Los Angeles

"Though in his mid-seventies, he was uncommonly energetic and seemed as busy as ever: sitting on or chairing a dozen or so boards (including those of his myriad investment companies, the Fraser Institute think-tank, and Canada’s Ocean Supercluster); mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs; and travelling extensively by private jet—even during the height of the pandemic—to places like Labrador (to fish at his world-class salmon lodge), Los Angeles (to visit a biofuels refinery he’d invested in), and Germany (to check on the construction of his new superyacht)."

"The year 2008 offers a direct comparison between California’s speed and China’s speed. That year, California voters approved a state proposition to fund a high-speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles; also that year, China began construction of its high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai. Both lines would be around eight hundred miles long upon completion. China opened the Beijing–Shanghai line in 2011 at [a cost of $36 billion](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor281). In its first decade of operation, it completed [1.35 billion passenger trips](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor282). California has built, seventeen years after the ballot proposition, a small stretch of rail to connect two cities in the Central Valley, neither of which are close to San Francisco or Los Angeles."

"When I first moved to New York, I thought that city was going to be my permanent home, but soon found I was never going to have geographical permanence. For the next thirty years I would be a nomad, my only constant the planes that connected New York and Los Angeles. While historically the command-and-control systems for networks were in New York, filmed and taped series were mostly produced in L.A. Equally important, Leonard was now seriously dating Marlo Thomas, and he wanted to be with her as much as possible."

"What took my father from his San Francisco–based construction-supply business to Los Angeles was the postwar housing boom in Southern California, where servicemen coming back from World War II were starting families and looking to use their government loans to buy homes in that sunny land of plenty. Back then, the great valley basin was mostly endless citrus orchards and thousands of acres of undeveloped land. My father, his brother, and three entrepreneurial colleagues essentially bought and built entire sections of Southern California—the San Fernando Valley, Palos Verdes, West Covina—replacing vast orange orchards with hundreds of thousands of tract homes, sometimes in ten-thousand-unit parcels divided into four basic models, mostly indistinguishable from each other. Men like my father made fortunes delivering the American dream to young couples in cookie-cutter houses in made-from-scratch communities. My father was far from the dominating force, that was his brilliant elder brother, and he always felt in his shadow."

"Unrelated, and many months later, Heatley took a late call at home from brokers Buddle Wilson. It transpired that somehow Brierley’s had learned that Michael Horton was booked on a flight from Auckland to Los Angeles. As soon as the plane had taken off, Brierley’s had launched a raid on Wilson & Horton shares. Horton could mount no defence because he did not even know the raid was happening. The brokers were acting on his behalf but without his knowledge. ‘Suddenly, Wilson & Horton, through Buddle Wilson, think I might be able to stave off Brierley’s,’ Heatley says. ‘Brokers are furiously trying to buy shares and they are calling and suggesting that I become a white knight but I was not interested without an agreement with Michael, which I could not have because he was on a plane.’ It was not the last time that an unfortunate turn of events for Wilson & Horton would become an opportunity for Heatley."

"⁠When it came to movies, most of the blockbusters were made by seven studios, all based in Los Angeles. Movies have a number of revenue streams, which studios try to maximise. For most movies, the main revenue earner is the initial worldwide release in cinemas. It is there that studios get the biggest return on their investment with individual moviegoers paying a premium rate to see a single viewing of a film on its release. A movie will stay in cinemas until the audience dwindles, typically about three to six months after release. In the late eighties and early nineties, the next most lucrative revenue stream was videos, where most sales would occur in the first six to 12 months. Studios would then offer the film to pay TV for a year, and last cab off the rank would be broadcast or free-to-air TV, by which time a popular movie might be nearly three years old.⁠"

"It’s also good to pay attention to tech trends that have the potential to disrupt economic models but haven’t hit their stride yet. Two examples relate specifically to the supply chain industry, where I’ve spent the past 13 years. 3D printing (also called industrial additive manufacturing) will drive seismic change in supply chains in the long term. It’s had a slow start—in the ’80s and ’90s, there was a joke that 3D printing was endlessly ten years away from being viable. Now, it’s being adopted for all kinds of purposes, especially in medicine. Ten years ago, dentists were giving patients a temporary tooth for a couple of weeks while a crown was made from an impression of the tooth. The last time I went to the dentist, he took measurements and told me to hang out for an hour while the office printed my crown. Hearing aids are 3D printed now, too; so are a lot of prostheses. Sophisticated industrial products, including structurally critical parts for jets, are 3D printed out of metal. As the cost continues to go down, I expect that 3D printing will be a growing part of local autonomous manufacturing. That will change the transportation industry, the global supply chain, and the entire geopolitical balance. Currently, the global economy is still based on an outdated model of sourcing cheap labor overseas, especially from China, and then paying a high price to get it transported to the consumer. For example, the goods travel on a plane or ship from Shanghai to Los Angeles, and then the dray containers go by rail to Chicago, where they’re put on a truck and driven to a warehouse in Kansas City. Eventually, the product is trucked the “last mile” to…"

"Nicolas Berggruen could easily take measure of his business principle: Buy what you can get. Best with the money of oil magnates, film producers, real estate moguls, superstars. For this too, Nicolas Berggruen gained good contacts in time. From Sands, he also learned what Los Angeles means for America's upper class: the Valley of Kings."

"Stokes had read the future acutely from the podium when he warned that the Australia he knew was morphing into a version of Los Angeles. ‘This is no particular slight on Los Angeles — it’s just that Los Angeles is not Australia. And there is no need for us to surrender our cultural identity, certainly not without a fight.’"