I realized a number of years ago that we were going to need our governments – plural – to get their shit together.
Hi everyone. My name is Nikolay and I'm a video producer here at Mashable.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been thinking a lot about what our collective future looks like.
But from today's perspective, because we're finding ourselves in very uncharted waters
I wanted to do a video series that looks at how we can create a more sustainable and more equitable future.
It was not going to happen on its own, because the incentives that politicians have is just to
sort of go tit for tat and, like, have the pendulum swing back and forth,
regardless of whether the problems are getting solved or not.
I was fed up, if you're fed up, too – let's do something about it.
I wanted to start this by saying thanks for coming on. You're my first guest
in this new series called 'The Future We Want'
and before we delve deeper into your ideas about how to create a more sustainable and equitable future,
I want to start off by talking about the present – do you see a way forward?
You would ideally resolve it through changes in political leadership
and then those new leaders would enact certain policies.
I obviously championed universal basic income, which, I believe, is going to be necessary
to help resolve how 40 million Americans are going to put food on the table.
But it also will go a really great length in helping resolve the systemic poverty that gives rise to
people being victimized by police.
I mean, George Floyd was killed because he tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill.
He might not even known – so there's material deprivation,
that is driving many of these issues, that is actually a choice we can make as a society.
My great hope is that we just choose to abolish poverty.
And we can do it tomorrow, if enough of us get together to do it.
And that to me is the best path forward
is that we elect new leaders who do things and see things very, very differently.
And we can modify our capital flows very, very quickly if we'd so choose.
We all just saw it – we just printed several trillion dollars, primarily for big banks and corporations,
there is no reason why we cannot simply give people $1,000-2,000 a month to meet their basic needs.
$2,000 a month into the hands of the average American, they're going to spend most all of it in their community.
And so, where does it go?
To daycare centers, to local nonprofits, to Little League signups, to the local restaurant and bar, or food truck.
We can make the economy trickle up and rebuild our communities
in ways that actually match up to our needs and values.
You would give rise to this massive boom in entrepreneurship,
because, all of a sudden, millions of Americans would know that their basic needs were going to be met next month
and they'd start thinking, "OK, what should I do?"
In this country, prosperity has never trickled down from the wealthy few.
Prosperity has always come from the bottom up,
from a strong and growing middle class.
We would particularly unlock women in underrepresented minorities because
they have lower levels of savings and access to investment capital and the rest of it.
So they've been stifled in terms of entrepreneurship and value creation.
So it's – again, this is just a social choice. This is our great hope.
It's very, very dark if we don't evolve,
because if we just look around and say, "Well, everyone's on their own,
you lost your job to a robot, then that's on you."
Then you're going to see millions of people rioting in the streets over time.
Because it's that or die. And so,
I mean it is that stark, like, I obviously campaigned on this for months and months.
And, you know, the timeline just accelerated dramatically because of COVID-19.
So we really have to choose to evolve very, very quickly or we're going to see
America disintegrate before eyes.
As the coronavirus struck and the chaos that commenced, it's
incredibly easy to look at the future, as diagnosed by you,
and think
that we're pretty much doomed, that there is very little that we can do to fix things now, that it's too late.
But I know that you're a solution-based person. And I know that you
look at problems and try to find fixes for them, so
I wanted to give you an opportunity to outline a vision
of an alternative future,
not just for America, but for the world, where we use this opportunity of global chaos to
really address some long-term issues that have remained dormant and unresolved.
We just have to move as fast as we can and start measuring our economy
by how we are doing instead of capital efficiency.
Because the truth is that robots and machines and AI are going to do more and more of the work.
Some of us will benefit from that because we own stock and we, like, own the machines, or whatever.
But we have to look up and say, like, "Well, using that as your measuring stick is just a massive disaster."
And we should start measuring our health, our mental health,
our freedom from substance abuse, you know, like, our social mobility
our freedom from getting brutalized by police.
You know, and use these as measurements for our well-being.
Because capital efficiency is going to turn on us – and people who watch Mashable know this,
I mean, you all are like tech-heads – you understand that technology is getting more powerful and more capable,
in a way that's unprecedented in human history.
And our governments are decades behind the curve.
They don't understand it, they don't get it – we have to make them get it.
And if they do get it, then great things are possible,
despite all of the the breakdowns and the trauma,
and the displacement and the despair.
You know, it's like, the only hope is that you accelerate the solutions as well as the problems.
One of the biggest problems we face today, and going forward, is the
absolutely unprecedented economic inequality
on a global scale.
And that has a lot to do with
the specific merging between capitalism and the technological revolution that we're undergoing.
And I wanted to ask you – do you think that a certain
evolution of capitalism – I guess what you call "human capitalism" – or
just a transition towards a different type of capitalism in the future,
can result in a very different way of tracking and talking about
progress, in general, economic progress, specifically?
I love technology, I love entrepreneurship,
but we just have to know that our energies have been focused on market-based problems.
Like if I could solve a problem that makes someone a lot of money then
investors will give me that money.
But if it's a problem that no one cares about, like – let's diffuse.
And you can even throw climate change into this, too.
It's like, you know, it's a very expensive problem, but, like, the market mechanics aren't as clear.
And so, investors will shy away from it in many cases, so that's why it takes someone
with a massive appetite for risk, like Elon Musk, to like, try and go into it.
So the goal should be that we start using our energies to solve non-market-based problems.
Like, how do you improve the way of life of an Uber driver who just lost his job?
Or a cashier whose store closed forever?
How do you improve our collective mental health?
How do you make our kids stronger and happier instead of more anxious and depressed?
These are massive problems – climate change, you know, social decay,
that we're not actually trying to solve meaningfully.
Like, we're trying to solve these other problems – and again, I love technology and progress
and the goal has to be that we're using our energies to solve the real, broad human problems of our time.
If we do that, then the sky remains the limit.
And that's what I'm committed to. That's what I'm passionate about.
I hope that people see me as like a bridge figure between the world of technology and entrepreneurship
and the world of politics and policy.
Because I realized a number of years ago that
we were going to need our government – our governments plural – to get their shit together.
It was not going to happen on its own, because the incentives that politicians have is just to
sort of go tit for tat and, like, have the pendulum swinging back and forth,
regardless of whether the problems are getting solved or not.
I was fed up – if you're fed up, too, let's do something about it!
Let's fight for a future that we can be proud of. I'm a parent.
You know, some of you are either, you know, you're either parents
or, you know, you're, like, thinking you may be a parent someday.
Let's leave a world that we're still proud of for our kids.
It's a very tall order, so we need everyone watching this to help.