A Quote, a Reminder and Four Thoughts

Greetings everyone. We are taking a break from our longform content this week to try something new. What follows is a collection of thoughts and ideas that came to me at some point or another in the last week. Hope you enjoy!

A Quote

“We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume quantity, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration.

The primordial blessing, “increase and multiply,” has suddenly become a hemorrhage of terror. We are numbered in billions, and massed together, marshalled, numbered, marched here and there, taxed, drilled, armed, work to the point of insensibility, dazed by information, drugged by entertainment, surfeited with everything, nauseated with the human race and with ourselves, nauseated with life.”

This is from “Raids on the Unspeakable” by Thomas Merton, a phenomenal read. As much as this sounds like a perfect description of our world today, believe it or not, this dates from the mid-1960’s. If this is what the 60’s felt like for Merton, I wonder what he would say about today?

A Reminder

There’s this famous idea in business that good products and services sell themselves. In other words, there’s an inverse relationship between quality and the need for advertising and marketing. This is something to keep top of mind as you face the daily onslaught of ads coming at you.

I don’t mean to single out Wall Street because everyone is guilty here, but this ad triggered something for me:

For what is the advertisement saying? “Hey Boomer, thanks for working your whole life to accumulate some savings. Just go ahead and invest with us and you too can enjoy an idyllic retirement of bike rides and beach picnics. Please ignore the fact that this product is not actually in your best interests, we are charging you way too much in fees and basically trying to offer you a guarantee even though we aren’t allowed to do so. Oh and by the way, we are neglecting to tell you that you could buy some low cost index funds and earn more than 7% probably but who’s counting.”

Four Thoughts 

1. The Debt Ceiling is an Absolute Joke

I cannot help but look upon the spectacle of the debt ceiling negotiations with a kind of cynical scorn. The debt ceiling is literally political theatre. It means absolutely nothing. I think we’ve raised this supposed ceiling over 90 times in the last 100 years. Are we really going to draw the line in the sand today when our economy is teetering, our banks are in crisis, and government interest expense is growing at a crazy rate? I doubt it. Both parties are guilty of running massive deficits so we should all stop pretending that we care about balanced budgets and the national debt and just get on with things.

One of my core working hypotheses of Profit+ is that you simply cannot separate economics and politics. This drama is a perfect reminder for just that. There are serious negative economic implications for this political brinkmanship, as evidenced by market action over the last few weeks. The last thing the world economy needs is more uncertainty. If I were in charge, I would address the issue quietly and quickly.

1. AI and the Tower of Babel

For some reason, all this AI hype has me thinking about the Tower of Babel story. Remember the moral there. Once upon a time, when we all spoke the same language, we decided to band together to build a tower to heaven. Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? The only problem was that, well, God didn’t want us to do that. Oops.

I cannot help but think this is exactly what’s happening today. All these computers are, in fact, already speaking the same language. It’s a language of 0’s and 1’s and with AI it won’t be long before all the barriers of our existing language differences will be made irrelevant. I wonder if the Tower of Babel story can be read as an allegory for humankind’s previous attempts to develop AI?

2. Umuganda

I came across an article the other morning about how Kigali, a city in Rawanda, has been ranked the cleanest city in Africa. The story describes how a practice called Umuganda—essentially a National Day of Service on the last Saturday of every month—has brought the people of Kigali together in interesting and inspiring ways. Of course, despite great results, Umuganda is not without controversy as questions have been raised about just how “voluntary” all this has been.

Putting that aside, I find myself inspired by the spirit of the idea. I feel like the notion of communal responsibility is something we’ve lost here in America and a revival of the “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” spirit is one my missions here at Profit+.

3. There are Over 23,000 Cryptocurrencies

I knew there were a lot of shitcoins and grifters in the space but this stat floored me. As much as I am excited about the potential for crypto, this is madness and a sign for just how crazy the speculative fever got in the space. With only a handful of potential use cases worth talking about—digital money, smart contracts, tokenization of real-world assets, internet of things, NFTs and maybe a few others—I suspect we’ll see a massive consolidation toward the clear winners in the space like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Two Things I’m Tracking

1. Commonwealth Markets

Commonwealth Markets is experimenting with a super interesting financial product—a way to invest in the careers of professional golfers and racehorses. I’m not so interested in the racehorses but the golfers are interesting. I think the legal on this is tricky because of things like, well, the Constitution and its protection of freedom. How do you “invest” in someone’s career? Assuming you can figure that out, I think it’s a super exciting development because it could open a whole new avenue for young people to structure their financial lives. The way things are now you either hit the genetic lotto and have parents that can back you or you take on a bunch of student loans. Neither is fair nor ideal. It would be nice to have another option.

2. City Funds (by Nada)

Nada has created a really cool financial product designed to give investors a way to invest thematically in cities. So, let’s say you are bullish on Miami, like everyone seems to be these days. Rather than fly to Miami and try to buy some actual real estate, which is actually kind of hard, you can just invest in their fund. Success here will depend on what kind of real estate Nada acquires and how good they manage it but I’m pulling for them. If they can figure this out, it will be a great addition to the investment landscape.

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