seem_2211

No chance that businesses will stop paying for people to travel. And their budgets are much bigger than individuals visiting family. Take a look at the entire private jet market - basically a very small wedge of HNWs and lots of executives flying for business.

But I agree with the rest of your statements. Better to have a VC investment that brings a 12% return or whatever than some negative returning European or Japanese government bonds.

It seems like the more money you have, the harder it is to deploy it efficiently.

It would be interesting to know the influence of David Swensen (the CIO at Yale), who's put a large portion of their endowment into Private Equity and Venture Capital investment, and how other large funds might be mimicking his strategy.

People always compare VC vs the S&P500 but I wonder if there's a side benefit to VC in that it's not necessarily linked to stock market fluctuations.

Are VC returns in the aggregate going to turn to absolute crap over the next ten years as hundreds of new funds (with a new one popping up every day it seems) all grinding it out - or will we see the opposite, where a lot of these smaller funds have very successful first funds (partially constrained by the sizes they're initially able to raise), only to be dramatic underperformers as they raise second and third funds?

Finally, it seems like more money doesn't make for better results (past a point). The Vision Fund being example A.

Until very recently, being illiterate was common, so it's not as if there was a paradise 150 years ago where everyone was an engaged citizen.

If you aren't paying for information either in terms of money, or inaccessibility (as in, there might not be a paywall, but you need to know where to look), it's probably not worth consuming.

RE: Cost of living, I dunno, part of the reason the cost of living in SF / Manhattan is so high is that lots and lots of people make enough to be able to afford it.

If you plug that $38k in 401k deductions, and then add say another $10k in employer contribution, assuming you have two parents at age 30 who plan on working for the next 35 years, and who have, to date contributed $10,000 total to their 401k you end out with a $9.0m retirement fund at age 65, assuming a 7% annual growth rate. Going by the 4% withdrawal method you get a $360k annual retirement income which seems a little high.

Peter Thiel made an interesting point RE: one structural problem in the US economy being that lenders are giving consumers too much credit, but small businesses not enough.

A Rolex and a Timex will both tell you the time. An iPhone and a $129 Android will do mostly similar things. A Toyota Camry and a Porsche will both get you to work.

But practical utility and value aren't necessarily the most important thing.

Apple intuitively understood this, at a time when other computer companies didn't. Lots of people look at a Macbook and see an overpriced computer that costs a few hundred dollars more than a similarly equipped PC, albeit in a pretty case. But that's the point - lots of people want their computer to look good!

Apple products are relatively cheap to produce - and they make an enormous margin on their hardware. But it doesn't feel cheap. The boxes are substantial. The finishings are high quality. The user experience is taken care of. Other PC makers might have been much cheaper, but you notice that to do so, they've cut corners in places.

I don't think the lesson here is in what he said, but rather that he made his customers feel like idiots. Only a fool would believe that a ring for £1 has the level of quality and craftsmanship that you'd get with a £100 ring, but you don't want to feel like a dumbass for buying it. You don't go to McDonalds with expectations of buying a Michelin Star meal. You go there for something warm & tasty, that comes out quickly.

Elon Musk is great at promising stuff, and then terrible at executing. For every promise he fulfills there are 20 that he doesn't. But sure, the guy who flies private everywhere and shitposts more than I do is "working 100 hour weeks" and "cares for the environment."

On reflection, the social aspect of meeting people through friends really helps solve a lot of future relationship problems (you have things in common, some level of shared values etc).

In my view online dating is brutal for all. As a guy you are constantly swiping and sending out a lot of messages with a very low conversion rate (I'd be surprised if 1% of all swipes turn into a date). If you go on things like /r/tinder there are lots of guys who complain about being on the platform for months or years and not having a single match. As a woman you're often dealing with hundreds and hundreds of matches. Everyone has to run a massive pipeline which means things end up being very transactional if you aren't careful.

Because there's so much competition things that wouldn't necessarily matter all that much end up being huge deal breakers (say for example height, or niche preferences).

I'm off the apps, at least for the moment, and am focusing on meeting people in the real world.

To some degree I think we see this in the startup world where a lot of the aspiration seems to be: Operator -> Angel Investor (on the side) -> VC.

I haven't lived in NZ for a few years now, but I grew up there. I wouldn't be surprised if your analysis on urban vs. rural centers being producers vs. consumers might be slightly off as the economy is heavily dependent on agriculture etc.

New Zealand has two major problems: 1: Housing is completely out of touch with reality in Auckland (and to a lesser extent in all major centers). Auckland is one of the least affordable cities in the world to live in, and unlike San Francisco, lacks an industry that pays enough to keep up. 2: The regions are suffering from a death by 1000 cuts type scenario.

I have a working theory that the move towards bigger and better and more powerful cities has been one of our gravest errors in modern urban planning.

In New Zealand, people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if Americans don't change"

Now I live in America, where people with high carbon lifestyles say "well regardless of what we do, nothing matters if the Chinese don't change"

And I'm sure in China they say the same thing back to the US.

It's fun shifting the blame.