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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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      Middle class isn't too grifty itself, but is often forced to navigate pervasive grift to sustain its lifestyle. Buying cars, dental services, home contracting... everything is exhausting grift-detection/mitigation. And that's assuming you can at least filter for competence.

      2 replies 4 retweets 58 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Michael Huber

      PNW seemed less grifty than SW. Midwest is middling-grifty. DC was also middling. I think for grift to become a big force in the economy, there has to be a disproportionately bigger local wealthy class and smaller middle class.https://twitter.com/nerdsnipe/status/1326592988848431104 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Michael Huber @nerdsnipe
      Replying to @vgr
      Where are the low grift regions?
      2 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      Like, take something like dentistry or hair-styling in LA. There's a lot of rich people here for who are willing to pay big premiums to get exactly the service they want. Everybody wants that business. The cost of being a producer gets indexed to serving the premium market.

      1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      But then, those who can't get enough of the premium business are forced to serve the larger but less profitable middle, and resent it. So they turn to grift. By contrast, regions without a large ultrarich market get structured to serve the middle class.

      2 replies 1 retweet 21 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      Pick 2 of 3: affordability, trustworthiness, competence. If you try to have all three under high inequality, you get griftonomics. In Nevada, competence fails. In LA, trust fails. For the rich, affordability fails.

      4 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      In traditional societies, the way people resolve this is to replace impersonal trust (yelp ratings etc) with personal trust (the doctor or dentist is also a family friend etc) and sacrifice some competence (the family friend may not be the best at stuff)

      1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
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    7. 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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    8. 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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    9. 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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    10. Paul Millerd‏ @p_millerd Nov 11
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      Replying to @vgr

      Have you written a recent essay on these topics? You’ve done a few threads on this in least year or two which are great.

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 11
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      Replying to @p_millerd

      No, topic is in the shitposting department

      7:41 PM - 11 Nov 2020
      0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

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