Frequent Flier Free-Agency

Phillip: [00:00:00] In fact, humans, homosapiens, have experienced cataclysms across human history. So we are probably destined to have that happen again. Just for my and your sake, I hope that we have the technology and the willingness, the human capacity to deal with them when they happen, because I don't think it's an if. I think it's a when.

Brian: [00:01:49] Welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast where we explore the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:01:55] I'm Phillip, and I'm maybe a loyalty-free agent. Loyalty programs are shifting. We're going to talk a little bit about that today on the podcast. We'll also maybe dive in a little bit into my experience at the All-In Summit.

Brian: [00:02:10] Yes.

Phillip: [00:02:10] Before we do anything, though, I just want to give a quick shout out. We are aiming we've got our sights fixed on Art Basel, Miami Beach, and you may have heard it at the top of the show. If we've done our jobs correctly. We just got our dream venue December 6th through 8th. Art Basel, Miami Beach. We're coming back. Future Commerce, the only eCommerce-centered event, the only retail-centered event in all of Art Basel. If you haven't booked your travel yet, do so now. December 6th through 8th. Art Basel Miami Beach. Muses by Future Commerce will be there.

Brian: [00:02:47] It's so cool.

Phillip: [00:02:48] I'm so excited. ArchetypesJournal.com/Muses. We should probably get a better domain for that.

Brian: [00:02:53] We will.

Phillip: [00:02:54] But we will. We freaking will. Three days. Going to blow everybody's mind. We have a new book coming out as well. So a new journal. Brian, are you pumped?

Brian: [00:03:08] I am more pumped than I've ever been for something we've done. Because with Archetypes it was like we'd never done anything kind of like it before. And now I know what we're doing with Muses and I'm freaking out.

Phillip: [00:03:24] I'm setting my clock. Hold on. And {boop}. I am going to check back in on December 9th. Back to this part of the podcast. I'll even do like a little doo doo doo doo doo doo. We'll do a fade back in time to hear you say the words, "We know what we're doing."

Brian: [00:03:39] You don't even need to do that. It's a full-on like, what is it? Arrested Development Flashback.

Phillip: [00:03:48] Yeah. We just need a little flashback, a little prequel action. We were going to have a full-on art exhibition. We have incredible artists lined up. We've hired the world's best curator in for the Art Basel scene to come out. Tam Gryn, who has done work with Showfields and every brand under the sun. Sotheby's... Just incredible work and curating. We're bringing Rebekah Kondrat, the DTC IRL brick-and-mortar retail pop-up wizard herself, and her whole team along for the ride. And none other than Linda Strawberry is coming back yet again with artist credit of her own right. Incredible musician and artist herself. But she is styling and bringing creative direction to the book and to the event, and it's going to be an incredible three days, December 6th through 8th. I can't say it enough. Art Basel. Be there with Future Commerce, the only eCommerce and retail-centered event for the retail and eCommerce community. If you want to know about the future of commerce, I think it's going to happen and we'll tell you all about it at Muse's by Future Commerce. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit. Brian, you're a Delta guy.

Brian: [00:05:02] I am. And no longer a Delta guy. {laughter} I just looked at what's going to be required to maintain status next year. And I just it's not going to happen. I mean, there's not the incentive to do it. It's over, man. It's too bad because I love flying Delta. I do. It's just not worth it. It's really not worth it. I'm going to have to become a United guy or something.

Phillip: [00:05:31] Yikes.

Brian: [00:05:31] That sounds awful or even worse, Alaska. I don't want to become an Alaska guy.

Phillip: [00:05:36] So the options are pretty clear. You either get dragged down the aisle kicking and screaming to exit the plane or I mean, Alaska has a nice lounge system, but...

Brian: [00:05:52] They do have a good lounge system.

Phillip: [00:05:53] Alaska's, uh, not the great... I mean, just not the greatest experience, as far as I'm concerned, I've flown a lot of Alaska, Fort Lauderdale to Seattle.

Brian: [00:06:02] Yeah, they never have screens on the backs of seats, which I appreciate because I hate having to run down my battery even though I could plug it in. But it's another thing to have to plug in and manage and the seats, oftentimes it feels like the planes are a little aged.

Phillip: [00:06:18] A little?

Brian: [00:06:19] A little.

Phillip: [00:06:21] Let me just cover the highlights of some of the changes that are making people upset right now. And we'll tie it back to a Future Commerce piece on the future of loyalty. Number one, it looks like they're retiring MQMs, Medallion Qualifying Miles, and MQS, which is the qualifying segments. Now it's being all rolled into MQDs.

Brian: [00:06:41] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:06:43] So it's all about the D, Brian. It's always been all about the D. It's dollars, of course, and but I don't think that...

Brian: [00:06:52] A lot of D.

Phillip: [00:06:54] So that's a big D. There's a lot of D, so I think that there's a lot of money that needs to be spent because it's going to require 35,000 MQDs a year to achieve higher thresholds. Is that right?

Brian: [00:07:08] Yeah. What they're looking for is a total experience. They want you to run all of your stuff through Delta.

Phillip: [00:07:15] You want to be omnichannel. They want you to be omnichannel.

Brian: [00:07:17] They want you to, yeah.

Phillip: [00:07:18] Flight. Hotel. Rental car. Vacations. Your firstborn child.

Brian: [00:07:26] Run that through the Delta system.

Phillip: [00:07:28] We need the Delta hospital. You know what? You know what? This might be the future. What we need is loyalty points on hospital care.

Brian: [00:07:37] They've tried that.

Phillip: [00:07:38] But Delta's got a partner with it. Dude, I'm telling you.

Brian: [00:07:43] Oh, I see what you're saying now. Like Delta partner. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:07:45] Your premium, like your medical premium, your max out of pocket, all of that goes to your MQD for the year. I think I've just solved loyalty.

Brian: [00:07:57] The thing is, though, your insurance rates go up if you fly to places that are on the like, you know... {laughter}

Phillip: [00:08:04] That's coming. That's coming. Oh, you're going to Tulum for the third time this year. Yeah. Yeah. High-risk category. STDs are a given. Yeah. We know what you're doing in Tulum.

Brian: [00:08:17] Yeah. Oh, you're going to Seattle. You're definitely going to get mugged. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:08:23] We got Seattle. Chicago. San Francisco. LA. Your insurance premiums going up, bubba. Yeah, well, loyalties are changing. We actually we wrote a piece back in June about the broad topic of loyalty. Of course, I think loyalty doesn't really mean anything anymore, because the word loyalty, again, presumes the existence of disloyalty. I don't think that loyalty exists. I think maybe clubs exist. I think maybe membership exists. Loyalty is an overbroad term. But I outlined in this piece, it was in The Senses back in June, on June 9th. We'll link it up in the show notes. But loyalty is a form of arbitrage. I think customers have figured out... Customers have always figured out how to game rewards programs, but loyalty programs in particular are a short-term play. I believe you have a short window. Maybe Delta had a bigger window than most, especially with Covid, but you have a short window in which the customer gets the maximum amount of benefit that they can extract from their relationship with the brand. And once the brand tries to rebalance that, the customer is "Sayonara, sucker." And that means the customer sees it as arbitrage. It is not loyalty. You are financing your future and giving away margin, hoping that they'll have something that we call operant conditioning, meaning that they're just going to continue to do what they used to do because it's convenient.

Brian: [00:09:49] Granted, I was a loyal Delta customer for a long, long time, like a long time. So I mean, I think airlines are probably one of the best examples of how to pull it off in an almost loyalty-like way, which is why everyone was like, "Oh, well, look at Delta." The ultimate case study. And finally it is falling. It's breaking down at this point.

Phillip: [00:10:18] But let me make the anti-argument, which is that in the era where you don't have to earn much of anything anymore, I don't know that the Diamond Medallion experience is all that different from just buying up to Delta One or Comfort Plus. You board maybe a hair earlier, but you can pretty much spend your way to this to an equivalent experience.

Brian: [00:10:45] You spend your way to that. You board basically at the same time on comfort and you board... But I mean there are some people that really care about boarding time. I don't think it's that big of a deal.

Phillip: [00:10:55] You don't. I flew with you for the first time ever. You and I flew together. Let's talk about that because I've never flown with you before until a couple weeks ago.

Brian: [00:11:05] Because you have. That's not true.

Phillip: [00:11:06] We've never flown sitting right next to each other until two weeks ago.

Brian: [00:11:11] That might be true. That might be true. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:11:13] I think that's true. Let's talk about our differences. I am the guy that boards the second that I'm able to board.

Brian: [00:11:22] I usually do. The thing is, I'm usually late.

Phillip: [00:11:23] Not this time you didn't.

Brian: [00:11:24] No, not this time.

Phillip: [00:11:26] Brian took his, for those listening, Brian took his sweet time getting on that plane. And when he got on that plane, he got on that plane with the most oniony burger I have ever smelled in my life.

Brian: [00:11:36] Oh, yeah.

Phillip: [00:11:37] And he unpacked that sucker and ate it, every delectable morsel, while everyone was boarding. We're very different travelers, Brian Lange.

Brian: [00:11:45] I don't usually buy food and bring it on. Well, that's not true. If it's the morning, I do. I do. But it's usually like a quiche.

Phillip: [00:11:56] You boarded at your leisure. Many, many, many minutes after you were called. But here's the thing. That was a JetBlue flight. I don't think you had taken JetBlue prior to that.

Brian: [00:12:10] No, I had. I had. I realized that I had. Yeah, I already had a program.

Phillip: [00:12:15] You could have just played into the narrative for the podcast, but it's fine.

Brian: [00:12:18] I could have. No, I realize.

Phillip: [00:12:20] I appreciate the intellectual honesty. Well, anyway, I think other loyalty programs probably have a lot to gain from what Michael Miraflor, a friend of Future Commerce and Chief Brand Officer over there at Hannah Grey VC, what they call, or what he's calling the loyalty program free agency era. And linking that up to, well, what does that mean? What is a free agent, by your definition? What would a loyalty-free agent look like?

Brian: [00:12:47] It means you sign up for a while and then you leave. It's like, you know, any other kind of like, NFL season right now. What happens with free agents? They can sign places if they get the best offer or if the perks are right. They might want to target a city because that's where they want to be or whatever. There are lots of reasons why someone might join your loyalty program, but they might leave as well because guess what? Contracts. Contracts end. And that's what Delta's made perfectly clear. It's actually our program, not your program. Sorry. We do what we want to do.

Phillip: [00:13:26] Well, I feel like there's a bigger story happening here, too, which is what causes the behavior of being loyal to a particular brand? And it's always where the incentive lies. And so in the world of... There was another story that we'll have to find and possibly if we do our jobs well, if remember, we'll link that up in the show notes too. But something to the tune of like 1% of GDP is tied up in Delta-branded credit cards. And I think that that's because the world does revolve around this value extraction and trying to maximize the benefit that you get through spending through a charge card. So in reality, the loyalty-free agency era is going to be defined by those who do status matching across programs and invite those people who are running away from Delta in with open arms. And then it all begins again. It'll all begin again.

Brian: [00:14:34] I almost went for it earlier this year. I should have. To Alaska. I was so close to just pulling the trigger.

Phillip: [00:14:40] They will be happy to have your business right now, Brian.

Brian: [00:14:42] I know. Well, now everyone's flooding over so they'll probably end status match, actually. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:14:48] Potentially. But when you look at the amount of volume and the guarantee of business that will come, the halo effect on the industry will be where do you want to be in the world? And so JetBlue has found a way over the years to partner with other businesses, like overseas. They had a partnership for many years with Aer Lingus. For Hawaiian Airlines they had a partnership with I think Air Portugal and some others. They had for a long, long time now, which has now been ruled as illegal, apparently, and monopolistic, but they've been peering with The Northeast Alliance, I think, is what they called it with American Airlines. And now this merger that is definitely in question with Spirit Airlines gives them a very large footprint in North America. Jetblue might be the next loyalty program to be targeting if you're rushing away from Delta. But it really depends on what cities you want to be in and use frequently.

Brian: [00:15:54] That's right. Yeah, that's the problem. That's why I'm looking at United and Alaska.

Phillip: [00:15:58] Guess what? It really comes back to, well, where in the world are you trying to be? And most of this travel, I really believe, comes down to business travelers. I think a good volume of that is business travelers who are trying to maximize their value away from home. You can't change where your headquarters or where your customers are. Well, maybe not, right?

Brian: [00:16:17] Well, yeah, I think...

Phillip: [00:16:20] So you're going to be constrained by current routes.

Brian: [00:16:24] There is some criticism out there. A lot of tweets, or whatever we call them now, about how...

Phillip: [00:17:11] Xs?

Brian: [00:17:12] I don't know. They like, "Oh, yeah, poor upper middle class America is like freaking out about Delta." This is where all the money... That 1% of GDP sits in upper middle class America. And they care about it because let's be honest one percenters don't care about this at all. People who are elite, rich, and actually genuinely rich don't care about this kind of thing. They're going to get treated differently by airlines or they're flying private.

Phillip: [00:17:46] Yes.

Brian: [00:17:46] So it's really upper middle class that's being affected by this. The thing is, though, to your point, Phillip, it's all business travel, mostly business travelers, that really care about this because they're the ones that are flying on a regular basis, like you and I kind of fit that mold very well, actually.

Phillip: [00:18:02] We did. Yes.

Brian: [00:18:03] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:18:05] Maybe we still do. Not me as much, that's for sure.

Brian: [00:18:08] I'm still traveling, you know, 1 or 2 times a month.

Phillip: [00:18:10] Sorry. {laughter}

Brian: [00:18:11] And I will say this about that. Flying is in general, a terrible experience. It's almost like you have to deal with the government and you have to deal with, you know, schedules and you have to deal with weather and you have to deal with airports which suck. The whole system is just one giant pain fest. And the reason why people obsess over their airlines and over their miles, yes, it is definitely to get the benefits, the points, and so on. But it's also to just know that it's not going to suck so much to go through the process of flying because you do it so often.

Phillip: [00:18:55] You're just trying to reduce friction. That's really what it comes down to.

Brian: [00:18:58] Well, reducing pain. Those miles hit you as a person. They do. There's a toll and you're trying to reduce the toll.

Phillip: [00:19:07] Let me give an alternative perspective, because I came to this realization in 2019. I traveled 30 out of the 52 weeks in the year. That was all for business way back then. Back in my agency days. You remember it well. And then 2020 came and travel ground to a halt. And I spent maybe two months going stir crazy because I was used to being on the road and my family was very happy for me to be home. But I kind of detoxed in that time. And I came to this realization that I had banked a million Amex points. I'd banked half a million, I think, Hilton points, at that point. I had 300,000 JetBlue points. And I realized to myself, why am I not using these points? It's because it just it only serves to make me travel more. And I don't want to travel more. I want to travel more for me, but in a business capacity travel is kind of exhausting for me. So I came to this place of yes, the rewards ensure that I'm reducing friction. But it's again, coming back to this point that I made in the piece that I wrote that I'm referencing here. It's a form of operant conditioning in hopes that you just keep doing the thing that you're used to doing over time when the party stops, and not many people keep dancing when the music ends. So that's where we are. And speaking of dancing, some really awkward dancing at the All-In summit.

Brian: [00:20:46] Saw your video, dude. Tell us about the All-In Summit. So one, how did you get to go? And two well, let's just start with how did you get to go? Actually, we'll get to more questions.

Phillip: [00:21:01] So yeah, spent some time at the All-In Summit. If you're not a fan of the All-In Podcast, I'm sure there's a reason. You may have heard of it. You may not have. It's an often reviled podcast of very rich men talking about the state of the world and politics and often have very interesting and sometimes misinformed conversations about the state of the world. What's interesting is this is their second year of the summit and I think their third year in running the podcast, well over 100 episodes at this point. I think a lot of the criticism around their conversation is a halo effect because of who they are and who they know. And the fact that two out of three of them are best friends with Elon Musk definitely doesn't help the sentiment of the All-In podcast. They've had Elon on the show quite a bit. Elon was at this conference live via StarLink, by the way, from his private jet.

Brian: [00:22:02] Just like me. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:22:03] Not in from your private jet. But yeah, you're live via StarLink right now. The summit was incredible. And we can kind of get into some of the content there. But the way I got to go is that a lot of things we just don't really talk about very often, at least on the podcast. If you know us personally, you probably know Brian and I were mentored by a man named Mike Savino. There were three owners of Something Digital, an agency, an eCommerce agency that I served for ten years at in various capacities, starting as a software engineer and then working up to Chief Commerce Officer over that decade. Brian, you and I learned a lot of what we know from the three owners of that business. And they weren't just owners. They were the first people in the morning and the last people out the door every single day.

Brian: [00:22:21] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:22:56] They work profoundly hard. They were incredibly smart, very strategic, unbelievably naturally gifted, and talented in their respective areas. And they were like mentors for us. And Mike Savino, who is a legend in the wine world and has built many services-based businesses over the years, has become quite an angel investor in the eCommerce ecosystem, so much so that his relationship with Jason Calacanis has become very close over the years. So Jason, being an angel investor, wrote the book literally on angel investing and has had many, many... Has the largest angel syndicate in the world at thesyndicate.com. I have come to know Jason through Mike and that's how I got to go to the All-In Summit. I'm an LP or a member of the Syndicate and I've backed a number of syndicate deals through launch Mike and Jason's friendship goes back 25 years because they used to work together. Mike had a business that Jason worked at when he was fresh out of college. And the big so what of it all is that the ecosystem there used to index really closely towards the eCommerce vertical. And so I've done a lot of deal vetting and things for them over the years. So yeah, that's how I got to go to the All-In Summit. And I think it's great for us. I mean great for our brand. Like posting that I'm at the All-In Summit with a bunch of awesome people. So it was a lot of fun. But I think what was said over and over and over again at the summit actually brought me to a really fine point on the moment that we live in and strengthened my thesis on why Future Commerce is important and why our perspective on the role of commerce in the world is important right now. So we can talk about some of that.

Brian: [00:24:50] Yeah, so tell me more. Say more about that. What was sort of the theme or a few of the themes that you saw as key and why do you feel like it strengthened our thesis and maybe restate our thesis again?

Phillip: [00:25:06] Yeah so the big so what is that we believe that commerce connects every person alive. Commerce touches everybody. It doesn't matter who you are in this world, you have to engage in commerce to live. And what I heard over and over from legendary people in the technology and venture capital ecosystem like Bill Gurley, which, by the way, if you don't, you don't know Bill Gurley. He spoke at the event he founded Benchmark. He's been in Silicon Valley since like 1997, I think he said. He arrived in Silicon Valley and early dealflow was in telecom way back then. Internet enablement. He's been in that ecosystem for as long as I've been doing eCommerce. And so he said, I'll give you a few pull quotes as we go. Technology, commerce, and the sharing of ideas is what leads to innovation and prosperity for all people. And I think that that fits really well with our thesis is that if you can touch commerce, you can touch the world. If you can make an effect in the people who make decisions in commerce every day, you can affect the outcome of the way that people engage in human interaction because we all have to engage in commerce. So what I heard over and over again from incredible, incredible people, is that this idea that we have about the power of commerce is an important one and it's a timely one and it's more relevant now than ever.

Brian: [00:26:35] Yup.

Phillip: [00:26:35] But they kept saying commerce. I think commerce means a lot of things to a lot of people. But it is this thing we all have to engage in. So it's really profound.

Brian: [00:28:20] They had a bunch of people from sort of commerce and influencer ecosystems that are engaged in brand, retail, and tech around commerce. There were sessions from Shopify and Mr. Beast...

Phillip: [00:28:38] So one of the first sessions of the day was Tobi Lütke from Shopify, obviously the Co-Founder of Shopify and the CEO. I met him for the first time at the event. I name-dropped a friend of Future Commerce Gil Greenberg. He says he loves Gil. He and Gil are quite close. Gil, obviously is a mover and shaker these days in the ecosystem, in the Shopify ecosystem. But once upon a time was our colleague, Brian, at Something Digital.

Brian: [00:29:09] A lot of talent at Something Digital.

Phillip: [00:29:11] So when you think about the kinds of people that do affect commerce, they were in that room. So just kind of really awesome to see that. There was Ray Dalio opened with an incredible presentation that was actually very sort of doomer-ish.

Brian: [00:29:34] I feel like there was a lot of doomerism going on based on some of the things I saw coming out of there. We've got a lot of pessimists and nihilists in the world right now, I think.

Phillip: [00:29:45] Well, yeah, I mean, Ray Dalio wrote this book The Changing World Order. He's written a number of books, Principles and then also The Changing World Order. His talk was based on the changing world order. He has been talking about an impending conflict with China and potentially in the future, India, for I think 4 or 5, three, 4 or 5 years now. And that was the focus of his talk. He did have a quote that I thought was really powerful about the power of commerce. He said, "In the past, conflict and superpower challenges came from commerce and capital." And so, you know, access to resources and the distribution of those resources and where they go in the world aligned to global superpowers and people who have tremendous amounts of natural resources that the world wants and needs. And that's what creates the opportunity for commerce. It's funny because I remember going back to that like 97, 98 era, the idea of a global information superhighway was that we were going to have a more global commerce world.

Brian: [00:30:59] Right. And we did.

Phillip: [00:31:00] And it did it created more. It also created this incredible rise of China. And the fact is that 75% of GDP and products created... We hollowed out our own manufacturing in the United States to enable that in exchange for cheap prices.

Brian: [00:31:23] Although does that have anything to do with the Internet or does that have to do with...

Phillip: [00:31:27] It has a lot to do. It has a lot to do with a lot of things. I can't explain it in the way that, you know, I can do no justice. I was just witness to these incredible conversations. All of the videos will be up for free on the YouTube channel. The All-In Podcast YouTube channel. Highly recommend that you check it out. Check out Ray Dalio's keynote. I think the Tobi Lüdke keynote was okay. It was good. Just talked about Shopify and the role of Shopify in the world, but mostly also about Shopify's leadership in the ecosystem because both Tobi and Brian Armstrong from Coinbase... Again, you talk about the future of commerce, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase was there talking about the role of regulation and regulatory capture and these challenges with adoption of crypto and whether that's useful, whether it has any applicable technologies or not. But Brian Armstrong had a lot to say about both he and Tobi being the first people in business, in industry to sort of set the precedent to say, "We will not discuss, in the workplace, topics of politics. We will not discuss hot button topics that are sort of social hot buttons like gender identity. This is a place to work. This is a place to do good work in the world." And it's interesting when you look at Coinbase and Shopify as being the present leading... They're building the future of commerce. Those two companies are building the future of commerce. They're not the only ones building the future of commerce, but they both set the tenor and the tone of saying we're here to change the world by doing phenomenal work. And, in Toby's case, saying to empower people and to empower entrepreneurs. Now I have other thoughts on that. But, you know, they also had people from public policy perspective. When you hear all of that, Brian, what do you think about that read back?

Brian: [00:33:34] I think it's really interesting. These are concepts that are very difficult to determine causes and as a result, effects, so unpacking the why to understand what's next, like the why we got here and how we got here. It's actually just as difficult to understand how we got to where we are as it is to understand where we're going next. And so I think what's interesting is I feel for a lot of these really big topics, contexts can change so quickly. Like look what Covid did to China actually. China's actually going through a downturn right now and they're really struggling. And is that what we would have predicted going into something like that? Sometimes technology changes or people change, things change in a very dramatic way, and all of a sudden all of the whys start to shift. People come up with different reasons for why things are headed the way they're headed. And I'm not addressing anything specifically because I wasn't there. And I feel like I don't have the ability to fully understand.

Phillip: [00:35:09] You do bring up a good point, though. The fact is that I think public policy, and the way that we engage in commerce, especially around trade, has a lot to do with the rhetoric that came out around Covid. So the shifting priorities of the Trump administration is something that was talked about at this conference that Trump may have had the right policy that we took too far. We gave China too much power. But the other side of that is the human impact of well, yeah, I think we all in the United States want to maintain our global dominance. We all want to maintain the US as the reserve currency of the world. It is advantageous for us to do so. I believe in America. Brian, do you believe in America?

Brian: [00:35:54] Of course, I believe in America.

Phillip: [00:35:55] Right. So I'm a capitalist for sure. But you're also talking about it took 40 years to lift a billion people out of poverty. And that's good for people. It's really hard to be terribly negative about like what's good for America or what might be painful for America also generated a lot of human good. Now, you could make the argument that there can't really be a lot of long standing sustaining good and maybe ideological issues with them living in a non-democratic state and quasi authoritarian form of government. Like how good could it possibly be? But I do think that these are complex issues.

Brian: [00:36:41] Very complex. Yeah. And I think the technology question is a big question. It could go in a lot of different directions. And I think that that's how a lot of this is going to change what people actually accept and take hold of and think about how to apply creatively. There's still so much about... The implications of the Internet are still vast. Vast. We are still not applying current technology in ways that are truly transformative.

Phillip: [00:37:18] Yeah. That's right.

Brian: [00:37:22] We're entering the AI era alongside not even having fully realized all of the things that we can do with the current technology that we have. Like this is, you know, I don't want to go down the Marshall McLuhan path too far, but...

Phillip: [00:37:37] Please, Brian, I love it when you do that. Please do.

Brian: [00:37:39] I mean, it just feels like the extensions of humanity that are coming about through technology haven't fully been explored yet. How is AI going to impact consciousness? Are we as humans actually going to change as we realize what the capabilities of our brains are as a result of having more reach, more intellectual reach? And so that's going to take a long time. It's going to take a long time for us to sort of come around on that.

Phillip: [00:38:18] Khosla Ventures Founder, former Sun Microsystems Founder, Vinod Khosla, had a lot to say about UBI and sort of this like coming wave of productivity. There was also a lot that was spoken about fusion technology and sort of limitless power, this future of productivity that a lot of people are saying is like the miracle that we're going to need in order to close the gap between America's debt to its debtors and not defaulting on its commitments and keeping up with debt service. So we need in the next 30 years, we need AI to be incredibly productive. We need a general superintelligence to help us solve fusion. And we have multiple companies working to solve fusion. And many people stood on the stage and said that we'll have fusion basically limitless power in the next 20 years. And we're going to need it because we can't power the AI without it. Oh, and by the way, our policies are going to bring us to conflict with China in that time because we're going to try to prevent China from getting access to Nvidia chips that would power the AI.

Brian: [00:39:30] Right.

Phillip: [00:39:31] So these are and not only do we need those things to happen, but they set us up for more conflict, which is, I think the doomerism that really makes everything feel kind of hopeless. And that was my... I actually talked to David Freedberg at the closing event and I gave him my perspective that there's a missing piece here. We can talk about that in a minute. But I think there's a missing piece here because...

Brian: [00:39:59] We're going to run out of time and we should do a whole episode just on this. I will say...

Phillip: [00:40:05] Maybe. Maybe.

Brian: [00:40:05] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do think that, if you look back in McLuhan and he was asked one time if he was an optimist or a pessimist or something to that effect and he's like, "No, neither. I'm an apocalyptic," which is such a Marshall McLuhan answer. Although, if you look at the term apocalypse and you think about what that term stems from, it actually stems back to the meaning is more revealing. It reveals. It's a revealing moment. And I actually think that's what he was referring to. He's a revealist, which I find to be really interesting. Gosh, I might have to write an article just on that. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:40:48] To coin a phrase from our friend Mike Lackman of Trade Coffee fame. Now the president at Trade Coffee, former CEO. So Mike would say that 78 years without a global superpower conflict is an aberration. It's something that doesn't happen very often in human history.

Brian: [00:41:08] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:41:08] He would also say that over the lifetime, what he might say, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but what he might say is that if you look back over millions of years of the Earth's history, apocalyptic cataclysms are very frequent as well. So whether they're caused by human doing or not, this earth has seen apocalyptic cataclysms in the span of human history. In fact, humans, homosapiens, have experienced cataclysms across human history. So we are probably destined to have that happen again. I just, you know, for mine and your sake, I hope that we have the technology and the willingness, the human capacity to deal with them when they happen, because I don't think it's an if. I think it's a when.

Brian: [00:42:04] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:42:05] It's a very scary... The universe is a scary place and that's just true. And maybe, you know, all of this technological advancement will help us to persist for longer than and maybe we overcome some differences. Yeah.

Brian: [00:42:20] Former founder of Braintree believes that as well as that.

Phillip: [00:42:25] Tobi had some things to say about Braintree.

Brian: [00:42:28] I bet he did.

Phillip: [00:42:29] Yeah, he likes Stripe as a business, just so they're also... He's a huge customer of Stripe, so... {laughter}

Brian: [00:42:35] Yeah, yeah.

Phillip: [00:42:36] I can see why he would say nice things about Stripe.

Brian: [00:42:38] The final thing I'll say is this does get back to the quantum piece that I wrote a little bit.

Phillip: [00:42:43] Quantum Yeet? Your piece on Insiders.

Brian: [00:42:46] Yeah. So that piece did get into what would be required to have the computational technology we need to do all the things that we want to do. The amount of data we're going to collect, the amount of processing power we're going to need, we're going to need server farms that span the ocean and take over the world. With fusion power and quantum processing maybe we'll be able to do it all. Until that day, I think we're going to be butting up against the limits and like you said, hopefully, we can get through some of those limits before we get to some brutal moments.

Phillip: [00:43:27] Well, maybe. But while we're on the subject of quantum, let me finish up one thing on the subject of the All-In Summit. So basically All-In Summit, it did sort of end in a place where there's a potential for a bright hope and a future. The former president of Harvard and the former US Treasury secretary, Larry Summers, while sitting on the stage, he said that the American story is one of self-denying prophecy. Being able to look at the odds and the eventual outcomes, what is surely meant to be, and overcoming it at all odds. Because we have incredible resilience and we defy the odds. We have faced great superpower rises in the past: Germany, Russia... It could be that we overcome it again. Here's what he said. He said that what is needed is a Jeremiah generation to call people to a new renewal. And the thing that really moved me about that is that speaks very dear to my evangelical upbringing is this idea that there are people that are weeping for the current state of things. They are prophetic voices of people that are like him and like Ray Dalio that are trying to call out to say, "This is what will be if we do nothing about it." Maybe it's inevitable, but we can't lose hope that it's a situation that can't be changed. So in that I feel that there's a profound amount of hope that we could find not in commerce, yes in commerce, but all of the same challenges and systemic distrust that we have of political institutions we have in religious institutions. And what we talk a lot about in Future Commerce, especially in Visions reports over the last three years, is that commerce has followed a lot of parallels that replace the role that spirituality and community have had in people's lives. And what if we realize that those things just don't fulfill and we need to find within us something that gives us hope? Buying more things, shopping like a billionaire on Temu does not give us hope. But finding community and people of like mindedness and trying to tap into something greater than yourself can give you hope that defies the inevitability of certain demise. So I think that what I came away with is that I have greater faith in commerce than ever before, but I have greater faith in our ability to find resilience and hope within ourselves to overcome our present challenges. And maybe commerce is just one part of that picture. Find more episodes of this podcast in all Future Commerce properties at FutureCommerce.com. We have six podcasts and our newest one Visions is coming out. All of our content from this year's Vision Summit at the Museum of Modern Art back in June and from our Visions Summit back in June in Chicago. Both of those sessions and ten episodes are coming your way. Subscribe so you don't miss out on any of it. FutureCommerce.com/Subscribe.