Some Links, 8/31/2025
Noah Smith on Dan Wang; John Burn-Murdoch on progressive demographics; Blake Dodge interviews Michael and Danielle; Thomas Murray on the Deep State within the states
Meanwhile, between 1970 and 2020, the number of lawyers in America rose enormously relative to the population:
His chart shows that the number of lawyers per capital more than doubled in that time. That supports Dan Wang’s characterization of China as an engineering culture and America as a lawyer culture.
But Noah offers some pushback.
it may simply be every rich country’s destiny — whether it’s ruled by lawyers or by engineers — to transition from a “just build it” engineering-type culture to a fussy rules-and-procedures culture dominated by lawyers and economists.
For all the talk of a general fall in births, the drop is overwhelmingly driven by people on the left having fewer kids.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen. Didn’t Eric Kaufmann writes something about the religious inheriting the earth? Maybe the floofy-gender fad is going to fade out really fast.
Blake Dodge writes,
[Thiel] Fellows were mentored by people working in tech, sometimes by fellow Gumptious Youngs who dropped out of college. And so, mentors tended to lean in, even to the point of fighting each other in the elevator about who had the best advice for a given mentee. Plus the fellows hit it off. (Just take it from the fourth Hereticon baby: weirdos enjoy the company of other weirdos.) The first year, there wasn’t a moving requirement — but almost all of the fellows moved to the Bay Area anyway. Knowledge — like “founder-led sales is how you do things,” Danielle said— traveled through osmosis to younger classes, and they did a ton of business together, probably more so than your average incubator community, Danielle said.
…Danielle and Michael are four funds deep, including a $100 million fund they’re still raising. Already, a handful of their companies are at Series A and Series B stages, including Mach Industries (defense) and Rainmaker (weather modification), founded respectively by Ethan Thornton and Augustus Doricko, both of whom Danielle and Michael referred into the Thiel Fellowship.
And now they’re taking the thesis even further.
“A potential investor in 1517 recently asked us, ‘Where do you want to be in 15 years?’ And I said, without missing a beat, ‘I want to be backing 11-year-olds,’” Danielle said.
Danielle is Danielle Strachman and Michael is Michael Gibson.
state bureaucracies have been colonized—quietly, methodically—by a cartel of national associations and professional guilds no voter ever approved.
…The National Association of State Treasurers (NAST) insists that ESG investing is a fiduciary duty and trains treasurers in DEI. The National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD) declares equity—not health outcomes—the “foundational principle” of Medicaid reform and pushes race-based service priorities. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) maintains that “structural racism” is a public health emergency and coordinates messaging on abortion, climate, and even online speech with the White House. The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) encourages states to embed race- and gender-based scoring rubrics into contracting, turning neutral bidding into an ideological loyalty test.
substacks referenced above:
@https://substack.com/home/post/p-172258535
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"A potential investor in 1517 recently asked us, ‘Where do you want to be in 15 years?" I think the best 1517 advice would have been, "short the Catholics, go long on Luther."
Arnold - In addition to charts showing greater relative falling birth rates among progressives, can you also link to charts showing their worse mental health rates, lower levels of freedom, longer commute times, more trans kids, older housing stock, and closer proximity to high levels of crime? You might consider packaging these in a blog post titled, “Patterns of Progressive Living.” Or maybe, “Are You Sure Republicans Are the Dumb Party?”