Joe Lonsdale

You get all the stakeholders involved. You say, here's who's not going to like it. These special interests aren't going to like it, but here's why they're wrong. You kind of prepare them ahead of time. We have this 20-step process, and you partner with all these people in the state, and you get the law passed, and then it fixes the problem. How fast is this spreading?

It takes usually two or three years to get a law done, and we've been doing it for eight years. We got dozens of laws passed in 17 states last year. We have teams in 20 states now. What you'll do is you'll hire someone who used to... be the lieutenant governor or speaker of the house or whatever.

And they're a lobbyist, but it's the coolest type of lobbyist relationship because lobbyists are usually sick of having to help businesses try to ask for things for themselves. And these guys charge us way less than anyone else because they get to work on something they agree with. And so you'll hire these guys, like, yeah, this is really cool. I get to work on this with you.

And they'll work, because every state's different. Every state has different ways behind the scenes of getting things done. And so you just have to do it and push it through. But rather than play the lobbying game for the bad guys, it's playing it for the good guys, which is a lot of fun. Are you guys in Tennessee? We do. We do have teams in Tennessee.

Governor Bill Lee has been a great guy to work with. He has been. He has been. He's a strong governor. A lot of pro-freedom things here. There's a bunch of stuff we're working on for next time. I apologize. I should have checked the notes for exactly what we're doing here. It's all good. All good. I just love that you guys are operating in here. You got a strong set of leaders here.

I think that all three houses, both sides of Congress and the governor are red, and there's a lot of bold things I think we can get done here.

What other states are you guys in? Do you know? We do a lot in Florida. We do a lot in Texas, of course, where I am now. You know, Missouri, you know, does a lot of stuff in Georgia. There's all sorts of places. We're all over the country. Arizona was a big place for us. It's harder now with the current governor. But even sometimes with moderate Democrats, we get along. I'll tell you what happens.

Most of the time when our laws pass, we get people from both parties voting for them. And the moderate Democrats love a lot of our stuff too because it's like we're helping fix things with incentives and accountability. The far left hates us because the far left is tied to those government unions I was talking about. They don't want anything to be held accountable.

They don't want spend to be tied to metrics because then they can't capture the spend for their corrupt groups. So the far left tends to be really against us. And so therefore, when you have a left administration, usually you can't get through the far left. But we're still getting a lot done in purple and in red states. What about homelessness? That's a big one for us.

So we've passed a bunch of laws in a bunch of areas there. So I come from San Francisco, remember, originally, in the nearby area. And San Francisco is just totally screwed because of homelessness. And what happens is you get these special interests, the NGOs, And these guys lobby for money. And then even 20 years ago, people were like, wait, we're giving you all this money.

How about we like tie the money to results or to outcomes or to goals together? And they're like, no, no, no, you can't do that. And they screamed and yelled. And they're so powerful because once they all lost money, they become the biggest donors. And so all the politicians don't want to piss them off. So they don't hold them accountable.

And when you look at it, these NGOs, they started giving free houses to a lot of their friends, the people in their groups, because their houses are given out, of course. You started actually having incentive to bring more homeless there with super generous stuff. You started giving free drugs to all these people, because that's what the homeless people want. It makes them come.

It's just a total mess. I think the worst part of it is the vulnerability index for homes. Have you heard of this before?

If you talk to the people in the very far left, they're not really big on incentives. And some of them are well-meaning, of course. And so they say, well, we want to give homes to people who need homes. It sounds like a nice thing. But, of course, there's an infinite line in America for homes. Everyone wants a free home. It's okay. We have to prioritize people who are more vulnerable.

So how do you prioritize them? This is something that came from both HUD and a bunch of these blue cities. So they said, you get more points towards a free home if you're on drugs. If you're on drugs. You get more points if you're not in a recovery program because you really need it better. More if you're not in a recovery program. You get more points if you commit a crime.

You get more points if it's a violent crime. More points if your kids are truant. So basically there's all these points you get for bad things and they say, well, these people deserve a home because they're going through all these bad things. I'm like, no, no, no. If you give them points for bad things, you're creating an incentive. So you look at our cities and say, why are they so effed up?

Is you literally have insane amounts of money being given out based on points for bad things. And so we like followed a homeless guy around and a bunch of homeless people around Austin, try to be helpful and we map it out. And like one of them goes in The first time he goes in, he says, I'm trying to look for job training. What do I do to get out of my situation?

And this young, blue-haired, progressive woman says, no, no, sir, you deserve a home. And I'm not sure we're going to have enough from right away because Republicans aren't funding us enough, but you deserve a home. Sign this. Here's how you get your tent. He's like, oh, I was going to stay with my cousin. And she said, don't tell me that. It's better if you have a tent.

You're going to get home sooner. So he gives her the tent to go set it up in the city. And he comes back two months later. And he doesn't quite qualify for a home. And he says, but you know, I heard that if I was on drugs, I'd be more likely to have a home by now. And she said, yeah, that's technically true, but we don't like to think of it that way. Can you believe that? This is enraging.

Yeah, exactly. Why do you think I get so involved in policy? It pisses me off. It's crazy. It's breaking our country. And so we passed a bunch of laws in Georgia and Florida and a couple other places where we're actually just completely fixing the incentives, completely getting rid of this nonsense. The red states still need to hold these NGOs accountable.