All In for Socialism?
A Provocative Podcast Panel Peers into 2025
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Winners and Losers
To start the week, here are two podcast recommendations.
I released Episode 721 of The Kindle Chronicles yesterday. It contains my conversation with Sue Erhart about her first book, Lose Your Critic for Good: A Step-by-Step Process for Reclaiming Your Spirit. The YouTube video of the interview is here.
The All-In Podcast’s Episode 206, uploaded on January 3rd, comprises nearly two hours of original, provocative, Tech-Bro predictions for 2025. The YouTube link is here. Audio is here .
I’ve become a big fan of All-In. I listened to every minute of Episode 206. I didn’t agree with everything these four Silicon Valley stars and their guest had to say, but it sure was entertaining. I felt as if I were looking into the future with a new pair of glasses.
I forget why I decided that I don’t like Jason Calacanis, the main host. It might have been something he said about Amazon back in the day when I considered it my job to defend Team Bezos against all doubters.
Calacanis has made early investments in more than 300 startups, including Uber. His fellow buddy/hosts have similar credentials.
Chamath Palihapitaya is a venture capitalist and former top exec at Facebook, where he was responsible for growing the user base to more than 1 billion people.
David Sachs, a former PayPal exec, has been named AI/Crypto Czar for the incoming Trump Administration.
David Freiburg is an entrepreneur who founded a climate company and sold it for $1.1 billion.
Their guest was Gavin Baker, a venture capitalist whose 17-year career at Fidelity Investments included managing a $17 billion equities portfolio. For six years his fund outperformed more than 99 percent of its industry peers.
What do these savants see as possible this year and beyond? Here are a few samples:
Putin will be the big political loser in 2025. Xi Jinping will begin decoupling from him. Trump will be a lot tougher on Putin than people think.
2025 will be the year of autonomous hardware and humanoid robots.
Tesla’s Full Self Driving (FSD) will cross into mainstream adoption.
Dollar-denominated stable coins, a form of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to the U.S. dollar, passed Visa’s transaction volume in 2024 and will be the big trend in 2025.
OpenAI will fail to convert from for-profit to non-profit.
Big trouble for Detroit and European automakers could lead to wave of mega-mergers.
Like other pod panelists, David Freiburg sees unleashed economic growth in 2025 because of deregulation and AI. For his choice in the Contrarian category of predictions, Freiburg gave this surprising scenario:
“I think that the party line is that socialism was defeated in this election cycle, and that there was a resounding vote from the American populace against socialism. And I actually think my contrarian belief is that we'll see a rise, a dramatic rise in socialist movements in 2025 in the United States.”
That’s because, Freidburg said, an economic boom means big winners, big losers, and bigger-than-ever inequality. Large contingents will be left behind.
“When that happens, I do think that the socialist policies and the socialist movements gain steam.”
I heard it first on All-In.
I’ve become a fan of that pod as well. Sometimes it feels like those guys are in a bubble but also very interesting to hear their take on current events, tech, business etc since they have much different circles and resources.
Regarding anticipation for an increase in socialism movements, this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I completely agree that with the advent of AI there are going to be big winners and very big losers and of course the number of losers is going to far out weight the winners. Many talk about how new jobs will be created that we do not anticipate that will replace the jobs that are lost. Interestingly, I have not heard Elon talk much about this and I am of the opinion there will be far more jobs eliminated than created. He talks about universal high income but I’ve not heard him explain where this high income comes from. I don’t understand the mechanism he has in mind for this high income. He also talks about the fear of people losing purpose which is also on my mind.
Anyway, I’m very interested to hear your thoughts on these topics. In the meantime I’m focused on being one of the winners and ensuring my kids will also be among the winners but frankly I think it’s a very privileged position to be in.