Thread by @eriktorenberg

Some of my favorite takeaways & quotes from Mark Zuckerberg's interview w/ Patrick Collison & Tyler Cowen👇

There’s a lot of suggested evidence that maybe we aren’t as effective at generating progress as we had been in the past

Between 1920-1970, productivity growth in the U.S. hovered between 1.7-1.9%/year. Nowadays, most economists think it’s much lower (~0.4%).

If you have a growth rate that’s 1% lower, over the course of a bit more than a century, you could have been 3x richer with the higher growth rate.

That’s a difference between the U.S. today and Mexico

I don’t think economic growth is always positive, but America has serious problems.

I’d rather address those problems with more resources, rather than fewer, whether paying off our debts, addressing climate change, or fixing global poverty

How can we enhance growth?

By making it easier to build homes & move to big cities (enhancing opportunity/geographic mobility)

It’s extremely difficult to pack up & head somewhere like the Bay Area & just hope to get a job (this was much easier ~50 ago)

cc @placement

Related: In 1980, 40% of people moved somewhere when starting a new career; last year, only 1 in 10 people moved after accepting a new job offer

One reason for this: costs of movement + housing costs have increased, especially in our most productive regions

Funding science is incredibly important, but there’s little research into how exactly we should be doing so 

e.g. in 1980, NIH spent 12x more dollars on researchers under 40 than those over 50. Today, this has inverted – they spend 5x more dollars on ppl over 50 than ppl over 40

Over the past 100 years, there’s been tremendous progress in medical research

The average life expectancy has increased by ~1/4 year of every year, & relatively linearly

But, Tyler brings up a good point: We use to spend a few % points of our GDP on healthcare, now we spend 18%

All of the following have grown linearly over the last 100 years: # of PhDs, totals $ spent on funded science, and # of published papers 

But no corresponding increase in terms of scientific progress.

When NY decided to build a subway in 1900, they opened 23 subway stations in 5 yrs for ~$1B

When NY decided to build a 2nd Avenue subway in 2000, 3 stations in 17 yrs & spent $4.5 billion doing so

Productivity in regards to subway construction decreased by a factor of 40

The percentage of Americans who think their kid’s lives will be better than their’s has been declining since World War II

This lost sense of optimism about the future results in people investing less and not working as hard

If you look at a list of American universities, the list of the top schools in the 1920s & those today is virtually the same, except we’ve added on California.

7 of the top 25 schools started within 30 year period.

In contrast, the list of the top 10 cos changes every decade

Procedures for tenure in the top 50 research universities hasn’t changed much at all

There’s not enough experimentation with how you reward people.

More schools should experiment with different kinds of tenure or reward people more on the basis of practical impact

Rent, healthcare, education, etc have skyrocketed in the U.S., but we can learn from others

In Singapore, healthcare spending is only 4% of their GDP, and they have a slightly higher life expectancy

In Japan, the NIMBY problem (the cost of getting an apartment) is mostly solved

How to bring housing costs down?

It’s easier to move bits around than atoms – advancements in tech like AR & VR will enable ppl to be where they want to be without having to move there physically

Hyperloop will expand the “radius” of cities, allowing ppl to live further away

Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge starting in 1933, finished within 4 years and then we built island in 18 months.

Not possible today in 18 months. 


France in 5 years high speed rail, CA projected 25 year projects for high speed rail.

Why does Zuck think education and healthcare are too expensive?

Education is subsidized by government, which puts low pressure to decrease costs of education


American value of doing everything you can do to help someone who is sick is root of cause of over spending in US