One idea that has been rolling around in my mind the last few weeks is to picture what the world will look like in 100 years and what you fight against.
There are technologies that are inevitable. Just as horses would be replaced by the car, we know there are things we won’t do in 100 years. In those cases, why fight the march of progress? I don’t believe we need to support everything, but we should remove our resistance to it.
There’s no doubt in my mind that we will rely more on solar power. It may not look like solar panels on top of everyone’s home and we may not store it in batteries, but we will get a greater share of our energy needs directly from the sun (rather than indirectly, as we do today).
So why fight it?
Another example – giving people the ability to thrive by removing some financial insecurity in their lives. It may not look like universal basic income or single-payer health care, but we will reach a point where our society offers that luxury either through the government or private industry. So as you think about the things you fight against, consider the inexorable march of time.
Our first article looks at Gravity Payments, a company that offered every employee a salary of at least $70,000 and how it’s doing after five years.
The boss who put everyone on 70K [BBC] – “In 2015, the boss of a card payments company in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for all of his 120 staff – and personally took a pay cut of $1m. Five years later he’s still on the minimum salary, and says the gamble has paid off. […] The headcount has doubled and the value of payments that the company processes has gone from $3.8bn a year to $10.2bn.”
History is Only Interesting Because Nothing is Inevitable [Collaborative Fund] – “Nothing that’s happened had to happen, or must happen again. That’s why historians aren’t prophets. Wars, booms, busts, inventions, breakthroughs – none of those things were inevitable. They happened, and they’ll keep happening in various forms. But specific events that shape history are always low-probability events. Their surprise is what causes them to leave a mark.” This article is fascinating because it examines what people felt and tried predicting leading up to the Great Depression. What I find most fascinating is think about what people were saying leading up to the Great Recession (housing prices are crazy! but no one really knew about CDOs, the true culprit) and this most recent correction (a correction has been imminent for years but everyone pointed to trade war, not coronavirus).
And finally, another day, another Ponzi scheme!
Escape Artist [Airmail] – “Inigo Philbrick is a Ponzi-scheming gallerist who got in over his head. Now he’s gone missing—with a pack of furious collectors on his trail”
Have a great day Apexians!