I'd say if you have a marketing problem do whatever the heck you can to get Rory Sutherland to take a look at your product, the man is a force of nature when it comes to unconventional marketing and from him I've learned the crucial distinction between relational and transactional capitalism.
And if you ever make it to the (multi)unicorn status because of him, don't forget yours truly. :)
An early Terminator prototype is pretty much useless unless you can field an army of them all at once and use them as shock troops.
As an infiltrator, it's worthless because it's not fooling anyone with its bizarre uncanny valley gait, and as an assassin either a drone swarm or human snipers are more efficient.
While sturdier than a human, if drones can take out tanks they'll be able to take out Terminators as well.
>that you can also solve via better polices and incentives if you want to
Nobody can. And it's not like they don't want to. Neither the very traditional and religious Arabic countries like Saudi Arabia (2.14, barely above replacement, and trending down), nor a country like Norway, which can afford the best social program in the world. All have fertility troubles. Urban lifestyle just does fertility in.
Yeah you can, they just don't want to because it will be at the cost of short term corporate economic growth.
>And it's not like they don't want to.
They don't want to compromise short term corporate profits. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
>nor a country like Norway, which can afford the best social program in the world
Social programs don't mean shit if nobody can afford to buy urban real estate in the big cities where the jobs are. Norway has different issues than Japan. Every country has different issues.
Really? Can you name one developed country besides Israel that has succeeded?
>Social programs don't mean shit if nobody can afford to buy urban real estate in the big cities where the jobs are
The Government Pension Fund Global (Statens pensjonsfond utland), also known as the Oil Fund (Oljefondet), was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. As of June 2025, it had over US$1.9 trillion in assets.
Price of a 3 bedroom house in Oslo: $1.5M
$1.9T / $1.5M = 1.266M houses
Population of Norway is 5.6M
Do you have a better argument than housing affordability?
Exactly. As a regular at a non-hardcore gym, I had never appreciated it until I saw the gym sell 12mo membership for the price of 4x 1mo, and then I tried to remember how many people sticked around for a meaningful period. Very few men. No women.
The nearest gym is truly the best gym for 90% of people, as everyone seems to look for excuses not to go. So just go, people there will not bite you or shame you.
Gym I go to is near to a university so always filled with college age kids. I find it super motivating. Lifting more than them has become life affirming for me :)
Spotted an 18 year old the other day that hit a PR at 315lbs on bench. I bench 405lbs and at that exact moment I decided I have to hit 495lbs. 405 had been my goal for decades. I went from I've hit the most I will ever need to "the journey continues".
"people there will not bite you or shame you" I have found the gym to be filled with the most grim looking people that transform into the kindest, happiest people as soon as you say hello. No one is there to judge anyone. You are 100% right
Even with the most charitable steelman interpretation of "visible problems", 2 out of 3 things you've listed have strong evidence for being responsible for weight gain, and even smoking has some weaker evidence supporting it.
In 2025 dollars their peak would have been $59.5B. To wit, this is roughly what Doordash is worth today, and that's a top-5 YC company. It died 9 months later.
> The influence of money in politics is one of sharply-diminishing returns. It is invaluable for name recognition
This part is true.
> There is a tendency, when we disagree with an election, to tally up the donations made to the other side while ignoring all the times the best-funded candidate got trounced. (Jeb!)
While this is too specific to a particular type of election to hold true in general (no pun intended). The POTUS election is almost by definition the most high profile election in the US, therefore the money does the least to boost your name recognition, as evidenced by $2B in "free" media publicity for the 2016 winner.
This article goes into great length to explain why correlation does not mean causation, but it also makes the case that a lot of the races that are indeed somewhat low-profile, and that's where money makes the big impact.
> it also makes the case that a lot of the races that are indeed somewhat low-profile, and that's where money makes the big impact
I will amend my prior statements to be constrained to national politics. You can absolutely buy policy at the state and local level, because if you’re a candidate’s sole sugar daddy you have obvious influence over and goodwill owed from them.
The moment a candidate gains a profile, however, that channel becomes a two-way street. Donors will donate to maintain access and goodwill. Refusing to donate means being cut off; the elected has the leverage.
I know of a software billionaire[0] who opened a pizzeria and failed. He said so himself.
Should we conclude, obviously, that any break even pizzeria owner is a better businessman than tech billionaires?
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxAwUb86MUE