Links - July 21, 2017

It seems like this is a post where articles are paired up in some way or another. That didn’t happen on purpose.

• How did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance?
  Alex Mayyasi - Aeon
  

  Religion’s role in the rise of finance is an interesting topic. I remember reading about it in Dimont’s God, Jews, and History 10 years ago (I should probably it read again), and being surprised by how much of a role Judaism had in the development of modern banking. This article discusses the changing views of money within Christianity, and how lending shifted from being sinful to respectable. The development of money and commerce is related to slowly expanding our circles of trust - from families, to tribes, to villages, to towns, and eventually to cities and countries. As transactions become trustless, finance becomes faceless, and lending at interest is no longer one person screwing the other one, but oil in the gears of a bigger machine.

• Apple Prime and the iPhone Pro
  M.G. Siegler - 500ish Words
  

  It is interesting to think about Apple products as part of a subscription model. M.G. makes good points, none of which I can comment on.

• Wall Street Has Begun to Think About Apple In a New Way
  Neil Cybart - Above Avalon
  

  And speaking of Apple and things I can’t comment on, here’s some more interesting financial analysis on the company. When I read articles like this one I wish I had paid more attention in my corporate finance classes.

• Why Not Taxation and Representation?
  Timothy Taylor - Conversable Economist
  

  How would an alternative history where the American Colonies get seats in the British Parliament have played out? In Imagined Communities, Anderson repeatedly mentions that the colonial nation state emerges in the Americas partly because creole colonists are not given the same opportunities as the “actual British” or the “Actual Spanish.” A colonist could rise in the state bureaucracy up to a certain point, but never reach the highest courts. This led to an imagining of “us” against “them” where the “us” were the colonists, and the “them” was the empire. This dynamic led to rebellions, and a variety of fights for independence across the continent. Are there any examples of colonies that were granted full “part of the empire” status? I couldn’t think of any.

• Content isn't king
  Benedict Evans
  

  Holding the keys to the content is not as important as it used to be. Partially, I think this has to do with the fact that the market for content has been totally flooded, an aspect that Evans does not touch at all in his article.

• In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
  Paul Mozur - The New York Times
  

  I would love to spend some time in China and understand how some technologies are being leapfrogged over there. The article reminded me of Charlie Warzel’s cashless Swedish adventure, which I shared when it came out last year, and is totally worth your time. Especially interesting here are the aspects of consumer lock-in to these two companies (Alibaba and Tencent) mobile payment systems, and the lock-out experienced by foreigners.

• Alienation 101
  Brook Larmer - 1843 Magazine
  

  As international student who landed in the Midwest for the first time for college, this was interesting. Granted that the cultural differences between the US and China are much larger than those with Costa Rica, but I can still relate to a lot of it. It was much easier to hang out with other Latin American students, and enclose myself in the international bubble, but spending time with people from all around the world, including the US, was one of the highlights of my college experience.

• The Cost of a Hot Economy in California: A Severe Housing Crisis
  Adam Nagourney and Conor Dougherty - The New York Times
  

  Last night I attended an event about the interaction between technology and housing. As you’d imagine, this is a hot topic in San Francisco. One of the panelists pointed out that unlike other countries, in the US home ownership is seen as an investment, and not as a means of shelter. From her perspective, this philosophy has led regulators to crystallize a perverse set of incentives into law, in order to preserve the value of those investments, at a huge social cost. And I totally agree. When I see all the single-family two story homes in the western side of San Francisco, or the low rise buildings neighboring the downtown area, I just get more convinced that this is a policy issue, not an innovation issue. Having an economic boom should be a good thing!

• Should we build lots more housing in San Francisco? Three reasons people disagree
  Julia Galef
  

  Disagreeing over the facts, and these levels skepticism over quantitative analysis is almost laughable, but NIMBYs, and other critics of the pro-housing movement do have some good arguments. Here’s a quick summary.

• Trump's Lucky Break on the Economy
  Justin Fox - Bloomberg View
  

  I have always said that who is president does not matter as much as the historical context, and who that person surrounds themselves with. The fact that things were going well when he got to power means that people shouldn’t be too unhappy (yet!) but they are. What will happen once the economy goes south?

• The Death of a Pig (1948)
  E.B. White - The Atlantic
  

  Hannah made fun of me for reading this without knowing who E.B. White is. Sometimes, even she forgets that I’m not American, and that I don’t know everything about this culture. I read this essay because it strangely showed up on Hacker News. I still have not decided what I think about it.

• The Ceremony (podcast)
  Radiolab
  

  I have mixed feelings about the fact that ZCash is on Radiolab. On the one hand, it’s great to see good reporting on cryptocurrencies, and they do a pretty good job of making it accessible to laymen, but on the other hand they hide the math behind mysticism and science. It is ok to explain simplified versions of the concepts, but even the title of the episode gives it a magical connotation that I can’t come to terms with.

• The Golden Era of Productivity, Retail, and Supply Chains (podcast)
  Marc Levinson, Hanne Tidnam, and Sonal Chokshi - a16z
  

  The episodes of a16z where people talk about the past are way better than those where they talk about the present or the future. “How did we get to now” says a lot more about where we are going than the latest and the shiniest.

• Jones Iver - Alex Jones Rants as an Indie Folk Song
  Nick Lutsko
  

  This is funny, but it is also sad. Sad!