Yep.
Markets build in response to incentives. Most American production choices are determined by markets, including the choices of investors allocating capital.
Public institutions build and manage in response to electoral incentives.
If we're not prepared, it's because the incentives are wrong.
On the market front, once incentives and maybe even insights become opaque at the level of the abstraction of return on investment -- especially on a horizon within which a generation can live and die w/o experiencing a risk event like a pandemic -- then investors will be essentially blind to this.
On the public front, we have at least one political movement in the US that generally stands on the idea that government shouldn't do things like this for the common welfare. That movement is a minority, but knows how to use countermajoritarian features of the US political system to maintain control and is determined to do so (demonstrably well past limits of defensible public stewardship at this point).
That leaves philanthropy, which is helpful, but often scales poorly and is distributed first by proximity to various privileges on the social graph.
And maybe some degree of private capacity to re-think incentives and how long-term value could be structured into short-term incentives in private markets.
If anyone is in a position to do the last two, it's someone like Marc, so it's weird to read this as someone who's in a position nothing like his. Perhaps I'm not the audience. Perhaps others in his wealth class and investor circle are.
Markets build in response to incentives. Most American production choices are determined by markets, including the choices of investors allocating capital.
Public institutions build and manage in response to electoral incentives.
If we're not prepared, it's because the incentives are wrong.
On the market front, once incentives and maybe even insights become opaque at the level of the abstraction of return on investment -- especially on a horizon within which a generation can live and die w/o experiencing a risk event like a pandemic -- then investors will be essentially blind to this.
On the public front, we have at least one political movement in the US that generally stands on the idea that government shouldn't do things like this for the common welfare. That movement is a minority, but knows how to use countermajoritarian features of the US political system to maintain control and is determined to do so (demonstrably well past limits of defensible public stewardship at this point).
That leaves philanthropy, which is helpful, but often scales poorly and is distributed first by proximity to various privileges on the social graph.
And maybe some degree of private capacity to re-think incentives and how long-term value could be structured into short-term incentives in private markets.
If anyone is in a position to do the last two, it's someone like Marc, so it's weird to read this as someone who's in a position nothing like his. Perhaps I'm not the audience. Perhaps others in his wealth class and investor circle are.