Bretton Goods

I spoke to Pramit Bhattacharya an independent data journalist about India's statistical system. We talked about

• How did Indian statisticians adapt their statistical methods to account for India's informal sector?
• How are India's GDP numbers constructed?
• Why it's so hard to outright manipulate GDP numbers
• The case for optimism

I talked with Harry Law of the University of Cambridge and Google DeepMind about AI regulation

We talked about

• Me vs Harry on open source AI regulation
• Being humble when regulating AI
• Why a "Manhattan Project for X" is overrated

I spoke with Derek Wong about the adaptive markets hypothesis, macro investing and investing in cryptocurrency markets

We talk about

• Why investors should consider the financial markets as a complex adaptive system
• How investing in China is very different from investing in the West
• How he invests in crypto without fundamental anchors

I spoke to Adam Ozimek and Connor O'Brien from the Economic Innovation Group about the policy and politics of high skilled immigration in America. We talked about

• Why reforming high skilled immigration in the US is so difficult
• The lump of labour fallacy in immigration
• Reforming immigration through place-based visas

I spoke with Devashish Dhar, the author of the excellent book India's Blind Spot which talks about India's urbanisation crisis and solutions to it. We talk about

• Why does India have a much lower reported rate of urbanisation than the rest of the world?
• Explaining the global bias against cities
• “Extremely high levels of traffic is caused by poor land policy”
• Why are there so many floods in Indian cities?
• How to climate-proof Indian cities
• “India’s biggest unfulfilled promise is local government”

and much more!

I interviewed one of the most interesting thinkers today, Tyler Cowen.

We talked about

• Why there are such few Singaporean famous people
• What Singapore can do to get more weird
• Why he's sceptical of an AI-driven singularity
• What happens to kids in a post-GPT world
• What happens to public intellectuals in a post-GPT world
• Why he's optimistic on Kenyan economic growth

And so much more!

I spoke to Rohit Krishnan the author of the blog Strange Loop Canon about why he is sceptical about the idea that AI will kill us all

We talked about

• Why he’s sceptical of AI regulation proposals

• Why AI “timelines” are not as meaningful as you think

• AI deployment is harder than you think!

• The value of incrementalism in AI policy

• Why he thinks instrumental convergence is unlikely to happen

I spoke to Soham Sankaran who runs PopVax, an Indian mRNA vaccine company. Their goal is to build low-cost broadly-protective vaccines to protect against the entire sarbecovirus species. Read Soham's experience here (https://chronicles.popvax.com/p/three-meetings-and-six-million-funerals) as a complement to this episode. Also check out their jobs page (https://jobs.popvax.com/) for opportunities.

This episode includes

• How he started PopVax and (went bankrupt in the process)
• Why there hasn't been a successful Indian mRNA vaccine yet
• Why developing countries can't afford drugs for rare diseases
• What they're doing to fix it
• Their biggest constraints

I talked to Dwarkesh Patel of the Lunar Society Podcast about many topics. We talked about:

• Why do AI researchers and rationalists disagree about existential risk?

• What would happen if Robert Moses ran San Francisco?

• Is localism overrated?

• What does Effective Altruism get right and wrong?

• Which politicians would he like to interview

I talked to Faris Abdurrachman about Indonesia and it's nickel boom. We talked specifically about

• Why Indonesia banned exports of raw nickel
• Who gets the value from nickel exports
• Indonesia's new sovereign wealth fund

I spoke to Kartik Akileswaran who runs Growth Teams - an initiative which helps build state capacity for economic growth in developing countries. We talked about

- Why implementation is a binding constraint for economic policy

- How industrial policy helps reduce information constraints for investors

- Underrated growth reforms

I spoke to Matt Korda who works at the Federation of American Scientists on nuclear weapon policy. We have an exciting discussion about the role of nuclear weapons, their growth and the dangerous arms races that are starting

Some highlights of the show:

• The advent of “exotic” nuclear weapon systems
• China’s nuclear strategy has changed dramatically!
• Why nuclear experts are most worried about South Asia
• The new game theory of a multipolar nuclear world 

I talked to Anupam Manur, a professor of economics about India's trade policy before 1991. We talked about:

• The scarcity mindset about foreign exchange reserves
• The controversial 1966 devaluation
• How did the pre-1991 import licensing system work?
• “The financial account was almost non existent”
• “Hindustan Motors and Toyota were set up at the same time but in 15 years Toyota sold 280 times the cars”
• “Productivity growth was almost absent before 1991”

I spoke to Professor Richard Jones, about how science funding in the UK could improve. Some interesting questions we talked about are

• “Penny wise, pound foolish” in science funding
• Creating markets for technological advances
• How he’d invest a billion £ to accelerate scientific innovation?

I talked to Tiago Santos, a diplomat, about his book Why Not Parliamentarism. Tiago and I explore some questions here

• What makes parliamentary democracies superior to presidential ones?
• The creeping presidentialisation of parliamentary democracies
• The optimal rate of constitutional amendments

I talked to Amit Varma who runs one of my favourite podcasts - The Seen and the Unseen about politics, economics and public policy. We talked about

• Libertarianism within the Indian canon
• Cultivating your audience 
• Being a public intellectual
• The differences between generations 

I spoke to Jason Crawford of The Roots of Progress about the new movement of Progress Studies. We talked about

• Building a culture of economic progress
• Why are developed countries more averse to progress?
• Is there a tradeoff between economic progress and existential risk?
• What is the main constraint for the movement today?

I talked with Mayank Seksaria of Liberty Mutual Investments about investing on macroeconomic views. We talked about

• Translating macro views into investing allocations
• A bottom up view of the macroeconomy
• Evaluating macro talent
• Why does institutional research cost so much?

I spoke to Mary Childs who is the author of the exceptional book The Bond King. We talked about

• How finance became an interesting profession
• How do you build institutions that succeed at investing?
• Can we automate the Fed?
• Financial history being undervalued

I spoke to Steven Hamilton professor of Economics at George Washington University about Australian economic policy, and their upcoming elections. We talk about

• Why was Australian COVID policy so strict?
• Australia as a nation of prison guards
• Economic issues of the Australian election
• “Australia is a mine with a parliament”
• Dutch disease in Australia
• Swimming, intermittent fasting and other personal habits

What is the labour market like? What are the largest barriers in the labour market? Nathan Young and I spoke to economist Bryan Caplan about his new book Labor Econ Versus The World. We also talk about

• Censorship and dictatorships
• Bets he is willing to take
• Malengo and international migration
• DALLE-2 and writing graphic novels
• The literature on education
• Why he is not an experimental economist
• The effect of AI on jobs

Bets Bryan is willing to take

• No important disruption to the politics of countries where Ukrainian refugees immigrate
• Poland will gain over 3x of the GDP Ukraine loses with regards to immigration
• Less than 20% chance of humanity ending by 2100
• Less than 60% chance that he will consider misaligned AI to be a problem in 20 years
• If >5% of people immigrate to a developed nation there will be no civil wars
• Upper bounds on religious fundamentalism in the EU
• What are the odds that mainstream psychiatry accepts his view of mental illness?

• Mankiw, Romer and Weil
• Where has all the Education gone?
• Eric Hanusheck on test scores and GDP

I spoke to David Manehim who works on reducing existential threats to humanity at the Technion. We talked about

• The biggest threats to humanity
• Preventing all future pandemics
• Is working on X-risk even tractable?
• How you can work on reducing existential risk

Very fun on an underrated topic!

I spoke to the very very talented Trevor Chow about the history of long run growth. Topics include

• Wishlist of economic history topics
• Getting over vetocracy
• Qualities of the best economic blogs
• Why more economics graduates should join a VC firm!
• Meme theory of money

Highly highly recommended

I spoke with Jamie Catherwood who writes and teaches financial history at Investor Amnesia. We had a lot of fun talking about 

• The relevance of financial history
• Formation of bubbles
• Investing during a war
• Surprising stories behind the 1907 financial panic
• The influence of Twitter

I talked to Ben Reinhardt about new models for funding science and innovation. Ben's pieces on DARPA and his proposal for a private DARPA-like research funding organization are foundational pieces in the field and should be read by anyone who wants to understand them. We talked about:

• The Big Man Theory of History
• What makes good DARPA program managers?
• Why you need to be less responsible to innovate
• Does science have an introspection problem?
• Will the US maintain its leading position in science

Highly recommended! 

I talked to Duncan Weldon a former Britain economics correspondent for The Economist and the writer of the substack Value Added. We talked about his book Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through. Topics include

• How did the road to riches change through centuries?
• Why does Britain have no tech giants?
• How did Britain survive with high levels of debt in the past?
• Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain and not elsewhere?

• How housing affects everything!
• How do we incentivize NIMBYs into allowing more building?
• The most underrated economist
• Lessons from writing Works in Progress

I spoke to Joey Politano, who writes the popular newsletter Apricitas . We did a deep dive into monetary policy where Joey talked about Quantitative Easing, Yield Curve Control and stablecoins. Other topics include

• Measuring the stance of monetary policy 
• Which country would benefit from using dogecoin as currency?
• What can economists learn from political science
  

I talked to Tom Spencer a law student at City Law School and Chief Organizer of London New Liberals. Tom's interests lie on the edge of law and economics where he does work on housing policy and anti trust. We had a lively conversation on

• Solving the UK's housing crisis
• What lawyers and economists can learn from each other
• Brexit and its consequences
• The unwritten British constitution
• Abolishing the monarchy

I talked to Kevin Erdmann, a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center about his upcoming book Building From the Ground Up which is about myths surrounding the housing bubble and the Great Recession. We talked about

• The myth of a 'housing bubble'
• How American policymakers self induced a recession
• His research process

Preorder Keivn's new book here!

I talked to Rohit Krishnan, a venture capitalist and writer of the newsletter Strange Loop Canon. In my view he is among the most underrated writers in the public sphere today. I talked to him about a variety of topics. They are:

• The real meaning of ambition

• Why people misunderstand optionality

• Rohit’s favourite Indian cuisine

• Why you can’t replicate college with internet subcultures

• “VC’s biggest competition  is hedge funds”.

• Biggest career mistakes people make

• Do consultants make good VCs?

• What is VC's biggest competition

I'm sure you'll love this!

I talked to the very popular @EGirlMonetarism about the political economy of Argentinian populism. It was a very informative conversation. We talked about:

• The political economy of Latin American populism

• The most underrated economic concept

• How to fix the Argentine economy

I spoke to Michael Fritzell who writes the substack Asian Century Stocks about high-quality stock ideas around Asia. Michael is a CFA charterholder and has worked as an equity analyst in Asia for over a decade.

We talk about

• Common characteristics of successful CEOs
• Why Chinese real estate prices are due for a fall
• How do you read an annual report in Asia?