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Thanks for the Mean Girls reunion link. Is it just me, or does Lacy Chabert look like Lauren Boebert?!

The Apples or Amazons or Google’s of the world could conceivably invest in capturing consumers in a single consumer ecosystem. But if it’s true that markets and capital really want to be free, a meaningful number of people will want to be able to move across consumption borders with little to no restrictions. Ultimately these companies will have to Highlander it out because in order to keep people in their ecosystems, there can be only one.

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Jim, that's a terrible thing to say about Lacey Chabert... or about anybody!

I agree that pure capitalism wants free markets, but the anticompetitive stances of Amazon, Facebook, and Google all suggest that they aren't interested in pure capitalism. It's more of an Oligopoly.

"Highlander it out" is hilarious.

Thanks for reading!

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I mean no offense to Lacy Chabert. I used to LOVE “Party of Five.” A guy I did “Grease” with when I used to do community theater was a regular on the show. But a quick glance and I was, like, whoa!

I doubt the AmaGoogleBook isn’t remotely interested in genuinely free markets. And as long as they keep friction low-to-nonexistent, they’ll keep the masses inside their walls (as they do with many advertisers already). I'm curious what you think about their future ability to accumulate new populations. Do they grow who they’ve got or provide more to who they already have?

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I too saw Michael Lewis in Portland yesterday... to me the big questions are around Effective Altruism - Lewis indicates that SBF was almost entirely motivated by it, and many others are as well - is EA objectively possible (or is it more of a power game)? a net positive or net negative approach to the world?

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Hi Perival, did you enjoy the Lewis talk? Whatever my thoughts are about Effective Altruism in general, I hardly think that SBF is an adequate test case for any system of thought. I'm more of a Twainian enlightened self-interest guy myself. I believe in karma and kindness, but I get a lot out of helping other people, which means there is a benefit to me, too. Thank you for reading! Sorry we didn't get to meet up.

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I did enjoy the talk - Lewis is a skilled storyteller, and I felt he got the gist of his book across in little more than an hour. While SBF is clearly an outlier in many ways, I think his story is at least a warning sign - who is deciding what is a "net positive" for society? what 'calculations' are being used? and what means are being used to try to make it happen?

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