Jason Calacanis vs DHH
I got back from Tahoe tonight after a full day of snowboarding. It was a great day on the slopes. Francis and I ended up meeting some of his old coworkers and it was awesome spending the day with them. They come from the fintech world and they’re all doing some really cool things nowadays.
We talked a lot about finance, data science, stock options, and VC money. It’s never a bad day on the slopes when you have good conversation and I learned a lot from them.
On the drive home today, Francis and I listened to the latest podcast by angel investor Jason Calacanis where he hosts David Heinemeier Hansson who is the co-founder of Basecamp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyq_lnLK-RU
Jason and DHH are two of the most opinionated people on Twitter that I follow and I have seen them go after it quite a few times on Twitter. I was fully expecting a gloves off fist fight between them on various topics ranging from capitalism to Uber and I was ready to be entertained.
To my surprise, they agreed much more than I think anyone anticipated. While each held their own opinions and thoughts on how the world works, or should work, they both made several great points on some controversial topics.
The podcast was one of the best I’ve listened to in the last few months and I learned quite a bit from both Jason and DHH. I was driving so unfortunately was not able to take notes, but there were several points that I wanted to highlight that I thought were worth noting:
The agreement that healthcare and education in the US is absolutely awful and that the U.S. needs to copy exactly what works in Europe. We can debate capitalism vs socialism all we want, but some things are done better from a socialist standpoint such as healthcare and education.
DHH’s beliefs that Marissa Mayer bragging about working 100+ hour weeks is absolutely bonkers and that as a society we would be better off working much less so we can enjoy life.
The debate on wealth tax. I found myself siding a bit more with Jason on this topic as I believe creating a wealth tax where you have to value all assets will cause much more headache than good. The rich will just find loopholes to pay less on the wealth tax. I don’t believe valuing assets will be as easy as DHH makes it sound.
The agreement that tech companies should be broken up as they have become monopolies. This has been one of the more interesting debates going on in this Presidential election. To my surprise, both Jason and DHH seem to agree that these companies should be broken up to encourage competition and spur innovation. I have been a bit on the fence as I believe the major issue is with data, but the angle of allowing more competition made me lean towards taking the position that these companies should be broken up.
Jason and DHH do a great job of analyzing the issue with data and how these large tech companies are using our data. I have always been a bit more on the relaxed side of things in regards to data and privacy, but this conversation got me thinking quite a bit about privacy. There were some great solutions brought up such as forcing tech companies to allow users to opt out of their data being collected.
As I reflect back on the nearly 2 hour podcast, I realized how much content there was in this podcast. It truly was one of the better listens and I look forward to listening to it again soon so I can digest it a second time.