David Foster

I write frequently at Chicago Boyz:
sometimes at Ricochet:

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

In a world with global and highly-efficient transportation and communications…and billions of people who are accustomed to low wages…is it possible for a country such as the United States to maintain its accustomed high standards of living for the large majority of its people?…and, if so, what are the key policy elements required to do this?

https://t.co/Wi7tu59s4k

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@RevivedThoughts @HVNYrefugee The Phobia(s) That Are Destroying America
https://t.co/Mxkjhter51

[Danielle Strachman 💗 🐈 💃 🪴 🎸 🎨 🐕 @DStrachman]

Met with a really great founder out of Bangalore yesterday. She met with someone at a top tier firm and was told in earnest that to fundraise she needed:

1. To dress better
2. Act more autistic
3. Be more serious and less bubbly

I prefer my founders ridiculously bubbly with light shining out of their eyeballs. Bring me your authentic essence!

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@ChipActual @peterboghossian https://t.co/1iA05JIWCM

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

In 1957, TIME magazine ran a cover story about General Bernard Schriever, who ran the USAF ballistic missile program, referring to the general and his staff as “tomorrow’s men.” In my 2017 review of Schriever’s biography, I remarked that in retrospect, this was true only if one defined “tomorrow” as the interval between the appearance of the article and, say, July 1969…and that America had increasingly lost the ability to do big things fast. The success of SpaceX has been a major milestone on our recovery of that ability, and I think you are right about the impact on younger generations

[Chip @ChipActual]

My son just turned 13. Elon inspires him more than anything else in the world right now. The multiplier effect of that is underappreciated.

He’s as excited about the first trillionaire as about riding Starship to Mars. Not because of the money - because it’s proof. Bold thinking + relentless execution = science fiction becomes reality.

Decades ago kids inspired by Michael Jordan didn’t just dream of dunking. They drilled. They worked. They elevated everyone around them.

Same thing is happening now but it’s far more consequential than a basketball super-player.

The next generation isn’t just watching Elon. They’re internalizing him.

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@patrickberzai @megha_lilly So basically, they want you to do the marketing for them and just serve as order-takers for the book

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@megha_lilly If publishers were any good at marketing, then this wouldn't be a problem. (assuming that the publishers were a lot less rigid in the kind of books they select than they seem to be at present)

[Flopping Aces @FloppingAces]

What if the mullahs and the Lefty-left are actually competing for the same job, just with different uniforms and better-funded marketing departments?

Both groups look at normal human existence ... people raising families, working jobs, minding their own business ... and decide it’s fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed by force. One side wants to drag everyone back to the 7th century under religious supervision. The other wants to drag everyone into some glittering future where feelings are regulated, language is policed, and biology is treated like a suggestion. Neither side has much use for people who just want to be left alone.

The dark comedy is how both of them genuinely believe they’re the enlightened ones. The mullahs think they’re doing God’s work by keeping women covered and dissenters quiet. The Lefty-left thinks they’re doing history’s work by keeping wrongthinkers deplatformed and institutions ideologically pure.

Both treat ordinary human nature as the enemy. Both need a permanent state of crisis and moral emergency to justify their existence. And both get extremely uncomfortable when you point out that their perfect societies always seem to require a lot of coercion and a surprisingly small number of people making all the rules.

It’s almost impressive how similar the psychology is once you strip away the branding. One side quotes scripture. The other quotes academic papers and equity statements. Both get that same glassy-eyed look when they talk about the glorious future that will arrive right after they finish crushing the current version of humanity.

The only real difference is one group is honest about wanting to control you in the name of God, while the other still pretends it’s all about liberation.
(article below)

[shirish @shiri_shh]

bro immigrated from Mexico and took a $28/hr contract welding job in 2015.

didn't even know what SpaceX was.

they gave him $10,000 in stock and let him buy more through payroll deductions.

that stake is now worth $880,000.

and he's one of 4,400 employees who became millionaires on Friday. welders. technicians. cafeteria staff.

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@SRCHicks "Producing" the most startup founders implies that the universities created the person attributes that led to the founders' success. Do you really believe this is the case?

[Kathryn Porter @KathrynPorter26]

This really worries me

A month ago in Wales I suffered a ruptured aneurysm in my abdomen. I lost over 2 units of blood

But the Welsh ambulance service refused to send an ambulance. I was still breathing so apparently didn't need one

I spent 7 hours lying on the ground in a car park. Every time I moved I threw up from the pain. The owners of the car park called 999 6x

One of the people there was a fireman. He couldn't believe that 999 treated each call as a separate incident and couldn't see the details or link to previous calls. He was frustrated because they could see I was seriously ill but you can't see internal bleeding and so there was no way to persuade 999 that it actually was an emergency

Eventually my husband arrived by taxi, journey of more than 3 hours from our home

He gave me my pain meds (the car park people were worried about liability and I was too ill to get them myself). This meant I was able to crawl into the car and he drove me to A&E

He got me into a wheelchair. We waited 75 minutes to see a doctor. I was shivering, heaped with blankets and threw up all over the floor

As soon as a doctor looked at me I was taken straight to resus. The next day I was transfered by blue light ambulance to another hospital, had a blood transfusion and spent 5 days on the high dependency unit

If my husband hadn't been able to come and look after me I have no idea how I would have survived. As it was I nearly didn't

I would not have been able to get myself to hospital nor would I have been able to log into some digital triage system

This scheme seems to assume if you're seriously ill you'll arrive by ambulance and if not you're well enough to navigate a digital portal

My experience suggests that's a dangerous assumption

A week later, back home in England I had another ruptured aneurysm. This time an ambulance came in 2 hours and again I was taken straight to resus

It wasn't the same because I had a recent diagnosis of a ruptured aneurysm so we could tell 999 I was almost certainly bleeding internally. But I was too ill to get myself down the stairs and out to the car. We still needed that ambulance and I still wouldn't have been able to fiddle around with an ipad

Proper triage REQUIRES an actual doctor to look at the patient. It takes a matter of minutes to differentiate between a life threatening emergency and not a life threatening emergency. That's not minutes to get a diagnosis but to know that the person is stable or not stable and if not that needs immediate attention

Seriously ill people can't do it themselves. It doesn't matter how smart or articulate they are normally. Or how tough. Expecting people to manage their own emergency care isn't what a modern health service should do

https://t.co/RMi7L44fUy

[Werner Zagrebbi🇦🇿 @zagrebbi]

Average SAT by major at Columbia.
Classics improbably edges out Math and Physics for the top spot at 1529. Sociology is on the bottom (1422), though "Ethnicity & Race Studies", "Public Health", and "Human Rights" aren't too far in front.
The within-school spread is 100 points or so — around half of a standard deviation of the SAT-taker population.

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

Boswell, citing a remark by Samuel Johnson: "He observed that a man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. ‘It was a miserable thing when the conversation could only be such as, whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that."

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@orlipeter "The ability to sustain and integrate information over time" is a very key requirement for a whole lot of job types

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@magattew @HonTonyAbbott Starvation and Centralization:
https://t.co/m8XNrUtF2I

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@MrDanielBuck I wonder how many of them could have made it through an issue of the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine from 1884...the readership of which was definitely almost all non-college, and probably in many cases non-high-school graduates.
https://t.co/DU18HEdiLF

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Voici le palmarès des abrutis de l'histoire. Ils ont tous eu la même idée géniale : régler un problème complexe en condamnant un groupe. Voici leurs résultats, dans l'ordre chronologique. Riez bien. Puis comptez.

An 64, Rome. La ville brûle. Néron a besoin d'un coupable : ce sera les chrétiens, une secte minuscule. Tacite raconte les jardins impériaux éclairés par des torches humaines. La cause réelle ? Une ville de bois surpeuplée. Le coupable officiel ? N'importe qui, sauf l'urbanisme.

1349, Strasbourg. La peste noire approche. Coupables désignés : les Juifs, accusés d'empoisonner les puits. Le 14 février, la ville en brûle deux mille selon les chroniques. Détail : la peste n'était pas encore arrivée à Strasbourg. Ces génies ont exécuté le coupable avant le crime. Le pape Clément VI publie une bulle rappelant que les Juifs meurent de la peste exactement comme les autres. Les foules s'en moquent : un coupable, ça ne se discute pas, ça se brûle.

XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Europe. Le climat se refroidit, les récoltes pourrissent, la grêle hache les vignes. Coupables : des dizaines de milliers de femmes, jugées pour sorcellerie météorologique. Une civilisation a brûlé ses voisines pour corriger la météo. Bilan : la grêle a continué.

1793, Paris. La crise est totale. Coupables : les aristocrates, puis les prêtres, puis les accapareurs, puis les suspects, puis les révolutionnaires eux-mêmes. Danton guillotiné. Robespierre guillotiné. Vergniaud avait prévenu avant de monter à son tour : la Révolution, comme Saturne, dévore ses enfants. Quand tout le monde finit suspect, c'est que le coupable n'a jamais existé.

1929, Moscou. La collectivisation affame le pays. Coupables : les koulaks, liquidés comme classe. Puis les saboteurs : des ingénieurs fusillés parce que des quotas physiquement impossibles n'étaient pas atteints. Puis les trotskistes : on accusera Trotski des mauvaises récoltes dix ans après son exil, et encore après son assassinat à Mexico. Un fantôme sabotait les moissons. Facture : des millions de morts de faim.

1933, Berlin. Le coupable total : le Juif, accusé d'être à la fois le banquier capitaliste et le révolutionnaire bolchevik, responsable de la défaite de 1918, du chômage et de l'art moderne. L'accusation n'avait même pas besoin d'être cohérente, c'est le privilège du bouc émissaire. Détail stratégique : le Reich chasse ses physiciens. Einstein, Szilard, Teller, Bethe traversent l'Atlantique et construisent la bombe atomique pour l'Amérique. Hitler a livré l'arme absolue à ses ennemis par pureté idéologique. Facture : six millions d'assassinés, et l'Allemagne en cendres.

1958, Pékin. Mao déclare la guerre aux moineaux, ennemis du peuple qui volent le grain. Des centaines de millions d'oiseaux exterminés par mobilisation générale. Sans prédateurs, les criquets dévorent les récoltes, et la famine emporte des dizaines de millions de Chinois. Détail final : Pékin devra réimporter des moineaux d'URSS. Le régime avait gagné sa guerre contre les oiseaux.

1961, Berlin-Est. Trois millions de citoyens ont fui le paradis socialiste. Coupable : le fascisme extérieur. Solution : un mur, nom officiel, « rempart de protection antifasciste ». Un rempart contre l'extérieur dont tous les miradors regardaient l'intérieur.

1975, Phnom Penh. Les Khmers rouges désignent l'ennemi : les intellectuels. Critère de détection : porter des lunettes. La myopie devient un crime capital. Facture : un quart du pays exterminé.

Années 2010, Caracas. Les rayons sont vides. Coupables : les spéculateurs, les accapareurs, la « guerre économique » de l'empire. On arrête des commerçants. L'inflation dépasse le million de pour cent. Le sabotage avait bon dos : c'était l'arithmétique des contrôles de prix.

Maintenant, notez le dénominateur commun de tous ces abrutis. Ce n'est pas d'abord la cruauté. C'est une erreur technique, toujours la même : ils ont condamné des groupes.

Or les groupes ne commettent pas de crimes. Les individus commettent des crimes. Et la culpabilité collective produit mécaniquement deux choses : elle massacre des innocents, et elle fait disparaître les vrais coupables dans la masse. Quand tout un groupe est coupable, le criminel devient introuvable.

Et la logique de groupe finit toujours au même endroit : le sang. Le nazisme avait un mot pour punir la famille d'un accusé, Sippenhaft. L'URSS avait des camps pour les épouses et les enfants de « traîtres à la patrie ». Les Khmers rouges exécutaient les familles entières, avec un proverbe : pour arracher l'herbe, il faut arracher les racines. Condamner un groupe, c'est toujours, au bout du chemin, condamner des enfants.

Alors voici la leçon, et elle tient en une règle que nos ancêtres ont mis trois mille ans à formuler.

Condamnez des actes. Condamnez des crimes. Condamnez des individus, à la hauteur exacte de ce qu'ils ont fait, avec toute la sévérité nécessaire. Mais jamais des groupes. Jamais le sang. Jamais l'héritage.

Il y a deux mille six cents ans, Ézéchiel posait la règle : le fils ne portera pas la faute du père. C'est peut-être la phrase la plus civilisatrice jamais écrite. Notre droit en descend en ligne directe : nul n'est responsable que de son propre fait.

Et cette règle n'a pas de camp. Quand un criminel commet une horreur, jugez le criminel, enfermez-le, à la hauteur du crime : le groupe d'où il vient n'a pas tenu le couteau. Et quand on vous explique que vous êtes coupable de ce que des hommes qui vous ressemblaient ont fait il y a deux siècles, refusez : c'est le même poison, présenté comme une vertu. La culpabilité héréditaire ne devient pas morale parce qu'elle change de cible.

La justice juge des actes. L'idéologie juge des groupes. Tout le palmarès ci-dessus est la facture de la confusion entre les deux.

Les abrutis condamnent des groupes. Les civilisations jugent des hommes.

Au travail.

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@EveKeneinan The political positions and behavior that sail under the banner of 'empathy' are often motivated by something much darker. See: Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism

https://t.co/sx0CdAlMpN

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@KathrynPorter26 @peterkyle @BBCSimonJack "bespoke concierge service"...would a 'bespoke concierge service' have identified Apple or Intel as potential big winners, let along Tesla or SpaceX? I doubt it most seriously

[David Foster @DavidF1344]

@FloppingAces The Rage of the Prince-Electors
https://t.co/CyxDcALCtj