2026-01-24 00:58:10
I’m in Davos. I was last here in 1999 — a period in history marked by (relative) peace, a narrower wealth gap, and techno optimism. Today geopolitics resembles a cross between pre-World War II and the Gilded Age, and Big Tech is the foe. But the most striking change is that the U.S. is no longer the good guy. It’s as if MGM greenlit a body swap installment of the Bond franchise, where 007 and Ernst Stavro Blofeld switch places. Think: Diamonds Are Forever meets Freaky Friday.
American military interventions have always reminded me of the Bond films. The opening act is nothing short of spectacular: a daring production marked by operational excellence, jaw-dropping personal courage, and high-tech lethality. But too often the rest of the movie serves up mediocrity and confusion, resulting in citizens/viewers asking, “How did we get here?”
In response to Iraq invading Kuwait, George H.W. Bush assembled a 42-nation coalition. After a six-month build up, it took 43 days and fewer than 300 U.S. killed for the American-led forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Bush decided to declare victory and leave, vs. attempting to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. The first Gulf War was Goldfinger: There was an iconic villain (Saddam), clear stakes (oil and sovereignty), spectacular set pieces (smart bombs down ventilation shafts), public support (yellow ribbons), and a clear ending. Even the dialogue was Oscar-worthy: “This aggression will not stand.” The plot was a perfect execution of the Powell Doctrine.
It took just 26 days of major combat operations for U.S.-led forces to enter Iraq, destroy Saddam Hussein’s military, and capture Baghdad. The “shock and awe” of Tomahawk missiles decimating their targets, American armored units on “thunder runs” slicing through the opposition, and the toppling of Saddam’s statue were as compelling as the opening of Spectre. Unfortunately, the next eight years also resembled Spectre. Weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photo-op. Abu Ghraib. There was no plan to stand up Iraqi civil society; we just imposed a democracy — a contradiction in terms. Sectarian violence followed, at an enormous human cost: 4,500 American dead, 32,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties. We squandered trillions of dollars — money we should’ve invested in America. Political division at home. ISIS. Iranian hegemony.
Critics panned Spectre for wasting one of the best openings in Bond history and for desperately attempting to retroactively connect the Daniel Craig films into one grand conspiracy. (See: the nonexistent link between Saddam and 9/11, fictional WMDs, and a Neocon pipedream about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East.) W. would be one of the most liked ex-presidents — his Pepfar program was credited with saving millions of lives in Africa before Trump came for it — had he not produced an Oscar-caliber geopolitical disaster film.
The U.S. military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was a serious flex. For months, a surveillance team observed Maduro’s every move, while special forces trained in an exact, full-size replica of Maduro’s Caracas safe house. The night of the raid, hundreds of U.S. warplanes knocked out Venezuelan defenses. In a little over two hours, American forces eliminated more than 50 Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers and captured Maduro and his wife, while sustaining zero dead and seven wounded. The ultimate Bond opener.
A month after the raid, however, America’s intervention in Venezuela is beginning to resemble The World Is Not Enough — a forgettable Bond film with a convoluted plot about controlling oil pipelines in the Caucasus. Trump’s casus belli (fentanyl and cocaine) didn’t survive the press conference; he mentioned illegal drugs just five times, while talking about oil 27 times. However, Venezuela’s black gold is heavy crude; it costs $70 to extract a barrel of oil you can sell for $58. Regime change for oil, 007? That’s like invading the Alps for snow. Cut to: An Oval Office meeting where ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told Trump Venezuela is “uninvestable.”
Where The World Is Not Enough had a bad script, Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” doesn’t have a script at all. After the raid, Trump announced that Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, was in charge, saying she would “make Venezuela great again.” But Rodriguez struck a defiant tone, saying, “There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolás Maduro.” In a column for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, retired U.S. Marine Colonel Mark F. Cancian called the Maduro raid a “military victory with no viable endgame,” likening it to conquering Nazi Germany but keeping the Nazis in charge.
Quantum of Solace is the Bond film nobody asked for. The geopolitical equivalent? Seizing Greenland. In the film, the villain’s scheme revolves around controlling Bolivia’s water supply — a resource he could simply purchase. Trump’s motives are even more convoluted. Greenland has valuable minerals, but 80% of the land is covered in ice, making extraction difficult and costly. One Arctic expert called the idea “completely bonkers,” adding, “You might as well mine on the moon.” Greenland is strategically important, especially as the melting Arctic ice cap opens up new shipping lanes, but we don’t need to invade — we already have the right to reinforce existing bases under a 1951 treaty. Speaking of treaties, attacking Denmark would blow up NATO, the most successful military alliance in history. We walked into a Starbucks with an AR-15, locked and loaded, and demanded a grande latte for $6.46. OK, we can have that without the gun or the threats. So fucking stupid.
What’s the motivation here? Some theories. First, Greenland is 3x the size of Texas. Seizing Greenland, or bribing Greenlanders to break their ties with Denmark and join the U.S., would be a real estate deal on the order of the Louisiana Purchase, albeit with a fraction of the ROI. Second, Trump said he feels that ownership of Greenland is “psychologically needed for success.” Third, like a movie star snubbed by the Academy, Trump is mad he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump’s Greenland folly is Quantum of Solace as written by the writer’s room from Veep, directed by Ed Wood (ask Gemini), and produced by the team that brought you Ishtar. Note: During his speech at Davos Trump backed away from an invasion (#yay).
In geopolitical terms, the audience for Quantum of Stupid was Russia and China. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the NATO concept had “discredited itself.” That’s Russian for “stupid,” i.e., the U.S. is hurting Europe while hurting itself, and we love to see it. Without NATO, Putin could take advantage by rolling up Ukraine and then turning his attention toward seizing the Baltics, Finland, and Poland. A wider European war would likely follow. Meanwhile, China will continue to expand its influence. Last week, during an official visit, Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged Canadian leader Mark Carney to chart a path of “strategic autonomy” independent of the U.S. In a speech at Davos, Carney gave an obituary for the rules-based order America once led, saying, “the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” For China, the entree is Taiwan.
In economic terms, Quantum of Stupid is already a flop. After announcing a 10% tariff on goods from eight European nations that immediately rallied around Denmark, the U.S. got a sneak preview of coming attractions. Denmark’s largest pension fund announced plans to sell off $100 million in Treasuries (it denied the move was political). Pimco’s chief investment officer told the Financial Times it was pivoting away from U.S. assets because of Trump’s “unpredictable” policies. Europe holds 40% of foreign U.S. Treasuries. As Ray Dalio said, “You could easily imagine it could simply become unpopular to buy or hold U.S. debt.” True. You could also imagine the EU weaponizing capital. “For all its military and economic strength, the U.S. has one key weakness: It relies on others to pay its bills via large external deficits,” said Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos, adding that it’s “not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part.”
In You Only Live Twice, Bond fakes his death to infiltrate SPECTRE and stop World War III. The title refers to a Japanese proverb: “You only live twice: once when you are born, and once when you look death in the face.” The Islamic Republic is looking death in the face, and the U.S. has a small window to pull the plug. This should be the Bond film every American wants. The Islamic Republic caused 17% of all U.S. casualties in Iraq and armed anti-American forces in Afghanistan. It remains the world’s chief sponsor of terror, committed to a policy of “death to America.” Iran’s mullahs have a brutal human rights record, especially when it comes to women and LGBTQ people. However, the left is silent, suffering under a moral color code. When the oppressor is brown, it experiences moral paralysis.
We squandered regime change opportunities during the 2009 protests over rigged elections and again in 2022 when Iranian women took to the streets. (Call this a regrettable prequel, Live and Let Live.) Now the regime is even more vulnerable. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has systematically dismantled Iranian proxy forces. Meanwhile, Iran is facing economic collapse — the rial fell by 45% against the dollar in 2025, inflation accelerated from 33% in 2024 to 42% last year, food prices have increased by 70% YoY, and an estimated one-third of Iranians live in poverty. Protests have galvanized society. The resulting crackdown has killed as many as 20,000 Iranians, according to a UN estimate. Airstrikes could defang the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, sabotage could disrupt infrastructure, cyber could cripple regime intelligence and propaganda capabilities while boosting opposition visibility, and special forces could take out the mullahs. The question isn’t whether we’re capable of regime change, but what comes next? The answer is likely something better, or less bad. Military intervention is always a risk, and this is one worth taking.
The tragedy of American power isn’t that it’s declining; it’s that it’s increasingly unserious. We still have the muscle, the money, and the moral case. What we lack is patience, humility, and the stamina for the boring part — asking “What happens next?” Until we relearn how to write second acts, every intervention will look the same: dazzling, destructive, and destined for a sequel no one asked for.
Life is so rich,
P.S. At Davos this week, I sat down with historian Niall Ferguson to discuss geopolitics. Listen on Apple or Spotify, or watch our conversation on YouTube.
The post License to Intervene appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2026-01-17 01:36:57
I hate the “incel” moniker. Throughout 99% of history, 99% of men have been incels for long periods. I was celibate until I was 19 — not by choice. I wanted a girlfriend in high school, but was largely sidelined from the dating game by afflictions common among teen boys: I was painfully skinny and insecure, with bad skin. So I got to work. I enrolled at UCLA, hit the gym, focused on ways to demonstrate excellence (for me it was humor), built friendships with women, and surrounded myself with the impressive men of ZBT. I worked hard and developed the callouses that nearly every successful person has: I learned how to mourn and move on, to endure rejection.
By the middle of sophomore year, I had my first girlfriend. There were a lot of “firsts” in the relationship, but two stand out: Melanie was the first woman I was “me” around, instead of trying to be someone I thought she’d like. And we loved each other. Having an impressive person who could date other men choose and love you is profound.
Struggling to find a romantic partner is normal. Today, however, a dangerous ideology is infecting many young men, who see their incel status as inevitable, and even embrace it, blaming women instead of trying to better themselves. Many aren’t incels, but vcels — voluntary celibates who choose resentment over self-improvement.
The challenges young men face are real. In school, boys fall behind their female peers and are much less likely to become valedictorians and go to college, with the education system biased against them and girls mature faster. American tax policy increasingly transfers money from the young to the old. We’ve adopted a scarcity mindset that only benefits incumbents — and the rising costs for housing and education that result take an especially heavy toll on young men, who are disproportionately evaluated on their economic prospects. Big Tech profits through sequestration and enragement, while digitizing dating has resulted in a winner-take-most environment.
Rather than addressing the problem, leaders on both ends of the political spectrum have inflamed the crisis. The left ignored young men in the lead-up to the last presidential election, espousing the belief that they didn’t have a problem, they were the problem. The far right filled the void with misogynistic, racist, and otherwise hateful messages, arguing that the answer was to send women and non-white people back to the 50s. But here’s the bottom line: Nobody is entitled to reproduce, nor obligated to serve another group. Women are ascending; it’s a collective achievement. Men need to level up.
Government programs and societal shifts will help, but young men should, and will, shoulder most of the responsibility — one that most are addressing but too many abdicate as they slide deeper into the darkness of frictionless online relationships.
These young men fail to recognize the agency they have to transform their lives, instead donning an incel badge to justify their sense of victimhood. My message to young men: Being an incel isn’t a burden you’re destined to bear. If you’ve surrendered, sitting at home all day watching porn, bingeing Netflix, and playing Diablo, that’s on you.
We need to model a healthier vision. My advice: Exercise three times a week, work at least 30 hours a week out of the house, and push yourself into the company of strangers at least three times a month, even if you’re an introvert. This strategy will make you more attractive and increase your odds of finding a partner. Following this rule of threes will put you into the 95th percentile of young men. If you can stay there long enough, you’ll likely have the opportunity to be voluntarily incelibate … which is awesome.
It’s easier to get a job than it has been for most of the last 100 years. Youth unemployment is hovering around 10%, historically low. When I was young, unsure if I could pay tuition, I took any job. If you’re reading this and living with your parents, you should, too. I’m going to Davos next week on my own plane, but I got there by waiting tables, carrying groceries, and hauling golf bags 5 miles in the humid Ohio summer.
On both the economic and social fronts, there are ways to overcome your obstacles and become a better man: Get an apprenticeship. Join a team. Go to a church, synagogue, or mosque. Develop a kindness practice. Learn how to approach people. This is harder in an age when many people are addicted to YouTube and TikTok and third spaces are disappearing, but increasing your risk appetite for the real world is essential.
Adolescence, the gut-wrenching Netflix miniseries that won four Golden Globes earlier this week, stoked the debate about “incel” culture, shining a light on the threats posed by social media influencers known for their misogynistic views. The drama, which follows a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female classmate, tackled symbols such as the “red pill,” a metaphor taken from the 1999 movie The Matrix. Keanu Reeves’s character, Neo, must choose between a blue pill, which will keep him in a state of blissful ignorance, or a red pill, which will awaken him to a painful but enlightening reality. In the manosphere, people who make the latter decision have accepted the supposed “truths” about gender roles, including the idea that the world is unfairly stacked against unattractive and awkward heterosexual men. Here’s the truth pill, re sex: Throughout history, 40% of men and 80% of women have reproduced. In the U.S. today, an estimated 75% and 85% of men and women will reproduce, respectively. American men today are twice as likely to procreate as their ancestors.
Another incel conviction — fed by dating apps that separate potential partners into a small group of haves and a massive cohort of have-nots — is that most men will never find romantic satisfaction, because 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. The bottom 80% of male Tinder users, based on percentage of likes received, are competing for the bottom 22% of women. This leads me to the same conclusion: Young men need real-world venues where they can demonstrate excellence to women, who are more discerning than they are.
The incel movement was in motion long before Adolescence. The term emerged in the late 1990s on a website dubbed Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project, created by a university student who wanted to provide an inclusive hub for people of all genders and orientations who had trouble dating. Instead, the term was hijacked as a “weapon of war,” and the community morphed into a nihilistic, misogynistic subculture.
Our society is producing far too many self-described incels who think it’s acceptable, even aspirational, to give up on relationships, and who become susceptible to biases against women and immigrants. Most will not harm others — their loathing is usually reserved for themselves. About two-thirds of incels say they’ve considered suicide. Instead of retreating amid increased scrutiny, social media accounts are widening their audience and rebranding to bypass bans. Adding fuel to the flame, the algorithms boost many female influencers whose misandry cosplays as social commentary.
Many young men are genuinely trying to forge connections but stumbling over economic and social hurdles — struggles that Democrats are finally starting to take seriously after watching this demographic help Donald Trump retake the White House.
With young men continuing to feel frustation and malaise more than a year into the president’s second term, the Democrats have a chance to win them back. Empathy isn’t zero-sum. The party, and society more broadly, can build on the gains women have registered over the past three decades, while also supporting boys and men.
Young men themselves are part of the solution. Women aren’t to blame for their relationship woes, just as immigrants aren’t responsible for America’s economic problems. Men need to seize the opportunity to become better, and we need to provide an off-ramp for red-pilled men who believe the mating market is rigged against them, helping to prevent their descent into bitterness and potential extremism.
Many young men struggle with mental health — understandable given the challenges they face. But here’s a truth the manosphere won’t tell you: In the end, meaningful relationships are the only things that matter. If you’re alone and resigned to being nutrition for Big Tech, you need to reset and commit to becoming voluntarily incelibate. If you sequester from other mammals, the anxiety and depression you’ll ultimately feel will dwarf any terror about disappointment that exists in the outside world — isolation is the only danger that compounds.
Life is so rich,
P.S. This week, my Prof G Markets co-host Ed Elson wrote about the debate over California’s billionaire wealth tax … and proposed an alternative. Next week, he’ll unpack Jerome Powell’s win against Trump and what it means for our country. Subscribe to his weekly newsletter Simply Put here.
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2026-01-10 00:50:07
Last week, U.S. forces entered Venezuela and arrested President Nicolas Maduro. Regardless of your politics, this was a serious flex from the best-performing organization in history: the U.S. military. Army Delta Force and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (specialized helicopters) accomplished in 35 minutes what Putin has been unable to accomplish in Ukraine in 35 months. But, like most Bond films, our overseas adventures begin strong but then come off the tracks.
Ostensibly, the goal was to stop the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., but there is no flow; according to the DEA, Venezuela has nothing to do with smuggling fentanyl. Trump’s real objective is oil. In a press conference announcing Maduro’s capture, the president mentioned drugs just five times, while talking about oil 27 times. Like so many things with Trump, the “Donroe Doctrine” is a noxious cocktail of greed and stupidity, garnished with calcified ideas from the past. Oil still matters to the global economy, but launching a regime change for oil is like invading Costa Rica for sand. Venezuela’s black gold is heavy crude; it costs upwards of $70 a barrel to extract oil you can sell for $58. The world power curve has been shaped by oil for decades, but a different resource is bending that curve. So, for a moment, let’s ignore that masked government agents are murdering people in American cities — and talk about the new oil. BTW, America’s very founding was an attempt to escape this type of state-sponsored depravity. But I digress.
Rare earths is an umbrella term for 17 metallic elements. Despite the name, they aren’t especially rare, just difficult to extract and refine. Like petroleum, which is a raw input for more than 6,000 products, rare earths find their way into a wide range of modern technologies, including smart devices, solar panels, medical imaging equipment, and vehicles (both electric and internal combustion). Also, similar to petroleum, rare earths are vital to U.S. defense capabilities, from tanks and Tomahawk missiles to satellites. RAND estimates an F-35 fighter contains more than 900 pounds of rare earth materials in its engines and electronics. An Arleigh Burke–class destroyer requires approximately 5,200 pounds, and a Virginia–class submarine uses about 9,200 pounds. The question isn’t what do we need rare earths for, but what do we not need rare earths for? A: Nothing important.
The idea that nations don’t have friends, only interests, is a worldview variously attributed to Lord Palmerston, Charles de Gaulle, or Henry Kissinger. The maxim doesn’t capture the idealism that (sometimes) drives American foreign policy, but it does sum up how statesmen explain the logic of sacrificing blood and treasure in the pursuit of national interests. A nation that secures its interests, oftentimes natural resources, controls its destiny.
For the ancient Romans, salt was more than seasoning, it was the backbone of commerce. In Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, historian Tom Holland views control of the salt trade as the key building block of Rome’s early wealth and military dominance, noting that Rome’s location was desirable, in part, because of its proximity to the salt pans at the mouth of the Tiber River. In SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, historian Mary Beard argues that Rome’s government saw salt as a strategic resource akin to how modern states view energy. Rome built roads to transport salt (in particular, the Via Salaria) and even subsidized salt prices to preserve domestic order.
In the 19th century, Peru held a near-monopoly on guano (bird shit), a critical input for fertilizer as well as gunpowder. In response, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in 1856 authorizing the seizure of more than 100 guano islands. In How to Hide an Empire, historian Daniel Immerwahr notes that guano was so valuable that many called it “white gold.” As Immerwahr writes, “It was the pursuit of this ‘white gold’ that made the U.S. an oceanic empire and laid the foundations for overseas territorial conquests to come.”
During World War II, Japan’s push into Southeast Asia cut off 90% of the global supply of natural rubber, spurring the U.S. to launch a program to mass produce a synthetic alternative. Without rubber, America couldn’t produce tires for trucks and planes, life rafts, oxygen masks, pontoon bridges, certain medical supplies, raincoats, boots, and thousands of other products necessary for waging war. In The Economic Consequences of U.S. Mobilization for the Second World War, Alexander J. Field, professor of economics at Santa Clara University, argues, “Redressing the loss of Southeast Asian rubber imports was more important than the Manhattan Project in making Allied victory possible.”
In 1973, Americans got a crash course in the geopolitics of oil when the OPEC nations flexed their economic muscle to undermine U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The fallout from the embargo caused the U.S. to reassess our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, leading to increased domestic production and a greater emphasis on energy efficiency. Beginning in 2019, nearly 50 years after OPEC’s embargo, the U.S. is now a net exporter of oil. Though we still import some oil, 52% comes from Canada and another 11% from Mexico. Notwithstanding the Donroe Doctrine, which can be summed up as “alienating allies and comforting enemies,” the U.S. oil supply is no longer vulnerable to exogenous shocks.
If rare earths are the new oil, China is the new OPEC. Chinese mines supply nearly 70% of the ore from which rare earth elements are extracted, and more than 90% of the refined materials. Meanwhile, the U.S. imports 70% of its rare earths from China. This asymmetry is a strategic vulnerability. According to a 2025 report from the Center on Strategic and International Studies, China has demonstrated a willingness to “weaponize” rare earths. In 2010, for example, China cut off rare earth exports to Japan over a maritime dispute, threatening to halt its automotive production. Japan responded by importing more rare earths from Australia in the short term and ramping up domestic production long term. Since then, Japanese rare earth imports from China have fallen from 90% to 60% — still too high, but low enough that Tokyo has options if Beijing restricts access. This week, China again banned the export of rare earths to Japan over its support for Taiwan, but, notably, the ban included a far broader category of goods, suggesting China’s rare earth leverage over Japan has weakened.
It’s a different story for the U.S. In April, China retaliated against Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs by restricting the export of seven types of rare earths. Trump folded, naturally, but even after reaching a deal in October to resume exports, the U.S. remains at China’s mercy. According to a recent Bloomberg report, continued restrictions on deliveries of raw materials “hamstring” U.S. efforts to build domestic rare earth processing capacity. Meanwhile, the president’s plans to secure alternative sources of rare earths would be laughable if they weren’t so stupid, i.e., hurting others while hurting ourselves. We’re threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, despite Greenland’s rare earth deposits being low-grade and costly to extract. We also shook down Ukraine for rare earths, but that deal could take more than a decade to bear fruit, as 40% of Ukraine’s mineral resources are inaccessible due to Russian occupation. While we flounder, China dominates. As Deng Xiaoping famously said back in 1992, “The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths.”
In 2024, reports out of Wyoming suggested that the U.S. had hit a rare earth mother load at Halleck Creek. Geo Hussar, an (outstanding) influencer who focuses on geopolitics, believes Halleck Creek, with an estimated 2.3 billion metric tons of ore, 50x China’s reserves, will eventually break Beijing’s stranglehold over rare earths. But according to Karl Friedhoff, a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Halleck Creek is likely to net closer to 7.5 million metric tons of usable rare earth material after extraction and processing. Even using the lower estimate, that’s enough to catapult the U.S. from seventh to third place, just behind Brazil. Still, the objective is getting rare earths out of the ground and into the supply chain. Unfortunately, it takes American mining firms an average of 29 years to go from discovery to operations, putting the U.S. next to last worldwide, just ahead of Zambia.
China monopolized rare earths by providing capital to its leading firms, encouraging rare earth acquisitions abroad, banning foreign companies from buying domestic mines, and eventually consolidating its industry into a few giant players, giving it leverage over prices. In other words, China played the long game. According to a 2025 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis, both the Biden and Trump administrations correctly identified the need to contest China’s rare earth dominance. But to do so, the U.S. must marshal a combination of innovation, international cooperation, and long-term industrial planning. Based on our history, I’m optimistic. Based on our present, however, the good money is on pessimism / catastrophe. Cutting research funding and pursuing a xenophobic immigration policy undermine innovation. Careening from one budget crisis to the next renders long-term industrial planning nearly impossible. And alienating allies while comforting dictators squanders the soft power that made the U.S. the indispensable nation.
One of my favorite aphorisms says “old men should plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in.” Our rare earths deficit developed at the speed Hemingway attributed to bankruptcy — gradually, then suddenly. Our failure is bipartisan, and blame goes to the public and private sectors alike. Rare earths aren’t rare. Long-term, strategic investment is. And the scarcest resource in America today is leaders who will invest in a future we don’t immediately profit from.
Life is so rich,
P.S. My Prof G Markets co-host Ed Elson has launched a Substack. How original. Ed’s first installment is a deep dive into the business that defined 2025: OnlyFans. Read it here.
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2026-01-03 01:00:38
“Buy now, pay later” is booming. This past holiday season, American consumers were expected to spend a record $20 billion using these services, in many cases snapping up electronics, clothes, and other products they otherwise couldn’t afford. But the BNPL mentality extends far beyond retail. Getting a dopa hit today and dealing with the consequences in the future has become the default mindset for millions of Americans. We’re raising a generation of addicts, as tech, gambling, finance, and other companies tap into our constant craving for now. We need to help young men in particular understand the value of slow, compounding gains. Not just the ones that produce financial returns but the kind that pay dividends in your family, friendships, and career — the rewards that really matter. In my new book, Notes on Being a Man, I call this Slowpa. Below is an excerpt.
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Growing up, I was drawn to novel, crazy experiences — in other words, attracted to doing a wide variety of insanely stupid shit. So were most of my (male) friends. At age 8 or 9, we would build ramps and jump with our bikes over one another’s motionless bodies. I would skateboard down Wilshire Boulevard, not on the elbow or the sidewalk, but on the actual boulevard. The third and fourth grades of our school looked like an ER waiting room — casts, bandages, crutches, eye patches.
Then I got older, my incredible maturity obvious to everyone. In high school, I distinctly remember deciding not to study for the upcoming SATs — too boring and time-consuming. That same year, my mom had to sign a release so I could play on the high school baseball team, but I forgot to give it to her, which meant I wasn’t allowed to play the first game and was eventually cut from the squad.
At UCLA, after my freshman year, I applied immediately for financial aid for the next year. I got a shit-ton, too, including Pell Grants. Then, a year later, aware that my junior year was coming up, I decided not to apply for financial aid, and, you know, whatever, take my chances.
Incredibly fucking stupid.
Other highlights from that era include never checking my car’s oil level until the dashboard screamed with yellow and red symbols alerting me that either the engine was about to explode or a comet had just collided with Earth. When this car was later towed to a city pound — encumbered under the weight of dozens of unpaid parking tickets — I thought, Fuck it, and never saw it again. Later, during my first real job, at Morgan Stanley, I was given the profoundly complex task of hand-delivering a proposal to a client. All I had to do was board an a.m. flight to San Francisco. I missed the flight.
Among other things, the brain’s prefrontal cortex helps us get the easy stuff right. Until 25, I got more than my fair share of easy stuff wrong, didn’t take responsibility, most of the time had no ability to plan, and continually messed up.
A tendency for risk-taking, mixed with poor impulse control, renders many young men helpless against a torrent of on-demand dopamine provided by the world’s richest tech companies and makes maturity a hard sell for teen and college-age boys — at least, relative to girls and young women. You almost never hear about people named Laura and Elena eating Tide Pods or blowing off their final exams. Why?
Male and female brains are more than 99% identical. There are variations, though. Men have more than double the brain space and processing power devoted to sexual drive. The male amygdala, home to fear, anger, and aggression, contains testosterone receptors that make males lose their cool faster and more easily. But where the male and female brains diverge most sharply is in their development, especially during adolescence. By age 14 to 16, male and female brains have stopped growing, with the exception of the prefrontal cortex, or PFC. Girls attain “peak values of brain volumes” earlier than boys do — Latin for “girls get their shit together way sooner.” Basically, the female PFC matures up to two years before the male PFC does.
The PFC is the grown-up in the room, the CEO. The brain is a network; e.g., overlap is a feature, not a bug. No single brain region governs one instinct. But science agrees that a healthy PFC regulates impulse control, decision-making, good judgment, reasonableness, emotional regulation, and planning/prioritizing between the stuff you have to do versus the stuff you’d rather be doing (getting drunk or high, rewatching Family Guy).
At the start of puberty, boys are basically force-marinated in testosterone. T makes them more monosyllabic than usual. Their socializing, never strong to begin with, narrows to sports/physical activity, depending on the kid, and thinking about sex. With their thicker, denser muscles and deeper voices, boys may look impressive and imposing, but behind the forehead, girls have lapped them. By 14 to 15, girls have greater volume and complexity in their PFCs and thus, theoretically, more maturity than boys. They’re better decision-makers and problem-solvers. They can overcome their brains’ reward circuits with a good counterargument or simply by deploying common sense.
The male PFC catches up around age 25, when many young men get their act together. Until then, they’re at a huge maturity disadvantage.
Waging war against a young man’s unformed PFC is like trying to wean a kid off salty snacks in favor of carrots and radishes. With my two boys, I do my best to illustrate the differences between the feverish, relentless dopa hits they get from TikTok and Instagram versus the slower, incremental results that are more valuable and satisfying from reading, working out, or spending time outside — slow dopa, or “Slowpa,” as I call it. If tech dopa hits are like shoving handfuls of Cheetos or Snickers into your mouth — i.e., they don’t fill you up, you hate yourself, and you want more — Slowpa is more like the salad you order that makes you feel healthier for a week. When my boys were little, we spent a fortune on Legos. If Slowpa ever hires a celebrity spokesperson, it should be Lego. Building a model out of 1,300 pieces of lightly hued plastic requires one to two hours daily, plus focus, but then two weeks later you have a really cool Millennium Falcon or Blacktron Renegade to hang in your bedroom. On weekends, Alec, my oldest, likes cooking with his mom. That’s an hour spent chopping, measuring, grating, kneading, basting, followed by another hour watching the oven. Dinner, but also Slowpa.
Children today are overprotected in the real world and under-protected online — an observation made by my NYU colleague Jonathan Haidt. At age 13, I flew from LAX alone to visit my dad and stepmom in Ohio. Looking back, the 1970s may seem lax, negligent, and flaky, but parents were onto something. Nowadays, if, say, my 14-year-old son wants to have a party, no, I won’t go out and score a case of tequila for him, but I won’t hover, snoop, or get in the way of his plans, either.
I recently showed both boys a TikTok by some ex-finance guy. What he said was basic, obvious, and great: Success comes when you put in small, consistent amounts of effort, every day and every week; it doesn’t matter whether you’re investing, filming two minutes of video content, or lifting dumbbells. Small, deliberate, regular efforts accumulate and in time pay off. In other words, the most powerful force in the universe — Einstein knew this — is compound interest. Aka, Slowpa.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Notes on Being a Man was published in November and is available in all the usual places.
The post Slow Dopa appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2025-12-20 00:39:54
Every year, we make predictions. Our missives on 2025, made in October ’24, registered the most direct hits since we first pulled out our Ouija board a decade ago. Our objective isn’t to be right — though that helps — but to inspire a conversation that crafts better solutions. OK, enough of that. We begin with our 2025 report card, followed by our 2026 predictions.
The question isn’t when the AI bubble will burst, but what the catalyst will be. A: China. Trump has changed U.S. tariffs on China 17 times this year. They’re tired of having a major trading partner with sclerotic decision-making and the demeanor of a raccoon on meth. Since 2019, China has decreased its share of exports to the U.S. from 17% to 10%. Meanwhile, China’s global exports are up 40%, while imports are flat. Trump’s tariff policy is the definition of stupid: hurt others while hurting yourself. It has not inspired an increase in domestic manufacturing, but a decrease in exports, as reciprocal tariffs take effect, and a rerouting of the global supply chain around the U.S. “Higher prices, lower growth” makes for a lousy bumper sticker.
If I were advising Xi, I’d counsel him to go for the jugular by engaging in AI-dumping, a repeat of their aughts steel-dumping playbook. It’s already underway — and working. Eighty percent of a16z startups use open-source Chinese models. Same story at Airbnb. China is registering similar or better performance as the American LLM leaders, but with a fraction of the capex. Flooding the market with competitive, less-expensive AI models will put pressure on the margins and pricing power of the Mag 7, taking down a frighteningly concentrated S&P and likely sending the U.S., possibly the globe, into recession.
OpenAI is promising Oracle $300 billion — money it doesn’t have — for infrastructure Oracle hasn’t built. We can’t see the actual contract, but this is BS. The greatest AI hallucination yet is the assumption that in the next few years we’re going to build anywhere near the required grid and power capacity. OpenAI needs 20% of current U.S. electric capacity — equivalent to 250 nuclear power plants — at a cost of $10 trillion. There’s a five- to eight-year wait to connect a new data center to the grid. Meanwhile, China has more than twice America’s energy capacity at half the cost. Second greatest AI hallucination? Job creation. The average number of full-time employees at a data center is equivalent to the number of people working at two Applebee’s.
Based on its valuation, Nvidia is telling the market it will add an additional $800 billion in revenue over the next five years — equivalent to the combined revenue of Apple, IBM, Meta, and Tesla. OpenAI, which has $20 billion in annual revenue, is projecting it’ll add $180 billion in revenue over the same period — equivalent to the combined revenue of Disney, Fox, the New York Times, Paramount, and WBD. Also, OpenAI’s $1.4 trillion in spending commitments exceeds Argentina’s national debt.
Meanwhile, the competition is heating up. China is putting out comparable models at a fraction of the price (see above), Anthropic has captured the lead for enterprise users, and, as I predicted last year, the empire (Alphabet) is striking back. Gemini summaries are improving, and arguably the greatest concentration of AI talent resides at Alphabet. OpenAI could be our era’s Netscape, i.e., the disruptor that enjoys a moment in the spotlight before being eclipsed by an incumbent.
I’m bullish on Amazon, even though it underperformed the Mag 7 this year. The collision of AI and robotics is the Champagne and cocaine cocktail fueling Amazon’s retail margin expansion, catalyzing a 2x increase in the gross merchandise value of its largest business (retail) by 2033, without adding any human workers. Just as Ford’s assembly line slashed automotive production time by 88%, Amazon’s robotics investments have reduced the time from click to ship by 78%. The rest of the Mag 7 capitalizes on the elevation of information (bits) over objects (atoms), while Amazon is leveraging bits to move atoms faster and cheaper. Notably, the market hasn’t priced this in yet; in 2025 Amazon stock traded at a P/E ratio of 33, compared to its historic average of 58. The greatest accretion in shareholder value from AI will be at companies that leverage others’ AI. Specifically, Amazon. 
When technology gets cheaper, startups form, the ecosystem attracts cheaper and cheaper capital, which spurs innovation, and so on and so on. The cost of the personal computer decreased 58% during the 15-year dot-com boom, and U.S. IT spending increased 200%. The same pattern is happening now with AI: The cost of GPU operations has fallen by 74%, while global AI funding has risen by 280%. The key metric for space? Over the past 15 years, the cost to get a kilogram of payload into orbit is down 89%, while private U.S. space investment jumped 6x.
SpaceX is dominant, registering 84% of U.S. space launches in 2024, up from 18% in 2008. If I were running investor relations, I’d position SpaceX as follows: Google owns 93% of information with search, Meta controls two-thirds of social connection, Amazon has half of e-commerce. SpaceX controls 90% of everything else in the universe. Everything is a subset of the addressable market that is space.
TikTok’s success underscores the biggest mistake marketers make, believing choice is a good thing. It isn’t. Consumers spend five days per year deciding what to watch on Netflix. TikTok has only one channel, and it’s the best one you’re ever going to watch. Forty-three percent of Americans 18 to 29 get their news from TikTok. We also spend more time, on average, with TikTok (54 minutes per day) than with friends (35 minutes). When I say TikTok is our new best friend, I mean CCP spy. But I digress.
The math on TikTok’s forced sale doesn’t math, though, unless you’re one of the president’s cronies. TikTok’s U.S. ad revenue was $12 billion in 2024. Applying a 10x P/S ratio, its U.S. business has an implied value of $120 billion. Accounting for a revenue share with China, Trump’s deal values U.S. TikTok at $28 billion. But I’m a Democrat, so I’m not allowed to invest. These insider deals reduce people’s faith in the market, raising the cost of capital for everyone. U.S. economic policy could best be described as corrupt, but stupid.
Hollywood is the new Detroit, but with better weather. For creatives, the return on human capital is inversely correlated to the size of the screen. Seventy-eight percent of Americans age 10 to 24 watch TV and movies on YouTube and TikTok. The Kids Diana Show on YouTube averages between 2 and 10 minutes per episode — perfectly calibrated for young people’s shrinking attention spans. The show registers 137 million subscribers; Disney+ has 128 million subscribers.
The other meteor headed for Hollywood is AI. What AI will do to Hollywood is what podcasting is doing to TV. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert employs 200 people, costs $100 million, and makes $60 million. When Colbert shifts to podcasting, he’ll take eight people with him and make just $20 million, but it’ll only cost $5 million to produce. The means of production are being arbitraged. There will be outrage from the creative community, who believe they’re too precious to face disruption. But consumers, much less the Ellisons, don’t give a shit.
Automobile deaths kill 40,000 Americans annually — equivalent to prostate cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and breast cancer combined. Autonomous driving may be the equivalent of a cure for (some types of) cancer. A study evaluating tens of millions of miles driven by Waymo found that its autonomous cars were involved in 96% fewer vehicle-to-vehicle crashes, resulting in 90% fewer bodily-injury claims, and 92% fewer pedestrian injuries compared to cars driven by humans.
Waymo went from 38,000 paid rides per month in 2023 to 1 million just two years later. The company is lapping the competition, logging 100 million fully autonomous miles, compared to Tesla’s 1.25 million miles with human safety monitors. The second horse to watch is Uber. It’s technology-agnostic, choosing to pour capital into the consumer experience. As former CEO Travis Kalanick said, the most expensive part of the business is the person in the driver’s seat.
Similar to self-driving cars circa 2015, humanoid robots are another Musk weapon of mass distraction designed to draw attention away from the fact that Tesla is a car company. Tesla’s market cap per car sold is 77x what it is for GM and Ford, 28x Toyota, and 24x BYD. According to Musk, Tesla’s Optimus robot will be an “infinite money glitch” that ends poverty and performs surgery. It’s as if he’s on ketamine. According to MIT robotics professor emeritus Rodney Brooks, “We will have plenty of humanoid robots 15 years from now, but they will look like neither today’s humanoid robots nor humans.” The current / future opportunities aren’t robots that mimic humans, but robots that augment / replace humans at industrial scale.
Prediction markets leverage the wisdom of crowds. In turn, crowds supercharged by integrations with news brands create a virtual self-propulsion marketing machine. Participants may be deluded into believing they’re engaging in an intellectual pursuit when they bet on an election’s outcome, but it’s gambling, just more fun and interesting. What GLP-1s did to fast food, prediction markets are doing to the gaming business. Aristocrat Leisure, Caesars Entertainment, DraftKings, Evolution Gaming, Flutter Entertainment, and MGM Resorts are down 22% YTD, on average. Las Vegas tourism is down 8%. Nobody will be in Vegas once Vegas is on everyone’s phone.
The externalities are huge. Half the men in the U.S. between 18 and 49 have a sports betting account. Among sports bettors, 23% say they’re addicted; the share jumps to 37% for Gen-Z. One in five people with a gambling addiction attempt suicide. Personal bankruptcy filings increased by 28% in states that legalized sports betting after a 2018 Supreme Court ruling. There are also civic externalities, as prediction markets represent the mother of all insider trading opportunities. Wagering on what Musk will Tweet next, Trump’s Fed pick, the speed of a pitch, or when a candidate will drop out of a race invites corruption into every aspect of American life.
There’s a use case for AI companions, but it’s uncomfortable — a sad story about lonely old people. One-quarter of Americans 65 and up are socially isolated, increasing their risk of stroke and dementia by 30% and 50%, respectively. The share of the population aged 65 and older is projected to reach 21% by the end of the decade. In one year-long analysis of older Americans living alone, 95% of participants said bots reduced loneliness. If synthetic relationships can make older people less lonely and stave off dementia, that’s great.
The problem? Young people aren’t developing the skills to navigate life’s hardest / most rewarding thing: relationships. Google search volume for “how to make friends” has increased 5x since 2004, while the share of Americans who say they have no close friends increased 4x from 1990 to 2021.
I believe synthetic companions are the next opioid crisis for young people. On Character.ai, 79% of the users are under 35; the average session is 93 minutes. In any given week on ChatGPT, 560,000 people show signs of mania or psychosis, while 1.2 million people engage in conversations that indicate they have a plan to self-harm. Unfortunately, Congress is The Walking Dead meets The Golden Girls. They see the danger from synthetic relationships about as clearly as the propaganda threat posed by TikTok.
Some of the most successful people of our age are college dropouts — Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Oprah. You should assume your son is not Oprah. Despite the noise about employers removing degree requirements, the share of workers without a degree increased only 3.5% between 2019 and 2024, while 45% of all firms made no changes to their hiring practices. In pure economic terms, the median household income for a college graduate is more than 2x what is for someone without a degree. College graduates see better nonfinancial outcomes, too, in the form of lower rates of obesity, divorce, and suicide. On average, they also live six years longer.
After declining during the pandemic, enrollment has rebounded. The issue isn’t value add, but value (i.e., cost). Adjusted for inflation, tuition rose 53% and 32% at public and private schools, respectively, between 2000 and 2025. Why? A: My industry is corrupt. We artificially sequester supply so we can raise tuition faster than inflation. Faculty, administrators, and alumni are drunk on exclusivity. We’ve lost the script and begun believing we’re luxury goods, not educators.
Finally, Team Scotland will reach the semifinals of the World Cup on the back of a Pele-like performance from Scott McTominay. Hey … I can dream.
The best way to predict the future is to make it. I hope the New Year brings you the perspective and presence of mind to realize that, if you live in America, are healthy, and have people who let you love them completely, 2026 will be the best year of your life.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Start the year off with a New York Times bestseller. (Flex.) Notes on Being a Man is available in all the usual places.
The post 2026 Predictions appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
2025-12-13 00:38:56
Netflix’s $83 billion deal to buy most of Warner Bros. would unite Stranger Things and KPop Demon Hunters with Game of Thrones and The White Lotus, creating a streaming powerhouse. With Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters at the helm, the combined company would also be led by the smartest team in the entertainment industry. I know Ted and, like most who meet him, admire him.
I don’t know David Ellison, and I find kids of billionaires trying to reshape the culture with a 12-figure jackhammer a bit … gross. But the Paramount boss — who’s trying to thwart Netflix with a hostile $108 billion bid for Warner Bros. — is right: A Netflix takeover would likely be bad news for consumers at a time when many are facing an affordability crunch. The fight over the century-old studio is also a great example of the cronyism and head-up-your-ass economics of the Trump administration that adds fuel to the crisis.
Anticompetitive
Ellison argued on CNBC that allowing two of the biggest streaming services to join forces is “anticompetitive.” As the son of Larry Ellison, the world’s third-richest person, Paramount’s CEO has close ties to Donald Trump and access to a seemingly bottomless pool of capital. It’s obnoxious listening to a guy raised in a gravity-free financial environment warning others about the dangers of market distortion. After giving that interview, did he go into the kitchen of the restaurant and lecture the line cooks on the dignity of minimum wage? I digress.
Socialism
After giving the elder Ellison a significant role in his plan to transfer TikTok’s U.S. operations to a group of American investors, Trump is pledging to get involved in the regulatory fate of a Warner Bros. takeover. This is straight-up socialism — the state controlling the means of production.
Everyone knows we’re sliding into a stew of autocracy/kleptocracy, so Sarandos also wooed Trump in the lead-up to announcing his agreement on Dec. 5, securing a secret White House meeting with the president. But before unveiling his rival offer two days later, Ellison reminded his adversary who has the political edge. The Silicon Valley scion was spotted beside Trump at a ceremony in D.C. Who the president, or podcasters, believe is the rightful owner shouldn’t matter. It’s simple: It should be whoever shows up with the biggest check and passes regulatory reviews.
Dominant Position
Concentration of power in streaming might corrupt the market, similar to the corruption the country endures when a few people can reshape media, tech and Washington. Anyway, back to streaming. With more than 300 million subscribers, Netflix already has a leading position. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney control over 60% of the market. Acquiring Warner Bros. would give it even more power, with one of the largest libraries of premium scripted content and some of the most valuable entertainment franchises. Combining HBO — the gold standard of television — with Netflix — the streaming superstore — is like fusing LVMH and Walmart.
Less Choice, Higher Price
If Netflix captures HBO Max, the streaming war (ad-free, original content) is over. The upshot, despite Netflix’s assurances that the combo will create greater value for consumers, is fewer choices. At some point, as concentration intensifies, all the companies’ stocks will fall, as there are fewer people who can afford to buy their stuff.
This trend is well underway, with the top 10% already accounting for 50% of consumer spending, making the economy more fragile. One-tenth of the population can crash the train. A Paramount deal also raises competition concerns, given the two companies have rival film studios with theatrical releases and overlapping streaming services. But there’s a reason Paramount would probably face an easier regulatory path — and it’s not just the support it would receive from Trump. It boils down to market share.
Streaming prices are climbing, along with the cost of groceries, gas, and housing, as the industry consolidates. The average subscription price for the top 10 U.S. platforms has risen 12% this year, far outpacing inflation, following double-digit increases since 2022. U.S. households spend an average of $70 a month on streaming services, a significant sum for people whose grocery bills have climbed 30% over the past five years.
Chicken vs. Beef
The companies say they have to raise prices to pay for the premium content they provide. But what the increases really signal is a transfer of capital from consumers and labor to shareholders. Adding the studio and streaming assets of Warner Bros. would give Netflix even more leverage.
If Netflix wins, the most critical question will be whether it’s competing with premium streaming platforms or virtually all digital video content vying for attention. Netflix isn’t nearly as dominant if you factor in Alphabet’s YouTube and ByteDance’s TikTok, as Kara Swisher, my Pivot co-host, points out. But regulators should adopt the narrower market definition. Otherwise it’s akin to chicken producers defending their control of the market by suggesting their competition extends to cattle ranchers and pistachio farmers.
Also, consolidation won’t stop with Netflix or Paramount and Warner Bros. The deal will only put more pressure on rivals, including Comcast, to follow with their own transactions to scale their streaming platforms.
From Indignation to Ideas
Streaming subscriptions are just one part of a wider debate. Everyone from Donald Trump to New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is talking about affordability. However, the country is long on indignation and short on ideas or programs to actually bring prices down. The president has insisted that tariffs will boost the economy, when in fact they’re pushing prices higher and fueling concerns over the cost of living. Trump, who once vowed to “make America affordable again,” now calls concerns about increasing prices a “hoax” perpetrated by the Democrats.
Americans know this is bullshit. The use of buy-now, pay-later services is rising to record levels this holiday season. Yet they’re also not buying the message from Democrats, who highlight the need to curb health, housing, food, and energy costs but resort to stoking outrage and throwing money at people vs. implementing concrete structural change. Here are four ideas that aren’t sexy (i.e., they will take work):
Build, Baby, Build
Housing should be at the top of the agenda, as it’s the primary culprit driving the lack of affordability. Half of renter households in the U.S. are cost-burdened, meaning they spend 30% or more of their income on shelter. Higher expenses curb labor mobility and productivity, deter families from seeking medical care, contribute to anxiety and depression, and fuel homelessness. While rent control is tempting, it suppresses development longer term, only adding to the problem. Higher costs for labor, building materials, and regulatory compliance exacerbate the housing shortfall.
We should have tax credits to unleash private development to build 8 million to 10 million homes in the next decade. Yimby laws (yes in my backyard) and cost-effective building are also part of the solution. Manufactured homes, built in factories and finished on site, are 35% to 73% cheaper than homes built entirely on location.
Nationalize Medicine
The U.S. healthcare system is broken — for the bottom 90%. Many Americans are one medical expense away from sliding into debt. More than 30 million citizens, especially Black and Hispanic adults, borrowed money to pay for healthcare last year, accumulating $74 billion in medical debt. Enough.
Let’s take Medicare and lower eligibility by two years every year for the next decade. That would bring the age of eligibility to 45 in 10 years. What is that called? Nationalized medicine. We can help younger people in other ways. They aren’t the ones accounting for the vast majority of surging health costs.
Impose Tuition Caps
We also need tuition caps based on income. As a freshman at UCLA, I benefited from an annual tuition of just $1,350 (and an admissions rate of 74%). A degree from a prestigious school opens doors and potentially quadruples the income a person can expect to make, but the ROI has declined as costs have ballooned.
If your family is middle-class, the tuition should reflect that. Colby last year announced a program to cap the cost of tuition, room, and board at $10,000 a year for families who earn up to $100,000, and $15,000 for those with incomes ranging from $100,000 to $150,000. That compares with a net price of as much as $53,000 a year.
If universities with endowments greater than $1 billion aren’t increasing freshman enrollment faster than the population is growing, they should lose their tax-free status. They’ve decided they’re Birkin bags, not public servants.
Trust-Busting
Concentration of power harms consumers and workers, with the benefits flowing to shareholders. It’s up to regulators to break up or block harmful oligopolies that stifle competition. The nation’s regulators are supposed to enforce antitrust law based on guidelines about market share and other standards, but giving the president the ability to “engage in post hoc manipulation” undermines the rule of law, as Herbert Hovenkamp, an antitrust scholar, told the New York Times.
More Oxygen
The pursuit of Warner Bros. is more than just a transaction. It’s a microcosm of a wider emergency. We can’t complain about surging costs while ignoring the factors behind them. We need to have an adult conversation, saying no to harmful deals and yes to policies that spur competition and rein in health, housing, and education costs.
It’s telling that the loudest objection to this nascent monopoly comes from a Hollywood mogul who’s never lived outside one. But we should listen to him. Consolidation is a tax on the young and the poor, levied to protect the old and the rich. Affordability begins with a simple idea: more firms, more competition, more oxygen.
Life is so rich,
P.S. This week I spoke with Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, about the AI dilemma. Listen here on Apple or Spotify, or watch on YouTube.
The post The Streaming Wars and Affordability appeared first on No Mercy / No Malice.
