Canada’s missing entrepreneurs
Companies in Argentina (from my email)
From Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski:
Every weekend, I try to go through interesting articles about Argentina. Here’s something from La Nación that surprised me: it discusses the relatively weak standing of Argentine companies internationally. (https://www.lanacion.com.ar/opinion/las-empresas-argentinas-ante-un-cambio-de-perfil-nid11012025/):
– only 3 of the top 50 largest Latin American companies are Argentine (22 are Brazilian, 14 Mexican, and 8 Chilean). Moreover, only 7 of the top 100 largest Latin American companies are Argentine.
– there are just about $50 billion invested by Argentine companies abroad; compared to $300 billion from Brazil, $215 billion from Mexico, $140 billion from Chile, and $75 billion from Colombia.
Argentina still has a long way to go!
>By the way, what would be your answer to the question: why is Argentina not Australia? I’m currently reading the book ‘Por qué Argentina no fue Australia’ by Gerchunoff and Fajgelbaum, which discusses this topic.
*The Brutalist* (no real spoilers)
As I kept watching, I was thinking “well, this is pretty good but it isn’t great.” But by the time the final scene rolled around, I was convinced. A few points:
1. The Hungarian wife is the best character.
2. The title “The Brutalist” does not refer solely to the architect.
3. The industrial landscapes and shots of an earlier America are excellent.
4. The movie never felt too long, and that is at 3.5 hours.
5. It is an explicitly pro-Israel movie, and that angle I was not expecting at all.
6. The movie does make an actual case for brutalism in architecture. Note the architect and main character starts off as a modernist, not a brutalist.
7. Do pay attention to how this movie “rewrites” Casablanca.
Recommended, for some.
My podcast with Reason
With Liz Wolfe and Zach Weissmueller:
The link here contains the YouTube video, text description, and links to audio versions at reason.com: https://reason.com/podcast/2025/01/10/tyler-cowen-why-do-we-refuse-to-learn-from-history/
Youtube page for embedding is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Kpyg2mFU8
Lots of about libertarianism and state capacity libertarianism, and The Great Forgetting, food at the end…interesting throughout!
Economics in the Age of Algorithms
Great talk from Sendhil Mullainathan. He discusses how machine learning differs from causal inference, how ML can be used to develop new and strikingly original hypotheses, why economists are necessary for the design of recommendation systems and algorithms. Deep but accessible. Provides a very important roadmap for how humans and AI can work together on science.
Saturday assorted links
1. A report on “killing with applause.”
3. Turkish chef recreates 8,600 year old Neolithic bread.
4. Boomerasking (not about Boomers, btw).
5. Peter Thiel publishes the word “struldbrugg” in the FT.
6. Who paid U.S. taxes in 1929?
7. Africa books of 2024, and forthcoming in 2025.
Lunar spectrum markets in everything?
Private companies are staking claims to radio spectrum on the Moon with the aim of exploiting an emerging lunar economy, Financial Times research has found. More than 50 applications have been filed with the International Telecommunication Union since 2010 to use spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enable all wireless technology, on or from the Moon.
Last year the number of commercial filings to the global co-ordinating body for lunar spectrum outstripped those from space agencies and governments for the first time, according to FT research. The filings cover satellite systems as well as missions to land on the lunar surface.
“We will look back and see this as an important inflection point,” said Katherine Gizinski, chief executive of spectrum consultancy River Advisers, which has filed for lunar spectrum for three satellite systems on behalf of other companies since 2021.
Here is more from Oliver Hawkins and Peggy Hollinger at the FT.
Noah Smith on L.A: fire lessons
The best piece I have seen so far, here is one bit:
Basically, the lessons I take away from the horrific L.A. fires are:
- The insurance industry as we know it is in big trouble.
- Climate change is making wildfires worse, but there’s not much we can do about that right now.
- Forest management needs to get a lot more proactive, but is being blocked by regulation.
- Wildfire preparedness is just a lot more important than it used to be.
And this:
Patrick Brown of the Breakthrough Institute estimates that in order to achieve the maximum economic benefit from wildfire suppression, California should be doing almost 4 times as much controlled burning as it currently aims to do, and almost 8 times as much as it’s currently doing. The gains over the last few years are welcome, but also woefully insufficient to the task.
Here is the entire essay. And this guy has a background in fires and forest management, a good piece.
Friday assorted links
1. Perhaps people do not view love as zero-sum.
2. The growing strategic significance of Greenland.
3. Changing building materials to improve carbon outcomes?
4. “The Danish West Indies—comprising the islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix—were sold by Denmark to the United States in 1917. After decades of on-and-off negotiations between the two countries, the U.S. and Denmark signed the Treaty of the Danish West Indies on August 4, 1916, and the formal transfer took place on March 31, 1917. The purchase price was $25 million in gold.” (o1)
5. Brian Albrecht on fire insurance and price controls. Excellent and important thread, for instance: “Over the last 5 years, CA ranks 50th in speed of rate approvals. The avg delay is 236 days for homeowners and 226 days for auto insurance.”
6. China building solar power in space?
7. Zvi reviews the AI segments of my podcast with Dwarkesh. Note in his remarks there is a confusion between government consumption and government spending. p.s. Zvi says he is long the market and is doing well — good! I’ll just repeat my periodic observation that there is nothing — literally nothing — in either the peer-reviewed literature or in market prices — to support the doomster position.
Congestion Tolls versus Congestion Pricing
New York’s new congestion fee appears to be reducing commuting times on key routes (see Tyler and this thread from Michael Ostrovsky). The toll only has two rates, however, on-peak (5 AM to 9 PM on weekdays and 9 AM to 9 PM on weekends) $9 and off-peak ($2.50). I like the way Vitalik Buterin explained a key weakness:
I wish the tolls were dynamic. Price uncertainty is better than time uncertainty (paying $10 more today is fine if you pay $10 less tomorrow, but you can’t compensate being 30 min late for a flight or meeting by being 30 min early to the next one).
Exactly right. Tyler and I make the same point about price controls (ceilings) in Modern Principles. A price ceiling substitutes a time price for a money price. But this isn’t a neutral tradeoff—money prices benefit sellers, while time prices are pure waste (see this video for a fun illustration).
Here in Northern Virginia the toll on I-66 to Washington is dynamic and on-average varies by more than a factor of 6 during peak hours. Everyone complains about congestion pricing when it is first introduced but people get used to it quickly. Albeit in VA we still have the option of paying no-toll which perhaps eases the transition.
Podcast with Misha Saul
Misha lives in Sydney and works in finance and is very smart. Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Some bullet points:
- “[Agency has] one of the most skewed distributions I can think of”
- “You look like you have kids. I thought you would have kids.”
- “You’re going to drive Melbourne into the ground and it will be your fault.”
- “It’s striking to me when I receive Emergent Ventures applications, which is all in English, of course. I hardly ever get any from Australia.”
- Tyler on who he is in German: “Dreamier, more romantic, maybe more relaxed, less obsessed with getting work done.”
There is a good bit of new material in here.
AI-driven hotel planned for Las Vegas
A new, AI-driven hotel is getting set to open in Las Vegas, highlighted by a major presence at CES.
Philippe Ziade, CEO and founder of Growth Holdings, developer of the hotel, detailed the concept as we sat at the CES Otonomus booth display to discuss the venture.
“This is the first truly AI-powered hotel,” said Ziade. “The whole floor is interconnected.”
…The entire focus at the hotel is capturing and leveraging data.
“We create a virtual copy of the guest,” said Ziade. “There is an onboarding before coming to the hotel. We capture information and use AI to scrape the internet and then we track behavior while on property.”
Each guest would have a virtual assistant, which would track and retain that guest’s preferences, which could then be used for subsequent hotel stays.
Ziade said the Las Vegas property is the prototype hotel before national and global expansion of the concept to other locations, such as Dubai…
Due to the large number of variables, such as room sizes, locations, proximity and comfort features, the system is tuned to mix and match the features based on the perceived preferences of the coming hotel guest.
Does it know I want a lot of chargers, thin pillows, and lights that are easy to turn off at night? Furthermore the shampoo bottle should be easy to read in the shower without glasses. Maybe it knows now! Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma.
The sick leave culture that is German
Germans are the “world champions in sick leave”, according to the head of the country’s biggest insurer, who was criticised for demanding that workers without a doctor’s note are unpaid for their first day off.
With the economy slowing and the welfare system under pressure, Germany can ill afford its average per worker of 20 sick days a year, said Oliver Bäte, the chief executive of Allianz SE. The EU average is eight.
The figure of 20 days, based on research by the health insurer DAK, puts a further dent in Germany’s ailing work ethic reputation. Last April, Christian Lindner, then finance minister, admitted that the French, Italians and other nationalities worked “a lot more than we do”, after OECD data showed Germans put in significantly fewer working hours per year than their EU and British neighbours…
“In countries like Switzerland and Denmark people work a month longer per year on average — with comparable pay,” he pointed out.
Here is more from the Times of London. If you can get through the gate, you will see it is Mexico that is the work ethic country.
Thursday assorted links
1. How Japanese architecture adjusted to earthquakes.
2. Was the Berghisel ski jump the most significant building of 2002?
3. How long does it take to get approval for prescribed burns in California?
4. Why the space community should care about Arctic geopolitics: “Any satellite in a polar or sun-synchronous orbit, such as those in critical communications, imagery and weather monitoring constellations, requires an Arctic ground station for consistent tracking, telemetry, and control throughout every revolution.”
5. Is this the beginning of the end for fire insurance in California?
Martha
Martha (Netflix): A compelling bio on Martha Stewart. Her divorce from Andrew Stewart happened more than 30 years ago so the intensity of her anger and 
bitterness comes as a surprise. With barely concealed rage, she recounts his affairs and how poorly he treated her. “But didn’t you have an affair before he did?” asks the interviewer. “Oh, that was nothing,” she replies waving it off, “nothing.”
Stewart’s willpower and perfectionism are extraordinary. She becomes the U.S.’s first self-made female billionaire after taking her company public in 1999. Then comes the insider trading case. The amount in question was trivial—she avoided a $45,673 loss by selling her ImClone stock early. Stewart was not an ImClone insider and not guilty of insider trading. However, in a convoluted legal twist, she was charged with attempting to manipulate her own company’s stock price by publicly denying wrongdoing in the ImClone matter. Ultimately, she was convicted of lying to the SEC. It’s worth a slap on the wrist but the lead prosecutor is none other than the sanctiminous James Comey (!) and she gets 5 months in prison.
Despite losing hundreds of millions of dollars and control of her own company, Martha doesn’t give up and in 2015, now in her mid 70s, she creates a new image and a new career starting with, of all things, a shockingly hard-assed roast of Justin Bieber. The Bieber roast leads to a succesful colloboration with Snoop Dogg. Legendary.
Stewart is as compelling a figure as Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Not entirely likable, perhaps, but undeniably admirable.