E92: Adam Neumann's second act, a16z's $350M bet, housing policy, Inflation Reduction Act & more

But my point is just we've like so broken the free market for housing that we then come along and say, see, the free market's not working. We need more government mandates. Look, is this happening in Miami?

So I think David is right, which is that there's a contortion of laws that come together, that underlie some of these decisions that then manifest in a petition like this, and etc. They all need to get cleaned up.

So it's hypocrisy all the way up and down. And I think this is why people are largely moving to different places around the country, and it's a competition between states and cities.

And in that lens, I think like a whole bunch of business models got turned upside down. So I think carbon markets and carbon trading are not going to be the thing that we thought it was going to be. I think stuff like direct air capture, again, are going to be toy projects off to the side.

instead of doing this carbon tax, which seems incredibly elegant, but we all know it's impossible to get consensus across hundreds of governments and locales to negotiate this, it will never happen, at least not effectively and in real time.

So that's the set of issues that have been pushed back against the carbon tax. And it's why it's been impossible to get implemented and to really get into market.

And so I'm hopeful that this will actually provide a more effective market force in allowing the biggest customer in the market to negotiate prices and that the VCs, instead of making 48% IRR, they'll ultimately make 28% IRR on the investments that they're making in biotech startups.

Well, I mean, you're saying that these drug companies are going to make a lot less money. Well, obviously, that's going to have a downstream impact in the willingness to fund new drugs, new investment, new R&D.

And, you know, they're in the midst right now of completing a massive facility. I think it's in Virginia where they'll be able to make as much insulin as is needed for the entirety of America for no more than 35 bucks a dose.

You can make the argument that technology is as important as those three categories. And so, you know, if I think it's pretty obvious that Andreessen is trying to build a publicly ownable security that represents all things in technology. So again, I don't think that they're necessarily out to generate massive returns for LPs.

Well, I mean, I think Chamath's right that their stated goal is to build like a larger institutional VC type investor. I mean, doesn't Andreessen have a portrait of JP Morgan hanging on his wall or something? I mean, they want to turn VC from being like a little craft business to something larger and more institutional.

And the thing I've learned after the first six months of investing in carbon, because we have a syndicate now with Molly Wood, who's working with me on this climate syndicate, we couldn't find a lot of great investments that made sense that weren't asset heavy.

And so I personally think we are going to see a significant influx of venture capital and support for a lot of these climate tech and new energy material and manufacturing projects that otherwise may have been held back because the subsidy will kickstart.

If you're not contribution margin positive today, free this bill in climate change and the bill is the only way that you get there.

And we need to do what's in our economic interest, which really is investing in nuclear, investing in solar, batteries, wind, and even and brittuals.

And what's amazing is that if we actually pass this framework, which is still yet to be written around how to make permitting more seamless and efficient for these hydrocarbon projects, it will really unleash a massive torrent of both revenues back to the United States.

And one of the reasons it didn't work is because simultaneously with declaring these allies to be enemies, he basically restricted US to energy production, which is strategically undermined.

Global productivity absorbs that. There is very little room right now to expand that without pushing the date in which that capacity is available out until, you know, 2028 to 2030 So effectively a decade from now.