Dragons, bailouts and resort buyers
Neologism #19, 05.02.2023
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant
The story argues that humans for most of history have lacked the tools to fight the monster of death, but now the capacity to fight it may exist. The fable thus addresses the themes of death acceptance and resignation to fate in the face of ageing and critiques the pro-aging trance
Read The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant by Nick Bostrom
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Neoliberalism’s Bailout Problem
Mainstream economics ignores the massive government interventions that “free market” capitalism requires.
The CARES and COVID Relief Acts amounted to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP in 2020. But the government spent more—nearly 20 percent of U.S. GDP—to keep Wall Street afloat.
The same bailout operations deployed during COVID-19 have been mobilized regularly and with increasing force since the beginning of the neoliberal era in the early 1980s.
The only remaining alternative is to create an updated, reimagined version of the big government model of capitalism that prevailed before the rise of neoliberalism.
Read Neoliberalism’s Bailout Problem by Boston Review
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Buyers of first resort
How do technologies get off the ground? As well as seed funding, many of the best technologies require Buyers of First Resort, which buy products until they improve enough to get to efficient scale.
We all know about the importance of patents, copyright, trade secrets, R&D subsidies, tax credits, and national labs. But less well understood is the importance of 'Buyers of First Resort' – entities which establish a market for something well before it can support its own customer base.
A Buyer of First Resort might help innovative new technologies to get the scale they need to be commercially viable in areas like carbon capture, space exploration and developing new vaccines.
Taiwan has a "pay for success" model where gov't commits to pay if a panel deems a particular objective to be met. And this promise can be securitised. Very similar to the Buyer of First Resort concept
Read Buyers of first resort on Works in Progress
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