Economics of Human Energy

Thoughts about how money and human energy relate

WSP New Zealand | WSP

Human Centered Design

High-quality access to information : social technologies that help people form high-quality opinions about important topics in an adversarial environment. I personally am bullish on prediction markets and Community Notes; you may have a different take on the solutions, but the point is that this topic is important.

Vitalik Buterin • Against Choosing Your Political Allegiances Based on Who Is "Pro-Crypto"

We need ways to filter, validate, and value large amounts of information. Traditionally, this has been limited to the wealthy in the form of “experts”

H]uman beings need all the relatives they can get–as possible donors or receivers not necessarily of love, but of common decency.

. . .

When we were children in Indianapolis, Indiana, it appeared that we would always have an extended family of genuine relatives there. Our parents and grandparents, after all, had grown up there with shoals of siblings

Austin Kleon • KURT VONNEGUT ON THE NEED FOR BUILDING EXTENDED FAMILIES

Extended Family is important. Why not choose the extended family we bring in?

On the other hand—and I think this the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure—we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products.

Bob Black • The Abolition of Work

It's hard to sit there complaining about paying money if you can see it costs $300 get the accountant to file that thing we need, and that the person you enjoy talking to gets paid this much. Seeing it all transparently is quite powerful.

Divya Siddarth • Building Capacity for Exit to Community

Money spent that goes to people you like makes it easier to spend money

I don’t want to wait for the world to change.

I want to live it.

How I’m Planning to Defeat Global Ecosystem Collapse (By Living the Alternative)

This is the secret to time travel. You have to be the first one to the be the example that others can follow.

Cost effective is the wrong way to think about value

What is the value of work in a world on the cusp of automation, and how will humans redefine their relationship with it?

Our Centaur Future - A RADAR Report

Work isn’t valuable. People are. People can set a value on the work that is done, therefore, they are the most valuable piece of the equation. Work for the sake of work has no value.

This is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work.

Tina He • Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective

Yes.