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Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
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27 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Tech starting to show real spine.

Zuck says he doesn't report to legacy media corporations. He serves his constituents, namely billions of users. And they don't want the increased surveillance and censorship that these "whistleblowers" are calling for.
fool.com/earnings/call-…
We should of course decentralize every FB service. And fund countless things toward that end.

But in the interim, know that the state & press aren't seeking to protect your freedoms. They're seeking to take them away to prop up a decaying establishment.
On the spectrum of decentralization:

BTC > FB > NYT

That's the ethical compass. Decentralized media over social media, but social media over legacy media. Because you don't have *any* voice on a legacy media corporation's platform.
Real whistleblowers: Snowden, Assange. Risked their freedom for your freedom.

Fake whistleblowers: feted by the establishment. Burn your freedoms for their benefit.
Are they seeking asylum from the US government? No? Then they may not be a real whistleblower.

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Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
28 Oct
Meanwhile, in India...we're seeing a free market renaissance?

"...privatizing state-owned enterprises...overhauling taxes, relaxing foreign direct investment rules and deregulating labor and agriculture markets."
archive.md/pjhDh Image
As I've said, I am only moderately bullish on the Indian state. As the saying goes, India disappoints both the optimists and the pessimists.

But there is a dark horse chance that by 2030 it's the *least bad* of the big three relative to China and the US.
It's important to remember how long a period a decade is. Ten years ago, Bitcoin was at $1. A lot can change.

An achievable vision for India may turn out to be that it is a reasonable home base *and* more friendly to emigrants than either the US or PRC.
Read 8 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
26 Oct
Actions speak louder than words. But do they? Words are explicit and often public. Actions are often implicit and unobserved.

This may be why many are "action-blind", analogous to colorblind. They see only the words someone emits, without weighing their track record of actions.
A concrete example is something we take for granted, which is that a politician's promises are non-binding. They can say anything to get elected, then do what they want. Compare to a product that does what it says on the tin.

A convincing actor vs a substantive action.
One way of thinking about this is to make actions more visible. There are sites that do political report cards, though the scores aren't placed next to tweets or ballots.

Relatedly, it is interesting that we have decent book and movie reviews, but not newsmedia reviews.
Read 6 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
26 Oct
Important piece, worth reading.

However, Mearsheimer is realist about everything…other than US capabilities. Rather than fighting an unwinnable war, or surrendering to illiberalism, the right approach is to build an admirable society.

Win by example. 🧵foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…
First, why is conflict arising?

There was a strain in Western culture that wanted to be the best, and a strain in Chinese culture that wanted to copy the West. The conflict is arising because the Chinese no longer want to copy, as the West is no longer obviously the best.
Indeed, the West is no longer building the City on a Hill. It is about equality rather than excellence, and freedom over cooperation.

There is a tension between checking your privilege & checking China's rise. Or assuming the US is the best & all the rest are sh*thole countries.
Read 16 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
25 Oct
Both @jack and @CathieDWood are right in different ways.

Everything technology disrupts will see prices fall. Everything the state subsidizes will see prices rise. Like the graph below, but even more extreme. Image
The problem is that the state controls much of the physical world: housing, education, and healthcare, but also ports, utilities, and police.

So the next costs after soaring rent and medical expenses will be supply chain shocks, power outages, and spending on crime mitigation.
The state actively prevents automation in the sectors it controls. Baumol’s cost disease doesn’t happen by accident.

Arguments vary — sometimes it’s safety, sometimes explicitly about protecting jobs — but there’s a reason you don’t have free AI medical imaging on your phone.
Read 10 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
25 Oct
The steelman version of this argument is not that Bitcoin would fail, but that money itself may not be easily able to buy valuable things in a time of serious conflict — like public safety, or other social goods.
That is, we know from recent experience in conflict zones that smartphones and wireless internet are insanely robust technologies.

We know the Bitcoin network has survived many attacks, including the recent Chinese state assault on mining.

And we know private keys work offline.
The real issue in a modern Mad Max scenario is not that Bitcoin fails, but that money itself fails to buy the most useful things you want in a warzone: like an end to war, or a ticket out of there.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
24 Oct
I actually don’t think they will.

Jack and Zuck didn’t build their $100B+ companies from scratch to bow to the East Coast establishment, whether that be Trump or the Fed.

The rematch will surprise people.
Tech CEOs don’t win by fighting the last war.

In 2015-2016, the tweeting took many by surprise.

In 2020-2021, the censorship took many by surprise.

But in 2024, or whenever the inflation comes, the censorship-resistance will take everyone by surprise.
To be clear, the companies run by non-founders may buckle. I don’t expect Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon to hold any line.

But Zuck & Jack still control their companies. In different ways, they are adopting cryptocurrency. And they aren’t backing down. m.facebook.com/zuck/posts/101…
Read 8 tweets

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