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8 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
This is exactly why Bitcoin works. A simple monetary policy specifies a hard cap of 21 million BTC. Anyone with a computer can cryptographically verify this to confirm the supply has not been inflated.
This excellent post by @mattyglesias aligns with what a different kind of policymaker — namely the tech CEO — has learned over the years. To get many people to do something, you need to make it as simple and transparent as possible.
slowboring.com/p/making-polic…
For example, if you have a commission plan for your sales reps that they can't rattle off in a sentence, that "policy" is not incentivizing what you want. saastr.com/a-framework-an…
Another example of unnecessary complexity are academic metrics like HDI or GDP.

People understand life expectancy, not HDI. And they understand median net worth, not GDP.

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More from @balajis

balajis.com Profile picture
9 Jan
This is all much bigger than US politics.

It is a matter of national security for India, Israel, and every other country to maintain a sovereign communications channel for their leaders to reach their people directly.

The world cannot be ruled by American corporations.
Every sovereign needs its own basic internet infrastructure: hosting, payments, anti-DDOS.

Over the long term, crypto is the obvious choice for the 80% of the world population that is neither American nor Chinese, as well as large swaths of both Americans & Chinese.
This is now going to happen.

China is already US-independent when it comes to communication & payments infrastructure.

India, Israel, Russia are obvious candidates to go techno-autarkic next. Then perhaps the EU, South Korea, Japan, Brazil.

Crypto is the demilitarized zone.
Read 9 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
8 Jan
A solo media founder like Rogan or Mr Beast can make as much money as a strong tech founder, with significantly less managerial stress.

Tech created this ecosystem but there’s a historical cultural bias in tech towards media as unprofitable. That changed a long time ago.
Many more angels that invest in people will invest in media founders. Many traditional media people will *become* media founders.

But not necessarily big companies. Just solo individuals or small groups doing content, like Notch doing Minecraft. Because media scales like code.
Increasingly feeling like “keeping the team size as small as possible, even to one person” is the unarticulated key to making media profitable.

Substack and all the creator tools are just the start of this ecosystem.
Read 12 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
5 Jan
If Bezos did it we’d all get the vaccine in two days.
Not even kidding. Amazon has the most sophisticated logistics infra in the world.

Give them, Doordash, and Uber a few billion dollars each of the printed money, put them in touch with vaccine makers & nurses, and stop any government officials from interfering in any way.
Btw, Amazon did acquire Pillpack for $1B, which they’re rebranding as Amazon Pharmacy.

So far they have lacked the (crucial) cold chain distribution mechanism — but they may be able to boot that up quickly if all regulatory blockades were removed. healthcareweekly.com/amazon-pharmac…
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
30 Dec 20
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
balajis.com Profile picture
29 Dec 20
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…
Read 6 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
28 Dec 20
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

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