms. I do think Marshall Plan for Moms would reap huge benefits for our society. And then two, I think young, non-college bound youth. If you look at the profile of these shooters, they have an eerily similar profile.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they do.

Scott Galloway: And it's disaffected young men who are having trouble attaching to work, having trouble attaching to school, and quite frankly, having trouble attaching to relationships. There's an uncomfortable truth that men date and mate horizontally and down, and women date and mate horizontally and up. And because women, young women relative to young men, have done much better—seven out of 10 girls are valedictorians, more women going to college, vastly more women graduating from college—there's just not getting around it. A young, bored, lonely man is the most dangerous person in the world. I want to be clear. I don't think it's anyone's obligation to service young men in any way. But there was a frightening statistic that came out. I don't know if you saw this. It was from Pew, and it said that in 2008, the number of men who had not had sex before the age of 30—in other words, hadn't been in a relationship—was 8%. Do you know what it is now?

Kara Swisher: Oh, don't tell me.

Scott Galloway: It's 27%. And even when you look at places like Sudan where they're really warlike, when you end up with incredible income inequality, you end up with essentially polygamy because the wealthy people get the most selection of mates. Young, bored men who aren't attaching to relationships become violent. That's not to say that gun control isn't a central component here, but I do think income inequality and a lack of prospects for young people—and I'm just saying men, I'm saying women as well, but it just so happens when women don't have a lot of prospects, they tend to not pick up an AR-15. They do not. So I think there's something around investing in not only moms, but also I think we need a much greater focus and more investment in young people who are not college bound. Because we're creating an entire generation—and it's happened in China—of young men who aren't attaching to anything. And unfortunately, a young, bored, unattached man is the most dangerous person in the world. And if they're radicalized by misinformation on social media, or they're fed information that it's a woman's fault that they're alone. So I think we want to talk about guns, but I don't care if it's guns. I don't care if it's systemic racism, gender inequality. I think all of these have a bigger issue at the front. But the incendiary making all of these things worse underneath them is income inequality.

Kara Swisher: 100 percent. Scott, we're going to have to say something positive. We've got to end on a positive note. I went to the National Arboretum, which was free from the U.S. government. Beautiful cherry blossoms, daffodils. That's nice. Everything. It was lovely. And it was lovely to take Clara there who loved it. So that was a positive that there are good things from our federal government.

Scott Galloway: Wonderful. Thanks. National parks. National parks.

Kara Swisher: That's nice, Kara. What's your win?

Scott Galloway: You know, I didn't have a win. Yeah. I'm feeling—I don't know. I don't have a win today. No win. No win. I'm really just—every time this mass shooting stuff comes up, I feel so impotent as an American. I just feel so like, Jesus Christ. I mean, what the fuck is wrong with us?

Kara Swisher: I know.

Scott Galloway: And I don't know how to—we have 40% of the guns and like whatever, 4% of the population. We have more guns than people. We have 5% of the population, but 45% of the guns. I mean, it's just absolutely crazy town. And then what I find just so discouraging is that the gun people like to blame us on the mentally ill. And the reality is a mentally ill person is more likely to be the subject of gun violence than the perpetrator. So mentally ill people not only have enough to deal with, but the NRA blaming them. And we do not have a monopoly on mental illness. We don't over or under index on mental illness. We over index on people's access to weapons of war. I just can't understand. And again, I sort of blame Democrats. The NRA is on the ropes. They're financially mismanaged. Wouldn't this be the time to go in and break their fucking backs?

Kara Swisher: Well, guess who's doing that? Tish James in New York.

Scott Galloway: I hope so. She is.

Kara Swisher: I hope so. But see, the thing is, New York is actually pretty good on gun control and on gun violence. She's going after their bankruptcy. She's going after them in a way. They're trying to escape her attempts. But yeah, I agree. We got to get our government to intervene in a lot of these areas. In any case. Arboretum, please. It also does link with governors like Asa Hutchinson or senators like Ted Cruz who are appalling as people. I'm sorry. And by the way, Jeff Bezos, stop fucking tweeting like that. Act like a man. Man up and give your case. Come on.

Scott Galloway: Get back to the dick pics, says the jungle cat.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's fine. Do what you're good at. You get mad all you want. We don't want to see your tweets. You get mad all you want about your pictures. We want to see Big Ed and the Twins. We are good with that. But for five, just stop. Just stop. You're the richest person in the world. Stop. Thank you. That is my job application for that. You want, make me head of the Washington Post and I'll tell you where to get off. That's how I say. That is my job application. Don't be an asshole, Jeff. This is getting ugly.

Scott Galloway: Let's go back to the Arboretum.

Kara Swisher: All right. That's the show. We'll be back Friday for more. There's so much news, Scott. It's crazy.

Scott Galloway: There's a lot of news.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the Pivot podcast. The link is also in our show notes. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Camila Salazar. Ernie Indra Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Kara Swisher: America isn't what it is. It's what we make of it.

Scott Galloway: Gun control can absolutely happen, Kara. This is, for God's sakes, it was time a long time ago, but now especially it's time.

Kara Swisher: You.