Scott Galloway · 43:29
Thing. It levers up people's self interest for prosperity and innovation. But if it loses control of itself, you find ways through money to disassociate and sequest yourself from the damage of just the free market. That at some point, people will make excuses to lower their taxes. At some point, they'll they'll not wanna pay for things that benefit the masses because they're able to have their own schools, their own doctors, their own transportation, their own police force. That ultimately over time, it leads to a lack of empathy and money creates so much distance between you and the people that unfettered market forces, the externalities it creates, that it becomes... Ultimately, it ends up in revolution because the bottom 90% just end up with such terrible lives relative to the top 10% that ultimately they pick up arms. And this is a form of that. This is saying we wanna create more and more disassociation. We wanna give wealthy companies and people with $800 an hour PR consultants to just sequester so they never really see the pain, not their immorality, but their amorality is causing.
Kara Swisher · 44:40
I agree. I I I don't know what to say. I think this this case will go... It it will have a terrible effect. If it's a free for all and this goes on, we are fucked in ways that we don't know.
Scott Galloway · 44:50
And especially with election season where Vladimir Putin, the only thing that gets in the way between him and his own 11 story window is a win in Ukraine, and the only win in Ukraine happens if Trump is reelected. We are about to see the mother of all election misinformation on platforms where Nick Clegg can just say, oh, I haven't heard from them. Oh, we're really concerned about that and just cash everyone's check regardless of the source.
Kara Swisher · 45:17
We hope it's overturned, and we'll see where it goes. But they are not backing off. They didn't back off on abortion. They didn't back up on sliming Hillary Clinton who helped them along. But nonetheless, they were right there. They didn't back off on a firm back. They... They're absolutely planning this and have been planning it, including stacking judges. And this particular judge, again, is a nincompoop. Okay. Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.
Scott Galloway · 45:41
You've got you've got I can't believe I'm gonna be a mailman. You've got mail.
Kara Swisher · 45:46
This question comes via email. I'll read it. Hi, Karen Scott. I've been in higher education for over a decade and one of the many professionals trying to make a change. However, I'm being given feedback by companies reps that I can't transition into their jobs as I don't understand what it's like working in the corporate environment. I believe that working at several large flagship public universities, which despite their not for profit status, is more corporate than many companies. How do you recommend pivoting from education into the for profit sector? Love the show and thanks for your perspective. Scott, you're the person who pivoted in a sort of a corporate setting. I've never worked in academia. I try to leave schools as soon as I can. So why don't you take this one?
Scott Galloway · 46:23
Yeah. I don't know enough about the situation, but I pivoted into academia after being in the private sector, and then kind of... I'm a hybrid. Right? I I have one foot in the academic sector, but I make the majority of my money in the private sector. I would argue that the quality of your research and the quality of your management skill if you're involved in administration or the quality of your teaching actually carries a lot of weight in the private sector. And I've always said, and this is gonna sound arrogant, but if you're at a world class business school and you're in the top quartile, if you're not making a million dollars a year in other ways, whether it's media, whether it's books, whether it's advising corporations, then you're not in the top quartile of your early university. There's tremendous opportunity. I mean, all these companies hire a ton of academics. So I would be more focused on... I'd wanna wanna know what domain you're in, how relevant is your research. Mhmm. But I don't think there's a... I I I don't know... Have a a silver bullet.
Kara Swisher · 47:22
What's the answer to that? What's the answer? You've been working in, like, nonprofit. You've been working in academia. You're not you're not corporate. You're in the room and someone says that to you, what's the answer?
Scott Galloway · 47:33
I don't think that's true. I think that if you're a tenured professor, you might run the risk of being so removed from market forces that quite frankly, you just aren't that productive. And you're just so out of shape from the demands of the private sector that it's just quite frankly, you're just... At every university, a third of the people, specifically the tenured professors, half of those tenured professors are overpaid. They're not productive. But the problem is... Or the the reason you have tenure is that some of them do such outstanding work and say such controversial things that they do need some level of protection. It's based on Galileo. But if you're a strong leader, a strong teacher, do great well in research, the academic institution is a unbelievable platform for entry or relevance or monetization in the private sector. So I... To be blunt, I think this is more a software problem. I don't mean to be harsh, but I think this is more about the individual than an inability to transition from nonprofit
Kara Swisher · 48:35
You have to the private to sell yourself. There's a lot of layabouts in the for profit sector, by the way, Lots of underperforming people. So I think you just you dress it full on. That's what I would say. You say this is just not true. This is what I've done. And then launch right into the things you've done that have been proactive and innovative. You you can be innovative anywhere. And as long as
Scott Galloway · 48:56
you But they're using an excuse. They're grin fucking you. They're using an excuse for a reason not to hire you when it's... That's not the real reason. A lot of private sector companies love academics. Google hires a ton of academics. Corporations. I mean, the last... I'm sounding very... In the last week, I've been with three big multinationals because I'd like to think my work is relevant. And every professor worth his or her salt at Stern has all sorts of private companies crawling all over So I would say that, look, this person needs a kitchen cabinet. You need to find some people at your school and outside of school and say, these are my objectives. I wanna make more money or I wanna transition in the corporate world and get open and honest dialogue around your personal attributes, your domain, your research, your teaching that's required to do it. Because sometimes in certain sectors and with certain performance, you're just sort of relegated to that job. If you're doing something very esoteric, if you're studying French seventeenth century literature at, you know, Michigan State University, it's gonna be there aren't that many jobs in the private sector for you. You need a kitchen cabinet to advise you here.
Kara Swisher · 50:06
Yes, I agree. Okay. Good answer. Good answer, Scott. Okay. Listen up. We have some listener mailbag episodes coming your way in the next couple of months. We love our mail that we get from fans, So now is the time to get your questions in. If you got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 85551 Alright, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Gee, I hope you have a good one from there in Mykonos, Greece.
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— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 51:41
Okay, Scott. Let's hear a prediction.
Scott Galloway · 51:45
I think threads is gonna get to a 100,000,000 users in five weeks. It took Twitter five years. Think this is
Kara Swisher · 51:54
Wow.
Scott Galloway · 51:56
When we're talking about round one, my prediction is round one of the cage match between Musk and Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is is kicking the shit out of Musk, specifically via threads. Yeah. This is his thing. This is... He has focus
Kara Swisher · 52:09
Just as It's Gatesian. Gatesian.
Scott Galloway · 52:12
He... In in the cage match, the actual cage match, he had youth. Right? And he had... Quite frankly, he's in much better shape. And he also had some skills in jujitsu. As it relates to to threads versus Twitter, Twitter is bigger. Twitter has more body mass similar to Musk, but Zuckerberg has focus and intensity. This is what he does. That he's in the business of social. He has an unbelievable ad stack and relationships. He's gonna find really great advertisers, and the ads will be good.
Kara Swisher · 52:41
Yeah. The ads on Twitter are so bad now.
Scott Galloway · 52:44
While Musk is firing engineers, he's... You know, Zuckerberg can take a 100 and say, hey. You wanna work on threads?
Kara Swisher · 52:51
It's a small group. I think it's 10 people. He's... He can just add to it.
Scott Galloway · 52:55
If this shows hope, he can take it up to 200 in a week. Mhmm. Yep. This is his thing. He's got focus.
Kara Swisher · 53:01
Can I point out? I'd love your thought on... He also had a little failure with metaverse. He he wants to show that he can punch. That... That's a motivator for him. It's like, I'm not irrelevant. I'm not irrelevant. You know what I mean?
Scott Galloway · 53:13
Like We don't need to get... Let... Let's just let's just summarize it. 2023 was the year of three truths. One, crypto's a levered Ponzi scheme. Two, the metaverse and headsets don't work. And three, Harry and Meghan are awful people. So look above number two. Number two, the metaverse just makes no fucking sense. Yes. But when you sit on a cash volcano and you have... Two thirds of all social media globally runs through one group of executives. Guess what? They're really good at it. And if Zuckerberg tried to build a rocket or tried to build an EV, it might not go that well. And that is what, you know, Musk is. He's he's... He is in a totally alien environment right now, and he is about to get the shit kicked out. My prediction, again, in five weeks, there's more users on threads than there was in the first five years of Twitter. And round one of this cage match goes to the Zuck.
Kara Swisher · 54:03
Let me just add one thing even though you don't like the social. I do think he was wanting a win, and he really wants one badly, and it motivates this man. This man is motivated by loss, so he wants to win. Secondly, he's got executives around him that have been with him forever. He's not a rude fire of people. He's... Madame Messieri's been there forever, is intensely loyal. All Musk does is look at people as fungible products. You know what I mean? That he he moves in and out. There's no loyalty to that man or very little. Maybe at the other companies, but not this one. Mark has executives around him who know what they're doing, who really wanna help Mark. And it's not a small thing. It's not a small thing to have a motivated group of loyal people who wanna win. Although, let me make only one observation on your thing. When my brother asked me about it, I was on a thread with him and Louie last night. And my brother was like, what is this? Asking all kinds of questions. And he was... My brother's like, I have almost 10,000 followers on Twitter. I... Do I wanna go over there? I'm like, well, do you have a lot on Instagram and this and that, you know? And then my my son goes, what the hell is threads? And my brother goes, apparently, a new Twitter killer from Instagram. And I was telling Jeff to get on, not my son. And Louis goes, yeah, nah. You boomers can enjoy it. So there's that. There's that.
Scott Galloway · 55:17
Well, yeah. But those Boomers
Kara Swisher · 55:18
can enjoy it.
Scott Galloway · 55:19
The younger generation was on Twitter. The vibe will be different. If I were to if I were to speculate how the vibe will be different, and that is... And this is very reductive, but I'm holding to it. Instagram users are prettier than they are smart, and Twitter users are smarter than they are pretty. I think Instagram is more about wealth porn and more about visuals and influencers. Twitter has some really deep thinkers that bubbled up that are just incredibly incisive and interesting. This won't have the depth, but it'll be a little bit more bravo Kim Kardashian, which has a big market, but it'll have a different vibe.
Kara Swisher · 55:55
Anyway, that was a really good prediction. Can't believe
Scott Galloway · 55:57
I'm rooting for Mussolini. It's like
Kara Swisher · 55:59
I know.
Scott Galloway · 56:00
You hate the least.
Kara Swisher · 56:01
Yes. True. That's what I said. I'm like, here we are. Here we are. We're rooting for By the way, he's gonna violate your privacy, and this is an antitrust issue. Thank you. Okay.
Scott Galloway · 56:11
Yeah. Unfortunately, we we can say something because we... We're not in the government.
Kara Swisher · 56:15
And that's good. But it's an act of trust. And, Mark, get the fucking misinformation on your platform, you cheat bastard. How about that? Is that good? And by the way, Elon's not gonna help situation. Anyway, just so you know, in my latest interview speaking conspiracy theories and misinformation, on my other show, on with Kara Sushr, I talked to Oliver Stone about his new documentary dealing with nuclear energy. Stone also talks to me about Vladimir Putin, whom he calls the world statesman. So there's that. It's actually a great documentary, but he's a little bit Stone's a piece of work, let's just say. But... And the reason I think it's important is because record for the hottest day on Earth was just broken three times in a row. The record was broken on July 3, then on July 4, and July 5 tied with the fourth, and science have warned that 2023 will be one of the hottest years ever, citing climate change in El Nino climate patterns. We have to do something. Give a listen to Oliver Stone and others who are advocating nuclear energy. So that's all I would say. That's my prediction. We're gonna have to do something about it. Okay, Scott. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out and enjoy the rest of your vacation, by the way.
— Predictions segment ends —
Scott Galloway · 57:20
Thanks for saying that. Today's show is produced by Taylor Griffin, Travis Larchuk, and Nishat Kerwa. Ernie Intertaut engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Milsavario, and Gatti McBain. Make sure you're following the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. There's another follower on threads. Fuck you, Elon. That was a little over the top.
Kara Swisher · 57:46
No. I liked it. I loved it.
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