Your 4th Key to Progress; " High value-added export industries" is perhaps the one that is least intuitive of the 5 that you have discovered or recognized. Thinking about it a little more, it strikes me as having two related aspects:
1) somewhat related to the idea from Bastiat (or was it Ricardo?) that you have to have been able to produce something to have something of value to offer to the market so you can buy the produce of others, or as John Tamny phases it, "production [aka supply] comes first".
2) it is part of the cross sharing of innovations necessary to truly advance progress [even though I might prefer your original phrase “Prosperity theory.” ]
Looking forward to your posts for 2025, even if I don't have time to read or respond to everyone.
I had never really thought of it as the least intuitive, but maybe you are correct, as it was the last one that I added.
In the early drafts of my first book, it was originally the Four Keys to Progress, but I wanted to make sure that my theory was useful in the modern world.
I think that export industries are the most important key for developing nations.
The reason why I chose "progress" over "prosperity" is that prosperity sounds like a final destination. Progress is about change in the desired direction so there is no end point.
Congratulations! I recently finished reading your first book and enjoyed it very much. The Five Keys to Progress is a useful model for understanding the world
Congrats and thank you. You are making a difference like few other writers (if any?).
My background in the topic has some similarities. I led innovation and new product development at a large financial company. I was drawn to the topic because it seemed to me that there was nothing more important to humanity than our future, and whether we progressed, atrophied, failed or went extinct. Yet nobody seems to be pursuing the topic. It even seemed to be taboo, or at least considered unfashionable and naive. I probably spent almost a decade in research in evolution, history, economics, philosophy and game theory before I even recognized that “progress” was the best collective term for the topic.
In the last seven or eight years I have seen a complete reversal in the subject. Now there seems to be recognition that progress is of immense importance, and that we need to understand it and help it to flourish. It seemed to start with Ridley and the Rational Optimist, then on to Pinker and then into the Progress Movement.
I have read and studied everything I could find on the topic, but nobody gets it better than you, and nobody is generating as much valuable content as you.
Delete this if too off topic: " Sometimes, I feel like a voice in the wilderness."
While Substack provides authors such as yourself a platform for communicating, you are in time and content competition with 17000 other essayists. I gather only a very few substacks are being built with multiple author contributors (Bari Weiss, et al.; Michael Schellenberger; etc.). This makes it harder to justify a paid subscription for a single author, even one posting up to 5 times per week as you have been doing.
Of course your wilderness is the relatively slim number of Substackers or other essayists and commenters qualified to professionally critique your posts.
Communities of like-minded Substack writers do seem to try and cross post or cross recommend each other's work, but sometimes that becomes a distraction as much as a draw. It seems to now be common for a Substack author to insert a Substack formated display of his or others' essays as a reference or related content to what he/she is writing. I have no problem with providing such references, but would appreciate retaining the more usual hyperlink type linkage. Otherwise I have to recognize there is futher content below such insertions. I also would prefer if such links displayed enough of the title to indicate if I should pursue that link or skip it. Substack redirects don't give me that information. Not sure if you can or want to bother taking this up with the Substack "powers that be". I fear my voice is also a voice in the wilderness on this topic. :-)
Thank you for this background writeup. It helps keep your content in perspective: while I may disagree about a given point or other, I can see that any such differences should be treated with a respectful response, as you have the "lived experience" and you have done your homework, so clarifying any disagreements is probably more about asking you the right question.
Given your prior work as a User Experience Designer, or what I would call a user interface designer*, I would welcome an "off topic" posting about your views concerning the variety of interfaces we have to manage, often with little consistency among them. All too often I struggle (especially with my iPhone and its apps) to find the next button or expected focal point after making an entry. There may be "industry standards" on this stuff, but they seem to be violated as often as they are adhered to.
*Or does the user experience also include the type and quality of databases being queried behind the scenes? Some web sites have terrible search responses. Web wide searches sometimes seem to need a magic incantation in the search field to bring out the best/ better content. [more later]
I defer to his information on history. I have had some minor differences about political views, given I am pretty much on the conservative side, but I have to hand it to Michael that he treats both sides evenhandly, often with a "pox on both their houses" outlook. He has a couple of recent posts dealing with upcoming political actions that I have not had a chance to read yet, so I am withholding judgement.
From this post in particular, we can see he has the background and experience, and has dedicated professional and personal time thinking about our political parties, political science, etc., and what he thinks should be done to fix things. No particular instance comes to my mind right now but I suspect some of those corrections are areas I would have to think about more deeply before knowledgably accepting or rejecting them. [Perhaps this is a non-answer to your query?]
Thanks. I find it kind of fascinating that I could be so aligned with someone politically considering that what drew me to MM was just a shared interest in progress and not his political leanings. In other words, the political stands that I developed are extremely similar to what he developed and yet neither is in any way conventional. I suspect we are both backing into prescriptions based on what has worked in progressive societies, rather than starting with abstract values, hard ideology or party affiliations and justifying prescriptions from that.
The areas where I don’t completely agree with MM are that he tends to focus much more on economic progress than I would. I would also like to delve deeper into his 5 Keys of Progress. I sense something is missing, but haven’t taken the effort yet to put it into a solid argument.
Hope these replies are not getting too far off topic, but we are discussing our respective paths towards MM's goals, as he presented his own.
I understand how and why he would focus on a clearly quantitative metric such as per capita GDP (data available; hard #'s; decent if incomplete measure of "progress"). I am sure he recognizes the limitations there, too. [Strange to talk about someone who is essentially "standing right there" next to us.] [Is there some etiquette that violates, or is it accepted as part of thread commentary?]
I was going to ask MM if from his reading and studies he has a view about the relative "firstness" of people having political liberty and social freedoms vs. obtaining relatively improved economic and material conditions. Is one necessary to achieve the other? Not clear from what I have read, and witnessing China's rise, that liberty has to come first, as I might have expected or hoped. Better to explore on a different posting?
Political and social benefits are or should be part of the measure of "progress" but they are hard to demonstrate in a neutral analysis. Plus they do have some relationship to economic gains - just perhaps indirect?
Your 4th Key to Progress; " High value-added export industries" is perhaps the one that is least intuitive of the 5 that you have discovered or recognized. Thinking about it a little more, it strikes me as having two related aspects:
1) somewhat related to the idea from Bastiat (or was it Ricardo?) that you have to have been able to produce something to have something of value to offer to the market so you can buy the produce of others, or as John Tamny phases it, "production [aka supply] comes first".
2) it is part of the cross sharing of innovations necessary to truly advance progress [even though I might prefer your original phrase “Prosperity theory.” ]
Looking forward to your posts for 2025, even if I don't have time to read or respond to everyone.
Interesting.
I had never really thought of it as the least intuitive, but maybe you are correct, as it was the last one that I added.
In the early drafts of my first book, it was originally the Four Keys to Progress, but I wanted to make sure that my theory was useful in the modern world.
I think that export industries are the most important key for developing nations.
I write more here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-export-industries-matter-so-much
The reason why I chose "progress" over "prosperity" is that prosperity sounds like a final destination. Progress is about change in the desired direction so there is no end point.
Congratulations! I recently finished reading your first book and enjoyed it very much. The Five Keys to Progress is a useful model for understanding the world
Thanks so much, and I am glad that you enjoyed the book.
If you purchased my book on Amazon, I would appreciate a review.
Congrats and thank you. You are making a difference like few other writers (if any?).
My background in the topic has some similarities. I led innovation and new product development at a large financial company. I was drawn to the topic because it seemed to me that there was nothing more important to humanity than our future, and whether we progressed, atrophied, failed or went extinct. Yet nobody seems to be pursuing the topic. It even seemed to be taboo, or at least considered unfashionable and naive. I probably spent almost a decade in research in evolution, history, economics, philosophy and game theory before I even recognized that “progress” was the best collective term for the topic.
In the last seven or eight years I have seen a complete reversal in the subject. Now there seems to be recognition that progress is of immense importance, and that we need to understand it and help it to flourish. It seemed to start with Ridley and the Rational Optimist, then on to Pinker and then into the Progress Movement.
I have read and studied everything I could find on the topic, but nobody gets it better than you, and nobody is generating as much valuable content as you.
So, yeah, thanks and congratulations.
Thanks so much, and I appreciate your comments even when we disagree.
I hope that I am making a difference. Sometimes, I feel like a voice in the wilderness.
Delete this if too off topic: " Sometimes, I feel like a voice in the wilderness."
While Substack provides authors such as yourself a platform for communicating, you are in time and content competition with 17000 other essayists. I gather only a very few substacks are being built with multiple author contributors (Bari Weiss, et al.; Michael Schellenberger; etc.). This makes it harder to justify a paid subscription for a single author, even one posting up to 5 times per week as you have been doing.
Of course your wilderness is the relatively slim number of Substackers or other essayists and commenters qualified to professionally critique your posts.
Communities of like-minded Substack writers do seem to try and cross post or cross recommend each other's work, but sometimes that becomes a distraction as much as a draw. It seems to now be common for a Substack author to insert a Substack formated display of his or others' essays as a reference or related content to what he/she is writing. I have no problem with providing such references, but would appreciate retaining the more usual hyperlink type linkage. Otherwise I have to recognize there is futher content below such insertions. I also would prefer if such links displayed enough of the title to indicate if I should pursue that link or skip it. Substack redirects don't give me that information. Not sure if you can or want to bother taking this up with the Substack "powers that be". I fear my voice is also a voice in the wilderness on this topic. :-)
Thank you for this background writeup. It helps keep your content in perspective: while I may disagree about a given point or other, I can see that any such differences should be treated with a respectful response, as you have the "lived experience" and you have done your homework, so clarifying any disagreements is probably more about asking you the right question.
Given your prior work as a User Experience Designer, or what I would call a user interface designer*, I would welcome an "off topic" posting about your views concerning the variety of interfaces we have to manage, often with little consistency among them. All too often I struggle (especially with my iPhone and its apps) to find the next button or expected focal point after making an entry. There may be "industry standards" on this stuff, but they seem to be violated as often as they are adhered to.
*Or does the user experience also include the type and quality of databases being queried behind the scenes? Some web sites have terrible search responses. Web wide searches sometimes seem to need a magic incantation in the search field to bring out the best/ better content. [more later]
Thanks, but I do not plan to write about UX design in this Substack.
do you have a source of info that you could recommend?
Not for end users, no.
I too disagree with the author in a few areas. Could you perhaps share some of your notable disagreements?
I defer to his information on history. I have had some minor differences about political views, given I am pretty much on the conservative side, but I have to hand it to Michael that he treats both sides evenhandly, often with a "pox on both their houses" outlook. He has a couple of recent posts dealing with upcoming political actions that I have not had a chance to read yet, so I am withholding judgement.
From this post in particular, we can see he has the background and experience, and has dedicated professional and personal time thinking about our political parties, political science, etc., and what he thinks should be done to fix things. No particular instance comes to my mind right now but I suspect some of those corrections are areas I would have to think about more deeply before knowledgably accepting or rejecting them. [Perhaps this is a non-answer to your query?]
Thanks. I find it kind of fascinating that I could be so aligned with someone politically considering that what drew me to MM was just a shared interest in progress and not his political leanings. In other words, the political stands that I developed are extremely similar to what he developed and yet neither is in any way conventional. I suspect we are both backing into prescriptions based on what has worked in progressive societies, rather than starting with abstract values, hard ideology or party affiliations and justifying prescriptions from that.
The areas where I don’t completely agree with MM are that he tends to focus much more on economic progress than I would. I would also like to delve deeper into his 5 Keys of Progress. I sense something is missing, but haven’t taken the effort yet to put it into a solid argument.
Hope these replies are not getting too far off topic, but we are discussing our respective paths towards MM's goals, as he presented his own.
I understand how and why he would focus on a clearly quantitative metric such as per capita GDP (data available; hard #'s; decent if incomplete measure of "progress"). I am sure he recognizes the limitations there, too. [Strange to talk about someone who is essentially "standing right there" next to us.] [Is there some etiquette that violates, or is it accepted as part of thread commentary?]
I was going to ask MM if from his reading and studies he has a view about the relative "firstness" of people having political liberty and social freedoms vs. obtaining relatively improved economic and material conditions. Is one necessary to achieve the other? Not clear from what I have read, and witnessing China's rise, that liberty has to come first, as I might have expected or hoped. Better to explore on a different posting?
Political and social benefits are or should be part of the measure of "progress" but they are hard to demonstrate in a neutral analysis. Plus they do have some relationship to economic gains - just perhaps indirect?
I think that you replied to the wrong comment.