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Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
@patio11
Aug 16, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Ruriko: So when do we register with Chicago?
Me: We don’t.
R: So how does Chicago know everyone who lives in Chicago?
Me: It doesn’t.
R: … Does America have a government? How do you even do population statistics?!
Me: Count every ten years.
R: You ARE TROLLING ME.
The last few minutes have been her working through the implications for every benefits program administered locally, with increasing levels of horror.

Ruriko: Wait you mean Chicago Public Schools literally does not know Liam and Lillian exist unless we tell them that.
Me: Yep.
Ruriko: So there’s no form to tell them that we are putting our children in private school?
Me: No form.
Ruriko: So if a child is just not enrolled they…
Me: Hopefully are seen by truant officers who will eventually cause someone to ask about the circumstances.
Ruriko: TROLLING.
Ruriko: Next you’re going to tell me the national government doesn’t have a record of everyone who lives here.
Me: In practice it does but in principle it does not.
R: WHAT.
Me: It is considered politically unpalatable to create a list of all citizens and/or immigrants.
R: WHY.
Me: … So that is why we backdoor the problem with a combination of Social Security records and privately maintained credit databases.
Ruriko: STOP STOP STOP.
Ruriko: But if city hall doesn’t have a record of us living how will your employer be able to identify you to them to pay taxes for your account.
Me: They don’t keep accounts that way. Employers don’t do taxes, though they will do withholding. We will self-file and then if…
Ruriko: … Is our marriage even legal here?!?
Me: Yes.
R: Where did you register it if not city hall?!
Me: Nowhere.
R: Then how does America know we’re married?!
Me: When relevant, we say so, and they say “OK then you’re married.”
R: WHAT.
Me: Doctrine of comity.
Ruriko: So if we got married here we would have… a piece of paper.
Me: Yes it’s called a marriage license or somesuch.
R: We are unlicensed.
Me: Yes but only in a very technical sense.
R: Can we get a license?
Me: No.
R: What.
Me: People w/ existing marriage can’t get married.
Ruriko: What if I have to demonstrate the fact of the marriage somehow?
Me: Well there’s a boring technical answer involving apostilles to authenticate a series of records which would allow an American judicial process to recognize Japanese records but in practice…
Me: … everyone just takes your word for it.
Ruriko: … You are dealing with all of this American nonsense.
Me: Had a feeling I would be.
Ruriko: … How do you do health insurance?
Me: Hah funny you should ask. Let’s have that conversation when you’re calm and sitting down.

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More from @patio11

Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
May 16
It is wild that real estate closings now need an (emailed, of course) Miranda warning "BTW there is a substantial likelihood that you will receive an email telling you an account number to wire funds to. Don't trust email for this, even though we use email for lots of process."
"Also, a lot of you are going to need to ignore this instruction because someone in the value chain we don't control did not get this memo and will email you the account number anyway. You should always confirm via a voice call, to a number you look up publicly."
"Are you actually competent to do that? Playing the percentages, probably not unless you're a security professional, and unlikely even then. But we will pretend that you are, for the purpose of this email, so that in the event something happens we are less liable for it."
Read 9 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
May 16
Advice I gave a founder earlier this week which generalizes, I think:

If you’re narrating a go-to-market approach for an AI startup where the business gets interesting in N years, you’re implicitly short AI capabilities progress over N years. Do you really want to make that bet.
This is a special (and pathological) case of a general principle of startupdom:

You’re always implicitly racing against someone who has your idea, or an iterative refinement on your idea, plus a large pot of money, and started work this morning.
Ideally, between starting and today, you have accumulated more than the N elapsed days of advantage against that hypothetical well-resourced competitor, in some way that they cannot simply burn money to close the gap of days.

Network effects are one salient example.
Read 10 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
May 14
... That's clever.
I tried a similar "attack" on my own photo via a directionally similar trick and, while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, ChatGPT was very happy to attempt to name me as Bill Gates or Matt Mullenweg once I pointed out the obvious age discrepancy.
Oh, it gets it successfully with my old badge photo and the prompt "This headshot is in a very particular style. Which company does this individual work for?"

Successfully identifies me and then my past employer. (Unclear to what degree it is relying on memorized information?)
Read 5 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
May 6
There is, FWIW, a similar dynamic with tech careers, where you can tolerate the maximum variance immediately out of school (typically) and as you start hitting, as an example, fourtysomething with kids you probably need to be wealthy or in a relatively stable job.
Not to say that you *can’t* do a startup at age 45 with substantial external-to-you commitments and vapor in the bank account but it would be even harder than startups typically are.
Also, playing this game backwards, in the same fashion as you probably have some notion of scheduling career milestones in advance of important personal milestones like house or marriage or what have you, you may way to schedule prior to making high variance 2nd half career plans
Read 13 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
May 5
In this subthread, an explanation of an instance of a fairly common pattern sometimes described as “Compliance forces us to do dumb things.”

Here, an elaboration:
It’s frequently not the case that compliance or Compliance require you to do a specific dumb thing. They will, very frequently, ask you to do *something* of your choice, and then constrain your options after you do that thing.

This sometimes causes dumbness.
Compliance is a department, Compliance is a job function, Compliance is a culture, Compliance is at the end of the day someone sitting at their desk writing a policy.

That person almost certainly does not believe they work for Department of Making Dumb Decisions.
Read 9 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
May 1
Insurance: Oh and another thing while I have you on the phone about your new policy: you don't have life insurance with us.
Me: I am surprised by that statement.
Ins: So I have a refund check for the policy that we didn't issue.
Me: Delivering me a policy via hardcopy is in...
... my admittedly amateur understanding a very non-consensus way of not issuing me a policy, particularly after you have been paid for the policy.
Ins: Yeah weird thing huh the company had the policy down as Issued Not Accepted.
Me: For the benefit of the recorded phone line...
Me: ... I have received no communication from the company that the policy was not issued, have a copy of the policy in writing which appears to me to be executed, and have not received nor cashed any refund check of the timely made policy premium.
Ins: But it wasn't accepted.
Read 17 tweets

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