Commissions & carry for civil servants

If the mayor & economic development team of a city bring in prosperity, they should get a cut of that after citizens do.

For example, if the city sovereign fund returns billions to citizens, the civil servants should get millions.
Civil servants control enormous flows of money, but aren’t officially supposed to partake of any of it.

In many areas of government this leads to a revolving door. Regulate, then make money consulting when out of office.

Or it means outright corruption:
sfchronicle.com/projects/2020/…
Singapore takes the route of paying civil servants well.

However, simply increasing pay isn’t the entirety of it. As an island with no natural resources, Singapore is disciplined by exit.

The key is to tie pay to performance for society as a whole.
politico.com/agenda/story/2…
Rather than high base salary alone, the idea of tying the compensation of civil servants to hard-to-fake metrics like delivering $1000 in sovereign fund returns to all citizens = pay for performance.

Many details to work out, but broadly speaking it could realign many incentives
One of the most interesting things about this — it vectors in the complete opposite direction of our current anti-immigrant, anti-entrepreneur politics.

Rather than stoking nationalist/ socialist hatred of immigrants & entrepreneurs (which means no Moderna!), you recruit them.
Right now, nationalist and socialist sentiment is fusing into something nasty.

“Get out of our city” = “get out of our country”

You can argue about ways to fix an economy or policy, but driving out talent probably isn’t the way to do it.

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More from @balajis

30 Dec
No one trusts your data analysis, Popper. Most of the executives at Coinbase are women and people of color! coinbase.com/about
But hey: why not paste the New York Times Company’s pay data online, so we can all compare?

As @OoTheNigerian found, tech journalism as a whole is 20-30 points whiter than tech. Tech actually hires people of color & promotes them. Tech journalism doesn’t. …chjournalismislessdiversethantech.com
The fact that woke whites who can’t code are so common in tech journalism actually affirms the left, right, and tech critiques of tech journalism at the same time: they’re ideologically, demographically, *and* intellectually unrepresentative of their subjects at the same time.
Read 7 tweets
28 Dec
In the last Cold War, the non-aligned movement was the weakest faction.

In the coming Cold War, the decentralized movement may prove to be the strongest.
Everyone knows the last Cold War was US vs USSR.

But the third faction was the non-aligned movement, which included India and dozens of other countries that didn’t formally join either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. theconversation.com/explainer-the-…
Today there are many countries that do not want to pick sides in a second Cold War.

In the fullness of time, BTC and crypto offer a third way: a decentralized movement that doesn’t depend on either superpower. theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…
Read 4 tweets
28 Dec
If just getting started, have someone like @DavidSacks, @shervin, or @rabois look at it.

If they invest, set up a sovereign fund for the city and co-invest. Model it on the Alaska Permanent Fund and pay out dividends to citizens in good standing.
Every politician in the world watching @FrancisSuarez is starting to realize that remote has changed their economics.

In a time when budgets are tight, cities can seek more revenue from present residents.

Or they can seek new residents who present more revenue.
You don’t need 50% of politicians worldwide to be like Suarez. You don’t even need 10%.

You need just 10, about 10 politicians worldwide recruiting on Twitter for their cities and countries to completely change the world.
Read 6 tweets
26 Dec
BTC > NYT
Ledger of record > paper of record
Argument from cryptography > argument from authority

Oracles already provide more reliable price feeds than Bloomberg or Reuters.

Extend that. And replace declarations by media corporations with decentralized cryptographic truth.
An early use of decentralized cryptographic truth to knock down a declaration by a media corporation occurred in 2014, when the absence of a digital signature killed Newsweek’s cover story.

Oracles systematize this. They’re like an on-chain Reuters. genius.com/2900395
Decentralized cryptographic fact checking is also used by Wikileaks, as anyone can use DKIM to verify email authenticity. You trust the cryptography, not Wikileaks. blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/11/16/ok-…
Read 5 tweets
26 Dec
Mayor Suarez has single handedly reformed politics Twitter.

First, politicians around the world now understand they can recruit constituents with their tweets.

Second, they now understand they can *lose* constituents with their tweets.
What @FrancisSuarez has done is being studied by cities and countries around the world.

After years where Twitter showed us the worst of politics, we have a glimpse of what it can be at its best.

With one tweet, he helped launch a new era of economic development.
Mayor Suarez shows a new path for a startup politician.

You can now make an international impact without waiting years to pay your dues & work your way up.

Just support technologically progressive policies & recruit talent online. Now you can build your city with every tweet.
Read 6 tweets
24 Dec
Miami is already the Singapore of Latin America. And Latin Americans understand the need for sound money.

So: Miami should hold a conference connecting all the Latin American financiers with all the crypto & tech people to talk Bitcoin!
As Wences Casares has discussed, the idea that the state could default, hyperinflate, or go communist is not theoretical to Latin Americans.

Witness Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba respectively.

So the use case for Bitcoin as a way to protect human rights is instantly understood.
As @antoniogm has mentioned, Miami is already an important center for Latin American commerce and finance.

It’s a neutral zone with good banking where people from across the region can store their money and do deals.
Read 4 tweets

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