Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 26th, 2023
“I get up in the morning looking for an adventure.”--George Foreman
"Sure, getting yourself a second (or third, or in my case this year, a fourth) passport will require some kind of time and effort commitment on your part. But in my opinion, it’s always time and effort well spent.
In the time of the Mongols, you needed to be one of the born elites to achieve a level of travel freedom only a few possessed. Sure, getting yourself a second (or third, or in my case this year, a fourth) passport that gives you more elite status will require some kind of time and effort commitment on your part. But in my opinion, it’s time and effort always worth spending."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/the-most-valuable-item-on-earth
2. "History definitely doesn’t support Balaji’s assertion that hyperinflation happens with lightning speed. José Luis Saboin-Garcia, who studied episodes of hyperinflation in a large number of countries, found that they all go through a period of at least a year during which inflation is above 50% but not yet above 500%.
In other words, Balaji is not just betting on a U.S. hyperinflation; he’s betting that thanks to digitization, a U.S. hyperinflation would happen faster than any hyperinflation has ever happened in any country in recorded history.
But anyway, let’s take a look at why Balaji thinks the dollar will crash in the very near future, and why that’s extremely unlikely to happen.
Basically, he thinks that hyperinflation will come as a result of a massive failure of U.S. banks.
The idea is that the Fed’s interest rate hikes have made essentially all U.S. banks insolvent, by lowering the values of their bond portfolios. This, he believes, will cause depositors to flee the banks for the safety of Bitcoin."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/in-which-balaji-gives-away-at-least
3. "A corollary: Making a decision and moving forward is often more effective than extended deliberation about the decision. Deliberation assumes we know how to reason about the future, but even experts aren’t good at that. Making decisions and gaining experience is how to find the right answers, if the organization is introspective enough to also face the truth when it turns out the original strategy is incorrect."
https://longform.asmartbear.com/predict-the-future
4. "China has already concluded that humans should be kept out of the battlefield as much as possible. It’s a compelling approach. Everyone is a conscript. Even the lowly fisherman in a tiny boat technically now comes under the rubric of the Chinese Navy. But, few will be asked to fight. Instead, they are replacing humans with code.
The next war for China is a digital operation run by highly responsive and obedient self-replicating robotics, informed by the best data sets and AI that exists anywhere in the world today. Humans won’t even be needed for decision-making. In conjunction with super-computing, AI is replacing Generals, especially as the warzone expands beyond a battlefield and across the entire supply chain.
What is the West doing? More weight is being placed on the most superhuman individuals in the military – Special Ops. There is a logic behind this. Special Ops Forces (SOF) have become the “easy button” because they have the military's best impact/expense ratio.
They are relatively inexpensive and punch far above their weight. But as SOF leaders themselves keep pointing out, they can only do their job if supported by the rest of the massive American/NATO military infrastructure. Yet, the West is still enamored of the idea that an individual with experience and judgment will win over automation and AI.
This is the tip of a more profound philosophical split between the
West and the East."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/war-in-an-era-of-intelligent-machines
5. This is an excellent discussion on Ryan Reynolds and Bali's 1M dollar Bitcoin bet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQgsFh5lX_s
6. "Poland is not only building the strongest Armed Forces in Europe (after Ukraine), but it is also building the defense industry needed to sustain it. It is also diversifying the suppliers, increasing the speed of delivery, and reducing its dependency on the U.S.
The bottom line is that Poland is thinking, planning, and acting according to NATO’s late strategic concept. It is building military power to do – if needed – what the U.S. and NATO will not: i.e., fight alongside the Armed Forces of Ukrainian to stop a war that threatens European security and stability."
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/14676
7. A very sober discussion on the recent China-Russia Summit.
It's a fair view versus the hyperbole I see from so many other folks online. The Global South matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6ha8BpI2vI
8. Balaji is a brilliant man and has been right on alot of stuff. He might be right here but not sure I agree with his timeline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZCePHC80w
9. Jason nails it. This is why most VCs are in cognitive overload and hence not responsive.
https://twitter.com/jasonlk/status/1639261814516228096
10. This is a great episode and gives a good understanding of what’s happening with the macro economic environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub9QcwSgbjc
11. "In our experience, founders have long evaluated VCs based on things like a firm’s brand, name recognition, or domain expertise in a given sector.
In a world of higher rates, we believe that founders should now also pay attention to a VC’s ability to actually manage their portfolio to success (converting TVPI to DPI) and employees should get smarter before accepting an offer from a given startup. This not only has an impact on the VC’s distributions, but importantly its real value to the founders and their employees.
Finally, for LPs allocating capital, factors like correlation and DPI should be increasingly top of mind, because running with the crowd may not be the safest strategy after all."
https://chamath.substack.com/p/advice-to-startup-founders-and-employees
12. "The hardest round to raise so far in 2023 is the Series B. Although, all the early & mid-stage rounds have fallen to levels not seen for 5-10 years."
https://tomtunguz.com/2023q1-venture-market/
13. This twitter character James Medlock is fascinating.
I lived in small S socialist country, its okay for the average Joe & provides a good living.
But it's not for those looking to go big. Still good interview below.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/repost-interview-with-james-medlock
14. "Guns, bunkers, private islands, crypto, secession … connect the dots. The venture catastrophists now have a vested interest in the nation’s decline. They’ve invested too much in Doomsday not to root for it — maybe even catalyze it. Balaji has a million dollars on the line; Andreessen Horowitz has $8 billion.
Much of their catastrophizing is in response to elements of U.S. society that are legitimately broken.
The question is: What do we do about it? For too many, the answer is quit: Instead of fixing the Fed, start a different currency. Instead of healing our divides, split the nation in two. Instead of making this planet more habitable, colonize other planets or put a headset on that takes you to a meta (better) universe. But here’s the thing: We’re stuck here, and with each other.
Spoiler alert: No matter how many rough-cut gems you can shove up your ass or how plush your bunker, there is no escaping the fallout of our democracies failing. Because our democracies are largely capitalist and accept, if not idolize, people who aggregate the wealth of small nations. If shit gets real — I mean real — bunkers will likely become easy targets in the recalibration of society.
The previous sentence is a pedantic way of saying the best bet (by far) is to double down on a society that already has Netflix, Nespresso, and Girl Scouts. Citizenship is not just an obligation; it’s also a trade. In the case of America, the best trade is to invest in each other and what MLK called our “beloved community.” We need reformers, not quitters."
https://www.profgalloway.com/quitters/
15. "But there’s an alternative version of events being pieced together that is far more sinister — and convincing. It appears that these banks, especially Signature, were the victims of an opportunistic campaign to decapitate banks serving the crypto industry.
Not only was the bank run opportunistically exploited by regulators to shut down Signature, but it may even trace its origins to Choke Point 2.0. Did the Biden Administration actually instigate the now-global bank run as part of a grievance campaign against the crypto space? If so, this represents a colossal scandal, and one that the Biden administration must be made to answer for.
The preponderance of public evidence suggests that Silvergate and Signature didn’t commit suicide — they were executed."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/2023-banking-crisis
16. "That division isn’t helping another big problem for VC: its reputation. It wasn’t stellar headed into this year, when some of the perils of throwing too much money at startups—with too little scrutiny—became apparent in the blowups of failed crypto exchange FTX and e-commerce startup Fast. But last week has done far more serious damage to its image."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/venture-capitalists-made-a-big-mess-of-svb
17. I always learn stuff from listening to Zeihan. Agree with 80% of what he says. Pay attention to demographics, supply chains and energy & resource flows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9zU4cBCf1U
18. "One of America’s only airplane repo men, he’s spent more than 2 decades flying all over the world on behalf of banks, reclaiming aircraft from broke businessmen, crumbling corporations, and drug lords."
https://thehustle.co/airplane-repossession/
19. "The other difference in the coming offensives is the growing asymmetry in the quality of equipment. The Ukrainians, with the infusion of western aid, have improved the quality of their tanks and other vehicles. The Russians, having lost much of their best kit in the first year of the war, are turning to much older tanks and armoured vehicles drawn from Cold War stores. This will have an impact on the battlefield, and not just because of the age and technological disparity in vehicles.
Imagine you are the tank crew of an old Russian tank, that is 3-4 times as old as you are. And, imagine then you have been briefed that you will be coming up against the latest Western tanks. Regardless of what the ludicrous Russian propaganda tells us, this will have a significant impact on Russian morale."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-coming-ukrainian-offensives
20. "AI is supercharging growth and revenue, as consumers are eager to pay for AI at the application layer for products they already love. The common narrative right now is that AI value will accrue to OpenAI and big tech, but the less spoken narrative is that early to mid-stage startups applications are already seeing growth."
https://chapterone.substack.com/p/getting-hit-by-the-ai-lucky-truck
21. "From here, I have no doubt Japan’s VC and start-up ecosystem will continue to evolve at an accelerating rate. Nothing succeeds like success, and the reality of both the technocratic elite and the Prime Minister’s office now fully aligned on an industrial policy to support and foster Start-up Nation Japan is poised to keep momentum going.
The primary risk, in my view, could be the government doing too much: a key reason for why the venture capital model is successful is because it encourages failure. For every unicorn you get, say, 1,000 failures. the model works because it creates a market place where only the best survive. Japans capitalism is the worlds undisputed champion of protecting against failure.
The good news is that the rapid growth in both fiduciary and corporate VCs should ensure against “zombie start-ups” becoming a hallmark of ‘new capitalism’."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-reality-check-5-are-start-ups
22. "I believe that this wave of technology will augment our creativity as oppose to replace it. However, the text and image models are improving so fast that we can’t rule out AI completely winning the creative race. At least based on technical ability, speed and volume.
But that is why the Van Gogh story is so relevant. “The Starry Night” is a reminder of what creative work — with or without the assistance of technology — is worth being made. And worth us caring about.
In the face of ever-improving generative AI, the only thing I know for sure is that each person will be able to cultivate one competitive edge: yourself. You need to express yourself more. Your life more.
Your quirks more. Your humor more. Your filter more.
Translate your own experience into creative work. Because if you are only expressing what can be “seen”, technology has it covered. But what can be “felt”? That is still uniquely ours."
https://trungphan.substack.com/p/the-camera-van-gogh-and-the-starry
23. It's a great convo today on the government war on crypto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60UN8RVkhyw
24. "We’re back in a phase where alpha seems to be coming from technical innovation (crypto, climate, biology, AI) and not just business model application (XYZ but a marketplace!). It’s not just that it takes time to understand these technologies but each of them bring their own new networks and talent to the forefront.
You have to be *in* these networks to see the best early stage opportunity, not just wait for intros to land in your inbox."
https://hunterwalk.medium.com/death-of-the-generalist-seed-vc-1e1dc8bb490e