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It's a fairly valid argument imo. The idea that liberal ideals is the best way to organize markets is good - but you can't just ignore the outliers.

If it was easy to fixing it - every country that has been colonized should be at least middle income by now right?

what is success then? what are you trying to accomplish?

I'd argue the best way to accomplish whatever you're thinking about that we should be accomplishing - something that is hard to measure - is by maximizing GDP. Because GDP is correlated with everything you're thinking about accomplishing.

For the last 30 years they've produce some miracles.

I disagree that the safer bet is to have less government - look at the macro picture, things are better than ever as governments are exerting more controls, so there must exist a process of which allows for better prosperity for all by allowing government to modify our behavior.

Making rules is a function of government, and government is a function of the collective will of the people. So rules are nothing more that what I, and most of my neighbors, believe how everyone should behave, and the process is ultimately a trial and error; an experiment.

GDP is the thing we should measure because without it, you can't have all the things you mentioned - you might be able to not start wars but you still need a strong army.

To say that money isn't everything is already a luxury

Yes, I do think people can't be left to their own accord and some people should be allow to make rules for others. How we determine who those `some people` are is a matter of what we tried already and what was effective.

What would you suggest?

there is a strong correlation between strong government and higher GDP. Weak economies are weak because of corrupt and weak government. So that would be my case for government action - collectively or through a good dictator.

Your logic seems good but is removed from history and reality.

I don't think a perfect line exist - a perfect line that maximizes a country's output, for example. Laffer curve is real.

But it's more of a experiment - life is an experiment.

People have been making a lot of prediction about China, such that market economy would lead to more political openness or a middle class would demand more political freedom - all good guess but turn out wrong.

I think we're bad at prediction - so why not let them experiment and see how it turns out 50 years later.

People can't be left to their own accord.

I'm glad I have certain inalienable rights, but I'm also happy to see the authoritarian government experiment continue.

There is a chance that liberal government is the most effective government, ever - the so-called end of history argument, but let's not forget the shot heard around the world was fired less than 250 years ago. Benevolent dictatorship could still work - especially today. Look at Singapore, look at China - lifting millions and billions of people out of poverty is an achievement that shouldn't be denied because they're an authoritarian government.

If I remember correctly, he only successfully dodged 2/3 bullets. And then he started to stopping them

While others have contributed valid points, I think there is another key point here - Netflix stock price is (or was) strongly correlated with that quarter's subscriber growth.

In other words, this might be a method that only worked with Netflix stock in that timeframe where sub growth and stock price is strongly correclated.

I think this is a good point too - venture companies and research SHOULD have two very different distributions

Well said - Perhaps a way to look at it is that 'good' is a subjective target that should be define as 'distance from average/medium'.

So let's be thankful of the crappy medium haha

It should be point out that Marc Andreessen of all people should deeply believe Sturgeon's law - after all, return on investment for venture firms are dominated by few 'hits' and lots of 'duds'.

Of course - I think if anyone act on the belief that 90% of their bets are duds, they would not be in the venture business. It's really interesting that a process could lead to a distribution - but knowing the outcome distribution is actually...useless?

CSV is bad - but convenience is hard to beat. It's the same thing with excel. People abuse it, but you just can't beat the fact that your programmer, CEO, analyst, and secretary can all contribute to the same file.

Calling isn't zero cost, and that spammer time isn't zero cost, so in this case, there is a incentive from the spammer to weed out people who costs the most.

So isn't the popular idea that you should NOT answer spam calls wrong? Logically, you should answer every spam call and try to get them to stay on the line for as long as possible, therefore maximizing their cost.

This is assuming they have some CMS software on the backend that allows them to categorize numbers.

I've actually been answering each spam call - and try to get them to stay on the line for as long as possible.

My assumption is that they have some sort of CMS software and that it costs money to call. If you don't answer - they'll keep trying you. But if you do answer and costs them money - they'll put you in the 'do not call' list.

Just my guess - but so far it has worked for me personally.

It reminds me of something I think someone from Netflix once said (paraphrasing): We're not competing with Hulu or Disney Plus, we're competing with sleep.

These days games are not the only forms of addictive entertainment - there are games, social media, streaming service, youtube, tiktok, and so much more.

Maybe games are cheaper (in real-term) because entertainment in general are getting cheaper.

I will die on this hill but I'm never trying pickleball. Silly reason - tennis looks cool, look at Roger. Pickle ball looks...less cool

Are we savages or what?

I would add that this is one of the few good books by Packt. Bayesian Analysis with Python is also pretty good.

Still, most of the time Packt is a reliable signal for low quality

There is a good reason to do something and there is a real reason.

Coming from Niantic, who is a proponent of AR, it seems like the good reason is to care about building a better reality, but I'm curious if anyone knows enough to comment on their 'real' reason?

I think this is a bear case on China - essentially you're saying that authoritarian government is unstable by nature, democracy is the end of history, etc.

I'm a bit less certain. Past is no indication of future, but China has been the most successful authoritarian country to date. Enough for me to start questioning whether democracy is truly the only way.

For example, I look at their recent crack down rather enviously - to pivot from consumer internet which they realized they have no competitive advantage over into the "German model" where industrialization is key, is a much better approach considering their industrial base and current political climate. In the US, things are moving much slower.

So IDK - I'm not sure if I buy the "it'll get worse" effect. Besides, you could be right, just off by 500 years. In the longrun - we're all dead

None have products that "you can only get it here". They have experience but no product that is competitive, if not protected by government action

I'm really curious if China will go after bytedance next in its crackdown.

My guess would be no. Alibaba, Tencent, DiDi, Meituan all are either local champions that have no competitive advantage overseas - and thus does not help China's growth. But TikTok actually represents that China might have a competitive advantage in deep learning algos that takes massive amount of data - therefore it would be spare from crackdowns.

FB, Google, AWS, and Azue all have a competitive advantage that China don't - English.

On somewhat of a side note, has anyone stopped their subscription to Stratechery in the past year?

I've been a paid sub to Stratechery since the Amazon acquiring Wholefood article - I think Ben's thinking is really unique and valuable.

But - I've recently stopped my subscription, partly because of change in my own finance, partly because I am no longer interested in what Ben wants to cover - namely privacy, policy, and anti-competitive. I miss the days where companies like Stitch Fix could earn a email. I think Ben is covering important topics - but it's not something that I'm really interested in.

Plus the fact that each post seems to require a large amount of prior knowledge - manifested by the large amount of quotes in each email.

What do you think? Have you found other blogs worth subscribing to?

Fun story time - One time I woke up in the middle of the night. Not knowing what time it is, I shouted into the darkness "Hey Google, what time is it?" To my surprise, the machine reply in a excessively cheerful tone, "Welcome to what fruit are you" and proceed to give me a personality quiz. I wasn't able to get the time - but I found out that I'm a watermelon.

So I think it is a mistake to call smart home a failure.

I've always thought "from lib import star" is somewhat of a anti-pattern.

Personally I think that makes sense - because sometimes when I read code, I just have no idea where something comes from.

But I've seen import star everywhere, couple of examples:

Doc for this product

FastAI's course

Bing ads code base

So I'm guessing it is more of accepted than I expected? What does HackerNews think?