Open-Note 2.
Thoughts from the weeks of April 7-22, 2024
South Korean housing market makes every property owner a hedge fund manager and every renter an LP with 0% gains (@Alex)
“Under a system that’s unique to South Korea, landlords collect a deposit called jeonse that’s equal to anywhere from 50% to 90% of a property’s value at the start of the lease period, which typically runs for two years. Tenants usually pay no rent for the duration while the property owner profits by investing the funds, often to buy or build more apartments. Landlords are contractually obligated to refund the deposit at the end of the lease term”
Higher interest rates in 2021 has crashed the system. Owners commit suicide after being unable to pay back their renters. Jeonse insurance is not mandatory to buy, with only 20% being insured.
Good Talk. A memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacobs
“Sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn’t…Our burden is how much we might love them anyway.”
“We think our hearts break only from endings—the love gone. The rooms empty, the future unhappening as we stand ready to step into it—but what about how they can shatter in the face of what is possible?”
I talked to a man who was willing to lose everything he had, go homeless, and work his way back up as a dishwasher for the sake of his principles. That type of resilience is admirable. He said he would have lived all the suffering all over again — as many times as it would take. It’s like that One Republic lyric I heard on the radio as a kid: “I hope you that you can suffer, and take the pain. Cause when the moment comes, I’ll say: I had it all. I had it all. I owned every second that this world could give. I saw so many places and the things that I did. And with every broken bone… I swear I lived”
Lessons from Petros:
If you suffer, do it with pride; enjoy building your resilience.
Prefer to actively choose to suffer over making decisions that you are not aligned with.
Let your reputation for fairness and hard work precede you.
In the service industry, pleasing people is a ‘game’ to be mastered and to be measured in tips (if the tip > cost of meal, you’re onto something).
Invest in businesses that pay themselves off. Especially early on, do not be afraid to take the risk of reinvesting your cash flows to pay off the principal and living on scraps.
Don’t skip steps
Sofia and I made a list issues we care about. Once we have more time post-grad, we want to outline the issues like this:
Issue Name
First thought about why this matters to me or why this is interesting. Ideally tell this in a story
Main levers of the issue
Approach should be naive high level questions and then go deeper and deeper to first principles and then go back up
Modern context: 3-5 core areas of disagreement so you know what camps exist. Do your own research (statistical or historical context)
Merits of proposed solutions
Where do I ultimately lean?
HEIC picture formats can be changed to JPG by going into Options and using “Most compatible formats.” This has saved me a lot of time on HEIC to JPG sites. Hallelujah.
“An hour saved at a non-bottleneck is a mirage”
This rule is how you should think through your credit card rewards, which generally encourage you to spend more and on things you may not normally spend for. Is what you’re being offered really what you’d be using without the card… is it your value-driving bottleneck?
Something I wish more teachers did to promote learning and teaching:
“I called on one boy—let's say his name was Mike-who I knew was struggling. He was rambling on and on. He did not get it. And I did not know what to ask Mike to get the answer out of him. So then I looked at my other students. And I knew if I called on John, for example, who did get it, he would just tell Mike the answer, and that's not what I wanted. So I said, "No one can give Mike the answer. You can ask Mike a question to help him think of the answer." And that is when one of my other students raised her hand. She said, "Remember when we were doing the cloud on teach fast, teach slow? The problem of making sure everyone understands but the fast ones don't get bored?" That's when I saw what was happening. As the other students began asking Mike questions designed to draw the answer out of him, I could see that everyone was engaged. It was a wonderful example of cooperative learning. Because everyone had to think. Even if they already knew the answer, they were thinking hard about how to guide others to the answer.” (The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt)
Which 4 books would I make mandatory summer reading for Wharton freshman?
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt (Bottlene
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Non-violent Communication by Michael B. Rosenberg
Problems on my mind
Protein powder gives me acne. Milk gives me acne. How the hell am I supposed to get bigger and have healthy bones… because working out is 25% of the ordeal.
I wish more people would ask me hypothetical questions and slap me if I ask for an answer instead of saying THINK! repeatedly. Wyatt, if you’re reading this, you do this very well and you are a homie for it.
OPEC price shocks in the 1970’s lead to a fascinating de-integration of oil company operations of oil companies from being tightly integrated behemoths to trading floors (The Prize by Daniel Bergen)
The establishment of trading as a separate profit center, a way to make money on its own terms, and not merely as a method for assuring that supply and demand were balanced within the parent company's own operations. If there had been no loyalty on the part of exporters toward companies when supplies were tight, then, in time of surplus, there would be no loyalty on the part of companies toward the exporters
The concept I was taught was that you moved your own crude through your own refining and downstream system," said George Keller, the chairman of Chevron. "It was so obvious that it was a truism.
The move to the commodity style of trading would be resisted in many companies by traditionalists who saw this direction as an uncouth, immoral, and inappropriate way to conduct the oil business—almost against the laws of nature