A good word for Fox News

As Fox News faces a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, I would like to put in a good word for Fox News.

I used to hate Fox News. When I was a kid, I was a devoted Democrat and thought that Fox was just a bunch of Republican propaganda, and that the U.S. government should force them to give equal weight to Democratic arguments.

I still believe that Fox should show more alternative points of view than it currently does and act less like the official Republican Party media organ, more like an independent news outlet like its sister organization The Wall Street Journal. It has been toxic for the Republican Party to depend so much on what the right-wing media thinks, where there is often herd behavior.

At the same time, Fox News does an excellent job on certain counts. Most importantly, it is an effective news outlet for the Resistance against the current establishment on the left and some of the establishment on the right. (If you can imagine TV in Star Wars. Have you ever noticed how Star Wars doesn't have any TVs? At least as far as I remember.)

Tucker Carlson had an excellent TV segment a month or two ago about how there has been consistent sabotage of trains and electricity and other infrastructure in the U.S. from abroad, and how this effectively amounts to a foreign invasion that no one is talking about. That is stuff you will not get almost ANYWHERE else because Tucker is uniquely insightful and honest, in spite of the slander that you often hear about him.

It's hard to find Fox ever criticize Donald Trump; they should be able to criticize him and any other reasonably important public figure. But overall, Fox is uniquely fair to Republicans and gives a megaphone to some of the best ones.

I recommend watching Fox News more, particularly their signature shows. You might be persuaded that it's better than you think.

[Caveat: I don't know the details of how Fox News is run or its secrets. So take this take with a grain of salt.]

The U.S. Congress needs to meet ASAP

The U.S. Congress currently is out on vacation. They were originally planning to come back on Monday, April 17, but now it’s unclear when they’re coming back. Congress needs to get back into session as soon as possible so that they can make important decisions as needed. These are not normal times.

It would be preferable if they stopped voting along party lines so often. Every member of Congress should be able to make their own decisions and vote their conscience.

Dear President Biden...

Dear President Biden,

I hope that you, your family, and your administration are doing well.

During your State of the Union address tonight, I was wondering if you could please send your well wishes to major world leaders, whether or not they consider themselves allies of the United States, in order to build good will with them. If you could just say that you're thinking of them, you hope they're healthy, happy, and prosperous, and you've been reading or watching some of their speeches recently, and you learned something from them, I think that could go a long way toward building more good will toward the U.S. from the rest of the world. All while standing firm in your own resolve to defend U.S. sovereignty, of course.

We're currently in a perilous time with the war in Ukraine, and with China and other countries feeling emboldened, it is crucial that we don't stumble into World War III. And showing some appreciation for political leaders like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can go a long way. Let's be honest, all four of these leaders--despite their antagonistic posture toward the U.S.--are fundamentally rational and normal enough, and they have good qualities too. This is highly preferable to dealing with someone who's completely impossible to deal with, so we shouldn't take it for granted.

I also hope that you can help bring an end to partisan divides in Congress once and for all. Right now, it appears that most votes are split along party lines, rather than having each senator and representative vote their conscience and develop more of their own legislation. Can you help set things up so that each senator and representative can truly vote their conscience?

I also was wondering if you could please name a cure for aging as a good long-term solution to the national debt. If people could live youthful, healthy lives into their 70s, 80s, and beyond, then there would be less need for Medicare or Social Security, at least at younger ages.

Another thought on the debt ceiling drama right now is that you could impose a high value added tax, which is a form of consumption tax, which ultimately could replace the income tax if you were interested.

Thank you.

China's President Xi Jinping Called for "Win-Win Outcomes" in January 2022

Chinese president Xi Jinping struck a conciliatory tone at the World Economic Forum’s virtual Davos Agenda meeting on January 17, 2022, a little more than a year ago. You can watch his speech here and read his speech here. In one section of his speech that stood out, he advocated for countries around the world to seek “win-win outcomes.”

I thought that this was a noteworthy part of his speech. Here’s the transcript of what he said:

“Fourth, we need to discard Cold War mentality and seek peaceful coexistence and win-win outcomes. Our world today is far from being tranquil; rhetorics that stoke hatred and prejudice abound. Acts of containment, suppression, or confrontation arising thereof do all harm, not the least good, to world peace and security. History has proved time and again that confrontation does not solve problems; it only invites catastrophic consequences. Protectionism and unilateralism can protect no one; they ultimately hurt the interests of others as well as one's own. Even worse are the practices of hegemony and bullying, which run counter to the tide of history. Naturally, countries have divergences and disagreements between them. Yet a zero-sum approach that enlarges one's own gain at the expense of others will not help. Acts of single-mindedly building ‘exclusive yards with high walls’ or ‘parallel systems,’ of enthusiastically putting together exclusive small circles or blocs that polarize the world, of overstretching the concept of national security to hold back economic and technological advances of other countries, and of fanning ideological antagonism and politicizing or weaponizing economic, scientific and technological issues, will gravely undercut international efforts to tackle common challenges.

“The right way forward for humanity is peaceful development and win-win cooperation. Different countries and civilizations may prosper together on the basis of respect for each other, and seek common ground and win-win outcomes by setting aside differences.”

In these challenging times, I hope that world leaders can consider taking this to heart.

There is more to a dynamic economy than antitrust policy

Lately, there have been more calls to break up big companies through antitrust policy. One argument is that these companies hold too much power, charging a toll to participate in the economy. Some experts argue that many of the persistent ills in the economy are linked to monopoly power. I wrote about some of these arguments here. Critics of these arguments say that big companies often are more efficient.

There is a lot of debate about these arguments, and quite a lot of disagreement, which I won't delve into here. Overall, I worry that policymakers may be too focused on antitrust policy at the expense of other policies that will support entrepreneurship and dynamic markets.

Ultimately, when large companies are no longer doing a good job, the formation of charismatic new companies is a very good way to displace them. AOL, Yahoo, and cab companies are less powerful now not because the government broke them up, but because they didn't innovate quickly enough, and other companies displaced them. Breaking up big companies doesn't do much good if there's no one out there who can offer something better.

Most would-be entrepreneurs would not tell you that Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, or the local big hospital system is holding them back. By the time you've gotten the attention of a big company, you've already done well. Many people who would like to start a company, or are trying to start one, are prohibited by entry barriers. They don't have the money to go without a job for a while, or they don't have access to capital, or they don't have a deep enough network to hire from and learn from, or they don't have the subject matter expertise or time to spend on R&D to develop a substantial improvement over the status quo.

Access to capital is a particularly important issue. Most Americans don't have a lot of savings; they also don't have enough collateral to take out a large business loan. Venture capital is mainly interested in funding companies with the potential to become massive, quickly. Most people are legally barred from investing in private companies because they don't meet the required income/wealth threshold. And raising money from public markets is expensive and comes with a lot of regulations, and your company needs to prove itself first before it has an IPO.

This is part of why there aren't more Elon Musks. Elon Musk already had made enough money from PayPal--over $100 million--to start Tesla and SpaceX, capital-intensive businesses that most people can't just start from a garage. It should be easier for more people with less than $100 million to build ambitious new companies.

No matter where you stand on antitrust policy, I think it is important to focus more on reducing barriers to entry to entrepreneurship. If more people could start businesses, that would unleash a more dynamic and innovative economy than we can imagine.

It's Important To Have a Vision

"I think 'fail fast' is catastrophic if it is applied to strategy and goals... It's incredibly important to have a really vivid, clear idea of where to get in the long run that you stick to and are very sold on and that everyone agrees to--then be very, very flexible on tactics." -Marc Andreessen

"Think a lot harder about the future...try to think concretely what you want to do...there's always a question, where is the frontier, where are some pockets of innovation where you can do some new things and not be in a crazed competition." -Peter Thiel

"The future is something that always has to be thought of in relatively concrete terms, and it has to be different from the present. And only something that's different from the present and very concrete can have any sort of charismatic force." -Peter Thiel

"I don't believe in hypothesis testing. I believe in path dependency." -Keith Rabois

"Path dependency means that you employ heroic efforts to achieve your vision. This multiplied the odds of success vs. those who explore or test hypothesis. You literally will yourself to winning." -Keith Rabois

"The main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen... No vision, not much of a future." -Richard Hamming

Ancient Persian Values, from Herodotus

Here are a few excerpts about the values of the ancient Persian Empire from Herodotus’ Histories.

"Their sons are carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year, in three things alone, - to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth."

"To my mind it is a wise rule, as also is the following - that the king shall not put any one to death for a single fault, and that none of the Persians shall visit a single fault in a slave with any extreme penalty; but in every case the services of the offender shall be set against his misdoings; and, if the latter be found to outweigh the former, the aggrieved party shall then proceed to punishment."

"They hold it unlawful to talk to anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a debt: because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies."