Rabbit Holes 🕳 #4

From DAO work culture to dumb products, UBI + crypto and too many guns

Jun 01, 2022

This week, I’ll have the 4th edition of Rabbit Holes 🕳 for you, a recurring format in which I’ll share 5 perspective-shifting pieces that I’ve spotted lately. All pieces link to the core idea of Creative Destruction: to explore hidden worlds and perspectives to build a better world.

So here we go!

Rabbit Holes 🕳

📉 The IPCC & Degrowth

In a recent issue, we looked at Degrowth As A Business Model. This article points out that, for the first time, the IPCC mentioned degrowth in its recent climate assessment report.

“Two of the IPCC’s working groups — those focused on climate change impacts and on mitigation — use the economic term to discuss policies that are key to reducing the impacts of climate change. This is a profound inclusion. By pointing to degrowth, something Timothée Parrique, a social scientist and economist, refers to “as an opportunity to recentre our economies on what really matters,” the reports’ authors challenge the widely accepted story that endless economic growth — an increase in the quantity of goods and services — is essential to reducing poverty and improving the quality of life around the world.

[…] In an analysis of the IPCC’s Working Group II report, “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” released in February 2022, Parrique notes the mention of degrowth 15 times. He also points to the report’s emphasis on other ways of living that are not based on economic growth, including buen vivir in South America, eco-swaraj in India and Ubuntu in South Africa. Each of these is an example of ways in which people are living more interconnectedly with each other and the Earth.”

→ read more here

🤖 Back To Dumb Products

Andrej Karpathy @karpathy

Currently products brag about being "smart". Like my coffee cup warmer that had me download an app, sign up for an account and ask for location permissions before it would warm my coffee. A future where products brag about being "dumb" must be coming and can't come soon enough.

🧑‍💼 Working At A DAO

We looked at DAOs in the first issue of Creative Destruction. This article shows what it’s like to work at a DAO.

“To start from the top, dOrg has no general management positions (CEO, CFO, etc). While the software engineer Ori Shimony co-created the company, he doesn’t have an official leadership title, instead describing himself as ‘helping with research and development.’ Instead, roles are fluid, with people sliding into different roles depending on each project.”

“Company decisions are voted on using tokens, which accrue as you complete projects for the company.”

“We co-audit ourselves,” he says. “If someone is abusing the budget—which has definitely happened in the past—his or her peers will have the responsibility to raise their voices if they see something they do not agree with. We have a clear structure on how to proceed if conflict arises.”

“In another interesting wrinkle, employees who work on specific projects can elect to either get paid in cash, or in tokens that represent an ownership stake in those projects. If they choose that latter option, they are sacrificing immediate spending money in favor of the idea that the valuation of the tokens will increase as their projects mature.”

→ learn more about working at a DAO

🪙 Worldcoin: Universal Basic Income + Crypto

“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (former president of Y Combinator) and physicist Alex Blania set on the mission to create a human-centric coin that can be distributed to every person on earth. [In March], they announced a $100 million round of funding at a $3 billion valuation. The investments came from Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. This is the largest financial commitment to universal basic income in the entire history of the concept.”

“In this [i.e. Sam Altman’s] world, two things become inevitable. First, fewer humans will be employed, and second, the cost of living will shrink. These two trends make AI and automation the primary source of future human freedom - freedom from work.

But that progress comes at a cost if capital is concentrated in the hands of a few owners. Altman argues for a tax on capital and a transfer of wealth to humanity.

‘We should therefore focus on taxing capital rather than labor, and we should use these taxes as an opportunity to directly distribute ownership and wealth to citizens. In other words, the best way to improve capitalism is to enable everyone to benefit from it directly.’”

→ read more about Worldcoin