BONUS: Conversations with Coleman: Big Tech, Politics, and Trust in Institutions

32:36And so to me, looking at a society and asking how much income, say, or wealth inequality there is, is actually asking the wrong question vis-a-vis human flourishing and what we should actually care about. And then when you actually look at that question, and I put this, I had a socialist on my podcast recently, and, you know, I made the point, which is, you know, even at the height of, you mentioned, you know, the Gilded Age, when you had Rockefeller and all these people making all this money, well, at that very time, what was the number one destination for the poor migrants of the world? America, that very same gilded society that the rich were supposedly running into the ground.

33:24That was the society that Italians and Irish and Jews from Russia were pouring into by the millions with nothing through Ellis Island because it offered them the very best opportunity in the world at the time to live a middle-class life, a better life. And so if you look around the world, it looks like, it quite often looks like the societies with the billionaires, like America, also are usually the societies with the kind of structures that help the working poor succeed as well. So that's how I view the whole issue. I think people look at it backwards. By the way, I completely agree with the principles you just mentioned, because I do think that the question is, how do we create both the best rising of that floor, plus the opportunity to make as much wealth, make as much progress, do great work as possible, which can go as high as possible.

34:26The one place I would kind of, as it were, steal person, the one place is if you say, well, actually, in fact, And this is one of the reasons why I think kind of questions around monopoly power and so forth are good ones for society to address is if you get somebody who is so powerful that they're corrupting the system to lock themselves in a position of power, either individually or collectively, that gets to be a place where you should examine that some. And it's part of the reason why I think, you know, like, for example, the antitrust stuff from the Gilded Age and, you know, Teddy Roosevelt and so forth was actually, in fact, you know, actually, in fact, good for society.

35:10Yeah, I agree. Right. So anyway, so, yeah, so I think we're in, we're coloring in an area of very, very broad agreements within the philosophy of create human prosperity and human opportunity. And that's the most important thing. And you're going to have societies with a lot of inequality as part of that. But that's actually, in fact, the functioning of a society that creates a lot more, you know, kind of humanist, you know, like medical systems and, you know, elevating poverty and, you know, elevating people out of poverty and so forth, which is the most important thing. Right. Medical research is one of the prime examples of this.

35:53Any given year, if you look at where all of the new medical breakthroughs are invented, it just so happens to be America. Why? Because this is the uncomfortable truth, I guess, is that in America, there is an opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to make oodles of money by inventing things that people will want to buy in order to cure or mitigate disease. That opportunity to make that much money is restricted in Europe for various reasons. And so only in America is it worthwhile for pharmaceutical companies to put up the billions of dollars required for the uncertain result of making that huge bag of cash at the end of the rainbow.

36:41And it might seem unseemly to someone without that bag of cash that people are making that absurd level of money. But not only do we benefit from the medical innovations, eventually the whole world benefits from those medical innovations as they condemn the system that allows people to get wealthy creating them. And so there is something very dark in human nature, in my opinion. And, you know, I've been seeing it just more and more on both sides of the political spectrum lately, I've been noticing it more, which is the reality of envy. like he like envy is uh is the emotion i think perhaps more than any other that has led to the destruction of otherwise good societies right if you look at every time the jews have been expelled or pogromed in a country or not just the jews you know the the pakistanis and indians in east africa or the Chinese, the overseas Chinese in Malaysia and other places in Southeast Asia, they get expelled from these societies because they're doing too well, because they have too much money.

37:55They control, quote unquote, too many of the businesses, right? And then like clockwork, when you expel them, the country does much worse off. It's just cutting off the nose to spite the face. And that's just one example of envy, but obviously every country that has willingly elected communists, like true capital C communists, such as we rarely see anymore, was a case of, you know, of basically of envy. And, you know, in those cases, the electorate gets what they want, and they get it good and hard as the quote, as the quote goes. But so there's a left wing version of envy, there's a right wing version of envy.

38:38And, And in my view, that's what motivates a lot of the anti-billionaire rhetoric rather than a deep concern for the country per se. By the way, the other thing, just as a general principle, I think is worth saying, because I agree with that as an instance of where people say it's better to tear the whole system down, is that the impulse to kind of tear the system down versus renovate the system is an extremely expensive, very difficult thing. It's the kind of thing that leads to the French terror. It leads to the Cultural Revolution. It leads to the year zero. And it doesn't say that sometimes that may be the only path out, although frequently it's not.

39:26And the cost in human suffering and the collapse of society is huge. But I agree with your envy point. And I think that it's also a, you know, kind of think about how do we renovate our institutions versus how do we tear them down as a good general principle. Yeah, so right now, a lot of people feel that the threat to institutions is coming first and foremost from the Trump administration. And I'm of two minds about that because in the first instance, I do believe Trump's personality tends towards authoritarianism. he is exactly the kind of president that the founding fathers were worried about and designed the system in order to contain.

40:17There's just no doubt about that, that if it were up to him, he would grab as much power as he possibly could. He would run roughshod over every rule that constrained his power. That seems obvious to me. On the other hand, it seems equally clear to me that the institutions are successfully holding him to account. And so I see some of the rhetoric which suggests that he has already sort of taken over democracy or already turned America into an authoritarian state to be alarmist. And I also think that there is a disturbing phenomena where the media actually stands to gain by convincing Americans that basically we've already lost our democracy or we're at the five yard line with our democracy and we're about to lose it.

41:15And so there's a, there's a systematic, especially, you know, I live in New York City, most people I encounter are liberal. There's a systematic under reporting of the instances that happen almost every day, you know, recently in the news of Trump's ambitions, you know, know, being thwarted, whether it is, you know, the Supreme courts look like they're about to rule against him on his signature tariff proposal, which I've been against since the beginning. The National Guard have been removed from two of the cities they were deployed to. And in general, the hyperventilation about the National Guard going into DC hasn't really borne very much by way of imposition on the citizens of that city.

41:55You've got federal court challenges to, you know, all kinds of things. His lawsuit against CNN and appeals court ruled against it, and the attempted GOP redistricting of Texas, a judge ruled against that. And so the judges are doing their job, not only at the federal circuit level, but also at the Supreme Court level. And to me, it seems like a case where you have, like I said, a classic authoritarian wannabe that is successfully being held by the institutions. And that should make us feel, if not good, then at a minimum, we should not feel like we're losing our democracy. And I hear that tone quite a bit.

42:41So where do you feel we are right now? And where, if at all, do you disagree with the picture I just sketched? So probably not surprising to you, I have broad brush agreements with the picture you just sketched, but perhaps a little bit more, you know, critical of the Trump Foundation, the Trump administration than you just sketched. Look, I do think that a number of Democrats get a little histrionic, like, oh, we're not going to have elections next year. And it's like, that's like, I think, frankly, misleading. And then when people say, well, look, there were elections and you were just, you know, everything that you said was just a bunch of histrionics and we shouldn't pay attention to, I think is a destructive thing.

43:32And what's more, you know, when this kind of lefty progressive goes this histrionic, it covers the actual more relevant issues. And I do think that there is a certain amount of the tripartite, the judiciary kind of holding the ground, which I think is important. Although the fact is it's kind of like in a number of the instances, it's like stop breaking the law, like stop invading blue cities with National Guard as a kind of way of doing it. The kinds of things you didn't cover that were also very alarming to me was the politicization of the military, kind of firing 31 generals as a function of it.

44:18I think it's important that the military, like I think one of the subtle genius things that of the American system was that the military doesn't do its oath to the president, it does its oath to the constitution as kind of the way that it operates and I think it's one of the things that we have, our

44:42Our forefathers and other folks have made a great system, and so the firing of those generals, I think, was a problem. The fact that, yes, I understand that this was speeches and so forth, but kind of the environment of risk where you got everything from Trump kind of advocating for the execution of a chairman of joint chiefs of staff on Truth Social to kind of doing the Democrats should be executed for making a statement about don't follow illegal orders. It's kind of like apple pie and vanilla ice cream. Don't follow illegal orders. Like, great. Yeah, don't follow illegal orders as kind of a way of doing it.

45:30And so I think that the attempts to erode our system are serious. I think words are actually, in fact, serious. I think they create a whole environment that, you know, kind of part of how society works is by belief in the fact that laws work and the fact that elections work, etc. And I think doing a variety of things to keep those reinforced, I think, important. And so I'd say that the critique of the Trump administration as being very corrosive to our democracy is accurate. I also agree with you about the Trump tariff policies and so forth. And I hope that the judiciary keeps that because that is a power of Congress, not a power of the executive.

46:25And the attempt to erode the powers of Congress I think is bad for the American system. But anyway, so I'm more critical than your picture of the Trump administration just outlined. But I do think the judiciary has, you know, elements of showing the kind of resolution, despite, you know, Trump's, you know, best efforts to, you know, contramound what the founding fathers were trying to limit the powers of the executive for, you know, domestically for very good reasons. Yeah. Do you think that Trump is a singular threat as a result of his personality, and also his cult of personality, that is to say, the level of loyalty that he commands among his followers that is unlike anything we see from anyone else in the Republican Party, but also anyone at all in the Democrat Party?

47:31do you think that his because i agree with you when he you know all of this all of this uh normalization of of the language whether it was from locker up to i'm gonna you know you know everything you mentioned that just the loose way he is with language with threatening political opponents with threatening violence all that stuff it all bothers me but at the same time i I am sympathetic to the argument that if that stuff doesn't happen, we should judge people more by their actions than by, than by their, than by their rhetoric. And, and so it, it does bother me. And do you think that he is a singular threat or do you think that because of his success, the success he's had with the Trumpian style, let's call it, that we will be seeing politicians try to emulate that freewheeling, say whatever the first thing that comes to your head, even if it's violent, even if it's nasty, push as hard as you can on the system, challenge every norm, don't respect, you know, do whatever you can get away with.

48:49Do you think we'll be seeing politicians emulate that style for the rest of our lifetime? Well, it's certainly possible.

49:24institution or anything else, and, like, we don't want that. And I think that's one of the concerns that it will create that. I think also that the, you know, the kind of the questions around, you know, even as the judge appropriately throws out the inappropriate indictment of Comey, you know the question is is even like bringing that case as a form of you know kind of autocratic persecution of an individual to create fear in other individuals to not counter the executive authority because even you know it's it's extremely costly for a for everyday citizen to try to defend against that kind of stuff.

50:14And so that kind of fear of political abuse and persecution is the kind of thing we don't want either legally or normatively to things. And I think that the use of those kinds of things, not just words, are kind of extremely dangerous. And then, you know, pardoning people who assaulted police officers in an effort at an insurrection where the, you know, a bunch of the people were trying to see if they could kill Vice President Pence or Speaker Pelosi or so forth. I think those are all instances of actual, in fact, corruptions of the system that are beyond just words. So I think we're actually already – it's not just the emulation of the word side, but the emulation of the activities and the furthering of the activities for political power.

51:18You know, I think the genius of the American system, the wondrous of our, you know, kind of earliest democracy was the peaceful transition of power and the acknowledgement that the election is what works. I mean, for example, like one of the things I find completely nutty about how the administration works is you can only serve in the administration if you make some public statement to the fact that the 2020 election was stolen. Which if you look at it at its outset is when Trump was president and there was a Republican Senate and there was Republican state of electors, sleepy Joe Biden stole the election.

52:01But when Biden was president in 24, he didn't. That's the thing you need to publicly testify to. to be part of this and that that is a a huge i mean it just it's it's like it's bonkers um and it's a huge erosion of you know trust and media ecosystems and anyway that's that's that that kind of thing i think where that goes is nowhere good yeah i think one of the best criticisms of Republicans that I've heard in the past year is when Trump won in 2024, there were actually Democratic Party insiders that asked a few questions. A, how did we mess this up? What did we do wrong? Was it simply not having a primary?

52:49Or does it have something to do with the way we talk about political issues? Do we have a problem with wokeness? There was, obviously there was a wing of the party that didn't want to do any self-examination, but there was a wing of the party that was trying to do self-examination, error correction, and look inward and saying, what did we do wrong? when republicans lost in 2020 there was like zero self-examination there was like literally the the very few people that tried to self-examine were effectively ejected from the party and they all got around a total lie that somehow as you said the election was stolen when trump was sitting but then they weren't able to steal it when biden was like it makes no sense at all from a basic perspective.

53:42Trump constantly says, oh, I've got the evidence, but I'm just, I left it in my other pants. I'm not going to show it to you right now, but I've got a whole bunch of evidence. And yeah, there is an asymmetry there with respect to which party is actually willing to look into its faults, even if I think Democrats don't do as good a job as they could have, even on that score.

54:10But, yeah, and, you know, when it comes to the political prosecutions, this is the point that I always raise to Trump supporters I have on the podcast, is how bothered I am by Trump's retributive instinct. I mean, this is a man who will literally file a lawsuit against a pollster who came out with a poll saying he was going to lose an election that he then won. Right? So he was not in any way damaged. If anything, the pollster's reputation was damaged by her failed prediction already. He was not at all damaged because he won the election. And yet, after winning, he's still upset enough to file a lawsuit against anyone who had the idea that he might lose.

54:59That's a level of pathology psychologically that's actually difficult for me to understand. um and at the same time i think it's always important especially if i have a democrat um on the podcast to express that i thought the political prosecutions of trump went overboard at the same time and i think there was a lack of reflection on that within the democratic party like the january 6 prosecution seemed to me totally appropriate um but the prosecutions by Alvin Bragg and Letitia James seemed to me frivolous and that they wouldn't have been done for anyone besides Trump. And then when it came to the classified documents case, this is a gray area for me because, you know, there's a very good case to be made that the Espionage Act is just overly broad and that's why it so rarely gets actually prosecuted.

56:02It seems like every president and vice president is taking documents home after their presidential term. And, you know, Hillary Clinton, you know, those emails disappeared after they were under FBI subpoena, which is not that different than Trump evading, you know, moving boxes that were under subpoena at the same time. And yet she didn't get prosecuted for it. And that kind of made sense to me because there seemed to be a certain wisdom about amnesty for political officials not wanting to go down the Banana Republic route of putting people in prison, even if you technically can, even if they did, in fact, break the law.

56:45And I thought that Democrats and media outlets that were partial to Democrats didn't do a good job of being critical of those prosecutions at the time. That does not justify, to be clear, what Trump is now trying to do to all of his political opponents. But it is something that I think should be part of the conversation. Yeah, no, I agree with that.

57:37At least the thing was being done very carefully. But I think the notion of kind of what is – when it's involving political figures, it should be something that is kind of fundamental to the corruption of the state versus anything else. You know, it's part of the reason why I kept it was, you know, like the, oh, look, I'm going to take a plane from Qatar. It's like, we should be much more careful about this kind of thing. Anyway, so, but it's a corruption of the state more than anything else. Right. And on that topic, it's been reported that Trump's DOJ is looking at you as a billionaire Democrat donor who has spent a lot of resources opposing Trump through the normal Democratic allowable means.

58:44and that you're on Trump's hit list. How afraid are you that Trump's DOJ is going to try to find something to indict you over? And what is it like to be in that psychological state of anticipation? So I think it's kind of the incense of what's terrible and kind of anti-American on this. So I've been called out twice by Trump in front of the White House press corps. Once, because I think he's angry at the fact that I called for the release of the Epstein files. And so it was like, we're going to investigate Democrats and Reid Hoffman for their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And I'm calling out the DOJ to do this.

59:35And you're like, well, okay, so I've already kind of publicly said that I regretted following MIT's lead in fundraising for Jeffrey Epstein, which is my interaction with him. And I wasn't partying with him back in his criminal days, unlike there's photographic evidence of a certain president doing that, President Trump. And then the other one, which is an executive order against Antifa, which as far as I know is a fictional organization. There is no such organization. And then saying, you know, I'm going to investigate Alex Soros and Reid Hoffman on this. And so I think both of those cases are kind of called out from the White House in an official capacity with directing investigations with, as far as I can tell, because from my perspective, zero evidence of anything because I don't have any actual truth in any of those cases.

1:00:41And my guess is, is the DOJ is spinning up stuff because they tend to do a little bit like the Comey thing. Like, okay, no legitimate prosecutor will file an indictment against Comey. So we'll fire them, demand their resignation, and put in a lawyer who has zero prosecutorial experience to ram one through that doesn't work. everything that I've seen is the DOJ will jump anytime that Trump will do something on true social so I anticipate something is coming from a complete political persecution point of view and what I think you know obviously that's uh concerning and you know kind of uh you know has a personal story but I actually think the more bad thing is the corruption of state the corruption of American values and virtues.

1:01:37And I think that's the thing that we as a society most don't want. Right. Yeah, I agree with that. And I hope that people see that these prosecutions for what they are, even if they are Trump supporters, and I hope that they realize this is the worst part about Trump, right? The best part about Trump is that he can go to the Middle East and get these peace deals and genuinely do get some foreign policy achievements that I doubt a Democrat would have been able to do. For me, the worst part of Trump is he sees a Democrat billionaire donor and says, how can we make this guy's life living hell just because he opposes me in the way you're allowed to as an American citizen in a democracy.

1:02:29I mean, that's really disturbing to me. You mentioned that you said Antifa is not a real organization. When you say that, you mean they're not an organized group that goes under one umbrella? Because obviously there are black clad people in Portland, you know, attacking journalists like Andy Ngo and, you know, surrounding federal or state courthouses during COVID or whatever it was. So when you say that, explain what you meant by that. Yeah, just the principal place that I've seen any references to Antifa is, you know, right wing or, you know, red media organizations. I've never seen any organization like that was described as organization.

1:03:18I think there's individuals who might kind of describe themselves in Teva, and obviously all political violence is bad. We should be discouraging it in word and deed and in any mechanism. And so, you know, part of like, you know, I'm just kind of expressing my shock when it was like, I'm going to, like, we have an executive order against Antifa and I'm going to investigate, you know, read off. And I was like, well, like, not only have I never funded anything that ever was anywhere, even in the same planetary atmosphere as Antifa, I was like, I'm not even aware there's such a thing as an organization like this.

1:04:11Like the only place I've ever heard it described is in the red ecosystem, and it's never crossed my path otherwise. Right. Right. So, yeah, I think the confusion there is that my assumption is that it is a network rather than an explicit organization, a network of individuals that meet up and discuss tactics and view themselves as anti-fascists, not as a proper noun, but as a normal noun. and they go out and do stuff like this and they don't have a 501c3 obviously or they don't have um um i'm not even sure if they have a national official body or a spokesman or anything like that it's really a loose network and so how do you combat a loose network essentially what you're talking about is they're criminals right they're criminals and they you know cities like seattle and Portland have done a pretty bad job of just simply applying the criminal law to those people and those networks.

1:05:12But there's nothing to gain by, say, declaring them a terrorist organization, right? Or looking for Antifa in other countries and deeming them to be terror organizations as if that's like a real problem for Americans. What really actually has to happen is the police departments of Seattle and Portland need to prosecute those individuals that are committing these crimes, right? I mean, I think, you know, we don't really need to seize emergency powers in order to do that. But at the same time, I think those cities have done a very poor job of actually clamping down on that issue. I agree with everything you just said.

1:05:54And I think part of it is to not try to use the very legitimate case of when we do need to act on terrorist groups to try to seize more executive power to persecute your political enemies in an anti-American and undemocratic way. Yeah. Okay, Reid Hoffman, we've reached the end of my questions for the time being, maybe I'll invite you on another time. Obviously, best of luck and knocking on wood that your legal troubles don't actually arise, and that if they do, they end up just being an embarrassment to the Trump administration rather than a serious headache for you. Is there anything that you can point my listeners to if they share your general concerns, want to support the work that you're doing?

1:06:43Can you direct them to any of your organizations that you're excited about right now? Well, I think generally speaking, I think one of the things that's actually most important is something you were saying earlier, which is we should be raising the

1:07:04capabilities and the livelihoods of Americans across the country. So whether it's the various things I'm doing with Opportunity at Work, which is how to get people of talent all across the country able to participate in the tech industry or the Center for Rural Innovation to create economic opportunity rurally. Those would be the kinds of things because I think that's what we should really be focused on most primarily as a society. Thank you very much for coming on my show, Reid Hoffman. Thank you. I look forward to the next conversation, whatever context it is.