Most tech people don’t hate taxes bc we’re greedy. We hate them bc we spend all of our time eliminating friction for people — trying to add value to their life, building experiences worthy of choice. If we don’t, we die. And then we try a Government service. It is full of friction, opaque, kafkaesque. And no one cares. No one is accountable. It’s insulting.

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If government felt like it actually provided a service, it wouldn't feel so repellant to write multi-thousand dollar tax checks. If politicians actually believed they were servants, they wouldn't be debasing themselves for anything and everything that will keep them in office. If citizens are forced to suffer enough, these obvious facts won't be worth tolerating anymore. For now, in many countries, most of our lives feel just good enough that it's not worth the effort to change the nature of government. (I think AI disruptions will change this calculus, pretty quickly.)

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FIRE is a beautiful specimen of a nearly extinct species. Donate to FIRE today. https://x.com/TheFIREorg/status/1938626547776160168

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this is a good clip that illustrates my beef with so much of the left. we get endless abstract complaints and then, when pressed, so little depth on how to solve the problems we deeply need to solve. https://x.com/steady_drumbeat/status/1923073500941590639

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Important thread. The compromise is full liberty (Mill's harm principle) for what's allowed, but legal limits on what is convenient. https://x.com/bpodgursky/status/1902769150532989130

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Europe, left wing: we'll send you to jail for facebook posts US, rw: we'll deport you for campus protests (Fortunately we have a robust 1st amendment, very unlikely #2 will actually happen.) But still sad; you can count the major public-figure principled defenders of free speech on one hand.

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Interesting paragraph from Alex Karp's new book

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Crypto is key because free speech relies on free exchange. When commerce runs on open and permissionless rails, we protect both. We're vaccinating the world against this:

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Excited for this. there is insane overhang between how fast kids can learn and how fast current schools are set up to teach. with human encouragement and now 1:1 tutor AIs, people will be blown away by what's possible. https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1889006354708205739

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One fun result--how would you direct public goods funding at this? By betting on disaster! If I bet $1k that USDT *will* depeg at 1% odds, I enable $99k of "no" bets, which serve as a bounty for anyone who knows something. Nice leverage.

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I gave the leading AIs the Thiel question. First thing first, Claude absolutely smoked ChatGPT. ClosedAI "thought for 5 seconds" (hidden proprietary chain of thought) to come up with the exact opposite of a good answer--a belief that is basic, widely held, and wrong. It's all luck bro.

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Interesting predictions from @fredwilson.eth Some good some goofy but all 13 are concrete and testable, very nice. https://avc.xyz/what-will-happen-in-2025-1 Here's what will actually happen. Game on and set a reminder: 1. Yes. DeepSeek makes this even more likely. 2. Yes, but only within SF, not LA. 3. Yes. 4. No. If we're lucky such a trial might start in 2025, but the remaining steps will take way longer than EOY. 5. Sure, yes (sounds like Fred has the inside scoop) 6. Yes specifically to the testable part = 6529 selling their collection. 7. Hard no if you mean an actual doctor that has authority to prescribe anything. 8. Yes (another inside scoop?) 9. No. 10. No and lol. AI might be used as part of a film production, as in that Coke commercial, but nothing more than that. 11. No. Looking forward to Uber x Joby but will be pushed back to 2026! 12. Absolutely not 13. Maybe if you mechanical turk it 🤣 "hii it's your friendly ai, are you raising?"

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New FB energy.

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🤣

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It's not enough to be "the third thing". There are so many possible third things that at times different people's proposed "third things" end up being almost exact opposites of each other. The vibe of being "the third alternative to escape the binary" is appealing, but it has to be matched with the right substance.

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