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18 Jan, 7 tweets, 4 min read
Dubai is important to study because it disproves many of the myths circulated during the 2000s about what the Middle East was capable of doing.

Of course it has its flaws, but it's moving in the right direction in terms of economic diversification, the Abraham Accords, and tech.
Follow @WamdaME to see what the future of the Middle East may look like, beyond the stereotypes. There's a global, positive-sum tech community there as well. The Careem exit in 2019 was a big moment for the region! menabytes.com/fadi-ghandour-…
That's also why the $200M Paystack exit was huge for tech in Africa. That's real money for anywhere, and goes even further in Nigeria on a PPP basis. We need 10 more like this, which is why I backed @buycoins_africa and am looking at more in the region.
techcrunch.com/2020/10/15/str…
The massive Walmart deal with Flipkart (though not without its ups & downs!) similarly showed that global investors could make serious money by backing Indians. These proof points are key.
techcrunch.com/2018/08/20/wal…
As William Easterly as shown at length, and as the recent history of Asia has demonstrated empirically, NGOs don't develop a region. Capitalism does. Profit > nonprofits. Because charity is dependency and profit is financial independence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E…
See for example what happened with YouWin in Nigeria. It was just a business plan competition! But after reviewing the results, economist Chris Blattman asked, “Is this the most effective development program in history?”
priceonomics.com/what-happened-…
If a city like Miami had a sovereign fund, they could also hold a business plan competition for Miami-based (or soon-to-be-based) founders. Like running a footrace, the mere act of competing strengthens all entrants. @FrancisSuarez @shervin @rabois

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More from @balajis

balajis.com Profile picture
19 Jan
One of the more fascinating phenomena is people who think they understand economics that have never built a two-sided marketplace, coded a financial instrument, issued a digital currency, started a company, managed a cap table, met a payroll, or created a single job.
Cryptoeconomics is about reproducible experiments. You can actually issue a currency, set a monetary policy, get opt-in participants, and test your theories in practice.

The proof is in the pudding. And the pudding is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. https://coinmarketcap.com/c...
Not disjoint at all.

Microeconomics is the theory of individuals & firms. Directly related to running a business.

Macroeconomics until recently was off-limits to experiment. But now anyone can create a currency, set monetary policy, and see what happens.
Read 8 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
17 Jan
Did we forget that California burns to a post-apocalyptic orange every year now?
theguardian.com/world/gallery/…
As Miami sea levels rise, there are engineering solutions. Take a look at what Dubai has done. fircroft.com/blogs/engineer…
Miami is already the cruise ship capital of the world. It may become the land reclamation/seasteading capital too, as sea levels rise and tech minds with the right mindset take on the problem. Like pursuing nuclear energy rather than giving up. @patrissimo @rabois @shervin
Read 4 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
17 Jan
Strongly disagree.

1) There were 272M international emigrants in 2019. The vast majority of those people were not rich.

2) Emigration reduces inequality as people move away from ultra-wealthy cities like SF/NY to the rest of the country and the world.
un.org/development/de… https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/inter
Indeed, it's the wealthy landed aristocracy — like the NIMBYs of California — who have the most control over local politics and the least need to move.
Let's remember that the right to emigrate is an absolutely foundational human right, part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by people from all over the world, translated into every language.

Exit is the last resort of the powerless.
un.org/en/universal-d…
Read 5 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
16 Jan
CEO of the city

In a remote world, talent is mobile. Mayors no longer need to run for higher office — they can level up just by recruiting talent to their city. On the other hand, they can also *lose* talent if the city doesn’t perform.

More upside and downside than before.
The acceleration of remote has changed the world in more ways than people realize.

Politicians must deliver results, or else an instant vote of no confidence is called as people emigrate out. More like a parliamentary system, except you choose between cities rather than parties.
No legislation was passed, but remote will change the job of every politician just as much as social media did. The best ones like @FrancisSuarez have already recognized this.

The medium-term consequence is the rise of competitive government. Deliver results or lose citizens.
Read 4 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
16 Jan
This article is making the rounds. It’s well-written and makes a good case. And I should say up front that I have zero info about whether Tether really has 100% backing of every USDT.

However, a few thoughts. 🧵
crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-…
First, the crypto ecosystem has survived Silk Road, Mt Gox, the DAO hack, the Bitcoin civil war, the Chinese crypto crackdown of 2017, and countless BTC obituaries.

From 2017: bbc.com/news/business-…
Second, the tech is real. Look at defipulse.com, epns.io, Zcash, starkware.com, ens.domains, NFTs, Uniswap, rollups, and all the new L1 chains just to start. There is genuine computer science here.
Read 7 tweets
balajis.com Profile picture
15 Jan
The deeper point is that India doesn’t need to look up to Harvard. Indians are CEOs of trillion dollar companies, soon-to-be VPs, and of course (real) professors at Harvard.

We can build a wholly digital replacement. Declining US institutions aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
In the same way China ascended from a mezzanine level of skill to becoming the factory of the world, India can ascend from providing a shadow academia on YouTube to producing genuinely world class digital learning institutions.

As the meme goes:
ifunny.co/picture/lFZIX5…
India becomes a media superpower.

It’s capable of building digital alternatives to Harvard, Hollywood, and the New York Times. Indeed the people in these institutions often hail from India.

The v2 would lean on modern technology: online learning, AI video, cryptographic truth.
Read 6 tweets

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