Existential Hope Podcast: Eli Dourado, Abundance Institute | Accelerating Progress
Sep 24, 2024
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Eli Dourado, Chief Economist at the Abundance Institute, dives into accelerating economic growth through innovative technology and policy reforms. He discusses groundbreaking advancements in healthcare, transportation, and energy, envisioning a future with scalable solutions and rapid deployment of new technologies. Dourado also tackles regulatory challenges that stifle innovation and emphasizes the need for effective digital governance. He champions broad literacy and continuous writing as essential tools for progress and community engagement in shaping a brighter tomorrow.
Eli Dourado emphasizes prioritizing productivity-enhancing technologies to stimulate economic growth and address industry disparities.
The rise of positive attitudes towards progress, influenced by key literature, has fostered a renewed enthusiasm for innovation since 2014.
Regulatory complacency and institutional inertia present significant obstacles to technological advancement, necessitating policy reforms like reevaluating the National Environmental Policy Act.
Deep dives
Exploring the Future at Edge Esmeralda
The episode highlights the significance of the Edge Esmeralda gathering, designed for individuals committed to building a better future. This event, held in Helzberg, California, serves as a prototype for a proposed new town, Esmeralda. Participants are encouraged to incubate innovative technologies and explore new lifestyles while learning from experts across various fields. Upcoming events, like Edge City Lana in Thailand, are also mentioned, inviting more people to engage in these transformative discussions.
Eli Dorado's Vision for Economic Growth
Eli Dorado, the Chief Economist at the Abundance Institute, emphasizes the need for focused strategies to enhance economic growth, particularly in addressing productivity disparities across industries. His background includes extensive work in tech policy, showcasing his commitment to deploying innovations to drive economic progress. Dorado's approach allows for a critical examination of economic practices, spotlighting productivity as a primary target for enhancement. He advocates for saturating the economy with technologies that increase productivity to foster significant growth.
Cultural Shifts in Progress Thinking
A notable cultural shift in attitudes towards progress is underscored, tracing its evolution from skepticism to renewed enthusiasm around 2014. Influential works, such as Peter Thiel's 'Zero to One' and articles by Carlson and Cowan, have catalyzed conversations about progress and innovation. Today, this movement encompasses various subgroups focused on accelerating advancements in fields like biomedicine and technology. Dorado notes a growing recognition of the need to overcome obstacles to realize faster rates of progress.
Barriers to Innovation and Change
Dorado identifies complacency and regulatory hurdles as significant barriers to innovation across sectors. Fear of inconvenience, strict safety regulations, and lengthy permitting processes hinder the ability to deploy new technologies rapidly. He argues for a reevaluation of these barriers to streamline innovation, particularly emphasizing the need to reform the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for expediting projects. Additionally, he discusses the implications of institutional inertia that complicates efforts to stimulate economic growth and technological advancement.
A Vision for the Future through Technology
Dorado envisions a future marked by advancements across various sectors: health, housing, energy, and transportation. He advocates for innovations that could reduce healthcare costs significantly, along with strategies for efficient housing development to meet demand. In energy, he suggests a focus on deployment and iterating technologies like nuclear and geothermal energy to enhance capacity. Transportation could see a renaissance with the revival of supersonic flight, leveraging advancements in engineering and materials to create a new generation of efficient aircraft.
Eli Dourado is the Chief Economist at the Abundance Institute. He is a former Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and he has studied and written about a wide range of technology policy issues, including Internet governance, intellectual property, cybersecurity, and cryptocurrency.
Session Summary
This episode covers topics including Dourado’s efforts to accelerate economic growth in the U.S., his views on policy reforms in key sectors such as health, housing, energy, and transportation, and the challenges of regulatory complacency. We also explore the potential of new technologies such as AI and biotechnology. Dourado shares his vision of a future with scalable healthcare solutions, more efficient housing, rapid deployment of energy technologies, and advancements in transportation like supersonic flights and electric vehicles. The conversation concludes on the importance of broad literacy and continuous writing in supporting progress.
Existential Hope was created to collect positive and possible scenarios for the future so that we can have more people commit to creating a brighter future, and to begin mapping out the main developments and challenges that need to be navigated to reach it. Existential Hope is a Foresight Institute project.