Alpha

“Either Caesar, or nothing”. Founder @templecities

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

As an “industry”, charter cities are where AI was in the 2010s: anti-memetic, fringe, with lots of experimental energy and still intellectually potent.

Yet despite the current Charter City Winter, the most important company of the century will be a charter city company.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Something admirable about young Thiel’s naked greed

[yung macro 宏观年少传奇 @apralky]

whenever you feel like you're taking too much risk recall that as PayPal was running out of cash 33-year-old Peter Thiel tried to transfer what remained to his LARP hedge fund so he could go long Treasuries

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Ahem

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

You don’t need VC or PE to reindustrialize. Neither are fit for purpose. You need a State Bank—run by private sector domain experts—with unlimited fiscal authority, independent of congress or the Fed, built on MMT principles (crucial).

Watch this: say USG creates a new American Industrial Renaissance Bank (AIRB). To capitalize it, it makes a deal with US treasuries holders: swap $500B of your treasuries for shares in AIRB in exchange for more yield. Boom, AIRB can instantly deploy at least $5T in capital, with trillions more that can be created if resources are there to match.

No VC, no PE, no new “debt” issued (in fact on paper the debt has been “reduced”), no appropriations debates nonsense. Because the “national debt” isn’t debt. It’s fake. In fact it’s an asset. You’ve been duped by bullshit fiscal hawkishness—the worst of all mind viruses.

The biggest irony is that the tools needed to reindustrialize America are all anathema for fiscal hawks and market fundamentalist tech libertarians who make the bulk of the founders/VCs in this space (Elon is a perfect example).

The reality is capital isn’t scarce. Never has been. America is the world reserve currency. It cannot default, it never will. No sovereign issuer of a free floating currency has ever defaulted, ever, not even Japan in the 80s.

Also, inflation isn’t caused by money printing. Too much money chasing too few RESOURCES causes inflation. If you can resource it, you can print it. And right now America has tons of both human and natural resources sitting idle, underutilized, misallocated. There’s a lot of SLACK in the US economy. Tariffs are a loser side show.

The question is: do you have the political will to kill the Austrian fiscal demon on your shoulder, embrace MMT, and take reindustrialization seriously? Clock’s ticking.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

You don’t reindustrialize by giving financial capital an even longer leash.

You reindustrialize by subordinating the interests of financial capital to those of sovereign production capital.

[Dustin Walper @DustinWalper]

America has the world's best financial markets, and this can be rapidly converted into industrial capacity if the will exists.

JPMorganChase's announcement today is a great signal of that will materializing.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

From “super intelligence isn’t enough” by Fukuyama.

True enough. The bottleneck to deploying AI into the world over the next decades is governance.

Need to fast track permitting / regulation to scale compute and power? Governance. Unions blocking automation of industries? Governance. People mad at losing their jobs? Governance.

For this reason, I predict the rise of charter cities will be a massive secular trend in the coming years as they become deployment vectors for real world AI.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

This is the billionaire’s dilemma. You could either hoard your stash like Smaug at Erebor, and live in fear of cops coming for your shit, or you could just YOLO that shit and buy yourself a crown.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Thiel is easily the only thinking billionaire in Silicon Valley—yet even he dare not kill the miser within him.

His conclusion here isn’t wrong, just weak. The contrarian solution to resolve this would be to engage in the most aggressive program of philanthropy (not altruism) ever conceived. Literally spend it all away before “they” come and take it. Burn your wealth and transform it into a monument to whatever it is you value the most in the world, acquiring real power in the process.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

This is arguably the only thing SBF was right about. MF was spending capital he didn’t even have on a quest to take over the world. Sure FTX collapsed, but which living billionaire would have the balls to cut Anthropic a $500M check in 2021?

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Peter “I’m religious, but not spiritual” Thiel

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Only the snobs can save us from the slop merchants.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Elon did it, Sama did it, shit even Jobs did it (Apple 2.0)

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

It’s a tough realization but the best way to ensure you can work on big, interesting things as a founder is to get rich first.

Unless you have rich friends/fam, you’re better off getting a few $M’s under your belt first to work on big shit

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

@Victor_Patru If you haven’t, I’d encourage you to check these guys out: https://t.co/QVMtelpnMV

Willing to bet new firms like these will outperform the YCs of the world by a wide margin in the years ahead

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

YC is an anti signal. The best founders I know have either been rejected by YC or simply do not even consider it

[Anthony Sistilli @sistilli]

I’ve been rejected by YC 7 times. In that time:

- i built and sold a startup
- i built a following of over 400k devs
- i learned what i enjoy doing and what i don’t
- i’ve learned more about building, business, and marketing than any job or school could have ever taught me
- talked to and learned from some of the greatest minds of our time

normalize failing in public, and normalize finding a way through even when the people you look up to don’t see what you see

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

YC’s business is few hundred k for 7-10%. Rinse repeat. This model will not su revive the next 15-20 years as the developed and developing world (re)industrialize. Debt, asset backed financing, project financing etc will all overtake venture for the smartest companies

The best founders are building said companies. They’re not the richest founders (yet). And yes they’re on the way. Takes longer to build real shit

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

@Victor_Patru “YC is not where it was” we are in agreement then. But trust this doesn’t come from bitterness. None of my projects are venture backable, playing a completely different game.

I simply genuinely know exceptional founders who deserve a better class of investors

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

@DafyddFD Fully agreed. The seeds of renewal in the metropole will be found in these frontier cities

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Promising. Given US’ actual capabilities, Pax Americana should be much smaller than the globe but much larger than the nation. Containing China militarily is a fool’s errand. The real competition should be technological and economic.

[Paul McLeary @paulmcleary]

NEW: The new National Defense Strategy has been delivered to SecDef Hegseth for review, and places homeland security over deterring China has the Pentagon’s primary mission. Not everyone in the Pentagon thinks that’s a good idea.

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

@DafyddFD Smart charter city co’s will sell themselves as partners to great powers to manage policy implementation across frontiers — at least to start with. The most successful will eventually renegotiate those relationships as sovereignty hardens

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

@ancerj Checks out

[Alpha @alphaxbarry]

Energy I’m on for the rest of the decade.

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.