The Attack on Pelosi and the Stark Contrast Between Where Republicans and Democrats Turn for Leadership (Comparing Kentucky and San Francisco)

An intruder broke into Nancy Pelosi's home yesterday to attack her. Her husband was violently assaulted and has had surgery to repair a skull fracture.

Radicals on the right paint San Francisco as a socialist dystopia and see House Leader Pelosi as one of the reasons that California is such a hellscape. I still marvel at the levels of ignorance required to label San Francisco as socialist. Republicans' answer to Pelosi's congressional leadership is Mitch McConnell, a senator from Kentucky. It's worth comparing Kentucky and San Francisco to get an idea of the sorts of communities from which Democrats and Republicans draw their leadership, and what they hold up as models that deserve to be emulated.

No place on the planet receives more venture capital per person than San Francisco. Venture capital. Arguably the most disruptive, lucrative, and “capitalist” kind of capital in the world. San Francisco gets an average of $75,000 per resident in venture capital in 2021. Kentucky? It got just $44. San Francisco gets about 1,700X more venture capital per resident than Kentucky.

In large part because of this, San Francisco's per capita GDP is nearly 5X what Kentucky's is, $247,000 per resident compared to Kentucky's $53,000. Profits, rents, capital gains and other returns to assets coupled with their monthly salaries makes the average San Franciscan much more affluent than the average person in Kentucky.

This level of innovation and wealth creation attracts people from all over the world and leads to a level of diversity that is stark contrast to Kentucky. People in San Francisco are roughly 8X more likely to speak some language other than English in the home and to be foreign born. Firms are 4X more likely to be owned by a minority.

The right is not threatened by San Francisco being socialist. It is not socialist but is arguably the most dynamic, capitalist community in the world. San Francisco has created a culture that depends on disruption and invention, entrepreneurship and innovation. The right’s value for tradition is so strong that it sees the level of affluence and progress that follows from this disruption as threatening rather than as something to emulate, even to the point of violently rejecting it. The communities from which Democrats and Republicans draw their congressional leaders could not be in starker contrast. Republicans see this level of disruption and progress as a threat. Democrats see it as something to emulate which is why they have continued to make Nancy Pelosi their congressional leader.

The Most Defining Thing About a Community: Zero or Variable Sum Worldviews

The biggest difference in worldviews seems to be the difference between zero-sum and variable-sum. If your worldview is zero-sum, you believe any gain I make comes at your expense. If your worldview is variable-sum, you are open to the possibility that we both can do better (or worse).
Variable-sum suggests that if we miss on creating opportunity for that kid from a poor neighborhood, we all do worse. He's either creating value for all of us and everyone does better because he is doing better or he is not and we're all doing worse.

Zero-sum suggests that if that kid comes across a border or leaves a bad neighborhood to get a job, it'll be stolen from us. The only way he gets ahead is from us falling behind.

In 1980, the acceptance rate at UCLA was about 75%.
Today it is close to 10%.

We even have a zero-sum worldview when it comes to education, to knowledge, to learning - domains that are so demonstrably variable-sum as to make them the perfect examples of variable sum. If you give me a dollar and I give you a dollar, we leave the exchange no better. If you give me an idea and I give you an idea, we might both be better off. (Or worse off. It could be that we exchange really dumb ideas. This is, of course, the domain of variable-sum.)

We need to do better at making people's lives better. The simplest predictor of future returns is present investments. Any community that wants to prosper has to look for reasons to invest more, not less. We could start with increasing the capacity of our great public universities, making them tools for more young people to create a better future. Because when we leave some young adult's potential untapped it reduces the potential of all of us.

One of the most curious consequences of realizing that you live in a variable sum world? The distinction between selfish and selfless begins to blur. We have to make lives better for other people to make our own lives better. It's a fairly cool reality we've gotten ourselves into.

2 Major Problems With Musk Owning Twitter

Elon Musk is moving ahead on his purchase of Twitter.

I have 2 problems with that.

1. This means he'll be playing CEO for 5 companies. How I imagine his schedule:
Monday: Tesla
Tuesday: Twitter
Wednesday: SpaceX
Thursday: Neuralink
Friday: Boring Company
Saturday and Sunday: spends time with his 9 kids.

2. Musk has promised to bring Trump back to Twitter. Musk is a free speech guy who doesn't see any need for managing content. A community has a lot in common with individuals. If you maximize for work or money or fitness or socializing or religious piety or relaxing you'll have a lousy life. Life is best when you have the good sense to tamp down any and all of those, alternating what you subordinate to at different times so that your life isn't taken over by any one of the pieces of your life. Any system needs to be subordinated to the goals of the whole system, not one part of it, whether that system is a life or a community. A community needs free speech but to pretend that we should subordinate every other community goal to it is silly. The consequence of abuses from misinformation campaigns, say, or slander or deceit or misleading advertisements or blatant lies is to subordinate too many other good things to an ideal that may hold in some Platonic ideal of a community but don't hold in some Pragmatic ideal of a real community. Musk owning Twitter raises the odds that the US will give way to plutocracy because free speech is a lie in this regard: in an age of platforms, amplification and mass media, speech is NOT free. The more money you have to spread your message, the more it will be believed. Elon's net worth is greater than about 150 countries' GDP. To pretend that his "free" speech has no more influence than mine or yours suggests a high degree of self delusion.