Tyler Cowen: evaluation

Transcript context

…One of the things that I appreciated was he mentioned this need to focus on operationalizing what you’re trying to do, and having people who can coordinate and make things happen. Then, as I’ve seen what’s happened, it seems like a big part of the problem was that, operationally, they were a mess. That’s right. He said, “That is what is truly scarce. ” He actually had a deeper understanding of the scarcity of good operational talent than I realized at the time. The other thing he said that reads very differently in retrospect — when he praised Elon Musk and said, “Elon’s greatest achievement is not Tesla the car, but Tesla the brand.” That’s interesting for at least two reasons. First, Tesla the brand has changed quite a bit since Elon took over Twitter in many people’s eyes, but also the sense that what a company really is is just its image, and you can skate along with that. I really did not pick up at the time that’s what he was saying, though it’s quite clear when you read it that I should have picked it up at the time. When you re-read it in light of what’s happened, you get a sense of uh-oh, he presumably thought that way about FTX. As long as the brand was strong, he could always somehow trade his way out of trouble. One effect of the fallout with FTX has been on the effective altruism community, in particular, Will MacAskill, who’s a guest on the podcast. He was involved with some of the FTX philanthropic projects. One of our guests on Twitter asked, “What do you think is the future of the movement? Do they need new leadership? Speaking of branding, how are they going to recover from the fallout with one of the biggest personalities of ‘earn to give’ now being wholly disgraced?”…

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