Stranded Technologies Podcast: Recent Episodes
Niklas Anzinger
Niklas Anzinger talks and writes about his experience as a VC based in Prospera Honduras, competitive governance and how it can unblock "stranded technologies" that are held back by bureaucracy and overregulation.
www.strandedtechnologies.com
Bradley Tusk is a cofounder of Tusk Venture Partners, which invests in early-stage technology companies operating in highly regulated industries.
Bradley was also Uber's first political advisor and instrumental in developing their strategy to disrupt the incumbent taxi monopolies.
This is one of the most fascinating stories in the recent history of regulatory hacking.
In this episode, we're demystifying political misconceptions and looking into practical advice for entrepreneurs on navigating regulatory roadblocks and changing them for their benefit.
Key Takeaways:
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Every policy output is the result of political input. Every politician makes every decision solely based on reelection and nothing else.
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The vast majority of companies are regulated in some way. Rather than avoid dealing with regulations, run with the mindset that you'll figure it out.
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To hack the regulatory system, you need to take into consideration that:
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1) The level of government really matters—focus on doing things on a local or state level rather than a federal level;
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2) Get your customers to advocate for you
More about Bradley's work:
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bradleytusk.com
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Tusk Venture Partners
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Podcast – Firewall
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Book – The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
What if you could choose the set of laws under which your company is regulated?
Honduran reformers have developed a model to facilitate collaboration between foreign capital and local institutions in Honduras, leveraging external resources and expertise to develop an alternative to the levels of instability, crime, and corruption that prevailing institutions have been unable to address sufficiently.
But how do you encourage foreign investment in a country with this high-risk level?
That's where Próspera's framework comes into play. It protects property rights effectively and gives entrepreneurs flexibility over how they’re regulated.
No "one size fits all" law exists for all industries and businesses, so this flexibility is crucial, especially in industries like medicine, where regulatory approvals and licensing requirements vary widely between countries and pose significant barriers to entry.
This system allows products approved in one country, practitioners licensed in another, and innovative procedures from yet another to have an easier path to acceptance within Próspera's framework, fostering rapid business and technology development.
Moreover, Próspera aims to redefine standards of constitutional governance. It integrates best practices of common law from centuries past with novel elements like regulatory elections, medical reciprocity, 3D property rights, and air rights resolution mechanisms. This comprehensive approach is a step toward advancing governance for the 21st century and beyond.
If you're an entrepreneur interested in taking advantage of this regulatory framework for your business, please fill out this form!
Further links:
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Infinita VC
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Vitalia City
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
In this conversation, we're discussing with Vitalik the connection between longevity and Ethereum, what he's looking to build, frontier technologies, and how pop-up or startup cities can supercharge the longevity movement.
In the early days, when crypto started as a new frontier technology and experienced a Cambrian Explosion—rapid and transformative development and growth—How can the longevity movement experience something similar as it emerges?
This discussion highlights potential similar obstacles, key distinctions, and pivotal moments for longevity to experience a burst of innovation compared to crypto potentially.
The lessons from the crypto space offer valuable guidance for longevity researchers and enthusiasts alike. By fostering a culture of innovation, patience, and practical application, the journey towards unlocking the full potential of longevity technologies can be accelerated, bringing us closer to a future where age may no longer limit human potential.
If you liked this episode or article, please consider supporting the “Stranded Technologies” publication (podcast + blog) to help us continue producing high-quality material.
Further links:
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Infinita VC
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Vitalia City
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
“What’s more important than living forever?”
At Vitalia, Naval Ravikant outed himself as a longevity maximalist.
This is a compilation article with 7 key takeaways from the Fireside Chat with Niklas Anzinger at the AI & Technological Progress Conference, a summit in Roatán, Honduras.
#1 | The Future Is Actually Brighter.
“It just takes one person to make a breakthrough for humanity.
One person who invents the steam engine, one person who discovers relativity, one person who discovers an anti-aging solution.”
Technology is the scaling mechanism for individuals to benefit the world at large.
People are smart on their own and even smarter together.
We collaborate across cultures by sharing stories and traditions and joining organizations to achieve big things.
#2 | Why Would Someone Want To Live Longer?
“Longevity is not for everyone.” – Naval.
The idea of "making death optional" shows a push to extend life, challenging the established paradigm that death is inevitable.
This seems like common sense. Life is good.
So why do people fear the idea? Naval thinks it could be negative feelings about ourselves.
#3 | What Comes First: Scientific Theory or Entrepreneurial Tinkering?
Both! They build on each other.
Theoretical thinkers give us important concepts, but most progress happens when people try things out and solve problems.
AI can help put together information we already have, but real creativity means coming up with new ideas and tinkering in the real world.
People are really good at connecting different things creatively, in ways in which AI is still very limited (so, no, AI is nowhere near to replacing humans)!
#4 | Be Optimistic On The General Things And Be Skeptical About Specific Things.
David Deutsch talks about the "fun criterion," saying that exploring what excites us leads to better understanding. The general things we care about we can hold with optimism.
But it's also important to be careful and question things, ensuring we're focused on the truth. If you’re not skeptical about the specific details, you won’t execute or pick with precision.
Broadly: remain open-minded.
Narrowly: question everything.
#5 | Regulation and Innovation in Healthcare.
In sectors like healthcare, regulations meant to reduce risks can slow down new ideas and progress.
The problem is that these rules ignore the potential benefits that new ideas can bring, such as life-saving treatments.
As the founder of Angellist, Naval once succeeded with the “voice” strategy to lobby the government to change investment laws. However, now he believes it’s too hard, and it’s better to do an “exit” to make progress on longevity and new medical treatments.
#6 | How Do You Find What's True In A World Full Of Wrong Ideas?
Through trying things and getting real feedback!
Nature and free markets are great examples of systems that give honest feedback.
Even though society sometimes spreads wrong ideas, people must stay open-minded and change their beliefs when they get new information.
Being sure of something but willing to change your mind helps us learn and grow.
Biotech is an especially hard field because we don’t know the first-principle engineering that went into creating the human body.
That’s why only a system of continuous feedback and rapid innovation can lead to the key breakthroughs in longevity biotech.
#7 | Rethinking Traditional Ways To Do Things.
Philosophy and science is about “ideas having sex”. (Matt Ridley)
Maybe you don’t need a Ph.D. to be a scientist; being curious and careful matters more.
There can be more decentralized ways to fund and organize science, like using the internet to get patron support directly instead of large bureaucracies.
There are better ways to do things than we're used to always doing.
If you liked this episode or article, please consider supporting the “Stranded Technologies” publication (podcast + blog) to make it possible for us to make high-quality material.
Further links:
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Infinita VC
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Vitalia City
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
How compatible are two very different giants in the longevity movement?
Aubrey de Grey, the iconic and highly academically decorated bioscientist, paved the way for the early stages of scientific development, and Bryan Johnson, the software mogul turned one-man experiment and chief meme officer of longevity, focuses on the intersection of lifestyle and research.
Do their very different approaches go together?
They do! Let’s explore how they overlap with each other and how they are giving shape to the longevity movement.
They navigate the intricate landscape of scientific advancement, with Aubrey opening the area of possibility through scientific progress and Bryan developing broader accessibility of solutions.
Advancing From Early Stage Discovery
In society, when someone demonstrates what's possible, it inspires others to follow suit. “My goal is to shift the current trend from being offensive, weird, and eccentric to being amazing through Blueprint.” – Bryan Johnson
Change is inevitable because humans tend to doubt new technologies initially, but once they're available and add value to people’s lives, adoption grows, and it becomes the new normal. This is a recurring pattern in history; therefore, we should question our initial skepticism.
Collaborations With The Traditional Clinical Sides
Working together with clinicians is crucial. PhDs and MDs have different approaches, but they both understand the end goal: reducing human suffering. The process from lab to clinic is rocky and time-consuming, but there are pathways to streamline and accelerate.
Although people like Bryan Johnson play a significant role in advancing the mainstream medical profession, they intelligently contribute by collecting relevant data to expedite the process of ensuring the safety and effectiveness of medical innovations, making them accessible to a wider audience beyond just the early adopters.
Why Hasn't There Been A Moonshot For Longevity Yet?
Traditionally, the Far East has been slower to embrace longevity research despite factors like respect for the elderly, demographic challenges, and technological prowess. Recently, this mindset might be changing, and if so, it could pave the way for a significant initiative akin to the Apollo project.
One hurdle in the West is the centralization of science funding. Public officials act based on a desire for re-election and public opinion, but the public has a presumption against new technology. The solution could be more independent science funding, such as VitaDAO, and more “direct democracy,” such as citizen science.
Aubrey's innovation and Bryan's practical focus signify the diverse strategies required for advancement, emphasizing the integration of discovery, clinical application, and societal acceptance of mainstream longevity technologies. Despite cultural and political challenges, this fireside chat underscores the potential for transformative initiatives and the necessity of collective action in propelling the longevity movement forward.
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
In this fireside chat with Balaji Srinivasan and Niklas Anzinger at the Startup Societies & Crypto Cities Conference in Vitalia, they discussed the importance of longevity and its impact on technologies, as well as a strategy to breakthrough existing systems to develop your project.
This brief article summarizes key points of the conversation, giving you an advisory perspective on how to approach your journey in innovation.
Having More Time To Do More Things
Longevity is the ultimate technology for the core reason that it gives you more time to do everything else. “Look around. All that clutter used to be money. All that money used to be time.” – Unknown.
The impact of longevity in technology falls into the premise that time is money.
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If it’s cheaper, you spend less time buying it, meaning less of your life is devoted to the purchase.
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If it's faster, it takes less time to reach a destination, saving more time in your life.
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If it’s better, it requires less mental effort to understand how it works.
Almost every technology saves you time, whether seconds, minutes, hours, or days of life. On the other side, inflation diminishes your wealth over time, as what you worked for loses value.
That's why longevity serves as our true wealth reserve. With more time in life, you can do more.
Approaching The Challenges To Innovate in Longevity
“If you’re serious about technology, you need your own sovereignty.”
Innovating in longevity comes with a series of obstacles, just as innovating in any other technology does.
Take a look at some current tech conflicts, such as SpaceX vs the FAA, AI being attacked by the NYT, crypto being attacked by the SEC, or biotech being held back by the FDA.
You must be prepared to do whatever it takes to make a change and leave a lasting impact. This doesn’t mean compromising integrity but rather being ready to challenge established systems and barriers. Fundamentally, petitioning an existing government for permission is ineffective.
Just as Netflix didn't ask Blockbuster for permission, Apple didn't seek Blackberry's approval, and Amazon didn't request consent from Barnes & Noble, the new disruptor aims to replace the old system entirely.
When facing obstacles from established institutions, it's not about seeking their permission but rather acknowledging their presence and negotiating with them if necessary. However, the focus remains on progressing without their permission.
It’s easier to start Bitcoin than to reform the US Federal Reserve, it’s easier to start a new country than to reform the FDA, it’s easier to start a new city than to reform San Francisco. Engage with these entities solely to demonstrate their shortcomings and gather support for positive change.
“Cloud first, land last; but not land never.” – Parallel Establishment
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Parallel Societies: These are physical communities like Prospera, Culdesac, and Cabin. They represent vertical structures from physical presence.
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Parallel Institutions: These are digital entities replacing traditional systems like education and transportation. For instance, cryptocurrency serves as a parallel to traditional finance. These represent horizontal structures from digital presence.
Both the parallel societies and institutions combine in a grid to construct an alternative system that can stand in contrast to existing structures.
While it’s possible to establish a billion-dollar business online, you still need a billion permits to build something in your backyard. This is the tension between “the network” and “the state” that our world goes through day by day.
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Tyler Cowen is a professor at George Mason University, creator of the Marginal Revolution blog, founder of the Emergent Ventures grant program, podcast host of "Conversations with Tyler," and author of numerous books, including "The Great Stagnation."
Evaluating Economists and Their Contributions
In Tyler’s latest book, "GOAT: Greatest Economist Of All Time," he explores the contributions of renowned economists like Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, John Stuart Mill, Malthus, and Adam Smith.
The Post-Great Stagnation Era Has Begun
In his 2011 book, "The Great Stagnation," Tyler Cowen argued that technological progress had slowed significantly since 1973. While initially met with skepticism, this idea gained acceptance over time. Cowen's central thesis was that low-hanging technological fruit had been picked, but optimism emerged from the potential of the internet to drive a new wave of innovations.
However, already in his 2011 book, Cowen believed that society has moved beyond the Great Stagnation due to a new wave of innovation enabled by the internet.. In the past few years, we have seen breakthroughs like mRNA vaccines and AI.
That is good news.
However, regulatory challenges persist, particularly in biotech and pharmaceuticals. There is still lots more that can be done through deregulation or innovation in governance.
Small Jurisdictions & SEZs as Governance Experiments.
There’s potential for smaller countries to enact significant reforms and catalyze positive change. Tyler witnessed New Zealand's successful reforms in the early 1990s.
He views charter cities and special economic zones as great drivers for innovation in governance. A key challenge is the reluctance of governments to permit these experiments, often driven by concerns about their reputation or sovereignty, particularly in less stable regions.
But there are many successes with these zones; the overall record is quite robust, and we now have a clear understanding of how to execute these actions effectively. It's not merely a formula but rather a proven approach, looking at examples from China, Ireland, or the Dominican Republic.
Soon, Tyler is visiting the Próspera ZEDE, a special economic zone in Honduras, for Vitalia – a two-month longevity biotech acceleration camp. If you want to visit us there, apply here →
More about Tyler’s work:
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LinkedIn
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Twitter
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Conversations with Tyler Podcast
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
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Iyinoluwa (“E”) Aboyeji had an outsized influence on the startup landscape in Africa with Andela and Flutterwave (both top-10 unicorns in Africa)
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Surprisingly, to become a successful startup entrepreneur he had to become a policy entrepreneur and remove regulatory bottlenecks
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With Itana, a charter city in a free zone in Lagos, Nigeria, E is doubling down on creating an enabling policy environment for African’s tech talent
E’s entrepreneurial journey began with a spark of inspiration - watching the movie “The Social Network” and a fortuitous introduction to the world of startups by a friend and finding an early mentor in Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
E went on to build one of the first successful tech startups in Africa and cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2019.
Andela: One Of The First Successful Tech Startups In Africa
In its early days, Andela had to establish a new culture in Nigeria. This cultural shift, emphasizing principles such as punctuality and performance, profoundly impacted Nigeria's entrepreneurship and tech landscape. Andela pioneered remote work and empowered technical talent, inspiring other companies to follow suit.
Regulation often presents significant hurdles to innovation, a challenge particularly pronounced during Andela's early days in Africa's startup landscape.
A key lesson from Iyinoluwa's experiences is the paramount importance of aligning with others' objectives and the value of proactive engagement with regulators, e.g. to shape favorable regulations before the business launch proved invaluable.
Itana: Africa’s First Digital Free Zone – Crafting Digital Economy And Financial Services
Itana aims to become a hub for the digital economy and financial services sectors. Unlike traditional free zones primarily designed for manufacturing and trade, Itana focuses on the unique needs of service-oriented and digital businesses.
Itana's innovation operates on two fronts. It creates an inviting policy environment through business incorporation and access to financial services. It also addresses infrastructure gaps, offering workspaces and well-run electricity and internet.
Initiatives like Itana's free zone status are needed to transform Africa. Its entrepreneurs lack stable legal, financial and even physical infrastructure to thrive.
E’s work perfectly aligns with Infinita’s mission to support founders in overcoming regulatory bottlenecks to unleash a new wave of technological progress.
More about Iyinoluwa’s work:
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LinkedIn
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Twitter
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Itana – Build a global business in Nigeria
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
In this episode, we debate with two major thinkers with different philosophies but also commonalities about governance and social evolution.
Max Borders, author of “The Decentralist,” "The Social Singularity," and “After Collapse,” (a previous guest on the show) and Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation and author of “The Political Economy of Peer Production”.
The definition of “commons” is already a challenge, but we typically refer to inherited and collectively created goods, like air, oceans, and wildlife and shared institutions such as libraries, public spaces or scientific research.
In Michel Bauwens definition, what is peculiar about commons is that they are governed by a community - not by market-only or state-only mechanisms.
Michel is critical of both the market and state-led suppressions of local governance solutions to commons problems, where Max Border has a more proprietarian approach. These differences evolve into a deep discussion.
To Michel, proprietarian solutions aren’t necessarily bad - they can be enabling solutions for commons governance, especially empowered by the internet and blockchain technologies. Max Borders replies that this is a feature, not a bug - proprietarian / libertarian solutions are meant to enable pluralism.
Michel’s vision is one of "cosmo-local" dynamics, depicting a globally connected yet locally optimized system. As an open value network, co-production became pivotal in reallocating value from old systems to new ones through peer-to-peer capacities.
We discuss the role of cryptocurrency for community-focused economic networks, the paradox of "trustless" systems and the importance of peer-to-peer exchange. We also talk about the right "exit strategies", the concept of network states and the importance of building societies that benefit local communities.
All of us want to encourage more governance experimentation. Experimentation allows us to try out different ideas, and technology empowers us to scale those solutions that work from the local to the global level.
More about Michel’s work:
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P2P Foundation
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LinkedIn
More about Max’s work:
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Underthrow Newsletter
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LinkedIn
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
Ever wondered where SEZs in Latam are already a backbone of the economy?
It’s in Uruguay, a country with stable governance, clear legal frameworks and many other advantages for export-focused businesses.
Uruguay did many things right to create a business-friendly environment. It’s touted as the safest spot in Latam, and enjoys a high degree of civil and economic freedom.
Now meet David Luftglass, the founder of the “Zenith” (TBD) Special Economic Zone. One of many zones, each with its unique flavor, from industrial science parks to towering structures tagged with the World Trade Center brand.
David illuminates how the SEZ program works. They’re in the works of getting an approved 10-year renewable tax exemption, a great starting advantage for new industrial businesses that already struggle with high capital costs.
It's like a sandbox for entrepreneurs, and the best part?
The process is not a black box like it is for many other SEZs (Honduras had a great advantage there too, but the new government in power is damaging this). There are clear processes, templates, and even law firms to guide you through.
But here's the beauty of it—these benefits aren't exclusive to big players.
David is an experienced founder, but it’s still a new business not backed by $100+ millions like a big corporation. Tax exemptions for income, corporate gains, VAT, and export taxes for a startup. Imagine that!
So, what's the plan? David is building more than just a city; he's building a community that builds many things from ag-tech to health and wellness, from true algae marvels to longevity labs, and even a nod to the cannabis and mushroom enthusiasts—these SEZs can become melting pots.
Think co-working on steroids, with incubators and spaces where dreamers meet doers. And the perks? They're not reserved for the elite. Anyone stepping into the SEZ world gets a taste of the benefits.
So, if you're reading this and your entrepreneurial spirit is tingling, Uruguay is calling. Uruguay's SEZs aren't just zones; they're an invitation to be part of a movement.
Connect with David:
Learn more about how Infinita supports founders overcoming regulatory bottlenecks through startup cities, network states, and crypto rails, to unleash a new wave of technological progress.
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
If you’re not excited yet about insurance regulation, this episode is for you!
Matthew Queen and I uncover the often underestimated impact of insurance regulation on the global economy. In this podcast, we learn the importance of the legal structures of societies, and what SEZs like Próspera can do to improve them.
Insurance is a peculiar product. It’s purely digital. It’s math about risks & probabilities.
It is an important backbone of the global economy, not only for people to have a fallback when they’re experiencing misfortune, but also for businesses to manage risk.
Risks abound for businesses, in a changing world. However, no external firm can assess your risk better than yourself - which is where captive insurance comes in: you can insure your risk yourself.
Captive insurance is a sophisticated financial risk instrument for companies.
Matthew Queen provides insights into the regulatory barriers for captive insurance, and how different jurisdictions are currently enabling the formation of captive insurance companies.
The regulatory dynamics offer potential for small, nimble and digital jurisdictions like Próspera to offer efficient alternatives. There is a balance between regulation and innovation in the insurance market - it’s a market not naturally attuned to small companies to disrupt easily because of large capital requirements.
This episode is a valuable resource not only for insurance entrepreneurs navigating industry complexities, but for any entrepreneurs with the ambition to build multinational companies to whom captive insurance can be a powerful tool.
More about Matthew’s work:
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Book: Modern Captive Insurance
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Twitter
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LinkedIn
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
Magatte Wade is an entrepreneur, author and promoter for African entrepreneurship. Magatte shares her impactful personal journey of migration, education, and entrepreneurship and calls attention to the economic difficulties in African countries. She discusses her book "Heart of a Cheetah", where she explores the misrepresentations of African poverty and how startup cities can help unleash entrepreneurship for Africa's development. She shares anecdotes from her entrepreneurial journey, highlighting bureaucratic hindrances she has encountered in Africa versus the U.S. and advocating for the establishment of startup cities in Africa as a radical, immediate solution to alleviate poverty and drive economic growth.
Magatte previously appeared on Lex Fridman and Jordan Peterson. She recently interviewed Vitalik Buterin on her own video series.
More about Magatte's work:
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MagatteWade.com
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SkinIsSkin.com - Magatte's company
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Twitter
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Instagram
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YouTube
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Facebook
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LinkedIn
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TikTok
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
Richard Hanania is the founder and president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, and author the books “The Origins of Woke” and “Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy”.This is a far-ranging conversation with an emerging star public intellectual.In this episode we discuss:
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Political theory: Nietzschean Liberalism, the worldview that greatness is a higher value than equality coupled with the insight that the liberal institutions of markets & democracy are the best delivery mechanism for greatness
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The influence of law on society: it's a recurring topic of this podcast how legal systems influence economic growth. Hanania argues that even culture such as "wokeism" is downstream of key US legal decisions made in the 1960s
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Public choice in International Relations (IR): many IR theorists assume states are rational actors. Richard debunks this theory, arguing that collective guilt and responsibility of a "people" is morally not the right lens to view the world
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
Andrew Côté is a nuclear fusion engineer at Stellerator Systems and a scout at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). He has a Substack called "Ulysses".
Right in time with the release of Marc Andreessen's "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto", this episode has good news: nuclear fusion has a real shot.
There are engineering challenges, but the science has paved the way for some promising methods to achieve energy superabundance from nuclear fusion.
Is fusion even necessary? Isn't nuclear fission enough?
What's great about fusion is that it doesn't start with a regulatory uphill battle. Instead the US Department of Energy (DOE) decided fusion is regulated like particle accelerators, not like nuclear power plants are under the NRC.
This is fantastic news. There is no real anti-fusion political movement, so there's a chance a rapidly accelerating near-permissionless industry can develop.
In this episode, we relish in the major upside for humanity.
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
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/
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
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/
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
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.
Get full access to Stranded Technologies at www.strandedtechnologies.com/subscribe
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 ...
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Zone developers and governments need to start by defining the problem - why are we not getting the investment we want right now?
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You need a young, energetic local lawyer who knows existing regulations in a country and deeply understands the "code base" to find elegant solutions
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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
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The keys to a successful zone are predictability, productivity and profitability (3 P's)
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International multilaterals are a problem more than a solution
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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.
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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.
Adam is one of the most experienced technology policy analysts in the world - he was writing about the internet on day 1 in the 1990s. Now, Adam is an innovation policy analyst at the R Street Institute, and the author of several books, including Permissionless Innovation (2016) & Evasive Entrepreneurs (2020).
Isn't it striking - almost all popular sci-fi movies about technology are dystopian? Not only does that warp the public perception of technology as something dangerous, but it also influences policy. Supposedly serious policymakers make arguments for increased regulation like "we don't want the Terminator, don't we?" all the time.
Adam takes us through the quagmire of Washington D.C. policy through the lens of one message: permissionless innovation is key to unlock a better future.
He introduces the term "evasive entrepreneurs" through case studies of Uber, Lyft and biohackers that used 3D printing for making prosthetics. These cases of "technology liberation have a few things in common: a) the operate at the borderline of legality, and b) they succeed by making consumers advocates for them.
Evasive entrepreneurship describes the premise of this podcast and of Infinita VC. Special jurisdictions like Prospera in Honduras, the Catawba DEZ in North Carolina or other free zones in Africa or Latin America can be regulatory sandboxes.
However, evasive entrepreneurs have moral obligations. It is also a tactic used by bad actors, such as Sam Bankman-Fried, who used an offshore jurisdiction (Bahamas) as a launchpad for a move to do regulatory capture in the United States.
We concede that evasive entrepreneurship can be done for good and bad.
Recently, Adam has been writing about the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. He brings bad news: Washington D.C. policymakers want to use it as an excuse to control the internet. Adam has been in the business for three decades and he's never seen more extreme proposals in a short amount of time.
This should be alarming to entrepreneurs. Technology is a force for good in the world, and we need permissionless environments to thrive. The good news is that we don't need to advocate for policy in Washington, we can criticize by creating.
Adam's book on Evasive Entrepreneurship contains several chapters to navigate ethical questions, and it's available for free (here). Let's build!
Adam blogs at techliberation.com
Dr. Simon Whitney is a family physician and ethicist. He taught at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas for twenty-two years. He is retired from medical practice but continues to publish and teach about medical ethics.
He wrote the book From Oversight to Overkill: Inside the Broken System That Blocks Medical Breakthroughs—And How We Can Fix It (Rivertowns Books, 2023).
What Simon is talking about is not the behemoth U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), one of the largest public agencies in the world.
The subject of his book is the Institutional Review Board (IRB) system, an institution responsible for preventing abuse of research subjects. It is run by the Office for Human Research Protection (OHRP), a small office within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
It is an obscure and little-known bureaucracy.
Simon uncovers how a fear-driven bureaucracy frustrates scientists by delaying research from anything between months to years and sometimes preventing important research with no harm to patients, but failing to benefit untold millions.
The medical history behind IRBs is fascinating and parallels many other stranded technologies stories.
It starts with a flexible system and lots of innovation. Medical self-experimentation was more common. It can be gut-wrenching, but it led to heroic feats of progress.
It was public health disasters that led to its demise.
Most of all the Tuskegee Syphilis Study became a widely know scandal where the United States Public Health Service (PHS) withheld life-saving treatment from 400 poor African Americans with syphilis to study its effect over 40 years.
A gross incidence of ethical misconduct.
Yet what followed was an overcorrection. The National Research Act of 1974 led to federal oversight of IRBs, leading to frivolous lawsuits and a bureaucracy stifled in fear of not doing the wrong thing, even at the cost of doing the right thing.
The incentives are again stacked against progress.
The anatomy of the IRB system going awry is instructive.
It teaches us again the need for regulatory innovation and for bold action to correct the excesses of bureaucratic overreach - ideas for inside reform seem feasible, and external inspiration by special jurisdictions can help accelerate this movement.
Malcolm Collins is a parent, polymath serial entrepreneur, education nerd, pronatalist and a 5x bestselling author, including the Pragmatists’ Guide series.
He has a podcast and YouTube channel called Based Camp.
In this episode, we talk about a wide range of topics including:
Demographic Collapse: At current fertility rates in developed countries, there will be 5 grandchildren per 100 people. This demographic trend is not economically sustainable and will lead to fundamental transformations of society.
Pronatalism: Pronatalism is a movement that Malcolm and his wife Susan are well, known for as the founders of Pronatalists.org.
The analogy is with climate change: it's not about freezing the planet, it's about countering an unsustainable trend - population decline - by having more children.
Charter Cities: Malcolm views charter cities as key for the pronatalist movements as incubators for a different culture that is not influenced by "urban monoculture".
Some of Malcolm's surprising theses are:
- The collapse is coming when markets price in lack of population growth and divest from assets that losing money to places that grow. These shifts in market sentiments typically happen gradually, and then suddenly.
- The winning cultures need more than high birth rates. The Amish people have high birth rates, but little clout. The winning cultures need to have high birth rates and be technophilic and be at the forefront of technology
- The key for charter cities or special jurisdictions to attract Malcolm are: a) a guaranteed right to use reproductive technologies, and b) a harsh environment, like a space colony, that nurture a culture of hard work to survive
This is a kaleidoscopic episode with insights into the frontiers of humanity.
Primavera De Filippi is a researcher at several institutes, including the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Her research focuses on the legal challenges and opportunities of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, with a specific focus on governance and trust.
Primavera is the author of the book “Blockchain and the Law,” published in 2018 by Harvard University Press (co-authored with Aaron Wright).
Primavera led a collective effort during Zuzalu (Vitalik Buterin's pop-up village in Montenegro) to offer an alternative to Balaji Srinivasan's "The Network State".
Her main critiques are its overreliance on market- and exit-based approaches.
This conversation highlights the differences, but Primavera cautions that there are more commonalities between these different approaches than differences. Most importantly, they share the goal to experiment with governance and approaches to sovereignty to improve on failures of the private and public sectors.
We start by defining the problem of the tragedy of the commons: individually rational behavior can lead to collectively worse outcomes.
There are three approaches to overcome the problem:
a) the Leviathan approach where a public authority manages the commons
b) the market-based approach with defined property rights and trade
c) the polycentric governance approach
The last one was developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom (the latter receiving a Nobel Price for her work) and is the starting point of Primavera's approach.
Niklas has more confidence in market-based solutions than Primavera, so a fruitful discussion ensues discussion the potential pros and cons of these approaches.
Both discussants agree that pluralism is the right way forward, trying out different approaches to solve issues such as climate change, immigration, or poverty.
The Coordi-Nations approach is encapsulated in a recent blog article, but it's just at the beginning of being formulated and will be discussed in future iterations of Zuzalu and within Ethereum/web3 and governance innovation circles.
Walter Patterson is the co-founder and chief science officer of Minicircle, a biotech startup that produces reversible gene therapies.
Minicircle is known for some of their bold moves that include medical self-experimentation, and conducting clinical trials on Roatan, Honduras within a special economic zone led by Próspera that offers an innovative legal framework.
In this episode, we learn about Minicircle, gene therapy and regulatory challenges from one of the two iconic founders behind it (the other is Mac Davis).
The highlights of this episode are:
- Walter talks about his early fascination for science, and how it allows us to mold the environment around us to live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives
- The potential of various gene therapies (incl. CRISPR, mRNA) to edit the code of human biology, to overcome life-threatening defects and improve life quality
- Minicircle key innovation of plasmid gene therapy, used to produce follistatin to reduce muscle degeneration and increase bone strength for long durations
- The advantage of Prospera as a common law legal jurisdiction: Minicircle is following the same safety protocols and research ethics oversight that are done in the United States under the FDA, the main advantage is to cut bureaucracy
- How, counterintuitively, Minicircle is more regulated under common law and has stronger liability for bad outcomes than in FDA jurisdictions where companies are exempted from liability if the played the political game well
Towards the end of the episode, Walter highlights the beauty of Roatan: the perfect weather, natural beauty and overwhelming friendliness of the community.
You can experience it yourself visiting Roatan during H2-2023 for various conferences and events taking place: https://lu.ma/infinita
Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of several books, including Open Borders - The Science and Ethics of Immigration, The Case Against Education and the Myth of the Rational Voter.
Bryan is one of the most iconoclastic contemporary thinkers, and had a major influence on the themes of this podcast. His books explain much of the emergent incentives created by the political process that stymie economic growth.
In this episode, we talk about his new book "Voters as Mad Scientists - Essays on Political Rationality" and use it as a starter to talk about a variety of topics:
- Bryan on how the alignment of "Chaotic Good" in the world of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fits his non-conformist style of thinking and practice of breaking bad or unethical laws, as long as you can get away with it
- Why voters love to have business and how the Stockholm Syndrome can help explain it: people like to ally with the powerful, even if they're rich, against rich people or business with less or no political power to hurt them
- The politics of what sounds good vs. what is good - explained by social desirability bias, exposed by revealed preferences ("actions speak louder than words") and cemented into practice by status quo bias
- Bryan admits that he's been wrong about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin: F. A. Hayek's idea of de-nationalizing banking has won the day against all odds
If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you'll chuckle when Bryan compares how someone telling him about Bitcoin for the first time with someone telling him about starting a new country on an island (Prospera is not literally a country though).
If starting a new jurisdiction with better laws sounds like a crazy idea to you, and your D&D alignment is Lawful-Neutral, Neutral-Good or Chaotic-Good, then come check it out and help us build it - the schedule for coming events is here.
Laurence Ion is a Steward at VitaDAO - a community-owned collective dedicated to funding and advancing longevity science.
Longevity is the defining question of the century. Laurence is passionate about health & longevity due to his personal experience struggling with the disease.
Laurence was one of the key organizers of Zuzalu, Vitalik Buterin's pop-up city in Montenegro, and worked with Niklas to put together new initiatives to break through the regulatory bottlenecks that hold back the science & technology of longevity.
This episode encapsulates a summary of our thinking that includes what we know about the flawed ethical and regulatory paradigm in medical innovation, results from many months of exploratory conversations with governments and policymakers in Latin America, Africa and Europe, and a peek into the future we want to build.
The future we want to build is one where we use a different regulatory paradigm, as safe or safer than the existing one, while faster to innovate. A safe haven for refugees of age-related diseases that want to try something different, rejuvenate and heal.
Most importantly, Laurence and Niklas believe community-building is at the heart of what we do, and having seen the possibility of creating talent density like in Zuzalu inspires us to push the boundaries further, and build a bigger movement.
A movement aligned in defeating the Dragon Tyrant of Aging.
If you're a biotechnologist, renegade life scientist or relentless entrepreneur who wants to help radically supercharge human health and extend lifespan, join us!
The key upcoming initiatives are:
- Longevity State Congress in Sep 2023
- Prospera Buildweeks 2023 starting in Oct 2023
- DeSci & Longevity Biotech 2023 - A Próspera Builders' Summit in Nov 2023
- Start a Longevity Network State in Latin America in Q1-2024
Neil Chilson is a lawyer and computer scientist, he’s the former Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a current senior research fellow for technology and innovation at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, and the author of “Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World”.
Neil has decades of first-hand experience in regulatory policy and introduces the distinction between outcome-based, more common law-like legal approaches to regulation vs. the more well-known statutory and preventative approach.
This seemingly technical distinction is very relevant. We start by discussing the "Knowledge Problem" that F. A. Hayek raised in one of the most influential economics papers ever written, "The Use of Knowledge in Society" from 1945.
Hayek's insight is that central planners cannot know the facts relevant to making their decisions, because knowledge is "tacit" and value is subjective to the individual. The system of free price-setting is necessary to create an "emergent order" that does not come about by conscious design but by adjustment and small improvements through individuals making rational decisions based on their local information.
Neil's work is dedicated to applying the insight of emergent order in business, policymaking, and even personal growth - instead of rushing to ask for an authoritative "man in charge", we should instead embrace humility.
Rather than making rules for new technology that is rapidly changing, we should focus on liability for bad outcomes after-the-fact. We apply these insights to debates about the existential risk of artificial intelligence (AI) and the regulatory policy of OpenAI's Sam Altman and Microsoft.
While we're optimistic that software and AI are "born-free" technologies relatively unencumbered by regulatory overreach, Neil warns that policymakers in Washington and in international governmental organizations have an agenda: they see the internet as a bad thing, and AI risk is a welcome opportunity to further this agenda.
Let's not let the internet and AI become stranded technologies. The future is open.
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Michael Huemer is "the best living philosopher, possibly the best who ever lived." (Bryan Caplan)
The podcast host Niklas Anzinger considers Michael Huemer to be the greatest intellectual influence on his life and work with Infinita VC to date.
In fact, the name Infinita is a reference to Michael's book "Approaching Infinity".
Michael is Professor for Philosophy and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of more than eighty academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy - as well as the author of ten books.
This conversation is intended to introduce Michael's work to the listener, particularly the books most relevant to unlocking stranded technologies.
The first book we discuss is "Knowledge, Reality and Value." The book is an introduction to philosophy and a masterful one. It teaches the reader why it's important to form rational beliefs how to make clear arguments and "wake up" from a state of perpetual intellectual confusion (yes, we all are - and we don't notice it).
The second book is "Justice Before the Law", a book about the ethical flaws of the legal system. Michael's key thesis is that actors in the legal system should prioritize what's just over what's the law - that means breaking the law if it's unjust and not unwise to do so. This is an explosive thesis in conflict with existing legal norms.
The third book is "The Problem of Political Authority" which argues that existing governments regularly commit what we would consider atrocious violations of individual rights if they were done by any non-governmental actor, and that political philosophy fails to deliver a convincing justification for this special privilege.
While all these books have surprising and radical conclusions, what is special about Michael Huemer*s work is his method. Michael clearly states his premises and chooses only those that are based on widely shared beliefs. This results in an extremely clearly written and persuasive style of reasoning.
In this episode, we discuss all these books and the implications for entrepreneurs in regulated industries, such as the obligation to follow the law, how to present yourself when you innovate, and how to navigate moral questions that arise in the process.
Michael blogs on a Substack called "Fake Nous".
Today’s episode is another one in the style of episodes 10 and 25 with Niklas' thoughts, synthesizing 1 year of work with the podcast and a VC fund.
First, you’ll hear a recording of Niklas's talk at Zuzalu, Vitalik Buterin’s pop-up city in Montenegro. The speech can be watched on YouTube as well.
The talk shows the progress made by startup cities and network states, and argues that this is a pivotal moment to unleash a wave of new technological progress; the zero-to-ones are already out there - it's no longer a dream.
Afterward, Niklas shares impressions of Zuzalu - he believes the key innovation is to prove the impact of in-person civility, bringing together a highly aligned online community in one place to live and build together. In one quote, it was "a university campus on steroids, with people that actually care and actually build."
Zuzalu is already resulting in a couple of new initiatives, some led by Infinita VC taking place within the next couple of months.
(1) African Regenerative Cities & Futures @ FreeFlow Eden Zanzibar
July 20-23, 2023: This is an event to bring together entrepreneurs, artists, and governance innovators with a focus on African cities & technology.Sign-up & more info here: https://lu.ma/zanzibar_regen
(2) ETH Latam in Honduras and Prospera Buildweeks
October 26-28, 2023: This is the core Ethereum conference for the continent.
Watch out for sign-up news here: https://mirror.xyz/ethhonduras.eth
Afterward, for all of November, we plan to do a 4-week mini-Zuzalu in Prospera called “Prospera Buildweeks”. - during that time we will do two conferences: Crypto & Futurism, Longevity & Decentralised Science, as well as a Prospera General Summit.
Updates on sign-ups are here: https://t.me/+xhTw-dudXBc1NmE6
(3) Founders' Journey - Start a Longevity Network State in Latin America
This is a 2-month long journey for biotechnologists, renegade life scientists, and relentless entrepreneurs to radically supercharge human health and extend lifespan, by creating of a longevity-focused network state in Latin America.
Sign-up & more info here: https://lu.ma/longevity-journey
Alexander Bard is a Swedish cyber philosopher, futurologist, and the author of "The Netocrats", "The Global Empire", "The Body Machines" and "Syntheism - Creating God in The Internet Age", together with Jan Söderqvist.
He’s also a former music producer, artist and entrepreneur.
We start with Alex' history in the music industry, and how he saw the emerging internet and Napster as a Hegelian "negation" of the status quo, leading up as the "synthesis" that Alex actively shaped as a founding contributor to Spotify.
In "The Netocrats", Alex foresaw an age where data would replace capital as the source of power over assets, and a new elite it would shape - which turned out to be true in the form the tech giants of our age and the resulting impotence of politics.
This old order of nation-states as the source of power is becoming replaced by an internet economy underpinned by Bitcoin and crypto-currencies, leading to perfected and pure capitalism as the source of rational transactions.
However, this pure capitalism is not the be-all-end-all.
The result that Alex is working towards is "Intentionalism", where sovereign individuals consciously decide what to give their attention to, with the rational-capitalist marketplace only as a basis for our income, not a source of meaning.
The sources of meaning are spiritual and could come in the shape of new interpretations of the religions of the East that embrace decentralization.
Alex is interested in the frontiers that the "shamanoids" or outliers of civilization gravitate towards, and he sees the new frontier in the form of city-states and special jurisdictions, like Singapore and Dubai shown to be capable stewards.
Alex predicts that today's exiteers that build at the new frontiers are tomorrow's elite at these new places. A good reason to be a pioneer at the frontier right now.
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Brian J. Robertson is a serial entrepreneur and the creator of Holacracy, a comprehensive practice for governing and running our organizations.
Holacracy is an often misunderstood, massively influential social and management system. Yet it is more than that, Brian's goal with Holacracy is to give people a taste of self-governance, personal growth and empowerment to impact society.
In this episode, we dive deep into the mind that has nurtured Holacracy and brought it to adoption within 10.000+ organizations worldwide.
To start with, Holacracy is a modular, open-source, constitution-based management system with clear rules and management responsibilities. It is not no managers (although it aims to reduce the need for managers), and not no structure.
Quite to the contrary, it is more structured. The analogy Brian uses is the emergent order market-based order vs. top-down planning. Markets come up with better, more adapted, and more fit-for-purpose sets of rules, institutions, and regulations.
Brian solves for me a tension I thought about for a long time: why is it that firms in a competitive market-based system are run to a large degree by central planners?
A key answer of mine we discussed is Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" which talks about the planning horizon versus scale efficiency of greater size.
Brian's answer is Holacracy. Organizations can be run more like markets and adapt more to tensions as they arise instead of relying too much on top-down decision-making.
We discuss Marc Andreessen's reservations against Holacracy, as well as its place in the order of managerial vs. entrepreneurial capitalism, as well as how it steers organizations towards "Antifragility", a term coined by Nassim Taleb.
Holacracy is more than a management system. It can be a guide to personal growth and consciousness.
Not coincidentally, Brian is currently working as well on starting a psychedelic church by using some clever legal engineering in a Stranded Technologies-like fashion.
This is a rich episode and will give you an appreciation for the concept of Holacracy and how it can supercharge your organization and your personal growth.
Join us for upcoming events: https://lu.ma/infinita
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Jonathan Hillis is the founder of Cabin.
Cabin is building a network city - a collection of remarkable coliving properties tied by a shared culture, community, economy, and governance.
We start by talking about how a combination of science-fiction and American Wilderness romanticism inspired Jon to start Cabin in the Texas Hill Country.
Neighborhood Zero is a development on 28 acres, with a creek that runs through the property, rolling hills, grasslands and forests, and pet longhorn cattle running around.
Cabin is now a thriving community that has land and real estate development in multiple locations in the USA and internationally (e.g. Portugal, Italy),
Jon talks about the pluralism of moral and community governance innovations that Cabin is working on, inspired by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom.
These practical insights from Jon's work lead us to discuss Balaji Srinivasan's "The Network State" more, and our insights from Zuzalu, Vitalik Buterin's pop-up city.
The key insights are that network state-building is a practical endeavor, and it's hard to build real-world things and deal with the day-to-day of living together.
Jon recommends starting small and iteratively, just like in software and technology development - and you don't need an architecture or mechanical engineering degree for it. You can just go out there and start building.
Jon has learned the value of community, and building things in the real world, and found that evolutionary adaptive processes toward governance are what's needed to rediscover the lost art of building durable and lasting structures.
Join the Cabin community: https://www.cabin.city/
Join us for upcoming events: https://lu.ma/infinita
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Erik Voorhees is the founder of Shapeshift, a decentralized crypto exchange, and one of the most important voices in crypto.
Erik virtually joined for a fireside chat during Decentralizing Finance 2023 - A Prospera Builders’ Summit on the island of Roatan.
We start by establishing the ethics and principles of Bitcoin, crypto, and the separation of state and money. Money is one if not the most important good for a peaceful, market-led world. It does not belong in the hands of governments.
Erik has withstood more than a decade of navigating the complex legal and regulatory maze put up by governments. Governments were initially overconfident in the quality of their product - fiat money.
However, Elizabeth Warren’s “crypto army” seems like state actors are realizing the threat of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to their predominance.
Crypto has survived many challenges - and Erik believes we’ve come far enough to withstand an even great amount of anti-crypto activism by governments. Bitcoin has proved resilience over and over, and hundreds of millions of people are using it.
Not only are we on the verge of realizing the dream of overcoming the traditional, centralized financial system and building a more inclusive one instead. Also, new cities and special jurisdictions are experimenting in governance.
While Erik is generally skeptical of legal wrappers for DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), he's welcoming the movement towards regulatory pluralism instead of a regulatory monopoly.
The transition towards new forms of governance and finance on crypto rails may be perilous, but we have come far in expanding the frontiers.
Join us for upcoming events: https://lu.ma/infinita
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Today is the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA, and the 20th anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome.
A perfect day to talk to John Cumbers.
John is a molecular biologist. He is the founder and CEO of SynBioBeta which promotes synthetic biology to build a more sustainable universe.
This episode is a primer on "synbio", the scientific breakthroughs and commercial applications of reading, sequencing and editing DNA to engineer the built world around us by manipulating the organic process of biology.
In 2012, the discovery of CRISPR technologies led to rapid progress into a field that has now $10bn in annual investment and unicorn startups such as Ginko Bioworks.
The applications range from food production to materials made from microbes, space travel and human health - anything biological to organize the built world.
We discuss potential regulatory challenges of synbio, the bad public perception of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) - while some regulatory challenges reduce adoption in places such as the European Union, non-human facing applications face few regulatory bottlenecks. Of course, human-facing applications have the same limitations as healthcare or pharmaceutical and face strong bottlenecks.
Does synbio need a network state? There are certainly unsolved challenges, such as the application of synbio to food production in places that need it the most - something currently not possible because of unit economics.
Synbio is certainly a nascent field with tremendous potential.
Join us for upcoming events: https://lu.ma/infinita
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Ingemar Patrick Linden is a professor for philosophy and bioethics who taught for 10 years at NYU.
In his book "The Case Against Death", Patrick points out that evolutionary biology explains why we age and die, but not that we must age and die, or that we ought to.
“My experiences tell me that unless there is a good afterlife, death is a horrific evil and nothing is more important than preventing good people from dying. I am a death abolitionist and a life prolongevist.”
As we've learned in past episodes such as Ep. 15 with Sebastian Brunemeier, scientists have achieved breakthroughs that could radically extend human lifespan.
However, not only is longevity biotechnology ("LongBio") held back by numerous political and regulatory obstacles - it is up against what could be an intellectual fad or an age-old taboo of humanity: the vilification of the search for immortality.
Since the Ancient Greeks, Plato, Epicurus and the Stoics, a prevalent idea is "the wise view", that it's mature and enlightened to accept death and vain to fight against it.
Popular culture vilifies the search for immortality, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Marvel's Doctor Strange, depict immortality-seeking as a bad thing.
Patrick's view is simple: "Life is Good. Death is Bad."
In this conversation, we address some of the common arguments against the view and talk about the massive potential of life-extending technologies.
We concur that society would have to change.
Our current political and economic choices are not made for a world with an indefinite lifespan.
However, this is not a reason not to do it. This is a reason to do more experiments in human governance, such as Prospera, the modern charter city in Honduras, or Zuzalu - Vitalik Buterin's pop-up city in Montenegro.
With improved governance, we can be ready for a world with a prolonged or indefinite human lifespan.
Join us for upcoming events: https://lu.ma/infinita
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Allison Duettmann is the iconic President of The Foresight Institute, the world's premier futurist think tank enabling science & entrepreneurship at the frontiers of technology.The conversation starts with Foresight's mission and strategy to avoid hype cycles - focusing on what's next, not current.The focus areas have particular learning and development trees:* Intelligent Cooperation (Economics, Crypto, Incentive Design) * Molecular Machines (Programmable Nanotechnology) * Neurotechnology (incl. Brain Emulation) * Longevity Biotechnology * Space Exploration * Existential Hope
We'll explore Foresight's history and Allison's own thinking, why she is hopeful towards the future, while closely monitoring risks.The Foresight Institute has been central to the themes of this podcast, with affiliated scholars such as Robin Hanson, J. Storrs Hall, Eli Dourado, featured.Thus, if you like this podcast you definitely need to get involved with the Foresight Institute.
This is the recording of a webinar about Ciudad Morazán, the charter city in Choloma, Honduras - not to be confused with Prospera, another Honduran charter city.
Recorded on-site, this episode is a deep dive into one of the most interesting developments in city governance in modern history.
Located in one of the most dangerous regions in the world when it comes to crime, Morazán provides a beacon of stability, safety, and affordable housing.
It also runs its internal economy 100% on crypto, having developed its stablecoin (eLPS), based on the Honduran currency - the lempira.
Founded by the Italian industrialist Massimo Mazzone, Ciudad Morazán is located in a Honduran ZEDE, a free zone with the highest degree of legal autonomy in the world.
So Mazzone: "I want to show that liberty has the most impact on poor people."
We couple this deep dive into Morazán with a background in free cities and the Honduran ZEDE legal system that allows this governance innovation.
Chapters:
00:04:46 - 00:11:14 Introduction to Bootstrap City by Alex Ugorji
00:11:29 - 00:36:49 Economist Vera Kichanova about Free Private Cities Worldwide
00:37:43 - 00:57:18 Prospera Major Jorge Colindres about Honduran ZEDEs
01:02:13 - 01:46:59 Ciudad Morazan's Founder Massimo Mazzone Speaks
01:46:59 - 02:03:10 Biographer Joyce Brand on Spencer Heath
02:14:11 - 02:52:23 Alex Ugorji on Doing Business in Morazan
Telegram Group for Bootstrap City - the initiative to promote awareness about Ciudad Morazán: https://t.me/bootstrapcity
Trey Goff is coming back on to continue the previous discussion (Episode 9) about Balaji Srinivasan's book "The Network State" (TNS).
This is the right time to dig deeper for two reasons: 1) TNS has increasingly become a meme in crypto and technology circles, 2) Balaji is commanding a lot of attention for #BitSignal, a bet on US dollar hyperinflation + Bitcoin rising to 1m.
Trey & Niklas have become friends through Prospera, the modern charter city on Roatan, Honduras, and the zero-to-one "network state / not a network state."
In addition, Trey has a new role as Co-Founder of Learn Arena, a competitive learning platform, and we'll discuss how Learn Arena will fix a frailing education system.
Here is how the discussion unfolds:
Trey iterates that the Prospera model follows many of the same schools of thought that Balaji Srinivasan follows in TNS, though with one critical difference: with Prospera, Trey has first-hand experienced the role of politics as a practical matter when it comes to becoming a territorial jurisdiction. Politics is hard but unavoidable.
We update some of our learnings about regulations and what we can realistically achieve by upgrading governance, e.g. in the world of medical innovation and finance.
Talking finance leads us to Balaji's Bet: we think Balaji is directionally correct in his analysis of a brittle US financial system, albeit we withhold judgment on whether or not the timeline will be correct - all of us have to assign our estimated probabilities.
It is certainly the leading question of the time: we think a Bitcoin Standard world is more desirable, but there are better and worse ways to get there.
For example, we are skeptical about achieving Bitcoinization by top-down decree like by President Nayib Bukele in the country of El Salvador.
If one thing is certain, it's that the world has a lot of uncertainty. And navigating this uncertainty in finance will have massive implications for your personal wealth.
There is no better way to navigate uncertainty than self-education.
We discuss the US education system and its failings: Trey presciently identifies a core problem - school and education are both too easy and too hard.
By introducing gaming and competition to set young people on alternative career tracks, Trey aims to revolutionize education with Learn Arena.
Trey and Niklas have a lot to talk about - this won't be the last time!
Join us for upcoming events: https://lu.ma/infinita
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Have you wondered what Próspera is all about?
Start with the founders. Gabriel Delgado Ayau is the co-founder and chief development officer (CDO) of the zero-to-one modern startup city in Honduras.
This is an extensive episode where we talk about Gabriel's past in Guatemala as a serial entrepreneur that founded 17 startups, learning about the challenges for entrepreneurs in Central America, and how his grandfather's teachings showed him a better way - radically improving the institutions towards a free society.
We talk about Próspera's founding history, the governance model of radical decentralization and regulatory flexibility combined with insurance risk assessment.
First and foremost, Próspera's goal is to propel economic development for Honduras by providing better institutions to live, work and play.
Consider this claim: if the bottom 75% of the world would implement the governance of the top 25%, the economic value created would be an additional $100 trillion (!).*
*In the episode, Gabriel mistakenly says $1tn, the true number is indeed $100tn.
And this is not all. The famous blogger Scott Alexander once said:
"To my biased eye, Próspera’s institutions aren’t just better than Honduran institutions. They might well be better than the institutions of America, Europe, and the rest of the developed world.
Some of their ideas - 3D property rights, modular construction, common law regulatory options, medical reciprocity laws - are genuinely innovative, the first in the world.
They’re things that intellectuals have been discussing for decades, and then suddenly some progressive-minded people get jurisdiction to try them out in and see if they work."
This episode is an extended riff and deep-dive into this quote and should give any entrepreneur reason to be curious enough.
It's almost hard to believe, which is why Gabriel and Niklas call on entrepreneurs to check it out for themselves, by joining the next couple of summits, taking place on the Caribbean paradise island of Roatan.
Supercharging Health 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, April 21-23 on Roatan: https://infinitavc.com/healthbio2023
Decentralizing Finance 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, May 5-7 on Roatan: https://infinitavc.com/defi2023
Legal Engineering 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, May 10-11 on Roatan: https://lu.ma/legalengineering2023
Joey Krug is the co-CIO at Pantera Capital, the first U.S. institutional asset manager focused exclusively on blockchain technology, with 4.1bn assets under management.
Joey is also the co-founder of the Forecast Foundation, contributing to the development of Augur (a decentralized oracle and prediction market protocol).
Joey is a pioneer in the world of blockchain finance, and I want to take this opportunity to discuss two leading questions: how might the final takeover of defi (decentralized finance) over tradfi (traditional finance) look like?
What are the barriers we need to overcome?
As the co-CIO of the largest institutional crypto investor in the world and a private angel investor, few people have traversed the two worlds more than Joey.
This gives Joey a unique set of sometimes surprising insights.
For example, the liquidity of token investments is a double-edged sword. Token investments provide investors with more flexibility but investments with more extended holdup periods tend to perform better.
Pantera's most successful investments were from their venture fund.
The big win for defi would be to do away with the bloat of large banks: real estate footprint, manual transaction processing, and regulatory compliance.
We discuss regulatory compliance extensively. The problem in tradfi is that legal norms evolve around the assumption of centralized entities developing regulations, but many of the necessary guardrails can instead be written in code.
The problem with tradfi is not lack of financial products. Many traditional financial products, like mortgages or stock market exchanges, do make sense to Joey.
What defi can instead do is participation in the system can be more global, more 24/7 (although that's not only an advantage), and more efficient.
One of the key things to get right to make defi more available is to make it more user-friendly to the average consumer - a lot of work remains to be done.
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Upcoming Conferences in Prospera: https://lu.ma/infinita
Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University, and a research fellow with the Mercatus Center.
Alex is one of the world’s best teachers of economics and reaching a large, worldwide audience as the cofounder of Marginal Revolution University and the popular Marginal Revolution blog together with Tyler Cowen.
This episode is an intellectual journey that discovers insights that can be used by entrepreneurs and city developers.
Alex has been teaching economics for decades, so we start the episodes with our favorite concepts.
We talk about the Baumol effect that Alex uses to explain the now infamous price chart: why is it that some goods have become much cheaper (e.g. consumer electronics), while housing, education and healthcare have increased?
This informs the thesis of the podcast, which assumes regulatory and political sclerosis are the key obstacles.
The Baumol effect pushes back against this explanation.
The Baumol effect instead offers a more long-run focused macroeconomic explanation: the success of technology adoption in some areas must necessarily correspond to relatively higher costs in other sectors.
The discovery of this effect, however, could be a necessary, not a sufficient explanation. Niklas points at the non-linearity and the many examples of regulation being specific, non-macro factors with a large impact.
Alex and Niklas end up agreeing that overregulation is a large part of the problem.
We further talk about economic insights such as prediction markets or dominant assurance contracts that entrepreneurs can apply in practice.
A problem in the governance of public goods and regulation, however, is that the laws of society are hundreds of years old, and little new innovation is taking place.
However, private cities and special economic zones such as Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Dubai have shaken up the field in the second half of the 20th century. Alex talks especially about the lessons of Gurgaon, a private city in India.
Gurgaon has been in many ways remarkably successful, but it also had experienced problems funding large public goods such as sewage and electricity.
Alex’s recommendation to new city or governance startups like Prospera, Ciudad Morazan or the Catawba DEZ is to think of city development as a “dance between centralization and decentralization”.
Towards the end, we take a deep dive into dominant assurance contracts as a mechanism for public goods funding - an idea we could use in city development, but also for venture capital and startup funding.
You can help us apply these insights in practice, check out the upcoming builder-focused conferences in Prospera:
Supercharging Health 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, April 21-23 on Roatan: https://infinitavc.com/healthbio2023
Decentralizing Finance 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, May 5-7 on Roatan: https://infinitavc.com/defi2023
Alicia Nahmad is a born entrepreneur, starting in the construction industry before doing her PhD. Now with The Circular Factory, she is translating advanced technology into real-world progress in the built environment.
The Circular Factory is a kaleidoscopic and ambitious startup that aims to fix the construction industry through on-site construction mini-factories with software-driven robotic arms, 3D printing and sourcing local material and labor.
Alicia talks to Niklas about how the construction industry has turned from a proud profession of highly skilled craftspeople into an old-fashioned industry that lost its reputation and missing on advances in the digital world.
Construction has lots of problems, from a prevalent waterfall model of construction leading to cost overruns and time delays, lack of skilled talent, lengthy permitting, and regulations that make introducing technology harder.
Alicia is set out to disrupt this industry with The Circular Factory. The first near-shoring mini-factory is based on the Caribbean island of Roatan, in the modern charter city of Prospera, where Niklas and Alicia will be neighbors.
We talk about how having an audacious goal such as building a new city that creates shared prosperity can be a catalyst for change by invigorating an entrepreneurial spirit and community, as well attract a local labor pool for upskilling.
The Circular Factory will open in mid-2023, and Infinita VC will soon announce a conference to invite builders, architects, and entrepreneurs to visit Prospera, celebrate the soft opening, and help us build a modern city.
Follow Infinita VC to stay tuned: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
If you are an entrepreneur and seek a community of techno-optimists, join us for upcoming conferences in Prospera, the startup city:
Supercharging Health 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, April 21-23 on Roatan.
Decentralizing Finance 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, May 5-7 on Roatan.
Does this sound straight out of a science-fiction novel? That's because it is.
In "Termination Shock", Neil Stephenson described a near-future earth where climate change has significantly altered human society and follows the attempts of a businessman using solar geoengineering to cool the planet.
Luke Iseman, a hardware entrepreneur and solarpunk, read the book and dug into Stephenson's research on solar geoengineering.
To his amazement, he found that it was possible and nobody is trying it out!
Luke founded make sunsets to experiment with balloons sending sulfur dioxide particles that reflect sunlight into the stratosphere, effectively replicating the process that volcanoes have done for millions of years to cool the planet.
In this episode, we're joined by regulatory hacker Eli Dourado to better understand this powerful technology that could help humanity achieve climate mastery.
Major innovations often start with hobbyists, tinkerers, and true believers, as Clayton Christenson's "The Innovator's Dilemma" found out.
They are not taken seriously by the mainstream for a long time.
While starting on a small scale, Luke's experiments have nevertheless engendered controversy in the scientific community.
We talk about why science is disconnected from promoting real-world innovation by focusing too much on analysis instead of action and real-world experimentation.
The episode is a fascinating journey that helps us better understand the challenges faced by entrepreneurs on the frontiers of science and technology.
They are not hailed while they are doing the work, they instead face skepticism often from powerful groups - partly for good reasons as new technology never comes in a mature form, but also partly because incumbents fear for their status.
As a result, we learn that entrepreneurs need to build a community of true believers around them on a mission against a hostile mainstream culture.
If you are an entrepreneur and seek a community of techno-optimists, join us for upcoming conferences in Prospera, the startup city:
Supercharging Health 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, April 21-23 on Roatan.
Decentralizing Finance 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, May 5-7 on Roatan.
David A. Johnston is the Chief Strategy Officer at DLTx, the first public tech company run by decentralists who believe the future will be built on open public blockchains, owned and operated by their users.
David is a major crypto OG, he was the chairman of the board of Mastercoin and facilitated the world’s first ICO (initial coin offering), he was one of the first people to analyze the Ethereum white paper.
This episode is to understand the thinking that leads David to his current beliefs, to give us a better sense of how we can build a more decentralized financial system, a more decentralized “web3” or decentralized everything for that matter.
David explains the "tokenization of everything" logic, and how it comes from his insights into economics and libertarian philosophy.
One of his core insights in 2013 was that the network effects of technology companies are specialized. Arguing against others who believed Bitcoin would become the be-all-end-all, David foresaw and shaped the emergence of decentralized applications (dApps), before Ethereum even launched.
The train of decentralization is now in motion and unstoppable. It will eventually lead to all assets having an on-chain record of transactions and ownership.
This new decentralized finance system is orders of magnitude cheaper, faster, and more efficient than the traditional system that requires lawyers and intermediaries.
Governments and legislators, consequently, fight against this new system that is threatening to upend their privileges. The United States has become a hostile environment for crypto, which is why David moved to Puerto Rico 3 years ago.
Special jurisdictions have been forward-thinking, like Estonia, Switzerland, Portugal or Singapore, and especially Puerto Rico, in attracting the crypto community.
Adoption of cryptocurrencies is highest in Nigeria, Vietnam or Argentina.
David is quite open that the blockchain movement is on a collision course with nation states, and he would like to see a separation of nation and state.
The future might be network nations that are globally distributed, but share an identity, a membership or residency, or a common culture.
That is the ultimate end of the decentralization of everything.
Join us on May 5-7 the Caribbean island of Roatan for a summit in Prospera and help us build exactly that decentralized future: https://infinitafund.com/defi2023
For more information about Infinita, check this Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
Bret is an entrepreneur on a big mission as the CEO of Last Energy, a vertically integrated nuclear-powered electricity provider.
Bret aims to create energy superabundance, fix climate change and elevate human potential to unimaginable heights and sees nuclear as the solution.
Few if any people in the world have talked to more experts. Bret hosts the "Titans of Nuclear" Podcast, which has a whopping 380 episodes!
Bret and Niklas talk about why nuclear has become such a stagnant industry.
The history of the industry is, surprisingly, not one mainly driven by fear or public perception. Bret uncovered that the problems of the industry started before Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island were catalyzing fear.
Instead, it was utility regulation in the US that incentivized the industry to build bigger and bigger nuclear power plants.
The industry itself was selling the argument that nuclear power is dangerous and needs massive amounts of safety, and regulation needs to ensure that.
The process known as "regulatory capture" is responsible for nuclear stagnation.
Bret systematically debunks misconceptions about nuclear: meltdowns and nuclear radiation are not dangerous at all. Uranium is not a scarce resource - in fact it could power the planet for up to a billion years.
However, nuclear energy does have a cost problem. The cost problem is the result of industry stagnation and overregulation, and it needs to be solved.
With Last Energy, Bret is super-modularising and vertically integrating the value-creation process. It's not a technical innovation, but a business model innovation: Last energy takes responsibility for all aspects of project development, from conceptual design through operation and maintenance, selling electricity directly to customers through power purchase agreements.
Bret expects the first nuclear power plant in 2025 in either the UK, Poland or Romania - European countries with high energy costs or dependence on Russia.
If we can solve the energy problem, we can supercharge human progress.
Infinita Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
Eche Emole is the co-founder of Afropolitan, a digital nation aimed at empowering Africans to lead abundant lives. With a background as a lawyer, technology executive, and community organizer, Eche has extensive experience in his field.
He has successfully organized events for over 200,000 diaspora Africans, including the 2019 Year of Return in Ghana, which generated $1.9 billion in economic activity.
Eche's vision for Afropolitan was further solidified after reading "The Network State" by Balaji Srinivasan, which inspired him to create a "cloud nation."
Recognizing the problem of poor governance affecting the African people, Eche saw an opportunity to create a solution through Afropolitan, now recognized by the New York Stock Exchange.
This is just the start for Eche, who has big plans for the future of Afropolitan, including gaining diplomatic recognition and establishing embassies, known as "Afrotowns," worldwide. The ultimate goal is to make Wakanda a reality.
Infinita Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
Scott A. Beyer. is a journalist and consultant, and owner of the Market Urbanism Report, a think tank that advocates for free-market city policy.
Scott is currently on a 1.5-year-long trip to document how Market Urbanism can apply to developing world cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Scott has just arrived in Africa after 6 months in Latin America.
Niklas and Scott talk about what's wrong with cities, how can we improve them and colorful insights from Scott's travels to existing and new cities in Latin America.
Cities in the USA are suffering from institutional sclerosis and favoritism when it comes to housing and transportation policy. What's the predominant cause for rising housing prices and shortages is land-use zoning regulations.
It's one of the core policy sins of city development in the USA. It makes land development a process driven by often intransigent local politics and NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard). This policy favors the status quo over dynamic change.
Scott has grown frustrated with US city politics.
As an investor looking for new areas to invest in, and as a free market thinker he is now looking toward developing countries for better opportunities.
This sounds counterintuitive.
Don't migration flows go from developing to developed countries in search for better opportunities? Scott and Niklas both have discovered a contrarian insight: cities in Latin America are cheaper, more pleasant and safe than commonly assumed.
Places like Mexico City, Rio, Santiago, Medellin or Buenos Aires are bustling with life and opportunity, rich cultural experiences and wonderful people.
Also, Latin America harbors some of the most forward-thinking new city developments in the world, such as Prospera and Cuidad Morazan in Honduras.
Scott is continuing his trip to Africa - and we're looking forward to re-interview him in 6 months about his next wave of colorful insights into city development.
Infinita Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
Patri Friedman is the legendary founder of The Seasteading Institute, and General Partner at Pronomos Capital, a VC fund focused on improving statecraft.
Patri is the foremost thinker behind the idea of "competitive governance". Patri has been a huge inspiration for this show, and for Infinita VC.
This makes this one of the most defining and important episodes in the history of the podcast.
We talk about Patri's life's work and the venture funding side of funding new cities or governance experiments to foster human progress and flourishing.
Patri talks about how ideas like charter cities, AI safety, internet money or life extension were part of fringe, cypherpunk-like groups.
These ideas gained adoption to millions with the expansion of the internet, Silicon Valley culture and blockchain/cryptocurrency technology.
After working on alternative governance ideas for 15+ years, including the foundation of Seasteading, Patri turned to VC as a way to realize these ideas.
In 2019, he founded Pronomos to support charter cities. Initially, with little dealflow, new projects are now more than ever reaching him.
We talk about how Balaji Srinivasan's book "The Network State" has added new fuel to the movement by innovating on a model with lower barriers to entry.
The movement is now at an inflection point.
The "zero-to-one" has been achieved with Próspera Honduras, and several dozens of projects like Praxis, Small Farm Cities or Kift are maturing rapidly.
At this inflection point, the movement needs founders and entrepreneurs. Patri is planning to start a venture studio that is building a sales pipeline with governments open to new models for economic development and matching with founders to start them.
There is no better time to build!
Infinita Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
Max Borders is an author and public intellectual. He wrote books like "The Social Singularity" and "After Collapse". He is also Executive Director at Social Evolution, a non-profit organization dedicated to solving social problems through innovation.
We start the conversation by discussing competitive governance and using "exit" to improve existing institutions. Max views existing institutions as increasingly ossifying due to their monopolistic nature coupled with high switching costs.
This DOS operating system is holding back humans from technological and spiritual progress. For example, the "welfare-warfare" state has increasingly replaced mutual aid organizations and thereby outsourced community care.
We further talk about how both centralizing and decentralizing pressures influence how large organizations become (Ronald Coase's "theory of the firm"), the concept of holacracy, and how alternative forms of governance such as DAOs (digital autonomous organizations) provide a useful avenue for experimentation.
Towards the end, Max talks about his new project of a "Shadow Constitution" that's taking the work of Balaji Srinivasan's "The Network State" further.
Max plans to provide the "ought" to Balaji's "is".
Infinita Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
Adeo Ressi is an iconic entrepreneur, investor, and teacher. He is the CEO of VC Lab, which runs the leading venture capital accelerator. He is also the Executive Chairman of the Founder Institute, the world's largest pre-seed accelerator.
Adeo has launched more than 14 venture capital funds and founded 11 startups, having nearly $2 billion in exits before the age of 30.
Adeo speaks about his mission with VC Lab. VC Lab has to date accelerated 236 new VC firms and reduced the time to start a fund from 18-24 months down to 5.8 months.
VC Lab is designed to turn venture capital into a force for good in the world.
Traditionally, VC is an exclusive club and accessible only in select locations like Silicon Valley, New York, London, Berlin, etc.
Regions like Latam or Africa need entrepreneurship the most to solve local problems, but the locally available capital is predatory.
It is no accident that venture capital has not yet scaled globally: as so often, the barriers are regulatory. The "dinosaurs of the industry" have set up moats.
Starting a VC fund is a black box, and requires a significant amount of upfront capital for legal fees to comply with a set of onerous laws.
VC Lab is solving the problem by creating a full-stack: a free acceleration program, standardized legal advice in three domiciles, and fund management software.
VC Lab is doing more than anyone to globalize access to VC by reducing the barriers to starting a fund for managers committed to the ethical principles of the Mensarius Oath, thereby unleashing a new wave of innovation through entrepreneurship.
Towards the end of the episode, Niklas comments on why he chose VC Lab and how it helped him start Infinita VC.
Check out VC Lab if you're thinking of starting a VC fund (applications for Cohort 10 are open): https://govclab.com/
Infinita Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc
Dan Epstein is Director at Trust Ventures, a VC fund helping entrepreneurs overcome regulatory challenges.
As a political economist and regulatory litigator, Dan is uniquely positioned to understand the politics, law, and economics of regulation and how it affects entrepreneurs at the forefront of technology.
Studying and practicing regulatory litigation on both the government side, and the entrepreneurs' side led Dan to surprising and important insights.
Insights that are essential for any entrepreneur.
You may not think of yourself as a regulatory entrepreneur yet, but maybe you are.
According to Dan, entrepreneurship is about redefining an industry. Uber or Lyft is not a taxi company but invented the ride-sharing business.
It's important for regulatory entrepreneurs to think about this because the existing industry is regulated not to fend off competitors and get a ticket to survival.
Dan and Niklas develop some nuanced views about regulation and charter important territory for how to navigate the complex regulatory landscape.
While the U.S. regulatory state is sclerotic, we do see hope for sustained activism, "right to try" regulations, and sunset clauses, as well as using the playbooks that are increasingly being developed for regulatory entrepreneurs.
As VCs, we also see increasing international competition for jurisdiction, and entrepreneurs have the opportunity to choose.
There are challenges, but there are exciting opportunities on the horizon for regulatory entrepreneurs.
Infinita Discord: https://discord.gg/dwbNh7NK
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Niklas speaks with Thibault Serlet, the Director of Research at the Adrianopole Group, a firm providing intelligence on special economic zones (SEZs)
Thibault is one of the world's leading thinkers on the past, present and future of governance innovation through SEZs.
SEZs are business parks that are geographically walled off from the countries that they're in, and they have their own laws.
The most famous examples are Shenzhen, China and Dubai, UAE, which both were growing into modern megacities and hubs of technology & prosperity.
With the Open Zone Map Project, Thibault found more than 5.000 SEZs worldwide, a fact that is little known in the Western world.
SEZs have a fascinating history, including the trade and export hubs of Europe starting in Champagne, France, proto-venture funding of city captures by crusaders, and as a tool to modernize an economy of 1bn+ people in post-Mao China.
What makes SEZs so interesting is that they make governance innovation possible on a small scale, something that is not possible on a large scale due to entrenched interests. Successful innovations can then scale.
That makes SEZs a laboratory for the future, both when it comes to governance innovation, and when it comes to harboring innovative firms or individuals.
We talk about the pitfalls of governance innovation, such as the failed libertarian attempts since the 1960s Operation Atlantis.
Also like anything, SEZs can be used for horrible things like human trafficking in the Golden Triangle in Laos.
SEZs are a tool and can be used for good and bad.
To illustrate their potential, Thibault talks how they could be used to test policies to combat climate change, such as a carbon tax or a biodiversity futures market.
SEZs and governance innovation are at the heart of unleashing the potential of stranded technologies and start a new wave of technological progress.
Infinita Discord: https://discord.gg/dwbNh7NK
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Niklas speaks with Eli Dourado, a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University.
Eli is also a blogger, investor, and self-described "regulatory hacker".
Eli and Niklas have a conversation about many things technology, innovation, and regulatory bottlenecks. His breadth of knowledge includes aviation, energy, housing, cryptocurrency, biotech, cybersecurity, and many more areas.
Eli has a background in regulatory and technology policy. He was involved in initiatives such as saving the internet from UN regulation and the debate about noise limits in civil aviation, in his role as a public policy specialist at Boom Supersonic.
Energy is the key to a better future. The major regulatory mistake was the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which led to a major slowdown in the adoption of nuclear energy and hampered America's ability to build new infrastructure.
Eli sees potential for modular and small-scale nuclear power. He also sees geothermal energy as a major potential source of clean energy, made possible by better drilling techniques developed during the hydraulic fracturing boom.
Generally, Eli sees the pro-progress camp aligned with the environmental movement. The major disagreement he has is with the de-growth camp. Instead, to solve environmental challenges more economic growth is needed.
Economic growth is at the heart of improving society in all areas and developing better solutions for problems such as climate change.
After a Tour de France through many promising areas in technology, Eli is optimistic that entrepreneurs can overcome the regulatory challenges that often come with adoption. It's hard, but it can be fun, and come with a moat for your businesses.
Infinita Discord: https://discord.gg/dwbNh7NK
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Niklas speaks with Mark Lutter. Mark is the Founder and Chairman of the Charter Cities Institute, a non-profit which is building the ecosystem for charter cities. Mark has a PhD in economics from George Mason University.
Mark also has a podcast called the Charter Cities Podcast, a fantastic listen to learn about this fascinating movement.
Mark and Niklas start by talking about how they both became more motivated to pursue experimentation to fix or build alternatives to government institutions as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, and how they hope charter cities can propel new technology development such as biotech and longevity or drone delivery.
Mark talks about charter cities, how to finance them and the many other challenges involved in building them. First and foremost, charter cities are a political challenge and require local partnerships and buy-in from national governments.
Mark believes an optimistic scenario could lead to charter cities having 3 million residents in ten years with growth rates 1-2 percentage points higher than the surrounding region.
Charter cities have a very long time horizon and are up against the inherent stability of existing institutions: people typically don't move unless there is a really strong motivation such as political or religious persecution, or instability.
This stickiness of existing institutions is something Mark believes is often underestimated by proponents of "network states" such as Balaji Srinivasan. While charter cities have overlaps with network states, Mark believes there is not enough migration flow out of developed countries with bad institutions - the much stronger force pressure to migrate is from developed to developing countries.
Mark cautions against claiming the sacred concept of political sovereignty and instead opts for partnerships with governments. He sees the biggest potential for charter cities in Africa, because of the strong urbanization rates
Mark is a key thought leader in the charter cities space, and achieved tremendous success in increasing awareness and developing the right templates through the Charter Cities Institute - it was fascinating to have Mark on to share his learnings!
Infinita Discord: https://discord.gg/dwbNh7NK
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Niklas synthesizes insights after thinking about regulation & innovation by talking to experts and practitioners for more than 8 months.
Why are regulations important?
John Maynard Keynes observed that capital accumulation and technical improvements enabled economic growth.
Keynes calculated that with 2% growth per year, the economic pie increased by 7.5x in 100 years. If it would be 5%, it’s 130x our current level of wealth.
That would lead to an age of superabundance.
Regulations have a much larger impact on those than immediately obvious. They directly affect Keynes' factors of capital accumulation and technical improvements.
If we want to reach an age of superabundance, we need to look at our process for making rules that impact hundreds of millions of people
The 10 theses are:
(1) Our knowledge of the multi-layer effects of government regulation is comparable with medieval doctors' knowledge about the human body.
(2) It is an obfuscation to equate equates regulation with government regulation. There are many more ways for achieving the same effects.
(3) Our association of regulation with stability is influenced by pro-authority bias.
(4) Regulation mostly targets groups that are unpopular with the majority.
(5) Government regulation mostly follows as an overreaction to public events.
(6) We regulate seen consequences and disregard unseen consequences.
(7) In the absence of binding obligations, public officials have a herd mentality.
(8) Most business regulations fail because they don’t address the Safety Paradox.
(9) The main problem with regulation is the process of how we make decisions.
(10) Bad regulations are hard to get rid of (Machiavelli Effect).
Towards the end, Niklas discusses different solutions such as ethical exit, jurisdictional shopping, competition, and experimentation in governance.
Over the coming episodes of this podcast, we'll get more in-depth about solutions, entrepreneurs that achieved the impossible, what promising governance experiments are underway and how to achieve 100x growth for humanity.
Please send feedback and guest wishes to Niklas:
Discord: https://discord.gg/dwbNh7NK
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Email: niklas@infinitafund.com
Niklas speaks with Santiago Pinzon, the founder and CEO of ORKID.
ORKID aims to revolutionize healthcare in Latin America through autonomous drone delivery. In this episode, we talk about technological and regulatory challenges in the aviation industry, and how to unlock a future of rapid logistics.
Aviation is a fascinating industry that has developed high safety standards and technology that leads to extremely safe passenger flights.
However, we note something we call the "safety paradox". High safety standards lock in old technology to the detriment of experimentation with new technology, which could, inadvertently be even safe and have massive benefits.
The developed world has made it very hard for the commercial drone industry. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) applies the same standards to non-passenger drones as to passenger aircraft, i.e. drone delivery is regulated like an airline.
Standards developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) are not mandatory, but most countries abide by them because they lack the knowledge to assess new technologies or the willingness to try something new.
However, there are good news. A company named Zipline has been invited by a forward-thinking government administration in Rwanda to trial healthcare deliveries via drones. The success was amazing: reduced maternity mortality by 50-60%.
ORKID is close to a breakthrough with the regulator in Brazil, a country proud of its aviation industry, to start operations in Sao Paolo. Special jurisdictions like Prospera are similarly promising for drone adoption, and islands are a great use case.
The future of rapid logistics is coming, and ORKID is on the forefront!
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Joshua Scigala, the Co-Founder and CEO of TheStandard.io, which offers over-collateralized stablecoins backed by Gold, Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Josh and Niklas talk about the recent events surrounding the collapse of FTX, the crypto trading platform. Josh has been in the industry since 2010 and has seen many collapses and creative destruction over the years. He believes the industry has a way of overcoming failed experiments and bad ideas by writing better code.
Better code instead of laws and regulation is at the heart of the ethos of DeFi.
Secondly, we talk about stablecoins and Josh's mission to create a privatized and decentralized Gold Standard for the 21st century.
Stablecoins create access to the financial innovation of the crypto ecosystem while allowing a host of important everyday transactions. Unlike algorithmic stablecoins, TheStandard.io is backed by rare assets, i.e. Gold, Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The Standard aims to solve inflation by leveraging devaluation to work for savers, not against them. Besides leveraging rare assets, TheStandard.io also aims to innovate when it comes to decentralized governance through prediction markets.
The pace of financial innovation in DeFi is mesmerizing, but the industry is threatened on multiple fronts by bad PR and regulatory overreach. However, they survived multiple crises and came out stronger by building antifragile systems.
Join us on the mission to create a better, decentralized financial system for the Prospera Fintech & DeFi Summit 2022 (Nov 18-20).
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita VC Website: https://infinitavc.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
David K. Levine is an economist at the European University Institute and at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Michele Boldrin of "Against Intellectual Monopoly", an empirical study of the economics of intellectual property (available for free here) that concludes that IP is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity, and liberty.
IP law allegedly offers protection of innovation, most importantly in the form of patents and copyright. Most economists see IP protection as a "necessary evil". However, David believes they are in fact an unnecessary evil.
While IP laws do increase the reward for the innovator through a legally granted monopoly to produce and sell a unique product, they also have perverse effects such as making it costly and cumbersome to use other inventions, and they reward the inventor with better lawyers over the inventor with the better innovation.
So-called "patent trolls", for example, deliberately patent everything they can and sue other people to extract money. Surprisingly, many of the most famed inventors in history such as James Watts (steam engine) and the Wright Brothers (airplanes) turn out to be patent trolls. James Watts' predatory use of patent laws against his competitors had possibly delayed the Industrial Revolution by two decades.
David uses multiple examples from the music industry to the pharma industry to show that the alleged benefits of IP law are in fact empirically not demonstrated.
IP law is, therefore, a great example of a pernicious regulation that is holding back innovation not only in one but in many different industries across the board from media production, software, and financial markets all the way to pharma.
This episode offers deep insights into the history and mechanics of innovation. We learn about the so-called "lifecycle of innovation". Innovation typically starts with tinkerers and hobbyists, becomes a professional industry, and develops wide use of patents only late in its development to sustain the privilege of incumbents.
It shows that we need to develop a much better understanding of innovation as a process that requires permissionless tinkering.
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Website: https://infinitavc,com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Caroline Cochran, the COO and co-founder of Oklo, joined by special guest Mac Davis, the CEO of Minicircle.
Oklo is revolutionizing nuclear energy to create a clean energy future.
Nuclear energy is probably the best example of a stranded technology. It has the potential to give us a low-to-no-cost, low-to-no-carbon future economy - but it is held back by political obstacles and regulatory strangulation.
In this episode, we'll learn about Oklo and Caroline's mission, and how so-called "powerhouses", micro-scale advanced fission power plants that are orders of magnitude safer than old nuclear power plans, can disrupt the energy industry.
Caroline explains the difference between old and advanced nuclear power. The large gigawatts-producing power plants with cooling towers are a thing of the past - the future is small megawatt-producing "powerhouses" in Tesla-grade modern design.
The safety of these micro-plants is by design, using metal fuels. If the fuel expands through heat, the metal to expands to shut down the reaction
Caroline explains the process of convincing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a regulatory agency that has not allowed a single nuclear power plant to start operations since 1975. While the process has been slow and expensive, Caroline also observes that nuclear is increasingly on a path to greater acceptance.
Oklo is on track to build the first NRC-approved nuclear reactors, paving the way for a nuclear revival to produce cheap and clean electricity that is advancing humanity in the fight again climate change and accelerating technological progress.
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
J. Storrs Hall or "Josh" is an independent researcher and author.
He was the founding Chief Scientist of Nanorex, which is developing a CAD system for nanomechanical engineering.
His research interests include molecular nanotechnology and the design of useful macroscopic machines using the capabilities of molecular manufacturing. His background is in computer science, particularly parallel processor architectures, artificial intelligence, particularly agoric and genetic algorithms.
This episode is filled with techno-optimist verve.
Josh wrote an epic book called "Where is My Flying Car - A Memoir of Future Past".
The book is the subject of the conversation, for which we're joined by Trey Goff - the CMO of the startup city Prospera, who sees the book as his ideology.
The book starts as an examination of the technical limitations of building flying cars and evolves into an investigation of the scientific, technological, and social roots of the economic stagnation that started in the 1970s.
The period from 1880 to 1940 brought major technological advances: electricity, electric lights, powerful motors, automobiles, airplanes, household appliances, the telephone, indoor plumbing, pharmaceuticals, mass production, the typewriter, the tape recorder, the phonograph, and radio, and television.
Today, in contrast, apart from the seemingly magical internet, life in broad material terms isn’t so different from what it was in 1953.
Scholars like Tyler Cowen and Robert J. Gordon spoke of "The Great Stagnation".
Josh has explosive insights into the history of regulation and technology that show how different our lives could be.
At the center of losing out on major new innovations in the world of atoms is nuclear energy. The world not producing enough clean energy at scale to advance in energy-intensive areas such as nanotechnology, air & space travel, and advanced materials.
We learn that flying cars are a real possibility, even right now.
It's just due to policy changes and a culture of "safetyism" that sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently holds back progress.
Is humanity ending up like the "Eloi" in H.G. Well's novel "The Time Machine": lazy, stupid and timid due to the coddling effect of advanced technology?
Josh says "No"! Humanity can do better.
Human ingenuity is endless, and we can invigorate our passions to reach to the frontiers into new and hostile environments, master the elements through the scientific method and engineer our environments for human flourishing.
This episode is a rallying cry to build a better future now!
J. Storrs Hall's website: https://autogeny.org/
Prospera's website: https://prospera.hn/
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Dusan is the Founder and CEO of the AmityAge Academy, a Bitcoin Education Center based in the startup city of Prospera on the island of Roatan, Honduras.
The mission of the academy is to accelerate bitcoinization.
Dusan and Niklas share a special history.
Dusan heard about the paradise island of Roatan, Honduras from a friend. While he was visiting in April, he heard about the "Build Prospera Summit 2022".
The conference was organized as an "unconference", so it was very open for every participant to engage and bring their ideas.
On the last day, we had a pitch competition. Dusan spontaneously pitched a long-held idea: a Bitcoin Education Center.
Dusan gave a fantastic presentation, where he talked about his goal to "educate 100m people about bitcoin by 2030".
After the talk, Prospera CEO Erick A. Brimen told Dusan: "Come with me, I show you a place where you can do it."
The rest is history.
In this episode, you'll hear more about Dusan's journey to becoming a Bitcoin educator, how he teaches children bout Bitcoin, living in and working with the communities in Roatan, and why Dusan is a Bitcoin Maximalist.
Dusan and Niklas debate the maximalist thesis, talking about competition vs. efficiency when it comes to creating a store of value, the risk of default of governments & fiat currencies vs. Bitcoin, and the path to broad adoption.
The AmityAge Academy will have its grand opening on November 18, in the wake of the Prospera Fintech & DeFi Summit 2022 (Nov 18-20). Join us on this dreamy island to build the future of money together: https://infinitafund.com/fintech2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Savva is the Founder and CEO of Crowd Funded Cures, a New Zealand-based charity and Open Source Pharma De-Sci Organisation.
Savva and Niklas talk about the pharmaceutical market, and how the interplay of clinical trials and the patent system disincentivize pharma companies from producing widely available drugs that could significantly improve people's lives.
This is another deep dive into one of the largest markets in the world, healthcare, and into the possible future using blockchain technology to disrupt it.
Savva describes three core concepts: a Health Impact Fund, Pay-For-Success Contracts and intellectual property (IP) NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
Together, these legal and technological innovations can create the right incentives and create a scalable business model to fund clinical trials for off-patent, generic drugs such as ketamine to treat depression, which is only $2 a dose compared to expensive patented drugs such as esketamine for over $850 a dose.
This is important because the pharmaceutical industry is disincentivized from conducting clinical trials, if they can't enforce a monopoly price. Because people can buy generic drugs cheaply from multiple sources, they can't create a business model by charging a monopoly price and suing other companies. This is why we need new "pay-for-success" contracts to fix this market failure under the traditional IP system.
There are over 7500 off-patent drugs and 50,000 supplements that could be repurposed to treat new diseases at up to 1/100th of the cost and 5-10x faster than new patented drugs.
Savva offers deep insights into the broken incentives of the pharmaceutical system, but he is describing key innovations enabled by blockchain technology that has the potential to create an open-source, decentralized science ecosystem.
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Silicon Valley-based serial entrepreneur John Chisholm.
Over the last 40 years, John has founded, grown, or sold four companies in Silicon Valley, including Decisive Technology, now part of Google; and CustomerSat, now part of FocusVision. Today, John is CEO of John Chisholm Ventures, a startup advisory and angel investment firm. He is the author of “Unleash Your Inner Company: 10 Steps to Discover, Launch, and Scale Your Ideal Business.”
Niklas & John explore the thesis of entrepreneurship as a stranded technology.
Technology can be stranded because it fails to attract sufficient investment to compete, such as automobiles propelled by steam as compared to internal combustion engines in the early 20th century; or by being superseded by other technologies, as fax has been replaced by email and messaging; or because of regulation, such as nuclear energy today. But technology can also be stranded because of excessive government regulation and red tape, such as nuclear energy.
It could be argued that entrepreneurship is increasingly being stranded. Across the United States, entrepreneurship is on the decline. According to the Kauffmann Foundation, as a percentage of all businesses, new firms have dropped from 16% in 1977 to less than 8% in 2010. This includes all new businesses – sole proprietorships, retail stores, service providers, restaurants, consultants – not just high-tech.
High-tech businesses have become much easier to do in many ways because of the increasing availability of digital tools and the internet.
In this session with John Chisholm, we’ll see how it is a combination of factors, both external & regulatory, on the one hand, and internal & psychological on the other, that are holding back entrepreneurs today.
And we’ll talk about the implications and what we should do about it. John gives a set of recommendations for aspiring entrepreneurs on how to discover, launch and scale your business. John also provides keen insight and recommendations on how to improve the regulatory state, such as localism, sunset clauses, and special economic zones.
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Zina Sarif, the Founder and Managing Director of Yendou, a company on a mission to accelerate clinical research and make it universally accessible to patients, clinicians, and scientists.
Zina starts by talking about her familial experiences with cancer during her upbringing in Morocco, and how it motivated her to dedicate her life to combating cancer.
During her career as.a cancer scientist in Germany, Zina experienced the inefficiencies and bureaucratic obstacles to bringing solutions from the science to market.
It takes 12 years and $800m in cost to bring a new treatment to market, and the shortened patent life cycle incentives pharma companies to charge high prices.
"We are currently not winning the war against cancer," so Zina.
However, Zina has identified hope for patients.
Clinical trials contain the most innovative treatments for cancer, and they typically take place in large hospitals with great infrastructure and care options for patients,
Yet only 8% of cancer patients globally are participating in clinical trials, and it takes 18 months to get access - often too long to have a chance at survival
With Yendou, Zina aims to reduce the time to access new treatments from 18 to 4 months, and enable more patients to access them.
But this is only the beginning. Long-term, Yendou aims to reduce the time for clinical trials from 12 to 7 years, and reduce costs from $800m to $300m.
We learn in the conversation how medical innovation in oncology is held back by a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, a frustrating reality that takes a toll on innovators.
Yet, Zina is bent on overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles and encouraging hope that the war against cancer is not over.
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Sebastian A. Brunemeier.
Sebastian is the Co-Founder and General Partner at Healthspan Capital, a venture fund focused on longevity biotech ("LongBio") & geroscience.
He is also the Co-Founder and CEO at ImmuneAGE Pharma, a drug discovery platform for immune system rejuvenation.
He holds an advisor and board member position at multiple companies and organizations, such as VitaDAO and Molecule AG.
This episode is recorded as a primer to the "Prospera Healthtech Summit 2022", a conference taking place September 23-25 on the island of Roatan, Honduras.
Sebastian talks about the scientific breakthroughs of the past decades that show the path to end or at least significantly slow human aging.
What remains is an engineering challenge.
What follows is a wide-ranging conversation about the regulatory, policy, and business challenges when it comes to producing scientific innovations in the field of geroscience to result in drugs and therapies to treat humans.
Sebastian argues that the mainstream legal and financial guardrails of the medical system are broken, and instead we need alternative guardrails built on-chain.
Sebastian and the longevity movement are building these alternative guardrails such as decentralized science (de-sci) funding, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and intellectual property (IP) on non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Sounds science-fiction? It is already science-fact. LongBio has attracted close to $1bn in funding in recent years.
Sebastian introduces us to this emerging ecosystem that develops the powers to unleash a new wave of human progress through better health and longer age.
We close the episode by talking about network states, and how Puerto Rico is creating the perfect conditions for a longevity hub.
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Grant Taylor. Grant is the Founder & CEO of Quotanda, a company that is digitising financial aid for educational institutions and students.
Over the past 40 years, college has developed from an offering for an elite of knowledge workers to a job entry requirement for a majority of the population.
Grant argues that college is overutilised in developed countries such as the United States, but underutilized in less developed countries such as Mexico.
The higher education system he knows intimately from his experience in the USA, Spain and Mexico is massively mismatching students with jobs.
A couple of key innovations can help overcome that gap: 1) bootcamps of 3-6 months that teach job-relevant skills quickly. Students in Mexico can earn 5x more with a coding BootCamp compared to working in a call center. 2) Income share agreements (ISAs) between universities or financial institutions and students.
Grant talks about how ISAs have gained a bad reputation and regulatory attention in the USA after some flawed marketing messages. Yet Grant sees lots of opportunities for ISAs to become widespread. There are no regulatory barriers in many countries in Latin America, allowing an underserved market to access higher education.
We invite you to join us at the frontier to build the education system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Cameron Sorsby, the CEO of Praxis, a college alternative that builds your skills, your network, and leads to a full-time job at a growing business.
Over the past 40 years, college has developed from an offering for an elite of knowledge workers to a job entry requirement for a majority of the population.
However, during the past 2 years enrollment rates have been dropping rapidly.
During covid-19, students and parents were comparing "Zoom University" with free, or better alternatives to a 4-6 year commitment with potentially $100ks in student debt.
Covid-19 supercharged college alternatives such as Praxis.
Cameron talks about the benefits of "a vocational MBA" when it comes to costs and time spent. He also shares insights as an entrepreneur starting in a small niche, growing through word-of-mouth and becoming a premier talent pool for fast-growing tech companies that value tenacity and skills over the signal of a college degree.
We invite you to join us at the frontier to build the education system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Michael Gibson, co-founder and General Partner at 1517, a VC firm that backs dropouts, renegade students & deep tech scientists at the earliest stages.
Michael is the author of the book “Paper Belt on Fire - The Fight for Progress in an Age of Ashes”, coming out on November 8, 2022 (pre-order on Amazon).
Michael dropped out of his philosophy PhD program and was then picked by Peter Thiel to run the now legendary Thiel Fellowship Program from Day 1. With no traditional VC background, Michael then founded 1517 to find young entrepreneurs willing to leave the traditional paths to build the next great thing.
One such renegade entrepreneur Michael backed early was Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, whom he noticed early to be a voracious self-learner who taught himself not only the necessary coding and math but also to speak Mandarin Chinese.
In this wide-ranging conversation, we learn about the failures of the higher education model and science funding ("the paper belt" from NYC, Washington to Boston), and "The Great Stagnation" in technological progress starting in 1971.
Michael talks about the notion of the "frontier", a place where you can go to if the established institutions are corrupt and favor insiders over outsides, to do it all differently. In American History, the frontier was the West.
The new frontiers now seem to be the internet, the crypto/blockchain movement, and charter cities. We invite you to join us at the frontier to build the industries of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Prospera Fintech Summit, November 18-20, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Sandra Carillo, the Professor in charge of Cannabis Research and Education, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Panama.
Sandra has been advocating and promoting the use of medical cannabis as an educator, advisor to policymakers, and a medical doctor treating 1.500 patients in Colombia.
Cannabis for medical use is a great example of a stranded technology. It's prohibited by many governments and faces cultural resistance, even though the benefits have been proven for a long time in epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and as a pain reliever.
Sandra talks about the endogenous cannabinoid system, or "endocannabinoid system" —named for the plant that led to its discovery—one of the most important physiologic systems involved in establishing and maintaining human health.
We learn that both the scientific and political establishments have long resisted change coming from these insights, and the regulations have been blocking progress in developing better treatments for patients for decades.
Sandra is at the forefront of the campaign to legalize medical cannabis in Latin America and all over the world, and her journey provides insightful lessons into what's required to unleash the potential of a stranded technology.
We invite you to join us to build the industries of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Prospera Fintech Summit, November 18-20, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas speaks with Joseph McKinney, the CEO of the Catawba Digital Economic Zone (CDEZ).
The CDEZ is the Is the first jurisdiction within the United States created for fintech and digital asset growth.
Governance is possibly the most stranded technology imaginable. The governance industry, typically run by state governments around the world, is roughly 40% of global GDP and has gotten more expensive and lower quality over time.
The CDEZ is one of the most exciting and ambitious startups set to disrupt the governance-as-a-service industry. by using blockchain technology.
The ambition of CDEZ is no less than to disrupt Delaware by providing better company incorporation laws than any jurisdiction in the world.
The fundamental problem they are solving first is the lack of regulatory clarity around digital assets, including NFTs, DAOs, and cryptocurrencies.
Joseph walks Niklas through how the Catawba have a unique opportunity as a sovereign Native American tribe within the United States to make their own laws, how they can be much faster in developing better laws and regulations than any US state, and the thought process leading up to the forthcoming comprehensive set of incorporation laws for crypto/web3 companies.
We invite you to join us to build the industries of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Prospera Fintech Summit, November 18-20, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas shares some of his own thoughts and insights after 3 months of podcasting. He starts with Adam Smith's 1776 masterpiece "The Wealth of Nations".
Smith believes in the best case, humanity could produce 3-4x than what he observed in the present day. What happened is that more like a 30-40x improvement.
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes reasoned that response was a compounding interest of 2% annual growth, and he believed in an even greater future for his grandchildren.
But who says 2% is the best we can do? In this podcast, we talked about several improvements in the legal system that would make it possible to add several layers of growth by disrupting the largest industries in the world. Additionally, a more open world for ideas, capital, and people, could amount to close to 5% annual growth.
Niklas concludes that it does seem possible to 100x humanity over a 100-year period.
The way to achieve it is through improvements in legal systems, and startup cities are the frontiers where legal innovations can happen.
To explore this frontier, we invite you to join us to build the industries of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Prospera Fintech Summit, November 18-20, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
This is a special episode. Niklas has a free-flowing conversation with Trey Goff, the CMO and Chief of Staff of Prospera, the startup city in Honduras.
If there is such an industry as “network states”, “network societies” or “startup cities”, Trey is one of the most influential executives in the field.
Governance is possibly the most stranded technology imaginable. The governance industry, typically run by state governments around the world, is roughly 40% of global GDP and has gotten more expensive and lower quality over time.
The book "The Network State" (available for free online) is a manifesto to address this challenge. It is written by Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase and Partner at a16z, and one of the leading thinkers in crypto and blockchain technology.
Trey & Niklas discuss the book, bringing our unique perspectives as an executive of possibly the most advanced startup city project in the world and as a venture capitalist that is investing in companies running on better governance software.
We overall like the book a lot. However, we disagree with some of the core concepts. Trey highlights that Prospera is not about "nation building", it's about co-development together with the country of Honduras.
For Trey and Prospera, it's not about building new institutions from scratch, it's about taking what works best, reconfiguring and introducing it to a unique set of local institutions, people, and culture.
We notice the book's great innovations, such as deconstructing some of the core concepts of nation, state, and governance, how blockchain technology can be a driving force in creating better governance protocols by designing immutable records of transactions, and starting with a "one commandment" moral innovation.
While it is a step in the right direction of directing technology entrepreneurs towards building lasting institutions to steer human progress, we warn against taking an adversarial approach to existing institutions - and instead build new forms of governance in an inclusive, not an escapist way.
We invite you to join us to build the industries of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Prospera Fintech Summit, November 18-20, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Raymond J. March, the Director of fdareview.org at the Independent Institute and assistant professor for economics at North Dakota State University.
Entrepreneurs are often taught the incentives of investors but rarely do they learn how the incentives of public bureaucracies work. However, in the area of medical technology and healthcare, navigating public health institutions is vital.
This episode is a takedown of the most powerful government agency in the world - the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It regulates 40% of products in the US market and has an outsized influence on international markets.
Ray explains the concept of public choice economics and how it helps us understand the incentives of a large bureaucracy. Public officials are self-interested and their incentive is to rather let someone die from natural causes than from a bad drug.
The FDA withheld better insulin from diabetes patients, HIV drugs, and more covid-19 vaccines - all of which could have saved potentially millions of people's lives.
Historically, the FDA massively expanded in size and reach into what became into the 2000s a giant behemoth that mandates 10+ years and $1bn+ costs for approving new drugs, medical devices, and therapies. Even software can be regulated.
During the covid-19 pandemic, the key flaw of the FDA approval process became apparent: speed. A pandemic is no time for decade-long testing.
The pandemic led to deregulatory pressures on the FDA, and they may lead to progress when it comes to patients' rights and medical innovation.
We invite you to join us to build the healthcare systems of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Tom W. Bell, Tom is a professor of law at Chapman University, and the author of books such as “Your Next Government - From Nation States to Stateless Nations” and “Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good”.
For anyone interested in startup cities, network states and competitive governance, Tom is someone you must know. Tom is the engineer of the legal architecture of the startup city of Prospera in Honduras and the Catawba Digital Zone.
He's like the Satoshi Nakamoto of Startup Cities.
The guiding premise of this episode is that law can be seen as a technology, like software. It’s a key part of the software that society runs on.
Tom lays out the pillars of his legal philosophy. The law is not a way to engineer human affairs in some direction. Human behavior is too complicated. Instead, the law should be seen more like a band-aid that is there when things go wrong.
Tom explains the difference between civil law and common law. Civil is what most people think of as law, whereas common law is lesser known. However, Tom views common law as a better way to create laws that adapt to a changing environment.
Based on his insights into common law, Tom developed Ulex an open source legal "kernel" inspired by the Linux philosophy. It is available on GitHub for use by new jurisdictions, and it is the basis for the legal code in Prospera and Catawba.
It is fascinating to think of law as the software of society.
Equipped with this lens, Niklas and Tom are thinking of the enormous possibilities that we can unleash by using better rules, found through experimentation.
We invite you to join us to build the industries of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:
Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022
Prospera Edtech Summit, October 28-30, 2022
Prospera Fintech Summit, November 18-20, 2022:
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Michael Strong, the founder and CEO of The Socratic Experience, an online school that helps students ages 8-19 discover and develop their unique genius and prepares them for success in the 21st century.
Michael is the author of books including “The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice”. He is one of the most experienced designers of innovative school programs in the United States.
Michael and Niklas start by talking about the purpose of education. Do schools teach skills or are they only providing expensive certifications?
Michael strongly criticizes the public school system that puts humans with an enormously diverse array of talents and passion into a one-size-fits-all model that works for only 20-30% of students, while making everyone else miserable.
We talk about the differences in education systems across countries. Is the hailed Finland model something to emulate? Why does Sweden have the most school choice? We learn that education products can sell fast in Latin America, and that Germany has developed a novel solution for vocational training.
We use these insights to develop ideas on how to create better options for children and young adults to become capable members of society.
We invite you to join us to build the education systems of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on October 28-30, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/edtech2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Bart de Witte, Founder of Hippo AI, a non-profit that fights for making medical knowledge openly available and AI-based healthcare a common good.
Hippo AI, for example, aggregates and cleans datasets from individual and institutional data donations. This means making data available without reward for open-source usage that benefits communities or society at large, such as the use of breast-cancer data to improve global access to breast cancer diagnostics.
Bart and Niklas start by talking about barriers to open innovation, the lack of a sharing culture ("not invented here"), bad incentives and intellectual property (IP) law.
Bart highlights the need for a narrative for the future of healthcare: how market vs. government-driven will healthcare be? How much, if any, inequality can we tolerate? Who has a right to make profit on top of "our" data, and should AI models be public?
Bart and Niklas have an intense debate about these questions. While they do have different views on how to get there, for example on the role of government in regulating the data economy and AI, Niklas and Bart agree fundamentally on the need for an open source culture to unleash the needed innovation to improve lives.
We invite you to join us to build the healthcare system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on September 23-25, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/healthtech2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Jessica Flanigan, Associate Professor at the University of Richmond. Jessica's research addresses the ethics of public policy, medicine, and business.
Jessica is the author of two books. In "Pharmaceutical Freedom" (Oxford University Press, 2017), she defends rights of self-medication. In "Debating Sex Work" (Oxford University Press, 2019), she defends the decriminalization of sex work.
We start by talking about Jessica's work on pharmaceutical freedom. Jessica claims that medical authorities such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who are supposed to protect patients, are in fact causing grave harm by making innovation costly and acting immorally by using a prohibitive approach to medication.
While this claim seems controversial, Jessica is using common-sense ethical principles such as "my body, my choice" as a basis. Her research into the history of medical ethics reveals surprising insights such as cultural shifts.
The choices embedded in the status quo are by no means inevitable or immutable.
In the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, Jessica believes we have a chance to learn from the failure of institutions and not only expand medical freedom, but also innovation: human challenge trials could further progress. Ethics committees rarely if ever allow them, but Jessica debunks the arguments against them.
We conclude that the main requirement for more progress in medical innovation is experimentation and developing better, non-prohibitive regulatory practices.
We invite you to join us to build the healthcare system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on September 23-25, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/events/event-one-83cse-nbr6b
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Robin Hanson, Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and Tom Bennett, Founder & CEO of Futuur, a prediction market where you can trade on future events with play-money or crypto..
Robin is the world's foremost expert on prediction markets. He introduces the ideas behind prediction markets and highlights the potential of prediction markets to fundamentally change and improve governance of major institutions.
Tom points out how U.S. regulators such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) makes for-money prediction markets not only hard to create in the U.S., but also how the prevent any firm from allowing American citizens to bet.
We discuss potential applications of prediction markets in firms, such as "fire the CEO" markets, and how to practically build a business around it.
The discussion ends with a passionate plea by Robin for more experimentation on a small scale, to accelerate innovations that can lead to big changes that benefit all of humanity.
We invite you to join us on our mission to build the financial and governance systems of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on November 18-20: https://infinitafund.com/fintech2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Simone Azevedo, CEO and Co-Founder of Xingu Health, and Henk Schuring, Chief Regulatory and Commercialization officer at Prilenia Therapeutics.
We talk about the right of patients to access medical drugs not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Why would patients want to take non-approved medical drugs?
Patients of rare diseases often have few options. So they turn to drugs in clinical trial stage, even though their safety & efficacy isn't proven.
Henk & Simone draw from a wealth of experience from patients, doctors and industry across multiple therapeutic areas to draw a vivid picture of the status quo.
We learn about the Byzantine requirements for patients to access these drugs, the bureaucracy and logistical difficulties, as well as supply issues.
Niklas is critical of the regulatory requirements for drug approvals, and we discuss alternatives such as medical tourism and more international regulatory cooperation.
We invite you to join us to build the healthcare system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on September 23-25, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/events/event-one-83cse-nbr6b
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas talks with Sean Pawley, CEO and Founder of Seshat Bank and Rasheed Griffith, COO and Chief Compliance Officer of Merkle Hedge.
Sean has founded an API-first commercial bank for Latin America. He talks about his journey from East Africa to Central America, and how he uses the novel regulatory regime on Prospera Honduras to innovate in key areas for banking.
Notably, he talks about the "Pawnbroker for All Seasons" model to risk management pioneered by Mervyn King (ex. Governor of the Bank of England) as an improvement over the "Lender of Last Resort" Model.
Rasheed and Sean walk us through the most important international financial regulations such as AML-KYC laws, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Securities Laws. These are key for finance entrepreneurs to understand when starting a new company.
We learn how regulatory practice is often detached from material effectiveness, and how political incentives often lead to bad regulation. Better regulations, however, are needed for some key financial innovations to flourish.
Rasheed, Sean and Niklas believe startup cities like Prospera Honduras can be the innovation needed to provide more innovation-friendly regulations.
We invite you to join us on our mission to build the financial and governance systems of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on November 18-20: https://infinitafund.com/fintech2022
Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzinger
Infinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Niklas, the founder if Infinita Fund, introduces the podcast. He talks about the thesis of "stranded technologies", why they present a massive opportunity to unlock innovation, and why it's important to talk about ethics and mitigating risks.
Join the community to discuss what’s said in the episodes:
Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK
Website: https://www.infinitafund.com/