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Progress: The economic, technological, and organizational advancements that gave rise to modern civilization, are underappreciated and under threat.
To address this threat, The Lianeon Project is gathering the best ideas into one place where they can be shared and improved. We seek ideas that ensure the continued march of civilization, human progress, and a better future.
We reject the notion that “development” has a finish line. Instead, we hold that progress is a never-ending process, and in order to prevent societal decline and collapse, we must maintain economic growth and double down on our problem-solving capacity (innovation).
Pilot First, then Launch
The below proposals should not be adopted rashly, there is simply too much at stake. We support piloting these concepts in pilot zones first, as outlined here. There, experimentation and data collection can help tweak and improve those concepts before they are rolled out more broadly.
Healthcare/Longevity
Every person brings with them unique knowledge, wisdom, and capability that they share with society. Chronic illnesses and death detract from humanity’s most valuable resources: its people. We should strive to keep every human consciousness alive and healthy as long as possible.
But healthcare is an incredible challenge. Prices are high, there is unequal access, and new chronic health conditions threaten to undo generations of advancements in longevity. The core challenge of healthcare is simultaneously preserving innovation while constraining prices and ensuring equal access.
The solution is to design healthcare policy that neither blindly accepts the “free market” as a savior, ignoring obvious market failures, or stifling innovation with heavy-handed government controls. In short, let markets work where they work and correct them where they don’t. The basic principles for doing this are as follows:
Tort reform to constrain healthcare prices
Utilize risk-adjusted vouchers for affordable/universal care funded by a VAT
IP reform to avoid monopoly pricing (discussed below)
A sugar-sweetened beverage levy to correct the negative externalities/internalities over sweetener overuse.
Education, Science, and Technology
Education is our means of transferring knowledge from one generation to the next. The more efficiently and quickly we can do this, the faster we can innovate. It is innovation that underpins not only economic growth and human progress, but the sustainability of civilization itself.
It is foolish to assume that technology, like time, is asymmetric and always moves in one direction. Technology can, and has, moved in the reverse direction. Today, extractive government policies threaten long-term innovation and growth potential, and by extension, society itself.
If we are to avoid this fate, we must continue to innovate with greater ferocity. We must do everything we can to sustain and accelerate technological advancement. This can be done via:
Massive tax credits, grants, prizes, and direct investment into science and technology
See our technology page for a list of potential emerging innovations.
IP Reform through Harberger Taxes and/or Patent Buyouts Auctions
Financing higher education through Income Sharing Agreements, not loans
Economy
Economic growth is necessary as it expands the opportunities and capabilities of citizens. There exists a reciprocal relationship between society and the individual, each contributing to and enabling, the other. When people live out their full potential, they can contribute more meaningfully to society.
First and foremost, we need to have a better understanding of what “growth” really is. GDP, our primary measure today, fails to differentiate between positive and negative economic activity or its sustainability. We need new metrics that measure genuine progress.
Second, as history illustrates, economic growth must be inclusive for it to be sustainable. Growth should also strive to minimize environmental damage, at least as far as possible without violating the laws of conservation of energy and matter. Better, more inclusive growth can be achieved via the following:
Free trade with possible Pigouvian exceptions.
NGDP-targeting instead of inflation-rate targeting.
A Negative Income Tax UBI to replace inefficient welfare systems and the minimum wage.
Occupational license reform alongside regulatory streamlining
Replacing income taxes with Land Value Taxes
Curbing excessive housing prices through zoning reform and land taxes.
Adoption of Square Root Voting at corporations
Eased Border Restrictions led by a market-based migration system
Pronatalist policies to prevent global depopulation
Retirement options that work for both society and the individual
Infrastructure sustainably funded through user fees and value capture
Society
Society is increasingly threatened by ideological extremist elements. While some disagreement is normal and healthy, this extreme level of social and political polarization is unsustainable.
The prevailing structure of the media and political system gives outsized voice to the extremes, the societal outliers, who gain disproportional attention and representation, despite not speaking for the majority. To limit this extremism, we must:
Understand and address the limitations of modern corporate media
Counter misinformation through critical thinking
Promote understanding of the horseshoe theory to discourage radicalism
Government
The inclusiveness of the economy and society’s capacity to innovate (and therefore its sustainability) is inextricably linked to government design and policy. The more effective government is at generating sound policy, the more growth and development that will result.
There is a tendency to treat Western-style representative democratic government as the ultimate form of government. It is seen as an “end,” which began with absolute monarchs, evolved into limited monarchies, and then into modern representative democracy.
We propose that representative democracy is not an end, but another step along a path toward more effective governance. We propose to introduce new forms of democracy that could prove to be more efficient and less prone to capture by vested interests.
Direct democracy through sortition and utilizing quadratic voting.
A proactive government structure that allows easy modification/deletion of existing law
Clean and efficient administration through an incentives-based anti-corruption approach