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Samo Burja

πŸ‘€ Speaker
212 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

We're not talking just about the infrastructure bill.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

There has been the COVID stimulus.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

There have been many, many cases where the U.S.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

that, of course, has been spending with a massive deficit, has a massive debt burden, has injected trillions of dollars of cash into the economy, mainly to make sure that the stock market doesn't go down.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

You know, at this point, I feel

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

Basically, anyone that holds a 401k, anyone that owns stock, you're basically the beneficiary of the high printing system, right?

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

It's not money that retains its value, it's stocks.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

And politically, it's far too costly for the sitting president, no matter his party affiliation, to allow the stock market to go down for too long.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

And, you know, I think this political incentive is massive.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

I don't think it's going away.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

And I think because of that, we will be printing trillion dollar bills.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

And then the question is, well, who gets them?

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

And I sort of feel it's actually better the AI companies get them.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

If I told you that the US government is investing a trillion dollars into data centers, that would seem good industrial policy.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

If I tell you it prints a trillion dollars and buys a trillion dollars of stock at like basically the value, the market value of, say, OpenAI or possibly Anthropic, you know, I'm pretty sure they're going to use it for employee compensation and for data centers.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

So not that bad, actually.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

So I'm taking a pessimistic view on sort of fiscal sanity of the U.S.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

and an optimistic view of the institutional health of the frontier AI labs.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

I mean, I think it obviously is going to be much longer term as a positive consequence.

The a16z Show
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

You know, the best asset for a welfare state, if you want it to be sustainable, is a booming economy.