I Liked It Before It Was Cool
Better early than wrong
Partial list of things I was ahead of the trend on…
The future population problem was always going to be too few people not too many. This came from reading Ben Wattenberg and Julian Simon early, early on in my formative years. Keep in mind that too few includes everything from shrinking populations to populations that while growing and large are still smaller than they could otherwise be. And don’t fall for the fallacy of composition: what can be good for families and small groups can be bad for society in general—small families can be optimal for those particular families but still suboptimal for the society they belong to.
There has been a problematic trend of over feminization of societal norms especially in academia and corporate America and practices along with not valuing men and masculinity properly.1
There are too many people going to college. This is separate from the related problems of college expenditures being too high, degree disconnection from the real world, work credential requirements growing to excess, and grade inflation.
Sugar consumption in excess is the major dietary health risk mostly responsible the obesity problem while the consumption of fat is and has been a neutral if not beneficial part of our diets.
Nuclear energy is the best and most promising power source and is the best solution to the environmental problem of burning fossil fuels for energy.
Zoning is economically destructive. This significant problem is in addition to the fact that it is a meaningful violation of property rights and tool for control by powerful interests.
Rudy Giuliani is a dirtbag. I didn’t like him when he was the attorney general prosecuting Michael Milken. I further didn’t like him when he was a mayor whose administration so fit to have cops become interventionist bullies including “stop and frisk”. America’s mayor never had much cachet with me.
The efforts to move to a cashless society are very concerning and should be strongly questioned and resisted. Anti-money laundering and other cash-penalizing policies as well as a refusal to accommodate cash by issuing larger denomination notes have been the heart of this problem. The potential threat of developing a CBDC has been the latest iteration.
Marijuana among other illicit drugs should be fully legalized. Obviously the full extent of this statement especially the "among other illicit drugs" part has yet to be completely fulfilled. However, psychedelics are certainly the next step in this evolution, and perhaps sanity in the opioid crisis will be the third.
School choice is the solution to the failure of government schooling. Another important nuance to understand is that school choice is public schooling. The limitations imposed by the government school structure give lie to the idea the government schools equal public schools.
While we’re in the early dawn of this one, nonetheless lab grown meat is the future of meat consumption. As technological strides are made bringing economies of scale to this innovation, norms will change and acceptance will grow. One big contributing factor will be that no longer will people be able to ignore the plight of factory-farmed animals.
These are just some items that (I believe) I have been ahead of the curve on presuming I am on the wave of change. Obviously I think the wave is moving in the right direction (my direction), but I could certainly be wrong in either case—these are not the future or these should not be the future.2 We’ll see…
It is very likely this item gets misinterpreted as being anti woman. It most certainly is not.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman