The good news about the Pfizer vaccine has brought a few of my thoughts about politics and society into clearer focus.

Namely, why can't we do big things any more?

A: We can. We clearly can! But something's getting in the way.

You see a lot of people thinking along these lines in the last few years: @pmarca says it's time to build. @peterthiel calls out how shallow our innovation has become: twitter, not flying cars. Robert Gordon wrote 600+ pages on slowing US growth. Plus many others.

What's wrong?

The vaccine has crystallized in my mind how much human ingenuity can still accomplish.

It is a remarkable, breathtaking achievement to have a vaccine so fast. Especially given the new tech involved, the effectiveness, and the fact that we're going to get SEVERAL good vaccines.

The reasons for slow growth, inability to build big projects, and disappointing technological innovations aren't because humanity hit an intellectual wall, or because technology is just at some weltgeist-determined stopping point.

The problems are institutional.

When we put our minds to and REALLY need to, we're clearly still capable of great things. But our market structures, our systems of government, of regulation, etc, are holding us back. The institutions need to change.

This isn't a left-right thing - the problem isn't purely too much government/too little government. It's both simultaneously, it's the wrong forms of government, it's the wrong incentives and structures in the market.

It's a much harder problem than just 'government good/bad'

The belief that we need to fix these problems in order to turbo-charge innovation is a core part of the Neoliberal Project. It's what we mean when we call for a 'tech-optimistic society' in our core values.

One of the most valuable things anyone can do is work on this problem: how do we change our institutions to make 'vaccine in under a year' the norm, not just a one-off blessing?

It's unclear what the right answers are, but it's clear we need more talented people looking for them

Matt's point makes me think one of the 'technologies' we need is an easier way to compensate those who lose out, and clear institutional hurdles out of the way.

What if Kaldor-Hicks was actually a thing that happened reliably and not just a fun theorem. https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1326122380356411394