Tomás Fontes

In 1992, a 32-year-old historian became Prime Minister of Estonia. He had read exactly one book on economics: Milton Friedman's Free to Choose. He used it as a policy manual. Western advisors and Estonian economists told him it would fail. 🧵

O futuro que os Liberais querem:

If you told ppl that we should force workers to save in individual accounts — w govt matching for poor workers + no choice of portfolio + a low annual withdrawal rate + a 100% inheritance tax on balances at death…they would not realize that this is a sovereign wealth fund

Coming back to Hayek’s argument, there was another aspect of it that has always bothered me. What if computational power of central planners improved tremendously? Would Hayek then be happy with central planning?

I was never able to do blood tests when I asked for it in Netherlands Doctor asked "why? you're not sick?" Then I tried in Portugal (at Germano de Sousa) but they never picked up the phone or when they did were so slow and unhelpful I gave up, they also require a doctor prescription btw The first place I could get my blood tested was Thailand in 2018, I just walked into Bumrungrad and asked for it, amazing experience Last few years we just fly to Brazil and do it here, the nurse comes to your home/hotel at 8am and takes your blood, same or next day results online I find it funny I keep having to fly out of Western Europe to do blood tests, they make it impossibly hard to do them Which is retarded

This is a ballsy power play by Trump. Lloyd's of London was the gold standard for maritime insurance policies until just a day or two ago when they started cancelling policies or jacking them up 3-5X. Others insurers followed. That collapsed commercial shipping traffic through Hormuz, which choked oil shipments out of the Middle East. Trump doing this means the DFC has the chance to displace Lloyd's as the big dog in this game, when they have been the lock-in player for many years. It also frees up all the oil that was getting trapped there, heading off shortages and keeping the energy market alive. And why not? It's the American navy that sunk the Iranian ships that were harassing tankers. And the American Navy -- at least for now -- will keep those tankers safe. It's a huge reassurance to allies -- both oil producers and oil consumers -- that our campaign in Iran isn't going to sink their economies. And it allows America to be choosy about traffic in the Strait. It also potentially means billions of dollars in insurance premiums at wartime rates going to America instead of the UK. And those rates are STILL going to be cheaper than what shippers were getting.

This is absolute nonsense. Lloyd's market pricing reflected patently obvious real-world risks. There is zero commercial demand to sail ships through a tight lane with a belligerent threatening to sink them. And DFC has no interest in doing 99.99% of the business Lloyd's writes.