Loony Le Fist
17th October 2013, 08:58
Chamath Palihapitiya is the owner of Golden State Warriors and was once an employee of Facebook. You can't help but cringe at his opulence and complete lack of empathy for the effects of the government shutdown. He seems to only care about the stock market. The only thing that makes it worse, is the audience applause at the end. You can skip the video and read the transcript inside the spoiler.
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Transcript of the important parts (starting at about 31:00) follows:
Palihapitiya: The government, they're completely useless.
Calacanis: The government got shut down today and the stock market went up 1 percent.
Palihapitiya: We're in this really interesting shift. The center of power is here, make no mistake. I think we've known it now for probably four or five years. But it's becoming excruciatingly, obviously clear to everyone else that where value is created is no longer in New York, it's no longer in Washington, it's no longer in LA. It's in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And when you look at sort of, like, how markets react to things like that, and when there's no reaction, it should be taken as a very subtle signal that the power dynamics have changed. Because markets value meaningful events, markets discount meaningless events. And so the functional value of the government is effectively discounted to zero ...
Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter. If companies shut down, the stock market would collapse. If the government shuts down, nothing happens and we all move on, because it just doesn't matter. Stasis in the government is actually good for all of us. It means they can neither do anything semi-useful nor anything really stupid. They just sit there and they just kind of, you know ...
[Applause]
Calacanis: There you have it.
ptO6mccWtIo
Transcript of the important parts (starting at about 31:00) follows:
Palihapitiya: The government, they're completely useless.
Calacanis: The government got shut down today and the stock market went up 1 percent.
Palihapitiya: We're in this really interesting shift. The center of power is here, make no mistake. I think we've known it now for probably four or five years. But it's becoming excruciatingly, obviously clear to everyone else that where value is created is no longer in New York, it's no longer in Washington, it's no longer in LA. It's in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And when you look at sort of, like, how markets react to things like that, and when there's no reaction, it should be taken as a very subtle signal that the power dynamics have changed. Because markets value meaningful events, markets discount meaningless events. And so the functional value of the government is effectively discounted to zero ...
Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter. If companies shut down, the stock market would collapse. If the government shuts down, nothing happens and we all move on, because it just doesn't matter. Stasis in the government is actually good for all of us. It means they can neither do anything semi-useful nor anything really stupid. They just sit there and they just kind of, you know ...
[Applause]
Calacanis: There you have it.