Relatively light roundup this week, likely due to Elon Musk buying Twitter plus the incoming midterms sucking all the oxygen from everything else. I do have a Twitter/Musk post in progress tentatively scheduled for Monday. Prediction Markets Would Probably Be Great
Regarding executive orders, I notice I am confused. I have heard a lot of people complaining that these things are bad, violation of democratic norms, etc. I have never held this view, and I think that I and others are kinda talking past each other.
My understanding of an "executive order" is that, generally, the President sees something that he wants to do, determines which agencies have the preexisting statutory authority to do that thing, and then orders them to do it. To me, this seems fundamentally the only way that presidenting can work, because the President can't memorize the entire US code so he basically has to decide his policy goals first and then determine how they could be achieved within the existing executive authority. It thus seems to me that opposing this would be tantamount to saying that if the President wants to do something, he would need to get Congress to go pass a bill giving him the authority to do something that he already has the authority to do...? People claim that opposing executive orders is respectful of Congress vis a vis the President, but this doesn't make sense to me either. It seems to me that Congress should have the ability to choose whether it wants to pass a broad, forward-looking law or a narrow law for a specific purpose. And that the President using a broad forward-looking law for some particular instance that Congress couldn't have had in mind at the time, is in fact the entire point of Congress choosing to pass broad laws.
Obviously, I don't think that's people's real view, but can someone who opposes "executive orders" or think they are a norm violation explain what it is, exactly, that they oppose, and provide one or two examples of the thing that they oppose occuring?
It is certainly not clear to me that overperformance through increased risk is an unmitigated good for shareholders/investors! Wouldn’t you get this same profile if the “good” non-bereaved managers did exactly the same thing as the bad ones plus sold some OOM puts? Do we have evidence that the bad managers are off the efficient frontier?
That Telegraph article on the BOE is from 2021...? Am I missing something here? Doesn't make it any less eyebrow-raising, after the Canada stuff earlier this year, but I wonder what's happened in the intervening 17 months.
Also, I notice I am confused: didn't you write a few years ago that most internet food delivery apps are destroyers of value, and to avoid whenever possible? From https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/minimize-use-of-standard-internet-food-delivery/ : "do not order via online services like SeamlessWeb, GrubHub, Delivery.com or Caviar, if there is another way to contact the restaurant. Period." Have they gotten better since then, or you've simply found more restaurants that cannot be contacted any other way?
-wonder if there's any viable business model where rewards do not at all rely on unfortunate "whales"; probably involves correct pricing somehow.
-feels a bit like a "don't hate the playa, hate the game" situation...even if I personally know my cashback is someone else's cash lost, that isn't convincing enough to therefore pay X% more on ~every transaction and lock out some trades entirely. A dollar here, a dollar there, and soon we're talking about a nontrivial inconvenience.
-besides the actual utility value, I wonder what % of credit card usage is (sub)consciously primarily driven by "must make credit score go up and to the right". Many other loan types exist, but lenders seem to particularly like revolving credit, or so I'm told...
Are these roundups a good place to point out random things that might or might not be relevant to balsa?
Here's an ACX comment talking about the risks of trying to get drugs established as veterinary treatments before going for human approval, and how the feds seem to be clamping down on people who try to get ahold of these drugs for themselves:
re: bereaved managers, obviously we need to test what happens in the opposite: when they have a child!
Awesome! You should check out the prediction market Futuur, we have questions related to Elon Musk x Twitter, and much more!
Regarding executive orders, I notice I am confused. I have heard a lot of people complaining that these things are bad, violation of democratic norms, etc. I have never held this view, and I think that I and others are kinda talking past each other.
My understanding of an "executive order" is that, generally, the President sees something that he wants to do, determines which agencies have the preexisting statutory authority to do that thing, and then orders them to do it. To me, this seems fundamentally the only way that presidenting can work, because the President can't memorize the entire US code so he basically has to decide his policy goals first and then determine how they could be achieved within the existing executive authority. It thus seems to me that opposing this would be tantamount to saying that if the President wants to do something, he would need to get Congress to go pass a bill giving him the authority to do something that he already has the authority to do...? People claim that opposing executive orders is respectful of Congress vis a vis the President, but this doesn't make sense to me either. It seems to me that Congress should have the ability to choose whether it wants to pass a broad, forward-looking law or a narrow law for a specific purpose. And that the President using a broad forward-looking law for some particular instance that Congress couldn't have had in mind at the time, is in fact the entire point of Congress choosing to pass broad laws.
Obviously, I don't think that's people's real view, but can someone who opposes "executive orders" or think they are a norm violation explain what it is, exactly, that they oppose, and provide one or two examples of the thing that they oppose occuring?
It is certainly not clear to me that overperformance through increased risk is an unmitigated good for shareholders/investors! Wouldn’t you get this same profile if the “good” non-bereaved managers did exactly the same thing as the bad ones plus sold some OOM puts? Do we have evidence that the bad managers are off the efficient frontier?
That Telegraph article on the BOE is from 2021...? Am I missing something here? Doesn't make it any less eyebrow-raising, after the Canada stuff earlier this year, but I wonder what's happened in the intervening 17 months.
Also, I notice I am confused: didn't you write a few years ago that most internet food delivery apps are destroyers of value, and to avoid whenever possible? From https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/minimize-use-of-standard-internet-food-delivery/ : "do not order via online services like SeamlessWeb, GrubHub, Delivery.com or Caviar, if there is another way to contact the restaurant. Period." Have they gotten better since then, or you've simply found more restaurants that cannot be contacted any other way?
On credit cards:
-wonder if there's any viable business model where rewards do not at all rely on unfortunate "whales"; probably involves correct pricing somehow.
-feels a bit like a "don't hate the playa, hate the game" situation...even if I personally know my cashback is someone else's cash lost, that isn't convincing enough to therefore pay X% more on ~every transaction and lock out some trades entirely. A dollar here, a dollar there, and soon we're talking about a nontrivial inconvenience.
-besides the actual utility value, I wonder what % of credit card usage is (sub)consciously primarily driven by "must make credit score go up and to the right". Many other loan types exist, but lenders seem to particularly like revolving credit, or so I'm told...
Are these roundups a good place to point out random things that might or might not be relevant to balsa?
Here's an ACX comment talking about the risks of trying to get drugs established as veterinary treatments before going for human approval, and how the feds seem to be clamping down on people who try to get ahold of these drugs for themselves:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/acx-grants-project-updates/comment/10276077