media that I had an idea that could change the world. And I was willing to sell that idea. I did it as an experiment to see if anybody would fund a company based on an idea. And I actually got a company to say yes. And they sent me a contract and said, yeah, that idea is so good that we will actually give you a percentage of the company just for the idea. And some internal changes happened at the company and they ended up not being able to complete the contract, which was independent of whether it was a good idea. So I had an idea that I thought would change the world. A company was willing to fund it. And I didn't even have to do anything, which was very unusual because that's not a normal situation. People don't pay for ideas. That just doesn't happen. Nobody pays for an idea unless it's such a good idea.

Here's the idea. Y Combinator, which is probably the most prestigious startup incubator in the country, maybe the world, you announced that one of their companies raised money. It's called Outschool, O U T S C H O O L E R, one word, Outschooler. They got investments. And what they are, they describe themselves as quote the Netflix of education online, the Netflix of online education. What that means is exactly the idea that I tried to sell unsuccessfully to this company. And that idea is to have a marketplace where anybody can create a class, just like Netflix is a marketplace where anybody can create a movie. And if they make a good movie, Netflix will consider putting that on their platform. If you make a good TV show, then Netflix will put it on the platform. And so they have done the thing that is, somebody's saying Udemy does that. I'm making a stark difference between classes that a company puts on a platform versus a platform that lets anybody put content there if they meet certain requirements. Now I'm not an expert on the other companies doing that so there may be some other companies who are already in the business, which would be all good news. So the point is that the education field had never been subject to competition, to free market competition.

If you have a platform that you own, you control who the instructors are, etc., that's not exactly a free market enough situation. But if you have something that's really a Netflix for education, then even I, I mean literally me, I could make a class. So I can say to myself, you know what kids who are 14 through 18 need to learn? Well they need to learn about maybe systems over goals. Maybe they need to learn about persuasion. Maybe they need to learn how to write. I could make a class and I could put it on there. And if people like my class I could make money. Somebody's saying what about IQ? Yeah, and YouTube could do this as well. But as the free market allows people to compete for online, here's the big thing. Here's the big idea for all of this. Online training has the potential to be so inexpensive it's effectively free. We're very close to the point where online education will become good enough that people will prefer it over going in person. We're not there yet. Right now going in person is still up here. Doing it online is still down here. There are exceptions. Certainly there are bad in-person teachers and good online things that might be better. But in general, on average, in person is still better than online.

But these free market classes will allow people to compete just like movies do. And the quality of the online is just going to keep going up. The quality of in-person education is not going to get much better. It's sort of as good as it's going to be. But online will keep getting better because of these free market forces. The moment it crosses over, the only thing missing is the certifications, the credibility, the part where you say I got a degree and it means something. That is almost certainly going to change in the next five to ten years, maybe sooner. And all it requires is people with enough credibility. I always use Bill Gates as my example because he works for lots of examples. If Bill Gates ever says publicly, here's the deal, if you take these specific classes online I will award you the Gates Foundation Bachelor's of Education or whatever it is, whatever the classes, the moment he does that people are going to say, well that's the thing. Bill Gates looked into it. He's credible. If he says this is a college degree, that's a college degree. If Warren Buffett says if you take these classes online you have a degree in my opinion, I will give you the Warren Buffett college degree certification, that means something. Now not everybody could do that but people who have enough credibility could certainly do that. Could President Trump do that? Yes he could. President Trump through the administration, not him personally. Yeah let's not call it Trump University. I guess that's the problem. So forget what I said about President Trump. Let's make it a government certification. The government could say we're going to certify college degrees online as collections of classes if they meet certain criteria. And the government could say here are the criteria. And anybody who meets it can say I got the government four-year degree, whatever that is.

All right. Somebody said America First University. Hmm, maybe. But the larger point here is that when I say that I love Bernie, which I often say, I say it because I want all the things he wants. Except as you can see it is often the case that capitalism can get you, can deliver what socialism promises. So socialism promises you free education but it doesn't have to get it. Capitalism doesn't promise you anything but it might give you free education. In fact I will upgrade my might to it will at this point. There's absolutely nothing that will stop this from happening because the free market will give you increased quality of online education. It will cross over in-person education and it won't take long. Three years maybe. I'd say three to five years and online education will be functionally completely superior to in-person. But it may not have the credibility until people start blessing certain sets of classes. But we're going to get there. So we have free education is going to happen. Free college is going to happen. Nothing could stop it. Bernie doesn't even have to do a darn thing. He doesn't have to promise anything. He doesn't have to get out of bed in the morning. Bernie's going to get free college. He just has to wait. That's three to five years.

All right, so that's the other good news. Apparen