A Long Talk About Billionaires, With Billionaire Mark Cuban

Cody, Katy, and Robert have a very long conversation with Mark Cuban about everything, particularly billionaires.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, So don't don't hello and welcome back

(00:22):
to Worst Year Ever. My name is Katie Stull. Uh.
Today we have a very special guest, Mark Cuban uh
and UH, the boys, Sophie and I chatted with him
for a very long time and that's what we're presenting
for you guys today. I will give you a quick disclaimer.

(00:43):
There were some audio issues and we're we are addressing them,
but you're you love us and you're gonna roll with
the punches, I think, UM cool. Anyway, here we go. Um.
So yeah, Mark, thank you for being here on talking
to us. A little background so about I don't know,

(01:03):
many months ago I responded to some of your tweets
and then we had a little back and forth and
that was fun. Uh. And then we did a little
d M S. I believe I asked you if you
would give me money a bunch of times, um, and uh.
We ended up we talked about like you know, capitalism, socialism,
a lot of different things, um, which I think we

(01:25):
something like, well you got so much, just give me some, right.
I mean that logic seems sound to me, but so
I think we do disagree on a lot of things. UM, so, uh,
we'll probably get into that, but um, we also will
you know, we'll talk about all the things that you've
done recently and in general from your position. But on

(01:47):
that note, we sort of wanted to open up about
the sort of larger question that we I think got
into a little bit where um Alexandro Acasio Cortez, as
we all know who she is, um her senior counsel
and policy advisor Dan Riffle change his Twitter name to
every billionaire is a policy failure. Last year in September,

(02:08):
Bernie Sanders wrote there should be no billionaires. We are
going to tax their extreme wealth and invest in working people.
Both Sanders and Kasya Cortez are extremely popular with young Americans,
and in general, just that idea that the billionaire class
should be reduced or eliminated via economic reform is increasingly popular.
So we're sort of curious how it feels to hear
that and how you feel about the sentiment that people

(02:31):
being able to accumulate your level of wealth is part
of what's wrong with our society. Well, I mean, look,
I've been poor, I've been you know, had my lights
turned off. I've had my credit cards cut, I've been
had my credit turned down. I've lived six guys in
a three bedroom apartments, sleeping on the floor with a
pile of clothes, you know, not spending more than twenty bucks,

(02:52):
gaining forty pounds because you know, buy one b already
five pounds of fried mushrooms at a bar. So I've
been on that side, and I've been on this side.
Descip is much better. Yeah, we're gonna give me a
shit about it. I don't care now in terms of
how I got here and what's right or what's wrong. Look,
part of it was hard work, part of it was smart,

(03:13):
part of it was lucked. You know what percentage each
all hypothetical? I don't know. Is it a policy failure?
Not necessarily. I don't think it's. You know, when you
have you're always going to have extremes, no matter what.
If everybody made the exact same amount of money, but
one person grabbed the plot of land next to the ocean,
and somebody else grabbed the plot of land that's in

(03:35):
a floodplain, you're gonna have people who are at different
extremes on the on the realm of asset ownership right,
And so the question becomes, how do you deal with
the people that need to help the mote? And so
when you say, you know, billionaires are a pot of
failure of policy. Problem isn't that they're they're billionaires. The

(03:56):
problem is that there are people who aren't living up
to standards and aren't having don't have the things that
they need. That's a problem, And the question becomes, how
do you solve it? Yeah, I'm curious what you think
is sort of the government's role in solving it as
opposed to more like society's role in solving it, Like,
what is how much of this of solving that is
social pressure? And how much of it do you think
should be things like changing the way taxes work, changing

(04:18):
the way inheritance works. You know, well, I'm a capitalist,
so I believe in the marketplace of ideas. I don't
care where the idea comes from, whether it's government, I
don't care if it comes from a communist, a socialist,
a capitalist. You know, the question becomes, when you look
at the problem, how do you solve it? You know,
when when I look at the problem of incoming equality,
it's a given that no matter what your hourly rate

(04:40):
is if you're one of the seventy seven million people
that are paid by the hour, you're probably gonna live
paycheck to paycheck and you're probably going to struggle at
some level whether that you know, whether you take a
working wages fifteen dollars or fifty dollars. Right Because of
that uncertainty in when you're living paycheck to paycheck or hour,
or you're getting paid by the hour, then it's hard
to really accumulate any type of asset based to increase

(05:03):
your network. And so the question I've always asked and
wanted to solve is how do I take people who
live out our hour give them the opportunity to increase
their network, Because if they have asset based, if they
whether it's a home, whether it's a bank account, you know,
you guys know better than I do. People don't have
four dollars in case there's a problem, how do you

(05:24):
change that? And then on the flip side, you say
that the government best suited to do them. Yeah, they
can pass the laws. But if every tax dollar that
you pay ends up in only cents or fifty cents
or even seventy five cents getting to the people who
need it, you're not solving the problem. So I've I've
always looked at it to say, there's a problem that
needs solving, what's the best way to get there, and

(05:46):
just being dogmatic about it. You know, all billionaires are
bad or this is all bad. The government's got to,
you know, provide all the solutions because capitalism just doesn't work,
and socialism is better, but democratic socialism is even better.
Communist is good unless it's bad. You know, when when
you talk about you know, parties and and dogma, that's

(06:07):
the only thing I know is going to be wrong.
You talk about ideas and you talk about trying to
solve problem, then at least we have a shot. And
then that's about creating movements, getting people to look towards
those solutions, and helping you implement. Thank you for that.
And I was really interested in something that you said
in late March in an interview with Just Capital, where
you you stated your belief that during this pandemic, shareholders

(06:29):
should come last, for the people who run corporations and
employees and their family members should come first. And as
someone who runs gigantic businesses and has for a while,
when we're not in sort of you know, plague times
as we are right now. Um, in what situations in
sort of normal life do you think employees and their
families should come first? And what situations do you think

(06:50):
shareholders should come first? Every company in normal times has
got a life cycle, right. So when I started my company,
right and I've took I took the risk you know
I got when I told you I was living six
guys in the three three betterm apartment. I got a
job at the bartender at night, and I was working
selling software during the day. And I got fired, you know,

(07:12):
and I quit my job as the bar Actually I
was a bar back of bartending just a little bit.
And you know, I started this and I had no money,
and I convinced somebody to put five dollars up and
I told him, if that, you know, the software I
told him did work. I walked their dog, washed their car,
or whatever it took to make them happy. I took
that risk, and I feel like in every situation, someone

(07:35):
who's taking that risk should benefit the most. Bernie Sanders
wrote his book, he shouldn't share all the money he
made from his book. He earned it. Now as the
company grows, different roles to come in, you hire different people.
And I'm of the attitude and I've done this the
companies I've started, not only companies I've invested in, but
the companies i've started UM. I've given everybody equity because

(07:57):
I recognized that in order for the company to grow,
my my employees or the employees should be shaables because
they contribute whatever it is they have to do, and
if they do it well, the company grows and everybody benefits.
And I think that's the way it should be. But
on the flip side, you know, there's different kinds of
companies in different circumstances. So in the company that UM

(08:21):
you hire CEO, the CEO is not au fond founder.
I think it's more likely that all employees are are
should be should be. Well, let me take a step back.
I was talking about life cycles. So as a company
grows and companies have different roles and different layers of management,
I think it's not it's not wrong so that people

(08:42):
at the top are making more, are owning more shares
of stock, right, or gather gaining more shares of stock
because hopefully in that company they're taking on more responsibility
and more risks. Right, But still at the same time,
everybody in the company should own shares of stock. Now,
when you come into a city situation like this, where
there's just an all stop, everything just ended, just came

(09:05):
to a complete halt, then everybody's on the same layer,
on the same level. Right, the CEO isn't going to
contribute all that much more than the person who waxes
the floors, because you're going from nothing to having to restart.
And if everybody doesn't do their job to the best
of their ability, the company doesn't work, particularly when you're

(09:27):
having to bring people in from disparate situations that are
you know, it's basically a food bar situation, so everything
is uncertain. And so now in those circumstances like we
have now, every employee is just as important as the CEO.
Twenty years from now, it could be a different equation,
but right now, that's the way it is. So everybody

(09:48):
should have equity in the company. Not everybody should get
paid the same, not everybody should own the same amount
of equity. But when the company grows, and particularly if
there's an accident it's solved, everybody gains. Now we're we
do we should put employees first because employees are going
to help you probably more than the CEO right now,
your general employees or we're gonna help you more than

(10:09):
your CPO. Just sort of on this because you've and
like you talked about like your practices at your company,
which I don't think a lot of other companies have
those same practices. Um, and we can have those practices.
You mean like that you're you're continuing to pay your
hourly workers for the duration of this and right right
a lot of the things that you're doing during this crisis,

(10:30):
but also in general, you're talking about equity and uh
and yes, keeping them employed even though they're not actually
doing the work. Do all you guys work for the
same company. We all work for I Heeart Radio in
somewhere or another, more or less in somewhere or another.
Who owns the equity in the company right now? Who started?
So there's two different things. Cody and I have our
own company for some more news and and this show

(10:54):
is a production of I Heeart Radio. So we are
contract employees for iHeart Radio and owners of our and
I'm a full time employee for I Heart Radio. And yeah,
so we're a huge corporation. So Cody for your guys company.
Are you are you too the only ones in the company? Yes? Yes, okay,
And I'm guessing you guys working for I Heart, particularly

(11:14):
as contractors, you guys, are you are you guys are
independent contractors? Are employees? We're employees? Yeah? Yeah, full time
employee contractors. So Katie and Cody A are are have
like a talent contract with I Heart So they're contingent alright?
Just curious? Well, so, I guess I guess my real

(11:36):
question is, um. You've also talked about this moment sort
of as uh an opportunity to like rewrite the rules
of how society works, sort of like as a this
is a an American reset. One point out, I think
you referred to it as what are some things in
your company that you've always done that you think might
be good for legislation to make all companies sort of

(11:57):
operate that way? And what are some things that this
situation have made you reconsider and think about in other
ways that you think would help in the future when
when there's not a pandemic going on. Yeah, I mean,
I don't know that you legislated UM, but I think
it's Look, I think what really has changed right now

(12:19):
is the need for leadership right because there's so much
uncertainty there. The only thing that we know for sure
is that we don't really know anything right now about
what's going on. Yeah, we really don't know. We don't
know how long this is gonna last. We can guess
on the impact, but we don't know how long we're

(12:39):
stuck inside. And when that happens, when you have a
void of information, that's where leadership is most important. And
so what I think is and why you've seen me
more vocal, not because I'm thinking I think this is
a great leader. It's just because no one else is
saying anything. You know. It just happened to happen that
the NBA season stopped while the Dallas Mavericks were playing

(13:01):
the game, and they interviewed me, and I told them
when I thought about paying our hourly workers. And then
people ask me more about how I like to you know,
what I thought about our employees, how I thought things
should work, and so I just kind of fell into this.
But when you have a void of leadership, it's hard
for people to know. It's hard to people know what
to do or what comes next. And so I think

(13:24):
what you need right now is somebody who can connect
with all different viewpoints and understand where everybody is coming from,
recognizing that we're not in a ready aim fire mode.
We're in a ready fire aimal mode, because if we
don't get the stimulus deal done, then you know, people
can't control their own lives. And when people can't don't

(13:44):
feel like they can control their own lives, or they
feel desperate, they go out into the streets and you
have civil you know, you have unrest, and that's the
worst thing that can happen. So you know, when you say,
what's the thing that's missing or what's the thing I've learned,
I've learned that I've learned who the leaders are and
who they're not, and I've learned the importance of leadership
trying to introduce that to help our companies with it.

(14:06):
I'm curious, uh, what you think of this stimulus package
that was passed last week last year whenever that was
everything time doesn't is meaningless now because I know you
had a lot of thoughts about stock buy backs and
how what should happen um And yeah, I'm curious to
hear your thoughts on it. I mean, if this deal
had been had been negotiated three weeks earlier, I would

(14:27):
have said that the these who get money should never
be allowed to buy back stock, that they should only
be allowed to pay dividends of all employees received those dividends.
That you know, whatever you do for the CEO, you
have to do for every employee, so that the CEO
makes a million dollars a year and you give them
a million dollars worth of stock options were value and
repricing stock options, and you have someone who acts the

(14:48):
floors and makes thirty dollars a year, that person get
equivalent in value as well, so that everybody stands to game.
So I would have included that. I also would have,
you know, my better negotiator for we the people, and
that and also asked for stock warrants for the government.
You know, if you look at the deal that Warren
Buffett did when he bailed out Bank of America UM

(15:10):
ten years ago, he gave them five billion dollars to
help them survive, but he also asked for warrants, which
allows you to buy stock at a given price by
some day in the future, and he made another twelve
billion dollars off of that. People whoever is negotiating for
the United States taxpayers should be asking for the same thing.
And if Boeing or any other company doesn't want to

(15:30):
do that, let them get the money somewhere else, or
go out of business if they don't feel it's necessary.
So I think, you know, uh, it wasn't perfect, but
in terms of what we got, um, I think I
think it's platform herble and hopefully we'll take the steps
to really have some And I've even volunteered. I said, look,

(15:51):
I'll put on my chart tank hat and you put
me in the negotiations with Bowing or whoever, and we're
getting a great deal. Right, We're gonna own a big chunk. Yeah,
that's when we happened. Someone needs to represent we the people,
because that's what's been missing and what was missing ten
years ago. I think that's a really reasonable idea. And
I hear that you're kind of coming at a lot

(16:13):
of this from you know, it sounds like to me
sort of a top down per perspective, Like you you
think that one of the things missing in this crisis
is sort of like a central like like like a
solid voice of leadership, not just arguing for people, but
kind of laying out what needs to happen, and I
I agree with you. I think we've seen an absence
of that. But I also can't help but feel like

(16:34):
a lot of the solution to the problems that are
kind of being made very clear right now is more
input from people on the bottom. Um. You know. I
think we've seen some corporations respond well to this, we've
seen a lot respond poorly. And the ones that have
responded poorly have ignored the people who make their companies work. Um.
And I think I like one of the things that

(16:55):
I'm really interested is in from Sanders is he has
a plan that would require publicly traded companies to gift
two percent of their stock or more to employees per
year until of the company was employee owned. That's not enough, right,
That's not enough right. So like the companies that I have,
typically they'll do a ten percent option pool that's available
to all employees. And that's where I started already, so

(17:17):
you know, having it grow. When I say not enough, right,
I think, when it's all said and done, an averaged doubt.
I'm not saying every company needs to give or more,
but when it's all said and done, an averaged out.
It should be normal because remember what I said, every
good company should give stock to every single employee, right,
and so you should end up if you do it

(17:37):
that way. You shouldn't have to grant every single year.
You should be rewarding people when you hire them. You
should be rewarded and start up just like you guys
did when you started your company, right as you know.
That's how that's and it should end up being more
than there. There really should be companies that you have
to force to grant options to them. Well, are you

(17:57):
saying that you should have to force comes? I'm not
sure if that got garbled up. I'm saying you shouldn't
have to. And I also saying that there's no problem
in shaming those companies that don't do it, because I think,
and I've said this before, how you treat your employees
right now when the ships, when everybody's backs up against
the wall is going to be how you're defined as
a brand for decades and you don't take care of

(18:20):
your employees. Now, look, we live in in a video.
We live in a look at my brand generation? Right,
everybody's kind of social media. He's really proud of his brand.
He's gonna wrap you know, he's gonna bust on everybody,
you know. And that's the thing, right, Tody's you know, Tod,
he's not gonna wear a T shirt that says, you know,

(18:43):
I love billionaires And if you know, and he's not, well,
how much are you gonna pay me to wear that shirt?
To get my point right? So, companies who aren't doing
things right. Every everybody's Instagram account is their definition of
who they are as a brand, as an individual brand,
And so you're not going to buy products and put
them on your account if you don't think they represent

(19:04):
who you are. You know, It's why Bernie Sanders has
had such a movement. People want that's who they want
their brand to be. They want to be associated with that.
And so when you say, you know, you need to
have I hope we don't have to legislate it. I
hope it's just a common sense thing to do. And
I'm kind of curious to sort of push on this
a little bit. How if if you were in a

(19:24):
position of sort of national political importance, how would you,
without legislation, try to push businesses to institute something like this.
You can send them via the tax tax law right,
you can send them. You know, if you just legislate it,
it creates so many problems because then remember, I mean,
there's just there's always trying trying to find an equilibrium

(19:48):
is always the hard part, right. But there's all kinds
of tax incentives you can do where you know, you
get a deduction for that that stock. There's you know,
it's tax free to the employee, you know, if they
hold it for more than five years. And I've written
a lot about written a lot about this on my
blog blog bavern. I think that CEO should only be
paid in stock and make and I'm sorry, I think

(20:10):
that CEO should only be paid in cash because cash
is the most dear asset to a corporation. And you
just pay them a salary and let them go out
and buy it on the open market. For any company
that doesn't give stock to their their own employees. Okay,
And I'm curious. You know, you've been a billionaire for
a while, Mark Um. And in fact, I grew up

(20:30):
in the Dallas I grew up in the Dallas area,
and I think it was either you were Ross Perot
was the first billionaire that like, you know, when we
were like our our word for rich was Mark Cuban
a lot of the time. And I I feel as
if the national conversation around billionaires has changed rather sharply.
And there's a lot of people right now who have

(20:50):
a lot of a really extreme amount of anger towards
what they would refer to as the billionaire class. And
I'm wondering, just kind of on an emotional level, how
has how it feed eels to have you know, that
level of wealth changed, and how have you sort of
noticed the conversation around it changed as that sort of
interfaced with your own life. I mean, I ignore bank
account biggots, bank accounting, but I'm so is it it

(21:17):
hasn't been um like, just the fact that that's a
popular topic of conversation has kind of been something you've
you've you've not sort of, uh, I don't know, taken
to personally. I mean, I don't ignore a somebody who's poor.
I don't ignore an idea from somebody who's rich. And
somebody actually have a little bit less respect for somebody
who ignores what I say. Well, once I once I

(21:39):
became wealthier, and if I you know, and would have
accepted what I said if I was when I was poor, right,
that doesn't make sense to me. I'm I'm a big
believer that good idea should rise to the top. And
have you I'm wondering, like, have you had to like
take any particular steps to sort of make sure that
you're able to stay in contact with people who you
know aren't at a higher level of wealth, because that's

(22:00):
something that does kind of get harder the more you
have is it's something you have to really like think
about doing, yeah, to stay accessible. No, my best friends
are still my best friends from high school and college.
You know, when I moved to Dallas and I was
hanging out, which I lived in the village and you know,
that was my six guys and three better you know,
in a three betterm apartment. There's still my best friends.
So I don't you know, it's not like I look

(22:21):
for people, Oh my god, you're rich, can we be friends? No,
that's right, my friends friends, you know, and those are
the same people. And you know when I go out,
you know, if you ever saw me around Dallas or
whatever with my family or before you know, you know,
I'm just me. I just go to the same place
as I've always gone to do the same things I've

(22:41):
always done. I mean, I have a nicer car, I
have a plane, I have stuff I never dreamed of having.
That's what's changed. My bank accounts obviously changed. But if
you talk to my friends, my nickname in high school
is Boris because I took Russian and I sat next
to a girl who decided to name herself Natasha. So
from fourth in the hash if you know the old
Rocky Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. My high school

(23:04):
friends still call me boys and it doesn't matter, right,
And so it's not about you know, how do I
stay connected? No, yeah, I'm curious. So, Okay, we're in
the midst of a global pandemic. There's some sort of
a great equalizer in that um there, in that we're
all quarantined together. We're all going through an experience, although

(23:27):
of course your experience is probably much different than mine.
I assume you have a home gym and stuff like that,
and we're making do. But what are the experiences that
you think are universal, like are you are you taking
up your kids education at home? Are you doing their
homeschooling and stuff like that? Look, do I have it easier?
You know? Because my I was on we did um

(23:50):
Google handouts with a bunch of my high school buddies
last night, and one of them had just gotten laid
off when we were talking about it, and he's bummed
and he's pissed and all this, and we're talking about
filing for or benefits and he's like, what are you
guys doing? You know, tenne slash basketball court out back
and I can go shoot with my son I've got,
you know, I've got a thirteen and sixty year old daughter.

(24:12):
And they ignore me either way. It doesn't matter how
much money I am, unless you want to do a
TikTok video, exactly right. I do have a lot of
empathy for the teenagers during this this crisis, because what
a nightmare, Oh my god, stuck with your parents, not
being able to be with your friends, just all this
being so uncertain. But the one common denominators fear. Yeah,

(24:33):
we hear for our families, we fear for our friends,
we fear for ourselves. We fear the uncertainty, and there's
no amount of money that can change us. Yeah, it's
really easy for us all to forget that when we're
we're sitting in the midst of our own fear is
to look at what other people have and to say like,
well they don't get it. No, we get it. We
can all relate to that. Just we don't know what's

(24:55):
going to happen. Yeah, I'm curious what you think Mark about.
So we're having this kind of national conversation about the
social safety net, you know, in the wake of all this,
and like where it should be. And at least in
my mind, when we talk about the social safety net,
what we're talking about is like the floor, Like what
is the floor we should allow UM in our society?
You know, what is kind of the minimum that we

(25:15):
think we should try make sure that people have UM?
And I wonder or wages or what do you think
what pick a pick a segment because that covers a lot. Sure, sure,
I guess Yeah, let's start with UM. Let's start with
access to UM. You know, a roof over your head,
like with with with homelessness and stuff like what do
you think like that that has been thrown into sharp

(25:37):
relief by this and the fact that there's a disease spreading. Now,
what do you think is the minimum Americans should expect
when it comes to shelter. I think they should expect shelter. Now,
not everybody's going to take you up on it, but
I don't know. I have no problem at all. I mean,
we need to an asset. We look, when I talked
about America two point oh and a reset, one of

(25:57):
the things that we should do is reevaluate awning laws
because as we learned to work from home, as companies,
particularly retailers, go out of business because of shopping online, um,
now all of a sudden there may be more space,
there may be more opportunity to rebuild. You know, I
don't want they shouldn't be shelters, they should be homes. Right.

(26:17):
But the hard part, the hard part isn't shouldn't we
do it? The hard part is how do we do it?
And where right. One of the things that has has
come up is that you know, when I came out
of college, relocating to go to any city where you've
got a job was do a big deal. Now people
don't want to relocate. They don't want to go where
there might be plenty of space or plenty of land.
They want to stay where they're comfortable. They want to

(26:38):
stay closer to their families, or even if they have
no families, they want to stay where their weather is
nice or whatever it may be, right, and so how
do you balance that? So what if we built two
thousand units in Idaho and it was cheap and it
was free, cheap to live free to whoever is living
there for some period of time, if not permanently, but
they don't want to go to Idaho? How do you

(27:00):
deal with that? K What do you build them elsewhere? Right?
You can build a lot of places, But what if
it's not that I want to go. I love you know,
you're there's not Dallas is too dance. We can't build
him here. But if you go down to pick a
small town and texts it's too hot there, it's too dry,
right for whatever reason. That's the challenge because all want

(27:22):
that free will to be able to make our own decisions,
and so not everybody wants to go where they're told
to go, And so I have balance of liberty and support.
That's part of the hard part. When you talk about housing,
and I think we can agree like there there needs
to be more housing available, you know, even though that
like yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely, The issue isn't enough right

(27:44):
or more. Rather, the issue is it's enough right, And
at some point when you're going from more to enough,
there's a lot of people that are going to be
asked to do things they don't want to do in
and that's where it's hard to find the equilibrium. That's
where people get upset. How could you not give this
person exactly what they want? How could you not do this?

(28:04):
How could you not do that? That's where it's hard
to find answer. Yeah, it's tough because, like what you're
talking about is, you know, like building all housing in
this this random space, Well, how do you incentivize industries
to go there as well so that there's opportunities for
people to move there. You know, my dad works in
nonprofit uh drug rehabilitation and works with the communities in

(28:26):
northern California and and one of the issues that they
come across a lot is is homelessness. And he's come
up against like what you mentioned, zoning, different laws, like
people willing to come in and build you know, prefab
places housing communities and not being able to get zoning
clearances from the community even though the community wants that.

(28:48):
But now that we're about to hit at some point
when we get to the other side of this America
two point oh, that can change and will change, right
because so many companies are going to go out of business,
so many Right, it's there that there's going to be
space available, it's not. It's just a question of, you know,
how do you pay for a lot of this because

(29:09):
we're gonna go six trillion dollars in death and it's
going to go worse than that because there's there's so
much forbearance on taxes being paid that every municipality, every county,
every city, every state is going to see their their
tax revenues decline by who knows how much. And all
those programs that are great programs are not going to
be funded and we could borrow more, and I'm not

(29:32):
against that at all, But that's where leadership comes in,
because you've got to have somebody that has a sense
of compassion, the ability to execute on these compassionate items,
and somebody with a mind for business that understands the
hard parts finding the equilibrium across all of this because
there aren't rules and it's going to be imperfect information.

(29:54):
That's gonna be hard. Yeah, I think you're I agree
with what you're saying there. Um, I I think that though,
like it seems to me at least that part of
the solution is you know, money is required, and so
the question is like where to get that money? Debt
is absolutely part of it. UM, what do you think
in terms of UH spend all that money now in America?

(30:15):
Point on what the reset right? You have to realize
that a lot of what we're doing with stimulus is
forbearing money that would otherwise be paid in taxes. And
given that a lot of people are going to be
auto work and companies are going to be closed, tax
revenue is going to drop significantly. So we still can
we still can borrow money, but being effective and how

(30:36):
you use that is critical because if it doesn't turn
out right, then we can end up in the depression
where nobody has the opportunity to help with anybody else.
And that's yeah, that's that's a very good point. And
I wonder what you see as sort of the role
if any, in increasing UH tax the tax BREA in particularly,
like a big part of the conversation that pops up

(30:57):
online is like Amazon only paid X in taxes or
didn't pay you know, federal taxes. How much of the
of the solving that problem do you think is UM
increasing levying new taxes on you know, the wealthy, and
on businesses like I. I personally no minor probably going
to go up. I've said it to Cody, I've said
in a hundred times I think had no problem with

(31:18):
my taxes going up. My tax rate this year was right.
I literally didn't take every every deduction I could have
taken because I wanted to pay a little bit. I'm
the idiot that wants to pay a little bit more
in taxes, and I'm the literally written a check to
the Dallas Treasury to try to help. But all that said,
taxes will go up, but the tax bases because of

(31:39):
all this is gonna prob absolutely. And so look, I'm
not a Bernie fan for a lot of reasons. But
I'm not against a lot of Bernie's ideas. But what
I'm against on Bernie is that he has no ability
to execute on them, and so he's not well. You
can argue that Elizabeth warren't put together a plan that
I don't know whether or not she could execute or
not they I would argue that she hasn't shown that

(32:01):
she's able to um and Bernie has said, I don't
need to explain to you at all in America America
one point oh. Maybe you could get through that because
you had well finding out now maybe there was two,
two trillions or six trillions, well right, and how much
we could borrow. But now that bluff, if it was there,
is gone. Right. So you need somebody who who can

(32:22):
communicate to everybody and understand the needs to lift people
up because you know the top is going to be
compressed dramatically. I can't even tell you how many hundreds
of millions of dollars I've lost, you know. And so yeah,
I'll still pay I'll still pay more taxes, and I'm
okay with that because I'm still in good shape. But
what I will tell you talking to talk, when I
talk to other like team owners, liquity, I think what

(32:45):
a lot of people don't understand from Bernie's angle Lizabeth
Orn's angle in the five text in America two point oh,
liquidity dropped dramatically. So if you happen to be worth
a hundred thousand dollars um which house or two dollars
with your house, how much do we expect that you
have in cash or liquid assets available in the bank.

(33:07):
The percentage you have is probably not all that much different.
From somebody who is far, far wealthier. And so when
you talk about taxi more after all this that has
happened in America two point oh, the liquidity of the
one for centers has dropped dramatically. And I'm not saying
give them any empathy or simpathy, No, not at all.
What I'm saying is, if you're going to get this right,

(33:30):
and you really want to lift up the bottom and
you will want to reduce income inequality, you have to
take into consideration reality and everything that happened. So, I
guess how do you feel a lot of this conversation
seems very familiar just in the past many decades to
sort of stall the progress. So if you're saying, like, well,
I like this idea of this plan, but it can't

(33:52):
be implemented, That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying, Look,
if you if it was me sitting down with you guys,
we could could come up with a plan that worked, right,
because we would care about finding something that would have
people using the word equilibrium a balance to it, right.
Because I think business thrives when you lift the bottom.
The top should be able to lift our We should

(34:13):
be able to lift ourselves. Right, we should be I cannot.
We should be entrepreneurial, we can be innovative, we can invest,
we can lift ourselves. You need to lift the bottom.
But what's happened now, and as we try to get
to the other side of this, the bottom is fallen
out for the bottom. They didn't have to fall as
far as everybody else is falling right, But the bottom
is falling out for a lot of the one per

(34:34):
cent as well. And you've actually compressed the delta between
the bottom and the top if things stay the same
the way it is now, right with the markets and
everything else, I mean, you're seeing real estate in some
cities just collapse. You're seeing business values just collapse. And
so people you know, look again, no sympathy for me,
but other people who may not have been so wealthy

(34:56):
or or as as prepared for this as I was.
Um now all of a sudden you can tax them more.
They just it's not there anyone happen money. Yeah, and
so how do you how do you deal with that
in this environment after a reset? And what you do
is you say, all everything is off the table. Whatever
you were dogmatic about before, put that aside and saying

(35:18):
what do people need to live? Right? And I'm fine
with fifteen dollars an hour as long as everybody plays
by the same rules. Is that? And how can we
increase equity? Well, at the housing market collapse, maybe we
can get people into homes far less expensively and support
them so that they can own their own homes if
they're making enough of a living ways to do that?

(35:38):
And how do we tax people to get there? Yeah,
people like me are going to pay more, But you
have to look at extraneous programs as well and say
do we really need this, this or this being paid
for by the government, because now tax revenues have dropped dramatically,
So how do you solve all these problems knowing that
tax revenues are cutting off even after taxing, people like

(36:00):
need far more because well, we looked at Elizabeth Warren's
numbers for the amount of money raised. They were they
were high based off of what I knew about my
own liquidity, and now they're gonna be far lower. How
do you balance all that so you get it to work. Yeah,
off the top of your head, what would you consider
extraneous programs that wouldn't need to be I mean you

(36:23):
hate to say it, but maybe some arts programs, you know,
putting the statue in front of the hospital, you know,
putting the statue in the park. Um. Maybe even though
it's great to see artists paid that they need as
much as anybody, that's something you say, Okay, maybe we
don't have to do that. She don't need to give
you know, tax breaks for people like me at all.

(36:46):
You know, well, I agree with that, but again, of course,
I mean I I won't hold that to you. But yeah,
it shouldn't be just me making the decision. And that's
the point. And one thing I wanted to kind of
bring in is sort of this another in terms of
national discussions that we're having right now. One is the
idea of people who are like taking advantage of this

(37:07):
current crisis and using it to make a pile of money.
And you've had some dealings as a result of three
M and some of the stuff that's happened in terms
of like gouging of of medical supplies, And I wonder
if you wouldn't mind sort of relating, um, because at
least the story that I've read is that you were
getting emails basically trying to sell you these face masks
and stuff. Is that? Yeah, So could you tell me

(37:28):
about that? I'm kind of curious about, Like, when a
pandemic hits in the economy collapses, what sort of emails
a billionaire business owner starts to get hustle, so you know,
whether it's fake watches, real watches, um fuel in New
Jersey and New York to get around taxes, drugs, illegal drugs, whenever.

(37:49):
Wherever there's a black market, it thrives when there's a
lack of information. And what happened with the surgical masks
the N ninety five that we're all stressing about because
our front line health care workers of people who are
saving our asks and saving the ass the people who
are getting sick, they don't even have these masks to
help keep them safe. And so what happened was there

(38:10):
are only like three or four domestic manufacturers of those
mass um when this all hit, and three M was
the biggest of them. And so I started looking into
it because it didn't make sense to me that there
there weren't enough mass um. And as it turns out,
three M cells through these exclusive distributors, and those exclusive

(38:31):
exclusive distributors would not give out any information to anybody,
whether you're a hospital or a third party or whatever.
They would just say, you know what place in order,
you can't cancel it, and we'll fill it when we
can fill it. And oh, by the way, you're not
gonna get the same number of masks. And and in
this particularly case, with three M to their credit um,
they increased their production and they supposedly kept all their

(38:53):
pricing the thing, but they ghosted everybody in terms of
what was actually happening in the market. And I said
publicly was Look, there is a product manager at three
M who knows everything about the surgical mass business. He
or she is an expert. Can tell you where every
surgical mask is made around the world, who uses it,

(39:13):
who the primary customers are, how they're distributed. All you
have to do three M is get a person who
has that knowledge to speak up so we understand what's
happening in the surgical mass market and the personal protection market,
so that we all don't freak out about our health
care providers. And we all don't have you know, we
all have somebody in our extended family who works in healthcare,

(39:35):
and we're not scared shitless for their health. They won't
do it right, and when they and others don't do that,
you've got people that are panicking. And so now you're
getting hospitals and the government and states all chasing the
same sources which are now around the world. These plants
in China have expanded, you know, and plants in China

(39:57):
can turn around and start making these masks. But for
some reason, and we can't here. You know, we're not
as fast. Even though Honeywell and some mothers have done
some good things to increase production, we don't seem to
be able to do that here. But the experts who
understand these business business are basically silent. And when you
have that silence, you amplify the fear and you get

(40:17):
it results in higher prices. And to me, that's not
being a good corporate citizen. It may not be criminal,
but it's the most it's morally criminal, you know what
I'm saying. Right by by just keeping this market o pay,
you have a lot of people trying to do the
right thing, and by doing that, they're increasing prices for

(40:40):
everybody because there's there's no information and there's nobody in charge.
That's what I had a problem with, and I was
very alloud towards three am, and they responded. You know,
they basically said, we're you know, here's our pricing, we
haven't raised it. That's good. Here's our production, we've increased it.
That's good. And then they goes to this again. Yeah.
I mean, my brother is an emergency room doctor, and

(41:02):
thankfully he's told me they have enough ppe for this week.
But it's definitely something that's on my mind consistently. You know,
how these people speak won't change the facts, but at
least you'll understand it. You know. Again, leadership right when
you have honesty and transparency and communication. That's what good
leaders do, and that's why you get through crises like this. Yeah,

(41:25):
we get everything, don't. You've talked a lot about leadership
and lack of leadership. Uh, And I'm sure this is
a question you've been asked a lot. But would you
be considering running for office of some sort locally or

(41:45):
at some point lofully? I mean, no, that's that's not
who I am. I mean, I you went bigger than that.
I obviously looked at running for president UM, but my
family literally voted into town they said no, otherwise I
would have UM tomorrow and and in this world, who knows,
you know, as as you know I've been saying America
two point oh the reset? You know, who knows what

(42:07):
we need or who we need or how it all works.
But I'll tell you this, I'm not a fan of
who we have and I'm not a fan of who's running.
You know, who have run you. None of the candidates
really got did it for you. I didn't think there
was a leader among them. I didn't think there was.
I think they were all politicians, and not that that's
necessarily bad, but I didn't think they really I like

(42:28):
when Elizabeth Warren, you know, delineated everything she was trying
to do, but I felt like they were all written
by policy wanks and it wasn't authentic to her. I
like Bernie Sanders in terms of pushing a movement and
speaking up for the little guy, but I don't think
he knows how to do it. I think he knows
what to say to get people excited, but he doesn't
know how to execute on it. You know. I think
Joe Biden is a placeholder that's better than Donald Trump,

(42:52):
real exciting, uh campaign, better than Donald Trump. Joe and
I like him. He could do to do a decent job.
But you know, and he he can be a voice
for the people, but he's not a voice of the people,
you know what I'm saying. And he's not a problem
solver per se. He allows things to happen, he doesn't

(43:14):
make things happen. He kind of represents the status quo
in a lot of ways. Um, you know, given what
we're bad, that's not a bad thing, I understand. I
understand how people are compelled by that, especially at this
point in time. It's not what I think we need,
but I understand why people are pulled to it. Yeah,
sometimes you don't get what you need and you just

(43:35):
got to take the best of the options, you know. Sure. So,
as the only NBA fan in this group, Well, I
was about to go to my very first NBA game
when all this happened. So which I was going to
the Clippers? I can't remember. My boyfriend bought the tickets.
It would be like against my moral to not ask
you some NBA questions. You know. NBA is like the

(43:57):
thing that has kept the one thing my entire family
can all agree on. We're huge Laker fans, obviously the Lakers. Sorry,
so I just wanted to ask you a few questions.
You know, realistically, what do you think that the NBA
should do? Like what's the best playoff format? You know?
I know that you talked on ESPN with Stephen A.

(44:17):
Smith and he suggested some sort of like a one
city tournament style playoff thing, Like what do you what
do you think realistically? Now with where we're at isle right,
you've got to make sure what you say. And so
within that realm, you know, having everybody in one big
Vegas hotel or one big complex you know, like an

(44:39):
Olympic village type thing, you would think would be the safest.
But I'm not the expert on that, right, and so
don't listen to me about what's safe and not safe,
you know, listen, We'll listen to the experts. But what
I will say is we need sports. Like you said,
your family, you know, comes together over the Lakers. When
when the company, when Google has their best gar her,

(45:00):
nobody throws a parade. And when the team in city
wins a championship in a major sport, there's parades. Everybody's
going to nuts, everybody's watching, everybody's screaming. Cody, did you
watch sports? Not really but but I do I watch.
We need sports in our lives because we need something

(45:20):
to cheer for. We need something to to communally come together,
you know in l A voting for the Clippers, or
rooting for the Clippers or the Lakers, you're in Dallas
righting the Mavericks, whoever it may be. We want something
to cheer for. Could you imagine if we were having
the Olympics and all this was still going on, and
there was like an underdog United States team and they'd

(45:41):
beat China and something. It would feel good. Oh my god,
We'll all be going nuts. Even if you don't care
anything of sports, right, I certainly always get swept up
at some point or in other sports. I completely agree. Um,
do you think that there's any way are you guys
thinking about any ways to bring that community together via
live stream? I mean we've seen a lot of like

(46:02):
social distance concerts and stuff like that. It would be nice. Absolutely. Look,
I don't think, and I'm just guessing, but I don't
think we play in front of fans for a while,
which means will be watching it on streams and watching
it on television, and again, you know, even though you
won't be with people outside your apartment or house or whatever.

(46:22):
You're going to hear them, you know you're gonna need. Yeah,
I think it would be a good morale booster for
for a lot of people. That's a responsibility that we
have that we we can fill that role. And again,
even though you might not be a sportsman, Cody, Um,
you will benefit from everybody just being cheerier and happier
and more excited and having something to move forward to.

(46:44):
My goodness, right about that? And I think that sports
can be a really healing and important thing for all
of us. Um. I also feel that like one of
the things we need to move away from is um
having politics be treated like sports because in a sports game,
it is like a binary one team wins, the other loses,
and we're we've gotten used to that being the way

(47:06):
politics works, and when a pandemic hits, that's not the
way it works. We either all win or we all lose. Right,
how do we how do we get back to something
or I don't know if we ever were there, but
how do we how do we make politics in America
less like sports? Um? I don't know, that's that's a
good fair answer. Yeah, yeah, we don't either hopefully this
will lead to it and and give us that opportunity.

(47:30):
It's going to have to come from somewhere else, right,
I mean, it's I don't see any of the options
that we see. I don't. I don't think there is
you know, and you're not hearing anything that gives you
comfort from anybody, and you know it's unfortunate. But again,
there's a dearth of leadership in this country. So as
as an NBA owner, how are you as a leader

(47:51):
communicating with your team right now? You know? How are
you keeping your group chat? Yeah? I mean like how
are players? Do you guys all get on Zoom together,
house party not so much me but yeah, or you know,
video games but mostly group chats? Any stupid jefs and beams,
dumb stuff to you know, like everybody does? You know?

(48:11):
I just think of you know, the Lakers and Lebron
being of the age that he is, and you know,
just how our players staying motivated? And do you worry
about injuries once the season does resume things like that
because they're not doing five on five or even any
sort of team team practicing. We've had shortened seasons before,
you know, um for for um negotiations and contract issues

(48:34):
and so you know where after the maps one, Yeah,
maybe back there after I see it Mark, Um. You know,
there was the strike shortened season and so you know,
we put it together so that there was enough of
a training camp that players weren't kid So again, whether

(48:54):
it's the virus or any other reason, we're not going
to risk the players livelihood and their health to just
put together a season. Sure, and you know, just like
the mental health of it all. You know, if there
is a season, it is the sort of thing where
players have to be away from their families, um and
coaching staff. You know what measures is the NBA taking

(49:15):
already to plan for that as well as like honestly,
they don't tell me everything, and I've been busy with
so many other things. You know, this this is so
much bigger than all that. Um. You know, for me,
I look at all these small businesses who are just
getting decimated, and so I've been trying to do as
many of these where I communicate with with small businesses

(49:36):
and try to give them hope and try to give
them guidance, just like you guys are stressing. I mean
you have a podcast and you know advertising drives what
you hope to be your future, and that's got to
be scary as hell, you know, And so where you know,
and so talking to companies and and doing these types
of given takes, and so if you guys want to
ask me questions about that, I'll answer. But you know

(49:57):
that that is stressful. And if I if we can't
keep those small businesses in business, you can't keep those
employees connected. And if those businesses aren't working, you know,
all those independent contractors aren't getting paid either, And so
that's that's a big deal. And so that's really where
I've been trying to focus. And we've got enough people

(50:17):
who deal with all the day today stuff and even
the big picture stuff at the NBA. They don't need
me for for that type of stuff. Yeah, it strikes
me when I listened to like you talked about the
three M things, talk about sort of the importance you
feel now and getting involved in this conversation about like
what should happen as a result of this to stop
the worst case scenarios from occurring and to reset you know,

(50:38):
where we are as a country. Um, you have this
option because both you know, you have a very prominent
uh position, in the media, but also because you're you're
a very wealthy, successful person, and I think from the
outside a lot of us look at people who are
at your level of wealth through our billionaires. Is it's
like having a superpower right in terms of the ability
to change the world around you that you have, of

(51:00):
am I is that hard? But I know what you're saying, Yeah, well,
I'm interested in how you feel about that. If you
wouldn't call it a superpower, what do you think I'm
me and other folks are kind of getting wrong about
what it actually is like to to have those kind
of options that you have, because you definitely have a
different list. I'm not gonna be arrogant. I'm self aware
enough to do that, and I'm not here to tell

(51:21):
you how that's but I've got experience, and so I
the benefit of my experience and that's all I can do.
And I'm you know, there's a lot of people smarter
than me. There's a lot of people dumber than me,
you know, But there aren't a lot of people that
have touched all the different businesses that I have had.
There's not a lot of people that have the combination
of tech and business. Hopefully empathy, you know. Um, and

(51:46):
I haven't always been empathy. I haven't always empathized with
everybody that was That was something I had to learn
the hard way. But um, you know, there's no superpower.
And again, I'll say it again, I just want the
best ideas to rise to the top. And so when
I went back and forth with Cody, you know, that's
why I went back and forth with him. You know,
I don't have to engage with anybody. Yeah, there's a

(52:07):
superpower being wealthy. It's like I can just be arrogant
and turn my back on everybody. But that's not who
I am, and I try to learn from everybody. And
so the only superpower I guess I have is that
I can turn my back and I also can turn
lean in and listen to anybody and not feel threatened. Yeah,
and I wonder sort of as a society, I think

(52:29):
we're all thinking more about our health care professionals because
they're the ones putting their lives on the line to
protect us all from this. Um, what do you think
we owe these people on the other side of this pandemic?
What do you think we owe the folks and doctors
and nurses in hospital janitorial staff, those kind of folks
who are keeping the crucial part of our infrastructure going

(52:50):
right now, Like what do we owe them? I think
you ask them what they want? Yeah, you know, I
think one of the things you know we're going back
a little bit to healthcare and support of us is
I think med school should be free. Now. You know,
I know Bernie wants free college for everybody, but I
think the way he approached it was wrong because the
way he approached it by saying it is just free

(53:10):
for everybody from any public university. Every university has already
proven that they're really good at jacking up tuition and
boarding and roomen boarding costs, and all you're doing is
giving them a license to do it even more and right,
and so there's ways to say in every region, you
you allowed the schools to bid, and you pick one

(53:32):
school that is the free school, and you make community
colleges free because that localizes them more. But no matter
what for med schools, since it's hard to get in
and it's expensive, and we need more doctors. There's only
a million practicing doctors right now. We have two point
four um doctors per thousand people, which is less than

(53:52):
most of Western Europe, and so we don't We were
not in a position so when something like this hits,
we're less prepared. And so, yes, whatever they want, because
they've earned it, but we don't have enough doctors. Really,
monetary isn't going to be all that much benefit to them,
because you know, maybe you pay off their loans, but
they're still gonna have to do the job, and we're
still gonna be shorthanded, you know, So we need to

(54:14):
get more doctors in the system. Now. A lot of
doctors would argue on that, our specialists, because I've had
this argument with them that for specialists, you don't want
too many. If you look at the difference between the
United States and Canada, the big delta, isn't it with
the number of physicians they have for thousand people. The
big delta is they have a lot more um primary
care doctors and we have a lot more specialists. And

(54:36):
the private primary care doctors act as the gateways into
the health care system, which regulates how much health care
is used, and we haven't really addressed that here. We
just let everybody go to the doctor that they want,
how and when they want it, and we don't regulate
at all. But if we increase the number of primary
care physicians, we can we can start to address some

(54:57):
of these things. And you do a lot of that
by opening the door. You want to bring the bottom
up more. You open the doors and make med school free.
And if we do that, if med school only costs
fifty dollars um a cement, it was a fifty semester
a hundred thousand dollars a year. And I forget, I
think there are eight thousand med students at any given
point in time. That's eight billion dollars a year. It's

(55:19):
worth it because the doctor population is aging. And you
can tell I've spent a lot of time with you
because you know me to Cody, healthcare is important to me,
and I'm against single payer across the board, but I'm
for a hybrid version, a single payer and open market.
I'm I'm a single payer supporter of myself. But I
can definitely agree with you that I can't think of

(55:41):
a better way to spend eight billion dollars than more doctors. Yeah,
books for the best candidates, but a lot of the
best candidates don't even get to the point where they
can apply, you know. And it's unfortunate. And and that's
a problem across the board with everything you know, our
political system it's run by a power structure of two
parts that so over up to me. And I should

(56:01):
have said this when you asked about you know, what
we should do. I get rid of all political parties.
I'm there with you, presidents. Yeah, you know. When it
comes to my personal beliefs on this, I I am
from the idea of UM. I I don't. I think
the healthier our society is, as a general rule, the

(56:23):
lower the gap between rich and poor is going to
be UM. And I I have a trouble seeing I
have trouble morally squaring myself with people having billions of
dollars in this situation where we also have huge numbers
of people on the streets, kids starving, UM. Things that
are are not being done that that need to be

(56:44):
done in our country. UM. But I also feel that
like the problems we're facing right now are problems that
need to be dealt with ad HAWC. It's not a
situation we're just being like, well, I'm going to commit
to this ideology is the solution. And so I don't
agree with you on a lot of things. But if
we couldn't, if we can work together to make sure
medical school is free, then I'll do that. You know, Yeah,

(57:10):
you know I I would say I think that, Um,
I think there's a level of the stock market as
it exists that I I can't square myself with morally
the idea that like, dividends are paid out to a
company based on the profit generated by laborers, um, and
then those dividends, UM, they don't tend to go back
to the laborers like I. In my inequitable system, I

(57:32):
think would be one where, um, it is impossible to
have a publicly traded company that employees don't have as
much say in, at least as as the investors. Like
I'm a big kind of workers controlling the means of
production thing. And if that winds up being a hybrid
of what we have now and something new, I'm okay
with that. But I think that needs to change pretty radically. Well, okay,
so let's let's start there. So you already know that

(57:53):
I agree that that I believe that all employees sh sure, sure,
so when dividends are paid, then they'll also benefit from
the dividends paid. Yeah, absolutely, And then I'm great with
it in terms of having worker control or worker influence.
There's two different types of companies. There's a company where
you hire the CEO and there's a founder driven company.

(58:15):
So for the companies I've started, like when we started
audio Net, which effectively started the whole streaming industry, if
I just immediately set up a worker's council and said, everybody,
give me your feedback, we would have failed miserably because
I had it was my vision and my partner's vision,
and my first company was the same way, where it
was just go go, go, go go, and we got
him put from the employees, but it was always my

(58:36):
final decision. That's a founder driven company where the company
hires the CEO. Right, if the employees own enough share
at the stock or they get people that they connect
to to buy enough to get control, then when you
go hire a CEO, you can direct the approach that
that CEO will take. And if they want to have

(58:57):
or the shareholders which now include the employees, want to
make it un employee driven company. There, I don't have
a problem with that, but you know, at the end
of the day, the results are still going to speak
for themselves. You know, if we get better results UM
from employee UM council driven companies, more companies will do it.
If we get worse results, those companies will struggle, and

(59:19):
most companies will try not to do it. And so
that's where the Darwinian nature of capitalism well, either either
make it work or fail. And so I'm not against
it at all, except in d companies, because I think
it's difficult to say to somebody who took all the
risk or most of the risk, you know you can't
make the decisions to believe it, and that you designed

(59:40):
the companies to do, because here's this council that says otherwise,
and the same thing happens with the board of directors. Yeah,
and I don't and I don't disagree with that. I
think there's certainly a place there's obvious and in arguable
and in arguable benefits of companies that are run that way.
There's things they do incredibly well, and there there's no
denying that. But I'm also looking at at this world
and like I kind of hesitant to bring some of

(01:00:01):
this up because I don't want it to be like
here's a bad thing, A completely different person who happens
to be a billionaire did answer for it, Mark Cuban,
because that's not a fair Um. Yeah, like Cody would
Tody could could responder here, which I went back and
forth again because I'm always curious. I'm not gonna get
any smarter. Yeah. I have less of an issue with

(01:00:22):
the idea of individuals with a vision um being able
to like run, you know, start a company that that
that works the way they want and does the thing
they want, and that they benefit from, you know, core
you know, commensurate to the uh the level of risk
that they put into it. But I think that sort
of the system we have now, where you have the
people who are investors in these companies and like these

(01:00:43):
tech companies, UM and and just in general, like the
way our system works, the people who are the kind
of capital owning class, the folks who actually own these stocks,
which is a pretty small fraction of the American population. UM,
the profits they make put them in a position of
extreme hour over the rest of us. I feel, and
not everyone exercises it, but a number two there right

(01:01:05):
wrote a blog six seven eight years ago on blog
maverick dot com where I said there should be a
windfall profit tax I got a fault when I sold
my company, right, and then I sold the stock that
I got. I would have been happy to pay almost anything,
because I was like a pig and mud right. I
was happy as a clam, and that was the time
to hit me. I've got no problem with the windfall
profits text right. Some people would, right, I don't. My

(01:01:30):
biggest concern is how do we use it? Yeah, and
I think that is one of the areas we're going
to have more commonalities because I have some beliefs that
are sort of ideological, but I also have some beliefs
that are just like, yeah, we need to be spending
less money on certain things and more money on certain things,
and we're going to spend that money anyway. So let's
work together to do it more intelligently. Yeah, well together everything.

(01:02:04):
I know. Cody had one final question for you, and
he wants to know who do you think killed Jeff Epstein? Yeah,
you know, Tiger King. What's the guy's name. He's sure
it's not Carol Raskin because he knows. Yeah, I haven't

(01:02:25):
watched it. That's my goal tonight to get on the optical.
It's pretty wild. You'll enjoy it. Yeah, Yeah, you know,
our our home state Texas has more tigers, uh than
live in the wild and the rest of the world.
That's crazy. I did not know that a lot of
tiger owners in Texas. I think still I agree there

(01:02:45):
should be a tax on tiger purchases. Yeah, yeah, put
that on your platform in case you ever decided to
run in America. Two point oh. I'm mainly so, just
a couple of things. I mainly I was curious about
because like, we've talked about healthcare a lot um and
your opinion of like Bernie Sanders plan was with Warren's plan. Um,

(01:03:06):
you've criticized them both. Obviously, it does seem like you
don't support single payer, but you do want everyone to
have health care while like expanding Medicaid and but maintaining
a good capitalist system for healthcare in the middle. But
I guess so recently in regards to the three M situation,
you've also said, I get wanting to make millions of dollars,

(01:03:26):
but people are dying. And I think for a lot
of people that's true any other time, it's not just
true for the pandemic. And so how do you sort
of reconcile those two ideas of maintaining a good, healthy,
capitalist system while knowing that any sort of system like
that is going to tend to put profits over people,
and how that maybe shouldn't be how health care system

(01:03:49):
works when people are dying for the sake of millions
of dollars. So people are dying unless there's some extraneous
thing that's causing the death right, it's typically through lack
of access to a healthcare system. And so as you
and I have talked very briefly, I put together when
when it looked like the Republicans were going to crush
um in the a c A. I asked myself, Okay,

(01:04:09):
if I needed to recreate a healthcare system, what would
I do? And so I went to a far left
economist and I said, you know what, my company and
all the biggest, smartest companies I know self ensured. So
in other words, we don't we don't pay insurance premiums.
We just cover the cost of our employees when they're
only we have great programs. I mean, our people hate you, mate,
hate working for me. They stay for the healthcare um,

(01:04:31):
that's how good it is. And so I said, well,
if we do it, and all these smart companies do it,
then why doesn't the United States of America's self insured.
Why do we have insurance companies in the middle of
this at all? And so I put together a program
and I said, would you would you score this like
you were the government? And it came back and they
said that if we did your plan, you'd have coverage

(01:04:54):
for everybody under the that would be eligible for the
A c A would be automatically be covered, and you'd
save sixty billion dollars a year. And I'm like, oh, okay,
that's interesting. And then let's if we have sixty billion
to span, let's change the parameters and instead of just
doing a one year projection, let's do a fifteen year projection.
And so I took it. I asked Zeke Manuel, and

(01:05:17):
I asked others who's the best at scoring healthcare proposals
that will rip it apart and make it better? And
so they sent me to the RAND Corps and I said,
here's what I want to do. I want to take
a program where there's some level, some percentage of the
federal property level the low which health care is effectively

(01:05:37):
free right, so that people who can afford care have
access to it. And the biggest challenge really is the
states that don't have Medicaid, because where there's good Medicaid programs,
you don't see a lot of those issues that lets
it's a mental health driven problem, right because there's they
have access to care and they typically tend to get it.
The v A kind of goes south a little bit um,

(01:05:59):
but you know, it's it's those non Medicaid states that
really are real pronct. But I said, okay, let's start
with the poverty level, and below that it's effectively free.
Above that, you don't start paying insurance premiums until you
you use the health care system. So if you're thirty

(01:06:19):
thirty five and healthy and you can afford to go
to the doctor once a year and pay sixty or
eighty dollars or a hundred fifty dollars whatever it may be,
you don't you don't get involved in this system at all.
If you can't afford to do that, then and you
enter this you pay well again, and you're making over
two of the povy level, which that number varies by

(01:06:39):
the number of people in your family. But if you're
making above them, then you don't when you enter the system.
You don't start paying until you use something so and
then the payment is based off a percentage of your income.
So if I'm making if I'm a single individual and
I'm making fifty dollars a year, and I use UM

(01:07:02):
and I break my ankle, and it costs me a
thousand dollars, and I can't afford to pay that thousand dollars,
and so I'll pay no more than three percent of
my income each month until that thousand dollars is paid off.
If I'm I'm if I'm in an unfortunate circumstance and
I have loopez, I have just horrific things, and my

(01:07:22):
drug therapy is a million dollars a year, I pay
the same three percent no matter what, and that becomes
my premium that now that I've entered the health care
system now using this ten plan is what it's called.
Because nobody making under UM five thousand dollars pays more
than ten percent of their income. So that's my premium.
That's what I pay. That's it and SOW and under

(01:07:47):
it's effectively single pair above that. If I'm making fifty K,
it's three percent. If I'm making eight a d K,
it's probably it's eight percent. If I'm making two or higher.
It's ten percent. That's it. And then the government eats
the ballance. And so when you do that, individuals, according
to the RAM plans, save sixty three billion dollars a year.

(01:08:10):
The government breaks even. But the important part is you've
got Medicaid, you've got employer based insurance. Everybody else in
the middle is covered. The problem with the A C
A is out of the forty five or forty six
million eligible people, twenty eight million or not covered under
my plan. Under the ten plan, all twenty eight million
people are covered, and the government doesn't spend more and

(01:08:33):
employee in everybody that's in that A C A program equivalent.
The ten plan save sixty three billion dollars, which gives
us the flexibility to say, all right, maybe we charged
a little bit more for those who enter the plan
so that we can raise that bottom threshold from too

(01:08:53):
whatever the numbers allow us to do. But now, all
of a sudden, if your four open market, you're good.
If you're if you really want everybody who needs care
to get care, you're good. Right and in this environment,
and after the reset, when we come on the other side,
same thing. All those people who are lg as eligible

(01:09:15):
all of them are covered immediately starting the day after
this passes. If you break your leg, if you get cancer,
whatever it is, you're just paying your percentage based off
your income. And if you don't have any income, we'll
work with you to get into medicate or you age
out into Medicare. So yeah, so this this tent plan
you're referring to UM, So it's sort of along these

(01:09:39):
lines because let's say I make thirty a year and
I have that problem. Would you and I be able
to go to the same doctor basically, because if you're
separating into like this tent and this tent uh, if
no one is, if not everyone is paying into, then
you would get the better care. I guess this point,
you go to the best doctor in the world and
you paid three of your income. Okay, I see it's

(01:10:02):
one of those things I can potentially get on board
with any plan that would mean that everyone walking in
everyone in America could walk into a doctor if they're
worried they're sick and get treatment. UM, as long as
it's also a situation where everyone in America can afford
their insulin without it costing as much as rent or
whatever other medication they need. Let's go there for a second, right, Sure,

(01:10:23):
when you look at drug pricing there there are certain
drugs that most of the single molecule drugs and I'm
not an expert here, so if I misspeak, you know,
forgive me. But most of the single molecule drugs came
from research that was done at the National Institute of Health,
and when they discover something, they license it to somebody,

(01:10:44):
and typically that person licensed it to somebody else, and
you have this middleman effect until it gets to a
big pharmaceutical company and they jack it up forever. Yeah,
you can change the rules so that anything that originates
from the n i H and give the n AGE
more money so they can originate more things and inhibit

(01:11:04):
the cost of the drugs going downstream. There's also this
thing called the called Marching Rights that it's been debated,
but also allows the government right now for any of
those drugs that originated from the NIH to reprice them
now because of the lobby and effects. That hasn't happened yet,
but yeah, well there's to be there. And with insulin,

(01:11:26):
because that's generic and it's off patent, one of my
companies is looking at doing that. The problem is it's
going to take three years to finish it, but you're
gonna see something where, hopefully, if everything goes according to
plan and everything's upside down. Now, obviously we're gonna take
a lot of drugs and sell them at cost plus
ten percent and they'll always be that price. I guess

(01:11:48):
one of the issues I see in terms of actually
making this happen, because again, I support anything that's going
to make it easier for regular people to get healthcare.
But there is a very, very wealthy industry that has
made a lot of money and relies on being able
to do things like triple the cost of insulin over
the course of ten years, which is what happened with
Eli Lilly when Alexaser was in charge of it UM.

(01:12:10):
And those people, the individuals in the man the companies themselves,
are going to fight like hell to not have a
situation that is less profitable for them. How do you
deal with that? Yeah? Right, Okay, I'd like to hear that. Yeah,
that's the fight I'm happy to take on because that's
where my platform comes in. It's not the arrogance of

(01:12:30):
someone who's rich, that somebody who has a TV show. Right,
We've seen we've seen how much a reality TV show
can benefit nobody. Um, I have a platform that others
may not have. But I also know how to compete, right,
So you're not going to hit every drug and solve
every problem, but you can solve the insulin problem. What
what I've learned is with this company, I started to

(01:12:51):
address this. And again I don't want to make any
problem with promises, but I'll give you an example. UM,
is that once once a new company comes is in,
all the big guys try to buy it. And so
we've already been offered a lot of money for the
company that isn't even really selling anything yet because they
want to try to keep us out and they know

(01:13:11):
what we're trying to do. And most people say yes,
because why wouldn't they. I don't need their money. There's
there's a drug called then danizol or something. It's for tapeworm.
And there's there's an epidode. I don't call it epidemic
these days, there's a significant spread of tapeworm and some
of the rural communities of Alabama. And so we found

(01:13:34):
a source. And again, all this could be upside down.
Who knows, you know, what happens to our sources now.
But if we're in, if we go back two months,
the goal was um to take this albertazol and I
know I'm saying it wrong, and it was selling for
two bucks per um for prescription and and go we
can go out and we found the original manufacturer that

(01:13:56):
created it, and we were buying it for eight dollars
selling it for nine. And we were going to give
the initial um prescriptions away for free just to get
our arms around what was happening in rural Alabama. And
so there's a lot of arbitrarze opportunities that well that
we're looking to take advantage of that people have always

(01:14:18):
been fought out of. And the bigger point is that
as bad as the pharmaceutical industry is with jagging up
the price of drugs, every single drug goes up a
patent at some point for the original drug, and so
at some point you can battle them across the board.
Even when they played bad bad company patent games, there's
still ways to deal with it. And so that's the

(01:14:40):
goal of what we're trying to create. And I don't
want this to sound like, oh, it's the rich guy
trying to solve everything that's not the point at all.
Where I'm fortunate is that I get a lot of
smart people that reach out to me. Cody wants to
talk politics, other people want to talk medicine, and I
invest in those companies, right, And so that's what happened.
It's not me thinking I can save the world. It's

(01:15:01):
really really smart people from all walks of light coming
to me and say, would you give me a chance,
whether it's Arlene Hamilton's and me investing in women of color,
you know, mommy, or baby products ready said go for
baby products. Just people who came to me and said, Okay,
give us a chance to do this. That happened here,
and the Jude was brilliant, right, and happened to get

(01:15:22):
it going, and it's his baby. I'm not running it.
I'm not I'm not the brains behind it. I'm just
supporting it. But I have all these unique opportunities available
to me and that you know, I can find and
hopefully they'll turn out to be something special. We've talked
a lot about sort of the things that people of
goodwill can try to do to fix this situation, your

(01:15:43):
own personal solutions for this situation. And when I look
at what we need to do to to fix a
lot of the problems in this country. I can't escape
from the fact that there are there is a fairly
small group of people with an enormous amount of political
influence as a result of their wealth, who not only
year behind, sort of like you know, when you talk
about like the jacking up of the price of insulin,

(01:16:04):
you know, as high as it's gotten, there's a there's
a death toll associated with that. When you talk about
people who have taken advantage of the current pandemic and
monopolized supplies of h or or or you know, gouge
medical supplies, there's a death toll associated with that. And
a lot of people in that sort of group have
lobbied and pushed for laws that have made it easier

(01:16:25):
to do what they're doing. And I get I I don't.
I think it's risky to talk about punishment in a
lot of cases, but I think at the minimum, we
need to talk about how do we stop those people
from having this kind of influence. And I can't get
away from UM a legislative remedy that there need to
be changes in how UM money can be used politically

(01:16:48):
and also how it can be gained in the first place,
citizens United anciens illegal five dollars or five million dollars,
get rid of them, all right, we don't. You know,
it's easy to me that I'm still getting emails from
every both parties, from political candidates. When that money, instead
of that five or twenty go into a candidacy, should

(01:17:09):
be going to help people who are who's sides are
turned upside down? Why give them the politicians, give them
the people who need it. Yet, left or right, you
haven't seen any politicians say, you know what, don't give
your money to me, Give your money to somebody who
needs it. Not one right, So if you go back
to open Secrets and look at the last time I

(01:17:30):
gave money to any political organization or candidate. I gave
one to something called Unity O eight back in two
thousand and oh eight, where they were going to try
to create a new independent party. And I gave money
to Zoe Loughran and maybe Maria Cantwell in two thousand.
That's it. I make a point of never giving money.

(01:17:52):
When Obama was running and they were like, hey, can
you come do this or this, I'm like, I'm not
giving a penny, not giving a penny, right, because again,
either my idea, my ideas stand up on their own
merit and you're good and they're good, or you can
ignore them. Now, they still might ask me to do
something because of the shark chain thing and my visibility
and all that, but you're not gonna get a nick

(01:18:13):
uata by. And I think money is the root of
all evil when it comes to politics. Yeah, Um, we
gotta wrap this up, uh and get this to our editor. Um,
but I know Cody, since he has his audio back
question he wants to get Yeah, I just wanted real quick. Um.
So kind of circling back to what we were talking about,

(01:18:33):
this this crisis is sort of equalizing a lot of
things and creating a lot of empathy between people, and uh,
you talked about fear and how that is very common
with everybody, whether it's for your loved ones or for
what's gonna happen to the economy and everything. Um. We
also we just did on some More News a recent
episode about sort of how a lot of the rich

(01:18:56):
in the country are dealing with the situation and they're
sort of a billy to kind of like funck off
if they want to, um, taking private jets somewhere and
just sort of living that life. So like the fear
feels very different in a lot of the way people
are handling it. UM. In a recent interview with Yahoo,
you were asked about the the n b A and
like the wealthy in general seeming to get coronavirus tests

(01:19:17):
with great ease above the less fortunate. UM. For example,
the Brooklyn Nets arranged for their entire roster to be tested. UM.
You said you didn't really know anything about that, and
that your team and people simply follow the process that's
in place. UM. Could you describe what that process is
and do you think it's the same process everyone else
goes through. No, of course, not right. I mean, I'm

(01:19:39):
not trying to protect anybody. You know, the process was,
Are you showing symptoms. If you're showing symptoms, report them
to the n b A, and we'll deal with the
doctor to help get you tested. The only way, the
only thing I'd say to justify that, And I get
your point that you know, if I showed symptoms, chances
are doctors would come running to me and do whatever
I wanted. I mean, you, if you you don't have symptoms,

(01:20:00):
you could probably call someone right now and get a test, right.
I have no doubt that I could because people will
kiss my ask no doubt about it. Right. The one
thing I will say in defense of the NBA, when
your celebrity and you're very visible, people walk up to
you and they put care behind right. They don't care
to walk up to you and hug you, to walk

(01:20:21):
up to you and you know, shake your hand. I
mean my wife and I were taking a walk and
people had to catch themselves to not walk up and
say something. You know. Social distancing is much harder in
those search of circumstances, and people have much greater access
to you typically. Now, remember those tests were done early on.
We're talking, aren't eleven, right, when on one hand they

(01:20:44):
were harder to come by, which makes it a little
bit more questionable. But on the other hand, people there
weren't the quarantines in place, and people were less awhere
and less likely to follow social distancing. So there is
no moment to be made that that's why they got them.
Like generically across the board, it's wrong, right, There's because
the reality is from a social health of a public

(01:21:06):
health perspective, people in the least in the worst economic
condition are going to be more crowded and more likely
to have to go outdoors to try to just you know,
stay alive, and more likely to get affected, and more
likely to be a spreader. And you're not gonna see
me or anybody else trying to take tests away from anybody,
but you will see me and a lot of other people,

(01:21:27):
and you guys among them, everybody saying we need more tests,
and we need to get more people testing. And I
will say, I mean, yeah, it's a dicey situation. You're right,
there are less tests available and and there's obviously an
element of privilege, and they're invisible getting these tests. But
the NBA making the decision to suspend the season because
players have been testing positive for coronavirus is what made

(01:21:50):
this a reality for people. That is what sparked everybody
to say, well, fuck, I gotta stay home. You know,
not everybody scared. Everybody that and Tom and Tom Hans,
But I would argue that the n B a a
little bit closer to home for a lot of you. Definitely,
m becomes real, but it is, but it is, it is.

(01:22:11):
You're right, it's it's it's tough, but it's a tough situation.
Um um, yeah, so we did. Uh, we did already
cover my last question about Epstein. Um so, I guess
my final final question is, uh, can I have some money?
Give him a proposal? Oh gotta pay for better internet

(01:22:40):
over there. Thank you so much for taking time out
of your day to speak to this. This was really
really interesting. Yeah, thank you, guys. I enjoyed it. I learned,
and that that's what I always look for. Good luck guys,
I know you know your businesses. Just hoping I heart
keeps rolling right, yeah, very yeah, you know. Yeah, we're

(01:23:01):
doing okay right now, and it's nice to have this
connection with with people and to be able to be
doing what we feel is important work. Are you guys
applied for the small the Payroll Protection Program loan? Yes,
don't look into it and do it right. So let
me tell you. Are we still rolling? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
but we don't have debate. Yeah yeah, but do the

(01:23:22):
math right. If there's three fifty billion dollars allocated, and
let's just say there's a million small businesses that want
three or more, the money's gone. Yeah, and they'll there'll
be other allocations. I'm sure that right, because they have
their choice, but be first in line. And if you
are contractors, are no other contractors that are freelancers, you're

(01:23:43):
eligible to apply. Apply. Yeah. My X runs an appliance
repair business in Dallas, and I'm giving her the same advice,
like get in there and do it, like yeah, hell yes,
do not pass, go, do not collect two, go right
to the p p P programs. They're not they're not
going to start. I was really hoping that I could
push banks to start taking applications earlier, because the difference

(01:24:04):
between this and traditional s b A is that the
banks will do all the approvals as opposed to waiting
for the SBA to approve it. And so I was
hoping banks would step up and be a lot quicker,
but um, they weren't. So it looks like Friday will
be the day. And for you guys, for who you
are and what you want to get out there, you
need to be pushing banks because three weeks or two

(01:24:25):
weeks for that is too long. People are going to starve.
And so whatever bank you deal with, Like I pushed
a couple of small Oklahoma banks and other little banks
wherever people have bank accounts now and they they already
direct deposit or um direct debit for their tax payments

(01:24:46):
or got refunds from taxes, um, have them go to
the bank and really put pressure on those banks to
give them overdraft protection over then and doesn't cost them
a lot, but those banks know that they're going to
get to check and two to three weeks. Let's encourage
anybody you know that listens to you or followed you
to talk to their bank to try to encourage them.

(01:25:07):
You guys, encourage the banks that you work with to
try to give overdraft protection to people now, because that
does make me really curious, Like one of the things
you pointed out, like that tw is not going to
come in time for a lot of people. Rent is
do now and a lot of folks just missed a
paycheck or more than one paycheck, and there's talk of

(01:25:28):
a rent strike going on right now. People saying like
if there's no assistance, how do you feel? What do
you feel about a rent strike? Like what is your
you have solution for the problem right twelve? If you
if you're paying more than you're right, you're in a
different set of circumstances. But um, if it's just about execution,
so where's burning where's burning right, where's Elizabeth? Where's every

(01:25:54):
liberal progressive politician in office? And why aren't they pushing
for this to get done yesterday? Why isn't that direct
deposit already in people's accounts? Why haven't they worked out
to deal with Western Union for them to pick up
the cash and deal with Western Union to pay them
back directly? Where is everybody saying anything? Well? You know,

(01:26:15):
I I but I also feel like that releases a
lot of kind of the onus on the folks who
number one fought to like reduce what that kind of
directs cash stimulus would be and have kind of worked
to add in like means testing and stuff. I'm just
saying the people that you would expect the only reason
I name those names, and that's who you expect to
be standing up for the little guy. Right. I'm not

(01:26:35):
quick to throw Elizabeth under the bus as people are
listeners to this show. No, but I agree, I've been
wondering where where, Yeah, I've been the last couple of weeks.
I tend to think figure should be focusing on how
how can we get everyone's rent paid this month? I
think that's look, So don't deal with the symptom deal
with the problem, right, people don't have money. Rent is

(01:26:58):
just one symptom. Like the utilities have been instructed not
to share off utilities, right, and they haven't, and so
people haven't had their lights and gas electricity turned off.
That's all great, right. Rents a little different because it's
to a private contract or a private company or whatever.
But you solve that by offering overdraft protection. So why
isn't Elizabeth in and again pick Marco Rubio. Why isn't

(01:27:20):
Marco Rubio analyze the territories going to the banks and saying,
offer overdraft protection, will make sure that that amount gets
paid to so that people can pay the rent overdraft
protection up to for people's rent today. Yeah, I think
we know what Marco Rubio isn't. But yeah, within that context, though,
if if these politicians left and right, progressive and and

(01:27:44):
and centrist failed to do something like that, and people
are in a situation where either they just can't pay
rent or they're going to be delaying rent payments and
having multiple months of rent stack up where they're not
earning income, like the what do you think about people
striking paying their rent if there's no action nationally so
so now you create a different set of issues. Right now,

(01:28:06):
there's a cascading problem for landlords and all their oblige
and not all those people that are landlords are wealthy. Right,
it could have been Ramma. Right, So there's a cascading set.
But on the other hand, if you look to create
a solution that pre empts all that I can't pay
for this problems. Right, So, whether it's rent, it could
be any number of different things. Your car payment, it

(01:28:28):
could be you know anything. You know, your cell phone.
I can't work without my cell phone because I'm working
at home. It could be your broadband whatever it is. Right,
if you allow overdraft protection, if only up to the
that you already know you're gonna be getting into your account,
that allows you to solve the problem the individual to

(01:28:48):
have control over their life to solve the problem they
need to solve. While a wrenchment sounds great, that's not
everybody's problem. And so while you're helping some people who
can't pay their rent, somebody else may have. You know
that that may not be a problem. They're living at home,
but they can't pay their they can't pay their broadband bill, right,
they can't for their cell phone, and that's a different problems.

(01:29:09):
So you need to get to the underpinning of the problem.
And I tried to push this before they came out
with this bill. Just give everybody overdraft protection, right, go
ahead and do the check, write the trans do the
transfer up to amount. And it's actually works better for
the bank because they don't have to just write in
advance to somebody, right, and that money flows down and cascades,

(01:29:33):
and the people who are are most at risk get
to use that they deem appropriately. Whereas a rent strike,
everybody's screwed and other people people might need to be solved.
Now you're dealing with the rent strike and not dealing
with the root of the problem. I think we don't
agree with you that a rent strike isn't necessarily the solution,
and the real solution is a general strike. I think

(01:29:53):
it's what you were going to get at. I don't
think that gets us there, but I you know what,
what money? Now the time to get more money. I
want my money and I want it now right, But
you've gotta you gotta reduce the friction. So it's the
coppers are open, the government treasury is open. We can
argue it should be open to everybody, but it pretty

(01:30:14):
much is right. We're spending brillion. Your only condition right
now should be reduced friction. Reduced friction, getting it from
the people, the treasury, the people who needed the most,
and when you lift up the bottom. This is the
one example where triple off economics will work. Great. But
what we haven't heard from the people that we need
to hear it from right or left, center, whatever, if

(01:30:36):
we need to execute on reducing that friction. Nobody's saying, damn,
were yeah, okay, we really now it's a quick turnaround
for us. But you are you are wonderful. We really
really You've been very generous with your Thank you so much.
That was great. Um. You can follow Mark on Twitter

(01:30:57):
at m cuban and you can follow us on Twitter,
Instagram at Worst your Pod. You can follow Katie at
Katie's Stole on Instagram and Twitter. You can follow Cody
at dr Mr Cody on Instagram and Twitter. You can
follow Robert on Twitter at I Right. Okay, we have
a t public store and wash your hands everything everything,
So dum man, it's again, I tried. Daniel. Worst Year

(01:31:24):
Ever is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.