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Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
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Jan 27 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
My rebuttal is that California is rolling blackouts while China is scaling nuclear.
As noted, I have nothing against @PeterZeihan the person. But since you asked, I do disagree with some of his ideas. China is a technologically advanced, formidable power. And the US is not on the right track. Defending freedom means grappling with this.
My position:

- I regard China under Xi with apprehension
- But I don't think the US is a guarantor of order anymore either, as it is characterized by chaos at home and war abroad
- I don't have significant investment in China
- But like many Chinese, I prefer trade to conflict
Below is the long form version of my position.

The 21st century belongs not to China or the United States, nor to tech companies as traditionally understood. It belongs to the internet.
archive.is/0wlC2
Zero obligation whatsoever, as we are all busy, but if @PeterZeihan wants to do a polite point & counterpoint via essay perhaps we can do that sometime.

One model is the point and counterpoint on BTC we did for @bariweiss' newsletter last year.
Good counterargument. But the trendline is flat for the US and up for China[1]. That's why I think Fitch's report[2] is credible. China's hiccups are on the way up, the US hiccups are on the way down.
[1] ourworldindata.org/grapher/electr…
[2] fitchratings.com/research/corpo…

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More from @balajis

Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 26
The person of color victimized by this terrible crime is suing SF's DA directly. That's a new twist.

Just a little while ago woke whites wanted to end qualified immunity for police. Perhaps this case will end absolute immunity for prosecutors themselves. nlg-npap.org/absolute-immun…
Of course, the push against immunity came from a certain direction. But life is unpredictable.

Allowing regulators, prosecutors, judges, etc to be individually sued could break the system. What's on the other side?

Maybe anarchy, maybe accountability.
fedsoc.org/events/prosecu…
The discourse has, so far, entertained the idea of police being sued for over-enforcement. We are now seeing prosecutors being sued for *under*-enforcement.

Setting emotions aside, these are (in a sense) type I and type II errors respectively, and both should be disincentivized.
Read 8 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 22
Russian troops have been massing near the Ukrainian border for weeks. Negotiations not looking good. US carriers also apparently now positioned to deter China if something happens in Ukraine.

No idea what's going to happen or which reports are accurate. Monitoring with caution.
Some thoughts:

1) Fog of war applies. Who knows what reports are real? Military deception is a thing.

2) This is one of those things (possible simultaneous conflicts with Russia and China?) that you'd think would get more attention. Not that attention necessarily helps...
Also, if you're truly taking Gell-Mann amnesia into account, every article has to be put through the filter that media corporations are unreliable narrators.

But *if* they didn't butcher this quote, then Russia is saying negotiations are at a "dead end".
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Read 14 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 20
Before/after health is to transhumanism what before/after wealth is to cryptocurrency.
In both cases, the visceral and visible improvements are the direct consequence of powerful new ideas.

The philosophy around digital cash predated the gains by decades. As does that of transhumanism. They came together in the person of Hal Finney, who was an extropian.
"He’s always been optimistic about the future," says Hal Finney's wife, Fran. "Every new advance, he embraced it, every new technology. Hal relished life, and he made the most of everything."
archive.is/gNLv5
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 16
India is indisputably much safer than America. The infrastructure has improved *dramatically* over the last ten years and the internet works.

Photos will always be accused of being cherry picked, but the respective rates of ascent (and, unfortunately, descent) are palpable.
By the way, I'd rank this as among the most surprising developments in my life.

In 1990, 2000, or even 2010, if you'd told me an Indian city would flip an American city, I'd have been very dubious.

But now? It's obvious. Chennai > SF in a heartbeat.
One reason I'd have been dubious is that it's easy to destroy a city (as even SF's mayor now admits is happening), but hard to build one up.

Yet it's happening. The right photo essay would illustrate the rise of Asia and fall of US cities.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 15
for-profit = for-profit
non-profit = for-status
Rank order of motives

1) pursuing mathematical truth
2) pursuing science and technology
3) pursuing material things
4) pursuing power
5) pursuing status

Just for fun, let's compare nonprofits, Miami-style materialism, academia, media, Hollywood, tech, and DC on these motives.
Nonprofit: makes no real claim to truth. Values political power and status above money. Indeed, these are engines to turn money into power and status.

Miami: honest about making money.

Academia: at its best, pursues truth, but often power (policy influence) or status (prizes).
Read 10 tweets
Balaji Srinivasan Profile picture
Jan 8
"...the only amount of decentralization people want is the minimum amount required for something to exist..."

This is true for the same reason internet apps use the minimum necessary bandwidth to exist.

Blockspace, like bandwidth, is rapidly increasing but costly and finite.
Moxie's article is fine, thoughtful, constructive, worth reading.

But it doesn't discuss the concept of blockspace, which is the key technical constraint on web3, just as bandwidth was to web2 (and arguably web1).

[1] research.paradigm.xyz/ethereum-block…

[2] bitcoinsuisse.com/research/decry…
In 2000, Netflix mailed DVDs. They knew streaming was the future. But they also knew bandwidth was limited.

In 2022, many web3 entities are partially centralized. They know decentralization is the future. But blockspace is limited.

Need Nielsen's Law for blockspace.
Read 14 tweets

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