Progress Studies

Malthus was wrong. We make MORE food than ever with LESS land than ever. Because we have one inexhaustible resource— Human ingenuity.

Governments sporadically got things spectacularly wrong. In 1865, the rail and horse-drawn carriage lobbies in the U.K. drummed up enough outrage to pass the Locomotive Act, whose most notable feature was an absurd requirement that a man walk in front of any self-propelled vehicle waving a red flag and blowing a horn. It stunted the U.K. automobile... See more

anyone who prioritizes the wellbeing of the “future of humanity” in the abstract over the dignity and care of individuals in the present cannot claim that they truly care about people

My current favorite theory about what's gone wrong since the 1970s is that we stopped innovating to maximize performance and started optimizing for energy (and resource) efficiency. Imagine all the cool shit we're gonna build once we have abundant sources of clean energy...