Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦

Books build better people. Join the rebellion and create the indie book platform readers deserve 👉📚

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

📚🔥 My 3 favorite reads of 2025 and why I loved them -> https://t.co/1T6acGfU3n and share your 3 favorites here -> https://t.co/QiiUowXSfK #BooksWorthReading

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

They finally figured out how to screw over index funds, this is an insane move. Keep the requirements in place.

[Hedgeye @Hedgeye]

Rule changes for the SpaceX $SPCX IPO:

Index providers waived the profitability requirement and cut the seasoning window from 90 days to 5.

This forces over $30 trillion in passive 401k and retirement money to buy SpaceX at IPO valuations.

Bloomberg Intelligence estimates S&P 500 funds must absorb 19% of SpaceX's float within 6 months.

Russell 1000 and Nasdaq 100 funds will absorb 24%.

The rules built to protect passive investors:

1. S&P 500 has required 12 months of trading and 4 quarters of GAAP profitability since 2002. Both waived.

2. Nasdaq cut its inclusion window from 90 trading days to 15.

3. FTSE Russell cut its to 5.

All three benchmarks are now structured to buy SpaceX at IPO pricing.

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

@DaveKeating @alemannoEU @vonderleyen It can also be both :)

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

We need to keep smart people in the country to build the future and build tomorrow’s businesses that employ millions of people

This is bad and misguided policy

[Cristina Cordova @cjc]

Big Almond has been doing this the whole time and we’ve been out here worried about data centers. Unbelievable.

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

Well said

[César A. Hidalgo @cesifoti]

Europe is one of the best places in the world to live, but one of the hardest places to build and scale a company.

After 5+ years in France, following 16+ in the US, I have a conflicted admiration for Europe.

On the one hand, Europe has great potential. When I lived in the US, I was skeptical of the European quality-of-life argument. But after getting used to Sunday morning markets, walkable cities, and 4.5 meter ceilings, I get it. There are things that you simply cannot import or experience as a tourist.

These things can make Europe very attractive for creative and intellectual work. I honestly believe some parts of Europe are the “best neighborhood” in the planet. But that’s not the full story.

I am not only a husband and a dad. I am also an entrepreneur. I founded a company in the US 12+ years ago that has offices in the US and Chile and clients throughout the world. I live in France, yet I have not opened a subsidiary here. That is telling.

We once hired someone in France through one of those remote employment platforms. The person received about 5,000 euros net per month, which is considered a very good salary here. But the total cost to the company was closer to 13,000 per month.

That makes hiring feel less like a relationship between a company and a worker, and more like renting someone from the state. At the same time, you take an enormous amount of legal and administrative responsibility. The presumption is that all companies should operate like a 1960s car manufacturer. The response is simple. Don’t set up operations in Europe.

But this is not a remote-work story. I know many small entrepreneurs in France who do not want to cross the threshold from being a one-person activity to becoming an employer. They sometimes refuse a new customer to stay small and avoid the obligations that come with hiring one person. That should worry us.

Many social protections here are described as being provided by the state, but in practice, a lot of the cost and complexity of the implementation falls on the administrative shoulders of entrepreneurs. That is reasonable for a large energy company or bank. But for a small business, it is the difference between an entrepreneur waking up on a Monday to think about product or paperwork.

Growth is not the enemy of the European social model. It is what enabled it. Much of the quality of life we enjoy here today dates back to growth incubated in the past. Growth that is increasingly hard to find. France once led frontier industries, like bicycles in the 1860s, cinema in the 1890s, and aviation and automobiles soon after. Since then, Europe built a more humane social model. But that model was built on the assumption that Europe and the US were the only two rich and industrialized places in the world.

That is no longer true. Global competition in the 21st century is not what it used to be 50 years ago, and the padding built to protect us, may have grown into the handbrake that constrains the growth of the small and flexible firms we need to compete in new frontier sectors.

We should be able to be critical about Europe in our own terms, without comparing ourselves to the US or China. Innovative parts of Europe, like Sweden or Switzerland, operate differently and provide clues. Sweden has embraced a dynamic of capitalization in its pension system for a long time in a continent where fewer people buy stocks. Switzerland, a place that shares an enormous amount of geography and culture with its neighbors, is built in part on strong internal competition among its cantons.

But neither can light a candle to a French open-air market on a Sunday morning. A market where cash is king, and for a reason.

Europe may be the best place in the world to live. But it is also one of the most challenging places to build and scale an innovative activity. The goal is not to weaken the European model. But to get to a place where we can lead again by example. The world will follow us, but only if we are ahead.

[Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @lugaricano]

No smoking gun, but the preponderance of evidence points to smartphones, not economics, as the culprit for the global drop in fertility:
• In the US and UK, births fell first and fastest in areas that got 4G earliest
• Birth rates were stable in the US, UK and Australia until 2007; in France and Poland until 2009; in Mexico and Indonesia until 2012; in Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal until 2013-15
Each of these inflection points matches local smartphone adoption (see picture).
• The younger the age group, the sharper the drop.
• in-person socialising among young adults is dropping. In SK, by 50% in 20 years
• Sexual dysfunction is higher among heavy social media user
• Effect is largest in culturally traditional societies — Middle East, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa
• Decline holds across countries hit hard by GFC 2008 and those not hit, fast-growing and not growing.
Excellent again @jburnmurdoch.
https://t.co/RYEMXD2bRM

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

@paulg I think the missing part is a public discussion about how much we contribute to government, what it is responsible for, and how we cap spending. I feel like we need a cap of xx% for gov, and a FED agency to decide the optimal way to raise that (no congress).

[Dave Keating @DaveKeating]

More and more people are concluding that the only way to save the EU is a 'two-speed Europe' where the hesitant outer tier is left behind while the core moves forward with ever-closer union

The alternative is vassalisation to America & Russia

From former 🇪🇺foreign policy chief:

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

@pablogguz_ @MarkManger Sometimes it seems like the only way they will face this type of stuff is a crisis, the bond market saying no, or something big enough to motivate them to touch the third rail.

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

@paulg It is hard to understand something when one of your big voting blocks is paid a lot of money in home equity to not build anything.

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

@Noahpinion And honesty, I don't agree with her on everything, but I trust her. She has honor.

[Saad Asad @realsaadasad]

Missoula, a city of 80,000, just legalized apartments everywhere, eliminated parking minimums, and removed density caps.

If a small Montana city can overhaul its zoning code, San Diego has no credible excuse not to.

https://t.co/XR3GIv7cAR

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

@Noahpinion Biden was a good president, I'm blown away at this rating.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

How did our country get captured by this cult

[Micah Erfan @micah_erfan]

Every time Republicans take power, they increase the deficit.

Every time Democrats take power, they reduce it.

[Ben Fox 📚🗽🌎🇺🇦 @bwb]

@Noahpinion I saw this time and time again at work. People just needed a nudge and support, and you realize that a lot of people can do senior level positions. It made me a bit sad as we have so much talent locked away and told they don't have it.

[Danielle Beckman @DaniBeckman]

Imagine being a scientist investigating vaccines in the U.S. After years of research and millions spent, your study is blocked from publication because your data doesn't support RFK's and the FDA's battle against vaccines. This is why people like me were forced to leave.

[Verso Europa 🇪🇺 @VersoEuropa]

This is what belief in Europe looks like.

Tbilisi, Georgia. 🇪🇺🇬🇪

[NXT EU @NXT4EU]

Why do countries like China and the US complain when Europe takes similar measures to protect our industry as them.

We will not be bullied. Europe has the full right to prefer our own companies. Similar to the Buy American Act and the Chinese GPL.

[pablo @pablogguz_]

big update to wikibarrio:

- a new, more polished ui
- redesigned side panel with sparklines + historical trends
- points of interest overlay (schools, hospitals, pharmacies, supermarkets, train/metro stations, parks)
- share-as-image cards

try it out!

https://t.co/x06WrZ5sjK