arb-spreads

This is a short sighted and ignorant piece. The combined business will be 2% of the size of Amazon, 10% of the size of Walmart, and nearly 10% of the size of Costco. They will control ~10% of grocery sales, half that of Walmart. Roughly a quarter of the stores in areas with high overlap are being divested.

If the FTC cared about competition they would go after someone like Amazon/Facebook with nearly 40% market share, Google/Nvidia with over 90%, or even Apple with nearly 90% of market share among teenagers.

Lina Khan's incompetence has been a big boon for lawyers and merger arb strategies, without actually improving the competitive landscape or the world.

Ineffective altruism strikes again

Fairly self evident. Far fewer married people, many want to live in apartments, and others enjoy renting houses for a few years at a far cheaper rate than being locked into a dwelling.

A careful glance at any of the academic research around housing corroborates this. Or, any modicum of common sense

Nicer apartments, more houses are offered as short term rentals. People's preferences adjust. Resulting demand curve for homeownership adjusts

Homeownership is a far smaller part of the 'American Dream' relative to a few decades ago.

Some people rent out the original house or try to transfer the low mortgage rate in order to monetize it.

Worst is an interesting framing - lowest transactions is far better.

Obviously all in housing transaction costs decreasing from nearly 10% today to something a lot more reasonable would increase liquidity and transactions. A shift towards more short term rentals is also reducing the demand for homeownership.

Many companies have used return to office as a soft layoff. Many employees quit versus large layoffs.

Things should normalize as companies optimize their workforces, office leases roll off, and remote/hybrid work becomes standardized.

This has the potential to be extremely transformative for Argentina. The country struggled for decades with rampant inflation and incompetent leadership. Dollarizing the economy will offer the potential for Argentina to return to growth and offer a quality standard of living to tens of millions of Argentineans.

For reference - I was in Argentina earlier this year. The exchange rate was 400:1, relative to the dollar. Now each dollar is worth ~1000 pesos, after only a few months. A 30+ minute Uber was the equivalent of under 3 dollars.

Not really sure why people complain so excessively about dynamic pricing software. Whether for flights, concerts, or apartments - sellers will naturally seek to maximize profits. Software helps with this.

Housing and apartments are in many senses artificially expensive. Existing laws and regulations make it very difficult to build, appreciating the value of land and buildings. If people want lower rents - making it far easier to build is one of the best solutions.

Cynical take is that Google is a monopoly. They could probably easily double net income margins from ~25% to ~50% while still growing at a similar rate. Instead, they waste hundreds of billions to satisfy employees and placate regulators.

This is an unsurprisingly terrible article.

If anything, venture capital is more responsible for a lack of IPOs. At one point, there were over a thousand unicorns that had no reason to go public. Multiple series of fundraising rounds between venture capital and growth equity firms have enabled companies like Bytedance, SpaceX, and Stripe to grow into companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars with minimal pressure to go public.

Additionally, excessive regulation has seriously hampered IPOs. Expensive disclosures - for both investors and companies - makes being private far more compelling. Not to mention the fact that many private companies are sketchy and overvalued. Public markets incentivize market participates to root out fraud in order to more accurately value businesses.

Deep capital markets are one of the many strengths of the United States. To enable individual investors to invest in the next Apple, Microsoft, or Nvidia, the onus is on petty government bureaucrats to make it 10x easier to go public. Over the last few decades, it has instead become 10x more difficult and expensive.

Agreed. Similar to the invention of seatbelts and other safety devices, safer technology induces risker behavior.

Would be unfortunate to have an over-reliance on emergency services aided by these tools.

Offer a few free texts a year and then charge like 5 bucks to text for a day or something.

Participation would involve every nation. As a lower/middle income country, China would receive commensurate benefits from redistribution.

Significant collaboration would be required to mandate participation from all countries

Great point. Renewables are getting cheaper, but are still interment and require baseload power. They also require significant investments in grid infrastructure, with costs borne by governments and utilities. Additionally, equipment must be recycled and discarded after ~30 years.

For perspective, it takes about 1 unit of materials to generate 2 units of power from wind and solar. Significant resources are used, often on land that was formerly growing food. Oil and gas are roughly 10:1 in terms of output, with nuclear around 100:1.

~85% of world energy is currently non-renewable, relative to ~87% at the start of the millenia. Even if the world suddenly started building hundreds of nuclear facilities and blanketing the landscape with solar, wind, hydrothermal, and hydro, these investments will take decades to come into effect.

Easiest solution is to tax externalities and let the market efficiently allocate resources. Charge 100, 200, or even 500/ton for carbon emissions, allocated globally. Distribute some of the proceeds to low income countries who are still developing. Every 100/ton in taxes is ~3.5B, which could be distributed to the majority of the world who subside on less than 20 dollars per day.

Furthermore, tax air pollution. There are ~10m deaths annually from air pollution, primarily due to fossil fuels. Not to mention shortened life and health complications for the majority of the planet. Air pollution taxes could generate another couple billion in revenue.

Finally - stop subsidizing both oil and gas and renewables. Current incentives are riddled with loopholes and tax breaks. A mix of carbon and air pollution taxes would efficiently incentivize far more renewables development. Viola - more renewables and a cleaner world for eons

Tough country killing 500m birds/year not to mention all the natural bird deaths

Or just offer an option between a charging cable/brick, iCloud credit, or store credit for future purchase...

Alameda Research made billions arbitraging wide spreads in Asian bitcoin exchanges relative to the rest of the world. Required working with local banks to solve logistics around wire transfers and such.

Obviously a run of the mill crypto ponzi offering 30% interest or something will eventually collapse.

Difficult to balance incentives when it comes to traditional finance offerings such as structured products or an actively managed investment vehicle.

As you point out, customers struggle in evaluating risk

; )

Precisely, which require significant upfront investment/expertise in a consolidated space

There are a lot of 'soft' arbitrage opportunities out there, such as risk arbitrage or merger arbitrage. You may not have 100% certainty of a deal closing, but can still profit over hundreds of events.

Most 'pure' arbs are exploited, but many still exist. They often require capital, expertise, and experience.

Decent deal. Probably <4k if purchased and assembled within China. Cheaper than most electric mountain bikes.

Looks like electric ATVs/UTVs are around 15k, which would be a rough comp.

Electric bikes / scooters / etc will hopefully become much more commonplace. Way cheaper than cars, and potentially more exercise. Hopefully more special purpose trails for bikes / pedestrians are created to accommodate demand. Certain places like the Netherlands do a great job at accommodating non-vehicle commuting.

Yes - a classic public goods problem. Lots of global inequities with minimal interest in solving. The average standard of living is substantially lower than developed countries, and global resource expenditure would skyrocket if parity occurred.

Sweden has similar density to the US. Both countries have >80% of the population living in urban areas. Same goes for standard of living, with slightly lower GDP in Sweden and slightly higher quality of life.

Higher prices are one of the best ways to reduce consumption. Imagine of clothes were suddenly taxed at 100% - people would presumably purchase less clothing.

This WSJ analysis is quite good - an EV has about half the carbon emissions relative to a comparable car after 200k miles. [https://www.wsj.com/graphics/are-electric-cars-really-better...] Naturally, an EV that is much more massive than a regular car will have more emissions, use more materials to manufacture, and tear up roads quicker. Ironically, there are tax incentives towards purchasing large vehicles which destroy roads quicker.

Even if all vehicles were electric, overall emissions wouldn't budge much. [https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector] >80% of global emissions are from fossil fuels, mainly oil, coal, and gas. [https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix] Electric vehicles require more materials to produce and require significant grid infrastructure, which is mainly powered by fossil fuels.

A carbon tax is one of the only realistic policies that could help lower carbon. There has been minimal progress in developed countries, and even less in developing ones. Sweden has the highest carbon tax at nearly 150/ton, and 1/3rd the emissions per person relative to the United States. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/483590/prices-of-impleme....] Switzerland is similar. [https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...]

Plenty of SMB/middle market companies out there. Which is honestly the most common outcome for a YC company, other than failure.

Not sure how many are growing at >40% CAGR with minimal capital requirements...

Fine if you wanted to fund HVAC, plumbing, construction, etc. businesses that are generally ignored by YC. Wouldn't count on startupy growth from companies YC screens against