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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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      Bouncy house rentier capitalist not having a good time here. I guess if you’re gonna be a rentier you should do it at large enough scale to get bailed out rather than arrested.https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-21/bounce-house-business-owner-devastated-becomes-activist …

      3 replies 5 retweets 47 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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      It’s a sad story... he clearly works far harder than most who live off rents, but it’s hard to conjure up much sympathy for a business that combines this level of non-essentialness with this level of risk. All his ideas rely on foot-traffic the way all mine rely on the internet

      2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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      He has 300 bouncy houses, and his fallback line of business was the balloon men stores use to attract attention. 13 employees all devoted to lugging the things around and setting them up. All booked out months in advance due to graduation party season it seems. All canceled.

      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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      My small business is almost as non-essential, but is more conceptually diversified, and mostly relies on zero-capex infrastructure and more robust margins. Still, it worries me that I rely as much on 2 inputs — the existence of the internet and my own good health.

      8:12 AM - 21 May 2020
      • 12 Likes
      • Adobe Lumpen Pro portalnyc alth0u 😷🏠 OTIS! gregory_kramer Ling Hung Atam Peter Teneriello Jason Brown ( ༎ຶŎ༎ຶ )
      3 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          He’s a Trumpie but in this case I wouldn’t hold that against him. Nobody can really prep for something like this. You’d spend all day tail-risk-proofing a business idea and never starting anything if you were to worry at this level. But still... something unsympathetic here.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          I think I just don’t like economic rents. Even if it’s something as simple as an inflatable house. But rather than trying to estimate “rentishness” of a business by the vague definition of economics, I prefer to apply my own definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent …

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          A business is based on rents to the extent it does *not* require ongoing investment of thinking to keep it going. Ie if all you need is capital goods and formulaic labor that can be performed by interchangeable people, your business is based on rents.

          2 replies 4 retweets 19 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          Two factors can force you to think: 1. The presence of real competition (I suspect this guy was a local monopoly in Roseville) 2. The business being a knowledge work business where the basic output requires thinky labor that cannot be done by interchangeable parts people

          4 replies 1 retweet 9 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          Interestingly by this definition, even a super hardworking street food vendor is a rentier. Small cart capex, interchangeable formulaic labor, local monopoly on one street block. Look at say New York street food. Why do they all follow 2-3 patterns? (hotdogs, shawarma...)

          2 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          I guess I have low sympathy for people who try to build businesses with the goal of being able to stop thinking at some point. This is why I kinda detest the internet equivalent — the holy grail of “passive income”

          1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          It’s okay to want to stop thinking about one aspect of a business, via automation or figuring it out once and for all, but if you seek to eliminate all thinking input, you kinda deserve the risk exposures you get. Even if you’re working 14 hour days rather than idling in Bali.

          3 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          Retirement and disability exception case https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1263495955631894528?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1263495955631894528 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Replying to @adamgomulka
          I’m willing to make an exception for retirement, since that’s a universal future of falling cognitive capacity for anyone who continues living. It’s a bit like a disability we can all look forward to.
          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          If you’re doing your best thinking to survive and reality still gets inside your OODA loop and trips you up... that’s an honorable stumble and I can respect that. I’d vote for a bit of a communal bailout for you. It’s conscious cognitive free-riding that I have a hard time with.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          To be fair to inflatable house guy, I can’t tell from the story whether he was giving it his honorable best shot in terms of thinking-input or not. I’ve met many like him, with a good eye for basic arbitrage based businesses and a very narrow kind of transactional thinking.

          2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 21
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          I guess in Darwinian terns, cognitive free riding is like being a niche colonizing species rather than a generally adaptive one. Which also explains why I dislike “find your niche” business thinking. Niche thinking is for insects.

          3 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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        13. End of conversation

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