The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat in the Spring sun, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:
• “F*ck You” Money What is the optimal amount of wealth? A small increase in wealth leads to a massive increase in happiness when you have little, and massive increases in wealth hardly move the bar as net worth increases. For this exercise, it is important to note that happiness is very low when wealth is zero. (Young Money)
• AngelList: A Venture Constellation AngelList Venture is now worth $4.1 billion. That makes Naval Ravikant’s company a unicorn and a creator of unicorns. It may just be getting started. (The Generalist)
• An Oral History of Apple’s Infinite Loop Apple’s old HQ holds stories of pizza ovens, iPhone secrets, baseball bats, and what happened to Steve Jobs’ office. (Wired)
• Bad Economics: How microeconomic reasoning took over the very institutions of American governance. (Boston Review)
• A History: War, Oil Prices, Inflation & Trade Historically, wars have been the main catalyst of government-to-government transfers. The scale of official credits granted in and around WW1 and WW2 was particularly large, easily surpassing the scale of total international bailout lending after the 2008 crash. During peacetime, development finance and financial crises are the main drivers of official cross-border finance, with official flows often stepping in when private flows retrench. (Investor Amnesia)
• A Once Radical Idea to Close the Wealth Gap Is Actually Happening How economist Darrick Hamilton brought baby bonds from Bed-Stuy to U.S. statehouses. (Businessweek)
• From Russia With Blood: 14 Suspected Hits On British Soil That The Government Ignored Lavish London mansions. A hand-painted Rolls-Royce. And eight dead friends. For the British fixer Scot Young, working for Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic meant a life of incredible luxury – but also constant danger. His gruesome death is one of 14 that US spy agencies have linked to Russia – but the UK police shut down every last case. (Buzzfeed News)
• 2022 10 Breakthrough Technologies Breakthrough Technologies (MIT Technology Review)
• The myths and reality of modern friendship Over the past couple of years, digital connection has mattered more than ever, writes the philosopher Rebecca Roache. So, how is the nature of friendship changing? (BBC)
• Chumbawamba Tried to Save the World 25 Years Ago. Can They Do It Again? The SXSW doc “I Get Knocked Down” considers the impact the anarcho-punk band had when they were “pissing the night away.” There was, and is, so much more to it than you thought. (Daily Beast)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Darren Palmer, General Manager of Battery EVs at Ford. He has overseen the development and rollout of Ford’s Mustang Mach E, F150 Lightning, and the E-Transit van. The 30 year Ford veteran is part of their Team Edison skunkworks group and is overseeing Ford’s $50B shift to electrification, and will be driving the split into two firms, EV, and legacy business.
Xi Jinping says, “The East is rising, the West is declining.” He’s wrong.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.
~~~
To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.
