Monday, November 25, 2019

NEOM: Governance

I have been blogging about NEOM much recently. I have read little on the topic, and have said much. But on this one topic, I have read nothing. And here are my comments.

The NEOM territory will be a little bit of Egypt, a little bit of Jordan, and a lot of Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia will let go. That is my impression. The Saudi judiciary will have no jurisdiction over NEOM. That is my impression. That is a decision that has already been made.

Saudi Arabia is dangling a wallet with 500 billion dollars in it. But it has to have the humility to see this is not a 500 billion dollar project. This is at least a five trillion dollar project with most of the money coming from beyond Saudi Arabia. Easy math will tell you, Saudi Arabia will have to be willing to give 90% ownership to others. Which others?

NEOM has to be a fresh start for humanity like America was a fresh start for Europe.

But there is land. It is Saudi land, primarily. And the 500 billion dollar does not count the land. The land eventually is worth more than that wallet. After the city of NEOM is up and standing, NEOM land might fetch Manhattan prices. But that is not now.

Walking away from the Saudi judiciary is fine, that is how you give a place a fresh start, but that can not be walking away from God and faith. Every major faith emphasizes family and marriage.

At some level, this is existential for Saudi Arabia. This is do or die. The world needs to walk away from oil for climate crisis reasons. And oil is on its way to getting priced out. So Saudi Arabia has this window in time to diversify and become a post-oil economy. I think it can. It should. Done right the future riches will be greater than the oil riches. Nokia used to be a timber company long before it became a phone company. Great companies and great countries transform as necessary.

NEOM will be a new city. It will be a city-state. Like the Vatican is its own country. That is what I read somewhere. And I don't see how it could work any other way. 500 billion dollars is but seed money. It is a small amount compared to the ambition.

Heck, NEOM could create a world government. Every country willing to pay 1% of its GDP as an annual membership fee would be welcome to join the world government that would have its seat in NEOM, a city-state, a country of its own. That world government can co-exist with the UN. The UN functions more like an NGO. It does not function much like a government. The whole veto thing is so outdated. The UN can keep doing the UN thing. No problem.

The world government would be funded by that membership fee. It would have two chambers. In the lower chamber each country's voting weight would be in proportion to its population. In the upper chamber it would be in proportion to its GDP.

The world government would have a president directly elected by people all over the planet voting on their phones and tablets, using their biometric IDs. The president of the world would also be president of NEOM, but NEOM would also elect a Prime Minister. And that Prime Minister voted in by all residents of the city who have lived in the city for at least a year, would be the one running the city. The president for the city would be more ceremonial.

The city could have a prince in a ceremonial role. The prince of Saudi Arabia can be the prince of NEOM. Why not? Thanks for all that land.

NEOM should have a permanent seat for the world government. It should also have a permanent seat for the T100, the governing body of the 100 biggest technology companies in the world measured by market cap. Issues like data privacy and data security this T100 needs to solve.

And a Consortium of Cities (CC), an annual gathering of the 100 biggest cities in the world. This would be more like an organization for comparing notes and sharing best practices.

The city would provide all government services digitally. The city would use surveillance cameras to attempt a zero crime rate but would do so with the highest standards for privacy protection. Every time anyone enters or leaves the city, they would have to press the finger and submit their biometric ID. They would also have to be willing to do an iris scan and a face scan.

I understand there is a lot of paranoia around biometric IDs, much of it justified, because those who do it seem to have little respect for privacy protection.

All the high tech stuff would be happening in the private sector with individual companies participating. So when there is a failure it is a company and not the city failing. That demarcation is important. There will be plenty of failures. There is no innovation where there are no failures.

Taxes can be as low as possible. The city might even do the Dubai thing for a few decades and have no taxes. Land development pays enough to run the city.

And those are my early thoughts on NEOM governance.






NEOM Beats Mars
NEOM: Wide Participation Will Enhance Chance Of Success
NEOM, Jerusalem: Twin Cities?
My Take On NEOM, The City
NEOM: A City



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Sunday, November 24, 2019

The Man Who Solved The Market

Book recommended by Jassim Alseddiqi.




The Man Who Solved the Market employed at the IDA in Princeton ...... While I’ve often heard the story of how he was fired from IDA after publicly criticizing the Vietnam War, less well known is that a big problem was that he was quoted in Newsweek saying he planned to work on his own projects, not government ones, until the war was over.

How to Beat the Market “a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by the experts.” ........ the market is so efficient that even professional investors have little chance of beating it on a regular basis. If there’s one reason index funds, which replicate the performance of market indexes like the S&P 500, now hold $4.3 trillion (yes, trillion) in assets .......

Jim Simons is not a blindfolded monkey.

A former code-breaker for the United States government and a brilliant mathematician, Simons founded the most successful investment firm the world has ever seen........ even Warren Buffett’s track record — 20.5 percent annualized returns since 1965 — doesn’t approach Simons’s average of 39 percent gains over a three-decade span. And that’s after his company has taken a 5 percent management fee and 44 percent of the profits. ....... How does Simons do it? We know that his firm, Renaissance Technologies, helped pioneer quantitative investing, relying on complex computer programs rather than human judgment, to make trading decisions. .......... on the subject of his investing success, he is secretive to the point of paranoia. Employees sign ironclad nondisclosure agreements, and are told to avoid media appearances and industry conferences. ........ “combinatorial game theory” and “stochastic equations” ....... turns out that a firm like Renaissance, filled with nerdy academics trying to solve the market’s secrets, is way more interesting than your typical greed-is-good hedge fund....... Simons first began investing as a young man after receiving $5,000 as a wedding gift. He was a commodities speculator for a short time....... a computerized stock trading system that could search — and I’m quoting Zuckerman here — “for a small number of ‘macroscopic variables’ capable of predicting the market’s short-term behavior.” ......... In 1978, Simons left Stony Brook University, where he had built its math department into one of the best in the country, to start the firm that we now know as Renaissance Technologies........ They collected incredible amounts of historical data — not just about stocks and bonds, but about currencies, commodities, weather patterns and all sorts of market-moving events. They made plenty of missteps along the way. But in time, they had gathered so much data — and had computers powerful enough to ingest that data — that the machines found profitable correlations no human could ever suss out, much less understand....... one of the most interesting was the firm’s former co-chief executive, Robert Mercer, the conservative billionaire who funded Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica. Zuckerman portrays Mercer as “a peculiar but largely benign figure within the company” who liked to zing his liberal colleagues, but mostly kept his own counsel. When his role in conservative politics caused an outcry, Simons felt he had to ask his longtime partner to step down as co-C.E.O. But even though Simons himself was a liberal, he wasn’t happy about it. “He’s a nice guy,” Zuckerman quotes Simons telling a friend. “He’s allowed to use his money as he wishes.” ........

Simons makes money because human behavior will never be completely “efficient.”

...... humans have always acted emotionally ..... “I think the market is reasonably close to efficient,” another well-known quant, Clifford Asness, once told me, “but there are a lot of little inefficiencies.” Those little inefficiencies are what emotionless computers take advantage of. ....... “For all the unique data, computer firepower, special talent and trading and risk-management expertise Renaissance has gathered, the firm only profits on barely more than 50 percent of its trades, a sign of how challenging it is to try to beat the market — and how foolish it is for most investors to try.” ....... In other words,

stick to index funds.






The Man Who Solved the Market — how Jim Simons built a moneymaking machine Gregory Zuckerman’s book lifts the lid on the enimgatic founder of Renaissance who launched the quant revolution ......... The profound and the inane alike are debated on Quora, a website where the curious (or plain bored) can pose questions to the internet hive mind. ......... Renaissance Technologies, a fabled yet secretive hedge fund ......Last year, a rival recounted how he had once nearly poached someone from Renaissance, only to be stymied at the last minute. “I read about him years later,” the Quora contributor wrote. “He bought an Alp. As in . . . an actual mountain in Austria.” ....... the awestruck fascination that Renaissance commands in finance. ...... Machines and algorithms have taken over swaths of markets, supplanting the grizzled traders of public perception, and no one has harnessed computer science and vast data sets to invest as successfully as Renaissance. “It’s the gold standard of computer trading,” one rival once ruefully admitted to me......... Even most people in finance would struggle to identify Simons out of a line-up of similarly disheveled octogenarians. Indeed, his chain-smoking, silver beard, wryness and reluctance to wear socks all make him seem more like a Coen Brothers character than a colossus of investing........ Quoting Benjamin, Animal Farm’s wise old donkey, Simons said:

“‘God gave me a tail to keep off the flies. But I’d rather have had no tail and no flies.’ So, that’s kind of the way I feel about publicity.”

....... the most fascinating man in financial markets: a liberal mathematician who once motorcycled from Boston to Bogotá, was ejected from the Soviet code-cracking team at the Institute for Defense Analyses for opposing the Vietnam war, and then built the most relentless of moneymaking machines. ..... Renaissance has generated over $100bn in trading profits since 1988 — more than any other hedge fund in history — making millionaires of many of its employees, and several billionaires. Forbes puts Simons’ fortune at above $21bn, leaving other hedge fund magnates and financiers such as Ray Dalio, George Soros and Stephen Schwarzman trailing......... Quantitative finance — as it is dubbed — may seem a recondite subject to many people, but it is profoundly reshaping the investment industry, and thus capitalism itself. And Renaissance is the shining example of what can be achieved by applying modern technology, big data and lots of brainy people........... Renaissance is also emblematic of an era where technology helps money and power accrue to an increasingly small number of people. The choices that these people make can reverberate globally. While Simons has become one of the world’s biggest backers of scientific research and philanthropy — and a host of Democratic politicians — his former colleague Robert Mercer has funnelled his billions into the far-right Breitbart News, the election of Donald Trump and Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy ........

Renaissance’s first years were spent in a poky office in a Long Island strip mall. Regulators once came calling after recommendations spat out by the early algorithms saw Renaissance nearly cornered the potato market.

......... Failure often loomed. When Renaissance’s first foray into bond markets turned into big losses, Simons admitted to a colleague that “sometimes I look at this and feel I’m just some guy who doesn’t really know what he’s doing”...... Renaissance has enjoyed a golden run the likes of which investing has never seen. When it notched up its first $1m one-day profit in 1990, Simons handed out champagne — but $1m one-day gains quickly “became so frequent that the drinking got a bit out of hand” ........ For all Simons’ undoubted brilliance, the book makes clear that his skill was not inventing complex trading models and algorithms himself. His talent was to spot, nurture and harness beautiful but often combustible minds such as James Ax, Lenny Baum, Elwyn Berlekamp, Henry Laufer, Peter Brown and Mercer........ one of the biggest actors in one of the biggest stories of our time: how machines conquered financial markets.





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Saturday, November 23, 2019

NEOM Beats Mars

If you have read three articles on NEOM, it is fair to say you are no NEOM expert, and I am no NEOM expert. I expect to read up on it a little bit more. But sometimes it is an advantage to have read less. That gives you a freshness of perspective.

NEOM: Wide Participation Will Enhance Chance Of Success
NEOM, Jerusalem: Twin Cities?
My Take On NEOM, The City
NEOM: A City

Every astronaut has been an athlete. You need to be in an absolute great shape physically to experience that pressure on your body when the rocket accelerates at rocket speed to get out of the clutches of earth's gravity. This means everyone who buys a ticket from Elon to go to Mars will have to attain that athlete status. And that's for the first part of the journey when gravity is a big problem. Then you have a nine-month journey of being in a no gravity zone. That actually is harder on the body. Lack of gravity is very challenging for your bones, for your eyes, for your body in general. And there no amount of physical training can prepare you.

But NEOM does not have that Mars problem. NEOM is on earth. Mars has been sold as a fresh start for humanity. NEOM can be that fresh start. But it has to be a fresh start in many ways. It has to be a fresh start politically, economically, technologically.

NEOM needs peace. NEOM needs the Saudi-Iran regional cold war to end. NEOM needs genuine peace between Israel and Palestine. Peace is necessary infrastructure.

Also, NEOM is not going to have, so what air do we breathe issues. It is not going to have radiation issues. Earth has a magnetic field that protects it from solar radiation.

There are also psychological issues. If you keep people in a small space for too long, many get claustrophobic. And they start acting up.


Is Elon Musk Just Getting Started?
Elon Musk's Giant Blind Spot: Human Beings



Humans Will Never Colonize Mars The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times thinner than Earth’s. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to protect the surface from the Sun’s harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes............. The notion that we’ll soon set up colonies inhabited by hundreds or thousands of people is pure nonsense.......... Gravity on the Red Planet is 0.375 that of Earth’s, which means a 180-pound person on Earth would weigh a scant 68 pounds on Mars. While that might sound appealing, this low-gravity environment would likely wreak havoc to human health in the long term, and possibly have negative impacts on human fertility. ........ the unfulfilled visions proposed during the 1940s and 1950s........ “Back then, cover stories of magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science showed colonies under the oceans and in the Antarctic,” Friedman told Gizmodo. The feeling was that humans would find a way to occupy every nook and cranny of the planet, no matter how challenging or inhospitable ........ “But this just hasn’t happened. We make occasional visits to Antarctica and we even have some bases there, but that’s about it. Under the oceans it’s even worse, with some limited human operations, but in reality it’s really very, very little.” As for human colonies in either of these environments, not so much. In fact, not at all, despite the relative ease at which we could achieve this...... Unlike other fields, development into human spaceflight, he said, “has become static.” Friedman agreed that we’ll likely build bases on Mars, but the “evidence of history” suggests colonization is unlikely for the foreseeable future........ astronauts on the ISS, who are subject to tremendous muscle and bone loss, try to counteract the effects by doing strength and aerobic training while up in space. As for treating the resulting negative health impacts, whether caused by long-duration stays on the ISS or from long-term living in the low-gravity environment of Mars, “we’re not there yet” ........ It’s a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems. We’ve got to solve these problems here. Coping with climate change may seem daunting, but it’s a doddle compared to terraforming Mars. No place in our solar system offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Everest.

There’s no ‘Planet B’

....... Martian terraforming is a pipedream, a prospect that’s “way beyond any kind of technology we’re going to have any time soon” ....... radiation on Mars is far worse than we thought, adding that “we don’t have the long-term solutions yet, unless you want to risk radiation illnesses.” Depending on the degree of exposure, excessive radiation can result in skin burns, radiation sickness, cancer, and cardiovascular disease........ Life in a Martian colony would be miserable, with people forced to live in artificially lit underground bases, or in thickly protected surface stations with severely minimized access to the outdoors. Life in this closed environment, with limited access to the surface, could result in other health issues related to exclusive indoor living, such as depression, boredom from lack of stimulus, an inability to concentrate, poor eyesight, and high blood pressure—not to mention a complete disconnect from nature......... we don’t see colonists living in Antarctica or under the sea, so why should we expect troves of people to want to live in a place that’s considerably more unpleasant? ....... for prospective families hoping to spawn future generations of Martian colonists, it’s borderline cruelty. ...... Studies of astronauts who have participated in long-duration missions lasting about a year exhibit troubling symptoms, including bone and muscle loss, cardiovascular problems, immune and metabolic disorders, visual disorders, balance and sensorimotor problems, among many other health issues. ...... Some astronauts, like NASA’s Scott Kelly, never feel like their old selves again, including declines in cognitive test scores and altered gene function. ........ The regolith, or soil, on Mars is toxic, containing dangerous perchlorate chemicals, so that also needs to be avoided. To grow crops, colonists will likely build subterranean hydroponic greenhouses. This will require specialized lighting, genetically modified plants designed specifically for Mars, and plenty of water, the latter of which will be difficult to source on Mars.........

We may be stuck on Earth.



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Thursday, November 21, 2019

Hate Less, Love More (Via Talal Al Murad)

Via Talal Al Murad (One Of The Top 50 Most Influential People On LinkedIn)


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Wednesday, November 20, 2019

NEOM: Wide Participation Will Enhance Chance Of Success

I know very little about NEOM right now. I have been upfront about that. 500 billion dollars is a lot of money. But not entirely enough to build a city. There necessarily will have to be wide participation, and the many stakeholders that will come to join the ranks will all knock on the wood. That feedback loop might not always be convenient. It might even slow things down now and then. But overall that will be a good thing. That will enhance the chances of success.

NEOM, Jerusalem: Twin Cities?
My Take On NEOM, The City
NEOM: A City

What can NEOM do to enhance its chances of success?

(1) Wide Participation: Wider the better.

(2) $500 Billion Has To Be A Force Multiplier: If that $500 billion is the primary fund, it is obviously not enough money to build a city 33 times the size of New York City. NEOM has to feel like Europeans going to America, a land to give themselves a fresh start. And so techie gimmicks are not going to be enough. If you only have money and robots and cars and buildings, you could just end up with a white elephant.

(5) NEOM Needs Peace: There has to be peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Palestine issue has to be resolved. Peace is the necessary precondition to prosperity anywhere.

(6) The Economic Viability Test: Cutting edge stuff can start in NEOM, but if they only stay in NEOM, if they can not be scaled to many parts of the globe, chances are that particular techie gimmick is not economically viable. Most stuff that is being dreamt for NEOM is going to have to pass that viability test. Otherwise, you just end up with a bunch of expensive failures. What that means is NEOM needs an active feedback loop that ties it to the rest of humanity.

(7) Attracting Top Tech Entrepreneurs: Can NEOM attract many of the top tech entrepreneurs of the emerging technologies? A defining quality of the golden era of Islam was an enormous thirst for knowledge. That thirst has to be brought back.







Saudi Arabia's NEOM: A US$500 Billion City Being Built 'For A New Way Of Living' Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced on Tuesday the Kingdom’s most ambitious plan yet to free itself from dependency on oil. Prince Salman revealed a US$500 billion proposal to build a new transnational “independent special zone” on the Red Sea coastline that extends into Jordan and Egypt. Strategically located in proximity to international markets and trade routes, the 26,500 square km zone -dubbed as NEOM- is set to be powered by renewable energy, and has its eyes on incorporating elements of key sectors such as energy, advanced manufacturing, biotech, and media & entertainment........ will operate independently from the “existing governmental framework,” and is said to be funded by the Saudi government, its sovereign wealth fund, and local and international investors ....... Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld, the former Chairman and CEO of Alcoa and Arconic Inc. has been appointed as CEO of NEOM. “The NEOM project is set to transform the Kingdom into a leading global innovation and trade hub through the introduction of value chains of traditional and future industries and technologies to stimulate local industry, private sector job creation and GDP growth in the Kingdom” ........ The completion of the first stage of the project is expected to be by end of 2025, and its contribution to the Kingdom’s GDP is projected to reach “at least $100 billion by 2030.” It’s exciting times ahead for Saudi Arabia as the world watches how the Kingdom follows through on its ambitious economic and social upheaval plans.



I just read this phrase: "the world's first independent special zone." That is intriguing. Somebody said Catalonia has not been able to break away from Spain, but Saudai Arabia is voluntarily shedding NEOM! I think the idea of an independent city state is great. That will allow for maximum participation from numerous stakeholders. That is the only way to ensure success.

NEOM has to be able to compete with Dubai in terms of being able to attract people from all over the world. The number one quality I look for in any city anywhere is cultural diversity.

This is not just about technology. This is also about political innovation. And starting from scratch is the best way. May I suggest a few things?

All government services should be digital, and people should be able to vote on their phones, for a week. And anyone who has lived in the city for at least a year is automatically a voter.

Create a T100 along the lines of G20. These are the top 100 tech companies in the world as measured by market cap. They are given a Senate like space where to meet every year.

NEOM ought to have active ties with the 100 biggest cities in the world. In fact, build a Consortium Of Cities (CC). The mayors of the 100 biggest cities in the world meet here annually. To share best practices. To tackle big problems.

King Salman chooses staycation in Neom, Saudi Arabia’s new $500bn resort King Salman will avoid France this year to stay at the as-yet-unbuilt Neom, which artists’ impressions have labelled a City of the Future ........ When times are hard even Saudi monarchs are forced to forego the pleasures of the Mediterranean and opt for staycations......... King Salman, famed for the opulence and scale of his summer holidays in the South of France and Morocco, is staying this year in a new resort being built on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.













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