Essay on China & macro, with Western narrative violations: “the notion that the world is deglobalizing would seem laughable to anyone living in Dubai, Singapore, São Paulo or Mumbai”

Source: https://research.gavekal.com/article/the-revenge-of-the-ottoman-empire/

My highlights:

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Back in 2017, the value of Chinese exports to Asean economies amounted to 60% of China’s exports to the US. Today, China’s exports to Southeast Asia stand at roughly 120% of China’s exports to the US.

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…from the early 2000s, global economic activity was massively boosted, not just by connecting China to the rest of the world, but also by connecting Chinese cities to each other, with all the associated construction of rail, air, road, telecommunications and power links this involved.

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key income “thresholds’’. For example, if the average income in a country is below US$1,000, nobody owns a television; when incomes move above US$1,000, almost everybody buys one. For smartphones, the level seems to be around US$2,500. For the automobile industry, the critical level seems to be US$10,000 a year. For university education, the level is US$15,000 and above. For financial products like life insurance, brokerage accounts and mutual funds, the level seems to be US$30,000.

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Today, the notion that the world is deglobalizing would seem laughable to anyone living in Dubai, Singapore, São Paulo or Mumbai. Rather, the world is going through a new wave of globalization, which is different from its predecessors. For the first time since Columbus sailed to the Americas (as Churchill said, “Christoper Columbus was the world’s first socialist: he didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t know where he was, and he did it all at taxpayers’ expense”), the world is experiencing a wave of globalization which does not require Western financiers, Western engineers, Western modes of transportation, Western currencies or Western technologies.

December TV and movies: go watch Scavengers Reign!! It’s fantastic (and fantastically dark)

I’m trying to review and share the TV / movies I watch every month. November was the month of Blue Eye Samurai (still wow), and December was the month of Scavengers Reign.

Both are anime from Western studios, both are visually stunning, and both have strong plots. Blue Eye Samurai had better character development, and Scavengers Reign had better world building. World building so good I wanted to know every nook and cranny of it and couldn’t stop watching, but also would never wanna live in.

Blue Eye Samurai is more empowering and uplifting, while Scavengers Reign is…dark. Like very dark chocolate, if you know what I mean. I don’t even know what I mean.

In December, I watched:

all of Rick and Morty S7 (quite meh, especially when you’re addicted to early seasons like me)

Blood of Zeus (easy fun binge)

a few episodes of A Murder at the End of the World (because of Clive Owen, though I found the series cheesy and over-acted)

a few eps of Silo (promising, but I’d read part of the book so I already knew the big initial twist)

“Imagine you were born in 1900…”

Always good to maintain some perspective: https://x.com/HistoryInPics/status/1741506450688442764?s=20

For a quick moment, imagine you were born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.

When you’re 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.

When you’re 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish.

At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.

As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A child in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents survived through everything listed above.

Perspective is an amazing thing. With so much happening right now and as 2023 ends, let’s try to keep things in perspective, knowing that we will get through all of this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted forever. This too shall pass.

The important concept of social information hazards: “it is more like a black pill that might give you a slightly more accurate understanding of how the world works but saps your motivation to effectively navigate it”

I’ve shared his 2020 predictions before. Which were very prescient imo. Though he doesn’t write often, all his essays are bangers.

This one is on information hazards, which is basically information that is technically true, but socially harmful (the Biblical “for in much wisdom is much grief”).

Kids will blurt them out all the time, which is why kids can be hilarious and also chaos inducing. Or you’ll read a book that makes you a bit wiser, but also a bit sadder. Like this one (sorry).

Link: https://unpleasantfacts.com/information-hazards-in-career-and-life

Some snippets:

On an individual level, one way to frame this is the classic Matrix dilemma, where Morpheus asks Neo if he wants to take the red pill and see reality for what it is or take the blue pill and go back to believing everything is normal. Many people immediately think the red pill is the obvious option, but after taking the red pill they can no longer relate to their previous friends. And worse, having taken the red pill Neo made enemies of immensely powerful people.

Information hazards are not necessarily about red vs blue, as taking the red pill might give you superpowers. But sometimes it is more like a black pill that might give you a slightly more accurate understanding of how the world works but saps your motivation to effectively navigate it.

One type of knowledge that is often more than useless is knowledge that makes you unpopular. It might be fun to be the one to tell your classmates that Santa Claus is not real, but they will not like you for it.

One confusing fact that the existence of personal information hazards help solve is how pessimists are generally more accurate than optimists, but optimists succeed more often. About the only career in which pessimists do better is law, where understanding downside scenarios is particularly valued. Developing a bias towards optimism helps avoid focusing on information hazards that are more likely to bring you or other people down.

One aspect of social grace is developing a habit of not spewing out low-grade information hazards to people. If that is too difficult for some people, and I can relate, then being a little bit more esoteric in your speech and writings might be an alternative solution.

This one’s going in my Personal Bible for sure…

Some recent Ethereum learnings (and I’m still very bullish)

I’ve written before about my interest in Ethereum, and though it’s largely underperforming in the early stage of this current bull market, I believe the Ethereum token, network, and ecosystem will have its day / year / time in the attention sun. For me, part of the spirit and purpose of investing is to channel what capital and energy you have towards the world you WISH to see, and not just purely to maximize return. And Ethereum’s focus on decentralization, openness, pluralism, and a sort of positive idealism (reflected in Vitalik, largely) is something I aspire to. But investing is hard, crypto is always humbling, this is not investing advice, blah blah.

Below are just a few recent tweets / writings / learnings about Ethereum that I wanted to share:

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Ethereum has a yield in excess of its inflation rate. This is the definition of “real yield”, and is unique to Ethereum in the crypto world.
Institutions love yield. Especially real yield. It’s not hard to imagine a world where a bit of crypto risk-appetite in general comes back, and some institutional money managers realize that Ethereum can be viewed as both a tech-growth risk-on play, AND a real-yield play

But Ethereum has durable and unreplicable advantages right now. It is simultaneously
-The most Lindy smart contract chain
–The only smart contract chain that crossed the regulatory chasm
-The only chain with which Coinbase is aligned
-The only chain that has a “yield”

One enormous medium term advantage Ethereum has in the institutional world is that the CME lists an ETH futures contract. BTC is the only other cryptoasset that’s listed on CME. Now with almost 3 years of history, this contract has given regulators, notably the SEC, some level of comfort with trading around ETH that just doesn’t exist for SOL.

Source: https://medium.com/alliancedao/ethereum-is-the-only-institution-friendly-smart-contract-chain-b6a0ac199b6f

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One thing I ♥️ about Ethereum is the ability to easily verify the contract and look at the source code, whereas on Solana, one would need to compile the source code and generate a bytecode file before comparing against what is deployed on the blockchain

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And of course Vitalik’s recent essay on cypherpunk values including:

  • Open global participation
  • Decentralization
  • Censorship resistance
  • Auditability
  • Credible neutrality
  • Building tools, not empires
  • Cooperative mindset

Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/12/28/cypherpunk.html