Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 2nd, 2023
“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.” — Alan Cohen
Love this.
"Minchilli first moved to Italy from the States after meeting her Italian-born husband, Domenico, and has been writing about her life there for 30 years now. She joins a TikTok community of older expats who are turning the trope of “travel influencer” on its head—that is, the image of a 20-something globetrotter checking off a bucket list in pristinely manicured style.
Instead of showcasing sweeping views of Positano, for example, Minchilli might be more inclined to show us how she makes an afternoon espresso in her tiny Moka pot.
Through her platform, the charming expat prefers to inspire travelers to seek out smaller towns and become acquainted with their neighborhoods."
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/slow-travel-tiktok-expats
2. "My plan is to do what feels right and aligned with my own values and continue to build high-trust teams with a strong people focus. If at some point the tech industry spits me out, I’ll at least know I did what I felt was right.
To end on slightly more optimistic note, the other thing about pendulums is that they become less extreme the more they swing. Despite many shifts that feel like progress has been lost, I know that remote work is here to stay in a way that was unfathomable 5 years ago, and the many remote-only candidates have far more companies to choose from. People have moved away from city centers or into nearby suburbs and have gotten a taste of WFH flexibility and productivity.
This new generation of remote-savvy people-centric leaders will rise, displace others, and influence the norms. The industry can feel like it takes on a life of its own, but we are all part of it and can influence it too."
https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/saddened-by-the-tech-industry
3. "Well, after signing up for it 6+ months ago, my weekly usage of it is for brainstorming.
Need a new product name? ChatGPT.
Need some ideas for a new blog post? ChatGPT.
Need insight for a new market? ChatGPT.
Need a starting point for a new initiative? ChatGPT.
Lack of effort to start brainstorming no longer exists. Let ChatGPT do it for you."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/06/17/chatgpt-for-brainstorming/
4. So fascinating. The 22nd Century will be the age of Biotech. Quick overview of anti-aging science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLZEEOZlTzo
5. "For Ukrainians, the task ahead will be arduous. Beyond the inherent difficulties of offensive warfare, as Russia discovered when it marched toward Kyiv last year, is Ukraine’s lack of airpower. “What is a major concern is that this the first major international military operation of this scale that has been done without much air support,” says Vald Mykhnenko, a professor of geography and political economy at Oxford University, who is also from Ukraine. “We are stepping into unknown territory as far as military strategy is concerned.”
Still, analysts tell TIME that even in the best case scenario for Ukraine, the country would be unlikely to recapture all of its territories in this counteroffensive attack.
“The pressure and the expectation levels on the Ukrainian troops is so high,” Mykhnenko says. “I just hope we slightly ease up on those expectations and not demand that they retake Mariupol one week and then Crimea the next. People should understand that this is going to take months and months, not a week or two.”
https://time.com/6287830/ukraine-counteroffensive-slow-progress/
6. "For the reasons outlined above, the US economy will probably keep doing what it has done since becoming the world's largest economy in 1890s. Case in point, in 2021, 5.4m new businesses were started in the US, an increase of 53% compared to the pre-pandemic year 2019. Whatever political divisiveness there may be, it certainly doesn't stop Americans from doing what made America great in the first place – setting up businesses, and working hard to make them a success. Thanks to its unique set of circumstances and features, the US should continue to outperform most other major economies of the world.
The Internet has recently been flooded with content of a de-dollarisation of the world economy. Combined with the subject comes the usual plethora of reporting about the end of the US as a superpower, its coming bankruptcy on the back of spiralling debt, and similar predictions.
It reached a point where I asked myself: "Is being short the US dollar such a widely held view that it's worth heading the other way?"
If you have been around for a bit, you'll understand why despite all the well-deserved criticism and the need to be vigilant about a potential change to long-term trends, it's also worth spending a bit more time looking at the counter-arguments.
"A Brief History of Dollar Hatred" is an article worth reading in this regard. Its author Jens Nordvig, one of the world's leading currency experts and a friend of mine whose writings I have long recommended, gives his perspective on the waves of dollar hatred he experienced over the past 20 years, and how he sees things continuing right now. A native Dane, Jens now lives in the US where he has built an amazingly successful business – so he has quite a broad perspective on things.
Ceteris paribus, there are MANY good reasons why the US stock market should continue to trade at a premium to every other stock market in the world.
In fact, if I was in my 20s, I'd probably try to pack up and move to the US. Ignore the noise, and focus on the large set of opportunities there. Given the US is a collection of 50 states that compete with each other, rather than a unitary state, you have many different places to pick from. Don't like woke policies? Florida is waiting for you! Millions have been moving there of late – literally, millions.
Mobility is part of the American culture and enabled by a unified market that EU citizens can only dream about."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/usa-the-unstoppable-juggernaut/
7. Actually, I'm cautiously optimistic on Turkey in the short run. Definitely bullish on them in the long run as they are well positioned for the future assuming they get a less crazy economic policy in place.
8. Looks like a cool place to visit in the summer. Austrian Tirol mountain retreats.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/jun/18/cool-retreats-in-the-austrian-tirol
9. "America must be understood as a system of interwoven systems; the healthcare system sends a bill to a patient using the postal system, and that patient uses the mobile phone system to pay the bill with a credit card issued by the banking system. All these systems must be assumed to work for anyone to make even simple decisions. But the failure of one system has cascading consequences for all of the adjacent systems. As a consequence of escalating rates of failure, America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.
The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the idea that individuals should be systematically evaluated and selected based on their ability rather than wealth, class, or political connections, led to significant changes in selection techniques at all levels of American society.
Spurred on by the demands of two world wars, this system of institutional management electrified the Tennessee Valley, created the first atom bomb, invented the transistor, and put a man on the moon.
By the 1960s, the systematic selection for competence came into direct conflict with the political imperatives of the civil rights movement. During the period from 1961 to 1972, a series of Supreme Court rulings, executive orders, and laws—most critically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964—put meritocracy and the new political imperative of protected-group diversity on a collision course.
Administrative law judges have accepted statistically observable disparities in outcomes between groups as prima facie evidence of illegal discrimination. The result has been clear: any time meritocracy and diversity come into direct conflict, diversity must take priority.
The resulting norms have steadily eroded institutional competency, causing America’s complex systems to fail with increasing regularity. In the language of a systems theorist, by decreasing the competency of the actors within the system, formerly stable systems have begun to experience normal accidents at a rate that is faster than the system can adapt. The prognosis is harsh but clear: either selection for competence will return or America will experience devolution to more primitive forms of civilization and loss of geopolitical power."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/01/complex-systems-wont-survive-the-competence-crisis/
10. This is an alternate view on SF, guess it is like a testing ground for living in the dystopian future.
"The city manifests the kind of breakdown and bursts of insanity that justify its reputation. What took me several years of living in different places across California and the broader U.S. to realize is that the same crisis is slowly engulfing the whole country. San Francisco is not different from the rest of America—it is merely upstream of it. Its contradictions and tensions are matured and therefore amplified.
What San Francisco offers to those who live here is not an escape from America’s dysfunction, but rather an opportunity to master it. For years, this city has been a testing ground for those who go on to govern America. Those who figure out a path forward for America overall will not come from the hinterlands or the suburbs. These are trapped in their own various social crises. They will come from here in San Francisco."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/13/why-i-live-in-san-francisco/
11. Little bit grim but shades of truth.
The reality is there are still lots of incredible opportunities for wealth but it’s in building & owning businesses, not being an employee. The middle class is dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJJBnmDkEwI&t=606s
12. Well an interesting macro trade here in Argentina. This time it's different?
"Let’s start with the obligatory note that we love Argentina; friendly people, beautiful countryside, great wine. We’ve been there a few times and are fans. More importantly, it’s always been stunningly cheap to visit. Doug Casey famously says that “Argentina is the cheapest civilized place on earth,” and we agree. Given the current (persistent) currency crisis, we assume that it’s even cheaper to visit today.
However, this isn’t a tourist guide. The listed securities are also cheap, unusually cheap, stunningly cheap. Why are they so cheap?? Well, that should be obvious, the country is bankrupt, the currency is effectively worthless, they owe money to every global acronym, and the economy is in shambles.
Fortunately, most of this is fixable. There’s Western infrastructure everywhere, the roads are paved, things actually (sorta) work. The problem is simple; for the past century, the Argentines have chosen insane people to run their country. That’s it. That’s the whole issue. The government is the problem. Fix the government and you fix the country.
So, the trade is easy to understand, Argentina lurches to the right economically, tries to fix the economy, and assets moon. Is it really that simple?? We think so. The only difference this time is that we’re starting from roughly half of the price level in terms of valuations."
13. "The other way to ensure Russia fails in its "don't lose" strategy is rapid, and continuous, military assistance.
Historical experience from the 20th century indicates that operations of the magnitude now being conducted by Ukraine take weeks to generate momentum. The scale of fighting now underway in Ukraine is beyond the experience, or even imagination, of most of our citizens. Casualties will be heavy, the consumption of ammunition massive and loss of equipment will be ongoing.
But the Ukrainians, as they have throughout this war, trudge on. Their army is grimly working its way through Russian defences and defending the skies from a Russian missile and drone onslaught.
The West should consider sending Ukraine everything needed to defeat the Russians as quickly as possible."
14. "While raising more capital might seem like the smart thing to do if you can do it, it can heavily reduce the optionality for your business going forward. It also can promote the wrong behavior internally.
Companies are now shutting down each day that have raised Series As, Bs, and beyond as the amount of capital they have raised and their valuation is not aligned with the traction of the business."
https://trailruncapital.substack.com/p/why-your-valuation-matters
15. Always controversial but I always learn alot from Chamath and I will rewatch this a few times. Some great insights on investing well in life and business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPWfOc1gIro
16. "Stop letting strangers on the internet dictate your entire personality and belief systems.
The systematic outsourcing of our beliefs to the “influencer” class is one of a growing number of major reasons why so many people are mentally ill and unhappy these days.
Attempting to emulate the lives of others instead of finding your own path and beliefs is the quickest way to unhappiness. It’s also the quickest way to living a life without freedom."
https://www.thesovereignindividualweekly.com/p/dont-outsource-beliefs-influencers
17. "The first thing to understand is that demand for large commercial real estate buildings, such as office towers in big cities, has been rapidly declining as work from home trends turn into the market standard. According to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, attendance in the 10 largest business districts in the US is still below 50% of its pre-COVID level, as white-collar employees spend an estimated 28% of their workdays at home."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-impending-collapse-of-commercial
18. "Digital nomadism isn't solely a post-pandemic way of life, but over the past few years, people based in existing digital nomad hotspots are reporting a boom in the number of newcomers pouring in. Some are taking advantage of more flexible remote working policies introduced due to COVID. Others are indulging in "revenge travel," in which they compensate for several years of no vacations.
Almost universally, a major motivating factor among US nomads seems to be geoarbitrage – earning money in a strong currency and then living in a country where the local currency is weaker and the cost of living lower.
For Americans, especially those working high-income jobs in tech, this can make nomadism a highly profitable life choice. But with the cost of living and housing crises impacting more and more people, digital nomadism can seem like a financially responsible and freeing option even for Americans not earning vast tech salaries.
"When people ask if digital nomadism is good or bad, it's both," says Busittil. "It gives stuff and it takes stuff away, like any social phenomenon."
So if you dream of more than just labor, if you pine to make hay while the sun shines in a tropical co-working space with an iced matcha latte, know that you can do it ethically if you choose. Just follow the advice of those who are already living it, and avoid dragging those around you into your happy hour Zoom."
19. "For the sake of simplicity, I will analyze likely developments in zones around the three main currency areas: the US dollar and its satellites; the euro and its satellites; the Chinese renminbi and its satellites.
I will deploy my trusty Wicksellian tools to express these views, even though the findings will be more intuitively logical than deeply researched.
1) In the renminbi zone, the market rate of interest is going to fall and the natural rate is going to rise.
2) In the US zone, the market rate is going to rise, while the natural rate could go one of two ways: (i) stay stable if the US remains the chief repository of “Schumpeterian” growth, or (ii) fall, if this is not the case.
3) In the European zone, the market rate will rise and the natural rate will fall. It will become impossible to finance the usual social transfers.
As this vendor financing is withdrawn by foreign producers, US consumption will fall to a level dictated by domestically-earned funds. The natural rate will rise in those sectors that now face less foreign competition (reindustrialization in the US should begin, as firms start to raise their prices), but the natural rate will decline in the protected sectors, as demand for these items craters.
A special case should be made for “Schumpeterian sectors” in the US, which earn a very high natural rate of interest. If the US succeeds in dominating artificial intelligence and nuclear fusion as it has dominated the technology sectors for the last 50 years, then a decline in the US standard of living could perhaps be avoided.
In a world comprising three currency zones, each area will likely have free trade arrangements, with heavy protection between zones. The collapse of the unipolar US dollar implies the end of free capital flows between zones, with capital made unavailable to investors outside of the zones."
https://haymaker.substack.com/p/making-hay-monday-guest-article
20. "Becoming dependent on China for any crucial piece of the civilian or military supply chain not only allows the CCP to massively increase its leverage over Western governments, but also puts Western militaries directly at risk in the case of a war. For example, U.S. defense manufacturer Raytheon recently revealed that it’s dependent on China for a number of critical components. If a war breaks out, the CCP can starve the U.S. military of its production capacity, much as the U.S. and Europe have been attempting to do to Russia.
Many of these risks were fully present back in 2015, but Western governments and companies either didn’t realize the extent of the risk, or chose to ignore it. Those days are now done; everyone is being forced to wake up and acknowledge that any type of economic entanglement with China necessarily involves giving the CCP party-state some degree of leverage over you. Whether or not “de-risking” is the same as “decoupling”, the former is certainly a big driver of the latter.
A little over a century ago, Norman Angell famously predicted that economic ties would make great-power war a thing of the past. And he was famously wrong about that. But perhaps not entirely wrong; economic relationships do seem to reduce the likelihood of conflict to some degree, even if they don’t always prevent it. This may be the key to the world of 2015 — everyone knew China was spying on them and taking their technology and subverting their institutions, but China’s huge and fast-growing market opportunity and productive capacity stopped them from doing anything to upset the apple cart.
Now that the opportunity China represents has grown much smaller and the risks larger and more apparent, that fundamental countervailing force against international conflict has largely evaporated.
In other words, no matter what Biden and his officials are saying about a “thaw” in relations with China, the conditions now exist for tensions to flare up again and again. The world of 2015 isn’t coming back."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/four-reasons-china-cant-reset-the
21. "Remarkably, both countries lack what they most need and want. Unlike America and parts of Europe, China and Russia do not inspire people. With a few exceptions (like TikTok), the developed world neither imitates nor worships contemporary Chinese or Russian culture, celebrities, social and other media, music, cinema, universities or politics, and rarely adopts their products, brands, and forms of entertainment and leisure.
The East still copies the Western standard, not vice versa. China makes Western products, and Russia supplies the West with energy to produce and consume them, not the other way around. And their citizens, especially the wealthy and the educated, vote with their feet by emigrating to the West. Very few move in the opposite direction.
As American economist and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers cynically surmised when asked whether another currency might soon threaten the U.S. dollar’s global dominance: how could that happen when Europe is a museum, Japan is a nursing home, and China is a jail? In this sense, Russia is economically far too weak to even be considered a serious contender by that observer.
Yet it is the West, with its tendency for self-flagellation and culture wars, that has become insecure in its role and ceased to appreciate the values that made its historic dominance possible."
https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/west-globalization-china/
22. "The new twist on this concept is the emergence of networked tribes. With networked tribes, the threat is both largely invisible (most people won’t recognize it is happening) and far more aggressive;
-Quickly mobilize a new primary loyalty to a national/global scale or take action.
-Fight asymmetrically (the target has no natural defenses against attacks)
-Take over status quo competitors (governments, corporations, etc.) by forcing them into alignment and block competitive networked tribes from doing the same."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/alignment
23. "Economic life today would be a completely different reality… if the US economy had only grown more quickly.
It’s not like an additional 1.3% growth isn’t achievable; again, the US consistently hit this number for decades.
You’d think that politicians would understand something so obvious, and that they’d do everything in their power to maximize growth. They’d embrace capitalism, cut red tape, create incentives for production, support small businesses, make taxes more efficient, etc.
Or at a minimum, they’d simply stay out of the way.
But instead, they do the opposite. They paid people to stay home and not work.
They single out critical sectors (like energy companies) and punish them. They constantly threaten businesses, invent new regulatory burdens, stifle innovation, and attempt to systematically destroy capitalism, brick-by-brick.
So, no, based on current trajectory, it looks like the debt problem will keep getting worse… until the catastrophes of default are unavoidable.
The federal government has already acknowledged that Social Security’s trust funds will run out of money in about 10 years. This means that, at best, America has less than a decade to turn itself around."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/america-has-less-than-a-decade-to-turn-itself-around-147721/
24. "We are now living in a world in which it is relatively easy to create new viruses. There will be another pandemic. It could easily be worse than Covid, and right now, for our “expert” class’s total refusal to own their mistakes, or entertain the thoughts and concerns of the public, half the country is primed to believe all vaccines are dangerous, while the other half is primed to believe skeptics should be jabbed, silenced, and jailed.
There was a brief moment at the beginning of the Covid pandemic where we all took a breath and tried to understand, together, what was going on. That kind of cooperation is presently impossible. Another pandemic will destroy this country.
Debates are stupid, and no scientist should be expected to defend himself on Rogan. But the canonization of our experts is existentially dangerous. Assuming public health is earnestly our priority, it’s worth noting humility is the only thing capable of easing back the public’s rage.
My suggestion for the “experts” is they attempt it, which is not a moral expectation, but a piece of good, tactical advice. You’re welcome. Now please be less evil."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/pirate-wires-rogans-debatable-tactics
25. "Fortunately, another Plan C is available: the West should make it possible for Ukraine to use frozen Russian assets which are now held in Western jurisdictions – $330 billion in Russian central bank assets and perhaps (who knows?) $70-100 billion more in yachts, villas and the bank accounts of oligarchs and sanctioned Russian companies. The CER has previously writtenabout the ways in which this could be done, and some of the obstacles.
From a moral perspective, Russia should clearly be held accountable for its own actions: why should Ukraine or Western taxpayers pay for the human and physical damage caused by Putin’s genocidal war? Russia is not a poor country.
Before the war its per capita GDP was more than two and a half times that of Ukraine, it has $600 billion in sovereign assets (including those frozen in the West), a low debt ratio (less than 20 per cent of GDP, so it could easily borrow to fund reparations to Ukraine if it were forced to do so as part of a peace deal – at which point it would probably be allowed back onto international capital markets) and $250 billion in annual energy export earnings.
But even if Ukraine succeeds in stopping Russia’s advance and pushes its troops back into Russia, the threat to Ukraine and the West will remain. Ukraine will need help to be economically strong enough to sustain its own defence – protecting its Western neighbours in the process. The project of enabling Ukraine to win the war and the peace is a strategic priority and a public good for the West.
Failure to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction would mean economic, social and political instability in a country with Europe’s largest army; the prospect of millions more Ukrainian migrants in Europe; and the need for Western governments to increase defence spending massively in the face of a newly confident and even more aggressive Russia. The West has no choice but to rebuild Ukraine, however it funds the work. But if Putin has to pay for it, so much the better."
https://www.cer.eu/insights/why-russia-must-pay-damage-ukraine
26. "Fast forward to now, and things are looking a bit different. We've shifted gears into an era of multi-entrepreneurship - a space where moonshots and single-mission startups are making way for more diverse portfolios.
We've become "multipreneurs," juggling several ventures, but it seems like no one's really broken down what that really means. So let's do it:
Mul·ti·pre·neur (noun)
A multipreneur is someone who creates multiple products per year, with the aim of creating a company that creates companies.
So let's not confuse these terms. Being a multipreneur is about building small, capable teams for each venture, fine-tuning your game as you progress. It's not about going it alone, it's about leading a pack.
Most importantly, AI, no-code and global talent allow you to be a multipreneur from anywhere in the world — giving you the freedom to work wherever you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want, faster than you ever thought possible."
https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/the-multipreneur-manifesto
27. This explains a lot of India's geo-political leanings in the world. Short sighted but smart. Self interested and no real allies. But is a big present and future power to be watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VnNtUd1MX4
28. One of the best cultural and social critics around.
"The solo climb, the Everest trek, the remote expedition — these are deadly, unnecessary risks. Why would anyone take them? Tabling the more obviously gruesome question of why we shouldn’t celebrate their deaths, why should we celebrate their accomplishments? Here, I think we often miss the point. When it comes to the recreational adventurer, it’s true, few of these narrow victories matter. But that doesn’t make them meaningless for all the risk that they demand. The risk, itself, is the point.
We celebrate the risk taken for glory, for wealth, for curiosity, because watching YouTube videos of the Titanic from the safety of our covers is not the thing that makes us great. The quality that drives so small a subset of the global population to extreme risk is the quality responsible for many, if not most of the most important things we have ever built or discovered. That’s what makes us great. We are nothing without risk."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/pirate-wires-subhuman
29. "There is no sanctuary in modern warfare: the proliferation of multi-domain sensors and long-range precision strike weapons make everyone and everything vulnerable. In Ukraine, both sides have learned to use dispersion and fortification to mitigate this risk by changing the cost versus gain calculus for the targeteer. But an attacker still has to leave his prepared positions to mass combat power if he is to stand a chance of exploiting through the enemy’s defensive positions.
The ability to locate an adversary across multiple domains and to remove him from play by multiple means, places primacy of combat operations back in the hands of the defense, in the same way that it did over a century ago at the beginning of the first world war.
The Ukrainians will have planned to use deception and ambiguity to mitigate the defender’s inherent advantage on this transparent battlefield. It is, perhaps, testament to their success that, three weeks into the offensive, military analysts around the world continue to speculate about it’s objectives."
https://amilburn.substack.com/p/the-offensive-is-still-in-its-early
30. "A Former U.S. Green Beret Fought In Iraq, Afghanistan, And Ukraine. He Says Ukraine Is His Generation's 'Most Righteous War.'
I'm sitting in Kyiv right now, and it's like being in New York City or Washington, D.C., or just a regular American city, you know. It's righteous because when Russia invaded, it felt like, August, September 1939, like if we don't stop this thing here, it could get way worse.
Because if you look at it in hindsight, if you look at the trajectory of what Russia has done since the fall of the Soviet Union, I mean, you have Transdniester (Moldovan pro-Moscow breakaway region), you have Chechnya, you have Georgia, you have 2014's Crimea and Donbas, the dawning of MH17 (the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine). You have all the polonium and Novichok poisonings, you have Czech ammo depots blowing up like they're out of control. I compare them to a rabid dog. If we don't -- if you look at that trajectory -- if we don't stop them here, the next stop on that trajectory is a NATO country."
31. "But the blatant contradiction between disarray at home and increased power abroad has a simple explanation: the greater part of American power does not derive from what the US itself, let alone individual presidents, are able to do, but from the cooperation and support it receives from friendly countries around the world. US power depends on the magnitude and the cohesion of its alliances — and the latter can change very quickly.
But the war in Ukraine is far from the only boost. In fact, now that Russia is declining in several ways, what has added to global American power is the emergence of a vast, if informal, Indo-Pacific de facto alliance to contain China.
Neither Biden’s gaffes nor Trump’s tantrums can change the realities created by Putin and Xi’s bellicosity; America’s European and Asian alliances have rarely been so empowered. Indeed, the only consequence of America’s disarray at home is that the US cannot start wars to pursue fanciful aims, such as bringing democracy to Iraq or progress to Afghanistan. And that is just as well."
https://unherd.com/2023/06/how-putin-and-xi-resurrected-america/
32. "The cards you’re dealt matter … a lot. Your income is the clearest indicator of how much money your kid will make when they’re 30. Churn is increasingly a rare-earth element in the U.S. Per a Georgetown analysis, “It’s better to be born rich than smart … The most talented disadvantaged children have a lower chance of academic and early career success than the least talented affluent children.”
However, the people dealt the best cards can’t see their hands. The myth of the “self-made man” is rife among U.S. citizens who’ve never faced a draft or registered a devaluation in their currency — people who are remora fish on investments made by the U.S. government.
Tech has raised a cohort of people who simultaneously credit their character for their success and blame a rigged market for their failures. The real cage match in tech is entitlement vs. empathy. The former is winning, and that results in a staggering accumulation of power that’s amoral, focused only on the aggregation of more power regardless of what happens to people with less. (Side note: I hope they beat the shit out of each other. Is that wrong?)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/origin-story/
33. "Notice that another feature (or bug) in the venture capital business model is the belief that new ventures and their teams must be young. In 2018, Ocean Gate fired the Director of Maine Operations, David Lochridge. He was a middle-aged man in his fifties with immense experience. He expressed safety concerns about the carbon fiber and about the lack of even a safety beacon in case the crew got into any distress. He was fired, apparently because because he was not as “inspirational” as younger people. Inspirational means fun and fast. The media and investors alike are drawn to the idea that young people should be running start-ups.
Yet, we know that older entrepreneurs outperform younger ones. Forbes reported on a study that laid out the reality. “Researchers from MIT, Northwestern, Wharton and the U.S. Census Bureau” “found that the mean age of startup founders across the U.S. was 42 years. The mean age of high-tech startup founders (where one might presume that the founders are younger) was 43. And the average age of founders of the rare ultra-fast growth unicorns (the 1 in 1,000 fastest growing ventures) was 45.” Here’s the kicker: “The study shows that the likelihood of success as a founder increases with age until the age of 60. The older you get, the more likely your chances of success are. A 50-year-old founder is twice as likely to build a thriving enterprise that has either an IPO or a successful acquisition as a 30-year-old founder.”
So why does the media keep propagating the idea that startups are about the young and why do investors keep pursuing younger founders, especially in sectors that require a lifetime of experience to get right? This all smells of fundraising requirements. You have to offer to do something really sexy that investors can talk about at dinner parties, like tourism to the Titanic.
My question is this: Can we make great hardware with a software business model? No. Is it possible to make great shardware (hardware + software) if the business model is built on assumptions that only apply to software? No. If we want to make real things we need to get real with the business model. Only then can we take advantage of the miraculous new materials that we now increasingly have access to."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/distress-signals-from-ocean-gates