Co-Founder & COO @undercurrentSG | shaping the world in my image
Singapore
Joined April 2009
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Jonty Kay retweeted
I don't know how many people realize that if Elon Musk pulls off what he's building, it will be the biggest social reset in human history.
To understand why, you need to understand a concept almost nobody really gets: rent.
Yesterday I was talking about it with someone. I told them something simple: the moment a rent sets in, whatever kind it is, it gets paid for. Not necessarily in dollars. It gets paid for in stagnation.
So what is a rent?
A rent is income that doesn't come from the value you create, but from the position you hold. You don't win because you're better. You win because nobody is allowed to come and beat you.
The mechanism is almost always the same. A company succeeds. Then, instead of continuing to innovate, it goes for regulatory capture: licenses, standards, quotas, approvals, lobbying. It turns its lead into a wall. And behind that wall, new entrants can't get in.
But they're the ones who innovate. They're the ones who drive prices down, raise quality, create new wealth. When you block them, nothing dramatic happens. Nothing happens at all. Prices stop falling. Quality stalls. The pie stops growing. And when the pie stops growing, the only way to get richer is to take someone else's slice.
This is the point almost nobody sees: what people blame on "capitalism" (frozen inequality, a broken social ladder, the feeling that the game is rigged from the start) are the effects of that stagnation. The symptoms of rent. Not of capitalism. Capitalism is competition. Rent is its negation.
Now, Elon Musk.
He said that by 2036, money won't matter anymore. Most people read it as science fiction. I read it as an implicit critique of our entire monetary system.
His reasoning: AI and robots will produce more than we can possibly consume. So prices will collapse. Deflation, not inflation.
And this is where it gets interesting. For decades, the role of central banks has been to stabilize prices. In practice: to stop them from falling. Yet in an economy that innovates, the natural direction of prices is down. Look at what a computer cost thirty years ago.
Preventing prices from falling was the worst thing we could have done. Because it created an entire generation of rentiers. People who got rich not by creating something, but by owning something at the right time. An apartment. A plot of land. An asset shielded from falling prices by money printing and by rules that choke supply.
In a world not captured by the state, house prices would be extremely low.
And who would stay rich? The people who keep creating value. The ones whose wealth comes from the valuation of their company, because their company keeps innovating. Wealth you have to re-earn every single year.
That's where Elon's line really makes sense. In a world of deflationary abundance, human life would look like a video game. Or a game of chess.
If you're good and you start at the bottom, you can rise very, very fast. In a few years.
If you're bad and you inherit the inertia of a position you don't know how to maintain, against people who keep innovating, you fall very, very fast too.
No more rent. No more entitlement. Just your ability to create value, put back on the line every day.
It would be the greatest equalizer in human history.
Not equality of outcomes imposed from above. Equality of the playing field, imposed by abundance.
I think Elon Musk is reinventing the rules of capitalism. Or rather, bringing them back to their original form: the Austrian school. Real capitalism. Value creation as the only legitimate source of wealth.
And at the end of the road, something neither rent nor redistribution has ever achieved: the end of poverty on a global scale.
Jonty Kay retweeted
Recently I was talking with a friend about universal geniuses. And something struck me.
Florence, 1480–1510. Same city, same moment: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Botticelli, Pico della Mirandola. Raphael right behind them. They walked the same streets.
Europe, 1600–1700. Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Pascal, Huygens, Newton, Leibniz. In two generations, we got calculus, modern mechanics, probability theory, and the scientific method.
Athens, 470–320 BC. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Phidias, Thucydides. One century, one city, and the foundations of Western thought were laid.
Europe, 1890–1930. Poincaré, Hilbert, Einstein, Marie Curie, Tesla, Planck, Bohr, then von Neumann.
Always the same pattern. In every great era, the West had 15 to 20 minds of this caliber alive at the same time. People who could touch everything and push the frontier of several fields at once.
Today we have one. Just one. Elon Musk.
And Elon is an anomaly.
Not in the sense that he shouldn't exist. In the sense that the world we built is designed so that someone like him never emerges. Statistically, he shouldn't be here.
Because what forged Elon was an absolutely insane move.
October 2002. eBay buys PayPal. Elon walks away with roughly $180M. Anyone else buys an island and never works another day.
He puts $100M into SpaceX, $70M into Tesla, $10M into SolarCity. Almost everything. On rockets and electric cars, two industries no sane person wanted to touch.
2006–2008. The first three Falcon 1 launches fail. Tesla is burning cash, the financial crisis hits, investors run. He has enough left for one last launch. Just one. He borrows money from friends to pay his rent.
September 28, 2008. The fourth launch reaches orbit.
December 23, 2008. NASA awards SpaceX a $1.6B contract.
December 24, 2008. The Tesla round closes at the last possible hour. A few more days and everything collapses.
That's what a genius is. Not just IQ. The ability to put everything on the table when the entire world tells you it's impossible, and be right.
Now the real question: why do we only have one?
Because a genius needs three things. The freedom to try. The right to get massively rich if it works. The right to fail without being destroyed.
And that's exactly what the collectivist left and the technocrats have torn down across the West for the past 50 years.
They turned success into suspicion. Making a lot of money became a moral failing. Taking risks became irresponsible. Rising above the crowd became an insult to equality.
They stacked up norms, committees, permits, regulations written in Brussels by people who have never built anything in their lives. In Europe, Elon would never have been allowed to blow up three rockets. He'd have been stopped at the first form.
They want to tax capital before it even exists, cap fortunes, redistribute what others created by risking everything.
They replaced excellence with conformity. Our schools produce docile people, not dangerous ones. And a genius, by definition, is someone who disrupts. Their entire system is built to neutralize the people who disrupt.
The result: where we should have 15 to 20 universal geniuses alive at the same time, we have one.
Just one.
And you want to put him in prison.
You summon him before judges, you raid his offices, you insult him morning, noon and night, you dream of breaking up his companies. The man who lands rockets vertically and wants to take humanity to Mars.
You're disgusting.
History won't remember your names. It remembers Galileo, not the inquisitors who tried to silence him.
Jonty Kay retweeted
CARRICK’S DOWNFALL
In terms of tactics and personnel, Carrick’s downfall this season comes down to these key points:
▪️the 4-2-4 press got figured out completely, and already last season it was the weakest aspect of Carrick’s tenure. Opponents freely luring & progressing through wide areas at will, no real attempts fo fix it for months now. Total lack of coordination, chemistry and basic understanding between the players, leading to mistakes in timing, intensity, shape, angles
▪️this season’s half-baked sttempt to increase in-possesion control backfired dramatically and led to a static, undercoached attack, not dynamic, not automated, not positional. @cirotexts refers to it as a static-positional approach. United lost the transitional threat and gained nothing in settled play, rendering us impotent when attacking both behind and in front of the line
▪️as one of consequence of this change, we stopped using Dorgu as the LW, which had a substantial negative effect: while clearly a limited player, he’s a rare width holder & natural runner in the squad, who provided a lot of balance to an unbalanced front line. The correct solution was to upgrade our wide options, currently dire, which is the club’s failure
▪️on his good day and when used well, Casemiro was a cheat code for team. His excellent quick progression abilities, positioning and especially set pieces dominance, as noted by @umirf1, have not been adequately replaced. His goals from set pieces were of extreme value in many tight games. Again, the correct solution for lies in recruitment
It’s an unfortunate situation. Carrick was failed in the market, for sure, but Carrick also failed with what he had at disposal, and failed severely. Both are true.
This unfortunately has a lot of truth to it @ManUtd
Watching the Spurs game made me want to throw up. The lack of effort or urgency particularly in the first half was alarming. If you can’t get your team to play hard, no amount of tactics or new faces will fix things.
There’s something Manchester United fans are still not understanding about Michael Carrick.
His recent struggles have been excused by some fans that the board didn't properly backing him.
Okay, let’s agree that’s the truth.
Let’s agree the board failed to sign him a left-back and a backup striker.
But how does that excuse playing poorly week in, week out as a coach?
He has Joshua Zirkzee, who can provide cover for Benjamin Sesko.
He has Harry Amass, who can provide cover at left-back when Luke Shaw and Dorgu are unavailable.
If Carrick were using these players, implementing a clear system, creating chances and dominating games, but the players simply lacked the quality to execute his instructions, I’d understand the argument about inadequate backing.
But that’s not what we’re seeing.
We can’t even identify a consistent style of football. The team looks like it’s playing on vibes. The team selection is questionable, the tactical setup is unconvincing, and the in-game management leaves so much to be desired.
Where is the identity? Where is the structure? Where is the clear pattern of play? What exactly is Carrick trying to build at Manchester United?
You cannot blame the absence of a new left-back or backup striker for every tactical problem, questionable substitution or poor team selection.
A lack of backing can limit a manager’s ceiling. It doesn’t automatically explain a lack of tactical clarity.
Even if the board had signed the best players in every department, these managerial weaknesses would still be a concern.
My point is simple: Carrick isn’t struggling solely because he wasn’t properly backed.
He’s struggling because he isn’t good enough.
Manchester United need a coach with a clear identity, a coherent tactical plan and the ability to improve the players already at his disposal.
If Carrick cannot demonstrate those qualities consistently, the club must have the courage to make a change.
Carrick should be relieved of his duties.
Jonty Kay retweeted
Five years ago, an important miscarriage of justice occurred.
The story began in April 2018 when David Sabatini, an MIT, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and Whitehead Institute scientist and professor began a consensual intimate relationship with Dr. Kristin Knouse, a principal investigator with her own lab at the Whitehead.
By January 2020, David sought to end the relationship, but Knouse apparently did not want it to end. When David thereafter started a new relationship and Knouse learned about it, she began a secretive campaign to destroy him by attempting to end his career as a scientist. She did so by damaging his name, reputation, and that of his family with false sexual harassment and other claims, thereby making him unemployable.
Knouse conspired with Dr. Ruth Lehmann, the then- and still current Director (i.e., President) of the Whitehead Institute, in her efforts to destroy Sabatini.
The record presented in court demonstrated that Dr. Lehmann committed to Knouse in October of 2020 that she would fire David. Dr. Lehmann made this commitment to Knouse before any investigation of the facts had taken place.
Seven months after committing to fire him, in March of 2021, Dr. Lehmann, on behalf of the Whitehead, hired the law firm of Hinckley, Allen, Snyder (HAS) to undergo an investigation of David. By July 2021, HAS shared a draft of its conclusions with MIT, HHMI, and the Whitehead, but not with David or his lawyers.
On the morning of August 19, 2021, David for the first time received the more than 200-page investigative report and a calendar invite for a meeting the following day with Dr. Lehmann, the president of HHMI, and the HR directors of both institutions. The report was riddled with errors and unsupported claims about David and his relationship with Knouse.
When David's lawyer immediately thereafter reached out to Whitehead counsel to ask whether David was about to be fired, they confirmed that he would be terminated at the meeting.
On the advice of his lawyer, David immediately resigned from HHMI and the Whitehead rather than attend the meeting. HHMI did not accept his resignation, choosing instead to fire him. MIT put David on leave and ultimately revoked his tenure. David thereafter resigned from MIT.
On August 20, 2021, one day after sending David the HAS report and before David had the opportunity to dispute the facts and the conclusions of the investigation, Dr. Lehmann emailed all employees at the Whitehead informing them that David had violated a number of Whitehead policies "including policies concerning sexual harassment."
The Lehmann public email, David's resignation and firing, and Dr. Lehmann's claims about David's sexual harassment exploded into a major global scandal covered in mainstream, social, and scientific media around the world as it had all of the requisite ingredients:
An attractive target with David, one of the most important scientists of his generation in line for the Nobel Prize, a purported inappropriate sexual relationship with a younger female colleague, and a political and institutional environment where punishing a man for sexual harassment advanced the career and reputation of the person and/or institution that destroyed the career and reputation of the accused, regardless of the validity of the allegations.
As a result of Knouse's claims, Lehmann's sham investigation, and the media onslaught that followed, David lost all sources of income and his reputation was destroyed. All prizes he had been previously been awarded were withdrawn. He was removed from all scientific advisory and other honorary roles other than as a member of our family foundation's (the Pershing Square Foundation's) scientific advisory board.
When I initially learned of the news about David in the summer of 2021, I hired him as a consultant to the Pershing Square Foundation as I believed our small foundation team would benefit greatly by his insights (and he now had the time to help us), and he needed the money to support his family.
At my request and under a confidentiality agreement, David provided us with many hundreds of pages of documents including texts and other communications with Knouse, the investigative report, and David's responses to the allegations so that we could do our own evaluation of Knouse's claims.
I and a member of our family office's legal team carefully reviewed the documents. After a careful review of the empirical documents -- in particular the texts between Knouse and David -- it became abundantly clear that Knouse's actions were that of an angry and jilted lover, not those of a sexually harassed junior colleague. And the investigative report appeared designed to deliver a pre-ordained conclusion rather than a dispassionate fact-based analysis.
The impact of the firings and the destruction of his career and reputation on David and his family was extraordinarily devastating, so much so that we became increasingly concerned that he might commit suicide.
[In order to make sure that David's important scientific research would continue, in February 2023, in partnership with an anonymous donor, we funded $25 million to support David launching a new lab. As you might expect, I was reviled in the press, in scientific journals, and on social media for doing so and for supporting a so-called sex offender.]
On October 20, 2021, David filed suit against Knouse alleging defamation and tortious interference in his career and his contractual arrangements. Thereafter, Knouse brought counterclaims against David.
Today, nearly five years to the date of the filing of the suit, he has finally received justice.
Today, a 13-person jury (seven men and six women) of David Sabatini's peers (12 jurors plus an alternate) unanimously determined that David proved that Kristin Knouse defamed him, tortiously interfered with his contractual relationships (his entire career as a scientist), and tortiously interfered with his prospective advantageous relationships (his future employment). The jury awarded him nearly $10 million in damages including interest.
The jury rejected all of Knouse's claims including her claims that David engaged in quid pro quo sexual harassment and created a sexually hostile work environment.
While five years is a very long time to live under a reputational cloud, justice was finally served today for David, but not completely in my view.
To this day, Dr. Ruth Lehmann remains Director of the Whitehead Institute. Dr. Lehmann worked alongside Dr. Knouse to destroy David Sabatini, an acclaimed scientist and professor. She did not follow due process before she intentionally destroyed David's career and reputation.
Dr. Lehmann nearly killed David with her actions, as had we not rescued David by finding him employment, supporting him publicly to buffer the reputational damage, and supporting his recovery, he could have ended his life and left his son without a father before the world understood what had transpired here.
And the reputational damage was not just to David.
David's brother, Bernardo Sabatini, is one of the most important neuroscientists in the world. To this day, he has had to deal with a large cloud over his family name and reputation. Recently, when the new CEO of our brain institute mentioned that Bernardo Sabatini was on our board, he was asked: "Wasn't he involved in some kind of sex scandal?"
For obvious reasons, the character of the person who runs a scientific institute is of utmost importance. Among other failures here, Dr. Ruth Lehmann committed to Knouse that she would fire David many months before an investigation was even launched and without consideration of the empirical facts.
How can one trust research produced by a scientific institute if its leader is not committed to observing the empirical facts before reaching conclusions that have life-threatening import? We have unfortunately seen massive amounts of scientific fraud which has harmed innumerable human lives and wasted billions of dollars of research funding and time.
For her ethical breaches here, Dr. Lehmann should be fired from the Whitehead. Based on her actions in this case, she is in no position to serve as the leader of an important scientific institute.
I speak with some perspective on how scientific and other institutions should be led. Including the recent launch of the Ackman Oxman Institute, we have funded approximately $1 billion of scientific research and institutions over the last decade or so, and this experience has given us the opportunity to meet the leadership of many of the most important scientific institutions in the world.
To put it plainly, we would not give a dollar to a scientific institute whose leader compromised basic moral principles as has happened here.
At an absolute minimum, the board of the Whitehead should immediately launch a detailed and independent investigation of Dr. Lehmann's actions in the Sabatini case. I would encourage the investigation, among other considerations, to carefully exam all of the correspondence between Lehmann and Knouse, as well their correspondence with the HAS law firm on among other areas, the various drafts of the Sabatini investigative report.
Alternatively, Dr. Lehmann could resign, minimize further distraction for the Whitehead, and save institutional time and resources that would be better spent on research that benefits humanity.
How similar is this to the wave of restaurant closures in Singapore? I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this because it is getting to a point that we really should be concerned for the future of the local food scene
Jonty Kay retweeted
🚨 Jose Mourinho on Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola comparisons:
“Someone asked me this question before and I said, ‘Before I answer, tell me something. Where are we starting Alex Ferguson’s career?’
She said, ‘Manchester United.’
I said, ‘No, no. Then already we have a problem.’
People talk about Ferguson and immediately they see Old Trafford. The trophies, Cantona, Beckham, Cristiano, Rooney, the Champions League.
I see Aberdeen first.
This is a man who went into Scotland when Celtic and Rangers were supposed to own everything.
He wins the league with Aberdeen.
Then he does it again.
And again.
Then apparently dominating Scotland with Aberdeen wasn’t difficult enough, so he goes into Europe.
Bayern Munich.
Real Madrid in the final.
European trophy.
Then the Super Cup.
I remember once joking with him, ‘Mister, you could have retired before Manchester United and still spent the rest of your life telling everybody you were a very good manager.’
He laughed and said something like, ‘I would’ve been bored.’
That tells you everything about him.
Because then he goes to Manchester United.
And people speak today as if he arrived at the Manchester United we all know now.
No.
They hadn’t won the league for 26 years.
So this man had already disturbed the natural order in one country, came to another country and apparently decided the natural order there needed disturbing too.
Thirteen league titles later, now everybody remembers United as the giant.
That is the funny thing about football.
Sometimes a manager becomes so successful that people eventually use the size of the club he helped build as an argument against what he achieved there.
So if you ask me to choose?
I remember Aberdeen.
Because before Ferguson had Manchester United, Manchester United had to go and find Ferguson.
And they found him in Scotland with a European trophy he’d just taken off Real Madrid.
For me, that changes the conversation completely.”
Jonty Kay retweeted
Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals he built a smoking tent outside his Capitol office to bypass laws and negotiate deals with lawmakers
"The law says that you have to be 20 feet away from the building."
"I have an atrium where my office is, and we have measured 20 feet away from the building from each side of this atrium. And we're building a tent. We built a tent that is big enough so we can have inside meetings and everything like that, and we're going to smoke our cigars in there."
"They sent me a bill to forbid smoking in a smoking tent. And so, of course, I didn't sign it. I vetoed it."
"Democrats and other legislators came down and asked me, begged me, 'Can I come down and smoke?' And that's how I got most of my deals done."
"They came down to smoke, and we found something in common, which is smoking. We smoked our stogies, took our jackets off, took our ties off, and we were sitting there and saying, 'What are you working on?'"
"And so we started working together, and I was able to sign more of their legislation because they were not stubborn about how they wrote the legislation. We got a lot of things done because of the smoking tent."
Jonty Kay retweeted
Will Guidara told me how Eleven Madison Park fixed the most awkward moment of any meal: the check.
When he could see you were done but hadn't asked for the bill, he'd come over with a bottle of cognac, pour a splash for everyone, and leave the whole bottle. Then he'd set down the check.
People who ate some of the best food on the planet there don't remember a single thing they ate. They remember the bottle of cognac.
Jonty Kay retweeted
Je vais partir du principe que tu es de bonne foi, parce que ton raisonnement est intuitif et que 90% des gens le partagent. Mais il repose sur trois erreurs factuelles, et ça vaut le coup de les regarder calmement.
Erreur 1 : la fortune d'Elon n'est pas un tas d'argent. C'est de la propriété d'usines, de fusées et de satellites. "Prendre la moitié de sa tune", concrètement, ça veut dire forcer la vente de la moitié de SpaceX et Tesla. L'argent ne sort pas d'un coffre, il sort des entreprises elles-mêmes, qui passent sous contrôle de fonds étrangers ou d'États. Tu ne redistribues pas du cash, tu démantèles un outil de production. C'est la différence entre récolter des pommes et découper le pommier.
Erreur 2 : "ça résout énormément de problèmes dans le monde". Cette expérience a déjà été tentée, en vrai. En 2021, le directeur du Programme Alimentaire Mondial de l'ONU a affirmé que 6 milliards de Musk pouvaient "résoudre la faim dans le monde". Réponse d'Elon : décrivez-moi exactement comment, comptabilité publique à l'appui, et je vends mes actions Tesla immédiatement. Le PAM a publié son plan. Verdict : ce n'était pas "résoudre la faim", c'était nourrir 42 millions de personnes pendant un an. Un an. Puis il faut re-payer, pour toujours. Le PAM avait d'ailleurs levé 8,4 milliards l'année précédente, et la faim était toujours là. Les ONG traitent les symptômes en boucle, jamais les causes, parce que leur financement dépend de l'existence du problème.
Erreur 3, la plus importante : tu cherches ce qui sort vraiment les gens de la pauvreté. Bonne nouvelle, on a la réponse, et elle est massive. En 1990, 36% de l'humanité vivait dans l'extrême pauvreté. Aujourd'hui, moins de 9%. Plus d'un milliard de personnes sorties de la misère en 30 ans. Par quoi ? Pas par la charité ni par l'aide internationale (plus de 1 000 milliards versés à l'Afrique en 60 ans pour un résultat à peu près nul). Par l'ouverture des marchés, l'industrialisation, le commerce. La Chine seule a sorti 800 millions de personnes de la pauvreté en abandonnant le collectivisme, pas en taxant ses entrepreneurs.
Donc fais le calcul complet. Option A : tu confisques 500 milliards, tu finances quelques années de programmes, l'argent est consommé, et tu as détruit la machine qui produisait les fusées, les voitures électriques et l'internet des zones rurales. Option B : tu laisses le meilleur allocateur de capital de sa génération réinvestir 100% de sa fortune dans des industries qui baissent les coûts pour tout le monde et emploient des centaines de milliers de personnes. L'option A soulage ta morale pendant 18 mois. L'option B sort des populations entières de la pauvreté pour toujours.
La pauvreté ne se redistribue pas. Elle se résout par la création. C'est contre-intuitif, c'est frustrant, mais c'est ce que disent 200 ans de données.
Wasn’t @mcuban the controlling owner when this happened…bad series of events parlaying the Mavs into a cautionary tale of how not to run basketball operations, even with the championship in 2011
The Brunson camp reportedly "laughed" at the Mavericks when Dallas tried to offer him a 4-year, $55M extension near the 2022 trade deadline, per @TheSteinLine
"The Brunson camp basically laughed at them and said, 'Uh, we'll take our chances in free agency now, you guys had your chance.' ... The Mavs still had the option at that point of picking up the phone and saying, 'Jalen, we completely screwed this up, we are deeply sorry, we've disrespected you, we want to make this right, we're going to offer you 150 over five.' They even could have gone to 175 over five... They had the wherewithal to give Jalen Brunson a blow-away offer and they didn't do it."
"If they re-signed him, they either could have kept him with Luka or their phone would have been ringing off the hook with trade offers and they would have had so much better optionality... losing Jalen Brunson for nothing when you combine that with how the Luka trade turned out, like I said, where I live there is a lot of pain when the Knicks are on television."
(Via @ALLCITY_NBA)
Jonty Kay retweeted
𝟭. 𝗚𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲 failed spectacularly at Valencia CF because he took a massive job with zero managerial grounding. He won 3 of 16 games, oversaw one of the club’s worst runs in decades, lost the dressing room almost immediately, and became a tactical punchbag. Players didn’t trust him, fans protested, and the team collapsed. It wasn’t bad luck he simply wasn’t ready, and La Liga exposed him fast.
𝟮. 𝗣𝗮𝘂𝗹 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀 lasted 31 days at Oldham Athletic. That alone tells you everything. He walked into a chaotic club, won 1 game in 6, showed no clear identity, no authority, no long-term plan then quit when it got uncomfortable. That’s not failure through pressure; that’s failure through lack of commitment to the craft.
𝟯. 𝗥𝗼𝘆 𝗞𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗲 managed Ipswich Town and later Sunderland AFC. At Ipswich he had a brief high, then burned bridges and left instability. At Sunderland, it went worse: poor results, toxic atmosphere, players switching off. His intensity turned from edge to excess. Motivation without structure doesn’t last over a season, and teams eventually tuned him out.
All three relied on status instead of substance. They thought elite mentality would replace coaching education, tactical depth, and man-management. Football doesn’t work like that anymore.
Legacy gets you the job.
Competence keeps you in it.
None of them had enough of the second, and every club paid the price.
Jonty Kay retweeted
🇨🇳🇫🇷 A French guy left laptops in public spots around the world to see how fast they'd get stolen.
Paris: 8 seconds, India: 12 seconds, New York: 25 seconds, China: never touched.
He was speechless. So are we.
nitter.cf/snsnokyoufu/status/205…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The video shows a vlogger's experiment only in China, where the laptop was untouched for 30 minutes. Claimed theft times for Paris, India, and New York are unsubstantiated estimates, not from actual experiments.
hindustantimes.com/trending/frenc…
ndtv.com/offbeat/influe…
Jonty Kay retweeted
Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.
Cette phrase change tout.
L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?
Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.
Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.
Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.
Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.
L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.
Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.
Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.
Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.
Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.
La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.
Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.
Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.
La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.