Balaji appeared on Howard Lindzon’s Panic With Friends recently and I took a bunch of notes and wanted to share them here. As usual Balaji is going 150mph and some of his insights are pretty out there, but clearly the product of deep thought and research. So I need to review what he says multiple times, over an extended period of time, to really let it sink in and do whatever our thoughts do in that squishy computer we have in our skulls.
The notes without attribution are what Balaji said, and I try to note “HL” where I’m sure it was Howard. But there will be mistakes, and they’re solely mine:
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This is America’s first real defeat
Buffett is like the turkey who’s been fattened his whole life and suddenly it’s Thanksgiving
HL: If you own a China stock after Luckin then you’re just lazy. They even cheat coffee, which should be one of the easiest things to sell because it’s an addictive product
Thinks 3 very prescient people: Thiel (US can’t innovate); Gates (actually predicted a pandemic); KaiFu Lee (China can innovate)
“Any sufficiently advanced execution is indistinguishable from magic” re: China ability to build a train station in a day
// a twist on Clarke’s “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
During Yeltsin’s US trip, the moment he seemed to admit defeat was one of the most mundane – when he visited a random Albertson’s
Govts aren’t giving back powers they gained while fighting coronavirus
To fight this, you will need encryption and crypto
The two extremes of coronavirus world is “total state” (China, SKorea) or “market anarchy” (parts of US, Sweden)
Expects UBI, will be both deflation in wants and inflation in needs
Everything physical becomes expensive, all digital versions – travel, games, courts, education – will dominate and in this world digital currency is very important
Internet turned everyone into publishers, crypto turns everyone into investors
Buffett seemed tired – just realizing how hard it is, things have changed, can’t blame the guy for being lost, their fearful leader (speaking of the Buffett investing acolytes) is not a tech person
HL: “We’ve gone from an extrovert world to an introvert world”