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4 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Did we learn that? Or did we learn that the huge regulation of 2002, namely Sarbox, killed IPOs for a decade while doing nothing to prevent the financial crisis of 2008?
Many regulations are sold in the following way:

- Something should be done
- This is something
- Therefore this should be done

Needless to say, the outcomes are not always desirable.
Just to pre-empt a likely distortion, the answer isn't "no regulation" either. It is to have many jurisdictions with different alternatives, such that people can weigh pros & cons of each.

We see this with marijuana laws at state level, stem cells at national level, etc.
Btw, I respect @felixsalmon for not just betting against @bhorowitz on Bitcoin but winning the bet (though arguably not the spirit of the bet). Writeup here:
npr.org/transcripts/69…

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More from @balajis

balajis.com Profile picture
6 Dec
Most value eventually becomes digital.

This is counterintuitive. But first think about what fraction of your spending already goes to digital goods like books, SaaS, etc.

Now think about what happens as robotics improves and you can “print” more things.
Much work remains on sensors & actuators. But once an actuator gets to a certain level, most value is digital.

Printers let you print most documents, speakers let you “print” most sounds, monitors let you “print” most images.

Drone delivery, robotics, 3D printing extend this.
This is a complementary take on the phenomenon @EpsilonTheory notes.

Eventually, robotics turns more forms of labor into electricity. And with digital code + digital currency, you can print out anything.

Many of these APIs already exist (from TSMC to Zazzle) but more will come.
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
26 Nov
The proposed new anti-crypto regulation by @stevenmnuchin1 is a form of financial disenfranchisement. It harms people who lack ID, further expands the surveillance regime, and sets up more honeypots for hackers.

It must be resisted vigorously.
Let's remember that OPM was hacked. And the State of Texas, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and NARA, and even the US Voter Database.

Forcing companies to surveil you is bad enough. Then the databases get hacked and blasted all over the internet.
digitalguardian.com/blog/top-10-bi…
The new regulation is financial disenfranchisement because it takes away a right people already have: the right to use crypto without being surveilled, tracked, and recorded in some US government database. coincenter.org/we-must-protec…
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
25 Nov
The Cool War

Thesis: America is transitioning from the coolest country in the world to the holiest country in the world. From blue jeans & counterculture to blue checks & cancel culture.
America's soft power remains, but it's of a very different type, and more vulnerable in the long run. Converting all these soft power institutions like Hollywood into instruments for propagating a very American form of secular gospel may open up space for competitors.
The rise of TikTok is instructive. Twenty years ago, the idea that a Chinese app could outcool Hollywood & SV to win millions of US teenagers would be laughable.

Is it a national security threat? Maybe, but the soft power issue may be a bigger deal than even the data collection.
Read 11 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
19 Nov
We really should be in the middle of a golden age of productivity. Within living memory, computers did not exist. Photocopiers did not exist. *Backspace* did not exist. You had to type it all by hand.
It wasn't that long ago that you couldn't search all your documents. Sort them. Back them up. Look things up. Copy/paste things. Email things. Change fonts of things. Undo things.

Instead, you had to type it all on a typewriter!
If you're doing information work, relative to your ancestors who worked with papyrus, paper, or typewriter, you are a golden god surfing on a sea of electrons. You can make things happen in seconds that would have taken them weeks, if they could do them at all.
Read 13 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
17 Nov
If you're interested in self-hosting, I've been very impressed with cloudron.io. Open source, quick to set up, allows easy installation of Ghost, Mattermost, GitLab, and 80+ other apps.
A few tips:

1) Use a dedicated server from Hetzner or Contabo, not an AWS instance. Reason: it's 10-100X cheaper & you don't need programmability.

2) You'll need to configure the box to send email (eg password resets), which means a host that allows setting PTR records.
Cloudron may be interesting for crypto & dweb people as well because packaging new apps for it is Docker-based and quite easy. docs.cloudron.io/custom-apps/tu…
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
12 Nov
"One of the clearest indications of stagnation is the flatlining of energy usage...Hall calls the long-term trend of about 7% annual growth in energy usage per capita the 'Henry Adams Curve'. In the late 20th century, we fell off of it." rootsofprogress.org/where-is-my-fl…
"A good explanation for technological stagnation is that the only technological revolution of the last 50 years, computing, was the only one that didn’t need more power than could be provided by the technology of the 1970s." rootsofprogress.org/where-is-my-fl…
"An even greater regulatory burden applies to nuclear power, which Hall blames for the skyrocketing cost of power plants in the US."
Read 6 tweets

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