Welcome back to the Stove Top weekly newsletter. As usual, each edition has a few brief stories and finishes with a mix of interesting links, hot takes, and good reads.

Enjoy.

Trust Is In The Toilet

Just 16% of people trust the government to do what is right just about always or most of the time. That is a record low number, and the easy explanation why is that we’ve been lied to over and over and over again by the institutions we’re supposed to be able to trust.

• Iraq didn’t have any WMD.

• Flint lied about its water for 18 months.

• The government lied about the origins of covid for months.

• Big Sugar lied about the health impact of fats.

• Big Tobacco lied about cigarettes.

• Greenpeace lied about nuclear energy.

• The WSJ lied about how much crypto Hamas raised.

• The Ivy League lied about discriminating against Asians.

• 3M lied about its chemicals for decades.

• Texas officials lied about the presence of Benzene.

This list is nowhere near exhaustive. There were multiple occasions in the debates where candidates flatly denied saying something they were quoted verbatim as saying. You could even make the case that the promise of the American Dream via college education is a lie. Cable news channels are a disaster.

There’s a reason the boy who cried wolf is such a popular story. If you lie and lie and lie, eventually people are going to stop believing you.

People Aren’t That Smart

The other less mainstream reason I believe trust is so low right now is that the social media-driven 24/7 news feed has illuminated how stupid most of our public figures are.

Before, unless it was a planned appearance, you didn’t really see much of our esteemed compatriots. So, because everything was planned, you only saw their best side. It’s like a relationship. When you’re only going on a few dates a week, they are going to look like the best person in the world. It’s not until you live with them that all the baggage comes out.

Social media displays a fuck ton of baggage, and not just personal scandals. It also shows how not extremely smart a lot of the world’s most successful people are. Economists can’t predict a recession. Cramer can’t pick stocks. Elon threw one of the world’s most recognizable brands into the toilet so he could have “X”. Biden doesn’t know his middle name. Trump is out of his freaking mind. Claudine Gay is a plagiarizer. Sequoia invested in SBF because he played League. Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff exist. Even Sam Altman is writing articles so shallow it reminds you of JFK’s Harvard essay.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these people being kinda regular. Most people are. But in a society that’s built on being a meritocracy, the revelation that the elites aren’t actually better than us presents a problem, as you now have to ask why these people are the elites. The most common explanation from the left is that they take advantage of a rigged system. The most common explanation from the right is….who knows. Either way, backlash is inevitable if people don’t have a good explanation for why the people above them are above them.

The True Meritocracy

Funnily enough, Sam Altman explains why some people do “better” than others. It has very little to do with intelligence, and everything to do with force of will:

It really boils down to this:

• Most people are risk-averse, so they don’t take the bets that would lead to positions of power.

• Most people don’t want to work all day, so they don’t do the grind that would lead to positions of power.

And that’s really it. Sam Altman is smart. Kamala Harris is smart. Jeff Bezos is smart. Mr. Beast is smart. But they are much closer to you and me in intelligence versus the average astrophysics Ph.D. You’ve heard of all of them. You probably can’t name a single astrophysics Ph.D.

The most “successful” people in the world chose that goal and then pursued it with relentless effort.

That’s why they are who they are.

Extras

• China is like lowkey winning the nuclear race.

• The social media crackdown might be coming to the UK.

• I really need to read more about the fediverse. 

• Netanyahu don’t give a fuck what you think.

• If you want to invest in a fund, invest in one with an ugly manager. 

• People like this are no fun at parties.

• The goal is to automate us. 

• Companies really can hear what we say. 

• You don’t have to give the cops your phone passcode.

• Homelessness is at record highs.

• Google is killing geofence warrants. Basically, the cops can’t force Google to give up your location anymore.

• The housing shortage is larger than you think.

• Cell phones are making us dumber.

• Rite Aid is banned from using facial recognition.

• Australia’s encryption efforts must be stopped.

• We aren’t meant to live forever.

• Substack and X are our greatest defenders of free speech.

• Google is replacing some ad sales jobs with AI.

• Nuclear is more expensive than renewables.

• Build the domestic semiconductor industry.

• The UK has just an absolutely atrocious record on privacy.

• Ukraine, take this shit. 

Until next time, ✌️

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