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  • Look, I think change is scary.

  • I think there is no way around that.

  • I think what is familiar is easier for people, and not everybody wants disruption and innovation

  • and entrepreneurship; not everybody wants to have seven jobs.

  • That sounds terrible to a lot of people.

  • I think the idea, the sort of assumption thateverybody is an entrepreneuris a bit

  • of a mistake.

  • I think many people are willing to be entrepreneurs given no other option, but a lot of those

  • people would rather just have a job.

  • Like not everybody is a founder.

  • That's okay, this is not some failure.

  • Founders are sort of unique animals in sort of our social ecosystem.

  • But what I think it requires of us as individuals is: this pace of change is unlikely to be

  • slowed down in a way that is productive.

  • It could be slowed down in ways that are super unproductive like being isolationists and

  • protectionist and trying to make a global economy smaller in ways that ultimately hurt

  • more people than it will help.

  • There are ways of slowing down innovation, but I don't think any of them are actually

  • good for people.

  • I think the reality is we have to get better at teaching flexibility.

  • We have to teach critical thinking and adaptability to students as part of how we're preparing

  • people for the future.

  • We also have to be willingthis is where leadership matters a lotwilling to be more

  • ambitious for ourselves.

  • We tend to think about progress in generational terms, “I want my kids to be better off

  • than I am.”

  • Well, why wait for your kids?

  • Like if it's easier and more effective to make something somewhere else we can take

  • on a bigger problem.

  • And I believe that we can do that, that we have the capacity to embrace something more

  • ambitious for ourselves now in our lifetime in a way that isn't terrifying and in a way

  • that isn’t—it's about seeing these things as opportunities and addressing the anxiety

  • of trying new things and embracing new things, and that requires leadership that is confidence-inspiring

  • and that speaks to the discomfort that we're in, and that meets us at an emotional level

  • of leadership that I think politicians are pretty scared of a lot of the time.

  • And I don't think it's just politicians, I think it's also business leaders, I think

  • it's community leaders, I think this is a cultural shift in an attitude toward what

  • successlooks like and whatworklooks like.

  • And it may be the case that we're moving into this sort of post-industrial economy, we're

  • sort of in this complicated shift and industrial jobs are moving and changing.

  • Value is no longer linearly correlated with work.

  • So in a typical industrial system, if I work more hours I create more value in a relatively

  • linear equation, which is why an hourly wage makes sense.

  • But in a world where one more hour of work might create 10X more value, but in the world

  • we're currently in all of that value goes to an investor and none of it goes to me as

  • the worker, hourly wages make no sense.

  • And it might be the case that if we did a better job sharing in that value creation

  • and spreading the cost of disruption around more effectively maybe we only need to work

  • 30 hours a week, and maybe that is full employment.

  • Maybe our definition of full employment needs to be revisited just like a lot of our other

  • assumptions.

  • And maybe we don't need seven jobs, maybe we just need it to do a better job sharing

  • the value we're creating, and that leaves more time to be parents.

  • Like I don't know that we need to take as a given the 40-hour work week.

  • Most other countries don't and they haven't for a long time.

  • Look, I think that this concept of shared success and collective progress leads us toward

  • a conversation that invites the question of universal basic income.

  • I think it's a really interesting idea.

  • I'm not an expert in it and I'm not convinced that it's the only answer.

  • I think things like requiring companies to do things like profit-sharing is part of the

  • same conversation that ultimately what universal basic income is about; is that we are collectively

  • creating value and we should collectively share in that value.

  • I believe in that 100 percent.

  • I think that we live in a community where accepting the suffering of any of us makes

  • all of us poorer and makes all of us less well-off.

  • Aand accepting that that is like the default part of the gradient should be unacceptable

  • to us.

  • Is the answer a check from our government that creates a minimum layer?

  • Maybe.

  • That may be exactly the kind of public good that the government should create.

  • The question is: who gets it, and how, and when, and what are the cutoffs?

  • Which is not to say it's a bad idea, I just think it's a lot more complicated at the point

  • of implementation than most people talk about, of who qualifies?

  • What if I make enough money?

  • I mean this is a similar conversation to welfare, who qualifies, at what point am I making enough

  • money that I don't qualify for that, and does that create a valley or a cliff in my economic

  • well-being and progress that creates problems for peoplethat people get stuck in this

  • valley, which is very true with especially welfare where you must be working to get to

  • benefit from welfare.

  • The work-first mentality that started in the '80s means that you can't like, for instance,

  • study while on welfare because you have to work full time.

  • And so you can study at night and yes you can go to work and you can study at the same

  • time, but it creates incentives that create this weird valley in the middle of, sort of

  • the way welfare systems, our welfare system gets executed in the United States.

  • I think that's the kind of thing that we have to be really, really conscious and careful

  • of with universal basic income.

  • I think the concept that we should accept that anybody living in poverty shouldn't be

  • acceptable to us.

  • We have enough wealth and value and opportunity in this country for that not to be true and

  • I think accepting it as true is just us wimping out on a hard problem.

Look, I think change is scary.

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