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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 30
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      I frankly don't think a reactionary turn to neomercantilism is plausible. The world is too dependent on non-zero-sum trade, which is dependent on technological progress, which is now owned by corporate forces, not national.

      1 reply 2 retweets 17 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Corporations are still nominally governed by nations. The US started a trade-war. The Chinese state interferes in IPOs. But in general, the ability to own corporations is weak because corporations are globally mobile. So if not tech or mercantilism, what then?

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Healthcare is actually a big candidate. Covid revealed public health governance and care delivery as a huge differentiator among nations, regardless of governance systems. With aging populations reliant on a service sector of relatively poor people, this is a big deal.

      1 reply 1 retweet 27 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      There is a popular social darwinist view that pandemics are culls. This was kinda true in 1919 with the Spanish Flu, with the weak and aged succumbing at the margins leaving behind a healthier pool. Even if you buy this ideologically, it is descriptively a poor model for 2020.

      2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Off the top of my head, around WW2, around 16 young/working people supported 1 aged person in the US. Now it's down to 4:1 or 3:1 or so, and heading that way globally. And most of the 3 workers today are low-skill service workers with hard-to-automate jobs. "Cull" is bad model.

      2 replies 1 retweet 9 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      The population structure of 2020 cannot handle "culls" from pandemics. We are at 7.5B headed to about a 9B peak in a couple of decades, with a very slow service automation trend in a barbell population of poor young people serving weak old people.

      1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Countries will compete on how well they solve this problem. So we now see a world marked by: a) relative American decline b) tech progress driven by corps still staffed by educated globalized elite c) nation-states competing on healthcare with barbell service+aged populations

      1 reply 1 retweet 21 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      This boils down to how individuals see their lives: work for the most innovative companies remotely while living in the countries that manage healthcare best. This is a FAR cry from the world of even 1980 when nationality was identity rather than a healthcare provider.

      1 reply 4 retweets 29 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      I'm not even exaggerating. Healthcare is increasingly the reason people choose to live in specific places, and constrains where they move to, both within and between countries.

      3 replies 4 retweets 30 likes
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    10. Paul Millerd‏ @p_millerd Nov 30
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      Replying to @vgr

      this is a surprisingly big factor in my wife and my discussions. we are feeling lucky we have Taiwan to fall back on given how good their healthcare system is.

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Replying to @p_millerd

      Soon: healthcare marriages like green card marriages

      6:44 PM - 30 Nov 2020
      3 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        1. Paul Millerd‏ @p_millerd Nov 30
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          The Taiwan-US dynamic on this has flipped. Now all the Taiwanese Americans are moving to Taiwan to start businesses too

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        1. Will Bachman‏ @willbachman Nov 30
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          Replying to @vgr @p_millerd

          My wife and I got married in July 2003. But my healthcare coverage from my job ended in January 2003. She was a city employee and had coverage. So in January we went to City Hall and became joined in a civil union so I could get on her health plan.

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        1. Brendan McAdams‏ @brendanmcadams Dec 1
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          Soon?? How about already.

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