Larry Summers: “My broad view has been that the 20th century was the century of physics, and that the 21st century is going to be a century of the life sciences. I think we’re going to see more change around healthcare and the implications of biology for doing other things in the years ahead. Here’s a fundamental thing to understand about the economy: All the consumer price indices are normalized to be 100 in 1983. The price index for a television set is now below 5. The price index for a year in college is now measured at 600. What that’s telling you is that a much larger fraction of our economy is going to be away from manufacturing and producing stuff, and is going to be around services, experiences and taking care. That stuff is in many, many ways very ripe for transformation.”
Thomas Sowell: “It is not the source or the ruthlessness of power alone which defines totalitarianism, but the unprecedented scope of the activities subjected to political control.” [via CafeHayek] Donald Boudreaux adds: “Progressivism is an even graver threat to liberty than is populism, for progressives are far more intent than are populists at subjecting to political control as many activities as possible…Populism is deeply illiberal and much to be feared. It must be fought against and subdued if liberal civilization is to survive. But the enemy of my enemy is not thereby my friend. Progressivism – if only because, compared to populism, the mask it wears is friendlier and the tones in which it speaks are more dulcet – is an even greater threat to liberal civilization than is populism. Embracing, or even tolerating, progressivism as a means of subduing populism – or simply because progressivism is currently the most practical political option to populism – is a foolish move for anyone wishing for a revival of true liberalism.”
Mint: “[India’s] PM GatiShakti National Master Plan launched a year ago and is frequently touted as India’s biggest administrative reform tool. It is like the Google Maps of infrastructure planning and offers a dashboard with a bird’s eye view of bridges, roads, tunnels, pipelines, power transmission cables, forests, water bodies, and airports in any region of the country…As of now, GatiShakti has over 2,000 layers of data, and it is growing every day as more and more state and central government agencies feed the platform with even more data. The tool, in short, aims to solve a complex problem—delay in important projects that often leads to cost overruns. An oil refiner, for instance, can potentially cut the time required to get a mega project off the ground if the company knows for sure the land it needs to acquire between place A and B, the number of railway tracks and highways to be crossed, and other hurdles such as water bodies and habitation.”
Vinod Khosla: “Rushing to meet carbon-reduction targets by 2030 may hinder what can be achieved by 2050…For any technology to scale globally requires risk-adjusted competitive returns for investors. Companies must produce technologies that can succeed without subsidies. They must be profitable at what I call the “Chindia price”. I define this as the price at which clean technology will be adopted in China, India and globally as it outcompetes fossil alternatives. We should not rush to meet targets unthinkingly, but instead invest in superior technologies that may take longer to mature. The reality is that China was the world’s largest investor in clean technologies last year while also increasing its coal consumption by a whopping 10%. India will burn coal in ever-greater quantities for years to come. Let’s plan pragmatically to maximise carbon-cutting by 2050.”
Read: Desert Star by Michael Connelly
