Stranded Technologies Podcast

Niklas talks with Raymond J. March, the Director of fdareview.org at the Independent Institute, public policy and public choice fellow at the American Institute for Economic Institute and assistant professor for economics at North Dakota State University.Entrepreneurs are often taught the incentives of investors but rarely do they learn how the incentives of public bureaucracies work. However, in the area of medical technology and healthcare, navigating public health institutions is vital.This episode is a takedown of the most powerful government agency in the world - the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It regulates 40% of products in the US market and has an outsized influence on international markets.Ray explains the concept of public choice economics and how it helps us understand the incentives of a large bureaucracy. Public officials are self-interested and their incentive is to rather let someone die from natural causes than from a bad drug.The FDA withheld better insulin from diabetes patients, HIV drugs, and more covid-19 vaccines - all of which could have saved potentially millions of people's lives.Historically, the FDA massively expanded in size and reach into what became into the 2000s a giant behemoth that mandates 10+ years and $1bn+ costs for approving new drugs, medical devices, and therapies. Even software can be regulated.During the covid-19 pandemic, the key flaw of the FDA approval process became apparent: speed. A pandemic is no time for decade-long testing.The pandemic led to deregulatory pressures on the FDA, and they may lead to progress when it comes to patients' rights and medical innovation.We invite you to join us to build the healthcare systems of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:Prospera Healthtech Summit, September 23-25, 2022Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzingerInfinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas talks with Tom W. Bell. Tom is a professor of law at Chapman University, and the author of books such as “Your Next Government - From Nation States to Stateless Nations” and “Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good”.For anyone interested in startup cities, network states and competitive governance, Tom is someone you must know. Tom is the engineer of the legal architecture of the startup city of Prospera in Honduras and the Catawba Digital Zone.He's like the Satoshi Nakamoto of Startup Cities.The guiding premise of this episode is that law can be seen as a technology, like software. It’s a key part of the software that society runs on.Tom lays out the pillars of his legal philosophy. The law is not a way to engineer human affairs in some direction. Human behavior is too complicated. Instead, the law should be seen more like a band-aid that is there when things go wrong.Tom explains the difference between civil law and common law. Civil is what most people think of as law, whereas common law is lesser known. However, Tom views common law as a better way to create laws that adapt to a changing environment.Based on his insights into common law, Tom developed Ulex an open source legal "kernel" inspired by the Linux philosophy. It is available on GitHub for use by new jurisdictions, and it is the basis for the legal code in Prospera and Catawba.Equipped with this lens, Niklas and Tom are thinking of the enormous possibilities that we can unleash by using better rules, found through experimentation.We invite you to join us to build the industries of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island.Join us for upcoming events: https://lu.ma/infinitaInfinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas talks with Michael Strong, the founder and CEO of The Socratic Experience, an online school that helps students ages 8-19 discover and develop their unique genius and prepares them for success in the 21st century.Michael is the author of books including “The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice”. He is one of the most experienced designers of innovative school programs in the United States.Michael and Niklas start by talking about the purpose of education. Do schools teach skills or are they only providing expensive certifications?Michael strongly criticizes the public school system that puts humans with an enormously diverse array of talents and passion into a one-size-fits-all model that works for only 20-30% of students, while making everyone else miserable.We talk about the differences in education systems across countries. Is the hailed Finland model something to emulate? Why does Sweden have the most school choice? We learn that education products can sell fast in Latin America, and that Germany has developed a novel solution for vocational training.We use these insights to develop ideas on how to create better options for children and young adults to become capable members of society.We invite you to join us to build the education systems of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on October 28-30, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/edtech2022Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzingerInfinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas talks with Bart de Witte, Founder of Hippo AI, a non-profit that fights for making medical knowledge openly available and AI-based healthcare a common good.Hippo AI, for example, aggregates and cleans datasets from individual and institutional data donations. This means making data available without reward for open-source usage that benefits communities or society at large, such as the use of breast-cancer data to improve global access to breast cancer diagnostics.Bart and Niklas start by talking about barriers to open innovation, the lack of a sharing culture ("not invented here"), bad incentives and intellectual property (IP) law.Bart highlights the need for a narrative for the future of healthcare: how market vs. government-driven will healthcare be? How much, if any, inequality can we tolerate? Who has a right to make profit on top of "our" data, and should AI models be public?Bart and Niklas have an intense debate about these questions. While they do have different views on how to get there, for example on the role of government in regulating the data economy and AI, Niklas and Bart agree fundamentally on the need for an open source culture to unleash the needed innovation to improve lives.We invite you to join us to build the healthcare system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on September 23-25, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/healthtech2022Niklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzingerInfinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas talks with Jessica Flanigan, Associate Professor at the University of Richmond. Jessica's research addresses the ethics of public policy, medicine, and business.Jessica is the author of two books. In "Pharmaceutical Freedom" (Oxford University Press, 2017), she defends rights of self-medication. In "Debating Sex Work" (Oxford University Press, 2019), she defends the decriminalization of sex work.We start by talking about Jessica's work on pharmaceutical freedom. Jessica claims that medical authorities such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who are supposed to protect patients, are in fact causing grave harm by making innovation costly and acting immorally by using a prohibitive approach to medication.While this claim seems controversial, Jessica is using common-sense ethical principles such as "my body, my choice" as a basis. Her research into the history of medical ethics reveals surprising insights such as cultural shifts.The choices embedded in the status quo are by no means inevitable or immutable.In the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, Jessica believes we have a chance to learn from the failure of institutions and not only expand medical freedom, but also innovation: human challenge trials could further progress. Ethics committees rarely if ever allow them, but Jessica debunks the arguments against them.We conclude that the main requirement for more progress in medical innovation is experimentation and developing better, non-prohibitive regulatory practices.We invite you to join us to build the healthcare system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island:Supercharging Health 2023 - A Próspera Builders’ Summit, April 21-23 on Roatan: https://infinitavc.com/healthbio2023 Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas talks with Robin Hanson, Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and Tom Bennett, Founder & CEO of Futuur, a prediction market where you can trade on future events with play money or crypto.Robin is the world's foremost expert on prediction markets. He introduces the ideas behind prediction markets and highlights the potential of prediction markets to fundamentally change and improve the governance of major institutions.Tom points out how U.S. regulators such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) make for-money prediction markets not only hard to create in the US, but also how they prevent any firm from allowing American citizens to bet.We discuss potential applications of prediction markets in firms, such as "fire the CEO" markets, and how to practically build a business around it.The discussion ends with a passionate plea by Robin for more experimentation on a small scale, to accelerate innovations that can lead to big changes.Infinita Website: https://infinitavc.com/Upcoming Conferences in Prospera: https://lu.ma/infinita This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas talks with Simone Azevedo, CEO and Co-Founder of Xingu Health, and Henk Schuring, Chief Regulatory and Commercialization officer at Prilenia Therapeutics.We talk about the right of patients to access medical drugs not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Why would patients want to take non-approved medical drugs?Patients of rare diseases often have few options. So they turn to drugs in clinical trial stage, even though their safety & efficacy isn't proven.Henk & Simone draw from a wealth of experience from patients, doctors and industry across multiple therapeutic areas to draw a vivid picture of the status quo.We learn about the Byzantine requirements for patients to access these drugs, the bureaucracy and logistical difficulties, as well as supply issues.Niklas is critical of the regulatory requirements for drug approvals, and we discuss alternatives such as medical tourism and more international regulatory cooperation.We invite you to join us to build the healthcare system of the future together on Roatan, Honduras, a beautiful Caribbean island on September 23-25, 2022: https://infinitafund.com/events/event-one-83cse-nbr6bNiklas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NiklasAnzingerInfinita Fund Website: https://infinitafund.com/Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubK This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas talks with Sean Pawley, CEO and Founder of Seshat Bank and Rasheed Griffith, COO and Chief Compliance Officer of Merkle Hedge.Sean has founded an API-first commercial bank for Latin America. He talks about his journey from East Africa to Central America, and how he uses the novel regulatory regime on Prospera Honduras to innovate in key areas for banking.Notably, he talks about the "Pawnbroker for All Seasons" model to risk management pioneered by Mervyn King (ex. Governor of the Bank of England) as an improvement over the "Lender of Last Resort" Model.Rasheed and Sean walk us through the most important international financial regulations such as AML-KYC laws, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Securities Laws. These are key for finance entrepreneurs to understand when starting a new company.We learn how regulatory practice is often detached from material effectiveness, and how political incentives often lead to bad regulation. Better regulations, however, are needed for some key financial innovations to flourish.Rasheed, Sean and Niklas believe startup cities like Prospera Honduras can be the innovation needed to provide more innovation-friendly regulations.Join us on May 5-7 the Caribbean island of Roatan for a summit in Prospera and help us build a more decentralized financial system: https://infinitafund.com/defi2023For more information about Infinita, check this Linktree: https://linktr.ee/infinitavc This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com

Niklas, the founder if Infinita Fund, introduces the podcast. He talks about the thesis of "stranded technologies", why they present a massive opportunity to unlock innovation, and why it's important to talk about ethics and mitigating risks.Join the community to discuss what’s said in the episodes:Discord: https://discord.gg/Z4H6UjbubKWebsite: https://www.infinitafund.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.infinitacitytimes.com