Shownotes Transcript
There's this kind of thing that happens in biology called evolution. And a lot of people think evolution is this continuous process, but it's not. Evolution is this process by which there is some significant growth for a period of time. And then there is an extinction event or an external force that causes what ultimately becomes what's called punctuated equilibrium. So the whole kind of system resets and then the healthier, stronger species survive and they grow and they persist. And if you look at the
first chart, Nick, that I pulled up, this will just show you guys past extinction events, large amounts of biomass over the past half billion years get wiped out when these extinction events occur. And then evolution occurs because the species that can survive the extinction of hand persists in the environment and they grow. And that's how evolution kind of actually takes place is there's an external force that changes what survives and what doesn't, it's kind of a testing force. If you look at federal spending,
And this is a crazy link, but here's federal spending over the last couple of decades. And I would argue that many of the agencies, much of the bureaucracy, many of the jobs created, many of the spending programs, many of the operating models, many of the behaviors can kind of be viewed as a species or species within this ecosystem that have kind of grown a lot over the last few decades.
And I think what Trump's mandate was by the people, and people don't want to hear this and they don't like it, but his mandate was to be kind of the extinction event. And whatever agencies...
Whatever operating processes, whatever individuals, whatever bureaucratic systems exist within the federal government that can withstand the scrutiny of the individuals that Trump is going to put in charge of each of these agencies, that they can survive and they can come out the other end, there is certainly some degree of strength and resilience and hardiness there.
This is not about right or wrong. You say they deserve to exist if they can survive. I'm saying this is going to bring in the most disruptive force that federal agencies have ever seen. And the intention with Trump isn't to find some person to keep running things the way they have been running the past. His mandate from the people who elected him based on the message he put out there is to do the opposite.
which is to go in and be as disruptive and damaging and destructive as possible. And whatever comes out the other side will be stronger, will be harder, and theoretically will be, you know, more resilient. And I think that that's the event that's underway. Now, the people who are getting exactly what they want in Trump's candidacies are the Democrats.
They were saying Trump is going to put a bunch of crazy lunatics in office and he's going to make them the cabinet and they're going to, and now they're able to kind of clap their hands and say, we told you so, we told you so. And I'm not sure that if they're really getting the message, which is that the intention here isn't to keep things running the way they have been running, but to really fundamentally test the systems and test the systems with the most challenging oppositional forces the systems have ever been tested by, which is the candidates or the individuals that he's putting in charge of each of these agencies.
So I'm not saying it's right or wrong one way or the other, but I'm making an observation that this is going to be kind of an extinction level event that Trump's decisions on who he's putting in place, I think, are going to drive an outcome on the other end.
That's going to make the government look very different. And I, you know, I'm not going to sit around and say this person's good, this person's bad, because I don't think the point is to find someone that's quote qualified to do the job. The intention is actually quite different. And the outcome may actually be positive for America. If you fast forward a couple of years, in some cases, and there's some cases where things could get really messed up, and people could suffer and jobs will be lost, and all sorts of bad things will happen. But the
We cannot continue the way we have been with respect to federal spending, bureaucracy and inefficiency in the federal government. And so something has to happen. And if this is the path by which this gets resolved in the limited window that's in front of this particular administration, which is probably two years, maybe four, maybe this is what has to happen.
Shabbat, where do you stand on Freedberg's interesting metaphor here that we're sending meteors into each of these departments to blow them up and see if they survive an extinction level event? I saw you nodding. Do you think this is an interesting framing? Great take. I have nothing to add to Freedberg's take.
Got it. Who's your favorite? You asked me the question, I answered. Who's your favorite? Well, I think let's take Elon and Vivek off the table because... That's an obvious one that we've all been behind since the beginning. Yeah. And we all support the idea. Who's not against more efficiency? I mean, you'd have to be an idiot to be against efficiency. It's the easiest one to say you love. I think the highest beta pick so far has been Bobby Kennedy. I think the second highest beta pick is Matt Gaetz.
Explain highest beta pick in this context, please. I think the third is Tulsi Gabbard. That there is the potential for an enormously positive two or three sigma outcome, but there's also the chance that it can really not work. That was exactly why I picked Bobby Kennedy, because he's going to shake it up. Peter Thiel just did this podcast with Barry Weiss. It was fantastic, by the way. Highly recommend. Highly recommend. He's awesome, yeah. The...
One of the great things he said is that he was talking about science, but I think the example works here as well, which is that we didn't have enough skepticism and we had too much dogma. He was talking about sort of like the death of science. And I think that that idea applies here as well, which is that the federal bureaucracy has not really been challenged. And Vivek put out a very compelling post on X where he basically said like, look, when you
On the one hand, there's going to be radical transparency. But on the other hand, there's a lot of case law that we can use to kind of try to really dismantle the government apparatus. And they're putting themselves on a shot clock to do it by 2026 for the 250th anniversary. So I think I'm really predisposed to this idea that
It'll force the government to be very resilient at the end of this process. And I think that's a good thing. And it'll probably be very different than what it is on the way in. And I think that that can be very positive.