Stranded Technologies Podcast

This is a two-part episode - in the first part Janine Leger, one of the driving forces behind Zuzalu talks about community development and Zuzalu's future.

In the second part, Niklas introduces Vitalia - a Zuzalu-inspired network society that aims to radically accelerate the development of life extension technologies.

Engage with Zuzalu here: https://zuzalu.city/

Engage with Vitalia here: https://vitalia.city/

Jim Pethokoukis is a policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, and writes the Faster, Please! newsletter on Substack.

The subject of this conversation is Jim's new book "The Conservative Futurist - How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised."

Ray Kurtzweil said in 1999:

“The twenty-first century will be different. The human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems of need, if not desire, and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a post-biological future.…The result will be far greater transformations in the first two decades of the twenty-first century than we saw in the entire twentieth century.”

However, this future seems distant and progress towards it too slow.

The covid-19 pandemic that took place against a backdrop of scarcity: "too little housing, too few immigrants, too few entrepreneurs, not enough clean energy, not enough slots at top colleges, and not enough high-quality infrastructure."

This conversation is about how to counter The Great Stagnation, an "Upwing" vs. a "Downwing" culture and the "Three Tailwinds" that could accelerate Upwing such as a revival nuclear power or productivity boost due to artificial intelligence (AI).

One idea to nurture that culture is the "Genesis Clock" as opposed to the famous "Doomsday Clock" from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Jim suggests the Genesis Clock to tell humanity how close or distant it might be to a period so different from modern life that it would qualify as a new beginning for our civilisation.

Bob is the world’s greatest expert on special economic zones or "opportunity zones" as he likes to call them, having worked in setting them up in 174 countries.

Max Borders said about Bob: “I would argue no living human being is responsible for helping lift more people out of poverty than Bob Haywood:”

Bob is notoriously low-key about his work.

This podcast episode together with Max' written 2-part series (part 1, part 2) is a rare look behind the scenes of a trend little understood or noticed in the developed world, but enormously important in the developing world to lift billions out of poverty.

In this episode you'll learn that ...

- Zone developers and governments need to start by defining the problem - why are we not getting the investment we want right now?

- You need a young, energetic local lawyer who knows existing regulations in a country and deeply understands the "code base" to find elegant solutions

- You need to build a coalition of local "second-tier" elites, i.e. not the ones that already are on top who benefit from the existing order

- The keys to a successful zone are predictability, productivity and profitability (3 P's)

- International multilaterals are a problem more than a solution

Sam Peltzman is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

Sam is was a graduate student to Milton Friedman and a contemporary to George Stigler, the famous economist who coined the term "regulatory capture".

Regulatory capture is an important concept. AI and crypto is under fire by regulators.

The legendary venture capitalist Bill Gurley gave a talk at the All-In Summit 2023 that went viral. He quoted Stigler's adage that "as a rule regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit."

The problem is that it's not true.

Stigler asked the right question, but didn't give the correct answer.

Sam Peltzman has thought and written extensively about this question for 50+ years since Stigler's famous article. The truth is simpler, but more sinister.

In fact, we learn in this episode that it's not industry that seeks to be regulated. Even the pharma industry did not proactively lobby for more regulations - they resisted the landmark Kefeuver-Harris amendments (1963) that shaped the modern FDA.

It's regulators who seek to regulate for their benefit.

Bill Gurley might be on the right track commenting on Elizabeth Warren's behaviour towards tech: "You attack 'em they have to come to you.”

This is a very nuanced episode on what might be the most important but least understood problem for greater progress in technology.

Sam Peltzman's legacy helps us to understand what's coming at us.

Yet his message is deeply optimistic: technology is still unstoppable. It can only be temporarily slowed down, not eliminated.

Two of the most popular previous guests are back: Sebastian Brunemeier, the General Partner of Healthspan Capital and CEO of ImmuneAGE Pharma, and Robin Hanson, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and iconic thinker.

Sebastian previously talked about longevity biotech and decentralized science. Robin spoke about prediction markets and governance innovation.

In this episode, we talk about the surprising science of health outcomes. Equipped with vast amounts of money and talent (18% of GDP), the healthcare market disappoints egregiously when it comes to making us living longer and healthy.

Robin explains why that is: it's hidden motives in human behavior. We defer rational decision-making to authorities with the incentive to overmedicate us.

Increased spending and more drugs make us worse.

Sebastian can confirm as a practicing scientist how the pharma-industrial complex and regulatory monopoly are drivers of a massive misallocation of capital.

However, we have now learned much about the potential of special jurisdictions, medical tourism, and regulatory flexibility.

Niklas and Sebastian have worked together over the past year to implement some groundbreaking ideas in practice: life insurance coupled with healthcare, for example, is an idea that is waiting for the right jurisdiction to make it possible.

At the following events, we'll gather renegade life scientists, biotechnology engineers, and crypto hackers to build the healthcare system of the future:

• Nov 3-5: Crypto Futures & Legal Engineering 2023 - A Próspera Builders' Summit https://lu.ma/crypto_legal2023
• Nov 17-19: DeSci & Longevity Biotech 2023 - A Próspera Builders' Summit https://lu.ma/longevity2023

There is a unique event that we're currently collecting a waitlist for:

• Jan 6 - Mar 1: Vitalia - Starting the Frontier City of Life https://lu.ma/vitalia

Olivier is an entrepreneur, investor, and independent author. He wrote “The Way of the Intelligent Rebel” and blogs at Disruptive Horizons.

The blog is about the disruption of the nation states by the internet and globalization and how to transform from a mono country to a netizen without borders.

Olivier's journey started with Tim Ferriss' book "The 4-Hour Work Week", as a way to unbundle his life through entrepreneurship and digital nomadism.

As a digital nomad, Olivier recommends the "Six Flag Theory" to become a mobile and sovereign individual protected from the overreach of extractive states.

Olivier is also a history buff and started a 2-part series with ten principles from history about the disruption of large institutions by new technology.

We also talk about AML-KYC financial regulations: they started with a noble goal, but have become an inefficient bureaucratic nightmare. It is estimated that the global compliance cost is $304bn per year but only managed to seize $3bn criminal funds.

This episode is full of practical insights into how to start unbundling your life and join the movement towards the decentralization of governance.

David Friedman is an economist, physicist, legal scholar, and author.

His father is the legendary economist Milton Friedman, and his son is the founder of the Seasteading Institute and Pronomos Capital, Patri Friedman (appeared on episode 32).

His most popular book is The Machinery of Freedom, and he’s written books on microeconomics and the economics of law, such as Law's Order, Hidden Order, and Legal Systems Very Different from Ours.

In this interview, we talk about the legacy of the Friedman family: a commitment to the search for truth, and a little trick to express uncomfortable things with numbers.

We talk about economic rationality, efficient law and the problem of public goods or why so-called "market failures" aren't an argument for government intervention.

These are important terms to understand what the "competitive governance" space is about: civilizations all throughout history have come up with different ways to solve coordination problems. Legal systems are much more different than you'd think. We can learn a lot from Islamic law, Romany law or Saga period Icelandic law.

These differing legal norms and mechanisms have an impact on the economic development of a civilization. They explain why some societies flourish or stagnate.

Yet there has been little innovation in probably the most important industry in the world. Governments and nation-states are monopoly providers of their products. It is very costly and hard to switch your provider, which is why they are slow to change.

David Friedman's work provides frameworks for thinking about how to change it, and to develop better ways to live together, to prosper, and to advance human progress.

This is a double-feature episode about the past, present and future of living.

In the first episode, Thibault Serlet gives a historical view of migration patterns and labor mobility. In the second episode, Jackson Stegers gives an overview of modern-day co-living business models and practical learnings - we use both to think about a future where people have more choices, a more mobile and unbundled territory.

Jackson Steger is the host of the Campfire by Cabin podcast. Besides podcasting, Jackson is writing about coliving networks, startup cities, new neighborhood development, network states, and other new models for living on his blog.

In this episode, Jackson gives an overview of different ways of co-living from smaller scale and self-organized to becoming large businesses like Selina.

What's new about co-living is technology such as the Internet to enable highly aligned groups to find each other. Balaji Srinivasan's "The Network State" is built around that idea, and projects such as Cabin are at the forefront of this trend.

In his role at Cabin, and at various stages in his life, has collected experience in organizing a community to live together. He summarized his practical insights in a post called "The Pyramid of Co-Living Needs", a valuable guide for self-starters.

Towards the end, we talk about the origin of passports, how to unbundle our lives, improve governance services and make it possible to live together in harmony.

This is a double-feature episode about the past, present and future of living.

In the first episode, Thibault Serlet gives a historical view of migration patterns and labor mobility. In the second episode, Jackson Stegers gives an overview of modern-day co-living business models and practical learnings - we use both to think about a future where people have more choices, a more mobile and unbundled territory.

Thibault Serlet is the Director of Research at the Adrianopole Group, a special economic zone intelligence firm.

In this episode, Thibault starts with a surprising insight: many people probably traveled more in the past than now. That is, if you compare traveling as a share of time and not miles traveled (this is higher today with airplanes).

Traveling for work and leisure was common for commercial, religious, and military reasons. Borders were much more open because it was much harder to enforce them, and it was in some ways easier to move to another place for opportunity.

After World War I, nation-states have become more powerful. They increasingly kept stricter border controls and required passports for passage. Passports have a long history, but the way we know them now is mostly a result of the past 100 years.

While Thibault can foresee a dystopian future where governments use technology to enforce even stricter within-country border controls, he reminds us of the struggle of many people against massive oppression such as the Sephardic Jews.

There is always hope.

Dwarkesh Patel is a podcaster.

The Dwarkesh Podcast (YouTube | Spotify | Apple) interviews intellectuals, scientists, historians, economists, and founders about their big idea.

The themes of Dwarkesh are similar to this podcast: frontier technologies, how to accelerate progress and the implications for humanity.

Recently, Dwarkesh has had prominent guests talking AI such as Marc Andreessen, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Carl Shulman, Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei.

In this episode, Niklas and Dwarkesh debate whether AI poses a high or low risk to human existence (neither of us denies that the risk is 0).

Niklas stands more on the low to negligible-risk side and Dwarkesh sees a greater risk. This ends up in a friendly, rational and learning debate.

Dwarkesh is a rising star in the podcasting world, and his channel is highly recommended content for listeners who enjoy this podcast.