Chatting about voting with Rand Fishkin

Yeah, so for folks who don't know me, my name is Rand Fishkin. I'm the founder of a company called Moz, which was in the search engine optimization space. Started as a consultancy back in '01, became a software company in '07, raised a bunch of rounds of funding. I stepped down and left that company a couple of years ago, started a new company called SparkToro, which is in audience intelligence and market research software. So like yourself, Sahil, I'm a software entrepreneur. I also do a lot of speaking and writing and events. Well, not anymore. No one's doing events. But for the last decade and a half, a lot of travel and speaking. Wrote a book, Lost and Founder, that many folks are familiar with and have been very often a contrarian critic of big tech, probably especially last 5 years, despite also being a big fan of technology.

Yeah, I think we have a similar story in that way where we both went through kind of like that different— in different ways. And you went through it first, right? I more recently went through that kind of VC exit, in a sense, which you call Lost and Founder. And it's a great book, everyone should read it. I've read it. And us. And then, yeah, also kind of outspoken, like, about the issues. And also, I feel like pretty nuanced about it. Maybe Twitter sometimes removes that, and we'll get into that. I think we both, you know, think it's a tool that has purpose when used, you know, used well.

I mean, one of the things that surprises me most about Twitter, especially the last 2 weeks, is that while it has been a source of anxiety, it's also been a source of comfort and of sharing and of social inclusion, right? I think that for me, I don't know about for everyone, but I felt it from my network and community that Twitter is like a place where we go to have some of the conversations that maybe we'd like to have in person but can't because we can't get together.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like I've already noticed a shift of almost like what Twitter was back in the day where it was more conversational. Yes. Whereas I feel like in the sort of pre-two weeks ago, and certainly for the last few years before that, it felt more like a billboard kind of thing where you would kind of put a thought up there and then when it would kind of disseminate And people would react, but often the reactions felt like for another person's audience. It was kind of like this marketing engine almost. Yeah, I mean, I think that happens when things just grow. Audiences grow, the platforms grow, monetization opportunities grow. And I think this tweet— so the reason we started this conversation was I tweeted this thing, which March 3rd, for what it's worth, 2020, I said, opinion: judging someone by the way they vote is stupid. Voting is 0.0001% of how one spends their time and inconsequential 99.9999% of the time. And then you replied saying, could not disagree more. And then I said, basically, like, let's have a chat and talk about it, you know? And I think that's— it's funny because even now I look at that tweet and I'm like, especially with what's transpired since, and we met in person in Seattle and talked about it too. But just with what's happened in the world in the last two weeks, I feel like my opinion on it has almost changed. So maybe I'll start there as kind of like a defense.

Well, I would have— I have empathy for, I think, part of your position on that, right? Which is that, look, voting is this thing you do one time every year or every couple of years, maybe if you're less responsible every 4 years only. And many people don't put a ton of thought and effort into who they're voting for or what they're voting for. They sort of look at, okay, I'm going to look at this voting sheet and maybe I heard something from a friend about how Prop 202 is bad, so I'm going to vote against it. Right. And it's not— it's not a ton of, hey, I'm going to— I'm a high information person and I go out and I do my research and I try and collect different thoughts from different resources and make the most informed decision. I think that's how we wish voting was, but it is not. And so I do give— I want to give you some credit there, right? Because I think that I have empathy for the fact that not everyone maybe even necessarily votes their true beliefs. Right. So it's possible that you vote in a certain way and you don't actually support the things that you voted for, but you've been misled. Or receive bad information or just, you know, it's just not that important to you. It's not like you're getting paid to do this. It doesn't feel like it directly impacts your life in that moment. Yeah. This is one of the challenges, right, that we can see these last couple of weeks. Human beings are terrible at dealing with long-term, slow-burning threats and pretty remarkable at dealing with short-term things that feel really dangerous.

Yeah.

It is unimaginable to me that, let's say, 6 weeks ago we said, hey, as a planet, we collectively want to stop climate change in its tracks. Everybody stay home. You could not get humanity to do it. Yeah. It just would not happen. But a crisis like COVID occurs and people are scared enough, right, and somehow thoughtful enough to say, yeah, you know what? We know it's going to hurt the economy. We know that's going to have long-term consequences. I know it's going to hurt my income and ability, but I care about people who are immunocompromised. I care about elderly people. I care about the health and well-being of millions of people across this planet who won't survive this disease. So I'm staying home. OK, right. People will react.

Yeah, it's interesting because collective action in general is such a hard problem in any voting or any way. And COVID has been the first time really, I feel like, where people across the globe, billions of people really have like all committed in a kind of selfless— it feels like selfless way. I'm sure there are some— it feels— it's definitely more directed, you know, it's kind of climate change on some sort of like crazy sort of trajectory, like just speed-wise. But it's been inspiring, I think, to see that. But it took time, right? Like, I feel like it did take a few, even for me personally, like some time of looking at it and being like, this seems bad, but it's probably not that bad.

Right. I mean, when did we meet in that coffee shop in Seattle? Was that 9, 10 days ago?

I hope it was more than that, but you might be right. It was not, yeah, it was—

Obviously today, right? Today we had that appointment on the calendar. We, hey, Sahil, sorry, like obviously we have to cancel. Let's turn this into a video meeting or whatever.

100%, yeah. It's, well, that's the meme, the meme that people have been talking about this thing is this concept of exponential growth, right? And all these, all these sort of VCs and stuff kind of saying, oh no, you know, I understand exponential growth, therefore I realize this thing is going to be a big deal, which started off, I think, almost like a joke. Like these people are getting, maybe applying a heuristic that they're, that they're really familiar with in a different context. And then kind of seeing it play out almost exactly like that, which is when you have something that compounds at any, any percentage rate, really, right? 30%. In this case, 30% day over day, you're getting the growth that that results in, the absolute growth that that results in, is basically incomprehensible to any human being. No matter how— I don't think I've met anyone that can understand it intuitively. You have to do the math in a sense and look at it. That Asian proverb of you have one rice on a chessboard, and you have two rice on the next piece, and how many rice would be on the last piece? And it's like, like 16 trillion or something like that, right? It's just like a— and, and if you're in startups, you might be a little bit more familiar with how that can happen, that kind of hockey stick growth that we talk about. Um, but it is— it's the scary thing is that I think we haven't really addressed, I feel like, on the zeitgeist level is The hockey stick always looks like a hockey stick. So where we're at now might look like almost flat compared to the next 2 weeks, for example, right?

That's almost certainly what the curves in Italy show, right? Yeah, exactly.

Unless you do something drastic like what we've really started to do, I think collectively, socially distance ourselves and quarantine and lockdowns and all these sorts of things.

Yeah, to me, this sort of— look, this crisis obviously brings into stark relief the choices that we've made as voters, right? Because I think there are, you know, reasonable people would, could disagree, but it certainly seems like the leadership we have in place will determine very much the future outcome. Let's just restrict to the United States, right? The leadership that we have in place at the federal level and at each of our states' levels and even city governments will determine a ton of the future of how, you know, the small businesses down the street from me survive this or don't. Yeah. And how, you know, how and whether they are able to exist, what they look like in 6 months, what our daily lives look like in 6 months. You know, certainly it's the case that if the United States had taken the precautions that we're taking this week, If we had done that 2 weeks ago, we would have likely prevented tens, if not hundreds of thousands of more deaths that will occur. And we might have saved ourselves a few trillion dollars of economic loss over the next couple of years. So that is a really direct thing. And I, like I said, people might argue, hey, well, What are you saying, Rand? Are you saying that if in 2016 Hillary Clinton had been elected, we absolutely would have done this the right way and blah, blah, blah? I'm not. I don't know that. It's impossible to show that. Right. Maybe the Trump administration's actions have been faster than Clinton's would have. Maybe here in Washington where I live, the governor, Jay Inslee, maybe he will end up being the wrong choice because if you run the simulation with— I can't even remember who he ran against in '16, but whoever the other person was, that they would have reacted 2 weeks faster and shut down bars and restaurants and Washington would have far less of an outbreak than it has now. These are hard things to know. But this is where I struggle is I think it's impossible to say that it is 0.001% of your humanity, right? Because humanity is so— we are so intricately tied to each other. That voting is, you know, it's not just an obligation or responsibility. It is also so indicative to me about how you, how your world beliefs coexist with the rest of the planet and how you perceive other people in humanity. It's intrinsically tied to sort of your personality and who you are as a human being and how you represent yourself.

So a lot of that's correlation, not causation, but yeah, it serves as a proxy for other beliefs that you might hold. And also maybe more than beliefs, it might— it might serve as a— sorry, it might serve as like a proxy for actions that you might be taking in your life as well.

Yeah, yeah, certainly. One of the topics, you know, that I thought was really interesting— are you getting a good feed from me?

Yeah, you're good.

One of the topics I thought was really interesting that you and I discussed in the cafe, whenever that was, 10 days ago, was this idea of would you rather have someone, you know, or many someones in your life who kind of, in your opinion, whatever your opinion is, vote the wrong way but are good to you personally and kind and your friend? And I found it fascinating that prior to 2016, I would say I had not many, but plenty of, you know, somewhere between half a dozen, maybe around half a dozen close friends and many dozens of acquaintances and, you know, more distant friends who believed or who voted very differently than I did in sort of presidential and federal level elections. And that changed. Like, I don't know about whether this happened to you. I suspect it happened to a lot of people who are watching this, right? That there were friendships that were dissolved after 2016.

Right.

For me, for my wife and I, couple friends of ours who basically, you know, one half of the couple believed one way and the other the other way, and they couldn't reconcile those differences, and, you know, that caused splits. That was real, right?

That's crazy. Yeah, for me it was weird because I had so few people in my life that went the other way. So I voted for Hillary Clinton. I was living in San Francisco. And I knew almost— the only people I knew maybe were people that were libertarian, that kind of maybe opted out of the system and voted for Gary Johnson or something like that. Maybe voted for Evan McMullin, if people remember him.

Yeah, no, I had a few Mormon friends who were big fans of McMullin.

And I met a lot of those when I moved to Utah or soon after that. That for me, it was like I had a problem with, I had only a caricature of what a Trump supporter in my head was because I had no context for, I couldn't even like call someone and be like, hey, what happened here? Or like, why did you do this? Or it was all, the only interactions I had with people like that were on Twitter. And that, as we talked about before, it's like not maybe a great place to form a perspective on.

Sure, yeah, no. I mean, Twitter can get very insular and bubbly. I'm not sure why I had a larger exposure. My statistical suspicion is just that, you know, I had family and friends who were from those regions that were— that had some heavy support. Seattle, obviously, like San Francisco, extremely liberal and left-wing, you know, for the most part. But the rest of Washington can vary. And I know California has parts of it, too, that can vary. My sense, though, is that the 2016 election was— I don't know if it was the first time, but it was certainly the first time for me when voting felt like more of a personal act. Right. That, you know, my perception at the time, which I would say has actually moderated a little bit over the last 4 years, especially as I've met more people who voted for Donald Trump but maybe have different kinds of beliefs than I would have expected. But a big portion of that felt to me like a look, if you are Black or brown, screw you. Right. Like, that is how the act of voting felt to me. And it— yeah, it hit really hard. Right. I think that that's because of the style of campaign that Trump ran and probably the media that I was exposed to and the people that I was exposed to. Geraldine and I are lucky that we have a lot of friends who don't look like us, right, and are from different parts of the world and have different experiences growing up here in the US. But certainly for those folks, I know it felt to many of our friends and to us like this personal attack, like this I can't explain how it was never like that before. Right. George W. Bush, it was like, well, I don't support his policies. I'm against him. I think the war in Iraq was a bad idea. You know, how can you be so blind to the big picture here? But it didn't feel personal. And this one felt personal.

That's interesting. Yeah. No, I think that's true. I think the thing that Trump did very differently than basically anybody else, is just how vulgar I think he was. And I don't know if he's continued to be that, but definitely during the campaign, it was, you know, I remember his, whatever his announcement was, and he said that thing about Mexicans crossing the border and how some of them are rapists. But the way he said it was this very strange way of talking to. And I think that's another weird thing about him and just the way that he talks often implies something much worse than almost like the words he's literally using. And Peter Thiel kind of was lambasted for saying you shouldn't take him literally, you should take him seriously.

Right.

And I feel like it took me almost years to realize kind of what that meant. But just the way that Trump speaks is so vulgar and it kind of like how a 3-year-old would speak about something. And you almost have to like take the words and be like, okay, that's not what you actually mean. Because you couldn't possibly mean that. Just like, no, you know, no way.

Well, and many— yeah, the transcripts that you read just make no sense when you read them aloud, right? Or read them.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think, you know, that's another— that's another challenge, I think, for people who are used to certain forms of information dissemination at from government officials, from people who generally are in positions of power and influence, is the expectation is that the language will be more formal, more precise, more inclusive, less profane, right, than what we have now in office. And I think that the fact that it appealed to certain people more so than, you know, the language that we might be accustomed to in the past was also really challenging for me. It's continued to be challenging for me to, you know, to find ways. I want to find ways because fundamentally I want to be able to empathize with anyone and understand their position. But it has been really challenging for me to empathize with people who, for whom that language resonates, but the language of Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, right? Mitt Romney is a conservative, he's a Republican, he ran for president. Like, his language was the style I was accustomed to. John McCain, you know, tons and tons of people across the political spectrum. Yeah. Just don't speak or think, I think, the way that Donald Trump does. And so that act made it I think it created more polarization than what I'm accustomed to. It was like this whole, whole new world, right? And in a lot of ways, waking up after the 2016 election felt similar to the way that waking up over the last 2 weeks about COVID has felt. It had this like, oh, we are in a new kind of world and I need to adjust my all my calibrations for what I thought I knew about the world before.

Totally. Yeah, no, I think that's super spot on. It feels like you've woken up and it's like you're in a dream state or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So tell me, like, for you and on this specific subject of like—

Yeah.

—voting and judging people, what inspired the tweet? Yeah.

Yeah, that's always good. That's always, yeah, good, good context. So, uh, I think what inspired the tweet was I remember one of the things that happened when I, when I was living in SF, there are a lot of people that are super progressive and liberal, um, but they, they wouldn't really participate. And I would maybe even put myself to this bucket. It's like they wouldn't really participate in their communities so much. Um, they would, they would sort of, I think the Maybe, and definitely again, like, a lot of this has changed, right, since, since 2016 and since COVID even. Like, I think people are shifting the way they think about community and participation in different, different facets of their life. But basically it was like, I give a bunch of money to the federal government or our city government or different levels, and they, they, they're, they're good at these certain things, and they're gonna take my money and spend it better than I could spend it, and then I can go focus on what I'm good at, which is like participating in the economy, building a business, hiring people, etc., etc., etc. And then— but that's kind of almost like the— not the end limit, but a huge chunk of my social participation, my community participation was in the voting and sort of tax, you know, voting for higher tax— taxes on myself almost, in a way, was a big part of my sort of commitment to my country or to my community. Then I went to Provo, which is kind of the opposite on that, which is like, we actually don't think the government should— we, the world, we, Provo people would say that taxes should be incredibly minimal because I'm really good at caring for my community. I do a lot for my community. I plant trees, I volunteer, I donate, I do XYZ thing. But what that means is like, I've done a better job than than if I gave a bunch of money to the government. And so therefore, like, I should be taxed as minimally as possible. And I'm going to vote for the people that sort of do that, which is in general conservative Republicans. And in 2016 was either Trump or Johnson or one of the other non-Hillary Clinton. And Hillary Clinton in Provo got around 13% of the vote, which is actually third place. After Evan McMullin and Donald Trump. Donald Trump got 45%, I think Evan McMullin got 23%. It was the only county, I think, in America that Hillary got third. Wow. Yeah, crazy, crazy thing. Because yeah, having the whole Mormon thing, right? Sure, sure. And I think I was thinking about that, when I was like, sometimes I see these phenomenal people that do so much for the communities, they care a lot about climate change, they implement it in their daily life, the way that they live. They might not own a car, they might skateboard everywhere, they live incredibly cheaply, they buy all used clothing. And then, but they voted for the sort of libertarian conservative person. And then I know people in San Francisco that basically do none of those things, but they voted for Hillary. And in my head, I would just like this kind of weird, and of course it's a simplification, right? But I was like, what, who, it's not a pure ladder, but I was like, who, if I had to pick one group, that's done more for climate change or been better for climate change, like, which group would that be? And I was just like, I don't know. And so therefore, I shouldn't judge. I would probably bias towards one group over the other, but I shouldn't judge the other one because it is complicated. And voting is one of the many things. And, you know, and then there was like this third group I thought of, which was like surfers in Hawaii, which are people that politically align with me and probably do nothing bad for climate change. Like, they are, you know, surfing, and that's all they do. And that's like the best-case scenario, and they don't even vote at all. And so it was— but again, I took that complex set of thoughts and said voting is inconsequential most of the time and a tiny part of your time most of the time, so you shouldn't judge anyone for that. And I think I would, I would say One, definitely what I was wrong about was time. I think time is not a great proxy for if you should judge someone or not, because you can— there's a— you can do a lot of really great or a lot of really bad things in a very short amount of time. So that's not the best, the best proxy. But I think the consequentialism is, is, is accurate, in which often a vote doesn't matter. But what we've seen since, especially with COVID is like, you don't know how much your vote matters. And that's one of the weaker That's one of the weird things about voting. I think it's one of the weird things about like even picking health insurance, um, is, is you're, you're being asked to make a decision that is incredibly unpredictable, right? Like predicting, for example, predicting like how much your vote is going to be consequential in whatever issue, um, is incredibly difficult to really to do any real, you know, like when, when Obama said, you know, we want to make health insurance as easy as picking I don't know, whatever he said, picking shampoos on Amazon or something. I think in my head that made sense intellectually. Like, yes, you should have that much knowledge and you should see the price and all these sorts of things. But the thing that's incredibly difficult about health insurance is you have, one, you have no idea how sick you're gonna be tomorrow and your past sickness is not super predictive on future. But then also like your ability to pay does not correlate with your ability to want to pay, right? Like, when your health is on the line, you will basically pay an infinite amount of money for a product. And so, sort of maybe a more traditional sort of free market capitalist system, like a marketplace, might not work. Because how do you, you know, like, and you've seen this in a lot of different other avenues, you've seen it in education with student loans, when the upside of being educated feels limitless, you're willing to pay an obscene amount of money for that education, especially if you're not on the hook for it immediately. But anyways, yeah, I think that's a lot of what was going through my head was like we— and I think the thing that I react negatively to often, and even I've noticed this, I live in Portland now, and we just as of yesterday at like 3 PM or something, we closed down restaurants and bars. So we were one of the slowest cities, major cities, to do it. We did it after New York and the Oregon governor was like really against it for a long time. And I assume it was an economic reason. Like those are the two things that I think every politician is trying to balance, try and figure out for themselves what those things even mean. And, but I was on this call with a bunch of Portland people and it was like, oh man, if we voted, just voted for more, Democrats or whatever, or like, and I'm like, it's not that simple because this person's a Democrat and like, you don't know every— especially when it feels so direct. I think simplifying it as like just us versus them, I'm always a little bit— especially because I lived in Provo, Utah for 2 and a half years and I am so much like, I almost have like, I feel obligated to like be like, hey, no, like this is what that person would say, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Even though I still don't think I'm— I would never consider myself right-leaning or right-wing or right anything, really, probably conservative, etc. I always feel like I'm like the person that needs to pipe up for that, for that group, just like I felt like I had to pipe up for the liberals when I was living in Utah too. And so any— yeah, any times— and I'm sure that's the other thing you see on Twitter a lot is just people saying, oh, these people are are wrong or bad or responsible. That's always difficult for me to hear is when people call people responsible for something maybe as indirect as voting. Because it's not to say that voting doesn't matter, but to say this happened and it's because it's your fault almost. I think that's also difficult because it's kind of like applying hindsight. You know, like you voted without predicting the future, but knowing what the future is. Not always, but I think that's a lot of where I come from and my kind of my emotional kind of reaction to stuff is often, I think, based in those— in that kind of thought process.

Yeah, I— let's see. So I, I am definitely someone who in the past and even now sort of sees events unfold certain events unfold and says, well, the blame for this lies with who, right? Whom or what, right? And a big part of the systems— I mean, here in the United States, it's a complicated system. There's a huge engine of dollars, right, that feed in from wealthy people and corporations to a political system that absolutely shifts and swings votes. But I also have this sort of core belief about what's good and evil. Right. And for example, it is fundamentally, in my opinion, evil to gerrymander districts or suppress votes or create very few polling places or polling requirements so that you intentionally, you know, that a group of people will be underrepresented in, you know, in your state, region, county, country, whatever. And that historically, if you go back, you know, 50 years, you can see Democrats doing that. Right. So this has happened in both parties. Currently, it is almost exclusively Republicans. You could argue that is because Democrats benefit when more people vote because statistically more people tend to vote Democrat. And so the Republican Party benefits when they can shrink voter turnout, generally speaking. But I don't know how you mentally or emotionally get through the, well, I like, I personally like lower taxes and think it'll be good for the world. I personally like less spending on transportation and healthcare, and I want more spent on whatever, military. I personally, you know, whatever the many conservative positions. I don't like restrictions on assault weapons. I want to be able to, you know, have fun and enjoy my use of my AR. I don't know what the actual assault rifle numbers are, but I want to be able to enjoy those, and like, I get a lot of fun out of them. And in many cases, individually on these positions, I have empathy. Right. I can come around to the idea of, OK, if you believe in a world where people are like— your Provo, Utah example is great for this, Sahil, because, you know, you said, hey, I'm surrounded by these people who are very active in their community. And I agree with you. I've been to Provo. I've been to Utah. I've seen how incredibly involved not just the Mormon Church, but like many people in that geographic area are involved in helping people in their communities. I can understand them saying, hey, we have this involvement, maybe we need less of the government doing this job. We want less of the government doing that job. So I have some empathy there. I fundamentally disagree. I think there should be professional people handling many aspects of those things. And I think that in countries where that's been embraced, It's generally better for the population than where it's been left to private industry and private individuals. But we can disagree about that. Reasonable people can disagree. Gun rights, I think, look, driving is way more dangerous than guns. And we all do it. And we have not banned cars. So, okay, right? If your position is like, look, we allow dangerous things because we enjoy them and we get satisfaction from from them and they bring us whatever positive benefits, and guns do that for me, so screw you, I don't want you to take away my assault rifles. And I'm kind of like, eh, I disagree, I don't think it's the right move, but I understand where you're coming from. Lots of dangerous things are allowed. Gun deaths are terrible and horrifying, but okay, right? I can see that position. Voter suppression, women's rights, rights for people of color. You know, there's a handful of issues where I cannot bring myself to imagine an ethical way to think through that. And so my empathy falls apart. And And I think that's where, for me, right, as a, you know, I over-intellectualize a lot of things. But in this particular case, that's where a lot of my judgment based on voting comes from. Yeah, there's a few core issues where I just, I can't see how it's not evil. And so, look, if you're going to vote for that party, I think you have to first change the party's positions to reflect things that are more positive. Otherwise, I can't get behind how that act is right. Even if you're doing lots of other ethical things in your life, right, and even if you are, you know, at your core someone who helps people and is loving to your friends and family and all those kinds of things, the fact that you won't extend your kindness and your recognition of what is ethical to a broader swath of humanity makes me disappointed. Right. I want better from people. And look, right now in the United States, I direct that primarily at the Republican Party, the conservative party. But there probably were times, like I said, over the last 50 years where I think you could reasonably point to the Democrats and say they're the ones who I can't find a way to think about whatever this issue that they support ethically.

Yeah, yeah, I remember reading, I think this is not that long ago, I think 2014 or something, where California went through, I think it was a, it was like a midterm, and every, every single House seat in the, in California, what, in the legislature, was Democrat or went Democrat. And this is kind of gerrymandering, I think, basically. And the voters actually did a referendum and said, this is— we actually— we don't— even if we were mostly liberal people, we don't want this because it sort of— it's like too much job security for Democrats. Even if we agree with them, we want more competition to push them to be better. Gerrymandering, in my opinion, is bad. Especially because I'm like a super pro-competition and pro-innovation person. And so in my opinion— Yeah, right. And so I think it was something like 2014 or 2012 or something where basically the voters said, because California has a referendum system that I think 50% or 67% have to say we want this. So they added, I think it was the country's first independent redistricting commission or committee. And actually, I think the House sued the voters, basically, or sued the state, or however it works. Yeah. Because they were like, you can't. This is our duty as legislators to figure this thing out, the districts. And lost in the California Supreme Court. And I think 4 out of the top 7 most competitive districts in America are in California. There are, and 3 out of the 7 are in Arizona, which is when, basically went through the same thing, I think 2 years later. Arizona is red, but basically went through the exact same thing where like they just had so, they gerrymandered everything perfectly. And then the voters who are mostly conservative, or at least Republican voters were like, we don't want this. We actually, we don't want this at all, got rid of it. And so it's exciting to me because it shows that in blue states and red states, there's a template for making this change happen. You know, and I think it's now in 7 different states or something, have an independent redistricting committee. And to me, it should be— hopefully is in 50 states in no short order. These things happen really slowly and then all at once.

I mean, this is, you know, this is one of the things that I look at with the COVID outbreak. Right. You see Ohio shutting down their primary, Florida. I think Florida ran theirs, but other states are delaying theirs. Ohio delayed theirs today. Yeah. Potentially for a long time. And the argument being made is essentially, hey, we have to vote by mail. We don't know how long this crisis could continue, but vote by mail works extraordinarily well in a number of states already, Washington being one of them. I think Oregon as well, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Right. The ballot, it's very hard to tamper with. There's almost no plausible way to cheat the system. Even if you do somehow do some voter fraud, you can always go back and look through it, right? It's just the Postal Service is set up really well to handle this. It's wonderful, right? It's a great, great system.

And you can vote ahead of time, so you never have to— like, you can flatten the curve in a sense of voting. You can get people to vote a few weeks before.

You don't have to stress about, like, the voter returns from polls. You don't have to stress about— there's a lot of initiatives like, hey, we should give everyone Election Day off so that they can go to the polls, or you just send it by mail so it only takes them like 5 minutes to fill in the ballot, right? So you don't lose the whatever, productivity or workday or whatever it is. So there's a ton of good reasons for that. And crises like COVID might accelerate that, right? People might say, hey, you know what, vote by mail, that's the only way that we can make a safe and fair election. We have to do it this way because CDC guidelines are not going to let us do it any other way. So we're switching to that. And then that infrastructure remains in place for a long period of time and potentially means that way more of the United States' population votes, which I think is also an extraordinarily good thing. You know, there's— yeah, there's just a lot of potential benefit here. I love— you know what? One of the other things that the administration has proposed yesterday, today, right? So some congressional Democrats and some— it was a guy from Harvard who basically said, hey, we should make immediate cash payments to all Americans. Sahil, you should get a check in the mail for $4,500. Rand, you get a check in the mail. Every single person in this country gets a check for $4,500 that you can go cash, basically to prevent the 40%, 50% of Americans who are most at risk of losing houses, rent, not being able to cover bills, not being able to buy food, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because of this crisis. And that's never been done. Like, that is— that has just never been tried before. And it's on the table and supported by, frankly, a presidential administration who 4 days ago I could never have imagined them accepting that. So I— yeah, well, some of the— some of the—

yeah, I think some of the exciting innovations often happen when there's like an argument that's like, you know, option A or option B, and it might be like voter suppression or vote by mail or whatever. And then often the answer is like this thing that happens out of left field. It's like, actually, this thing over there now makes way more sense. And actually, like, both sides who might have been arguing about this point are like, actually, that sounds great to us. Like, let's do that. And because they're not— they don't have that emotional investment into what they were, you know, because it's a kind of a totally new outsider argument, like Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend, basically. It has a lot of sort of support from politicians and then also a lot of support, I think, potentially from voters, because I think one of the hard things— one of the things I noticed in Provo was people— often the way you speak about something affects how you support it or not, right? And so that's one of these— it's almost like kind of an emotional sunk cost where if you—

this is the core of marketing, right? Everything that I do and have worked on, right, in my career is around marketing. And you can see how a brand or branding, including language, is hugely powerful in changing minds, right? If you talk about— what was the classic example in 2016? Do you support Obamacare? Do you support the American Care Act, right?

Yeah, the Affordable Care Act.

Affordable, right. Affordable Care Act. Right. And people, if you ask people about the ACA, it's like 75%. If you ask them about Obamacare, it's like 49%. What's the difference? It's exactly the same thing. Well, one has Obama in the name. Okay. All right. There you go.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, no, that's a, that's a really, really good point. I mean, the other, the other thing that's really hard is when— it's, it's cool now because it— when you have a crisis, you have to come up with like solutions to very specific problems. So it's like, how do we solve this specific problem? Whereas often I think when you're voting for one party or another, you are speaking in such abstract terms because you have to pick one sort of like one checkbox that has to represent like all of your ideas in one. And some of those ideas might be, you know, really, like as you mentioned, like might be just like feel evil, right? And so even though there might be like 8 out of 10 ideas you really like, 2 of them are really, really, really bad. And they might be so bad that you can't even, you're like, I can't vote for you, sorry, because it doesn't matter how good you are on these things, like this thing is too far. And it might go the other way as well.

Yeah, in Provo, right, I think Evan McMullin is a really good example of that, where people said, look, I generally support more conservative policy, but I cannot get behind, you know, Donald Trump as a Republican candidate. And so I'm voting for McMullin because I feel like he represents, you know, whatever my views without the—

100%. I think the one thing that was really surprising to me in Utah was one, Bernie Bernie Sanders support was a lot stronger than I thought. And he, yeah, it's a really weird thing. I think that might just be because Utah, because of the church, and like they're much more, I wouldn't say socialist, because again, like it's a marketing thing. But a lot of the ideas I think he stands for really resonate there. And Utah has its own weird brand of conservatism. You know, they all give 10% to the Mormon Church, which is kind of a socialist idea almost. Yeah, good point. But they would consider it voluntary instead of maybe forced or something like that. But yeah, I don't know. I forget what exactly my point was now, but the— let me try to think what it was. What were you talking about just before?

Well, so I mean, I think that the right support for—

Oh, yeah, I remember now.

Or support for like these— Yeah, it's hard to reconcile ethical issues that your party might believe in. My sense is that you're making a really good point here, which is if we judge people based on their vote, we have to make sure that we consider the intent behind it, not merely the outcome of it. Yeah. So if the intent behind your vote was, look, I I like my guns and I don't want that restricted. I, generally speaking, want lower taxes. I want more people to be responsible for their own communities and the people in them. I think that a social support network is a wonderful thing, but I want that provided by myself, my neighbors, my church. That is very different from I imagine there's probably very few people, but like the person who hangs up the Confederate flag in their living room and votes conservative is fundamentally very different from the person who says, hey, my community and me and my neighbors and my church are better at providing social services than the government is. That's who I want to do that. Those are two really different reasons to vote for the same party. You could, I'm sure, right, someone who is highly critical of the Democratic Party and of liberals in the United States would be able to point out similar hard to reconcile.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there are ideas that to a middle of the road conservative, they might look at Bernie, for example, and say he's honest and eloquent and he has a lot of really great ideas. He's really smart. But this one one thing he advocates for, I think, is just like so wrong that I cannot possibly support him. And then also anyone that votes for him, I just can't get around how they do that. Right. For example, this is what I was— I remembered I had met a friend, one of the first friends I made in Utah, and he said his mom votes, almost votes Democrat. He said she votes like she believes in every single policy platform basically that Democrats have except for one, which is abortion. And she's just like fundamentally morally, not uncommon, but in Utah, or she lives in Idaho, but like she just fundamentally thinks abortion is wrong and is in a few cases should be allowed. Health of the mother. Incest, rape are the 3 common ones. And that's what the Mormon Church says as well. That's kind of like their position as a church is that abortion is up to the mother in those scenarios. And but she would never vote Democrat unless they, the Democrats, sort of more visibly acknowledge that abortion was was wrong, basically. And it was really a fascinating thing for me because I had never met anyone that expressed voting conservative in that way, which is like, basically, I vote completely— like, I believe on almost every issue economically, et cetera, on the Democrat side. But because of the messaging, she feels that Democrats are almost pro-abortion. They're like so— like sort of aspirational about it almost. And she just gets so turned off by that idea. Like, she's like, I even agree with them. I just think we— they should admit that it's a terrible thing. Um, and it just— it was, it was, it was like the, the first time that I felt like I was out almost outside my body. Like I was able to kind of look at my own party, and I considered myself a Democrat at that time. Like, I was like, oh, I can see how you would when the way that they spoke about it, I was like, oh, I could see how that kind of that word evil, like how you could see that of me by the way that I—

Certainly, I will— I will ask you, right, that I think the success of conservative media and the failure of what conservative folks often feel is the mainstream liberal media to position abortion in a way that is as serious as anyone takes it. Like, I know many people, I'm sure you do as well, who are liberal, who are Democrats, and their feelings about abortion probably mirror your friend's mom far more than they mirror your friend's mom's impression of what they must think. And so, yeah, this framing, this branding problem is a huge one. And I think that also creates a lot of the anathema and anger between people in the United States, myself included. Right. The personal— how personally attacked I felt, how offended I felt when people voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Yeah. I'm sure that must— it must be a similar sensation for her. Yeah. Of like, how can you, you know, whatever.

Yeah, 100%. I think that's totally spot on. Like, to her, it might have been the exact same. Like, there's like, you, you— this group of people, these millions of people in America are just wrong. Like, this kind of like, sort of like holistic wrong. It reminds me of that. You know, that kind of saying, like, what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable wall, right? And it's like, you have two ideas that are like so powerful that they kind of like nothing else matters. In the same world, to her it might be abortion, to us it might be gerrymandering or something related to immigration or like, or even abortion on the other way, right? We might say, like, I would say the caricature that I had going into Provo was probably like, these people think that abortion should never happen, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, even on the most extreme— or yeah, never happen even on the most extreme cases. And then I met people and almost always they were like, no, there's this scenario or this scenario, or here's like, I don't know, some example of it in my life. And I was like, then why would you identify with this party that is And they're like, well, and it kind of goes, I think, back to your point around intention, right? Which is like, I think sometimes people have, I, in, you know, I like the dichotomy of behavior versus intention. And intention is like kind of like what you, you know, you're only really aware of your own intention, right? You know why you're doing things. You don't necessarily know why anyone else is. You kind of have to assume to some level. And then yeah. Right. So like the, in general, when I, when I see someone who I politically align with do something, I can almost guess their intent. And I always am going to put that intent in a pretty positive place where sometimes I can see someone else do something and I might be like, oh, they have a bad intent. But then often as I get closer to them and I figure it out, I'm like, oh, I finally understand. And the same thing with like with Bernie, he might say something and then, you know, a conservative friend of mine would will iMessage me or something, you know, and be like, hey, Bernie said this, like, how could you support this person? And I almost always am like, this is what he meant. Even though I don't know what he meant, but I have a pretty good guess. And in general, I just, I'm just, you know, that's kind of my bias is to be like, okay, what I believe Bernie's a good person. So like, let's figure out what he really meant by this. And then I would sort of text him about another politician that he might have supported. Recorded, and they would do the exact same thing. It would even be with Trump, for example. I remember asking him about the impeachment. I was like, hey, I saw this tweet that made a really convincing case to me about why Trump should be impeached. And then I sent it to him. I was like, what do you think? And he sent me back something else and was like, that's a really valid point. This is something I've read that makes a really good case for why Trump should not be impeached. You should go read it. And it's by this constitutional lawyer at Harvard who's a Harvard Law professor or something like that, who taught Obama or something, like some incredibly credentialed person. And he basically— we kind of came to this conclusion of like, we have no clue. We both think we kind of have a good idea about it. But the truth is this person is incredibly knowledgeable I feel like this other person is, and they disagree. And both of those people know a lot more than we do. And so, you know, like we just don't know. And I think it's kind of where we are, I think, as society, um, is we just don't know. Like there's so many problems that I think are so new to us that like, I think that's kind of a lot of where my— going back to that original tweet, like that judgment, it's like we just don't, we We're trying to solve problems in the dark, in a sense. And we're not— and so, like, when you judge someone for the way they vote, you might be kind of dismissing, like, that intent. And you're kind of assuming— you know, you're saying, like, they're responsible for the outcome completely, which maybe they should be less responsible for.

Yeah, I think it is hard, right? It's very hard to say— Well, you know, Sahil and Rand, you voted for Barack Obama. And so the fact that I have affordable medical care now, you get credit for it. Right. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, that feels not quite accurate. Right. I think that responsibility and the powerful positives that that's brought to the United States and to hundreds of millions of Americans, rests distributed. And similarly, it should probably be just the blame and fault should be distributed when we have these fundamental core disagreements.

Exactly. I think, yeah, that's a good— that's a good— I think, no, is often when good things happen, it's easy to say, oh, this, you know, thanks, Obama. Right. Like, this is because of Obama.

Non-ironic. Thanks, Obama. Yeah. Not ironic. Thanks, Obama.

Exactly. And then when something bad happens, it's like, that's Trump's fault. And I think if you catch yourself doing that over and over and over again, you might have fallen into the trap of confirmation bias. And I noticed this, I know a lot of my friends, the economy as of a month ago was doing phenomenally, right? And Trump has been in office for, 3 years or whatever, and a very common sentiment on Twitter was, thanks Obama, basically, right? Not ironically, it's like Trump's taking credit, but actually, this is due to a lot of what Obama did in '08. None of those people have said this crash is due to Obama in '08 and the stuff that he put in place. I think that the answer is complex, as you mentioned, you cannot draw a straight line. And there are things that probably Obama and Trump deserve blame for, and Obama and Trump deserve fault for, and that includes great things that happen to our economy and not great things. And also, I think they don't deserve blame and credit for things. Like, there is a huge system at play here. Yes. And the Obama— the sort of Obama stuff made some impact. We're never really going to know. What the alternative of that would have been. Like if Romney or whatever won, what would he have implemented? How would that have changed things? If Trump or Hillary, like what that would have done. And the scenario that we're in now, and that's the really fascinating thing about something like COVID is because it's so, you can't blame anybody really. I mean, maybe you could blame like the Chinese government for suppressing information and things.

But I certainly, I think that's a, yeah. I think that there are some— yeah, there are some obvious things that I think you would point out and say this was wrong. And in retrospect, very, very terrible move. Like we underinvested in immunology research at critical times. We dismissed the head of CDC, whatever. Like, yeah, that's true. Bad moves. Seattle almost certainly should have been locked down way sooner. We should have collectively quarantined way sooner, right? So that falls on potentially all of us. Yeah.

Individually, seems pretty obvious. There might be other ways. Like, I remember in January, Trump shut down the border against China in early or late January. And Chuck Schumer, I think, tweeted basically being like, that's racist. And he deleted the tweet. It turns out— I don't know what— again, I don't know what Trump's intents were behind that. My guess is, knowing the fallout since, that they must have had some idea that this thing was coming and it was kind of— or not. I don't know. Trump certainly takes credit for doing that. Yeah.

Patient zero was a guy from the Seattle area who went to Wuhan and was visiting relatives there and came back, you know, just an ordinary tourist, right? And came back. And if those borders had been locked up, whatever, 5 or 6 days earlier, you know, potentially a different story. I'm sure that person probably would have found another way to get to the US.

Yeah, it kind of almost gets into determinism, right? Which is like Bill Gates did that talk at TED Vancouver in 2012, I think, where he basically says the next— the biggest threat humanity faces is not World War III, it's a virus. It's an influenza virus that spreads incredibly quickly and is asymptomatic to most people and has an incubation period of several days, if not a couple weeks. He kind of described It's a little spooky. It's a little spooky, but also like probably shows that he's seen Ebola, seeing what he's done with Zika, like he knows like the sort of the threat level potential of this. He also knows that most viruses never get that far and fall out, or you know, they kill too quickly or whatever, they don't spread, etc. But he, yeah, he was like, look, this thing, if there's an event in which like 30 million people die, it will be an influenza virus. I can't tell you if that's going to happen, if that's going to happen tomorrow, in 30 years, if that's going to happen once and then every year after. We don't know. But if it happens, there's a good idea. And I think that's a lot of— I think talking about voting and other things, I feel like that's a pretty core theme, is just you don't know the impact you're going to make. So you should— like, you don't know the the outcome of your actions always. So we should focus on, I think, is you should be hopefully really, you know, you should be knowledgeable about the intent that you want to have. You should also share, I think, your intent. I think it's really helpful to be like, this is why I did something. So at least then no one has to guess.

I mean, certainly this is a big, you know, checkmark in favor of ranked choice voting. Yes. In primaries and in the general election. Because I think you could perceive a lot from someone's intent by looking at their rank choice of 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the thing that often Democrats get into, right, is like the Bernie Bros and are they going to go to war or are they not going to vote? And it's like, well, if you really— it should be possible for me to tell you, actually, look, I don't care. Yeah. Right.

Or I do care, or whatever. I think one of the things that voting— that is true about voting in the United States in particular, but in democracies across the world, is that it is fundamentally your job is not to choose, not to exclusively vote for the best candidate, but rather to avoid the worst choice. And that's true whether you're voting on propositions to direct things in your local city government, whether you're voting for judges, whether you're voting for presidents, congresspeople, etc. Right. Your fundamental job is pick the least bad option once presented with the choices. That's the only thing that you can do. And that is frustrating, I think, for a lot of people. I think that's why many folks complain about the two-party system. The structure that we have. Ranked choice obviously is a great way to solve this, but yeah, it's just, it just is what it is. And Sahil, I apologize, I'm gonna have to run.

No problem, this is awesome.

This has been amazing. I can't wait to see it put out there and edited. I am both dreading and looking forward to the comments that we will potentially receive But I think overall, you know, it is, it's really wonderful to have such an open conversation with someone like yourself and to be able to take what was arguably a really negative interaction, right? Like I tweet this thing and then like Rand's like, I super disagree with this. You know? Well, thank you. Yeah, we're not nasty to each other, but we, you know, we're friends, we're comrades, like we're, We're certainly in this together. Agree on far more of this than we disagree on. I bet that's true, as our conversation pointed out, for a huge majority of even very polarized Americans. Yeah.

And I think the last point I would just add to that is because we know that and we've had interactions before, we're allowed to almost have this terse interaction. And I know you're not a stranger. I know where you're coming from. And I always, as I mentioned before, like, I assume good intent behind it. Yes. Which— but, but if you are not familiar with our relationship, you might see that, you might follow both of us, and you might be like, these two people abhor each other. Yeah. And so that's, I think, another great reason to do this and to put this out, and I'm excited to see that as well.