Rockwell Green Prager Hallock was born on Jun 19 -- another healthy and happy boy in our house! Mom is doing great. It's wonderful having a larger family. If anyone who reads my newsletter is on the fence in any way, my advice would be to have kids asap. It's starting to be the most rebellious act one can participate in. Anyway, sorry to skip last week, but I've been stacking up the articles. This is a long one that I debated splitting into two parts. Ultimately I figured you all can handle a few extra reads. Forgive me for shorter descriptions, but they're all good!! Here we go...
The Party Line
https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/the-party-line
This, from Leighton Woodhouse is a great piece on current partisan news
The Middle Men
https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/the-middle-men
Leighton Woodhouse again killing it on populism vs elitists
Obfuscation in Competitive Markets
http://www.econ.uzh.ch/static/wp/econwp391.pdf
Super interesting working paper from the University of Zurich Dept of Economics. Well worth the read. "In many markets, firms make their products complex through add-ons, thus making them difficult to
evaluate and compare. How does this product obfuscation affect competition, sellers’ profits, and
buyers’ welfare? We study these questions in a competitive experimental market in which sellers have
the opportunity to obfuscate by add-on features, and buyers endogenously decide how much time to
spend on searching for the best product. We show that stable obfuscation levels emerge that reduce
buyers’ welfare by ensuring that total prices are substantially above marginal cost and by inducing
buyers to make mistakes and to waste their time searching"
The Party Line
https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/the-party-line
This, from Leighton Woodhouse is a great piece on current partisan news
The Middle Men
https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/the-middle-men
Leighton Woodhouse again killing it on populism vs elitists
Obfuscation in Competitive Markets
http://www.econ.uzh.ch/static/wp/econwp391.pdf
Super interesting working paper from the University of Zurich Dept of Economics. Well worth the read. "In many markets, firms make their products complex through add-ons, thus making them difficult to
evaluate and compare. How does this product obfuscation affect competition, sellers’ profits, and
buyers’ welfare? We study these questions in a competitive experimental market in which sellers have
the opportunity to obfuscate by add-on features, and buyers endogenously decide how much time to
spend on searching for the best product. We show that stable obfuscation levels emerge that reduce
buyers’ welfare by ensuring that total prices are substantially above marginal cost and by inducing
buyers to make mistakes and to waste their time searching"
The man whose software ate the world
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-man-whose-software-ate-the-world
Marc Andreessen interviewd by Antonio Garcia Martinez is as close to a must-read interview as you're going to find.
Marc Andreessen interviewd by Antonio Garcia Martinez is as close to a must-read interview as you're going to find.
Why do American Elites love Wokeness?
https://alexeiarora.substack.com/p/why-do-american-elites-love-wokeness
Isn't it odd that the "counter-culture" is supported by all of the power centers? When Coke and the CIA are flying rainbow flags, something is up. Here's a good start at understanding.
Length of life in the ancient world: a controlled study
https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1294277&blobtype=pdf
I was absolutely shocked to find out recently that adult life expectency isn't much changed from thousands of years ago. I think the common belief is that everyone used to die at 35 and now modern medicine keeps us going until 70. I've been going down the rabbit hole on this and will post more as time goes, but here's a quick study that should loosen some of your firmly held data on the subject.
Conservatives can't win the history wars
https://www.slowboring.com/p/conservatives-cant-win-the-history
Don't accuse me of never posting lefties! Here's a Matty Yglesias article that's an interesting take on the current culture war.
The ABCs of DAOs
https://1729.com/daos/
Lastly, a reminder that it's unlikely any of our problems get solved by solving the problems themselves. Rather, other things will occur that change conditions. DAOs are a look into the future. Add in the idea that you no longer need your true identity to participate in a decentralized organization and you've solved most identity based and governance based concerns in one stroke.