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tv   Charlie Rose  Bloomberg  April 21, 2014 8:00pm-9:01pm EDT

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>> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> david brooks is here. he is a columnist at the new york times and a regular contributor to the newshour.
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recent appearance at the ted talks where he talked about eulogies and resumes. >> i have been thinking about this problem. the thing that helps me think about this is a rabbi who wrote a book called "the lonely road of faith." he says there are two majors. the first is the world the external nature of us. the second is the humble side of our nature. not only to do good, but to be good. to live in a way that honors god, creation, and possibility. adam 1 wants to conquer the world. adam 2 savers and her consistency.
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nner consistency. he argued that the two sides of our nature are at war with each other. we live in perpetual self confrontation with external success and value. we live in a society that neglects adam 2. animal.ned you into an to become a cold and calculated creature that slips into mediocrity. there is a difference between your desired self and yourself. >> where have you been? >> i have been busy. trying to write a book. and, write a column. and, make speeches. >> can you tell us about what the book is about? called "theng to be
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road to depth." it is about people. resumets with the virtues and the eulogies virtues . there are things that you put on your resume that you bring to the market. there are things that you mention in your eulogy. these are non-overlapping. like a lot of people, i think about my resume. i think about my eulogy. it is about how people have developed those virtues. >> this is part of the ted talk in 2014 that you can get online. >> hundreds of thousands of people do this. >> they do. the interesting thing about that subject -- and interests me a lot -- a long time ago, someone said, imagine your death decades from now. think about what you would like people to say about you and get
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on with living that life. >> it is easier said than done. sermons and books do not get you there. i was writing a column a couple of months ago -- years ago, now. it was about how hard it is to communicate in words. i got a great e-mail from david jolly. he had great sentences. what the wise person says is the smallest of what he gives all stop the message is the person. what he is saying is that what comes out of our mouths may or may not register. it is the way that you act, and the smallest of ways, the disciplines, the habits, the ness, thosete were given to you in your life and through the dimness of time. that is worth remembering. it is the behaviors that get spread. trump words.
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>> it is what children learn from their parents and, when you think about and you go back to people who mattered most to you teachers,fe, or even your member what they say and the way that they are. those are hard to communicate. there is a sentence from abraham, when i was young, i admired intelligence. deep inle who go life are combating sinfulness. the people who impress you with hard character have a sense that they fought themselves. in some small way, they defeated themselves. it is the combat with yourself that is missing and culture. that used to be in coulter. now, we think we are wonderful inside. it is the word that we associate with dessert. it is sin.
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it is now absent from culture. >> one of the things i remember that you said several years ago was the following, you said, a lot of people always talk about finding themselves. you thought it was more important to lose yourself. lose yourself for something that is grander and broader and more purposeful than yourself. >> this is biblical logic. whether jewish, christian, muslim, the biblical logic. economic logic is reversed. biblical logic tends to be paradoxical. you find yourself to lose yourself. your greatest success can lead to your greatest failure. humility can be a greatest success. the bible is filled with paradoxes. that is a moral logic and not an economic logic. people used to be more aware of that logic. there is a famous book that i
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highly recommend people to read that millions of people have read. it is called "man's search for meaning." he goes against the common view of the commencement address. today, find your passion. who was in europe and put in concentration camps. he said, i did not plan on this and this is not the life i would have land. this is what light presented for me. the crucial question is not what i want from life. the question is, what is life questioning me to do? and is presenting suffering he said that suffering became a problem that he did not want to turn his back to. he decides to suffer well and that the notches would not take his dignity. s would not take his dignity.
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then, he would study suffering. what questions are the world thrusting in front of you? being a new york times columnist is not the same as going to tz.shore its -- auschwi it is foolish to think, what is my calling? >> circumstance. bill murray was here. i admire him greatly. -- he does not have a plant life. -- planned life. life has spoken to him. he said, you have to be alert and responsive. i am not giving justice to it. it was, you have to make sure that you are responding to stimuli. >> i would not only do that. you can take a lot of circumstances. it is important to serve a cause that is greater than one lifetime.
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some thing you cannot complete. there is a jewish phrase, you do not have to complete the task and you are not free from starting it. that will give you some long obedience toward something that is important and transcends an individual human life. >> did this come to you? >> a couple of things. the midlife crisis. this is noting that being served by the public the way it was in the 1950's and 1960's. there was a lot of that out there. there is a gap there. column, youte a have to shift the ground every few years or you get stale. i have tried to shift ground, in terms of subject matter. i think you should. shift -- is a great threats to people who do that.
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i do not think about this before trod the same ground. i wrote about consumption, patriotism, neuroscience, now, moral philosophy. >> what did you teach a yale? >> i thought grand strategy. thinkers fromc and onward.pericles about how a nation and individuals should think. we did this mark. -- bismarkck. we just did lincoln. kennedy asy -- cole
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a book about the logistics of world war ii. a guy named charlie hill. it is very good. i will say one good thing. we spent one term going through these books, machiavelli and things like that. the next, students have to present to us. we pretend to be a panel of advisers and we cut them off. we try to rip it. it is totally fun. you do not want to make them cry. you want to hit them hard. >> also, beneficial. i think about that confrontation as a way to harden truth. >> they present to us. the first time, we tear them to shreds. they come back and they are so much better. if you look at "self-made millionaires -- if you look at self-made millionaires, the gpa is 2.75.
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somebody told them that they were too stupid to do something and they set out to prove the wrong -- prove them wrong. i came across a study a number of years ago that was the opposite. inyou look at the figures history that have gone on to tremendous achievement, a disproportionate number of them have a father died when they are about 12. >> those who were successful? >> for good and evil. your fathers that dies when you are 12 and your you ferociously motivated to establish security for yourself. mass sacrifice. >> a little stronger. absolutely. you have been writing about
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politics and vladimir putin. here we are. the crisis in ukraine. tell me how you see it and what the possibilities and options are. real pessimist. what is fascinating to me about the situation is that we rarely have a world crisis so dependent on the mind of one man. >> vladimir putin. >> the interesting thing about him is that he is a cold-i've eyed cynic andld- a true believer. he sensed strange books for world leaders. they were a certain sort of theology of russian exceptionalism and an orthodox theocrat philosophy that was very ecstatic and mystical. they combined with a believe in autocracy. these are the themes that are
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running through the firmly-let .od given russia d guy whoe a cold-eye wants to change history, this is going to grab you. he is motivated by that. not just narrow self interest. the people around him in that country have the same russian eschatology. i'm not convinced they are a normal country that can respond to carrots and sticks. that guess that i fear they are going to get to a place where they cannot turn back, even when the incentives are there. > with the loss of face -- >> a loss of a sense of identity that this is their mission. they are going to do it slowly. they could contribute to the internal collapse in the
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ukraine. there is relentless pressure. and, we face this interesting question that is a psychological question. in theot about troops ukraine. we are not going to do that. does it ever become necessary to arm the ukrainians? if you do, do you deter or inflame? that is a debate that is happening within the administration and a decided that it would inflame. you are really guessing about the psychology all the way through this process. and, a very opaque person. >> here he is with all of the cards. are you suggesting that sanctions and nothing we can do can deter? if you know and he knows that it will make russia a miserable place, he might. >> i only know what i know in
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the translations in russian press and i have read enough statements that -- we s urvived a few sanctions. i have russian friends. they say it will put pressure on him. >> would he respond to all of garch pressure? >> i am not enough men expert to know if they run him or he runs them. so, -- byychology, the way, i think that the obama administration has handled this well. in general, they have been firm. they have been impinged by allies and the law. they have been good as it is
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possible to be, given the circumstances. we sort of ease our way into sanctions and, you could say, the proper psychological approach is getting the first blow. by the statement in the last couple of months, there is a broadcast of contempt. you guys cannot touch me. leverage than we do. >> what does that say about the united states in the 21st century? >> well, i think that we have underestimated the extent that there was a post-cold war order. it did not go as we would have wanted. we have the soviet union covering the ukraine, africa, the middle east. everything seemed to be turning up roses and apartheid was ending. and, there was a sense of openness.
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that global communication would matter more and a sense that we can be free. what we have learned is a couple of things. establishing political order is more important than being free. it is easy to be free. establishing just order and just authority is where the extremists fail. it is where the middle east failed. >> is this about passover? >> i wrote a column about exodus. we go to the movies and it is, "we're free." that is the movie version. john adams,nders, benjamin frank ling, thomas franklin,-- benjamin thomas jefferson. off in the people
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wilderness and imposed law on them. that is what they did with the constitution. in 1776.ad liberation writing the constitution was an act of genius. >> the capacity to impose just authority. not -- >> we don't know how. put enough emphasis on imposing law and order on places. i have examples. i was in the soviet union as it collapsed. we sent over economists because we thought that if we had the right privatization reforms, we would have the invisible hand working and they would get order. in fact, they need cops and prosecutors. but they needed macarthur?
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-- >> they needed macarthur? >> i don't know if i would go that far. the more contemporary example is foreign aid. people in ngos are compassionate people who want to help, be kind, and dental. -- gentle. if you talk to the people in the developing world, they have a problem with hunger. they have a problem or they cannot go out at night because someone is going to shoot him in the back of the hat. if you do not establish law and order with honest cops, real prosecutors, any prosecutors, honest judges, they cannot do business. >> you say this and i am looking at examples. irawq after the invasion? >> totally. if you set people free, they will spontaneously form communities and build civil society. and believe in spontaneous order.
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in spontaneous order. >> look at libya. we kill the dictator and -- >> the knights of columbus will come in and form communities. there will be little platoons of democracy. if you have social trust, deep institutions, you can just as easily get chaos. this is something we talk about in the grand strategy class. a lot of how you see this sort of thing happening is dependent on your view of human nature. if you believe that people are naturally cooperative, you are not going to worry too much. if you are like machiavelli, who had a cynical view of human nature, that people are ungrateful, the issue of human nature is on your mind. >> 40 think obama is, in all of this?
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you think that obama is in all of this? >> i think that he has a few about how barbarous human beings can become. we do not have an apparatus in our government that does this military, we have the obviously, blowing people up and blowing things up. foreign aid doing great stuff. we do not have an official political order of creating institutions. that was a problem in afghanistan and iraq. here's how you set up municipal authorities and police forces. we struggled with that. we did not have nationbuilding. >> i'm thinking about something significant, serious, hugely disruptive. world war ii.
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would you use japan and germany as a model? >> it was intrusive. i hesitate to say this. i think it is historically true that the british empire, and believe me, i am not supporting the british empire, the places , they left a rule of law behind. to some degree. with all of the flaws. >> interesting that the chinese are finding the necessity for that. they're talking about reform and the things that they know that they have to do with -- deal with. the talk about reform and confidence of the citizenry. it deals with survival. there is a wreck and is it -- a recognizing of something like that. by hart said that -- >> beinhardt said that people vote
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for the candidates who seem the most orderly. campaignspended his and obama marched along orderly. you look at the bush-kerry race. may not support him, he offers security. people generally understand that are not as high as the lows are low. our political leaders can do a lot more damage then they can good. there's an upside to political action and government action. there is a huge downside if they mess it up. you want somebody who is going to be stable and i think that our voters pick the most stable candidate. >> when you look at the president, you wrote another column about what he needs to do now.
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any chance for legislative action is gone are quickly will be there, given the elections coming up. therefore, he should do what? >> he should lay the ground for further success. it will be tough to pass big things. he talks this way, too. he is using the white house to create a coalition around opportunity. there is great opportunity to take some republicans and liberal organizations to create coalitions. he did this with this initiative for black men. you create a groundswell and maybe they will not be legislation now. real inequality legislation for the next person. that will emerge from the ground
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up. i was struck by -- this is my theme for the night -- that we overemphasize politics. we had a commemoration of the civil rights act. there have been some great books written. >> at the lbj library. >> i go back and look at that. johnson did great legislative work. without the march on washington a year before, is it really possible to imagine this? i don't think so. colleagues of mine came up with a wacky idea. at first, all of the date civil rights organizations say they did not want to do it. they wanted to work with in the system. >> a former communist. >> a pacifist and a great figure. a controversial one. one of the early gay
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intellectual forces. his is a life, by the way, 2-d tour, a life of great humility and great praise. he was being groomed to be the gandhi of the pacifist movement. prisonerheroic battling segregation in jail. battling racism. he was getting attention for battling segregation. in the early part of his life, he was promiscuous. he gets caught with sexual acts in prison. he has a morals charge. after the morals charge, in those days, it was illegal to be gay in public, he could never be the leader. ego and,ged his behind the scenes, does so much good for the country, even
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though he can no longer be the star. that is in active service. -- an act of service. >> this is political affairs with the head chopped off. real power is in the swarm. exception, ihe would say. when i was covering the soviet union collapsed, we had leaders who were dominant figures in the world. reagan, youtcher, would say they were large figures. in is a large figure. obama, i will leave others to judge. the major confrontation is the autocrat versus the village square. we're seeing that in the
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ukraine, the air spring, lidia -- arab spring, libya. that is the crucial confrontation. giving me square the power to organize is crucial. look at occupy. >> it makes order more difficult. people toe to teach accept hierarchy and authority. you look at occupy wall street and it was not a lasting movement because they would not accept authority and create institutional structures. >> within their own ranks. >> is a flash in the pan. everything is a flash in a pan if you do not accept a structure. but i cannot wait for the book. when is it out? >> about a year. think about the life you want to
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live. back in a moment. stay with us.
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cofounderwitz is the
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and capital partner. he has emerged as a note to go-to mentor for tech. his insight on founding, managing, and investing in companies is compiled in the new book called, " the hard thing about hard things." i am pleased to have been horwitz at the table for the first time. how can that be? >> i appreciate being here. manyrk has been here times, as you know. >> he is always good. beyoncé andd him as you are kelly rowland. >> i am kelly rowland to his fiancée. >> tell me about your background. >> i grew up in earthly.
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my grandparents were communist. my grandfather is a colorful figure. went from the left to the right. it was a different transition. i learned about computers and i was a kid. i thought they were going to do everything and change the world. if you are into computers, you end up in silicon valley. once you just love them at first -- >> you just love them at first knowledge? >> i would buy an alarm clock and take it apart to see how it works. h on i understood the mat how fast things are growing and , i wasstood moore's law
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like, oh my god, the world is going to be different. >> in silicon valley, what did you do? >> silicon valley was where every engineer wanted to work. they have the greatest engineers, the best environment for engineers. they make computers that -- >> did you work with jim clark? >> the computers made the movie the terminator. what an amazing ain't! -- thing! as soon as i got there, i was like, this is so much better than the other jobs. i could not believe it was called work. >>e did you make your way -- did you make your way to netscape? >> i got myself an interview there. >> with mark? >> my partner. he was a kid, 23 years old. >> it was not a traditional
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interview. >> no. it was him trying to learn everything that i knew. what i knew about everything. >> wanted to go into venture capital with them? -- why did you go into venture capital with them? i announced it on this program. >> you were the very first. that the best companies, including our own, ones run by the inventor. inture capital was set up the opposite. the inventor would set it up and then you it bring in the adult. >> you did not buy that. you thought it was better if the founder ran it. in the technology business and in the business of doing things a better way and a
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better way of doing things. at some point, somebody is going youatch the invention and are going to have to invent something again. if the innovator is not running the business, that is the end of the business. we saw great technology hewlett-packard, microsoft, oracle, google, all being run by the founders. professionalsy ended at the end of the product cycle. money andovide somehow, you will bring in somebody who is a dazzling businessperson. >> yes. they can drive venture capitalists crazy. if you come from a background and you are used to getting straight a's, you look in and there is chaos.
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strategically, it is dangerous. netscape,ol acquired you, mark, and a couple of others, founded something else. it was the original cloud computing company. in fact, if you go back in the literature, cloud -- that well. out >> now, the cloud is everything. >> we were eight years too early. >> sometimes, you can be too early. >> that is the more telling mistake. >> what does it mean to be too early? bubbles,ot of internet a lot of the ideas that they made funny ideas about where good ideas and the cost structure was wrong because it was expensive to build these
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things and all proprietary hardware. there was not a cloud available. , at the peak of netscape, there were 55 million people on the internet and half of them -- it is not a big market. that is what it means to be too early. the seeds are not sewn for you to grow the guardian. had run-ins that were too early. the guys who built that have a new company. it is quite an amazing product. they were the microsoft guys who
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built the tablet before apple. arguably, with a better design. it was too early for microsoft. for a lot of reasons, they canceled it. >> what are a lot of reasons? >> can you have multiple operating systems if the cost structure is not right? there are always reasons. >> why did you write that building a business when there is no easy answers. everybody lives in silicon valley and says, look at what is happening. valley. to silicon >> yeah. >> let's go. >> that easy. >> you have interviewed a lot of them. them?s unusual about one is an unbelievable
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original view of the world. what do you believe that no one else does? it is a great interview question. even if you know it is coming, it is hard to answer. >> i can see asking that question. >> exactly. you need somebody with original thinking. then, the other side of it is the courage to say it and build a company around it. that is a tremendous amount of courage. the underpinning of the leadership that you need to build a company. aristotle said that courage is the first virtue. the reason it is is because you need it to activate any others.
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you may lose your courage and your integrity. courage is fundamental. it is very rare to have that and the same person. you invested in facebook. did you know something that you did not know -- that we did not know? mark is on the board of facebook. >> we had known him for many years. the original investment and how long, you know, we have worryingstock and not about the ipo pricing is all about mark zuckerberg. in my view, one of the greatest tech ceos there is. very smart and courageous. he has done a great job in managing the company.
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a lot of the things that people have identified is teenagers drifting or not being on mobile. all true. mark zuckerberg is running the company. does not know that. >> he is going to do something about it. >> he has known that he needs to figure out a way to get advertising on mobile. is not doinge mark well because he does not understand that he needs advertising on mobile. how about skype? >> skype is a different thing. at that time, nobody wanted to buy skype from ebay. the sky phenomenon was impressive. -- skype phenomenon was impressive. own all the
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intellectual property or the most important piece of intellectual property. when people assessed the investment, they said there was a non-zero chance that the founders will sue the company and shut down the service. your $2.5 billion will not be worth anything. you cannot make a purchase if it is worth nothing. we looked at it differently. we look at it from the founder's view. last thing the founder would want to do a shutdown skype. they may be willing to do it legally. they will never do it. that turned out to be reasonable. >> did you guys make the investment innocuous? oculus? >> it was one of the best investments we ever made.
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the board of facebook. but he refused himself from the decision-making and it is like, nobody tells mark zuckerberg what to do. even if he had wanted to. >> he knows what is best for facebook. >> he says that people have been trying to tell me that i am wrong all my life and so far, i have not been wrong. >> stock prices go up and down. they go down and they bounce a little. >> a series of tweets have raised questions about valuations. >> on private companies, it is different than public companies. look, there has been a kind of shift with a lot of public market investors getting in that, you know, partly because the rules of
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public companies have changed, private companies stay private much longer. things that used to be private investments -- anytime we have a lot of capital entering a stage of the market, the prices go up and that is the nature of it. that is definitely happening in the later rounds of venture capital. >> here is a thing i do not understand. i have no idea about bitcoin. valley, many of us are excited about it. >> really? >> you can start by telling us who invented it. >> we will never know. a nobeldid should get prize in mathematics and computer science. it is an amazing computer science breakthrough and it solves a 30 year problem. copy --es you to
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transfer a piece of digital property to another individual. >> what you mean by digital property? mp3, digital car keys. can havethat i something and give it to you and i no longer have it. that has not been possible. when you think about what that changes? when you think about what that changes, it changes everything. , if you no easy way to do not have something people do not really want, you have to rely on advertising dollars that you need skill for. people do not want to put a credit card on the internet. when you do, they take it and he'll it every month. so, it solves that problem. you can have cash.
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i can give you a dollar or a penny to read your article. we are done. you do not have my address, my phone number, all that stuff. i can load up my browser with money and read stuff. sam. spam is easy to solve with bitcoin. charge everyone to send you an e-mail and there is no more spam. don. there are things like the stock exchange and a third-party. bitcoin, you can transfer digital property and you can nasdaq or theth new york stock exchange. really profound opportunities. >> you think that the future of bitcoin is stunning and exponential. whatever word you can use. >> it is like the internet of money.
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that is the way we think about it. >> what about those who talk about bad conduct and criminal transactions. >> that is a misunderstanding of what has gone on. guysnotice that a lot of have been arrested. it is traceable. bitcoin is a distributed ledger. every transaction that ever takes place gets recorded. it is not anonymous. like e-mail. from send you an e-mail red flintstone. flintstone. it is getting more tied to identity through regulation. i do not think that is the issue. it is more of a function of a different technology that is
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amazing. it is not about money. but the internet of things is here. the internet of things is here. it will exponentially grow. >> yes, it is very interesting days ofre in the early it. you can put anything on a network. the most interesting applications are the things that people have not thought about. it is not programming your house. we get pitches on that. you walk in the door and all of the lights are on. what if my wife is asleep on the couch question mark >> that is true. >> what do you mean by the internet of things? >> anything that you have to be connected to the network. you can have a lot of services and things. one example is security. if you have security cameras
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them.ou have, you know, with the internet of things, they can be connected to other .hings, like the cloud people can analyze the data. >> you say a thing that i totally believe. it is easier to teach and innovator to be a ceo than it is to teach a ceo to be an innovator. a skill set. i tried to demystify it. why do you have an organizational design? why'd you put a process in place? >> your single biggest improvement occurred on the day that you stop being positive. >> yes. interesting story. it was a conversation i had with my brother-in-law. you know, he worked for the
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phone company and climbed the forth.ne poles and so i knew one of the executives at the company. i asked him if he knew chuck. chuck comesyeah, along and blows a little sunshine up my but. it took me back. i wonder if people are saying that about me. as a leader, honesty is the most powerful thing. for 40 is the basis already communication. and companies, communication is the most fundamental and important thing. >> ok. we are coming to the end. this thing about you and rap music. >> yes. >> you look different than a normal wrapper.
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>> yes, that is true. i started. >> it is an interesting story. it has to do with friends being shot. tell the story. it is heart-warming. >> it was out of desperation. shotend i grew up with got and became blind. he became incredibly depressed, as you would expect. i was trying to, you know, search for ways to cheer him up. at the same time, this whole thing, this rap music thing, was a rocking in new york in 1986. i listen to it and these guys have nothing at all. they are proud and positive what it and talk about they are going to do despite that fact and those problems. first, i, you know, at said in the music and i thought
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that we could be a rap band and rap about being blind and how it would be cool. it would be the best. it is the power of the art form and the music that has been with me since that time. >> he got into it and it changed his attitude. >> oh yeah. enabling a whole new person. -- it made him a whole new person. >> you wrote this book for young entrepreneurs to know what to do and how to be a good ceo and have a realist view. it is great to see you. >> i appreciate it. >> ben horwitz. the book is called "the hard thing about hard things." thank you for joining us. see you next time.
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♪ >> this is "taking stock" for monday, april 21. i'm filling in for pimm fox. bill cohen joins me. a revelation, not in the biblical sense, but every guest will be revelatory. edward snowden pass rush and have sparked numerous questions around the world. we will talk to an author that took an intimate and look at him and vanity fair this month. michael king will tell us why his new venture and boxing will be a revelation.

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