What Noah Smith and Parker Thompson Think About Basically Every Economic Policy

Erik is joined on this episode by Noah Smith (@Noahpinion), Bloomberg opinion writer, and Parker Thompson (@pt), partner at AngelList. They cover a wide variety of topics relating to, among many others, labor productivity, the gig economy, healthcare, education, solar power and the Green New Deal. They start out by talking about productivity and why it hasn’t increased over the past decades, even though technology has in theory enabled higher productivity. Noah explains his pet theory that people waste the time they’re saving by being more productive via technology “dicking around on social media at work.” They talk about certain sectors like real estate and wealth management ripe for disruption and where technology should result in better value for consumers. They discuss the gig economy and why Noah says it is not actually the future of labor. He points out people in Silicon Valley conflate companies that will make them very rich with companies that are going to take over the world (even though Silicon Valley insists they will). They discuss why good government health insurance would be one of the best things that could happen for the American worker, and much, much more, including why workers should control a portion of the company they work for, why people have such trouble saving, and why companies aren’t investing in training or educating their workers. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.