The Main

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman on how welfare programs destroy a society:

“Welfare programs have an insidious effect on the moral fiber of both the people who administer the programs and the people who are supposedly benefiting from it.

For the people who administer it, it instills in them a feeling of almost Godlike power. For the people who are supposedly benefiting, it instills a feeling of childlike dependence. Their capacity for personal decision-making atrophies.

The result is that the programs involved are a misuse of money. They do not achieve the objectives which it was their intention to achieve. But far more important than this, they tend to rot away the very fabric that holds a decent society together.”

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@MBAeconomics1 I sure hope we get good numbers for silver and gold.

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@MBAeconomics1 Something HAS to be going on. So weird.

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

Ages of Founding Fathers in 1776:

James Monroe, 18
Aaron Burr, 20
John Marshall, 20
Alexander Hamilton, 21
James Madison, 25
John Jay, 30
Thomas Jefferson, 33
Thomas Paine, 39
John Adams, 40
George Washington, 44

This nation was built by brilliant young men.

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@MBAeconomics1 What made you specifically so sure it was last night? I think we all agree the US is bankrupt, and pm will eventually surge, buy why were you so certain?

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk just put a price tag on obedience. It costs $200,000.

Musk: “You don’t need college to learn stuff. Everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free.”

Every lecture. Every textbook. Every framework ever written. Free on any screen in any country right now. The entire knowledge monopoly collapsed in a decade. Nobody updated the price tag.

Musk: “Colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores. But they’re not for learning.”

Strip the ivy and the branding. What’s underneath is a four-year obedience trial. Can this person follow instructions on a schedule without asking why.

Musk: “There is a value that colleges have, which is seeing whether somebody can work hard at something, including a bunch of annoying homework assignments, and still do their homework assignments.”

That is the entire six-figure value proposition. Not what you know. Not what you can build. Whether you can be managed. The establishment doesn’t need you educated. It needs you domesticated.

Musk: “If you’re trying to do something exceptional, you must have evidence of exceptional ability. I don’t consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability.”

The system doesn’t produce exceptional. It produces manageable. It takes the most creative years of your life and teaches you to wait for instructions. That is not education. That is containment.

Musk: “Gates is a pretty smart guy, he dropped out. Jobs is pretty smart, he dropped out. Larry Ellison, smart guy, he dropped out.”

They didn’t leave because they couldn’t keep up. They left because the ceiling was underground.

8 billion people now carry the same library in their pocket. The one these institutions charged a lifetime of debt to access.

The only product the university still sells is the belief that you need one.

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@MBAeconomics1 Crap!

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@MBAeconomics1 OMG I hope you are right!

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

“Why have we had such a decline in moral climate? A major factor has been a change in the philosophy which has been dominant, a change from belief in individual responsibility to belief in social responsibility.”

— Milton Friedman

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@MBAeconomics1 @elonmusk I SO hope you're right!

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@MBAeconomics1 How can you be sure it's materials constrained and not other manufacturing process issues?

[The Main @Vipertjh]

@SirSilverQuack That is one of the most mystifying things I've ever seen in the market. All one sided, no similar puts. And boy do I hope they end up in the money!

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

The real class war is between the productive class and the parasitic class.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

FDR is the most overrated president in American history and it is not close.

People treat him like a saint. The reality is he inherited a recession and turned it into the longest depression in the history of the developed world. Every other major economy on earth recovered faster than the United States did under FDR. Sit with that. We had the most resources, the most industry, the most capacity, and we recovered slower than countries that got bombed.

Unemployment was still 19% in 1938. Six years into the New Deal. Six years of "bold experimentation" and one in five Americans still could not find work.

Why? Because his policies were economically illiterate. The NIRA cartelized entire industries and made it illegal to lower prices during a deflationary collapse. He paid farmers to slaughter livestock and plow under crops while people stood in bread lines. He launched a war on business so aggressive that investment dried up because nobody knew what insane rule was coming next. Even his own Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, admitted in 1939 that they had spent enormous sums and "it does not work" and that unemployment was as high as when they started.

Then in 1937 his policies triggered a second brutal crash so embarrassing the textbooks gave it its own polite little nickname, the "Roosevelt Recession," so they would not have to attach his name to the failure in the obvious way.

A UCLA study in 2004 concluded the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by roughly seven years. Seven years of extra suffering sold to you as heroism.

So what actually saved the economy? Not the alphabet agencies. Not the fireside chats. A world war. Twelve million men shipped overseas and the entire planet's industrial competition reduced to rubble. That is the "recovery." That is the legacy.

Strip away Pearl Harbor and FDR is a guy who took a bad recession and stretched it into a decade of misery with bad economics and a cult of personality. He is not ranked on results. He is ranked on the luck of being in the chair when Hitler invaded Poland.

Greatest marketing job in the history of the presidency. Nothing more.

[A Man Of Memes @RickyDoggin]

RULES FOR SONS:

1. Never shake a man’s hand sitting down.
2. Don’t enter a pool by the stairs.
3. The man at the BBQ Grill is the closest thing to a king.
4. In a negotiation, never make the first offer.
5. Request the late check-out.
6. When entrusted with a secret, keep it.
7. Hold your heroes to a higher standard.
8. Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas.
9. Play with passion or not at all…
10. When shaking hands, grip firmly and look them in the eye.
11. Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be.
12. If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point.
13. Carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your back pocket is for you. The one in your breast pocket is for her.
14. You marry the girl, you marry her family.
15. Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath.
16. Experience the serenity of traveling alone.
17. Never be afraid to ask out the best looking girl in the room.
18. Never turn down a breath mint.
19. A sport coat is worth 1000 words.
20. Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising.
21. Thank a veteran. Then make it up to him.
22. Eat lunch with the new kid.
23. After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it.
24. Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win.
25. Manners maketh the man.
26. Give credit. Take the blame.
27. Stand up to Bullies. Protect those bullied.
28. Write down your dreams.
29. Always protect your siblings (and teammates).
30. Be confident and humble at the same time.
31. Call and visit your parents often. They miss you.
32. The healthiest relationships are those where you’re a team; where you respect, protect, and stand up for each other.

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman on the public school system:

“What we have is a monopoly, and like every monopoly, it’s producing a low-quality product at a very high cost.”

“The way to improve that is to have competition—to make it possible for parents to have a choice of the schools their children attend.”

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

“The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself. You must turn the issues over in your mind at leisure, consider the many arguments, let them simmer, and after a long time turn your preferences into convictions.”

— Milton Friedman

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

Elon Musk explains his 5-step algorithm for solving any problem:

"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist."

"I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run as a mantra."

Elon breaks it down:

Step 1: Question the requirements.

"Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are always dumb to some degree, no matter how smart the person who gave you those requirements. You have to start there, because otherwise you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question."

Step 2: Try to delete it.

"Try to delete the part or the process step entirely. If you're not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you're not deleting enough. Most people feel like they've succeeded if they haven't been forced to put things back in. But actually they haven't, they've been overly conservative and left things in that shouldn't be there."

Step 3: Optimize or simplify.

"The most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist. So you don't optimize until after you've tried to delete."

Step 4: Speed it up.

"Any given thing can be done faster than you think. But you shouldn't speed things up until you've tried to delete it and optimize it otherwise, you're speeding up something that shouldn't exist."

Step 5: Automate.

"And then the fifth thing is to automate it."

Elon explains why the order matters:

"I've gone backwards so many times where I've automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. I got tired of doing that. So that's why I have this mantra."

[🚫👁️Drinks on Saturday🇺🇸 @drinkonsaturday]

One of, if not the greatest luxuries in life...