It's time to be serious
Humanity has done many immoral things in the last few centuries. We killed 90% of indigenous Americans, enslaved tens of millions of Africans, and killed millions in the Holocaust.
We can ask the question: what are we doing now that will seem immoral in 100 years?
There are some pretty clear answers, like the fact that each year we kill 70 billion animals in factory farms. A big no-no.
I’ve been starting to ask a different question though: From the perspective of an alien species, what does Earth do that is embarrassing, immature, or unacceptable? If you were to date Earth, what would be our red flags? And how can we change them by 2100?
Here are some things that I find embarrassing, starting with San Francisco:
It’s embarrassing that there’s a $100,000 fee to create affordable housing in SF.
It’s embarrassing that San Francisco calls itself progressive, but from 2010-2019, median white incomes increased from $90,000 to $150,000, while black incomes stayed level at $30,000.
It’s embarrassing that SF spent $32M on a payroll system, but still couldn’t pay its teachers.
More generally, it’s embarrassing that our government is focused on policy and comms over ops and impact.
It’s embarrassing that SF is the innovation capital of the world, but has 1/3rd the density of Paris.
It’s embarrassing that, because we don’t build housing, SF has 10x more homeless folks per capita than Chicago.
It’s embarrassing that one small neighborhood group can stop thousands of kids from enrolling at Berkeley.
It’s embarrassing that we live in a vetocracy and can’t get anything done.
It’s embarrassing that it’s illegal to build nuclear power in California, while China builds a new plant every month.
It’s embarrassing that tech created tons of wealth but left much of the Bay Area behind.
What about the larger US? What do we do that’s embarrassing and unacceptable?
It’s unacceptable that US life expectancy is 6 years behind similar countries, and dropping. This is from guns, food, cars, and drugs.
Guns: It’s unacceptable that twenty 6-year-olds were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, that we have 60 times as many gun deaths per capita as the UK, and yet still don’t have reasonable gun control.
Food: It’s unacceptable that our obesity rate has increased from 10% to 40% in the last 50 years.
Cars: It’s unacceptable that the US has 3x more car deaths per capita than the EU.
Drugs: It’s unacceptable that the US overdose rate has increased 4x in the last 20 years.
This is the water we swim in now. Two people OD every day in SF, and I regularly pass the ambulances on my bike. A 17-year-old friend of mine recently OD’ed from fentanyl. A 65-year-old friend retired, then run over on his bike.
These things are unacceptable, and we should see them as such.
More generally, it’s unacceptable to perpetuate these problems under the banner of freedom, when actually they make us more vulnerable. Guns, food, cars, and drugs. It’s exploitation masquerading as freedom.
Many of the problems thus far have been problems of government. But companies and markets are not necessarily better. They too are still unacceptable and immature.
It’s immature that we decreased our capital gains tax from 40% to 15%, sucked capital and talent into tech, then complained about government dsyfunction.
It’s immature to think our value capture system is correct when Instagram was acquired for $1 billion, but only 13 employees and 14 investors received the upside. Nothing for open-source. Nothing for their 30M users.
It’s immature to create dark patterns that force users to call a phone number to unsubscribe from the New York Times.
It’s immature to ignore that happiness levels off after $100,000, while 700M people still live in extreme poverty.
It’s immature to allow the yacht industry to repeal our luxury tax.
It’s immature to think that your individual success is primarily a result of your hard work, and not some combination of your place of birth, genetic lottery, and childhood.
Put simply, we need to grow up.
This is true for everything but is blatantly obvious in our lax response to the climate crisis. We can barely keep a single nuclear plant running, much less rebuild all of our infrastructure to be green. By 2050, we need a 4x larger electricity grid, 10x more carbon capture piping, a 10x increase in renewable electricity, and 100x more EVs. It’s a lot.
We need to build. And we should’ve started yesterday, last year, last decade, last generation.
Although our status quo is embarrassing now, it doesn’t need to be that way. We can respond, and respond in a serious way.
What does it mean to be serious? Here are some things that feel serious to me:
Brie Wolfson’s reflection on how Stripe’s demanding work culture was actually deeply rewarding.
How Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover “exercised the concept of responsibility” by personally interviewing 14,000 people to build and operate 200 nuclear-powered submarines.
Truly prioritizing self-growth. As Stripe’s old COO, Claire Hughes Johnson, says: “Build self-awareness to build mutual awareness.”
So…yes!
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Right now our culture is meh. Instead:
Work hard. Be focused on outcomes. Don’t accept bullshit.
Do your part. Step up. Have high standards.
Raise the bar. Push the pace. Do the right thing.
Everything good in the world results from years of hard work on a single problem. As Sam Altman notes, spend 1 year exploring, then 4 years relentlessly focused on execution. Repeat.
Get two of these sprints in your career, and feel ok. Get five and feel satisfied. Achieve 10 sprints like this? S Tier status.
How can you find a problem to sprint on? Start by looking around you. Search for things that you find embarrassing, unacceptable, and immature. Get annoyed by them.
Then work on one for 5 years. Focus on outcomes. Be proud. Rest. Repeat.
By 2050, we’ll look back with pride on what we’ve accomplished this quarter-century. But we won’t be there yet. Too far to go. Success by 2050 will just set us up for 2050-2075, then 2075-2100.
By 2100, we finally can have an Earth we’re proud of. No red flags. Nothing to be ashamed of. Just wise people in an abundant world.
In all seriousness,
- Rhys ❤️
P.S. If this doesn’t resonate with you, that’s ok! But for some people it might. As Patrick Collison says:
To the extent that you enjoy working hard, do. Subject to that constraint, it's not clear that the returns to effort ever diminish substantially. If you're lucky enough to enjoy it a lot, be grateful and take full advantage!
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