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

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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 Nov 11
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      The only way to get all 3, and drive down grift levels (and thereby, cortisol levels and vast amounts of hidden transaction costs) is to a) expand the middle class b) shrink the inequality span, so that the bulk of any service sector orients towards serving the middle.

      4 replies 0 retweets 25 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      The ultrawealthy have a distortionary effect on consumption that everybody participates in. I'm fine with the yacht market getting oriented around the wealthy and their indifference to cost. But you do not want things like healthcare, groceries etc. to be 1% oriented.

      2 replies 2 retweets 49 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      The problem is there is a part of America -- and not just the Trumpy part -- that thinks obscenely priced luxury consumption plus grift-ridden, sketchy-quality general consumption is a good condition for an economy to be in. It's not. This condition tends to kill wealth creation.

      5 replies 2 retweets 35 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      Here's the problem. Wealth creation rests on energy and attention of people with banal middle class lives. The more time they spend reading yelp reviews of car dealerships and wondering if their dentist is cheating them, the less time they have to work on making Elon's rockets.

      3 replies 2 retweets 36 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      There's a reason grift-ridden economies tend to be highly extractive. If you own coal mining operations, you only need some miserable miners and a small middle class. If you're building complex software or rockets, you need a big, fat middle class.

      1 reply 1 retweet 21 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      The rentier wealth-extracting class I suspect, is responsible for all the "bad" inequality ("good" inequality is the kind where wealth is partly proportionate to risk appetite, adjusted for safety net, rather than effort). And it's not always obvious.

      1 reply 1 retweet 23 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      Right now, the entire economy is dominated by some sort of obfuscated rentier dynamic driven by financialization. It's not just the Sacklers extracting opioid wealth out of unseen masses. Almost everything is that way, with diffuse extraction going on to power it.

      1 reply 2 retweets 32 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      I'm mostly venting about some relentless grift navigation challenges we've faced recently (mostly handled by wife, so I've been largely protected) and it is so soul sucking I can't see it being sustainable. This shit is going to blow up one way or the other in the next decade.

      2 replies 3 retweets 20 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      The entire inequality debate has been pwned by a socialist narrative, which is part of the problem. There is a stronger, more robust, capitalist argument inequality: it is inefficient, it kills wealth-building, amplifies extractive economics, and erodes competence.

      2 replies 9 retweets 46 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      It might seem self-serving to argue for a middle-class focused economic model, but both trickle-down (from wealth favoring policies) and trickle-up (UBI etc) are wishful thinking. Middle-out is the only thing that improves all 3 classes. Bourgeoise virtues.

      4 replies 4 retweets 27 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      Competence erosion is the biggest risk. And it hurts all 3 classes. The wealth of the rich is of no use if there's no competent people to pay to do what you need. And without competence in the middle, the grind at the bottom turns into increasingly unbearable oppression.

      11:13 AM - 11 Nov 2020
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      • 38 Likes
      • Halikaarnian Divia Eden Mohit Jhawar H Barath Imperialist Cubicle Mercenary GrowWiser Abe Antibodhi Cool stuff only
      2 replies 3 retweets 38 likes
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        2. Mundt‏ @Mundt2512 Nov 12
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          Replying to @vgr

          @threadreaderapp unroll

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