In the startup world we sometimes talk about the difference between being a peacetime CEO and a wartime CEO (cf this famous essay by Ben Horowitz). While some people may be turned off by this martial... | Continue reading
Given the ongoing decay of our institutions and their utter failure to address the climate crisis it is not far fetched to ask whether we are headed for some kind of societal collapse. A highly... | Continue reading
I recently read Joseph Tainter's outstanding book "The Collapse of Complex Civilizations," which I recommend. It should be required reading for all politicians. Tainter's theory is one of diminishing... | Continue reading
I have been away from writing here for an entire month. It was a combination of travel followed by a health crisis that is now thankfully nearly over (a “routine” surgery that turned out to be... | Continue reading
“Infinite growth in a finite world is an impossibility” goes a popular quote. It is usually rolled out to illustrate that sustainability requires humanity to impose limits. Sometimes people then point... | Continue reading
I find it difficult to think of another time with as much macro risk as the present at least since the financial crisis and likely much longer than that. There is a shooting war in Europe with no... | Continue reading
Many years ago I was debating whether or not to finish my PhD dissertation. One of the people I talked to about this decision was Prof. Thomas Malone, whose office was next to the oversized closet... | Continue reading
In a push to wrap up my book The World After Capital to a point where I will make a print copy available, I am finally tackling the appendix one more time. The goal of the appendix is to provide more... | Continue reading
Over the last two decades I have helped many companies raise venture capital rounds. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from this.If your company is growing like crazy you will have an easy... | Continue reading
Having enjoyed Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” on psychedelics (in particular psilocybin), I was intrigued by a book that goes much broader on drug use: Dr. Carl Hart’s “Drug Use for Grown... | Continue reading
The more you know about the climate crisis, the harder it is to not be depressed at least some of the time. The challenges ahead are vast and the will to action still small by comparison. So we... | Continue reading
I have been asked how I can reconcile my support for crypto/blockchain with my concerns about the climate crisis. So here is a blog post laying this out.Crypto/blockchain is a fundamental innovation... | Continue reading
Artists and authors are issuing non fungible tokens (NFTs) for their work. The market price of these has exploded and bids are currently at $2 million for Jack Dorsey’s first tweet. A lot of people... | Continue reading
Today Algorand and Blockstack are announcing that they are collaborating on the Clarity smart contract language. Clarity is a decidable (i.e. non-Turing complete) language inspired by lisp. I am... | Continue reading
Whenever something really bad happens, we tend to rush to do something quick and fast which makes us feel better, but throws out important principles and thus has severe negative longterm... | Continue reading
Today is Labor Day which is meant to celebrate the workers movement (as an aside, in Germany and much of the rest of the world this is held on May 1). That might be a good time to think about what... | Continue reading
One key lesson from COVID19 is that we need a lot more decentralization. This is especially true when the center is as inept at managing the crisis as the US federal government has proven to be. For... | Continue reading
The lockdown measures put in place have started to flatten the curve, but they are hugely disruptive and even if we were better about freezing the economy than we are, we cannot possibly maintain them... | Continue reading
There has been a lot of discussion of whether or not startups qualify for forgivable loans under the Paycheck Protection Program administered by the SBA (part of the CARES Act). I don’t want to rehash... | Continue reading
There has been a lot of discussion of whether or not startups qualify for forgivable loans under the Paycheck Protection Program administered by the SBA (part of the CARES Act). I don’t want to rehash... | Continue reading
On this last day of the 2010s here is a recap with a single theme: we are fighting the battles of the past instead of inventing the future. We are doing that at a time when humanity is facing an... | Continue reading
The discussion around taxing wealth, and in particular billionaires, has been illuminating. Not in the sense of learning something new but rather seeing who is willing to make or defend bad takes... | Continue reading
In yesterday’s election New York City voters passed Ranked Choice Voting as a ballot measure. This means that in future elections such as those for mayor of the city, independent candidates will have... | Continue reading
Here we are again in 2019 debating speech online and specifically the case of Facebook. Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown trying to invoke the civil rights movement and to draw a sharp distinction to... | Continue reading
It is fascinating to see at the moment how much China is flexing its power. And maybe as importantly how little the world is pushing back. Certainly on the commercial side we are finding that... | Continue reading
Of course Ethereum is not a walled garden the way AOL was. Anyone can write and deploy a smart contract, whereas adding functionality to AOL required a contract and a custom implementation. What I... | Continue reading
I got the idea for today’s Uncertainty Wednesday from seeing quite a few tweets in my timeline to the effect that startups don’t really have meaningful upside for employees. Tracing these tweets back,... | Continue reading
Today’s Uncertainty Wednesday revisits a favorite topic of mine: correlation. I first wrote about the importance of thinking about correlation in modeling over 10 years ago, long before starting the... | Continue reading
When #DeleteUber was a trending hashtag it was relatively easy for people to take action in those cities where Lyft, MyTaxi or some other service was available. Even if you didn’t delete the Uber app... | Continue reading
We have entered a new phase of the discussion on what to do about speech on platforms such as Twitter. On the plus side many more people are engaged. On the minus side the calls to treat Twitter as a... | Continue reading
NOTE: I am resuming posting excerpts from my book World After Capital. The last post was the beginning of Part Three of the book. Today’s post is the the introduction to the concept of economic... | Continue reading
NOTE: Today’s excerpt from World After Capital dives deeper into human knowledge and why it is so powerful.The Power of KnowledgeHave you watched television recently? Eaten food that had been stored... | Continue reading