Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver. Today in the show, we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about a certain man whose name rhymes
Speaker 2: with Dilon Tusk. You can probably guess what he is.
Speaker 2: He recently left the Failure. We're going to give a
Speaker 2: grade for Elon Musk's tenure in office. Did he help himself?
Speaker 2: Did he even help Trump? We'll discuss it all and
Speaker 2: what kind of decisions Elon made.
Speaker 1: And then we're going to actually zoom out a little
Speaker 1: bit and address one of our listeners questions about how
Speaker 1: we can change our current system of government to allow
Speaker 1: it to make better decisions. So let's talk about Elon
Speaker 1: Musk and his brief tenure at the top as President
Speaker 1: of the United States as co President of the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so, first of all, one thing we
Speaker 2: might ask is who comes out looking better in this exchange, right,
Speaker 2: like Trump or Elon? Trump got what was at three
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars contributed to his campaign in various ways.
Speaker 2: Trump got to brand himself as a more interesting, kind
Speaker 2: of forward looking candidate, gets Elon to be one of
Speaker 2: the ringleaders of this faction of Silicon Valley and business
Speaker 2: leaders that gravitate toward Trump. I think from day one
Speaker 2: in the White House that Elon was not helpful to Trump. Right.
Speaker 2: Although Trump is not popular, his numbers aren't that bad, right,
Speaker 2: especially they were covered a little bit since I mean,
Speaker 2: on any given day you never know what is the
Speaker 2: truth about what terroifts will be in place. But they've
Speaker 2: recovered since that reparations day what was it called? Not
Speaker 2: Independence Day? Either liberation Liberation day? There we go. Yeah,
Speaker 2: reparations Day would not.
Speaker 1: Be a Trump No, no, I think I think if
Speaker 1: we had a reparations Day, it would have been canceled
Speaker 1: under a Trump.
Speaker 2: But his number, says, have recovered, Elons have not. Let
Speaker 2: me look up the how popular is Elon Musk on
Speaker 2: the Silver Bulletin So forty percent favorable rating, fifty four
Speaker 2: percent unfavorable rating. At the start of Trump's term, he
Speaker 2: was a forty two and a forty seven, right, so
Speaker 2: his unfavorables really went up. People who were on the
Speaker 2: fence about Elon Musk now substantially disapprove of him. And
Speaker 2: by the way, this affects his bottom line too, right,
Speaker 2: It's affected Tesla sales in Europe absolutely, quite profoundly, where
Speaker 2: Elon is not forty fifty five but twenty seventy twenty
Speaker 2: eighty unfavorable in these surveys. And then you know, look,
Speaker 2: he does interfere in certain ways with Trump's policy in
Speaker 2: two or three areas, right, one of which is skilled
Speaker 2: immigration and one of which is tariffs. So I think
Speaker 2: Trump exits a little worse for trying this post election day,
Speaker 2: but Elon probably helped him in the campaign and during
Speaker 2: the campaign Eland was more neutral in terms of public
Speaker 2: image and so forth, and like, if you're neutral, but
Speaker 2: you raise three hundred million dollars and allow you can't
Speaker 2: it to rebrand himself and not such a bad deal.
Speaker 1: So I think it's an interesting calculus, right, because Elon
Speaker 1: was definitely helpful in getting Trump elected, but then at
Speaker 1: some point he started being a liability because I think
Speaker 1: with Doje, even people who supported Elon, there were certain
Speaker 1: things where he was starting to get blowback, including from
Speaker 1: Trump who was like, oh, well, we don't really want
Speaker 1: to be cutting all of these things, right, we need
Speaker 1: to win elections and people cutting things isn't popular. I
Speaker 1: think he said something along those lines, so I think
Speaker 1: that that was hurting Trump. And then we have actually
Speaker 1: the evidence of the campaign where Elon donated twenty million dollars, right,
Speaker 1: and it ended up with a huge Democratic victory because
Speaker 1: there was a backlash there was, yeah, exactly, there was
Speaker 1: a huge backlash the fact that he was perceived as
Speaker 1: kind of meddling a little bit too much. And you
Speaker 1: also have these conflicting things right where a lot of
Speaker 1: the tariffs that Trump wants to pass hurt Tesla, right,
Speaker 1: and Tesla currently is losing a lot of the there's
Speaker 1: ev credits that are no longer a part of the
Speaker 1: big beautiful bill. So there are a lot of things
Speaker 1: happening that are hurting Tesla directly. And people at SpaceX
Speaker 1: have been complaining that, you know, they feel neglected, that
Speaker 1: productivity is down, that innovation is down, that people are
Speaker 1: not motivated, that the you know, the work environment has
Speaker 1: been horrible because Elon has completely neglected his duties there,
Speaker 1: and so I think he's definitely suffering on those grounds.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very curious to see whether Trump is going
Speaker 1: to persist with the Doge cuts and like double down,
Speaker 1: or if he's going to now like slowly try to
Speaker 1: walk it back as part of separating himself from elon.
Speaker 2: What do you think, Nate, Well, look, if you look
Speaker 2: at bond markets, they're worried that we're going to run
Speaker 2: budget deficits because we'll probably cut taxes on rich people
Speaker 2: like Republicans like to do without cutting spending by enough, right,
Speaker 2: And where we have cut spending are in things like
Speaker 2: foreign aid programs that probably from like a expected DIYU standpoint,
Speaker 2: do a lot of good for the world. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: aren't that large a fraction of the federal budgets. It's
Speaker 2: almost like the you know, it's like the canonical issue
Speaker 2: where if you pull people and say what percentage of
Speaker 2: budget goes to four and aid, they'll say fifteen percent
Speaker 2: instead of one percent or whatever it is, right, And
Speaker 2: so you know, it's where we kind of get a
Speaker 2: lot of bang for your bucket, and that's where where
Speaker 2: there have been more cuts. But like, yeah, look, I
Speaker 2: mean Trump was never a fiscal austerity guy, right, and
Speaker 2: he differed from like the Romney Ryan generation of Republicans
Speaker 2: by doing less to target entitlement programs. Right. I mean,
Speaker 2: in principle he has an isolation a streak, But I
Speaker 2: don't believe we're cutting defense spending or anything like that,
Speaker 2: and you know, with with legitimate reason. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: things as we you know, you look at t happening
Speaker 2: in Ukraine, right and like how is our drone capabilities
Speaker 2: compared to China? And it could become a very dangerous world.
Speaker 2: But no, yeah, I mean what is Elon's legacy on
Speaker 2: the government. I mean I think it's like you know,
Speaker 2: cutting PEP far and things like that, and not a
Speaker 2: lot of other you know, and maybe maybe restraining Trump
Speaker 2: a little bit on tariffs at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that remains to be seen, right, But yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at some numbers right now, and this is just
Speaker 1: one calculation that said that, you know, his at best,
Speaker 1: it seems like Doach has saved around one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty billion dollars, but that's probably unlikely to stand, and
Speaker 1: that it the consequences of the cuts, putting the federal
Speaker 1: workers on paid leave, rehiring mistakenly fired employees, and all
Speaker 1: of that is going to cost the government as much
Speaker 1: as one hundred and thirty five billion dollars. So nut
Speaker 1: it seems like very little has been accomplished except for
Speaker 1: things that you know, Elon is very big on innovation,
Speaker 1: right and American you know, American brain power, and he
Speaker 1: you know, he's been tweeting about SpaceX and all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. And one of the big things of his
Speaker 1: legacy is cutting all of the grounds too, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show multiple times, kind of creating
Speaker 1: this brain drain and this vacuum. You know, where the
Speaker 1: fuck is innovation going to come from if I also
Speaker 1: just leave the United States? And so I think that
Speaker 1: he perversely, it's not I think the associate with Trump.
Speaker 1: I think he has cost himself a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot of money in that sense, because the pipeline is
Speaker 1: going to dry up and this is going to be
Speaker 1: much harder to undo than rehiring federal employees.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I think he was coming from a paradigm where,
Speaker 2: you know, in the private sector, there's kind of a
Speaker 2: paradigm where like you accumulate fat in a corporation, Right,
Speaker 2: it becomes hard to fire people on a one on
Speaker 2: one basis for various reasons, right, I mean, a it's
Speaker 2: just kind of a challenging thing to let someone off
Speaker 2: of a job, right, And there can be union stuff,
Speaker 2: and there can be legal stuff and wrongful termination stuff
Speaker 2: and all of that. Right, So you know, so so
Speaker 2: much in a corporation be like, Okay, we've been growing, maybe
Speaker 2: we're struggling little bit. Now, let's just take a scalpel
Speaker 2: and shave ten percent or whatever of our budget off. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like much harder to do in a US government sense,
Speaker 2: where like, like, look, I'm sure there is lots of waste, fraud,
Speaker 2: and abuse in the government. If you read the book
Speaker 2: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, it talks about
Speaker 2: some of that. There's some state governments too, and seems
Speaker 2: to be worse in blue states than in red states. Right,
Speaker 2: But like, you have a whole bureaucracy and a whole
Speaker 2: legal framework and for both apporporating funds to begin with,
Speaker 2: like and for cutting them, right, So you know, Congress
Speaker 2: is supposed to control the power of the purse. Trump
Speaker 2: has not performed very well in litigation so far in
Speaker 2: a number of areas, and so you know, so that
Speaker 2: paradigm doesn't carry forward, and I think is like, look,
Speaker 2: I mean the basic critique that I find most compelling
Speaker 2: of Elan is not oh, he's a Nazi. It's that
Speaker 2: he's weighing over his head and doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: this ability to differentiate issues that he knows a lot
Speaker 2: about from ones where he doesn't. Like if Trump had
Speaker 2: appointed him instead of like David Sachs to be like
Speaker 2: the part time ais are. I mean, Elon actually is
Speaker 2: more cautious on AI, more concerned about AI risks than
Speaker 2: some other Silicon Valley leaders, Right, So like Elon, we
Speaker 2: want you to like and do what you can to
Speaker 2: ensure AI leadership in an intelligent way and leadership against
Speaker 2: China and technological leadership. And and now you know, look,
Speaker 2: I think the chance that China wins quote unquote what
Speaker 2: do you want to call it? Porld War two has risen.
Speaker 1: Gone up by a lot. I think that you just absolutely,
Speaker 1: like spot On, nailed the issue here in Nate, which
Speaker 1: is the overconfidence that Elon Musks has exhibited, right, the
Speaker 1: fact that he doesn't seem to grasp like he is
Speaker 1: so he is so enamored of his own intelligence that
Speaker 1: he doesn't seem to grasp that his deep knowledge of
Speaker 1: one sphere doesn't mean that he has qualified to be
Speaker 1: an expert and have deep knowledge of everything else. And
Speaker 1: he's like, well, I can do the same thing to
Speaker 1: the government that I did to Twitter, and look at
Speaker 1: Twitter now, haha, fuck you haters. However, Twitter is not
Speaker 1: the government, right, and you can also like argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, Twitter is worse off now. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not making that argument, but you could. However, even
Speaker 1: if you say, okay, Twitter's better off. Now, everything's great.
Speaker 1: You know, he understands business in a way that he
Speaker 1: does not understand government.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know what he's doing, he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: he's cutting. He lacks that basic knowledge, and yet the
Speaker 1: confidence doesn't match up right with his knowledge. He's not
Speaker 1: the humility is altogether absent in the way he thinks
Speaker 1: about this. And this is one of the biggest problems
Speaker 1: with people who are very intelligent. It's actually in my
Speaker 1: dissertation for when I was in grad school. This is
Speaker 1: what this is what we discovered, right that this is
Speaker 1: the Achilles heel of high performers, this overconfidence bias where
Speaker 1: they succumb to thinking that they know much more and
Speaker 1: are much more in control than they actually are.
Speaker 2: And especially in his case, if first of all, Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley is kind of a no nagging culture, right, It's
Speaker 2: very self dealing in the sense I don't mean any
Speaker 2: correct way. I mean, like in a kind of little
Speaker 2: way of like everyone's getting in everyone else's different rounds
Speaker 2: of investment. It's a very tight knit community, so you can't,
Speaker 2: like it's considered uncou to like criticize another VC or founder. Right,
Speaker 2: you don't see a lot of that necessarily, That's one
Speaker 2: part of it. But also, look, he is on a
Speaker 2: pretty amazing winning streak. I mean, you know, if you
Speaker 2: ask most investors at the time the SpaceX gonna work,
Speaker 2: assess is gonna work, they'd say no, right, probably not.
Speaker 2: You know, I do think that like he deserves some
Speaker 2: credit for like, you know, some of the dire predictions
Speaker 2: about Twitter were grossly exaggerated. Now it's business model isn't
Speaker 2: much good, but like it's remained an important part of
Speaker 2: the discourse. You know, I think that like xai is
Speaker 2: taken somewhat seriously. It's not a category leader like open
Speaker 2: Ai or Nthropic or maybe Google. You know, it might
Speaker 2: be down in that third tier, but like still has
Speaker 2: a lot of interesting data to crunch from Twitter, data
Speaker 2: that is valuable. They're hiring good people, and like it's
Speaker 2: not impossible that that could be a big player, right,
Speaker 2: So like you have to give him credit for what
Speaker 2: he's done in business. And look, are are different types
Speaker 2: of intelligence too. I mean the phrase I've used with
Speaker 2: Elon is spiky intelligence, which is just like very excellent
Speaker 2: in some areas and very deficient in other areas where
Speaker 2: he's like below the average showing some areas like emotional
Speaker 2: IQ probably right, and and that's but he's not like
Speaker 2: a calculating I mean, in my book you talking about
Speaker 2: the river, right, which are at least very competitive anarchical people.
Speaker 2: He's not like the calculating type. He's impulsive. He goes
Speaker 2: all in on things. And yeah, you know, ocou say, it's
Speaker 2: like a pooker player that has a sun run and
Speaker 2: wins like three big tournaments in a year. There's like
Speaker 2: a little bit of that, But then they're playing some
Speaker 2: other game that isn't poker and they bet on themselves
Speaker 2: really heavily, and yeah.
Speaker 1: Or even in poker. But the next year when their
Speaker 1: sun run is over. I'm thinking of someone in particular
Speaker 1: who's on the sun run a lifetime right now, who's
Speaker 1: going to be coming down to Earth at some.
Speaker 2: Point, and we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 1: I think that spiky intelligence is a really important way
Speaker 1: to look at it because they're people who are generalists, right,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, you know, if you think
Speaker 1: of the fox hedgehog type of thinking. Have we talked
Speaker 1: about this on the.
Speaker 2: Show We should's It should be a risky business core concept,
Speaker 2: but yeah, let's talk. Let's remind people what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you have two types of people, the people
Speaker 1: who know who have the broad intelligence, right, who know
Speaker 1: a little about a lot of things, and then the
Speaker 1: people who know a lot about one thing in particular.
Speaker 1: And so those are kind of the two concepts. And
Speaker 1: some perform better in some environments, some perform better in
Speaker 1: other environments. Nat, I think you wrote about this in
Speaker 1: your book, right, And so these are kind of these
Speaker 1: two paradigms for high performers. And both types of people,
Speaker 1: by the way, can be very high performing people. So
Speaker 1: this isn't a dang on any one approach, right, but
Speaker 1: it just depends on what the context is and what
Speaker 1: you're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hedgehog knows one big thing, a fox knows many
Speaker 2: little things, right, And they're both types of intelligence for
Speaker 2: things like poker, or for things like making prediction, right,
Speaker 2: than this fox tendency to kind of calibrate and estimate
Speaker 2: and be pluralistic tends to be helpful, I think, right,
Speaker 2: if you are a founder of a company, then you
Speaker 2: might watch someone who goes all in and is very
Speaker 2: spiky hy variants right.
Speaker 1: You want, you want that hedgehog. But a fox is
Speaker 1: actually less likely to be over confident than a hedgehog
Speaker 1: because the hedgehog is much more likely to fall for
Speaker 1: that bias, because the hedgehog knows so much about that thing.
Speaker 1: And if it's a successful hedgehog, the hedgehog has been
Speaker 1: very good, right, and has been rewarded for knowing a lot,
Speaker 1: And so that then creates this false sense that oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just brilliant, right, I'm like naturally good at knowing things,
Speaker 1: whereas the fox, because the fox kind of knows about
Speaker 1: so many different things and might not be Like if
Speaker 1: the fox squared off against the hedgehog and the hedgehog's
Speaker 1: area of expertise, the fox would lose. But the fox
Speaker 1: kind of knows enough about the world that I think
Speaker 1: the fox is more likely to be humble. It's a
Speaker 1: little you know, it's a little strange to think of
Speaker 1: a humble fox. But that's why the hot fox is
Speaker 1: able to evade traps. Right. If the fox became over confident,
Speaker 1: would be very easy to catch the fox, because you'd
Speaker 1: be like, haha, I know that the fox thinks that
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, the best in the world, and
Speaker 1: so I'm going to be able to catch it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And Elon also lacks a certain type of worldlyness, right.
Speaker 2: You know, look, say what you want about like Mark
Speaker 2: and Breeson, Repeter Teel, but they can write interesting essays
Speaker 2: about kind of world affairs and political philosophy and things
Speaker 2: like that. Right, you get some founders. You know, Metallic
Speaker 2: Bouterin is the founder of Ethereum, and when I talked
Speaker 2: to him from my book, He's like, yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: there was a ninety percent chance that I'd fail, but
Speaker 2: I thought that the expected value was positive at the
Speaker 2: stage of my life. Right, that's a very risky business
Speaker 2: slash Fox way to think about things, whereas Elon would
Speaker 2: just be like, I'm going to fucking do it. I'm
Speaker 2: going to fucking do it. I don't even want to
Speaker 2: think about the odds. I'm going to fucking do it. Right,
Speaker 2: so he's particularly you know, he lacks that roundedness I think,
Speaker 2: and and the self reflectiveness. And also he is has
Speaker 2: a lot of distractions. I mean, look in terms of
Speaker 2: the number of things things he gets done. I mean
Speaker 2: he's sort of in a half assed way, but maybe
Speaker 2: not completely. You know, he is running like a half
Speaker 2: dozen companies and being a special advisor to the president,
Speaker 2: and like fathering all these children and traveling around the world.
Speaker 1: I love how you just threw that in there, and
Speaker 1: fathering all these children and in lawsuits about all of
Speaker 1: the children he's fathering. So that's actually it's a very
Speaker 1: it's an important point because that does kind of get
Speaker 1: his attention.
Speaker 2: And you know, look, we all know okay, let me
Speaker 2: put this carefully. We all know how achieving defective people.
Speaker 2: I don't mean defective entirely pejoratively, right, but like people
Speaker 2: who have flaws that they're able to overcome because they
Speaker 2: have crafted a life to work around them, and or
Speaker 2: because they have strength that outweigh them, and or because
Speaker 2: they have enough like how our privilege authority and not
Speaker 2: get called on the problems.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, my experience with those people is that when
Speaker 2: you add other elements that careful balance can get out
Speaker 2: of whack, right, And with Elon, you're adding too. You're
Speaker 2: not sending the government stuff. You're adding. According to a
Speaker 2: lot of credible reporting, maybe quite a bit of drug use,
Speaker 2: and not just weed, but ketamin in particular seems to
Speaker 2: have been a thing that he was doing, right, And
Speaker 2: when you have these reports there's one recently in the
Speaker 2: New York Times, there was one in the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2: I mean, so the reporting on that I'd gather is
Speaker 2: very deep, and like you know, Elon's life has taken
Speaker 2: I think, kind of a turn for the worse in
Speaker 2: this period.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He was at one point one of the most admired
Speaker 2: men or women for that matter, on Earth. Tesla had
Speaker 2: a very good brand. I mean, there are a ton
Speaker 2: of Teslas on the road, right, but like you know,
Speaker 2: part of the preme is like this kind he kind
Speaker 2: of spends neglecting. Tesla is a time when Chinese electric
Speaker 2: vehicles begin to gain a lot of market share, right
Speaker 2: where other American companies like Rivian begin to become more prestige,
Speaker 2: especially in the in the blue areas where ELI used
Speaker 2: to be more propular. By the way using oftentimes like
Speaker 2: the charging network that like Tesla built. Right, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: you see a few cyber trucks on the road. I
Speaker 2: think that is largely not seen as a tremendous success
Speaker 2: in in driverless cars. Waimo is a category leader in
Speaker 2: the United States. Right, so all of a sudden, Tesla
Speaker 2: is like second best at a bunch of things. Its
Speaker 2: profit margins are down. Its stock did bounce back after
Speaker 2: Elon downsized himself from the government or was or was downsized.
Speaker 2: But Elon might have concerns that you're playing catch up
Speaker 2: in various ways in this market now, and you kind
Speaker 2: of established the whole category by yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that he's he is playing catch up.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Nate, I've started noticing, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have bumper stickers on a lot of
Speaker 1: Tesla's that apologize for driving a Tesla. So people are
Speaker 1: you know, people are saying things like I wish I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, but I can't afford a new car. And
Speaker 1: I bet that the secondary, like the resale market for
Speaker 1: Tesla's is going to fall, which has traditionally been actually
Speaker 1: incredibly strong right in the past. If you try to
Speaker 1: buy an old Tesla like the prices were ridiculously high,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that secondary
Speaker 1: market also kind of absolutely caved in, And so you
Speaker 1: need to think not just right now, but ahead. And
Speaker 1: then you've got the lack of eb subsidies and kind
Speaker 1: of all of those credits that are going away, and
Speaker 1: so all of these things are sobering if you're an
Speaker 1: Elon musk and Tesla's kind of your your baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, people are pretty rational about car purchases, right,
Speaker 2: They're often pretty go gageous for overall optimism about economy
Speaker 2: in the near term. Right, according to Google Gemini AI.
Speaker 2: You know, always caveats about this, but there's been a
Speaker 2: ten percent decline in resale values approximately so far instead
Speaker 2: of time when in theory, because of tariffs, you should
Speaker 2: have people moving into used cars, right, if new cars
Speaker 2: get more expensive. Yeah, And it's like no longer like
Speaker 2: a flash. She used to be cool thing ne a
Speaker 2: difriend who would ride a Tesla. It was like a
Speaker 2: little bit like a friend who had a crypto punk
Speaker 2: right flex right, Hey, you want to you want to?
Speaker 2: You want to ride my Tesla to the poker tournament.
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, Sure, yeah, and and they've lost that
Speaker 2: category leadership.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, I think I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I do wonder whether something else will step in. I'm
Speaker 1: very curious to see what the next five to ten
Speaker 1: years in the US will look like in terms of EVS,
Speaker 1: whether someone else is going to step in, whether TESLA
Speaker 1: is going to rebound as Trump, you know, leaves office
Speaker 1: and Elanas further distance from it, or whether we're going
Speaker 1: to see just a fall a continue must fall in
Speaker 1: the share of evs, in which case I think it
Speaker 1: would be a lasting harm for for a lot of
Speaker 1: goals that Elon even has stated that he has in
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 2: Now, look, I don't think we will. I think that
Speaker 2: will that will rebound, right. You know, look now every
Speaker 2: manufacturing and if you look at like what are Car
Speaker 2: and Driver's best electric cars testas Model three is still
Speaker 2: number one. You have Hundays, and you have Nissans, and
Speaker 2: you have you know, BMW's and American made versions and
Speaker 2: things like that, And like, I think the market demand
Speaker 2: for these cars is proven. And obviously Trump's probably gonna
Speaker 2: roll back fuel efficiency standards in some places. But like,
Speaker 2: and by the way, I don't think I don't think
Speaker 2: Elon's position as a public figure is unrecoverable. I think
Speaker 2: it might have become unrecoverable if he'd remained in office.
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess he was in office. He was
Speaker 2: officially he was office for much longer. But people have
Speaker 2: like people have like short memory.
Speaker 1: People have Oh my god, yes, can we just like
Speaker 1: talk about that for a second. People's memory is non existent,
Speaker 1: like people especially these days, Like I feel like the
Speaker 1: attention span is so incredibly short that like next week,
Speaker 1: if something else happens, you know, you will kind of
Speaker 1: go back to your priors and this will be kind
Speaker 1: of water under the bridge. Even though this kind of
Speaker 1: the circumstances might not have changed that drastically, the repercussions
Speaker 1: might still be felt. I'm always shocked at just how
Speaker 1: short people's memories actually are.
Speaker 2: Look I mean if he I mean part of premise,
Speaker 2: Like Elan I think does not believe in surrounding himself
Speaker 2: with like he has some PR people have tried to
Speaker 2: work with them before, but like not not many relative
Speaker 2: to a person of his stature. But like a good
Speaker 2: PR campaign, you know, you do the right interviews, you
Speaker 2: make sure you're not on Kenneman or something. When you're
Speaker 2: doing the interviews and like and like, and you can say,
Speaker 2: I try to stop Trump from mushrooms are okay? I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, I tried not to. I tried to
Speaker 2: stop Trump from these horrible terrorists and X, Y and Z.
Speaker 2: I mean he has expressed so when we put up
Speaker 2: at silver bulletin the Elon Musk popularity tracker, he actually
Speaker 2: replied to me on Twitter and said, it's because the
Speaker 2: governments or the news media is biased against me. I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 2: but also, hahaha, I have kind of fucked up some shit, right.
Speaker 2: It was like surprisingly humble. I think it did register
Speaker 2: her to him at some point that like, you've burned
Speaker 2: a lot of credibility, buddy, with with a large mass
Speaker 2: of the American public that once hold you in high regard,
Speaker 2: including friends. And yeah, I mean I hope he has
Speaker 2: people in his life that can point him in the
Speaker 2: right direction. He has found a bunch of amazing companies.
Speaker 2: And I'd rather have good Elon than evil Elon, I
Speaker 2: guess right, without wanting to precisely define what good and
Speaker 2: evil are, but he is like a world historically important figure.
Speaker 2: It'll probably be better if for the world, if you
Speaker 2: were making more I don't mean sober in a literal sense,
Speaker 2: but like more better, making better decisions more to use
Speaker 2: a taglen of the show.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, so okay, So summing up Nate, if we
Speaker 1: were to give him a grade on his decision making,
Speaker 1: I don't know do you want to give him a
Speaker 1: letter grade or a number grade, but let's give him
Speaker 1: a grade.
Speaker 2: Let's do a number.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, let's do zero to ten, with zero being
Speaker 1: absolute disaster, ten being you know, brilliant, best decision maker
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: And when's the start out? It starts out.
Speaker 1: We're talking just the Trump tenure from from the moment
Speaker 1: he's appointed, and so.
Speaker 2: We don't give him from a pure EVS play. You
Speaker 2: can give him credit for investing in the Trump campaign, right,
Speaker 2: Let's let's give him two grades.
Speaker 1: Let's give him the grade from his decision to kind
Speaker 1: of pivot to Trump, let's call it that. And let's
Speaker 1: give him a grade for his tenure in the not
Speaker 1: his official tenure in the Trump administration. So two grades.
Speaker 2: To pivot to Trump in the first place. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to ignore what my political preferences are personally from
Speaker 2: that kind of Elon's look, I give him a it's
Speaker 2: hard not to be results oriented, right, I give him
Speaker 2: a five, which is a boring grade. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, he did recognize that, like Trump
Speaker 2: is the rising ship in this election, right, I can
Speaker 2: have access to like a lot of power and a
Speaker 2: lot of influence. I mean it's like tactically, it's kind
Speaker 2: of smart, right strategically in terms of what it means
Speaker 2: for for his life and his brand. I mean, he
Speaker 2: has a very high opportunity cost, right, he has really
Speaker 2: cool jobs as it is, right, and you know, aspires
Speaker 2: of extending human life spans and traveling to Mars or
Speaker 2: building super indulgent AI and all these things, right, and
Speaker 2: so like you know, and you know, initially Tesla gained
Speaker 2: a lot of value in the stock market when Trump
Speaker 2: one and then Elam was brought in, right, and then
Speaker 2: lost all of that back basically and now has rebounded
Speaker 2: some again. Right, So like, yeah, I don't know, you
Speaker 2: can't give him a high grade because, like I think
Speaker 2: you have to be a little bit results oriented. Right,
Speaker 2: he was not able to do it in a way
Speaker 2: that avoided massive backlash toward him and his products, right,
Speaker 2: and was not able to do it in a way
Speaker 2: that was sustainable really, but they did win an election.
Speaker 2: He was one of the key figures in winning a
Speaker 2: vital election at a vital time in world history. And
Speaker 2: so you can't go too low either, yep.
Speaker 1: And what about during the administration.
Speaker 2: I'll give him a two and a half, which is
Speaker 2: rounding up. I'll give him one point for one point
Speaker 2: for pushing back on skilled demigration, one point for pushing
Speaker 2: back on terras, and I'll give him a two point
Speaker 2: three and three tenths of a point for leaving when
Speaker 2: he did the reason three tenths because I think it
Speaker 2: was probably at least seventy percent Trump's decision. Where are
Speaker 2: your scores?
Speaker 1: So I was actually going back and forth between lower
Speaker 1: and higher than a five on his pivot to Trump,
Speaker 1: And so I think I'll end up at a five,
Speaker 1: which is quite boring, but I'll explain what my thinking was.
Speaker 1: So originally I was going to say lower because he
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons that Trump ended up winning.
Speaker 1: I think like that support actually helped Trump at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and that money helped Trump at the beginning. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, obviously this is speculation but had he thrown
Speaker 1: that support towards the Democrats, I think we might have
Speaker 1: seen a different election result. I don't know, right, this
Speaker 1: is a lot of a lot of maybe's, but so
Speaker 1: so on that sense, like it's very hard to disambiguit
Speaker 1: cause and effect here and figure out like was it
Speaker 1: actually a good decision? Right? Would he have been better
Speaker 1: served if Kamala Harris had come to power and like
Speaker 1: he was able to align himself closely with that government,
Speaker 1: which was not, you know, a shit show, and the
Speaker 1: way that you know, Trump two point zero has been
Speaker 1: that might have actually been strategically smarter. And once again,
Speaker 1: it's really really hard to deal with counterfactuals. So so
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's kind of it's pulling me
Speaker 1: in different directions. The other thing I was thinking about
Speaker 1: was he reminds me of the Russian oligarchs who threw
Speaker 1: in behind Putin right, who helped get Putin in power
Speaker 1: and were like, this is this is what's gonna really
Speaker 1: help my business, and they you know, that was brilliant.
Speaker 1: They made billions of dollars until a lot of them
Speaker 1: started getting killed. And so at the at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, like that wasn't nearly as brilliant. So
Speaker 1: at first, when I was thinking through it, I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that can actually be strategically smart, so higher than a five.
Speaker 1: But most of them died and so so that's actually
Speaker 1: not a very good trade off, And that was the
Speaker 1: other kind of part of what I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: So I ended up at a five. Actually maybe even
Speaker 1: lower than a five, given that both of these end
Speaker 1: up net negatives. So I would give him a four
Speaker 1: on that. Honestly, I'm going to give him a one.
Speaker 1: I don't think that in his time in the administration
Speaker 1: he has accomplished enough to warrant more than a one,
Speaker 1: because even the things that he pushed back on, like tariffs,
Speaker 1: I think that that wasn't him pushing back. I think
Speaker 1: that was popularity ratings and everyone else and Trump just
Speaker 1: going back and forth. And I think that we would
Speaker 1: be in largely the same place we are right now
Speaker 1: even without Elon. So I'm not going to give him
Speaker 1: that much credit for that, And I'm going to give
Speaker 1: him a lot of grief for the chaos that he's
Speaker 1: caused and the brain drain that he's caused, and the
Speaker 1: downstream effects that he's causing for the country. So I
Speaker 1: think his decision making in this particular moment is like
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm being very positive not to give
Speaker 1: him a zero.
Speaker 2: All right, plus.
Speaker 1: Exactly, we're not failing him, but pretty damn close. All right,
Speaker 1: mister Musk, that's our report card for you. Let's take
Speaker 1: a break and talk about government in general. So we
Speaker 1: have a question this week from a listener whose name
Speaker 1: is Tyler, and he writes, how can we change our
Speaker 1: current system of government to allow it to make better decisions? Now,
Speaker 1: he wasn't coming at it from quite the angle that
Speaker 1: I thought he would, but it is a thought provoking angle.
Speaker 1: So this is what he writes. He says, one thing
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about recently is the benefits of autocracy.
Speaker 1: I look at Putin and she and I'm jealous of
Speaker 1: their ability to do real long term planning. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, this is something that has caused Tyler to think,
Speaker 1: is there something that America can do to kind of
Speaker 1: go past short term gains and have more of a
Speaker 1: long term strategic mindset.
Speaker 2: I'm a big believer in democracy. Yeah, Look, but this
Speaker 2: is this is a question. I mean, China can.
Speaker 1: Clearly, China can do things we can't do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can build. I mean their way ahead on drones, right,
Speaker 2: they're ahead or catching up on electric vehicles, they're behind
Speaker 2: on AI, they're way ahead on robotics. You know, for
Speaker 2: a long time people thought when you have a whole
Speaker 2: country become middle class, invariably you also have democracy go
Speaker 2: along with it. And China's like no, I mean you
Speaker 2: you know, you are getting closer and closer to free
Speaker 2: entrepreneurship in China. You are not able to talk about
Speaker 2: Tannemin Square without getting in a lot of trouble. And
Speaker 2: they're and they're managing these issues in like very weird ways,
Speaker 2: are getting more progressive on like gay rights. But you're
Speaker 2: you're not going to You're not going to have a democracy,
Speaker 2: And like, you know, that's not a compromise that I'm
Speaker 2: willing to make it necessarily, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, I completely agree with you, But I do want
Speaker 1: to kind of acknowledge that the question where Tyler's question
Speaker 1: is coming from is the question that people have been
Speaker 1: asking for centuries. So if we go back to Plato,
Speaker 1: right and the Republic, you have the idea of the
Speaker 1: philosopher king. So Plato ended up, you know when he
Speaker 1: tried to interrogate which system of government is best, and
Speaker 1: you know, rule by the few, the many, all of
Speaker 1: these different things. He comes to the conclusion that we
Speaker 1: should have basically one person in power who's a philosopher,
Speaker 1: who has all of these different qualities that make him
Speaker 1: wise and that basically make him the best paternalistic ruler.
Speaker 1: He knows what's best for everyone, And it's kind of
Speaker 1: it's a scary thought if you actually try to think
Speaker 1: through the implications. But this is where Plato came out
Speaker 1: as well, and that was one of the things that
Speaker 1: I thought about when I was thinking about Tyler's question.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that there is lots wrong with
Speaker 1: the US government, but not being an autocracy is not
Speaker 1: one of them. I have always believed that we need
Speaker 1: to the two party system right, that we would actually
Speaker 1: be much better served if we had a more pluralistic
Speaker 1: system with more viable third party options and healthier debate,
Speaker 1: less polarization, right where people actually were able to represent
Speaker 1: more more points of view, which is kind of more
Speaker 1: of the parliamentary system that you see in a lot
Speaker 1: of European countries.
Speaker 2: Well, look, our our system was designed in a world
Speaker 2: where you don't have terribly strong parties, what most of
Speaker 2: the founders assumed, because if you didn't, then, like then
Speaker 2: we'd have much more checks and bounces with Trump in
Speaker 2: the name of Congress in particular, the court I think
Speaker 2: largely has played the role that the founders envisioned for it.
Speaker 2: Believe it or not, right, but like, but Congress, you
Speaker 2: know a lot of things Trump was doing. Again, Congress
Speaker 2: has power to restrict Trump on tariffs, which is both
Speaker 2: directly unpopular and indirectly hurting the economach will hurt all of
Speaker 2: their jobs, right, And they're not able to do it
Speaker 2: because there are Republican primaries where where they face far
Speaker 2: more threat. Most Republican members face more threat from losing
Speaker 2: a GOP primary challenge than from losing a general election. Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a little bit unclear kind of what
Speaker 2: we're allowed to fee out or what we're not. I
Speaker 2: will say, sometimes you walk around New York, you know,
Speaker 2: nice spring day or whatever. You're like, I'm in all
Speaker 2: these buildings and parks, and you're like, I'm amazed we
Speaker 2: haven't just all killed each other by now. Right, Even
Speaker 2: being some have a long history of violence, they're able
Speaker 2: to get together and you know, countries have great epics
Speaker 2: and eras. Maybe the United States is out of its
Speaker 2: great era in some ways. The fact that we can't
Speaker 2: build things as fast as we used to do is frustrating,
Speaker 2: I think. But you know, look, the checks and balances
Speaker 2: at the framers design isn't a bad system, but it's
Speaker 2: like deliberately a hard system to change. Right, the threshold
Speaker 2: for many of the constitution is high. And if you
Speaker 2: get into a lock in where you have extra i
Speaker 2: mean partisanship on the one hand, which makes it impossible
Speaker 2: to achieve super majorities on most things, right, then that
Speaker 2: creates lots of problems. You know, I'm starting to sound
Speaker 2: like one of these middle aged guys who's more worried
Speaker 2: about like a debt crisis in the long term, right,
Speaker 2: markets are, and I tend to trust markets on that.
Speaker 2: You know, that's one problem that we face. I think
Speaker 2: the cuts that people are making to the to long
Speaker 2: term research and development and scientific programs right, the deterrent
Speaker 2: to the most talented people coming to the United States.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, all of these things I think
Speaker 2: are going to have long term consequences that reduce our
Speaker 2: leadership a bit. And America gets away with a lot
Speaker 2: because we have the world's most powerful military, at least
Speaker 2: top two and a half. Right, we have a world's
Speaker 2: leading currency, right, and we had a huge head start.
Speaker 2: I mean, everyone else kind of you know, Europe has
Speaker 2: had problem was China starting from a very low baseline.
Speaker 2: So we had a big head start and a lot
Speaker 2: of advantages we have. You know, we're protected from from
Speaker 2: foreign invasions. Who a degree, you aren't if you're in Eurasia. Right,
Speaker 2: Our natural resources are very rich. If we had to
Speaker 2: become self sufficient, then we absolutely could. Right. We have
Speaker 2: a lot of soft power based on our creativity and
Speaker 2: our capitalism and our brands and and things like that. Right,
Speaker 2: And you know, it'd be kind of a shame if
Speaker 2: we've we fucked it up, right.
Speaker 1: But well, we're on our way, rights, as you just said,
Speaker 1: we're on our way to fucking it up because a
Speaker 1: lot of those things that give us our power are
Speaker 1: under threat right now, and that is not going to
Speaker 1: help government. And having a putin in charge is certainly
Speaker 1: not going to help that situation. Because if in some ways,
Speaker 1: you know, what Trump is trying to do right now
Speaker 1: is not dissimilar from what happens in autocracies, right, with
Speaker 1: all of the executive orders, trying to circumvent the checks
Speaker 1: and balance, says, trying to circumvent Congress. It hasn't worked
Speaker 1: as well because we do you know, we're not in
Speaker 1: an autocracy yet. But I'm saying that's what he's kind
Speaker 1: of if you look at what he's trying to do,
Speaker 1: that is kind of the the approach is, let me
Speaker 1: just executive order my way through this.
Speaker 2: I mean, IFDR got struck down a lot by the courts, right,
Speaker 2: I don't know if Yeah, I think some people would
Speaker 2: say he had autocratic Oh.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, FDR was a disaster in that respect. I mean
Speaker 1: he was. He's the reason that we have term limits
Speaker 1: on the presidency. He's the only one who did not
Speaker 1: bow to president. Everyone else willingly left after two terms
Speaker 1: and there was no need for a constitutional amendment. And
Speaker 1: it was because of FDR that we have that constitutional amendment. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: Trump is not the first. So all I mean is that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're looking admiringly at that sort of approach,
Speaker 1: you can see that there are a lot of issues
Speaker 1: with it. And by the way, you certainly do not
Speaker 1: want to be living in Russia right where right now,
Speaker 1: that is not a good state living and that is
Speaker 1: not a good society to live in. So you see
Speaker 1: kind of what ends up happening. And a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that we take for granted are kind of
Speaker 1: consequences of the fact that we live in a democratic society.
Speaker 1: But yeah, would we be better off if we had
Speaker 1: a more more robust democratic institutions, right if kind of
Speaker 1: we were able to revive the critical thinking that I
Speaker 1: think has largely fallen by the wayside as people have
Speaker 1: become incredibly polarized. You know, we've talked before about how
Speaker 1: both parties are quite broken in different ways, and I
Speaker 1: think that if we're trying to have a better long
Speaker 1: term government strategy, we need to look to that and
Speaker 1: try to figure out, you know, how do we create
Speaker 1: a system that doesn't reward polarization. Because one of the
Speaker 1: things you're talking about, Nate, is that you know, people
Speaker 1: want to win their elections, right, they're afraid to lose.
Speaker 1: They're afraid to kind of do things that will potentially
Speaker 1: make lose and it's a vicious cycle. So how do
Speaker 1: we break that, right, Like, how do we actually give
Speaker 1: them And this happens It's funny this happens in businesses too.
Speaker 1: I just recently was talking to some business leaders who
Speaker 1: kind of asked how they can have kind of better
Speaker 1: innovation in their businesses, and I was like, well, you
Speaker 1: need to actually not just say that you reward creativity,
Speaker 1: but not punish people when they fail. Right, If someone
Speaker 1: who takes a risk and it doesn't work out, you
Speaker 1: fire them, then that tells everyone all they need to
Speaker 1: know about how you value risk taking and creative thinking.
Speaker 1: And here we're kind of seeing the same thing where
Speaker 1: people are afraid of saying something, doing something, and then
Speaker 1: not getting re elected. They're afraid to speak up. They're
Speaker 1: kind of afraid of that sort of environment, and that
Speaker 1: is not a good state of affairs. I think that's
Speaker 1: something that we should work towards fixing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, let me say a couple of things, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, one answer is maybe we need a contenst
Speaker 2: that we want to devolve more power to state and
Speaker 2: local governments, which seem to be more functional and are
Speaker 2: often less partisan. Right, they used to be seen as
Speaker 2: like Democrats didn't like that. They liked you know, they
Speaker 2: thought that states would take rights away that were conserus
Speaker 2: to protected, et cetera. But like maybe that just kind
Speaker 2: of the equilibrium that would best serve everyone involved. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: I do want to put the brakes on. You know,
Speaker 2: we still don't know about like the long term future
Speaker 2: of China or the United States. Right, you have countries
Speaker 2: that are quite harmonious wh they're going through this middle
Speaker 2: class stage and then reach like South Korea, right, And
Speaker 2: now South Korea is at a more mature stage where
Speaker 2: they have a GDP per capite's higher than Japan, for example,
Speaker 2: and they're having impeachment and political turmoil and people are
Speaker 2: unhappy there. So we don't know where China ends up,
Speaker 2: and we don't know where the US ends up. I mean,
Speaker 2: you have seen some shifts in coalitions, right, Like, I
Speaker 2: think there are certain ways in which the response to
Speaker 2: Democrats has been a healthy response, right, Where Democrats have
Speaker 2: been complace and lazy about a lot of things. Right,
Speaker 2: Renominating Biden and lighting people about it was really pathetic. Right.
Speaker 2: They have taken for granted certain types of voters like
Speaker 2: African Americans and younger voters and everything else. Right, and men, right,
Speaker 2: you know, they're losing grandival men and like, so they
Speaker 2: kind of deserve it. But maybe maybe there'll be some
Speaker 2: declined from partisanship eventually. I mean, all trends reverse themselves
Speaker 2: over some window. Maybe AI will radically remake the political
Speaker 2: coalitions in different ways. I mean, it certainly feels like
Speaker 2: a dynamic time, and dynamic means Hiberians and Hyberiants includes
Speaker 2: good outcomes. But I don't know, I not feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think, Yeah, Tyler, this was a really
Speaker 1: interesting question. We don't have an easy answer, right, We
Speaker 1: don't really.
Speaker 2: Have like so look, people with the good guver will say, oh,
Speaker 2: you can have like more nonpartisan primaries and ranked choice voting.
Speaker 2: Actually good stuff probably does help. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: and if we're gonna do like a New York mayoral
Speaker 2: episode ranked choice voting as a factor in the mayor's
Speaker 2: race here, you know, but like it's kind of because
Speaker 2: the constitution's hard to change, then you kind of have
Speaker 2: to change political culture and that's and that's difficult.
Speaker 1: Ranked choice voting, Nate, I think, is a good example
Speaker 1: of things that could on the margin help. And as
Speaker 1: we know as poker players, on the margin is actually important, right,
Speaker 1: Elections can be one or lost on the margin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the margin matters more when things are approximately
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty, right, you know, two Senate seats versus
Speaker 2: three next year for Democrats makes a huge difference as
Speaker 2: far as their ability to win a trifecta in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight, right. I mean it often comes down to
Speaker 2: just like one one seat, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: So I think that this is all really important to remember.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the question, Tyler. We wish we had an
Speaker 1: easier answer, but this was a really interesting discussion. Let
Speaker 1: us know what you think of the show. Reach out
Speaker 1: to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. And
Speaker 1: by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we
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Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2: And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
Speaker 2: production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
Speaker 2: by Isabelle Carter, our associate producer is Sonya Gerwin. Sally
Speaker 2: Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2: Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for tuning in to