Marco Zappacosta

Californians will really do anything except abolish the Prop 13 to properly tax some of the most valuable and immobile wealth in existence (land)

@mattyglesias Kevin Kelly had a great essay on this topic reflecting on the 10 year anniversary of the Netscape IPO wired.com/2005/08/tech/?…

“Produce is war”

For the U.S. to prosper & lower the cost of living, we gotta make it easier to build the things we need — housing, clean energy, child care centers, transit & so much more. The vetocracy needs to end. We’re doing that work in California. We need to take it national.

@raytingsystems @thumbtack Send me an email at marco@thumbtack.com with the details

The best resistance is delivering results on the issues our residents care most about. sfstandard.com/opinion/2025/1…

@typesfast You probably have it but if not a worthy addition to your coffee table. Photos of cargo ships in the bay

Instant buy

It's done. Thank you @GavinNewsom for signing SB 79! California can and will build the future!

“The greatest regret I have is underestimating the value of long term compounding. Capital, friendships, projects, places, all get better with decades. It is entirely what life is about. a few very good things for a long time.” - Will Manidis

New newsletter: HOW THE HOUSING MARKET FOR YOUNG PEOPLE BECAME A 'TOTAL DISASTER' In 1991, the median age of first-time homebuyers was 28. Now it’s 38. This is the hardest time for young people (defined, generously, up to 40) to buy their first home in modern history. The vanishing dream of 20- and 30-something homeownership isn't just an economic phenomenon. It's becoming a political centerpiece. Housing affordability is for voters under 40 what protecting Social Security is for voters over 65. The cities, states, and national parties that figure out how to talk about and ultimately solve this mess to restore housing affordability to Americans under 40 will have a major advantage in the next few years.

The Gentle Singularity blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-sin…

A clean CEQA exemption for infill housing just passed the Assembly Appropriations committee *on consent.* We have a lot more work to do, but things are looking up in California!

SB 79 (Wiener) and AB 609 (Wicks) both passed their final house of origin policy committee today. These bills are huge. If they pass, California will become a much more dynamic and affordable state, where entrepreneurs can build the future and anyone can afford to call home.

@km @patk Obviously the South African

@patk @mlz so is elon mlz or me in this analogy

Spoke to @km and talked about various issues, including the topics we discussed at dinner with @mlz earlier this year. Immense potential for collaboration in the areas of dining, fun, and technology too. // Why do pols post this meaningless stuff.

Thousands, and then millions, of American small businesses, including many iconic brands, will go bankrupt this year if the tariff policies on China don’t change. 🧵

It's exciting to see the public-intellectual drumbeat around "Abundance" manifest in this year's crop of California housing bills. They're far more ambitious--and promising--than anything I've seen previously. 🧵/17

7. Booking a one-time house cleaner for my home through the Thumbtack integration based on my budget ChatGPT Operator came back to me with four highly rated options within my price range

Self-recommending: @danhockenmaier deep dive on why DoorDash won

@dwarkesh_sp en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Lu

I've been looking for the right guest on China and I can't find the right person. Any suggestions? The big question I want them to be able to answer (in detail): how will the Chinese political system react to the level of capabilities I think are plausible for 2025/27/30/etc? I'm looking for someone who has a deep understanding of the political system, the techno-industrial complex, capital allocation, what exactly the gov. did to catch up in semis/EVs/solar/etc, and what worked/what didn't. How deep are their private markets? How willing are the big public funds to finance the next rung of scaling? What might instigate a Chinese Manhattan Project for AGI? Suppose tomorrow XI wanted to make building AGI a main priority. At an institutional level, what concretely could he do? How does Chinese industrial espionage in other industries work? Suppose there's a hardware company that wants to learn how Apple does some procedure. Is there some government department they file their well scoped snooping request with? Often we treat the CCP as some giant hive mind. This view betrays a complete lack of understanding or even interest in the actual incentives, constraints, and beliefs of its 100 million members. I want somebody to give me a granular understanding of how the next few years will look like from inside the Politburo (or inside the Big Fund, or whatever the most relevant institutions are). I'd rather have somebody who has expertise in how the Chinese political system works over somebody who knows a lot about DeepSeek or Qwen as they exist today. There's a couple boomer historians that often come up when I ask this question. Without naming names, I feel like they know a lot about history, but I get Gell-Mann Amnesia when they discuss technology I understand. I worry that they have no context in how the modern Chinese tech ecosystem actually works. So who's the right person to field all my questions?

Prop 13 is so destructive to California municipal finances that wildfires actually *increase* property tax revenue Burning a California city to the ground has minimal impact on its bond rating & only modestly negative net budget impacts from temporarily higher city spending 😬