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The Opioid Crisis (and addiction-based business models)

It’s common for scalable companies with good business models to involve addiction.

I mean addiction in a broad sense. This includes addiction to both physical products and digital goods and services. Addiction is a retention metric.

And retention (how long someone stays a paid customer or user) is what fuels many businesses. Let’s look at this with opioid addiction, focusing on Purdue Pharma’s product OxyContin. What second-order effects drive the opioid crisis?

Continue reading “The Opioid Crisis (and addiction-based business models)”

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The Emergence of Omniscience (Part 1 – Images)

We are in an early transition period of omniscience. We are transitioning from some personal actions that are recorded only through our memories to many events being recorded, re-playable, and shareable. By “personal actions” I mean anything from what content you consume to where you go to how you act. By “re-playable and shareable” I mean that some device or system collects data that can be stored for any length of time and then easily sent to others to observe.

Continue reading “The Emergence of Omniscience (Part 1 – Images)”

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Universal Basic Income (Part 2)

This is a continuation of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) discussion, mostly focused on the impact on entrepreneurship and personal choice of what work-related activities to pursue. (If you missed it, here’s UBI Part 1.)

As in the previous posts, I think we should pause in the face of large top-down decisions. While things can look good in theory, these large-scale changes often bring unintended consequences. How should we look at the systems we will replace? Might there be second-order effects in the case of UBI as well? What system changes will emerge?

What are some entrepreneurship-related unexpected results we could see from top-down UBI in the US? Continue reading “Universal Basic Income (Part 2)”

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Universal Basic Income (Part 1)

I’ve avoided discussing unintended consequences from one of the big policy debates of today — Universal Basic Income. Until now. This is a big topic so I preemptively titled this post as part one.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a general term that describes mostly government programs that distribute a periodic sum of money to citizens without otherwise considering their income. UBI has been proposed as everything from a tool to reduce poverty to a way to guard against the social impact of job loss caused by automation.

Each group outlines ways UBI could work a little differently. But many questions remain, including how will a particular country’s overall social system change? What are the second-order effects? Could UBI work in one place and not another? Could UBI work at one time and not another? Let’s first look at some UBI experiments and their initial pros and cons.

Continue reading “Universal Basic Income (Part 1)”

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Who Plays the Stradivarius in Interstellar Space?

This is a piece about the loss of skills — even ones that are marks of great beauty and mastery — due to a change in environment.

It’s an extreme example but a fun one to think through: who would play a Stradivarius violin in interstellar space?

As a way to think through an extreme environmental (not meaning climate here) change, I make the assumption that in coming centuries, whether one, five, or 10, humans will become an interstellar or extrasolar species. That is, some part of humanity will cease living in this solar system, and will instead live on other planets, space ships, or other artificial homes. I count that assumption as the less interesting part of this post and instead focus on the unintended consequences caused by a dramatic change in environment.

Let’s think through what happens to a specific type of human mastery (and by extension, a framework to apply to many others) as humans make extreme choices (like leaving earth).

Q: Who will play the Stradivarius in interstellar space or on extrasolar planets? A: No one. Longer answer below. Continue reading “Who Plays the Stradivarius in Interstellar Space?”

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Vultures and Ventures (Structure of Growth and Decline)

Vultures: Why are vultures dying in large numbers around the world? What else happens when the vultures decline? And let’s ask the question few are comfortable asking: How much is a species worth?

Ventures: Why do well-funded, fast-growing startups die? What else happens when they die? And let’s ask the question that is often ignored: Who wins in the process? Continue reading “Vultures and Ventures (Structure of Growth and Decline)”

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Destructive Collection (How We Destroy Things)

Some destruction is accidental. Some is intentional. Destruction works in different ways. And for different reasons.

These are types of destruction I’ve cataloged. I arranged this list according to what each type of destruction means, methods to achieve, first-order effects, second-order effects, and examples.

(Reminder: first-order effects are the direct, commonly noticeable changes. Second-order effects are the effects of the effects and often not obvious.)

Note that there is a lot of overlap between categories. I didn’t attempt a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive list. That just felt unrepresentative of the messiness of life. 

This is a destructive collection that I hope will change the way you think. Continue reading “Destructive Collection (How We Destroy Things)”

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Food Follows Function (Why we eat what we eat)

I’ve kept these early posts focused on issues that many people can relate to, rather than going into systems theory, complexity, chaos and more. Second-order effects touch the common things we consume, not just the esoteric. 

Second-order effects are everywhere — even in the choice of what we eat. But who chooses the choices? Some varieties of crops cannot easily be shipped far or produced for large markets. Other varieties are at risk of shocks and therefore put their focused producers and consumers at risk. 

Continue reading “Food Follows Function (Why we eat what we eat)”