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Invisible Companies

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Re: Invisible Companies

#51

Post by neerajsi »

bensyverson wrote: post #27

> Economists aren’t naive, so they don’t really believe these things entirely. But they assume they are mostly correct over the medium to long term. Spoiler alert from the article: turns out economists are wrong. This will sound inflammatory, but has the field of Economics produced anything of value to society? It seems to be a social "science" based on incorrect generalizations about human psychology and studies tha…

I think macro economics has provided significant value to society even if the model isn't precise with perfect predictions. We do have worthwhile models that the government can use to avoid making serious monetary mistakes in the face of the real business cycle. We are unlikely to trigger the awful depths of the great depression again.

The main problem I see with public economists is Goodharts law: When the predictive model becomes visible to the agents in the economy, there are stable strategies to counteract those models. So if economists want to remain good predictors of real outcomes, they have to collect massive amounts of data to feed the model but then remain mostly invisible afterward, so that the agents being analyzed don't change behavior too much.

In some sense, a known bad model that is used to set central policy may be good because the rest of the economic agents can work on a diversity of better models without correlating as much with each other and the known central model.

Re: Invisible Companies

#52

Post by cestith »

npilk wrote: post #12

My impression is that these companies are less invisible than ever thanks to the massive growth in private equity since Ross' era (the 50s-80s). I keep hearing stories about pest control businesses and HVAC companies that get inundated with messages from search funds.

My new pest control folks sold me partly by showing customer satisfaction numbers from independent third-party review sites. The sales guy made the point that their customer satisfaction had stayed high after their PE buyout, but my old service had gone downhill since their PE buyout.

Re: Invisible Companies

#55

Post by jmartrican »

latexr wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #4

There's a whole genre of YouTube cartoon videos about this. Dry cleaners.[1] Parking lots.[2] 7 boring businesses.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0cASirKyE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4SAUvmKz4 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebaiF97mCtM&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D...

All of those are clearly AI-generated. You shouldn’t trust any “edutainment” videos made that way, chances are there has been zero fact-checking and that the creator hasn’t even watched the result of their slop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gnrp_caPvo

This is a great topic. Lets say for a second the information is factual, then are these AI videos good? Sometimes I see these AI videos that tackle more obscure topics that are still interesting. These topics may have been monetarily prohibitive to do. Maybe too risky or getting all the animation and content too costly for the payout. But now with AI, all the data can be easily gathered.

Now lets talk about factuality. A human creator can just as easily lie or not fact-check all their sources. But if they do decide to fact-check, wouldn't it be easier to just task the AI to fact check. Simply tell it, "leave out any data that has not been fact checked and mapped back to a reliable source."

Re: Invisible Companies

#57

Post by ignoramous »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #50
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall going to a carpet/tapestry shop in Turkey where, as we enjoyed the ever-present sales-pitch tea, the owner showed us his wares. After the 5 grand mark, he just stopped listing prices. For the final assortment, he brought out some exquisite silk tapestries about the size of welcome mats. He joking clarified that these were tapestries, to be hung on walls. If you bought one without having a wall to hang one on…

My family is Persian and I grew up in Turkey. You definitely develop an appreciation for carpets, and it's sooooooo heartbreaking to see people use art as an entryway rug, simply because they don't know :(

Yeah, and if you're in the sub-continent, you better not walk all over the carpet with your shoe on!

Re: Invisible Companies

#58

Post by ignoramous »

Animats wrote: post #5
PaulRobinson wrote: post #3

I have thought about this a lot over the years and tried to spot these companies - many of them are the type of business that Berkshire Hathaway would love to find. Some of them are a little more visible simply because they’ve scaled and developed a moat - logistics, particularly trucking in the UK, and international cargo shipping, stand out here for me. But also social care, floristry and grocery wholesaling, weird…

I used to think that all those Persian carpet stores on University Avenue in Palo Alto were a way to get immigrants jobs in the US. But no. Turns out the carpet store guy had been renting upstairs office space to startups in exchange for an equity stake. That worked out very, very well for him. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/165_University_Avenue

> That worked out very, very well for him

Amazing.

  [The Amidi family through] its various holdings and brands, currently owns and manages more than 1 million square feet of real estate space along with assets under management exceeding $2 billion.
https://amidigroup.com/about-amidi-group / https://archive.vn/0LEOp

Re: Invisible Companies

#59

Post by autoexec »

jmartrican wrote: post #55
latexr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those are clearly AI-generated. You shouldn’t trust any “edutainment” videos made that way, chances are there has been zero fact-checking and that the creator hasn’t even watched the result of their slop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gnrp_caPvo

This is a great topic. Lets say for a second the information is factual, then are these AI videos good? Sometimes I see these AI videos that tackle more obscure topics that are still interesting. These topics may have been monetarily prohibitive to do. Maybe too risky or getting all the animation and content too costly for the payout. But now with AI, all the data can be easily gathered. Now lets talk about factualit…

> A human creator can just as easily lie or not fact-check all their sources

Not "as easily". A human creator can make a video without fact checking anything, but people using AI can push out thousands of bullshit videos in the same amount of time.

The human creator also actually sees the content they put into their video and can catch the most obvious errors that don't even require fact checking. Humans using AI can just keep spewing out slop as fast as possible without having any idea of what any of the videos actually contain.

Re: Invisible Companies

#60

Post by ltononro »

npilk wrote: post #12

My impression is that these companies are less invisible than ever thanks to the massive growth in private equity since Ross' era (the 50s-80s). I keep hearing stories about pest control businesses and HVAC companies that get inundated with messages from search funds.

I agree, nowadays is impossible to hide, but maybe they are still invisible to most people outside our bubble
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