Building Tomorrow

Most Americans, including working class Americans, could retire millionaires…if we fixed Social Security. Instead, we are facing a financial crisis when Social Security runs out of money in the mid-2030s and are forced to decided between massive tax increases or major benefit cuts. There is a country that’s a peak into our possible future if we start making smarter choices. Australia enacted major reforms to their retirement system in the 1990s that are just starting to bear fruit. Their superannuation system, though flawed in some ways, shows just how much better a market-based system of individual accounts would be for retirees.

What is the Social Security Trust Fund? When is Social Security suppose to run out? When did we attempt to fix our Social Security problem? What is superannuation?

Millennials and Super: The Case for Voluntary Superannuation, written by Simon Cowan

Social Security Is Running Dry, And There’s Only One Politically Viable Option To Save It, written by Patrick W. Watson

Fixing Social Security, Commentary from Michael Tanner

Social Security vs. Private Retirement, Antony Davies

Bringing Wealth to the Poor (with Michael Tanner), Free Thoughts Podcast

America’s Middle Class Gets More Welfare Than the Poor, written by Michael Tanner

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If a bear eats a burger in the woods and doesn’t realize it’s not from a cow, does it care? Until bears evolve the ability to communicate, I suppose we’ll never know. It’s an impossible question, but not as impossible as the Impossible Burger it just ate.

The future of meatless meat is here! So we asked the closest thing we have to a bear in the woods at Building Tomorrow, our producer Landry Ayres, to taste test two burgers, one an Impossible Burger and the other a traditional burger. Check out the episode to find out whether Landry guessed between them correctly, then stay for our interview with an Impossible Foods representative about the environmental benefits of this burger that is made from soy protein yet still ‘bleeds’ when you bite into it.

How do you define meat? Does Impossible Burgers taste like regular burgers? What is the environmental impact of the Impossible Burger? What is the key ingredient to the Impossible Burger? Is it possible to make the Impossible Burger at the same price as a regular burger? What is the difference between lab grown meat and the Impossible Burger?

Impossible Foods

Impossible Burger: Here’s what’s really in it, written by Laura Reiley

Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?, written by Tad Friend

The FDA Ruins Everything You Eat, Free Thoughts Podcast

Popping Techno-Utopian Bubbles, Building Tomorrow

When Is a Market Failure Not a Market Failure?, written by Jon Murphy

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The world is rapidly aging and, since people have fewer kids, that means we are facing an eldercare crisis. People will live longer, but have fewer family checking in on them, driving them to doctor’s appointments, and catching the early warning signs of serious illnesses. There is no perfect solution for that crisis, but new technology promises to take better care of us as we age. We have two interviews in today’s episode with startups that can passively track the health of elderly users to watch for Alzheimer’s, dementia, blood pressure, and heart attacks. These technologies can both save lives and improve the quality of life for many elderly people and, potentially, for the not so elderly as well, but that innovation will be delayed if the Food and Drug Administration fails to remove the regulatory barriers that inhibit medical device experimentation.

Are there innovative ways to spot the early stages of Alzheimer’s? As the global population ages, how are we able to create technologies that will help us take care of the elderly?

Hanamura Mirror Concierge

Researchers use AI to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s

Health Care without Health Insurance, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Wearable Tech: Health Care of the Future, Building Tomorrow Podcast

On Innovation: Don’t Ask for Permission, Building Tomorrow Podcast

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If you had to choose one technology that has done the most to transform peoples’ lives for the better in the past forty years, you could make a strong argument for cellphones. While people in the US have the first world privilege to complain about wasting time on their phones, millions of people in the developing world are using their cellphones to pull themselves out of poverty, move from subsistence farming to global markets, access credit and bank the unbanked, and learn about the broader world.

In this episode, Paul is joined by Katherine Clayton, founder and CEO of Omnivis, a startup that has created a smartphone-based device to cheaply and quickly test for cholera in water. Then he is joined by Marian Tupy and Chelsea Follett from Human Progress to talk about the transformative effects of cellphone technology.

What is the social and economic impact of cellphones in the developing world? How can cellphones be used as medical devices for people who do not have access to medical facilities? Do we rely too much on cellphones?

OmniVis, Rapid Cholera Detection Platform

Human Progress

The Miracle that Is the Smartphone, written by Marian L. Tupy

Mobile Connectivity in Emerging Economies, by Laura Silver, Aaron Smith, Courtney Johnson, Jingjing Jiang, Monica Anderson, and Lee Rainie

Has Your Phone Hacked Your Brain?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

The World is Getting Better (with Marian Tupy), Free Thoughts Podcast

Making the World Better, written by Aaron Ross Powell

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Matthew Feeney and Peter Van Doren interview Hal Varian about his professional experience starting with his economics column at the New York Times. They also cover other topics like the Google search engine, autonomous vehicles, and working in the age of automation. Varian even suggests that problem with autonomous vehicles is not the vehicle, but the humans that interfere with them.

Is there a market for search engines? How do people use search engines? Is Google a monopoly? Which country has the shortest workweek in the developed world? Is our labor market tightening?

Sometimes the Stock Does Better Than the Investor That Buys the Stock, written by Hal R. Varian

Googlenomics: A long-read Q&A with chief economist Hal Varian, written by James Pethokoukis

Google chief economist Hal Varian says a robot isn’t after your job, written by Olivera Perkins

Hal Varian on Taking the Academic Approach to Business (Ep. 69), Conversations with Tyler

Will Artificial Intelligence Take Your Job?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Does More Technology Create Unemployment?, written by A.D. Sharplin and R. H. Mabry

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence is Best Left to Researchers, written by Ryan Khurana

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How did Limbaugh change the radio business? How did the conservative opinion media come to be? Who were the left-wing talk radio hosts while Rush Limbaugh was gaining more and more listeners? Is NPR political advocacy media? What is media bias? Who is Howard Stern and what is “guy talk”? Why are liberal podcasts succeeding in the Trump era?

Conservative talk radio has become an assumed presence in American media and politics, but in this manifestation it is only about three decades old. Historian Brian Rosenwald joins the show to discuss his latest book, Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party that Took Over the United States, which explores the rise of entertainers like Rush Limbaugh from the margins to having incredible influence in national politics. That surprising story has implications for other media, including the future of podcasting, which is allowing previously marginalized voices, from socialists to libertarians, to have greater voice, for good or for ill. 

Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States, written by Brian Rosenwald

Rush Limbaugh’s Problem: How The Internet Changed Talk Radio, written by Brian Rosenwald

Why All The Talk-Radio Stars Are Conservative, written by Abram Brown

Talking Across Political Divides (with Arnold Kling), Free Thoughts Podcast

Is Netflix Ruining Culture?, written by Pamela J. Hobart

The Fairness Doctrine Was Terrible for Broadcasting and It Would Be Terrible for the Internet, written by Paul Matzko

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People may not really know what artificial intelligence is but they are convinced that it will either utterly destroy humankind or lead us into a utopian Singularity between man and machine. But, as philosopher Susan Schneider reminds us, there’s much we don’t know about artificial intelligence, including the nature of consciousness itself. And consciousness, while it may be hard to identify, entails significant ethical obligations, a point that any fan of the HBO show Westworld will quickly grasp. These kinds of questions have been the object of philosophical debate for millennia and it’s a line of inquiry that we should understand before, and not after, we program the first conscious artificial intelligence.

What does it mean to design a mind? What is the ‘problem of other minds’? Why does the consciousness of AI matter? Can machines be conscious? Do you think Androids are conscious? Would we ever have anything like a Westworld with true violence? How much do you replace and you are still you?

Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, written by Susan Schneider

‘Westworld’ Science Advisor Talks Brains and AI, written by Jeremy Hsu

Transcending the Brain? AI, Radical Brain Enhancement and the Nature of Consciousness, Susan Schneider at the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

Spacetime Emergence, Panpsychism and the Nature of Consciousness, written by Susan Schneider

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence is Best Left to Researchers, written by Ryan Khurana

Will Artificial Intelligence Take Your Job?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

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Cryptocurrency is, ultimately, science fiction. That isn’t an insult. It is science fiction in the sense that decades before you could set up a cold wallet, trade crypto, or hodler Bitcoin, the idea that one day there would exist a vast, distributed digital currency as an alternative to fiat money was a fiction, a thing that existed only in the imaginations of a handful of geeks, programmers, and weirdos. And it is science inasmuch as those same people, through generations of trial and error, actually made that fiction reality.

Professor Finn Brunton joins our show to discuss his latest book, Digital Cash, which is about those innovators—anarchists, socialists, libertarians, and everything in between—and the stories that they told, stories powerful enough to fabricate something worth billions of dollars out of nothing and, possibly, permanently transform the future of money for good or for ill.

How is digital data valuable? How do you find ways that can limit the ways that data can circulate? What does ‘passing current’ mean? What role does trust play in the exchange of currency?

Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency, published by Princeton University Press & written by Finn Burton.

Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency, written by Finn Brunton

Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution, written by Rebecca L. Spang

The Future of Banking, written by Pascal Hügli

What’s in Your (Crypto) Wallet?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Facebook Friends Libra, Building Tomorrow Podcast

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The recent shootings in El Paso and Gilroy are a reminder of the power of the internet to build communities for niche interests, from vampire fan fiction aficionados to neo-Nazis. The El Paso shooter posted his manifesto to 8chan, a hub for dank memes and hateful content alike. Timothy McLaughlin joins the show to explain where 8chan came from and the personalities people behind its founding.

Then Paul, Matthew, and Will discuss the ways that online radicalization of the alt-Right is both similar to past waves of terrorist radicalization and dissimilar in that it is stochastic and requires less organizational structure. Finally, they caution against government overreaction to the legitimate problem of online radicalization, given that most of the proposed measures wouldn’t work, might even backfire, and would create significant, ill, and unintended consequences for positive online social movements.

What is 8chan? How is 8chan organized? Who created 8chan and what was its’ original purpose? How should forms of exchange be regulated in the wake of horrific events? Does the use of mass communication inspire people to commit terrible acts of terror? Why are criminal manifestos posted on 8chan? What is stochastic terrorism? How should government respond to the problem of online radicalization?

The Weird Dark History of 8Chan, written by Timothy McLaughlin

Trump wants social media to detect mass shooters before they commit crimes, written by Rani Molla

‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says the Creator of 8chan, a Megaphone for Gunmen, written by Kevin Roose

Haters Gonna Hate Speech, Building Tomorrow Podcast

How the FOSTA Rules Create a “Bootleggers and Baptists” Scenario for the 21st Century, written by Paul Matzko

What Made the Internet Possible?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

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If you, as a private citizen, want to build a bridge across the river to shorten your commute, you run into a few problems. The incredible cost of the proposed bridge puts it beyond your limited resources, so you try and convince thousands of your neighbors to chip in donations. But you don’t want to contribute money unless you reach the total amount necessary to build the bridge; a half-built bridge is worse than no bridge at all.

One answer to this problem is to use the State to coerce contributions (taxes) from the community, but that comes with ethical problems and inefficiencies from bureaucracy and regulatory capture. Recently, new internet-based alternatives like Kickstarter have fueled the rise of private sector crowdfunding (properly known as assurance contracts), solving the fundraising problem by guaranteeing that contributors will only be debited if total contributions reach the required amount.

However, there is still a free rider problem given that people who want the bridge will be unwilling to contribute since there’s a chance that the bridge will be built regardless of whether they, personally, contribute. They can have a bridge without paying, thus the temptation to free ride. To mitigate that problem, Alex coined the idea of the dominant assurance contract, which gives potential free riders an additional incentive to contribute. And dominant assurance contracts could be combined with smart contracts on the blockchain to remove the need for as much trust in the good intentions of strangers.

What is a dominant assurance contract? What is a public good? How much of each public good do we want? How are assurance contracts just like crowdfunding? What is Kickstarter?

Making Markets Work Better: Dominant Assurance Contracts and Some Other Helpful Ideas, written by Alex Tabarrok

Kickstarter and the NEA, written by Tyler Cowen

The private provision of public goods via dominant assurance contracts, written by Alex Tabarrok

What Theory Won’t Tell You About Public Goods, written by Jon Murphy

Prices Are Too Damn High, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Modern Liberalism and the Paternalism of Things, written by Jason Kuznicki

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