Hope for the Future through Entrepreneurial Solutions

Endlessly better law, governance, culture, and community

First principles approach: Human outcomes are the result of genetics, culture, institutions, and exogenous factors (e.g. earthquakes, asteroids, etc.)

Thus Strong’s Law: Under the right conditions (lots packed in there), entrepreneurial competition results over time in higher quality, lower cost, and more niche offerings.

This law applies to the most important aspects of human existence, including law, governance, culture, and community as well as it applies to electronics or widgets.

The tragedy of humanity is that we have not yet created conditions under which we can systematically build towards endless improvements in law, governance, culture, and community.

I envision a future in which new entrepreneurial jurisdictions provide for ever more effective legal and governance services. Most of the world’s poverty, much of the world’s conflict, and many of the world’s injustices will gradually fade away in such a world. Meanwhile, as we simultaneously create more flourishing cultures for young people and then adults, future generations will grow up to become more capable while being more deeply immersed in nourishing communities, leading more fulfilling lives than is the case today.

We are miserable because we have not yet applied the power of entrepreneurial value creation, “innovationism” in Deirdre McCloskey’s felicitous expression, to the most important domains of human well-being: Law, governance, culture, and community.

As a practical matter, I’m personally focused on the entrepreneurial creation and promotion of new jurisdictions (such as Prospera and many similar projects in development around the world) along with the entrepreneurial creation of new culture and community by means of my educational projects (including The Socratic Experience). There are many thousands of others also working towards a world of entrepreneurial jurisdictions as well as new creations of culture and community through both education and through intentional community building of various sorts.

While many people are angry and depressed much of the time, those of us involved in the active creation of a better future through new jurisdictions and new learning cultures and are mostly happy and thriving. Unlike those engaged in political conflict, we have a sense of empowerment. New jurisdictions will provide prosperity for billions while creating new communities with higher quality of life for most who live within them. New forms of education, ultimately blossoming into new cultures and communities, will provide a higher quality of life for millions and then billions of young people.

Moreover, we are at the earliest stages of both movements. Most current projects will fail - and that is to be expected. Successful innovation requires countless failures along the way. These iterated experiences of failure are exactly how individuals and institutional networks learn. As the old saying in Silicon Valley goes, “Fail faster.”

My motto is “Criticize by creating.” Or, as Seasteading Director Joe Quirk says, “Don’t argue, build.” My purpose here is not to argue with those who are deeply attached to their ways of seeing the world. I would like to encourage more people to see a path to a brighter future and to join us in building it.

I don’t have immediate solutions to many of the problems that people obsess with in the media (climate change, AI, global pandemics, nuclear war, etc.) And of course there are millions of important problems that will be solved by entrepreneurial solutions that have nothing directly to do with better institutions and culture. That said, almost everything will be improved by better institutions and culture. Conversely, dysfunctional institutions and culture will undermine all of the other solutions people are working on. Indeed, the most dire predictions associated with climate change and AI are premised upon our existing dysfunctional institutions and cultures.

Moreover, dysfunctional institutions and culture will result in expanding domains of other problems in the future. The ultimate “whack-a-mole” scenario is for humanity to lurch from one potential disaster to another without ever addressing our most fundamental dysfunctions. In future posts I’ll outline various ways in which fundamental improvements in institutions and culture may ameliorate a multitude of other potential catastrophic risks.

I don’t see “entrepreneurship” as narrowly for profit. I do see it as a matter of taking initiative through voluntary win-win solutions to improve the human condition. For those who are stuck in simplistic mental models of “states” vs. “corporations,” learn from the Ostroms about institutional diversity, learn transaction cost economics from Coase and Williamson, learn robust political economy from Mark Pennington. In order to improve our institutions, we need a broad understanding of the full range of institutional solutions that are possible as well as the informational and incentive constraints on various existing institutions. At the end of the day, my political philosophy is “governance is a hard problem.” In comparing potential alternative scenarios, we all need to understand just how challenging governance is, given human diversity along with informational and incentive constraints. We want a vibrant global industry in governance innovation. Let ten thousand city-states bloom, then on to a million and beyond.

But nonetheless, the “voluntary” aspect is key. Forcing other people to do things is ultimately not the foundation of a positive society. Much of the misery of our condition today is due to the pervasiveness of coercion. Reducing the extent to which coercion takes place will, on balance, improve the human condition tremendously. Ultimately I’m a voluntarist, looking forward to a world (100-200 years from now?) when most human activity around the world is voluntary and acts of coercion are rare. I intend to present a very gradual roadmap for getting there, based on the simple fact that talent and capital have migrated and will continue to migrate to higher quality jurisdictions, cultures, and communities. Accelerate the rate of growth of positive new options and reduce switching costs, and we accelerate the rate of positive change.

Every day I wake up and look forward to loving what I do and doing what I love as I create better ways of doing things. I believe all 8 billion human beings (or whatever the number when we get to that stage) can live similar lives. The mass flourishing of humanity is within our reach. But we need new institutions and subcultures to get there.

For those who are attached to their despair: Yes, despair is always an option. I won’t try to argue you out of your despair. Bad things have happened, bad things are happening, and bad things will happen. Maybe emergency X will take place before we can significantly improve our institutions and culture. This is a long game. But we will always live more vibrant and fulfilling lives if we believe we can improve both our own lives and the human condition more generally. If you have a more fulfilling approach than what I offer here, more power to you.

But if you are curious about or inspired by the entrepreneurial creation of endlessly improving institutions and cultures, let’s have a conversation together.