Kyla, you are such a special and observant mind. I am sending you: "hey good job"! I understand what you are saying and I love the passage: "I guess I had been expecting things to feel different, for the sky to open up, a booming voice to say “hey good job” and the sun to beam a single ray of light into the middle of my forehead, for fanfare and chorus and celebration, but instead, it was me and Moo, as always, in my kitchen/office/living room/bike workshop." You belong in a world think-tank trying to make sense, meaning and appropriate actions to improve upon such uncertainty. Thanks for another wonderful essay.
Human storytelling highlights the importance of micro connections, the face time with your family, friends, neighbors, and larger community. The act of extending one's community to a larger public pool by acts of common curtesy, kindness, and charity to strangers is a routine and sometimes heroic feature of our fables. To the extent we're being trained to accept a reduction of meaningful human connections, this represents a moral hazard. Dealing with live people is tricky and messy but that's where the good stuff is. Thank you for keeping it real, Ms. Kyla.
Reading your Notion, I found this extremely relatable:
- i know how elevators work. you press 'up' and the lightness of your heart carries you heavenward. or 'down' and the earth tenderly pulls you close
- When you realize reassurance seeking is a compulsion and no amount of reassurance will ever satisfy anxiety you will know peace
- once fucking again i have realized for the 6000th time that i was feeling insane because i was disconnected from my gratitude and as soon as i felt thankful for something i was not insane anymore
- why is there so little people explicitly experimenting with consciousness?? we have access to this shit every moment, let's understand and jailbreak it
- discourse isn't real, none of this is real...this is a thinking machine daily reinvented to distract you from maxima with minima, it's a funhouse mirror with no referent at the origin of a labyrinth with no perimetrical exit. and everything real encompasses this flat thing.
Technology is not the same as the essence of technology. When we are seeking the essence of *tree*, we have to become aware that that which pervades every tree, as tree, is not itself a tree that can be encountered among all the other trees. - Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Intelligence is a moral category. The separation of feeling and understanding, that makes it possible to absolve and beatify the blockhead, hypostatizes the dismemberment of man into functions.
Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, 1951
I find the typos to be distracting, like "to" when you mean "too." Also "who's" when you mean "whose." Maybe you could get a friend to read it over and edit a bit?
Hi Kyla, I really enjoyed this and congrats on finishing the manuscript!
Your point about the crushing uncertainty really hit home for me. Bc I like hearing that things are alright. And you are right, things aren't "that bad" but often it still feels like things are bad! And reading your post I realised it's the uncertainty about the future that makes me angsty. Rather than what's actually happening now.
Time to take a chill pill and wait for your next post. Thanks for making economics actually accessible and understandable to someone who doesn't really like reading the news!
I read your comments above very, very carefully. I wanted to see why I disagreed with the premise so profoundly. Your thoughts are so scatterbrained, your command of the English language so feeble (where were you originally educated in the basics of English?)... e.g "it's" where you mean "its... "to" where you mean "too", your reference points are sometimes non-existent. Or when you say, "credit card debt is not that bad". It just goes on and on. And the basic premise adds up to nothing. The economy is bad. Get used to it...
"am just going to let this sit alone - "Nearly 60% of companies that have been public in the U.S. over the last century or so have failed to create value, defined as earning total shareholder returns in excess of one-month Treasury bills."- Henrik Bessembinder's research"
Interesting quote but I think it makes sense. Companies are supposed to be risky. If all of them succeeded then they would be risk free assets. Since the other 40% probably have massive gains (fat tail distribution), we should expect a lot of companies to 'fail'. Maybe even more than the 60% observed.
Maybe it is regional but where I live (in Florida) people are struggling. Food pantry demand is way up. Rents have skyrocketed; homelessness is increasing daily. The job market is not good for job seekers. When I was hiring for a role two years ago it was difficult to get over two applicants. Nowadays that same role would have 20-30 people apply. So it doesn't surprise me to see such sour sentiment.
Assuming the data is sound, and things aren’t all that bad, maybe we should do nothing. Back when I was a caseworker I learned that people need to make a personal choice to help themselves. I could only say so many combinations of words to convince them to begin picking up pieces of their lives.
All the Cass Sunstein-style nudging hasn’t amounted to much since the 2010s, so maybe time to stop trying to convince people to feel better, or to use another tool. Maybe that Taylor swift method is right: let them party.
In terms of the vibecession, I think you pretty clearly nailed that the fundamentals — housing, healthcare, and education — are a mess. We know how to fix those things, we just won't do it because of entrenched political interests.
Similarly, I don't see how you can blame VC specifically for misallocating capital when their objectives are so clear (high-risk, high-reward investment profile) and their performance is so legible (actual LP returns). I'm not sure what the counterfactual here is—do you just want them to do PE investing (the guys in more traditional companies) with lower risk/return profiles? Of greater concern is that change in the aforementioned fundamentals is practically illegal, and if no change is allowed, how can there be any innovation? This dynamic roughly translates to all of the physical world—atoms are much more expensive vs. the world of bits, where there is far less regulation and can grow much faster thanks to the existing infrastructure and zero marginal costs. If you want more dollars allocated into the real world, you have to change that return profile (see: CHIPs Act and IRA). Those are still one-offs, and they're still stuck in the same vetocracy and cost challenges that plague all modern physical world innovation in the US.
Kyla, you are such a special and observant mind. I am sending you: "hey good job"! I understand what you are saying and I love the passage: "I guess I had been expecting things to feel different, for the sky to open up, a booming voice to say “hey good job” and the sun to beam a single ray of light into the middle of my forehead, for fanfare and chorus and celebration, but instead, it was me and Moo, as always, in my kitchen/office/living room/bike workshop." You belong in a world think-tank trying to make sense, meaning and appropriate actions to improve upon such uncertainty. Thanks for another wonderful essay.
"Don't wait to be generous" - post-it stuck to the side of my monitor
Human storytelling highlights the importance of micro connections, the face time with your family, friends, neighbors, and larger community. The act of extending one's community to a larger public pool by acts of common curtesy, kindness, and charity to strangers is a routine and sometimes heroic feature of our fables. To the extent we're being trained to accept a reduction of meaningful human connections, this represents a moral hazard. Dealing with live people is tricky and messy but that's where the good stuff is. Thank you for keeping it real, Ms. Kyla.
Congratulations on sending off the manuscript!
Reading your Notion, I found this extremely relatable:
- i know how elevators work. you press 'up' and the lightness of your heart carries you heavenward. or 'down' and the earth tenderly pulls you close
- When you realize reassurance seeking is a compulsion and no amount of reassurance will ever satisfy anxiety you will know peace
- once fucking again i have realized for the 6000th time that i was feeling insane because i was disconnected from my gratitude and as soon as i felt thankful for something i was not insane anymore
- why is there so little people explicitly experimenting with consciousness?? we have access to this shit every moment, let's understand and jailbreak it
- discourse isn't real, none of this is real...this is a thinking machine daily reinvented to distract you from maxima with minima, it's a funhouse mirror with no referent at the origin of a labyrinth with no perimetrical exit. and everything real encompasses this flat thing.
Technology is not the same as the essence of technology. When we are seeking the essence of *tree*, we have to become aware that that which pervades every tree, as tree, is not itself a tree that can be encountered among all the other trees. - Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Intelligence is a moral category. The separation of feeling and understanding, that makes it possible to absolve and beatify the blockhead, hypostatizes the dismemberment of man into functions.
Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, 1951
Re: Your book. Hey, good job!! ^_^ !!
If you persist in following the sun, then eventually you will find that sunbeam.
A book is a big project; sending one off is a big deal. I hope you get a chance to celebrate, maybe with some fanfare and chorus (live musical?).
You tackle tricky topics in this post. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Our turn to think things over.
Thank you for being here.
I find the typos to be distracting, like "to" when you mean "too." Also "who's" when you mean "whose." Maybe you could get a friend to read it over and edit a bit?
Real: more cash has been printed in the past few years than in the course of history.
Shills: “aCtUaLLy u R wRoNg aNd ThE eCoNoMy iS gUd.”
thanks for this :D
also, how will we know that your book is available for the masses? sorry if you have already talked about this; I must have missed it.
"And I am not a psychology person (although the economy certainly feels more like psychological analysis than financial)"
Wellllll this why I read your newsletter. Animals spirits impacting the economy writ large are disregarded by so many out there but not thee!
Hi Kyla, I really enjoyed this and congrats on finishing the manuscript!
Your point about the crushing uncertainty really hit home for me. Bc I like hearing that things are alright. And you are right, things aren't "that bad" but often it still feels like things are bad! And reading your post I realised it's the uncertainty about the future that makes me angsty. Rather than what's actually happening now.
Time to take a chill pill and wait for your next post. Thanks for making economics actually accessible and understandable to someone who doesn't really like reading the news!
I read your comments above very, very carefully. I wanted to see why I disagreed with the premise so profoundly. Your thoughts are so scatterbrained, your command of the English language so feeble (where were you originally educated in the basics of English?)... e.g "it's" where you mean "its... "to" where you mean "too", your reference points are sometimes non-existent. Or when you say, "credit card debt is not that bad". It just goes on and on. And the basic premise adds up to nothing. The economy is bad. Get used to it...
I just want to own a home one day :/
"am just going to let this sit alone - "Nearly 60% of companies that have been public in the U.S. over the last century or so have failed to create value, defined as earning total shareholder returns in excess of one-month Treasury bills."- Henrik Bessembinder's research"
Interesting quote but I think it makes sense. Companies are supposed to be risky. If all of them succeeded then they would be risk free assets. Since the other 40% probably have massive gains (fat tail distribution), we should expect a lot of companies to 'fail'. Maybe even more than the 60% observed.
Maybe it is regional but where I live (in Florida) people are struggling. Food pantry demand is way up. Rents have skyrocketed; homelessness is increasing daily. The job market is not good for job seekers. When I was hiring for a role two years ago it was difficult to get over two applicants. Nowadays that same role would have 20-30 people apply. So it doesn't surprise me to see such sour sentiment.
Assuming the data is sound, and things aren’t all that bad, maybe we should do nothing. Back when I was a caseworker I learned that people need to make a personal choice to help themselves. I could only say so many combinations of words to convince them to begin picking up pieces of their lives.
All the Cass Sunstein-style nudging hasn’t amounted to much since the 2010s, so maybe time to stop trying to convince people to feel better, or to use another tool. Maybe that Taylor swift method is right: let them party.
In terms of the vibecession, I think you pretty clearly nailed that the fundamentals — housing, healthcare, and education — are a mess. We know how to fix those things, we just won't do it because of entrenched political interests.
Similarly, I don't see how you can blame VC specifically for misallocating capital when their objectives are so clear (high-risk, high-reward investment profile) and their performance is so legible (actual LP returns). I'm not sure what the counterfactual here is—do you just want them to do PE investing (the guys in more traditional companies) with lower risk/return profiles? Of greater concern is that change in the aforementioned fundamentals is practically illegal, and if no change is allowed, how can there be any innovation? This dynamic roughly translates to all of the physical world—atoms are much more expensive vs. the world of bits, where there is far less regulation and can grow much faster thanks to the existing infrastructure and zero marginal costs. If you want more dollars allocated into the real world, you have to change that return profile (see: CHIPs Act and IRA). Those are still one-offs, and they're still stuck in the same vetocracy and cost challenges that plague all modern physical world innovation in the US.