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Undoing Incumbent Marketplaces: Lowering the Take Rate
Albert Wenger – Jan 26, 2015
A big part of our investing at Union Square Ventures is to find businesses that have network effects. Marketplaces fit with that because participating in a marketplace tends to become more valuable as the marketplace grows (that’s assuming the marketplace [...] Read more
BIG and BOT Policy Proposals (Transcript)
Albert Wenger – Jan 23, 2015
Here is the transcript of my talk about a Basic Income Guarantee and the Right to be Represented by a BOT from TEDxNewYork. All of our economic theory, all of our business practice, all of our public policy, they were [...] Read more
TEDxNewYork: BIG and BOT Policy Proposals
Albert Wenger – Jan 16, 2015
In my talk at Techconomy Detroit I proposed two policy measures for dealing with the transition to the information age: a basic income guarantee (universal basic income) and what I then called the right to an API Key. At the [...] Read more
Secular Stagnation: GDP is the Wrong KPI
Albert Wenger – Jan 13, 2015
The secular stagnation discussion has a bad title and sounds wonkish but is extremely important – it is about nothing short of understanding what the economy is and should be about. If you want a lot of detail you can [...] Read more
Code Execution: Where Are the Clouds Headed?
Albert Wenger – Jan 12, 2015
It is hard for me to believe that I wrote my post “I Want a New Platform” over seven years ago. At the time that post led to our investment in MongoDB, which was then called 10gen. The company was [...] Read more
The Charlie Hebdo Massacre: We Need a Coherent Alternative Idea
Albert Wenger – Jan 8, 2015
Why write here about the massacre at the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo? Because most of what I have been writing on Continuations is about developing a coherent view of what comes next for humanity. It is about [...] Read more
Vice on Universal Basic Income: A Response
Albert Wenger – Jan 7, 2015
I was going to write some more about deflation today but then Vice posted a piece on Universal Basic Income (UBI) by Nathan Schneider yesterday. I suggest you read it and then come back here for a response. 1. After [...] Read more
Towards Deflation: Healthcare
Albert Wenger – Jan 6, 2015
Yesterday I wrote about how free or low priced online courses are beginning to put pressure on pricing in education. As a small addendum to that: the same day the New York Times ran a front page story about home [...] Read more
Towards Deflation: Education
Albert Wenger – Jan 5, 2015
I have been arguing that we live in an era of technological deflation driven by advances in computing (including robotics). In the US, the prices for consumer durables peaked in the mid 1990s as this chart from the St. Louis [...] Read more