Rajesh Jain

WSJ: “The 20th century belonged to the unruly minds at 3M. From its early days, the American manufacturing giant gave its researchers a long leash to chase ideas, many to dead-ends. The hits, though, were indelible: Scotch tape. Masking tape. Videotape. Post-it Notes. N95 masks. Artificial turf. Heart medication. 3M patented adhesives and abrasives, as well as proprietary coatings and films that reflect light, repel water and insulate against cold and heat—materials at the heart of highway signs, weatherproof windows and stain-resistant clothing and carpets. Its optical film brightened the screens of millions of laptops, smartphones and flat-screen TVs. A cautious air has since settled on the 3M headquarters and research campus in Maplewood, Minn., dampening the restless ambition that built the company, according to some investors and company veterans. There are fewer new products and fewer still have been blockbusters, a dry spell that couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.”

WSJ: “As AI becomes capable of taking on more work that is now done by humans, people will need to more aggressively upgrade their skills to stay productive and employable. “Reskillers,” a new type of teacher, will help people stay one step ahead of the machines. As AI evolves, companies will put growing value on specialists who can guide such critical human development. “Teachers had it bad under the industrial revolution. Look at what they are paid,” says Stephen Messer, co-founder and chairperson of Collective[i], which has developed a foundation model that produces insights around revenue forecasting and growth. “Now, I think teachers are about to go through a revolution because of AI.” Reskillers will need to understand the talents that organizations require as technology marches ahead. “This puts an onus on employees and companies to stay relevant,” says Keith Peiris, co-founder and chief executive of Tome, a startup with a generative AI-native storytelling and presentation platform. “In the ‘old world,’ pre generative AI, maybe you needed 100 people to build a company…With AI, maybe you could build that company with 30 people.””

Ilya Somin: “The popularity of political misinformation is indeed due primarily to demand, rather than supply, which is why the problem long predates the rise of modern social media, and might well have been as bad or even worse in earlier eras dominated by what we today call the “legacy” media of newspapers and radio. The lies and disinformation that promoted fascism, communism, and other enormously harmful ideologies spread without the aid of Twitter and Facebook…This demand for misinformation is the real root of the problem. If it were lower, the supply would not be much of a danger, and at the very least would not affect many voters’ political decision-making.”

Arnold Kling: “When I finish writing a book review, I will often say to myself, “There! Now nobody has to read the book. I’ve boiled it down for them.” We would be better off if authors did that work themselves…Books and magazines evolved when printing and distribution costs were high. This meant that consumers had limited amounts of material to read, so that as a writer you could take your time getting to the point. Computers and the Internet get rid of printing and distribution costs. The most important scarce resource these days is the reader’s time. You can complain about that all you want, but I recommend adapting to it instead…Your aspiration should be to condense your thoughts into a good substack essay.”

Donald Boudreaux: “The basic rules that all good parents teach their children aren’t convoluted, dense, or esoteric. Nor are they unfamiliar. They’re unassailable and obvious, and in their simplicity provide indispensable guidance for the pursuit of success and happiness in our enormously complex world: Don’t hit other people (unless they intentionally and without provocation hit you first). Don’t take other people’s stuff. Keep your promises. Be honest. Don’t envy others’ good fortune. Don’t make excuses for your mistakes and failings.Respect other people’s peaceful habits and characteristics, even when these are unfamiliar. Work hard. Mind your own business. Might does not make right. Don’t think yourself entitled to be excused from any of these rules.”

Reason: “”The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.” This spicy little sentence is typical of the zingers littered throughout David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom. The anarcho-capitalist classic turns 50 this year, and it’s worth revisiting for both its spirit and substance…The appeal of Friedman’s anarchism is not that he has the answer, but that he has dozens of them and he’s not at all bothered by the idea that none may be the perfect one. “It is fashionable,” writes Friedman, “to measure the importance of ideas by the number and violence of their adherents. That is a fashion I shall not follow. If, when you finish this book, you have come to share many of my views, you will know the most important thing about the number of libertarians—that it is larger by one than when you started reading.””

Arnold Kling: “I think that artificial intelligence is in that same chaotic, high-potential state in which the Web found itself in 1993. Yes, the field of artificial intelligence in computers has been around a long time. By the same token, as of 1993, the Internet had been around for a quarter century. But the release of NCSA Mosaic did for the Internet what the release of ChatGPT did for AI. The newest buzzword in AI is “multimodal,” meaning combining text, images, and possibly other sensory inputs as well as data. Today’s text-only chatbots may soon look as primitive as the text-only Web of 1992. Tim B. Lee’s recent essay foresees powerful results from combining AI’s with cameras: “Until recently, computers needed human help to understand what was in an image. Now computers can glean a ton of actionable information directly from images. And that data can then become an input to other software.” My advice is to set aside time to play with AI’s now. But imagine directions that the technology might take in the future. We’re in early days.”

FT: “Studies by McKinsey, the CFA Institute and others consistently show that companies that invest less in long-term growth relative to their peers end up underperforming over the medium or long haul. The bonus is largest for companies that continue to invest during difficult periods like the one we are in now. So who is to blame for this short-sighted short-termism? Corporate executives finger sellside analysts and greedy investors. The former, who dominate on earnings calls and at conferences, ask for quarterly targets for use in their models and punish those who fall short. Activist investors are accused of seeking to profit from short-term moves in a company’s share price and demanding that earnings be spent on dividends and share buybacks. While there is some truth to these complaints, corporate leaders and chief financial officers in particular also need to take a hard look in the mirror.”

AIER: “[Thomas] Sowell’s insightful angle on this is that “the more other things there are, influencing outcomes, the lower the chances of all of those things being equal.” That is critical because “At the heart of the social justice vision is the assumption that, because economic and other disparities among human beings greatly exceed any differences in their innate capacities, these disparities are evidence of proof of the effects of such human vices as exploitation and discrimination,” but “we can read reams of social justice literature without encountering a single example of the proportional representation of different groups in endeavors open to competition—in any country in the world today, or at any time over thousands of years of recorded history.” In other words, given zero real world examples where other things were equal enough that proportional representation made any sense at all as a standard from which any deviation can be judged proof of malfeasance requiring coercive redress, buttressed by mountains of evidence to the contrary (much of which Sowell cites), the central assumption or premise of much of social justice discussion is false. And that faulty core premise cannot establish the truth of the conclusions so many wish to reach…In Sowell’s words, “We might agree that “equal chances for all” would be desirable. But that in no way guarantees that we have either the knowledge or the power required to make that goal attainable, without ruinous sacrifices of other goals, ranging from freedom to survival.”

FT: “In business, bad timing can be as disastrous as a bad idea. Many will remember the first dotcom bubble. In many cases, businesses went wrong not because they did not foresee the future but because they did not understand how long it would take for that future to arrive. This was particularly true in the media. Visionary execs predicted smartphones, streaming and broadcast opportunities. And they were prescient. But what they didn’t factor in was how far off decent broadband, high-end mobiles and so on, were. So vast amounts of money was wasted. Moving too quickly was an expensive mistake. Bad timing is another way of saying that you have misread the circumstances…Moving too fast can be as catastrophic as moving in the wrong direction. It is not a forgivable frailty.”

Andy Mukherjee: “Should India double down on software services, where it has proven prowess and strong outsourcing companies? Or must it follow the successful East Asian model and bet big on factory work to generate mass employment? Maybe there is a third way…It may not lead to the 70 million new jobs the economy needs over a decade, but it could help garner much more value per employee than either assembling electronics or selling software as a remotely produced service. This third way is software products.”

strategy+business: “Change begins to scale when people are given resources to help them achieve things they already believed in. The method succeeds because it empowers people to see themselves as heroes within their own story. In the hospital example, the tally of lives saved was incentive enough. The success of the new initiatives, in turn, shifts the perceptions of those around them, opening up new possibilities, and achieving even greater impact. This approach—convincing, not coercing—can be used in all areas where companies seek to introduce new ways of working, be it new technology or simply new procedures. Though it may be tempting for managers to impose change on everyone simultaneously, a better approach is to start small and give change enthusiasts the resources they need. In the final analysis, successful transformation is about empowerment, not persuasion. By designing a resource that those who believe in change can co-opt for their own purposes, you can unlock powerful forces that enable change.”

Economist: “A radical alternative really is taking shape. Some call it “global resilience” or “economic statecraft”. We call it “homeland economics”. The crucial idea is to reduce risks to a country’s economy—those presented by the vagaries of markets, an unpredictable shock such as a pandemic, or the actions of a geopolitical opponent. Supporters say this will produce a world that is safer, fairer and greener..It will, in large part, create the opposite…Homeland economics will create billions of losers. Beneath the apparent reasonableness, there is a deep incoherence. It is based on an overly pessimistic reading of neoliberal globalisation, which in fact held great benefits for most of the world. The benefits of the new approach are at best uncertain. Meanwhile, attempts to break free economically from China are likely to be partial, at best. The benefits of green subsidies for the fight against climate change are also less clear than their proponents admit.” More: “Homeland economics will ultimately prove to be a disappointment. It misdiagnoses what has gone wrong, it overburdens the state with unmeetable responsibilities and it will botch a period of rapid social and technological change. The good news is that eventually it will bring about its own demise.”

Business Standard: “Nano-level 3D printing can have applications in medical science. A doctor can bioengineer a scaffolding to grow tissue cells for regenerating organs. These technological advances have a huge impact for sectors like biotechnology and material science. As companies look to create new materials that are versatile and ecofriendly, the printing will accelerate experiments to prototype cycle. Miniaturisation is another trend driving nano-level 3D printing. “The demand for smaller and more intricate components in electronics, medical devices, and other sectors drives the need for nanoscale 3D printing,” said a report by Persistence Market Research. “Nanoscale 3D printing, also known as additive nano manufacturing, is a revolutionary technology that allows the creation of three-dimensional objects with incredible precision at the nanoscale level. This groundbreaking technology has a wide range of applications across industries, including electronics, healthcare, aerospace, and materials science. The healthcare and electronics sectors are expected to be the largest and fastest-growing end-user markets for nanoscale 3D printing,” it said.”

Econlib: “The “information” you get by “asking people is often contradicted by the information you would get by observing what people actually choose – and as the old saw goes, actions speak louder than words. A deeper problem is that the information isn’t clearly available in pre-existing form even in our own heads, not even to ourselves. As James Buchanan put it in his book The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, “Individuals do not act so as to maximize utilities, described in independently-existing functions. They confront genuine choices, and the sequence of decisions taken may be conceptualized, ex post, (after the choices), in terms of ‘as if’ functions that are maximized. But those ‘as if’ functions are, themselves, generated in the choosing process, not separately from such process.” As a consequence, Buchanan goes on to explain, “The potential participants do not know until they enter the process what their own choices will be.””

WSJ: “Hundreds of companies have promised to produce large amounts of green hydrogen, but none have succeeded. Electric Hydrogen believes the secret to success is finding a better way to split a molecule. Investors believe it too. The company is the green hydrogen industry’s first unicorn…The molecule is water. Splitting it to create green hydrogen requires devices called electrolyzers. They are expensive and consume vast amounts of renewable electricity to make a small amount of hydrogen, making most projects uneconomical. Electric Hydrogen says its electrolyzer can produce much more hydrogen.”

NYTimes: “NASA is now plotting a return. This time around, the stay will be long-term. To make it happen, NASA is going to build houses on the moon — ones that can be used not just by astronauts but ordinary civilians as well. They believe that by 2040, Americans will have their first subdivision in space. Living on Mars isn’t far behind. Some in the scientific community say NASA’s timeline is overly ambitious, particularly before a proven success with a new lunar landing. But seven NASA scientists interviewed for this article all said that a 2040 goal for lunar structures is attainable if the agency can continue to hit their benchmarks. The U.S. space agency will blast a 3-D printer up to the moon and then build structures, layer by additive layer, out of a specialized lunar concrete created from the rock chips, mineral fragments and dust that sits on the top layer of the moon’s cratered surface and billows in poisonous clouds whenever disturbed — a moonshot of a plan made possible through new technology and partnerships with universities and private companies.”

Michael Munger: “Generally speaking, taxes can have only one of two broad purposes: 1. “We” want to reduce the amount of the thing being taxed. 2. “We” want to increase the revenue that “we” want to spend on good things…We tax things if we want revenue, in which case we’d prefer not affect the amount of the thing, which introduces distortions. OR we tax things we want to go away, things we hate, and we don’t care if there is any revenue at all, because we don’t like the thing being taxed.”

Platformer on the synthetic social network: “A bot that gets to know your quirks; remembers your life history; offers you coaching or tutoring or therapy; entertains you in whichever way you prefer. A synthetic companion not unlike the real people you encounter during the day, only smarter, more patient, more empathetic, more available…Between ChatGPT’s surprisingly human voice and Meta’s AI characters, our feeds may be about to change forever.”

WSJ: “Screens are supposed to be the future: more natural, more intuitive than learning a set of buttons…The problem? “Although we call them touch screens, they require sightedness,” explained Rachel Plotnick, associate professor of media studies at Indiana University Bloomington. Plotnick’s research examines the relationship between humans and machines. Because screens are typically smooth and flat, you need to look at them to know where to press, she says. “Buttons give us texture, weight, are graspable and offer many modalities for feedback that touch screens don’t,” Plotnick said. They also can make navigating devices more accessible for people who have mobility issues.  Screens, on the other hand, need our full attention, which is why using them can be frustrating when we are doing something else, like driving. Plotnick has a name for this frustration: the “rage poke.” When people rage poke, they’re exasperated by the screens’ lack of interactiveness, she said.  Voice-enabled commands were supposed to help, but using AI assistants, which don’t always understand correctly or perform the right task, can be just as maddening.”

Ajay Shah: “[The biggest Indian forms] have developed the teams and capabilities to operate in the Indian policy environment. But these are just a few firms and add up to a small part of the Indian economy. The beating heart of the Indian economy lies in thousands of firms, and particularly small firms all over the hinterland, which are not tooled up for this environment. It is possible to operate on pure market economy principles: The firms that cannot handle this policy environment should just close down. This requires a bankruptcy process, for rapid firm exit. It requires the strong firms to buy out the weak firms or their assets. It requires shifting labour from the weak firms to the strong firms. It requires shifting production from low-productivity locations to high-productivity locations. Under good conditions, this can be done in about one generation. However, the Indian institutional environment is not well suited to factor market reallocation. As an example, while bankruptcy reform was well begun, it ran into myriad difficulties and is at present a flawed system. The wise middle road, then, lies in easing up the pressure of the state so that firms of middle India do not lose heart. This involves low tax rates, less central planning, less regulation, reduced staffing and budgets for agencies and regulators, reduced levels of punishment, the removal of imprisonment for economic offences, and better functioning courts.”