π Faster, Please! Week in Review #54
Please check out some highlights from my essays and interviews!
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Melior Mundus
In This Issue
Essay Highlights
β A look at gloomy, dystopian Generation Z
β Science is popping! Now it's superconductors! I mean, maybe!5 Quick Questions
βEconomist Gregory Casey on rising temperatures and economic growth
β Policy analyst Shoshana Weissmann on occupational licensing and internet regulation
Best of the pod
Essay Highlights
π A look at gloomy, dystopian Generation Z
Whatever your opinion about the quality of American secondary and university education and whether the subject matter is too biased to the left or right, you should be concerned with results from the new Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University survey of 2,250 undergraduate students currently enrolled in four-year US colleges and universities. Far too many of them simply donβt understand the basic current state of human civilization and how our society works. While I am superoptimistic and hopeful about the future, these polling results should be part of any pessimistic outlook: βOnly 47 percent of students believe that based on what they have learned in college the world has gotten better in terms of extreme poverty, life expectancy, hunger, and literacy over the last 50 years.β
π₯ Science is popping! Now it's superconductors! I mean, maybe!
Science and technology sure seem to be popping right now, from AI/machine learning to CRISPR to reusable SpaceX rockets to energy breakthroughs. So while the following news is superexciting, Iβm starting to get a bit accustomed to such potentially revolutionary headlines. From the new βbig if trueβ paper βThe First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductorβ by South Korean researchers Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon. β¦ Look, Iβm not a scientist nor do I play one during my CNBC appearances. But, but, but β¦ if it does pan out, this advance would open up the possibility of creating practical devices and technologies (this would be especially great news for nuclear fusion) without the need for extreme pressure conditions, leading to more efficient electronics, transportation systems, and energy storage, among other potential applications. What a world. Or as William Gibson might write it (via Anthropicβs Claude): βRoom temp superconductors hit the street. New tech holy grail, the gods toss us a bone. Cities lit up atomically top to bottom now. Compact fusion the new crack, basements rigged into star cores. Gas graves, oil barons, old news.β
β Are we ready for another Atomic Age?
Despite the above points, when you read the entire report, Citiβs concerns seem more about policy than technology. Itβs a logical position based on the history of nuclear energy. Although Citi points to some hopeful signs on the regulatory front, regulation remains the biggest obstacle to nuclear deployment for both advanced nuclear fission and fusion:
Regulation continues to be the largest obstacle to commercializing SMR technology faster across the world. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a very comprehensive and lengthy approval process that prioritizes security of operations. β¦ In addition, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently working on developing rules that would shape the future review and license of advanced reactors and SMRs. Such rules allow vendors to choose from two regulatory pathways:
An innovative approach, based on probabilistic risk assessments.
A traditional, deterministic approach aligning with international guidance.
In general, while regulation is being enhanced and made more accommodative for SMRs (specifically the LWR type), we do not observe the same scale of support for fusion reactors yet. This is likely to change in the coming years as the technology matures with more successful designs.
So here we are again, just as we were a half-century ago, with a future of clean and abundant energy for the taking β with our decisions the key factor. What will we decide?
Best of 5QQ
π‘ 5 Quick Questions for β¦ economist Gregory Casey on rising temperatures and economic growth
What is the scale of that impact on the US economy and on the global economy?
I think it is important to distinguish between our best guess based on historical data and uncertainty. Our work is about improving estimates based on historical data and making them more consistent with the existing literature on the determinants of economic growth. In particular, our main finding is that changes in temperature permanently affect the level of economic output, but do not permanently affect the growth rate of economic output. When we project the impacts of future changes in temperature, we find that they will decrease the level of GDP in 2100 by 2.4% in the US and 3.5% globally, relative to a scenario with constant temperatures. This estimate only covers the market impacts of temperature change. It ignores non-market impacts of temperature, like mortality, as well as other impacts of climate change, like rising sea levels. It also ignores βtipping points,β like melting ice sheets, that donβt occur in the historical data, but may be future consequences of climate change.Β
Personally, when I think about the impacts of climate change, I focus more on uncertainty. Climate scientists tell us that there could be large and unprecedented changes in natural systems if climate change continues on its current course. It isnβt clear how well these changes are captured in historical data. The potential impacts of these changes are hard to quantify, but it seems plausible that they will have sizable economic consequences. Wagner and Weitzman have a great book on this uncertainty called Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet. They argue that a key benefit of climate policy is protection from these βtail risks,β and I find this argument convincing.Β
The classic examples we typically hear about occupational licensing are about EMTs or people working at hair salons who are subject to these occupational licensing schemes. Could you give me an example of one which is less common but really ridiculous?
There are so many. A lot of localities--not so much states, but localities--license fortune tellers, which is just dumb. "Oh Man, we want to make sure this fortune teller is really legitimate." It's just such an amazing concept to confer legitimacy on the βrealβ fortune tellers. Louisiana is the only state to license florists. The lobby there just fights it tooth and nail. They really want to make sure their florists are licensed. And the Institute for Justice had a win years ago where they got rid of the floral examination where other florists decided if they liked your flowers enough to let you compete with them. And, no surprise, the pass rate was lower than the bar exam (which I think is also lower in Louisiana than it is in other states.) Auctioneers is a big one. There was a fight with eBay and auctioneers years ago. But it's always just really funny to see all these little ones. And even more common ones: like doctors can't often work across state lines. There are so many professions we don't think about where it really sucks that they can't work in different states or work to their best of their abilities. And then ones where we're like, why does this even exist? Like the florist and the auctioneers.
Best of the pod
Ashlee Vance is the author of the new book, When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach. He previous wrote, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future in 2015.
In the book, you write, βThe future that all these space buffs have already started building is one in which many rockets blast off every day. These rockets will be carrying thousands of satellites that will be placed not all that far above our heads. The satellites will change the way communications work on Earth by, for one, making the internet an inescapable presence with all the good and bad that entails. The satellites will also watch and analyze the earth in previously unfathomable ways. The data centers that have reshaped life on our planet will be transported into orbit. We are, in effect, building a computing shell around the planet.β Other than SpaceX, who are the companies building that computer shell?
The one that comes to mind is the next sort of central actor in the book, which is this company called Planet Labs, which is based in San Francisco. For people who don't know, they already surround the Earth with about 250 imaging satellites. They can take, and they do take, pictures of every spot on the Earth's landmass every day. Multiple pictures. Unlike even the world's biggest governments, China, Russia, the US, which have spice satellites obviously, but they only have a handful of spy satellites. And they tend to only look where interesting things might be happening. Planet sees everything that's happening all the time. And this is not some far-off concept. They had this full constellation up and running in 2018 and have just been adding to it ever since.
At the time they launched, in low-Earth orbit there were about [2,000] satellites. And Planet had put up about 250. They were about 10 percent of all the satellites in space, just from this small private company in California that grew out of NASA Ames, the Silicon Valley center. And so they're indicative of, today, we have many, many, several companies trying to build these space internet constellations, each of which require on the order of 10,000 to 20,000 satellites. You've got more imaging satellites along the lines of Planet that do all kinds of different things. And then you got a ton of scientific satellites. The whole premise is that there are many more ideas yet to come.