Category: Commentary

When to Take Action

I’m highly action biased.  I get the frustration of identifying a problem or having a new idea and wanting to do something about it, good and hard.  I believe jumping in with both feet as soon as possible is always preferable to lots of analysis.  Still, there are times when the best thing to do is nothing.

This is particularly true when the problem is a grand one that affects all of society.  Just because you realize that there is something wrong with X system or process doesn’t mean there is an obvious and immediate action to take.  The realization is the first, often most powerful but also most fleeting step.  It’s easy for action biased people to get antsy and want to do something quick.  Start a campaign, write an article, launch an organization, etc.  Often though there is no clear vision, understanding of causal factors involved, or strategy.

Our culture is one that provides social rewards for any kind of action.  If you say you’re doing something to alleviate poverty, people congratulate you no matter how stupid or useless or even counter-productive your efforts might be.  Volunteering is deemed noble and effective, whether or not it’s either of these things.  The obsession with nonprofits and vilification of win-win for profit activities further incentivizes blind action.  Start a club.  Host a fundraiser.  Do something!

The most profound improvements in the world are typically born out of many years of following the initial identification of a problem deep down the rabbit hole.  Those who see something they don’t like and jump to do something come and go, as do the effects of their efforts.  Those who internalize the problem – let it steep, let it alter the way they think, pursue an in-depth understanding of the problem and knowledge of tried and untried solutions, and only act when the idea they hold is one that doesn’t just suggest but demands action – are typically the ones who best solve it.

There are a lot of dysfunctional beliefs and institutions around us.  Discover them.  But when it comes to action if you feel the itch ask yourself exactly what kind of action you want to take and why.  Do your ideas demand action?  That specific action?  Will you be unable to sleep without taking that specific action?  More importantly (and much harder) ask if the solution you have in mind can be obtained within the context of a for-profit business model.  If not, the odds that it will work are incredibly low.  If a solution is real, it will create value.  Non-profits can create value, but it’s much, much harder to know if they are and far too easy for them to do the opposite.  If the solution is political it’s almost assuredly going to do more harm than good.  If the goal is good feels, launch a nonprofit effort or lobby politicians.  If the goal is effectiveness, try as hard as you can to discover a way in which your ideas can generate a profit.

Until action is clear, and clearly value-creating, let your ideas direct you to further understanding.  Channel your hunger to act towards the act of learning more.  When the time is right and the idea is ripe you’ll know.

Soylent Experiment

  

I rarely eat breakfast. When I get up I want to get started on writing and the day’s work immediately. Plus I hate the prep time, and I’m not ready for solid food for a few hours after waking. So I often skip breakfast only to be ravenous at 10:00 AM. 

Lunch is my favorite time to catch up on small stuff, quick emails, read some articles, share things on Twitter, etc. Food prep is annoying and eating out gets expensive and often makes me feel sluggish, not to mention the time cost.

I’ve tried some protein shakes and such, but all are insufficient for a meal, costly, and taste bad. The best breakfast solution thus far has been homemade bone broth, but it’s a lot to make a batch and freeze it (I should say it’s a lot for my wife, because she’s the one who’s done it!).

I’ve been excited about the concept of Soylent since I read about it a few years ago. It’s logical. Food is made up of chemicals. Break it down to its most basic form and tinker with different delivery mechanisms.  The distinction between eating (for survival) and dining (for pleasure) is interesting to me, and the option to treat them separately if desired is freeing.

I ordered a box of 7 packets (one packet pictured above), which each contain 4 servings. Each serving is a 500 calorie meal with essentially all the nutrients an average body needs (obviously each body is very different in needs, so it’s a very rough average).  I know, just like that scene in the Matrix.

My order was $85 and shipped in two days along with a nice container to mix and pour from. It comes to about $3/meal. A good deal when you compare to most lunch options, decent compared to breakfasts.  It’s pretty simple. You just add water and shake. It’s an inoffensive beige color with virtually no smell and very little taste. Creamy and a bit gritty. I kind of like it. 

I plan to eat it for breakfast every day and lunch most days over the next few weeks. When I’m done I’ll post about the experience.

Most commenters on Facebook seemed to overlook the value of the concept when I shared the picture.  “Why would you want to replace delicious food with this slime?” assumes delicious food has no downsides. When I’m working and in the groove eating is a huge pain. I don’t want to have to stop. I don’t want to have to prepare or go to the store or a restaurant. I don’t want to have to pack frozen burritos the night before and wait by the microwave.  The more convenient lunches don’t taste that good anyway. If I’m going to just mindlessly munch a mediocre frozen burrito, trying not to burn my mouth or get grease on my laptop, why not just pour and drink a single glass of Soylent and be done with it?  If I’m not really enjoying the food then I’m not missing out anyway.  This isn’t competing with a juicy burger or steak any more than a new car is competing with walking shoes. They’re different products. I’m not looking to replace the good kind of eating, just the lame kind. 

I love food. I love the experience of dining. But during my most productive hours I’d rather not have to enjoy food until I’m relaxed in the evening. Since my body doesn’t do well without food for ten hour stretches, Soylent offers a potential solution.

Look for a recap in a few weeks.

(And no Sci-Fi fans, it’s not people). 

The Doomsayers are Right (but so are the optimists)

One hundred years of horror

The first visitor looks grim. He tells you that “the war to end all wars” will soon begin. It will encompass the globe and destroy millions of lives. Cities will be decimated. The Great War will have a scope and level of brutality never before imagined in human history. It will be followed by economic collapse, political upheaval, and tremendous human suffering.

A decade later, the largest economies in the world will teeter, then collapse. Hyperinflation, panic, stock market crashes, breadlines, and financial ruin will be the norm. Hunger, poverty, and desperation like no modern society has ever experienced will span a decade. Before recovery, war will break out again — this one even more catastrophic than the last. Tens of millions will die.

A new form of evil will show its head. Totalitarian regimes aided by advanced weaponry and propaganda machines will lead the mass execution of millions. Weapons of mass destruction will be created, and two will be deployed, leveling cities in minutes with effects lasting years. Governments the world over will grow in power and brutality. Control over all facets of personal and economic life will expand.

The second great war will end and economic growth will resume, but not without constant smaller wars across the globe. Government will balloon out of all proportion. Surveillance will become ever present, even in the freest states. Acts of terrorism will be all over the news. Inflation, regulation, and taxation will increase once again to levels rivaling those that led to the great economic collapse. Countries will go bankrupt, drowning in debt. Police will turn on citizens regularly. Finally, the first traveler concludes, all signs in 2015 point to another painful reckoning.

But the other traveler seems unfazed by his companion’s tale. “Do you have anything to add?” you ask hesitantly.

One hundred years of human achievement

He smiles and begins to recount the next century with excitement. Automobiles are mass produced. Soon, they are everywhere. Temperature-controlled vehicles, homes, and workplaces pop up and spread. New forms of communication that instantly connect people across countries and then the world proliferate at incredible speed. People get healthier and wealthier the world over.

Air travel takes over where automobiles leave off. Humans safely traverse the world many thousands of feet in the air. Appliances do all the most tedious, painful, and time-consuming tasks — and not just in wealthy homes.

Hunger is no longer a problem in developed countries, and it is increasingly rare throughout the world. Common diseases like polio and malaria are all but eradicated with medical and pharmaceutical developments. Average lifespan dramatically increases; infant mortality plummets.

Information is freed in ways never before imaginable. Every book ever written can be transmitted anywhere in the world through crisscrossing networks of data transmission. Humans enter outer space. Satellites beam information, video, and voices back and forth around the globe. Rich and poor alike hold in their hands devices more powerful than anything kings or tycoons of ages past could have hoped for.

Money and memories alike can be sent anywhere, anytime, easily. Anyone can learn anything without access to prestigious centers of knowledge. Gatekeepers for information are no longer impediments to human cooperation and progress. Laboring in fields and factories is decreasingly necessary, as a host of new and intelligent machines take on these tasks.

Finally, the second traveler concludes, humans focus more than ever on creativity, freedom, and fulfillment.

Who’s correct?

Both travelers have described the same future for the same planet. Neither description is untrue, and both are important.

It’s easy to feel confused by conflicting theories about the future. If you have a firm grasp on economics and political philosophy and get stuck in the political news cycle, it’s depressing. You look at the state of our economy and government intervention and see nothing but storm clouds on the horizon. There’s no way the mountains of debt, the constant currency debasement, the damaging social programs and interventions, and the buildup of regulations and nanny-statism can result in anything but an ugly future.

But if you’re up on the start-up scene, you hear tech optimists describing a future of 3-D printing, cryptocurrency, robotics advancements, colonizing Mars, and mapping the human genome, and you can’t help but see the future burning bright.

Both groups are accurately describing the possible and probable future, and there are lessons to be drawn from each.

Will history repeat?

There are striking similarities between today’s developed democracies and ancient Rome. Bread and circuses and political decay may lead to a Roman-style collapse. Then again, we have something today that the citizens of the Roman-ruled world did not: digital technology.

We are able to coordinate and collaborate via dispersed networks in ways individuals in the past never could. The centrally planned state, with all its military and monetary might, is a lumbering beast compared to the nimble, adaptive entrepreneur and citizen today. Yes, the state may use technology to spy and oppress, but always through a top-down management structure. We are a headless conglomerate of individual nodes, networked across the globe, that cannot be destroyed.

Maybe the US dollar will, in fact, collapse. Maybe states will go bankrupt. Maybe government services will fall into disarray. And maybe in the middle of it all, individual humans and civil society won’t even notice.

Do you remember how the Cold War ended? Neither do I. It just kind of did. Do you remember the great collapse of government-monopolized phone lines? Neither do I. Cell phones just emerged and it stopped mattering. The post office is in perpetual deficit. So what? Email and FedEx and Amazon drones will continue to make it irrelevant.

You see, striking as the similarities to great collapses of the past may be, history is not an inevitable indicator of the future. Collapse of government systems in an increasingly complex, market-oriented world may not spell disaster for society at large. It may spell improvement.

Problems are real … real opportunities

Take your knowledge of unsustainable government and extrapolate it into the future. Yes, these bloated systems are unsustainable. Don’t turn a blind eye and pretend it doesn’t matter. Instead, let the insights of your inner doomsayer inform the actions of your inner optimist.

Every government problem is an entrepreneurial opportunity. Stifling licensing or work restrictions or immigration bans can be overcome with peer-to-peer technology, the sharing economy, virtual work software, and more. Bad monetary policy can be sidestepped with cryptocurrency. Defunct educational institutions bubbling over with debt and devalued credentials can be ignored while private alternatives emerge. Clumsy socialized medicine, transportation, and communication systems are all begging for innovation. Entire countries can be exited — physically or digitally.

The innovators must be realistic enough to see problems with the status quo and optimistic enough to innovate around them instead of merely shaking their fists.

Informed optimism as adventure

It’s good to wake up to the tragic missteps of government policy that surround us. But if lovers of liberty only ever point to the problems, predict trouble, and head for the hills, the future may indeed be lost. If, instead, we see those problems as opportunities and talk about the possibility in front of us, we stand a chance. Optimism is a powerfully attractive force that invites bright minds to join us. As F.A. Hayek once said,

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.… Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.

We must recapture the intellectual and practical adventure of not just demonstrating the failures of a planned society, but building the glories of a free one. Only then will the world look at us and say, “Why are you so optimistic? What do you know? How can I be a part of it?”

One hundred years from now

There are two stories we can see unfolding in our future. One of increasing political foolishness leading to dystopia. One of emerging technology and innovation leading to utopia. Neither is untrue. Both are instructive.

What would you expect to hear from a traveler from 2115? Which story brings out your best self and inspires you to live free and help others do the same?

We need doomsayers: they help discover and highlight the greatest areas of opportunity for optimists and entrepreneurs to seize on. Listen to them, then act to overcome or sidestep or make irrelevant the problems they predict.

The Limitations of Cost-Benefit Analysis

It’s easy to assume a simple cost-benefit analysis is always in order for every important decision.  I’ve found that the more important and radical the decision, the less valuable c-b analysis is.  It’s often little more than a way to complicate things, stall a decision, add stress, and provide cover for a choice your gut tells you is wrong but you fear to pick otherwise.

When I think about all the biggest decisions in my life they all had a moment of crisis where c-b ceased to bring any clarity and I was forced to answer one simple question – the only question that really matters – do I want to do this or don’t I?

Whether considering marriage, moving to a new city, having a child, starting a business, or any other major life-altering action, c-b analysis is probably distracting you from being honest about what you want and doing it.  It’s possible analyzing the pros and cons can help you discover what you really want, but far more likely you know with your knower already, but what you want is scary or unconventional or hard to explain or justify to others, so you look for additional ammunition or an out.  Push all the clutter aside.  Throw away your two columned pros and cons list.  Sit down with yourself in the quiet and ask, “Do I want to do this or don’t I?”  Sit in it.  Imagine what choosing no feels like.  Imagine what choosing yes feels like.  Which do you know deep down you want?

Once you honestly know the one-word answer to “Do I want this?”, commit.  Resolve to do it.  Take some action that holds you accountable to your commitment. (Tell someone in private, make it public, etc.)  The rest will follow.

Cost-benefit analysis is great for picking a web-hosting service or a tagline – decisions that don’t affect the core of your being and that have a lot of small differences worth exploring – but it’s woefully insufficient and even counter-productive for deciding which bold steps to take on your life journey.  None of the pros or cons can really be known with any degree of certainty, and all the best decisions have more unknowns than knowns, thus fewer items that can fruitfully be put on the ledger.

Trust your gut.  If you want it, go get it.  There is no such thing as the perfect choice, or the right choice.  There is only what you want to take a chance on and what you don’t.

One of the Benefits of Writing: Better Reading

Let’s say you come across an interesting and perhaps controversial idea in an article.  If you share the quote on Facebook you’re likely to get a lot of comments about what it omits, or the other side of the idea, or the potential errors and pitfalls.  Even inspirational or thought-provoking little witticisms that do not pretend to convey the whole truth get scrutinized and poked at because of what they leave out.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with pointing out error or missing pieces or potential for misunderstanding, but it does severely limit your ability to take in new ideas.  Good ideas often begin as bad ones, but if you immediately look for what possible problems any idea could have, you’ll stunt the process.

If it’s easy for you to contradict or find flaw in every pithy quote, I submit that you might not be writing enough.  When you aren’t putting your own thoughts into the world often, it’s very easy to play critic and see problems with everyone else’s.  But once you start writing regularly you’ll discover just how hard it is to convey a thought while covering all of your bases.  You’ll find the very tough trade-off between making sure you’re not misunderstood and not going on and on forever or being so full of exceptions that you never communicate the rule.  Of course every sentence is not the whole truth of the matter.  Of course there are exceptions.  But if you want to write and think well, you can’t spend all your time listing them.

After writing a lot you’ll stop looking for perfection in the writing of others.  You’ll get better at the practice of charitable interpretation, where you assume the author is intelligent and has thought of your objection but chose to write what they did anyway.  See if you can discover why.  They must have assumed what they wrote was worth the risk of misunderstanding.  Why?  Writing opens your mind and creates a kind of empathy with other writers.  You know they face the same limitations you do, and you can more easily see the core value in their communication over and above any flaws or omissions.

The more you create, the harder it will be to simply sit on the sidelines and be a critic.

Three Unpopular Beliefs

I have a number of beliefs that are outside the mainstream.  Probably the three most controversial are listed below.  These beliefs were hard to arrive at.  None of them came naturally or intuitively, and all of them are a fairly significant departure from what I once believed.  In many ways it would be easier if I did not believe these things.  Still, these three unpopular beliefs play defining roles in what I do, and how and why I do it.

  1. The deliberate instruction of children is a net-negative. (Unless they seek and choose it themselves.)
  2. Government is unnecessary.
  3. Efforts to improve your own life do more good for the world than efforts to do good for the world.

Why I Love Las Vegas

I don’t play slots or gamble outside of house card games with a few buddies.  I don’t really enjoy the nightlife party and drinking scene.  I don’t do strip clubs.  I’m not a fan of musicals and shows.  Yet I love Vegas.

The first time I visited Las Vegas for a conference I was blown away by how much I loved the atmosphere.  Yes, it’s cheesy and ridiculous and lewd and in your face.  But it has in extreme measure that thing you find more in most American cities than just about any country in the world: customer service.  America has a deep and strong culture of entrepreneurship, hard work, and (partially) free-markets.  This results in a relentless drive and competition to please customers.  “The customer is always right” is a powerful adage that drives business, whether the owners like it or not.

Ludwig von Mises described the situation of producers in a capitalist economy well:

“Descriptive terms which people use are often quite misleading. In talking about modern captains of industry and leaders of big business, for instance, they call a man a “chocolate king” or a “cotton king” or an “automobile king.” Their use of such terminology implies that they see practically no difference between the modern heads of industry and those feudal kings, dukes or lords of earlier days. But the difference is in fact very great, for a chocolate king does not rule at all; he serves. He does not reign over conquered territory, independent of the market, independent of his customers. The chocolate king — or the steel king or the automobile king or any other king of modern industry — depends on the industry he operates and on the customers he serves. This “king” must stay in the good graces of his subjects, the consumers; he loses his “kingdom” as soon as he is no longer in a position to give his customers better service and provide it at lower cost than others with whom he must compete.”

In other words, the customer is not only right, the customer is king.  The businesses are the subjects, always vying the for approval and happiness of their Kings and Queens.  The truth, of course, is that the producers are also themselves consumers.  Those who work in the hotel, or mall, or diner, or factory are also consumers who patronize businesses.  We’re all serving each other.

In the case of Vegas, the notion of customer service reaches new heights.  It borders on customer worship.  From the minute you step out of the concourse your eyes are dazzled with light, sound, and a flurry of activity intended to delight and amaze.  Every square inch of the famous strip is covered with people and signs and sights begging to make you happy.  The chubby middle-aged guy from the Midwest wearing a cheap Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt is courted and complimented by beauty and talent all around.  The question that seems to be always on the mind of the businesses there is, “What can we do to make you happy?  How can we exhilarate you?”

You may call it tacky, but there are few places in the world where the commonest of people are treated like royalty 24/7.  There is something magical about it.  That’s what I love about Vegas.

5 Signs You Might Be Too Good for College

From the Praxis blog.

There is a common myth that only Steve Jobs-like geniuses and cheese puff eating flunkies should opt out of college.  For college to be a poor fit, you’ve either gotta be sitting on the next billion dollar startup idea or sitting on your mom’s couch.  This is nonsense.  There is a large and growing group of smart, hard-working young people who are way too good for the rigmarole and time-wasting conformity of even elite colleges.  I’ve met lots of them.

These are what I call “blue collar entrepreneurs”.  They’re quick, curious, eager, and in-touch with their core values and goals.  They want to learn about themselves and the world and won’t wait for permission.  These are the people for whom college is the biggest waste.

The mediocre, the minimum acceptable regurgitators, and the mildly enthusiastic are those who get the most value from college.  After all, their degree signals that they are about as good as all the other degree holders; average.  But the most ambitious young people gain little from such a signal.  In fact, a degree that lumps them in with all other degree holders undersells them.  They’re too good for college, and they have the power to send a much more valuable signal outside of the one-size-fits-all system.  They can create a better credential than the off-the-shelf version that takes four years and six figures.

“There’s no question that increased formal credentials can give you an advantage. The question is, is it the best advantage you can buy with the amount of money and time you’re going to spend?” –Michael Ellsberg

How to know if you’re too good for college?  Here are five signs to look for…

1) Your classmates frighten you.

You look around the classroom and it dawns on you: these people will walk out of here with the same credential as you.  All this time and money just to buy a degree that says, “Hey, I’m at least as good as the snoring sleeper next to me in Psych 101″.  Not only that, but your future accountant, doctor, marketing director, or editor might be sitting in that classroom.  You read the essay they turned in last week.  It wasn’t pretty.  If it’s clear this education isn’t preparing them for the world and the thought of them living and working as adults gives you a start, you might consider separating yourself from the crowd.

2) You feel a little annoyed being treated like a burden instead of a customer.

You might begin to feel most of your professors don’t see you as a customer, but a hindrance they’d like to get out of the way with minimal interaction and deviation.  Sure, there are always some good profs, but how many of them act annoyed at a teaching load of a few classes per semester, or give minimal and inconvenient office hours, or don’t seem to care if their lectures are boring, or get angry when you challenge their ideology or assumptions, or shame students on Facebook for asking questions about the syllabus?  You’re the customer and are right to wish to be treated as such.  You can always take your business and walk.

3) You learned more about how government functions from watching ‘The Wire’ than an entire year of political science classes.

The cat’s out of the bag.  Pandora’s box is open.  Whatever metaphor you use, the university is not the font of wisdom it once was.  Books have always been there for the curious, but with online courses, podcasts, audiobooks, eBooks, streaming videos, and social networks, you might find yourself eagerly consuming information relevant to you everywhere but the classroom.  The learning method at universities is older than the wheel, and it’s a crap-shoot whether you’ll get a decent teacher.  If you get your learn on outside of the graded conveyor belt already, why keep taxing yourself with class?

4) Your degree is the least impressive part of your resume.

If you’ve already done a lot of things, or you’re capable of doing a lot of things, that are rarer and more interesting than getting a BA, why get one?  If you’ve started a business, worked for a year or longer at a good company, traveled the world on your own steam and your own dime, built a website, written some articles, sold products, learned a foreign or programming language, or any number of interesting things, those will be more valuable on your resume and in building your network and reputation than a generic degree.  Ask yourself what you’d want an employee to bring to the table if you owned a business.  Can you get those things right now, without school?

5) You’re happy when class is cancelled.

What an odd thing that students pay up front for a university education and then get excited when the service is not provided.  What other product is treated this way?  If classes are a distraction from running student clubs or newspapers, working, blogging, hobbies, startups, or other things that make you come alive, why not get it out of the way?  The idea of a degree as a fallback is pretty weak.  It’s not going to magically lift you out of poverty or aimlessness.  You’ve got to do that yourself.  Why not start now with all your energy and not have nagging classes and exams hanging over your head?

If you see yourself in these signs, you might be too good for college.  Jump off the conveyor belt and create your own path.  Fortune favors the bold, so break free.

If you know you’re worth more than college but you’re not quite sure how to plot your own path and discover what makes you come alive, we can help.  That’s what Praxis was created for. Contact us or Apply today!

Screenless Retreat

I’m joining the rest of the Praxis team this week for a three-day screenless retreat.  We’re spending tomorrow through Friday at a friend’s beach house in North Carolina without laptops, tablets, TV’s, or smartphones (except for emergencies).  I’ll have some books, an old fashioned pen and pad, and good company in a beautiful setting.

I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, and I thought, what better way for the team to get some time together?  We’re spread out across the country and we all travel a lot, so when we’re in one place it’s usually for a work-related event or Praxis seminar where we’ve got a lot going.  We have a very anti-meeting culture and we all work on our own schedule, so even though we are in constant communication, we don’t get much time to just be together and let ideas flow.  Rather than a work-related retreat where we do some kind of brainstorming or team building or structured activity with specific goals, I wanted to just force us all to shut down reaction mode and take some time to contemplate or just relax.

To be honest, it’s going to be hard.  Just in preparing I’ve realized how much harder it will be than I thought.  The pre-scheduled blog posts (which will continue every day, per my commitment), the handling of communications and social media, and all the tasks to check off the list before going off the grid are a good reminder that I probably live a little too close to the moment.  My goal is to always have space for opportunities and activities and ideas that spring up unexpectedly, and if the daily work-flow is too high, that won’t happen.

I’m sure I’ll have some stuff to write about after our time away.  If I can remember it without my digital devices!

(We have a few amazing interns who will be monitoring the Praxis accounts and communications, so if you see us active on the web, just know we’re not cheating.)

Rules Make the Exceptions More Valuable

I shared recently several rules I have for myself that increase my productivity and happiness.  I was discussing these and other rules with my brother, and we both concluded that, despite the value of our rules, some of the most valuable times are actually when we break them.  This is especially the case with time-management and schedule rules.

I try to get 8 hours of sleep every night because I function better.  Yet some of the best flow states are induced when I’m up until the wee hours cranking away on a creativity binge fueled with caffeine.  If I did this often, I’d be terrible.  But it’s so valuable when employed as a rare exception.

This is one of the other benefits of rules.  Keeping to them gives you space to kick it up to “11” when you need it.  Try going without coffee for several weeks, then when you really need to dial-in have some.  You’ll find the boost from a single cup to be amazing in the clutch when you limit your intake on normal days.

Make rules if for no other reason than the value it adds to breaking them.

On Feedback and Data Gathering

Expressing an opinion is free.  Everyone will tell you they think your idea is good.  That’s not the same as giving up something to read it or listen to it or purchase it.  Focus groups, surveys, polls, and research can’t tell you as much as putting a product or idea out into the world.  In a marketplace where people have to trade-off other opportunities to take advantage of what you’ve made, you’ll learn more about its value than any test-case or lab experiment.

It doesn’t mean you can’t gather some facts or be informed.  But it’s more important to have a sound theory, and a clear bet on what gap you’re filling or value you’re creating than it is to have a lot of cost-less expressions from disinterested parties of whether or not they imagine it will be valuable.

Do it if it’s valuable to you and if you believe in your unique vision.  Do it if the process of answering the question, “Is this a good idea?” is exciting in and of itself.  Do it if you’re willing to fail to get the answer.

The Biggest Problems are the Biggest Opportunities

In their book Bold: How to Go Big, Achieve Success, and Impact the World, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler talk about the fact that the biggest problems in the world are also the biggest opportunities.  Higher education is no exception.

We are by now well acquainted with the myriad problems with the traditional higher ed conveyor belt system.  Student debt is reaching astronomical levels, institutions have become little more than degree mills spitting out graduates unequipped for the world, students are bored and restless, employers aren’t finding skilled workers, and nobody’s happy.  This is a big problem, and therefore a big opportunity.

It’s not only an opportunity for entrepreneurs to create new education models like Praxis, Minerva, Gap-Year, Enstitute, and others; it’s also an opportunity for you as an individual.  You can capitalize on the problem by creating your own path.  The degree is declining in value and the classroom is fast becoming one of the weakest ways to gain relevant information, skill, confidence, network, and knowledge.  This is an opportunity for you to gain a first-mover advantage and step out of the classroom and into the world.

Those who can boldly say, “I opted-out of the stagnant status quo to create my own path”, and demonstrate the value they can produce will have a tremendous advantage over the throngs of young people hoping that BA on their resume will get them an interview.

Praxis is Democratizing the Degree

Above all a college degree is a signal.  People buy one to signal to the world – their parents, peers, employers, investors, co-workers – that they are a valuable, smart, skilled person worth working with.  Yet the signalling power of the degree has been dropping fast.  Ask any employer and they’ll tell you they have less and less trust in a degree to accurately signal a high-performing, value-creating person.  They prefer experience and demonstrated proof of knowledge, but instead they are asked to simply trust a credential that’s supposed to verify knowledge and skill they can’t see for themselves.  The whole system is based on trust, which is why it’s so vulnerable and ripe for innovation.

Why is Bitcoin a breakthrough? Because unlike all other methods of payment, it’s a trustless system. You don’t need to simply believe people and institutions, you can have demonstrated proof. It’s s platform for open, peer-to-peer verification.

That’s what we’re doing for credentialing at Praxis. The closed door, black box model asks everyone to trust universities and professors to accurately reflect knowledge and skill through tests, grades, and degrees, yet no one gets to actually see the process.  We’re opening it up to the world.  It doesn’t matter what your professor or institution thinks, it matters what the people who actually want to work with you think.  Let’s let them in.  Let’s let them give the grades.  Let’s decentralize this thing.

We’re not trying to create new and better credential gatekeepers. We’re tearing off the gates.  I describe what we’re doing and why in a bit more detail below.

You can also read and watch more about what we’re doing here.

It’s Not About GDP

I’ve been thinking lately about GDP, and common ideas of economic progress more generally.

I just attended an event about the causes of and cures for poverty in the poorest countries.  So much of the discussion utilized comparisons between countries based on measures of GDP, GDP growth, and the like.  The more I thought about it, the less sense this made.  Not that GDP doesn’t decently correlate to overall wealth, opportunity, and progress – it does – but that it does less and less as technology and markets change.  GDP charts would fail to show, for example, the tremendous progress made in many poor countries by the fact that nearly everyone now has access to cell phones.  In fact, GDP does a bad job at measuring the progress of information/communication/data in general.

Consider MOOC’s and the abundance of free online learning.  Since the education industry is a chunk of GDP, putting it all out there for free can actually bring GDP numbers down, even as human well-being and human capital increase.

Think about other areas of misleading measures.  What you can do with a computer or smart phone in terms of sending data across the globe means fewer freight ships, the things easily measured in GDP calculations, but not less progress and opportunity.

Automation, information technology, decentralized networks, open-source…these make the world better and increase human flourishing, though they don’t do much for old-school metrics like employment and GDP.  Being listed as on the payroll of a company doesn’t always equal being better off (depending upon what else you might be doing of course), and having a larger number of physical objects to count doesn’t either.

For this reason, I don’t take much stock in those who lament slowed economic growth and fear it will bring an end to the complex market systems in countries like the US.  We used to consider farming the only thing that really mattered for economic well-being.  Then manufacturing.  As machines can do more of both of these, we humans can be redeployed in myriad ways previously unimagined.  Think about all the micro entrepreneurship going on today.  Think of crowdfunding for one-off projects.  I know authors who probably aren’t technically “employed” most of the time, if at all, and don’t produce GDP enhancing widgets, but they live wonderful lives by pitching book ideas on kickstarter, raising the money, travelling the world, doing the writing, and selling ebooks.  They may make aggregate data appear we’re economically worse off, but they’d rather not trade their life for one hoeing rows or assembling buggies.

The fact that no one quite knows how to calculate the value of the internet and other information age technologies probably causes us all to underestimate just how well-off we are today, and how bright the future is.  It’s the perfect time to seize the opportunity and do something new.  Carpe diem.