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Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#31

Post by pmohun »

jeremyw wrote: post #26
netcan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They discuss healthcare & higher education in parallel, and I do think the cost explosion in both is worth noting... But the differences are as important as the similarities. Some big healthcare cost increases come from increased consumption. It's not just incentives, bureaucracies and inefficiencies that caused cost increases. Once upon a time we had less medical care to consume, fewer procedures, cancer treatments…

> It's not just incentives, bureaucracies and inefficiencies that caused cost increases. This might be true if there weren't stark counterexamples, e.g. Singapore at 1/4 the cost, with better outcomes. Notably there, government dollars flow through to consumers who choose among competitors by price and quality.

There is also a lower focus on end of life care in Singapore, which makes up the vast majority of spending in the American system.

These issues are cultural, not just political or economic. I am looking forward to seeing what PC and TC can come up with for a common framework. This seems to be a tough problem.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#32

Post by aty268 »

artfulhippo wrote: post #9

> Collison: when we sort of talk about the phenomenon of “progress,” you know, I think GDP or GDP per capita is a pretty good first approximation measure of it and it correlates strongly —— I got confused when Collison said that there was scientific evidence that business productivity increases with improved management practices. That’s the thesis of business schools and management consultants. What’s the new idea he…

2) Is a monopoly or a perfectly competitive business better for societal progress?

In theory, a monopoloy would be because you can make more profit and constantly reinvest more than any competitor into making better products and holding your monopoly.

Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in practice, because monopolies tend to buy competitors in order to stifle competition rather than reinvesting and building a better product.

So I think acquiring competitors tends to inhibit progress because you are wasting money that you could be reinvesting into building a better product for society.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#33

Post by hanniabu »

valleyjo wrote: post #2

They discuss the fact that we are seeing linear gains from exponential investment in several fields (healthcare, semiconductors to name a few). This is a fascinating problem.

I'd think it's more of a problem to assume they should continue to rise with exponential gains....

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#34

Post by Matticus_Rex »

eloff wrote: post #15
whb07 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be? Humans have infinite wants and needs. These change overtime in terms of taste/perception as well. So the counter point should be made as to how this isn't the case and that a "growing pie" is actually against human nature.

It's the compound interest problem. If you keep compounding growth, like growing GDP at 1-2% a year, within some few thousand years you've grown bigger than all the resources within a sphere the same number of light years in radius. So clearly, growth is not sustainable and must eventually slow down until it approaches zero. To be clear, we're far away from that today. But the parent is mathematically correct, the be…

The calculation isn't so simple -- a lot of growth is efficiency growth: getting a lot more out of the resources you're using. Switching all energy production to nuclear, for example, would lower resource usage while drastically raising GDP.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#35

Post by Matticus_Rex »

mattigames wrote: post #22
edanm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tyler Cowen has a book with basically that premise - that in the long run, economic growth is the only thing that matters. It's called Stubborn Attachments. It's not an intuitive position for most people, but it's a pretty convincing argument - it's certainly been the most important thing in the last 100 years, in my mind (think the incredible increase in health, standards of living, etc, which, even if they aren't s…

Yeah, most of that was before we discovered (or just didn't care enough) we have been destroying natural resources in a completely unsustainable way, from the extraction processes (mining) to disposal (ocean filled with trash)

Sounds like there are externalities that need to be internalized, but not like we need to stop growing.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#36

Post by PunchTornado »

valleyjo wrote: post #2

They discuss the fact that we are seeing linear gains from exponential investment in several fields (healthcare, semiconductors to name a few). This is a fascinating problem.

to me this is a meaningless question.

it's so broad with so many variables, so many assumptions that you might as well ask if God exists and you'd have the same chance of answering it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#37

Post by Matticus_Rex »

v4dok wrote: post #18
eloff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the compound interest problem. If you keep compounding growth, like growing GDP at 1-2% a year, within some few thousand years you've grown bigger than all the resources within a sphere the same number of light years in radius. So clearly, growth is not sustainable and must eventually slow down until it approaches zero. To be clear, we're far away from that today. But the parent is mathematically correct, the be…

But why should growth of the growing GDP should be the target? I don't think that anyone believes that the GDP growth can increase every year. But you can reasonably assume that it can grow every year

I think his point is that, for example, a flat 2% yearly GDP growth is a yearly increase in absolute growth due to compounding, and most economists absolutely do believe that's possible somewhat indefinitely (with significant historical basis for that belief).

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#38

Post by pyb »

"What’s interesting and, anyway should be concerning, is that for almost every conceivable applied measure we seem to be getting at best constant returns. But that’s really bad because we see exponentially increasing inputs and constant return outputs."

Ironically, in terms of innovation, the yearly output of companies such as Facebook and Stripe has seemed somewhat constant, despite those companies getting many orders of magnitude bigger!

Maybe MZ and PC should investigate this issue at their own companies, and perhaps even begin to fix it. After that, they'll be better able to look at fixing innovation in the world at large.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#40

Post by Isamu »

sova wrote: post #5

It seems that naturally with technological progress and population increase, we are doomed to always zero out our gains in the minute with losses in the aggregate. How is it that science and technology move forward but crop yields remain constant? Cowen mentions that it seems to be a "last mile problem" for delivering scientific research benefits to all. Collison has a cool list of "Fast" completed projects on his si…

>but crop yields remain constant

Some, not all, crop yields have been stalling in recent years. I think Tyler's point was maybe the increasing cost of research and effort to keep moving the yield curves up, such that it may be stalling progress there.

Data on crop yields here: https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields

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