Links - 7/16/2020
“That's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously.” —Yuval Noah Harari
Orthodox Privilege - by Paul Graham (LINK)
Here We Are: 5 Stories That Got Us To Now - by Morgan Housel (LINK)
How Disruptive Innovation Theory helped a small college set a new direction (LINK)
Against Environmental Pessimism - by Matt Ridley (LINK)
Naval Ravikant interviews Matt Ridley (Podcast - Part 2) (LINK)
Foundering Podcast: Season 1: The WeWork Story (Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5)
a16z Podcast: How Transparent Pricing Drives Healthcare Change (LINK)
Related book: The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It
Revisionist History Podcast: May the Best Firebomb Win (LINK)
Is the Saudi Government Plotting Against Another U.S.-Based Critic? - by Dexter Filkins (LINK)
Covid-19 Risk Doesn’t Depend (Much) on Blood Type, New Studies Find - by By Carl Zimmer (LINK)
Ed Yong speaks with Anthony Fauci about The Battle Against COVID 19 (Article, Video)
Coal, oil, and natural gas…. From the 2012 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting:
WARREN BUFFETT: But the other thing that’s happening, as you mentioned, natural gas got down under $2 — it’s a little higher now — but it got down under $2 at the same time oil was $100.
And if you told Charlie or me five years ago that you’d have a 50-to-1 ratio between oil and natural gas, I think we would have asked you what you were drinking.
Did you ever think that was possible, Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: No. And I think what’s happening now is, to use your word, it’s idiotic.
We are using up a precious resource, which we need to create fertilizer and so forth, and sparing a resource which is precious but not as precious, which is thermal coal.
If I were running the United States, I would use up every ounce of thermal coal before I’d touch a drop of natural gas. But the conventional view is exactly the opposite. I think those natural gas reserves we just found are the most precious things we could leave our descendants.
I’m in no hurry to use it up, and the gas is worth more than the coal.
WARREN BUFFETT: Despite the wild things we’ve seen in pricing, particularly this ratio of natural gas prices to oil, you can’t change — I mean the installed base is so huge when you get into electricity generation — that you can’t really change the percentages too much, although there has been a shift in recent months.
Where gas generation is feasible, it has supplanted some coal generation. And certainly in the future, you’re going to see a diminution in the percentage of electricity generated from coal in this country.
But it won’t be dramatic because it can’t be dramatic. The megawatts involved are just too huge to have some wholesale change.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how this whole gas-oil ratio plays out, because it has changed everyone’s thinking, and it’s changed in a very short period of time. I mean, three years ago, people wouldn’t have said this was possible.
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. The conventional wisdom of the economics professors is if it happens in a free market it must be OK. It will work out best in the end.
That is not my view with 100 percent accuracy. I think there are exceptions to that idea. And I think it’s crazy to use up natural gas at these prices.