Author: Marius Schober

Is it okay to bomb and starve 1.000.000 children and many more civilians to find and kill 20.000 radicalized crazy Hamas terrorists?

The answer is no. Never.

Killing helpless, innocent civilians, women, children is ethically not justifiable – under no circumstance, ever.

Neither in Ukraine, in Israel, nor in Palestine. Nowhere. Ever.

The only correct position is pro civilians and anti terrorists.

Anyone who celebrates the murders of civilians are pro terrorists. That applies to everyone regardless of country, religion, politics, or policies.

Europe must pay attention now.

First: As soon as Israel acts absolutely ruthlessly in Gaza, we will see massive violent protests (if not terrorist attacks) in Europe by integration failures from the Middle East and Maghreb.

Integration failures are illegal migrants who have come to the EU (especially Sweden, Germany) since 2015, but have not integrated, but have been criminalized / radicalized in a parallel society.

Second: The war in Israel will lead to another massive migrant crisis in Turkey and the EU. The capacity to take in more refugees is exhausted in most countries – especially Turkey and Germany.

To make room for real war refugees, the EU must immediately launch a massive and consistent remigration for illegal and criminal immigrants and all rejected asylum applications.

Third: In addition, Hamas could use war refugees to try to smuggle terrorists into the EU.

The EU must immediately and without exception implement border controls and take strict measures to immediately detect and turn back radicalized Hamas terrorists at the border.

These measures must be implemented within hours, not days.

The PayPal Mafia is the most fascinating phenomena of the entire history in business.

A group of people – seemingly randomly – work on a startup, exit, and each founder and employee ends up (co-)founding companies which re-defined the entire internet as we know it.

Tesla, SpaceX, Palantir, The Boring Company, Neuralink, OpenAI, FoundersFund (arguably Facebook), Affirm, Yammer, Sequoia Capital, YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, 500 Startups, Geni.com, and through acquisition X (formerly Twitter).

Let’s look at the current valuation of each:

1. Tesla: 795 Billion
2. SpaceX: 140 Billion
3. Palantir: 33 Billion
4. The Boring Company: 5.5 Billion
5. Neuralink: 5 Billion
6. OpenAI: 80 Billion (est.)
7. FoundersFund: 11 Billion (in assets)
8. Affirm: 6.5 Billion
9. Yammer: 1.2 Billion (acquired by Microsoft)
10. Sequoia Capital 80 Billion (assets under management)
11. YouTube: 1.6 Billion (acquired by Google; today’s valuation is estimated to be 180 Billion)
12. LinkedIn: 26.2 Billion (acquired by Microsoft)
13. Yelp: 2.9 Billion
14. 500 Startups: 2.4 Billion (assets under managemet)
15. Geni.com: >>100 Million (acquired by MyHeritage for indisclosed amount)
16. X: 44 Billion (acquired by Elon Musk who holds as the largest shareholder 9.2% of the company)

Who wants to have fun adding up these numbers?

Someone asked about an optimistic prediction about the future 10 years from now.

As an e/acc optimist myself, here’s the ideal:

• Human aligned AGI reached.
• The world transforms into a utopia of efficiency.
• AGI, synergizing perfectly with human ingenuity, catalyzes unprecedented innovation across sectors; amongst them unlimited free energy.
• Economies skyrocket, with wealth equitably distributed, eliminating poverty and fostering global prosperity.
• Individual creative and entrepreneurial endeavors flourish as mundane tasks are automated, unleashing human potential to its fullest.
• The Law of One is recognized on a mass-scale, revealing the interconnectedness of all beings. Altruism and mutual support become the norm, reshaping socio-economic systems and ushering in a harmonious society and shared spiritual growth.

Yesterday I had a conversation with Christian Darnton. He approached me and asked whether I also felt that the entire feed on Twitter, or X as it is now called, became extremely low quality. Or in his words, whether it became a “garbage dump” that feels like “parasites trying to attack your brain”.

It resonated with me as I felt the same. While I am spending more time on X, I also feel as if the time I spend on the platforms is less and less worth it. To a point where I should really consider whether I should even use it more than a few minutes each day.

But why does it feel that the quality of the content on X feels mostly so low value?

I believe we reached a point in content creation where people do not write, record videos or podcasts because they want to, but because they have to. They try to get engagement, get your attention to amass not only the number of followers, a stupid metric on a social platform, but also to participate in the new monetization programs X and closely thereafter TikTok introduced.

The result?

People smell the chance to get rich quick. They are seduced to earn 10k a month by posting memes or re-posting stupid content on X.

X bribes people to chase money, fame. But as Christian noted, “it’s a rat race”. With all the way to get rich with attention (content), everyone should ask themselves the question: “How much value am I really adding to society?”.

He continued: “I want to talk to interesting people. I love people that are interesting. I don’t care how much money you have. I’m interested in interesting people.”

It is a valid point. Most attention on the internet is not used in. a productive way at all. It is at best a zero-sum game. Getting attention through controversies, charisma, or pure sexiness is easy. I understand, we live in an attention economy. But isn’t it a fair question to ask how many young people would be of so much more value to the world, when instead of becoming an influencer, they’d actually build a product, or they actually solved hard issues.

Out of experience, Christian said that your time is limited and when you focus on content it takes a lot of time out of your day, including mental energy

So without an economy of attention, how many more people would be valuable to the world, especially young people? Instead of creating just another podcast on productivity, how can we benefit humanity on a larger scale?

I don’t want to badmouth the potential of social media and the internet. Instead, I want everyone to think about how we can design social platforms in a way that is net-positive.

For me, I like essays. You write them because you have something to say, and you want to say it. You just write it. Without any intention of gaining fame or riches. There is no schedule. You don’t write it daily, not monthly. There is no target, no sequence, no goal. You write when you have not only the inspiration but also the urge to share it with the world – because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t sleep well.

I think a great example for this is Paul Graham. Over the past 20 years or so, Paul Graham wrote essays because he feels he has to say something. Not because he set himself a goal for 500,000 followers on Twitter (Twitter didn’t even exist when he started writing his essays). Not because he wanted to get rich by doing so. He wrote because he felt he has something really valuable and unique to say. Over time, it became the most popular blog on startups, and as a byproduct he now has well over 1 Million followers on X.

This is why I believe long-format content without a schedule is the healthiest form of content on the internet. This is not only true for essays or newsletters. Even YouTube videos: you only record and publish a video when feel that you really have something to say. Not to become famous or rich.

For many, content creation is now a job. The opposite of what I believe to be a healthy form of content. Instead of working for traditional media, you are now working for an algorithm. The more content is mass-produced out of wrong incentives, the more time is wasted on the internet, the more human potential is destroyed.

Again, the ideal is the Paul-Graham-Style: you post content when you feel you really have something to say about a certain topic, but you don’t just post it, you let 5 friends proof it, so you know it’s really worth the time of your reader, listener, or viewer.

While there is a large market for podcasts and videos, I truly believe the basis for each spoken word should be a written word. When you really sit down and write, you think much more deeply about a certain topic. By prioritizing written words over spoken words, people will think much more deeply about what they have to say. They do more research, they proofread it, they ask other people for their opinions, they edit, and re-edit the essay, before it is finally published. The output is therefore always more valuable than an improvised conversation on a podcast.

In podcast, it is the opposite, it is all freestyle. If a question is asked or a certain topic raised, you have to say something – within a second or two. The contrast is drastic.

The remaining question is then: how can we create also meaningful and valuable discussions on the internet?

When essays are the basis, then essays should be the basis for replies, discussions, and debates as well. If you disagree with a standpoint strongly enough, you sit down, and write yourself an essay or a short article, as a reply.

X makes it too easy to reply “haha, you’re stupid” – which adds zero value to anything.

By replying yourself with an essay, you think deeply about the topic. And if it’s not worth the time to write an essay, then maybe your opinion is not worth much to anyone at all.

Reading and writing essays and books is – how Christian described it – “an antonym to the constant hedonism which is so prevalent on social media.”

Things are getting quieter around crypto.

The laser eyes are gone, the price has stopped going straight up, JPEGs are fairly valued: worthless.

I got very excited about Ethereum and Bitcoin around 2016. The more I researched the underlying blockchain technology, the more excited I became.

Today, I barely touch crypto.

But once you have understood the underlying technologies behind crypto, everything changes, and you can’t really “leave crypto behind”.

You can’t leave it behind because you’ve understood the potential and the impact it’s going to have on the world, not just the financial system.

What you can leave behind instead are all the cults, the scams, the hype, and the broken technologies. When you leave that shit behind, it gets very quiet.

There aren’t many projects that survive the test of time – the test of real-world adaptation and use.

As the attention in crypto slowly shifts to creating solutions instead of getting rich quick, we will see the true potential of crypto, DeFi and the blockchain realized.

The time is ripe.

Yesterday, Mexico unveiled the mummies of two aliens during an official meeting of their congress. The two alien mummies were found in Peru and are believed to be over 1,000 years old. Since I’m a child, I’m very interested in aliens, UFOs, and the supernatural. The photos which have been published are one of the most exciting one’s I’ve seen for quite some time. Scientists of the Autonomous National University of Mexico found that over 30% of the specimens’ DNA was “unknown”.

What makes be dumbfounded – however – are not the mummies themselves but the surrounding silence. I saw more memes on X than I’ve seen curious reporting on them. Shouldn’t we assume the alien mummies are real? Otherwise, what is the incentive for Mexico to fake them? Shouldn’t we at least probe their authenticity? The question I ask myself: Where did all our curiosity go? For me, nothing is more exciting than alien life. I really don’t get it.

Someone asked me what I think about the stability of the eurozone and where Europe is headed. Here is my answer:

I think we are entering a very chaotic decade overall. Global power structures are changing rapidly towards a more multipolar world. The US is losing some relevance, OPEC+ is gaining power, China is in a massive housing bubble, Russia is cut off from the West. The problem with Europe is that we’re not just losing a little relevance, we seem to be losing almost all of our relevance. The EU and Germany are vassals of the United States. We have no pride, we have no self-confident foreign policy, we have no independent defense policy or defense capabilities.

Germany’s deindustrialization will threaten the eurozone, since the euro is largely dependent on Germany’s economic performance and rating. If Germany doesn’t wake up to reality sooner rather than later, I don’t see how the euro can survive.

Waking up means that Germany makes rigorous policy changes, from drastically reducing energy costs, to mediating peace in Ukraine, to massively reducing taxes and duties for individuals and businesses, to massively reducing red tape, to choosing the free market over a centrally planned green economy, and so on. If this does not happen, companies and their top performers will leave Germany for the United States and some for Central Asia.

The ultimate problem is to get out of this terrible socialist situation that we have gotten ourselves into – especially Germany. Politicians now have to make decisions that are unpopular with many voters. Just as an example, I recently read that in Germany a regular full-time worker earns only 300€ more than if he were unemployed (of which he has to buy gas, lunch, etc.). The German Fleiß (diligence) that made Germany and the EU strong is actively discouraged by attractive unemployment benefits, high taxes, high tariffs, high energy costs, high inflation. There’s basically no environment for Fleiß anymore, rather we’ve created an encouragement to shut down your business and not work – or leave the country (and ultimately the continent).

I’ve seen all of this coming since COVID-19 hit. It’s just shocking how everything is intensifying and nothing is happening to stop the downfall. I think we’re going to see very chaotic times in Europe, but out of chaos comes order. It might be wise to leave the EU for a while until everything collapses and then rebuild – economically and politically. With the collapse of the Euro, we may see strong independent currencies again, we may eventually see an adaptation of crypto, we may also see the Euro split into a North and South Euro. Competitiveness will probably improve to compete with the US and China. All of this will create opportunities for us as entrepreneurs. But right now we are seeing the fall, not the rise.

By the way, as I’m looking for companies to buy, I’ve talked to many dozens of entrepreneurs lately. Now, I often start the first meeting by asking if he plans to leave Germany after successfully selling his business. With increasing regularity, the answer is yes. We’re not alone. Something has to be done.

Overall, out of chaos comes order, and we as man must now be masculine, stand up, and (re)build.