Bill Combes

Diverse background - I've been a weather forecaster in the Air Force, started and ran and recently founded

[Bill Combes @billntfs]

@GrindeOptions Yes because every stock is over valued!

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

Taxes screw over both the companies and the states they’re in.

Taxes didn’t build those big companies. They show up after the success. They sure as hell didn’t create Silicon Valley.
The sky-high taxes came later, once it was already killing it.

California basically turned its successful companies into hosts and started parasitically draining them for more and more cash, jacking up the rates year after year.

They forget the first rule of parasitism: don’t kill the host.

Companies only have so much tolerance before they say screw it and bail for another state with better deals and resources.

And that breaking point is a lot lower these days.

[Bill Combes @billntfs]

@DrTeslaFSD @WR4NYGov I have some with my VCX investment

[TFTC @TFTC21]

Ken Griffin went home on a Friday "fairly depressed" after watching AI agents at Citadel do work that used to take teams of PhDs in finance months to complete. Done in days.

His words: "These are not mid-tier white collar jobs. These are extraordinarily high skilled jobs being automated by agentic AI."

This is the head of one of the most successful hedge funds in history saying the people he pays seven figures to analyze markets and structure deals are being replaced by software that works in hours instead of months. Not theoretically. In his own office. Right now.

The Coatue deck we covered earlier this week called agents "the biggest unlock" in AI. Griffin just confirmed it from the buy side. The shift from copilots to agents is not a future event. It is already happening at the highest levels of finance.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Called it!

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Just wrapped!

[Viva Frei @thevivafrei]

This is absolutely mind blowing!

When Karin Bass was in Ghana as Los Angeles burned, the deputy mayor she left in charge was at home on house arrest.

For phoning in a bomb threat.

We are indeed governed by criminals.

From @spencerpratt on @joerogan

[Brilyn Hollyhand @BrilynHollyhand]

MA: 36% Republican, 0 seats
CT: 42% Republican, 0 seats
ME: 46% Republican, 0 seats
NM: 46% Republican, 0 seats
NH: 48% Republican, 0 seats
RI: 42% Republican, 0 seats
VT: 32% Republican, 0 seats
HI: 37% Republican, 0 seats
DE: 42% Republican, 0 seats

Hello, Gerrymandering.

[Clyp Keeper @DGrayTexas45]

“WE WILL NOT ALLOW IRAN TO HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON”

The ‘All Bark, No Bite’ handling of Iran’s nuclear program the last 20 years failed.

Some people are just all talk.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

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.

[Jason D. Meister 🇺🇸 @jason_meister]

They arrested the President of the United States of America 4X, charged him 91X, indicted him 4X, spied on his campaign, sabotaged his first term, jailed his supporters, raided his private residence, censored him, gagged him, tried to bankrupt him, and attempted to remove him from state ballots.

When all of that failed they tried to assassinate him not once but four times.

And they go on national television to talk about how we need to vote for them to save democracy.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk just used a joke to perform an autopsy on the American economy.

Two economists go for a hike. They find a pile of shit. One pays the other $100 to eat it.

They keep walking. Find another pile. The second economist pays $100 back to eat that one.

They stop. Neither man gained a dollar. Both ate shit for nothing.

But on paper they just generated $200 in GDP.

Musk: “That basically would count as a job. This is to illustrate the absurdity of economics.”

That is not a punchline. That is the operating system of the federal government.

Every time a politician celebrates “record job creation” this is what they are describing. Not output. Not value. Not progress. Motion.

The entire bureaucratic machine exists to manufacture friction and then invoice for it.

Compliance layers built to justify the next compliance layer. Oversight committees that produce nothing but the need for more oversight. Consulting firms hired to audit the work of other consulting firms.

Trillions circulating through systems that have never produced a single thing you can hold in your hands. But the GDP number ticks up. So everyone applauds.

The shit gets eaten. The scoreboard moves. Nobody asks what actually got built.

This is why Washington treats AI like a five alarm fire.

AI does not play the friction game. It does not form a committee. It does not schedule a review. It does not file 400 pages of paperwork no one will ever read.

It just solves the problem.

And that is the one thing the machine cannot survive.

The government does not tax results. It taxes the process. The longer the process, the deeper the cut.

AI compresses a ten day workflow into seconds. There is nothing left to bill. Nothing left to tax. Nothing left to skim.

So they will spend the next decade warning you that AI threatens the economy.

What they will never say is what it actually threatens.

The illusion that activity equals progress.

The $200 economy where both men ate shit and called it a job.

The machines are not coming for your purpose.

They are coming to prove that half the economy never had one.

[Bill Combes @billntfs]

@STPointHoops @Drake @adidasHoops @VypeATX @3SSBCircuit Nice! JV making some noise this weekend as well!

[Ginny Robinson @ImGinnyRobinson]

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran."

— Hillary Clinton

Tell me again how the candidates and political parties are so different.

Please. I’m begging you.

[Bill Combes @billntfs]

@chamath Glad I own VCX for us small time investors!

[Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio]

Until recently, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were green card holders living lavishly in the United States.

Afshar is the niece of deceased Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. She is also an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the "Great Satan."

This week, I terminated both Afshar and her daughter's legal status and they are now in ICE custody, pending removal from the United States.

The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

My idea of a good time is working with amazing engineers to create incredible technology 🤩

The Tesla chip research fab will have all the machines needed to do logic, memory, packing & masks in one building for a lightning fast development cycle. Heaven 💫

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Wow

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

SpaceXAI + Tesla TERAFAB Project

Goal is a trillion watts of compute/year

Most must necessarily go to space, as US electricity is only 0.5TW

[Bill Combes @billntfs]

@AccessIPOs All because of the low float