world – Max's Two Cents

The National Dashboard and Human Progress

2021-04-142023-03-09economics, economy, progress, science, well-being, world, world optimizationLeave a comment

In this post, I would like to consider a hypothetical national dashboard comprising essential metrics that measure the economy, human well-being, and long-term progress. It is hypothetical because, although all these metrics are measured today, not all of them receive equal attention in the government and the media.

In This Post

Show Me the Numbers
Can We Measure Progress?
A National Dashboard
Upstream Drivers of Long-Term Progress
A Possible Set of 11 Metrics
More Options
Global Focus

Show Me the Numbers

As someone who has studied economics and business and spent over a decade working in the private sector, I’ve been long dismayed by how little focus there is on numbers in government and media reporting. To the extent politicians focus on numbers, they typically pick the ones that support their narrative and seem relevant to this week’s news cycle.¹

I wonder if there’s a better way. What if we reversed the order? What if we came together as a society and determined (1) what areas we would most like to improve, (2) the best way to measure the progress, and (3) the best way to report on it and future plans? What if we then used this framework to guide public conversation, media reporting, and perhaps even some White House press briefings?

Favorite Books of 2018 (and early 2019)

2019-01-282023-03-09AI, books, entrepreneurship, future, leadership, lifelong learning, management, negotiation, neuroscience, social impact, startups, technology, worldLeave a comment

Here are some books I’ve enjoyed more than others in the last 14 months or so. I’ve included some notable quotes but not all are equally representative of the book contents.

Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

“What is progress? You might think that the question is so subjective and culturally relative as to be forever unanswerable. In fact, it’s one of the easier questions to answer. Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony. All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress.”

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Harari

“Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective condition and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including to the condition of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently even dramatic improvement in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.”

Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

“Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they’ll find a way to screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a good team, and they’ll find a way to make it better. The goal needs to be to get the team right, get them moving in the right direction, and get them to see where they are making mistakes and where they are succeeding.”

Monthly Newsletter: Issue 3

2018-03-292023-03-09AI, books, email-marketing, feedback, financial models, growth, happiness, leadership, management, marketing, music, performance management, product management, research, science, space, startups, technology, unit economics, world3 Comments

This is an issue of my monthly newsletter. Main topics: technology, startups, business growth, and marketing. See other issues on my blog or subscribe. ~Max

Now, get a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Technology and Startups

Latest YC Batch: 64 Startups. (Techcrunch)
Crypto Canon. A list of crypto learning resources. (A16z)
A visualization of how self-driving cars see the world. (Waymo on Medium)
Live video of the Falcon Heavy launch. This was just epic and worth a re-watch. (SpaceX)
B2B Buying Guide – AI, HR, legal, finance, marketing, productivity, and other products. (Y Combinator)
Cora. The electric aircraft company that Larry Page invested in unveiled its first “self-piloting” product.
The Building Blocks of Interpretability – visualization of image recognition machine learning algorithms. (Distill)
Here Come the Fake Videos, Too. It gets increasingly easy to develop fake videos using machine learning. (NYT)
YouTube, the Great Radicalizer. YouTube’s recommendations might lead you to increasingly radical content – no matter the topic. (NYT, Zeynep Tufekci)
10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2018. Sidewalk Labs’ “sensing city” and “zero-knowledge” proofs facilitated by Zcash cryptocurrency are interesting. (TechnologyReview)

Growth and Marketing

What 10 Studies Say About The Best Time To Send Email. Best options: Tue at 10 am, Thu at 8 pm, Wed at 2 pm, Tue at 6 am, and Thu at 10 am.
Analysis of the Dropbox financial model based on the S-1 filing. 1.1B revenue; 35% YoY; 7.97 multiple; 67% gross margin; -0.1% net income margin; 2% Free–>Paid conversion; 93% of customers are self-serve. (Tom Tunguz, VC)
Lessons from Spotify. Atypically for tech, Spotify’s marginal cost is not zero as it pays royalties. Since it’s hard to negotiate better rates with the music industry, Spotify will either need to tightly control operational costs or cut out the labels altogether – not a likely option. (Stratechery)