Hi hi!
Lots to discuss this week. Let’s jump right in.
1) I wrote Defining Abundance.
I hope this piece helps you understand the shared mechanism that connects the Agricultural, Industrial, and Information Revolutions. Plus, why we have disinformation and what to do about it. There are three main sections:
I. How abundance is created through abstraction.
II. How abundance in quantity leads to heterogeneity in quality.
III. How individuals and systems can respond to heterogeneity in quality.
I’d love your feedback! (It’s my first time doing custom drawings.) Read it here: Defining Abundance
2) I received some excellent reader feedback on my last piece, Building Paradigms.
One reader (Katie) connected it to the pluralism and interconnectedness in Martin Luther King’s “World House”: All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors. This worldwide neighborhood has been brought into being as a result of technological revolutions. She noted:
“King thinks the automobile and plane have hyperconnected us into a World House. Imagine what he would think of the internet.”
Another reader (Ben) critiqued my piece as lacking a class-based analysis. He writes:
I am genuinely curious why you focus on responses to Andreessen's essay that focus entirely on polarization while failing to examine inequality and capitalism itself as a primary cause of America's failure to "build."
Perhaps the reason that Penn Station is such a dump is because capital, and those few individuals that serve as its vanguard, have decided Penn Station, and public transit in general, is potentially deleterious towards the continued production and consolidation of capital, and, as such, have erected roadblocks in the way of making improvements that people want and that would improve their lives.
What I'd like to see is a recognition of modern capitalism as being an unparalleled force for destruction of everything in the world of true value.
In addition, I’m especially interested in Ben’s perspective here:
The idea that the current inadequacy of our institutions derives, even in part, from individual complacency reeks of the personal responsibility logic of the right, a logic that's been used to halt responses to climate change, poverty, inequality, etc. You can't discuss complacency and responsibility without considering the ways in which capitalist institutions have created or reinforced that complacency.
This is tricky. How should we balance personal responsibility vs. institutional and systemic effects? (I explore one answer to this—Libertarian Paternalism—in my Defining Abundance piece above.)
(Here’s an Are.na with all responses to Andreessen.)
LINKS
Tyler Cowen interviews Glen Weyl. Two highlights:
On Coherent Pluralism:
Tyler asks: What are you rebelling against?
Glen: Singular identity. Every identity is corrupt. It’s the plurality and intersection of those things where I find meaning.
Tyler: People aren’t Hegelian enough.
On Bentoism and stakeholder capitalism:
Tyler: What will be the most enduring change from this pandemic?
Glen: Large corporations will take on important social responsibilities given the decline in institutional trust. It will become increasingly illegitimate to have a pure shareholder-maximization perspective. We’ll see fundamental shifts in corporate governance as a result of companies’ new social role.
Divinations and Superorganizers made a Substack bundle. Right now there’s just one, but the bundle math makes me think we’ll see at least 50 Substack bundles by the end of the summer. (Tiago Forte is already considering it.) Are large media orgs (NYT) just a bundle of trusted writers? We keep rediscovering the bundle.
As always, the crypto world is full of interesting weirdness. Here’s a cool new class of co-invented DeFi primitives: Constant Function Market Makers. Also, the MetaCartel has spawned the MetaGame. Their community manifesto references some great hits: Doughnut Economics, Game Warping, and more.
Latest Write of Passage essay: Suthen Siva on Walt Disney as a City Architect.
The Onion, from March 25: Man Just Buying One Of Every Cleaning Product In Case Trump Announces It’s Coronavirus Cure
Interesting graph below shows (weirdly high) correlation between a Workers Score (how well a company treats their employees) and market performance during Q1 COVID. Source.
As always, my full list of links is here.
JOBS / OPPORTUNITIES
Project Wren looking for a content writer
Patrons fund $500 LingComm grant
Tyve, a new effective giving platform, just launched in the UK. If you’re an exec, reach out if you’re curious about trading money for meaning and impact.
EVENTS
Anonymous Connection Funtime from Spencer Greenberg. (Sunday, May 3rd at 4 pm Eastern Time)
Open 2020: Networked Commons (June 11-12)
Weekly Bento (recurring: 11am EST every Sunday)
Effective Altruist Events Calendar (recurring)
Interintellect Salons (recurring)
The Stoa (recurring)
Foresight Institute (recurring)
MUSIC
I, the uncultured writer of this newsletter, hadn’t yet listened to the RENT soundtrack (oh, the horror!). But now I have, and it’s great! My favorite track is Over The Moon. It’s Idina Menzel at her weird best. Six minutes. Accapella backing track. Idina yelling. Idina saying “got to” 18 times in a row. Idina’s exasperatedly taking an in-breath after a long note. It’s good shit. That track and the rest of my RENT Top 5 here.
Thanks as always for reading, let me know if you have comments, and have a good week!
Warmth, Rhys