I really like Buttigieg. He honestly seems to be doing this because he wants to serve America. I’m working my way through his book and I’m very impressed by his eloquence and clarity of thought. Also, I think as a mayor he embodies the entrepreneurial spirit. He was classmates with Mark Zuckerberg.

I submitted this interview the other day:

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/a-long-talk-with-demo...

I think it’s also worth listening to an interview he did with David Axelrod a couple years ago, and his recent interview on Pod Save America. Here also are a couple videos I’m recommending because they cover a variety of topics in the Q&A portion that I haven’t heard him speak about elsewhere:

- https://www.necn.com/news/new-england/Indiana-Mayor-Pete-But...

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nldx3r7h3Cg

I know this comment is obviously political but I think he deserves to be heard from.

I've been following how Buttigieg's rise has been manufactured by 1-2 insiders. Mainly David Axelrod.

He did a SXSW town hall. I watched Tulsi Gabbard (disclosure, I volunteer for her a bit) first and then tried to watch Mayor Pete, as he is called.

He basically bombed the first 20 min. The period that any viewers would try to give the candidate any chance to better understand them.

He was just a bit too nervous, he was talking fast. This was a big contrast to methodical way Tulsi was speaking just prior to him her ability to connect was in a different level.

So you thought that would be the end of it all....

Nope! I observed a beautiful spin of manufacturing narratives.

Axelrod tweeted about how great Mayor Pete's performance was [1]

Soon after there was a ton of articles talking about much lauded performance of Buttigieg. I even called out the journalist behind one of these articles on twitter and it was clear she had not watched the town hall nor had done her research [2] I just went to find that discussion on twitter and she seem to have deleted as I do not see it under my tweet and replies.

Essentially I asked her about the "much lauded performance" in her article. I asked her where she got that from. She replied with a link to a CNN article which was all based on Axelrod's tweet. This journalist based her article on that CNN article. So I pointed out, this "much lauded performance" is based on just one tweet. The journalist then replied to me, I should just google "town hall and Buttigieg". Meaning she had no done any research herself. Point is, Pete Buttigieg who started his promotion from a podcast on Axelrod. I think there is a strong chance Mayor Pete is backed by Axelrod and/or at some point he'll hire Axelrod. Mayor Pete's rise bubbling up based on the inside influence of one person.

That being said, he is intelligent and I'm sure there is probably great excitement supporting the first gay (at least openly) candidate. However, it became clear to me, how a few insiders can create hype around one candidate and manufacture "lauded performance".

[1] - https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1104922963386630144

[2] - the tweet thread I was going point to is removed now

I don't know if this applies to BetChecker, but PredictIt is heavily handicapped by an $850 max bet.

Without the freedom for real amounts of money to come in and exploit mispriced bets, it's practically a straw poll of PredictIt users. The PredictIt user base has some obvious demographic biases that warp the odds.

Re:Yang,

I'm vaguely sympathetic to the idea of "elect a business person so they can run government like a business", but any openness to the idea goes out the window when the candidate's business is venture capital.

It would be wise to not trust any phenomenon which blows up online, given the ease of generating such a phenomenon artificially.

Does anyone here have thoughts about the quality of candidates as it relates to their ages (i.e. comparing late 70's Bernie/Biden and these younger candidates)? While I like the policies of Bernie, for instance, I ideally would prefer someone who doesn't have a high % likelihood of serious medical issues in the next 4 years of their life.

Is there an age that is too old to be a CEO/President/Senator/leading figure? Are they necessarily out of touch, lacking in resiliency, not forward-looking, or any of the factors we look for in our leaders?

Yang would like to be President, but his primary goal is to force a conversation amongst all the candidates on UBI and automation, which are important things that the next President should be talking about.

As an Andrew Yang fan myself, I was shocked to see that PredictIt has him as the third most expensive (read likely) candidate after Bernie and Biden, at least when I checked. This is in stark contrast to his 0-1% polling rate in the most recent polls.

So, are they just very leading indicators? It got me thinking that it's a relatively cheap campaign strategy since people like to refer to those as some sort of "market based odds" thing. Is it legal and/or ethical for campaigns to buy themselves on the betting markets to drive up the appearance of demand?

We'll see come the Apr 1 FEC reporting deadline if it translates to campaign donations, which are on of the real signals of the seriousness of campaigns.

I'm bullish on Yang's and Buttigieg's chances in general. I also think that their chances of winning the nomination (and election) are much lower than the odds indicated in betting markets.

There is a huge betting market selection bias in that the only people using these betting platforms are young and tech-savvy (i.e. the type of people who are in these candidates' base). Additionally, you can place nominally small bets, meaning there is no real skin in the game. Increase the minimum bet size to $10,000 or so and I think the odds will become much more realistic.

This only shows why running we now have 20 candidates running for president. They get a huge platform to expand their reach (good for both the issues they care about and their personal brand) with almost no downside (even if not pilfering their campaign funds they will raise enough money to travel the country effectively promoting for future book sales or a tv show).

Is Andrew Yang a writer? I'd be interested in reading some of what he's written that's longer than a tweet.

I did find the weekly campaign updates, which are okay as far as they go.

The majority of Americans are not insane and both mainstream Democrats and the incumbent are mostly appealing to the insane. A moderate, any moderate, left or right, that speaks logically, does not indulge in identity bullshit and does not treat the other side as if they were stupid or evil or both, will have a great shot at capturing the exhausted middle.

This is entirely meaningless at this point in the race. There may be some enthusiasts paying attention right now, and they're prone to focusing on particular candidates, but a more likely bet is that most primary voters are waiting to see how candidates perform with a view to backing the best candidate who has the best chance of winning.

Looking at that odds chart got me in a betting mood. I think those Yang odds in the article could be steep given the exuberance of some in his online following, however there could be interesting arb plays with an outsider like Yang like going long presidency+short nomination paired with going short presidency+long nomination with someone more establishment like Biden.

If prediction markets had more depth, I’m sure we would see politics hedge funds emerge.

Who is participating in the betting markets? Are these people perhaps more likely to personally like certain candidates more than others? When the market is relatively small, this question matters. I'm skeptical of the betting markets for this reason, as I think the participants skew heavily to a particular demographic.

I don't have strong opinions or awareness of Yang's platform, nor have I gone out of my way to learn much about him, other than seeing the random sensational stories that pop up on my feed (e.g. his thoughts about circumcisions, wrt health policy).

But knowing little of his background (e.g. career, wealth, any other attempts at politics), I think it's cool as hell he acted on what must have been a wild "what if" idea to join the race. I'd like to think that the more normal, non-political-machine-produced humans who go through this process, the more accessible and interesting that process will be to the average person.

It seems Yang afigured out how to "hack" the Democratic primary process to get on the national debate stage. I call it a "hack" because someone like me thinks the possibility of a no-namer like Yang on stage with Sanders and Warren is too absurd a reality to imagine. But Yang did his research and found he could target the minimum requirement of having 65,000 donors [0] -- a number that seems laughably low, because of how easy it is today for anyone with a phone/computer to make small donations, coupled with Internet platforms like Reddit that let Yang find voters/donors who aren't willing to provide the traditional value (e.g. large donations), but can make all the difference when the metric is number of people, not cash on hand.

Yang likely has no chance in the primary, so I won't have to wonder if my vote for/against him would have been even slightly biased by subconscious feelings about solidarity with other Asian-Americans. However, I like that I can just marvel at the sight of an Asian-American strolling on this rarefied political stage, like it's a normal thing. And yet, it isn't -- It's something I don't think I ever thought I'd see in my life. Not because I think there's a hard barrier of racial/social injustice. It's just something I had apparently had no reason to imagine or contemplate. Just like I don't ever normally contemplate the idea of 2 cats trying to steer a Tesla. There's nothing that logically blocks that concept in real life. But seeing it in real still feels like a small, happy surprise.

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/candidates-reach-for...

There is no way that Yang is more likely to win the nomination than Warren. And I say that as a Yang fan. So there's a lot of money on the table, but I'm not willing to tie up a couple grand for a year for a website I know pretty much nothing about.

White and male means Buttigieg is going to have a major problem in the primaries. Asian and male is almost as bad.

Unless the Democrats suddenly decide to stop playing identity politics they're going to choose someone based on gender/race (female/not white).

Andrew Yang is an Accelerationist.

His Universal Basic Income proposal is the most interesting thing in politics in a long time. It is actually feasible and will get us on the track to post-capitalism.

You are an American? You are a citizen? You get a thousand bucks a month. Funded by 10% VAT.

The freedom dividend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTkhrosH8xw

I had been following Yang since a while and have been super pumped up about his ideas and focus on real underlying issues. But with Pete joining the race, I am somewhat torn between these two. Both of them are really smart people. Yang has great ideas and vision, but Pete has real experience running a city and seems to be very likable in general. On the other hand, I am sure conservative media will paint Yang as a socialist which would take away a lot of votes, and Pete being openly gay is also going to take away a lot of conservative voters.

I am sincerely hoping for Beto to blow up. We need someone like Beto because 1. He is young 2. He was a hacker [we need people in politics that understand the most important driver of commerce now] 3. He was in a punk band 4. He is from Texas [he will be forced to have a balanced approach] 5. He campaigns hard 6. He can inspire people positively [as opposed to the constant whining that politics have become]

Andrew Yang seems like a nice guy with a cool UBI proposal, but his blowing up on Twitter has a lot to do with 8chan forcing 'YangGang' memes which began about 6 weeks ago. It would be unwise to view this like a true market signal.

Do you have a link to that first 20 minutes of the town hall?

I've listened to or watched a bunch of his interviews now, both one on ones and in front of crowds, and he didn't seem nervous in a single one of those interviews, nor unable to connect to an audience. I've posted links to two of those above, but there are many more I could post in front of different sorts of audiences.

> Mayor Pete's rise bubbling up based on the inside influence of one person

He's been twice elected mayor and Axelrod didn't have anything to do with that, nor obviously anything to do with Buttigieg's background or education.

> he is intelligent and I'm sure there is probably great excitement supporting the first gay

That’s a pretty dismissive way of characterizing him. That he is gay doesn't factor into my excitement for him, and he would rather that not be the reason people vote for him either.

I think he’s the only democratic candidate who’s not divisive, business as usual, lacking political experience, full of hot air, without something in their past to apologize for, or some combination there of.

Having just watched the SXSW town hall with no preconceived notion of Buttigieg, I completely disagree that he "basically bombed the first 20 minutes". I found him engaging and thoughtful.

Hm, if a journalist is going to describe something as a "much lauded performance," I'd expect her sources to be people lauding the performance, not her own judgment of the performance itself. It is weird if she hasn't seen it herself (so she can judge whether the lauds are sensible enough to pay attention to, to avoid manufactured lauding as you suggest) but it isn't that weird if her primary evidence for the claim that a thing is popular is media sources.

How is this manufactured in any untoward way? Influential people (certainly more than Axelrod if we're being honest) like this guy, the press amplifies the viewpoints of influential people, and so he did better in the press than the candidate you volunteer for.

Have you considered that because of your affinity for Gabbard, you overestimated her ability to connect? Or that you are overconfident in your ability to estimate who had the objectively superior SXSW town hall performance?

You say he bombed the first 20 minutes...but how did he do the rest of the town hall?

Plenty of people into politics will give a candidate more than 20 minutes to make their case, especially now that they've seen what happens when you make emotional snap judgments about who you vote for.

The SXSW town hall is not the only thing Pete Buttigieg has done in the past month. He's been on three or four of the podcasts I listen to and his Twitter game (especially his husband's) is strong.

Axelrod may have sparked the media interest in Mayor Pete with a tweet, but Buttigieg has handled the attention and impressed people on his own.

I got a similar impression from his Pod Save America interview.

The issue he lead with in his first 15 minutes was how he would restructure the supreme court to be 10 judges or something. Not health care, climate change, or the economy. If the host hadn't introduced him as a presidential candidate I would have thought he was some professor that they brought on the podcast.

To even begin to be successful in 2020 he's going to have to focus his message and speak with conviction. He would get destroyed going up against Warren/Harris/Bernie/Trump.

How does his ride compare with yang’s? I am wondering how yang got the momentum that he did

So good example of Fake News then. It's not just one side that does this stuff.

It's even worse than a straw poll. PredictIt's 5% withdrawal fee destroys any potential profit opportunity for new users betting against a candidate with low winning chances.

For example, if I were to sign up and bet against Yang at 5% odds, even if I won my bet, I'd make $0 profit because my entire withdrawal amount is taxed at 5%. If Yang's odds were set at less than 5%, I'd actually lose money even though I won my bet!

Given this, the market for low likelihood outcomes is extremely inefficient and it's very plausible that these odds are being gamed by candidates vying for attention.

There is a counter argument for this as people with a lot of money will drives the results one way which can actually impact elections. Nkt that I buy this argument but something to keep in mind.

Some of Bovada's odds are currently:

Trump: +175

Biden: +650

Beto: +900

Yang: +2200

Buttigieg: +2800

Warren: +3000

Klobuchar/Booker: +3300

Hillary: +10000

The Rock: +12500

Jeb: +15000

(payout for a $100 bet)

Just gonna leave this here: https://app.veil.co/market/will-2020-presidential-candidate-...

Also interesting to mention the crossover between Yang supporters and the crypto community: https://breakermag.com/five-reasons-crypto-fans-are-joining-...

I'm taking a wait-and-see approach in general, but I do find Yang one of the most interesting candidates so far. Just to respond to this specific point, Yang wrote recently on Twitter [1]:

There are lessons and principles that government can take from business - like treating customers well and resource efficiency. But anyone who says they are going to “run government like a business” is dumb. They require very different forms of leadership.

As a CEO you can pretty much tell people what to do. You are their boss. You are paying them. If you say we are doing something then it generally happens. The downside is no one tells you unpleasant truths.

In government most all of the time you are building consensus. You provide a vision and try to rally people around it. You build relationships. You compromise. You appeal to common goals. Things often happen more gradually. But when big things happen they can improve many lives.

[1] https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1107126100163858432

I think you're referring to Venture for America, which despite the name is not a venture capital firm.

https://ventureforamerica.org

A government run like a business loses the most important and necessary quality of a government: it can takr actions that are economically harmful to itself but helpful to society. It should maintain all roads, not just the ones used to transport goods. It should investigate even small crimes. It steps in when the market would cause a catastrophe (e.g., tragedy of the commons). Of course, money still exists, so the government restricts its reach within a budget.

Besides, the president's only tasks should be international diplomacy, commander of the military, and doing what the Congress says. They can be "ideas gals/guys," but he/she shouldn't be independently making huge decisions outside of war scenarios. That doesn't sound like a CEO to me.

I'm not so sympathetic to that idea in the first place. A business, particularly a corporation, is one of the most authoritarian structures ever devised. If the government were like a business, every citizen would be either an asset to be exploited or a liability to be eliminated.

> I'm vaguely sympathetic to the idea of "elect a business person so they can run government like a business"

I really don't want a government that ruthlessly cuts costs that don't drive revenue and uses all mechanisms within reach to maximize lock-in and extract monopoly rents from customers.

Also, didn't we just elect another business person and see where we are.

Like it or not, we need politicians who can work across the aisle and actually get things done.

This comment doesn't make sense since Andrew Yang has no background in venture capital.

His primary business was a test prep company he sold to Kaplan. As far as I know he did not own or work for a VC firm.

I haven't seen this "run govt like a business" idea outside the U.S (or maybe I just missed it).

Biz and govt are two separate things, I don't understand how one can be run like the other. Sure, there are some overlaps, but thats about it. Can someone explain?

Andrew Yang has never worked for a VC as far as I can tell. What are you referring to?

I don't think his business really is venture capital, though. What exactly are you referring to?

At least, if you're talking about Venture for America, it's more of a YC or TechStars. It's a non-profit designed to help entrepreneurs start companies.

Prior to that, I think he was the CEO of Manhattan Prep before it getting acquired by Kaplan.

"Run the government like a business" was Ross Perot's mantra. Was quite popular for a while, but didn't work out so well in the end. That's probably more because he sort of went insane during the campaign rather than due to a a reasoned choice the voters made about that philosophy.

Why though? I would like my government to be open to at least listening to lots of different ideas and applying an investment mindset to them. You're right, there is little operational experience that comes with being a VC. But you dont need that to initiate groundbreaking projects. Hoover didn't pour concrete at the Hoover Dam. Kennedy didn't know the rocket equation.

>but any openness to the idea goes out the window when the candidate's business is venture capital.

Or being the activist investor that breaks up the business and sells what's profitable.

> elect a business person so they can run government like a business

I mean, didn't we try that already, and quite recently for that matter? It doesn't seem to be working very well. What makes you think that Yang can do better than that?

"elect a business person so they can run government like a business"

This is a terrible idea for a society. Typical businesses are internally dictatorships that are single-minded, intolerant of dissent, very controlling (my employer reads my E-mails and lately they are setting up a ton of cameras) and are designed to funnel rewards to only few people. That's not a good mindset to run a whole country. We can't just lay off people to cut costs.

I think that's why Trump seems to get better along with dictators like Erdogan, Putin or Kim Jong Un than with democratic leaders. their leadership is much closer to what he is used from his business.

Running government more efficiently would be nice but I don't see the ex-business people who got elected into government do better than other politicians.

How about Real Estate?

He doesn't want to run the government like a business, and he's not a venture capitalist.

A few thoughts

- President is unlike CEO/Senator/leading figure in that it has a fixed 4 year cycle (even Senator's can be democratically replaced in a few months with a by election).

- President is unlike the others in that it has a built in redundancy, the vice president. You should probably weight your opinion of the vice president candidate stronger when considering a president who is likely to become ill.

- Extremely old people seem to be as likely to be forward looking to me as middle aged people, perhaps more so. Many still care about their legacy, they probably have less concerns about personal wealth.

- Every presidential candidate is necessarily out of touch, you don't get to be in that position if you lead an even remotely normal life.

There's another element in there - that older candidates simply have more history to contend with. That's not always a bad thing, like Bernie Sanders' presence in the anti-racism protests of the 60s. But it can be a bad thing, like Bernie Sanders having taken a trip to the USSR in 1988 (I won't disagree with anyone who says that isn't actually a thing to care about, but people do). Biden in particular is going to come up against a lot of issues for his previous zero-tolerance crime advocacy, and for the treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Younger candidates simply don't have to contend with that reckoning. But they have a lot less experience. You could make the case that experience should be good for a candidate, but that it doesn't always work out that way.

VP choice makes a bigger difference for an older candidate, which might be why rumors are that Biden will be choosing his running mate very early in the process.

Right track here.

Specific cutoff age? I'd say not. But I would think that we should require of candidates a full independent medical workup from an independent practice, such as [1]. The kind of nonsense reports we get from the doctor selected by the person currently occupying the PResident's chair are clearly farcical.

(Of course, also beyond the bare constitutional requirements and the independent med workup, should be added: 2) minimal prior service as an elected official, 3) pass a standard HS Science & Technology test, 4) pass the INS Citizenship exam, 5) release a decade of tax returns, and perhaps a few other requirements that inform the citizenry of who is seeking the job... but what do I know, I'm just one of 300MM on the hiring committee)

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/departments-centers/mayo-clinic-e...

I agree. I don't want to see people 70+ as president. Being in my 50s I already notice that my physical energy is less than it used to be and I am pretty sure it will be worse once you are 70.

> Is there an age that is too old to be a CEO/President/Senator/leading figure?

Not really.

> Are they necessarily out of touch, lacking in resiliency, not forward-looking, or any of the factors we look for in our leaders?

No; The statistical probability may be higher with age, but we don't elect an age and get a random person of that age as a leader, so that's not important. Filtering for that is what election campaigns, executive search processes, etc., are for.

Not sure that's a goal of his, but in many countries a candidate will enter the primaries (or the general election, in a minor party) campaigning on a single issue, and then join the government later as a secretary (or minister) to either implement some version of the policy or prepare for its implementation in the future.

Check out the Joe Rogan Experience podcast episode #1245 with Andrew Yang, you won't be disappointed. Listen on your commute, your just driving anyway, might as well learn about one of the candidates.