Smith emerges as a penetrating psychologist who understood that our deepest hunger isn't for wealth but for respect--and that this hunger, left unexamined, leads individuals and societies alike into serious trouble.
When people have to pitch a story, not a fifty page business case, and justify why their ideas deserve another few million dollars, they suddenly start thinking like founders instead of managers.
Alan thinks about the financial system the way a historian would, studying the incentives, guardrails, and market structure that determine how things play out.
The 0.1% have their own transportation. They don't give a shit about 4-hour TSA lines. They have their own police forces. They live in buildings in neighborhoods that are of incredible security. They have their own health care. So what is their vested interest?
I think wanting to make money and help people are not mutually exclusive. I think there are a lot of people who do really good work and make a really good living doing it.
The lesson out of that which is sort of a textbook lesson which is that you don't want government picking winners and losers cuz a it's not very good at it and b even if it is good at it like to whom does that benefit a crew?
Prediction market players want to be the news, and they've even devised new, frankly unconvincing frameworks for why they should be considered legitimate sources of information — instead of just anything-goes casinos.
Fights sell ratings. And so you see that, I think, on the media oftentimes. Talking heads are on radio. But the reality is the collegiality that exists between members.
If you think that you will immediately be cut down in your society, you don't actually go out and hunt. You actually don't go out and bring back the the the big deer or whatever you're hunting the bacon. You don't bring home the bacon in the first place. You don't even try because you're so worried about this tall poppy syndrome in your society.
Formula One is three competitions in one: a 200mph battle of the world's best race car drivers, the world cup of engineering where thousand-plus person teams spend hundreds of millions designing cars from scratch, and — as one listener put it — the Real Housewives of the Garage, a soap opera of billionaire egos, team politics, and paddock drama.
Just beneath the surface of the global economy, there is a hidden layer of dealmakers for whom war, chaos, and sanctions can be a great business opportunity.
1mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
