What is missing concerns the evolution of our institutions and their controlling belief systems.
Over half a century ago, we had the cultural dominance in Academia of analytical thinking from STEM and business areas, with Economics still being non-Marxist. To achieve economic growth and abundance, you need innovation, the ability to fund implementation, and permission to actually build and market the innovations. The high risk of determining which innovation will work and which will fail is beyond what the banking industry and government bureaucracies, with their regulatory requirements, can rationally finance, so we invented Angel Investing and Venture Capital, where the people making the decisions had real "skin in the game" with downside risk.
Meanwhile, the last requirement for implementing innovation became government permission, while the Social Sciences and Humanities in academia took over power and control of the regulatory institutions. By the 1990's, between environmental and political activists, a "vetocracy" was created where everyone could block the implementation of any innovation having anything to do with the real world, implemented outside the US and EU.
This limited the US innovation to areas not under regulatory control, like PC's and electronic design. Meanwhile, nuclear power was effectively blocked from continuing down the normal decreasing-cost curve as scaling of both size and numbers proceeded. In the last half-century, this whole industry in the US ceased innovation and shifted from being as cheap as coal to the most expensive energy source, thanks to permission blocks by the NRC. Now we have a CO2 problem and a Strait of Hormuz problem. We now believe that people with the "correct" feeling and beliefs can and will be analytical.
Regarding energy and the permitting issues .. can share some stories from my day job leading innovation at so cals big water utility which has lots of assets to leverage for the energy transition.
Regarding state capacity, there is ample whitespace regarding model civil service. Would be great to have a 21rst century Northcote-Trevelyan Report. Procurement has been a bit of a public sector particularly tech white whale for a minute. Lots of experiments to be done with bounties, quadratic voting and other creative mechanisms especially for knowledge work. For bread and butter goods and services there's a big need for tying procurement simplification to civil service reform to marry flexibikty with accountability. The political economy of both are tricky with unions, contractors and lots of rent seeking interests. Of course having a clear well evidenced north star with proven experiments provides a direction to row towards. Thanks for writing this.
What is missing concerns the evolution of our institutions and their controlling belief systems.
Over half a century ago, we had the cultural dominance in Academia of analytical thinking from STEM and business areas, with Economics still being non-Marxist. To achieve economic growth and abundance, you need innovation, the ability to fund implementation, and permission to actually build and market the innovations. The high risk of determining which innovation will work and which will fail is beyond what the banking industry and government bureaucracies, with their regulatory requirements, can rationally finance, so we invented Angel Investing and Venture Capital, where the people making the decisions had real "skin in the game" with downside risk.
Meanwhile, the last requirement for implementing innovation became government permission, while the Social Sciences and Humanities in academia took over power and control of the regulatory institutions. By the 1990's, between environmental and political activists, a "vetocracy" was created where everyone could block the implementation of any innovation having anything to do with the real world, implemented outside the US and EU.
This limited the US innovation to areas not under regulatory control, like PC's and electronic design. Meanwhile, nuclear power was effectively blocked from continuing down the normal decreasing-cost curve as scaling of both size and numbers proceeded. In the last half-century, this whole industry in the US ceased innovation and shifted from being as cheap as coal to the most expensive energy source, thanks to permission blocks by the NRC. Now we have a CO2 problem and a Strait of Hormuz problem. We now believe that people with the "correct" feeling and beliefs can and will be analytical.
I'd really love to see a "IFP but for Europe"! Sorely needed!
Regarding energy and the permitting issues .. can share some stories from my day job leading innovation at so cals big water utility which has lots of assets to leverage for the energy transition.
https://pioneeringspirit.xyz/the-garden-of-forking-permitting-paths
Regarding state capacity, there is ample whitespace regarding model civil service. Would be great to have a 21rst century Northcote-Trevelyan Report. Procurement has been a bit of a public sector particularly tech white whale for a minute. Lots of experiments to be done with bounties, quadratic voting and other creative mechanisms especially for knowledge work. For bread and butter goods and services there's a big need for tying procurement simplification to civil service reform to marry flexibikty with accountability. The political economy of both are tricky with unions, contractors and lots of rent seeking interests. Of course having a clear well evidenced north star with proven experiments provides a direction to row towards. Thanks for writing this.