It is a Tyler Cowen project, with seed funding from Peter Thiel. The press release says that it is
an incubator fellowship and grant program for social entrepreneurs with highly scalable ideas for meaningfully improving society.
1. It definitely is not “Shark Tank.” I have only seen parts of a few episodes, but the entrepreneurs had very small ideas, and the sharks only cared about whether the entrepreneurs had made some progress and could demonstrate that the market had enough revenue potential.
2. In a brief podcast, when Tyler says that his comparative advantage is spotting talent, it almost made me spill my orange juice (I don’t drink coffee). If I had a dime for everyone who thinks that spotting talent is their comparative advantage, I could fund Emergent Ventures. I am not saying that Mercatus is bad at spotting talent, but are they better than Google or Andreessen, Horowitz, or Paul Graham, or. . .? I guess it depends on what domain you are talking about.
3. Maybe their slogan should be, “We’re looking for the next Robin Hanson.”
4. One way to come up with a moonshot is to think of a big, annoying problem to solve. Some possibilities that come to mind:
–the intellectual collapse of American education, including higher education and K-12.
–terrorism and the responses to terrorism
–potential use or mis-use of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence
5. Have I ever had a “change-the-world” idea? Back in October of 2000, I wrote,
Now, imagine that everyone in the world is given an “ethics rating” that is analogous to a chess rating. Maybe 2500 would be the highest, and 0 would be the lowest. Your rating would affect how you could use various technologies. “Ethical grandmasters” would be allowed to do advanced research in biotechnology and robotics.
Note the passive voice. It raises the question of who is going to create and control such an “ethics rating” system. The Chinese government? They seem inclined to implement such an idea, but they are not necessarily the ones I want to see doing it.
At the time, I assumed that I would initiate the ethics rating system by designating a few people as ethical grandmasters. They would in turn rate other people, and these would rate other people, until everyone had a rating. You can read the essay to see the idea sketched out a bit more. Note that as of the time I wrote the essay, I was still left of center, as you can see from the people I named as possible ethical grandmasters.
As I re-read the essay, I think that this qualifies as a moonshot idea. It might even be worth trying.
I suspect that people’s ethics ratings are inversely proportional to their own assessments of their ratings.
The research of Robert L. Trivers on self-deception is relevant. His book _The folly of fools_ is relevant and accessible to the general reader, though the chapters on the foreign policy of Israel and Turkey tends to annoy some. My own favorite is his reprinted papers with commentary.
Title: _Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers (Evolution and Cognition)_.
The hypothesis, of course, is that we can gain a reproductive advantage (at least in the short run) by convincing others that we are ethical and trustworthy, but then by betraying the trust. And the best way to fool others is to first fool ourselves.
Also appropos is that line from…Doctor Johnson? “The more he spoke of his ethics, the faster I counted my spoons”
Peter Thiel likes fintech. But to fully automate fintech we need to pre-qualify clients for cash in advance. So the solution is the smart cash card, a card which can manage financial contracts for the user. We know how to make those. Or we could use smart phones for that but users fear the smart phone for financial traction. Users want a dedicated, biometric cash card with contract intelligence.
I should point out the legal issue.
The intelligent cash card needs to have its processor hold a secret key, that only the processor knows. The NSA will want guarantees that the card is only used for financial contract management, it keeps honest account. That is the last hurdle, I think
I am pretty sure Peter wants some group to push that issue. We are at the ‘Carter Phone’ point for those who recall the Carter Phone battle won third parties the right to add equipment to the pohione line. We need to win the equivalent battle in financial space, and the TNB lawsuit only takes us part way there.
Wow! This reads Tyler Cowen wants to be Branch Rickey trying to find the next Jon Galt! (And Branch Rickey was probably the best spotter of baseball ever.)
1) Spotting extra special talent before college is extremely tough and these are people that are going to be successful anyway.
2) Are they ready that 90% produce good ordinary quality work but not the next big item? (Or convince some of the chosen ones to work under specific person?) The 1930 Cardinals farm system was the greatest in the world and yet 90% did not make the Majors and was only funded by Rickey from selling a 31 veteran player to another team. (And then the Yankees devised a scouting team in early 1930s to find the talent to become the dominant late 1930s team & farm system.)
3) I always dubious that they will devise the next big thing and there is a lot right in society today. It seems weird to hear K-12 is collapsed especially considering what it was like in 1990. Things are better today in a lot ways than a generation ago.
If I were to suggest our ‘Big’ thing, it would how would you get 18 – 30 years old more settled on career and family. I think the biggest reason why young people are not supporting capitalism more is, they are not benefiting from career in capitalism. (Basically Noah Smith point here but graduating college in 1992, I supported capitalism a lot more in 1998 than in 1993.) And I see this a BIG idea but mostly a lot work on the local level.
And is Jordan Peterson really some suddenly smart intellectual? He is a great speaker who truly understands top corporate culture and gives great Sales Meeting speeches. Otherwise, he sounds like anti-feminist from the 1970s.
2. In a brief podcast, when Tyler says that his comparative advantage is spotting talent, it almost made me spill my orange juice (I don’t drink coffee). If I had a dime for everyone who thinks that spotting talent is their comparative advantage, I could fund Emergent Ventures. I am not saying that Mercatus is bad at spotting talent, but are they better than Google or Andreessen, Horowitz, or Paul Graham, or. . .? I guess it depends on what domain you are talking about.
If the goal is to find inchoate/potential talent, give all the applicants an IQ test and anyone who scores above 150 gets funding.
Thomas Edison is reported to have said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” One may have the smarts, but does he/she have the work ethic, drive, and passion?
The idea of an ethics rating scheme is simply the ridiculous extreme of regulatory regimes in general. The problem they all share is that somebody must decide — and no human or machine can ever be trusted with that kind of power. Certainly if such a scheme is implemented, whoever controls it is either as corrupt as the Chinese leadership, or will become so.
If the factors are reduced to trustworthiness and loyalty, the security clearance process (to include special reliability systems like PRP) while off course imperfect, is still pretty good. And for paying debts on time, credit scores are also pretty good. In the government, some hiring selections use a scoring method which includes a number for any derogatory disciplinary incidents, or complaints / investigations. I think the reality is that every big organization is trying to mine big data and run regressions to come up with good statistical relationships with a low number of factors, and then trying to score everybody on those factors. So these scores probably already exist, it’s just one isn’t going to know one’s own numbers.
I have a suggestion for a venture.
I work with a fair number of college educated young people who are making what seems to be ok money, but who are still struggling to make it in the big city. Most of them are delaying family formation because of it. To them, the situation seems hopeless, they feel powerless, and they are very tempted by the lure of more redistribution aimed at them, for the political provision of which they obviously look to the big-government left.
That’s bad news for several reasons. But mostly, because it won’t work, and wouldn’t fix anything.
I think it would be good to help persuade intelligent young people of futility of that approach, while also offering them a different, better way to get to more personal prosperity and well-being.
Yes, I know books or projects like these don’t directly persuade anyone of anything. But if nothing else, the mere existence of such a thing could help to create the perception that there exists an alternative program and set of solutions that would help improve their lives quickly and dramatically. That it’s not just redistribution or “deal with it”, which is what most of them believe now.
This would be a scholarly project, but with multiple levels of presentation suitable to the level of sophistication of the audience. Something like this should be easy to do online, providing the opportunity to keep ‘drilling down’ to get more detail, evidence, and citations.
The project would start with something like “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.” (probably not by that title, as it’s already been used a lot). And the explanation would focus on the fact that the four Neo-Ricardian sectors (Housing, Education, Health Care, Government) are sucking up everyone’s surplus. (I’ve written extensively about the underlying mechanisms in this space over the last several years, and of course these subjects are right down the GMU-Econ / Mercatus alley. Hansonian Medicine, Caplanian Education, etc.)
Part of the research project would be to go into granular details of the various manifestations of “American Cost Disease”. I won’t post links because the spam-filter has been pretty aggressive lately, but City Journal recently had an article, “Why Can’t New York Control Its Infrastructure Costs?” and The Atlantic had “Why Is College in America So Expensive?: The outrageous price of a U.S. degree is unique in the world.” There is also plenty about the California High Speed Train boondoggle. What’s needed is a grand synthesis that ties these all together. And which does so in service of the overall case to a new generation of young people who are neither familiar not presently inclined towards the libertarian perspective.
Then it would focus on what the evidence suggests is the lowest-hanging fruit which can address each of these sectors, which will probably be in the “expand liberty to enable private provision of alternatives” category. Uber, for example, is almost universally popular with young people, and provides a good example of what can happen when a state-imposed monopoly is broken and opened up to new competition.
This wouldn’t cost a lot of money, but it would take a lot of man-hours. Someone (doesn’t have to be me) could lead a team of, say, four grad or advanced undergrad students, organize and and direct their research efforts, and assist with drafting and editing the articles / chapters. What does grad student time go for these days?
Ever hear of Dave Ramsey?
“If I had a dime for everyone who thinks that spotting talent is their comparative advantage, I could fund Emergent Ventures. I am not saying that Mercatus is bad at spotting talent, but are they better than Google or Andreessen, Horowitz, or Paul Graham, or. . .? I guess it depends on what domain you are talking about.”
How else would you explain a commuter school in suburban D.C. developing the most creative and influential economics department in the world?
Widespread discrimination in favor of conventional monoculture is not meritocratic and so leaves at least some surplus for someone else to enjoy. 100 dollar bills on the sidewalk that others pass up out of irrational aversion. Also, they have some very special donors who are at least slightly willing to patronize a counter-intelligentsia.