molson 🧠⚙️

US public infrastructure is a global embarassment and a national emergency. The Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed in 2024. It is now projected (ty @TimothyDooner) to be completed in 2030 at multiples of original cost. Africa has high speed rail. Indonesia has high speed rail (median salary $143 per month, not a typo). We have nothing despite having spent 10s of billions on it. If we can build anything at all it is extremely slow and insanely expensive and increasingly prone to accident. This problem doesn’t seem as bad as it actually because we rely on infrastructure built well 100s of years ago. Can we still do it? No. Global embarassment and national emergency, with no plan to fix, and we’ve, as a nation, given up.

Is China running out of useful infrastructure to build? This is a deep undersea tunnel for high speed rail to reach a dead-end island with a few hundred thousand people (small town for China). Better to have nothing to build than to be unable to build, but this will be an adjustment for China’s economy.

Example of how Amazon (in my opinion) unethically increases prices while claiming that it's not: Prior to March 2025, when Amazon lost a product that we stored in its warehouses, it would reimburse us equal to what we would be paid, had we sold that item. Now Amazon doesn't do that. It reimburses us according to the cost of the item. They won't pay the shipping costs we paid to move that item to the United States. They won't pay the tariffs we paid to import the item. They won't pay the shipping costs we paid to get it to Amazon. And they won't pay the storage fees Amazon charged us to store the item until they lost it. They'll only pay the cost of the item, which we must prove to them by revealing our supplier and cost information, which most suppliers consider sensitive. It gets worse. Amazon, after reimbursing for the item they lost (or broke), can then sell the item. Sometimes they lose items and find it later. So they'll sell it. When they sell it, the money goes to them, so they get the full original reimbursement, not just the product cost. Not only that, when Amazon sells the item, they are taking a sale away from the seller and maker of the item. You may think, so what big deal, it's just reimbursements. These reimbursements can be $100,000s or $1,000,000s a year for some sellers because Amazon is constantly losing and breaking products. In fact, with the way they've set up the system, they even have an INCENTIVE to lose and break the products, because they can sell them for more later. The change in policy isn't just unfair, it greatly increases costs for Amazon sellers, but it's not a direct cost increase. Amazon is still reimbursing, they're just doing it differently. That's different from increasing all their prices by 5% so they can stay stuff like "we only increased prices 3.5%, lower than industry averages". What they're not saying is that they also changed prices that are complicated, that people outside of Amazon don't understand, to increase costs and juice their bottom line. Of course these cost increases, sellers eventually notice (or go bankrupt) and when they happen, we have to raise prices, so consumers pay. So while Amazon saying they haven't raised prices might be legally true, practically and ethnically, it's not. And it seems that they go to great lengths to hide this.

How the Waffle House ordering system works, even without power

About 1.5 years ago I needed to get one of our warehouses rented and a friend shopped it out to the "reindustrialize" crew. The feedback was that it was "too far". The location which was too far for them was good enough for @JeffBezos and @blueorigin (who by the way did not take me up on the offer of free rent for a year, $200k+ value 🤷‍♂️). In reality, the people who turned down our warehouse weren't serious about building a real business and they had so much VC money that they could afford expensive nearby locations.

Never personally guarantee debt. Why? 1. I saw it ruin my parents life 2. The stress will shorten your life and kill your performance 3. There are other ways to get capital 4. 2 out of 3 major religions ban debt 5. You can make tons of money without debt 6. It’s a trap

Wouldn't ride a self-driving car without one.

People get frustrated with other nationalities, cultures, races, etc. and then end up calling them inferior or lazy. Most of this frustration is caused by different social or business expectations which result in miscommunications. With some open-mindedness, pragmatism, and flexibility you can work, as an individual, with anyone or culture.

You’ve got to know who you are not as an entrepreneur. I am not a rizzler. I have raised $0 in my life and I’ve tried. If you’re a rizzler, rizz for cash, but for me, I was always better off finding capital through creativity. If you’ve got a good idea, it’ll find money fast.

Yes, we are between new world orders. What will happen? There’s probably going to be an ever growing war (we have that) along with multiple currency collapses (this is guaranteed at this point).

I really wish I could edit this to add one more point. When you meet one of these people, you need to be MEMORABLE. One time I had dinner with this very famous venture capitalist. It was me and 7 other people who superficially were like me. For whatever reason, these other people all acted pretty bland or even milquetoast, despite being successful in their own right (we all paid $5000 and flew somewhere to meet this guy). I did not take that path. I went full on "different-mode". No one makes friends with someone boring. You need to run the risk of being unlikable to be liked.

Don't. It's horrible. Anyone who knows a lot of rich kids knows this.

*I once went to Charlie Munger’s house and asked if I could talk to him and his house assistant was like “he says no”.