Patterns in the Chaos? Don't be a Victim.

Patterns in the Chaos? Don't be a Victim.

Attempting to discern patterns in times of great change is hard. "What is happening?" is a hard question to answer. Especially because the answer is always, "it depends".

It depends on what you decide to do, and not only you but all of us. History is not pre-ordained. There is no definite path it will take. History is decided by human decisions taken in real time.

And to make those decisions involves deciding on an outcome, and then engaging with the world to make the outcome you desire more likely to happen.

Briefly scanning the titles of this week's articles seems to show trends in many conflicting directions.

The judicial treatment of Apple, Meta and Google implies they are in serious trouble, triggered by regulatory intervention in their businesses.

Earning seems to indicate they are in great shape.

Ai innovations seem to prefigure a new set of large companies that can damage them and eclipse them.

AI itself points to an AI agent future where humans get significant help from software agents able to carry out plans and leverage tools.

Packy McCormick's "Chaos is a Ladder" pokes at the fact that chaos begets outcomes. It is a great read. So too is Sangeet Paul Choudary's "Humans as Luxury Goods" also starts to understand the future role of humans in these outcomes.

But the essay I am drawn to is Albert Wengers book review of Ezra Klein's Abundance. Albert criticizes Klein for stopping short of the promise the book's title implies:

Whenever they get to the point of talking about what could be done, for example to drastically refocus government funding for innovation, they pull back hard towards incremental patches applied to the existing system.

....

Now here is a guess: they encountered a fear that the degree of change required is such that we don't know how to accomplish it with "democracy as usual" but they rightly don't want to provide any ammunition for the "tear it all down" and "we need a new aristocracy" crowds.

This is the real discussion we need to be having: how can we achieve the disruptive level of change required for an actual abundance agenda in a democratic fashion.

Albert gets to the cruz of historical change. People doing things. Consciously.

The question has been for quite some time: what should we do about it? And here is where the authors utterly lack the courage of their convictions to call for bold changes, for some kind of actual reinvention.

Predicting the future is impossible. Making the future according to a plan is far more possible. Observation versus Participation.

For our current world there are some things I care about enough to fight for. And my participation, partly here in words you can read, is to state clearly what those things are and seek to gain your approval for them so you too can be an agent (of change).

I want a world where the economy grows (global GDP).

I want a world where human beings are increasingly supplemented by software and robotics to reduce labor time and increase leisure time.

I want AI to get better and better at producing products and services.

I want government to get out of the way except when building things we all share (infrastructure for civic and physical needs) or protecting us all (laws).

I want abundance, defined as unlimited access to everything humans need to enjoy life.

I want that abundance to lift everybody up, not only one or two nations or a handful of people.

I do not want national elite's fighting wars for their own share of the abundance pie and asking us to die for them.

I want us all to feel we have control over decisions that affect us. Democratic decision making is core to this, but it can be better. When we all have smart phones and internet, and can identify ourselves as citizens with voting rights, democracy can be way better than its current form.

I could go on. But the point is, when we assess AI or Venture Capital, or Geopolitical issues or Blockchain we need to have a framework driven by a set of outcomes we want to see. Only then can an opinion help create history. And creating history is the job of humanity. Not simply being an object of it.

This isn't a manifesto, but it is a method of thinking.

Essays

Chaos is a Ladder

Notboring • Packy McCormick • April 29, 2025

Business•Startups•Innovation•SupplyChain•VerticalIntegration•CreativeDestruction•Essays