Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 18th, 2025
“Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” ― Frank Tyger
"Over the last few centuries, the cycle of great powers has corresponded almost exactly to the cycle of reserve currencies, with at most a lag of two or three decades. If America ever stops being the world’s leading power, then the dollar would also cease being the global reserve currency. Such a momentous reversal might take place after a world war or a catastrophic financial crisis. One might think, however, that a hegemonic power should be able to prevent those outcomes, if only to preserve the privilege of holding, in its printing presses, the key to something far better than the gold of the alchemists. But this is where things get both more interesting and more complicated.
The truth is that for a country to hold the global reserve currency is both a privilege and a curse. Remember the internet-meme aphorism: good times breed weak men. The dialectic was well explored by classical thinkers such as Polybius or Ibn Khaldun. It applies to money no less than people.
If a country can become prosperous just by printing money it will likely lose interest in producing actual goods. There could be a psychological dynamic at play here, but even in its absence there would always be a monetary mechanism. If the whole world wants to hold assets in the global reserve currency, in order to save or invest or speculate, then that currency will be grossly overvalued. It will no longer reflect demand and supply in global trade markets and will no longer allow for trade deficits to balance. The country with the global reserve currency will find it very hard to sell its artificially inflated goods in global markets and, as a result, manufacturing and agriculture and even many services will move elsewhere. It might end up specialising in financial services, the management of money, at the expense of almost everything else."
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2025/04/the-downfall-of-king-dollar
2. "Every island matters. That is why during the last great Pacific war so much blood and treasure was expended to hold and take them.
For far too long, this territory or that was either forgotten or dismissed as “not an atoll worth dying on” by people either ignorant of history, geography, or simply unserious people in serious jobs. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially when we were engaged in unwise imperial policing actions in Central and Southwest Asia, took advantage of the West’s neglect and moved it. A lot of work needs to be done to roll their advances back."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/brave-little-palau
3. Lots to learn as always. Life is about making bets and statistics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1pciCFUpQk
4. "The longer a war lasts, the more it is dominated by economic factors. This is just as true in Saladin’s quarter-century war with the Crusaders as in a massive industrial conflict like World War II.
The Red Sea, and the wide-ranging trade networks it enabled, was therefore foundational to Saladin’s grand strategy. Although Reynald’s adventure was ultimately far too small to seriously threaten this, the harsh reaction it provoked—above and beyond the obvious religious motivations—shows just how sensitive it was for any ruler of Egypt."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/red-sea-pirates-commerce-raiding
5. Incredibly rich dissection on the art and science of venture capital. Very helpful to anyone who wants to get good at this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVMnMlsVnCc
6. "We call them tetris business models because they are built in different configurations than we are used to. Common business sense, historically, says you expand in one of two directions. One is, you have a core customer, and you make a product offshoot of your core product to sell to that same customer. Two is, you have a core product, and you tweak it to take it into a different market.
But in this new world of AI tech, you get these weirder business models that still make sense, like being a vertically integrated tech convenience store but also selling your tech like a SaaS company. The way you build looks funny compared to previous waves of technology.
These tetris business models are arising because of the issues and opportunities of AI. One is that execution of almost everything is going to get easier because of AI. So, the parts of a business that AI can’t impact very much will get so much more valuable. Secondly, your assets in an AI business are often data and models and, those may give you an advantage in areas that are quite different than your core initial business model, at least from an investor perspective."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/tetris-business-models-the-ai-opportunity
7. "From an investment perspective, memory challenges the frequently repeated Silicon Valley belief that AI lacks defensibility. Spend five minutes at a Bay Area investor dinner and you'll hear that take. That was lazy thinking.
Memory is a massive, defensible moat everyone, from startups to tech giants, will race to capture.
Memory, and the deeply personal context that comes with it, will make Facebook Connect’s 2008-era social graph look primitive.
If Facebook Connect was about who you knew and your surface-level likes, memory is about who you are and the deepest thoughts you carry every day.
Your work goals. Relationship doubts. Health concerns. All of it.
Once OpenAI amasses enough memory, expect them to roll out deep personalization APIs for third-party developers.
They'll effectively become the Memory Operating System (MOS?) for anyone building new products. No startup can realistically compete with that kind of context from scratch.
And of course, OpenAI will build many of these apps themselves. Given their current product velocity—arguably the fastest we’ve seen from any modern internet company—it’s hard to imagine otherwise.
Switching to a new assistant won’t just be inconvenient — it’ll be costly. An AI that knows your habits, preferences, and workflows over years is leagues more valuable than one starting from zero. Just ask anyone who's had a great Chief of Staff."
https://jeffmorrisjr.substack.com/p/the-new-moat-memory
8. "But “people” is much less valuable today because most firms will have way fewer employees in the future. almost every company, except for the startup, is at peak employee count today.
The revenue per employee will go up 3-10 times in the next decade.
in the future, the most valuable work thing will be to select and manage vendors — including software, APIs, tech contractors, AIs, and more.
there are ZERO good books (or even blog posts on this) on selecting and managing vendors — so if you can do this well, you will have a big advantage.
most people are really bad at selecting and managing vendors. Like grade F bad. So even if you get yourself to a grade C, you will be in the top 10%. the best people are the crazy founders that run $100 million companies by themselves … but you cannot hire those people to help."
https://auren.substack.com/p/vendor-management-is-the-most-important
9. "In general, with a real friend, you will have agreements AND disagreements. With fake friends, you will primarily have agreements.
You need to observe this over time and you will catch a lot of fake friends."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-to-identify-fake-friends-from-real-friends/
10. Great conversation on Agentic AI in the Enterprise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdLPl4WLOgQ&t=448s
11. Learning from the master of the entertainment world and Kaiser Soze of Silicon Valley: Michael Ovitz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RHFu4N3fq4
12. How to win this new great powers competition & the future of war.
Net net: we are our own worst enemy in DoD: bureaucracy and central planning. by The CTO of Palantir. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTG393KqOGc&t=4s
13. I try to understand the other side. But this sounds like a psy-op from CCP as she is a princeling even though she is based in Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4oyfAH94TE
14. Understand thy enemy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idaSfpD1pBI
15. "Trump has stated, in his rather dysfunctional manner, that America will not be the sole consumption engine of the global economy—it will not be the place where others dump their excess production. From now on, the rest of the world can produce less, in which case we have a global depression. Or the rest of the world must find a way to consume more—in which case, we have a more balanced, and rapidly growing global economy.
This is a direct challenge to many global leaders, to large corporations, and to literally everyone else who’s about to have their lives upended. Many are upset, and many will push back—as their whole existence is based upon dumping product on the US. I don’t think there’s a going back now—the die has been cast, and Trump seems rather defiant that we’re not going backwards.
So, which will it be. Will we have a global depression?? Or will everyone else consume more?? I feel rather strongly that after a period of chaos and reflection, the world will choose to consume more, if only because the other option is so bleak.
Besides, it’s not that hard to consume more. If you lower taxes on the bottom half of income earners, their propensity to consume almost all of the tax savings is quite high. If you subsidize low interest loans for cars and homes, people will take them up and consume more. If you do direct payments, people will consume more, as we learned during Covid. If you do massive infrastructure programs, then the nation consumes more. Increasing consumption isn’t hard, however it’s a political decision. A decision to have the oligarch class share a bit more with the peasant class.
Naturally, these sorts of difficult decisions can only come about during a crisis. Trump has created the necessary crisis. Will global leaders take him up on their chance to push consumption and fix the global imbalances?? If not, do they just sort of shrug their collective shoulders, and accept a collapse?? One thing is for sure, the old model of stimulating production and then dumping it on the US is not going to work this time. Everyone needs domestic demand. They need to run it hot."
https://pracap.com/theyre-gonna-choose-to-run-it-hot/
16. "Practically everything that would impact the lower-end consumer is getting hit harder. While someone like Gucci could take a short term hit to profit *margins* without raising prices, the majority of lower end apparel, toys, hardware, furniture and even some basic home improvement items *cannot*. This means prices will be raised at the low-end of the spectrum relative to the luxury end (unless China’s marketing push really kills demand for Luxury products being secretly manufactured in China at scale).
Onto Some Optimism: Don’t think this is going to lead into any sort of 4-year recession. Perhaps part of the game is create a bunch of uncertainty to force the Fed’s hand. Again. No clue and gave up trying to figure it out since they flip flop every 24 hours.
Instead the more important part is that consumers are giving up. This is historically a *good* sign for future returns on stocks, crypto and any other asset.
Looking Good for Around Summer: If people need a timeline we’re hopeful that May/June is the time we get answers. We’ll have rules on DeFi, real expectations on tariffs and we’ll have a good idea on Q2 GDP + Fed positioning.
As you all know, in 10 years, 20 years etc prices will be disastrously higher. All of this volatility ends with money printing."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/most-cooked-industries-post-tariffs
17. So much tinfoil hat geopolitics. But always an interesting lens to look at the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZMiQ-vdfD4
18. Grim assessment of tariff mess. 2025 is gonna be pretty ugly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHkg5o52XW8
19. "China's electricity comes mainly from coal and hydro. They've dammed most of their dammable rivers and they've created far more smog by burning coal than is healthy for their population. Their nuclear program is firmly 20th century in character and already has a way of doing business that will be difficult for them to adjust. The Chinese deserts that are best suited for large solar farms are far away from the coasts that consume most of the energy. They might be able to cut their energy prices in half, but I doubt they’d be able to do it quicker than America can, and I really doubt they’d be able to follow us even further if we were to shoot for an objective like $0.01/kWh.
It's crazy that a relatively energy-poor country operating under all these physical and organizational constraints manages to get cheaper electricity in its major economic centers than we do. Our government had a lot to do with the perverse financial incentive structures and stupid regulations that got us to this point, and only our government can undo it in timeframes that matter in the context of fierce global competition. We have to throw money at the problem at grand scale, but if we do we can expect to cover a lot of ground quickly, and in a way that China can't easily duplicate.
Scaling American energy generation by enough and in the right places might be a >$1t project, but we will reap far more than that sum if we pursue it aggressively, and we may even enable victory in the most consequential geopolitical confrontation of our times in the process. We have the means, now it is a question of will.
Economic prosperity is a function of energy availability to a great extent. We’re currently underperforming the Henry Adams curve by at least a factor of five. We must be competitive with Chinese industry in order to maintain our security and prosperity, but once we’ve accomplished that objective we must stretch our ambitions further. I’ll settle for doubling energy generation for now, but in the long run we should be discussing orders of magnitude, not factors of single digits."
https://mattparlmer.substack.com/p/america-can-beat-china-on-energy
20. Good summary of the disastrous last few weeks in America and the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXETOHvRMj4
21. A master class on how to drive returns in a venture fund. Lots of interesting practices and ideas for VCs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If0UxGxTuFg
22. "That’s the reality behind today’s ERP - the operating system of business encompassing financials, inventory management, supply chain, reporting & human resources.
The fundamental problem? By the time vendors finish modeling a company’s operations in software, the business has already evolved: grown into new markets, restructured teams, and shifted key metrics. The software becomes outdated before implementation completes.
AI disrupts this negative feedback loop with composable software. It enables organizations to model themselves in plain English, empowering teams to adapt their software systems at the same pace as business evolution - not months or years behind it."
23. George Friedman always has a pragmatic perspective and pro-US view. So this is his bias but it can help for trying to understand the Trump tariffs & present geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0YJSEMy0sc
24. "They want to hammer in a good vs evil framework into people’s heads by repeated exposure to their language manipulation.
And so far it works really well because unless you are actually affected by something, you don’t really think about it beyond PERCEIVED “good vs evil”.
This is how it is. It’s a way to rig the game. The media is a tool of psyops."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-they-manipulate-you/
25. "Being TED, the idea that we might be living in a simulation naturally came up amongst the assembled technologists, philosophers, and scientists. But most concluded that no such exotic explanation was necessary to explain what we observe.
Individuals with high agency (such as Musk, Trump, Putin) have simply decided to ignore consensus reality and the laws and norms that previously shaped it. They are following their own agenda and we're all being dragged into a new reality, whether we like it or not.
In fighting it, we are lured into engaging with the old systems — wasting time spinning the knobs labeled checks and balances, finding they do nothing. What may happen next is anyone's guess. But we're running out of time."
https://america2.news/americas-meltdown-as-seen-from-ted-2025/
26. 4 years of NIA, this is as usual, a fun and informative episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd-izEcoT50
27. "The inconvenient truth, for China, is that its scale relies upon American power and influence. The Chinese export machine, for instance, requires a relatively free world trading order. The recipe to date has been “mercantilism for us, free trade for everybody else.” Yet Trump threatens to smash that framework. If the world breaks down into bitterly selfish protectionist trading blocs, China will be one of the biggest losers. After all, where will the Chinese sell the rising output from their factories?
The Chinese growth and stability model also requires relatively secure energy supplies. For that it relies on the United States and its allies, as the Chinese programs for nuclear and solar power remain far from their final goals. If the Western alliance system collapses, who is to keep the Middle East relatively stable, at least stable from the point of view of procuring fossil fuels? China hardly seems up to that task, as the country has neither the means, the inclination, the experience, nor the allies to do the job.
Furthermore, China relies more on American hard and soft power more than it likes to let on. The leading role of America makes both Western Europe and also Latin America a bit “soft” when it comes to self-defense and martial spirit and also nationalistic pluck. After all, many countries are outsourcing their defense and also parts of their intelligence-gathering to the United States.
That makes them relatively easy pickings for Chinese infiltration, whether it be economic infiltration, pulling up alongside as an easy “extra friend” to boost bargaining power with America, or spying and surveillance. If Trump scuttles our current multilateral commitments and trust, China will find most other countries harder to penetrate, not easier."
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/04/is-china-the-ultimate-free-rider.html
28. "The overall dilapidated state and overcentralization on the East Coast of U.S. shipyards has proven to be a consistent problem. If we want to be able to quickly build and repair ships and relevant assets at both scale and a rapid pace, the U.S. must diversify our shipyards to focus on getting the right systems into the hands of the warfighter. Too much of our defense budget is being poured into ineffective programs and overcomplicated contracts that don't keep pace with evolving threats.
Eliminating unnecessary bureaucratic red tape is necessary here to unshackle our domestic defense industrial base. Incentivizing private companies to contribute to our defenses and infrastructure would help to streamline this process and allow for faster development and deployment of new technologies that can give us an edge over China in key areas.
If the U.S. is serious about deterring CCP aggression in the Indo-Pacific, we must give our navy the tools and resources to do so. This means embarking on a concerted effort to restore our domestic defense industrial base so as to prevent the projected 2027 scenario from happening in the first place."
29. Worthwhile conversation on global macro trends. How to play secondary effects for investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JSFlAIvsdE
30. An absolute masterclass on the practice of venture capital investing right now. The game has changed & there will be blood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JAY6q6LaHI
31. Russia is not as strong as people think from a true Russia expert. Valuable to understand what is going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9xWglp6rY
32. Kind of depressing. Russia clearly has massive influence in present Trump admin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoZq4sAE1YQ
33. One of the most original thinkers in America. Peter Thiel, love him or hate him, he has been more right than wrong about where the world is going.