Flight Cancellation Chaos, SNAP Ruling, and U.S.-Canada Trade War

Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes you work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. Support for this show comes from Upwork. If you're overextended and understaffed, Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top quality freelancers fast. You can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in marketing, design, AI, and more, ready to jump in and take work off your plate. Upwork Business Plus sources, vets, and shortlists proven experts.

So you can stop doing it all and delegate with confidence. Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you get $500 in credit. Go to Upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025. Again, that's Upwork.com slash S-A-V-E. Scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit.

Terms and conditions apply. Ladies and gentlemen from Toronto, Ontario, welcome to this live recording of the Pivot Podcast with your hosts. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway! Hi, everyone. Live from the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. And where are we, Cara? Toronto!

This is the first stop on our Seven Cities in Seven Days tour, which should challenge our relationship quite a bit. We're spending all our time together. Before we start, we want to say a big thank you to our sponsors, Odoo. And Upwork. Or as I like to say, touching. Okay. We're taping this show for audio and YouTube distribution, so look pretty. You will be able to hear it or watch it next week. And let's begin.

We've got a lot to talk about tonight, Scott, from tariffs to tourism to local politics and beyond. We're making these in each city, whether we go to Boston, making them local. We're localizing them. That's what we're doing. So we're going to talk a lot about Canada and things like that. We learned up on y'all. But first, how was your flight here? My flight here? Yeah. I feel like you're setting me up. My flight here was fun. It was great. Yeah, not mine. Not yours? Not mine, no. See, this is...

When she asks a question, it's not really because she wants to know me. She wants me to say, Kara, how was your flight? By the way, just a quick fun fact, there are more raccoons in Toronto than kids under the age of 10. Okay. Good to know. True story. True story. 5% of Torontonians are vegan. I don't know if that's especially high or low. Is it Torontonians or Torontos? Well, it's Toronto, but it's Torontonians, no? Torontians, no? Hello!

Passport coming my way. He was literally, we're in the car here the entire time. I haven't seen him in a while on chat GPT, having a relationship with a chat bot the whole time. And this is what he was doing. He was asking questions like this. I'm in a relationship. I'm in a synthetic porn relationship. And I just, I'm addicted and I can't. And plus you're like, you're not doing this. That was sexist. Yeah. Okay.

Okay, anyway, flight cancellations. Mine was three hours late, actually. Across the U.S. could rise 15% or even 20% if the government shutdown continues. The FAA started off by cutting around 3% of flights at select airports, including mine. We're taping this Saturday. By the time it airs, that number could be up to 10%. What do you think of this? What's going on? It's bad for everybody. Business, tourism. I thought I almost wouldn't make it here. It feels as if.

Somebody has asked ChatGPT that how could we most elegantly reduce the prosperity of Americans? Because we generally think of innovation as things that can capture economic value so we think about e-commerce or search or social because a small number of companies were able to sequester the value through ip or distribution

and capture value for a small number of companies but if you look at the most impressive innovations in history that really change things they're typically things where we're the winners And that is no small group of entities called the Delaware Corporation are able to skim massive value. So it's consumers and the public that is able really are the big winners. And some of those things are, I believe, the greatest innovation in history.

is the Western nation middle class, longer story, but close up there would be vaccines. And by the way, if you don't think vaccines are the biggest innovation in history, your head's up your ass and I can't save you. Yeah. There's... But literally, tens of millions of kids every year get to be adults because of vaccines. But no one company has really been able to sequester and capture shareholder value. Another example would be the PC.

think about just see you were basically able to put a 30 million dollar supercomputer from 1970 on everyone's desk for about 300 bucks by 1995. and then the third biggest i would argue innovation in terms of how it's changed the world, is we're going to be in seven cities in seven days skirting the surface of the atmosphere at seven-tenths the speed of sound for very little cost, whereas to get across the U.S. just...

100 or 150 years ago, we'd begin eating our nieces and nephews. Yeah. Who do you think would survive that, you or me? Me. Oh, it's pretty obvious to me. Me, right? It would pretty be obvious to me. You own the prison yard. You'd be both gamey and stringy. to eat yeah yeah yeah no i don't think it would be like how about how about some scott with your makers and ginger yeah if you bit into me i would totally kill you and eat you if i needed to

Go on, as you say. Okay. But anyways. I may have to in the United States. But if you, first off, I would argue that the administration is trying to threaten people. has conflated coarseness and cruelty with masculinity and leadership and is basically trying to say we're going to make your life miserable and they're not afraid to and i i wonder i mean when you think about airline travel there's few things

that have created more connection, more global commerce. It's just deploying human capital to its best use whether it's for a few days.

or over you know a couple of years but i think it's amazing and what's interesting about airline if you think about the airline industry again going back to the notion that as capitalists we like to think the greatest innovation creates a small number of companies with trillions of dollars in value what's happened with the airline industry if you added up the profits of boeing airbus bombardier a canadian manufacturer i own a

Bombardier plane. That was an incredible douchebag flex. Which is why his trip was easy. Anyways. By the way, if you buy a plane from Bombardier, you're getting it for 50% off because Canadian taxpayers continue to bail that company out. So thank you. But essentially, if you added up all of the profits and losses of all the airlines in history, all the jet manufacturers in history, this year they're at breakeven. So there's something around the notion.

And I'm going to bring this forward to technology. I'm waiting for you to land the plane, but go ahead. Yeah. This is where Kara says, is there something resembling? Yes, I'm thinking it. There's a big bubble. Is there something resembling a period at the end of this? Right. I wonder if AI is going to be, I'm hoping AI becomes one of these innovations where no small number of companies are able to aggregate trillions of dollars in value, and that is we win.

And I think there's some geopolitical concerns here. I think China is going to dump into the market a bunch of inexpensive LLMs to go after the jugular of America or they're sick of fucking with them. But I think that AI could be more like the airline, the PC.

or the vaccine industry, and that is it could end up benefiting all of us, but a small number of companies aren't going to be able to sequester that kind of value. I don't know how I got here, Kara. I don't either. I'm like watching this go. Anyways, my flight was fine. How was yours? Woo! I'm going to be on his plane tomorrow to Boston. Here's the problem is that this is a I was thinking that if I miss this flight, given I have to fly commercial as opposed to you, for example.

Like we have all these people working for us. We have this whole tour going and it just eats into economic vitality. We've sold out. We've sold out everywhere. It's all the people. You come here, you go to dinner, everything that leads to it. And then this. This idiot who was on, like, I forget what stupid reality show he was on. Sean Duffy is running our transportation department. Secretary of Transportation. Okay, fine. Whatever. The idiot. The incompetent moron.

And then he just, they're using it as a political plan, which is grotesque. And then from the safety point of view, two planes almost collided in L.A. today. There's going to be. a collision in midair or something terrible is going to happen. And airlines are among the most safe thing to do in general compared to almost any other transportation, which is... There was a real visionary innovation around. the FAA and that is, I mean, if you think about from

Kitty Hawk to a man landing on the moon, I think it was 70 or 80 years. I mean, just the innovation there has been incredible. But what was really visionary about the airline or the air transportation industry is they said, It feels very unnatural. I don't know how many of you are like this, but out of the blue, I started getting on planes and I think, why am I sweating and feel like I'm going to die?

And I realized that I had anxiety. It was the first time I noticed I was getting old and suffering from depression and anxiety was on a plane when I started freaking out. And when I did some research on it. It is not natural. Our species is not used to skirting along the surface of the atmosphere 500 miles an hour. So every 300,000 years of instinct says to you, get the fuck to the ground. This is not a good idea.

And so it is a very anxious process. It's much more anxious than going at 0.1 the speed of sound on the ground in a four-wheeled vehicle. You just get anxious in a plane. And the vision of the FAA and different regulatory bodies around the world is related to transportation, air transportation, and said, whereas we're making auto safety one sigma,

We're going to make planes for Sigma. I love aviation. I invest in aviation companies and they're generally speaking really shitty businesses because the cost and time to get FAA certification. is so intense because they decided early on, we are going to make this the safest form of travel because you naturally just feel so unsafe in this thing. If you knew as many people...

who had been hurt on an airliner, as you knew people who had been hurt in an auto accident, you'd never get on an Air Canada flight. You'd be like, no, I think I'll just take the Greyhound or what I used to call the dog. You'll take a bus. But it was visionary because now most of us... While anxious, get on a plane because we see those stats that the most dangerous part of your...

Your airline travel is the ride to the airport. So it was somewhat visionary to create standards like this. And of course, we're blowing it, as always. We're blowing it with this stupid thing because people become, there's lots of... Statistics showing people are now cutting flights. We're going to Thanksgiving and Christmas. The economic toll will be gigantic on this whole thing. It's almost as if we were so fucking stupid, we'd impose tariffs. Right, exactly.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that in a minute. But one of the other things in the United States is these snap food benefits. Last week we talked about it, which we correctly predicted that Elon Musk would get his trillion dollar pay package, which he's not going to get until he... meets all kinds of criteria. But it wasn't related, but it had the juxtaposition with these snap food benefits. The Supreme Court is letting the Trump administration continue to hold back full benefits.

That's actually a very smart move by Judge Jackson, who's a liberal justice, because it goes down to the circuit court, who will probably quickly. force him to do so and not the Supreme. She wanted them to make the decision because it's a more liberal court than the Supreme Court. So actually, it was a smart chess move on her part. So Judge Jackson currently is in charge of the emergency decisions.

He sent the appeal back to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, can handle the matter quicker, will probably decide against President Trump and his... people who want to stop children from eating food. And, you know, one of the things that's happening is you have these juxtapositions of very wealthy people, largely tech people and children.

and people who are desperate for food. And of course, there's all this misinformation online about... the use of snap that you can buy all manner of things which you can't hair extensions yeah whatever uh it's quite racist in general but again another another bad black eye on the united states we're going to have to tear us in a minute but

It really does reveal the ugly side of the United States. And that is, my dad used to say that America is a terrible place to be stupid. And I think that was a harsh, unfair way of saying America is a terrible place to be unfortunate. And capitalism at...

its core does believe in winners and losers that we create an incentive system where people who work hard are talented and also quite frankly really lucky can have an extraordinary life and quite frankly the people who aren't as lucky or as talented don't have as nice a life. That is a basic trade-off that we opt for in a capitalist society. But when the net gets so low that people just massively hit the ground, it reveals something ugly about a culture.

especially when it's been recognized the kind of prosperity that America has registered. We have huge prosperity. This is astonishing that we're allowing kids to be starving in the United States. Well, where I was headed with this was that... A budget and fiscal priorities on behalf of voters reveals a nation's character. And this is America's character right now. And that is somewhere about 22% of America's population is under the age of 18.

but 40% of SNAP recipients are kids. So we have decided to over-index, in the wealthiest nation in the world, the number of kids who go hungry. That is a really poor reflection on our values because effectively what's happened in the United States is people my generation, really Kara's generation because she's much older than me. I am not much older than him.

Old people have figured out a way in the U.S. to vote themselves more money. The D in democracy is working too well. And as old people vote, so as a result, we are now spending more. You know those masked, ice-like, weird... secret police force we're now spending more money on ice in the united states than we're spending on um children so you're

Your budget reflects your values. And I think this is bringing to light some very ugly things about America that we have decided we're no longer capitalism believing in winners and losers. We're about the Hunger Games, where if you win. It's a life you couldn't have never imagined. But for everybody else, you die a pretty slow, ugly death. Yeah, it's a really it's it's we'll see how it goes. I don't think it's a particularly good look for it. Go ahead. You can.

I think it will have implications. I think between the ICE raids and the cruelty of them and SNAP benefits and the juxtaposition between Trump tweeting... 17 photos of the Lincoln bathroom, which has a lot of marble now, and the Oval Office, which I don't even understand what's happening in that Oval Office. So much gold is happening there. And then this ridiculous ballroom, all of it.

together is is i think an indictment on the trump administration and it looks like i'm i'm like waiting for three spirits to visit him on christmas this year that's my feeling you know that's what's happened to marjorie taylor green in case you're interested So... We don't know what to think of that. I think it's a scam. We all think it's a scam. We know it, but...

We're here for it. We're fine. As long as she's the best. We were talking about, there was this poll recently of who was the leading... who was the Democrat, and it came up no one. You know, it was 17% no one. But I feel like it's Marjorie Taylor Greene who's the leader of the Democratic Party at this point, don't you think? Well, they did some analysis where they tried to figure out, so Trump's popularity has really taken a dive, and they tried to suss out what...

Yay. Sussed it out. Well. Yeah, they figured out he's a mendacious fuck. And they think. They think a bunch of there's some academic research now saying that the one thing that they think has had the greatest impact on his popularity has been the visual image of them tearing down the East Wing. We are a highly visual species, so it's not...

These visual metaphors are incredibly important. Well, the ice people, there's a lot of visuals now. But they say that image of a crane tearing down the east wing has somehow connoted or inspired a visceral reaction. Yeah. And what he's going to put in place. From the American public. I don't know what the next president's going to do, presumably. You know what it's going to look like? It's going to look like the best whorehouse in Iraq. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Can you imagine going? By the way, the East Wing wasn't... all that. But that's OK. They shouldn't have torn it down. They should have renovated. That's what I felt. So we're going to go on a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the U.S.-Canada trade war, which won't be awkward at all. Support for the show comes from Odoo.

Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Support for this show comes from Upwork. So you started a business, but you didn't expect to become the head of everything. Now you're doing marketing, customer service and IT with no support staff. At some point, doing it all becomes the reason nothing gets done.

Stop doing everything. Instead of spending weeks sorting through random resumes, Upwork Business Plus sends a curated shortlist of expert talent to your inbox in hours. These are trusted, top-rated freelancers vetted for skills and reliability.

And with Upwork Business Plus, you can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in marketing, design, AI, and more, all ready to jump in and take work off your plate. Upwork Business Plus can take the hassle out of hiring and the pressure off your team. That way you can stop doing everything and instead focus on scaling while the pros at Upwork can handle the rest. Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you get $500 in credit.

Go to upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025. Again, that's upwork.com slash save. Scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply.

Scott, we're back recording live from Toronto. Hello, Toronto. Oh, my God. Yeah. Scott has remained dressed. this entire time. It's early in the program. He has so much respect for your Canadians. It's early in the program. In Austin, the shirt came off immediately. I get the sense the ladies want a little dessert. No, they don't. Little dessert. That's right.

No. Surrender to the dog. They do not want a little dessert. What kind of dessert would you be? I'm thinking chocolate pudding. Or no, vanilla pudding. Excuse me. I'm a tall drink of limoncello. Limoncello? Like lemonade. Like a tall drink of lemonade? I know what limoncello is. All right. Move on. Okay. I'm trying to think of what dessert you are.

I'll think about that later. Anyway, we're back, as I said, recording live in front of us, so it's a great time to talk about trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada. Elbows up. Since President Trump took off... We're paying attention.

Since President Trump took office, the U.S. has imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports. Many Canadian goods face up to 35 percent tariffs and steel and aluminum face rates of 15 percent. After four decades of close economic partnership, Prime Minister Mark Carney is saying. saying it's time to...

date other people. He's looking to double exports with countries other than the U.S. within the next 10 years. His government's new budget proposes spending 280 billion Canadian, that's 200 billion U.S., over the next five years. to help offset the effects of the U.S.'s trade war, attract investment, and increase defense spending. By the way, Carney is two seats away from a majority government, a conservative MP, defected to the liberals.

He's doing rather well. And of course, there was the Doug Ford ad, which angered President Trump. which I wasn't seeing it coming from Doug Ford, I'll be honest with you. But I'm also down for that. So talk about what's going on here, because that, of course, incents Trump. And we're sorry about the World Series, by the way. Not really. No. I'm from California. Too bad. Sorry. I grew up in L.A. and I was rooting for, wait for it, the Blue Jays.

You are such a suck up to Canada. True. I tweeted about it. That's because you were conceived here. So talk a little bit about the terrorists, because it's a really difficult situation. And of course, he continues to say you. You do not want to be the 51st state, I assume. Thank you. But he keeps talking about it. It's demented, obviously. That's a waste of time. But talk a little bit about where the tariffs are. By the way, we'd like it. We're progressives. We'd win every Democratic House.

Can you imagine what would happen if Canada became the 51st state? We'd be so fucking liberal, it would be out of control. Yeah, it's true. Anyways, so just a little bit of context. We have the strongest alliance in the world. Churchill said the only thing worse than fighting with your allies or fighting with your allies is fighting without your allies. And I think.

America right now is taking for granted a lot of things. We're taking for granted the FAA. We're taking for granted Veterans Affairs. We're taking granted competence in the administration and across all of our great public sector employees. But we're also quite frankly taking for granted our friends. Canada has the largest undefended border in the world with the U.S. That says something.

It would cost us somewhere between $20 and $50 billion a year if either side decided to militarize their border. But we don't because we trust and we like each other. Canada went to World War I, a colony came back a nation on a per capita basis. They lost eight times as many people as America won. They actually went to World War II or entered World War II before we did. They were in Afghanistan with us.

So this has been this unbelievably prosperous relationship where in the words of Animal House, quite frankly, you fucked up, you trusted us. And that is about... Somewhere between 60 and 70% of exports from Canada go into the US. It's about 17% of ours. That's a bit misleading. because of the exports that come into the u.s from canada they're generally low margin products they're oil petroleum lumber and they're in companies that traded a p multiple about 20.

Whereas the products that we import or export into Canada are more like automobiles, electronics, iPhones, pharmaceuticals that have double or triple the operating margins and usually... our revenues in a company that trade at about a multiple of 20 to 30. So for every dollar of exports that we push into Canada, we recognize about three times the shareholder value.

So trade, if you will, between the U.S. and Canada is asymmetric. And that is for every dollar we push into you, that you buy, versus every dollar you push into us we get triple the amount of shareholder value so if anyone's getting has been taken advantage of over the last 20 or 30 years it's been canadians we benefit more from this trade than you do But we've decided...

We've decided, and this is what is just so sclerotic and stupid, economically stupid about what we're doing. We've decided because we're, it's like going through an angry divorce and one partner is much wealthier than the other and has said, Well, I'm going to damage myself more, but because I have so much more money, it's going to hurt you more. So it's not only irrational, the bottom line is it's just...

For lack of a better term, it's just unkind. And what you're seeing is, Carney, by the way, I don't know if you know this, I have another podcast called Prof G. No, I haven't heard of it. My most... my most viewed podcast with this was this guy who reached out to me his office and said we want to come on your podcast and it was mark carney and i had no idea who the guy was this was

You had no idea who the guy was. I didn't. I'd never heard of the guy. He's the prime minister of Canada. No, no, no. This was during the election. That's why I called. And he came on. And by, it's like 70 minutes later, I'm like, old me. That guy. I'm like, Dad? Dad? Seriously, that's the dad I want. Wait, wait, you didn't have those feelings for Justin Trudeau? Justin's more like I'd like to roll and pick up chicks with Justin.

Justin's like... That seems to be his job right now, I think. I met him in person like three days ago, and I'm like, Jesus Christ, look at this guy's skin. And he's beautiful. He looks like he's in a fucking boy band. He doesn't look like... Anyway. Where were we? Bring me back. Mark Carney, what do you think of him? Anyways, so what are these leaders doing?

Trump and the trade wars have absolutely accomplished what he was hoping to accomplish. They've inspired a massive flurry of deal making that's the good news the bad news is it has nothing to do with us so essentially every world leader is on a global tour trying to figure out new supply chain and new alliances that don't include america and the unfortunate thing about this is that if and when trump is out of office in 28

it's going to take us a decade and at a minimum to repair these trade alliances because once you establish alliances with other nations for your lumber and for your parts and for your whatever it might be your petroleum your oil whatever it might be You're not gonna say, I'm sorry, girlfriend, we can't trust you. The next time some weirdo comes into office,

When COVID hit, I was on the board of a company called Urban Outfitters, an apparel company. And we recognized that 70 or 80% of our tops were coming from a 10-mile radius of Shenzhen that basically got shut down. And we said, okay, never again. We can't be this. Supply chains were maximized for no slack and just pure efficiency, which made us vulnerable to a supply chain shock.

What Canada is going through is sort of a self-imposed own goal COVID from America where they're going to diversify their supply chain and never put themselves in a position again where they need to trust this meth lab that they have an apartment on top of.

So one of the things that... Actually, your point about it being a good thing for Canada, I think absolutely, because it creates a situation where you have to be... One of the issues around Canada, I'm sorry to insult BlackBerry because when I had my baby, I was holding a BlackBerry in the delivery room in my hand because I was texting with someone at the time.

Wait, so you actually birthed the child? Yes, I did. You know that. Okay. Louie. Oh, my God. Don't say anything. You need to invest. Don't say anything. You need to invest in our relationship. He's coming tomorrow to the Boston. Louie. Louie. Oh, great. Okay. I actually had him. I had a cesarean scar. Do you want to see it right now? Oh, God, no. Okay, good. All right.

But now I'm getting back. Anyway, I love BlackBerry, but a lot of the innovations in technology didn't happen here as much as it should have. because of the dependencies on the United States. And it's a good thing to get out from under a dependency, because with the U.S., BlackBerry was absolutely out front in terms of innovation, in terms of usage, but...

As you know, it got run over. It got run over by Apple and Google and everything else. And that to me was, and again, Waterloo is an astonishing technology school. Did you know about Waterloo? A little bit. Yeah, okay. You didn't. So one of the things that I think is interesting is how can you revive innovation in places like Canada?

like and not rely because the reliance on america i was looking at a list of american the most valued companies in the world they're all u.s companies whether it's nvidia or apple or or meta or alphabet and it's really important to establish And not just to support them to really think about innovation within each of your countries and to get off the relationship with the U.S. may not be the worst thing.

for most countries in the world, given how repugnant we are at this moment, but also because it's important. Because I think of BlackBerry, I just, they... dominated they dominated the early technology era of mobile uh computing and then absolutely didn't yeah look it's this is the question i get most i live in london right now and it's like why can't we

you know, one company. So I think Nvidia right now is worth more than the Canadian GDP. Is that right? Yeah, it's worth 5 trillion. I think Canadian, anyways. The bottom line is you don't command the space you occupy in terms of technology. There's just no getting around it. We can talk about Blackberry and root for a company that's been irrelevant for 10 years. True.

But you got great universities, you got a great culture. I think there's something to the, I mean, I hate to admit this, but the Ready, Fire, Aim regulatory environment in the U.S. does create a lot of fast movers. Of opportunities. In addition.

I would describe the benefit of the U.S. as being, kind of comes down to one word, and that is risk. So the people... you know when i describe i don't know if this is true of canada because 50 of the people living in toronto were born in other countries but when you describe when people when i'm in the uk say why are you guys doing so much better than us i say well

you're the ones that decided to stay. And so for example, what you need is quite frankly, you need 10 or 20 Shopify's because what happens is a company starts It gets huge. They have huge liquidity events. The people who started these companies decide to stay there because they collect mates and dogs. And then they start a VC firm.

and start salting the environment with more and more venture in addition and this is unfortunate but the environment in the u.s where there's more upside because of lower tax rates on the wealthy we have a very strange tax system it's progressive right until you get to about the 99th percentile and then once you get to the 99th percentile it plummets

so the tax rate on someone in the 99th percentile if you're living in a blue state might be 52 points the tax rate on the 25 wealthiest families in america is six percent and the superpower of americans is their optimism but it's also the achilles heel because all of us in america think our kid is in the top one percent and i can prove to every one of us 99 of our children are not in the top one percent

And then we have a very low safety net. So what it creates is an incentive system where people are encouraged to take more risk because there's just so much more upside. But there's got to be something else, and I'm not entirely sure what it is, why when you get to the Canadian border, quite frankly, those unicorns somewhat stop.

In the honest sense, I don't have an answer for you. Yeah, that's an opportunity. But we're going to move on. But it's really, it's just an interesting time. I think ultimately Trump taco, you know, he will taco the thing out. Trump always chickens out. And so at some point he'll repair those relationships, although he has to wake up first. Anyway, we're going to he's been sleeping a lot lately in meetings.

He just did yesterday when that guy fainted, the Ozempic guy fainted. Anyway, we're going to go on a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about something New York City has in common with Toronto, a progressive mayor. Support for the show comes from Odoo.

Running a business is hard enough and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

no more app overload no more juggling logins just one seamless system that makes work easier and the best part is that odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost it's built to grow with your business whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

Scott, we're back recording live from Toronto. How much do we love it here? What? How much do we love it here? I do. I know. We're moving here. Another 20 years of global warming. This is going to be the greatest city in the world. Yeah, it's going to be great. Yeah. Seriously. So back in the U.S., we had one local election that transfixed the whole country, the New York City mayoral election.

Toronto's Mayor Olivia Chow is a progressive who campaigned on affordability issues when she ran in 2023 like a certain newly elected mayor. Her advice to him in a recent interview. She was talking about the issue that defines affordability. It's housing, not so much free buses. I just want to ask you a question. You've got a thing from. How do we pronounce it? Momdani. I have no think forum. You have a think forum so you can pander to your Lokistan liberals. No, no.

Here's what I think. I want to ask you this question. You're on this incredible book tour, and Scott's book is number one on Amazon right now, Notes on Being a Man. I'm going to throw you a bone there because it's worthwhile to be that way. But here is a man who is the description of the men you're talking about, right? Who is respectful, who's community oriented.

who has gone around the city and met people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm just curious. A rich kid living in a rent-controlled apartment? No, it's not right. No, listen, Cuomo. Cuomo was in a rent-stabilized apartment, too, before. I find it interesting, but these are the kind of people you want men to be like or look up to or not. You don't think so.

Oh, honestly, I hadn't run the macho test on Mamdami. I think he's a super impressive young man. I think he's an incredible candidate. I think the Democrats can learn a lot from him. I thought he ran a great campaign. He's bold. He takes risks. He's smart. And I want to be clear. We talk about this a lot. I think once someone is elected, you have an obligation as a citizen to rally behind them.

hope for their success and support them and let them prove you wrong. When you go to a voting booth, we're not in a suicide pact. One of the things I keep saying about, I've been thinking a lot about quote-unquote the mating crisis because i wrote this book on young men and another yet another reason why young people aren't hooking up

is because women are becoming slightly more progressive and men are becoming much more conservative. And women don't want it. The moment a dude starts talking about his conservative values, she's like, okay, I'm out. And I literally try to think, can you think of anyone when you were dating when you were single? Well, maybe you did. I've never been single. You've never been single? No. I've been single most of my life.

Anyways. A month. I was single for a month. Single for a month? Well, you know, I'm beachfront property in Malibu. Among lesbians, at least. Yeah, I'm the part of the beach that washed away and has gone forever. Anyways. But I can't remember what the political leanings were. And it's yet another reason why people are writing each other off. But to your point, as I think about it, I think of a...

I think of masculinity as being three things. Provider. I think every man at the outset of his career should assume that at some point he needs to take economic responsibility for his household. And sometimes that means... getting out of the way and being more supportive of your partner who's better at that money thing but i don't think it's a bad idea to start out saying i'm going to have to be economically viable in a capitalist society that disproportionately evaluates men

and my self-esteem is largely based on my economic viability. I'm not saying that's the way the world should be, but it's the way the world is too. Once you have that prosperity, you move to protector.

i think this is the part of the program that the men were supposed to look up to for masculinity specifically the richest man in the world and the president president have totally missed the whole protector part of masculinity and then three procreation i think sex and being horny and wanting to have sex makes you a better man makes you want to dress better smell better have a kindness practice

Be resilient. Make an approach while expressing romantic interest and making someone feel safe. Stop demonizing sexual desire. It's an amazing thing. It makes men better men. Mom, Donnie, you got it. Yeah, you got it. Stop it. Stop shaming me. I get them right. I think he's a great role model for, as I think about it, I think he's a great role model for young men. He takes risks. I think he's happily married. He seems to be talking about protecting other people. So as I'm...

thinking about this real time. Yeah, I think he's a great... What? I'm not a New York president. Best of luck to him. In any case. What do you want? In any case, I think he's a great role model. And, you know, I'd even fuck him. So would you. But you would. That hair. Come on.

A few beers, you never know. I'm down. All right. And I know you hate, very quickly, we have two more things, and then we'll get to questions from the audience. I know you hate the idea of a... state-run grocery stores. But here in Canada, most provinces have government-run liquor stores. Some states in the United States have them. That's okay, though, right? No, it was a bad idea here, and it was a bad idea there. When Alberta got rid of their...

Government-owned liquor stores, the number of liquor stores tripled, the number of employment tripled, and the number of products available to consumers was up eightfold. That's nothing but a transfer of wealth.

from consumers to the government for shitty service. There are certain things the government does really well. They're really good at taking care of our national parks. They're really good at collecting taxes. They're really good at the Navy. They're really good at the DMV. Someone from the DMV should not be picking out your produce. or your alcohol. The private sector does some things really well. One of them is grocery. We do not need food sponsored.

Food lines called government-owned grocery stores. Grocery is the last thing that should be nationalized. It's the idea of getting better nutrition to poorer people who now can't buy them. And give them money.

Give them money. Well, we are not giving them money because of snap benefits being cut. The problem when government gets involved on a lot of this stuff is it creates an infrastructure where the majority of the money does not end up in the pockets that you're supposedly helping. If you want... to get more food or make food more affordable for people what you do is you give them money more money in their pockets 25 an hour minimum wage she is proposing which i'm a huge fan of and then let them

force Trader Joe's, Kroger's, Loblaws, or whatever you call it up here, to compete against each other and battle it out in this full-body contact violence called the private sector. All right. We will talk to them. I see your point.

But I appreciate you acknowledging he's a good role model for men. I think he is a good role model. I'm glad you pointed that out. Last thing. Tourism is down between the U.S. and Canada. Last year, Canada was the top source of international tourists to the U.S., generating over 20... billion dollars in spending and supporting 140 000 american jobs in the first half of this year u.s saw a 25 drop in canadian we miss you canadian visitors uh this summer

For the second time in nearly 20 years, more U.S. residents traveled to Canada, largely escaping, than Canadians traveling to the U.S. Why don't you think they want to come see us, Scott? It's so funny. We suppose these tariffs are going to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector. But here's the problem. Nobody wants to work in the manufacturing sector. You don't get to take your dog to work on the shop floor.

And 11% of the American public works in manufacturing. Yet 80% of Americans think we need more manufacturing. We have this fetish of around manufacturing. And the reality is over time, America has been very good at... arbitraging out of low wager low wage jobs into more service more information more innovation industry 12 of american public is employed in the tourist industry so our obsession with trying to

falsely, sclerotically, idiotically prop up the manufacturing sector with quote-unquote tariffs is taking down faster an industry which is higher margin and employs more people called the tourist sector. When you come to Disneyland, We get much more money, much more margin, support much more jobs than if we tariff your shit such that our lumber's more competitive. This again, if you were looking, it's as if the Trump administration said to ChatGPT, how can I elegantly

reduce the prosperity of Americans inch by inch and make it almost irreversible. Actually, it's not that elegant. It's not elegant at all. But what could bring Canadians back to us? What could bring Canadians back? Yeah. What could we do? Fuck, a new president. I mean... So, let me get a prediction from you because... The World Cup? The World Cup. Are you coming for the World Cup?

No, they're not coming for the World Cup. Are you coming for the World Cup? I'm coming to Vancouver. There's two cities or three cities in Canada. Toronto, Vancouver, and then... Montreal. There's lots of cities. I used to come every year in June to Canada for tourist reasons. Anyone want to guess? F1 Montreal. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Hello, European food and hot women. Did I just say that? Yeah.

So what could we do? Say Trump leaves. Right. His tiny minion doesn't win, J.D. Vance. The most uncharming person in politics that exists. Talk about pandering. Yeah. South Park has him exactly right. Yeah. What would you be the first thing the U.S. should do to get tourists back to the U.S.? Canadian tourists. I just, I think all we need to do is make America, America again. I just don't.

I don't think we need advertising. I don't think we need Disneyland in Niagara on the American board. They have Niagara too, but go ahead. I just, this, I mean, let's be honest. We're pretty much the same goddamn people. we're fraternal or maternal twins, right? And the fact that we don't, we just, we love each other so much, we take each other for granted. It's like you wake up in the morning and you're spooning your wife and you just...

you forget how wonderful it is. It's just, this is not a Canada and America. Like, we're you and you're us. And the thought that we even have this kind of... No. No, they don't think so. They don't want to be spooned by you, Scott. And neither do I, but that's another issue. This is really interesting, though, because we Americans are so narcissistic. That's correct. We agree with you. Scott was shocked by that. I was not. Americans feel much better about Canadians right now.

than Canadians feel about Americans. Yep. So... Scott, they hate us. They really hate us. So, I don't think there's anything we can do. Other than what I would call just going back to a sense of normalcy in someone who doesn't declare war on its friends. Yes, I would say the one thing we could say is we're so sorry. We are so sorry. That's what I see. That's how you do it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Did I tell you I was conceived here? Look at you. You were surprised by that. They don't like us. I'm just telling you. Anyway, we're going to finish up and then we're going to get to questions from the audience. So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages. Funny how that works. Any business can add AI.

IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business, IBM. Okay. All right. So we're going to, Scott in his head is going, love me, Canada. It's going to be all night tonight with us discussing this. So let's get some questions from the audience. Where are they? They're okay. Right here. There's a podium.

So we would love any questions you have. There is no question too rude. And Scott made it through the entire show without a dick joke. So you should be happy. Thank you so much.

We've been watching and we're kind of terrified as to what's happening in America. And we've been watching... the dismantling of democracy with the legal systems and the military. And I could go on with 250 things. Yeah, there's a lot. To say, there's a lot. Yeah, we're a lot these days. So my question to you is, what is your... because it seems to be there's a mobilization around Donald Trump and all of his followers. Who are we supposed to follow?

on the opposite side. What is your suggestion? There needs to be a leader. Well, the recent election said something, didn't it? Didn't the recent election? Absolutely. It's not just at the top levels. It was down in the city councils. And we're very hopeful that. And I think that says to us that the American people have a voice, right? They do. But who's leading that voice? Who's going to take it to the next level? And that's my question to you. We don't know right now.

You know, we don't know. We don't know who the Democrat. There's a lot of Democratic Party officials. There's other people maybe you've not heard of yet. There's leaders. My whole take on the whether you like Mamdani or not is. we contain multitudes is how the Democratic Party should be. Not that we have to agree on socialism or Abby Spanberger in Virginia is much more conservative. Or if you're Jared Paulus in Colorado. The Democratic Party has to say,

Here's the three things we care about, affordability, dignity, and democracy or something like that. And I think it's really going to be interesting to see who emerges. But there's some great candidates. It's just a question of the fever of Trump is a fever that the United States. has all the time, whether from the Salem witch trials to the McCarthy era, to the Civil War, we have fevers that are really ugly and grotesque. And I feel like we're going to come out of this and...

I agree. This sad, decrepit, cruel man will be gone. But we'll see. He's got a lot of people who love him. You know, absolutely. Any quick things? Yeah, but to build on Kara's point... America has been in very dark places before. And it's actually, it's tested our democracy and the democracy has been damaged in like a muscle that's damaged. It's grown back stronger. At one point, slave owners controlled our quote unquote democracy.

Right after the Great Depression, there was... Henry fucking Ford. Fuck that guy. I mean, he's dead, but he should be deader. Veterans were marching on the Capitol, and this guy named... this young general named Douglas MacArthur opened fire on them. We were essentially putting, we were interning people because of their Japanese background in camps. We have been through very dark times and each time we have come back, learn from it and come back stronger.

So that's not an excuse to be complacent, but our democracy is being tested. I think a lot of Americans are recognizing that a lot of our blessings we've taken for granted. So I'm hopeful that our democracy like a muscle is being tested and it's going to grow back stronger. We've been through worse before. I also believe in young people. Again, New York, Mayoral, you can have all the feelings you want about it. Young people voted.

And they said what they wanted. And they said, we don't want an ass-grabbing terrible Trump-loving Democrat. So we'll see. I believe in young people. That's who I believe in.

Hello, Scott Guerra. My name is Daniel. I'm here with my wife. It's our first anniversary tomorrow and we both love you. Congratulations. Thank you. We both love you. And I wanted to ask, both of us have worked in advertising. I had an agency that I exited last year and I'm still working as a strategist and consultant. She works in advertising.

My question is, and I also teach in post-secondary. So my question for you, mostly Scott is, are we screwed to work, continue to work in these industries? Should we pivot now? Yeah. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? It's situational because I'd say if you're over the age of 40 and you have senior level sponsorship and you're doing well and you own relationships, which is always the key in a services industry.

I would say ride it out and keep going. If you're younger and thinking, okay, I have some options in other industries, I think you want to get out of the ad-supported ecosystem. I think it's going to be a difficult industry. It's better to be good in a growing industry than great in an industry that's flat or declining.

within your industry if you decide to stay in it i would say try and get as close to the relationships with the clients as possible and also try to get good at buying media and creating content for a small screen the return on investment of your human and your financial capital we inversely correlated to the screen

you're creating content for. If you're in the business of big screens, movies, that's a shitty business that's only going to get worse. If you're in the business of a medium-sized screen TV, that's a huge business that's gone flat. But if you're in the business of designing creative, For the small screens, it's champagne and cocaine, my brother. Okay, there you go. There you go. I think Google and Met are going to dominate AI advertising and they're going to get...

they're going to hold. And our country just recently, well, there's one case in Virginia right now with Google. They might break it up, but it doesn't matter. They dominate everything in advertising. And he's right. Small screen.

All right, last question really quick. Make it a good one. Hi, I'm Kelly. I'm here with the bummer question. Oh, okay. So AI has been the fuel on the fire that is disinformation. Yes. How do we curb that? Or is the horse too far out of the barn, as my mom would say? It's not AI. It was here before.

By the way, propaganda has been around since the beginning of time, let's be clear. It's just been amplified and weaponized in a way. And social media has certainly done its job. So it's not a new thing. I think the question is, now that we have AI here and it's not as... protected legally, at least in the United States, as social media is. It's time for our regulators to get very clear about guardrails, beginning with young people in terms of the usage and safety. Let me tell you my whole book.

was about how they do not give a fuck how safe you are. They are people who have never felt unsafe a day in their lives don't care about safety. They don't care about your safety. And so we have to engage as citizens to get our legislators to get a fucking backbone and start to really legislate. reasonable guardrails. I'm not talking about innovation killing guardrails. But the fact of the matter is, as Scott's pointed out, the AI boom right now is allowing Trump

It's kept the stock market up, which is allowing Trump to do all manner of heinous things. Like that's an after effect. But we have to absolutely get control of the technology industry and pass.

We don't have any laws in our country regulating them. We have to start understanding how easy it's going to be to destroy all our democracies, not just the U.S., because we're so... vulnerable but everywhere without understanding there should be reasonable and important legislation around transparency privacy usage safety all kinds of things and it's not that hard we do it with every other industry

And it should be done here. This is all I talk about now. And I want to start with young kids because everybody agrees on that. Like, everybody agrees on the safety of children. And so that would be my beginning. Scott, why don't you end it? So you're zeroing in on what I think is the most important topic that has the least amount of coverage. And that is we're all like, what's going on with our kids? What's happening to our society? And it's because...

People don't want to acknowledge and the incumbents want to make sure we're focused on other weapons and mass distraction. But the thing that really ails the West right now is the following. Our economy in the United States is a giant bet on AI. The economy would be flat. The stock market would not be up 16%. It'd be up 0% if it wasn't for the massive run-up in these 10 companies related to AI based on incredible expectations.

So we've effectively connected the entire global economy. 40% of the S&P is these 10 companies. That represents 20% of global market value. If these companies sneeze, the whole world gets pneumonia. And these companies are in the business of a lot of things, but mostly they're in the business of dividing, polarizing, and sequestering people from one another.

There is now, unfortunately, the deepest pocketed godlike technology has connected trillions of dollars in shareholder value to separating our children from their parents. and each other and making them feel shitty about the flag each other in democracy there is now unfortunately a profit incentive attached

to evolving a new species of asocial, asexual youth. And it is terrible for the species. It's terrible for the economy. It's as if we have connected a profit motive into planning our own extinction. So what do we need to do? No synthetic relationships for anyone under the age of 18. No phones in schools. No social media under the age of 16. And quite frankly, holding these companies to the same account as every other company. We need antitrust. We need phone.

and quite frankly, someone needs to do a fucking perp walk. Other than that, but...

You need to get involved. And on that note, we want to thank you. Scott's book is really amazing. It's called Notes on Being a Man. Thank you. Number one on Amazon right now. Is that correct? I think it's going to be he does, of course, because he's so insecure. He's like, it's going to be two or three on the New York Times bestseller list. It's going to be one. And so I urge everyone to buy it in bulk.

so that he gets that little moment in the sun that he would adore. But it's a great book. And one of the things we'd like to end on, we want to thank obviously Canada, but one of the things we always talk about in this era of AI and separation and anxiety and... Partisanship is you've got to get along with people you don't agree with, and obviously Scott and I don't agree on a lot of things. But it's been a real journey. You saw it here right now. I'm correct about Zoran. But...

But it's really important that you have personal relationships in the real world. We talk about tech a lot. We talk about online a lot. But the most significant relationships are with each other and unlikely ones where you have disagreement and challenge each other. the most critical thing to do. We make our money with tech and media, but we really make our money because of a relationship, a personal, don't you think? Yeah.

Anyway, he can't stand it. I think we need to embrace our imperfect allies. Canada, hang with us. We're your allies. Yes, please do. Thank you so much. We love, and Americans love Canada. We really do. Most Americans do. Thank you, Toronto. I hope you believe that. Thank you. Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Lara Neyman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Corinne Ruff. Ernie and Todd entered into this episode. Jim Mackle edited the video. Thanks also to Jabros, Ms. Averio, and Ancelon. Amazing ground support provided by Trish. And a big shout out to the Vox experiential team, Tara Riley, Courtney Gibbon.

Abbey Aronofsky and Caitlin Berla. Nishat Karoua is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at noymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

It's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. By now, you've probably heard of Built, where you can earn points on your monthly rent payment. But did you know they make it possible for you to get more outside of your home too?

By paying rent through BILT, you earn flexible points that can be redeemed towards hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and more. Earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home. by going to joinbuilt.com slash vox. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash vox. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent to you.