Category: Current Affairs
Emergent Ventures winners, 28th cohort
Anup Malani and Michael Sonnenschein, Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, repeat winners, now collaborating on a new project of interest.
Jesse Lee, Calgary, to lower the costs on developing safe and effective sugar substitutes.
Russel Ismael, Montreal, just finished as an undergraduate, to develop a new mucoadhesive to improve drug delivery outcomes.
Calix Huang, USC, 18 years old, general career development, AI and start-ups,
Aiden Bai, NYC, 18, “to work more on Million.js, an open source React alternative,” and general career development. Twitter here.
Shrey Jain, Toronto, AI and cryptography and privacy.
Jonathan Xu, Toronto, currently Singapore, general career support, also with an interest in AI, fMRI, and mind-reading.
Viha Kedia, Dubai/ starting at U. Penn., writing, general career development.
Krishiv Thakuria, entering sophomore in high school, Ontario, Ed tech and general career development.
Alishba Imran, UC Berkeley/Ontario, to study machine learning and robotics and materials, general career development, and for computing time and a home lab.
Jonathan Dockrell, Dublin, to finance a trip to Próspera to meet with prospective venture capitalists for an air rights project.
Nasiyah Isra-Ul, Chesterfield, VA, to write about, promote, and create a documentary about home schooling.
Sarhaan Gulati, Vancouver, to develop drones for Mars.
And the new Ukrainian cohort:
Viktoriia Shcherba, Kyiv, now entering Harris School, University of Chicago, to study economic and political reconstruction.
Dmytro Semykras, Graz, Austria, to develop his career as a pianist. Here is one recent performance.
Please do note there is some “rationing of cohorts,” so some recent winners are not listed but next time will be. And those working on talent issues will (in due time) end up in their own cohort.
Diogo Costa on Brazil
From my email, via Gonzalo Schwartz:
The country ranks third globally in consuming information via digital platforms, a landscape that cultivates distrust in public institutions and ignites social unrest. This has fostered a rise in right-wing populism, including the election of former president Jair Bolsonaro, intensifying what Martin Gurri describes as a ‘crisis of authority.’ Efforts to counter this crisis, however, further destabilize Brazil’s democracy.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes exemplifies this turmoil with his controversial measures, including arbitrary digital content removal, ousting elected officials, and implementing unprecedented surveillance. Moraes and his peers have been criticized for investigating entrepreneurs and freezing assets over alleged anti-democratic private messages, probing executives from Google and Telegram for supposed disinformation campaigns, revoking passports of foreign-based journalists, and censoring a film about then-president Jair Bolsonaro.
The government’s endorsement of these measures amplifies the crisis. It has established a “National Attorney’s Office for the Defense of Democracy” to combat disinformation, while introducing a contested “fact-checking” platform. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office recently requested user data from followers of former President Jair Bolsonaro across major social media platforms to aid their investigation into anti-democratic activities.
Two key anti-corruption figures, Senator Sergio Moro, an ex-judge, and Representative Deltan Dallagnol, a former prosecutor, are under increased political assault. Accused of colluding in past investigations, they now face political retribution. Dallagnol has already been ousted from Congress by Brazil’s electoral court, and many speculate that Moro will follow suit. Their plight was summed up by President Lula’s statement, “I will only feel well when I f*ck with Moro”.
These high-profile cases are emblematic of a broader collapse of Brazil’s anti-corruption efforts. Initiatives like Operation Car Wash, which reclaimed R$3.28 billion out of R$6.2 billion in misappropriated funds, are now being undermined by political backlash. This underscores the urgent need for robust institutions that can effectively combat corruption without succumbing to political pressure.
Brazil’s circumstances resonate regionally due to its leadership role. As Ian Bremmer recently stated, commenting on the Supreme Court making former president Jair Bolsonaro ineligible for the next eight years, “Brazil [is] setting the standard for U.S. democracy”. This political meddling could influence other countries, potentially eroding the rule of law in other democracies.
Strengthening Brazil’s commitment to the rule of law transcends national borders — it’s a regional imperative. The advantages span from curbing corruption to advancing large infrastructure projects unimpeded by interference, as well as bolstering economic relationships given Brazil’s significant role in regional trade.
*War and Punishment*
The author is Mikhail Zygar, and the subtitle is Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine. I have to tell you the subtitle put me off and I nearly didn’t buy this one, as too many books in this area repeat the same (by now) old material. But after some extensive scrutiny in Daunt Books, I decided it was for me. And I was right. It is by far the best book on the origins of the war, both historical and conceptual, and for that matter it gives the literary history as well. Here is one excerpt:
…the Clinton administration’s approach is even blunter: Washington will not discuss anything with Kyiv until Ukraine gives up its Soviet-inherited nuclear arsenal: 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles, able to carry 1,272 nuclear warheads and 2,500 tactical nuclear weapons. True, Ukraine cannot actually fire them: all the control systems are located in Russia. But Clinton and his diplomats echo the same mantra: any economic aid to Ukraine is contingent on all nuclear weapons being relocated to Russia. Kravchuk tries to resist, demanding compensation and security guarantees, in return. In the end, Kravchuk gets the promises he wants.
Among many other sections, I enjoyed the discussion of how revolutionary the 1770s were:
But an even more transformative decade is the 1770s, which sees the birth of the global political and geographical structure as we know it today, the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the laying of the foundations of the modern economy. James Watt invents the steam engine; Adam Smith writes An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Captain James Cook reaches the shores of Australia and New Zealand. Curiously at the same time a new type of political confrontation emerges — the struggle not for one’s homeland or monarch but also abstract values. It is the 1770s that give rise to both populism and the liberal idea.
Definitely recommended, this will make my best non-fiction of the year list.
Argentina update, canine Mastiff edition
A far-right libertarian candidate won Argentina’s open presidential primary election on Sunday, a surprising showing for a politician who wants to adopt the U.S. dollar as Argentina’s official currency and embraces comparisons to Donald Trump.
Javier Milei, 52, a congressman, economist and former television pundit, secured 30 percent of the vote with 96 percent of the ballots counted, making him the front-runner for the presidency in the fall general election.
Polls had suggested that Mr. Milei’s support was at about 20 percent, and political analysts had predicted that his radical policy proposals — including abolishing the country’s central bank — would prevent him from attracting many more voters…
Mr. Milei has pitched himself as the radical change that the collapsing Argentine economy needs, and he could be a shock to the system if elected. Besides his ideas about the currency and the central bank, he has proposed drastically lowering taxes and cutting public spending, including by charging people to use the public health care system; closing or privatizing all state-owned enterprises; and eliminating the health, education and environment ministries…
He then thanked his sister, who runs his campaign, and his five Mastiff dogs, each named after a conservative economist.
Here is the full NYT story, and one dog is named after Milton Friedman, one for Murray Rothbard, and two for Robert Lucas, another being named after Conan. All are clones of the same underlying dog.
I thank MN for the pointer.
The WV Canary in the Coal Mine
West Virginia University has announced a preliminary plan to cut 7% of its faculty and 9% of its majors:
Among the programs recommended for discontinuance, World Languages including all 32 faculty positions. WVU is also recommending the elimination of several programs in the College of Creative Arts, graduate programs in higher education administration and special education.
On twitter there is a lot of bemoaning about the importance of languages but the students are voting with their feet. Indeed, most of these programs are only sustained by foreign language requirements which are increasingly otiose in a world with ubiquitous instant translation. The students are correct, the value of learning a second language has fallen.
Where the ax should fall may be debatable but the ax must fall somewhere because of demographics. College enrollment peaked in 2010 and has since fallen by 15%. What’s going on in WV is thus a reflection of national trends, magnified by West Virginia’s own decline in population. Full paying foreign students from China are also way down. Now add to declining college demographics, budgets hit by the great recession and then the pandemic. Now add in the rise of online learning which means that universities can outsource low-demand classes to other universities and save money and quite likely increase quality. (Indeed, the local teacher might have been teaching online anyway so why not substitute with a world expert and great teacher who has the backing of an entire team of delivery experts?) Finally, add in the fact that a substantial part of the electorate would like to see a decline in programs they see as politicized.
Put it all together and the only surprise is how long it has taken for the ax to fall. You can be sure, however, that there is more chopping to be done.
Why is the Russian ruble now doing so poorly?
And Russia has finally lost control of their currency. The Russian Ruble has officially hit triple digits vs the US Dollar. It is only going to get worse for Russia going forward. pic.twitter.com/Z8Q8libsMV
— Jake Broe (@RealJakeBroe) August 11, 2023
The talks from the Civic Future conference on the Great Stagnation
From my email, from Civic Future:
We held our inaugural annual conference The Great Stagnation Summit 2023 last month at the University of Cambridge. Well, you can now watch and listen to videos of the panel discussions on our YouTube channel. We have also made the discussion transcripts available, which you can read using the links below or on the summit page.
Progress: Have we run out of road? – Tyler Cowen (keynote), David Edgerton, Sam Bowman, Diane Coyle Video / Transcript
Rekindling Britain’s economic flame – Lord Sainsbury, Andy Haldane, Anton Howes, Deirdre McCloskey, Tim Besley Video / Transcript
Progress on trial – Aria Babu, Nicholas Boys Smith, Matt Ridley, Sam Richards, Inaya Folarin Iman Video / Transcript
How to be good stewards of progress – James Phillips, Ben Reinhardt, Stian Westlake, Rachel Wolf, Munira Mirza Video / Transcript
Unlocking the Potential – Matt Clifford, Logan Graham, Saffron Huang, Marc Warner, John Thornhill Video / Transcript
Japan estimate of the day
An estimated 42% of adult Japanese women may end up never having children, the Nikkei newspaper reported, citing a soon-to-be-published estimate by a government research group.
In a more optimistic scenario, a quarter of women born in 2005 may end up not having offspring. The midpoint estimate by Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research calls for a third of them not having children, the newspaper reported Wednesday.
Fairfax County facts of the day
Northern Virginia might be the safest region in the whole country, based on this Bloomberg analysis of crime and external-cause mortality data. The local commonwealth’s attorney likes to boast that Fairfax is the safest county of its size. Letting more people live there would not change that.
Forty percent of Fairfax residents aged five and older speak a language other than English at home, per the May strategic plan update. The county’s extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity makes it a paradise for employers and food lovers alike.
That is from Luca Gattoni-Celli, most of the post concerning zoning issues.
Should we now expect a recession?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and here is one excerpt:
How worried should we be? There is a common and popular tradition that suggests an economic recovery is a harbinger of bad times. Perhaps a recovery has a kind of expiration date, just like the milk in your refrigerator. After some period of time, it simply goes sour, no matter what you might try to do to keep it fresh.
The good news is that the old macroeconomic saying — “Expansions don’t die of old age” — is basically true. Most academic literature supports that conclusion. There is always a possibility that an expansion can turn into a recession, as remains the case today, but the mere fact of an expansion should not be cause for worry.
In 2010, experts were asking whether the economic recovery would run out of steam. Instead, it continued until Covid intervened — and right before Covid, the economy even accelerated. In 2021, the OECD worried that the US recovery from the pandemic might be slowing down. That worry also turned out to be wrong.
Again, the proper conclusion is not that recession is impossible. It is that recession does not become more probable as the recovery proceeds.
Please do not commit the mood affiliation mistake of taking this as a verdict on the Biden administration, one way or the other. It has been known for a long time that the influence of the President on the economy is extremely limited. Furthermore, to the extent the Biden people are Keynesian (and mostly they are), that is the view that implies we should be in a recession right now. Most likely the ongoing recovery is a mix of underlying positive real economy momentum, and Sargent/Lucas credibility mechanisms for getting the inflation down.
Progress in Sri Lanka
…for Sri Lanka, the only country in the region to default on its official debt amid the economic squeeze caused by the pandemic and the Ukraine war, these are sunny days.
Tourism revenue and remittances from Sri Lankan workers overseas have come roaring back. Inflation, which reached 70% last September, was back down to 6.3% in July. As a result, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka has cut its benchmark interest rate by 4.5 percentage points since June…
To win the IMF’s support, Colombo took hard but much-needed steps to increase fuel and electricity prices as well as raise tax rates and extend the tax net. A new central bank governor raised benchmark interest rates by 8 percentage points over the course of 2022 to try to put a lid on inflation and bring a degree of macroeconomic stability…
The IMF, which approved support for Colombo in March, estimates Sri Lanka’s current-account deficit will be around 1.5% of gross domestic product from this year onward. This would be a manageable and normal level for any developing country that is a net importer of fuel and food.
Here is the full Nikkei story, via AM Livingston.
My views on the UFO hearings
I found them very interesting to watch, and wrote my last Bloomberg column on them. Here is one excerpt:
I do not think that the US government has the remains of alien spacecraft, for example, including some alien bodies, as claimed by retired Air Force Major David Grusch. But the rest of the evidence was presented in a suitably serious and persuasive manner. It is clear, at least to me, that there is no conspiracy, and the US government is itself puzzled by the data about unidentified anomalous phenomena.
As for the more serious claims:
Members of Congress, to the extent they desire, have independent access to military and intelligence sources. They also have political ambitions, if only to be reelected. So the mere fact of their participation in these hearings shows that UFOs/UAPs are now being taken seriously as an issue.
The Pentagon issued a statement claiming it holds no alien bodies, but it did nothing to contradict the statements of [Ryan] Graves (or others with similar claims, outside the hearings). More broadly, there have been no signs of anyone with eyewitness experience asserting that Graves and the other pilots are unreliable.
As is so often the case, the most notable events are those that did not happen. The most serious claims from the hearings survived unscathed: those about inexplicable phenomena and possible national-security threats, not the hypotheses about alien craft or visits.
And to conclude:
I suspect that, from here on out, this topic will become more popular — and somewhat less respectable. A few years ago, UAPs were an issue on which a few people “in the know” could speculate, secure in the knowledge they weren’t going to receive much publicity or pushback. As the chatter increases, the issue will become more prominent, but at the same time a lot of smart observers will dismiss the whole thing because they heard that someone testified before Congress about seeing dead aliens.
I am well aware that many people may conclude that some US officials, or some parts of the US government, have gone absolutely crazy. But even under that dismissive interpretation, it is likely that there will be further surprises.
I thank commenter Naveen for the point about declining respectability. A broader question — which I will continue to ponder — is why it is the United States that held these hearings, rather than other nations (NB: I hope you don’t fall for that Twitter map suggesting that UAP sighting are mainly an Anglo phenomenon).
The European Visa Mess
A US passport used to allow visa free travel to more countries than almost any other passport. No longer.
Yahoo: The days of visa-free travel throughout most of Europe are about to change. Starting early next year, the European Union will implement the European Travel Information and Authorization System requiring all visitors from visa-free countries to obtain travel authorization prior to their departure.
Terrorism! Crime! Paperwork!
Of course, this inconvenience will reduce travel to Europe (see here) but tell that to the Europeans and they respond, well the US imposes similar requirements on Europeans. This is not a logical response. As Ronald Reagan liked to say, “if one partner in the boat shoots a hole in the boat, it doesn’t make much sense for the other partner to shoot another hole in the boat.” Logical or not, however, it’s a predictable response so I blame the US and the EU for ruining a good thing.
I hate to be the grumpy old man but one day, not too long from now, I will be telling my children, “I remember when you didn’t need a visa to travel abroad. I also remember when there were no anti-money laundering and know your customer laws!” The kids probably won’t believe me. Of course, if I were a little older I could have said, I remember when you didn’t need a passport to travel abroad! The modern passport dates only to World War I:
Wikipedia: During World War I, European governments introduced border passport requirements for security reasons, and to control the emigration of people with useful skills (italics added,AT). These controls remained in place after the war, becoming a standard, though controversial, procedure. British tourists of the 1920s complained, especially about attached photographs and physical descriptions, which they considered led to a “nasty dehumanisation”.
Try to tell anyone today, however, that we should have a world with no passports and they will think you bonkers. In a few years, Americans will not be able to imagine a world without visas. Apparently, we have gotten used to dehumanisation.
Emergent Ventures India, Cohort Five
The following was compiled by Shruti Rajagopalan, who directs Emergent Ventures India. I will not indent the material:
Ankita Vijayvergiya is a computer Science Engineer and an entrepreneur. She founded BillionCarbon along with her co-founder Nikhil Vijayvergiya, to work on solving two problems that plague India – soil degradation and managing biodegradable waste. At BillionCarbon, they are nutrient mining from biodegradable waste to convert it into liquid bio-fertilizer. Their EV grant is to execute proof of concept with pilots, field trials, and technology validation.
Sujata Saha is an Associate Professor of Economics at Wabash College, Indiana. Her primary research interests are in International Finance and Trade, Open Economy Macroeconomics, and Financial Inclusion. She received her EV grant to study entrepreneurship and economic development in Dharavi, Mumbai, the largest slum in the world.
Aditya Mehta is an Arjuna Award-winning professional snooker player. Through the non-profit organization, The ACE Snooker Foundation, he aims to teach and promote cue sports in India. He is creating a technology-based digital cue sports coaching solution, specifically aiming to develop a curriculum-based approach for schools and colleges across India.
Aditi Dimri (PhD, Economist) & Saraswati Chandra (Engineer, Entrepreneur) co-founded Cranberry.Fit to develop a virtual menstrual health coach with the aim to break through the traditional silence and apathy regarding painful periods and menstrual health. The EV grant supports the development of the virtual coach to help manage menstrual symptoms with the help of a personalized habits plan.
Vedanth Ramji is a 15-year-old high school junior from Chennai, passionate about research at the intersection of Math, Computer Science, and Biology. He is currently a student researcher at the Big Data Biology Lab at QUT, Australia, where he develops software tools for Antimicrobial (AMR) research. He received his EV grant to travel to his lab at QUT, to develop deeper insights into AMR research and collaborate with his team on a publication which he is currently co-authoring.
Abhishek Nath is a 43-year-old entrepreneur tackling public restroom infrastructure and sanitation in urban areas head on. He is determined to bring Loocafe – a safe, hygienic, and accessible restroom for everyone – to cities around the world. He seeks to ensure that no city is more than a kilometer away from accessing a safe public toilet, providing youth easy and safe access to hygienic urban sanitation.
Sandhya Gupta is the founder of Aavishkaar, a teacher professional development institute that aims to educate, equip, and enable teachers of K-10 to become excellent science and math educators. Sandhya and Aavishkaar received an EV grant to help create an army of female Math educators helping students enjoy Math while chartering a career pathway for themselves in STEM fields.
Ankur Paliwal is a queer journalist and founder of queerbeat, a collaborative journalism project to cover the historically underserved LGBTQIA+ community in India. Over the last 13 years, Ankur has written narrative journalism stories about science, inequity, and the LGBTQIA+ community. He received an EV grant to build an online community and newsletter alongside queerbeat, to help transform public conversation about LGBTQIA+ persons in India.
Arsalaan Alam is a web developer, machine learning enthusiast, and aspiring rationalist. He is working on improving the conditions of harmonic coexistence between humans and wildlife. He got his Emergent Ventures grant to continue building Aquastreet, which consists of a hardware device that can be attached beneath a boat, after which it takes in audio of fish’s voices and converts the audio into a MEL frequency and then performs machine learning to classify the fish species, which is then displayed on the Aquastreet mobile app.
Soundarya Balasubramani is a 26-year-old writer, author, and former product manager. She moved to the United States to pursue her master’s at Columbia University in 2017. Immigrants in the US face several barriers, including the decades-long wait times to get a green card for Indians, the lack of a startup visa for entrepreneurs, and the constant political battle that thwarts immigration reform. To reduce the barrier skilled immigrants face, Soundarya is has written a comprehensive book (Unshacked) and is building an online community where immigrants can congregate, get guidance, and help each other.
Aadesh Nomula is an engineer focused on cybersecurity. He is working on a single-point cybersecurity device for Indian homes and small-scale factories. His other interest is Philosophy.
Aurojeet Misra is an 18-year-old biology student at IISER Pune. He received his EV grant for his efforts on a radioactive tracing system to detect and locate forest fires. He hopes to test a prototype of this system to better understand its practical feasibility. He is interested in understanding different scientific disciplines like molecular biology, public health, physics, etc., and working on their interface.
Divyam Makar is a 24-year-old entrepreneur and developer working on Omeyo, a platform to connect local pharmacists, which aims to provide a large inventory to users with all the needed items, along with being super low-cost and interactive. They aim to deliver medicine to their users in as little as 20 minutes.
Divas Jyoti Parashar is a 23-year-old climate entrepreneur from Assam. He founded Quintinno Labs, a cleantech company driving the electric vehicle revolution by developing power banks for EVs. These compact and portable devices that fit in your car’s trunk aim to reduce range anxiety and offer emergency relief to EV users in developing countries that lack a charging station network. He is also working on deploying hydro-kinetic turbines in Assam to generate clean energy from flowing water. His recent passion project was a documentary about the impact of the 2021 volcanic eruption on the local population in La Palma Island.
Ray Amjad is prototyping scalable tools for finding and supporting the lost Einsteins and Marie Curies of the world – young people with exceptional math and science ability from under-resourced backgrounds. He received his EV Grant to help him find collaborators. He graduated from Cambridge, where he filmed many educational videos.
Amandeep Singh is a 22-year-old inventor and entrepreneur interested in machine learning and deep learning. He is building ‘Tiktok for India’, a short video-sharing app that allows people to edit and share videos with the world, create communities, and deliver authentic video content. Prior to this, he founded an AI surveillance startup, particularly for CCTV cameras.
Govinda Prasad Dhungana is an assistant professor at Far Western University, Nepal, and a doctoral candidate at Ghent University, Belgium. He is a public health researcher and co-founder of the Ostrom Center and he designs and implements high-impact HIV/Family Planning programs in marginalized communities. His EV grant will be used for piloting the community-based distribution (using Ostrom’s Design Principles and behavior change models) of a new self-injectable contraception (Sayana Press).
Kalash Bhaiya is a 17-year-old high-school student and social entrepreneur. She founded Fun Learning Youth (or FLY), a nonprofit that employs cohort-based mentorship by volunteers in their localities and received her EV grant to help reduce middle-school dropouts within underserved communities.
Kranthi Kumar Kukkala is a serial entrepreneur and technologist from Hyderabad. He is working on a health care device – HyGlo – a non-invasive anemia diagnosing device. HyGlo is similar to a pulse oximeter, when a person puts their finger in the device probe, it investigates blood inside the finger without taking a blood sample and finds the hemoglobin percentage in the blood. This device can help young girls and women manage anemia (a big problem in India).
Kulbir Lamba is a 35-year-old researcher and practitioner, interested in understanding the startup landscape and received an EV grant for studying the evolution of DeepTech startups in India.
Keshav Sharma is a 23-year-old entrepreneur working at the intersection of design, technology & marketing. Two years ago, he founded Augrade, a deeptech startup with his college friends. Augrade is an AI+AR platform to streamline the creation, editing, validation & visualization of 3D models at scale.
Srijon Sarkar is a 19-year-old researcher from Kolkata interested in mathematical oncology and applied rationality. He received his EV grant to study cancer systems, particularly Epithelial/Mesenchymal Plasticity through a lens of mathematical models and statistical algorithms, during his gap year. He will start his undergraduate degree (mathematics and biology) with a full scholarship at Emory University starting Fall 2023.
Shubham Vyas s an advocate for open discourse and democratic dialogue in India. With a background in data science and interest in philosophy, he received his EV grant to build his venture “Conversations on India,” into a multi-platform media venture to help shape the Indian political and economic discourse landscape.
Navneet Choudhary is an entrepreneur, and his journey started when he was 21 with a food delivery app for trains and buses across 70 cities in India. He received his EV Grant to develop LAMROD, a mobile application-based platform to manage trucking and cargo fleet operations at one place.
Srinaath Krishnan is a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Chennai. He received his EV grant to work on Zephyr, a start-up making credit scores universal and mobile, to enable immigrants to qualify for financial products using their international credit history.
Venkat Ram is an assistant professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, researching the development and deployment of human capital. He received his EV grant to study the structure and functioning of labor addas (proverbial marketplaces most daily wage laborers in India find work).
Arvind Subramanian, is a 25-year-old sailor from Chennai and works as a product manager at Sportstar, the oldest sports magazine in India. He won his EV grant to enable his (and his team’s) participation in the 2022 J80 World Sailing Championship in Rhode Island, USA. He is working towards building and scaling the niche sporting scene in India.
Some past winners received additional grants:
Karthik Nagapuri, a 21-year-old programmer and AI engineer, for general career development.
Akash Kulgod is a 23yo cognitive science graduate from UC Berkeley founded Dognosis, where he is building tech that increases the bandwidth of human-canine communication. His grant will go towards launching a pilot study in Northern Karnataka testing the performance of cyber-canines on multi-cancer screening from breath samples. He writes on his Substack, about effective altruism, talent-search, psychedelics, and sci-fi uplift.
Those unfamiliar with Emergent Ventures can learn more here and here. The EV India announcement is here. More about the winners of EV India second cohort, third cohort, and fourth cohort. To apply for EV India, use the EV application click the “Apply Now” button and select India from the “My Project Will Affect” drop-down menu.
If you are interested in supporting the India tranche of Emergent Ventures, please write to me or to Shruti at [email protected].
More on the Merger Guidelines
Jason Furman and Carl Shapiro write about the merger guidelines. On the thrust of the guideline as political rather than summarzing existing law they are very much in agreement with the Hurwicz and Manne piece that I summarized last week.
Merger guidelines aren’t enforceable regulations. They have also never attempted to be a legal brief or offered an interpretation of the case law. Instead they have described widely accepted economic principles that the Justice Department and the FTC use to analyze mergers. As a result, the guidelines have commanded widespread respect and bipartisan support. Amazingly, for at least 25 years, when regulators have challenged mergers in court, the merging firms themselves have accepted the framework articulated in the guidelines.
The new draft guidelines depart sharply from previous iterations by elevating regulators’ interpretation of case law over widely accepted economic principles. The guidelines have long helped courts use economic reasoning to evaluate government challenges to mergers. They shouldn’t become a debatable legal brief or, worse, a political football.
But in addition Furman and Shapiro make specific critiques:
,,,parts of the draft lack an adequate economic foundation. They contain a structural presumption against many vertical mergers unsupported by theory or evidence. The proposed guideline on acquisitions of products or services that rivals may use to compete includes legal wishful thinking about how commitments made by the merging parties are treated, as the recent court rebuke of the FTC’s attempt to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision illustrates.
Likewise, a new guideline states that “mergers should not entrench or extend a dominant position,” where a “dominant position” means a market share of at least 30%. As we read this guideline, many nonhorizontal deals that enable the acquiring firm to become more efficient, and thus gain market share or compete more effectively in adjacent markets, would be considered illegal even if they benefit consumers and workers….we are troubled by the draft guidelines’ claim that efficiencies won’t be counted, even if they benefit consumers and workers, for a merger that furthers a trend toward horizontal concentration or vertical integration. Imagine if regulators had applied such a rule to the automobile industry in the 1910s.