Professionally, I focus on creating social benefit startups. In my Saturday morning emails I share what I’m learning and thinking. Topics range from better living and parenting to business and philosophy.
Anti-Regulation. Silicon Valley and DC have never understood each other very well. Now with tech more dominant and more discussion of AI, it’s a bigger problem. A few years back, I was part of an effort to build relationships and bridge the divide. Now the trend in Silicon Valley may be more strongly anti-government and anti-regulation? For example watch Bill Gurley’s presentation at the All In conference. He says “The reason Silicon Valley has been so successful is because it is so f**king far away from Washington DC” and gets a standing ovation. He points out a number of problems with regulation, but don’t forget that government contracts were key to the early Silicon Valley companies. And those contracts were important for decades. Do you agree with his framing of what happened with software in healthcare? Were companies fined for not having the right features? That’s bonkers. How do we find the right balance with regulation and avoid regulatory capture?
Improving Governance. I do agree with Gurley that changing the role of money in politics would help. But is that enough? We need more experimentation and small scale implementations of improved governance systems. We’re trying to govern in the 21st century using the 18th century social tech based on 18th century communication and information tech. Humans gain power exponentially and aren’t improving our governance nearly as fast. I’d love to know about orgs that are pushing new governance models forward in practical ways. I’d like to know about experiments in the real world with instant sortition, liquid democracy, plural voting, futaracy, super forecasting bounties, etc. Rank choice voting seems to have the most push behind it but could we do more?
Local Job Creation. One of the positive externalities of business is the resources it provides employees and how it can provide resources for communities to grow. How often is creating jobs the goal of the business? Are businesses started with the goal of creating jobs weaker or stronger? I’m looking for examples of companies started to create lots of jobs locally.
Until next time,
Miles