Weekend Briefing No. 607
Post-human Economics -- The New Orleans Miracle -- Progress Hides in Plain Sight
Welcome to the weekend.
Prime Numbers
18 — A new China-Europe Arctic Express shipping route will connect Chinese ports to European hubs in just 18 days versus the traditional 40-50 day Suez Canal route, allowing cargo to arrive before the Christmas rush and reducing inventory costs for vendors.
30 — Boston’s trash pickup tonnage in August and September increased 30% from 2015 to 2023, driven by the annual college student moving frenzy when thousands discard furniture and belongings that don’t get claimed by incoming students.
98 — Frequency perils like severe thunderstorms, winter storms, wildfires and floods now account for $98 billion of the $152 billion in global insured property losses, representing smaller but more frequent disasters that are eroding insurance earnings worldwide.
Post-human Economics
Your smartphone contains more processing power than entire governments possessed decades ago, yet we still measure economic success like it’s 1950. Traditional GDP metrics crumble when AI agents produce infinite knowledge work at zero cost, forcing us to rethink what prosperity actually means. The coming post-human economy will measure civilizational success not by how much we produce, but by how efficiently we convert energy into intelligence. This shift represents humanity’s next great quest: maximizing intelligence output per unit energy as robots and AI systems take over material production entirely. New World Same Humans (12 minutes)
The New Orleans Miracle
What if the most successful education transformation in modern America became too politically inconvenient to celebrate? Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans schools, the city has achieved remarkable results that should dominate national headlines: zero failing schools (down from 60%), graduation rates jumping from 54% to 78%, and dramatic gains across all student demographics. The success came through a nuanced approach that combined charter school autonomy with coordinated systems for enrollment, discipline, and funding—creating a model that preserves school-level innovation while ensuring citywide equity. This transformation challenges both progressive and conservative orthodoxies, leading to bipartisan silence about outcomes that prove dramatic educational improvement is possible when communities choose pragmatic progress over ideological purity. The 74 (15 minutes)
New Tax Year Approaching
The new tax year is fast approaching, bringing a massive wave of information to sort through. Choosing who to trust with your finances can be daunting, and you might wonder whether to go with companies like H&R Block and TurboTax or build a relationship with a dedicated, professional tax advisor. While those companies offer convenience and brand recognition, it’s essential to understand the difference in relationship—think transaction versus partnership. Building a relationship with a professional is a game-changer. It’s not just about filing your current year’s taxes; it’s about continuous partnership. A professional tax advisor provides nuanced, personal advice from deep understanding of your financial life. They help with long-term strategic planning, not just reacting to the current tax season. TaxFrame believes in building lasting relationships with our clients, providing personalized strategies that help you achieve your financial goals. Book a call now. TaxFrame (Sponsored)
Progress Hides in Plain Sight
In 1820, nearly 80% of humanity lived in extreme poverty, 90% couldn’t read, and almost half of all children died before age five—yet most people today believe the world is getting worse. Two centuries of data reveal the opposite: extreme poverty has dropped below 10%, global literacy exceeds 87%, and child mortality has fallen tenfold. Media obsession with daily disasters blinds us to humanity’s greatest achievement—lifting billions from misery while the population grew sevenfold. Understanding this hidden progress isn’t just academic comfort food; it’s the foundation for believing we can solve today’s remaining challenges through continued collaboration. Our World In Data (15 minutes)
AI’s Global Divide Widens
Rich countries aren’t just using AI more—they’re using it completely differently than everyone else. Anthropic’s latest economic data reveals that wealthier nations prefer collaborative AI interactions while poorer countries lean heavily toward full automation, suggesting AI may accelerate global inequality rather than level the playing field. Meanwhile, businesses are automating tasks at triple the rate of individual users, with 77% of corporate AI interactions showing full automation patterns. This shift toward “directive automation” has jumped from 27% to 39% in just nine months, marking humanity’s growing willingness to hand over complete control to machines. Anthropic (8 minutes)
Creativity Steals Everything Successfully
Ancient Greek poets and modern content creators share the same paralyzing myth—that genius springs from nothing. The reality is far more liberating: breakthrough ideas emerge not from divine inspiration but from deliberate recombination of existing elements, a process researchers call “combinational creativity.” The Beatles didn’t invent music; they blended country, R&B, and Indian influences in unprecedented ways. Building an “idea bank” of collected curiosities, mixing concepts across unrelated fields, using random prompts to force connections, and learning publicly from diverse sources transforms creativity from waiting for lightning to actively engineering it. Ness Labs (6 minutes)
Build Both
What if the secret to breakthrough innovation isn’t choosing the right path, but refusing to choose at all? The Manhattan Project’s defining philosophy was “build both” - simultaneously pursuing every promising route to an atomic weapon despite astronomical costs and profound uncertainty. This approach required constructing massive industrial facilities before knowing if the processes would work, developing entirely new manufacturing techniques for materials never produced at scale, and solving engineering problems that had no precedent while racing against time. The project succeeded not through brilliant foresight but through systematic exploration of multiple technological paths, accepting that resolving fundamental uncertainty about new technologies requires expensive parallel development rather than sequential optimization. The lesson extends beyond nuclear physics: breakthrough technologies emerge from exhaustive investigation of possibilities rather than betting everything on seemingly optimal solutions. Construction Physics (22 minutes)
Should We Work Together?
Hi! I’m Kyle. This newsletter is my passion project. When I’m not writing, I run a law firm that helps startups move fast without breaking things. Most founders want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a flat, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit for the firm. Click here to schedule a one-on-one call with me.
Weekend Wisdom
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. - Maya Angelou