Podcasts about american growth

GOOD EVENING: The show begins shoppping as the consumer is backing away from shopping, and that is 69% of American growth... Undated Italian Bank NYC CBS EYE ON THE WORLD WITH JOHN BATCHELOR FIRST HOUR 9-915 #Markets: Shopping not so much. Liz Peek The Hill. Fox News and Fox Business https://www.wsj.com/economy/central-banking/fed-meeting-july-preview-interest-rate-cuts-fa3a8ca9?mod=hp_lead_pos4 915-930 #Markets: Newspeak goes to Washington. Liz Peek The Hill. Fox News and Fox Business https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/america-meet-immaculate-kamala-liberal-medias-latest-creation 930-945 #Venezuela: No voting records worthwhile to inspect. Allison Fedirka, @GPFutureshttps://geopoliticalfutures.com/maduros-pyrrhic-victory/ 945-1000 #MALI: Ambush. Bill Roggio, FDD https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2024/07/tuareg-rebels-jnim-each-claim-victory-over-russias-wagner-group-in-mali.php SECOND HOUR 10-1015 #LEBANON: The Empire strikes back. Behnam ben Taleblu, FDDhttps://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-targets-hezbollah-commander-in-beirut-in-response-to-majdal-shams-attack/ 1015-1030 #IRAN: Assassination teams aimed at Trump. Behnam ben Talebluhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/us/politics/trump-iran-assassination-plot.html 1030-1045 #LondonCalling: No way to elect. @JosephSternberg @WSJOpinion https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-picking-harris-democrats-follow-the-tories-folly-elections-europe-party-elite-pick-16b1c975 1045-1100 #LondonCalling: "Just Stop Oil" hard time. @JosephSternberg @WSJOpinion https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-07-24/just-stop-oil-lengthy-jail-time-is-a-bad-look-for-uk?sref=5g4GmFHo THIRD HOUR 1100-1115 #EastAsia: Gathering of Allies. Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/world/asia/us-philippines-military-aid-china.html 1115-1130 #NATO: No future. Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairshttps://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_216556.htm 1130-1145 #"STRATEGIC UNHAPPINESS" from Beijing to Washington https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/world/asia/us-philippines-military-aid-china.html 1145-1200 #KingCharlesReport: Forty thousand Euros for wine at the Elysee. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/30/macrons-500k-banquet-king-charles-blew-hole-finances/ FOURTH HOUR 12-1215 #StateThinking: Netanyahu in Washington @MaryKissel Former Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State. Executive VP Stephens Inc.https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-submits-latest-gaza-proposal-to-us-but-officials-warn-pms-new-demands-wont-fly/1215-1230 #StateThinking: #UKRAINE: End of the expectations. @MaryKissel Former Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State. Executive VP Stephens Inc. https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraines-foreign-minister-arrives-china-discuss-fair-peace-2024-07-23/ 1230-1245 #Lebanon: What is to be done? Jonathan Schanzer, FDDhttps://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-targets-hezbollah-commander-in-beirut-in-response-to-majdal-shams-attack/ 1245-100 am #GAZA: End of the beginning. Jonathan Schanzer, FDD https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-submits-latest-gaza-proposal-to-us-but-officials-warn-pms-new-demands-wont-fly/

If you don't want to start your day with beautiful beach views and economic forecasts, you may want to skip the video. Today we'll be discussing recent changes to the US economy and what future impacts might look like. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/strong-american-growth-and-something-to-worry-about Donate to MedShare Here: https://www.medshare.org/zeihan-impact/

There's something of a paradox that has defined my experience with artificial intelligence in this particular moment. It's clear we're witnessing the advent of a wildly powerful technology, one that could transform the economy and the way we think about art and creativity and the value of human work itself. At the same time, I can't for the life of me figure out how to use it in my own day-to-day job.So I wanted to understand what I'm missing and get some tips for how I could incorporate A.I. better into my life right now. And Ethan Mollick is the perfect guide: He's a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who's spent countless hours experimenting with different chatbots, noting his insights in his newsletter One Useful Thing and in a new book, “Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With A.I.”This conversation covers the basics, including which chatbot to choose and techniques for how to get the most useful results. But the conversation goes far beyond that, too — to some of the strange, delightful and slightly unnerving ways that A.I. responds to us, and how you'll get more out of any chatbot if you think of it as a relationship rather than a tool.Mollick says it's helpful to understand this moment as one of co-creation, in which we all should be trying to make sense of what this technology is going to mean for us. Because it's not as if you can call up the big A.I. companies and get the answers. “When I talk to OpenAI or Anthropic, they don't have a hidden instruction manual,” he told me. “There is no list of how you should use this as a writer or as a marketer or as an educator. They don't even know what the capabilities of these systems are.”Book Recommendations:The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. GordonThe Knowledge by Lewis DartnellBlindsight by Peter WattsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Austrian family-owned Pöttinger established its first dealership in Canada in 2005 and three years later opened for business in the U.S. From mowers to seeders, balers and cultivators, the agriculture implement company continues to grow in North America, setting a string of sales records on both sides of the border, says Andrew Brown, president and... Read More

Chapter 1 What's The Rise and Fall of American Growth Book by Robert J. GordonThe Rise and Fall of American Growth is a non-fiction book written by economist Robert J. Gordon. In this book, Gordon explores the history of economic growth and productivity in the United States from the late 19th century to the present day.Gordon argues that the period from 1870 to 1970 marked an exceptional era of economic growth and technological progress in the United States. He examines the various factors that contributed to this remarkable expansion, including technological advancements, massive investments in infrastructure, and demographic changes, among others. During this period, American living standards improved significantly, and the economy was transformed by groundbreaking innovations such as electricity, automobiles, and telecommunications.However, Gordon also suggests that this era of rapid growth is unlikely to be replicated in the future. He points out that the productivity growth rate has been slowing down since the 1970s, and the current wave of technological advancements, such as the internet and mobile devices, has not had as transformative an impact on the economy as earlier innovations. Gordon attributes this slowing growth to a variety of factors, including rising inequality, educational shortcomings, and environmental challenges.The book discusses the implications of this slowdown in economic growth for future prosperity and standards of living. It raises important questions about the sustainability of long-term economic growth and challenges the prevailing belief in unlimited progress and innovation.Overall, The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides a comprehensive analysis of the factors that fueled America's economic growth in the past and critically assesses the prospects for future growth. It combines historical analysis, economic theory, and social commentary to offer a thought-provoking perspective on the trajectory of the American economy.Chapter 2 Is The Rise and Fall of American Growth Book A Good BookThe Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon is widely regarded as an excellent book by both critics and readers. With extensive research and analysis, Gordon provides a comprehensive exploration of the various factors that have shaped America's economic growth over the past century. He skillfully delves into different components of growth, ranging from technological advancements to demographic changes, and explains their effects on productivity and living standards.The book offers a thought-provoking perspective on the future of economic growth, questioning whether the American economy can continue to flourish as it has in the past. While Gordon's conclusions may appear pessimistic to some, his arguments are well-supported and provide valuable insights into the challenges faced by the modern economy.However, it is worth noting that The Rise and Fall of American Growth is a dense and scholarly work, which may require an interest in economics and patience to fully appreciate. It contains extensive data, charts, and historical analysis, making it more suitable for those seeking an in-depth understanding of America's growth trajectory rather than a light read.Overall, if you are interested in economics, history, and understanding the factors behind America's economic growth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is widely considered to be a highly informative and enlightening book.Chapter 3 The Rise and Fall of American Growth Book by Robert J. Gordon Summary"The Rise and Fall of American Growth" is a book written by economist Robert J. Gordon. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the economic growth and development of the

→ The Rise and Fall of American Growth: ⁠https://www.bookmarked.club/books/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-growth Sponsor → Stakwork: ⁠https://stacksats.how/stakwork⁠ Summary The conversation explores the book 'The Rise and Fall of American Growth', which chronicles growth in America over the past 150 years. It begins with an introduction to the topic and the background of the author Robert J. Gordon. The concept of growth and productivity is defined, highlighting the role of GDP and the impact of inventions. The three industrial revolutions are discussed, along with their key innovations. The conversation then delves into the factors affecting growth, including education, inequality, and fiscal debt. The chapters conclude with an exploration of the rise of American growth from 1870 to 1970 and the fall of American growth from 1970 to the present. The conversation covers various topics related to economic growth, inequality, and the future. The guest, Robert J. Gordon, advocates for immigration reform and improved education as solutions to economic challenges. The discussion also touches on the impact of going off the gold standard and the role of money in exacerbating issues. The guest expresses skepticism about the idea that the US going off the gold standard in 1971 has played a significant role in rising inequality. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the potential for a 'special century' and the importance of economic growth. Takeaways - Growth and productivity are measured by GDP and reflect the increase in output per person or per hour of work. - The three industrial revolutions, marked by key innovations, have driven economic growth: steam engine and cotton spinning, electric power and internal combustion engine, and computers and digital technology. - The percolation of innovations takes time, and the impact of new inventions may not be immediately evident in productivity statistics. - Factors such as education, inequality, and fiscal debt can act as headwinds to growth. - The rise of American growth from 1870 to 1970 was driven by the implementation of inventions and increased productivity. - The fall of American growth from 1970 to the present is characterized by slower productivity growth, increased inequality, and fiscal debt.

I'm joined by investor and entrepreneur Anthony "Pomp" Pompliano. Pomp hosts The Pomp Podcast, with over 50 million downloads, and writes a daily letter read by 250,000+ investors.We talk about Pomp's approach to building resilient media properties, thinking long-term, and his best book recommendations for internet business success.►►Subscribe to my weekly newsletter for insights on community, creators and commerce. You'll also find out when new and exclusive episodes come out from Where It Happens. And it's totally free.https://latecheckout.substack.comFIND ME ON SOCIALTwitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@gregisenbergaBOOKS POMP MENTIONEDUnreasonable hospitality by John O'LearyThe Successor by Lachlan MurdochThe 50th Law by Robert Greene and 50 CentZero to One by Peter ThielSuleiman Ollian by AnonymousHow to Get Rich by Felix DennisLosing My Virginity by Richard BransonThe Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. GordonHidden Genius by Polina MarinovaThe Outsiders by Will ThorndikeElon Musk by Walter IsaacsonUrgency by John P. KotterThe War of Art by Steven PressfieldGood Profit by Charles KochLINKS FOR THIS EPISODEProduction Team: https://podflow.comPomp on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APomplianoPomp on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/anthonypomplianoPomp's newsletter: https://pomp.substack.comSHOW NOTES 0:15 - Anthony's provocative dinners for hidden beliefs 01:45 - Climate change evidence not as compelling 02:30 - Scarcity of unique perspectives in newsletters 03:00 - Click rates over open rates for engagement 03:45 - Media as repetitive software 04:15 - Bay Area Times' visual newsletters 05:15 - Unique Bitcoin perspective in Truth for the Commoner 06:00 - Bay Area Times' rapid growth 07:00 - Open rates for brand awareness, click rates for direct response 08:15 - Agora's focus on ecommerce conversions 10:15 - Monetization through hedge funds 11:15 - Joe Rogan's podcast profitability 14:00 - Bay Area Times' positive industry news 15:00 - Profitability before monetization for Bay Area Times 18:15 - Small teams and revenue for entrepreneurs 20:15 - Small teams for greater profitability 21:15 - Studying media greats like Rupert Murdoch 26:15 - Podcasts for expertise sharing 29:00 - Economic freedom and financial security 32:00 - Impactful employment business 33:00 - Small acts making the world better 34:45 - Pomp's book recommendation  

Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg discuss Marc Andreessen's Techno-Optimist Manifesto (a16z), the last waves of economic innovation, energy advancement, and predict the next wave of productivity gains from private and government-enabled innovation. Daffy is offering Econ 102 listeners a free $25 for the charity of their choice when they join: https://www.daffy.org/econ102 – Sponsors: GIVEWELL | DAFFY | NETSUITE  Have you ever wondered where your donation could have the most impact? GiveWell has now spent over 15 years researching charitable organizations and only directs funding to the highest impact opportunities they've found in global health and poverty alleviation. Make informed decisions about high-impact giving. If you've never donated through GiveWell before, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org and pick “Podcast” and enter Econ 102 at checkout.  Daffy is the most modern and accessible donor-advised fund, making it easier to put money aside for charity. You can make your tax-deductible contributions all at once or set aside a little each week or month. And you don't just have to donate cash, you can easily contribute stocks, ETFs, or crypto. Plus, you never have to track receipts from your donations again. It's free to get started and Econ 102 listeners get $25 towards the charity of their choice. Daffy is offering Econ 102 listeners a free $25 for the charity of their choice when they join Daffy https://www.daffy.org/econ102  NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform head to NetSuite http://netsuite.com/102 and download your own customized KPI checklist. – RECOMMENDED PODCAST:  Every week investor and writer of the popular newsletter The Diff, Byrne Hobart, and co-host Erik Torenberg discuss today's major inflection points in technology, business, and markets – and help listeners build a diversified portfolio of trends and ideas for the future. Subscribe to “The Riff” with Byrne Hobart and Erik Torenberg: https://link.chtbl.com/theriff – Econ 102 is a part of the Turpentine podcast network. To learn more: www.turpentine.co – LINKS: - Noah Smith, Thoughts on Techno-Optimism https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/thoughts-on-techno-optimism  - Marc Andreessen's Techno-Optimist Manifesto https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ - Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of Economic Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_American_Growth#:~:text=Gordon%20considers%20that%20the%20apparent,growth%20between%201920%20and%201970. - Miles Kimball (Econ 102's actual Econ 102 professor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Kimball – X / TWITTER: @noahpinion (Noah) @eriktorenberg (Erik) – TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (01:25) Reaction to Marc Andreessen's techno-optimism manifesto (04:22) Where Noah disagrees: technology does not always empower individuals (08:05) How to overcome the natural incentive problem of innovation (11:55) Economist Robert Gordon and no analog to step changes in innovation (15:50) Sponsors: Daffy | NetSuite (21:50) Nuclear energy and other energy advancements (29:40) GDP is utterly unprepared for changing preferences (33:40) Productivity boom 1987-2004 (36:58) Was the smartphone actually a step change in productivity? (39:42) Next wave of innovation (41:50) Where Noah disagrees with Marc Andreessen (44:15)Government vs privatized enablement of innovation (49:50) Real sustainability is important and possible

This conversation is part of a special series, The Heart of Methodism. Eddie and Chris, who are both pastors in the United Methodist Church, will talk to guests who can help us dive a little deeper into Methodism and its history, theology, traditions, and future.Today's guest, Dr. John Wigger, is a professor at the University of Missouri, where he specializes in US social and cultural history, including religious history and the history of flight. His most recent book is about the mystery of hijacker D.B. Cooper, but he is also spent a lot of time researching and writing about the history of the Methodist movement in the United States. Dr. Wigger traces the roots of Methodism through other Protestant denominations, including the rise and growth of Pentecostalism.Resources:American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists

In this episode, William Green chats with Chris Bloomstran, President & Chief Investment Officer of Semper Augustus. This conversation is so rich that it's been divided into two episodes. Here, in Part 1, Chris explains how to achieve long-term success by seeking a “dual margin of safety” that comes from owning high-quality businesses at attractive prices. He also warns about the perennial dangers of irrational exuberance, which he now sees in hot stocks like Tesla & Nvidia.IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN:00:00 - Intro04:45 - What Chris Bloomstran learned from his brilliant mentor, Robert Smith.08:17 - How Chris & Robert skillfully sidestepped the dotcom bubble & crash.10:00 - What lessons Chris drew from an early investment that fell to zero.35:17 - Why Chris named his investment firm after a crazily overvalued tulip.44:53 - What Sir John Templeton saw as the best antidote to financial insanity. 55:38 - How to succeed in stocks by seeking a “dual margin of safety.”56:51 - How his definition of a quality business has evolved.1:07:01 - Why he's skeptical about Cathie Wood's ARK portfolio.1:09:02 - Why hot tech stocks like Nvidia are likely to disappoint for many years.1:11:32 - Why he's wary of hype & “puffery” about Tesla's glorious future.1:17:49 - Why he's trimmed great but pricey holdings like Costco & Nike.Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESChris Bloomstran's firm Semper Augustus Investments Group“Extraordinary Popular Delusions & The Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay“The Rise & Fall of American Growth” by Robert GordonWilliam Green's book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier” – read the reviews of this bookListen to Stig Brodersen's April 2023 interview with Chris Bloomstran, or watch the video.Follow Chris Bloomstran on X (AKA Twitter)Follow William Green on X (AKA Twitter)NEW TO THE SHOW?Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. P.S The Investor's Podcast Network is excited to launch a subreddit devoted to our fans in discussing financial markets, stock picks, questions for our hosts, and much more! Join our subreddit r/TheInvestorsPodcast today!SPONSORSInvest in Bitcoin with confidence on River. It's the most secure way to buy Bitcoin with 100% full reserve custody and zero fees on recurring orders.Reach the world's largest audience with Linkedin, the place to B2B. Plus, enjoy a $100 credit on your next ad campaign!Invest in some of the top private, pre-IPO companies in the world with Fundrise.Choose Toyota for your next vehicle - SUVs that are known for their reliability and longevity, making them a great investment. Plus, Toyotas now have more advanced technology than ever before, maximizing that investment with a comfortable and connected drive.Be confident that you'll be small businessing at your best with support designed to help you reach your goals. Book an appointment with a TD Small Business Specialist today.Start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Be in control of every sales channel with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period today.Send, spend, and receive money around the world easily with Wise.Experience real language learning for real conversations with Babbel. Get 55% off your Babbel subscription today.Learn how Principal Financial can help you find the right benefits and retirement plan for your team today.Beat FOMO and move faster than the market with AlphaSense.Apply for the Employee Retention Credit easily, no matter how busy you are, with Innovation Refunds.Get a customized solution for all of your KPIs in one efficient system with one source of truth. Download NetSuite's popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance for free.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.HELP US OUT!Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The world economy has experienced many shocks over the past few years: A pandemic. Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Skyrocketing inflation. These are the stories that have dominated headlines — and for good reason.But they've also overshadowed a set of deeper, more fundamental shifts — the rise of China as an economic superpower, the fracturing of trade relations, the realities of the climate crisis — that are transforming the global economic order and prompting ambitious policy responses from leaders across the world.Martin Wolf is the chief economics commentator at The Financial Times, a former senior economist at the World Bank and the author, most recently, of “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Across his writings, Wolf has developed some of the clearest frameworks for thinking about how the global economy is changing and some of the sharpest critiques of how policymakers are responding to those changes.We discuss how China's meteoric economic rise has shaken the foundations of the global economy, why globalization has remained far more resilient than so many predicted, why Wolf is skeptical that President Biden's industrial policy agenda will succeed, the debate between “onshoring” and “friendshoring” that is dividing the Democratic Party, why a recession in the United States is looking far less likely than it did six months ago, the virtues and vices of Biden's “foreign policy for the middle class,” why China's recent economic troubles could signal a more foundational decline, why the U.S. economy has remained so much more stronger than most economists anticipated, and more.Mentioned:National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan's speech“The I.R.A. Passed a Year Ago. Here's a Progress Check” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Robinson Meyer“The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade” by David H. Autor, David Dorn and Gordon H. Hanson“Is the Global Economy Deglobalizing?” by Pinelopi Goldberg and Tristan Reed“Climate Progress and the 117th Congress: The Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” by REPEAT ProjectBook Recommendations:The Narrow Corridor by Daron Acemoglu and James A. RobinsonPower and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon JohnsonThe Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. GordonThis episode is guest-hosted by Rogé Karma, the senior editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus pandemic.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show's production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Efim Shapiro.

Fresh off his third top 10 in four races and best 2022 NASCAR finish at Darlington Raceway, Michael McDowell joins Davey Segal on the Frontstretch Podcast.

Fresh off his third top 10 in four races and best 2022 NASCAR finish at Darlington Raceway, Michael McDowell joins Davey Segal on the Frontstretch Podcast.

Conservative Conversations Episode 43—Michael Gibson on Tech, Elon Musk's Twitter, and the Paper Belt on FireIn this episode: Tech venture capitalist Michael Gibson discusses working for Peter Thiel and investing in talented college dropouts and renegadesThe concept of the “Paper Belt” and how credentialism can obscure true educationElon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and what that might mean for conservatives and free speechTexts Mentioned:The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. GordonThe Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better by Tyler CowenPaper Belt on Fire: How Silicon Valley Heretics Took on Higher Ed by Michael GibsonBecome a part of ISI:Become a MemberSupport ISIUpcoming ISI Events

Welcome to the nonlinear library, where we use text-to-speech software to convert the best writing from the rationalist and ea communities into audio. This is: Technological stagnation: Why I came around, published by jasoncrawford on the effective altruism forum. This is a linkpost for “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” says Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, expressing a sort of jaded disappointment with technological progress. (The fact that the 140 characters have become 280, a 100% increase, does not seem to have impressed him.) Thiel, along with economists such as Tyler Cowen (The Great Stagnation) and Robert Gordon (The Rise and Fall of American Growth), promotes a “stagnation hypothesis”: that there has been a significant slowdown in scientific, technological, and economic progress in recent decades—say, for a round number, since about 1970, or the last ~50 years. When I first heard the stagnation hypothesis, I was skeptical. The arguments weren't convincing to me. But as I studied the history of progress (and looked at the numbers), I slowly came around, and now I'm fairly convinced. So convinced, in fact, that I now seem to be more pessimistic about ending stagnation than some of its original proponents. In this essay I'll try to capture both why I was originally skeptical, and also why I changed my mind. If you have heard some of the same arguments that I did, and are skeptical for the same reasons, maybe my framing of the issue will help. Stagnation is relative To get one misconception out of the way first: “stagnation” does not mean zero progress. No one is claiming that. There wasn't zero progress even before the Industrial Revolution (or the civilizations of Europe and Asia would have looked no different in 1700 than they did in the days of nomadic hunter-gatherers, tens of thousands of years ago). Stagnation just means slower progress. And not even slower than that pre-industrial era, but slower than, roughly, the late 1800s to mid-1900s, when growth rates are said to have peaked. Because of this, we can't resolve the issue by pointing to isolated advances. The microwave, the air conditioner, the electronic pacemaker, a new cancer drug—these are great, but they don't disprove stagnation. Stagnation is relative, and so to evaluate the hypothesis we must find some way to compare magnitudes. This is difficult. Only 140 characters? “We wanted flying cars, instead we got a supercomputer in everyone's pocket and a global communications network to connect everyone on the planet to each other and to the whole of the world's knowledge, art, philosophy and culture.” When you put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad. Indeed, the digital revolution has been absolutely amazing. It's up there with electricity, the internal combustion engine, or mass manufacturing: one of the great, fundamental, transformative technologies of the industrial age. (Although admittedly it's hard to see the effect of computers in the productivity statistics, and I don't know why.) But we don't need to downplay the magnitude of the digital revolution to see stagnation; conversely, proving its importance will not defeat the stagnation hypothesis. Again, stagnation is relative, and we must find some way to compare the current period to those that came before. Argumentum ad living room Eric Weinstein proposes a test: “Go into a room and subtract off all of the screens. How do you know you're not in 1973, but for issues of design?” This too I found unconvincing. It felt like a weak thought experiment that relied too much on intuition, revealing one's own priors more than anything else. And why should we necessarily expect progress to be visible directly from the home or office? Maybe it is happening in specialized environments that the layman wouldn't have much intuition about: in the factory, the power plant, the agricultural field, the hospital, the oil rig, the cargo ship, the research lab. No progress except for all the progress ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: I scraped all public "Effective Altruists" Goodreads reading lists, published by MaxRa on the Effective Altruism Forum. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the idea of scraping the reading lists of the members of the Effective Altruists Goodreads group. The initial motivation was around the idea that EAs might be reading too much of the same books, and we might improve this by finding out which books are read relatively little compared to how many EAs proclaim that they want to read them. I got some positive feedback and got to work. Besides helping a little with improving our exploration of literature, I think the results also serve as an interesting survey of the reading behavior of EAs. Though we might want to keep in mind a possible selection bias for EAs and EA-adjacent people that share their reading behavior on Goodreads. For those who don't know Goodreads, it's a social network where you can share ratings and reviews of the books you've read, and organize books in shelves like I have read this! or I want to read this!. It's quite fun, many EAs are on there and I wholeheartedly recommend joining. In total, there were 333 349 people in the Effective Altruists Goodreads group, and 257 275 of them had their privacy settings set to completely public, allowing anyone to inspect their reading lists even without being logged in. I checked the Goodreads scraping rules and was good to go. Before you continue, I invite you to predict the following: 3 from the 10 most read books, except Doing Good Better a book that relatively many EAs want to read, but few have actually read Finally, if you have any further ideas for analysis, leave a comment and I'll be happy to see what I can do. If you want access to the csv file or the Python script I used, I uploaded them here. In this screenshot you see the types of data I have. Most read books Here the books that our community already explored a bunch. I would not have expected 1984 and Superintelligence to make it to the Top 5. HPMOR being the least read Harry Potter novel is a slight disappointment. Most planned to read Many classics on people's I want to read this! lists, maybe overall slightly lengthier & more difficult books? Though Superforecasting is not too long and very readable and very excellent in my opinion, so feel free to read this one. Highest planned to read / have read ratio These are the books that might be more useful to be read by more EAs, as many say they want to read them, but in proportion the fewest people have actually read them. Of course, there are good reasons why some of those books are read less, e.g. some of them, like The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Probability Theory or The Feynman Lectures on Physics would take me enormously more time to read compared to, say, 1984 (which still took me, a relatively slow reader, something on the order of 10 to 20 hours). Also, the vast majority of the books in this list have only been read by one person, so a score of 11 can be interpreted as one person having read the book and 11 people wanting to read it. Additionally, as of now this list excludes books that have never been read by any EA, as the ratio would be infinite. For those books, see the next section. If we only allow books with at least 2 reads, we get this list: Most commonly planned to read books that have not been read by anyone yet I'll consider it a big success of this project if some people will have read Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset Energy and Civilization next time I check. Highest rated books Here the highest rated of all books that were read at least 10 times. Not too many surprises here, EAs know what's good! Lowest rated books Here the same with the highest rated books. Before any fandom feels too ostracized (speaking as somebody who absolutely loved the Eragon saga), I should info...

How was it that, within a decade after the nation's founding, America's economy dwarfed those of European countries? What does our history of ingenuity and economic diversity tell us about our future?  Ali Velshi does a breakfast chat with Richard Vague, author of "An Illustrated Business History of the United States," to compare notes.

The average rate of labour productivity growth in the 15 nations of Western Europe slowed from five percent per annum in the 1950s and 1960s to less than one percent in the decade ending in 2019. According to Prof. Gordon, the EU-15 performance is catching up to the U.S. in stages, followed by a retardation since 1995. In Prof. Gordon's view, the overall theme is that productivity growth slowdown was due to a retardation in technical change that affected the same industries by roughly the same magnitudes on both sides of the Atlantic. An interpretation will be provided by Prof. Gordon of rapid productivity growth during the pandemic of 2020-21 and the likely trajectory of growth in the 2020s. About the Speaker: Robert J. Gordon is Stanley G. Harris Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. He is one of the world's leading experts on inflation, unemployment, and long-term economic growth. His recent work on the rise and fall of American economic growth and the widening of the U. S. income distribution have been widely cited, and in 2016 he was named as one of Bloomberg's top 50 most influential people in the world. Gordon is author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth: the US Standard of Living Since the Civil War (published in January 2016 by the Princeton University Press). He is also author of Macroeconomics, twelfth edition, and of The Measurement of Durable Goods Prices, The American Business Cycle, and The Economics of New Goods. Gordon is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association and a Fellow of both the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

I talked to the very popular Noah Smith on a variety of topics. We talked about Is America too insular? Indian cultural exports to the US Is economic growth zero-sum at the country level? Where does he disagree with @jdcmedlock the most? What are the deep causes of partisanship in America? The moral coordination problem of going vegan The political economy of solving NIMBYism “America's national pastime is avoiding other Americans” Do give a listen to this! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pradyumna-sp/message

Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, discusses second quarter earnings and the burgeoning adult-use cannabis business. Host: Carol Massar. Producer: Paul Brennan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve, discusses second quarter earnings and the burgeoning adult-use cannabis business. Host: Carol Massar. Producer: Paul Brennan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Regarding the debate on economic growth there has always been two sides. Some people say that we are now in an era of rapid growth characterized by informatization, digitalization, big data, 5G, etc and our potential is unlimited. Others say that the earth is only so big, and resources are limited. Not only that but people are also living longer, so unlimited development is not realistic. This book follows the American economic growth path, examining various reasons why growth has passed through stages of acceleration and deceleration. It summarizes America's economic journey from 1870 to 2015 from an economic and sociological perspective. The book divides the America's economic journey into three phases: “the Special Century,” the miracle of “the Great Leap,” and a phase characterized by decelerated growth during the modern “Computer Age.” The whole path is summarized in two words, “rise” and “fall.”

Mentioned in this episode:  Rothbard's  Conceived in Liberty https://g.co/kgs/A2PXHt Chasing the Last Laugh: https://g.co/kgs/CvC5hj The Rise and Fall of American Growth: https://g.co/kgs/bfCELy   ADDITIONAL WAYS TO CONNECT WITH US:  Connect with us on Telegram:  https://t.me/dougcasey   Email list: https://smith.substack.com/p/doug-cas...   Amazon Book Club Link: https://www.amazon.com/abc/detail/amz...   Chapters 00:00:00 Intro  0:37 John McAfee was a Kindled Spirit  4:26 Psychological assessment  6:51 When was peak economy in the US  11:57 Why Doug left Hong Kong  15:40 Population reduction event as deflationary or inflationary?  17:54 Revival of ancient religions?  24:30 Life after death? 25:46 Growing Islam influence in Europe 31:29 How to deal with information overload  35:22 Thoughts on Buddhism 38:19 Suggestions for spending retirement  42:06 World War Three, what firearm?  47:09 Buy a farm or move outside Canada?  52:19 The argument for walking away  55:47 BlackRock 58:16 Is it possible the future is actually awesome?

A conversation on whether COVID can be compared to wartime, which considers the different scales and scopes of the shocks, and what it all means for prospects for economic recovery. Economics Explored host Gene Tunny, an Australian professional economist and former Treasury official, speaks with businessman Tim Hughes, also based in Brisbane, Australia.Gene and Tim conclude that a comparison of COVID to wartime isn’t valid. One reason is that World War II required a complete reorganisation of the economy to maximise production for the war effort, while COVID has involved restrictions that have reduced economic activity. Links relevant to the conversation include:Comparing COVID-19 to past world war efforts is premature — and presumptuousUS Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder on The National Debt DilemmaBrookings on What’s the Fed doing in response to the COVID-19 crisis? What more could it do?Australia’s Boldest Experiment (excellent book on Australia’s wartime economy)Robert Gordon’s The Rise and Fall of American Growth (outstanding book by a leading US economist containing a great discussion of America’s wartime economy)Aussies over-confident after being over-compensated by Gov’t for COVID-recessionMint security lapse amazes judge (story about theft from the Australian Mint in early-to-mid 2000s)Finally, the word Gene got stuck on at 6:55, irredentist, means, “a person advocating the restoration to their country of any territory formerly belonging to it”, according to Oxford Languages.If you'd like to ask a question for Gene to answer in a future episode or if you'd like to make a comment or suggestion, please get in touch via the website. Thanks for listening.  

Jason Crawford writes about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about technologies like messenger RNA vaccines, nanotech, and supersonic jets. Plus society-level questions like whether we are in a period of stagnation, how we fund maverick ideas, and why we need hubris. @MuseAppHQ hello@museapp.com Show notes Jason Crawford / The Roots of Progress / @jasoncrawford Fieldbook A Small Matter of Programming We Need a New Science of Progress The Torch of Progress — Ep. 13 with Adam Wiggins The Great Stagnation Bessemer steel process germ theory We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters The Rise and Fall of American Growth and Jason’s summary Where Is My Flying Cars? and Jason’s summary Luddites Victorian-era concept of Progress A Culture of Growth Francis Bacon growth mindset The March of Progress World’s Fair posters phase 3 clinical trials Hardcore History techno-optimism 1927 Charles Lindbergh ticker-tape parade Why haven’t we celebrated any major achievements lately? Academy of Thought and Industry Boom 747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet Concorde

Jason Crawford writes about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress. He joins Mark and Adam to talk about technologies like messenger RNA vaccines, nanotech, and supersonic jets. Plus society-level questions like whether we are in a period of stagnation, how we fund maverick ideas, and why we need hubris. @MuseAppHQ hello@museapp.com Show notes Jason Crawford / The Roots of Progress / @jasoncrawford Fieldbook We Need a New Science of Progress The Torch of Progress — Ep. 13 with Adam Wiggins The Great Stagnation Bessemer steel process germ theory We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters The Rise and Fall of American Growth and Jason's summary Where Is My Flying Cars? and Jason's summary Luddites Victorian-era concept of Progress A Culture of Growth Francis Bacon growth mindset The March of Progress World's Fair posters phase 3 clinical trials Hardcore History techno-optimism 1927 Charles Lindbergh ticker-tape parade Why haven't we celebrated any major achievements lately? Academy of Thought and Industry Boom 747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet Concorde

Tyler Cowen is an economist and public intellectual par excellence. Show notes Selected links •Follow Tyler: Website | Twitter | Podcast | Blog •Stubborn Attachments, by Tyler Cowen •Ideal Code, Real World, by Brad Hooker •Utilitarianism and Co-operation, by Donald Regan •Peter Thiel interview, Conversations with Tyler •The Great Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen •The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin Friedman •Fully Growth, by Dietrich Vollrath •'The Nobel Prize Isn't What It Used To Be', Bloomberg article by Tyler Cowen •'Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2020' •Superintelligence, by Nick Bostrom •A Tract on Monetary Reform, by John Maynard Keynes •Indian Currency and Finance, by John Maynard Keynes •Individualism and Economic Order, by Friedrich Hayek •The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon Topics discussed •If God is dead, life is absurd and there are no rules, why shouldn't we just commit suicide? •Why should we care about the distant future? •Does rule utilitarianism collapse into act utilitarianism? •How can we make decisions at all without succumbing to moral paralysis and total uncertainty? •Why isn't the epistemic critique fatal to consequentialism? •Why didn't Tyler donate the proceeds of Stubborn Attachments to an effective charity? •What is the Great Stagnation? •Why was 1973 the breakpoint in western productivity growth? •Is the Great Stagnation overdetermined? •What metric would Tyler look at to determine whether the Great Stagnation had ended? •When did Tyler first become cognisant of the...

Matt Ridley is an author, journalist, biologist, and businessman. His books have sold over a million copies. Show notes Selected links •Follow Matt Ridley: Website | Twitter •How Innovation Works, by Matt Ridley •The Origins of Virtue, by Matt Ridley •Zero to One, by Peter Thiel •Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin •The Innovator's Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen •'The Use of Knowledge in Society', essay by Friedrich Hayek •Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou •The Great Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen •The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon Topics discussed •When did Matt first come to understand the disturbing notion of selfish gene theory? 8:55 •How did Matt, a biologist, become so interested in innovation? 16:20 •The infinite improbability drive. 20:30 •What's the difference between innovation and invention? 24:05 •What do most people (wrongly) believe about how innovation works? 25:48 •Why innovation relies on collaboration. 33:53 •Innovation is the child of freedom. But what amount or types of freedom are sufficient to underpin innovation? 40:35 •Why does innovation thrive in fragmented political systems? 46:39 •Does unfettered economic freedom tend irresistibly towards monopolies? 50:37 •Antitrust enforcement: have we been doing enough? 1:02:44 •The relationship between uncertainty and innovation. 1:05:58 •Frauds and visionaries. 1:14:20 •Uncertainty and economics. 1:15:26 •Are we in the midst of a Great Stagnation? 1:26:40 •Can we escape stagnation? 1:40:30

En nuestro primer episodio, conversamos con Juan Carlos Echeverry sobre el futuro de la educación. Juan Carlos es un gran comunicador y un profesor memorable. Sus ideas nos sorprendieron porque van más allá del debate tradicional, sugiriendo que el foco de América Latina para afrontar los retos del futuro debería estar en transformar, más que la educación, la pedagogía. Juan Carlos Echeverry habla con autoridad sobre este y muchos temas, gracias su amplia y muy diversa experiencia. Se ha destacado en los sectores público, privado y académico. Ha sido Director del Departamento Nacional de Planeación en Colombia, Decano de Facultad de Economía de la Universidad de los Andes, Ministro de Hacienda y Presidente de Ecopetrol. Es consultor en temas económicos y también autor de una novela, titulada En Sitios más Oscuros. Es comentarista en Caracol Radio sobre temas de actualidad, y comenta los libros que ha leído recientemente. Es doctor en economía de la Universidad de Nueva York, y también hizo estudios de posgrado en Alemania. Vive con su familia en el estado de Maryland, Estados Unidos.Estas son algunas de las referencias que menciona a lo largo del episodio. - Richard Feynman: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character). Disponible en https://amzn.to/2J2Dsvz- Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel. Disponible en https://amzn.to/2xTu2Ae- Robert J. Gordon: Rise and Fall of American Growth. Disponible en https://amzn.to/33DH68IEste episodio fue dirigido por Francisco Noguera y Ricardo Pineda. La edición estuvo a cargo de César Ocampo. Pueden seguir a Futuros Posibles en Instagram @futuros.posibles.podcast, y suscribirse a nuestra lista de distribución en www.futurosposibles.co

Use these timestamps to jump right into the episode:2:15 – Larry Summers’s secular stagnation hypothesis (see his Peterson Institute talk);4:10 – discussion of Tyler Cowen’s and Robert Gordon’s views (see Cowen’s lecture on Inequality, productivity stagnation and Moore’s Law and check out Robert Gordon’s book The Rise and Fall of American Growth);5:45 – On Stiglitz’s attack on Summers and secular stagnation (see Stiglitz’s article The myth of secular stagnation);7:30 – reference to “Dr Doom” Nouriel Roubini’s “perfect storm in 2020” interview from 2018;9:00 – discussion of Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh’s new book Innovation + Equality; 11:10 – reference to the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism;13:30 – Financial Times editorial on GDPR;14:08 – Verge article on new California data privacy law; and15:27 – IMF blog post on climate change. 

Please listen to our weekly podcast summarizing our June 22 note and consider becoming a paid subscriber, if you are not already, to read the full noteIP, Innovation, Policy, Productivity and MarginsRobert Gordon in the “Rise and Fall of American Growth” concluded the best innovation is behind us.  Erik Brynjolfsson’s in “The Second Machine Age”, reached the opposite conclusion.  Robert Solow commented decades ago that technology could be seen everywhere except in the productivity statistics.  Finally, Alexander Field in “A Great Leap Forward” described how the Great Depression obfuscated the beginning of a golden age for productivity.  While second revisions to GDP rarely generate much interest, the sharp upward revision to intellectual property product investment was the catalyst for this note. Barry C. KnappManaging PartnerIronsides Macroeconomics LLC908-821-7584https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-c-knapp/@barryknapp This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at ironsidesmacro.substack.com/subscribe

This is the episode for you, if you're interested in rugby league expansion in the USA. It's also the episode for you if you're interested in knowing more about the deal that got Jamil Robinson & Brandon Anderson to Red Star Belgrade. 2019 is looking up!

The job numbers are strong and GDP growth looks great, but is it really the "best economy" in U.S. history as President Donald Trump says? Robert Gordon, a Northwestern University professor and author of the 2016 book “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,'' dives into the history and discusses what's not so great about the current situation. 

With technology and this information age, we always hear "the world is changing faster than ever". But is it? Today's guest makes the case this is not true. Todd and Evan interview Professor Robert Gordon of Northwestern University and author of "The Rise and Fall of American Growth". Robert, an influential economist, says US growth is slowing, and this has huge implications for your future.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.AudioPlayer.embed("audioplayer_40", {soundFile:"http%3A%2F%2Fsupplychaininsights.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fpodcasts%2FInterview_with_Robert_J_Gordon_on_American_Productivity-episode_221.mp3"}); At the Supply Chain Insights Global Summit (September 5-8, 2017), Robert J. Gordon, author of the book The Rise and Fall of American Growth, will be speaking on the impact of technology on American productivity. In this interview Dr. Gordon explains how to measure American productivity and the impact of technology on the third industrial revolution. At the conference Dr. Gordon will share what we can learn from the Third Industrial Revolution to apply to the fourth advancement of technology that is coming with the Supply Chain Digital Age. Straight Talk With Supply Chain Insights – Podcast episode #221

We revise the book The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon published by Princeton University Press 2016 Bennett Baumer walks us through the different American economic revolutions cited in the publication. He synthesis the most important information in this article published in the April issue of The Indypendent. To read the article online go to indypendent.org

When phone companies implored U.S. customers in 2003 to text more because they were lagging behind the rest of the world, it was all over. Almost. While we're used to a dizzying array of new apps each month and new "sharing economy" companies such as Uber and AirBnB transform the way we do business, one of the greatest periods of U.S. productivity was already behind us by 2005. The little gadgets we're addicted to now are nothing compared with the invention and adoption of the electric light, indoor plumbing and the automobile. That's according to Robert J. Gordon, author of "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" and a professor at Northwestern University. There's not much on the horizon to change all that, Gordon tells Scott Lanman and Daniel Moss. But take heart: A recession isn't likely anytime soon!

Robert Gordon PhD '67 calls his new book a revised version of his thesis for Professor Robert Solow, "47 years late." The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War upends the typical narrative about the wonders of twenty-first century American innovations. In this interview, Gordon shares his thoughts on American growth and shares some memories of his MIT years. Read more: http://bit.ly/21bLmTd Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/2Je9zY4

Robert Gordon, author of “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” and Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, debate whether the era of strong economic growth is over, or whether innovation can revive America’s future.

Part 2 includes Panel I: The Coming Revolution in American Vehicle Transportation

Part 1 includes keynote speech delivered by John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil Company.

Part 3 includes a presentation by lunch session speaker Scott Segal

Part 4 includes Panel II: Creating a Common Market in Future Fuels

Part 4 includes Panel II: Creating a Common Market in Future Fuels

Part 3 includes a presentation by lunch session speaker Scott Segal

Part 1 includes keynote speech delivered by John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil Company.

Part 2 includes Panel I: The Coming Revolution in American Vehicle Transportation

Wesley K. Clark, retired U.S. Army General and one-time presidential candidate is long out of politics, but not political strategizing. Clark sits on energy company boards, works as an investment banker and runs an international consulting firm focusing on security and communication. "Don't Wait For The Next War: A Strategy for American Growth and Global Leadership." surveys  present American domestic and foreign policies and offers a plan. Here is an in-depth conversation with a man who has spent a good part of his life thinking about America's place in the world. 

Discuss this episode in the Muse community Follow @MuseAppHQ on Twitter Show notes 00:00:00 - Speaker 1: I think that the future is not determined. I think that it is up to us, and I think that we should always believe fundamentally in the ability of human intelligence when properly applied to solve problems. 00:00:17 - Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Meta Muse. Muse is a tool for thought on iPad, but this podcast isn’t about Muse the product. It’s about Muse, the company and the small team behind it. I’m Adam Wiggins. I’m here today with my colleague Mark McGranaghan. Hey, Adam, and our guest Jason Crawford from Routes of Progress. 00:00:35 - Speaker 1: Hello, thanks for having me on. 00:00:37 - Speaker 2: And Jason, when we first met, you were a tech founder working on Field Book. Tell me about that. 00:00:42 - Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s right. So most of my career has been in software and technology. I was a software engineer, engineering manager, and tech startup founder. Most recently, starting in 2013, I started a company called Field Book. Field Book was a sort of hybrid spreadsheet database, a lot like Air Table, so very much in the mode of a tool for thought and I’m very sympathetic to that general space of tools. I still have a soft place in my heart for it. In fact, Adam, one of the things That inspired me and helped give my mindset early on in developing that tool was a book that I think I learned about from you, A Small Matter of Programming by Bonnie Nardi. 00:01:23 - Speaker 2: Um, yeah, so that was a 93. Yeah, you can believe that. 00:01:27 - Speaker 1: And still very relevant today, frankly, and so I told all my employees, recommended they read at least the first few chapters of that book and there’s a significant amount in there about spreadsheets, which are probably the greatest tool for thought ever created, so. 00:01:40 - Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think the world’s most successful end user programming tool, which is almost everyone knows how to use a spreadsheet and probably can do at least the very most basic function like summing a column, and that is a small bit of computer code. 00:01:52 - Speaker 1: Exactly. So yeah, I built Field Book, worked on it for about 5 years. Unfortunately, didn’t work out, we ended up shutting down the product and selling the team. We did a sort of aquahire to start up Flexport. 00:02:04 - Speaker 2: And to be fair, the end user programming dream is one that many have chased and few have found there’s a few success stories, yeah, spreadsheets, you know, which are now decades old, maybe Flash, maybe Unity more recently, but it remains a really elusive dream to make a tool that both brings kind of the power of programming to an audience that is not already professional programmers. 00:02:27 - Speaker 1: It’s true, although at the same time, in the last couple of years, there’s been the notion of no code and low code has become, you know, much more prominent, and there have been a couple of major successes, so I’m happy to see tools like Air Table, tools like Notion, and, you know, a number of other sort of competitors in that space all keeping the dream alive and actually creating some pretty successful products. 00:02:50 - Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So going from there to, I don’t know, an independent scholar or educator or advocacy around progress studies seems like at least a pretty big leap. I’d love to hear that story. 00:03:02 - Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s right. So what happened was I got interested in the story of human progress early 2017. It began as not even a side project, it began as just a reading list, really. It was what books am I gonna read next. I always like to be reading a non-fiction book and at a certain point I discovered that it was kind of a good idea to read books in clusters, sort of pick a theme and then read a handful of books on one theme, and you can learn a lot more from that than just reading random books. So I decided to learn about the history of human progress, and mostly in the beginning at least was interested in focusing on kind of technological and industrial progress, really fascinated by just the simple basic fact of economic living conditions and standards of living throughout history, how much those have really skyrocketed in the last couple 100 years after, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of years of very slow progress and very little improvement overall in living conditions. And I just wanted to know, like, how did we get here? What were the major breakthroughs, the inventions and discoveries that created this standard of living? And ultimately I’m interested in getting to the root causes. When I started blogging about this, I called it the roots of progress. You know, so ultimately understanding what are the conditions, what are the root causes of this explosion of creativity and invention that ultimately has made everybody’s lives so much better. So it started off as just me sort of reading books, and then the books were so fascinating that I decided to start making some notes on them and maybe publishing the notes on a kind of a little blog that I didn’t even care if really anybody read except for maybe a handful of my friends. And then a couple of years went by and I was still doing it and frankly, it just became my hobby, you know, people would ask me, do you have any hobbies? And I would think about what do I do on nights and weekends? And then I would say, well, I don’t know, is economic history a hobby? Can that be a hobby? Because that was where my time was going. And so then when I decided that it was time for me to move on from the last tech job and figure out something new to do, I asked myself, what am I really obsessed with right now? What’s the one thing that I can’t see myself not doing in the near future? And it was really doing this research and writing about the history of technology. In the meantime, a couple of things that happened. One is that my audience had actually grown somewhat, some of my posts kind of got popular, one of them hit number one on Hacker News and So I was starting to actually see that there was an audience for what I was doing, people liked it. And then the other thing was that a whole community began to form around this notion of progress studies, particularly after economist Tyler Cowen and startup founder Patrick Collison wrote an article together in the Atlantic about a year and a half ago, calling for more focus on the nature of economic and industrial progress and indeed calling for a discipline of progress studies. And so that article sort of galvanized a community around this notion and it turned out there are a lot of people who are interested in this concept. And so, you know, between that community and my new audience and my just personal obsession with the topic. It was a, I won’t say it was an easy decision to kind of make a hard left turn and just take my career in a different direction, but there was something that just felt inevitable and undeniable about it. So here I am, it’s a little more than a year later, and I’m quite happy with it. It’s still a topic that continues to fascinate me and I think it’s still very important for the world. 00:06:27 - Speaker 2: Yeah, I find it really interesting that my own journey as kind of tech entrepreneur, like if you go back, I don’t know, 56 years, maybe you and I had pretty similar jobs in certain ways, you know, starting a company, building a tool, sort of standard software as a service inside the Silicon Valley startup, combinator model, and then we each in our own ways got interested in the meta process of innovation, and my path was to go off and start this research. Switch that Mark later joined up with about how we generate big breakthrough kind of step change, new digital technologies and that in turn led to me working on Muse because that was a spin out of that technology. You went a maybe more scholarly path, but I feel like they come from the same place, which is working within that box, that Silicon Valley box, which is very much about change, innovation, new technology, but it’s sort of narrow in a certain way. It doesn’t take that broader view of Human history and how do we get here? And for me, a big personal breakthrough or something like that source of inspiration was going back and researching all these older industrial research labs like ARPA and Bell Labs and even back to Thomas Edison, and you were nice enough to invite me to give a little talk at Torture Progress about that exact topic. So maybe yeah, there’s a seed of something that started in the same place, even though we ended up doing very different things in terms of our day job now. 00:07:50 - Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s interesting to see how much overlap there is between the software, kind of computer and internet and startup community and the progress community. It seems like it’s probably not a coincidence, but it’s interesting. 00:08:04 - Speaker 2: And Mark, you’ve been a little bit involved in the progress studies community. How do you think about this? How do you even define progress might be one place to start. 00:08:13 - Speaker 3: Well, that’s a big one. You might define progress as our ability to satisfy human wants and needs and desires. It’s a big area, right? I guess I came to it similar to Jason through the lens of economic history and reading about all the progress we had made over the past several 100 years in particular, but then also how curiously we seem to be going pretty sideways in the last 50 years. And it’s notable, I think that both you and Jason described reading about or having the sense. of there’s some sort of stagnation going on, because actually, if you look at the literature, it’s very pervasive. In many areas, it seems like we’re going a little bit sideways in terms of not making the type of progress we made in the first half of the 20th century, for example. And so as I read more and more, you keep seeing this over and over again, and it drives me to wonder what exactly is going on and how can we make it better. And I also have an interest similar to both you and the, you might call it the meta of why this is all happening the way it is and what might make it better. But to my mind, that’s perhaps the main thing. What’s the system of social technologies, if you will, that allows us to make progress or prohibits us from doing so. 00:09:16 - Speaker 2: Where do you fall on the stagnation hypothesis, Jason? 00:09:19 - Speaker 1: Yeah, short answer, I have come around to it after being initially skeptical. It was not my initial or primary motivation for sort of getting into progress studies or, you know, starting to study this story of technological progress. I was more motivated by sort of the opposite, which is how much progress there actually has been in the last few 100 years compared to the previous several 1000. Right, and I think we need to keep in mind that is still the bigger story. Even if progress has slowed today, it’s still significantly faster than it was, I think in any pre-industrial era, right? Like the big division is still between the industrial age and pretty much all the time prior to that. However, after some amount of time reading different arguments, quantitative and qualitative, looking at it in different ways. I’ve come around to this idea that progress actually has slowed down in the last approximately 50 years. I now see that. And part of what actually really helped me to see it was mapping out on a kind of a timeline, major invention. In different areas. So I made a sort of two-dimensional timeline for myself or one dimension was, well, time, and the other dimension was just sort of breaking out areas of technology into a few major categories like manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and so forth. And then I started placing on here kind of like, what were the huge breakthroughs, you know, in each of these areas at different times. And just from that, you can kind of exercise, you can really start to see it. And so the simplest way that I can summarize stagnation right now. is to just point out that around the end of the 1800s and into the early 1900s, we had, by my count, approximately 4 major technological industrial revolutions going on at once. One of them was electricity and everything that I was turning into, motors and everything, light bulbs, etc. Another was oil and all of its ramifications, including the internal combustion engine and the vehicles made from that the car and the airplane. Another was, I’ll just call it chemical engineering, the science of chemistry really coming into its own and beginning to really affect industrial processes. An early example would be the Bessemer steel process, a late example of this that really kind of capped it off would be the entire plastics industry. And then the fourth one, which maybe doesn’t always get a listed or counted as kind of a quote unquote industrial breakthrough, but which I think essentially does fit in that category, is the germ theory, the germ theory of disease and all of its ramifications in improving hygiene, improving public health, pasteurization of food, better food handling practices, especially water filtration and chlorination that improved that. And so these 4 things, oil, electricity, chemistry, and the germ theory, 4 major, mostly scientific and overall industrial innovation breakthroughs that are completely transforming one or two of those major areas of the economy, and then each one of them is having ramifications pretty much on like the entire world and on all areas of the economy, and they’re all happening at once. Now by the time you get to the end of the 20th century, the last 50 years or so, you’re basically down to 1. It’s the computer and internet revolution, right? And that is huge, and I think we shouldn’t dismiss it or discount it or downplay it, and there’s a lot of breath wasted on people arguing it across purposes a sort of like missing each other’s point going back and forth. Where I blame Peter Thiel for this a little bit. The whole, you know, we wanted flying cars, we got 140 characters. Well, what’s the matter with 140 characters? Like, That’s a pretty dismissive way of talking about this amazing information revolution that created the entire internet and put a supercomputer in everybody’s pocket and gives you access to all the world’s information and has connected everybody like never before. I mean, that is, you know, you don’t want to downplay that. But I think it’s fair to say that the computer and internet revolution itself is roughly comparable to any one of those four revolutions that I just mentioned, oil, electricity, and so forth. I don’t think it can measure up to all 4 of them going on at once. So if you just in a very crude way, if you want to count major technological revolutions that are going on, we went from 4 going on at once now to approximately 1. And by the way, that 1 has been going on for several decades, it’s kind. starting to level off. It’s starting to plateau. We’re starting to get to the point where it’s saturated the world and there’s still a lot more value to be generated out of computers and the internet, but it’s not gonna last forever, right? In a couple of decades, certainly we’re gonna start to see diminishing returns if we’re not already. And I think there’s some ways in which we are already starting to see it. So what comes next? Do we have another revolution on the bench or waiting in the wings to take over, right? Because the only thing worse from going from 4 technological revolutions to 1 is from going from 1 to 0. So that’s my current take on stagnation. 00:14:10 - Speaker 2: It does beg the question of what is the right number of revolutions to have or ideal number perhaps. There’s one version which is just more progress is better, and just 4 is good, 6 would be even better, 10 would be great, so 25, there’s another version where we say, OK, we like the world that existed and that it produced to have 3 or 4 major revolutions going on at the time. One isn’t bad. Somewhere in there seems about right, but there is such a thing as maybe too much progress or that’s not the only thing that matters in the world. There’s other things related to just human happiness. So how do we decide, I guess what what what we want in terms of societal progress. 00:14:50 - Speaker 3: Maybe that’s an internal variable in the system because you can imagine different social technologies that is different political systems, different ways for organizing society, where you have more or less ability to metabolize change. There are some structures that are very brittle, and if you put more than one, you know, industrial revolution on, it would just crumble and break. But we’ve also seen that there are systems that can handle 4 at a time, you know, reasonably well, at least get through to the other end. So I think there isn’t necessarily hard cap so much as you need the technology to be able to metabolize other technologies, if you will. The other thought is, and this one was really driven home to me by the book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which paints the picture that Jason just did about the huge amount of change that we had in our everyday lives before 1970 and basically the stopping aside from the information technology revolution after that. That book really focuses on the everyday lives of people and what it was like to live day to day. And a point that the author constantly makes is there are a few areas that are really key, housing, food, transportation, medicine, and these are kind of the bread and butter of everyday life. And it’s easy, I think, to forget that as people who work in the information economy. And so one way to answer the question of how many revolutions should we have is, well, we obviously have huge gaps in all of those areas. So we need enough to at least make progress in the big spaces like that. 00:16:04 - Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a good book that really does drive home, I think the how much progress there was in that late 1800s to early 1900s time frame, you know, compared to today. I deeply disagree with his conclusions about the future, where he sees basically no more progress ever, as far as I can tell, but I think his history is excellent. If you don’t want to read all 700 pages of the book, by the way, I did summarize it on my blog at roots of Progress.org. I have a sort of summary and book review. So I break it down, um, I mean, food, clothing, shelters sort of one way to look at it. I break it down as kind of manufacturing, agriculture, energy, transportation, communication, and medicine. Those are sort of the big 6 that I think about in terms of areas of the economy. And you can put almost all, not absolutely everything, but you can put almost all big breakthroughs and innovation into those categories. And so I see no reason why we shouldn’t have at least one major revolution, you know, affecting each of those things at any given time. You know, if you want to ask, well, how many technological revolutions do we need at once, right? One thing to look at is the areas that haven’t changed much and especially the technologies that seemed promising and areas where people thought there might be a revolution. But either it was aborted or hasn’t arrived yet or just hasn’t lived up to its potential. I mean, if you go back to the 1950s, everybody at the time thought that the future of energy was absolutely nuclear, you know, they almost just took it for granted that of course, this is the future, this is where it’s going, we’re gonna have nuclear powered homes, nuclear cars, nuclear batteries, nuclear everything. And I’m far, far from an expert in that technology and what is actually possible, but I think that far more is possible, at least according to the laws of physics that we know, than what we’ve achieved or than what most people actually believe to be possible. So I strongly suspect that nuclear is a far under exploited technology, and in a world where everybody is very worried about carbon emissions, that really looks like an oversight, doesn’t it? Manufacturing is another interesting one. So another book that I recently finished and reviewed on my blog is called Where Is My Flying Car by J Stors Hall. It’s basically just sort of the polar opposite of Robert Gordon’s rise and Fall of American Growth. It’s in many ways a work of futurism, and the author spent a lot of his career in nanotechnology, trying to do, you know, true or, you know, investigating, researching true, like atomically precise manufacturing, where you have basically nanobots putting together. Whatever you want, assembling it atom by atom, placing every atom in the right place, that would be an absolute revolution in manufacturing, right? That would allow us to not only create things of enormously higher quality, building 100 kilometer towers out of diamond, right? But also would, you know, like pretty much every revolution in manufacturing enormously bring the cost of everything way down, right? Because you’d be able to do everything faster and with much less human labor. You can look at genetic engineering technology and biotechnology, you know, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Gosh, it would be really nice if we had had a broad-spectrum antiviral drug that was as broadly effective as our broad-spectrum antibiotics. We don’t have any such thing yet. I’m really, really glad that somebody was working on Messenger RNA based vaccine technologies because the first two COVID vaccines that have come through and seem to have promising results in their phase through trials are both based on Messenger RNA. That’s a brand new technology, by the way. I mean, it’s been around in the lab for a while, but there’s never been a vaccine approved or in widespread use based on that technology. So this looks like COVID will be the first. So there’s always more. More progress to be made. And I think that’s a really important theme of progress studies, something I think you learn by looking at the history and I think, you know, it was always very easy to take the current world for granted and just assume that kind of this is how things are. You know, the people 100, 200 years ago, many of them were quite happy with the world as it was. They didn’t see the need for these huge breakthroughs. They didn’t believe they were possible, they didn’t even necessarily believe that they would be a good thing. Every single one of them was fought and opposed, not only by special interests who maybe stood to lose if some new breakthrough came into the world, but also The original Luddites, right? Yeah, and also just by people who were generally afraid of the technology and didn’t know, you know, what to do with it. 00:20:27 - Speaker 2: So, yeah, well, by default, you could say that humans I think are Fearful of change, and I almost wonder if kind of the tech founder type is someone that, because I’ve always been drawn to novelty and I find adapting to change or even taking advantage of it, sort of making the most of it in some way to be an exciting and fun challenge and stagnation is sort of bad for me, but I’ve come to realize that that is very much the exception, not the rule. In general, change is just threatening, very simple. 00:20:56 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that’s right. So I think it’s very important that we remember that perspective and that we remember that. Now if there’s one message I really want to drive home to people, it is that the future can be as amazingly better compared to the present as the present is compared to the past. Are we in the future and our descendants can be as fantastically wealthy compared to today as we are compared to the people of 200 years ago, the vast majority of whom lived in what we today consider to be extreme poverty. So we should keep that in mind and always be working for that much, much better future. 00:21:31 - Speaker 2: And that’s part of what’s very powerful about the advocacy side of progress studies to me is that it’s probably a very crude summary of cultural attitudes about change, but I think from what I understand, most cultures through most of history, most of civilization. Saw the world is largely static and it was really fairly recent that you had this, oh, we can actually steadily improve and each generation can be better than last, but maybe that was the Victorian era concept of progress, progress with a capital P, which was the sense that things must get better, that it’s sort of mandated somehow by God or nature or it’s in our nature that if we just keep doing what we’re doing, things will continue. get better and then maybe that the pushback to that is, well, wait a minute, it’s actually not quite like that. Things can and do get worse, you know, ask the folks in the declining empire like Rome or many of the others over the millennia, but in general, we can choose a society and as individuals to say that we actually think progress is possible and desirable and then do things to try to affect that. 00:22:36 - Speaker 1: That’s right. The most interesting book I’ve read on this was A Culture of Growth by Joel McKe came out just a few years ago. It’s one of the first books I read in my study of progress, and he says much of what you just said that the very idea of progress is a relatively new one. It is not at all the default. In fact, a common view in many places and times in history was sort of the opposite, something he called. ancestor worship, where we looked back to our ancient ancestors as the most Aristotle. Yeah, or even in the Middle Ages, people looked at the, they looked around and they saw the pyramids and they saw the Colosseum and the Roman aqueducts and, you know, they just thought, well, wow, these ancient people who and then especially in the Renaissance and, you know, when they started rediscovering some of the ancient texts, and they’re just getting this knowledge. That had been lost in Europe for 1000 years, you know, like how to mix volcanic ash into your cement to make a hydraulic cement, right? That was something the Romans knew and worked with and was kind of rediscovered 1000 years later after the fall of the empire. And I think it wasn’t just in the west either. I mean, I think the West had this special sort of historical thing where there was a kind of cultural decline for a long time and Than a rebirth, but I think in many places and times people have sort of looked to ancient ancestors as the wisest people who ever lived. We will never surpass their knowledge or achievements. All we can do is kind of learn what they had to teach us. And so progress in a certain way requires reversing this notion and actually believing that we can do better, that we can discover knowledge that none of our ancestors ever had, that we can create things that work better than anything they ever made. And that takes a little bit of hubris and Mir says that that notion of progress evolved in the West roughly between about Columbus and Newton, so say the 1500s and 1600s. The Voyages of Discovery actually had a significant amount to do with it, because here we are out discovering entire new continents that the ancients never knew about. Francis Bacon had a lot to do with it, and he’s a pivotal role in Moyer’s book. Newton really put the cap on it with his system of the heavens and explaining the motion of the planets and clearly better than anything that, you know, Ptolemy or anybody ever came up with. The summary of that book is basically it’s how the Enlightenment set the stage for and led to the industrial revolution. 00:24:55 - Speaker 3: This reminds me, one of the interesting things I see with the study of progress is that it’s very contingent and embedded. And by that I mean, you generally don’t have one person who strikes out and decides, I’m going to make some progress today. Instead, you have a culture, you have a society, it often takes several 100 years. Amen. 00:25:12 - Speaker 2: Speak for yourself. That’s what I think every morning. Perfect. 00:25:17 - Speaker 3: So you do think that Adam, but that’s because in part, it’s because you spent so much time in Silicon Valley, which has become the sort of magnet and amplifier of this attitude that if you spend enough time there, you can kind of catch as a contagious disease almost. And I think it’s important to understand these very human elements of how just the notion of the improving mentality can be transmitted and encouraged culturally or conversely, it can be lost if it becomes too diffuse. 00:25:41 - Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s almost a societal level growth mindset where, yeah, again, it’s the thing we can do and we can choose to do, but it is not automatic. It’s something we have to work out and over extended periods of time. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, and I certainly have plenty of ways that I talk about, and Mark, you and I talked recently about our decision to leave San Francisco, each on our own basis some years past, and some of that was for me at least was somewhat some Silicon Valley monoculture and feeling like I wanted to break out of that to have sort of new perspectives and new ways to pursue the things that are important to me. But at the same Time for some of the critique I have there, it is really one of the few places in the world I feel where that it is a baseline cultural thing that we’re here to make changes that we think will improve and possibly very deep changes. We talk about disruption, which is sort of an overused word, but it’s this idea that it’s the creative destruction. You can’t go beyond very incremental improvement without some tearing down. What’s already there and hopefully that shouldn’t be in a disrespectful way. And sometimes Silicon Valley startups get into trouble with that a little bit, which is they get so wrapped up in there, we’re going to change the world and it’s gonna be better that they forget about that every change, every transition has impacts, some negative, and you should be aware of those. But at the same time, yeah, that perspective of we can make the world better is quite a unique thing. 00:27:05 - Speaker 3: Yeah, now we’re kind of getting into the discussion of why we progress or don’t. So Jason, I’m curious, you’re looking back 50 years and you’re seeing we’re not making as much progress as we did in the previous couple 100 years, even though it’s more than we did 1000 years ago. Why do you think that is? 00:27:20 - Speaker 1: Yeah. I have 3 main hypotheses right now. My hunch is that they’re all true and part of the issue. The most fundamental is cultural and sort of philosophic ideas and attitudes towards progress. I think in many ways our world is not nearly as favorable to progress and doesn’t think of it as highly as we used to. We’re much less appreciative and much more fearful and angry. And I think when you value something less, you get less of it. You get less investment, you get less resources going into it. Fewer people want to devote their careers to it and so forth. Exactly why that happened and why it happened when it did, I don’t totally know. But if you go back to again, sort of the late 1800s. The culture in general, I mean, particularly in the west, and especially in America, was extremely favorable to progress. It was seen as a very good thing. It’s coming along and improving everybody’s lives. It was transforming the world. Humans were proud of themselves as a species and about our abilities and what we could do, right? That was sort of how it was seen. It’s this kind of Victorian progress with a capital P, you know, the march of progress and so forth, right? I mean, you go back and those things are, I don’t know, almost cliches now, but they were very real attitudes. People celebrated progress. You go and you look at the imagery, the posters from the old World’s Fair type exhibitions and the way that they saw. They really saw progress as this positive force moving forward. As what you mentioned earlier, yes, I think some of them even. Got to maybe see it as inevitable and unstoppable, which is wrong, it’s not inevitable in any way, but people saw it as something, you know, overall that was making the world better. Sometime seemingly around the, I’m just gonna say the middle of the 20th century, the tide seemed to turn, and by the end of the 60s and with the rise of the counterculture, you definitely see popular attitudes turning against this. I think you See most of all, but not exclusively in sort of the rise of the environmentalist movement, there was just much more concern about technology, fear for unintended consequences, a different set of values, even that may be put nature and animals, other species, the planet itself, the quote unquote ecosystem, all of that, even above and beyond what’s good for individual human beings. And overall, again, I think just people stopped believing in progress as this fundamentally good force and some people even started seeing it as a fundamentally bad thing. And so, again, when you give less honor and prestige and acclaim and social. Status to invention and science and technology and business and capitalism, you’re gonna get less of it. You know, you have fewer people devoting their energies to it and more people devoting their energies to stopping it. One of the lines from, I mentioned that book, Where is my flying car? He said something like, today for every person who’s out there trying to change the world, there’s somebody else who believes that they’re saving the world by stopping that person. So that I think is maybe the deepest explanation. So my second major hypothesis is the growth of bureaucracy and especially government regulation, although not exclusively government regulation, I think there’s been a general kind of growth of bureaucratic overhead even within private institutions. But there’s just so many more rules now, so much more, you know, that any new thing, both the invention itself and the process of research and development, there’s just so much more to comply with, right? And so much more overhead, and it’s just an enormous amount of friction added to the entire process. I mean, the multi-billion dollar FDA pipeline now, right? I mean, that’s how much it costs to get a new drug out there. The cost of getting a new drug out there has been increasing over time, over the decades. There’s sort of an inverse Moore’s law. In fact, there was a famous paper by, I believe Jack Scannell at Al. That coined the term E-room’s law. Eroom is more spelled backwards because the price of getting a new drug to market on average was doubling every 9 years. And I think that may have leveled off or so in the last decade, but still, the prices are enormously high. It costs multiple billions of dollars on average per new drug approved by the FDA. And uh you know, there’s a number of different potential explanations for this, and they mention a number in that paper, including things like, by the way, every time you add a drug to the market, all new drugs have to be better than everything that’s ever previously, right, so the bar just keeps going up, right? But you know, one of their hypotheses was what they call the cautious regulator problem or the over cautious regulator, just that the requirements for new drugs have just been going up and up. To the point where, you know, the FDA doesn’t even allow people to try drugs experimentally, even after they’ve been proven safe, right? They have a further standard of efficacy. And it’s the phase 3 of the clinical trials that costs the most money, by the way. Like, why is nobody even talking about something like a universal right to try, not even, you know, putting these drugs out there just kind of on the open market, but At least allowing people who discover them and know about them, give them the right to try in their own bodies, at least after these things are proven safe, you know, in earlier trials or once we have like a certain amount of data, right? I mean, these are the kinds of things where I think, I mean, coming back to sort of cultural foundations, I think we have evolved something of a safety culture, especially in the United States and in the world in general. And I often wonder if the safety culture has gone beyond true safety into basically safety theater, where we just keep adding overhead and processes and bureaucracy and regulation. Basically, we’ve gotten to the point where you can justify anything on grounds of safety, and you can pretty much kill anything on concerns of safety. And there just doesn’t seem to be any really ability to talk about trade-offs. And so I fear that what has happened is that we’ve kind of built up the safety theater, which is extremely low ROI like it adds tons of overhead and does not actually add an appreciable amount of safety. So I think we need to get smarter about the ways that we create safety. And this is not, by the way, to say that safety is not a valuable goal. It absolutely is. In fact, increased safety is one of the enormous accomplishments of technological and industrial progress over the last couple 100 years. Our lives are actually much safer now in many ways, although there are some arguments that they become less safe in some significant kind of, you know, tail risk ways. But in many ways, you know, our exposure to germs and disease, our exposure to air pollution, just the safety of our machines and our vehicles, all of these things, we’ve actually gotten a lot safer in many ways. So I’m not against safety, I’m very much in favor of safety. I just think there’s a trade-off in how we create it. And then the third major hypothesis, and maybe the one that is closest to the hearts of Ink & Switch, is the way we fund, organize and manage research. We have lost certain ways of doing this, in particular, it’s been a significant decline of corporate research and corporate R&D labs. At the same time, concurrent with that, there’s been a kind of centralization and bureaucratization of funding for science and research, especially in a small number of large and bureaucratic government agencies, and I think there’s a good case to be made that we don’t have ways of funding the real kind of. Contrarian maverick breakthrough ideas anymore. And that also closely related to this, that we don’t have great ways of funding very uncertain long term research that can’t prove itself with very predictable or short-term results, but, you know, is actually the kind of thing that makes long-term fundamental breakthroughs. And so looking at how we organize and manage and especially get resources to fund different types of research and development, I think is an important place that we should look at for countering stagnation. So those are my three big hypotheses. 1, culture, 2, regulation of bureaucracy, 3, funding organization and management. 00:35:23 - Speaker 2: There was so much in there, I’m trying to figure out where to start on the response. You touched on many things, I think are very interesting safety is versus like anti-fragile FDA approval is the thing I’ve been involved in in some of my advocacy work, funding research is obviously a huge one, and they can switch in kind of broader independent research world, but actually I want, if I can respond to something at the very beginning there, he talked about the potential change in attitudes about kind of progress and maybe technology and maybe capitalism is kind of a piece of that as well. And you know, I agree with you that if you of some of these mechanisms that have brought us so many great advancements, I think that is a problem both for progress and humanity. But I also wonder if in that time range you were talking about that I don’t know, 1960s, 1970s counterculture, people thinking about the environment, a lot happened in there to make people maybe have almost a reality check against the maybe more uns the word for it, unchecked, kind of just positivism of science and technology and capitalism and the modern world’s all good. And we saw that nuclear, which as you said was this great big hope for the future of clean energy, we had these horrible meltdowns were so deeply traumatic to the individual countries where they happen. Maybe there’s something like discovering the link between cigarettes and cancer and that for many, many decades, generations really, these huge corporate interests had been basically pushing this addictive drug that turned out to be quite deadly. Obviously the environmental stuff, rainforest deforestation and shrinking ecosystems and all that sort of thing and. Yeah, that basically it was sort of reasonable to have a bit of a, wait a minute, maybe we should think about some of the downsides of some of the progress, technological progress or growth in capitalism that we experience. Now maybe the place where I land on that is having a little bit of a reality check, maybe was a good thing or is a good thing, you know, you don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. 00:37:19 - Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a major and significant factor actually was the World Wars. So if you read what people were saying and thinking pre-World War One, the excitement and enthusiasm for progress, and it wasn’t just technical and economic progress, it was scientific progress and it was in many ways moral and social progress that people saw. And the Enlightenment era was focused on all of those. And so, you know, people saw the and were hoping for, we’re looking ahead towards the perfection of morals and of society, just as we would perfect science and technology. And there was a belief and a hope that the new prosperity created by industry, the connections created by communications and transportation. The interlocking of peoples and economies created by trade, that all of this was leading to a grand new era of world peace, and perhaps even that war was a thing of the past. And the world wars completely shattered that illusion. They were, I believe, the most destructive wars in history, um, certainly they were enormous, highly destructive wars, and of course they were made more destructive through technology. You know, in World War One, we had chemical weapons, we have poison gas, right? We had the automatic guns, we had towards the end of the war, I think the tank. 00:38:44 - Speaker 2: One really powerful way to get your head around how shocking that was, the role of technology in essentially killing people in mass numbers is there’s this excellent history podcast called Hardcore History, and they had a series, I think it was like a 6 or 8 hour series on World War One, particularly the beginning of it and some of those first battles, and you know, at the start of that war, I don’t know, they have like French cavalry. Riding into battle with their blue jackets and their big puffy hats and their sabers on their side, and then you look at these battles where they pull out these new weapons that have been developed over the course of the previous few decades, and they’re able to just kill in just such efficient and brutal ways and it was just so shocking that war just took on a whole other meaning and I Listen to that whole series just as I first moved to Germany, which is of course a place that has very deep scars, cultural and otherwise from both of the World Wars and yeah, it was a really powerful thing and for me, even I tend towards techno optimism. I think I tend towards that like technology is unbalances for the good, but then listening to these kind of contemporary descriptions of the destructive power of the technology of that time. Again, it’s kind of a reality check. 00:39:59 - Speaker 1: Yeah, and then World War II, of course, was even worse. I mean, you know, World War 2 was the wizard’s war. If people could catch a glimpse of the role of technology in war in World War 1, it was very obvious by World War 2, right? I mean, we had planes and, you know, bombing runs and radar and and then to wrap it all up, the atomic bomb. And I think that when we think about people’s fears about nuclear technology and nuclear power and energy, I’m sure that a significant amount of it was the association with nuclear war. 00:40:31 - Speaker 2: Yeah, I’m pretty sure in a film if they ever want to give you the feeling of, I don’t know, technology’s gone too far, society’s gone awry, I feel like there’s a little montage of this in the Fifth Element, great little sci-fi movie from some years back where they showed that mushroom cloud, that is the icon for we went wrong somewhere and yeah, technology was a mistake, basically. Yeah. 00:40:54 - Speaker 1: So I think the World Wars were very significant in the psyche of the world overall, especially the West. But at the same time, I think that events affect people’s views of themselves in the world, but they don’t determine those views. There’s always a question of interpretation. And so, for reasons that I’m not yet clear enough on. To talk about them, people interpreted the wars in the aftermath in a particular way and in a way that caused many people to turn against technology as such, and in the phrase that you used to throw the baby out with the bathwater and to, you know, rather than saying, Well, we have put a lot of effort into creating these technologies that have made us very powerful, and we haven’t put enough effort into creating defensive technologies or creating safety technologies or Instead of just saying, well, our attention and effort has been misplaced, let’s refocus our efforts so that we make sure that progress serves mankind and not destroys it. I think a number of people turned to a particular kind of counter-enlightenment sort of romantic notion that had really been around for a long time. Had always been around in some form, a kind of a back to nature, you know, very Roussoy and sort of down to technology, back to nature, and let’s just live simpler, quiet lives rather than trying to sort of move forward and make everything better all the time the noble savage. Yeah, exactly. 00:42:22 - Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s an interesting angle in terms of the World Wars causing perceptions to be negative on progress. The people being negative on progress is interesting, because I think it’s kind of both a cause and an effect. It’s a cause for the reason that you just described, but I think something also went wrong around. The 70s in terms of how well the system was working for a lot of people. And so to some extent you had people more or less rationally saying, this isn’t going well for me, I don’t want to sign up for even more of it. And this connects to a broader theme I have around our social technology. And I keep using that phrase, to me, that means the systems, the governments, the organizations, the norms, the patterns of behavior that we have that determine how we operate day to day. It feels like that technology is becoming a worse and worse fit for purpose in the sense that a, it’s sort of Decaying, it’s becoming bloated and it’s losing the plot, but also the world is changing a lot, especially with information technology, and our social technologies largely haven’t caught up. So this is why I keep coming back to this space as being a really important frontier. We need better ways to organize and motivate our work as a better fit for our modern world. And I’m pretty optimistic that if we’re able to make progress in that domain, it will in turn facilitate progress in other areas like people feeling that the system is working better for them and also areas like funding more impactful research. 00:43:37 - Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s definitely true. I think that they’re reinforcing cycles in this, as with many things, I think in society, where the more you value progress and honor it, the more of it you get, and then the more people can see that it’s valuable. Conversely, the more that you are fearful of progress and try to block it, the more you get technological stagnation, which then leads to people saying, well, what has technology done for us lately? You know, I don’t really see how technology is making my life better, so maybe it’s not even a thing to bother with or invest in. It takes some cultural leadership with vision to break out of cycles like that. It takes somebody who can see beyond the recent past and see a different type of future other than what we’ve had to take things in either a positive or a negative direction. 00:44:27 - Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there’s an opportunity both for people to innovate within the system and to help create new systems. So as an example of the former, I would probably give Elon Musk, you know, he’s basically operating with the parameters of existing governments and organizations and Our model for capitalism, he’s like, I’m going to Mars. It’s kind of a mess to get there because of all this weird bureaucracy, but I’m doing it anyways, you know, good for him. And I think we also need stuff like Routes of Progress and ink and switch where it’s like, OK, let’s try to change the game a little bit here and rearrange the pieces. And I hope we can encourage people to operate on both fronts. 00:44:58 - Speaker 1: Absolutely. 00:44:59 - Speaker 2: Role models is another thing I think I would like to see more of and Jason, you referenced the celebrating achievements and yeah, the tickertape parades for Lindenberg when he crossed the Atlantic, celebrations of scientists that contributed to vaccines and things like that. And I don’t know if it’s an effect of kind of our TV oriented culture or something else, but when you look at the role models that people are likely to just the famous people, people are likely to name or people that kids are likely to say, I want to be like this person when I grow up. You know, they play sports, they’re actors, they’re maybe YouTubers nowadays that we aspire to be maybe political leaders and to some degree, there is, yeah, the kind of tech world, folks, the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and so on. But maybe we don’t have enough celebration of, and again it becomes a cycle, either a virtuous or non-virtuous cycle that if you celebrate the people who do these great achievements, and then people look at that and think, I want to be like that, I want to do what they do, and then you get more of those people. 00:45:59 - Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I do think that is part of the cycle, and yeah, in one sense, one of the biggest things that Elon Musk has contributed to the world is just people look up to him as a role model of like, wow, here’s somebody who’s defining really ambitious technological visions for the future and then going after them full throttle. And I think there’s a lot of people who will come in his wake and be inspired by that, him and others like him who are doing things like that. 00:46:26 - Speaker 3: I think that this idea of role models is super important because so much of human behavior and action is basically imitation, and so much of what we do is influenced by who we just basically happen to be around. And so it sounds kind of weird, but you can make really different stuff happen just by putting different people together. And this is why one of the frontiers of social technology that I’m so bullish on is different types of organizations and replacements largely for what was previously the university. Which are basically an elaborate mechanism for getting a bunch of weird people in the same hall, and there’s all kinds of apparatuses happening around that, but that’s the core engine of it. And I’m excited to see people exploring new models that try to get that same core dynamic, but that leverage the internet so that the routes of progress community would be one of those, for example. I think there’s just so much more to do there, and I’m pretty optimistic that we’ll figure out some cool stuff. So a lot of work to do here. Jason, is there anything in particular that you’re looking forward to working on next or that you are looking for help on going forward? 00:47:20 - Speaker 1: Let’s see, so a couple of projects that are big for me right now. So one is over the summer, I created a high school program in the history of technology. We ran it initially as a summer program and it’s now being incorporated into the history curriculum. Of a high school, private high school called the Academy of Thought and Industry, and I’m continuing to do some curriculum development for them and really excited about how that’s gonna turn out. I think high school is a great time to begin learning about the detailed history of technology and how it’s improved everybody’s lives. The other somewhat longer term project is that I am working on a book. So I’m gonna take the writing that I’ve been doing at the Roots of Progress and the kinds of stories that I tell there about the development of technology and how it changed the world and I’m gonna be putting it. Together into something a little more long form and comprehensive, so that is kind of my main focus right now. Can’t say at this point how far out it is. I’ve still got a lot of research to do, but that’s the biggest driving thing, you know, for me right now and the thing I’m most excited about. 00:48:26 - Speaker 2: I’m really excited about that one too, not least of which because I think a book makes a field or a movement more tangible in some way, but also because you were nice enough to give me a peek at the list of chapters and yeah, I’m even with all of the reading I’ve done of your material, I think having together in this long form format will be, well, something I’m really looking forward to. Well, it may be a fun place to end. I think an interest that Jason and I both share is jet travel and particularly supersonic jets, which had an interesting story here. I think just recently this company Boom has been out doing kind of big product rollouts to announce their basically prototype of their supersonic jet, but I got really interested in this when I read the biography of one of the main, what you call it product managers, maybe the lead of the team that worked on the 747. The 747 is basically the plane that defined the modern airplane. When you see planes designed before that, they look kind of old timey, and the 747 and that have come after it share kind of the same rough body shape and the same style of interior and that sort of thing. So it really ushered in this new era of air travel, but one of the things that’s powerful to me about reading this book, both because I’m a. person and I like hearing the inside story about how the stuff evolved, but you realize it was just a guy, very smart guy, and he had some really good predictions about the future and what these technologies might enable for travel, but you saw, again coming back to that theme of progress is a thing we can decide to do and work towards as individuals. He had a vision for more wide travel. He saw the technology could make it possible. He got Himself in the position to work on that project and made it happen and basically ushered in this modern era of travel, which, putting aside the last year of relative lockdown has been an absolute golden age where essentially most people have the ability to get on a plane in a major city and go to almost any other city in the world for a relatively affordable price, which is a really amazing breakthrough when you think of it. But we also thought at that same time that the 747 was being developed or the industry feeling was supersonic was the future. And so at the same time they were sort of designing and developing the 747 and some of the related technologies, there was also the development of what would eventually become probably the Concorde is the best known of the supersonic technologies, but that actually turned out to be a dead end or had this eventual abandon. where essentially a combination of the air pollution from the sonic boom, the fuel cost, and a few other factors meant that even though we have this technology that would allow you to fly, say from Paris to New York in just a few hours compared to the usual 6 to 8 hours it takes us across the Atlantic, eventually we shut all that down. And now there’s a new company that’s working on it saying basically some things have changed, some technologies have changed. We can do something different, but I find that story or that evolution to be an interesting example of progress as first of all, something that individuals drive and decide to do. Obviously in groups and through mechanisms like capitalism and government funding and all sorts of other, all those social technologies that Mark talked about, but ultimately it is just people deciding this thing they want to do. But also this path of you. About the revolutions that we have, we had a revolution in air travel, but then we also thought there would be a similar or a next step change in travel based on supersonic, and that actually didn’t turn out to work out, or at least we stepped away from it. And maybe we’re coming back to it now, maybe we will be able to make it across the United States or across the Atlantic in just a few hours, but that remains to be seen. But it was exciting to me to see that banner picked up again. 00:52:16 - Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the speed of passenger aircraft over time is one of the clearest graphs you can look at that just sort of shows the stagnation of the last 50 years, right? It was going up and up and up, and then it actually went up to supersonic, and then it went down. We actually regressed, right? Forget about stagnation. 00:52:37 - Speaker 3: This is actual regress, especially if you count the time in airport security lines, which is increased significantly. 00:52:42 - Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, which ties back to the safety emphasis topic. 00:52:45 - Speaker 1: And the regress in passenger airplanes is not unlike and in fact came around the same time as the regress in space travel, right? We used to be able to go to the moon, and then it right at a certain point, we didn’t even have the Saturn 5 rocket anymore, and our space capacity had actually regressed. And in fact, there’s an argument to be made that you can chalk both of them up to very similar causes. Both supersonic passenger travel and the space race were pursued primarily as government projects for government glory, I mean, for lack of a better word, they were put out there for national prestige and to show off technological capability. And they weren’t set up to be economically sustainable, right? And that was a real problem with Concord, wasn’t making enough money. So I think part of the lesson of these things is that big showy government projects can temporarily push the frontier forward, maybe much faster or farther and earlier than it otherwise would have. And maybe that has some good effects, but they can also set areas up for regress and stagnation for decades. The way to make something actually long term sustainable is to give it a sustainable economic model, which means a profit model. And so I’m excited that both supersonic and space travel are coming back as private efforts from for-profit companies that are setting up sustainable economic models to actually make them profitable, make them pay for themselves in the long term. That’s how they will stick around and how they’ll grow. 00:54:18 - Speaker 2: So Jason, given everything we’ve talked about, do you find yourself at this moment optimistic, pessimistic, or somewhere in between about progress? 00:54:27 - Speaker 1: Well, I think it’s important to distinguish between two types of optimism, and I’ve used the terms descriptive optimism and prescriptive optimism. So descriptively, you can predict what you think is going to happen, or, you know, whether we’re on the right track, whether we’re on a path for good or bad outcomes. And I’m somewhat ambivalent, frankly, at that. I think part of me wants to be optimistic or is optimistic. I think there’s a lot of good things going forward, you know, the vaccine efforts against COVID are just like a great example of what we can do when the best of our science and technology comes forward to. a major problem. For people who don’t know the history of vaccine development, developing a vaccine in like a year or less than a year is amazing and basically unprecedented. Generally, vaccine development is something that takes decades, and so this really shows how far some of our technologies have come and what we can do. To use a cliche when we put our minds to it and put our efforts into it and our resources. But you know, there’s a lot of things to make one pessimistic as well. I mean, the US government’s response to COVID has been mostly incompetent. I think there is a lot of buildup of bureaucratic craft, a lot of our social technologies, to use Mark’s term, are not in such a great state. And so I think we’ve got a lot of work to do and in some ways, you know, have slid backwards. But I think it’s important to distinguish that kind of prescriptive like descriptive rather, are we on the right track from the prescriptive optimism or pessimism of what should we do about it? And prescriptively, I am always and ever an optimist. I think no matter how bad things are looking. The only thing we can do is to step up, bring our best efforts to the game, and, you know, even if we’re on a bad path to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I think that the future is not determined. I think that it is up to us, and I think that we should always believe fundamentally in the ability of human intelligence when properly applied to solve problems and to make the world better. So, descriptively, I’m sometimes an optimist and sometimes a pessimist, and it’s very case dependent. But what I’m not and will never be is defeatist, and I think there’s a lot of defeatism out there, you know, the notion that combining perhaps a descriptive pessimism with a prescriptive pessimism that essentially tells people to give up, or to scale back our ambitions or maybe even to deliberately regress to a safer or, you know, more comfortable world. So prescriptively, I’m always an optimist. Forward, you know, let’s confront the problems, no matter the odds, and let’s do our best to make the future better. 00:57:01 - Speaker 2: Can’t think of a better place to end than there. Yeah, right on. If any of our listeners out there have feedback, feel free to reach out to us at @museapphq on Twitter or via email, hello at museapp.com. We always love to hear your comments and ideas for future episodes. Jason, thanks for inspiring those of us who are working on building the future, and I’m looking forward to reading the book. 00:57:24 - Speaker 1: Absolutely, thank you for building the future and thanks for having us was a great conversation.