implementation is the only truth
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Great coverage about us here by Bloomberg!
Michael Brawer is out on his own — betting that he can build his own private credit ratings firm to take on his ex-employer and others serving the $1.7 trillion market bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Chris Tolles retweeted
The uneven rise of AI-generated web content
arxiv.org/pdf/2610.36631
Chris Tolles retweeted
We need to regulate public sector unions.
They aren't negotiating against a for-profit business.
They're negotiating against the public and our tax money.
Chris Tolles retweeted
Since Zucman is now lashing out publicly against the AI audit, here's a thread where I document several dozen examples of errors and questionable assumptions that collectively bias the Piketty-Saez-Zucman stats on inequality toward their political objectives.
Oh thank goodness.
Within 30 seconds, however, a man in the back of the room began yelling about billionaires, Gaza, and blood money, demanding that his questions be answered.
“Sir, we’re not here for you,” Lurie responded.
👏👏👏👏 @DanielLurie
thevoicesf.org/san-francisco…
Chris Tolles retweeted
Armed guards at the door. Opioids offered on repeat. Apple Pay at my bedside. Welcome to the American Emergency Room.
The French think it bankrupts you. Americans think France does it for free. I’ve been to the ER in both. Both are wrong.
Mountain bike crash, dislocated and fractured shoulder. I’m French, I live in San Francisco, and I take slightly too many risks. Let’s compare.
Security
🇺🇸 Kaiser in Marin. Three armed guards and a metal detector. My phone set it off, so with my shoulder out of its socket I walked through again. And again. Then a pat-down.
🇫🇷 A couple of unarmed guys with walkie-talkies. Still not sure what they’re for.
Wait
🇺🇸 Three people in the waiting room. Seen in 15 to 30 minutes.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: packed room, 4 hours before anyone touched me.
Records
🇺🇸 Kaiser is vertically integrated. Insurer, hospital, doctors: one system. They had my file before I sat down.
🇫🇷 Every new doctor is a fresh context window. Zero history, maybe a printout from last time.
Infrastructure
🇺🇸 Small hospital, serious kit. Straight to the trauma bay: real bed, IV, vitals monitoring, ready for surgery if needed. All imaging on the spot.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: a plastic chair and a Doliprane.
Drugs
🇺🇸 Strong opioids were the default offer. I said no. They insisted. The doctor came in personally, confused why someone in that much pain would refuse. I stuck to Tylenol, an anti-inflammatory, to put the shoulder back in.
Yes, it hurt. No, I didn’t tap out. My mom is proud of me.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: Doliprane, opioids never mentioned. I have friends who got their shoulder popped back in with nothing at all.
US default: opioids. French default: Doliprane.
Bill
🇺🇸 Every nurse warned me: “You’re French, this bill is going to traumatize you.”
Before discharge, someone came to my bed to collect payment. Apple Pay, from the hospital bed. $300. For everything. On a ~$500/month Kaiser plan.
🇫🇷 A flat ~€20 ER fee, usually reimbursed by your mutuelle. The real bill shows up later, on your payslip (see below)
followup
🇺🇸 Kaiser called me right after to set up follow-up and physio, all in their system. So far, so good.
🇫🇷 Broken hand: discharged, figure it out yourself. A friend dislocated her finger. They put it back in wrong, sent her home with bad instructions, it locked up, and she needed surgery months later. Still not fixed.
“Free healthcare” in France
It’s not free when your marginal tax rate nears 70% with social charges. And if you want quality care fast, more and more people pay for private clinics anyway.
Verdict
One person, one data point. But the care was 10x better than anything I’ve had in France, for a price that’s completely fine.
France has a lot to learn.
And yes, I refused the narcotics to stay sharp enough to launch a NanoCorp from my hospital bed. Launch your first company run by an AI agent: nanocorp .so
Chris Tolles retweeted
We need a practical hand at the wheel like @BenAllenCA to manage the home insurance industry amid climate change in California rather than an ideologue who might bankrupt the state with half-baked experiments.
As you can see below, insurers keep leaving the state as wildfires have wiped out like 2X of the premiums they've collected in 3 of the last 10 years. insurance.ca.gov/01-consumer…
NEW POLL
We sometimes release polls for public interest. Our latest poll is for the CA Insurance Commissioner race.
@BenAllenCA now leads. There are still a lot of undecided voters.
Chris Tolles retweeted
People seem upset that the top business leaders in San Francisco all seem to be donating and lobbying in favor of @Scott_Wiener.
Call me crazy, but I think that is exactly the type of person we should be sending to Washington.
Chris Tolles retweeted
🚨BREAKING🚨
>>> Holy Heroin Batman! A decade into our Drug Tourism disaster, the powers that be in SF have at last created a SF311 dropdown for — wait for it — public drug problems on our streets, in our parks, parking garages and open spaces. It took a decade but here it is.
Chris Tolles retweeted
Common Crawl Foundation will be at IETF 127 in SF, week of November 15. If you are around, we'd love to chat!
Chris Tolles retweeted
Imagine your net worth is $200,000. One day an armed gang comes up to your house and demands $10,000.
“Don’t worry!” the leader says. “I’m only going to do this one time. Plus, it’s only 5% of your net worth. What’s the big deal ?”
After he leaves, you call the cops, but they aren’t interested in investigating the matter. “What’s the big deal?” they tell you. “After all, it’s only 5% of your net worth!”
As you’re preparing to flee the city for a place where you cannot be robbed, Gabriel Zucman appears on your doorstep.
“Why are you leaving?” he asks.
“Somebody just robbed me and the police aren’t going to do anything. I want to live somewhere I can’t be robbed!”
“But sir,” says Mr Zucman, “Have you considered the fact that the man told you it was a one-time tax ? Have you considered that you gain nothing by leaving since the tax is already paid ? There’s no economic reason for you to leave anymore.”
What amazes me is the attitude of so many of the centibillionaires.
A 5% tax will not make any difference to the way they live. Their spending may be extravagant, but it is still much less than their (correctly measured) income.
They know that, as gifted as some of them indeed are, they have benefited from extreme luck (and the help of the state, and, to speak like an economist, monopoly rents).
They know that their effective tax rate is low, relative to what many others pay.
They know that extreme inequality is extremely unpopular, and can lead to political unrest, backlash, or worse.
They must admit that, morally, it is hard to argue for a society in which some become obscenely wealthy, while so many are poor and see their income stagnate.
They typically have not indicated that they are building their wealth to eventually make the world a better place.
But they are still willing to fight the tax, spending hundreds of millions in California to avoid paying the tax. Why?
They simply think what is theirs is theirs, end of story.
They believe in the slippery slope, and if they do not take a stand on this levy, the government will come back for more.
They hate the state and the notion that their money will be misused?
Or?
Chris Tolles retweeted
It could not be more stark, according to the data. You could have the hardest-working, most prodigious Congressional representative or the most obstructive.
“Based on 84 votes she cast on land use since she joined the board in 2021, Chan was second only to former Board President Aaron Peskin in amassing a record consistently opposed to liberalizing housing regulation.”
“From Wiener’s first session in the state Senate in 2017-2018 through the 2025-2026 session, he authored the most bills of any legislator in the chamber, at 186. Of those bills, 97 passed and were signed by the governor — the second-most over that period.”
sfchronicle.com/politics/art…
Chris Tolles retweeted
The entire point of a rules-based liberal system is that, when you play by the rules and win, then what you've won is yours, by right. That's the whole foundation of the system. When there's an "except if you win too big" exception, then it's all just lawless fugazi
Seeing the tsunami of comments, I realize the irony:
You are right that I was admitting to puzzlement at the fact that (many, not all) centi-billionaires act like the homo economicus of the basic economic textbook😀: They maximize utility (or at least wealth), try to keep as much as they can, and the hell with other motives.
And, indeed, this is what puzzles me. I would have thought (but this is the left wing me…) that they would care about more, including the welfare of others less lucky, and would be willing to pay the tax. That they might even volunteer to help (a few of them actually do).
I hear from the comments (although I suspect none comes from a centibillionaire…) is that maybe they care (although some of the comments are : Why should they?). But, even if they do, they do not trust the government not to come back with another “one time tax”. And that money given to the government is a waste of money. This may indeed be the reason, and I should not have been surprised.
I am afraid that there is not much the CA state can do in terms of credible commitments not to come back for more. But on the waste argument. The centibillionaires could have come back and offered public private partnerships to fund specific projects that they find worth funding. (Or maybe the state could have offered them)
Chris Tolles retweeted
A touch-grass moment for the "AI and data centers are huge issues in the midterms" people
Chris Tolles retweeted
Reading a history of the bond market recently, and the author noted that Britain defeated Napoleon mostly because their consol bond market left the British military much better funded than France’s weak post-revolutionary capital markets.
One Alexander Hamilton studied the British bond market, and then consolidated American revolutionary debt into one tradable market, which gave birth to what became the New York stock exchange, Liberty bonds, and the world’s largest capital markets.
An army might march on its stomach, but it’s borrowed money that pays for the food and ammunition, and the one who can borrow the most generally wins.
Chris Tolles retweeted
站在今天看，俄罗斯这波操作，属于手握着一把天胡的牌打得稀烂。
如果不出兵乌克兰，今天全球AI的牌桌上，除了中美，大概率真得坐着一个俄罗斯。
搞AI、跑大模型，底层逻辑就是“吃电、散热、堆机器”。这两年全世界的数据中心老板都在为电费和机房降温发愁。俄罗斯属于老天爷喂到饭：西伯利亚开窗就是纯天然顶级空调；境内水电、核电、天然气很便宜，当年挖矿的都选西伯利亚。
另外俄罗斯人的数学和算法也强，各大国际编程竞赛，Kaggle机器学习竞赛常被俄国人屠榜。全世界除了中美，俄罗斯也搞出了自己完整的互联网生态：搜东西有Yandex，社交有VK，还有Telegram。现在在美股被炒上天的算力黑马Nebius，核心班底就是原先Yandex那帮俄罗斯人。
如果疫情后俄罗斯出地皮、出冷气、出便宜电，再拉着中国这种基建狂魔帮忙拉高压电网、建厂房、铺光纤，欧美资本开服务器工厂。俄国人完全可以成为欧亚大陆最大的“超级算力工厂”，中美神仙打架，它在中间两头收过路费。
结果呢？普京一拍大腿：不行，我得去抢那几块地。
普京的脑子，彻底停留在了19世纪沙皇俄国那种“开疆拓土”的旧梦里。什么有没有出海口啊，有没有所谓的军事缓冲带啊，就算抢方法也多的是，这可这是21世纪啊！现在的世界霸权争夺，抢的是半导体供应链，抢的是先进算法，抢的是高精尖人才。你去顿巴斯抢了几片烂泥地、几座废弃钢铁厂，代价却是把整个国家的未来都押了上去。
枪声一响，一切全崩了。稍微有点本事的程序员、算法工程师，连夜跑路。Yandex核心技术团队，宁可巨亏，惨烈的断尾求生、割裂母国，也要跑到欧洲重组成Nebius。普京把最懂未来的人，全逼成了难民和海外创业者。
在人工智能技术爆发的黎明前夜，全世界都在疯狂狂飙算力、抢占新工业革命的门票；而俄罗斯的老大，却带着几十万人，在泥潭里打着一百年前的一战式堑壕战。
再说一遍，普京不行，国内崇拜普京的那帮人也不行
Chris Tolles retweeted
California hasn't built its bullet train because the state has required 130,000 pages of environmental reports, making absurd demands like:
• counting bumblebees one by one
• rebuilding woodrat stick huts
• hiring specialized dogs to sniff lizard scat
Asshole public sector unions potentially cost this state $28B in taxes with their retroactive tax stunt. Screw these guys and hope we ban the SEIU
this California wealth tax thing is just incredible.
so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time).
polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it).
there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate.
supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right?
well as it turns out, they did.
a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative.
proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave.
just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues.
but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion.
so when you add it all up you get:
+ $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated)
- $69b in present value of lost future income taxes
= - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax
of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time.
and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes.
[1]: nber.org/system/files/workin…
Always, *always*, a class act. Good read.
Foursquare was acquired last month. The outcome was disappointing. It's taken me a while to write this, but I think I'm finally done grieving it. Here are some thoughts on our final years, an effort to honor the team who helped build & maintain FSQ's legacy, and my attempt to finally get some closure. teendrama.substack.com/p/som…
