RE: Applied Divinity Studies Not drug testing the Olympics:
The missing element is that there's a much larger number of people who are trying to make the Olympics but don't, and the aggregate health risks from all of them doping. By at least pretending that the Olympics are clean only slightly more people than are going to the olympics end up doping.
There were 22 male Rowers at U-23 selection camp in 2021 (42 male rowers in 2019). If on average you're on the U-23 team twice before you age out (optimistic, most are already 22) and there's an 8 year window (pessimistic as there's 3 time olympians) where you can make the olympic team of 12 Men this year, that's 22*8/2 = 88 or >7x the number of Olympians.
But even the U-23 is probably too selective as if you're doping for the Olympics you'd want to start earlier and among all the people just trying to make the first team to even be considered for an Olympic spot. I was on a not very good rowing team in college (there's probably 30-40 schools better in the US) and of the ~60 people who have graduated 4 went on to olympic camps and 2 stopped working for at least a year to train full time. 4 people * 40 schools * 8 years / 4 years in school = 160 semi-serious contenders or 15x the number of people actually competing.
This is even before we consider the follow on effects: of encouraging doping for other athletes. If you're training for the Championship for 30hrs/wk and you know a lot of the field is doping as well as the best guy on your team, and the costs are hazy* you're probably going to be pressured into it. I was never drug tested in college; would they start if the Olympics stopped? The top 4 finals of 8 eights every year is 4 * 8 boats * 8 rowers/boat * 8 years / 12 olympians = 170x. This could continue down the talent pyramid, all the guys on a team who weren't quite good enough to make the top boat (1.5x), everyone who was in the top boat in their first year but got injured or quit (1.3x) and then down to the high schoolers who are trying to get onto college teams**.
*No one believes Nutrition studies because of how long term the effects are despite affecting many more people, why would we be better at assessing novel drugs for a few hundred people when the drugs themselves keep changing as more effective versions are developed? ADS quotes mortality rates over 4 years at 12% vs. 3%
**The impression is that at top schools the team is mostly Foreign (esp. Eastern European) because the ideal height for rowers is 6'6" and in the US you'd play basketball; so there would definitely be significant numbers of High Schoolers doping, even if US coaches recommend against it and Little Timmy's Mom won't let him.
Anything that was originally a luxury but is now a staple probably went from cyclical demand to something more stable? I seem to recall the S&P was divided into consumer discretionary and consumer staples, but the buckets didn't really get changed over time and for a long time cable companies were considered discretionary.
Maybe something in advertising - I also seem to recall that broadcast tv was less "seasonal" in the sense that election years and the associated political ad spend didn't stick out as much as they did in later years. That's kind of a cycle.
Not sure if this is the right place for it, but I'd love to see a dive into various Europe-related topics: not just what Europe does poorly (tech, tech, tech), but also what Europe does well (luxury (LVMH), insurance (Allianz, AXA, etc., at least relative to their banks), cars (Volkswagen, Daimler, FCA)), and their often cozy government-business partnerships to address perceived deficits (Airbus and EU-wide defense projects, Arianespace, Wirecard). What are the hungry/scrappy companies in Europe today (besides BioNTech?), and what might break their way?
What about a historiography of cycles? Turchin cycles, K-Waves (thanks CFA program), commodity super cycles, grand strategy epochs; we often try to interpret long multigenerational events thorough one of those lenses. Also to partially answer your question, I think of fast fashion as an answer.
I've said this elsewhere but my perspective on patronage is less that I'm worried about being associated with someone shitty, although that might be a concern with political patronage, and more that I just mostly don't think people out there looking for patronage are gonna create things I'd be happy to have paid for.
The patronage essay is interesting but misses the mark - the argument boils down to "the patronage I want to see doesn't exist how I think it should exist".
- Just to pull examples that the author cites, Galileo's and Kepler's relationship with the patronage system was nowhere near as tidy as the author makes it sound.
- What are Twitch and OnlyFans if not distributed patronage? Or owning sports teams, buying Beeple NFTs, or buying Koons' or Banksies?
- If anything, we've disaggregated the system (I know the author says patronage can't be disaggregated, but this is pretty clearly wrong).
Re cyclical to secular: any kind of infrastructure (railroads, telcos, etc). You could probably make an argument for precious metals too.
Regarding patronage: we have kickstarter and - wait for it - patreon. Arguably, 90% of the COPIES of products that are sold in a given kickstarter are lower tiers, where people buy a widget for roughly the market price of a widget, but my own experience shows that a very large percent of the DOLLARS sold in a given kickstarter are allocated in the higher tiers, where the backers get essentially the same product, but wrapped in a fancier binding and with some narrative value but - more than that - get the satisfaction of having supported someone they like.
I know of three decimillionaires who have backed my projects (arguably, I'm a fool for setting my top tier at $1,000 when the market might support 10x that).
It's easier to come up with cyclical industries that died than ones that turned secular, tough question. Maybe something like whale oil, high cyclical demand during the industry peak and then as it was phased out very stable low demand? think it really depnds on the time frame
RE: Applied Divinity Studies Not drug testing the Olympics:
The missing element is that there's a much larger number of people who are trying to make the Olympics but don't, and the aggregate health risks from all of them doping. By at least pretending that the Olympics are clean only slightly more people than are going to the olympics end up doping.
There were 22 male Rowers at U-23 selection camp in 2021 (42 male rowers in 2019). If on average you're on the U-23 team twice before you age out (optimistic, most are already 22) and there's an 8 year window (pessimistic as there's 3 time olympians) where you can make the olympic team of 12 Men this year, that's 22*8/2 = 88 or >7x the number of Olympians.
But even the U-23 is probably too selective as if you're doping for the Olympics you'd want to start earlier and among all the people just trying to make the first team to even be considered for an Olympic spot. I was on a not very good rowing team in college (there's probably 30-40 schools better in the US) and of the ~60 people who have graduated 4 went on to olympic camps and 2 stopped working for at least a year to train full time. 4 people * 40 schools * 8 years / 4 years in school = 160 semi-serious contenders or 15x the number of people actually competing.
This is even before we consider the follow on effects: of encouraging doping for other athletes. If you're training for the Championship for 30hrs/wk and you know a lot of the field is doping as well as the best guy on your team, and the costs are hazy* you're probably going to be pressured into it. I was never drug tested in college; would they start if the Olympics stopped? The top 4 finals of 8 eights every year is 4 * 8 boats * 8 rowers/boat * 8 years / 12 olympians = 170x. This could continue down the talent pyramid, all the guys on a team who weren't quite good enough to make the top boat (1.5x), everyone who was in the top boat in their first year but got injured or quit (1.3x) and then down to the high schoolers who are trying to get onto college teams**.
*No one believes Nutrition studies because of how long term the effects are despite affecting many more people, why would we be better at assessing novel drugs for a few hundred people when the drugs themselves keep changing as more effective versions are developed? ADS quotes mortality rates over 4 years at 12% vs. 3%
**The impression is that at top schools the team is mostly Foreign (esp. Eastern European) because the ideal height for rowers is 6'6" and in the US you'd play basketball; so there would definitely be significant numbers of High Schoolers doping, even if US coaches recommend against it and Little Timmy's Mom won't let him.
Anything that was originally a luxury but is now a staple probably went from cyclical demand to something more stable? I seem to recall the S&P was divided into consumer discretionary and consumer staples, but the buckets didn't really get changed over time and for a long time cable companies were considered discretionary.
Maybe something in advertising - I also seem to recall that broadcast tv was less "seasonal" in the sense that election years and the associated political ad spend didn't stick out as much as they did in later years. That's kind of a cycle.
interesting point on reputational risk. i suppose it's obvious, but it wasn't obvious to me until you pointed it out...
Not sure if this is the right place for it, but I'd love to see a dive into various Europe-related topics: not just what Europe does poorly (tech, tech, tech), but also what Europe does well (luxury (LVMH), insurance (Allianz, AXA, etc., at least relative to their banks), cars (Volkswagen, Daimler, FCA)), and their often cozy government-business partnerships to address perceived deficits (Airbus and EU-wide defense projects, Arianespace, Wirecard). What are the hungry/scrappy companies in Europe today (besides BioNTech?), and what might break their way?
What about a historiography of cycles? Turchin cycles, K-Waves (thanks CFA program), commodity super cycles, grand strategy epochs; we often try to interpret long multigenerational events thorough one of those lenses. Also to partially answer your question, I think of fast fashion as an answer.
I've said this elsewhere but my perspective on patronage is less that I'm worried about being associated with someone shitty, although that might be a concern with political patronage, and more that I just mostly don't think people out there looking for patronage are gonna create things I'd be happy to have paid for.
The patronage essay is interesting but misses the mark - the argument boils down to "the patronage I want to see doesn't exist how I think it should exist".
- Just to pull examples that the author cites, Galileo's and Kepler's relationship with the patronage system was nowhere near as tidy as the author makes it sound.
- What are Twitch and OnlyFans if not distributed patronage? Or owning sports teams, buying Beeple NFTs, or buying Koons' or Banksies?
- If anything, we've disaggregated the system (I know the author says patronage can't be disaggregated, but this is pretty clearly wrong).
Re cyclical to secular: any kind of infrastructure (railroads, telcos, etc). You could probably make an argument for precious metals too.
Mega thread on Franz Rosenzweig, one of Strauss’s intellectual heroes: https://mobile.twitter.com/ZoharAtkins/status/1420830864775290883
Regarding patronage: we have kickstarter and - wait for it - patreon. Arguably, 90% of the COPIES of products that are sold in a given kickstarter are lower tiers, where people buy a widget for roughly the market price of a widget, but my own experience shows that a very large percent of the DOLLARS sold in a given kickstarter are allocated in the higher tiers, where the backers get essentially the same product, but wrapped in a fancier binding and with some narrative value but - more than that - get the satisfaction of having supported someone they like.
I know of three decimillionaires who have backed my projects (arguably, I'm a fool for setting my top tier at $1,000 when the market might support 10x that).
[ oh, any if any non-decimillionaires are reading this and want to buy a widget at a market clearing widget price, my how-to homesteading book Escape the City is available at amazon https://www.amazon.com/Escape-City-1-Travis-Corcoran/dp/B093BC3K1T ]
It's easier to come up with cyclical industries that died than ones that turned secular, tough question. Maybe something like whale oil, high cyclical demand during the industry peak and then as it was phased out very stable low demand? think it really depnds on the time frame