January 19 2024
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WEF Parody
- Oh Davos Kumbaya
- Jason with killer beats
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Davos not so cool anymore
- Earlier people would flex it, now apologize for it
- People fly in on private jets and tell people to stop consuming carbon
- They eat rich stuff and tell people to stop consuming
- Only things that became serious and went viral were Milei’s speech and Jamie Dimon’s comments (including saying Trump was mostly right)
- Milei
- Says in front of Klaus Schwab and others that collectivist spirit is to blame and extolled capitalism
- Dimon
- Said like Chamath that Trump was right on NATO, immigration, tax reform, mostly on China, might not like how he said things and his policies were largely sound and only look better since we abandoned them
- Davos was about high status, now its not useful anymore
- Its a glorified enterprise software sales conference - basically allows you to close very big deals because leaders of counter party are there too to get a deal done - pay $40K per ticket to get people there to get this stuff done
- Beyond that its the eye of the beholder
- Alex Karp speech was apparently also notable?
- Milei was an economics teacher
- Heygen translation of his speech was really good
- This speech got so much virality because Argentina has a lot of ethnic europeans - which makes Davos listen because they are basically a coalescing of Europeans
- Argentina
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Mid 19th century it was a colonial nation, flourishing economy
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It was called the Paris of the west
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Was richer than France, Germany, Spain and had a top GDP per capita
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Military coups
- 1930
- 1943
- 1955
- 1962
- 1966
- 1976
- all the coups were about relativism - some people have benefited more than others so lets change social structure and take it by force
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This is the best example
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1800-2020 - 95% extreme poverty → < 5% - because of free market capitalism
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The West is in jeopardy
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Socialism has failed everywhere
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When government steps in - it causes inflation and makes it worse - everything that goes up in price, govt is involved - intention is that govt is good for people, but it makes it worse
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Intention might be good but impact is bad
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This isn’t well intentioned people but a small class of elites who want to feel powerful and tell other people what to do
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Governments used the negative reflexive loop - kept becoming more and more powerful
- Laws reinforced dynamic of deciding winners and losers
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Government and Boeing
- Government is not keeping us safe
- US air industry is a monopoly of 1 country
- Boeing is 1 of the biggest lobbyists and water down safety regulations
- Pilot unions are also preventing safety from improving
- Boeing 737 Max jet had a door blow off Jan 5 2024
- Previous version of 737 Max plane had a bad incident - lot of people died (1 or 2 incidents)
- Car market is better because there are so many vendors - whereas in planes its just a duopoly
- Car market incidents are overwhelmingly driver error
- Planes - monopoly vendor has zero pressure to build something accurately
- Regulations pile up because politicians or bureaucrats are paid by vendors to make it harder for new entrants to come in
- Transdigm Group stock has gone up a lot - they buy airline parts companies, drop costs and raise prices and doing well - they are operating in a virtual monopoly - have been elected by the government
- Can’t avoid a plane type like you can a car type so easily
- Government is losing it - focusing on Amazon and Roomba vs safety issues in planes
- Best accountability is competition - but that isn’t happening
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Adam Neumann and Flow
- Rental market - apartments
- Basic problem is he is failing to make interest payments - according to a story recently
- Why did a16z invest? Just because they had capital to deploy - so they can raise their next fund and get 2%
- In real estate you capitalize on the buy, not the sell, if you don’t buy at the right price, you’re never going to be able to make money on the sell
- Neumann makes good product but doesn’t pay attention to capital required to operate
- Cost basis on when you get into the investment is the most important thing
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COGS = Cost of Goods Sold
- Think carefully about software business vs tech-enabled business
- Software margins are also coming down - from 85% to 70%
- Rule of 40
- For public market saas companies: operating margin + growth rate = 40 - then its attractive business
- 20 + 20, 50 - 10, etc
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Peacock paid NFL ~$110M - 23M viewers - most in US history for this kind of activity apparently
- Churn rates going up
- Facebook and Google are the only ones who win here because they get all the ad revenue for these guys to fight
- This is what happens when there is a lot of competition
- Its good for consumers
- Subscription is a hard business
- Churn rates going up
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Microplastics in water bottles
- PET made from natural gas and crude oil
- Used for bottles, etc
- Glass is 5X the carbon footprint vs plastic bottle
- Study found ~10K microplastics in a bottle of water (240K pieces in a small bottle of water - small enough to enter ur cells)
- These are so small they can get into your cells, your brain, etc
- Can cause allergies, inflammation, etc
- Cumulative effect over time
- 80% of bottled beverages are bought outside the home
- PETs do degrade in sunlight
- Stop using plastic
- Recognize that cheap plastic made material transport possible
- France has banned plastic for fruits and vegetables - regulation like this can help
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Jason won poker tournament - ~BigO
- All in Poker?
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