Rajesh Jain

Tim O’Reilly on why it’s too early to get excited about Web3: “Let’s focus on the parts of the Web3 vision that aren’t about easy riches, on solving hard problems in trust, identity, and decentralized finance. And above all, let’s focus on the interface between crypto and the real world that people live in, where, as  Matthew Yglesias put it when talking about housing inequality, “a society becomes wealthy over time by accumulating a stock of long-lasting capital goods.” If, as Sal Delle Palme argues, Web3 heralds the birth of a new economic system, let’s make it one that increases true wealth—not just paper wealth for those lucky enough to get in early but actual life-changing goods and services that make life better for everyone.”

Russ Roberts talk to Michael Munger on Constitutions. Munger: “The real origins of Public Choice, and particularly the first of what we now think of as the Public Choice Pentateuch–took the five founding books of Public Choice–was The Calculus of Consent. And, The Calculus of Consent takes up some of the work– It was written by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, and it was published in 1962. So, this is right at the origins of what we now think of as Public Choice. One of Buchanan’s heroes was the Swedish economist–political economist–Knut Wicksell. And, what Wicksell had said–and it was interesting–was that the only justification for coercion was consent…A key to liberty is the ability voluntarily to subject yourself to coercion if you violate the terms of the agreement. That’s the way we make binding agreements.”

Via Shane Parish: “It’s very important to know what you don’t like. A big part of innovation is saying, “You know what I’m really sick of?” … “What am I really sick of?” is where innovation begins.”

FT on the transformative power of games: “Why have humans played games in their homes for millennia? Besides being fun, they promote togetherness, mental agility and emotional release.”

David Brooks: “[T]o lead a worthy life, you sort of have to have three projects or three accomplishments. One is to be in internal harmony with yourself. And that’s to do the practices that will elevate you. I like reading spiritual books as my way to get my insides elevated rather than degraded. The second is to be in harmony with others. And I think the crucial skill there is the ability to see people and understand them and make them feel that they’ve been considered, heard and understood. And then the final thing is to commit to some great loves, to fall in love with great things and really commit to them. My definition of a commitment is falling in love with something, and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters…And so it’s those commitments which tend to be like commitments to a vocation, commitment to a family, commitment to a philosophy or faith, and commitments to a community, a place. And so those are like the three lanes, what I would think of, of a worthy life.”

Economist on quadratic voting: ” In its simplest version, each voter would be given a budget of “marks” as Carroll might call them or “voice credits” as Mr Weyl calls them. Voters could use these credits to “buy” votes for a candidate or proposal. The first vote for a candidate costs one credit. But casting two votes for a single candidate costs four credits (ie, two squared); casting three costs nine (three squared), and so on. Under this scheme, people buy votes with their credits just as countries “earn” votes with their populations in Penrose’s imagined assembly. In both cases, the aim is to give voters as much sway as their population or passion warrants. But no more so.”

Ben Thompson on the Great Bifurcation: “The Metaverse, in contrast, is not about eating the world; it’s about creating an entirely new one, from entertainment to community to money to identity. If Elon Musk wants to go to the moon, Mark Zuckerberg wants to create entirely new moons in digital space. This is a place where LLCs make no sense, where regulations are an after-thought, easily circumvented even if they exist. This is a place with no need for traditional money, or traditional art; the native solution is obviously superior. To put it another way, “None of this real world stuff has any digital world value” — the critique goes both ways. In the end, the most important connection between the Metaverse and the physical world will be you: right now you are in the Metaverse, reading this Article; perhaps you will linger on Twitter or get started with your remote work. And then you’ll stand up from your computer, or take off your headset, eat dinner and tuck in your kids, aware that their bifurcated future will be fundamentally different from your unitary past.”

Business Standard: “The fact is that the data gauges, especially from employment surveys, are loudly proclaiming that India’s growth model is in trouble. While the increase in welfare measures and social protections can postpone the inevitable and somewhat protect living standards — especially as measured through recent efforts such as the multidimensional poverty index — the fact is that sustained increases in productivity, wages, and job security for the vast mass of Indians are the only sure foundation upon which to build economic growth and secure livelihoods. A movement of the workforce towards agricultural jobs, rural jobs, and unpaid or insecure work reveals not just that recent growth trends have not been broad-based but also that future growth might not be built on a sustainable foundation. Of all the government’s pressing economic concerns, this must surely be the most vital.”

Santosh Desai: “[T]he epistemic pool— the combined body of knowledge that we find ourselves amidst is now of a completely different character than in the past. Today the accretion of knowledge is unregulated, unmediated and indiscriminate. If earlier we learnt of the world from books, newspapers, journals, magazines, the odd pamphlet and advertising, today a bulk of our education is being carried out by tweets, blogs, social media posts generated not by experts or those on pedestals but by people like us. The library has given way to Twitter. The pool may be more democratically organised, but it is undeniably shallower. And it stinks.”

Olga Kharif on Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web3: “The term Web 1.0 generally describes everything from the earliest interconnection of computer networks in the 1970s and ’80s to the first flowering of browsers and websites in the ’90s. In the next phase, Web 2.0, companies built applications on top of that, from social media to search engines to wikis, much of it based on content generated by users. Although that made much of the web in one sense decentralized, most things still run through big companies. The idea of Web3 is to create software and platforms that aren’t dependent on traditional companies and Web 2.0 business models such as advertising. For example, users might pay for services directly using tokens. In an ideal world, Web3 services are supposed to be operated, owned by, and improved upon by communities of users.”

Jay Caspian Kang on NAUDL (National Association for Urban Debate Leagues). “My work today, when it’s at its best, still reflects both the structure and the freedom I found in debate. I learned how to back up arguments with evidence, how to understand when someone was simply trying to deflect or misdirect the conversation and how to think on my feet.” I have written about the need for a debating culture in India.

Naushad Forbes: “Going by what the majority want is not always right. Much progressive change happens “against the will of the people”. Indeed, the essence of liberty in any civilised society is to protect the rights of the minority against the will of the majority (John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is the classic statement). For us in India, when independent institutions set the rules under which we operate, we seem to deliver greater inclusion. Whether that independence reflects wise intent or is an unintended consequence of a power vacuum is less important. It is in these democratic features, so different from China, that our future lies.”

7 Marketing Predictions For 2022 from Forbes. Among them: “Attention to be rarest commodity.  Whether it’s on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, podcasting, or traditional media, the competition for hearts, minds, and eyeballs grows ever more intense,” says marketing thought leader Ellen Melko Moore. “The New York Times reports that 4.3 million people filed for small business licenses in 2021, up 24% from 2020, the highest percentage increase in over a decade. We can’t know exactly how many people have entered the independent thought leader/expert industry, but we do know each year brings a bigger crop of combatants to what Jonah Sachs famously calls ‘The Story Wars.’ Attention is both our most precious and rarest commodity.”

Also: 10 Trends For Digital Marketing In 2022. Among them: “Email Most Important Channel. Melissa Sargeant, CMO of Litmus, believes three trends have contributed to the prioritization of email: personalization, automation, and privacy. She anticipates tactics like dynamic and interactive email content, AMP for email, and new personalization strategies to rise in importance in 2022. “Litmus recently released a State of Email report showcasing that email has become marketing’s most important channel: 91% of survey respondents maintained email marketing is critical to the overall success of their company,” says Sargeant. “This is up 20 percentage points since 2019, and more than 40% of companies intend to increase their investment in 2022.”

Randy Holcombe: “In markets the situation is just the opposite [from politics]. People cooperate only when they gain from trade on some specific good or service. When a person buys gasoline at a filling station, for example, whether the gas station attendant favors higher or lower taxes is irrelevant to the transaction. Similarly, nobody enters a transaction at a department store contingent on whether the cashier has the same views on abortion as the purchaser. The only relevant issues are whether the purchaser wants to make the particular purchase and whether the seller is willing to sell. Nobody asks, or even cares, about the political views of those with whom they do business. Their interests simply are to complete the transaction as easily as possible. Market exchange, by its very nature, fosters cooperation, even among people who disagree about almost everything.” [via CafeHayek]