Não acho isto totalmente exagerado.
agents are going to cause a breakdown of human behavior assumptions underlying today's systems. i've started thinking about it as friction collapse. without friction, a number of norms will collapse.
consider selling tickets to a concert/event. today, you can post them at a certain time and it's first come first serve. soon everyone's agent will persistently monitor, and as soon as they are posted for sale, thousands of people will instantaneously be trying to buy the same ticket. how do you even resolve this? sell the ticket to the person whose agent gets there fractions of a second before?
we're seeing the same thing with job applications, restaurant reservations, but basically anything that relies on participation requiring effort is going to break down. sales emails/calls, participation in government benefits, apartment rentals, doctors appointments, RFP responses. customer support won't be able to handle the user who will not drop their point of dissatisfaction. with no friction, these systems just don't work anymore.
business models will break down:
- flights/hotels will be consistently cancelled and rebooked at the lowest price (great use case for your agent if you don't have this already set up)
- subscriptions will be cancelled
- retailers won't be able to arbitrage price differences as the agent will find the cheapest place to buy anything
- insurance denials (health/auto/home/etc.) will be fought tooth and nail
- bank interest rates will be optimized and avoidable charges will be avoided
a lot of what we perceive as stable social coordination is actually an equilibrium sustained by human inefficiency. rationing is a product of human slowness. signaling effort/interest/intent is a key part of our social infrastructure. inertia is a key to many business models. information asymmetry is everywhere. and attention is monetized thoroughly.
with agents, none of these things are true. humans will simply demand what they want and have their agents get it for them. there is going to be a fundamental renegotiation of how markets allocate resources, how people signal intent, and how businesses capture value.
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Não sigo os mercados de perto, mas fiquei um pouco surpreendido com este dado de o crescimento pós-midterms em renováveis + saúde ser suficiente para compensar as perdas em IA + centros de dados + defesa + Musk Inc.
Stock markets up after election results. But what is most interesting is the composition. Health and solar up, data centers and Musk-related down. Crypto up may be the one I wouldn't have expected.
And note, markets presumably had already been pricing in large Democratic gains.
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João Cancela retweeted
Hear me out:
Every year, a referendum on a billionaire tax, combined with a 10% tax on political donations.
Every year, the billionaire tax fails, but the states gets a lot of money from billionaires
Every year, a referendum on a billionaire tax, combined with a 10% tax on political donations.
Every year, the billionaire tax fails, but the states gets a lot of money from billionaires
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One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
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Imaginem que alguém esteve em coma durante as últimas semanas. Acorda e passado pouco tempo uma amiga em visita descreve a escalada do conflito entre os manifestantes e as autoridades de forma equilibrada, omitindo porém a identificação do grupo e as suas reivindicações. 1/6
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O exercício que proponho é uma versão muito + modesta dessa ideia. Não precisamos de concordar com as reivindicações de quem protesta, nem sequer de as considerar razoáveis. É só perguntar isto: acharíamos legítima a mesma actuação caso os manifestantes defendessem outra causa?
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Se a nossa avaliação muda quando se desvenda quem são os manifestantes, sem que nada tenha mudado no que sabemos sobre o seu comportamento ou sobre a actuação da polícia, talvez estejamos a avaliar menos a legitimidade da repressão do que a nossa simpatia por quem é reprimido.
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João Cancela retweeted
Moedas já falou com as famílias das vítimas da feira de Natal.
Carlos Moedas: "Não podemos ter a feira de Natal e a manifestação no mesmo sítio" sicnoticias.pt/economia/habit…
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