Whip Inflation Now
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The Nightmare Of Grocery Shopping In Venezuela
Price controls lead to food shortages, black market scalping, and low quality in Venezuela, in this story via NPR.
‘The final bill is the equivalent of less than a dollar. But that's part of Venezuela's scarcity problem. Economists say price controls make it unprofitable for farms and businesses to produce goods. Falling oil prices mean Venezuela has less money to import food.’
How the CrowdStrike Tech Outage Reignited a Battle Over the Heart of Microsoft Systems
Having mandated that Microsoft grant access to the Windows kernel for cybersecurity vendors, Germany now wants to minimize kernel-level access, after the Crowdstrike fiasco.
Why don’t you just tell me what movie you’d like to see?
‘Meanwhile, the pressure to find an alternative grows. In July, Germany’s powerful cybersecurity agency asked Microsoft to develop “more resilient architectures” for endpoint protection software with minimal kernel-level access.’
Apple’s Hold on the App Store Is Loosening, at Least in Europe
Apple builds a business. It builds a community. Once it gets large enough, the EU says that they have to share it with everyone. It’s too lucrative.
EU regulators have targeted the positive network externality of this community with the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
The logic here is that, at some scale, positive network effects are not in the public interest because they confer monopolistic power on the company that developed the network organically.
Will that chill efforts to build up networks? Probably not. But it does cap their profitability by shifting resources from winners to others. What effect will this distortion have on broader competition?
‘The changes are opening up Apple’s devices to outside developers in new ways, allowing third parties to bypass elements of its control and, in some cases, its fees. They show how a wave of new regulations, antitrust enforcement and rulings, many in Europe, are chipping away at Apple’s “walled garden” of devices and software.
‘Apple has long argued that its approach supports users’ privacy and security. It has also become a lucrative part of the company’s business model. Apple’s services unit, which includes the App Store, generated $85.2 billion in sales during the 2023 fiscal year, accounting for about 22% of overall revenue.’
Russian Drones Could Win This War, If Entrenched Bureaucracy Lets Them
Russian military procurement suffers from bureaucracy. There’s hope yet.
‘A detailed thread by military history author ChrisO summarizes criticisms from Russian commentators who do not want to see small drone startups dragged into a dysfunctional military procurement system. They view the system as a nightmare bureaucracy run by officials bent on seizing credit without taking responsibility, where every decision is referred to multiple committees to remove any trace of accountability.
‘These critics say the system is obsessed with standardization and cutting costs, even when this affects performance. They contrast this with the Ukrainian system of diversity rather than standardization where developers are free to use more expensive components when they give a real advantage.
‘And mainly, the critics say the Russian system prioritizes loyalty over competence. Blame is never assigned and lessons never learned, and reliable yes-men are promoted far beyond their capabilities.’
The Long Arm of Europe’s Crackdown on Speech
The bureaucratic tax here is the cost that will be imposed on US social media companies to ringfence content in order to comply with the EU’s laws opposing free speech. That’s a real cost.
‘If that’s the case, the only problem is the made-in-Brussels bureaucratic load, which, even then, would still include being subject to the EU’s onerous compliance mechanisms. But if the U.S. company does not have the ability to make those country-by-country cuts, or if the bureaucratic burden resulting from custom censorship becomes too heavy to face, then its American clients will find that posts they put up in the U.S. will be governed by the EU’s repressive standards and pulled. There’s nothing innocuous about that.
‘Making matters worse, the same may be true of posts that are also legal in the EU but are, for EU purposes, “harmful,” a category than can encompass “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “fake news,” all concepts flexible enough to delight censors on the march. Moreover, fines payable by a VLOP for breach of the DSA’s requirements can amount to as much as 6 percent of global sales revenues, an absurdly high number designed to encourage social-media companies to err on the side of caution when it comes to reining in speech.’
Executives expect complying with AI regulations will increase tech costs
KPMG survey anticipates higher costs for technology due to AI regulation.
‘More than half of executives expect complying with data privacy and security requirements will increase costs for their organization. Nearly two-thirds of leaders project the requirements will tighten as regulators shape policies.
Bureaucracy gets older along with society
Korea’s government bureaucracy is ageing out.
‘The bureaucracy is aging at a sharper pace, in line with the fast-aging population of Korea, where one out of five citizens is anticipated to be aged 65 or older by 2025. Young people shunning civil service jobs are also accelerating the aging of the group.’