Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 25th, 2024
"No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm."
- Charles Kettering
"Perhaps the real fight is not between Presidential candidates at all but between Project 2025, Project Biden, and those who think that think tanks, in collaboration with big business, should not be running the country. But, as long as we have inflation, it’s hard to see how any of these people hang out together, whether at a kid's Birthday party or a soccer match or over dinner. It’s simply too expensive.
This helps us understand a new reason why inflation is so very costly for the country. The political parties can’t operate, negotiate, or manage because they can’t and won’t speak to each other. It’s ironic. The loss of parties killed the parties. The “check please” at a restaurant has led to a request for a “check please” from politicians to donors. Thank you, inflation."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/pippa-and-vp-candidate-nicole-shanahan
2. Love this concept: Mission & "magically weird" investments. What a great interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zUk4GBL2Ag
3. Interesting take here on the effect of AI on white collar industry and its limitations: GPUs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVVVySiZSFA
4. "A series of changes in government, commercial industries, and culture has shifted defense to a viable venture investment category. The first and most important event leading to change has been the proven success of the vanguard companies; Palantir, SpaceX, and Anduril did what was seemingly impossible -- getting their foot in the door and disrupting decades of defense prime regulatory capture.
All three have all shown that startups can compete to build superior products that are more affordable for the government with a compelling investor return profile. Success does a lot to change minds and shows a viable path forward, drawing much more talent into the area.
As part of forging the way, the defense vanguard helped to drive reform that is enabling the entry of smaller innovative companies to further succeed in defense innovation."
https://www.alexkolicich.com/p/q2-2024-state-of-venture-update
5. This is a fun episode. Lots of tips for making your life better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA7Ku7AcfHs
6. "At the end of the Cold War, the US reoriented itself to meet the challenges and opportunities of a world without an existential foe.
Flush with hubris due to its victory in the Cold War, the US chose the global path, and everything began to unravel.
The choice of a global orientation wasn’t a conscious decision. The US stumbled into it bit by bit until the accumulated weight of the decisions made on orientation’s path made it impossible to think any other way.
That inability to think differently soon became a problem when, in less than a decade, it became clear that the global utopia an overextended and increasingly restive US sought was a mirage."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/what-went-wrong-with-america
7. "Let’s stop inspiring students to become venture capitalists and get back to inspiring them to become founders and builders.
Because that’s what we actually need."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/i-never-wanted-to-be-a-vc
8. An uncomfortable discussion on geopolitics via a libertarian lens. Net net: it's gonna be chaotic. Learn to think for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVl0FFrihTc
9. "Hungary and Slovakia are signatories to a mutual defense treaty that binds 30 other members to come to their aid should they find themselves under military attack. While bickering between allies is nothing new, the situation at the eastern edge of the NATO alliance is unsustainable, especially if a solution to the current impasse is not swiftly found.
Just this week, a deputy foreign minister in Poland stated that Hungary should leave NATO and the EU altogether to instead “create a union with Putin and authoritarian states.” Brussels has little use for Orbán and Fico and vice versa, and their current stance makes divorce a real possibility."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/eating-their-own
10. "Their cutting-edge research, especially from the prestigious Microsoft Research Asia lab in Beijing, has become world-renowned.
But the kind of U.S.-China tech collaboration Microsoft once pioneered might be facing an end. The Biden administration has blocked China from accessing chips used to develop AI technologies, proposed restrictions on tech investments in China, and threatened bans on Chinese-owned platforms like TikTok. In Washington, Microsoft’s presence in China is increasingly viewed as a national security threat.
But a growing distrust of China by U.S. politicians is making such collaboration, as well as the jobs of Chinese engineers, precarious. Despite China’s slowing economic growth and restricted freedoms, the tech giant’s high-earning Chinese staff are content with their life at home, where they enjoy cheap food, low crime rates, and child-care support from their parents. At the same time, they fear losing their Microsoft jobs if they refuse to relocate."
https://restofworld.org/2024/microsoft-china-ai-engineer-relocation/
11."When critics in Britain used to talk about the Establishment, this was what they meant.
Most countries are like this, at least to a degree, but the tendency has become much more pronounced in recent years. Whereas until the last generation or so there were power centres outside the Establishment (trades unions, mass political parties, even parts of the media) these have now been dismantled, and in their place we have a clone army of politicians, NGOs, journalists, pundits, consultants, political operators, but also judges, government officials, development agencies and even leaders of the police, the military and the intelligence services, who have been through the same formation, studied the same subjects at the same universities, all know each other and very largely think the same way.
They have disputes and they struggle for power, but they do so among themselves, and they join forces to resist outside pressures. This is why it's unnecessary to suppose conspiracies. Development agency officials, for example, share very much the same fundamental view of the world as personnel in other parts of government, and will sympathise with and try to support, the same individuals and groups as the foreign ministry, or even the intelligence agencies.
In the end, though, ordinary people do not want to be written off, nor are they ready to be insulted into voting as the elites want. They are perfectly aware that power is now disproportionately held by a smug and self-satisfied urban Liberal elite who no longer even pretend to care about the interests of ordinary people. And if they cannot get satisfaction from conventional political parties, they will get it from elsewhere, irrespective of whether PMC journalists decide to characterise this, in hushed and ominous tones as a “move to the Right.”
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/no-left-turn
12. "The entire world instinctively recognises the fakeness of our current point in human civilisation's history. Out of the senseless destruction of WW2 came many technologies that have powered our modern civilisation. Peaceful, safe, and almost carbon-free nuclear energy generates many gigawatts of electricity. Billions of people can travel worldwide on commercial airlines. And of course, the most essential thing to come out of the war: the creation of a new form of silicon-based life, which we call thinking machines or computers.
The growth of the population and the relative wealth of humanity since the war has been astounding. But the easy stuff has been done, and now politicians, in an attempt to justify their existence, have turned to printing money to engage in all manner of activities that are a net drag on the human condition. Green energy is probably the most significant global malinvestment of this age.
Because we have cheap and plentiful capital, which is just a derivative of cheap and plentiful hydrocarbons, politicians believe they could dictate natural laws rather than the other way around. Taking a less dense form of energy, such as wind and solar, and expecting them to replace more dense forms of energy like coal, natural gas, and oil, will never happen naturally.
And by naturally, I mean without government subsidies or below-market interest rate loans.
The green energy hoax is just one example. Many of you rue the inflation that has taken place since Pax Americana eschewed the gold standard in 1971.
Forget the YOY government-manipulated inflation statistics. The price of a loaf of bread in nominal terms is higher today than yesterday. That need not be the case in an age of brilliant technology and cheap energy.
You know this regardless of how the elites gaslight you.
Your response is to speculate. Your response is to purchase magic internet money. Your response is to bid up “scarce” digital forms of culture that you understand and appreciate.
Airheads is a collection that capitalises on this inflation hoisted upon us by the elites. It does so aesthetically and technologically."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/airhead
13. "In other words, the U.S. almost always anticipates each technological revolution, supports that technology with far-sighted government and industry action, invents many of the key technologies, innovates many of the key products, and at least attempts to commercialize the technology via American companies. This is overwhelmingly the norm.
But for batteries, the U.S. did only some of these steps. The potential of batteries doesn’t seem to have been widely anticipated decades in advance by the U.S. media or government. Battery technology received a bit of support, but not a huge amount. Some of the key invention was done in the U.S., but more was done in Japan and the UK, and the key products were innovated and successfully commercialized in Japan.
And in recent years, it has been the People’s Republic of China that has seized the lead in battery technology. China is the leader in battery manufacturing, of course, just as it is the leader in solar manufacturing. That has allowed China to electrify its economy much faster than the rest of the world.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-did-the-us-miss-the-battery-revolution
14. This is always an illuminating conversation. Not just on business but on living a great & enjoyable life. Optimize for heaven on earth. Stop being spectators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59D993W7aLk
15. A depressing and sober assessment of how unready the US Armed forces are for possible war with China.
I do NOT want war but strength is deterrence. And the more the CCP knows how weak we are, the more dangerous the world becomes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbdbgB2VE1A
16. I always listen to Rex as he is on the forefront of the creator economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZrzeyKylo
17. "Over the past two years, however, Zelensky and his allies have often complained that the U.S. response to the Russian invasion has been too slow under Biden, too hesitant, and too distracted by fears of Russian escalation. A growing number of them believe that if Trump takes power and decides at some point to help Ukraine, U.S. support would become more decisive.
In trying to win over Trump and Vance, the Ukrainians are also counting on help from their allies in Europe and from the U.S. military industrial complex, which stands to earn enormous profits from the continued production of weapons for Ukraine. “They can explain to [Trump] why this benefits many people in America, especially in red states,” says the senior official. “It creates jobs. It supports the economy.”
https://time.com/7001148/ukraine-zelensky-plan-to-survive-trump/
18. Lots of life and business insights here. Tai Lopez is a legend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJQRDG3q7_w
19. "If I had to guess, I’d say the IPO bar today for software companies is more like $400M growing at 40% than $250M growing at 25% [3]. Many, me among them, would argue that the bar is much higher than it needs to be, but there are things we can’t control and this is certainly one of them.
Once you pick the destination (in terms of size and growth rate) and the growth endurance factor (Scale picks 85%), the rest is just a math problem."
https://kellblog.com/2024/08/01/startup-growth-trajectories-and-the-saas-mendoza-line/
20. "As we stand on the cusp of The Great Diffusion (the topic of my recent Tedx talk), an era defining shift from consolidated power to a more decentralized and distributed framework, financial services find themselves at a crossroads.
The coming wave promises to reshape industries, none more so than the guardians of our capital."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/what-a-coming-wave-of-diffusion-means
21. I like Pavel Durov. We met and had dinner in Helsinki 9 years ago.
Interesting dude: This is a great conversation even though I don't like Tucker Carlson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w&t=903s
22. "So yes, Chavez and Maduro wrecked Venezuela’s economy with bad policy. The oil price drop of 2014 certainly didn’t help, nor did America’s sanctions in 2017. But the core screw-ups were mismanagement of PDVSA, nationalizations, and price controls.
The first of these was questionably “socialist”, since it involved strike-breaking and weakening of a state-owned enterprise. But the second and third fall pretty clearly within the ambit of policies that 21st-century socialists tend to embrace. Other “socialist” countries in Latin America, such as Bolivia, have escaped Venezuela’s fate by doing less of all three of these things.
Venezuela thus serves as a warning to other countries. Electing left-wing leaders can be fine — witness Boric in Chile, Lula in Brazil, etc. But you really do have to watch out for the Chavez/Maduro types who think that “revolution” means taking a wrecking ball to every economic institution in the country. That way lies madness."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-maduro-and-chavez-wrecked-venezuelas
23. Listening and learning from a legend in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD5bOhscU1c
24. "Americans, they need to watch South Africa and see what is happening. Because it is definitely, definitely coming to their side of the world one of these days. That said, America is still an absolute powerhouse when it comes to financial income and things like that. And they’ve still got a ton of people paying taxes, whereas in South Africa, we’ve got almost no taxpayers left,19 and we’re just staring into the abyss at this stage.
So, for the Americans, I would honestly say that if they want to ride out the storm, they have to form their own little communities now, of their own people who want to succeed and thrive in a world gone crazy. But then, you know, for them, it’ll be a case of “Oh, you’re talking about a militia,” and you get labeled a nutcase even though, no, that’s not what you’re talking about. So how they work around that will depend on their local environment and situation.
As I say, if they want to right out the storm, they need to start working together toward the common goal of self-sustainability."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/surviving-south-africa-a-boers-take
25. "To see what’s happening, we must look to Rhodesia and the Rhodesian experience: subversion and conquest at the hands of weak-kneed Westerners and communist terrorists. To do so, this article will first examine the history of Rhodesia and the changed social conditions in the West that led to a war on hierarchy, and will then examine how that led to the Great Betrayal of Rhodesia and why it matters to modern Americans.
But despite Rhodesia’s economic success, resistance to communism, and effective steps toward charting a course in Africa where the whites wouldn't face the fate of those left behind in Congo or Kenya and where blacks wouldn't face the same fate as in South Africa, America helped the USSR destroy the brave little land. It did so, as we have covered before, by working with the UK to embargo Rhodesia while encouraging the USSR and Red China’s efforts to aid the anti-Rhodesian rebels.
Though Rhodesians, black and white, put up a valiant fight, the combined weight of the world’s efforts to destroy them proved too much. They ran out of fuel, were starved for arms and ammunition, were close to running out of men, and, after Angola and Mozambique fell to the communists, were beset on all sides but south by enemies and infiltrators.
Mugabe quickly took power and proceeded to first genocide opposing tribes, the Ndebele and Kalanga peoples, and then nationalize the white-owned farmland, carrying out many atrocities against and heaping many indignities upon the white population in the process. Now, far from being an economic powerhouse and the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe has seen hyperinflation and famine."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/why-rhodesia-matters
26. "As with Rhodesia, South Africa used to be one of the few functional states in Sub-Saharan Africa. There was a thriving economy, you could go outside without being robbed or murdered, flipping a light switch would turn on the power, and farmers were safe to sleep on their ancestral lands without undergoing horrors that would make Pol Pot blush.
Then came America and its “liberal world order,” ....... Now, South Africa is exactly as K9 described it. A nation already in disarray and getting worse by the day."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/a-boers-view-of-the-crisis-in-south
27. Focus on lift not runway. Lots of good advice for founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSZnLUrtp58
28. "The seemingly random attacks have one thing in common: according to local officials, they are all linked to Russia. And while they might look minor in isolation, taken together these incidents amount to what security experts say is Russia’s hybrid war on the West.
“We are threatened by something which is not a full-fledged military attack, which are these hybrid threats … everything from meddling in our political processes, (undermining) the trust in our political institutions, disinformation, cyber-attacks (…) and sabotage actions against critical infrastructure,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during an event in Canada last week.
Rod Thornton, a senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s College London, said there’s been a pattern of attacks linked back to Russia. “There has definitely been an increase over the last few months in these particular types of operations. It is something that the Russians are ramping up,” Thornton said."
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/30/europe/russia-hybrid-war-nato
29. "The Olympics do feel smaller than in the 1980s. It may be because we are consuming them now in smaller bites. Some of what made them feel important in the past — particularly the intense us vs. them nationalism of the Reagan era — is gone.
What is still there is the primal drive to compete and the hunger to feel something. In a world increasingly run by old people, it’s inspiring to watch young people pursue excellence for the sake of something bigger than themselves: one another and their countries."
https://www.profgalloway.com/olympic-moments/
30. This is important to understand. Why Tariffs matter & how China is disadvantaged here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZhSMr9T7WI
31. A perspective from the other side: China. ie. our competitive rivals.
"What’s propaganda anyway? I have witnessed two kinds of propaganda in my life, so I think I have something to say here: propaganda is really just the systemic expression of any set of belief systems (aka ideology) that claims only this ideology is better than everything else. Sometimes, even facts and truth can be sacrificed for the sake of upholding this one ideology. But isn’t telling the truth (including the whole truth) what news media’s main job is all about? Since when does conformity to the same story become more important?
In this regard, Chinese propaganda and Western propaganda really don’t have much difference. The only difference is that Western propaganda is far more effective, that far fewer people question it, and that wars and suffering and human sacrifices could be brought about by this self-referential propaganda without people involved ever realizing it and ever regretting it."
https://www.china-translated.com/p/the-end-of-wests-ideological-monotony
32. This is a gloomy discussion on the EU. Net net: it's not particularly well structured for the future & lots of major problems that are existential over time. Very educational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CjV24QJ1BU
33. "Health damage is hard to reverse as you get older. It is much better to keep your good health until your old age than to try to regain health when you are 50 and weak."
https://lifemathmoney.com/where-will-your-health-be-at-70/
34. "Putin: A 16-10 swap in the West’s favour is not a great return for Putin. Having to surrender high level Putin critics like Kara-Murza and Yasin must have been painful for Putin. It shows that Putin wants to deal now which creates interesting momentum around a potential Ukraine deal before the U.S. elections. There are clearly channels of communication open between Russia and the West and these could be similarly used to talk peace over Ukraine.
The long war ultimately does not work for Putin - there are plenty of risks therein (Prigozhin 2, and see Wagner losses this week in Mali) and especially if Trump loses in November. Ukraine is seeing a real ramp up in military supplies now with F16s arriving in the past week and the U.S. rolling out the $61 billion support package for Ukraine before the November elections.
Add in the $50 billion G7 support for Ukraine linked to immobilised Russian assets and Ukraine is getting decent financial support now which it can use to purchase weapons to improve its military position in the months ahead."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-wants-to-deal
35. "Globally, we’ve fallen behind most major economies since 2000. At the turn of the century, the economic output of the average Canadian was on par with Australia. Today, Australians are almost 10% more productive, while their economy has grown 50% per person faster than Canada’s over the quarter century. We’re further behind the United States. Canada is 30% less productive than the U.S. and closer to lower-income states like Alabama in terms of economic performance than tech-rich California or New York. The result: We’ve fallen from the 6th most productive economy in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1970 to the 18th as of 2022.
Pretty much every Canadian has something at stake. The productivity gap with the U.S. stands at about $20,000 per person a year, putting Canadians’ wages roughly 8% below their U.S. counterparts. The gap has been even more taxing for capital. Anyone who invested $1,000 in Canada’s main stock index in 2000 would have $4,400 today; the same investment in the U.S. S&P 500 index would be worth $6000—a more than 35% difference.
Our relatively low productivity —the amount of production and income generated per hour worked in the economy— has been held back by a shortfall in investment, especially outside real estate, construction and public services like hospitals. As a result, we’ve not been able to capitalize on the immigration boom that has added seven million people—most of them working-age and well-educated—since the turn of the century and offset the retirement wave of baby boomers.
The deindustrialization of many parts of Canada has cut into the country’s overall prosperity."
https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/canadas-growth-challenge-why-the-economy-is-stuck-in-neutral/
36. "If you, like me, have experienced periods of fog and feeling stuck or inertia, then it’s time to break up a big or lofty goal into less daunting steps.
This way, you’ll find it easier to get started; I’ve found 2 weeks is a nice period of time to enable regular assessment and reflection, without putting too much pressure or being too hard on myself.
I also think sprints more easily facilitate attainable, realistic action and execution.
Nothing feels better than knowing that you are actually closer to a goal than yesterday, last week, and 2 weeks ago.
What matters is that you get the ball rolling in the right direction."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/rituals-2-week-sprints
37. "Now for the fun part here is our assumptions based on 2024 Living Standards
General: As a rule of thumb we’d think the majority are set in the $4-6M range by age 40. This is pretty hard to argue. It does not work in expensive cities like NYC and LA. We assume that this amount is going to work for 99% of people because they could move to a city they like and we really doubt everyone reading this “needs” to live in NYC/LA. This nets out to around $1M house and $4M invested. Tough to lose outside major cities.
Upper General: If you are a big city person and want an upper tier life in major cities it’s probably a double. This means you need to be on track to reach around $8-12M by age 40. This will give you all the wiggle room you want for a bigger place even if single to having kids/family. As usual your call. This is the rough number as $8M + $2M house is going to be extremely comfortable.
There is zero shot you stop working entirely as people who make it to this level are generally business builders anyway.
Joke/Video Game Money: Around the $20-30M range everything is largely the same. While you are not flying private all the time and don’t have a security team with you (more problems realistically), you can’t spend it all. You can simply invest this out diversified and nothing is out of of reach beyond nonsense like Yachts.
Before moving on here, you can have your own number. We know that people will ask about rough proxies so there they are. On Crypto Twitter Video Game money is “poor” but in the real world it isn’t. Similarly, people saying $10M isn’t enough to retire/be financially set is also cope. It’s only true in the most expensive cities in the world."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/being-a-better-personal-financial
38. Super insightful discussion on General Catalyst. One of the giants of Venture capital. The evolution of a firm: Investing and incubating.
https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/18391328/taneja-engineering-global-resilience?tab=shownotes