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76report

March 15, 2024

Free speech and truth-seeking

While social media and the internet certainly present a wide range of societal challenges, as operators of a digital content platform, we are very much creatures of the online world. Despite all the negatives, the access to interesting content that the internet provides is extraordinary. The supply is overwhelming, and many worthwhile items slip through the cracks. One service we think we can provide is to curate for you the stuff we find quite good, especially when it flies below the radar.

The 76report is an investment-focused newsletter, but as we like to emphasize, being a successful investor requires a broad understanding and curiosity about the world. This is because the political, economic and cultural environment has a direct bearing on companies and their financial performance. Companies and markets cannot be understood in a vacuum.

Taking in a wide range of information is also important because thoughts and ideas that are found in one area of human experience often apply in a very interesting way to the art/science of investing. Almost every great investor we have ever known or studied emphasizes the need to read, extensively and widely, and far beyond annual reports.

Reading is definitely my thing, too, and I think you have to read not just business stuff but also history, novels, and even some poetry. Investing is about glimpsing, however dimly, the ebb and flow of human events. It's very much about breasting the tides of emotion, too, which is where the novels and poetry come in. - Barton Biggs, hedge fund manager and former Morgan Stanley strategist

The beauty of the internet is that we can access and absorb a wide range of information through podcasts and videos in addition to the written word. Listening and seeing are often more effective ways of learning, which is of course why both children and adults attend school and don’t just stay home and read books.

We had the opportunity earlier this year to attend a lecture on the campus of Yale University featuring Professor Robert George of Princeton. The event was sponsored by the Buckley Institute at Yale, named after the founder of the National Review, the great conservative thought leader William F. Buckley.

With only 169 views as we write and 7 likes, odds are good that you have not seen this one. But do not be discouraged. If you are interested at all in free speech issues and the dynamics of political correctness and progressive orthodoxy on college campuses (picking up on the wokeness theme from Issue 1), you will enjoy this.

Professor George, if you are unfamiliar with him, is one of the leading conservative political theorists in the country. He runs the James Madison Program at Princeton. The James Madison Program and the Buckley Institute are, in our view, islands of hope in the sea of postmodernist progressive madness that much of higher education has become. Both programs produce excellent scholarship, host very interesting events (that get limited attention) and are worth monitoring on your social media feeds.

The lecture can be enjoyed without your investment hat on, but investing inevitably comes to mind as one takes it in, at least for us. What Professor George is fundamentally concerned with is “truth-seeking,” which is very simply the project of understanding what is right and what is wrong. His belief is that truth-seeking should be the overriding goal of a university.

George is primarily concerned with truth-seeking for the general advancement of human knowledge. But investors are also engaged, like scholars, in the same pursuit, albeit with a narrower and more self-serving focus.

Verita$

The essence of true ideas is that they conform with reality. If we can identify what is really happening with respect to a company or a stock, or avoid coming to a false conclusion, we will be rewarded. When you make money on a stock, it’s either because you got lucky or you figured something out—something true about the world—that others didn’t.

The professor is concerned that cultural changes on campus, especially the rise of “group-think,” are destroying the educational experience. We couldn’t help but feel that this same dynamic is playing out in the investment community. ESG is the DEI of the corporate world, a dominant orthodoxy that one is socially coerced into following. Like any form of group-think, there is tremendous risk it leads an investor to the wrong conclusions.

We hope you enjoy the lecture!

Robert George, truth-seeker

A second YouTube speech that caught our attention was a presentation by David Sacks. A highly successful venture capitalist turned public intellectual/podcaster, Sacks has been among the most vocal and effective critics of America’s Ukraine policy. Sacks, along with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, was one of the founders of PayPal, and, while highly educated (Stanford economics undergrad, Chicago Law), he is not a trained foreign policy expert. His critics use that to write him off as a novice.

What Sacks brings to the table, especially through his relentless and astute tweeting, is a creative thought process, an ability to find, synthesize and distill information, an apparent lack of fear (perhaps a function of his vast personal wealth) of saying the “wrong” things publicly, and a keen understanding of social media.

On the Ukraine question, he presents a picture of the war, grounded in fact and reason, that one is not likely to get from mainstream media sources. This is because his insights conflict with the dominant narrative and because his ideas are sometimes too subtle for mass media consumption. His presentation is worth watching.

David Sacks, active tweeter

Staying on Ukraine, but back to Yale and the Buckley Institute. We did not attend ourselves but took the opportunity to watch a debate between Elbridge Colby, author of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, and Professor Timothy Snyder.

Colby is an influential figure in foreign policy circles and served in the Department of Defense under Trump. The chief argument of his book and his central theme generally is that American foreign policy needs to be oriented around our main adversary and threat, China. Colby is concerned that our involvement in Ukraine is a distraction from that priority.

Unlike Sacks, who believes our proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is both self-defeating and immoral, Colby seems to want to find a middle ground, where he is not challenging the righteousness of American support for the war but merely suggesting we have bigger fish to fry.  

Professor Snyder competently puts forward the establishment argument—that Putin is a tyrant who must be stopped in the name of sovereignty, democracy and human rights and as a signal to other tyrants. He argues our efforts to defend Ukraine from Russia will deter China from moving on Taiwan, in contrast with Colby who believes it just diverts attention and resources from Asia.

Colby vs. Snyder: Implications for Taiwan

We include this recording of the debate to provide two additional thoughtful perspectives on the subject. Perhaps the most interesting question came from an astute student at 34:50, who presses Snyder on American involvement in the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which we discussed in Issue 1.

There is abundant evidence that the U.S. involved itself in the events of 2014, as part of a broader pattern of behavior in Ukraine before and since then that a reasonable observer could describe as a provocation and a serious threat to Russian security interests. Snyder simply dismisses the idea of U.S. involvement in the Maidan Revolution as something that didn’t happen. His overall position would become significantly weaker, of course, if he were to acknowledge and admit any of these factual realities.

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