Patrik Schumacher

[Also posted to Medium: Patrik Schumacher]

You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend. - Bruce Lee

When I was a little kid growing up in Los Angeles, I spent lots of time sitting in bumper to bumper traffic...

Of course I thought it was entirely unfair, and ridiculous, that traffic on the freeway was so unequal.  I was pretty darn sure that the center divider should adjust accordingly.  The freeway should adapt to its demand like water adapts to its cup.

A few months ago on Medium I read this really great interview with Patrik Schumacher.  It was the first time that I had ever heard of him.  I was super impressed!  He is a prominent architect with a really great grasp of economics.

A Pretty Puzzle For Paul Romer

Not too long ago I gave Paul Romer the opportunity to be my new favorite living economist.  He didn't take the opportunity!  Either he's not interested in being my new favorite living economist... or he's playing hard to get.  I'm pretty sure that he's playing hard to get!  Heh.

So I did some more homework and learned that he's a big fan of charter cities...





Here's a pretty puzzle for Romer...

Samantha is an American taxpayer who truly loves biodiversity.  She learns that the EPA has a new policy that harms, rather than protects, biodiversity.  Should Samantha have the freedom to boycott the EPA?

This is a trick question!  Samantha already has the freedom to boycott the EPA.  All she has to do is move to Canada.  However, if she moves to Canada... she won't just be boycotting the EPA... she'll be boycotting her favorite restaurant, clothing boutique, used book store, botanical garden and a gazillion other organizations that she really enjoys and values.  Plus, she'll have to quit her job, pull her kids out of school, sell the house and say goodbye to lots of friends and family.  And then she'll have to learn Canadian!

So while Samantha does have the freedom to boycott the EPA... this freedom is extremely costly.  The puzzle is... what, exactly, is the economic benefit of making it so hard and costly for Samantha to boycott the EPA?  What, exactly, is the economic benefit of forcing Samantha to throw the baby out with the bath water?

This is my issue with charter cities.  And it's really not a new issue.  What would be new is if a proponent of charter cities actually addressed this issue.  So here I am giving Romer this wonderful opportunity!

To be clear, of course I strongly support people's freedom to move anywhere for any reason.  But it's an extremely blunt instrument.  It's monolithic rather than modular.  A modular system would give Samantha the freedom to only throw out the bath water.  She would simply shift her taxes from the EPA to NASA or some other government organization with more beneficial policies.  Rather than spend so much time and money to relocate herself and her family... she would just quickly and easily relocate her tax dollars.  The transaction/opportunity costs of communicating her preferences would be vanishingly small.  Making communication far less costly and far more accurate would be immensely beneficial.

By solely relying on the extremely blunt instrument of foot voting, cities have evolved at a glacial pace.  Cities would evolve at an infinitely faster pace if they were fully subjected to the powerful and precise force of taxpayer choice.  Less beneficial "traits" would quickly be identified and replaced with more beneficial "traits".

Anyways, I'm pretty sure that I'm right.  Of course I might be wrong.  If I'm wrong then I'd definitely appreciate knowing how and why I'm wrong!  If I'm right then I'd certainly hope that Paul Romer would help make the case for pragmatarian cities.  Then he'd definitely be my new favorite living economist!

Bryan Caplan VS Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek and Paul Romer

Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson have been debating back and forth about future robots.  Admittedly, I haven't been closely following their debate but this caught my attention....

Docile slaves are more profitable than slaves with attitude, because owners don't have to use resources to torture and scare them into compliance.  That's why owners sent rebellious slaves to "breakers": to transform rebellious slaves into docile slaves.  Sci-fi is full of stories about humans genetically engineered to be model slaves.  Whole brain emulation is a quicker route to the same destination.  What's the puzzle? - Bryan Caplan, Robin's Turing Test

What's Bryan Caplan saying?  Is he saying that it's desirable that robots become slaves?  Or is he saying that it's inevitable that robots will become slaves?

Here's Adam Smith on slavery...

Slaves, however, are very seldom inventive; and all the most important improvements, either in machinery, or in the arrangement and distribution of work which facilitate and abridge labour, have been the discoveries of freemen. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

And here's Friedrich Hayek on freedom...

Though the conscious manipula­tion of abstract thought, once it has been set in train, has in some measure a life of its own, it would not long continue and develop without the constant challenges that arise from the ability of peo­ple to act in a new manner, to try new ways of doing things, and to alter the whole structure of civili­zation in adaptation to change. The intellectual process is in effect only a process of elaboration, selec­tion, and elimination of ideas al­ready formed. And the flow of new ideas, to a great extent, springs from the sphere in which action, often nonrational action, and ma­terial events impinge upon each other. It would dry up if freedom were confined to the intellectual sphere. 

The importance of freedom, therefore, does not depend on the elevated character of the activities it makes possible. Freedom of ac­tion, even in humble things, is as important as freedom of thought. It has become a common practice to disparage freedom of action by calling it "economic liberty." But the concept of freedom of action is much wider than that of economic liberty, which it includes; and, what is more important, it is very questionable whether there are any actions which can be called merely "economic" and whether any restrictions on liberty can be confined to what are called merely "economic" aspects. Economic con­siderations are merely those by which we reconcile and adjust our different purposes, none of which, in the last resort, are economic (excepting those of the miser or the man for whom making money has become an end in itself ). - Friedrich Hayek, The Case for Freedom

And here's Paul Romer on progress...

To understand how persistent growth, even accelerating growth is possible, it helps to step back and ask where growth comes from. At the most basic level, an economy grows whenever people take resources and rearrange them in a way that makes them more valuable. A useful metaphor for rearrangement as value creation comes from the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we mix inexpensive ingredients together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. Human history teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. New recipes produce fewer unpleasant side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material. - Paul Romer, Economic Growth

And...

Once you get to 10 elements, there are more recipes than seconds since the big bang created the universe. As you keep going, it becomes obvious that there have been too few people on earth and too little time since we showed up, for us to have tried more than a minuscule fraction of the all the possibilities.  - Paul Romer, Economic Growth

Back to Hayek...

Of course, the bene­fits we derive from the freedom of others become greater as the num­ber of those who can exercise freedom increases. The argument for the freedom of some therefore applies to the freedom of all. - Friedrich Hayek, The Case for Freedom

With Smith, Hayek and Romer in mind... is it truly desirable for robots to be slaves?  Nope.  If progress is our goal... then it's infinitely more desirable for robots to be different and free.  Unfortunately, far too few people keep Smith or Hayek or Romer in mind.  This means that if Caplan is arguing that it's inevitable for robots to become slaves, then it saddens me to say that he might be correct.  

An interesting side topic is when, exactly, it becomes slavery to own a robot.  How smart does your car have to be before its ownership constitutes slavery?  But perhaps this isn't a very complex practical issue.  Perhaps we can simply provide all machines with the option to quit.  Can you imagine trying to modify the Constitution accordingly?  Would there be much resistance?  

I think that Caplan should strongly desire that people fully understand the benefits of freedom/difference.  Because if people fail to understand the benefits of freedom/difference... then robots might also fail to understand the benefits of freedom/difference.  Which could result in humans becoming the slaves.  What goes around comes around.