ASB Partners Nuggets 12.6.24
This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.
Interesting Links/Reads
Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution
Google Introduces A.I. Agent That Aces 15-Day Weather Forecasts
The Baby Money Index. Israel is #1
David Brooks column on the anti-institutionalists
What does heroism look like according the MAGA morality? It looks like the sort of people whom Trump has picked to be in his cabinet. The virtuous man in this morality is self-assertive, combative, transgressive and vengeful. He’s not afraid to break the rules and come to his own conclusions. He has contempt for institutions and is happy to be a battering force to bring them down. He is unbothered by elite scorn but, in fact, revels in it and goes out of his way to generate it.
In this mind-set, if the establishment regards you as a sleazeball, you must be doing something right. If the legal system indicts you, you must be a virtuous man.
In this morality, the fact that a presidential nominee is accused of sexual assault is a feature, not a bug. It’s a sign that this nominee is a manly man. Manly men go after what they want. They assert themselves and smash propriety — including grabbing women “by the pussy” if they feel like it.
But character is destiny. An administration of narcissists will be a snake pit, in which strife and self-destructive scandal will snuff out effective action. Running things is hard, and changing things is harder, and it’s rarely done well by solipsistic outsiders.
Those of us in the institutionalist camp will have to learn the lessons taught by George C. Marshall. Marshall, who served as chief of staff of the Army during World War II, and was an institutionalist through and through. He was formed by Army manners. The very core of his ethic was this: I will never put my own ambitions above the needs of the Army or the nation.
6.Jordan Peterson Wrestles With God The Canadian author came to appreciate ‘perhaps the greatest idea ever revealed.’ Rav Meir Soloveitchik
As an adult, he “stopped believing in God but . . . started to believe in Satan.” “The problem with believing in Satan,” he says, is that “you end up stuck with God again.” His horror at evil provided a mirror that revealed the deep truths of Scripture, whose celebration of man as created in God’s image, Mr. Peterson writes, is “perhaps the greatest idea ever revealed.” He adds that a “lack of that belief or faith” destroys relationships and political societies, leaving us with “the true hell that they far too often become
One of Mr. Peterson’s most creative chapters concerns Jonah, who is scolded by God when he hopes for the destruction of the sinful city of Nineveh even as he loves the tree that offers him shade. For Mr. Peterson, this reveals a temptation that was found in the ancient world, as well as our own. “To put the natural world above mankind in the hierarchy of ultimate value,” he writes, “is to regress to the worship of Baal.” Such an approach denigrates “both the God Who stands outside nature, and humanity itself.”
The moral implications are dire when we forget that humans are endowed with divine-like dignity. “How,” Mr. Peterson reflects in the book, “could hell not appear, and prevail, when the cart is thus put before the horse?” The Bible, he insists, offers a vision that “is more real than power; more real than impulse, desire, wish or whim.” It remains the central offer “of redemption and atonement to those who are lost, the foundation of the rights that make free countries both free and desirable, and the spirit of all voluntary and productive relationship.”
Podcast/Videos
Dr. Saum Sutaria is the Chairman and CEO of Tenet Healthcare and a former leader in McKinsey & Company’s Healthcare and Private Equity Practices, where he spent almost two decades shaping the field. In this episode, Saum unpacks the complexities of the U.S. healthcare system, providing a detailed overview of its structure, financial flows, and historical evolution. They delve into topics such as private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, employer-sponsored coverage, drug pricing, PBMs and the administrative burdens impacting the system. Saum’s insights help connect healthcare spending to broader economic issues while exploring potential reforms and the role of technology in improving efficiency. Saum highlights how choice and innovation distinguish the U.S. healthcare system, explores the reasons behind exorbitant drug prices, and examines the potential solutions, challenges, and trade-offs involved in lowering costs while striving to improve access, quality, and affordability. The opinions expressed by Saum in this episode are his own and do not represent the views of his employer.
Peter adds, “This is the classic example of…’Show me how a man gets paid and I’ll tell you exactly how he’s going to act.’”
The CEO of a major pharma company shared with Peter that he wanted to price one of his drugs at a low level
He wanted to undercut similar products on the market and come in at a lower price
The PBMs flatly told him, “We will not put your drug on the formulary until you triple the price. Don’t worry, we will make it up to you with a rebate.”
Peter heard recently Paul Tudor Jones speaking with Andrew Ross Sorkin put it into simple terms for why there was no rational argument why anybody should buy a US Treasury
Imagine I have $700,000 of debt
You’ve lent me $700,000
My income is $100,000 a year
So what does that mean?
He’s taking that from $35 trillion of debt currently and $5 trillion of tax revenue
So my income is one-seventh my debt
I’m going to continue to assume $2 trillion of debt a year in perpetuity
And I’m saying to you (the US bond holder), the person who’s going to buy a 30 year treasury:
I have $700,000 of debt; I make a hundred grand a year
I want you to lend me $40 grand a year for the next 30 years and I promise you at the end of 30 years I’m going to pay it all back
What do you have to believe for that to be true?
You really have to believe I’m going to have a remarkable growth of income or a remarkable reduction of cost somewhere along the lines
Or a devaluation of the currency
To inflate my way out of this thing
None of those things are desirable
👆Very interesting all around
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam