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Economics Problems

Ponzi Economics​

What systemic flaws in capitalism create misaligned incentives?

Common Law Tax Loopholes​

The wealthy can pay for advisors to dodge paying taxes.

Competition Drives Selfishness​

Competition tends to fuel self-centred short-terminism. The question isn't whether competition is good or bad — it's whether the ledger we use to keep score optimizes for the right outcomes.

The current ledger asks: Am I winning?

A better ledger asks: Are we winning?

We need scoring systems designed to promote collective progress over individual extraction.

Good Ideas Lose​

It's not what you know but who you know.

Political and Machiavellian influence too often kill good ideas out of self-interest — or lack of understanding and humility to own up to that.

Mantra

Politics is what happens where systems fail

The Middle Management Problem​

HR rewards headcount over ability and performance. The best way to get a payrise? Manage more people. But this incentivises bloat and bureaucracy.

Machines are on the path to automate middle management. A lot of people will need to re-educate themselves to re-enter the workforce.

Speed of technology and culture are outpacing the ability of bureaucratic systems to keep up with demand.

Repurposing Talent​

Transformation tech is making certain skills redundant. Web3 will demand a new way of thinking about how to solve problems.

The pandemic led many people to question the purpose of their work and the leadership at their companies — and found it came up short.

Links:

Global Supply Chain​

International trade relies on moving containers, but global demand for physical goods is dramatically outpacing infrastructure.

For everyday consumers, infrastructure limits coupled with rising demand mean rising costs — a vicious cycle of scarcity.

Infrastructure is out of date. Without a logistics standard to act as a request-response protocol, there are supply chain issues and port bottlenecks along vital trade routes.

Without logistics standardisation the ecosystem must stitch trade networks together manually:

  • Suppliers
  • Drayage
  • Ports
  • Warehouses
  • Buyers
danger

The world's shipping infrastructure is starting to break

The key factor in growth of GDP via rapid globalization has been due to the pervasive adoption of containers and corresponding infrastructure

Between 1970 and 2018:

  • Total world exports increased more than 65 times ($384 billion to $25 trillion)
  • Adjusting for inflation, total exports have grown 10 times
  • Global GDP went from 14% to more than 30%

Opportunity: The interplay between Bits to Atoms that makes the world go round. Standardization and transparency will take us from the pre-internet era to a post-internet era for shipping.

Like a packet of data, a container is just a box with an address

Trusted Transactions​

Most businesses today lose money due to:

  1. Procedural delays
  2. Human error
  3. Fees to middlemen
  4. Inconsistency