One thing I find interesting is you're

saying that there's this sweet spot in

the middle.

>> Yes.

>> Where you you still get the the upside.

>> dynamism?

>> there's a sweet spot in the middle?

>> And decency.

>> It's a very narrow sweet spot and it's

very hard to achieve because Germany has

really tried so hard and they've like

they their economy is collapsing. They

their economy is going so badly at the

moment. Um and they've tried everything.

They've got workers have to be on the

board for example of every company

you've got to have a worker on the

board. So they're like doing as much as

he can to do inclusion and the German

economy

>> Okay, so where does it work?

>> Okay, but here here's the thing is it's

it is simply not fair

to say the German economy is collapsing.

Like have you been to Germany?

>> Yeah. [laughter]

>> Like come on. Like have you been to

Stockholm?

>> Okay.

>> Like these places are incredibly high.

>> functioning.

>> Yeah, there's definitely a forward

momentum, but the German car industry is

getting hollowed out right now.

>> China?

>> Right, China's doing that.

>> Yeah.

>> just because workers are on the board of

German companies that that that

and German people are unhappy

you can't necessarily connect these

things.

>> I just want to acknowledge though that

like there are places like Dubai which

are very close to laissez-faire

capitalism with a sovereign wealth fund

and just just hold just hold on. If you

talk to someone who lives in Dubai they

freaking love Dubai. Like they they are

so they're the happiest people uh

like and they call them the the

entrepreneurs entrepreneurs people.

>> Yeah, the rich people not the not the

poor brown people who are Well, I

[laughter] mean

>> because they bust Indians and don't

they?

>> You Well, they they

yes and also when I talk to a lot of the

Uber drivers there and I talk to people

who work in cafes there and all that

sort of they're all quite pro Dubai as

well.

>> Isn't it but that's because their other

options are horrific.

>> Yeah.

>> That is it's probably more extreme than

equality, isn't it?

>> It it's um

It's extremely equality but because the

place is growing until recently

obviously with

right the place is growing it feels like

there's a rising tide for everybody.

There's something about economic growth

that makes people very very happy and

there's something about a lack of

economic growth that makes people

miserable here in the UK for example.

>> Okay, but but just again

Dubai is a place

the UAE has been powered by the most

extraordinary gusher of free cash

probably the planet has ever seen. I

mean you can look up on your

iPad there the like the tailwind that

economy gets from the unlimited

resources

>> say that's why people love Dubai. They

love it because of the entrepreneurial

vibe like

>> Who loves it?

>> Like ambitious people.

>> Yeah, so this is the rich

>> well no I see I see there no I see young

people who want to have a crack.

>> And they're because they're they're rich

relative to the people doing the work

the labor.

>> Well they're what they're looking for is

a place where their work will be

rewarded. Let's imagine the UK where

your ability to get on to capitalism

your first million or your first two

million is very easily low taxed in

order to get things going for you

economically. I I just want to see a

situation where ambitious

like your ambitious people like what I

hate is that I see these young people

who are really super smart. I wish they

were here building and they're like you

can't succeed in the UK they'll just tax

it off you. As soon as you earn anything

they take it.

>> What if you're not ambitious?

>> I think you're benefited by a lot of the

ambitious people. So when when you get

one in a

if you get one in 10 people who are

entrepreneurial or one in 100 people who

are entrepreneurial they're creating

optionality they're creating companies

>> is this? The US is

sort of set up you know the American

dream.

This is more of a US approach isn't it?

And what we have there is higher

inequality.

>> I'll give you two to to one extreme the

US you hit the top rate of income tax

when you hit $700,000.

In the UK it's 100,000 and and it

immediately goes to 60% tax, 62% tax,

and then it drops to 45% after that.

Like but there's this kind of like

>> Does it really?

>> Yeah, it's this it's this it's this

weird pain No, it's this insane thing

where you basically pay 20%, 40%, 60%,

45%, and it's this kind of

>> But to the point of You should probably

fix that. People prefer the US The US

approach sounds more like what you're

saying.

>> to the US? Like a lot of Brits are

actually going to the US?

>> has an inequality has higher inequality,

which means it's probably more likely

that the pitchforks will come out.

>> Well, for an ambitious person, they

don't care about inequality, right?

Inequality is the opportunity to get

ahead.

>> might not, but from a social

perspective, the pitchforks are probably

going to come out sooner in the US

because of that inequality than in

somewhere else.

>> I They

They seem to be coming out here in a big

way. Like here in the UK

>> here, but they're also coming out in the

United States.

>> at Look at Zack Polanski

uh is is gaining a huge political

movement.

>> Joram Mundani in the UK?

Sorry, in New York is

We're seeing a rise of socialism in the

United States.

>> Okay, but Joram Mundani calls himself a

socialist because he does not have

another word for what he is doing.

>> He has said seize the means of

production. He's said it. And he said

take houses off landlords. Like he he's

a he's a card-carrying socialist.

>> Yeah, but he hasn't done any really

socialist things. I I just think that

there there's a bit of a confusion. But

asking wealthy people to pay a little

bit more tax is not socialism.

Uh standing up grocery stores in food

deserts because no grocery store will

will will will do it because it's not

profitable enough is not socialism. This

is the government provisioning

benefits to citizens. Fixing potholes,

making bike ramps, whatever the stuff

he's doing. These are not socialist

things. What they are is not strictly

neoliberal things, which is just like

letting rich people run roughshod over

everybody else.

>> The thing that I see with say a food

desert and a store is that the tax

system is so punitive that a small

opportunity like setting up a grocery

store with all the taxes and all the

regulations and all the stuff the

government puts on you is just not worth

doing it. There are better opportunities

out there. Like I'm not talking about

removing it for rich people. I'm saying

for startups, for small businesses, for

businesses that employ less than 200 if

you basically create very positive very

positive conditions for small businesses

to get started, they will set up a

grocery store in a in a bad neighborhood

because they go, "Yeah, you know what? I

can figure out how it works in this

>> Do you think there's a chance that we

have a a bit of a bias as entrepreneurs?

Everyone at this table is an

entrepreneur.

>> Yes.

>> And for whatever reason, I think a lot

of mine might be some like I don't know

trauma or whatever, I had a bias towards

setting up a business and taking that

risk. Whereas like my other three

siblings, they didn't do that. And I

don't know what I did to have that bias

within me.

Like if you really think about it, I

it's it was probably something my

parents didn't intend to do. Which meant

that at 18 when my four three siblings

went to university and sort of followed

that more, one could say safer path,

well, yeah, safer path, I dropped out.

>> were your parents when you

>> Oh, they didn't speak to them. My mom

was

Yeah. My mom's Nigerian as well, so she

didn't she left school when she was a

child, didn't get an education, can't

read, can't write.

>> tough

>> Tough conversation. That's an

understatement of

>> [laughter]

>> what happened. But for whatever reason,

that's the path that I took and I'm I I

can acknowledge that I'm in a bit of a

minority.

>> Yeah.

>> And I think I sometimes consider like

maybe I don't realize that through

privilege or through some genetic

privilege or whatever, I had this

particular orientation towards like

entrepreneurialism

that maybe other people don't always

have and that means that to start a

grocery store

>> I get crucified in the comments. Not

everyone can be an entrepreneur, right?

I'm not saying everyone can be an

entrepreneur. I've never said that.

>> But the grocery store analogy there is

someone would start that grocery store

if it was easier.

>> Well,

>> But not everybody would.

>> There's always a risk to reward ratio,

and government brings in all sorts of

regulations, and the government only

really thinks about big businesses. If

you talk to anyone in government, small

businesses don't exist, and they just

simply think, "Why hasn't Tesco done it?

Or why hasn't like Walmart done it?"

>> Yeah, I I've never started a business in

the UK, but I can tell you that in the

United States, the the barrier to

setting up a grocery store in a food

desert is not the regulation, it's

Safeway. It's the supply chain. It's the

It's all the stuff that you've

described, which makes it incredibly

difficult for for for somebody to

operate a single location grocery store.

>> Like your friend's car.

>> Yeah, and this is the this is Yeah, what

do you do about that?

>> Uh so, what I would do

is I would I would And again, in the

United States, we used to have lots of

laws that pointed the economy towards

small businesses. So, if I was in

charge, I would impose a much higher

minimum wage, but I would do it

progressively. All the labor standards,

all the all of the regulations would be

imposed progressively. And in terms of

regulation, I would make it far like for

a big company, there's a lot of regs,

right? You have to follow every rule to

the T.

For a small business,

you have a lot more flexibility. It's

impo- because because we need the

standards,

but it turns out to be really hard as a

single proprietor, even to even to read

the manual, right? To know what you're

supposed to do. So, to me, it would all

be progressive, so it would be easy to

get capital, easy to start a business,

relatively unencumbered by by

regulation, although constrained to a

certain extent.

There are terrible things that small

business people do, too.

>> Wait, how do you make it easier to get

capital?

>> Oh, you could have government programs

that were designed to help small

businesses get off the ground.

>> We have the British Bank that

under

under writes for the first 25,000 of

loans here.

>> have the Small Business Administration

in the United States that did a lot of

that work.

>> Yeah, so we we have a lending

institution here that is 75%

underwritten by government for 25,000

pounds startup loan, right? So there is

some some schemes that can can work. I

started all my companies on a on a

credit card. The key thing is is there's

a difference between entrepreneurials

and startups that are intending to scale

and just small businesses that want to

exist as a small business. I'm really

big on the idea that we want to we want

communities that have lots of small

businesses even if they have no

intention to scale and exit and any of

those sorts of things.

>> That old fashioned thing, right? Where

you just had a grocery store.

>> Yeah, and and it's a good and it's good

to do that.

>> trying to create Walmart.

>> Yeah.

>> You just wanted to run a grocery store.

>> It's hard though, isn't it? Cuz

>> You want to be CVS or you you want to be

you want to be a network.

>> But with a grocery store idea, if you've

got mom and pop grocery store here, then

next to it you have let's say I don't

know in the UK it's called Spar, which

is a grocery store, or 7-Eleven. The

problem is if those are next to each

other and one has

economies of scale, i.e. 7-Eleven can

buy the cucumber

>> Yes.

>> for 20% of the cost of the mom and pop

shop, then if you're on that street, the

7-Eleven is going to survive.

>> That's why that's why we tilt towards

small

>> States used to have laws that expressly

prohibited that.

>> And why did they get rid of them?

>> Neoliberalism.

>> So they got rid of the restrictions on

>> Yeah, there there used to be express

laws to make sure that big companies

could not buy raw materials cheaper than

than small companies. Like when I was

young, when I was your age, if you

wanted to buy a competitor,

you were sweating bullets because you

had that had to be reviewed by a body

and if they thought that you were

consolidating too much, they would just

say no.

>> But if you think I think about all my

friends that have opened retail stores

through their companies and they can

only do that when they get really big,

because their e-commerce business is

supporting it. So, if you think about I

know the Gymshark representatives and

Under Armour active. So, you can't

>> Okay, with respect to retail, you were

largely correct. It depends on what kind

of retail. Like you could have a gym,

you can't e-commerce a gym, or you know,

there are all kinds of retail, some of

which is somewhat immune from e-commerce

and some of which is getting destroyed

by e-commerce. Doesn't It doesn't matter

if we're talking about retail. They were

all

regional manufacturing companies,

regional everything.

>> Sure.

>> And it all went away, and you have never

experienced a world in which that used

to exist. Like your your entire business

experience is this sort of neoliberal

world of giant companies.

>> True. And the world I grew up in

>> Yeah, we're like you're young, medium,

old,

>> right? But I I remember what it was like

to go to the video store and select

videos from the video store. I remember

what it was like, yeah. Like I remember

going to the CD store and listening to

music and talking to the retail

employees. When I was growing up, the

cool kids worked at the CD store, the

geeky kids worked at the bookstore, and

everybody worked at the everyone else

worked at the grocery store.

>> Yeah.

>> And all of those business models are

gone. And this is what I mean, we need

to kind of tip back towards small

business experimentation being protected

and all of that. The other thing too,

and I should should raise this about

minimum wage and giving people more

money,

the bottom half of taxpayers in the UK

pay 9.5% of all the income taxes. The

government could remove taxes off of 50%

of workers in one move, and it would

cost 33 billion, and you just get rid of

that, and then every single person in

the bottom half of income earners gets a

10% pay rise to 15% pay rise, right?

>> I love it.

>> No, so where do we get the 32 billion

from?

>> Just Just keep in mind, their budget is

1.4 trillion.

>> I know, I know, I know. But we're going

to have to if

>> 1.4 trillion, you're talking about this

much to take 15 million people

>> Yeah, I agree. I'm just saying where

does the money go? Because I know what's

going to happen. Kiss Darmer is they

found this 20 million billion 20 billion

dollar black hole in the finances and

they and that's the reason why they're

saying they've had to cut back on

pensions and these kinds of things. So

if we add another 30 billion to that,

where do where do we where do we get the

money from?

>> You're talking about reduce the amount

of administrative burden to tax 15

million people and keep on top of the

tax on 15 million people. Just the sheer

volume of people who have to work at

HMRC.

>> I completely agree.

>> All of this insanity.

>> I'm saying where does the money come

from?

>> Yeah, so out of 1.4 trillion, I'm pretty

sure we could find half of 1% 1% of it

or whatever to get to get these number

of people out of tax. Um, I think we

could tax big corporations who are

taking the piss.

Uh, and I also think the economic

spending rounds of getting those people

those poor the poorer half of people

should not be paying tax. If you give

them more money, they'll spend more

money, right? Then they

>> Okay. I agree with you. So you're saying

tax big corporations more

in the UK at point of consumption.

>> Personally, I would make it a like it's

very similar to a broadcast license that

it's a fixed fee that's very hard to

wiggle out of.

>> So if I'm a let's say I'm an open AI.

>> Yeah, you might have a broadcast license

to pay

to to access this market.

>> So you're going to charge them say

you're say I'm going to charge open AI 4

billion 5 billion to access our market.

>> for example, Facebook is very much

broadcasting videos and content all the

time. So is YouTube, so is Google, all

that stuff. So you just simply say,

guys, the cost of doing business in this

country, if you want access to this

market, is a fixed broadcast license fee

of 500 million a year or whatever it is.

And you just say based on the number of

views that you guys get and how much

attention you suck out of our economy,

we just essentially tax the attention.

You're literally if people are spending

an hour a day on their phone doom

scrolling, we're that that is a

broadcast. You're broadcasting to our

people, so therefore we've got a

broadcast license. Um, so those are the

types of things that I would look at

because they're very hard to wiggle out

of.

>> Do you think then these these companies

like an open eye would would then as we

said earlier just increase the

subscription fee in this market? And you

see this sometimes where in certain

countries something is cheaper. I

remember going to the United I I used to

go to the United States to buy my Apple

products cuz it was cheaper there.

>> Yeah.

>> And then in the UK it cost me like not

even not even a little bit more. It was

like hundreds of dollars more to buy a

laptop here. The same laptop in this

market versus this one cost different

amounts of money.

>> They they may choose to try and pass on

that consumption tax to to consumers.

Maybe they do do that. Um, maybe we

could try and avoid maybe we could try

and legislate against that that they

have to essentially be on parity with

where they are in other markets that

they have to charge parity. Um, if we

don't if we don't do anything, we

essentially have nurses and uh, you

know,

like teachers and all the people who are

in the normal 50% of the economy whose

job is now to hold up the economy while

Starbucks doesn't pay taxes, while

Amazon doesn't pay taxes, while Google

doesn't pay taxes.

>> And and Steve, I think all your

questions are really really good, but

they all point to the same thing, which

it it which is that you know, the

economy is a collective action problem.

>> Mhm.

>> Right? And

>> said global action problem earlier.

>> it's a global collective action problem.

And if we want

if we want robust solutions to these

problems, we're going to have to

robustly coordinate activity across the

world.

And you know, like for during the Biden

administration they tried really hard to

do this global

profit tax where where uh, but that

collapsed under the weight of pressure.

But all you know, again, all of your

questions I think are really good, but

they all point to the same fundamental

weakness of of of governance.

>> And Nick, you you you need to talk to

your billionaire mates and also say, if

we don't start investing in the

economies that we do business with,

which you are saying, right? Of course,

right?

>> I I It's a lonely business. I'll just

tell you.

>> But it's But it's like [laughter]

it's like

those CEOs of those companies

>> [clears throat]

>> you know, you drain this you drain the

whole economy out and you and and then

what then what next? Like

>> I think on this pass-through problem I

was thinking I was looking at different

ways that this ends up being applied.

So, if you think about the Big Mac, the

Big Mac costs different things in

different states depending on how much

tax that that that state charges. So, in

Oregon the Big Mac is $8, whereas in

Chicago it's English $9.

If you think about like bookstores, you

can buy one book on the high street for

$20, the same book online is $10 because

they're passing through the cost. So,

it's conceivable that if we we say to

big corporations, right, you guys are

going to pay a bigger tax to sell into

the UK, then the UK consumer

that they'll they might pass that onto

the UK consumer.

And they might look at different markets

and because you know, they might say as

a company, we want to make 30% margins.

And the way to make 30% margins in the

UK is to bump the cost.

>> could say I'm going to use a VPN and

pretend that I'm going to be in a

different market and pay a lower price.

And doesn't matter, you still have to

pay the broadcast license if you want to

be available in our in our country.

These are hard problems and we need to

know who is the person that we're

targeting. It's it's the BlackRocks of

the world, it's the it's the big banks

of the world, it's the big mortgage like

>> I had a So, I had a I had a private

conversation with a CTO of a very large

company, technology business, and he was

saying to me he goes, "I don't I don't

think the UK understands the situation

it's putting itself in and the EU with

all this regulation." He said to me,

um

"that we sell this particular product.

It's a physical product. And because the

UK and I think EU have put this new law

in where you have to have removable

batteries.

>> Mhm.

>> Interestingly, the unintended

consequence of that is we have to stock

more lithium batteries, more of them go

into landfill, and also your devices

break because they're no longer

waterproof.

So, you're going to actually it's

harming the environment and also he said

the thing you guys don't realize is that

you're actually not a big market anymore

for us and because South America's

coming online we actually don't have to

sell the product here and you think

about this in terms of some of the

regulations around AI as well.

When a new product launches on a chat

GPT

it goes in the US first because of

regulations and then maybe

>> No, it goes in the US first because it's

the biggest market.

>> Biggest market but also we have we're

our regulations around some software and

GDPR and all these kinds of things means

that sometimes we just don't get the

features. And sometimes in my history in

our history of building

the previous business I was in

as creators we would sometimes have to

wait 12 or 18 months to get the same

tools that my competitors

in the United States could use.

Monetization tools they they'd have the

monetization tools first and then we'd

have to wait 18 months.

>> The economy is a set of trade-offs. Like

that is the problem. Like economics is

called a set of trade the actual

definition of economics is making

trade-offs

and picking picking a trade-offs. I

totally get it. Like regulation does

actually suck for consumers and for

businesses

and like the the EU is now

over-regulated to the extent that you

can't even take a a lid off of bottle

without you know the government being

involved with how the lid comes off the

bottle and it's killing it's killing our

dynamism. We are really

>> And the US is under-regulated and if you

buy chicken in a in a store and and

don't cook it

>> could be anything.

>> one in three chances you'll you'll

you'll you'll get either E. coli or

salmonella

>> [laughter]

>> and your life expectancy is lower.

>> Exactly. It's all trade-offs.

>> It comes back from the US and goes oh my

goodness I hate I hate eating food in

the US

>> It's all trade-offs. It's all

trade-offs.

>> Does this not then mean our ultimate

conclusion of this conversation is

around

morals and ethics around the trade-offs

that we think are the right ones to

make. Yes. so it's a question really of

morals and ethics.

>> Yes.

Human flourishing.

Yes. 100%.

>> The purpose of the economy is is to

improve human human lives.

>> The way to do this is to massively

maximize small business power because

>> I think it's more complicated than that.

>> When when people when people have to

when I have to work shoulder to shoulder

with my workers, I treat people well,

right? When I'm a mega corporation who

have faceless workers down on the

factory floor that I will never meet, I

will never sit next to on a plane, I

will never come in contact with my

workers, I can treat them however I

like.

>> Why do you think that's reductive, Nick?

>> Uh well, I think that what Dana's saying

is true and massively insufficient.

Of course, I mean, we're in violent

agreement about the small business

point. Like, I don't want to be naive

and think we should go back to the '60s

or something like that. Like, I don't

think that's true. But again, here's

what the new economics shows, that

corporate consolidation

increases prices,

lowers wages,

decreases consumer choice, and decreases

the rate of innovation.

>> Right? And I 100% agree.

>> Because innovation again, that the

conventional view of innovation, the the

conventional economic view of in in

innovation is this sort of great man

theory is you have this smart, rich guy

who's sitting somewhere and he

he or she has this amazing idea and

that's innovation. That is not what

innovation is. Innovation is always

combinatorial. In technology makes

itself out of itself.

You You start with a rock.

The rock The rock was our first

technology. And you get a lot of stuff

with rocks.

And we also had sticks. Actually, sticks

were our first technology. But you tie a

rock to a stick,

you have a hammer,

a spear, an arrow, an axe, a shovel.

It goes on and on and on. And what that

means in terms of policy is that because

innovation is combinatorial,

the more diverse people in a network

who come together with different ideas

and different sets of experiences, that

is what drives the rate of innovation.

And this is

mathematically demonstrated that a

diverse group of people working on a

problem will absolutely consistently

outperform a a a homogeneous group of

high performers.

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