Clement Wan

lazy crossfitter craving McDonald's and geeking out at the intersection of ecom, finance, and authoritative content while trying to figure out this app

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

Policy choices Canadians made: virtue signaling regulation (anti-resource/energy), higher taxes, financial misallocation (asset bubble / not enough capex), interprovincial trade barriers, mass immigration that didn't result in increased productivity coupled with welfare state.

[Alex Tabarrok @ATabarrok]

Texas produces more than Canada with three quarters of the population.

Note this isn't about which is better or where you would rather live or burritos or life expectancy--it's about why isn't Canada more productive?

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@alexpagepilot Check

[Alexis Rivas @alexisxrivas]

This is a massive fumble by Canada. It also wasn't the case 10+ years ago.

Canada has 13x Texas's land, more people, and far more natural resources: Forestry, freshwater, potash, uranium, hydroelectric, oil & gas reserves, aluminum.

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@danielhatke Wait what? Who told you my password?!

[Justin Mares @jwmares]

If you want to understand why healthcare is so expensive, I'd start with a Supreme Court case about teeth whitening.

Around 2003, spas and small kiosks in North Carolina were offering teeth whitening for a fraction of what dentists charge.

So dentists complained to the state dental board. That dental board looks like this:

- 6 of 8 are practicing dentists, elected by other dentists
- 8 of the 10 who sat on the board during this period earned substantial fees from whitening

The board sent 47+ cease-and-desist letters, warning non-dentists that they're committing a crime by practicing dentistry without a license. The board also sent letters to mall operators, advising them to expel whitening kiosks.

All this worked! These kiosks shut down, prices stayed high, dentists stayed happy.

Regulatory capture like this exists all over in healthcare. What makes this case notable is that someone actually sued the NC dental board, in a case that went all the way to the supreme court.

In a 6-3 ruling, the SC ruled that if a board is run by those who participate in the market without proper supervision - that looks like a cartel, therefore, antitrust law applies.

I have to believe there are so many other potential cases like this in healthcare, just waiting to be pressed on. I'd love to see more of this.

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@andrewamann Having distribution is obviously a huge advantage but harnesses / cos agents could become the OS. And then you have omarchy - the ai native OS gaining traction. Neither are likely to be mainstream for some time but both seem to be longer term threats to Apple and Google.

[tobi lutke @tobi]

Hearing so many of these stories.

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@BillDA If available capacity becomes a major factor (as is believed), current distribution will just be a gateway to those who have it. And will there be one winner? Why wouldn’t we have agents who do better at different things/integrations?

[Lachlan Phillips exo/acc 👾 @bitcloud]

I resigned from McDonald's today.
I enjoyed my work and loved the people, but the nuggets team was working on a new generation of sauces that are set to be even more delicious than szechuan, and I think szechuan sauce is already dangerously delicious, so I had to quit.

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@jordan_ross_8F Grok

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@spect3ral muse

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

Cool. DHH on the future of work: "No one knows anything about the future so the rational choice is to be happy about it." And as the cost of intelligence and problem solving approaches [zero], "every optimization is within reach."

DHH is remarkably unburdened by sunk costs (his keynote at a conference around the programming framework *he* created is about how he's moved on because he no longer writes code). Best coding language? English.

[DHH @dhh]

@thesamrapaport It's right here. Properly edited. https://t.co/R6MYN599zf

[Justin Spittler @JSpitTrades]

How Zuck sold AI to the masses

Vs.

How Dario sold AI to the masses

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Industrialization of knowledge work is going to be as disruptive a shift as industrialization of physical labor was. As then, once craft fields are under pressure to produce volumes of standardized product while using less of the craft that made the work interesting & meaningful.

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@Daniel_Spenrath Will it ever end? Productivity also tends to follow capex.

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

But aren't the generations closest to retirement, by definition, most complicit in this fraud - as much victims as villains? GW Bush tried to "privatize" just 10% of social security along with additional reforms.

Not sure it matters though - fixing this will come with a high political cost at this point. That anger needs to be redirected. The first issue is messaging - call out social security as being a fraud, ponzi scheme from which funds have long been spent, put the blame on the politicians who made this mess and then on those who refused to fix it until it was too late.

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

@norbertomarques @JJEnglert Didn't Cursor already release this last week?

[Clement Wan @ClementWan]

I think @acranberg 's point highlights the core messaging challenge. We've been told that payroll taxes are actually forced savings. We think these benefits are earned - when governments have long spent and squandered that money turning social security into a ponzi scheme / demographic time bomb.

Any changes will be most felt by those closest to retirement - but these are the same people who have been indoctrinated the longest into this fiction. They need a villain that isn't them. And they need to be convinced that social security was maliciously - by design - to always be a welfare program by politicians who knew they would never be faced with the consequences of their decisions - and then co-signed by politicians who thought they could kick the can further into the future.

Any changes to social security without first reconciling this fraud is going to be so much more difficult.

[Dominic Pino @DominicJPino]

Something to always remember when looking at the official poverty rate (10.2% in 2025) is that it doesn't count 90 percent of welfare spending as income.