People are scared of tech because we’re telling them to be scared, says Stripe CEO Patrick Collison

The only thing people have to fear about tech is fear itself, said Patrick Collison, who was a special guest at Recode and MSNBC’s first town hall event for the series “Revolution,” which aired on the cable network last night.

The CEO of the $9.2 billion dollar payments startup acknowledged that while it’s easy to “fall into the depths of despair,” the data proves otherwise.

“Unemployment is close to all-time lows, and even if we look at middle-aged males, sort of this demographic that’s been reportedly kind of hurt by technology, employment is rising there, as well,” said Collison, who added that over half of Stripe’s U.S. users are from the U.S. South and Midwest.

Collison’s comments about the potential impact of technology on employment were part of “Revolution,” which will examine tech’s impact on the future of work over the next year. The first episode, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was taped recently in San Francisco.

We asked Collison and several other tech players to serve as special audience members at the show to provide even more depth and insight to the discussion. But not all of their comments made it into the final program aired on MSNBC last night — we got a lot of substance in, but it’s still TV and has time strictures — so we will post them all here on Recode for you to see.

Collison is an important voice to listen to, for a number of reasons related to the discussion. He’s an immigrant from Ireland, presides over a major unicorn startup and aims to help small businesses and entrepreneurs succeed.

The Stripe CEO said the real challenges Americans see are around opportunity — things like housing, health care and educational costs — that stop people from moving to places where opportunities most exist.

“When you talk to the people creating these jobs, creating the businesses in the U.S., the challenges that face them are challenges of opportunity,” he said. “The average Stripe user intends to more than triple their employment in the next few years. They are creating jobs. They see possibility for opportunity.”

Watch the full discussion below:

And watch the full conversation with the CEOs of YouTube and Google below:

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via