In which I shamelessly draft off Marc Andreessen’s It’s Time to Build essay and suggest an approach to how, what, and where to do the building. I also have a framework I call the builder’s cone to think about it in a useful historical context.
This book is excellent. The intricacies are fascinating. France was 30% communist right after the war. Italy and Greece could easily have fallen. All of Western Europe could have fallen under Soviet domination.
It also makes me put the Soviets solidly in the "evil" camp.
I wonder if the geography of Russia just leaves it's people with no choice but terrible leadership.
Then it makes we wonder about why we don't get much more aggressive in combating China. If US companies move their manufacturing out of China, does it give the US more room to maneuver. The pursuit of profits seems to have led us to ignore all the terrible things about China.
China isn't even attempting to lead in the way the Soviets did either. It is not about Communism or equality. It is only about Chinese-ness. There is no broader vision. Is it just mercantilism without the spread of a legal system or religion?
What if US public companies had set up manufacturing in the USSR in the 80's?
Super interesting article. Just as a side note. Since I work in Edtech, I intend to use this article to validate some of our product development ideas vs the stage of development of my user base (mostly mid to low income families, late adopters) in Brazil. Do you see any specific tradeoff in applying this framework to a specific subset of a larger society?
Venkatesh, thank you for this article, thoroughly enjoyed it. Just a bit of a probably over-detailed question. In tracking your diagram you leave out the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's. If it is a semi-strict decade based cycle that means that we are actually in the disrupt versus macro rebuild phase. I understand that these are not hard and fast temporal delineations. And, I agree, from observing the world I think we're heading into macro rebuild.
At the danger of not wanting to push too far ahead of the curve, as those of us with a futurist bent are want to do, i'm curious if you feel that we are definitely in that new phase even if the "math" is a bit wobbly. Thank you.
Do you have any particular titles you'd recommend on history during Marshall Plan/foundational rebuilding?
This one is in my to-read list. Haven’t yet read it. https://amzn.to/34xXiZx
This book is excellent. The intricacies are fascinating. France was 30% communist right after the war. Italy and Greece could easily have fallen. All of Western Europe could have fallen under Soviet domination.
It also makes me put the Soviets solidly in the "evil" camp.
I wonder if the geography of Russia just leaves it's people with no choice but terrible leadership.
Then it makes we wonder about why we don't get much more aggressive in combating China. If US companies move their manufacturing out of China, does it give the US more room to maneuver. The pursuit of profits seems to have led us to ignore all the terrible things about China.
China isn't even attempting to lead in the way the Soviets did either. It is not about Communism or equality. It is only about Chinese-ness. There is no broader vision. Is it just mercantilism without the spread of a legal system or religion?
What if US public companies had set up manufacturing in the USSR in the 80's?
Super interesting article. Just as a side note. Since I work in Edtech, I intend to use this article to validate some of our product development ideas vs the stage of development of my user base (mostly mid to low income families, late adopters) in Brazil. Do you see any specific tradeoff in applying this framework to a specific subset of a larger society?
Not really, let me know how it goes!
Venkatesh, thank you for this article, thoroughly enjoyed it. Just a bit of a probably over-detailed question. In tracking your diagram you leave out the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's. If it is a semi-strict decade based cycle that means that we are actually in the disrupt versus macro rebuild phase. I understand that these are not hard and fast temporal delineations. And, I agree, from observing the world I think we're heading into macro rebuild.
At the danger of not wanting to push too far ahead of the curve, as those of us with a futurist bent are want to do, i'm curious if you feel that we are definitely in that new phase even if the "math" is a bit wobbly. Thank you.