👋 ASB Partners Nuggets 1.31.25
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
How did the organization of DOGE end up? An important piece. As I have been predicting, DOGE will shrink government (slow its rate of growth?) by only a modest amount, if at all (Tyler Cowan).
Sleepless nights? Try boosting your physical activity level (Peter Attia)
After a night (or week, or month) of poor sleep, exercise is often the last thing we want to do. Yet although daytime grogginess and fatigue from inadequate or low-quality sleep might seem like reasonable reasons to deprioritize your fitness routine, remaining sedentary can feed the vicious cycle of fatigue and poor sleep. Exercise, by contrast, has been shown to significantly improve sleep quality in people with insomnia. Although more research is needed to determine how exercise and other interventions (particularly CBT-I) might complement each other, exercise on its own is a cost-effective, accessible intervention to improve both objective and subjective measures of sleep.
Guess which S&P 500 stock has gained 154% over the past year, beating Nvidia, Tesla and Netflix? Nothing related to artificial intelligence, data processing or energy: It is United Airlines.
The problem with the airline business—which Buffett identified after getting involved with US Airways in 1989—is that it is extremely capital-intensive but has deceptively small economies of scale. Carriers have a tendency to oversupply the market with seats, seeking the efficiency of a bigger network. But they have huge variable costs. Also, barriers to entry are low: Any upstart can easily finance or lease planes. Travelers put price above everything else, and quickly cut back when the economy sours.
In inflation-adjusted terms, U.S. domestic airfares have fallen by roughly 50% since 1978.
Indeed, the gains of the air-travel revolution have accrued to companies that make aircraft, not those that fly them: According to data by economist Kenneth French, aerospace ranks third out of 49 industries in total equal-weighted return during this period, whereas transportation is 28th.
“What if every child on the planet suddenly has access to an AI tutor that is as smart as Leonardo da Vinci and as empathetic as Big Bird?” he asks. Reminding us of transformative tech’s historical arc, he urges us to step away from our gloomy preconceptions and imagine “what could possibly go right with our AI future.”
A recent publication examining the impact of AI on material scientists bears these concerns out: While AI increased total productivity, the best researchers were boosted the most
Future unemployment will be (mostly) voluntary unemployment
A shortage of electricians means that those willing to endure long shifts and live on remote sites can potentially earn up to A$200,000 (US$124,000) a year — double the national average salary and not far off the average MP salary.
“It’s a cup half full/half empty life. You do 12-hour shifts, there’s the heat, the flies and you’re stuck in a donga [temporary housing] in a single bed. But you’re fed well and everything’s covered. You leave your credit card at home. You earn good money and you get plenty of time off,” said Dowsett of his life as a fly-in, fly-out electrician.
The high salaries reflect the fact that fewer Australians want to be electricians, creating a potentially devastating shortage as major renewable energy, mining and data centre projects come online. Australia needs 32,000 more electricians by 2030 to meet the demand for workers, according to a report from the Clean Energy Council, citing government statistics.
But newer studies suggest that this old-school protocol might delay healing. Instead, doctors and physical therapists are turning to approaches that focus on controlled movement, gentle exercise to gradually return to full activity and allowing the body to move through its natural healing process.
Podcast/Videos
⇒ If you look at the top 10 causes of death in the US, 9 of them have biological aging as their greatest risk factor; yet half of 1% of the research budget goes to studying that factor
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam