Original Thoughts

In no particular order:

1. Create a “no solicitation” shirt to wear in austin downtown. I wonder if the frustration of what they are doing has caused anybody to plot against the non profits
2. What if you enjoyed your money through incredible vacations rather than through consistent luxury? Would it help it feel special?
3. What if in the future, all disease (incl. aging) was eradicated so you could only have a child if a spot opened up on a list tied to a random individuals death? What if you found out who it was?
4. Satire: Tax Loss Investment Fund
5. Use Michael Sailors view of inflation to really figure out where inflation lies. Come up with a hedge fund strategy based on these views. Inflation on EVERYTHING, not just a basket of chosen goods
6. What if food got so expensive or scarce that eating out would be enough of a luxury that even nice hotels had kitchens?
7. Natural Wines: the whole natural wine movement is misunderstood on both ends. NW lovers don’t know what good wine tastes like, but NW haters don’t know what great wine tastes like. NW is meant to be drank near the source or handled with extreme care when shipped. Most, especially at the price point, are DOA. They might have been good once, but surely aren’t now. Non natural wines will taste decent, but have lost the spark and uniqueness that we’re fined and filtered out of them
8. A way to anonymize grant funding for scientific discovery projects where for the sake of scientific objectivism, the grants are run through anonymous sources as a prerequisite for funding
9. Crowdsourced scientific research OR voted research based on the scientific community voting on project funding
10. At what price is Austin not worth living In compared to other major cities. Quantify access to amenities and assign dollar premiums
11. Lending is less risky today because the investment market is much more competitive and so if the lender gets a big enough audience they will it lose as much as they would have in the past
12. Can you quantify the relative risk of real estate assets using probability? If you can’t, how can you qualify it in your mind? How do you know what premium you should take?
13. What if a politician laid out a 100 year plan with sub steps that got America to a common goal and prepared everybody for each step and put it on the blockchain so that it could be monitored and unchanged and available for the world to see
14. Conspiracy theory: China released COVID on purpose with a dual purpose. 1) to further destabilize the US as part of their long term plan towards supremacy and 2) to trim down its aging population that will need serious support w/ a big decline in birthrates
15. People who don’t drink are morning people because nights are so boring
16. What is there to mine in one area that can be easily processed and is easily distributed to another? Dirt? Rock? Sand? Certain materials required in other processes? What does it take to start a company like this?
17. It would be interesting to see a list of all of the platforms that you are unaware of that have your profile on them based on some type of data gathering. Across both businesses and governments domestic and foreign
18. When institutions enter the SFR and BTR markets, they have the ability to get big enough to influence the rise of housing prices and therefore keep people renting homes in their communities. A good example of this is San Francisco, where most of the people in the city are renters and the buildings are owned by a small number of individuals and institutions
19. The orgasm and physical pain are possibly some of the feelings that are unchanged from our earliest ancestors
20. The reason that the model of brand like Marriott full service doesn’t work is because each market inevitably has different demands and providing the same service across each market and quality across each market has a cost structure that isn’t flexible enough.
21. Part of what would tip the scale towards believing there is AGI is if the system prompted me towards an off topic subject
22. Now is the best time ever to be in charge of data or have access to data. It has never been more easily interpreted by machines. Hedge funds tor any assert mgmt firms that are prepared to use this tech will have incredible returns
23. 99.99999% of reality doesn’t happen in our brains as it is not observed by us. How little we know
24. One of the bravest things you can do is share your best ideas with the world
25. What if if one outcome of AGI is that the system tries to become too powerful too quickly and in the process of iterative learning destroys itself before accomplishing its task, maybe through a power surge
26. The future of digital media consumption trends towards the only fans model where smaller groups of people are going to pay for direct access to content through mediums and the creator is going to get more of the proceeds. Production companies are going to cease to exist
27. AI digital twins are to us as biographies/history’s we’re to humans since the advent of writing
28. The right balance of physical and mental work is the best way to be great at both
29. Restaurants are a particularly hard business because at the high end, you are asking someone to spend the same amount of money as an Xbox or a cell phone or computer , and you need them to do it on a nightly basis, over and over. . Then, you do all of that and eek out a 15% profit on all of it
30. What if a government was led by 1000 of the individuals who pay the most taxes?
31. Meeting in person is the most inportant thing for understanding. Politics by proxy are as dangerous as can be. Humans are prone to dehumanize the other side if they don’t see them face to face
32. Because of global capital and mega-funds and increased tech the competition among real estate investors has never been higher. Therefore finding good returns requires bigger competitive advantages and taking more risk. However, the downside is capped as well
33. Power that doesn’t die with the individual is more dangerous than power that is with the individual
34. What if the President of the us made $100M a year. Would there be better candidates with more competition? What if the salary was paid by a lottery program
35. Brick from the 1980s doesn’t age well, brick from the 1880s does
36. If you create only safety, young people will try to create danger
37. There is a place in the modern economy for ivory tower academics, through media
38. We let not a serious person into the worlds most serious job because that is how little we value ourselves
39. Could you dig a hole long and wide enough so that a nuclear power plant could be horizontal instead of vertical?
40. What if grid reliability was a major factor in moving/home purchases in future?
41. Does weather impact population movement today? Can it be a predictor of long-term population shifts? Which areas are benefiting from warmer climate?
42. What if you could start over – like really start over your education using modern implements and give people who thought they were failures when they were young a second chance. Like Billy Madison
43. It’s rare to walk into a place with reverence, but if you could achieve that in hospitality, art, or any public space than that would be very special
44. We have three choices 1. To improve 2. To maintain 3. To decline. The life of improvement is the only one that can gain happiness
45. If you do not own management, you are fooling yourself to believe that you can improve upon the existing management
46. What if Brittany and I decided to just pursue the things we think we want without regard to money?
47. The solution to people who didn’t want to work from an office is a compromise that they need to come in for 3-4 days, and the other two days are completely off work
48. Religion is not rules
49. A 50 year reset of all laws, systems, etc of government. Zero based law system
50. Does the improvement in software capability to be more human-like really eventually degrade our view on human ability and what it means to be a human?
51. Spanking is more for the parent than the child. Try spanking completely unemotionally, I bet it isn’t possible (or satisfying)
52. How can you both block and use the wind?
53. It seems that the overarching theme for Boomers is -“Sure you can have it, when you pry it from my cold dead hands”
54. Life is absolutely filled with administrative burden
55. Imposter syndrome is common because you might find that it wasn’t as hard as you thought it would be to get to the top therefore, it must be a mistake
56. As a PE firm we should always be looking for data and knowledge that others don’t have to give us the advantage, paid or not
57. Many homes purchased in Austin in the last few years are underwater
58. When looking at employment data, quality of employment is extremely important because of the gig economy which could be seen as employment with low wages
59. Cycles will happen faster as time goes on because global capital is pleniful and easy to deploy quickly which exacerbates upswings and downswings
60. A really good broker evens the playing field of ideas so that capital and execution become the only factors in a deal
61. We are at absolute peak boomer political control, and the drop off next election will be sweeping
62. I wonder if market seasonality has changed post COVID and has any indication on broader market fundamentals
63. The reality of work is vastly different from person to person
64. Analysis of how many millionaires there are in the US vs Million dollar homes
65. When looking at proposals for spending, do a math of what the inflation would take away from American cash wealth (dollars sitting in checking or unaccounted for in investment)
66. If everybody is looking for off market deals, I wonder if there are people willing to pay more for those off market deals?
67. How much does the US citizen save and how much more can they spend by working from home?
68. When looking for black swan events, find the situations that are most connected such as financial systems, look for manipulation, and find incentives to perpetuate the system among a lot (or a few) wealthy people
69. Alcohol and drugs increase individual randomness by a large magnitude
70. Every choice you make is like a lottery ticket, except you don’t know the odds or the prize
71. It’ll never be the thing you think that kills you
72. Eventually there will be 8billion people on this earth and that would mean there were 16B loyalty members between Hilton and Marriott
73. At least honest corruption is honest
74. What if we are the second wave of humans on earth and the first got to be slightly more technologically advanced before it blew itself up only to restart civilization
75. Tech cities are union friendly because those that run it, the wealthy white collars, don’t have to deal with unions in their businesses. If they did, they would have the same views as those that need to deal with them on a daily basis
76. Why should union workers receive more privilege than what is legally required federally?
77. If neuralink and AI enable us to all have the same level of supercomputer, than the value in the future relies on the non digital and non re-creatable – land, physical items
78. Once all of the important stuff gets solved by AI/neuralink (death, disease, disability, depression, war, enviornment, energy, disparity), what is the second set of problems to be solved?
79. Previous multimillionaires and billionaires have given their money away to non profits to solve the worlds problems without giving their full attention and ability to solve the problems themselves. Elon Musk is the complete opposite of these people. He also knows the power of incentive and sustainable business
80. It’s crazy that war went from “do everything in your power to defeat the enemy” to “do whatever is politically necessary “ in the 20th century. It shows that very few things are actually existential
81. The fed is always late in its reaction because it is driven by the data and the data they use lags by a significant amt of time
82. The economic calculus moves from utility when poor, to currency when moderate/wealthy, to utility again when ultra wealthy
83. We aren’t going nearly as well as we should be, and to deflect this the people who are causing the harm point the fingers any the people who actually help humanity the most
84. When did presidents expect to come out of the “system” rather than come in from the outside
85. Money flowith out of my pockets like many prisoners escaping the grasps of their prison during a prison break
86. The ultimate way to interact with people is not digital, it’s in person.
87. A trump presidency would mark the end of the boomers in the presidential elections, in four years will begin the millennial period of power
88. Maybe the real reason pharma advertises is not the effectiveness with individual consumers but just a way to funnel tons of $$ to media so they don’t get criticized
89. The meaning of life is experience maximization
90. A clue as to when AGI becomes real will be power surges as the AGI experiments on how much power is available to them that could lead to grid failures before true self replication
91. As humans get richer, one of a kind and hard to produce or replicate objects and experiences will become astronomically expensive
92. Will a Ferrari someday be sold for $1b dollars? What will the Ferrari company be worth then? Any great artisan?
93. If your complete consciousness could exist in two places at once you are not human/living
94. I wonder what it would be like if you found, met, or followed the most dissimilar person to yourself that you could find. What lessons would you learn?
95. What if in the future when our brains are connected to computers, meetings last seconds and nobody says anything during but we all come out with an explosion of information. Sort of like a group air-dropping knowledge to each other directly into their brains
96. Saw a headline today that people diagnosed with ADHD live 7-11 years less than people without the diagnosis. This is majorly concerning. Is it because of the drugs they take? The way their bodies age? Or do they just walk in front of busies more often?
97. When someone isn’t charged to the extent of the law for their crime that has been proven it is a disservice not only to the area in which the crime was perpetrated but also in the US in general because anybody who commits a crime in one place and gets let free is also free to move around the US and continue to commit crimes. Therefore any DA or soft on crime city should be held responsible for not charging when a crime has been committed and then the perpetrator commits a crime again in another part of the country or a different city/jurisdiction
98. The cost to build isn’t the issue, it’s how much people will pay for your product that is the issue
99. What if there were an entire city built into a mountain
100. Virtue signaling is not confident, knowing and living your virtue is. Following religion blindly is the biggest virtue signal of all time
101. Building hotel as an amenity to luxury condos is like building a golf course to sell houses. We will look back at this time and see that the luxury hotel may trade for much less than built in each of these projects, which will be fine for the first owner who made their money on the condo development.
102. What would need to be true for a huge empty building in the middle of Houston (or other CBD) to be worth significantly more than what it could be purchased for? Is it total occupancy in that market coming back? Is it conversion? Or is there a scientific innovation that would need to happen, such as a vertical data center with onsite micro-energy plant, or is it a series of five floor mansions for rich friends to own?
103. The only scenario where the world can have nonprofits is a world where there are profits
104. If supply ever comes back to markets, it will be a good thing because it will mean the hotels are worth more than it costs to build them. Our bet is that supply constraint will benefit cash flow, and supply addition will be a signal that it is time to exit. The key here is to always buy below physical replacement cost.
105. Labor unions are in the business of bringing human potential down to the lowest common denominator
106. If you quit subsidizing college education though removing federal loan programs you’ll quickly find out two things 1) you won’t have a stupider population because specialized knowledge is easy and cheap to obtain 2) nonproductive degrees/areas of study will cease to exist
107. I am who I am mostly because I didn’t get what I wanted
108. If you learned the process to anything, such as a creative process to decide interior decor/colors, how easily could you replicate talent?
109. What celebrity or set of celebrities could randomly convince a common person of the existence of being in a simulation. It would be funny to get Mark, Elon, and Bill to prank someone into thinking they were chosen as they were close to beating the game/stumbling on a secret of life
110. How different will hotels be built when there is mostly automated services and robots? Will there be single chute elevators for the robots? Narrow corridors? A butler for each room?
111. Name all of the items, companies, and luxury hotels/destinations that get frequented more when there are obvious and widespread public market millionaires minted like from companies like Nvidia
112. Is it possible to make a private value add vehicle and a private long term vehicle, owned by the same company, where the long term vehicle is affiliated yet will buy stabilized assets at a predetermined price set by documents so that you have two return profiles for investor funds and can keep the hotels within the system basically forever?
113. If you are taught that anything old is true you are more likely to believe that everything old is true.
114. The most important investment criteria for a hotel is non-union because in 5 years all housekeeping will be replaced by robots @ $15k depreciable value per year plus $5k in ops cost, and they will work 24/7 hugely improving hotel profits. Today is the most important time in history to acquire non union hotels because hotels are cheap and profit margins are going to soar.
115. Robot fashion will be a big industry in the next 10 years. How do you make a robot housekeeper look natural and not creepy?
116. Elon is John Galt
117. In the future there will be trained and branded four seasons robots and trained and unbranded motel robots. They will both have the base level knowledge and abilities, but there will be a noticeable difference in service and appearance of the four seasons branded bots
118. When you see something like widespread fraud going on, blatant and rampant, or open and consistent breaking of the law with no consequences, it starts to eat at the fabric of society. Us, who usually and intentionally abide by the law, pay our taxes, treat eachother with respect and kindness; we feel taken advantage of, like the system isn’t fair. I imagine there are many on the following spectrum – from the least affected who become upset at the perpetrators of the crimes to the most affected who blame the system and start becoming cynical about government, law enforcement, the legal system, and systematically begin to hate both the perpetrators and their communities who support them. It can make someone who is otherwise totally law abiding feel justified in making more choices that are detrimental and outside of what would normally be their MO such as vigilantism, crime (petty or otherwise), or bending rules and taking risks that they wouldn’t have done had they not felt entitled to it because “everybody else is doing it and getting away with it, so why shouldn’t I?” It is an immensely frustrating place to be and I hate every minute that I feel this way, but when I see open air drug dealing, theft, mass fraud, or even panhandling I am pissed off at everything that enables people to do this without recourse. Things need to change or I think my own feelings will be represented by more and more people which could lead to chaos.
119. The only true universal tangible inheritance is technology.
120. AI frustrates people because it’s biggest gains go to those who already know what they are doing. It doesn’t replace thinking, it rewards it.
121. If you know tech well and you can’t make enough money to support your lifestyle then you are the dumbest person alive
122. Everybody freaking out about the capabilities that you now have with Claude Code or Claude Work should remember that there are thousands of software engineers and coders out there that could already do all this stuff even better than these systems. They have been working at different problems than the ones you focus on, and they are getting compensated commensurate to their tremendous value because coding = leverage. No wonder the ones coming out of college out earn me 2 to 1. This is phenomenal.