Noah Smith

Economist and writer behind the Noahpinion Substack, and one of the steadier sources in Kyle’s “build” and venture-economics reading. His essay The Build-Nothing Country is the mechanistic counterpart to Marc Andreessen’s It’s Time To Build: where Andreessen diagnoses a failure of will, Smith diagnoses a broken permitting / land-use / development system — “money is not physical stuff” — exploited by entrenched local interests (the Second Avenue Subway as the world’s most expensive subway line, NIMBY opposition to housing and green energy, homeowners who raise their paper wealth by restricting local supply). Kyle reads the two essays as direct intellectual descendants in his Techno-Optimism thread.

Smith also anchors part of What Is An Investor. Kyle leans on his “Will VC produce fewer home runs in the future?” piece — the “next Facebook” question — and on Smith’s application of Frank Knight’s Knightian Uncertainty to explain why outsized Venture Capital returns are getting rarer as the market matures.

Context: Noah Smith is an economist and former Bloomberg Opinion columnist who now writes the widely read Noahpinion newsletter, covering economics, technology, and the political economy of growth and abundance.

Where this appears

• The Build-Nothing Country — his diagnosis that America can’t build housing, transit, or green energy because of broken permitting and local incentives, not lack of money.
• It’s Time To Build — listed as the direct intellectual ancestor; Smith’s essay is its more mechanistic descendant.
• What Is An Investor / What Is An Investor - Research — his “fewer home runs” / Knightian-uncertainty argument on declining VC returns.
• It’s Time To Build… But Build What - Research — appears in the techno-optimism reading notes.
• Knightian Uncertainty / Frank Knight — the uncertainty distinction Smith invokes for venture.
• Techno-Optimism / Venture Capital — the broader threads his writing feeds.
• Does Anything I Write Matter Anymore? — Smith’s reflection on punditry’s declining leverage under populism, Substack monetization, and AI content saturation.
• I Have Never Been Working Class — Smith’s argument that American class is about future earning potential, not present-day snapshot, applied to critique PMC socialism and manufactured “working class” champions.
• Stop Screeching About Immigration, And Get Smart About It — his case for skilled, legal immigration as the antidote to America’s fertility crisis.
• The American Age Was The Human Age — his 250th-anniversary essay on American sclerosis, declining patriotism, and the looming end of “the human age” under AI.
• The American Suburbs Are Better Than You Think — his evidence-based defense of suburbia against the urbanist critique on commutes and loneliness.
• Slopulism Is Taking Over America — author; coins “slopulism” for policy that inverts its own goal.